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Issue 50.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1991. ; Review fOl~ Religious Volume 50 Number 4 July/August 1991 P()STMAS'I'I'.'ll: Send mhh'c.~.~ chang~'s Io Rl.:Vll.:W 1.~ nt ll,.:i.i~ ;i, ~i,s; P.(). Box 6071); l)llhli h, M N 55806. .~lll~scriplioll raics: .~illglc c.py $3.51) plus lll~lililig 1991 RI.:VIEW I)avid L. Fleming, ~.l. Philip C. Fischen S.I. Michad G. I-hzrter, ~.l. Elizabeth Mcl)omm~h, 0.1: Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Edilor Asxocial~" Cammical Co.nsc/Edilor 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. July/August 1991 Volume 50 Number 4 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor should be sent to R~vl~w rot R~lous; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Elizabeth McDonougb, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue; P.O. 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This order is for [] a new subscription [] a renewal [] a restart of a lapsed subscription MAIL TO: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ¯ 3601 LINDELL BOULEVARD ° ST.LOu1S, MO 63108 1-91" PRISMS. The word ordinary seems to imply the bland, the unexciting, the run-of-the- mill, the everyday. In fact, for many of us even the liturgical year of the Church suffers from being divided into two parts: the Seasons and Ordinary Time. Although liturgy properly speaks of our celebrations, we tend to find it hard to celebrate what is called ordinary. Perhaps the very distinction which the Church highlights in so dividing the liturgical year calls us to a deeper reflection upon our understanding of the ordinary. God creates the ordinary., and calls it good. It is true: the ordinary is the very substance of our world. While being itself God's cre-ation, the ordinary is also the substance with which God works. We, by being ordinary, can be touched and molded and transfigured by God. Often we try to escape from being ordinary, and in the process we shut ourselves off from being available to God's action in our lives. In the bibli-cal accounts of creation, we find the lure of an escape from the ordinary the root crisis of properly using our God-given freedom. The story of Lucifer and the fallen angels is a story of beings discontent with being ordinary. As they try to move beyond the ordinary by shutting out God, this becomes their hell. So, too, the story of Adam and Eve is a story of two people, in the freshness of human life, already desirous of escaping the ordinary--to be like gods. Sacramentally we are reminded that God continues to take the ordi-nary- water, bread and wine, oil--to make extraordinary contact with us. Even when our prayer or the spirituality we live is--try as we may---ordi-nary, we thus have the very quality which allows it to become the vehicle of God's action. The difficulty for us in accepting the ordinary is not just from an inherent human tendency to want to be noticed and praised, but also from the graced impetus to strive, to struggle, to desire to grow beyond where we are. How are we to distinguish these spirits within us, distinguish move-ments that would lead us to close ourselves off to God by our self-focus from movements whereby God is drawing us ever closer in our surrender? Our writers in this issue provide us with various approaches to a lived answer. John Wickham goes right to the heart of our reflections in the lead article by focusing on our choice of being "just ordinary." McMurray and Conroy and Kroeger turn our gaze to the whole complexus of activities 481 482 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 which make up our spirituality--how do we work at making a spirituality our "ordinary" life-source? A different question is posed by Samy and Fichtner when they ask whether the ordinary practices which we find in a spirituality which is not Christian can be an aid in our openness to God. Vest and Schwarz and Gottemoeller draw our attention to various aspects of the ordinary Christian lay life as influenced by a spirituality which is described as monastic, by a new kind of membership relation to a traditional religious congregation, or by a new responsibility within the institutions formerly identified with a particular religious order. In the midst of some of the liturgical renewal stimulated by Vatican II, the practice of a daily Eucharistic celebration has sometimes been a point of dispute, especially among those priests and religious whose congregational rule or custom clearly called for such observance. The confusion often turned on what was celebratory and what was ordinary or daily. John Huels weaves his way through various schools of thought in order to provide a group with a whole cloth of ordinary spiritual practice. Although contemplative life in its dedicated form is recognized as truly a special calling in the Church, Clifford Stevens would have us all draw some nourishment today from its age-old sources. And finally, four different writers--Navone, Monteleone, Seethaler, and Billy--lead us further along in the most common activity of human interaction with God, our attempt at praying. As portrayed in the gospels, Jesus had to spend a lot of his efforts both in his ordinary apostolic life and then again in his resurrected life to prove his ordinariness. He gets tired, he eats and drinks, he needs friends, and he takes time to pray--all ordinary activities for us humans. And yet it was in these very ordinary dealings that God is fully present to us in Jesus Christ. Perhaps the part of the Church year we call "ordinary time" is a necessary reminder to us of how God wants to work with us. David L. Fleming, S.J. Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" John Wickham, S.J Father John Wickham, S.J., is a member of the Upper Canada Province of the Society of Jesus. He is the author of The Common Faith and The Communal Exercises (Ignatian Centre in Montreal): His address is Ignatian Centre; 4567 West Broadway; Montreal, Quebec; Canada H4B 2A7. There is something new, I believe, about the feeling often experienced today of being "just an ordinary person." Many recurrently feel that way despite their natural gifts, highly developed skills, or honored positions. Nor do they need to deny those advantages. In contrast to what others may tend to think, or what the world expects of them, their subjective experience of themselves--what it feels like from within their own skins--is that of a worthwhile even if unfinished, rather unique and yet uncertainly striving, interesting enough but still "just ordinary" life. It is midway between what is heroic and what is base. It is not very glamorous, but neither is it paltry. Its special taste, which is quite different from these alternatives, makes it a rather new kind of experience. If at times we do recognize that experience in ourselves, then we may face a range of questions. Should I accept the feeling as a true and good one? Or would I be better off without it? Should I choose it so often and persis-tently that it becomes habitual for me? Or would that turn into an inauthentic pose? Should I try to find some part of my real identity there? And what exactly would that imply? For example, would it mean I am choosing to be mediocre? The fact that a feeling arises, St. Ignatius tells us, does not prove it to be from God. The latter point needs to be discerned. And kinds of feeling that become widespread in a given society need to be discerned just as much as do feelings that arise only in a particular individual. In fact, our faith com-munities must often set themselves against cultural trends in the world around them. 483 484 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 In order to get at underlying issues, I wish to consider this topic in two stages. The first will be restricted to the phenomenon itself of a "just ordi-nary" feeling as a secular event in our world. Only then will I turn to the sec-ond stage, namely, to take up the kinds of faith response which we might wish to give it today. The first part, then, attempts an analysis of the "feel-ing." The second considers when, or in what circumstances, we might "choose" in faith to make it our own. Our New Cultural Situation To rephrase my opening statement, I believe that a "just ordinary" feel-ing about oneself is somewhat new as a more widespread and recurrent experience in Western culture. In recent years nearly everyone I have spoken to about this has nodded at once and said, "Yes, that's exactly how I often feel." While I possess no statistical data on its prevalence, my impression is that quite a few people have come to recognize its presence in themselves. Let me try to locate this experience more precisely. I am referring to something secular in origin and not necessarily Christian or religious in itself. Like God's rain and sunshine, it may affect everyone, just :and unjust, believer and unbeliever alike. Perhaps it was triggered off by the countercultural movement of the nineteen-sixties, since during the seventies commentators often pointed out the exaggerated attention then being given to inner feel-ings- to the personal self of each one apart from their external involvements. At that time many were being thrown back upon their subjective states of awareness to a degree that had rarely happened before. The seventies were called the "Me Decade," one that belonged to the "Me Generation" whose subjective responses (often referred to then as "getting in touch with your feelings") were given unprecedented emphasis and publicity. What had previously been mostly private now became blatantly public. But perhaps during the eighties not only the novelty but some of the disturbing quality, too, of that rather messy explosion of "subjectivity" in our midst has worn off and subsided to a degree--enough to allow "just ordinary" feelings to rise to the surface and gain attention today. What had occurred, then, was an intensification of self-awareness, a heightening of subjective consciousness among much larger segments of our population than before, and even a thematization of this event in our culture. "Souls" had been transformed into "subjects." Individuals became persons. This had happened much earlier, of course, for some exceptional people and even for smallish groups here and there, but it had never before become such a widespread phenomenon. And it involves matters of considerable importance, not easily dis- Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" / 41~5 missed. Bernard Lonergan has written of "the shift to interiority" in the twentieth century as the emergence of a new "realm" of human reality, i At the opposite end of the scale, the usual wild and foolish misuse of a new gift by the more excitable members of society should not blind us to its underly-ing significance. That is the larger context. More in particular I wish to stress, first of all, the quieter reverberations which those noisy events have left with many per-sons today. The gift itself of interiority is multifaceted, of course, but a first approach would notice that in part it may belong with the newly "expressive self' which has emerged alongside, and often independently of, the older "utilitarian self.''2 While the latter continues to exert a dominant influence in our midst, it must now share the public table with a more mystical parmer. From a slightly different viewpoint the "just ordinary" feeling should be seen mainly as a response to the puritan "strong self' of modern culture. After the nineteenth century in the West we gained the capacity-- appropri-ate to a technocratic society---of developing our ego-strengths. That is, a cer-tain knack, at least for special purposes, of withholding or excluding deeper levels of feeling can free an individual to concentrate on impersonal obser-vations, accurate calculations, and carefully directed efforts of the will. Further development of this inner self-control is required for any kind of efficiency and productivity in the working world. It is clear that the requisite skills are not given by nature but must be culturally developed. Not only our workplaces but our schools and colleges, too, call insistently for the formation of habits (especially of technical reason and will) which enable entry into the competitive society with all the bureau-cratic ladders and graduated salary scales of a successful career---or not-so-successful, as the case may (more often) be. In contrast to this still urgent public arena of "strong selves," individual members also return to private worlds of rest, relaxation, and entertainment, to times of weakness when they may face their own ignorance about the questions posed to them in life and recogn!ze their lack of energy for the continual efforts required. Human beings, it should be stressed, when separated from their social roles and active commitments and thrown back upon their private resources, usually do not find a great deal of their own to sustain them. Modern urban ways have cut people off from the deeply penetrating and densely inter-twined supports of rural societies. As a result, the rootless city dweller becomes conscious of boredom, of empty times to be filled up, of personal neediness and spiritual hungers not easily satisfied. An individual person, after all, is usually endangered by too much isolation from others, and mod- 4~16 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 em technologies often weaken or destroy traditional communities (families, neighborhoods, parishes). Besides, whenever institutions let us down or defeat our aims, or when hurtful clashes disturb our feelings for others, we are left alone to deal with a diminishing present and a more uncertain future. That is when a loving spouse and intimate friends (if available)become essential to our very sur-vival; without them, depressed feelings all too easily turn to thoughts of nonexistence. It was the countercultural movement which reacted against the giant bureaucratic institutions of our world and forced into the broader stream of public life the previously underground resource of subjective feelings. It transformed leisure moments of the kind just mentioned into recurrent times of self-expression which are portrayed and celebrated in our electronic media. This revealed to large numbers of fairly well-off persons in Western societies that their interior selves need to be cultivated in ways that differ enormously from the older patterns of successful selfhood modeled for them in corporate institutions. The counterculture managed to give sustained pub-licity to a host of "alternative lifestyles"---that is, a diverse range of subjec-tive modes in self-identity and interpersonal relating. This vastly expanded "realm of interiority" provides a cultural context for, and is itself fostered by, many recent movements: affirmations of per-sonal rights, the reawakening of charismata, the turn to the East, the renewal of contemplative prayer traditions, and the broadly secular interest in spiritu-alities of all kinds. It is surpi'ising to notice how the word "spiritual" and its cognates have gained such widespread use not only in the arts but in sports, politics, business enterprises, salesmanship, the military--almost every-where today. In our faith tradition, on the other hand, the interior life had a much more restricted meaning. Medieval interiority was exclusively religious--the very opposite of anything secular or worldly. In order to develop one's union with God, according to the late-medieval Imitation of Christ, believers were expected to withdraw from external involvements--at least, from all the habits and attitudes belonging to them--and to cultivate an inner commu-nion with the Lord deep within their hearts. The Imitation, we should remember, is the most popular spiritual classic of all time.3 A crucial aspect of its teaching has to do with the personal self so poignantly revealed by means of a prolonged withdrawal of the kind rec-ommended. But when thrown back upon oneself in this way, what does one find? The oft-repeated answer to this question shows how bare the cup-boards of subjectivity can be: Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" / 487 This is the greatest and most useful lesson we can learn: to know our-selves for what we truly are, to admit freely our own weaknesses and failings.4 I am nothing, and I did not even know it. If left to myself, I am noth-ing; I am all weakness. But if you turn your face to me, [Lord,] I am at once made strong and am filled with new happiness.5 Oh, how humbly and lowly I ought to feel about myself, and even if I seem to have goodness, I ought to think nothing of it . I find myself to be nothing but nothing, absolutely nothing . I peer deep within myself and I find nothing but total nothingness.6 No doubt, older Christians today will recall teachings of this kind as familiar features of their early training. And some of its emphases tend to give us pause. What about the inherent goodness of each human self?. This was occasionally noticed in the Imitation, but should it not have received much more attention? On this question two historical points should perhaps be made. First, the Imitation itself arose from the Devotio Moderna's care for many ordinary members of society who desired to cultivate a devout life amid late-medieval disruptions of Christian Europe (the Black Death and subsequent plagues, persistent warfare, economic hardship, the Great Western Schism).7 Out of their prolonged experience of public calamities came this first popular expression of the personal subject in the West--at least, among the little seg-ments of the population influenced by the "new devotion." The point for us here is that a faith response to those troubled times made possible an interior life for many more persons than before (including lay members living in the world). An inner self could then be cultivated by means of the careful religious teachings extended to them by The Imitation of Christ and similar writings of the movement. Thus, interiority was initial-ly a sacred realm, not a secular one. In order to develop at all, it had to define itself against the secular world. This meant, of course, that the self had precisely "nothing" of its own to fall back upon--no widely accepted norms of individual worth had as yet been formulated. The themes of individualism which we take for granted today as "natural" were simply not available in the Middle Ages. The Devotio Moderna may, in fact, have contributed notably to the first social expression of our individual sense of self. It follows that to blame it for not supplying what it was in the very process of begetting seems misguided. That would be reading history backward--a frequent modern failing. Secondly, it seems that the difference between selfhood (a good sense of self) and selfishness (a bad sense) had not as yet been separately felt. In that 488 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 sacred milieu the differentiation of a secular goodness of creation apart from the fallen condition so frequently stressed in spiritual teachings remained for the future to bring about. In other words, the self-in-its-own-being could not possibly then have been "tasted" distinctly from the self-as-sinful or the self-as- saved-by-grace (or both together). True enough, humility was sometimes considered apart from habits of sinfulness--namely in Mary and in the saints--but even there what received emphasis was the divine grace of their redemption (in Mary's case extending to her prior preservation) from sin's more normal dominion. These excep-tions only proved the rule that humility--as we hear its accents in the Imitation--arises from the sharpened interior taste of one's sinful self that usually follows upon forgiveness. In view of this cultural moment of The Imitation of Christ in the early fifteenth century, its lack of any emphasis on natural goodness for the indi-vidual self is understandabl~. It is true that, by the later sixteenth century, Montaigne's Essays and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Richard II had begun to anticipate modem feelings of individual selfhood, but this was still an excep-tional happening within the sacred medieval precincts, it may be said. So many developments have taken place in the centuries since that time--the Cartesian ego, theKantian turn to the subject, the Romantic movement, nineteenth-century liberalism, as well as the already mentioned "shift to interiority" ~ind countercultural movement in our own century, that we cannot have recourse solely to a retrieval of medieval gifts. In short, the new interiority of our day differs a great deal from the "interior life" handed down to us in our spiritual tradition. The old interiority was (a) fully sacred in meaning, (b) defined in opposition to the "world," (c) low in self-esteem while high in reliance on God alone, and (d) rarely to be shared with others socially. By contrast, the new interiority is (a) mainly sec-ular in meaning, (b) defined against the mainline institutions of society (including those of the Church), (c) self-affirming and self-accepting, even if admitting one's need of friends and of the divine Other, and (d) eagerly shared with others in public lifestyles. Like many others, in my Jesuit formation I was often counseled to ignore, set aside, or "offer up" my individual feelings as distracting or, more likely, harmful to my fuller appropriation of the uniform spiritual teachings provided. These latter consisted in learning the general answers true for everyone alike and in keeping the rules set down for all without exception. That way of forming members, as we know, has been in great part aban-doned in recent decades. In any case, it had introduced painful distortions into our medieval heritage. Choosing to be 'Just Ordinary" / 489 The main "warp" in question was directly related, I believe, to the nine-teent~ h-century rise of the "strong self" already mentioned. Let me briefly review that development. As I have noted, humility had traditionally been ~'ocused on the sinful condition of those converted to the Lord. It did not dwell merely on mortal sins committed prior to their deeper conversion, but much more on the venial sins which they came to recognize in present self-awareness. This medieval tradition may be gathered in detail from Alphonsus Rodriguez's Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues.8 Against that backdrop the modem ideal of a "strong sell" to be fash-ioned in youth by anyone hoping to succeed in the secular world, or even to survive in it, presented a considerable contrast. Prior to 1965, our Catholic parishes and schools managed to combine this modem requirement (a strong selfhood formed in the conscious mind through repression of deeper feel-ings) With traditional teachings on humility (reliance on God alone because of personal sinfulness and the "nothingness" of self). This was made easier by means of the invisible wall erected around the distinctly Catholic world. By the later nineteenth century, of course, Christian faith had already become to a large extent privatized, separated from public life and domesticated in family and parish activities. For Catholics in North America, the immigrant Church had developed its own "garrison" mentality so effective!y that one could cultivate a traditionally humble self in the narrowly religious realm and at the same time a secularly aggressive self in the business, professional, political, or broadly social realm. That was the religious situation in which I was raised, and I did not then advert to its inconsistencies. Perhaps many others today can recall this com-bination of strivings. However opposite they were in character, we tried to attain them both and to some extent we succeeded--by the grace of God. In recent decades that whole effort has disappeared and as a result (among many other quandaries) a whole spectrum of possible selves has become available today. It is a somewhat unsettling set of choices. But amidst all our struggles to find or fashion personal identities (or perhaps to fortify older ways in the very teeth of these developments), the curious new event has made its presence felt--the "just ordinary" feeling. Contemporary Faith Responses At this point I wish to bring into our discussion a distinction rather dif-ferent from any mentioned so far. In a recent book, Hopkins, the Self and God, Walter Ong, S.J., has emphasized the "taste of self" which figured so prominently in Gerard Hopkins's poetry, letters, and notebooks.9 As a chap- 490 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 ter on the Victorian context makes clear, the theme was not unusual even then. But Hopkins, because of his unique attention to it and extraordinary gifts of language and feeling, managed to anticipate many of our present concerns. The distinction employed by Fr. Ong in his discussion is between the self as "I" or "me" in the densely concrete, subjective stance underlying all one's experiences and, on the other hand, the self as objectified in various characteristics, habitual attitudes, and acquired abilities. Ong names the first of these "the subject-self' and the second "the self-concept"--a terminology already in use. More is meant than merely a difference between subjective and objec-tive qualities of the self. The so-called "objective" side points to an individu-al's attempts to gain a sense of developing identity--at first through the reactions :of other people, and then through one's own continued striving. Often a variety of contrasting possibilities are "tried on for size" and lived out for a time, but later modified or rejected. But underneath every such effort lurks a richer source of seifhood that unifies the ongoing and often interrupted sequence. Moreover, the subject-self also feels--at least indirectly--the inadequa-cy of whatever aspects of self-conception are presently entertained. The lat-ter are never quite right. There is always a certain sense of"more to come": Why do I doubt my capacity to keep this up any longer? Maybe I should change my mind about the whole business? Or am I trapped in a "fate" of being the way I am?l° And as soon as some new aspect of the self gains initial clarity, there is often a tendency to react in a different direction. Even if I should rejoice in a rather flattering or at least affirmative symbol of myself, my subconscious feelings may tend to exert a counterinfluence. Or if snubbed by others or blamed in any way, I might resent it at several levels at once (despite a ten-dency to self-doubt), but I will also search for memories of my better qualities. A great variety of varying patterns of such "identity searches" may be noted in spiritual direction. But what I wish to stress here is the unifying "I" in every pattern or in every sequence of changing patterns over years of per-sonal growth. "I" am the enduring (somehow even unchanging?) recipient, resource, and agent of all such reflexive feelings, perceptions, visions, and (as Eliot has taught us) endless revisions. For I am always the one who is unfinished. I exist amid processes that are ever moving me into uncertain futures. This mysterious "I" may be used, of course, in a way that includes the self-concept of my current identity. Most often the two blend together in my Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" / 49'1 experience of them. Wider, more inclusive self-affirmations are normal and even important. For the self-concept can never really be independent of the subject-self--the two functions are inherently connected and interactive. My various self-conceptions (especially at their least vague, most fully articulat-ed stages) need to be tested repeatedly in the subject-self. Do I feel at home in them? In fact, their authenticity becomes known only insofar as they truly actualize my subjectively felt potentials. On the other side, the subject-self cannot long endure without some kind of self-concept. Even when denied previous realizations in the social world, the subject-self may have recourse to fantasy roles in the theatre of imagina-tion. For I cannot avoid notions of selfhood altogether--my neediness finds relief only in the movement to some form of self-realization, however indi-rect, implied, or even self-sacrificial it may become for a time. But what is new today for many persons is that 'T' may recurrently refer quite exclusively to the subject-self alone. In such cases the needful relation to identities is not denied but somehow "bracketed out" or "put on hold." This distinction appears to be called for by what I have named the "just ordi- ¯nary" feeling. More precisely, the "just ordinary" feeling belongs especially to the subject-self. Now, this distinction may unlock several, of the puzzling questions which arise .from our cultural situation today. It might resolve the problem for all who try to decide whether or not--even precisely as a Christian-- they should choose to be "just ordinary." Not Mediocrity, but Limitation A first question to be faced concerns mediocrity. If one settles into a "just ordinary" feeling of oneself, would this not bring an end to growth, to any serious striving for improvement? Would it not ring the death knell of idealism (in a good sense)? Would it banish from the competitive society believers who chose to accept it--as though our economic system as such is inherently alien? Even more traditional spiritualities sought to refute the accusation that Christian faith necessarily inclined believers to accept the established pow-ers and to resign themselves to exploitation by cle4er elites (Marx's "opium of the people" view about the role of religion in society). But that false use of Christian faith is not in question here. If a devout life means acceptance of manipulation and coercion by others, then it has simply lost its roots in the prophetic teachings of Christ. Instead, what is relevant here is the insight that only the subject-self can feel "just ordinary." Such a feeling cannot rightly belong to the self-concept. 499 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 My position is that only insofar as one becomes aware of one's "purely" sub-jective selfhood in contrast to current or possible fulfillments of one's poten-tials (the self-concept always means that) does the "just ordinary" feeling arise in the first place. It would follow, then, that for persons who do not experience this newish feeling (and no one is required to do so!) a decision to be "just ordinary" might mean choosing to be mediocre. That is not the case, however, for those who do recognize the new feel-ing in themselves; what they experience, I would say, is a new sense of per-sonal limits. No doubt, our knowledge of limitations is pluriform. Each person would tend to stress different aspects of the overall human "contin-gency" (its more technical name) as this comes home to individual lives. Limits are reached in our work, our relationships, our different life-stages, our suffering of reverses, rejections, sickness, injuries, or close encounters with death and dying: Our knowledge and abilities have a great variety of limitations, but so do our energies and our capacity for making creative responses. There are traditional ways of coming to know and accept our littleness, but what I have in mind here gives a different resonance to these more familiar events. In Western cultures it may seem natural to invest one's whole identity in a career role, with its achievements, or with honors already received (here the "strong self" makes its presence felt). But against this tendency I find it possible, like Hopkins, to identify mainly with my subject-self--even though my developed talents, skills, and other acquisitions (whatever their true worth) may be kept in view. I do not deny the crucial importance of these factors in my life as a whole. But I know I could lose all use of them if I suffered a grave stroke or a debilitating heart attack, for example. And throughout that illness, whose effects could be long-lasting, I would contin-ue to experience myself as "me"--a limited person, unique in my special taste of self, the same as I was as a child and teenager, and surely to remain so until death. If I am unable to make this sort of self-identification, but insist on claiming my developed self-concept as the only true "me," the danger is that a debilitating illness may tend to destroy me altogether. And those who live into old age, even if they never suffer a health crisis of the dramatic sort mentioned, may eventually experience their subject-self as "just ordinary"-- stripped of any actual use of their various gifts. In traditional Christian teaching our need for reliance on God will nor-mally be heightened and dramatized by major experiences of suffering (',limit" situations). This will surely continue to exert a central influence on personal realizations of Christ's paschal mystery. The unusual note to be Choosing to be "Just Ordinary '" / 493 sounded here, however, concerns the dimension of selfhood which our cul-tural moment may be bringing alive. The 'T' whom Jesus calls and unites to himself, the "I" who undergoes spiritual deaths and who may then receive new life in the risen Lord--this 'T' may now choose to identify with "just ordinary" feelings rather than either "nothing" or "something good denied." It is a form of limited selfhood available today to a much larger number of persons than ever before. Humility in a New Key As cultural events bring forward different ways of experiencing not only the humanized world but also the human subject in and by whom the world is humanized, individuals growing aware of their own gifts are always exposed to new dangers from pride. In his "Two Standards," we remember, St. Ignatius highlights the time-honored medieval teaching that pride is the source and origin of every other vice, and that humility, as St. Bernard puts it, is "the foundation and safeguard of all virtues." It follows that the emer-gence of a "just ordinary" feeling raises another question: precisely what effect might this have on our traditional sense of what the virtue of humility requires? No doubt, the rise of modern democracies brought a stronger emphasis on equality into social relations in the West (in contrast to earlier ideals of "subordination," of submission to those in higher orders). Every member, rich or poor, is supposed to stand on the same ground, in a civil sense as well as "before God," as every other member. But this opened the way to compe-tition in the public "free marketplace," where the many levels of social clas-sification become even more clearly marked than in the premodern world. Personal evaluations and interpersonal judgments are so much more intense than previously that the "neurotic" society of our day has become familiar to US.11 In this context modern teachings on humility tended to stress the differ-ence between the office and the office holder. And this traditional distinction was often combined with a focus on teamwork or group contributions. In sports, the heroes who score the highest number of points, even the winning goals, humbly acknowledge the help of their teammates and the glory of the whole team, rather than their individual merits. In short, modern humility consists mainly in putting oneself down. Self-abasement, especially after some signs of achievement appear in the struggle for success over others, is felt to be essential. This means that humility and humiliation are closely approximated in modern competitive societies. But in the postmodern world (if that is where we are today) many are 494 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 beginning to sense their subjective distance from the very structures of suc-cess and achievement themselves. Perhaps this is why human vulnerability and powerlessness have received so much attention in recent years. If I am right in this--to some extent and for some members only, of course--then the "just ordinary" feeling would denote an ability to experience self-worth independently of competition for successful contributions in the established institutions of the world. When the feeling does mean that, I would argue in favor of seeking to realize it in one's life. This would not necessarily signify nonparticipation in the large struc-tures of society--whether in business, politics, sports, communications, or whatever. But it could qualify the style of our participation because our main sense of self would no longer consist in whatever we might be able to achieve. To gain this rather sophisticated balance, of course, might not always be easy. It would mean learning how to give one's whole energies to highly skilled performances without pinning one's sense of self to success in performing well. Whatever the-degree of success or failure realized over time, those who contribute would continue to experience themselves to be "just ordinary" members of a community which regularly affirms their worth on a basis other than that of competition, success, or failure. This would bring a newish tone, a new chord, I think, to the age-old music of humility. Sacred and Secular Community The "just ordinary" feeling may also raise a question because of its very secularity. Normally the Church lives in a certa{n state of tension with the secular society in which its witness to Christ's message is to be given. But the quality of that "creative tension" can vary a great deal. In our day the tension may disappear whenever a new secular discovery affecting human growth is announced in a book or magazine, or its virtues are proclaimed in the media. It may then be taken up by skilled practitioners and made available in local programs. In recent decades we have received many such gifts. An example might be the interpretation of dreams by means of Jung's psychological theories. This can become quite an interesting activity, valu-able in itself. But there is a danger that believers who are attracted to it may then transfer most of their religious energies to essentially secular programs of this kind (think, too, of the many self-help groups claiming attehtion today) and thereafter give little attention to more central Christian practices. In particular, our own question concerns the "just ordinary" feeling. Is it another "brand-new discovery" of the type just mentioned? Does it not sug-gest a secular facet of human life which may all too easily replace more Choosing to be 'Just Ordinary" / 495 authentic 'teachings? Are we simply "shaking holy water" on secular objects and calling them Christian? I would reply that, while its potential misuses are undeniable, its right use may also be safeguarded if the underlying issue is kept clearly in sight-- the issue of the human call to transcendence. I will conclude this essay by exploring that deeper concem. At one level we remember that any new discovery may be claimed by Christian faith because all that is human belongs to God the Creator. Thus, we may recognize and welcome every fresh gift of human expertise, inte-grate it within the larger faith (making it subordinate, not dominant), and in this manner sanctify all things in Christ. No doubt this should be so. But at a deeper level of analysis the question arises in a new form because secularity (secular realities taken in a good sense, as differing from secularism) is always related to the sacred as its opposite. In this way Judaism and Christianity themselves initiated a radical process of secularization. For us the world is no longer "full of gods" since we believe in the one Creator who is beyond all created things (transcen-dent). Our faith has secularized the cosmos. Later on in history the civilized world, too, took further giant steps on the same journey. In great part today our political, economic, social, and cultural institutions are experienced not as immediately God-given but as humanly devised. In this more radical sense, then, whenever ongoing secularization enables a new gift of human life to be realized, the sacred powers of tradi-tional faith need to be adapted to the new situation. What had formerly been handled indirectly by religious beliefs has now come directly (even if incom-pletely) under human management. In faith we may welcome such events as fulfillments of God's intentions in creating humans "in his own image and likeness" (that is, cocreative with him). But we also note an important clue: there should be no change in secularity without a corresponding change in sacrality. The frequent failure here is a simple transfer of energies from the sacred into the secular realm while reducing religious operations to empty words alone. More specifically, if the emergence of "just ordinary" feelings can bring new aspects of human existence within the range of human competency, then we may rejoice in this prospect on condition that a corresponding, positive change occurs in our sense of specifically sacred gifts. But if the change should be merely negative, a loss of religious energies, then something has gone wrong. For example, the work of Carl Rogers and others on self-actualization and self-realization has an obvious bearing on our topic, but even here the 496 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 "just ordinary" feeling takes the process a step further, I think. All of these factors, we should remember, are secularizations of human powers which previously had been contained or implied within sacred gifts. 12 In Gerard Hopkins's poetry the sacred envelope remained untorn: Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-- Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his . 13 Even more to the point are his famous closing lines in another poem: In a flash, at a trumpet clash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. 14 The eternal worth to be realized at last in Christ is anticipated by a believer who knows his subject-self as "poor potsherd" and "matchwood." Surely this comes close to our "just ordinary" feeling even if its validation depends on faith in the resurrection. If we look back to Hopkins, we can per-ceive its secular potentials lurking within his very religious lines. In any case, now that it has emerged to stand on its own feet in our midst, we are challenged to respond afresh in faith to a new aspect of human self-realization. We may rejoice inthis event, but without a positive religious response of some kind the 16ss of transcendence becomes palpable. We may happily accept the growth of a human value, but its simultaneous excision from religious meanings calls for new initiatives, for real adaptations which do not downgrade the relevance of our transcendent faith but rather give it fresh impetus, redirecting its energies in new ways. Two principles may be l~ormulated in this regard. I have already been exploring the first of these, which might be put as follows: The Principle of Adaptation: Every new growth of secular competence should stimulate a corresponding renewal of sacred powers. The second may'be named: The Principle of Intensity: In our creative response to a given process of secularization, one important criterion would be a specific heighten-ing, rather than any lessening, in the experience of transcendence. Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" / 497 Whenever the Christian component is subtly reduced to a comfortable repetition of now irrelevant phrases, this second principle has been ignored. The urgency of transcendent faith for human affairs can easily be diminished without any advertence to its loss. Our "just ordinary" feeling, for example, simply cries out for creative faith responses. But what are these to be? That is the real issue. Will our sense of Christian humility be intensifie~l instead of being replaced? What fresh meaning can we now give to the crucial "poverty of spirit" which indicates membership in the Lord's kingdom? The heightened subjectivity that often seems to afflict us may also serve to awaken creative potentials previously unknown. Even though it makes us experience our human limits as never before, our acceptance of "just ordi-nary" feelings could, in fact, lead to new dimensions of liberation. But this will not be automatic. Our spiritual behavior will need to adjust itself cre-atively to the new gift. Possible responses are always at hand. Whenever in faith the members of our new communities reflect upon the significance of feeling "just ordinary" togetherl I believe the Real Presence of the risen Christ may receive a fresh emphasis. This heightened communal awareness may correspond in a unique way to our traditional poverty of spir-it. Precisely here a new intensity of faith may be gathering force. During the nineteen-twenties T.S. Eliot insistently employed the symbol of the Angelus bell, a traditional reminder of the moment of Incarnation. In that extraordinary instant, and whenever it is made present to us today, tran-scendent powers cut through the secular time dimension to disturb our mod-em preoccupations. In similar fashion a few decades earlier, wher~ striving to resist new inroads of modernity Pope Pius X led Catholic parishes to give renewed attention to the Real Presence in the Eucharist (mainly as reserved in the tabernacle or received during Holy Communion). Whatever judgments we may wish to pass upon those earlier modes of resis-tance, it seems clear that a creative response for today will need to focus on the Eucharist as an action performed by the whole community. We may be able to enter the eucharistic action as full participants because we surrender in faith to the Lord who makes his Real Presence felt in our ways of relating to one another. The "just ordinary" feeling may be chosen as a means to that effective recognition. When in a small faith community the members have learned how to act and speak out of their newfound sense of ordinary selfhood, all their gifts may be appreciated warmly and without exaggeration. They can be put into action zestfully since the members are set free from the anxieties of personal competition. Each one's acceptance by all the others may become intensified through the distinctly felt presence of the risen Lord in their community today--not merely by anticipat.ing the Second Coming. 498 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 In short, we are being graced, membered in a new life, invigorated, and turned in hope to the future by this much more active presence of Christ. That intensification of God's "reigning" in us may correspond accurately and be found to dovetail beautifully with the newly released "just ordinary" feelings of the members about themselves. NOTES l Method in Theology, New York: Herder & Herder, 1972, pp. 257-262. 2 On this distinction see Robert Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California Press, 1985, pp. 32-35 and passim. 3 SeeThomas ~ Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Wm. Creasy, Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1989; "Introduction," pp. 11-13. Also Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, trans. J. van Engen, New York: Paulist Press, 1988; "Introduction," p. 8: "The Imitation of Christ has undoubtedly proved the most influential devotional book in Western Christian history." It has also been translated into all the great lan-guages of the world. 4 Book I, chap. 28; trans. Creasy, p. 32. 5 Book III, chap. 8; trans. Creasy, p. 95. 6 Book III, chap. 14; trans. Creasy, p. 102. 7 Details are given in J. Leclercq, E Vandenbrouke, L. Bouyer, The Spirituality of the Middle Ages (vol. 11 of The History of Christian Spirituality), London: Bums & Oates, 1968, pp. 481-486 (text by F. Vandenbrouke). 8 Trans. Joseph Rickaby, S.J., Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1929; vol. II, pp. 165- 352: "The Eleventh Treatise: On Humility." See chap. IIl: "Of Another Main Motive for a Man to. gain Humility, which is the Consideration of His Sins." (The first main motive, given in chap. II, is "To know oneself to be full of miseries and weak-nesses.") 9 Walter J. Ong, S.J., Hopkins, the Self, and God, Toronto, Buffalo, London: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1986; see especially pp. 22-28. For a recent philosophical discus-sion see Frederick Copleston, S.J., The Tablet, 11 Nov. 1989 (vol. 243, no. 7791), pp. 1302-1303. l0 Cited by Alphonsus Rodriguez, Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, p. 168, see n. 8, above. Chap. II, "That Humility is the Foundation of All Virtues," pp. 168-170; chap. III, "In Which It Is Shown More in Detail How Humility Is the Foundation of All Virtues, by Going Through the Chief of Them." ~l On this, see Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart (n. 2, above), pp. 117-121, for its development in the U.S.A. But similar versions of "modem nervousness" and "therapeutic culture" could be gathered from the other Western traditions (Continental, English, Canadian.). ~2 Confer Paul C. Vitz, Psychology As Religion, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977, pp. 20-27, for a discussion of Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and Rollo May as moving from religious into secular concerns. Choosing to be "Just Ordinary" / 499 ~3 The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardiner and N.H. MacKenzie, 4th ed., London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967; poem no. 57, p. 90. 14 Ibid, poem no. 72, p. 106. The Hunter Yahweh's manifest love has all the proud and fierce majesty of a turkey buzzard flying with outstretched wings upon hot afternoon breezes, which are thrust upward unconstrained from ocher grabens below. This carnivorous bird is the other side of the symbolic dove. It is the Master of the Universe when he is not content waiting for hesitant or indifferent souls who fail to seek him. Rather, he becomes the strident hunter pursuing those who choose hiding in dark shadows caused by lichen-covered trees, or along cow-trodden riverbanks, where brown mud oozes into slowly flowing, opaque waters. Yahweh spreads his wings, searches for the goats and lambs, such as you and me, when we forget how to look for him circling over us in the translucent sky. Brother Richard Heatley, F. S. C. De La Salle, "Oaklands" 131 Farnham Avenue Toronto, Ontario Canada M4A 1H7 At the Threshold of a Christian Spirituality: Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Method John McMurry, S. S Father John McMurry, S.S., cun'ently serves at the St. Mary's Spiritual Center and as a spiritual director for St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland. He has taken part in thirty workshops led by Dr. Ira Progoff since 1976, and he has led some sixty Intensive Journal workshops since 1978. His address is All Saints Church; 4408 Liberty Heights Avenue; Baltimore, Maryland 21207. Since 1978 1 have been teaching Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal method occasionally at weekend workshops. Dialogue House, the umbrella organiza-tion covering all of Progoff's works, describes his method as a program of "professional and personal growth with a spiritual point of view." It is a non-analytic means for individuals to attain two goals. First, it enables individu-als to recognize and accept the wholeness of their life without denying the reality of any of its contents, no matter how unpleasant or embarrassing. Secondly, it enables individuals to get a feel for the consistency in the direc-tion that their life is taking as they discover potentials for the future hidden within their personal past. The goals of the program are attained by means of a variety of written exercises which are done in a group setting under the direction of an experi-enced leader who is committed to follow authorized guidelines. Individuals in the group work in private with the contents of their own life. The only prereq-uisites are an atmosphere of quiet and mutual respect, and an attitude of open-ness and acceptance on the part of each exercitant toward his or her own life. The program is not only nonanalytic; it is also nonjudgmental and is structured to help people experientially discover answers to questions such as the following: Where am I in the course of my life right now? How did I get to the place where I am in the course of life? Where is my life trying to go from here? What is the next step? 500 Progoffs Intensive Journal Method / 501 The Intensive Journal method itself has no content. The method is a dynamic structure to which each person supplies the content from one's own life. The structure aims at enabling individuals to establish deeper contact with the flow of creative energy in their own life. It is especially useful for people engaged in decision-making, for people who feel confused about the next step in life, for those who have lost contact with the direction their life wants to take, for those who feel alienated, isolated, or meaningless, and for those who simply want to expand their personal horizons of creativity. In creating the Intensive Journal program, Progoff had in mind people in a secular culture who are unfamiliar with or alienated by traditional religious language. However, the awarenesses stimulated by the exercises of his method serve to help Christians experience meaning in traditional doctrines which might otherwise remain merely propositional. In the case of people who approach it from the perspective of faith, the Intensive Journal program is a form of prayer. The Intensive Journal Method as Prayer In a chapter entitled "Prayer as Dialogue," Karl Rahner discusses prayer in terms apropos of the Intensive Journal method. He is addressing a com-mon problem of people who are earnest in their efforts to enter into dialogue with God. They often state the problem something like this: "When I pray, I cannot tell whether I am talking to myself or to God." Rahner challenges the presupposition that God says "something" to us in prayer. He raises some "what-ifs": What if we were to say that in prayer we experience ourselves as the utterance of God, ourselves as arising from and decreed by God's freedom in the concreteness of our existence? What if what God primarily says to us is ourselves in the facticity of our past and present and in the freedom of our future? Rahner concludes that when, by grace, we experience ourselves as the utterance of God to himself and understand this as our true essence, which includes the free grace of God's self-communication, and when in prayer we freely accept our existence as the word of God in which God promises him-self to us with his word, then our prayer is already dialogic, an exchange with God. Then we hear ourself as God's address. We do not hear "some-thing" in addition to ourself as the one already presupposed in our dead fac-ticity, but we hear ourself as the self-promised word in which God sets up a listener and to which God speaks himself as an answer. 1 Rahner is suggesting that God's word to me in prayer is not an idea; rather, God's word to me in prayer'is myself, that is, my personal, individual life story--past, present, and future. The implication is that my life story is 502 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 important in my relationship with God because it is the way God speaks to me and I to God. A further implication of Rahner's proposal is that I enter into dialogue with God ipsofacto under three conditions: 1) when I experience my life story as God's word addressed to himself; 2) when at the same time I understand that God is really present in my actual life story--past, present, and future-- as a free and undeserved gift of himself to me; 3) and when I freely accept my life story as the word of God in which God promises his Word to me. The Intensive Journal program is an instrument which lends itself to the discovery of the real presence of God in one's own personal life story. The content of the program is the content of the life of the Journal-writer; hence it is through the life of the Journal-writer that Christian faith may enter into the individual's use of the Intensive Journal exercises. Progoff has described the prayer dimension of his method as follows: The Intensive Journal work is indeed a species of prayer and meditation, but not in isolation from life and not in contrast to active life involve-ment. Rather, it is meditation in the midst of the actuality of our life experiences. It draws upon the actualities of life for new awarenesses, and it feeds these back into the movement of each life as a whole.2 The Intensive Journal Method and Spirituality In his "handbook of contemporary spirituality," Rahner raises the ques-tion whether the term "spirituality" is good, understandable, useful, or even has any meaning. Then he makes the observation that the crucial point for personal and pastoral life today is not so much a matter of getting the "spiri-tual" dimension of existence into our heads or other people's by means of abstract and conceptual indoctrination (which he says is ineffective anyway) as it is a matter of discovering the Spirit as that which we really experience in ourselves.3 Perhaps Rahner slightly understates the case. It may be that the crucial point for us personally and in our pastoral work today is simply to discover "the Spirit" as a fact of our own personal experience and to help others do the same. Furthermore, in order to be able to use the word "spirituality," we might let it refer simply to the individual's .relationship with God or, in other words, to what goes on in the creative process between God and each of us. This article presents Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal program as an aid to the process which is going on between an individual and God. The program adds no content to the life of the individual; it mirrors the movement which is already going on and stimulates that movement by feeding new aware- Progoffs Intensive Journal Method / 503 nesses back into the movement of life. ("Journal feedback" is one of the main features which distinguish this method from an ordinary diary.) This program, then, is a dynamic structure for evoking self-transcendence from the factual contents of a life story. For a person of faith it is a way of discov-ering the Spirit "as what we really experience in ourselves." Genesis of the Intensive Journal Method Following Progoff's discharge from the U.S. Army, he earned a doctor-ate in the area of'the history of ideas from the New School of Social Research in New York City. On the basis of his dissertation, Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning, published in 1953 and still in print, Progoff was awarded grants for postdoctoral studies with Carl Jung for two years. By virtue of those studies Progoff was licensed as a therapist by the state of New York, where he went into private practice after returning from Switzerland. In 1959 Progoff founded the Institute for Research in Depth Psychology at Drew University in New Jersey and served as its director until 1971. During those twelve years-he and his graduate students searched out the dynamics of creativity in published biographies of creative people whose life stories had ended. From his research Progoff concluded that creativity occurs through the interplay among various dimensions of life which may at first seem disparate. On the surface it may appear that the process in one dimension is unrelated to the process in another dimension, whereas in fact something new comes into being when the individual makes correlations among the dimensions of life. It is as though the individual is a complexus of certain processes which occur throughout life on different planes. Progoff has developed, the Intensive Journal method over more than a quarter-century of helping his clients apply the fruits of his research by dis-covering hidden sources of creativity within their own lives. He began teach-ing his method to groups in the late 1950s. In 1975 he published At a Journal Workshop, a thorough description of his haethod up to that time. In 1980 he published a companion volume, The Practice of Process Meditation, which added another dimension to the program. Dimensions of Human Existence In Progoff's view, the artist is paradigmatic. Each individual is both the artist and the ultimate artwork of life, and yet individuals execute the art-work which is themselves by engaging in outer activity which has inner meaning for the one doing it and beneficial consequences for society. In other words, in order for each of us to be fulfilled as an individual, we must 504 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 do some work (opus as distinguished from labor) which is both personally and socially meaningful. At the same time as we are creating our lifework, the doing of the work is creative of us. The basic dialogue of life is the dynamic actual (as distinguished from logical) dialogue between human cre-ators and their works. In Progoff's words, "Outward activity propelled from within is the essence of creative existence.''4 From his research on the lives of creative people Progoff learned to dis-tinguish certain dimensions of life as loci of the components of creativity. The Intensive Journal method recognizes those dimensions as sources of the raw material of creativity in anybody's life, They are the dimensions of time, ¯ of relationships, and of personal symbols. The Intensive Journal workbook uses color-coded dividers to mark off various sections in each of which the Journal-writer deals with the move-ment in one particular dimension of life. Within each of the main sections are tabbed subdividers of the same color as the main divider. Each tab bears the name of the specific exercise to be entered there. For example, the "Life/Time Dimension" is indicated by a red divider and contains four tabbed red subdividers; each of the four tabs bears the title of the written exercise to be entered there by the Journal writer. Similarly, the dimension of personal relationships in life, called the "Dialogue Dimension," is indicated by an orange divider and comprises five tabbed subdividers for each of the five "dialogue exercises." The part of the Intensive Journal workbook for making entries which deal with dreams and personal imagery is called the "Depth Dimension." It is indicated by a blue divider and five tabbed blue subdividers. In summary, the workbook comprises sections which reflect and stimu-late the movement of an individual life in each of its dimensions. Each of the main sections of the workbook represents a dimension of life and comprises several subsections for various written exercises which deal with the con- "tents of that life in styles appropriate to that particular dimension. The Dimension of Life/Time We do not get the chance to start life over, but the Intensive Journal pro-gram does offer us a tested means of restructuring our life from the perspec-tive of the present. At the same time it provides a means of discovering unactualized potentials which we may have overlooked the first time around, or which were not ripe then and may at some point in time be able to take a form they could not have taken originally. In studying the biography of a deceased person generally recognized as creative, the end or goal of that career may be clear and unmistakable, even Progof['s Intensive Journal Method / 505 though the lif'e story includes setbacks, stalls, reversals, and obstacles. It may be easy to see how everything in that life was leading up to some great scientific or philosophical work because we are viewing it from the perspec-tive of the end. But what if I am the life story I am working with? In that case the life process is still in progress. I am not looking at a still photograph but a mov-ing picture, and I am looking at it from the inside. In that case I start with the present epoch of my personal life and get a feel for this period of life from the inside. That is, I allow myself to feel the quality or tone of my life during this present period and record it objectively. The record I make of the pre-sent period will be an objective statement of my subjective experience of life at present. Then I am in a position to allow the course of my life to present itself to me from the perspective of the present in the form of about a dozen significant events. Each of those significant events serves to characterize a whole period of life. Of course, many other things also happened during that period. There are other exercises for dealing with them. The idea in this exercise is to get a feel for the wholeness and continuity of my life as I allow it to present itself to me in an articulated form so that I can use other Journal exercises to deal with it one period at a time. All the Intensive Journal exercises presuppose the attitude of openness and receptivity mentioned above, a nonjudgmental attitude toward life. It is not so much the objective contents of a life that affect its degree of creativi-ty, as the subjective attitude toward that life. In the creative restructuring of a life, a relaxed, friendly approach which allows surprises is important. Dimension of Relationships In the life/time dimension treated above, there is a principle of whole-ness, continuity, and direction,toward-a-goal at work. In the dimension of relationships, the dynamic is that of dialogue, that is, the give-and-take of equals listening and responding to each other in a spirit of mutual trust and acceptance. The principle of "dialogue relationship" applies first of all to significant people during various epochs of life. The. same dynamic applies analogously to meaningful work-projects (opera), which, like persons, seem to have a life of their own. In his research on creative lives, Progoff discovered that creativity occurs when people approach several kinds of meaningful contents of their life not as inert matter to be manipulated but as personal entities. That is, he discovered that creativity occurs when people acknowledge that each of sev-eral meaningful contents of their life has a life story of its own analogous to 506 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 that of a person. Each of these contents of life has a life story with blockages to growth toward a goal, with hopes, disappointments, successes, and so forth. He found that for the sake of movement toward acceptance of life and all it holds, it is of paramount importance to establish a "dialogue rel~ition-ship" not only with persons and works but witl~ the physical and societal dimensions of life, and with events, situations, and circumstances of life which "just happen." Progoff's research into de facto creative lives yielded two important corollaries. First, the movement which the dialogue relationship fosters is intrinsic to the "creative spirit. Secondly, in the dimension of relationships as well as in other dimensions of life, the factual contents of life are less impor-tant in the creative process than the way people relate to whatever the con-tents of their life are. The "Dialogue Dimension" of the Intensive Journal workbook offers a format for a variety of exercises which enable the Journal writer to engage in written dialogue with people who have played meaningful roles in their life, with work projects, their own body, sources of values in their life (v.g., fami-ly, ethnicity, religious commitment), and things over which they had no con-trol. The purpose of these dialogue scripts is to give a voice to the meaningful contents of life, that is, to provide them a forum in which mutu-ality can flourish in the form of a "dialogue relationship" rather than a mere-ly utilitarian relationship. This leaves the Journal writer open to the possibility of something new emerging from an old relationship from the past. That new something may contribute an insight or an awareness which is of benefit to another relationship or which creatively affects the movement in another dimension of life. The Dimension of Inner Symbols This dimension of life refers to dreams, "twilight imagery" and personal wisdom-figures as the vehicles which come forward spontaneously to carry the movement of life further. The aim of the exercises in this part of the Journal, called the "Depth Dimension," is to facilitate spontaneous correla-tions between inner imagery and outer life so that new insights, awarenesses, and possibilities for action and decision-making might come to the surface of consciousness. Then, by means of appropriate Journal exercises, they can be fed back into the ongoing movement of life and thus stimulate growth by creating new configurations in the way things fit together in life. Progoff tends to shy away from the use of dreams in his method because many people seem unable to deal with them except analytically. The Intensive Journal method of working with dreams is basically to allow the movement Progoffs Intensive Journal Method / 507 in a recurring dream or in a cluster of dreams to suggest some correlation with movement in one of the other dimensions of life. Then the exercitant may use appropriate Journal exercises to work in that dimension of life. The Fourth Dimension: The Spiritual As mentioned above, Progoff sees the Intensive Journal work in geoeral as "a species of prayer and meditation., in the midst of the actuality of our life experiences." However, he came to appreciate the role of the spiritual dimension in creativity only after he had developed Journal exercises in the three dimensions of life treated briefly above. The specifically spiritual dimension is reflected in his program as the dimension of meaning. The procedures for working in that dimension are called "Process Meditation." In the Intensive Journal program, formal work in this dimension is reserved for those who have already taken part in the "Life Context Workshop," which deals with the three dimensions of life treated above. As Rahner has said, "A basic and original transcendental experience is really rooted [in] a finite spirit's subjective and free experience of itself.''5 The "process" of "Process Meditation" refers to "the principle of conti-nuity in the universe" which is found on three levels: the cosmic, the s6ci-etal, and the personally interior.6 The Intensive Journal method helps the individual relate to "process" on the interior level. The movement of life in the three dimensions treated above is character-istically movement toward personal wholeness and the integration of the individual with oneself. Progoff calls that movement "core creativity." "In terms of individual lives," he writes, "the essence of process in human expe-rience lies in the continuity of its movement toward new integrations, the formation of new holistic units [of life/time].''7 In the spiritual dimension of life the movement is characterized by rela-tionships which transcend the core creativity of the individual. The roots of such relationships--even the personal relationship of the individual to God--are to be found in the stuff of everyday life, but at a deeper than ordi-nary level. Rahner speaks of the knowledge of God as "concrete, original, histori-cally constituted, and transcendental." He further says that such knowledge of God "is inevitably present in the depths of existence in the most ordinary human life.''8 Progoff interprets "meditation" broadly. In his usage it refers to whatev-er methods or practices one uses in the effort to reach out toward meaning. "The essence of meditation," he says, "lies in its intention, in its commit- 508 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 ment to work inwardly to reach into the depths beyond the doctrines of our beliefs.''9 Hence, "Process Meditation" refers to a set of exercises which draw on the individual exercitant's intimations or experiences of connected-ness to the principle of continuity in the universe. Progoff describes his method of Process Meditation as follows: Our basic procedure is to reenter the process by which our individual spiritual history has been moving toward meaning . We reenter that pro-cess so as to reconnect ourselves with the inner principle of its move-ment, and especially so that we can take a further step toward the artwork that is our personal sense of meaning,l° Conclusion In a review of The Practice of Process Meditation, William V. Dych, S.J., translator of Rahner into English, compares what Rahner calls "the uni-versal presence of grace and the Spirit" with Progoff's thesis that "there is in every human being an inner source of new light and life that expresses itself whenever the circumstances are right." Dych views Progoff's thesis as so supportive of Rahner's position that it would be hard to imagine a more pos-itive affirmation of it. ~ NOTES i Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality, ed. Karl Lehmann'and Albert Raffelt (New York: Crossroad, 1984), pp. 94-95. 1 Ira Progoff, The Practice of Process Meditation: The Intensive Journal Way to Spiritual Experience (New York: Dialogue House Library, 1980), p. 18. 3 Rahner, op cit, p. ! 86. 4 Ira Progoff, At a Journal Workshop: The Basic Text and Guide for Using the Intensive Journal (New York: Dialogue House Library, 1975), p. 35. 5 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), p. 75. 6 Progoff, The Practice of Process Meditation, p. 40. 7 Ibid, p. 58. 8 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 57. 9 Progoff, The Practice of Process Meditation, p. 34. l0 Ibid, p. 82. II William V. Dych, "The Stream that Feeds the Well Within," Commonweal, 25 September 1981 Our Journey Inward: A Spirituality of Addiction and Recovery Maureen Conroy, R.S.M. Sister Maureen Conroy is co-director of the Upper Room Spiritual Center; EO. Box 1104; Neptune, New Jersey 07753. [~qany of us travel a great deal throughout our lives. With advanced means of transportation, traveling around the state, country, or world has become second nature to us. However, no matter how much or how far we travel, as we journey through life we discover that there is no journey more challeng-ing and scary than the journey inward, the journey to find true happiness and our most authentic self. We search for what is fulfilling and life-giving, but at times our searching takes us down the dark road of addictive behavior. We search for happiness in compulsive ways that deaden us rather than give us life--until we experience a desperate need for help. In this article I reflect on the darkness pervading the addictive process and some ways to journey through the darkness to our truer self. I discuss three aspects of our journey from addiction to recovery--woundedness and wholeness, powerlessness and surrender, and pain and compassion--and describe some dimensions of a spirituality of addiction and recovery related to these three aspects. A Spirituality of Woundedness and Wholeness As human beings God has given us the gifts of strength and freedom; we are called to live in the light. It is also true, however, that we are wounded, weak, vulnerable, broken people. We come from an environment of dark-ness. The brokenness in our ancestry and the dysfunction in our families has influenced our growth as free human beings. We are broken and we are in deep need of healing and redemption. We cannot save ourselves. In our addictive stance we want to avoid our woundedness, ignore our 509 510 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 weakness, and run from our vulnerability. We seek fulfillment through an object, a substance, or a process; that is, we form a pathological relationship with a mood-altering reality in order to find wholeness and happiness. We find it difficult to be honest about the dysfunction in our families and the brokenness in ourselves, so we look for something outside ourselves to keep us from facing our darkness. Spiritual growth and recovery, however, are just the opposite of this avoidance. To grow humanly and spiritually we must journey in and through our woundedness; we must face it head on. We need to feel the messiness of our brokenness and to discover God there. As Psalm 50 says, "a broken and humbled heart, O God, you will not spurn." We must discover that God's heart of love encompasses and holds as precious our wounded hearts, bodies, and spirits. It is through dwelling in our woundedness and vulnerability that we experience our authentic self and that we enable our addictive self to grow less powerful. We come to experience the child within and integrate our dark side with our light side. How do we make this journey in and through our woundedness? We do it by uncovering our addiction layer by layer. By this I mean we allow the walls of denial and layers of dishonesty to reveal themselves; we honestly appraise our unhealthy behaviorL Denial blocks our inner journey. It is a buffer against any reality thatis not acceptable to us, a way to protect our-selves from awareness of realities that are too difficult to face. Spiritual growth happens when we remove layer upon layer of denial that covers over our woundedness and our truer selves. Rather than avoiding our wounds, we need to expose them to the fresh air, to expose our broken hearts to the heal-ing .heart of God, to bring our darkness out into the light of day, to bring hid-den realities out to the light of God's love and the care of others. As Meister Eckhart says, "God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a pro-cess of subtraction." So it is through peeling off layer upon layer of denial and dishonesty that we discover God in our brokenness. We discover the original blessing that we are, our deeper and truer selves. We see and feel the aspects of ourselves--minds, hearts, and bodies--that mirror God's pres-ence. We experience the truth of the Genesis story where God says, "Let us make people in our image and likeness." We discover the authentic self that God desires to be fully human and fully alive. Growth in wholeness, therefore, takes place through integrating our dark side with our light side, through accepting our brokenness as we journey through it, by seeing the original blessing that we are. We discover that "darkness and light are the same" (Ps 139:12), that God is present in every dimension of our being. Thus, our woundedness becomes a gift, so rather Our Journey Inward / S'l'l than covering it over with layers of denial, we come to feel at home there because God is there. We discover our truer self underneath the layers of an addictive self. We integrate our wounded and blessed self, our darkness and our light, and we become more and more a whole person. We experience the truth proclaimed by St. Irenaeus: "God's greatest glory is a person fully alive." A Spirituality of Powerlessness and Surrender The journey through addiction to recovery is also one of powerlessness and surrender. God sent Jesus in the flesh to free us from our enslavement to sin and to show us the way t6 live in freedom. It was through Jesus' total surrender to his death on the cross that he experienced new life and showed us the way to true freedom, the freedom of letting go and surrender. In our addictive stance, we are trying to control everyone and everything around us. We grow hardheaded and hardhearted, and we attempt to control the sub-stance or process that we are abusing--alcohol, food, money, sex, work, or an obsessive relationship. We are out of control, and the more we try to con-trol everyone and everything around us, even the substance we are abusing, the more out of control we become. Our addiction is enslaving us to our own self-centered needs and desires. We are "number one" when we are addicted; our addictive needs come bei'ore everyone else. Our addiction enslaves us to an object or process that we think is going to bring us lasting happiness when it is really bringing us misery and isolation. It enslaves us emotionally, spiritually, physically, and socially. The more we try to control the use of our addictive reality, the more we lose con-trol. We deny the basic reality that Paul~ expresses: "The desire to do right is within me, but not the power. What happens is that I do, not the good I will, but the evil I do not intend. But if I do what is against my will, it is not I who do it but sin which dwells in me" (Rm 7~18-20). In our denial we keep think-ing we can choose to keep this substance in right order; however, the rbality is that our will is not working, it is diseased. We are powerless. So how does spiritual growth and recovery happen in relation to our being out of control? It begins when we admit our powerlessness, realize the insanity of thinking that we can control all aspects of our lives and our des-tiny. Spiritual growth happens through the journey of surrender, not control; it begins at the moment of surrender. We need to admit that our ability to choose has become greatly impaired through the disease of our addiction. Our trying to choose not to drink, not to overeat, not to overwork, not to engage in compulsive sexual activity, is just not working. Our willpower simply does not work. As we begin to admit our powerlessness and surrender to God, we find 512 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 new life. When we surrender rather than control, we are choosing life: "I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse. Choose life, then, that you may live, by loving the Lord your God, heeding God's voice and holding fast to God. For that will mean life for you" (Dt 30:19-20). As we admit our powerlessness and surrender to God, true power grows within us--the power to love others, the power to experience God's love, and the power to love ourselves. Through our surrender we come more deeply in touch with our authentic self--the self that is alive and not dead, free and not enslaved, joyful and not depressed. True freedom grows--a freedom that heals rather than hurts, that brings about growth rather than destruction, that results in life rather than death. In our surrender we begin to make positive choices for recovery, attend-ing twelve-step meetings and living the twelve-step program. We choose to take responsibility for our lives and our recovery, like the paralyzed man who had lain at the pool of Bethsaida for thirty-eight years until Jesus asked: "Do you want to be healed?" We need to respond to that same question in our addiction because recovery is hard work; it involves a gre.at deal of sacri-fice and responsibility. Also, through our daily admission of powerlessness and constant atti-tude of surrender, we discover God in a new way--a God who supports us in our weakness and strengthens us in time of need, a God who will not leave us even in our most out-of-control moments. We discover in Jesus a God " who has experienced weakness and powerlessness, a God who has stood totally stripped and poor, a God who invites us to have the attitude of a vul-nerable child rather than a controlling adult: "Unless you become like a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of God." We experience a God whose power takes over in our weakness, as St. Paul discovered through his strug-gle: "Three times [which means numerous times] I begged the Lord that this might leave me. God said to me, 'My grace is enough for you, for in weak-ness power reaches perfection.' " It was through constantly admitting his powerlessness that Paul's spiritual growth and recovery took place. So he says: "I willingly boast of my weaknesses instead, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I am content with weakness., for when I am powerless it is then that I am strong" (2 Co 12:8-10). Thus, through admit-ting our powerlessness over an object of addiction and surrend.ering to God our weakness, we experience the power of God, the love of God, new life, renewed freedom. We move forward on the journey ,of recovery. A Spirituality of Pain and Compassion Finally, the journey through addiction to recovery is one of pain and Our Journey Inward / ~313 compassion. One of the hard facts of life is that suffering is an integral part of it. Jesus himself had to suffer great pain in order to bring new life. Our God is not a distant God but a compassionate God who experienced great pain, the pain of loving us. In our addictive stance, we deal with pain in an unhealthy way. We want to run from it, cover it over, deny it. We are caught in a "Catch 22" situation because, in using a substance to avoid our pain, we are really in great pain-- the pain of loneliness, isolation, and alienation from our true self and from healthy relationships with others. As our addiction progresses, it becomes increasingly painful to maintain our denial. We are overcome by the pain of shame and self-disgust. Spiritual growth and recovery take place when we face that pain, feeling it, looking at it square in the face, rather than avoiding it by abusing a sub-stance. As our walls of denial break down, we begin to feel the pain we have been covering up--the pain of living, the pain of loss, the pain of being human, the pain of developing intimate relationships, the pain of childhood neglect and abuse. We find out that healing involves pain, as in the case of lepers. Leprosy causes numbness. When Jesus healed the leper, he invited him to feel pain in the areas of previous nrmbness. The same is true of the leprosy of our addiction: as we begin to let down the walls of denial, we begin to feel pain. We realize that recovery and healing are not easy. As we journey through deeper levels of pain in our recovery, we discover a God who knows what it is to suffer. As Meister Eckhart says: "Jesus becam~ a human being because God, the Compassionate One, lacked a back to be beaten. God needed a back like our backs on which to receive blows and therefore to perform compassion as well as to preach it." Our compassionate God became a suffering God. Our God feels with us, suffers with us. Again, Eckhart says, "However great one's suffering is, if it comes through God, God suffers from it first." What a gift we have in a God who suffers with us! As we experience this tremendous love of a compassionate God, we become people of compassion, persons who can feel with others in their bro-kenness. We become more vulnerable and grow toward greater wholeness because love is the greatest healer. As our walls of denial are penetrated with God's compassionate love and we become more vulnerable, we can be with people in their brokenness. That is one of the beautiful realities of the twelve-step program: it is a group of people who are in touch with their bro-kenness and therefore have great compassion for those who are struggling. They live out these words of McNeill, Morrison, and Nouwen: "Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in broken-ness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with 514 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human" (Compassion, p. 4). As we feel the pain that our addiction has tried to cover, we become wounded healers--people who minister out of our woundedness as well as our strength. "What you have received as a gift. give as a gift" (Mt 10:8). Our pain becomes a gift that we can give to other addicted people as we compas-sionately help them to face the devastation of their addictive behaviors. In sum, our inward journey involves walking down the dark paths of our brokenness into the light of God's presence and our authentic self. A spiritu-ality of addiction and recovery must include two sides of reality: awareness of our woundedness, powerlessness, and pain as well as growth in wholeness, surrender, and compassion. Without a vivid sense of the depths of our bro-kenness in our addicted self, we cannot move toward the wholeness of our authentic self. Without a keen awareness of our darkness, we are blind to the light of God's healing presence. Without an acute sense of our vulnerability, we cannot become compassionate healers who stand with others in their pain. Though scary and challenging, our journey through our own darkness will lead us to the light of true happiness, deeper fulfillment, and new life. Awareness Examen for Recovering People In God's presence, take ten to fifteen minutes to prayerfully reflect on your day. Contemplate your day together--you and God. Prayer of Thanksgiving I thank God for the gift of this day, the gift of my sobriety, the gift of my recovery. I thank God for specific git~s of life that come to mind, such as my health, my family, my community, my friends, my job, my twelve-step program. I thank God for gifts of my inner life, such as the ability to feel and think, energizing feelings I had during the day (name them), specific values and beliefs that guided my actions, ways I used my thinking and imagination for growth, positive choices for recovery which I made today, God's life within me. I thank God for two or three concrete life gifts and inner gifts that I am particularly aware of and grateful for today. Prayer for Light I humbly ask God to help me see myself and my life today as God sees Our Journey Inward them. I ask God to remove blindness and denial from my mind and heart. I ask God for the gift of honesty with myself and God. I ask God for a dis-ceming heart and a truthful mind. Prayer of Awareness God and I contemplate my life, my heart, and my thinking this day from the moment I woke up until now. What specific feelings did I feel today? When did I feel most alive today? most my true self?, most joyful? most peaceful? most in tune with my deeper self?. How did I feel God's presence today? What was that feeling like? What was God like? At what moment did I feel God's presence the strongest? When did I feel powerless today? out of control? enslaved? unfree? What was I powerless over? Did I surrender that reality to God? When did I feel vulnerable today? When did I feel pain today? What was the pain about? Did I share that painful feeling with God or another? With whom have I been most honest today? myself?, another? God? What was I honest about? How did I struggle with honesty today? With what issue or feeling? ' What were my feelings underneath the struggle? fear? anger? guilt? Which of the twelve steps was my strength today? How did I live it, carry it out, in a practical way? In what concrete ways did I strive to improve my conscious contact with God? What choices did I make for my recovery today? How do I feel about those choices? When did I feel compassion for another person today? How did I reach out to others today? show concem and care? make amends? Prayer of Amends I ask God to forgive any specific wrongdoings of today. I ask God to have mercy on any negative attitudes or feelings that I got stuck in today. Prayer of Surrender I surrender all to God: my life, my will, my brokenness, my addictions, my imagination, my thoughts, my feelings. I surrender to God specific attitudes, feelings, thoughts, actions over which I felt powerless today. I ask God's strength to take over in my specific weaknesses. I ask God's power to be present in the specific areas in which I feel helpless and powerless. 516 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 O God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Take, O Lord, and receive my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O God, I return it. All is yours, dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me. (Prayer from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) RECOMMENDED READING Larsen, Eamie. Stage H Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. May, Gerald. Addiction and Grace. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. McNeill, Donald; Morrison, Douglas; and Nouwen, Henri. Compassion. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966. Nakken, Craig. The Addictive Personality: Roots, Rituals, Recovery. Center City, Minn.: Hazelden, 1988. Whitfield, Charles L. Healing the Child Within. Pompano Beach, Florida: Health Communications, 1987. A Gift to Share The Jesuit Heritage Today "Ignatian prayer puts the history of salvation into the present tense." --Walter Burghardt, S.J. A Spirituality for Contemporary Life ¯ presents six stimulating reflections on the Jesuit heritage today. Theologians Walter IBurghardt, David Fleming, Monika Hellwig, Jon Sobrino, ElizabethJohnson, andJohn Padberg speak about living with God in ordinary life. ISBN 0-924768-02-9 112 pages List Price $5.95 A Resource to Keep See Order Form Inside Back Cover for Special Offer for Readers of Review for Religious Apostolic Spirituality: Aware We Are Sent James H. Kroeger, M.M. Father James Kroeger last appeared in our pages in May/June 1988. He has a doctor-ate in missiology from the Gregorian University and has published five books. His address: Maryknoll Fathers; EO. Box 285; Greenhills Post Office; 1502 Metro Manila; Philippines. Adequately capturing realities in the spiritual life always demands the use of dynamic, expansive language. For this reason, spirituality is frequently described in relational categories--between a Christian and a personal God, between the servant-herald and the crucified and risen Lord. Such a relation-ship of intimacy is at the heart of biblical spirituality: "I will be your God and you shall be my people"; Christians are Jesus' friends and call their heavenly Father "Abba." Spirituality may also variously be described as growth, an evolution toward maturity, a pilgrimage. Each category presents an authentic, albeit partial, grasp of the human-divine dynamic operative in our lives. In this article, "consciousness" or "awareness" is the category for our insight into spirituality, and it naturally overflows with an apostolic or missionary dynamism. Consciousness: A Window into Spirituality Consciousness may seem to be an elusive concept, yet no one would deny the reality. An individual is in a conscious state when perceptual and cognitive faculties function normally. One continuously synthesizes various stimuli from within and from without; ideally, the result is a healthy personal integration. Notice that many constitutive elements are included in consciousness: seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, desiring, experiencing. Consciousness incorporates perceptions, emotions, observations, thoughts, aspirations, 517 5"11~ / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 choices. It also includes an introspective awareness of the personal impact of all events and experience. In light of this brief and rudimentary description of the phenomenon of human consciousness, one may begin to elaborate the relationship between consciousness and a spirituality of the apostolate. Our service--all focused on raising our God-consciousness and expanding the horizons of our spiritu-al awareness. We want to use our eyes to see perceptively and our ears to hear attentively; we hope to gain deepened insight into our lives through faith's mirror (Jm 1:22-25). In another vein, a look at the venerable Eastern traditions of many Asian nations reveals that the man of God or the God-conscious, God-focused per-son is essentially a seer, sage, or mystic. Such a person "sees" and experi-ences God; God is not an object of knowledge, but a subject of experience. To grow in holistic spirituality is concomitant with an experiential awareness and consciousness of God's presence and activity in all dimensions of one's life (Arguelles, 50-51). The beautiful prayer in the Upanishads, one of the Hindu sacred books, expresses the aspiration and spiritual desire to come to this deeper conscious union with the divine. In Sanskrit and English it is: Asato ma satgamaya Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya Mrutyu ma amrutam gamaya. God, lead me from untruth to truth Lead me from darkness to light Lead me from death to immortality. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and spiritual writer (1915-1968), has enabled countless people to gain insights into their spirituality. Merton inti-mately links spirituality and prayer with the transformation of conscious-ness. He sees that a renewed conscious awareness underlies all spiritual growth; Christians must cease to assert themselves as the center of con-sciousness and discover God's presence as the deepest center of conscious-ness within them. Thus, as their self-consciousness changes, they are transformed; their self is no longer its own center, it is now centered on God. It is important to note that for Merton no one will ever be capable of communion with God and others without ttiis deep awakening, this transfor-mation of consciousness. Such transformative growth "consists in a double movement, man's entering into the deepest center of himself, and then, after passing through that center, going out of himself to God" (Higgins, 49). Merton asserts that, unless our spirituality or prayer "does something to awaken in us a consciousness of our union with God, of our complete depen- Apostolic Spirituality / 5'19 dence upon him for all our vital acts in the spiritual life, and of his constant loving presence in the depths of our soul, it has not achieved the full effect for which it is intended" (Merton-A, 67). In today's world, "What is required of Christians is that they develop a completely modern and contemporary consciousness in which their experience as men of our century is integrated with their experiences as children of God redeemed by Christ" (Merton-B, 279). The renowned Indian theologian D.S. Amalorpavadass has written elo-quently on the role of consciousness or awareness in attaining spiritual inte-gration and interiorization: "If wholeness is a state of being at which one should finally arrive in stages, awareness is the running thread and unifying force. Awareness needs to flow like a river, like a blood-stream . Awareness is also the core of spirituality and God-experience." He repeats: "Awareness or consciousness should flow through the various actions of our life. One should maintain awareness in all that one does. It should serve as a running thread and connecting bond., through the various activities of our day, and the different periods and stages of our life, in an uninterrupted and continuous flow. This flow will make our whole life a continuous prayer and a state of contemplation" (Amalorpavadass, 4, 24). Brief glimpses of Scripture, Eastern traditions, a Trappist monk, and a contemporary theologian have shown that "consciousness" helps one grasp the human-divine dynamic operative in the Christian life. Within this catego-ry- which is foundational--a vibrant spirituality and a concomitant mis-sionary dynamism can flourish. And, in a Marian spirit, Christians who are missionary will grow ever more conscious of the marvelous deeds that God is accomplishing in us, our neighbors, our society, our Church, and the entire world. The Consciousness of Paul the Missionary The New Testament describes Paul's radical awareness of God's active presence in his life. Though not naturally prone to humility, Paul admits that he was knocked to the/~round; in Damascus "something like scales fell from his eyes," By grace h~ perceived that he was the chosen instrument to bring Good News to the Gentiles and that he would accomplish his mission only with hardship and suffering (Ac 9). Paul's consciousness of his apostolic calling was certainly at the basis of his extraordinary missionary journeys. Without a vivid perception and faith commitment, no one would willingly endure the challenges Paul faced. Such endurance would be foolishness. Yet Paul is never willing, even momentari-ly, to minimize his authority and commitment as an apostle; the introductory 520 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 verses of many of his letters are clear evidence of this. Paul's conversion was no superficial or passing phenomenon. It penetrated the core of his person and totally transformed his way of thinking and acting--his consciousness. Further investigation into Pauline theology and spirituality reveals the depth of his convictions. Paul is absolutely certain that God has a wonderful, marvelous, loving plan of salvation for the entire world (note his frequent use of the words mysterion and oikonomia). His letter to the Ephesians con-vincingly, almost mystically, explains how "God has given us the wisdom to understand fully the mystery,'~ "the mysterious design which for ages was hidden in God." Pauline reflection on God's loving plan of salvation (mysterion) synthe-sizes his belief that this design has been fully revealed in Christ and will be recapitulated in Christ at the end of time. This manifestation is focused on salvation, not condemnation or judgment, and is open to all peoples. It unfolds in stages: God, Jesus, Spirit, Church, world. Humanity's response is faith or personal appropriation of the mysterion (Fitzmyer, 807-808). A recent scholarly investigation (Plevnik, 477-478) has concluded that "Any center of Pauline theology must therefore include all these components of the apostle's gospel, his understanding of Christ, involving the Easter event and its implications, the present lordship, the future coming of Christ, and the appropriation of salvation. The center is thus not any single aspect of Christ, or of God's action through Christ, but rather the whole and undivided richness and mystery of Christ and of the Father's saving purpose through his Son" (mysterion). Mystery, in one word, captures the Christian message. Paul is the missionary par excellence because he believed, lived, prayed, served, reflected, witnessed, preached, and suffered so that God's mysterion would be known, extended, loved, and freely received. Obviously, Paul's missionary consciousness had the "mysterion encounter" as its central focus and driving force. Paul's self-awareness as an apostle was rooted in being chosen as a ser-vant and minister of God's loving plan of salvation. It might be asserted that the mysterion engulfed and consumed Paul; his consciousness was so trans-formed that he could assert that Christ lived in him, that fellow Christians could imitate him, that life or death no longer mattered, and that he gloried in giving his life for Christ. In a word, the mysterion is foundational to Paul's missionary identity and consciousness. Mission and Mysterion Consciousness The Second Vatican Council in its decree on the missionary activity of the Church places mission and evangelization at the center of the Church-- Apostolic Spirituality / 52'1 not allowing this task to float somewhere on the periphery: "The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature" (AG, 2). Pope Paul VI continues in the same vein: "We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all peoples constitutes the essential mission of the Church . Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize." (EN, 14). To evangelize--what meaning does this imperative have for the Church? It is to be no less than the living proclamation of the mysterion, God's loving design of universal salvation. As the community of Jesus' disciples, the Church realizes her "deepest identity" and "her very nature" when she ful-fills her mission of evangelization. She is to be always and everywhere "the universal sacrament of salvation" (LG, 48; AG, 1). For her, to live is to evangelize. In contemporary terms, the Church accomplishes her "self-realization" or "self-actualization" through mission and evangelization. She is only authentic and true to herself when she is announcing and witnessing the mys-terion. A nonmissionary Church is impossible; it is self-contradictory. The great missionary pope Paul VI writes that the Church "is linked to evange-lization in her most intimate being" (EN, 15); mission is not "an optional contribution for the Church" (EN, 5). In addition, the Church's missionary identity is not a late afterthought of the risen Jesus--though this outlook may seem true today of some Christians and local churches. Animation and rededication are necessary because Christians "are faithful to the nature of the Church to the degree that we love and sincerely promote her missionary activity" (EE, 2). These few paragraphs may invite the comment "I have heard it all before." True, yet all of us often hear without hearing, see without seeing, and listen without comprehending. It is precisely at this juncture that conscious-ness is poignantly relevant. Many Christians do not deny the missionary nature of the Church, but their level of conscious awareness is weak or mini-mal. This fact is unfortunately true even of many full-time Church personnel. The intention here is not to berate or castigate individuals. Rather, it is a stark statement of the need for "consciousness-raising"; it is a call for Christians to expand and deepen their awareness; all urgently need "conscientization-into-mission." In short, the entire Church herself must experience a profound reevangelization in order to become a truly evangelizing community. Recall the themes presented earlier on the centrality of consciousness in Christian life and spirituality. They seem particularly relevant as the Church struggles with her fundamental missionary identity. Is not this a central burn-ing question in the Church today: What has happened to her mission con- 522 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 sciousness--where is its urgency and dynamism--where are the contempo-rary St. Pauls? A rephrasing in mission terms of earlier quotes on consciousness from Amalorpavadass may prove enlightening. Church-as-mission is "the running thread and unifying force"; it "needs to flow like a river, like a blood-stream"; it is at "the core of spirituality and God-experience"; ira"will make our whole life a continuous prayer and state of contemplation." Trinitarian Basis of Mission Consciousness and Spirituality In the same breath that the Vatican Council spoke of the Church's mis-sionary identity, it presented the foundational rationale of mission. In a word, the why of Church-as-mission is Trinitarian, "for it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father" (AG, 2). This mission vision, expressed in Trinitarian language, must not frighten or intimidate readers. Do not say, "I do not understand Trinitarian theology, so I cannot grasp this." While a bit difficult and challenging, this insight is also beautiful and rewarding. It transports us to the heart of mission; it flows from the core of our faith in the Trinity; it greatly enhances our mission con-sciousness and spirituality. The most inviting manner to appreciate mission--via the Trinity--is to remember that it is an eminently personal approach. The Father is a person, his son Jesus is a person, their girl of the Spirit is also a person. This is only a statement of a basic dogma of the faith. Grasping the immanence and closeness of the three Persons appears far more fruitful than grappling with the incomprehensibility of the transcendent Trinity (Billy, 602-611). Growth in conscious awareness, experience, and encounter with each of the three Persons richly broadens our vision of mission. It also manifests that mission theology and spirituality draw from the same wellspring. An appre-ciation of the roles of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in mission produces an integrated missiology, incorporating "Abba" theology, Christology, and pneumatology. The result will certainly be a more holistic theology and spir-ituality of mission. Finally, it is the conviction of this author that such an approach relieves some current tensions and answers some questions in mission. For example, debates centered on interreligious dialogue with the living faith traditions of the world can probably be better resolved more from a pneumatological approach than from only a Christological one. Therefore, if mission theology and spirituality are an integrated endeavor, the deepened consciousness will provide insights for both theoretical and practical questions. Apostolic Spirituality / 523 Our attention now tums to the roles of Father, Son, and Spirit in mis-sion. How does each person of the Trinity send and accompany us into mis-sion? Recall the title of this presentation, which links mission and spirituality with a consciousness of being sent. The Role of the Father The Father is presented in Scripture as the harvest master and vineyard owner. Mission, therefore, originates with the Father; mission is God's pro-ject. The Father determines its parameters. Already this awareness places the Church and her evangelizers in an auxiliary, servant role. Vatican II clearly set aside triumphalistic ecclesiology as well as any simplistic identification of the Church and the Kingdom of God. As servant of the kingdom or laborer in the vineyard, the Church is to be "the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery" and the "the initial budding forth of that kingdom" (LG, 3, 5). In addition, the Council, situating the Church within the larger framework of God's design of salvation (mysterion), entitled its first chapter of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church "The Mystery of the Church." The Church and all missioners must radically see themselves serving the mysterion "according to the will of God the Father" (AG, 2). The Father desires generous cooperators and humble workers for the harvest. He freely chooses them and they are to belong to him (Lk 6:13; Mk 3:13-16; Jn 15:15-16). These passages remind evangelizers that all mission is a sending (missio/mittere), originating in the Father; their vocation is God's gratuitous gift. Missioners do not send themselves; mission cannot be defined in legal terms; all must be according to the Father's gracious design. Affirming mission, therefore, as a gratuitous gift in the Father's gracious vision, emphasizes the centrality of grace. Thus, missioners understand, as the country priest in Bernanos' novel says on his deathbed, in all vocations "Grace is everywhere" (Bernanos, 233). Trinitarian mission is always soteriological; its purpose is liberation and salvation. The Father has no other goal, as Paul clearly reminded Timothy: He "wants all to be saved and come to know the truth." Condemnation or rejection are inconsistent with the Father's design (Jn 3:16-17; Mt 18:14). The Father, overwhelmingly "rich in mercy" (Ep 2:4), extends his great love to everyone, as the universalism of both Luke and Paul make clear. All evangelizers have experienced "the kindness and love of God" (Tt 3:4); it is out of their deep consciousness of the Father's personal graciousness that they journey to all places, peoples, and cultures. They are aware that they have received all as girl, and they desire to give all with the same generosity (Mt 10:8). Any missioner would relish being described as "rich in mercy." 594 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 The Father cannot be surpassed in his kindness and generosity (Jm 1:5, 17); his mercy is made concrete and visible when he sends Jesus, his Son. This is definitely a new mode of God's presence with his people; it is love in personal form. This unfolding of the mysterion far surpasses previous mani-festations of Yahweh's presence to his people Israel (Heb 1:1-2). Missioners strive to be continuations of the love of God manifested personally in Jesus, and this approach brings transformation and deepened consciousness. Our discussion of the Father's role in mission carries us back to the heart of the Trinity: God is love (1 Jn 4:8), and all manifestations flow from this identity. No less than the inner life of the Trinity is founded on the dynamism of divine love. Thus, the mysterion necessarily is a loving design since it arises "from that 'fountain of love' or charity (fontalis amor) within God the Father" (AG, 2). It is imperative that missioners and evangelizers become mystics like John the Evangelist (see 1 Jn 4:7-21); nothing less can explain the love of God for a fallen world and rebellious humanity. No other motivation is ade-quate to the missionary calling--of the entire Church. Mother Teresa of Calcutta has named her congregation the Missionaries of Charity, and she never tires, of reminding her audiences that this is the fundamental vocation of all Christians. It sounds fantastic, but it is true: The love of the Trinity is personally poured into our hearts and it transforms all evangelizers into mis-sionary messengers of God's limitless love. Knowing our personal God as the font of love is the highest level of consciousness possible. Mission spiri-tuality becomes a conscious centering on Trinitarian love. This is the solid missiology-become-spirituality promoted by Vatican II. The Mission of the Son Jesus declares openly that he has been sent by his loving Father; the phrase "the Father who sent me" occurs forty-six times in the Gospel of John. And a salvific thrust is evident in the missioning of Jesus by his Father. Vatican II expresses Jesus' missioning as a reconciling presence "to establish peace or communion between sinful human beings and himself . Jesus Christ was sent into the world as a real mediator between God and men" (AG, 3). In Paul's theology, mediation and reconciliation are vital ele-ments of the mysterion (2 Co 5:19; Col 1:13; Rm 5:1)~ Jesus' continuing "Abba experience" (Kavunkal, 9-15), enabling him to faithfully accomplish his mission, has several dimensions: his coming or proceeding from the Father (noted above), his remaining with the Father (Jn 10:38; 16:32), and his eventual return to the Father (Jn 16:5; 7:33; 13:36). This means that Jesus fulfills his mission in light of a particular conscious- Apostolic Spirituality / 525 ness: continual intimacy with his Father. Luke tells us that, before making such a decisive move in his ministry as the choice of the Twelve, Jesus "went out to the mountains to pray, spending the night in communion with God" (Lk 6:12). Mission in the Jesus mode has its source, continuation, and fulfill-ment in the Abba experience. This dimension of Jesus' living of his mission provides evangelizers an inviting model for their own mission consciousness. In its holistic vision of God's design for salvation, the Council sees the Church as continuing, developing, and unfolding "the mission of Christ him-self" (AG, 5). The apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (13-16, 59-60) and the pastoral statement on world mission of the United States Bishops To the Ends of the Earth (25-27) also confirm mission as an ecclesial act in fidelity to Jesus. Contemporary evangelizers, cognizant of the Jesus-Church continuity, seek to live and witness as the community of Jesus' followers. They recall his promises (Mt 16:18; 28:20), but readily admit they are fragile "earthen vessels." They faithfully accept that "Christ in his mission from the Father is the fountain and source of the whole apostolate of the Church" (AA, 4). A missioner's model is "sentire cum ecclesia'" (feel and think with the Church), frankly admitting that one is "simuljustus et peccator" (concomi-tantly both upright and sinful). Who among Jesus' followers does not need a deeper consciousness of these realities? Central to the mission of Jesus is the mystery of the Incarnation: "The Son of God walked the ways of a true incarnation that he might make men sharers in the divine nature" (AG, 3). This radical identification of our broth-er Jesus with us mortals (Heb 4:15) makes us rich out of his poverty (2 Co 8:9). He became a servant (Mk 10:45) and gave his life "as a ransom for the many--that is, for all" (AG, 3). Consistently, Church Fathers .of both East and West have held that "what was not taken up [assumed] by Christ was not healed" (Abbott, 587, note 9). Thus, when Jesus took to himself our entire humanity, he healed, renewed, and saved us. In brief, incarnation is the fundamental pattern of all mission. Today evangelizers are deeply conscious of the ramifications of mission as incarnation. No missioner worthy of the name underestimates the impor-tance of indigenization and inculturation; they develop a spirituality of "depth identification," becoming as vulnerable as Jesus was in his humanity. This same pattern is the model of growth and development of all local churches (AG, 22). While it is certain that the mission of Jesus is initiated at the Incarnation, his baptism by John in the Jordan is an act of public commitment and conse-cration to mission. Jesus pursues his ministry; though it will encounter grow- 526 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 ing opposition and lead to the human disaster of Calvary, he will not betray his commitment. Note that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all juxtapose Jesus' baptism and the triple temptation in the wilderness. The tactic of Satan is to subvert Jesus with possessions, pride, and power; at the core, all Satan's promises tempt Jesus to renege on his dedication to mission. The more conscious an evange-lizer becomes of the struggle involved in mission faithfulness, the closer he will be drawn to Jesus. "who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." The missioner will constantly and with confidence "approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor and to find help in time of need" (Heb 4:15-16). Instructive for the Church and her evangelizers is an appreciation of the continual action of the Spirit in the life of Jesus. The creed affirms that he was conceived "by the power of the Holy Spirit." The same Spirit descends on Jesus at the moment of his baptism (Mt 3:17); he is led by the Spirit to the desert (Mt 4:1); he returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit (Lk 4:14); he begins his preaching mission at Nazareth asserting that "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me" (Lk 4:18). As Jesus was empowered by the Spirit, he sends forth his own disciples saying: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22). Peter (Ac 4:8), Paul (Ac 9:17), Stephen (Ac 6:5; 7:55), and those who listened to their preaching (Ac 10:44) were all filled with the Spirit. In fact, the entire nascent Church brims with the Spirit's presence (Ac 2:4), and thus the community increases while it enjoys the consolation of the befriending Spirit (Ac 9:31). Jesus, his disci-ples, and likew.ise today's evangelizers all are in mission through the mar-velous action of the Spirit (Kroeger-A, 3- 12). Concretely in the practical order, Jesus carries out his mission through evangelization--proclaimiog the GoodNews of the Kingdom. The first words that Mark places on Jesus' lips are centered on this very theme (Mk 1"15). Luke also portrays Jesus' mission as focused on glad tidings to the "little ones of this world" (Lk 4:18-19). As Paul VI has noted, this theme "sums up the whole mission of Jesus" (EN, 6). Jesus could not be impeded in his ministry: "I must announce the good news of the reign of God, because that is why I was sent" (Lk 4:43). Contemporary evangelizers, reflecting on the urgency and scope of Jesus' kingdom proclamation, will find themselves imitating Jesus' ministry as he lived it in silence, in action, in dialogue, in teaching, and in prayer. Yes, the Good News of the Kingdom for Jesus means an integral, holistic approach to evangelization--because all dimensions of the total gospel are expressions of his enduring love (Jn 13:1). Apostolic Spirituality / 527 Jesus' entire life, from the Incarnation to the Ascension, was a procla-mation. All he said and did were a testimony to the Father's loving design (Jn 3:31-35; 7:16; 8:38; 14:24). Jesus existed on nothing else; his "suste-nance/ food/meat" was to do the will and work of the one who sent him (Jn 4:34). In everything Jesus was faithful to the Father. Reflective, insightful evangelizers interiorize the fidelity mind-set of Jesus (Ph 2:5); they also imitate St. Paul in his concern for faithful transmis-sion of the message of Jesus preserved by the Church (1 Co 15:3, 11). In prayer and meditation missioners refocus themselves on Jesus and his king-dom, and often this demands setting aside personal opinions and ambitions. Mother Teresa of Calcutta notes that Jesus does not always call us to be suc-cessful, but he always invites us to be faithful. This fidelity to Jesus and his message should not be interpreted in too narrow a sense. As announcers of Good News, we consciously interiorize Jesus' gospel values; however, we seek to transmit them to humanity in all its cultural, social, religious, and politico-economic diversity. Certainly, this is a fantastic challenge; it is central to contemporary evangelization. Paul VI expressed it wisely and poignantly: "This fidelity both to a message whose servants we are and to the people to whom we must transmit it living and intact is central axis of evangelization" (EN, 4). Lifestyle is key in any vision of evangelization. For our contemporaries, who willingly listen only to witnesses (not theoreticians), the missioner's authenticity and transparency are generally the first elements in evangeliza-tion; wordless witness is already a silent, powerful, and effective proclama-tion. It is an initial act of evangelization (EN, 21, 41). Jesus himself adopted a particular, concrete lifestyle. His mind-set was fidelity and obedience to his Father; his outward manner manifested the lived values of poverty, total dedication, persecution, apparent failure. The Church and her evangelizers "must walk the same road which Christ walked, a road of poverty and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice to the death" (AG, 5). Bluntly, there is no authentic Christian mission without the cross and all its surprises, foolishness, and scandal (1 Co 1:18-25). True mission is always signed by the cross, and without it we cannot be Jesus' disciples. The evan-gelizer is always generous in bearing a personal share of the hardships which the gospel entails (2 Tm 1:8). Constantly the Christian disciple is measuring his life and apostolate against the lifestyle of Jesus and the patterns of the gospel. Sustained prayerful reflection and an ever deepening consciousness of one's personal relationship with the Trinity are the unique way of interior-izing the paradox of the cross and the power of the resurrection. 528 / Review for Religious, July-August 1991 An anonymous poet, speaking of the centrality of the Incarnation and Redemption in Christianity, noted that there are no definitions in God's dic-tionary for these terms. One must search for the meaning of Bethlehem and Calvary under another category. Their significance is to be found only when one reads how God defines love. Indeed, God's loving plan of salvation is a message of hope for all peo-ples. It is universal and should be preached and witnessed "to the ends of the earth." To spread this universal message demands great dedication and faith, as seen in the practical advice that Paul gave to Timothy (2 Tm 4:1-5). The evangelizer, conscious of his role in the actualization of the mysteri-on, will surrender enthusiastically to the invitation of Jesus: Come and fol-low me in my mission. This conscious surrender will open his eyes to perceive, not so much what his efforts are accomplishing, but how Father, Son, and Spirit are working fruitfully in and through his life. With this vision, contemplation and actibn harmoniously blend and sustain one anoth-er; the evangelizer experiences living the mysterion. Eventually, all will be recapitulated in Christ and God will be

Issue 11.6 of the Review for Religious, 1952. ; A.M.D.G. Review for Religious NOVEMBER15, 19 5 2 Xavier the Catechist ¯ Anthony Perelra Communion of Saints ¯ " c.A. Herbs÷ OnRace Rela~tions . Gerald Kelly Address~fo Superiors . Pope Plus ×ll ¯ I 0,000 Gold Francs Or Life . Adam C, Ellis A Monument to M. Vincent . Jerome Breunig Questions and Answers Xavier Centenary Book Reviews Communications index for 19S2 VOLUME XI NUMBER RI::::Vi W FOR Ri .LIGIOUS VOLU1VIE XI NOVEMBER, 1952 NUMBER 6 CONTENTS ¯ XAVIER CENTENARY-~The Editors . 281 XAVIER THE CATECHIST--~Anthony Pereira, S.J . 282 A NEW INDULGENCED ASPIRATION . 290 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 290 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS--C. A. Herbst, S.J . 291 FOR THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE . 295 BOOKS--FOR NOTHING . ° . 295 NOTES ON RACE RELATIONS--Gerald Kelly, S.J . 296 TEN-YEAR INDEX . 300 10,000 GOLD FRANCS OR LIRE--Adam C. Ellis, S.J . 301 ADDRESS TO RELIGIOUS SUPERIORS--Pope Plus XII . 305 TO TEACHING SISTERS (A Quotation) . 308 COMMUNICATIONS ON INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS . 308 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 28. Use of Income from Inheritance . '. . 309 29. Must Suggestions for General Chapter be Signed? . . 309 30. Mental Prayer during Second Mass . 310 31. Helping Younger Delegates at General Chapter . 310 32. When Do I Start Counting for my Golden Jubilee? . 311 33. Lay" Sisters and Class Distinction . 311 ¯ COMMUNICATION ON CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE . 312 SETS OF BACK NUMBERS . ' . . . 314 A MONUMENT TO MONSIEUR VINCENT--Jerome Breunig, S.J. 315 BOOK REVIEWS-- The Ignatian Way to God; Saint Therese and Suffering . 325 PROCEEDINGS OF CONGRESS OF RELIGIOUS . 327 BOOK NOTICES . 328 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 329 FAMILY COMMUNION CRUSADE . 332 ANNUAL INDEX FOR 1952 . 333 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1952. Vol. XI, No. 6. Published bi-monthly : January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marsy, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942 at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board i Jerome Breunig, S.J., Augustine G. Ellard, S.J., Adam C. Ellis, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J., Francis N. Korth, 8.J. Copyright, 1952, by Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before writincj to us, please consult notice on Inside back cover. Xavier Cent:enary DECEMBER 2 will be the four hundredth anniversary of the .death of St. Francis Xavier. Since he is not only our own brother inChrist, but also one of the two principal patrons of the Society.of the-Propagation of ~he Faith' and a saint d'dmired and loved throughout the world, it Seems eminently fitting that we pay~. him some tribute in these pages. Ver'y.specially we desire to re-echo' the follow]ng~eulogy of the saint by His Excellency Dora dose da Costa Nunes, Archbishop of Goa and Damaun. and Patriarch of the East Indies, in his Pastoral Letter of February' 15, 1952: "Among so many missionaries, martyrs and saints Who have' .brought the Gospel to the East, none stands out as prominently as the Glorious Apostle. A beacon of.rare brilliance, he illumined with celestial br!ghtness these regions which were at the time involved in mystery and myth. Go where he might, he left in th~ souls of men a trail of light. No one crossed re.giqns so dFtensive in-order to sow ~he seed of the word of God. "Like th~ Doctor of the ~Gentiles, he stopped nowhere, nor did" ,'he establish himself permanently in any. place. His one aim was to prepare new s~ail and march, ahead, b1~zing'trails, raising new out-pqsts of~Christianity and firmly pla~ting the .Church, leaving ~to his co-workers the labour Of watering and he)ping to bear fruit the seed-he had cast in'the soulsof native peoples . ¯ "And yet it was not these qdalities [his missionary exploits] that conquered for him the glory that surrbunds his name. It was t'he rightful fame of his sanctity . Even before the Church .had canon-ized him, he was already canonized, in a manner of speaking, by the. King of Travaniore, who ordered a statue of him to be placed in a Hindu temple." . The Archbishop's words are quoted from The Clergy/"Monthl~! (published by the destiit Fathers, St. Mary's 'College, Kurseong, D.~.Ry., Indi/) for dune, 1952. Their entire number of The Gler~?~t Monthl~ is devotgd to St. Francis.X~vier. With the peimi,s-sion of tl~e editor, we are reprinting one of ~hearticles, "Xavier the, Catechist, by A. Pereira.,,S.d., in the present.number of 'REV.~EW FOR RELIGIOUS. In a subsequent number we shalloreprint an article "6n Xavier the missionary. THE EDITORS.:,. 281 Xavier !:he Ca!:echist: - A. Pereira, S.). -, FATHER B,ROU, S.J.~ in his life of Xavier, calls the Apostle of ¯ the East 'anincomparable catechist." His life and the" few w'riting~ he has left us prove beyond doubt th, at the title is in no way unmerited. We shall study the saint's"idea of ~atechizing, his catechisms, and his method of catechizing. A CATECHETICAL "MENTALITY" "The more universal a good workis, the more.divine." For this reason Ignatius and the Society from the very beginning considered catechizing as more important and necessary than .other ministries. In May, 1537, Ignatius and his companions resolved "that children should be tatighi Christian doctrine for the.space of an hour" a day. They confir,rned this resolution On the 11 tb of June of the same year: "It has been.~.decided,.by all, except Bobadilla, that the article about teaching children for a period of forty days and for an hour, as indi-cated above, should be made the object of a formal vow and oblige under mortal sin." The Formula of the Institute stresses the fol-lowing: "Let them'consider as especially entrusted to them the edu-cation of the children and the ig.norant in the Christian do~trine." Xavier h'ad imbibed the spirit of Ignatius and particularly hi~ esteem for. catechizing, for he wrote to the Flemish Father B, arzaeus: "That way of helping the people is better-which is the more uni-versal, for example preaching, catechizing, confessing." H~nce he did not want th~ Father-in-charge to shove the duty ofoteaching. catechism on others: "You yourself will take charge of teach"ing the prayers to lhe children of the Portuguese, to the slaves, men and women, and to the native Christians. Do not entrustthis,offic.e to others because the persons who see you doing this are much edified and morepeople, come tO listen and learn the Christian doctrine." The h0ur~0f santa doutrina was.sacred to him. How often do we read in his letters remarks'like this: "In the morning¯~ was teaching men, in the evening ~omen, in the afterndqn after dinner the chil-dren." Xavier, then, was not, as some have .styled him, "a mere meieor" flashing througfi the Fky aimlessly. He had a clear aiml Catechizing, ,he knew, was fundamental, so he consecrated the'best of his time and energy to this humbleand absorbing work: "This 282 XAVIER THE CATECHIST fruitful work on behalf of ~he children is'the important on~." Xavier's esteem for catechizing learnt from Ignatius was further enhaiaced by the circumstances of his mission. Pope Paul III, by his Pontifical Brief of 1540, sent Xavier as his legate to visit the islands of the Red Sea, of the Persian Gulf, of the Ocean (Indian Ocean?), also the provinces and places of India on either side of the Gange.s and the Cape of Good Hope. The Pope entrusted to him the mis-sioh' "to ~trengthen the Christians in their faith and to bri,ng tho~e .who did hot know i{, to know, practic_e, and keep.the.same faith." It Was the custom of the time to :administer baptism to pe0pleowhb knelt only the ess0ntials,-which were'forgotten after baptism for lack of continued and vigilant instruct, ion. The King of.Portugal insisted on nlaking Christians ("fazer muitos crist~os, fazer muita cristan-dade'.'), leavi~ag'to others the care of.instructing them. The first missionaries planted but "no watering was done." Ordinarily they stayed with the Portuguese colonists; hence "the Christians, as there is nobody to teach, them, do not know 'more than to say that.they. are Christians." But it was not safe for the priest to live in places. -where he could not get help from .the Portt~guese. In the Moro Island, for instance, Father Fern~o Vinager converted many.to'the faith but he was killed and the island was deprived of the only priest it had. , We should not forget that tl~e first Portuguese missionaries were laymen. Captains of flotillas, merchants, soldiers plaiited the cross and baptized in {he absence of priests, They had come to the East for "pepp0r and souls," but often more for pepper tharf souls. There are some exceptions, however. In 1'537 one of them, Antonio Galv~o, baptized many of the Moluccans, at their own request, and built a ~eminary. When Galv~o was relieved of.his.office, the semi-nary disappeared with him. The knowledge'of the Christian faith imparted by the soldiers, and merchants could not go very far. Much catechizing remained to be done, as Xavier keenly realized. HIS CATECHETICAL WRITINGS Many writers have tried to magnify Xavier by attributing to 'him the gift of tongues. No need for this. His personality stands out much greater if we se~ him as he was--a man of hard work. From his own letter~ we know how much labour it cost him to learn the languages and to compose his catechisms. "May it please God to give us speech!" We are amongst them like statues; they speak and chat about us and we, not understanding the language, remain quiet; 283 Review [o? Religio~s at'present we must be like children and qearn the language." _ ~ His'aim in @riting his .vhrious catechisms was to be useful to h~mself and to his fellow-missionaries, and to spread the faith in every'pos.~ible w.ay. His predecessors in the missiofi field did not try to learn the languages of~ the people. For Xavier this could not last. He learnt the essentials of our faith in their language and wrote them down.to help his memory. He wished to share with his brel~hren this 'st~cessfial method of catechizing. Whenever"h~ found ~that people could read, as in Japan, he distributed copies of his w~itings:. "This winter we shall busy ourselves with writing for the press a rather detailed exposition of the oarticles of the faith in Japa'nese. All the leading people know how .to read and write. As we cannot help all. in person, our faith may be spr.ead everywhere through printed catechisms . . ." At times he had. th(' prayers posted in the church .that all who.could read should' learn for themselves. His catechetical' writings are the, following: 1, Xavier's Catechisms. Xa~vier brought with him to India the 'Short Catechism' of John de BarroL This formed, the foundation of his catechetical teaching. His own Portuguese catechism, Doutrina., Christ8 (which was.printed in 1557 at the press of St. Paul's Col-lege; Goa), follows rather faithfully the text of de Barros, with a" few additional prayers composed by Xavier--he wanted the cate-chism" lesson to.be a prayer. During~ his four months'-stay in Tuticorin, with great labour and' the help 6f interpreters, he translated the most esser~tial parts (the Creed,-commandments, prayers, Confiteor.) int'o Tamil, for the use of the Paravas who were in such great need of instruction. It was not a masterpiece of literature as-Xavier hin~self recognized. ~He wrot'e to Father Mansilhas, his first companion among the Paravad, to point out. some corre'ctions. Father. Henrique Henriques, the at/thor of a Tamil grammar, found in it mistakes (atguns errog) and inaccuracies (mer~tiras) which he attributed to the carelessness of the interpreters: , While he stayed in Malacca, ir~ 1545~, he put intothe Malayan l~inguage "the Creed, with an exposition of the articles of the faith, the general confessidn, Pater noster, Ave Maria and the co'mmand-merits." It cost him much work, f6r "it is a .painful t~ing not to know the language." ¯ As soon as Xavier came to know Anjiro, the Japanese baptized in Goa as Paulo de Sarita F~, he made up his mind to translate the 284 XAVIER THE CATECHIST catechism~di~to d~panese. He, put his resolution into. effect with tl~e help ,of Paul, vchen h~ reached Kagoshima, the native place of Paul. He gave too much,credit to his helper. Hd could say of him, :' ,Anjiro knows hohz to write ~lapanese very well." But, as Father Valignano wrote late, r, "Paul was not a learned~man and though he tried his Best to translatel our ~doctrine into 3apanese, his work was very defec-tivel so~ much so that it was a cause of scoffing and ~idicule for the ,lapanese. !~ It neither expressed the truth which the Father was preaching.:nor was it .written in a way that their learned men could - read without l~ughter.'~ Paul was not a philosopher and Xavier was not a.linguist. In the~ circumstances more could not. be achieved;' Xavier bad to leave perfection to his successors. 2. Declaracao da Fd (Explanation of the faith). This is a.de-tailed explahation of the Creed. The catechism has laid the founda-tions. The Christians were prepared for" more substantial food. ¯ Xavier starts his explanation from the dreation of the world, and then ex!boses the history of the coming of Christ. He wrote this work whilein Ternate in 1546; in 1548 he asked the Tamilian secular priest Gaspar Coelho to translate it into Tamil. Later, with' the help 9f Anjiro, he put it 'into dapanese--another work of Paul's that was not a piecd of art. The Portugues~ text was printed in Goa, ¯ in 1557, together with Xavier's Portuguese catechism. .3. Ordem e regimento (Christian rule of life) is a manual o~ devotidns, the necessary complement of the catechism. Ithas morning and evening prayers taken from his ~atechism, the examen of conscience and various, other, prayers. There is a meditation on sin, mortal and venial, and even a method of hearing Mass for children. 0 - 4. Instruction/:or Catechists. To the Fathers working in India Xavier proposes a method of catechizing, the fruit.of his own experi-ence. From these pages we get a vivid picture of Xavier's own cate-chism classes. Descriptions of hi~ method are also found in a number of his letters. HIS METHOD ¯ Xavier;s ~catechetical method can bd reduced to four points: natural meansl supernatural means, use of lay-helpers, and .the prin-ciple of adaptation. Natural Means "There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses,'" philosophy teaches us. The p,edagog~ of the senses plays a great part. 285 , in Xavier s method. ' Ret:iew'~or Reli'gious~ ¯ - His' classes: began With. a processibnfand con.~intied.as,a li~;ing, difilogu.e. ~ procession! 'rich' and. poor, chil- .d~n"dnd grown-ups, went in p~oces~ion' to th*e church. In" Goa', fiS Xavier~himsel'f writes, morethhn 300 childr~nt00k par~. On Sign-days the' church overflowed With people. The Para~vfis did not g0~ fishing on Sundays; in th~ n~orning they came t6 Mass~ and in the evening "there was a great reunion of all-the inhabitan~ "of,.the .~,il"-i lage, men and Women, "young and*' old, to recite .th'e prayers in thei~ langBag~. They ~how great p!~asure a'nd come With.al~icrity.'; .His class w'~s a living 'dialogue. The catechist did. not do 'all'the ialking~ Everybody was awake 'to what was h~ppening: "My brethre,n," he asked," "do you believe that "this our God,is the. only . true God?" They all replied: "Web~lieve.'". His teiiching was a lesson thatentered the soul by various sonses~ .The eyes'were cau.gbt by the ,ver~ fervor and, enthusiasm of the Santo Padre, th~ ears by the holy ~s'ong~, the.unariimou~resp6nse~ andthe clear repetition¯ of the formulae. India'ns for centuries were singing their Puranas. Xavier disc0ve.red ihat singin'g was"the thi~ng for the people of.the- East. In Goa, the custom introduced by Xavier was to be followed byhis'successors. In~ 1578 Father Francis Pasio ,wrote that he ha~l witnessed childreri singing the Christian doctrine" "in a bright and devout melody.'[ They sang it both in Portuguese and- Konkani. F~ther Barzaeus, who followed Xavier's method, closely, ¯wrote the following: "Children go about the street singing the Christian doc-trine: even the Moors go through ~he streets, singing the doctrine heard from ihe boys: in the name'of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Xavier himself gives testimony to what hap-pened in T~ernate: "It is.a reason to give thanks to Our Lord for the fruits which God obtained by imprintii~g in the hearts of His. crea-tures: canticles of His praise and honor, in a people recently converted¯ to His faith. It is customary'in Maluco, to Hear the boys in-the squares, the women and the girls day'and night in their houses, the workmen in the fields, the fishermen on the sea,. singing not~friv- Olous songs, but holy canticles as the Credo, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, ¯ the commandments, works'of mercy, and, the general confesSion.and . many other prayers." Xavier's class was a kind of drama where everybody~had to play his part.~ 'Raising the bandsor, extending' them, placing /hem on the breast-whilst s'aying "I believe," looking up to heaven . "these simple gestures k.ept the people active and intere,sted in. the class.~ ¯ ,- . 286 gi?acei''~ Fiai~15 i~ a gift of God~ih~r~fore it' is "tO' be bbt~ined b~ " prayer. CateChism~ class for Xavier ~vas,; d~i!(f0~,afi'~ exerciSe~:{~f prayer.~ Fie b~gan i~ with pr~yer, mingled it .w!thPr~er, and 'e~' .it With 'p~ayer.~ BefOre explaining a'comm~fidhaent, Xavier and :,audience a~ked Our:.Ladyfor.th~. grace, of unders(ahding. A~ the e6d . of hi~ explanation' 'thcy'~k.ed pard0n~' for pa~t faults 'agai~ist ti~ cbmmand,m~ent expl~'ifl'ed~' The cla~s "erid¢'d witfiI' prayer: "Let ia's sa~r ~even Paters an, d sev.en Ayes in honour of th~ Holy° Ghost that may help us, :to believe"fi~mly'wha~the holy¯ Catholic~ f~aith teaches fis." Somebody may object dsat" ~0rnmon :pr~yers."e~isily be.come mere ga.bbling. Xavier fg.restalled "the d~hger by alterh~iting' coin-moil and private., praye.r. "~The Paie~ and Ave'shduld be recited by everybody silently;)" He wanted to accustoin ::tl~em to personal, ,p, rayer. ¯ ¯ ¯ " ~. ¯ Lay-apostles . Xavier had expected hel~ from Et~rop~. ~et he realized their, even so, Parava laymen were indispen.sable.for the conversion and training of the .Paravas. He. thus. forestalled.6Ur pre~ent-da)i lay-apostolate in'.his Organization of the catechists." .In ,the v!llages he ~ Visite,d, l~e"left a copy of his Tamil catechi'sm' and-~ommisSioned a Christian,¯ the kanakapi'llei,, 'to instruct the people, The kan~akapiliei was~.0rdinarily.the-headmari of the village. :.:Xa~,ier wanted to ap, proach the :masses through th~ 'leaders., .~ ' ~ ,' . '" The kanakapillbi¯ (cat~chist~s) producedwonderful fruits. The~ represented the Father "in.his absence, report, ed_ abuses, inquired about impediments .for marriage, proclaimed the banns. "Father Francis in-stituted the .order of kanakapillei whith exists o°h this coast and" i~ has contributed so ~m'uch to the g'lory, of God and:the good of souls: He taught them the form or the rite of baptisin, hi enjoined on them to baptize~n case of necessity, to provide for urgen~ 'needs. Even today, they take care of the" Church, they are l~ke sacristans; they baptize without ~eremonieS, when it.is iargent; .they teach Christian doctririe ~twice a day, to the boys in the. morning and to the gi~lsfin~ the eve= ning, in Latin and in the language of (he 'counf~y"-; thus wrote Teixeira, one df the first historians df .Xavier: Of c0urs.e, the Para-v ¯as did not¯ under.sta~id.Latinbu, t' w l S" a"t ',. X" awer wished wasto accu's-tom them little,by little to tak~ean active'part in thelff~rgy.' The , 2:87 A.- PEREIRA. ~ " . Rt-~ie~ for Religi'ods organization of the kanakal~illei produced wonderful fruit even cdn-turies later. Father;Pi.er, re Martin wrote in 1700:~ "On,e of the things ~at. con~t.ri.bute ,too.st. t.o .make this Christianity so remarkable among others is the.diligence with which the small,est children areo,taught Chrfftian doctrine. This ho'l~y~ustpm has been kept inviolably the times of St. FranCis Xavier. He. was ,convince'd that the faitfi .would strik~ ~oots in the heaits Of' the inhabitants, if from a tender age. ~. h e y . were well" "i n"structed. " The k~n,akapille~! s.aved the faith among the P.aiav~as during the.time of the. pei'secution and in the ab-sence of pri.e.sts. ~. . . The support of the catechists v~as. one Of the great preoccupa-tions of Xavier. He.wrote to Father Mansilhas to obtain help from the giceioy.ThePa,ravas were.paying 400 gold pardaos "for the, slippers of the Queen of Portugal.r'. Xavier wrote to her to relin-. quish the "slipper money", for the benefit of the catechis.ts, remarking jocosely that the best slippers would be the children saved with that money. These would carry her to heaven. Another origin~al ~trait bf Xavier's method is.his h~bit of associ- - ating to his work Goan, Tamilian, .Travancorian, and Malsyan children. First of all:he believed in "the power of their interces-sion." He himself prayed to the children who died after he. had baptized them. He insisted with Father Mansilhas to make the chil-dren pray for .his intentions. Then he.made them share in his active apostolgte. He taugh~ them the prayers that. they, in their turn, might teachthem at home. "For a month I taught' them the prayers, enjoining on the boys to teach what'they-bad learnt in the school to their parents and to all the members of.the house and.neighbours." The children took to it with enthusiasm. They taught ,the prayers-in a pleasant way, for they "sang them," .They prgv~d their zeal in other ways. "They reprehend their parents,: when.they see tfiem practi~ing idol.arty . they come to inform me when such things are 'done . They burn the idols to. ashes." They. were bold enough to challenge the pagans: "they fight with the paga.ns"., and. Barzaeus wrote: "The.boys dis-cuss with the Moors and tell them that the~ cannot be saved, with-out baptism." . . , Xavier shared with the children even the power of. ~iracles. People called on him right and left. It.was.impossible for him to attend, to all: "So many., came to, cal_l me to their .houses to say some .prayers over.the, sick: ~.r .- and since it was not in_ my power~ to deny ¯288 November, 1952 XAV-IER THE CATECHIST such a holy'request. I halve settled the ma~tter in. a Way to.satisfy. all: I have brdered the boys who know .the p~ayers t6' go to the homes' 0f.'the sick and to gather all tl~e nhembers ~of the" hoi~se find tl~e neighbors: a~d to "say together the Credo ovdr and. over.again, telling the sick man to have faith, that he may be cured; and then ~he o~her' prayers. ThuS,,by'the. faith of the,members~of the house of the neighbors, and. o~ the si~k th~mselve,s, God Our" Lord g~anted many favours to the sick, rest6rin~ to them corporal andspiritual 'health. God has ihown great mercy to the ailing: He ~alied them tlJrough sickness, and as it were by forc~ He brought them to the faith." Adaptation 0 A last trait of Xavier's method, is his care to adapt himself to the people ofdifferent'temperam.ents and places. For Goa and t.h.e other Portuguese fo~ts he made himself a catechist a preacher, and a theo-logian. , For these places he requeste.d theolog!ans an.d.preachers." For the Paravas he made l~imself a goqd catechist:' .No need of much learning here: "The persons who hav'e no talent for preaching and confessions., would do much service in these parts'to the infi-dels if they had the corporal and spiritual force~, because there is no need of letters . let them be fit for many corporal works." Among the Japanese, Xavier became both'h ~atechist and 'a. savant. From the very beginning he spent time ahd ene'rgy to trans-late his more developed work, A Declaracao "da Fd, into.Japanese~=He wanted learned meii for Japa, n. ~ But Xavier pra~tlsed "adaptation" above all in his moral approach to the.pedple he had to deal with. T-he Indians easily over-look any imperfection in a priest except impatience. A priest, accord-ing to the Indian mentality, shouldbe a mirr6r of God's serenity. People came to'Xavier at odd hours ~ind children left him no'respite even f6r meals: yet. he never showed the slightest impatience: "When I reached the plac~ the children did not allow ine either to say mY office, or eat, or rest before I taught them some prayers," He wrote to Father Mansilhas: "Pray God to give you much patidnce ;to deal with this'pebple"; and in another letter: '.'L- ea~rn to bear their weak-nesses with patience, reflecting that if they are not good' now, they will be so some day." "I entreat you very much never, on an~r ac-count, to lose your temper with these troublesome people: and When ~ou have much.work and cannot satisfy alL .console yourself by. doing what you can. ~lways'bear with these, pe'6ple ~ith great 289" patience; but. if in:.som'e ¯case. kindness' doe~" not succeed., then~practlse that work'of mercy which"says,'tl-iou wilt chastise himwho'deserv~s to be chastised/" And to Fatl~er Barzaeus he wr0t~:."With this people of ,India',' much is.accomplished by exhortation,~ and nothing by force." ~ ¯ ' Xavier knew that mutUhl love .between the catechist and the pupils makes'his tea'c.hing m6re acceptable. He wrote'.to his c0m-panions bn the Fishery Coast: "Try. with all your might to make y6urself loved by'this people because if you are loved by them, you willpiod~ce much more fruit than if yoh are~ disliked by them. Again, I recommend you to take pains to make yourself loved by the people." It is worth noting ~he stress the saint lays ',not so much ¯ on' themis~sic~nary iovingth~ people but on the j~e6ple loving the" miss!ona,ry.~' People's love for the missionary will be an index of his lpve and devotiori to t~em. Love made up for . Xavier's d~fi-, ciencies, in the l~nguage, for example. It was one of the factors that made of him "ari incomparable catechist." A NEW INDULGENCED ASPIRATION By reason of special faculties granted to it by Our Holy Father, Pope Plus XII. ¯ the Sacred Penitentiary grants to all the faithful who have pidusly'recited th.e invo-cation, "Lord,° teach us to pray/,'" the following indulgences:' (1) a partial¯ indul' genre of three hundred~ ¯ days; (2) .a, plenar~ indulgence,¯ under the usual conditions, tb be gaine~l once a ~nth, if~this inyocation has been piously recited daily through-out ah entire month (April 30,. 195T, Acta Ap. 8edis,~1952, p. 389).' " Our readers will dovcell to'r~meml~er that Canon 928, § 2 states that "unles~ the contrary is expressly indicated, a partial indulgence may be gained a numbdr of times ada, y as, of~en-as the good work is repe~ted." Since the decree of the S:Peni-t. e, ntiary, contains no limiting clause, the partial indulgence of 30"0 days may be gained a.s~ often as the invoc.ation given above is repeated with a contrite, heart. ANTHONY., ~, PEREIRA. ," . ,was.,.°rdained. . a priest on November,, 11 of., the present, . year at.S't" Mary's theologate., Kurs.eong. India:~he is a':Goan.a.nd~ belongs to. the Mission of Goa. ~. A. HERBST is'bn the faculty of St. Mary's College. St. Marys, Kansas. AD~}C'i.~'~,"IS,"G~'I~.ALD KEL, L~.' a~i JEROME BREUNIG~'are members o~'the edi,," tbriai'.board of the"REV[E~" FO~. RELIGIOUS.~ ~ ~'; ~ ~" 290 The Commumon 0t: Sa'int s BELIEVE in the Holy Ghos~ the,.holy'Catholic Church. the Communion of Saints.'" Holy'Mo.ther .Church must think this doctrineof the Communion of Saints very important, and must want her children to bear it clearly in mind, and ~o'think.o.f i~ very ofte.n, since it appears so explicitly.in" the short profe~ion of faith we call the Apostles' Creed. The Church does because. Christ. ,. did., H~ came to found a kingdom to, which, all do Or can belong, the just find the unjust and the poor. and the unfortunate,.'~nd in which the little ones are the favorites. The. angels belong, too, and " r~joic'e when even,one sinful brother does penance. In the perfect prayer we pray as the members bf a family: our Father, give us, for-give us, l'ehd us not into temptation. " St.'Peter s~ys: "'You are a .chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a ,holy nation, a purchase.d people . (you) are now the people bf God" ('I Peter 2:9-10). St.'Paul says: "You are all the children of God" (Gal. 3, 26). And St. 3ohn: "That which we have seen and heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with his Son desus. Christ" (I dohn I,. 3). ' "T'he Communion of saints is ~he spiritual solidarity ~vht~h binds together the faith.f, ul on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven.,.The participants, in that solidarity are called saints'by reason of their destination and of their partaking of the fruits of the redemption." (Catholic Encgclopedia, s.v.) The church triumphant in heaven, su~ering in purgatory, fighting on earth, constitute one church, .one society, 6he- family. The chfirch triumphant, suffering, fighting are as three orders'of the same society, three battle-lines of the same army, three branches of the same vine, three limbs of the same mighty ~ree. Christ communkates Hi~ merits to each irfdividual and there is in turn a mutual interchange of °good ottices between each "saint." "The Corn .m.union of Saims compr, ises, and is made fruitful, by, three great vital,.movements. A.stream of, ardent love flows from the Chu,ch;.Triumpha, nt to the members of Christ on earth, and thence returns, i.n,.c.9~ntless rushing brooks to the" blessed in heaven. A similar tratiic of lo~e takes place l~etween 291 t C. A~ HERBST, , ~ Review'for Religious the members of the,Church Stlffering and the Churchl Militant. And thirdly that same communion operates between the several ~members of. the Church Militant, producing those fruitful,!centres of life whereby th~ earthly fellowship is continually renewed.',~ '(Karl Adam, Tb~ Spirit of Catholicism, 115.) We on earth belong to the church militant. ~re must fight. We. are soldiers. We are sealed to this by ,the sacrament of confirmation ".through whithwe receive the Holy. Ghost to make us strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ." In th~ ceremonies of the administration of this. sacrament the bishop gives us a slight blow on the cheek to remind us that we must be ready to suffer any-thing, even death, for the sake of Christ. Even a little child is a soldier in.the church on earth. We are soldiers in the church mili-tant, but soldiers without guile, without., malice, weak even, and foolish like God, "for the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness 6f God, is stronger than men~" (I Cor. 1 ~25). We, are invincibly armed With the eight-fold blessing of the beatitudes: poor. in spirit, meek, clean of heart, merciful; we mournl hunger and .thirst after justice, are peacemakers, suffer per, secution for justice' sake. , We fight with spiritual weapons, especially with prayer. -We .pray for one another here on ~arth. "Give us this day .our .daily bread, and forgive us ou_r trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.". We pray for one another that we may save our souls, for our father and mother and those dear to us, and for a sick friend. ask for favors and for .the conversion of sinners. We pray at Mass and ¯ offer it "for all those present and for allfaithful Christihns," for the holy father and the .bishop by name, and pause to make a special prayer'for the., living. It would be but belaboring the obviousto dwell at length on the intercession of the "saints" here on earth for one another and on the wonderful fruits that.comer from their, good offices in behalf of one another. T.he church' suffering ~s in purgatory, where the souls of, ~he just not yet fully ptlrified are cleansed. Nothing defiled can ~nter heaven. We cai~ help them. The Council of Trent teaches that "there .is a purgatory and that the souls detained .there are: helped by the suffrag,es of the faithful and most of all by the acceptable sacrifice Of the altar" (Decretum de purgatorio). So we follow them with our prayegs. We are still bound to them by the bond of love, by the bond of Christian charity, which is the blood-stream that vivifies 292 November, 1"952, THE COMMUNION O~ SAINTS the communion of ¯saints. Even death cannot break-that bond. "Love is stronger than death." "Charity never falleth away: whether pr6phecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed" (I Cot.' 13:8). "Charity which' is the.bond uniting the members of the Church.extends no~.0nly~to the living but also to the dead who die in chari~y. For charity, which is the life of the soul, even as the soul is the life of the body. does not cease." (S. Thom., Suppl.,,q. 71, a. 2.) "It is the'refore a hply and wholesome tl'iought to pray for the dead, othat they may be 16os'ed from their sins" (II Mach. 12:46). This has always been the mind of holy. l~other Church for all .her children, an~ today, as for alm6st two thousand years, ther~ fails f~rom the lips of countless millions the plea! "Eternal rest grant unt~ them, O Lord. and let perpetual light shine Upon them. May they. rest in peace. Amen." The poor souls can pray. of course. In fact. they have nothing else to do but be occup.ied with holy thoughts and desires. ""They thank, they sing the mercies of the Saviour. but always, with a back-. ward-looking towards past, sins. They petition,.but for others, and for themselves only that others may be inspired' by God to pray for them." " (3ugie, Purgatorg, 660 Gratitude would seem to demand that they pray for their benefactors. They are truly poor souls because they can do.little to help themselves and because they must suffer so much, but they g'do not forget, us, and:they will render us good for good. Not c6ntentmerely to. receive, they give. They give that which, the most miserable can .al~ays give. ~They give pra~/er.'" (Ibid., 72.) And since charity must be, mutual in the communion of saints as.elsewhere and the blessed interced~ for the souls in put-, gatory, these "repay the good offices of Heaven by ceaseless prais.e." Many think that ,Jesus and Mary and the saints and angel~ visit purgatory. After all, it is the vestibule of heaven. The guardian angels it seems, are especially at home there. St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi and St. Margaret Mary saw them there. Cardina! Newman pictures one bidding adieu to a soul there. - "Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; S~wiftly shall pass the night of trial here, ' And I will come and.w~ke thee on the morrow." (Dream of Gerontius., 899-902). ~ith th'e m6rrow comes the dawn of eternal day. The, chur~fi .293 C. A. HERBST Review for Religi~u~ ,shffering passes into the church triumphant. God's children, mili-tant on earth, suffering in purgatory, ¯have c6me home to heaven. The Council of Trent commands that Catholics be taught that "the saints reigning with Christ ,offer their prayers to God for men, and that it is good and useful earnestl~r to invoke them: that their'prayers and powerful aid be sought to~ obtain benefits from God through His Sbn Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who alone is our Redeemer and our Saviour." (Decretum de invocatione Sanctorum.). The many saints assigned by the Church to ~ach day of the year to intercede for fis indicates how fictiv'ely we should be in communion with them. Each of us has his patron saint. ~ We pray to'them and to Mary, the queen of all the saint~, and to our guardian angels. And they pray for us. "And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended , up before Go.d from the hand of the angel" (Apoc. 8:4). How many graces and favors and miracles even they have obtained for u§ we shall never know till we meet them face to face. It is probable, too, ~hat the blessed can efficaciously intercede~for the souls in purga-tory. The elect might very well owe a'debt of gratitude to a sofil in purgatory for some service rendered on earth. And a patron~saint to whom we had great devotion on earth will hardly abandoh us when " We get to purgatory. The communion of saints is a most consoling doctrine. It takes the sting from death, that most~ final and dev~astating ~of events. 'Holy Mother Church insists that on .the day of a holy. person's death we are "celebratin'g ?/is birthday" into heaven, l~ather, mother, brother, sister 'are born ifito eternal life. They hive simply gone'. home. That is what they were" born for. They have left the lowest degreeof the Church, the church militant, and have entered a higher, the church suffering, where they are confirmed in grace and'charity, where eternal life is infallibly.insured to them, and where there is also great joy. Soon the3~ will pass gloriously into the church tri-umphant. We have not lost them but gained them. They are waiting for us there. They ar~ watching over us, praying for us. They love us more now than they ever could on earth; We\are dearer to them now than ever; they can help us far more now. When we pass. into the church suffering their ~rayers will not ceas~ until we come home with them. That will be a wonderful reunion. We shall'never be ¯ separated again. "'Commu6ion of S.aints--what a glad and blessed light illumines it!' It is the hidden treasure, the secret joy of the Catholic.' When 294 November, 1952 THE COMMUNI~)N OF SAINTS he thinks on the Communion of Saints his heart is enlarged. He pass?s out of the solitariness of here and of there, of ye.sterday tomorrow, of I and thou, and he is enfolded in an unspeakably intimate communion of spirit and of life, far. surpassing his n~eds and dearest wishes, with'all those great.ones whom the grace of God hasforged from the refractory stuff bf our humanity and raised' to His height, to participation in His being. Here are no limitations of space and time. Froth out of the remote ages of the past, from civi- .lizations and countries of which the memory is now only faintly echoed in legend, the saints pass into his presence, and call him ~brother, and enfold him with their love. The Catholic is never alone." (Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, 139, 140.) FOR THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE Catholics Speak on Race Relations, by Rev. Danid M. Cantwell, is a valuable handbook of quotations on interracial justice and charity. 64 pages, with a good index to the qd~tations, Price: 25 cents each for orders of less than fifty; gener-ous reductions for larger orders. Order from: Fides Publishers, 21 W. Superior, Chi.cago 10, Illinois. Social Thought of the American Hierarchy, b~y Wilfrid Parsons, S.d., is a con-cise, easy-to-read, 24-page summary'of the social teaching of our American Bish-ops. It outlines their constructive teaching on such things as unions, industry councils, rent, human relations, .public morality, divorce, censorship, and family life. Price: 25 cents each; graduated reductions for orders of more than five. Order from: Social O~rder, 3655 West Pine'Boulevard, St. Louis 8, Missouri. S'ocial Order, the recent!y-founded publication of the Institute of Socia~ Order, now' announces special rates for two- and three-year subscriptions.- It is pubiished monthly, except duly and August, and it is 6f invaluable assistance to all.who are engaged in, or otherwise interested in, the social apostolate. "Price: $4.00, one year; $6.00, two years: and $7.50, three years. Order from:.Social Order, 3655 West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis 8, MiSsouri. BOOKS~FOR NOTHINg? We have been asked about a new "crusade," the purpose of which is to stock tee community libraries with new books--~-" for almost nothing. The scheme is too complicated to describe in detail, but it seems to come to' this: you send out one new book, add your name to, a circulating list, and eventually you will get 256 new books. The ide.a seems to be that ever~tone who~ sends out the~ one. new~ book will get 256 in return. We'are not versed in the higher forms of mathematics, but according to our simple arithmetic, this adds up-~o magic. 295 .No!:es on.Race Relat:ions Gerald Kelly, S.J. =~'HE Most Reverend Astone-Chich.ester, S.J., Vicar Apostolic of ~' Salisbury, in Southern Rhodesia,~presents an excellent analysis 0 of the "Problem of Race Relations" and its proper solution, in The South" African Ctergg Reoiew, for ~:ebruary, August, and No: vember, 1951. For the future of Africa, and indeed for the whole world, he s~¢s, there must be a solution to the race problem which is just to everyone. ~ InAfrica, the problem is intiniatel~, associated with its tremen-dous resources which are so badly needed by the rest of the world. To develop these resources native labor must be used. This calls for. bettering the health conditions of the native populations, .and this cannot be done without education. Education in turn leads to de-mands for better economic .position, and this. will call for a better political standing. If the political standing is not given, the result will be discontent and strife. In his various articles Bishop Chichester develops the points men- .tioned above; I~hen he outlines first a false, then a true, solution ~to the race. problem. The false s91ution'is one that does not recognize the intrinsic value of the non-European as a true human .b.eing; that sub, sfitutes the utilitarian 1~rinlip.le of. "enlightened self-interest" for the rational and Christian principle of mutual sympathy and respect; and that uses religion, as a mere tool for conveniently settling human problems. The third article outlines the prindples on which the true solu-tion mus['be based. For the most part. these principlds are but a re-statement of basic human rights and duties;, but the last. principle is somewhat unusualand might be .a subject of meditation for ~11 of "It is through God's providence that diverse races and varieties human beings come into this world, each of them intended tO add its peculi~ir goodness to the w0rld. T.herefore we ought,_ as a duty to God, to look at-the good qualitie.s in others and tq.praise them, the more partic, ularly as'~they are different from our own)' Bishop Chichester then~ ~oes on to show that Euiope~ns and ¯ non-E~ropeaia~ in. Africa are interdependent: first, materiallyl because 296 " - ~' NOTES ON RACE RELATIONS the European need~,the~.African labor and the African ne~ds "the ~ European's knowledge, of technique and. his m.achiner)i: and also spirituall'y. "The Afri,can," he iays, '.'needs the integrity, .self-control, sense of responsibility which is the'i~heritance of a sound 'Eurgpean tradition. But the European needstheAfrican, and can learn cheerfulness, p'atience ,and humility from him." Toward the end of his third article, the Bishop returns to the question of "racial superiority"--the false attitude on which no satisfactory sdlution Of race problems can be based. No matter how . seemingly affable or even generous the white man is, he will never ' solve the race problem unless he tre~ats the non-white With ge'nuin~ respect, a respect built on the consciousness o~ personal dignity. This ds aptly brought out by the following words of a Nigerian African: ¯ "Some Europeans wonder why: the hitherto ignorant African w~6m thdy. have bedn kind enough t9 educate soon takes up ,a hostile. attitude towards them. It is not due to ingratitude; it is not due to failure to'~ealize wh~t difference for thd bdtter his contact With the European has made for him. In many cases it is the reiult of wounded bon0r. This may be a personal opinion; but a close exam, ination Will reveal that it lies.beneath many racial prbblems today." Another s~atethent on Race Relations, issued by all the Arch-bishops and Bishops of South Africa, is published in The Catholic Mind, September, 1952, pp~ 572-76. The entire statement is well worth, reading. .The point that impressed me as~ most interesting in. 'tills statement is. the Bishops' realistic facing .of.t,laeir problem by dis-tinguishing between essential human "rights, and what they ca!! secondary rights. The first category includes:' "the right-to life, ~'dignity, sustenance, worshil3, to the integrity~ use and normal devel-opment of ¯faculties, to ~vork and the frt~it of work, to private owner-ship Of property, to sojourn and' movemen'f, to marriage and the procreation and education of childrdn,:'t0 assoCiation with one's.fel-low- men." The Bishops insist that no one should be deprived of th~ ,exercise of these rights:" . By secondary rights the statement means such things as partici-pation in political and social life. Non-Europeans who are fitted for such participatioh are entitled to it. But the Bishops admit that large numbers of the non-Europeans are not yet sufficiently developed for-this~ kind 6f equality, arid the duty of the Europeans in this case is to help t15em in thi~ cultural development. What do our own Bishops say about tl~e race problem? One GERALD.KELLY . . . ~ Review [or Religious .who is interested in the answer to this question will do well t~con, suit Catholics Speak on Race¯ Relations, by Father Daniel M. Cant-well. In this little 'booklet of ~xce~dingly quotable quotations Father Cantwell has sixty-t';vo statements by Popes and various members of the 'hierarchy. Thirty-seven of these are made¯ by our own hierarchy. Representative of the latter are such brief pointed remarks as these: "Among the saints there is no distinction of race or color" (Car-dinal Stritch) ; ".The race of which it is our duty to be conscious is the entire human race" (Archbishop Cushing); "Is it not Catholic doctrine that when a brother is excluded,¯ re-jected, segregated, it is Christ Who is insulted and humiliated?" (Archbishop Lucey) ; "I doubt very much whether in the field of jbb discrimination we can educate unless we also legislate" (Bishop Haas on FEPC) ; and '-'Jim Crowism in the Mystical Body of Christ is a disgraceful anomaly" (Bishop Shiel). Father Cantwell's booklet is not limited to episcopal statements; it also contains apt quotations from priests, Sisters, laymen, Catholic papers, and°so forth. It is divided into four parts. The first part concerns the fundamental truths of the unity and equality among men. The second refers to human rights: life, work, living family wage, economic freedom, ~education~ housing, neighborhood peace, esteem and honor, marriage, and ~ or~hip of God. The third part concerns various viola.tions bf. these basic rights; ;ind the fourth part deals with positive ways of promoting interracial justice. It is a very valuable booklet, a. re~al "must" for all who are interested in the great cause Of interracial justice and amity. For details about¯ the price, see page 295 qn'thi~ number of' the Revietv. Foremos.t.amQng the race problems in the United States is the so-called Negro problem. On this problem, the annual statement of our hierarchy, issued November 1 i, 1943, contains the .following directive: "In the Providence of God there are among us millionsof fell~w citizens of the Negro race. We owe to these fellow citizens, who have contributed so largely to the development of our country, and for whose welfare history imposes on us a ¯special Obligation of jus-tice, to see. that~ they have in fact the rights which are given them in 298 November, 1952 N~)TES ON RACE RELATIONS our Constitution. This means not only political' equality, but also fair economic and educational opportunities,.a just share', in public welfare projec'ts, good housing without exploitation, and a full chance for the social development of theirrace." (Cf. Huber, Our Bishops Speak, p. 118.) Social Order, .for February, 1952, contains an analysis if a re-port on family incomes for the year 1949. It is interesting to read some of the items of this report in the light of the Bishops' statem+nt lust°quoted. For inst~ince, 10.4 per cent ofth~ white families had incomes under $1,000:~ whereas 30.9 per cent of the non-white fami-lies were in this bracket. 13'.7 percent of the white families' .incomes were between $1,000 aiad $1,999: whereas 28.6 per cent.of the non- . white families fell within these limits. "For incomes from $2,000 to1 $2,999, there were 20.5 per cent of the white families, and 22.1 per cent of the nbn-white. Finally, as regards incomes exceeding $3,000 (the or~lgt bracket, incidentally, which includes income thai would correspond with Catholic teaching on the family living wage), 55.4 pqr cent of the white families attained this level, as against 18.4 per cent of the non-white families. Pessimistic though these comparative statistics are from the l~oint of view of interracial j~ustice, the economic picture is not entirely Without brightness, at least asregards Negro employment. "Fortune, for July, 1952, has an article entitled "Negro Employment: A Progress Report," b.y John A. Davis, which shows' that ~luring the last decade the Negroes in our country have made coiasiderable gains in employment. But these gains, says l~Ir. Davis, "were possible only through FEPC. They cannot continue without further legis-lation." This agrees with the opinion of Bishop Haas, previously quoted in these notes. All of us, no doubt, would prefer some kind of voluntary program of fair employment practices. We would prefer "education" to "legislation"--but actual facts show that it is not a sirhple matter of "either-or"; we need both'the education and the legislation. Mr. Davis's report shows that legislation has ac-tually produced good results where a plan of Voluntary action was ineffective. A'ccording to him, the recent gains in Negro employ-ment are largely attributable to the fact tha't in eleven states and twenty-two .cities, embracing sixty million people, business is now operating under some kind of Fair Emp19Yment Practice laws. In'"The Church Segregated" (The Priest, July, 1952), 2ohn Richards sees the segregation policy as practiced within th~ Church 299 GERALD K~LLY ,~" through the eyes of a Catholic Negro f~riend. This friend refuses to contribute to a drive for'a .new "colored'.' cburch'because be says he,' does not approve of segregated churches. He resents the fact t~at som~.Cat.holic schools willingly take Protestant white pupils, but exclud~ col6red' Catholic children. He believes that state laws requiring segregated education do not apply, to Catholic schools; 'and even if they did apply the Church should be the first.to Oppose such laws. He is ~distressed when priests join the Knigh~ts of Columbus, because he says that in his locality the Knights of Columbus is.a lily, White organiza'tion: an~ if "the Negro parishioners are not good enough for the local council, then the local council is not good enough for the pastor of these parishioners." Also, he sees no'valid reason for referring to the segregated colored parishas the Negro mis~ sion; nor any~more reason for efitering "Negro""in the Baptisma! ¯ register than there is for noting "black hair." , "Theqntegration of Negroes in Catholic parishes, in the South would drive lukewarm Catholics away from the Church." This rationalization leavesdohn'Richards' friend cold---oi', to shift the figure of 0speech, it makes him hot. The Church's insistence on ~the. di;cine" law regarding birth control_ and divorce drives lukewarm Catholics away; too but the doct~:ine is not watered down nor the practice of virtue mitigated for their sakes. Why should :the .policy be different regarding the inherent injustice of the segregation policy? To all the friend'~ omplaints, I say "Amen." At its best racial segre'gatio.n isan ugly thing: practiced in any' specifically Catholic institution it is at its worst. And this brings me back to Father Cantwell s little booklet, tothe following quotation from a pastorai letter'of Bishop Vincent Waters, of Raleigh,,N~C.': : " "To believe ~hat one race or nation.is superior to another in the Churcl~, or before God, is heresy and should be condemned. ~'"Equal ,rights are.accorded, .therefdre, 'to,every race and every " nationality in afiy Catholic churc~h, and within the church building itself eyeryone is given ~he privilege to sit or kneel wherever he de-sireS, and to approach the Sacraments Without any regard to race or. ~ nationality. ; . "Pastor~ are responsible for the observance of this practice." TEN-YEAR INDEX More cbpies 9f the Ten Year Index of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (1947.- l~95.!)~oare still available at one dollar per copy. Kindly enclose payment with the oider from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, S12 Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. ° 300 qo,ooo Francs "or Lire Adam C. Ellis, S.~I. AS SUPREME ~ administrator' and steward of. all church prop-erty (canon. 1518) the Roman Pontiff has the duty of regu-lating the' administration of all prop~erty owned by moral persons in the Church (dioceses, parishes, religious houses, and the !ike). ,Just as the state regulates the, civil corporations which it brings into existence and safeguards their financial'transactions, so the Code of ~Canon Law contains many prescriptions regarding the property of moral.persons in the Church. One of the most important of.these.is~the limitation put upon such moral persons with"regard to the alienation of property and the incurring of debts. Law of the Code Canon 1532 lays down a general law for all moral .persons in the Church, limiting their power to alienate property'to the sum of 30,000 life or francs, and canon 1538 extends this limitation to the incurring of debts: canon 534.applies both .these" general laws to religious moral persons (institutes, provinces,, hofises) .and protects it With other detailed requirements: These canons requir.e the permis' sign of the Holy See in order to alienate property or to borrow mon.ey when the sum involved excdeds 30,000 francs or 1ire. When the Code of Canon Law was published in 1917, canon~st~ almost unanimously interpreted "'30,000 francs or life" according to the gold standard which then prevailed in Europe. As far back as 1865, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland had established the Latin Monetary Union in which it was agreed that all four coun-tries" were to issue coins of equal foim. weighf, and value (gold con-tent) to be equally usable in all four countries. According to thi~ gold standard, fran.cs: whether Belgian~ French, or Swiss were truly equal both among themselves and to the Italian lir~ Hence the com-mon reference througho.ut the canons of the Code to "francs o? 1ire." Most.of the couniries of Europe followed the standard of the Latin Monetary Union in ,oract~'ce. Some had coins of the same value as the franc or lira, others of equivalent value. Thus in 1917 ;the- 301 ADAM C, ELLIS i~et~iew for Religion,. ~0,000 francs or life of the cknons regarding alienation or ~he in-curring of debts were evaInated as follows: 30,000 Belgian francs French francs STcciss francs Italian fire Spanish pesetas Bulg.arian leva Greek drachmas Serbian din~rs 24;000 English shillings (1,200 pounds) 24,000 German marks 27,000 Au~strian crowns 6,000 U.S. dollars 6,000 Canadian dollars While all the coin-s listed in the first column above had an actual gold value Of $.193, forpractical purposes they were e~caluated at'5 to the dollar, and thhs the sum of $6,000 was arrived at for the united States and Canada. The EngliSh shilling and the German mark were evaluated at 4 to the dollar. The,Roman Curia never formally declared that "30,000 francs Or life" were to :be taken as gold francs or life. Nevertheless, in practice, the Sacred Congregations of Religious, for the Propagation of the Faith, and of the Eastern Church, and the Sacred Consistorial Congregation permitted their clients to interpret these sums on the basis of gold, and f0r the United States and Canada it wasc6m-monly held that one did not need to get the permission of the. H01y See for an Jalienation or for a loan unless the sum involved exceeded $6,000 in gold. : Two world wars within a period of twenty-five years disrupted the moneta_ry systems of the nations of the world. In our own country, on January 31; 1934, the 'American gold dollar was devaluated from 100 cents to .5906 cents. Hence a 100 cent gold dollar was worth $1.692 of the present 59 cent dollars. As a mat-ter of ~act, all. gold currency had to be turned over to'the U.S. gov-ernment, and. no 59 cent dollars were ever coined. However, at that time,,it was estimated that henceforth the 30,000 lire or fra.ncs of theCode corresponded to !0,000 of the 59 cent dollars, and that one needed permission from the Holy See for aliena.tions and loans only When the transaction exceeded 10,000 present day. dollars. In Europe, especially in Latin countries,¯ currency 10st its prewar ~alue and i~ was difficult to determine jus~t what the equivalent bf the 30.2 November, ~1952 :' 10,000 GOLD FRANCS OR LIRE" .30:000 francs, or'fire was in th~ paper money .of the day. ~s a result' some persons went to the. extreme of never asking the permis-sion Of the Holy See. for alienations and loans. To remedy the' situ-ation, at least for the religious of Italy, the Sacred Congregation of Religious recently required that PermiSsion had to be" obtained for alienations and loans whenever the'amount in~,olved exceeded one million fire. - - The New Decree Finally, to provide a general re.medy for the situation, the Sac~d Consistorial Congregation issued the following decree on July 113, 1951: Since~he'change~in value o-~ "both metal and paper mon'ey has created particular'di~culties in certain place~ regarding the applica-tion of the pre.scription of canons 534, .§ I and 1532, § I, 2° of the Code of Cadon Law,. the Holy See has been requested "tO. establish'a suitable norm. Wherefore, having considered" the matter carefulhj, His .Holiness, Plus XII by Divine Providencb Pope, has kindly v6uchsafed to ¯ determine by this Decree of the Sacred Consistorial C~ngregation that, as long a~ present conditions last and subject to. the will of the Holy See, recourse must be had to the same Apostolic See whenever {here is question of a sum of money which exceeds ten thousand gold francs or life. There can be no doubt about the" fact that, for. the present least, the Holy See has taken the gold st~ndard"as~a norm 'for.the amount of money rcqui~ing the consent of the Holy See for aliena'- tion of church property and for tile incurring of debts. Our present problem is to translate."10,000 gold francs or. lire" into. modern paper currency. The most obvious way would be to take $2000 gold dollars of 1914 to a bank and ask that they be converted into present day dol-lars. The banker probably would call the police, Since it is against the law for: a private citizen to have gold cdin in' hi's possess~ign. But supposing the banker were a kindly soul and forbore tutning",one over to the law,-he would be allowed by law to give only .$2~000 paper dollars in e~change for the gold. " :: ¯ Another w, ay would b~ to (ake 10,000 gold. frhncs and .get .,the value in actual Belgian ~Sr French francs, and th.en.redute it to presen,t day dollars. F.atber f~mile Berg}i, S.J. (Revue des Communaut~s Re, ligieuses, 1951, p. 166), tells us that at.the end of.World War. IEin. ¯. : 303 ADAM C, ELLIS 1945 it w'as estimated.that ~he 30,000,francs for Which one needed aft indult fromthe Holy"See r.epresen, t.ed from,900,000 tO 1,000,000 actual Belgian f~ancs. Sirice tl~e recent decree now requires recourse for l(J~000 gold tirancs, this would amount to one third the sum .give~ above,-that is, to at iea~t 300,000 Belgian francs,-and'to 2,200.~300 French francs ~es16ectively. Reducing these sums. to American dollars ~t the cfirrent rate of ~xdhange, we get a minimum of $6,000 at 50 Belgian ~rancs" to the dollar, and $6,285 ';it 350 -French francs to the dollar. ':Father' Joseph Creusen, S.J. (Revue des ,Communaut~s Reti-gieuse~, 1952, p.-66), c~lls attention to the fact that the term "gold franc" may mean either the purchasing po.wer of the gold kilo; or its worth on the official exchange, or on the free market. He prefers to assess the value of the gold franc on th.e basis of its buying power immediately before World War I in 1914, but does.not tell uswha~ this would be in terms of present day dollars. ~ Finally, Father George Jarlot, S.2.,,a professor~at the Institute of Social S~iences of the Gregorian University, Rome, informs us that th~ pu~rchasing power of 10.000 gold francs in 1914 was equal to about $7,000 in American money.today (Periodica, 1952. p. 156), ¯ This is also th~ sum arrived at as the equivalent of the "10,000 gold francs,or life" bit other Roman canonists, according to private infor-mation received by the writer. , ~. Conc'lusion: Father A. Guttierez, C.]k,I.F. (Commentaridm pro Rbligiosis, 1951, 258), w~hile not" hazarding,ar~ opinion Of his own as to the value of "10,000 gold francs or lire" thinks it would be desirabl'e to have the Holy See determine-the equivalent for each ¯ country. Until this is done, we.may safely follow Jarlot's opinion a~nd~ consider 7,000 present day dollars as the equivalent of the 10,000 goldfrancs or life set as the norm by the iecent decree of- the S~c'red Consistorial Congregation. Whenever. therefore,-there is que'stion of'the hlien~tion of property or of the incurring 6f a debt, thd'value of which exceeds $7',000, the permission of the Holy See must.b~ obtained in order that the transaction may be valid. We take this occasion" to remind our readers that the permission nec~essary may now be obtained from Hi.~ Excellency, the Apostolic Delegate in~ ,Washihgton, D.C., ~vhen the sum involved does not exceed a half. .million gold dollarS;~ pr6vided the other conditions prescribed by .the la~v a~re fulfilled. (See Bou~caren, Canon Law Di'gest, Supplement 1948;,I3.~.131, under i:anon 858). ~ 304 Address ot: PoPe Pius XII .Religious Superiors [Tl~is address was given tO the supekiors genera! of institutes of geligious4women. on Se~teraber 15, 1952, at the conclusion of their first international congress.] . ELOVED daughters, We extend Our fatherly greeting tb you, who have come in such large numbers 'to the~ International Congress of Superiors General of O~ders and congregatisris of,' Women, and who, at the endof your labors, on th~ ¯point of putting into.effect the results.of your deliberations, have come't0, ask of.Us , the blessing of the Vicar of Christ. When the Sacred Congregation of Religious proposed calling this ,Congress to Us, Wefelt obliged to think'it over. An enterprise o'f in'ternation~il scope such as this always demands a considera.ble. penditure of time, money, and effort. Nevertheless, We had to acknowledge its necessity or, at least, its Usefulness~ Indeed, We felt OUrselves obliged td ~,ield before the solidity of the reasons pre-. sented; and the imposing assemblage~ which We have before Our eyes, your countenances, your entire appearance tell-Us that great good ~¢iI1 has been at work these days. ~ Yes, beloved' daughters, the echoes of the Congress which follow i~s conclusion hav~ proclaimed how-seriously you regard the service of God and flow desirous yos are of .spendin.g yourselves for your religious families and for the Church. With this. in view, you hop~e to receive fiom .Us a word of consolation, 6f eficouragement, and of direction. " Just one" year ago, We t~:eated in detail a series of questions. to~iching on ~he prog.ress of teaching orders and congregations and their adaptation to present conditions. Some, if not mos~, of thi~ in-structions We gave on that occasion hold equally true for all -other religio~s congregations. The experiences of the year .which has elapsdd urge Us to draw your attention to the directives which¯ We formulated at that time. We ask you to conform to them cousage-ously when your sisters and yot~r own experience tell you that. the time has come tO take intelligent account of aspects of contemporary life. We have,, moreover', a very special .reason for .speakin~ to you. You know that orders of wom~n are now facing a very grave crisis. We refer to the decline in .the number of vocations. Most assuredly,. POPE PlUS XII ' Reoiew for Reli~lions this crisis has not touched all countries. Even .where it has raged, its iritensity is not e.verywhere l~he same. 'tSut right now in one group of Euroi~ean countrie~ it i~ alarm, ing. In one region, where twenty years ago the religious life of women was in full flower the number 'of vocations has dropl~ed to half. And yet in times past serious diffi-culties impeded the vocations of girls, whereas iia Our day external ~onditions seem to 'impel them thither and there' would seem to be a iaeed for guarding against imag!ne.d x, ocations. We do not intend a detailed discussion of this crisis which is causing Us such deep anxiety. Another occasion will furnish. Us . with the opportunity~ Tod~y We wish only to address those, b~ they priests'or laymen, preachers, speakers, or Writers, who hax, encit a word c~f aigproval or of praise for viriginity pledged to Christ; who, for year~, in spite of admonitions by the Church; ~nd contrary;' to her mind', have accorded marriage an essential superiority 6ver the virginal state; w15o even go so far as to present marriage as the only rfieans capable of assuring.the development and natural perfection of human personality. Th~se who speak and write thus mu'st take. cognizance of their responsibility to God and to the Church. must reckon them amongst those chiefly responsible for a state of affairs of which We cannot speak without sadness. When, through-outth~ Christian world'.ahd everywhere else. there, re-ech0 at)veals ' for Catholic sisters, it is quite ordinary to be com't~elled reluctantly to give one negative answer after another. Yes, even long;sthnding . establishments--hospitals and educational institutions must be closed from time. to time--all because vocations do not eqtial the " needs. As for yourselves. "h~r'e are Our recommendations. With voca-tions in their present critical state, see to it that the religious habits, the manner of life, or the asceticism of your religious families do not form a barriei or a'cause of failure in vocations. We speak of c'ertain usage~ which, while they once had meaniog in another cultural milieu, are meaninbless'today, and in which' a truly good and cou-rageous girl would find only obstacles'to, her vocation',, In "Oul statement of last year We gave various examples 6f this. To repeat briefly on the question of clothing: the religious habit must always express consecration to Christ; that is what everyone expects and desires. Bu( the habit should alsb conform to modern demands and correspond to the :ne~ds of hygiene. We could not fail to express.Our satisfacti6ff--when, in the.course of. the year, We lsaw that sortie con-" 306 November, 1952 " ADDRESS TO RELIGIOUS SUPERIORS gregations had already put some of these ideas into practice. In a word, in these things that are not essential, adapt .yourselves as far as reason and well-ordered chhrit% advise. This said, We propose to you, beloved daughters, two matters with Our most earnest commendation: ~ 1) A motherl~t spirit as regards the direction of your sisters. It is undoubtedly true, as psychology claims, that a woman vested with authority does not succeed so easily as a man in measuring and bal- ~ancing strictness with kindness. All the more¯ reason fcir ~cultivating your maternal feelings. Convince yourselves that the vows have re-quired a great sacrifice from your sisters, as from yourselves. They have renounced family, the happiness of marriage, and the intimacy ¯ of the home--a sacrifice of. much value, of decided importance for the apostolate of the Church, but a sacrifice all the same. Those of your sisters whose spirit is nobldst and most refined feel this separation most keenly. The words of Christ, "He who puts his hand to the plow and then .looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God," find complete and, even today, unreserved application here. "But the brder must replace the family as far as possible; and you, 'the superiors gen-eral, are called up.on first and foremost to breathe into the community life of your sisters tile spirit of family affection. Also, you yourselves must be maternal in yo, ur external attitude, in_ your written and spoken words, even if, at times', you ha'~e to exercise self-control; above all, be thus in your inner thoughts, in your ,judgments, and, as far as possible, in your feelings. Every day ask Mary, the Mother off Jesus and our Mother, to teach you to be motherly. 2) The formation o~ ~tour sisters for the v~ork and .the task which is incumbent upon them. Here let there .be no parsimony; take a broad and generous view. Be it a question of education, pedagogy, the care of the sick, artistic or other activities, the sister ought to 'entertain this conviction: "My superior is making pos'sible for me a fotmatibn which wlill put me on an equal footing withmy colleagues in the world." Make it possible also for them, and g!ve them the.means, to keep their profession, al .knowledge and training up to date. On this point We have also elaborated dr/ring the past ¯ year. We repeat it in order to underline the importance of this re-quirement. for the interior pea~e and foi the work of your sisters. "'" You come, beloved daughters, from all parts of th~ world, Prom near and far. Tell your sisters that We thank them for their prayer, 307 "POPE PIUS XII of ~vbich We have snch great need; 'for their good exampl'e~ Which helps" powerfull~ to confirm so many.Cath01ics in their faith and to lead to the Church ~o many who do not belong to it; for their work in the service of 3iouth, the sick and the poor, in tl~e missions, in so many other w, ays~ all of which are so valuable for the growth and strengthening of the reign of ~lest~s Christ over souls. Tell ~our sis-ters. that'We give~ them all Our affectibn; that their concerns are Our'. concerns~ .their joys Our joys; tha.t, above;all, We wish for them the two-fold strength of courage and of, patience in the work of their own perfection and in the apostolote which their' Divine Master and Spouse has assigned them. As a token of Our patqrnal, benevolence ~nd a pledg~ of- the tri-umphant grace and love of ~the Divine Heart; We grant you, beloved daughters, for you.rselves, your ~isters, and your worksl Our Apostolic Benedktion. ADDRESS TO TEACHING SISTERS NOTE: The exhortation to the first international Congress of Teaching Sisters (September 15. 1951) to which the Holy Father refers in the foregoing address is i~ublished: in The Catholic Mind, ,June. 1952, pp. 376-80. The .following are a.mong the p.ei~tinent passages: ~ . "'The religious habit: choose it in such a way that it becomes the expression of inward naturalness, of simplicity and spiritual mfdes'ty. , Thus.it will e~dify every-one, even modern young, people . : "Followed in letter and spirit, your const~tut,0ns, too, facilitate and bring the Sister all she needs and must do in our time to be a good teacher and educator. This also ~applies to purely mechanical matters. In many "countries today, for example, even Sisters "use bic~ycles.when their work~demands it. At first¯ this was something' 'entirely new, though not against the Rule. It ispossible that some details of the school schedules, certain¯ reguiations---simple applicatifns of the" Rule--:-certain cus-toms. which were, perhaps, in harmony with past .conditions but which today° merely hinder educational work, must be adapted, to new circumstanc:s. Let supe-riors and~the general chapter prb~eed in this matter conscientiously, .with.foresight, prudence and cour.age and, where the case demands, let them not fail to submit the proposed changes to. competent ecclesiastical authorities." COMMUNICATIONS ON INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS Superiors and ,others who were privileged to attend the International Congress of Superiors General of Orders and Congregations of Women in Rome would 'do a great service~to our readers by sending their 0bservatio~s .on the congress. 308. ues ons and Answers M~'y a religious have the interest on his i~herifance? Suppose amounts to $300 a year: may he use this amount for Masses, hls'relatlves, or fo'r charlfy?. A religious~with: sole,mn yows loses all right to own, so there ~an be question here.only of a religious With. a simple, vow 6f poverty. He.ma.y .not.have the interest on his,inheritance, because canon 569, § 1 explicitly obliges every novice before taking first vows, to give away the usufruct or annual income deriving from his perso.nal pr6perty, unless the constitutions provide otherwise. The novice is free to give his annual incorn~ (interest on money, stocks, .bond~, rents from real estate; and the like) tO any. person., physical or moral, v~hom.he Nay choose; but h~ is forbidden to use it for himself, or to distribute it himself annually. The whole tenbr of the history of this canon is to the effect that the beneficiary.of the income :is .to .b~ determined upon once for all. Should the beneficiary die, another person may be appointed in his place; but in order to change the beneficiary determined upon at the'time of first profession, the per-mission of the superio.r is required unless the constit~utions provide otherwise (canon 580,.§ 3). We ~ave been invited to s~nd in our requests and compla~infs which will be proposed to the general chapter to be held within the n~xt 'three months. Are we obliged to slcjn our.names to these suggestions, or wili it be sufflclentto give them to on~e of the .delegates to the general chap-ter. and s.ay that these a~'e the requests of a.number~ of rellgious? Unless the constitutions or ~ustom require .that such requests or complaints must be signed, they need not be signed. Usually .they. a.re given to one of the delegates to the gen.er~al chapter who, in turn, at the proper time, turns them in to the special committee appointed for the purpose of screenin, g such requests and' complaints. Those that are considered worthy of the attention of the general chapter are pro-- posed to it in. due time during the chapter of affairs.,. At the end of thechapter, before a vote to adjourn is taken, any delegate may ask that a request or complain.t whichhas been turned, in but has. not - been submitted to the general chapter should now be read, and the 309 QUESt'IONS AND ANSWERS ,7 chapter will then vote first.on Whether the request or complaint is to be considered or not. If it is rejected, that is the end of the matter. If the majority vote is .for }onsidering it, it will then be considered in the same Way as the other requests or complaints, which were already, submitted to the general'ch.apter, ~30~- ~ By ou~" constifutlons We are directed to make one hour of~menfal prayer each day. In some of our houses it frequently happens .that .the Community Mass follows the first half hour.~of prayerJ The second half hodrwill then be made after thanksgiving, during which a second =Mass is sometimes said. Is attendance at this second Mass considered as fulfill;ncj the obligation of the Constitutions? In ma.ny religious communities it is customary for the communit~r to assist at the Mass of a ~isiting priest, usually .on a voluntary basis. There "does not seem to be any objection" to performing one's, spirit-ual duties, such as meditation, rosary, and the like during this second Mass. " Review for Religio~s " We are to have our general, chapter in January. " Is it proper for older delegates to ins~'ru~÷ ÷he youncjer Sis~'ers how ~'o 'vo~'e, "l-ha~" names of capable Sisters to them? " It is highly, improper for the Older delegates to instruct the younger Sisters how to vote in chapter. This is expressly forbidden by canon 507, § 2 which .states: "All must abstain f~om seeking votes either directly.or indirectly for themselves or for.others.':; What is allo'wed by certain c6nstitutions, and should be used with moderation, is to question other members, of the cl'iapter regarding the abilities of certain Sisters who have passive 'voice, that is,° are eligible for office. This should be done in a specific manner, for in-stance; by asking: "Is Sister N.N. firm in her manner of operating, does she ~aye good judgment, is she patient, kind, and the like" rather than ask: :'Do yo9 think Sister N.N. would make a good superior. One might ~sk a Sister who is very well acquainted with the indi~ vidual .in question: "Do you know of any serious.imp.erfection on th~ part of Sister N. N.' which would prevent her from being a good superior?" However, the Sisters of. tl'ie chapter thus in.terrogated are to answer tt~e questions proposed to them, and not offer any general advice not asked for. 3i0 November, 19~ 2 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Is the gblden jubilee in religion counted from date of entrance Or of first profession? There are no regulations in canon law re.garding this matter. Each institute follows its own custom. We l~hink, that, all things. coiisidered, tl~e jubilee shot]ld be counted from-the dal~e" o'f entrance intothe novitiate, since that is the first official step ~f dedication in religion to Christ's service. From" a practical viewpoint; fift~i years is a lon~ period of time, and should begin to run as soon" as possible afte'r" entranc~dnto religion, that is,' from the day of entrance into the novitiate. Cor~stitutions/requiring l~hat the gol.den jubilee be counted from the first temporary"prof.ession, or even frbm per.petu~l profession, may be changed by the proper authority, provided that'a majority 6f the members assembled in g~neral chapter request such a change~ Customs regard!rig the golden jubilee may be changed by'a majority ; ote of the chapte.r Without referring the matter to any higher authority. --33m What is the mind of the Church regarding Sisters "of |he second class," that is, lay Sisters?. Does this not savor of class distinction? Certainly the cl~ss of lay Sisters and Brothers savors of class dis-tinction. However, before condemning the Church for introducing such a distinction; it will be well to recall"that th~ Church take~ so-cial conditions as she finds them and seeks to better thefia gradually, Up t6 the begifining of the twentieth century, ~he only opportunity of bettering their condition was offered to the youth of the poorer classes oi~ Europe by the Chufchin the ranks of her clergy .an'd reli-giou. s. In modern times when the world has become more alert to social justice, and the opportunity to re~eiv~ 'an educati'on has become m6re common, the Church will readily grar~t permissi6n to abolish the class of lay Brothers and Sisters. This is especially true in the case of non'-dlerical i:ongrega.ti6ns of Sisters or Brothers only. The permi~- sioia, may be had for the. as~ing~ l~ovided that a ma'jori~r of the riaem-bers'of the gen.eral chapter reqfies~th~ Hbly See f6t it. In the case of a diocesan dongr~gatiohl ~he 16"c~il 6rdinary can gr~an~ the, p~rmissii3fi: 3il -ommunica ions Reverend Fathers: -It was nice to find an ar~ticle about the National Congress for Re-ligious in the REVIEW, as I had been looking for something in print about it." I had looked in.vain in several periodicals and papers, but with the "exception of The Santa Fe Register, I found notl4ing. I was privileged to be one of the few contemplative ieligious )resent. Another abbess from our monastery in Cleveland was there and a few other cloistered religious. The Congress for Religious was a most impressive and unique gathering, uniting as it did in one purpose, one endeavor, the. supe-riors of many religious orders of men and women. It would be impossible, .without a "record, to even hazard a guess at the number of Orders and Cong'regations that were represented. ¯ All the papers which were read and the discussions, etc. at the session for religious women, wdre compreheniive and manifested deep study and Understanding of the subjects treated. There was not enough time in the three days of the Congress to discuss thoroughly the subjects" chose~a or to cover more subjects. There were also the special sessions.~vhich proved very satisfactory, but some ~loubled up on others, so that only too often it was impossible not to miss one for another, both being conducted at the same time in differdnt buildings. That the subject of "prayer in the li~e of a religious" was com-pletely omitted seemed regrettable to.me. The priest ( I do not re-member .who h~ was) who brought up the subject of the contempla-tive life, and its having so great "an attraction for the youth of our day, left the subject woefully unfinished. That there is a great influx of vocations among the Trappists is evident, and leads one to hope that the future .will prove them to have really been true vocations. However, I do 'n0k believe the youth of our day in general shows a greater attraction for thecontemplative life than those of the past. There is a moderately larger number of v6cations in our day than in the past: but not in proportion to our increasing~populi~ti0n. In fact, taking' into consideration the fact that our Catholic population, our schools, colleges, etc. have vastly increased in the past 40 y'ears, the number of vocations to the contemplative Orders have not increased in prOportion. .: The statement which was made about the typical temptation Of 312 COMMUNICATIONS the active, and contemplative.religious is, I dare Say, not true. ¯ While active religious very often do 'long fo5 more timd for prayer, and the more fervent they are, the m6re they desire ~his.,-it is not.true ~hat the . temptation of the contemplative is to do more. No one but a cbn-templgtive. sh0uld make a statement touching so deeply the contem-plative soul, The contemplativ.e does r~ot feel that she dods not do ,enough, but that she does not pray enough, and .this~ after living many years the cloistered contemplative life. I ihould have liked to speak on the subject, but the paper had already gone over its allotted time, a'nd the subject could not be handled in a few sho~t sentences. " A life.of prayer does not comprise only the hours.allotted .to that _exercise, be it vocal in the recitation of the. Divir~e Office or mental, but it covers every hour of the day. Monastic work is prescribed by the Church for all c0nte~platives, notas a rest or cessation from prayer,, but as a means for uninterrupte.d, continuation of interior prayer. The contemplative knows that until her life is perfected by degrees in this uninterrupted interior p.rayer, not indeed a torturing of_the mind, but a silent, peaceful, interior communing.with Gbd in love, sbehas not yet attaiiaed to anyt~h~ng like, ~/high degree of that which she has set herself to fetich. Any woik, be it manuaLlabor or' simple domestic duties, be it of the literary or artist.ic, type, which fills in the tifiae befGeen the'hours of prayer.proper, must always be for the contemplative but a continuation of that interior union with God ¯ which was begun in her prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Prhyer is not one department and .work another. The work of the contem-plative is as valuable as her prayer, and her prayers as. valuable, as her work. Her temptation is not to do more, but to fed dissatisfied that. that her life is not a mord uninterrupted union and converse with her' Di~vine Spouse, the striving for the perfection of this.~being her one aim. There is an unseen world which to her is very real. The inci-dents of daily-life are mereaccidentals which are. of valud or~ly so far' as they can purchase for her more p~rfect union with God. This unseen world is as real to her as the things she can ~each out and touch, and touching it she can make every action of hers Prayer. I am speaking o£ pra~er,~ -not pra~/ers. The Di~cine Office, thoughoit is a vocal prayer, can yet give to the. contemplative, one of the most valuable occasions of the day for interior prayer, when her soul can remain in closest union with God, reaching 0ut'to Him in: loving, peaceful attention, whether she understands and grasps the meahing 313 COMMUNICATIONS. Reoieto for Religious of the wor'ds or not. o,. - .-. , . . ¯ ~ .The contemplati_ve:life should not be giamorized. This gives ¯ young people a mere admiration of it or a passing fervor at learning of its grandeur, which is not a vocation, Only too o, ften postulants applying have a mistaken idea of the contemplative life. picturing it as a quiet restful going to prayer and enjoying its peaceful hours.with little else to do. This is not what the contemplative life demands. It is a life of prayer indeed, but.united with the self-effacement and self-abnegation necessary to bring the soul to a detachment from ~elf and self-love, which alone can lead to higher union of the'soul With God. This is not a pleasant process if it is to lead to solid growth in holi- ¯ ness. It is not what enriches us but what effaces us that leads to union with God. But,'neither should we suppose that the, way is all darkness and strewn with thorns. The soul also comes to stretches of light and joy when she stands very.close to the Divinity to which she is wedded. Our Lord is ever a loving Spou.se who will not be outdone in generosity. Much more can be s~iid on the.subject, but I wrote this much be-cause I felt an explanatign was due since ,you .repeated the statement in the REVIEW which was made on the floor at the,Congress, and I feel it has given an incorrect impression. There isAlready a great deal written about the contemplative life Which should be reviewed or corrected. The trouble is few contemplatives write,and what is writ-ten is too often merely theoretical by those who have not lived the enclosed contemplative life. SISTER M. IMMACULATA, P.C. (Abbess) SETS OF BACK NUMBERS AVAILABLE To :meet the numerous requests for back numbers the following ligt has .been prepared. It contains the number of complete sets available.for the different years, together with the prices. The price of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS was rai~ed to $3.00. in 1951. ' " Sets at $2.00 Sets at $3.00 1945 " 8sets 1951 . 17.0sets 1948 ., . 87sets 1952 . ~. 130~ets 1949 . . 115 sets ' 1'950. . . . 75 sets ~ ~" Please order from the. business. ot~ce: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 606 Harrison, Top~.ka, Karisas. 314 A =h onument: t:o Vincen!: Jerdme Breunig, TH]~ recent Uook, Saints for Now, edited by Clare Boothe Luce, has two articles on St. John of the Cross and none on St. Vin-cent de Paul. Yet Vincent de Paul is pre-emin, e.ntly a modern saint, a "saint for now." In Social Action (July, 1952, p. 135) J. Correia-Afonso writes.: "Vincent.de Paul is indeed a modern saint, not chronologically., but as one of the first of his contemporaries to understand the new times ushered in by the R~naissance, and to consider them with a just and sympathetic discrimination; one of the earliest too to observe and to seek a practical solution for the social questign, which in" its different aspects has beiome the problem of our own days." (Social.Action is a'periodical published monthly by the Indian Institute of Social Order, St. Vincent St.,Poona 1, India.). The "omnipresence" of the Daughters of Charity; (more. than 40,000 strong) in the cities of the world, the numerous Vihcentian seminaries, the De Paul hospitals and schools, as well as the other congregations, associations, and works of charity that derive directly from or were inspired I~y St. Vincent may have rendered the saint too' obvious to be singled out. Recent tributes to the ~ipostle of charity are not wanting. The realistic'spiritual grandeur of the film, "Mon-sieur Vindent," is a notable instance. But the monument, "more lasting than bronze"is the fifteen-volume ~ork of Pierre Coste, C.M. This includes eight volumes o~ Correspondence, four of Con&fences; and a three-volume Life and Works of St. Vincent de Paul. The work is translated by'Joseph Leonard, C.M. The last seven volumes mentioned above were published, by the Newman Press during the present year. (See page 325 for prices, etc.) THE LIFE AND.WORKS OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL Reviewing Pierre Coste's biography in the Month when the book first appeared in the early thir.ties, Archbishop Goodier "wrote: "He has already given.to us, ig eight volumes, the saint's correspondence; he has now published in three volumes more, ~ study of the saint and his l,i e which is not likely ever to be superseded,. It is a masterpiece of research, 6f eruditionSand in ~he full-length portrait of SL Vin-cent de Paul which it~ depicts; si~aringhim in nothing, "~s the saint himself would not want to be spared,_, it allows u's to watch this Very -315 ~" JEROME BREUNIG Re~'ie~ for Religious ¯ human being, if ever there.was one, grow¯ into one of the most glori-ous heroes this world has ever produced, the pride alike of man and of .the Church, one of those in whose canonization the veriest pagan must rejoice." , The biography can be divided into three sections that are not co-terminus with the three volumes. First is traced the early-life 6f the s~int.ahd the first beginnings of the associations he founded. Then, in turn; follc;ws a detailed study of the growth and expansion of each. The third section treats.of his work at the French court, his. efforts against Jansenism, and his care of'the Visitation" Order after the ~dea'th of St. Francis de Sales: gives summary studies of his sanc-tity, his daily order, and the like: and concludes with. an account of his d~ath, beatification, and canonization. The r~al drama and challenge of Vincent de Paul's long life (1581-1660) is h~ightened rather thin dimmed by the careful ex-cision of legends such as the story of his exchanging places with the galley slave. The meager record of the early years is sufficient to m- .dica~e the initial struggle of a gifted poor boy who had to "work his~ way thiough college" by teaching boys. Not in accord with the pre- ¯ scriptions of Trent, Vincent was ordaified at twenty years of age. Providence .afforded realistic post-ordinatio~ training. The youfig priest.was ~capttired by Moors and sold int6 slavery in'Tunis. It was almost tq¢o years before he escaped to France. ~ The. turning point from mediocre to high sanctity seems to have been Vincent's promis~ to consecrate the rest of hi~ life to theservice of the'poor. Shortly afterwards when the Master of'the Paris M~nt gave him a personal gift of 15,000 livres, the dedicated priest gave the entire sum to the Charity Hb~lSitai on the very next day. Whether.pastor of Clichy or Chatillons, chaplain t6"the De Gondi Family or to the Queen, Vincent de Paul fulfilled his promise to help the po.0r.Whenever he recognized a serious need., whether spiritual or material, he tried a realistic approach, often not particularly orig-inal, experimented, made recommendations, and finally outlined pro-cedure~ .that would meet the difficulty. The Congregation of t~e Mission "The establishment of the Congregation of the. Mission is the result of the sermon at Folleville:' it sprang from it as the tree does from the seed" (I, 70). This mission sermon givdn on the feast of the Conversion of St. P~ul ,and exhorting the. yillager.s to make a 316 November, 1952 MONUMENT TO M. VINCENT general confession, was so abundantl¢ blessed that it.clearly under-lined the need to provide for thousarids bf similar missions and a congregation¯ of priests specially dedicated'to g!ving them. Incompetence and worse among the clergy of France~was another problem Vincent helped solve. First he prov!ded retreats for priests and ordin~nds. Hd saw, however,¯that a more radical remedy Was needed. Adequate seminary training had to be provided. -The Con-gregation of the Mission undertook and is continuing these special-ized sacred works for th~ sa'nctification of the clergy. Relief for the poor began in the same simple.manner. "On a cei-taifi Sunday, 'just as I was vesting,to say Mass, a person came to tell me that, in an isolated house a quarter of.a league away. the whole family lay ill, so'that not a single ond of them could come to the as-sistance of the others, and they were in Such dire straits as cannot be ,,expressed. ,It moved me to the depths of my heart. I did not fail to speak feelingly about them during the sermon, and God, touching the, hearts of those who were listening, caused them all to be moved to compassion for the poor afflicted people. "After dinner, a meeting was held in/the house of a good lady in the town to see what help could 15e given and every single one of. those present was quite~prepared to go and see them. to console them ,by talking to them and'to help them to the best of their ability." (I, 82.) The care of this familj, led to the care of'.others. After three months experience St. Vindent formed" an association to be called the Confraternity, of Charity. Its members were to be known fis the Servant~ of the Poor or of Charity. "It was to have desus Christ as its patron and its rriotto was to be: Blessed are the merciful as my Father is merciful} or, Come, ye bles'sed of my Fat'tier and possess the Kingdom prepared fo? you from the beginning of th~ world, for I was hungry and ge gave me to eat, I was sick and you visitbd me; for what you have done to theleast of thesq, {you have done unto me.'" (I, 83.) The Daughters of Charity Again,,this' confraternity became the model for similar ones,¯, From them developed the group known as the .Ladies ofCharity" who gave generously of time and money to h~lp the .poor. As the work of these groups expanded, it .became¯ clear that a permanent group of Full time dedicated nurses and teachers was indispensable. With the help of, Louise de Marillac, a "Lady of Charity." Vincent ' 317 ,JEROME BREUNIG Reoiet~ for Religious de° Paul established the Daughters of Ch, arity. This new congregation marked a great innovation in the reli-gidus iife. "The Daughters of Charity wdre not, like the members of ¯ :other communities of women, confined to "their homes; they were perfectly free t6 walk about the streets, and this was even a duty in-~ asmuch as their functions called them to leave their houses and enter. those of the poor. 'Your monasteries,' St. Vincent said to them, 'are the houses of ~he sickf ybur cell, a hired room; your chapel, the " parish church; your cloister., the streets of the city; your enclosure, obedience; your grille, the fear of God; your veil, holy modesty!' " .(I, 345.) The. Vincentians (C.M.) and the. Datighters of Charity are the largest but not the.only religious families Vincent founded. He suC-ceeded St. Francis de Sales as d~rector of the Visitation Order an~ helped found the institutes of th~ Daughters of Providence, the Daughters of the Cross, and the Daughters of the Holy Family. These congregations helped car.ry on the ~far-flung spiritual and cor-poral works of.mercy that were first initiated by M. Vincent. The Fou'ndlings Artists like to depic~ St. Vincent trtidging through slum areas leading one child by the hand and carrying another. They are not, drawing ~maginary scenes. In a diary kept by one of the Sisters at La Couche we read:. "3anuary 22, M. Vincent a~rived about eleven o'clock at night;, he brought us two childrea; o_ne may be six days old, the other is older. The poor little things were crying. The Lady Superioress has handed them over to the nurses. ~ . . ~' "'February 7. It i~ very, cold. M. Vincent paid a visit to our community; this holy man is always on foot. The Superioress asked ¯ him to rest, but he hurried off at once (o his little childiefi. It is marvellous to listen to his beautiful words of kindness and consola- ¯ tion. These little creatures listen to him as to.a father. Oh! what does not this kind, good Monsieur Vincent deserve! ';I have seen his tears flow ~oday. One of our little ones died. 'It is an angel now,' he explaiiaed, 'but it is very ha~d not to see it any more.' " (II, 263- 4.) An appeal of Vincent to the Ladies of Charity is recorded: "And no~; Ladies, s.ympathy and charity induced you to ad.opt these poor little creatures as ~?our children; yo.u have been their mothers ac-cording to Divine Grace ever .since their mothers aceording to nature 318 Novemb~r~ 1952 MONUM.ENT TO I~I.VINCEN'~ abarid~ned them. Cease to be their mothe.rs and become their judges; theirlife and death, i~ in your h~nds; I am i~ow abo~t to collect yoflf votes: the time has come to pronounce-their sentence and to ascertain whe.ther~ you desire any longer to be merciful tO them. They will live, if you charitably take care of them, and on the other l~and, they will die and infallibly perishif you abandon therfii experience does.- not allow you to think otherwise." (II, 222.) Chaplain for the Galle~ts "Nothing could give a bettei picture of hell than the hulks.[of the galley slaves] at Marseilles," wrote a biographer (I, 117). Into these tombs for the living, .Vincent went as an angel and consoler. His own experience as. a prisoner and a slave helped him to use his positior~ as chaplain-general of the galleys, to which General De Gondl bad appointed him, to alleviate the conditions of'the convicts. At Vincent's bidding, the Bishop of Paris sent a pastoral letter asking alms to prepare better quarters for the prisoners. The sp!ritual .minis.try among tl~e prisoners was not neglected: sacraments were ad-ministered and missions were sometimes arranged for them. The apostle of charity ektended his care to .other. needy classes besides foundlings and .prisoners. The sick poor in the over-crowded hospitals, orphans, the insane, fallen woinen, he.lpless beg-gars, and others were to. share the warmth of his contagious charity. A separate. ~tory is the relief woik of Vincent, that almost beggared the Parisian benefactors, to assist the provinces of Lorraine, Picardy, Champagne, and L'Ile,-de-France when they were torn by maraud-ing armies in the wars of the Fronde. Saving assistance was also provided for the Irish refugees who fled to France" during Oliver Cromwell's ~eign of terror. Spiritual Works Among the reforms in the spiritual apostolate that Vincent helpedpromote was punctu, ring the pompous, empty eloquence that ¯ had. become quite widespread.' Sentences like the following were commonplace: "I am about to grasp the intoxicating chalice, replete ¯ with SO much excellence, to replenish .your hearts through the orifices of Yourears." "May the gentle zephyrs of the Holy Spirit. waft the, .'sails o'f my thoughts.over the sea of this great audience to lead and bring it safely to a fair haven." (II, 206). Vincent promoted sim-plicit~ y, in form and tone. "Motives, nature, and means, all set out simply and cl.early--sucb is Saint Vincent's 'little method!' " (I!, 319 JEROME BREUNIG " ReuietuforReligious 217).He had no use for bitter sarcasm. "Bitterness "has never served.any 6ther purpos'e'than to embitter" (II, 218). Of greater impoFtance was his clear.standagainst heresy. ".The Jansei~iSts have never forgiven Saint Vincent for the pr6minent pait which he played in ~ecuring-the condemnation of their' doctrines" (III, .180). Vincent's sound faith, arid Cath01ic sefise kept him clear of this heres@ that won so many of his coun,trymen. Mqre-. over, his influential position at the French court enabled himo.to help expose the false doctrine in his bwn .country. A loy.al son. df the Church, he was also instrumental in ¯h~lping bring the matter to Rome where the heresy Was oflicially condemned. THE CONFERENCES OF ST. VIN'CEN~ DE PAUL The multifarious good works of Vincent de Paul ¯might give the impression that he was merely a man of action. The Conferences, in four v01um~s, modify this impres.sion by revealing the inner.spir-ituality which was the mainspring of the exterior activity. Not having a" Wire-rec, ording machin'e or even the Gregg short-hand method, the first Daughters of Charity pieced together what they heard, sometimes with the help. of Monsieur' Vincent's memor-andum. Of all the conferences Vincent gave duriiag aperiod of about 25 years (1634:1660), only 120 have been preserved. The handwriting ot~St. Louise de Marillac is recognized in twenty of" th~ transcriptions. Fragmentary and occasional as they are, the con-., ferenCes reveal an. inspiring and unmistakably high spirituality. It must be remembdred that When these conferences were given the Sis-ters were simply an association of layw0men who did not live in" a convent but usually in hired rooms in the particular parish wheie they worked. " " The "'Method" in the Conferences.° An interesting and, perhaps in some meagure, imitable feature of Vincent de Paul's conferences was the method. The Sisters were not ~nly .informed.when the conference was to be held, but they were told .what the subject matter was to'be.° Besides, the~ were to be prepared to give their own thoughts and to iinswer questions on th~ subject. The first time the method was introdiaced iff recorded:. '"In the t~ompany. "Sir, disunion seems to me to be like a building that is falling ddwn~ . . . JERk)ME BREUNIG Revie~,'for Religious (~ Another Sister said : "'Union is an image of tb~ most ~Ble~sed' .~rihity which is made up 6f three dlvme Persons, United.:b.y love. I~ we are thoroughly well united; we shall all be ,of one will and in complete harmony. Disunion, on the contrary, gives us a picture of hell, where the dem~ns live in perpetual discord and hate." ,(I, 87- Thus'each of. the group added to the conferende. These "conver-sati0ns" ai ~iven in the' Con(erences may stem toopat and perhaps too:good to some modern readers. This mhybe due to the editing. The idea seems to be a sound ont. After hearing the members and answering any questions, Monsieur Vincent would give a fuller treat-ment of ttie subject. The conferences were not monologues an'd fulfill the real meaning of the word conference, a meeting of minds. Inspiring scenes such as the following happened more than once. "The Sister who spoke on the good use of admonitions added: 'Recently .I.was so proud that, when my attention was called to a fault by _one of my Sisters of whom I had asked charity, I manifested displeasure. I. very l~umbly'ask pardon for having done ~o and als6, Sister, I'ask.for yours, who p.e?formed this act of charity towa'rds me.' At these words, the other Sister knelt down and said: 'It is I, Sister, who ask your forgiveness. I did not admon'ish you as I should have done, foi there were others present.' " (I, xv.) The Co£tent "" P~re Coste summarizes the content of the conferences in his troduction to the work. ;'His addresses chiefly dealt withthe voca-tion of Daughters of Cha)ity; their functions; thepoor, the sick, the foundlings; their daily exercises: rising, prayer, their general and par-ticular rules; the Christian virtues and those ¯which .go to make up. the spirit of the Company: simplicity, charity, humility, mortifica-tion, loVe~of work; the" frequentation of the Sacraments; Confession and Communion. Scandal, temptations, envy, admonitions, and the Jubile~ were also subjects of excellent conferences. He devoted several conferences to the virtues of deceased Sisters, and Sisters who were sent to the. proviricds were not allowed to.depart~ithout a few words of advice. The elections of officials .was'~ilso an occasion for a biief address. The. choice of subject was dictated by circumstances~ the needs of the Company, and the suggestions of St. Louise de 322 . November, -1952 MON~IMENT TO M. VINCENT rillac." (I, xii.) , St. Vincent had much to say about prayer. "Pray'er is th~ soul of our souls--that is to say, that what the soul is to the body, prayer is to the soul . The soul without prayer isalmost like a body without a soul, in what concerns the service of God; .it is without feeling, movement,, and has only worldly and earthly de-sires. I may also add that prayer is like a mirror in which the soul ¯ can see all its stains and disfigurements; it notds what renders it dis-pleasing to God; it arranges itself sb that it may be conformable to Him in all things." (II, 49.) Very practically, Vincent associates success in prayeb with re-tiring on time, getting enough sleep, and mostly with prompt rising. "Risi,ng is the first act of fidelity we render to God:. ~. the rest of the day. is determined by rising in the morning. Befiev~ me, there is no us~ in fighting with your pillow; you are always bound to lose" (iI, 22). "If sleeping during prayer becomes a habit, then one should, in order to get rid of it, stand upright, kiss the floor, or renew one's attention from time to time because, if we do not remedy this bad habit, it will return daily. Ar.e you not aware that there is a devil whose business Jr'is to put people to sleep when the~ are at " Pra.ger?" (I, 29.) ¯ He also suggests the use of pictures of Our Lord and .the saints as a help durifig prayer. Spiritual reading as a help to prayer is highly commended. "You must never fail to find time to read a chapter'of some devout book; it is very .easy and most necessary, for, as in the morning you" speak to God when at prayer, so God speaks to you when you read. If you wish your prayer to be heard by God, listen to God when you read. Theie is no. les.s' happiness and profit in list~ning to God than there is in speaking to Him. Hence, I strongly recommend you not to fail to do so, as far as you can and, if possible, to spend a little time in prayer afterwards." (I, 105.) The most difficult mortification is proposed to the Sisters. "Mor-tification is. also necessary, Sisters, if you are to endure the little suf-ferings that are bound to crop up in the course of your' exercises, and. the complaint.s tba.t those poor people may make about you. When .~he gentlemen in charge of the wounded pay them a visit, they may perhaps hear complaints about you; the wounded may tell them that you have not looked after them, that you ldft them all alone from morning until go6dness knows what hour. Very well, Sisters, ~ll that must be endured without complaining; do not seek to justify 323 JEROME BREUNIG yourselves, oh! no, never!" (IIL~ 3.) "The last means of loving God continually, and for ever ismsuffefifi~:' ~o suffer sicknesses, if God sends them; to suffer calumny, if we are unjustly .attacked; to suffer interi.orly the trials God sends us to test our fidelity''~ (II, .105) A witness to much deterioration in religious life,-Vincent was opposed to the'~ very Shadow of la'~ity. "The third thing-which.- causes.us to lose the love of our "vocation is-~-I shall not say im-p6rity, 6h! no, never, b.y~G6d's grace h:is this sin, even been men-tioned-- but merely' a certain sort of unrestrain.ed liberty. On~ is quite, pleased to meet men; one. is not a bit disturbed at listening to them.; one replies to and.,.enters into conversation, with them, even with one's'confessors apart from confession; on'e passes th~ timd in .speaking of matter~ that are neither necessary nor urgent, but just tO keep up a conversatmn. (II, 89.) F rstDaugbter ot: Charity" Among the finest conferences are those which treat of. the lives the first members.' .Here is "an abbreviated account of the. "First ' Daughter.of Charity": "Margaret Nas'eau, of Suresnes, was the first Sister who had the happiness of pointing out the road to our other Sisters," both in the education of. young girls and in nursing the sick,° although she had no other ma~ter: or mistress but'God. She w~is a poor, uneducated cow-herd. Moved by a powerful inspiration from Heaven, the idea occu'rred to h'~r that she would instruct children and so she bought an alphabet but, as she cduld not go to school for in-struction, ~he went and._asked the parish priest or curate tJ3 tell her what were the first four letteks, of the, alphabet. On another occasion, she asked what¯were the next four, and so on for the rest. Afte/~, Wards, whilst she minde~l her cows, she studied her lesson . "She afterwards made up her ~mind to go from village to village instructing the young . It was xiery .remarkable that she und~rto01~ all this withotit money or any other help save that of Divine Provi-dence.': She often fasted for whole days, and dwelt in .places bf which nothing remained but the walls. The harddr she worked at t~eachiJ~g the children, the more th~ ~village folk laughed at and' calumniated her. Her zeal gre~w more ardent . She provided for the education of some young men who had not the means of doing so . These ybung men are now good priests. Finally, when she learned" that there was a Confraternity of Charit~y'ifl Paris for the sick poor, she went- there moved by a desire 324 November, 1952 BOOK REVIEWS to be employed in this work, and although, she ~reatly desired to cc;ntinue instructing the young, nevertheless she laid aside this char-itable. work to take'up that of nursing the sick poor, which she be-lieved to be more perfect and charitable. This was, indeed, the will of. God, for He intended her to be the first Daughter of Charity and servant of the sick poor in the city of Paris. She attracted .to the work other gikls whom she ha'd helped to detach from all earthly vanities and to embrace a devout life. " . She Was most patient and never complained. Everybody loved be~ because ther.el was nothing' in her that was not lovable. Her charity was ~o great that she died from sharing her bed with a poor plague-stricken girl.". (I, 71-3.) THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL. By Pierre Coste, C.M. Translated by Joseph Leonard, C.M. Pages' in Volumes: I, xxiii -f- 608; II, xi-]- 500; III, xii -]- 563. Newman Press, Westmin-ster, Maryland, 19S2. Three-vohme set, $1S.00. .CONFERENCES OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL TO THE SISTERS ,OF CHARITY. Edited by Pierre Coste, C.M. Translated by Joseph Leonard, C.M. P~acjes'in Volumes; I,xxii -1- 322; II, vi -~ 310; III, vl -f-, 317; IV, xi -b 340. Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 19S2. Four-volume set, $16.00. For comment on these volumes see the article, "A Monument to Monsieur Vincent," beginning on page 315. THE IGNATIAN WAY TO GOD. By Alexander Brou, S.J. Translated by William J. Young, S.J. Pp. xii-1- 156. The Bruce Publishing Com-pany, Milwaukee, 19S2. $3.7S. This'exposition of the spirituality of St. Ignatius was written by Father Brou mainly to disprove a charge that Ignatian spirituality is "rigid and excessively methodical." He begins his work with a briel/ study of St. Ignatius himself and his directives on' prayer to his young Society, and,goes on from there to show that the spirituality of St. Ignatius is in all essentials that of the Spiritual Exercises. The purpose of the latter is to prepare one to seek the will of God and, having~found it, to embrace it. And ¯prayer for St. Ignati6s has the. same end. Father Btou says: "Prayer, according to St. Ignatii~s, is. 325 BOOK REVIEWS~ ' . Revi~w'f~or Religious a'combination of personal activity and of surrender to the inspira-tionof God, of method and of liberty," all of Which points he provesfrom the-bobk of the Exercises. ~ "Intriguing chapters in the development are: "The Exercises and the Graces. of P'rayerl . Id'quod ; olo," in the' Spiritual Exercises:, "The Men"formed to great hdliness by the SpiritUal Exercises; and, finally, in an Appendix, "The Liturgical Life and'the Spirituality of St. Ignatius!' a refutation of the fancied opposition between Igna-tian Spirituality and the Litfirgical Movement. A shcond App~ndi~ contains the~ following." "A D.e.scription of the Spirituality of St.~ Ig-natius," "The Holy See and the Exercisesof St. Ignatius," "The Method of St. Ignatius j and those of Louis of Granada and of' St. Francis de Sales," which shows the striking similarity between ¯ them. Each chapter of this excellent treatment of Ignatian Spirituality is bulw~rkdd by abundant references to sources,, collected in a special section in,the back of the book so that anyone ~ho wishes to.inves-tigate the subject more.deeplyhas start'ing leads for doing so. ~ -~.' ~UBREY 3. REID, S.J. SAINT THERESE AND SUFFERING. By Abb& C~ombes. Translated from the French Edition by Msgr. P; E. Haileff. Pp. rift -k 130. P./.Kene-dy &iSo.ns, Ne~v York, 1951. $2.S0. '" '.'Shadow on the Earth" mea.nt human sufferings'in the'fine bo.ok of.the same title by Owen Francis .Dudley, And anyone .wh, o i~ s.uffering.or~ has suffered kno~3vs that suffering.i~ truly a heavy shadow coming betv~een God .and us and putting our faith in Him to. a.severe test. We think'somewhat as follows: "God is all powerful. and He:loves me: And my, needis ov.erwhelming. Why doesn't'He help me?" TO any and all .who are asking a question of this kind, we strongly recommend Saint Th3rb'se and Suffering by Abb~ Combes. The author undertakes to make known St. Th~r~se's attitude to-wards sufferin~ as revealed in her own words and acti.ons.' "Tl~e Carmelite Saint of Lisieux is shown to be a sufferer from her earliest days. From.her First Holy Communidn she begins to welcome ¯ suffering and even to'find mysterious happiness in it. From then on suffering meant to her the price, she had to ,pay, to love Our I~ord greatly and to win souls from hell for Him. ' . , But.finally Th~r~se-tells us that she;~ .no longer desires ~.uffe.rings,i 326 November;,.195?_ ¢, BOOK REVIEWS but ':'the perfect accomplishment of the will 6f God~in my so~l." However, the Will of God for her is further sufferings, .indeed her great~st cross of suffering, for from the beginning of April, 1896, tintil:her death on September 30, 1897, she endured almost without break or respite severe trials of her faith in God's Goodness, and in her belief in heaven: see~rfiingly all her prayers went unanswered and the ravages of the disease' which would bring about her death were causing her intense physical, pain. And so St. Th~r~se died, as did her Savior, on the cross--b~ut how quickly came the Shower of Roses which proved that Th~r~se was,"living h~r heaven in doing good on earth," as she had promised. ° Now what do. we learn from St. Th~r~se about suffering? One point we surely notice is thai suffering did not in any degree distort her character. Suffer greatly though she did, St. Th~r~se will always. be one of the most lovable, attractive, and "inspiring Of the saints. In her life We learn" again the old truth that suffering is often a most precious gift of God. It merits His love. It helps to save souls. It gives~im something very special for which He can reward "us in heaven. Then most important of all. for us, as for Th&~se, as even fo,r the Son of God Himself. the rock bottom reason for accepting suffer; ing and bearing it patiefitly is that'it is God's will for us. And this too is the very heart of Th&~se's "Little Wa~r to God" in all things to trust ourselves to God With complete confidence in His love for us.AUBREY ,J. REID, S.,J. 0 PROCEEDINGS OF .CONGRESS OF RELIGIOUS The proceedings of the Firs~ National CongreSS of Religious held at the Uni-versity of N6tre Dame, August~, 1952, are being published under the title. Relioidus, Community,Life in the United States, in two separate books, one for the men's ses-sion and "one for the Sisters' session. A cloth bound copy of- ehch book of approxi-mately 300 pages is being'sold for $2.50. If you ~,ish to participate in the lim-ited first, printing, which is promised before Christmas. order promptly from: ,~Th.e ¯ Paulist Press. 401 West 59th ,Street, NeW-York 19; New York. ! "327 BOOI~'NOTICE~ ReviOw [or.I~etiOious . ,- ",'- ' BOOK'N6TICES" Thd'Dominicafi Nuns of'Cdr-pus Christi Mbnast~ery, Menlo Park, . California deserve thanks for translating so competently the book" KINSHIPS by Reverend ~ntonin S~rti]langes, O.P. In it you will find 76 brief chapters well suited to" induce- deeper,~spiritual insight and enthusiasm. Several chapters, though their exact number varies, have been grouped beneath the following gefieral subjects: ~od's, Presence, His Providence, Union with God, Love for G0d,Lo;e for .Self, Lovd for Others, the Apostolate. Sometimes a single parggraph, occasion-a! ly¯ one brief sentence, will make you pause tb'pofider and to pray. (New York: McMullen Books Inc.,,195~. Pp. v + 234. $2.95.) BE YE ~RFECT by David L. Greenstock, ~s a treatment, both scientific and devotional, of Christian perfection and various aspects of it. Much is made, for instance, of th~ distinction between essen- Hal perfectiofi, that is, being in the state of grace, and accidental per: fection, ulterior degrees of grace and virtue. The former is possible to all and ought to Be attained by all; how much farther one~n~o depefids upo~ the particular providence, of God. Those wno'nave a fair knowledge of the spiritual life would not learn much by reading this work, and people who are looking for an inffoduction would' d0 well to seek it in other books. This one is confusing rather than informative, and it is more ap~ to leave one comforted and contented wlth'mediocrity in virtue than to stimulate one to great'efforts. (St. Louis;.B. Herder Book Co., ¯1.'952. Pp. 362. $5.00.) A capable author with an attractive subject should produce a ¯ g0°~l biography. This formula works effectively in Katherine Bur-ton's THE TABLE OF THE KING, the story of Emmelie. Tavernier Gan~elin, Foundress bf tl~e Sisters of Charity of Providence. The words that w~re later inscribed on the coat of arms of the first Provi-dence Asile, "The Charity of Christ urget,h us," were' almost miracu-lously operative in Emmeli~ from her ~arly childhood, whe~ she used to distribute alms for her mother. As a girl still in her teens, she had a room set apart in the house where she fed the poor at "the table of the King"mherself do!ng the cooking, serving, .and ~lish-washing. Th'rough sorrow over the successive loss of her husband andthree small children she learned fhe practical need of trust in DivineProvi-dence; and this¯ trust was deepened and broadened when the bare cup-board of her first Old Ladies' Home was repeatedly replenished in an unforeseen manner. It is not strange that God should choose such a 328 November, 1957. BOOK ANNoUNcEMENTS woman to found an ifistitute w_h.oie function is Charity and Whose principle of growth is unbounded trust in Providence. (New o~or, k: McMullen Books, Inc., 1952.) "Come North as ~oon as possible!" These were th'e words Bishop Midge to M6tber Xavier, foundress.of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. COME NORTH is the exciting story of Ann Ross of Methodisi~ Parentage--her father was a harsh, unforgiving Method-ist preacher who disowned th~ daughte~r after she ran away to the convent. Sister Julia Gilmore, S.C.L., is to be congratulated for the very readable account of the spiritual 'and spatial odyssey of the ~oundress of her own flourishing~'ongregation. There0is hardly a dull page in the entire book, from .the account of the birth of Ann Ross in 1813 to that graphic account of the '.'aged itinerant revival-jsti' who drove up to the St. Mary Female Institute near Leaven-worth, Kansas. All unknown to himself, this circuit rifler had come to the Academy founded by his own sister who many years ago had run away from home. to enter a convent.The book ends thus: "Two Sisters walked with him to the c~metery~where he saw the plain white marker that reads: Mother Xavier.Ross Died April 2, 1895 Aged 82 years." '(New York: McMullen Books, Inc., 1951. Pp. 310. $3.50.) , , ' o Book ANNOUNCEMENTS [For the most part, these notices are.purely descriptive, based on acursory exam-ination' of the books listed.] ¯ AMERICA PRESS, 70 E. 45th St., New York, 17, New York. The State and Religious Education. By Robert C. Hartnett, 'and Anthony T. Bouscaren. On recent SupremL, Court decisions, D~: Conant, and the California tax exemption case: Pamphlet, $.25. BRUCE .PUBLISHING CO., 400 Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. Life Begins With Eooe. By E.Boyd Barrett. "With a suc-cinctness that pierces: so.phisticotion and a depth of conviction that commands, the author summarizes this Imitation o: Christ for mod-erns: keep''your promises, keep your temper, keep oyour~mouth shut, keep you~r heart warm

Issue 41.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1982. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1982 by REVIEW FOR REI.~G~OOS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR REt,IGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55802. 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 Jan./ Feb., 1982 Volume 41 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW I"OR RE~.IGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 541h St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints shoul.d be ordered from Rt:v,Ew Vo8 RE~oIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindetl Blvd.; St. L~uis, 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. Review for Religious Volume 41, 1982 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Sep-tember, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1982 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. The Art of Wasting Time: Thoughts on the Expropriation of Leisure James W. Heisig Father Heisig, of the Society of the Divine Word, is a Permanent Fellow of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, General editor of its book series on East-West thought and Associate Professor of Humanities at the Nan:an University. His address: Nan:an Institute for Religion and Culture: 18, Yamazato-cho. Showa-ku: Nagoya, Japan'. In modern industrialized nations, time is thought of as an investment commodity with a fluid market value. The power of time to cure all ills that the ancient Greek proverb celebrated has been drained from it to reduce time to disposable mer-chandise within our control. Some people's time is now worth more than other people's time because they know how to use time .profitably, that is, to achieve maximum production with minimum consumption. The ideal management of time is measured by cost-benefit analysis. As a consumer commodity, time is also unevenly distributed: some people now possess more time than others, which they are free to invest wisely or foolishly. It does not take much reflection to appreciate how the metaphor of "annual income,"the most Oniversal measure of the relative value of time, has crept its way into the modern imagination and laden words once rich in personal meanings with the double entendre of economic connotations. And that is as true in the world of business as it is in the world of religious or humanitarian devotion to an ideal. We hear it said that the fund~.mental shock occasioned by the increased pace of modei'n living is that shorter and shorter periods of time enable us to achieve the same things that former civilizations took much longer to achieve, which in turn produces the need for constant novelty. In fact, we do notachieve the same things at all. By submitting time and human needs to new s.tandards, the quality of life 3 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 itself has been altered and important spiritual values siphoned off as waste. The trip across the Sinai that took the ancient Israelites forty years to complete would hardly take forty minu~tes today from t~ikeoff to landing. But whereas their voyage was a.journey that transformed a band of refugees into a people of God, ours is reduced to a mere change of location that takes place too quickly to effect any but the most superficial of insights. For us, time wasted in travel, in the use of outmoded tools, and in the inefficient use of resources and personnel is money flushed down the drain. On the one hand, time well spent promises the reward of time to spare; but on the other, the time that we have saved is only of value if it, too, is well spent. The result is that leisure has become a luxury item, with less to be found among workers today than there was among the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome. In such circUmstances, it has become easy to market time-measuring devices for popular use that approximate the precision of scientific equipment. A wrist-watch that takes time to wind and has to be reset once a week is an anachronism to the modern mind. The practical advantages of such accuracy are fictitious, but the ideological advantage is very real. We are so firmly locked into the modern myth of time that the thought of unclocking oneself, even for the purposes of relaxation, has become the moral equivalent of undressing in public. The idea of time that has colonized the habits of thought that gird the institu-tions of modem society--school, church, business, entertainment, travel, health care, politics, social action--has wrought a spiritual impoverishment on our native sensibilities. The reverence for free time Freizeit and leave from labor (leisure) has not disappeared, but its motivations have shifted. The important wisdom that time belongs among the "best thing~ of life" that cannot be bought and sold, that belong to all of us as our common human right, and that are their own reward, is in peril. The expropriation of leisure by the consumer ethos is one of the most harmful ideas that pollute modern consciousness and obstruct the construction of an equitable and sustainable global community. Instead of having time for oneself, time for the earth, and time for the human race, we have become content with having time to consume the goods and services manufactured in other sectors of society. We have come to think of time as a nonrenewable resource, and lost the art of wasting it lavishly for our spiritual well-being. Deliverance from this state of affairs begins with learning to make transparent the myth of time that we inhabit unawares. And onestep in that direction, it seems to me, is to have a look at some of the things we no longer seem to have much time for. Time for Oneself The story is told of a certain clergyman who went to see the famous psycholo-gist, C. G. Jung, complaining of an impending nervous breakdown. His story was a familiar one. Working fourteen hours a day to fill up his life of service with meaning, he found only a spiritual tiollowness to his work. The harder he worked, the more tasks he took on, the more his nerves stood on end, threatening at any moment to shatter through the fragile mask of the busy pastor and expose his The Art of Wasting Time hypocrisy. 3ung's advice was simplicity itself; he was to work a mere eight-hour day, go home and spent his evenings quietly in his study alone. Unconvinced of the wisdom of .lung's counsel, but sufficiently agonized to have no other recourse, the man made up his mind to follow the prescription to the letter. He worked his eight hours, returned to the parish house for supper, then retired behind the closed doors of his study for the rest of the evening. Some time later he returned to see .lung, reporting that, alas, the remedy had been a complete failure. Spiritually he was worse off than before, and the parish had fallen into disarray for want of attention. He had done everything just as he had been told, but to no avail. "What did you do in your study?" Jung asked. "Well, let's see, the first night I finished a Herman Hesse novel and listened to some Chopin l~tu~les. After that I read some Thomas Mann and listened to a Mozart sonata. Next I . . ." "But you didn't understand," .lung broke in. "I didn't want you to spend your time reading novels and listening to music. I wanted you to be alone with yourself.""Oh, but 1 couldn't stand it. i make such bad company," the pastor replied. "Aha! Now we see the problem," said .lung. "That very self that you can't stand for even a short period is the same self you have been inflicting on others for fourteen hours a day.~ The pastor's problem and the way he set out trying to cure it both belong to a level of cultural development that can only be called elite. The freedom to opt for a fourteen:l~our work day and drive oneself to psychological tatters, and then to reduce one's time of labor by 40% for the sake of spiritual hygiene; the possibility of consulting a professional therapist and paying for the service; the ability to read classic literature and appreciate classical music--all of these things belong to a style of life unthinkable to the great masses of humanity, who do not work for ends supererogatory to survival that can be dispensed with when body or soul collapses, but work to keep alive, and great numbers of them successfully. I do not mean to imply that the man's problem was not a real one, or that it should be classified, along with cosmetic surgery and Caribbean cruises, as needs bred of boredom or surfeit. I mean only that, like all spiritual problems, its roots reach over into problematic social structures as well, whose repair requires more attention to one's own soul. Of this, more shall be said later. What 'lung showed the pastor about himself, and what many of those who share his general cultural field can readily identify with, is that people will often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to look at themselves without a role to play. The crises of meaninglessness.that had attacked his work spread over into his leisure because of a common fundamental bias that value can only be generated by keeping busy at a socially acceptable task. In each case, he fled what he feared would do him more harm than anything else: his deep dislike of himself. In his work, the pretense of altruism threw up a thick smoke screen, almost as if deliber-ately to cloud the problem; and in his leisure the pretense of polishing up his education protected and reinforced the hollow ideals he could never quite recog-nize as his own. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Before one embraces those words as a commanded task, they need first to be accepted as a statement of fact: like it or not, one cannot love another if one does not first love oneself. And 6 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 there is no way to love oneself if one does everything possible to avoid spending time with oneself. The pastor's abuse of leisure meant that leisure was not a freeing time but an enslaving time. Instead of serving as a re-creational balance to the creativity of his work, it bound him more firmly to the estrangement he felt between his own innermost beliefs and his outward devotedness. The proper use of leisure, on the other hand, demands the capacity to turn solitariness into solitude, not to dread it as a mere isolation from things that have value. If there are human values that daily life and work sterilize conscience against, and if those values are truly the eradicable imprint of the divine on the soul of each individual, then the deliverance of the human from the inhumanity of which it is capable begins with a transforma-tion in perspective metanoia towards oneself. And that takes time, leisure time. To be denied that time to waste on oneself, or to deny it to oneself, is to forsake redemption from the common habits of evil that we all participate in unawares. Time for the Earth A second dimension on which our~modern myth of time has expropriated the functions of leisure is that of our relationship to nature. In order to get to the core of this problem, 1 should like to cite a story from the Inner Chapters bf Chuang- Tzu, the Chinese mystic and Taoist philosopher of the fourth century before the Christian era. It is a story about a certain master carpenter named Stone and his apprentice, and how they happened one day to encounter the truth about worth-less trees. It seems that on one of their voyages the two chanced to pass by a gigantic oak tree standing by a local village shrine. The young apprentice stopped short and stood aghast with awe at the towering majesty of the tree, whose trunk he thought must measure a hundred spans in girth, and whose branches were so immense that at least ten of them he reckoned could surely be carved into boats. But the master Stone just stalked off ahead without so much as giving the tree a second glance. Catching him up, the apprentice inquired of him why a carpenter should pass up such timber, more splendid than any he had seen since taking up his axe. "Stop!" the master rebuked him. "The tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a coffin would soon rot, a tool would split, a door would ooze sap, and a beam would have termites. It is worthless timber and is of no use. That is why it has reached such a ripe old age." That night the oak,tree appeared to the carpenter Stone in a dream and complained of being compared with useful trees that are stripped and pruned and robbed of their fruits or cut down in their prime because they attract the attentions of the common world. "As for me, I have been trying for a long time to be useless. I was almost destroyed several times, Finally I am useless, and this is very useful to me. if I had been useful, could 1 have.ever grown so large? Besides, you and I are both things. How can one thing judge another thing? What does a dying and worthless man like you know about a worthless tree?" The next day, when the °The Art of Wasting Time apprentice heard of the dream, he was puzzled. "If it had so great a desire to be useless, why does it serve as a shrine?" This time the master took up. the cause of the tree. "It is just pretending to be one so that it will not be hurt by those who do not know that it is useless. If it had not been a sacred tree, it would probably have been cut down. It protects itself in a different way from ordinary things. We will miss the point if we judge it in the ordinary way." Let us say the carpenter Stone, with his "ordinary way" of looking at things, is a type of technological men and women whose tools have so eclipsed their direct contact with nature that they can no longer revere the world except as something "useful" for their equipment. As the tree reminds the carpenter in his dream, however, there are values that go beyond the useful, beyond the values that civilizations assign to things when they judge them to be worth our "while." These values reach deep beneath the differences that separate the human from the rest of the earth, to the point of geocentric unity that was broken with the anthropocent-ric revolt against being merely a thing among other things. They reach beyond the divisions of means and ends into which people classify everything about them. Insight into such values begins with learning t9 listen to the earth, something whose importance we are only now rediscovering after a century of industrial progress. Even so, we have the greatest of difficulty in unplugging ourselves from the apparatus we have built to mediate our way to nature. The world is still viewed by and large as raw material for human civilization. We struggle to keep our environment free of pollution because we fear the spread of disease among people and the poisoning of our food. We lobby against the mindless pillage of forests because we fear the effects of soil erosion on our buildings and landscaping. We protect the wilderness because we need somewhere to "get away from it all." These are reasons that make sense to a civilized mind, but do not satisfy it quite yet. We still want more sense than that. Increasing numbers (especially those for whom there is no economic danger involved) are finding it therapeutic to sympathize with the plight of species endangered by hunting or the destruction of natural habitats. Others are relearning to use the tools that scientific advance had thought to render into museum pieces. Something like a spirituality of the earth is coming to birth, but its douleurs d'enfantement are spasmodic and uncomfortable in the extreme. Perhaps the major reason that the developed industrial nations of the world do not yet have time for the earth is that their livelihood depends on a world frag-mented according to its utility for tools, and on a work force of specialists who literally feed off of one or the other fragment. The kit of tools that provides us with our ordinary way of looking at the earth functions not only because it represents a considerable extension of the power of the human body--legs into automobiles, voices into radio waves, eyes into telescopes, arms into cranes, and so forth, in the great caricature that humanity has made of its own image--but also because it succeeds in devaluing any other way of looking at life and work. While this has made impressive leaps in scientific and technical progress possi-ble, it has also taken its toll on the human spirit in the form of a massive addiction I~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 to packaged, processed experiences of the earth. We seek respite from the drudgery of working at our own specialized task only to find ourselves consuming the product of someone else's specialization. The woman who sits from morning to night on an assembly line at a canning factory learns to put up with the boredom and servility of her labor by concentrating on the privileges it will give her through the money she earns. Come vacation time, she happily skips into a great steel can sealed in Los Angeles and opened in Hawaii, clutching her five-nights-six-days-cut- rate-holiday plan around which she has organized her hopesof regaining some of the dignity she had to forfeit in order to afford the trip in the first place. She may well spend her whole life without noticing 'that she is being sold on the earth in entertainment-packages by an industry that depends on people not being able to experience the beauties and pleasures of nature without their help. Such contact with nature, far from helping one to recover the basic human demand for creativity and meaning in work, only reinforces the same feelings of impotence, ignorance, and strangeness in the face of the complex machinery and bureaucracy that has come between people and the earth. From the point of view of those who have forgotten that demand, such time may be considered very well spent, very useful, and very recreational. But it is not the freeing time of leisure because it does not so much as waste a moment on trying to step outside the ordinary way of looking at the earth, to see nature once again from the inside as it were, as something valuable in itself. Time for the Human Race In addition to the estrangement from oneself and estrangement from the earth, there is a third dimension on which our myth of time has expropriated the dower of wasted time, namely estrangement from our own race. We who compose essays on electric typewriters and subscribe to journals on the spiritual life tend to forget that the technology we take for granted is still experienced as an oppression by the vast majority of human beings. Consciously it is felt as the oppression of neglect at the hands of those who dwell in the economic penthouses of the global commun-ity. Unconsciously it is felt as the oppression of envy for the equipment and the life style of affluence and the accompanying disgust with their own primitive enjoy-ments. For all the commonsense wisdom contained in the counsel that money cannot buy happiness, and that more often than not it only multiplies the possibili-ties for unhappiness, both the rich of the earth and the poor are agreed that it is a misery they would prefer risking. The consumer ethos that pervades and sustains a high level of technology at the top of the human pyramid also pervades and sustains the grotesque want under which most of our kind are forced to live. - By far the greatest part of the human community has no opportunity for employing the technological tools that are now transforming the fac~ of the planet, and in many cases do not even know that they exist. Those who use jet transporta-tion are an absolute aristocracy; for every one of them there are several thousands who have never ridden a bicycle. The number of illiterates in the world still far The Art of Wasting 7~me / 9 outnumbers the number of those who even own radios; and the number of people who own television sets is far lower than the number of those whose annual income does not reach the cost of a television. The rest of humanity, for which individuals in the developed world have no time, have fallen into conditions made more difficult to escape by the surfeit that one small portion of the world enjoys. At the base of the human pyramid there are ~hundreds of millions living on the borderlands of vegetation and death, which in turn belongs to a group of nearly one billion people whom we have now come to speak of as the fourth world. Above them is the third world, over half of which lives in a poverty they have no hope of remedying, yet a poverty tortured by the knowledge that some of the race spend their lives struggling to acquire still greater surpluses of luxury, and to glut themselves with still more of the already maldis-tributed fruits of the earth. Those who are born and bred in life at the top of the pyramid have little practical feeling for the current inhumanity that is ravaging most of the race. They find it easier to imagine science-fictional futures than to imagine the present reality, let alone to image their own complicity in the way things are. They may watch documentaries about starvation in Africa or floods in Asia, but fail to make any connection when they book passage the next day for a tour in the Yucatfin. Or perhaps better, they have allowed their.questions to be silenced by the whole tangle of government and economic organizations that constantly complain of how com-plicated everything is. They may know that the budget of New York State, with its twelve million people, exceeds that of India with its six hundred million, and perhaps even permit themselves a sigh of pity; but they entrust the sorting out of injustices to the experts who have been trained to worry about such things. All the privileged of the earth know for sure is. that they have no objection to others sharing in their style of life, provided it does not make any demands on theirown appetities. Clearly, this is not enough. Within a generation we shall have six billion people on the earth, with five billion of them living in poverty. The tactic of indifference, which amounts to a war of the few against the many, kills and dehumanizes more effectively than any weapon we have yet dared to use. But it is running out of time. As the poor arm themselves with the surplus of our .stockpiles, sold off cheaply to make way for more advanced weaponry, we cannot suppose that they will forever remain content with waging war among themselves. The smaller and more concen-trated the centers of wealth become throughout the world, the more vulnerable they become to the masses of those who have been trained to be jealous of what others are free to consume. The urgency of the situation, however, is not of itself enough to guarantee the quality of any and every attempt to alleviate it. Just as time for the self and time for the earth tend to get absorbed without remainder into time for the consumption of luxuries advertised as refreshment from working time, so time for the human race all too readily gets twisted into the donation of services that perpetuate the spirit-ual impoverishment of the technological world by camouflaging it behind an 10 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 idiom of charity. Those who are touched with a sense of pity for the maldistribu-tion of wealth and feel the pressure to help, all too frequefitly lack the requisite insight into their own patterns of thought to realize how their aid can amount to the substitution of one form of dehumanization for another. In providing hospi-tals, schools, factories, and modern transport for the underprivileged (that is, for those denied the right to consume culture as we consume it), the donor organiza-tions narrow their responsibilities down tc~ the unilaterial sharing of goods and values. The possibility that alternate social systems, now' rendered obsolete, unproductive, and unsustainable by the current management of the world's resources, may have something to, teach the human community about liberation from the consumer ethos is pushed to one side in the rush to make amends for gluttony overcome with guilt in the face of deprivation. I1: the price of providing bread for the world is further investment in the current means of producing and distributing bread, then bread for the world there will never be. The economics of this are fairly intricate, but the direct ratio th~it obtains between the number of people who are starving to death and the increased number of organizations and agencies aimed at distributive justice is plain enough to see. A leisure that is freeing for the human race is not simply time given free of cost by the haves to the have-nots, but a time for withdrawal from the ruling myth of time. It must, in the first pla~e, be a waste of tilne altogether free of investments economic or ideological, time wasted on the whole of the race, ourselves included. Of all the forms of leisure, this is the one that has become most radically enslaved to the biases of working time, despite the way in which improved means of communication have enabled an altogether new image of the universal h~]man family. There may be no greater constriction of.the imagination in the history of human thought about world order than that of the present day face-off in devel-oped industrial nations between the philanthropic illusion of the rich nations of the world opening their storehouses to share with the poor on the one hand, and the financial illusion of increasing productivity to the point of being able to sell more goods more cheaply without monetary loss on the other. And this, too, is a mark of grave spiritual immaturity. The Reappropriation of Leisure If I have left a good deal in the previous pages to innuendo and only hints of an explanation of how leisure time has become victimized by the spread of consumer metaphors, it was not only to condense a manifold problem into a few words, but also to prepare for what 1 wish to propose by way of conclusion. Simply put, it comes to this: that only the personal awakening of increasing numbers of individ-uals to the considerable loss sustained by civilization in its forward march into technology can provide the footings for a modern spirituality, and that only the redemption of leisure time from its servility to current structures of thought can provide the conditions for such awakening. The reappropriation of the need for leisure--an unadvertised, unprofitable, and withal revolutionary need--begins with the individual or it does not begin at all. No one can stand l~roxy for another's The Art of Wasting Time spiritual conversion. No expertise can service a society with personal insight, judgment, and decision. For it is not so much concession to the logic of particular conclusions that is the point, but the recovery of the process of working one's own way out of familiar biases. This process hinges on the art of wasting time. In the first place, leisure time should nurture a spirit of resistance to the humors of resignation that poison the bloodstream of industrial society. It should increase one's resistance to the workaday bias that the submission and trust due divine providence, for having cast us into a world with hopes in our hearts too big for our abilities, should be extended into a submission and trust in social provi-dence, for having spun a web of institutions so tightly about us that we are powerless to do much more than lay a hand across our inquisitive mouths and adjust as best we can. From the point of view of the world of time where work gets done, free time that results in raising basic questions about that world is not only wasted time, it is counterproductive. No doubt a life in which leisure means nothing but filling up with comforts and entertainments the hollow gouged out of the soul by resignation to the complexities of modern life is an ideal few, if any, would Openly champion. But the fact is, the bare physical need for periodic reinvigoration always has a spiritual dimension to it as well, and in industrial society that spiritual dimension tends to vacillate between the reinforcement of patterns of passive consumption of relaxation and spare-time thoughts about better pay, shorter hours, or increased benefits. In either case, it remains subser-vient to the structures of work and effectively concedes defeat to their power. It lacks re-creativity. This is the idolatry, of epidemic proportions, that afflicts the spirituality of technological society. Second, in order to offer this sort of recreational resistance to the spirit of resignation, time wasted in leisure should be an abandon to the spirit of playful-ness. I use that word in a broader sense than either the games of children or the athletics of adults to cover not only the labor of alternative activities but also the enjoyments of repose; and in a narrower sense than sleep or intoxication on the one hand, moonlighting or profit-making hobbies on the other. The playfulness of leisure has three facets. The first of these is the imagination of possible futures in which we might be free of the oppressions of the present. If such futures are truly' possible, that is, if they are able to emerge out of the existing world by a rearrange-ment of its priorities, then their entertainment in imagination is capable of being sustained and deepened from one period of leisure to the next. This in contrast to the scattered daydreams of wishful thinking that come and go for all of us without effort or lasting impression. That is, such images can accumulate sufficient form in time to lead to the commitment to some preferable future from among the possi-bilities~ To experience such a reorganization of hope in playfulness is to experience the genesis of an ideal within oneself. Not to experience it is to keep leisure locked up in itself. And finally, there is the transition from the possible and the preferable to the enjoyment of the future in the present. This is where most people are best at wasting time, even though they may not know what they are doing. It consists in the construction of a temporary utopia about oneself where the things one values 12 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 most can be savored. It is a timefor tasting ideals of companionship without strife, pleasure without labor, crafmanship without pressure, play without punishment. The reigning fear among those who wish to protect their leisure time from being absorbed by spiritual or intellectual recollection is that too much reflection inhibits enjoyment. And to be sure, there are those whose twisted sense of asceticism drives them from one cause to the other, volunteering their services and neglecting the wisdom that comes from having a good, wasted time. At the other extreme, enjoyment cut off from reflection about the future altogether quickly shrivels up into a mere pampering of a self exhausted by labor, with the result that it becomes less and less enjoyable and more and more like the pure passivity of sleep. Some-where between the two lies the art of celebrating a world that is not but might be for a while, a world filled up with the spirit of playfulness. Third, leisure should help foster a spirit of survival in the midst of this by no means best of all possible worlds. Just as the struggle for physical survival requires ingenuity in using available resources and at the same time remaining alert to the opportunities for deliverance if and when they present themselves, so too with the struggle for spiritual survival. It requires anger against avoidable evils, sensitivity to appropriate solutions in which one's anger may be expressed, and the capacity to wait without exploding from within or being sapped of one's energies from without. One may have to buy chemically treated food because fresh produce has been priced beyond one's budget; one may have to drive an automobile to work because public transport systems have become an economic deficit to the com-munity; one may have to put up with menial labor because one's skills are not in demand; one may have to swallow large doses of injustice, stupidity, and callous-ness. But one does not have to pretend to like it or allow it to embitter enjoyment. Survival means wedding a resistance to resignation with a love of playfulness so as to forfeit neither the gusts nor the disgusts of life. Fourthly, leisure needs to infuse a spirit of the sacred into the time that we waste. When the ritual, beliefs, and holy writ of a religious tradition become fettered to the myth of consumer time, they forsake their sacredness. When they cease to cut like a. two-edged sword that denounces sinfulness and announces goodness, they dull and profane their capactiy of re-creation. At the same time, when they provide mere divertissement from the trials of working life or serve only as platforms for supporting the flood of causes that wash through the mass media with the regularity of spring and autumn fashions, they betray their meaning. Sacred time is not an investment measured in loss and profit to the current problems of a civilization. It is a necessity--the necessity to hallow the self, the earth, and the human race as a single great gift beyond all desert. It insures that, whatever of practical use may come out of time wasted in leisure, it is the wasting that is holiest. Sacred time unplugs us from our own time and opens up a horizon of all time, against which the greatest sin appears as the desire for absolute control and the greatest goodness as the grace of being absolutely loved. All of us, every soul of us on earth, breathe the myths of our civilization as inevitably as we breathe the air .that surrounds us. They are transparent, taken for The Art of Wasting l~me / 13 granted, but essential for human .life. Leisure time is like a flute that transforms.the silent secrets in the air into music. It shows us the harmonies and the cacophanies, the purity and the pollution of our myths. Without leisure, we have no way to know the air about us, no way to love back the One who made us the,mythmaking animals we are. View From Behind Tapestries look like battlefields from the back. Threads like soldiers in hand to hand combat-- who is most resilient? Arms locked, elbows out, clenched fists of knot scattered like small skirmishes across the expanse. Who is most flexible? Stitches quarrel in overbearing voice, rush to trenches, maintain positions. Colors invade each other's territory, singing violent victories of light. All clamor, all struggle, It faces the wall of faith while the weaver and the watcher . work from the front. St. Anne Higgins, D.C. 123 Franklin St., Petersburg, VA 23803 Celibacy in Africa Matungulu Otene, S.J. Zaire's Father Otene, ordained in 1977, is presently working in St. Peter and Paul parish: B.P. 1125: Lubumbashi: Zaire. This article is excerpted from the booklet. "C~libat Consacr~ pour une Afrique assoiff~: de F~:conditi:," published by Editions Saint-Paul Afrique, P.O. Box 8505; Kinshasa, which was translated into English by Louis C. Plamondon. S.J.: Manresa; Box 47154; Nairobi; Kenya. In English, it is no. 65 of the Spearhead series, "Celibacy and the African Value of Fecundity," published by Gaba Publications: P.O. Box 908: Eldoret: Kenya, which graciously granted permission for our use. ~f the reason for Christian celibacy is unique, that is, for Jesus Christ and his kingdom, every Christian called to this type of life is also called to live out this experience in the context of his own culture and personal history. An African celibate today is not celibate in exactly the same way as an Indian of today, even if both are celibate for the sake of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. There is a whole world of emotions and affectivity which permeates our celibacy very deeply. This is so true that the world we live in affects the objective and subjective content of our celibacy. Both what we hear being said about celibacy and what we experience in our flesh by living out what is said, are rooted emotions. Without this emotive element, there would be no human celibacy in the full sense of the term; conse-quently, there would be no Christian celibacy since the latter is deeply rooted in human nature and since celibacy itself has also to be incarnated. The affective life of a South American--his way of feeling and living celibacy--differs from that of an African from Zaire or Senegal. Among Africans there are a certain number of differences in affectivity. However, even if it must be admitted that within the same people there are different ways of feeling things, this, nevertheless, does not mean that African peoples do not have a greater affinity with one another than with peoples from the West or the East. After all, their cultural heritage is common. This seems evident even if there are shades of meaning or subtle nuances which are hard to express in these few short pages, which do not pretend to be a psycho-so-cial study of human societies. 14 Celibacy in Africa The cultural milieu in which the young African lives has a very great impact on his response to the Lord's call. Celibacy is surely an area in which sensibility is a very important factor, if not the most important. In fact, coming as he does from a family where marriage is viewed in a very special light, the young African will carry in the depths of his being, perhaps through his whole life, the impact of this way of thinking. It will take only a circumstance or an event to awaken in him a whole world of memories accumulated throughout his short life. The fact that his grand-father was polygamous, that his own father had more than one wife, and that his own mother was not the first wife of his father, nor the one preferred, cannot but have significance in his life of celibacy. The mere fact of knowing that in his extended family there is somewhere a cousin with five children, each with a different father, cannot be without significance. Those are his half brothers, but this entails that this good cousin of his.is a husbandless woman with children entirely dependent upon her. To know that his aunt is a prostitute with children, cannot' but have some impact on him. It is no small thing to have a deep sense of all these situations and still, despite all this, to dedicate his life to God in conse-crated celibacy. This world which I have just described briefly cannot be found as such in Europe nor in North or South America, but this is the world that has shaped the young African of whatever black African country he may be. One cannot ignore these realities and pretend that they do not have any influence whatsoever on people. For Africans the child is a reality to be treasured; and each human being does all in his power to leave behind him :some offspring, whether he be married or not married, living the life of a prostitute or of enforced celibacy. All Africans desire to have children, sometimes by any means. The young man who hears the Lord's call is living in this very world and not in any other. His' reflections and ways of thinking are rooted in the environment from which he comes, in the psycho-social milieu which surrounds him. This does not frighten the Lord just as no human milieu frightens him, because it is in such complex situations that he manages to find celibates for his kingdom. Growth in the Life of Celibacy To be sure, other cultures also have their own difficult problems in this area. I am merely showing that our way of experiencing the world has an influence on celibacy and that the cultural traditions are to be taken seriously, but without exaggeration. The young African called to a life of celibacy or religious life will have to integrate progressively within his affective life the realities which surround him without seeking to escape from them. He will do so by looking at them frankly, without panic, in prayer, in his personal relationship with Christ in the Eucharist. God's grace is always there, and this is what gives us confidence in the face of the strong temptations in this life. This young human being will have to understand that since the Incarnation, God gives his grace through weak human beings. Accordingly, to see clearly within his own being, he will have to be open with another person who has the experience of Jesus Christ. The one the Lord will "16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 put in his path will show him the road to follow and will give him courage in the moment of trial when temptations are strongest. Celibacy requires a lot of disci-pline. He will have to learn to exercise great control over his senses and sometimes to give up things which are innocuous, and to focus on the unique reality which is necessary, Jesus Christ. For certain types of people, chastity can be gained only after a hard fight lasting many years; and this can cause a lot of anxiety when it happens to people who are scrupulous by nature, yet desirous of achieving holiness. What I have just written is not rhetoric. It sometimes happens that young people are torn apart inwardly because they want to dedicate themselves entirely to the Lord but yet cannot completely control certain evil habits or certain attitudes which they find difficult to evangelize. I insist that it is a difficult fight--a fight to death--a fight which moulds a man gradually as he learns bit by bit not to depend upon his own strength but on that of the Lord who has set him apart from his mother's womb to preach his Gospel to men of good will There are less sensitive types of people who do not encounter very many types of problems in their development, but irrespective of their sensitivity, all will undergo moments when they are forced to make a decision for the Lord. The chastity that is required by a life of celibacy is not a case of spontaneous generation--it is a garden that must be tended lest weeds grow in it. When one has gone astray, one finds it difficult, sometimes even impossible, to go back; thus, it is not surprising that some young, generous people have gone astray. Vigilance is necessary in these matters, but the kind of vigilance characteristic of those who are sure of victory; for if Christ is with us, who can be against? Sooner or later Christ will defeat this devil of our middle age who likes to attack our flesh, born in the human condition, born incomplete. The young celibate, therefore, will learn not to abuse God's grace. He will be prudent; he will not take chances with his celibacy. He will have the simplicity of a dove but the prudence of a serpent. The married man who is a dedicated Christian will not flirt with other women lest his marriage, be threatened and, accordingly, his real happiness and that of his home. The same holds true for religious. They also cannot take chances with their passions and put themselves in the position of violating the gift they have made of themselves in the simplicity of their heart. Nothing escapes lay people when it comes to observing the behavior of reli-gious. They notice even the smallest detail when they want to criticize their priests or religious men and women. Some even take pleasure in judging them, in scrutin-izing their behavior to find the smallest reprehensible thing. In this way, they purify their religious, even without wanting to. Lay people are surely not gullible, even though they sometimes misinterpret the way African religious live out their celibacy. They can often distinguish between the religious who is loyal and faithful to his consecration to the Lord from the religious who is beginning to compromise and. to give in. Assuredly, their judgments are not gospel truth, and often one would do well to minimize themremembering that even the great saints were often Slandered by malicious tongues. Celibacy in Africa Certain Difficulties or Certain Illusions It is sad to 'note that many young, generous and seemingly solid religious have lost the grace of celibacy because of supposedly spiritual relationships with women religious and with young girls. There is nothing more dangerous than these suspect relationships between men and women religious, nothing more scandalous for African Christians than to see their priests, their men and women religious become involved in expressions of human love under the pretext of love in Christ.Many men and women religious believe rather too easily that they have been made immune to the weakness of their flesh. They are a little too quick to believe that they have attained the required maturity in celibacy. They sincerely think that henceforth sex has no hold over them since they have become spiritual. Yet, it is a very sad and illusory spirituality which makes man believe that he is now immune to sin. A really spiritual person, on the contrary, depends entirely on the grace of God without giving up healthy vigilance. I believe that the closer one gets to the Lord, the more one realizes that what seemed innocent until then now takes on the appearance of something that is not entirely pure. However, far from being threatened or discouraged by this increasing desire for purity, one has more and more confidence in the Lord and greater humility when one thinks 6f how little one is virtuous. In true love there is no fear. This is so, it seems to me, in the case of one who wants to respond wholeheartedly, day after day, to the call of him who has made us pass from darkness to his wonderful light. In my humble opinion, it often takes many years of solitude to be able to experience a true spiritual friendship in Christ with members of the other sex. The danger is to believe too quickly that the right moment has come. That is often when one goes astray. As for any genuinely Christian life, celibacy cannot go without suffering. There is no real celibacy without the mystery of the cross written, as it were, in the flesh of baptized people. A celibacy without renunciation, without a sacrifice that is willingly accepted, a celibacy which refuses to die like the grain of wheat fallen in the soil is a celibacy locked up in solitude and bearing no lasting fruit. There are people who are undoubtedly privileged because of circum-stances and especially because of the Lord, but let us not be too quick to classify ourselves among those people and risk spoiling the splendid grace the Lord has given to us--the grace of living the celibacy of simple people without any special favors from God, I mean without any extraordinary grace. This simple gift, in fact, honors the Lord just as much as the extraordinary gift that some of us humans might receive from God. I don't mean to say that it is absolutely impossible for men or women religious to experience a healthy spiritual friendship with members of the other sex, but I believe that some of us think that we have attained that stage when we really haven't. Often, because of a lack of restraint or a lack of real self-knowledge, one strikes up a friendship which will tomorrrow become sinful, therefore, bad for oneself and for theirs. A friendship to which we are too attached, a friendship which prevents us from fulfilling our duties is a friendship to be "18 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 purified or, better still to be abandoned while there is time; that is, as soon as we become aware off where it is. leading, the relationship must be severed politely and without human respect. This is for the greater good of the person whom we love in Christ; finally, it is for the greater glory of the one who has called us to holiness, Jesus Christ. In the same way, a friendship which would render a member of a religious order incapable of being available to do what his superiors want 9f him is simply not good. It is for the Lord that we have joined religious life, not for the purpose of surrounding ourselves with protective partnerships which go against true charity. In,his infinite goodness, the Lord may put on our path a person of the other sex for a certain period of time. This, person will enrich us through, friendship, and this enrichment can be mutual. But, here again, this gracemust be lived in all simplicity and with the necessary prudence since we are all weak, sinful human beings. Hope for Africa ~ , Certain missionaries have led young Africans to believe that celibacy is more difficult for them than !t is for young people from the West. This opinion is based on ignorance or it is a lie. The fundamental problem, in fact, is the same for all human beings; the conditions that are found in any culture are not qualitatively different. In the final analysis, it is the same fundamental problem for different people in different cultures; there are accidental but no essential differences. I have sometimes been shocked to hear this type of broad statement according to which it would be practically impossible for Africans to live a life of celibacy. For me, celibacy is rooted in faith in the living Christ. It is something which permeates the faith of the one who feels called, and faith is something which is given by the Lord without any distinction of culture or race. There are differences, but they are not so essential that they make a life of celibacy impossible in AfriCa. There are enough African religious to show th~.t this is true. Among these meia and women of Africa, often living in some isolated areas, there are men and women religious who live their cbnsecration to the Lord even in heroic fashion. Their silent example is enough to prove that celibacy is possible for Africans, at least for those who feel themselves called to it and who respond generously. Not too long ago, 1 was telling a group of young Africans the following: either we are Christians or we are not; either we believe in Jesus Christ or we don't believe in him at all. In this area there are no half measures. It's all or nothing. This is why faith in Jesus Christ requries a complete transformation of our life-style and of our outlook. One of the aspects of our outlook on life which must change because it is absolutely against Christianity is this requirement of a fruitfulness that is exclusively biological. A man without children among us in black Africa is one who does not bear fruit, who is useless and even an outcast. If there is an obstacle to the awakening and living out of vocations (and I am talking here about voca-tions to the priesthood or religious life), it is our too limited way of looking at fruitfulness. Many Africans believe that a man cannot be completely fulfilled in or outside of marriage unless he has many children. Among us, celibate people and Celibacy in Africa married couples without children are not seen in a good light because they seem useless to our society. It may be understandable that some non-Christians think this way. But for Christians this is disastrous. Haven't we ever meditated on the life of Christ? Can we ignore that he was himself celibate? Or do we believe that Jesus was not a man like us except for sin? Yet our creed is very clear on this. Jesus was truly God and he was truly man. If such is the case, why wouldn't we allow those among us who wish to live like Christ to doso? If it be true that the face of being celibate did not diminish the God made man, why wouldn't we accept that a certain number among us are not diminished by celibacy for Jesus Christ and his kingdom? Has the world ever known a being as fully developed as Jesus of Nazareth, our Love? Yet, he was celibate. Isn't this Jesus who lived without a wife and children still, even today, a source of all life for us? One doesn't lose anything by responding to his call, by becoming celibate for him and for his kingdom where we shall all have only one Father, his own, and where all of us will truly be brothers and sisters in the Spirit who makes us one. The young African is thus called to live a life of faith in Christ. He must not think that celibacy is more difficult for him than for young people in other continents. This is simply not true. Let us take the example of the West where today may be found pornographic films, sex shops, nightclubs. To live in such a world is not always easy. It requires a certain self-discipline. In order to live a life of celibacy in such an atmosphere, it is necessary to cling to Jesus Christ, to have a deep life of prayer and to receive the Eucharist regularly. The young African man or woman called to religious life will always remember that we live in a world of male and female; consequently, it is clear that we have to live our celibacy in the midst of men and women of our times and of our culture. There is nothing wrong with that; on the contrary, it is a grace that the Lord gives us by inviting us to live out his gospel in the midst of the world and not in some isolated corner. At the crossroads the Lord may put on our path certain persons of the other sex. We will welcome them as brothers and sisters in the Lord. The gospel is full of examples that show us how Jesus respected persons of the other sex. He doesn't send away the sinful woman who comes to the house of Simon, the Pharisee to have her sins forgiven. On this occasion, Jesus could have been afraid of shocking people by receiving such a woman with open arms. But the Lord was not afraid of what people would say or think because in true love there is no fear. Neither does Jesus judge the woman caught in adultery like the Pharisees who bring her to him. On the contrary, he defends her against the "unmarked tombs" who have grown old in sin and yet want to preach to others. Jesus is close friends with Martha and Mary as well as with their brother, Lazarus. Jesus has pity on the widow from Naim who has lost her son. The Lord admires the Canaanite woman's faith, and he is exceedingly affectionate toward his mother Mary, the Immaculate Virgin. In his Gospel, the Lord shows us how his celibacy did not exclude anybody. He Was completely open; he welcomed others. In solitude he prayed and he was a 20 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 source of joy and peace for the people that God, his Father, had placed in his path. If religious life is to flourish in our African continent,it is necessary that there be more and more religious who witness by their life of celibacy. A celibacy based on Jesus Christ cannot but be fruitful. Black Africa, which has such a high regard for fruitfulness, will see a new type of love which outstrips in fruitfulness the love of the children of this world. We, the sons and daughters of Mother Africa, have believed in the word of him who said, "there are some who are eunuchs because they have made themselves so for the kingdom of heaven. Let him who can understand, understand" (Mt 19:!2). If there is a word which has become the life of our life, that is the one. Spiritual Fruitfulness If there is a fruitfulness that is biological, there is another one which is spiritual. Any parent worth his salt knows that it is' not enough to procreate children. In responsible parenthood, it is also necessary to help the child that we have brought to life to grow untilhe has reached a stage where he will truly be an adult. To educate, to instruct are part and parcel of his awakening to human life. It takes only one instant for a couple to initiate the process of procreation. It takes only a little time to call someone into existence, but it requries many years for a child to become an adult. Whether it be as parents, as educators, or in any other capacity, all those who are engaged in human formation are doing a type of work that is spiritually generative. Any man who helps another one grow and become more human is a man who is gpiritually generative. This spiritual generation exists at various levels; yet, the spiritual fruitfulness of a Christian is not that of a non-Christian. From a Christian point of view, any Christian man or woman who awakens another human being to the life of God in Jesus Christ is spiritually fruitful. The object of spiritual fruitfulness for a Christian is Jesus Christ and his message. It is the person of Christ which distinguishes any typically Christian fruitfulness from any other. All Christians are called to be fruitful but in different ways and in accordance with their state in life. The form of life of one who wakens to the life of God in Jesus Christ is not something that is accidental. There are some who believe that the way of life--whether it be of married Christians or of "eunuchs for the king-dom of God"---has no importance in the process of awakening to life. But when one awakens somebody else to life, one does it with all one's being. If our way of life is not something external to us but a part of our being and, therefore, a part of our relationship to God, to others, and to the world, we can readily understand that this life-style is not without importance in matters of spiritual fruitfulness. In his life Jesus preferred celibacy to marriage, and this choice is not something accidental. The Jesus of the gospels presents himself to us as celibate and not otherwise, and this is part of the mystery of incarnation. In the same way Jesus was not at the same time a man and a woman. He was not both married and non-mar-ried. He was a celibate, and tfiis fact has some relevance in the transmission of his Celibacy in Africa message. He wanted to be born of a virgin, Mary, and this also is not something purely accidental or accessory in the mystery of salvation. Thus one who chooses celib~acy for the kingdom of God is fruitful differently from married people. This difference is rooted in the order of being and not of having. It is an ontological reality and, therefore, it is a dimension surrounded with mystery. The spiritual fecundity of those who live in celibacy resembles closely that of Christ. In other words, the way that Christ was spiritually fruitful resembles the way in which a man is fruitful through a celibacy chosen for Christ. Obviously "to resemble" or "to be close to" is not the same thing as "to be identical to." Wherever a true local Church is to be found, there will be found also Christians who are married and Christians who are eunuchs for the kingdom. Each of these forms of life has a great importance in the aspect of fecundity which is essential for the life of the Church. The uniqueness of the spiritual fruitfulness of a celibate for the kingdom of heaven shares something of the mystery of God made man, of God who wanted to be among us without woman or child while being eternally generative. Death Song of a Grain of Wheat Born above the earth, Beloved of the sun, Sky-held. Rain-touched. Wind-taught to dance, I know I sang of joy. Borne beneath the ground, Forsaken by the sun, Sky-denied, Rain-forgot, I feel no more the winds, And know a slower song. Yet reach I for the sun-set fires And C~rr the hidden waters. Stretched, song-heavy with the wait ' Of days too long to measure, I learn to trust the darkness That consumes me: That sends my myriad children to be Born above the earth. Sister Linda Karas. RSM Mercy Consultation Center P.O. Box 370 Dallas, PA 18612 The Sparrow Has Found Its Home At Last: A Personal Account of Transfer Anonymous The author is a sister who transferred from an active to a contemplative community some several years ago. She explains in the article why she prefers to remain anonymous. The sharing which follows comes as the result of a suggestion made to me that I write about my experience of transfer from an active community to a contempla-tive order. My first response was a hasty and hearty "No." Then the possibility of helping any individual or community involved in a similar experience crept into my prayer and thinking. The good which might be achieved seemed to outweigh my natural reticence and my disinclinatio.n to discuss the subject. I have not taken any polls, nor have I statistics. I personally know exactly six solemnly professed nuns and a few people in formation who transferred from active to contemplative life. However, one would'have to have lived on a remote Pacific atoll for the last several years not to know that transfers are on the increase. What follows is not a scholarly analysis of the phenomenon of transfer. It is just my own experience and an endeavor to share what ! have learned. The reason for my choosing anonymity is that I might feel freer in what I write and also guard the identity of my former and present communities. There is another reason: the story is more God's than my own. The transfer, or more correctly, my contempla-tive vocation, is his work, his call, his idea. My part has only been a response to his initiative and to his love. Early History The idea of transfer did not come as a sudden inspiration. My first desire to be a nun came when ! was twelve and I was certain then that I was called to be a contemplative: I even knew to which order and monastery I was attracted. Some-thing, though, interfered with following this vocation: My father adamantly opposed the idea of his daughter being immured in a cloister. The whole topic was 22 A Personal Account of Transfer forbidden, and gradually I forgot the idea. In the meantime, I became acquainted wi~h the sisters working in our parish. I won my father's consent to join this :community which 1 genuinely loved and admired. I received a good fo, rmation and an excellent education. I was very happy and contented. One thing consistenly moved and drew me: prayer. Right from the beginning I had some difficulty with meditation books and their outline of points, colloquies and resolutions. It all seemed too ready-made. Also, the time given to this prayer (one-half hour) never seemed to satisfy my longing for greater intimacy and depth. My difficulty was remedied by the fact that God simply transcended the books and led me along his chosen path for me in prayer. Another remedy came by way of hiding alone in solitary places on the novitiate property. There God had free rein in my heart. The one thing I most wanted was to love him and see him known and loved. Of course I did try to speak of this desire to superiors. They seemed mbre concerned that I live the common life, practice virtue, and eliminate my faults. All this was quite understandable but not terribly encouraging. Matters came to a head when I became a junior sister. My desires for loving God alone and in hiddenness, and for a life which would embrace withdrawal and penance became a steady fire within me. Neither studies nor work could distract me from it. After some months of inner turmoil I finally had the courage to broach the subject of a contemplative vocation to the community confessor, a, retreat maste.r, and my immediate superior. None of these persons told me the whole thing was a temptation against my vocation, but since 1 was happy and well adjusted, they each felt that I had enough opportunity for the things I was seeking within the scope of the religious life as it was then being lived in the congregation. Again, this was essentially what I had been told in the novitiate. My disappoint-ment was as strong as the attraction I had experienced but l was able to set aside my yearning. The work in which I was engaged kept me busy. I enjoyed it and gave myself to it wholeheartedly. A few years later, an unforgettable retreat, coupled with God teaching me to pray with Scripture some months after retreat, gave direction and support to me in my relationship with him. He was so near, and daily he spoke to me in his word. This did not rekindle the desire for contemplative life~ but it did establish me firmly in the way of contemplative prayer. This brief history serves, I think, to underscore a fact in my life and in the lives of those women whose stories of transfer I know well: the vocation was felt very early and not taken too seriously by those in a position to advise and assist. Had they done so, a good deal of the suffering, struggle and turmoil of coming to a decision to transfer,after many years in an apostolic congregation might have been mitigated. . Coming to a Decision In the years following Vatican Council II my community undertook its renew-al and adaptation. I welcomed all the initial changes as healthy and hopeful. As time went on, however, I became unhappy with my own and the community's level 24 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 of secularization. My modest wardrobe and collection of trifling possessions troubled my conscience. I wanted and expected to receive annual assignments, but the new approach of applying for both position and residence, with the full expectation that one's preferences would be honored, contradi6ted my understand-ing of Gospel obedience. T.V., mixed drinks, popular novels, dating, and all the inevitable departures from religious life were matters of grave concern to me. It seemed to me that the true life of the community was ebbing away, that God and the love of God were no longer the focus of life. We still did a first-class job in our work, but there appeared to me~ little difference between ourselves and dedicated lay persons. Without going into more detail, I felt it necessary to include the foregoing inasmuch as it formed some of the background for my transfer. However, I do not feel that discontent and disapproval, even if justified, are good reasons for transfer. They would form a very shaky foundation for any new beginning and would surely raise questions in the community accepting a transfer sister. Flight from trouble could well indicate that the same pattern would be followed in the new community. It could also mean that the heart of the problem might be within the sister herself, and her response to difficult circumstances. Fleeing trouble was never part of my motivation. Had this been the case, I would have done it much sooner because I lived in painful community situations for several years before making a transfer. Furthermore, 1 was always very open and honest in communicating my thinking to my superiors. One cannot simply leave. There must be integrity in the decision and it should be made in peace and, as far as possible, in harmony with one's higher superiors. There should be no bitterness, resentment or anger. The vocation is followed as God's call and is a result of his initiative. This fact, if kept central in the minds of all concerned, makes for peace; and it is in this way that God's presence manifests itself to all involved. God uses all our experiences to our good and brings about his purposes. While not my motivation, discontent and disapproval were part of my personal expe-rience and did serve to keep me from what I saw as wrong, In a more positive vein, they ,kept me praying for God's light, strength and help. Certain tragic events in my own family also form a part of this picture and had their effect. Instead of completely discouraging me or leading me to despair or exodus from religious life altogether, everything brought me to the God of all peace and consolation. He alone became myRock of Refuge and Teacher. The alienation I experienced from my community and its value increased my love for him and my trust in him. Thus it was that my attraction for simply being with God in love grew stronger. A mere "concidence" (in quotation marks because the providence of the God who numbers the hairs of our fieads extends to every circumstance and happen-ing) occasioned my writing to the superior of a monastery. In time we became correspondents. When I first visited her and met her community in the grilled and bare parlor of the monastery I was deeply moved. This surprised me. I had not thought of contemplative life as my vocation for years, yet here 1 was, feeling completely at home with relative strangers and very strongly drawn to their sim- A Personal Account of Transfer / 25 plicity, humility, joy, peace and poverty. In the months that followed 1 was haunted by the experience. I found out more about their life and read of their origin. Could it be? Might 1 become one of them? Or was this merely a desire for escape from present suffering ("the grass is always greener.") or a dream too good to be true? Then, too, there was the possibility to be faced that God was calling me to deeper contemplative prayer rather than actual contemplative life. And might I be doing more good in the world outside a cloister rather than in it? I went through this inner and secret turmoil for several months. All the while 1 begged for light and some discernible, positive direction from God. 1 kept waiting and hoping for some outside confirmation of God's will. God was, in fact, giving me all the "signs" I needed, but I distrusted the most significant of them: the profound attraction the life held for me over the years and especially at that moment, the fact that it fulfilled the most unselfish aspirations of my heart, and the fact that I seemed to have the requisite "talents." How is it we so readily distrust our own intuition and heart? Yet here at the deepest level of our being is where God works. Again, I have heard the same experience related by others who transferred to contemplative life. 1 went through no particular "process" of dis-cernment. There was just myself and, I trust, the Holy Spirit, plenty of tears, prayer, and searing, soul-searching honesty. One thing 1 knew: my life had one purpose and that was to love God with all my heart and soul, mind and being and to tend solely to him. Nothing else mattered. I did not see it then as clearly as I do now, but that, too, was evidence of a contemplative vocation, and had been the most important reality in my whole religious life. In his own time, God spoke, and he completely calmed the storm. I came to a "peace surpassing understanding." All my doubts vanished. My questions came to an end. I knew. In light of that peace I first asked the superior of the monastery (of the same order as that to which I was first attracted at the age of twelve) if there were any possibility of her accepting me. At the time I made my request I know now I was too little aware of the risk a small enclosed community takes in accepting a transfer. 1 next confided in my old and saintly grandmother who gave me her blessing, encouragement and wisdom--along with a warning that there was "still plenty of the world" in me and that I'd have far to go. She was absolutely correct. With my grandmother's prayers to back me, I approached my major superior. She was wonderful and accepting. The depth of my peace and conviction were evident to her. She fully realized and agreed.that this was a genuine vocation and not a result of any differences of values or opinions. We communicated in a real spirit of love. Not knowing much about contemplative life, her concern was that my personality might be stifled or my gifts ignored and unused. 1 had tentatively broached the subject to a priest friend in a letter some weeks before. Visiting him, 1 told him the whole story and said that I really thought it was God's will for me to transfer. He informed me that it came as no surprise to him, that he had seen it coming but had not wanted in any way to interfere with God's guidance of me. Among my family and friends, the least suprised was my mother. Her intuition had led her to realize that a great change was in the offing. 96 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 The responses of all the above mentioned persons further confirmed my expe-rience. I cannot say that my decision was accepted or understood by all my friends and religious family. It caused some painful estrangements and there were those who could only accept it as my "thing" and therefore all right for me. The actual process of transfer was thus initiated after what had felt like an interminable period of waiting and praying. Perhaps God wanted me to realize that it was first necessary that I be utterly surrendered to his desires and that the only way he could achieve this was to let me struggle on "alone" during that time. It was a kind of game of love. He so deeply drew me but never let me fully reach him. Left to myself 1 could not believe in my own heart. It was not until he gave me that unmistakable sign and gift of peace that 1 was sure that what I had been experiencing in my own heart was indeed his will for me, that the two were not two, but one. Legal Process of Transfer Because 1 am rather sure questions about procedure will arise, it may be helpful here to tell what 1 know about getting the document known as a "Rescript of Transfer" from the Sacred Congregation for Religious. In my own case this was done in the last months of my postulancy immediately prior to my receiving the habit and commencing my canonical year. For the validity of novitiate, one must have this document. Ordinarily the Vicar for Religious of the diocese in which the monastery is located handles the paperwork. He directed that three letters be written: the first by the superior of the community ! was leaving expressing her approval and her willingness to receive me back at any time before solemn vows should I leave the monastery; the second by the superior receiving me stating her willingness to receive me and including pertinent data regarding my status in religion (name, age, years professed, community of origin); the third by myself. handwritten and addressed to the Pope, stating my request and my reasons for it. These letters are sent to the Vicar who forwards them to.Rome through his office. In approximately six weeks, upon receipt of the rescript, he sends copies to the superiors. This is, as ! understand it, the general procedure, although I have heard of it being done through the Vicar of the diocese which the transferring sister was leaving. I have also heard of cases handled by a major superior independently of the Vicar for Religious. The superior dealt directly with the Sacred Congregation for Religious. In any case, this rescript is the only permission one needs to begin the canonical year and proceed through formation to vows. New Beginning I entered upon my new life with certain expectations. Some were realistic and some not so realistic. It was realistic to expect some sense of dbjb vu. This was in many ways a return to customs and practices l had lived in my first several years of religious life. With these things I was at home. I had also rightly anticipated a warm community life. Of course 1 allowed for a period of adjustment, but I did not A Personal Account of Transfer expect it to last more than six to eight weeks, in fact, it took much longer than that. The reason was not that I was too old to learn or change or that 1 lacked a willing docility. It was more subtle than this. Without realizing it, I expected to enter upon a period of rest, a sort of honeymoon in a safe harbor after years of struggle and sorrow. This was not to be. For one thing, the monastic community I entered was going through its own renewal pains. And much worse, for me, was that when I came in the front door of the monastery it seemed that God left by the back door. Here 1 was at last, and where was he? The work tired me. The hard bed took some getting used to. Often it was impossible to get back to sleep once it had been broken by the Office or night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Sometimes the closeness of my neighbors irritated me beyond measure. There were no days off from routine. I expected to master everything easily but it turned out that I was the one to be mastered. After many years in religious life it amazed me to learn how deluded I was about myself. Without the distractions of apostolic work and all that goes with it, without useless conversation, reading and entertainment, God's light began to clarify my vision. The very starkness of the life, its purity, makes for this experience. I was face to face with myself, my weakness, my poverty. Anything is possible if God is tangibly supporting us. It is when he is appar-ently nowhere to be found that things get out of hand and we are unable to cope with the simplest and most normal inconveniences and trials of daily life. But ought not a contemplative be able always to find refuge in prayer? Self-made prayer is most unsatisfactory. What a contemplative learns by being unable to pray, by being reduced to utter poverty at every level of existence (and this was my experience) is just to cling in naked faith to Jesus Crucified. Paradoxical as it may sound, there is no greater happiness. Having come to this reality through suffering, both in my life before 1 entered the monastery and in the years 1 have been here, I know something of what it means to say with Paul that I have been crucified with Christ, that my life is not my own and Christ lives in me (Ga 2:19-20). The way to the deepest joy I have ever known is just as the Son of God has taught us and that way is by losing my life and denying my very self. The total experience of knowing myself as nothing, of having nothing, has opened my eyes in faith to the All within me, the Being who in unfathomable love calls non-being into union with himself. My love for God, my hunger for him, unites me at the Heart of Reality with all my brothers and sisters in this world. I do not live for myself, nor suffer for myself, nor weep for myself. My vocati6n embraces every person on earth. In their names 1 pray and work. In their names, I, too, am in misery and pain. I am a whole world calling to God in need, in love, in trust. 1 have entered eternity in time and within me there is infinite scope for love. I came because of love and I have stayed because of love. Surely it is "a narrow gate and a hard road" (Mt 7:13-14), but it "leads to life," life opening more and more into the mystery of God as love. The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction Barbara Armstrong, O.SS.R. This article had its origin in a presentation made to a group of retreat masters by Sister Barbara, a cloistered nun residing in the Redemptoristine Monastery; Liguori. MO 63057. Somewhere in her writings, the great St. Teresa compares the contemplative with the standard-bearer in battle. She says that, because he is the standard-bearer, he is exposed to great danger. He can't defend himself because he carries the standard, of which he must not let go--even if he is to be cut to pieces. "Contemplatives," she says, "have to bear aloft the sign of humility, the Cross. And they must suffer all the blows aimed at them without striking back. Their duty is to suffer as Jesus did." "Let them watch what they are doing," she says again, "for if they let the standard fall, the battle is lost." It isn't the standard-bearer who is important. It is the standard itself which is all important, for it is imprinted with the sign of our salvation: the Cross. Perhaps this is why there are so few contemplatives. Perhaps, too, this is why contempla-tives need all the help they can get just to respond fully to the call of their vocation, to persevere and become fruitful in the Church of today. You Have No Eyes to See The message sent to the Church in Laodicea, in the Book of Revelation, is also a message meant for contemplatives--and for those who guide them. Right after the familiar passage about lukewarmness, we hear the Lord say: "You have no eyes to see that you are wretched, pitiable, poverty-stricken, blind and naked. My advice to you is to buy from me that gold which is purified in the furnace, so that you may be rich, and white garments to wear so that you may hide the shame of your nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes to make you see." That phrase, "You have no eyes to see," is significant for us because ignorance The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction is one of the reasons why relatively few contemplatives ever attain the end for which they were called: union with God. Mystical graces, we are told, are always available. God's goodness and generosity are never lacking. But very few actually arrive at a state of contemplation. Why is this? To answer this question, I would like to tell you a story. Actually, it is a parable which is told in the book of a Carmelite nun, Sister Ruth Burrows. Here is her parable. A Love Story Hidden away in a valley surrounded by high mountains there lived a very primitive tribe. The people of this tribe knew very little of the world outside their valley. Occasionally, they would get a glimpse of a jet streaking across the sky far over their heads, and this, they thought, was one of the gods throwing spears at another. One day a man appeared in the valley, a young anthropologist. He had come to study the tribe at close quarters--if they would have him. But they were a gentle tribe, so they welcomed him. The young man was lodged in the chief's hut and lived there for some years. Eventually he fell in love with the chief's daughter and married her. Hitherto, the girl had thought herself wealthy. Was not her father the most powerful of their people? But the closer she grew to her beloved, the more she saw that her riches--the family cattle, some cooking pots and animal skins--were as nothing compared to the possessions that were her husband's. He had materials, leathers and machines, knives and matches to make fire--riches unimaginable. But the girl saw, too, that her husband's greatest delight was to share his riches with her. Her lack merely aroused his bounty, so she knew her poverty itself primarily as a richness, giving them both pleasure. There came a time when the anthropologist had to leave and, taking his wife with him, he returned to his own civilization. The native girl found this new environment terribly alien. She discovered, to her horror, that her husband's enemies laughed at him behind his back because of his primitive wife. Even his friends pitied him. She didn't know what to do with this bitter knowledge. Some-how she had brought disgrace on her loved one. The girl always knew that her husband loved her. She knew that he longed to share his heart with her, take her completely into his life. But when he tried to speak of so many things closest to him, she would notice his voice falter, for she could not follow even the meaning of his words, let alone the scope of his thoughts and concepts. She was shut off from him by her own limitation and ignorance. That caused her distress almost beyond bearing. The more she realized what her poverty cost her beloved, the more absolute became her will to escape from it for his sake. Equally the more clearly did she see that, of herself, there was no escape. But all was not lost because she also realized that in her husband she had come not only to understand her poverty, but to find an effective and everpresent escape from it. From him she could receive all that his Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 love had prepared for her. So she opened her heart to everything he had to offer her. She found in him the most loving of teachers. Soon she became the echo of his thought. There passed between them intimate glances of complete understanding. She had an intuitive knowledge of how his mind worked, so closely did she grow to him. Yet she bad lost nothing of that natural woman he had first loved. On the contrary, she only now realized her own innate capacity. Her enrichment had brought all that was already there to bloom. But now, more than ever, she knew, too, that this was all his doing. Every perception, every growth, had come from his love and his teaching. Genuine Contemplatives This story, lengthy though it be, brings out so many important points about the contemplative vocation. Years ago, maybe it's different now, one of the phrases we often heard was that "we should strive for perfection." This tended to make us think that we could do it all ourselves. The main idea seemed to be that we were in control of our lives. The success of things depended on our own efforts. And so, many of us thought we could become contemplatives by the things we did. Like the primitive tribe of our story living in their valley, though, our horizons were very limited. We were content with our regulated existence, our own personal riches and the consolations sent us from time to time by a loving God. Much confid~nce was attached to the good things of our little enclosed world. We had no eyes to see beyond our then present peaceful life. But since we are meant to be genuine contemplatives, Jesus began to break through our ignorance and complacency. He asked us to leave our valley of poverty. He invited us to a rich interior world, one we had never dreamed of. These invitations continue to be offered to us in many ways. Perhaps they come in a retreat, in a sermon, in our reading, or through the words of a friend. But the voice is the voice of Jesus, and he invites us over and over again. If the primitive tribe in our story had turned away the young anthropologist when he came among them, he would never have married the chief's daughter. She would never have learned about the larger world; she would have stayed in her ignorance. Think of all the beauty, rich, ness and love of which she would have been deprived. The great St: Teresa was satisfied for a long time with her routine religious exercises, even though in her heart she knew better. We read that she continued to live just over twenty ,years with her heart divided between two extremes: the pleasures, satisfactions and pastimes of her fashionable world, and the spiritual life of a contemplative. How can this happen? How can we contemplatives continue to fool ourselves ---even though we are continually prodded, continually touched by grace? One of the ways we contemplatives have of staying in our valley of poverty is by our attachment to .the Law. We can" fall prey to a sort of fanatical legalism. The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction Most often, it seems, it is the most pious of persons who become rigid and unbending formalists. "Here at last," we say, "is something solid to hang on to." In our own eyes we are in the right. "We are doers of the Law." Any ,doer of the law, however, will also be tempted to live by the law, whereas the true lover of Jesus lives by the spirit. We contemplatives tend to make the Law, and it alone, our security. We never even dream that it is possible to seek a perfection in anything whatever with an intensity of zeal that is in itself imperfect. For instance, often in the past, the cross, austerity, suffering was unthinkingly perverted by us in our zeal. Wehad the idea that, since we were only pleasing God when we were suffering, the more suffering the better. Fearing and hating our bodies, we thought, would make us spiritual people. This, together with the notion that we were redeemed by suffering since Jesus died for us, we pushed .to its logical conclusion, thinking that we could never have too much suffering. It wasn't suffer-ing that redeemed us. It was love.t We contemplatives can develop attachments to just about anything: to prayer and fasting for their own sake; to a pious practice or devotion; to a custom or system of spirituality; to a method of meditation, even to contemplation itself (or to what we think is contemplation.) We can become attached to virtues, to things that, in themselves, are marks of heroism and high sanctity. We religious men and women, called to be saints, can allow ourselves to be blinded by an inordinate love for such things and can remain just as much in darkness and error as those who seem far less perfect than we. Some of us can become gluttons for prayer and for silence and solitude. Silence can become an ultimate. When there is noise we become angry and rebel-lious. If we are required to set aside our solitude for the sake of charity, we fill the air with our complaints. This kind of solitude and silence is false, of course, a refuge for the individualist. Perhaps the deepest attachment of all, the one which keeps us in our valley of poverty the longest, is attachment to ourselves. On this we must keep a fingerhold; we just cannot let go. Self-respect, self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction--we have to look good in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. We worry.about failure because somehow we are not living up to the expectations we have set for our-selves. Only secondly do we consider the expectations of God. In our story the chief's daughter found that her lack aroused her husband's bounty. She knew her poverty primarily as a sweet thing. But covetous as we are, we contemplatives want our hands full. We must have something of our own which we can bestow on God; or at least hold out to him, thinking to win him over with our generosity. When Jesus Touches Us Sooner or later we begin to realize that this way of living does not work; we begin to see that relying on ourselves alone is doomed to failure. When Jesus touches us with his mystical graces, what happens? Our eyes are opened and we are Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 dissatisfied with everything. This overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction could very well be Jesus' most precious gift of all. But it does not seem so to us~ We look within and discover the same faults and vices we have always been burdened with. Prayer has become almost unbearable. Spiritual things in general lose their familiarity and joy. Panic deepens. Life seems turned upside down and inside out. Above all this, the knowl-edge that we have failed the Lord, that we have dropped the standard, that the battle is being lost--this is our deepest sorrow. But although all seems lost, what we experience in reality is the finding of our true life in Jesus. Like our primitivegirl, we, too, begin to realize, at last, that only in Jesus will we find our ever present redemption from our dreaded poverty. Retreat masters, spiritual directors and confessors will do us the greatest favor if they direct their efforts toward instilling in us an abiding trust in the all-loving Providence of God and in the saving life of Jesus. They should help us to mistrust ourselves and to surrender ourselves into His hands. They should teach us to cling to him no matter how dark things seem to be, teach us to have faith in his love and in his forgiveness no matter what we think we have done; no matter how we think we have failed. Signs of Progress What are the signs by which spiritual directors may gauge for certain real progress in contemplatives? Some of the outward manifestations of an inward mystical encounter or of infused contemplation might be the following: We contemplatives might describe to directors an experience of a deep and painful knowledge of ourselves, for we begin to see ourselves as we truly are. We may say that all our illusions are b~ing shattered, especially our illusions of self-importance. We may tell them that all our cherished ambitions are unmasked for the first time, or that we feel our dignity has been overthrown. We will, perhaps, tell them that we are lost; that we are not sure any more if we are leading dedicated lives at all. We exper!ence a growing sense of insecurity. At the same time, strange as it may seem, we experience at~ acceptance of this state. As our native girl found when she op~ned her heart to everything her husband had to offer her, so we contemplatives begin to see everything in a different light. Our lives of austerity, our efforts at mortification will acquire a deeper significance. We understand that as God is our life, we must let nothing take the edge off our need for him. This is a new way of living out our hunger and thirst, our refusing to be satisfied. We are consenting to have no security and no other satisfaction but God; a God who is unseen and unfelt. So near is he and so awesome, that unless we say "Yes" to him all the time, and accept life as he gives it, we must return to our valley of poverty. The temptation to turn back can be overwhelming. But it is also true that we are given a powerful strength at this time, enabling us to persevere. All this, of course, is an effect of Jesus' lox;e for us. We remember, indeed we cannot for a The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction moment forget, that any enrichment in us is all his doing. Still, this is a time of great struggle and temptation. Perhaps the greatest temptation will be to abandon prayer or at least to try to escape, in some way, the grievous suffering of a deep emptiness and poverty within. This empty prayer, however, has tremendous importance. If we consent to wait humbly for the Lord, we will, all unknowingly, find that it is precisely in this arid waste that Jesus is touching us. At this juncture, the contemplative might tell the director of an experience of being literally undone and remade, for there are no half measures any longer. What is really happening is that our faith is being deepened all the time. A sure sign that we contemplatives have not made progress will be precisely the certainty that we have! Alternatively another certain sign of growth might be the gradual disappearance of a tendency to criticize and find fault. There appears instead, a more gentle outlook; a kinder and more compassionate approach, thanks be to God. Love: Human and Divine Love has been our theme all the way through. But now I would like to be a li'ttle more specific about love, I mean the place of both human and divine love in the contemplative life. I think we will all agree that human affection is probably the most sweeping emotion in us. So, from the outset, we need to keep these two loves, the human and the divine, in order, lest the human sweep us off the foundation of the divine. To feel attraction for another, of course, is not wrong. Yet, for some of us, it can and does become a .dangerous thing. We fear to admit our feelings and to accept them, for the very difficulty in doing so can pose a thousand problems for us. At the same time, we know that this is the only healthy approach. It means we are accepting our sexuality and womanliness. I wonder if any of us ever fully grasps what a block to God's transforming action lies in the refusal to face up to and integrate our sexuality, and live it out continently for the glory of God? The Carmelite, Sr. Ruth Burrows states: "Being sexual means basically that 1 am a half and. not a whole. I am incomplete as I am and I tend, unconsciously, always to seek my other half, even though consciously, ! have renounced my right to marry and have children and be made whole by another. But grace does not work fully in a half person, so I struggle to love purely though it be through a great deal of suffering, because Jesus has promised to fill my emptiness with himself and so take away the ache of loneliness. If I am to become whole it will be in him and I must live in the hope of becoming whole in him and in him alone." The greatest danger is that we will try to get rid of the pain. We will even deny that these desires and attractions exist because they do not fit our stereotypic image of "the holy nun for whom God is enough." When we deny these feelings, the temptation will be to seek compensation for what we have given up. Frustrated longing comes to the surface sooner or later. It shows itself in outward behavior 3tl / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 such as domination of others, maternalism (or paternalism), or a passive or child-ish dependence. Who hasn't encountered these types in religious life? There are the old maids or bachelors. They will avoid personal involvements of every kind. In the name of holy recollection, they "keep their hearts for God alone." They are afraid to make friends and so they play it safe. Then there are the frustrated wives and mothers--and we might add, frus-trated fathers. These have never faced up to the truth of their feelings and desires. So they live on compensations instead of on God. They use their friends selfishly, looking for gratification from them. They dominate.and control other lives for their own ends, thinking all the while that this is "holy freedom" and "human fulfillment." To get back to us women: a woman, by nature, is meant to be selfless, receptive, wholly intent on giving and loving, that others 'might become them-selves. But when we see so many religious women leave their institutes these days, giving up their vocation and going back to secular life, we're not judging them when we ask, "Could it be that they did not get the help they needed in this problem of love?" Perhaps they found no one to understand their problem. Was there anyone to whom they could have gone for guidance amid these conflicting feelings, desires and attractions? I think we all need to know that it's alright to feel attraction and affection for others, especially for those of the opposite sex. I think we need to hear again and again that the feeling of attraction is only one side of love; that it may lead to love but that it is not itself real love but only a feeling. And like any feeling, it will not last thus forever. In the meantime, the tension in which we are caught, between our desires for exclusive love and our commitment to universal love, needs some level-headed self-control. We need someone to encourage us tO effort, watchful-ness and patience, humility and trust in divine grace. The struggle will teach us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature. There is no doubt that we will grow from this struggle, which with God's help will become creative. We will learn to grow up, to take total responsibility for our own lives, their choices and decisions. And we will allow no one and nothing to turn us away from the principles by which we wish to live. The ultimate answer is found only when Jesus is re'peatedly placed before us as the object of our whole desire, and when, by repeated redirection, we are gradually transformed into him. Viva Memoria Finally, there comes a time when the interior rending apart, the anxiety, the sense of terrible absence are no more. The mysteries of Jesus, previously seen as the imitation of Christ giving the external principles by'which we were guided, now become our own mysteries, and we live progressively the life of Jesus; we become literally living memories. All that happens to the "personal me" begins to give joyful insight into the knowledge of Jesus himself. ~ Our venerable foundress, Mother Mary Celeste, has something to tell us about The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction this mystical state of contemplation. In her prayer our Lord speaks to her in these words which she passes on to us: "My spouse, abandon your own free will, your willing and your not willing, and leave all to my Divine Providence and my disposal. Make yourself an echo of my Willing. And if I say to you in my good pleasure: 'A cross,' then in your willing, will the cross. And if I say: 'Humiliation and contempt,' then be my echo and say, 'contempt.' And if I say: 'Kiss me with the kiss of sweet union,' then give me the most sweet echo of love and kiss me. It is in this way that you have no other desire or will than the absolute movement of my Will. Thus while you live, I, too, live as if I alone were alive in your very being, a.nd not you yourself." As with the happy couple in our love story, so it is with us: There begins the passing of those intimate glances of complete spiritual understanding. We might say that our whole occupation is love, or that prayer is our life. Either statement would be equally true. Then there is an awareness of deep contentment. That doesn't mean that growth isn't possible. In fact, it has to happen. The surrender becomes deeper and deeper, letting God do everything, totally sure that he will do so. And so ours becomes a life of deeper and deeper trust. We might end this as we began by saying, once again in the words of Sister Ruth Burrows, "Holiness in the contemplative is not a greatness but a total acceptance of human lowliness and total surrender of it to God in trust." Desert--After Fire Twisted; tortured, Bare black This land. Seared, scarred, What remnants remain. Evening whispers, "All is lost." Night mantles dark Deeper than ever touched This fire-scorched earth before. This land will heal. Soft spring rain Will sift tl~rough ashes. Bring new life to seed Concealed beneath the crusted earth. The cross is fire too And bare its wood Which must be aflame Before the Paschal morning dawns To heal and renew. Sister Miriam John, R.G.S. Patterdell 1820 W. Northern Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85021 Indwelling Prayer: Centering in God, Self, Others David J. Hassel, S.J. This article~ is a chapter from a book, Radical Prayer, which Father Hassel hopes soon to publish. An earlier article, "The Feel of Apostolic Contemplation-in-Action," appeared in the issue of May, 198 I. Father continues to reside at Loyola University of Chicago; 6525 North Sheridan Rd.; Chicago, IL 60626. The most radical of all types of prayer may well be indwelling prayer, for its quiet power pulses the movements of all other types of prayer. Indeed, the praying person, carried along by the seeming passivity of indwelling prayer, drifts closer and closer to the inmost self where the~ majestic God waits to welcome him or her warmly. In the attempt to delineate this deepest prayer, the reader's familiarity with various forms of more active prayer will be used as contrasting background for recognizing and appreciating more passive prayer. Some of these more active types of prayer would be: 1) problematic prayer wherein one reviews personal problems with the Lord while expressing various needs arising from them (e.g., peace in a troubled mar-riage, a job sought in the midst of a depressed economy, success in collegiate studies, mental health for a troubled daughter, good weather for the tourist season); 2) insight prayer (meditation): seeing the spiritual meaning of, e.g., a gospel event, a striking sentence in a saint's biography, a friend's casual but penetrating remark, a shocking event witnessed by chance; 3) spaced vocalprayer in which one spaces out the words of a favorite vocal tThe comments of James F. Maguire, S.J., of Edmund Fortman, S.J., and of Mary Ann Hoope, B.V.M., were especially incisive in revising this article for publication. 36 Indwelling Prayer / 37 prayer like the Our Father in order to discover and to reflect upon the fuller meaning of each phrase; 4) gospel contemplative prayer: seeing, hearing, feeling the gospel event as it unfolds in one's imagination; introducing oneself imaginatively into the scene as a friend of the apostles, as a servant girl, as a sick shepherd; 5) petitionary prayer: asking for God's help, e.g., to bring this person back to church, to relieve this person's mental agony, to be able to handle this court case well; 6) liturgicalprayer: the community finding God together in the sacred event of Eucharist, baptism, marriage, anointing of sick, reconciliation of sinners, and so on; 7) affective prayer: wherein feelings of hope, love, fear, anger, and desire (for God, for various virtues for saving situations, for the saints and for friends) operate. These are, of course, not ~all the forms of more active prayer, but they serve to illustrate the meaning of the term more active prayer for our purposes here. Familiarity with these types of more active prayer will later enable one to recognize, by experiential contrast, more passive prayer, and, hence, indwelling ;prayer, the probable source of all types of more passive prayer. Consequently, our first task is not to define abstractly more active prayer against more passive prayer, but instead, to get the "feel" of each by contrasting their diverse types of presence to God, self, and the world. This demands that, in ~/second step, we explore the experience of "presence" and ~ote the paradoxes arising in the presence constitut-ing more passive prayer. Thirdly, we will investigate whether more active and more passive prayer cancel out or nourish each other. In a fourth step, we note how those entering into more passive types of prayer, often undergo the discouraging feeling of prayerlessness, a purifying experience which paradoxically leads into awareness of the indwelling prayer underlying the more passive forms of prayer. At this point, we are finally ready to enter the life-rhythms of indwelling prayer and to search out the ways of doing this trinitarian prayer at the center of our being. Here, too, it should become clear why trinitarian prayer could be the presence underlying all types of prayer. For it reveals death and resurrection at new depths in our being. But for the present let us begin to deal with the diverse presences of more active and more passive prayer. The Diverse Presences of More Active and More Passive Prayer To distinguish more active prayer from more passive prayer is not to abandon one for the other, not to put a premium on one over the other, nor to deny their need of each other. But it is to see how they promote each other and to note how more passive types of prayer are rooted in indwelling prayer. Here definitions can mean nothing if they do not touch our prayer experience, or if they are ambiguous enough to bag together all types of prayer indiscriminately. Therefore we must distinguish these different types of prayer by describing the diverse experiences in which they occur. Let us begin such a process by first trying to discover the root of 311 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 more active prayer. Seven types (among many) of more active prayer were mentioned earlier. Actually all types of more active prayer seem to burgeon out of a single root, a "stretching out to the Lord." What is this stretch? It may well be an attitude towards others which the average good person has. To illustrate this, answer the following questions, and notice what you discover within yourself: i) Why not sleep later than usual today?--Suppose you do inconvenience some people like those in the car pool, like the spouse waiting at the breakfast table, like the other workers in the ,office or at the assembly line, like the students in the classroom? 2) Why pay attention at breakfast to the kids'chatter and the spouse's com-plaints about the leaking roof when the morning paper would be so much more interesting? 3) Why get to work a little bit early in order to get the jump on things so that the day goes better for everyone? 'Why not let others worry about the day? 4) Why help out at this or that emergency when you've got your own job to get done, too? Why not tell them to do the best they can without you since you're busy? 5) Why break off a lively lunch conversation to answer a telephone call or to listen to Henry's usual request for a loan to tide him over the weekend? 6) Why use your midafternoon break for correcting Jenny's letter to the man-ager protesting his failure to put her in charge of the secretary pool? 7) Why correct the kids at the dinner table when it's so much eas'ier to let things go and pretend you didn't see or hear it? 8) When you're dead tired and comfortably waiting for the T.V. news to come on or when you are just starting to relax with a little hi-fi music, why agree to hear the spelling lesson or arbitrate the latest argument betw, een the ten year old and the eleven year oM? 9) Why end and start your day with prayer at the tioes you're most tired? And why go to early Mass on your golf or hairdresser's day and also on Sunday, the only times you can sleep in? In other words, why keep stretching, stretching, stretching through the day unless there is a person waiting at the end of the stretching~ unless there is the Christ or the Father or the Spirit? This refusal to protect yourself from others and from God is a mysterious attitude.'Could it pbssibly be the lure of your vocation, the strength of your friendship with Christ (and therefore with his people, your people)? Could this attitude even be the taproot of 'all the types of more active prayer in your life? Could it even be the basic source of your contentment with life underneath all its irritations, failures, missed opportunities, and dashed hopes? Of course, this "stretch" attitude underlying more active prayer is. buried within one's consciousness and so it can be discovered only through the type of question-ing just completed. Yet is there riot some single directing lure running like'a golden thread through the "stretch" of the day to gi~,e direction and meaning to one's life? Indwelling Prayer And does this thread not lead eventually to the attractive Christ who alone makes fitting sense out of one's life? How can a person stretch out to all the needy unless first God is stretching out to him or her? .Here active prayer is seen as presence to the world and its needs--a presence inspired by Christ's appealing call. It would seem, then, that we may have tapped the root of more active prayer and are now ready to find the source of more passive prayer. More. passive prayer is often defined as a resting in God or a quiet'alertness to God and to others. Thomas Green describes it as "floating freely in th~ sea of God," as allowing God to direct oneself wherever he wills.2 In common with more active prayer, it is a refusal to protect oneself, it is an availability to God and to others. This common element,,hints at a deeper experience underlying both more active and more passive prayer and uniting them. And yet these two types of. prayers are quite different .since more passive prayer is often like a sinking into one's inner depths to find God; while more active prayer is a stretching out to others and to God in others. Even when more passive prayer is awareness of a God-vibrancy in clouds, trees, animals, and people's faces, voices, gestures, it nevertheless is more a stirring in the depths of one's being than a reaching out to touch. Even when one becomes aware of God somehow speaking and acting through the other person, passive prayer is more an alertness within one's own being than the message in the other's'action. Indeed, more passive prayer is, for the most part, careful listening, long waiting, occasionally a soundless crying out to God in his seeming absence. At other times, it is. allowing the Spirit to pray in me to the Father without my having any control; it is letting Jesus invade me totally,in my powerlessness and then .experiencing the resultant clash of fear and gladness within me. , ~ As more passive prayer progresses in the person, it can distill into a simple presenting of the self to the Lord. It is merely a "wanting to be with God" which is often intensified by Eucharistic presence. It is a wordless, thoughtless, imageless facing to .God. It is almost pure presence at the deepest level of experience; while in the upper levels of experience one can be .simultaneously aware of pain in one's posture, of distracting thoughts and images, of feelings of fatigue or elation. But the latter appear negligible compared to the facing of God. Here the praying person is facir~g not only God but also the mystery of presence itself. Perhaps the feeling and meaning of presence hold the key to understanding more passive prayer~ The Experience of Presence: Its Paradoxes in More Passive Prayer What is the "feel" of presence for us? It can be the invigorating experience of knowing that one's father and mother are listening proudly during one's piano 2Thomas H. Green, S.J., When the Well Runs Dr), (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1978), p. 150. Just as this book is ekcellent for its descriptions of more passive prayer, so his Opening to God (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1977) describes well more active prayer and delineates simply and directly the basic principles of beginners' prayer. tll~ / Review for Relig!ous, Jan.-Feb., 1982 recital~ or watching eagerly from the basketball grandstands for one's next basket. It can also be the sense of depletion, of sinking heart, when one sees the "enemy" coming into the room, hostile and even malevolent, to observe one's expected failure. Presence can be a sustaining strength in the hospital room. No need for words or for the busy alleviating of pain, just the steady touch of being there. Presence is an enriching moment when the vast anonymity of the great airport terminal'is shattered by a familiar voice calling one's name. Sometimes "absence" can sharpen one's awareness of what presence is. One observes two people talking to each other but neither listening, each waiting impatiently for his or her turn to speak. Absence can be the "freeze" where two people working side-by-side in a bakery or in an office, condemn each other heartily and render the eight-hour day coldly miserable for each other. The politi-cal handshake can be an insult when the state's leader has shaken three hands while still talking to the first hand. Here absence hardly makes the heart grow fonder. Presence, at times, seems to grow without any effort on one's part. Old friends go to the concert together. As soon as the music begins, they~are rapt and seem-ingly totally oblivious to the other. But neither would consider for a moment going to the concert alone. Underneath the silent raptness, their friendship continues to grow quietly--a conclusion proven by a new depth of sharing as they return home amid slow, mulling conversation. Not rarely three friends hike the mountain trails for six to eight hours with only an occasional word and: an almost silent midday lunch. Yet the enjoyment of each other is intense and, underneath the quiet calm, intimacy grows. It would seem that the beauty of music and nature mysteriously sensitizes each person to the other instead of distracting each from the other. This sense of the other's person deepens over the years; familiarity does not always breed co.ntempt. The tight-knit family may have more than its share of private squabbles, but its members have a true sixth sense when one of them is in jeopardy or in deep joy and they quickly arrive to rescue or to rejoice. Such a family, over the years, develops a secret language of grimace, wink, smile and code-words which sum up a lifetime of shared sorrows and laughs; the person of each is uniquely appreciated. The lover of many years still feels a _leap of heart when the beloved comes into the room or when the lover hears the beloved's laugh from the far side of the party chatter. The lover's heart affirms the beloved's "simply being there"---apart from what he or she is saying or doing;just as the two concert-goers and the three hikers are doing more than enjoying music and nature. They find in the being of music and mountains a new way in which to resonate to each other's being, i.e., to grow in the intimacy of friendship. For what is intimacy if not this acquired ability to live deeply with each other, to resonate in each other's very being, in such a way that friends can, on occasion, say to each other: "It doesn't really matter much where we go or what we do so long as we are together." Such intimacy, expressed through quick knowing glance, light caress, exuberant play, and the clasp of hand, perdures and grows at the being-level in emergency rooms, during sweaty decision-times about job and fam- Indwelling Prayer ily, on the beach, at the "graduation ceremonies" of the retarded child, at the birthday parties, within the many hasty breakfasts and more leisurely suppers. From all this, could one say that "presence" is intimacy or mutual resonance at the level of being? If so, then this could reveal much about the dynamics between more active and more passive types of prayer. If presence would be deep awareness of the other's very being, then "the prayer of simple presence" to God could be the praying person's affirming of God's being and God's affirming of the praying person's being. In more passive prayer of simple presence, one becomes aware of Christ and of his interests because one now allows him to enter oneself and one's work at the level of one's very being or personhood? In more passive prayer, God becomes more real for the praying person because the latter lets God be more real, i.e., lets God be Being Itself. The praying person does this by refusing to box up God within her or his own ideas, theories, and expectations. Rather, this person allows God to act in him or her: by remaining passive, he or she gives God time to become more present to the self. Paradoxically, then, more passive prayer renders a person more fully present to God and to self than does more active prayer. Through more passive prayer, the person becomes literally a being-for-God. Indeed, the divine name, Yahweh, comes to mean not merely "I am who am" but also "I am the One who will be for you." Is it possible that at this juncture we have reached that basic attitude of prayer which underlies all other attitudes of prayer? Is this the most radical of all prayers? For this basic attitude is the very being of a person as a "being-for-God." At this point, a second paradox comes into view. In more passive prayer, because the praying person is more present to self and to God at the level of being, he or she can now meet others at their being-level, not just humans but also animals, plants, and even non-vital things like mountains, rivers, fire, and stars. For with the experience of God's tender regard for oneself as unique and undying comes the ability to appreciate others as having unique worth and destiny. It is no wonder, then, that through more passive prayer, the praying person paradoxically becomes more actively present to the whole wide world. Even distant horizons are expanded by the intimate depth at which beings resonate with each other. For this reason more passive prayer renders the praying person more active in works for the family, the neighborhood, the Church--and also more hopeful because more trusting of the Holy Spirit's activity in the self and in others. More passive prayer, in making the perso.n less trusting of his or her own activity apart from God, has enabled the person to become more bold for the Church by 3Karl Rahner speaks of this passivity when describing the conditions of transcendence. "[Transcen-dence] may not be understood as an active mastering of the knowledge of God by one's own power, and hence also as a mastery of God himself. By its very nature subjectivity is always a transcendence which listens, which does not control, which is overwhelmed by mystery and opened up by mystery . Transcendence exists only by opening itself beyond itself, and, to put it in biblical languag,e, it is in its origin and from the very beginning the experience of being known by God himself" (Foundations of Christian Faith [New York: Seabury, 1978], p. 58). 42 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 allowing God to enter the self and to power the latter's actions. This is where personal vanity becomes reduced and the confidence in self-sacrifice gets increased. Evidently, the more passively praying person is more consciously a "being-for- God" and more clearly sees God as "I am the One who will be for you." The Differences Challenge and Nourish Each Other At this point having described more active and more passive prayer for them-selves, we are now in position to etch out their differences and to discover why these two types of prayer are called "more active" and "more passive" rather than simply active and passive prayer. It would appear that more active prayer is more conceptual than its counterpart, that is, more concerned with ideas and insight. It is also more creatively imaginative as it deals with plans of action, options for decisions, visions for the future, ambitions for the present. Again, more active prayer is more consciously integrative around a central idea or insight: "As 1 see it, the one great value in life is . "or "The central theme in my prayer is . " It is more apt to try to control: "We could set up this system of priorities, then get that done immediately; then . " It is more energetic, that is, more work oriented, more prone to gathering achievements. Finally, it is more bodily, because action in the world is incarnated through the body. On the other hand, more passive prayer is more affective than conceptual, more conscious of feelings for the other and in the other; therefore; it is more value oriented than vision enthralled. It is also more receptive than creative in its use of the imagination; thus, art and nature speak out more clearly and enter more movingly into the person praying more passively. It is more integrative by person or spirit than by idea: "This person loves me and so 1 can take the hard knocks ahead," or "1 don't quite understand her plan, but I trust her and will do what she says," Indeed, more 'passive prayer is, strangely, more spontaneous than con-trolled; it is more disturbing, more surprising, more dangerous to a person's careful selfishness. One says more often: "This happening in prayer wa~ a rather unex-pected revelation for me; I'm not sure 1 like this turn of events." Again, in more passive prayer there is more waiting, more expectancy, more sharp listening: "Nothing seems to be happening for days, and then boom ."Finally, it is more soulful in its reflective sinking into the self to find God. It should be clearer now that one must name these two types of prayer more active and more passive lest we split the personality of prayer. For both types are active and both are passive but with different emphases. For example, both use concepts, imagination, and feelings; but more active prayer is more conceptual than affective and the reverse is true of passive prayer. More active prayer deals more often with the creative imagination and more passive prayer works more often with the receptive imagination; but both types of prayer, working' in one and the same imagination, use not only the creative but also the receptive function of the imagination. All this would seem to point to their radical unity, especially since in both types the praying person has the intent not to prote,ct and to comfort the self but rather Indwelling Prayer / 43 to be available to God and to his people. Indeed, it would appear that either type of prayer would go slack and die without the appropriate challenge of the other type: Without the "stretch" of more active prayer, more passive prayer could wallow deep in the self and even forget God, much more his people. Without the "reflective sinking into being" of more passive prayer, more active prayer can end up in such a welter of action that the "stretch" could one day shred into a thousand loose strands of frenetic, superficial activities having no center of being, no rever-ence for others, no undying future. But actually, both types of prayer can challenge and nourish the other. More active prayer is concerned with "putting it all together," with having the world make final sense, so that the world is somehow under control. More active prayer works that the praying person may "have it all together," may be totally integrated as a wholesome person, not fragmented or tormented, so that the praying person may control her or his destiny. On the other hand, more passive prayer forces the praying person to face the fact that he or she is a being totally dependent on God whom he or she must trust in the midst of personal fragmentation and of a world gone awry~ More active prayer wants the resurrection now and the beatific vision now just as they are promised in every love song; in all ~great poetry and drama, and in the apocalyptic literature of the Bible. In contrast, more passive prayer demands that the praying person wait and listen, become excruciatingly aware of shortcomings and sins within one's being or personhood, know his or her absolute powerlessness to do anything worthwhile apart from God, be content for now with much less than immediate resurrection and beatific vision. Neither prayer denies the truth of the other's intent; neither claims to have all the truth, but each challenges the other to greater realism about self, God, and the world. Each depends on the challenge of the other as more active prayer aims at total wholesomeness of self and world in God and as more passive prayer aims at enduring the fragmentation of self and dislocation of world until God heals them both~ There is, however, more than challenge between the two types of prayer. Each nourishesand promotes the other. The more active forms of prayer (e.g., the seven mentioned earlier) lead into the more passive forms of prayer, which in turn.root more deeply the ensuing more active forms of prayer. For example, meditative or mental prayer focuses the praying person's powers on particular objects such asan event of Christ's life, Mary's motherhood of the Church, the mystery of the Eucharist, God's plan for the individual or gr

Issue 18.2 of the Review for Religious, 1959. ; Review for Religious MARCH. 15, 1959 Allocution to Contemplative Nuns By Pius XII Practice of the Holy See By Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Less Me "By Conan McCreary, O.F.M.Cap. Saint Joseph and the Interior Life By Sister Emily Joseph, C.S.J. Survey of Roman Documents Views, News, and Previews Questions and Answers Book Reviews and Notices 65 77 86 90 100 ~106 108 116 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 2 Volume 18 March 15", 1959 Number 2 OUR CONTRIBUTORS FRANK C. BRENNAN is stationed at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. JOSEPH F. GALLEN, the editor of our Question and Answer Department, is professor of Canon Law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. CONAN McCREARY is a student of theology at Capuchin College, 4121 Harewood Road, N. E., Wash-ingto 17, D.C. SISTER EMILY JOSEPH is stationed at the College of St. Rose, Albany, New York. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, March, 1959. Vol. 18, No. 2. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Bpulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Copyright, 1959, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Missouri. Copyright, 1959, by The Queen's ,Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Editor: R. F. Smith, S.J. Associate Editors: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J.; Henry Willmering, S.J. Assistant Editors: John E. Becker, S.J.; Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Departmental Editors: Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Earl A. Weis, S.J. Please send all renewals, new subscriptions, and business correspondence to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Please send all manuscripts and editorial correspondence to: Review for Religious, St. Mary's College~ St. Marys, Kansas. Plus Xll's AIIocution to Cloistered Contemplatives Translat:ed by Frank C. Brennan, S.J. [The first part of this allocution was published in the January issue of the REV1EW FOR RELIGIOUS; the last part will be published in the May issue. The successive parts of ':he allocution were broadcast by Plus XII on July 19, July 26, and August 2, 1958. The offical text is to be found "in Acta Apostoficae Sedis (AAS), v. 50 (1958), pp. 562-86. A~I divisions and sub-titles in the translation are also found in the official text.] PART II: KNOW THE,CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE SINCE WE SUMMARIZED the fpi,ar, srtt of Our allocu-tion by saying:'"Know what you are,' We might give this second part the title: "Love what you are." This love will lead you, beloved daughters, along your own proper way to the God who addresses to you a personal appeal. We will here successively examine the principal motives for lov-ing the contemplative life, the attitude with which you ought to regard it, and the particular traits which should charac-terize your attachment to it. Motives and Sources of Love for the Contemplative Life Love is strong on!y if its object is lovable in the fullest sense, only, that is, if it is good in itself and capable of com-municating that goodness. But is not God the supreme good, both in Himself and in His works--in the work of creation and especially in the redemptive work which reveals th'e Father's love for mankind? "By this hath the love of God appeared towards us," writes St. John, "because God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him.''~ How can man respond to this astonishing proof of the divine love save by accepting it humbly and totally? "We have known the love which God hath for us," continues St. Joh'n, "and we have believed in it. God is love; whoever abideth in love, abideth in God, and God in him.": Such is the essence of the contempla- ~I Jn 4:9. ¯ 2 Ihid., 4:16. 65 P~us XlI Review for Religious tive life: to live in God by charity so that God may live in you. Indeed, your daily efforts have no other purpose but that of putting your mind and heart always more intimately in contact with the Lord who reveals Himself to you and who invites you to take part in His work of redemption, in His cross, and in the spreading of His Church. This holds for all Christians, but more particularly for those who are engaged in a state of perfection. Here again the ways of God will vary. Your religious profession, together with the contemplative life which you have chosen, consecrates you more exclusiveiy to this search after divine union according to the particular spirit of your order and according to the personal graces which the Lord gives you. Let your love then go out to the contempla-tive life with all its distinctive claims, since it leads you to the perfection of charity and holds you in its radiance. Other motives, although not so important, can neverthe-less help to confirm and strengthen your interior conviction. These can be found in the Scriptures, in the attitude of the Church towards the contemplative life, and "in the fruits which this life has yielded. Without doubt, the scriptural passages and the truths which We will point out have an import which goes quite beyond the domain of the contemplative life; but they do apply to it in a way that is unique, and they will certainly go far toward purifying and confirming the love which you have for your vocation. The Scriptures contain many passages concerning the consecration of man to God and to Christ. These texts, so full of significance, will reveal their hidden meanings only to those who explore them °diligentl~ and meditate on them prayerfully. The same Holy Spirit who inspired their compo-sition continues through them to manifest the intensity of the contemplative vocation and the riches which it contains. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. . This is the greatest and the first commandment.''s 3 Mt 22:37-38. 66 March, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES "The unmarried woman and the viygin think about the things of the Lord.''4 "These follow the Lamb wherever He goes.''5 "Now this is everlasting life, that they may know Thee, the only true" God, and Him whom Thou has sent, Jesus Christ.'''~ Elsewhere the Scriptures speak of the treasures hidden in Jesus. Christ, our Lord and our God--treasures which come from His boundless love for us and which persevering con-templation little by little unveils. "The Word was God . The Word was made flesh. . . . And we saw His glory.''v "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.''s "My Lord and my God.'''~ The contemplative nun is well acquainted with the cruci-fied Lord and with the cross which she takes each day into her hands. She often recalls the words of Saint Paul: "I am crucified with Christ . Christ lives in me . Christ who loved me and gave Himself up for me.''~° "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? . . . I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.''~1 The works of penance and of mortification which form part of the contemplative life fulfill the words of Saint Paui: "What is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, I fill up in my flesh for His body, which is the Church.''1: Such scriptural texts will fill the contemplative soul who meditates on them with a profound joy and will bind that I Cot 7:34. Apoc 14:4. Jn 17:3. Jn 1:1.14. Mt 16:17. Jn 20:28. Gal 2:19-20. Rom 8:35, 38-39. Col 1 : 24. 67 P~us XII Review for Religious soul more intimately to God and to Christ. They invite the soul to embrace and lovingly to practice a vocation which leads unwaveringly to the love of God and of His incarnate Son. Since~the, Church speaks of the contemplative life as emi-nently worthy of esteem; since she approves it with all her authority and confers numerous privileges on it; since she dignifies its inauguration with a solemn liturgical ceremony and surrounds it with abundant protective measures; one can cer-tainly see in all this a clear proof of her esteem for this life and thereby gain a weighty motive for being devoted to it. Among countless ecclesiastical documents concerned with the contemplative life, We will mention only three: the apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi, the blessing and consecration of virgins in the Roman Pontifical (whose ancient arid solemn formulas are reserved to contemplative nuns by Article III, paragraph 3 of the constitution Sponsa Christi), and the en-cyclical Sacra virginitas of March 25, 1954.13 The apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi shows in its historical part the high esteem in which the Church holds the state of virginity and of cloistered contemplation. The docu-ment recalls "the sentiments of esteem and of love which the Church has always nourished for virgins consecrated to God," from the very beginning of her existence. As we have pointed out, the constitution insists on the importance of contempla-tion to which all other monastic observances are subordinate. From the consecration of virgins let us note the words which the bishop addresses to the candidates when presenting them with the habit and the insignia of their estate: "I unite you as a spouse to Jesus Christ, Son of the Almighty Father, that He may preserve you without fault! Receive then the ring of fidelity, the seal of the Holy Spirit, that you may be called the spouse of God, and after serving Him faithfully, be crowned for all eternity.''~4 ~:IAAS, 46 (1954), 161-91. 14 Pontificale Romanum, De benedictione et consecratione virginum. 68 "March, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES In the first section of .the encyclical Sacra Virginitas the excellence of virginity is treated. The encyclical proves this excellence first of all by referring to the Gospels and, in fact, to the very words of Christ Himself; and secondly, by recall-ing Saint Paul's doctrine on virginity chosen out of love for God. The encyclical likewise cites Saint Cyprian and Saint Augustine, who point up the powerful effects of such vir-ginity; and it stresses the importance of the vow which gives this virginity the strength of a virtue. The superiority of vir-ginity over marriage, the many divine blessings which it merits, and the wonderful fruits which it produces are all discussed in the same encyclical. These fruits of the contemplative life, which are also treated in the apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi, merit special consideration because their realization will awaken in you a yet deeper and more resolute devotion to your contemplative vocation. We might expatiate in great detail on the lives of the great contemplative saints, Saint Teresa of Avila, for example, or Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, both Carmelites. But We prefer to concern Ourselves with your personal experience and with 'your community life. The contemplative nun who is devoted wholeheartedly and sincerely to her life does not fail to perceive andrelish in herself the fruits of her efforts. While outwardly her life unfolds in a pattern fixed "by the order of the day and by the exercises of the rule, inwardly she matures and deepens her life by passing through successive periods of consolation and trial, of enlightenment and obscurity, which leave intact her intimate union with God. Thus in spite .of obstacles from within and from without, in spite of failures and weaknesses, she goes forward, confident of God's help, until there comes that hour--often unexpectedly--when she hears the words: "Behold the Bridegroom is coming, go forth and meet Him.''1~ We urge each of you individually to apply yourselves with all your strength to the duties of your state in life as contempla- 69 Ptus XII Review for Religious tiCes. Thus will you experience its effects more and find in that experience a further motive for being more faithful and devoted. We would have you guard yourselves against dis-couragement and meanness of soul. Undoubtedly you must give full cooperation to grace in warring, against your faults and in practicing virtue; but leave to God all care for your growth and increase. It is He who, at the right moment, "will perfect, strengthen, and establish you.''1~ With these dis-positions you can go forward, supported .by divine power and filled with abundant joy at having been chosen for this life. Your personal experiences will be enriched by observa-tions which you can make in your own community. If, in-stead" of dwelling on the inevitable faults and weakness of htlm~ln nature, you rather consider the sincere efforts of others t~° fulfill their religious ideal, you will easily come to realize tKe radiance of their interior life and of their union wi~h God. /~ikewise, in the small details of. community life you will admire their fraternal charity which flows directly from their love of Christ Whom they see in the members of His Mystical Body. The splendor of this charity, ~o often hidden during life, is o revealed sometimes brilliantly and suddenly--once death has affixed its mark; it is then that you will be able to sing with the Psalmist: "Surely, the just receives his reward.''17 Attitude Toward the Contemplative Life Now that We have considered the motive~ which impel you to love the contemplative life, We shall speak to you of the attitude which fidelity to this loves demands. Already in .the first part of this discourse, We have emphasized the im-portance of "interior contemplation" and the precedence which it takes Over other elements which are necessary as means to it:_the cloister; ex~ercises of piety, prayer, and mortification; and work. We will consider here how the contemplative nun should meet this ensemble of obligations. Jo I Pet 5:10. 17 Ps 57:12. 70 March, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES It is clear, in the first place, that a sincere devotion to the religious life excludes all legalism, that is, the temptation to be bound by the letter of the law without fully accepting its spirit, Such an attitude would be unworthy of those who bear the title of spouse of Christ and who wish to serve Him with a disinterested love. Scarcely more acceptable would be a type of eclecticism, an entirely subjectiv.e selection of certain obligations to which one submits while ignoring others. No right-thinking order would receive a candidate who would try to observe only a part of the rules a~d constitutions. The contemplative life is austere. Human sensibility does not submit to it without resistance, but the desire of giving oneself wholly to God willingly embraces works of Penance and cor~tinual self-renunciation. The contemplative nun, in-flamed with zeal for her vocation, can apply to herself t~ words which the Apostle of the Gentiles addressed .to _th.e Christian community: "For I betrothed you to one spouse, that I might present you a chaste virgin to Christ''is and--We~'can ~dd--"to Christ crucified." The nun who is faithful to he~ vocation will always take as the rule of her interior life Saint Paul's words: "What is lacking of the sufferings of Christ I fill up in my flesh for His body, which is the Church."0~ such is the law of true love and to it the famous remark of Saint Augustine gives testimony: "There is no suffering for one who loves; but for the one who does not love, every bit of suffer-ing is unbearable.''2~ ~. Work forms part of the contemplative life. The anciei'it monastic I£W, "pray and work," has not ceased to be Wise and necessary. Some work is required of human nature. Man has many spiritual and physical powers which he must use ~) provide, for his subsistence, to improve his living conditions, ~sII Cor 11:2. ~ Col 1:24. 2o In Ioannis evangelium tractatus, 48, 10, 1; Migne, PL, v. 35, col. 1741. 71 P~us XII Review for Religious and to increase his knowledge and skills. For thirty years our Lord led at Nazareth a life of labor; during His apostolic ministry He was likewise subject to .much physical fatigue. Saint Paul writes very incisively about this to the Thessalonians: "If any man will not work, neither let him eat. For we have heard that some among you are doing no work.''~ He adds that he himself works with his hands in order to make a living and to avoid.being a burden to his fellow Christians.22 This duty of contemplative nuns to work for their living is stressed several times by the apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi. From this it follows that whoever gives herself without reserve to the contemplative life, will also fully submit to this law of labor. Positive prescriptions of ecclesiastical law with regard to the canonical contemplative life are numerous. Even though some of them are of minor importance, all of them should be observed. Our Lord has clearly said that "whoever does away with one of these least commandments, and so teaches men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever carries them out and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.'''-''~ "I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.'''-'4 Whoever loves the contemplative life will consider this delicacy of conscience and this fidelity to the least detail a most precious duty. On the other hand, one must avoid narrowness of both mind and heart. The liberty of the interior man is positively willed by God: "For you have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an occasion for sensuality.'''2~ "Therefore we remain free in virtue of the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free.'''6 The liberty of Christ, which the Apostle here extols, gives us power to accomplish works of the spirit as opposed to. works of the flesh. Such works, are charity, '-'~ II Thess 3:10-11. ¯ .'2 See Acts 20:34; 18:3. '2'~ Mt 5:19. 2-'4 Ibid., 5:17. '-'~ Gal 5:13. 26 Ibid., 5:1. 72 March, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES joy, peace, long life, the spirit of service~ generosity, faith in others, kindness, self-control--"Against such things there is no law.'''v Even before the time of Saint Paul, Christ had spoken of the meaning of Christian liberty in a still more emphatic way: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.''-°8 Since our Lord did not hesitate to speak in this way, one can say in general that the law is for man, and not man for the law. This does not suppress one's obligation to observe the law, but it safeguards the freedom and the peace of the interior man. The extent of every law should be exactly understood, according as to whether it is divine or human, essential or accidental. To place the law above man as an absolute and not as a means whereby he attains his end is an error. Jesus had said of the Pharisees: "They bind together heavy and oppressive burdens and lay them on men's shoulders.'':9 We are convinced that a nun sincerely devoted to the contemplative life will "have no diffi-culty reconciling this delicacy of conscience in the observance of her rule and the performance of her duties with that peace which results from the tranquillity of liberty of the interior being. You will submit to the rules by observing them, but you will rise above them by living united to the Spirit of God and to His love. Characteristics of This Attitude We should like to add a word concerning the character-istics which ought to distinguish your interior attitude. "In a nun one expects to find first of all simplicity and humility; love f~r the contemplative life should exclude every desire of bein~ noticed, admired, or esteemed. In His Sermon on the Mount, our Lord severely reprimanded the Pharisees for their desire to be noticed by others.~° If you remain hidden, you will avoid psychological difficulties which are more "-'7 Ibid., 5:23. '-'s ME 2:28. '~-o': ~M Mt 6t :2 3:4. 1-6, 16-18. 73 PIUS XII Review for Religious frequent among women and more readily take hold of the feminine temperament. We have treated the contemplative life as an ascent to God in which you offer to Him your mind and your heart. This self-giving, inspired by supernatural motives, will l~e nourished by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which alone support an authentic love of contemplation. These virtues will give your contemplation a genuinely Christian character so that it will not seem just a psychological phenom-enon which comparative religious history finds among the most diverse peoples and in every age. In order to confirm the purity and sincerity of your char-ity, it will suffice to remind you of the celebrated description which Saint Paul gives of this virtue in the thirteenth chapter ~ of his First Epistle to the Corinthians--a passage on which you have already meditated often. Would that your daily lives might always progressively approach more closely" the ideal set down in that justly famous chapter. Gendrous de~,otion can not accommodate itself to constant tension, to a continual battle against almost insupportable obli-gations which one would reject if possible. It is indeed possible for God to permit a trial of this sort for some time in order to purifythe soul. But it can also happen that such a state of .mind results in a serious fall, in internal or external catastrophe. We will not consider the cases involving nervous or psy- ~chotic factors. Here We are thinking of normal persons, of nuns to whom this has already happened or is likely to happen. There can be no question of entering into a study of diagnosis or of therapy or of prognosis for such case~. But We have just indicated a psy.chic factor, a characteristic trait of the fervent practice of perfection which is. capable of preventing such mishaps. It is the conscious and joyful acceptance~by a nun of the life of each day. It is the optimism, not at all frenzied, but tranquil and solid, of our Lord who said: "I am 74 March, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES not alone, but My Father is with Me.''31 It is the indestructible confidence of the contemplative in Him who said: "Come to Me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will refresh you.''3'-' These considerations and these sentiments determine the interior attitude of the contemplative. She knows by experience what she ought to do; and she wishes to order her life according to the Words of the "Apostle who said: "God loves the joyful giver.''33 What "Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning the material goods de~tined for the poor of Jerusalem she understands in the much l~r~ger sense of the gift of all one's being and one's every exterior action. Joy and happiness are the traits characteristic of-a sincere gift of oneself. We are conscious of this in reading the First Epistle of Saint Peter. He presupposes and observes this joy and happiness among the Christians to whom he writes and who are already turned toward Christ: "Him, though you have not seen, you love. In Him, though you do not see Him, yet believing, you exult with a joy unspeakable and tri-umphant; receiving as the final issue of your faith, the salva-tion of your souls.''34 To each of you We say: Let the faith, hope, and charity of Christ give you something of that joy which Peter obserged among the Christians to whom he wrote. At the end~of his epistle he returns to the same theme, exhorting the Christians to think of earthly sadness as inseparable from life in this world and as a means of rea~ching eternal glory: "Cast all your anxiety upon Him; when you have suffered a little while, He will perfect, strength.en, and establish you.'''~'~ It is the very idea which Saint Augustine expresses toward the end of his City of God. This earthly life with all its bitterness will pass away; we will then go to God, and our joy in possessing Him ~ See Jn 16:32. 3'-' Mt 11:28. a~II Cor 9:7. ~"~I IPbeidt ,1, 5:8:7--91.0. ~5 P~us XII will not pass away. "Ibi vacabimus, et videbimus; videbimus et amabimus; amabimus et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine''s° ["There we shall rest and we shall look; we shall look and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise; behold what there shall be in the end and without end"]. Such should be the thoughts which sustain your life and give you the strength to live it with courage until the end without growing tired or discouraged, and thus to offer up to God a clean and perfect oblation. so De civitate Dei, 22, 30, 5; Migne, PL, ~ 41, col. 804. 76 Prac!:ice ot: :he I-Ioly See Joseph F. Gallea, S.J. CANON 509, § 1, obliges all superiors to inform their sub-jects of all decrees of the Holy S.ee concerning religious and to enforce such decrees. The activity and mind and will of the Holy See are also revealed, and sometimes in a more practical manner, by approved constitutions and com-munications addressed to individual religious institutes. An article drawn from these sources was published in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in 1953.1 This article is based on the same sources concerning lay institutes from January 1, 1954. The order of material followed in the article is the usual order of the chapters of constitutions of lay institutes. This is the first part of a series of three. 1. Nature, purpose, and spirit. (a) Petitioning pontifical status. It has been declared and explained many times in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS that it is the sense of canon law and the mind and will of the Holy See that a diocesan con-gregation should become pontifical; that a diocesan congrega-tion is onIy in an initial, temporary, and probationary state; and that the petitioning of pontifical approval should not be unduly delayed." The intrinsic reasons for seeking pontifical approval were also given,3 as also the necessary conditions and formali-ties. a In 1957 twenty-four congregations received the decree of praise from the Holy See, of which six were from the United States. Eighteen congregations were definitively ap-proved, but only two were from the United States.~ It was not a poor year, and we can hope that the accurate idea of pontifical approval is finally being grasped. The difficult birth of this idea is evident from a mere glance at some of the 1 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 12-1953-252-72; 285-90. -'Ibid., 9-1950-57-68; 10.1951.22; 11-1952-13-14; 12-1953-253-54; 15-1956-326. ~ Ibld., 9-1950-68. albid., 11-1952-14; 12-1953-253-54. ¯~ L'Acdvit~ della Santa Sede nel 1957, 124-25. 77 JOSEPH f. GALLEN Review for Religious institutes approved in 1957. Without any research, I know that one of these came into existence only in 1929, another is over a century old, and a third is just under a century. A hun-dred years is a long time to be on probation, especially when it is completely voluntary. (b) The union of religious insti: tutes: In any part of the world, and also in the United States, it is possible to find religious institutes, especially of sisters, that have been in serious difficulties for many years, for exam-ple, they are small, receive few applications from candidates, are in financial difficulties, and lack a personnel sufficient in" number and competence to carry out properly the works of the institute. Not all of these reasons are found in every case, and they vary in degree; sometimes there are other reasons also. The well-being and at times the salvation of such an institute is to unite with another similar but flourishing institute. Such unions are occurring. A rescript effecting a union 6f this type gives the following information: Recourse mu~t be made to the Holy See .for a union, since it implies the extinc-tion of one religious institute (c. 493). The consent of both institutes is necessary, and the opinion of the interested local ordinaries is requested. The union effects the extinction of the first institute; and its members, houses, and property apper-tain to the second institute. Evidently these persons are hence-forth to be governed and the property administered according to the constitutions of the second institute. The intention of the donor in any property given or bequeathed to the first institute is respected, and the canons concerning the dowries must be observed. The members of the.'first institute pass to the second in the same class, if there are various classes, and with the same rights of profession that they had in their former institute. Each of these is to sign freely a document in which he declares that he wishes to be a member of the second institute. Any religious who refuses to become a mem-ber of the second institute is to request an indult of seculariza-tion or a transfer to another institute, according to the i~orms of canon law. All unions evidently demand a sufficiently pro- 78 March, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE longed period of careful and prudent preparation.° Unions are also occurring among flourishing institutes, for example, those that have the same origin, spirit, and constitutions. The Holy See has on several occasions manifested its desire of such a union to particular institutes.7 (c) Federation of nuns. A huge proportion of the monasteries of nuns in the world have been federated or are in the process of federation. There are two such federations in the United States. Authoritative sta-tistics, including 1957, list no other federations in the United States nor any in the state of preparation,s Their absence is very conspicuous. The preliminary approaches to a federation have been made in some cases, and one federation appears to be near completion. "It has been emphasized in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS that the Holy See favors federations.~ (d) Aux-iliaries. A .congregation of sisters, whose mother house is in Italy, has affiliated to itself a new and distinctive type of auxili-aries. These are secular women who are sincerely desirous of a state of perfection in thee spirit of this congregation but, for various reasons, are prevented from living its constitutions com-pletely and fulfilling all its obligations, especially those of com-mon life. The purpose of these auxiliaries is their own sanctifica-tion and collaboration with the sisters in the apostolate, especially in education, catechetics, and in works that the religious can-not personally acdomplish because of their state and life of withdrawal from the world. The auxiliaries are of two classes. 1° Auxiliary Oblates. These constitute a secular institute, and ¯ therefore they profess and consecrate themselves to complete Christian perfection in a determined regime of life. 2° Aggre. gated Auxiliaries. These form only a pio. us union or associa-tion, with more limited spiritual and apostolic duties and a less strict bond of union with the religious institute. All the aux-iliaries share in the prayers and good works of the congregation 0 Cf. A. Bocquet, L'Ann~ Canomque, 4-1956-9-20. S Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 38-1957-371-73; ct:. J. Fohl, L'Ann~e Canon-ique, 4-1956- I85-86. ~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS," 12-1953-288; 15-1956-326-27. 79 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Revie~v .for Religi~.~ of sisters. Neither class has a distinctive dress, but they simply adhere to the traditional norms of gravity and Christian mod-esty. 2. Members and .precedence. At least seven congrega-tions of sisters abolished the class of lay sister. The Sacred Congregation of Religious readily grants an indult permitting all the lay sisters of a congregation to pass into the one class of sisters prescribed by the revised constitutions, without the need of a new noviceship or pr',fession and with all rights, as if they had been admitted to this one cla~s from the beginning. This. change demands the correction of all articles of the con-stitutions that specify or imply a distinction of classes. Requests to the Holy See for slappression of the class of lay sisters from monasteries and orders of nuns receive varying replies accord-ing to the tradition of the order. One monastery of nuns began to take extern sisters. Two sets of constitutions recently approved contain the statement that all the sisters are to assist in the common household duties. 3. The religious habit. A few congregations of sisters simplified their religious habit. This is praiseworthy, but al-most none of the changes were as complete.as they evidently should have been, and no change is in any danger of being termed radical. One set of constitutions states that, when the white habit is worn in hot countries, a cloth cincture may be substituted for the usual black leather cincture. Complaints have been m~lde about the use of a leather cincture dlaring the summer. In any thorough study of adaptation and simplifica~ tion, the color of the habit "should not be ignored. Is a black habit adapted to the' summer heat of the United States? It is amusing to reflect that a white habit is common in Oriental countries, yet both Orientals and Americans who have been in the Orient attest that our summer heat is more oppressive. Another set of constitutions declares that white shoes may be worn with the white habit. This right follows as a complement of the white habit, unless it is expressly forbidden by the con- 8O PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE stituiions. Some authors on renovation and adaptation have emphasized that excessive external distinctions should be re-moved from the class of lay brothers and lay sisters. One of these seems to be the white veil that is worn by professed lay sisters in at least very many monasteries of nuns. One purely contemplative monastery received permission to change this white veil to a black veil. A few superioresses of nuns are anything but hostile to reasonable adaptation. Several constitutions continue to specify a choir mantle of serge. Why this purely ceremonial garb should be of heavy material is incomprehensible to me. Formerly constitutions commonly forbade any change in the habit without the permission of the Holy See. In some later constitutions, this p.ermission was confined to a change in the form or color.'" Two sets of constitutions recently ap-proved state: "No general or permanent change in the form or color of the habit may be made without the permission of the Holy See." "No permanent, substantial, or general changes may be made in the habit without the permission of the Holy See." I believe we may hold that the permission of the Holy See is required only for a substantial change in the external appearance of the habit. Any change that does not modify this external appearance at all, as is true at least most frequently in a mere change of material, or that only accidentally modifies the external appearance may be made by the superior general with at least the advice of his council. 4. The dowry. One congregation received permission to borrow $100,000 from the dowry fund. As is true of any other debt, this amount is to be repaid within a reasonable time (c. 536, § 5). Canon 549 forbids any institute whatever, without a dispensation from the Holy See, to spend the capi-tal of even part of one dowry for any purpose whatsoever, even for the erection of a building, or the payment of a debt, before the death of the religious. Reasons such as those just cited Ibid., 12-1953-257. 81 JOSEPH Fi GALLEN. Review .for Religiow~ jtistify.,:g~ petition to .the Holy See to' use the 'capital sum of the dowries, This ~capital sum must be restored to any religious #ho definitively leaves her institute (c. 551, ~ 1).~ The practice of~ the Holy See has been to impose the obligation of restoring the amount expended; but one institute informs me that it has been granted a wider indult, that is, to use dowry funds throughout the institute for building purposes provided the provinces have sufficient funds at their disposal to return the dowries of. religious who might leave. 5. "The postulancy. The duration of the postulancy has assumed greater moment in recent years because of the educa- " tional pr.ogram for the young religious. The general desire ¯ in the United" State~is for a postulancy that will not preclude a full scholastic year. Provision has been made for this in two sets of constitutions recently approved by the Holy See: "Can-didates "before being admitted to the noviceship shall make a postulancy of not less than six complete months and not more than a year." "The time prescribed for the postulancy is one full year. The aspirant is admitted by the provincial sui~erior who may, for a just reason, prolong the prescribed time, but not beyond six months. For a grave reason, the superior gen-eral ma~), with the consefit of her" council, abbreviate the pre-~ Scribe'd time of postulancy, but nok beyond six months." Canon 539," § '1 c'o'ifimands a postulancy of .at least six months; and I see no reason why an abbreviation of a postulancy of a year requires a greater reason than its prolongation beyond a year. I~ prefer the latter article but believe that it should have read ~is follows: The time prescribed for the postulancy is a £ull. year. For a just reason, the superior general (or the higher superior), with the advice of his council, may abbrevi-ate or prolong this time, but not beyond~six months in either case. " ¯ 6. The noviceship. (a) Canonical impediments. Dispen-sations were granted to two married women to enter a mon- Ibid., 16-1957,164. 82 March, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE astery of nuns,. Both were converts and both had been di-vorced. I have a typed copy of the rescript of only one of these cases. This prescribes a longer postulancy, that is, of a year and with the usual right of prolonging it for another .six months. (b) Manner of beginning. In the former practice, of the Holy See, the constitutions were usually ~worded: "The canonical year begins with the reception of the habit." The word-ing was later changed-to: "The canonical year ordinarily begins with the reception of the habit." Constitutions-~ipproved within the last few years are. more commonly phrased: ,"The canonical year begins with the reception of the habit or in.any other manner determined by the superior general,, pro;tided in the latter :case that its inception is recorded in writing.'~ I see, no reason whW the different determination could not have been granted also to other higher superi6rs, for example, provincials. The superior general may certainly habitually delegate the faculty of making a different determination to these other higher superiors or even to other religious, for example, to the local superior of the novitiate house. The" new wording simply gives a superior greater facili,ty in permitting the be-ginning of a one-year noviceship on the day before the cere. mony of the. reception of the habit and also, irrespective of the duration of the noviceship, in permitting the beginning of the noviceship on the same day as the other members of a group to a postulant .who cannot attend the ceremony, for example, because of sickness. This entire matter was explained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 15-1956-222-24. (c) Duration. At least one congregation of sisters changed its noviceship of one year to two years. Of greater interest is the'fact that a purely contemplative monastery of nuns and a proposed .f.ederation of nuns have dbne the same thing. The historical reason for the longer noviceship of two years is that religious who have an active end were believed to require a longer and more solid spiritual formation. However, it can be maintained that a contemplative vocation is more difficult to discern; and it" can certainly be doubted that it requires a less prolonged or less ,83 JOSEPH ~. GALLEN Review for Religious skilled formation. (d) Dispensations from the second year. Rescripts from the Sacred Congregation of Religious dispens-ing from any part of the "second year contain the following conditions: "That the novices make a written request for the abbreviation of their noviceship, that these written requests 'and the rescript be .preserved in the files, and that mention 0f the requests, and of the rescript be made in the register of professions." (e) Separation of novices from the professed. Canon 564, § 1 commands that the novices are as far as possible to dwell in a part of the house distinct from the quarters of the professed. The same canon enacts that there is to be no communication between the professed and the-novices without a special reason and the permission of either the local or higher superior or the master of novices. This strict prohibition is to be observed also when there are but very few novices. It is to be remembered that those who have taken temporary vows are professed, not novices. They must therefore be separated from the novices in place and in communication. This applies "also to the monasteries of nuns. This canon is inserted in the constitutions of nuns by the Holy See, and khe quinquennial report (q. 87) for independent monasteries explic-itly asks whether the separation both in place and commun~- cation' is observed."-' One pu_rely contemplative monastery of nuns received an indult in 1955 permitting the professed oi: temporary vows to remain in the novitiate for further training under the mistress of novices. A proposed federation of nuns has included the same prescription in its constitutions. (f) Physical exercise. The constitutions of a congregation of sisters approved in 1954 contain the prudent provision that the nov-ices ought also to take physical exercise so that the recreation will benefit both body and mind. (g) Profession in danger of death. Admission to this profession has been reserved in the past to higher superiors, the superior of the novitiate house, and their delegates. Two sets of constitutions, approved in 12ibid., 11-1952-157-58. 84 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE 1955 and 1956, introduce a welcome change by assigning the admission to, "the mistress of novices, any other superior, and their delegates." Since the mistress of novices is not a superior in the proper sense of the word, it would have been better to have phrased the article, any superior, the mistress of novices, and their delegates. The master or mistress of novices is the one most likely to b~ present in such circumstances, and a second-year novice may be outside the novitiate hou.se. If the constitutions contain the former wording, higher superiors may and should delegate their faculty habitually to all other superiors and to the master or mistress of novices. (h) Vacation outside the novitiate house. Two congregations received indults per-mitting the novices to spend about fifteen days a year in a country house of the congregation under the direction of the master of novices. (The rest of this article will appear in the May and July issues.) 85 Less Me Conan McCreary, O.l=.M.Cap. WeE ARE almost'always talking to somebody. Often dur-ing the day we speak to our neighbors, and in prayer we talk to God. However, most frequently we are conversing with ourselves. Our ideas come to our conscious-ness through words formed in our minds, and these words make up a more or less constant interior conversation with ourselves. This interior monologue is quite natural, and it serves many good purposes. It helps us to think more clearly and con-cretely. It helps us also to provide for the next moment. "Let's see, what shall I do next?" we ask ourselves. Then we await our own reply, "I think that I'll clean off my desk." There is more to this interior conversation than at first appears. It can be an indication of our spiritual worth. When most of our monologue is spent on our own interests, we tend to become self-centered. When it is turned more to God and Christ and His interests, we tend to become theocentric or Christocentric. One great secret of the interior life is to turn our interior conversation away from ourselves and to turn it to God. "How can we pray to Him Unless we are with Him? How can we be with Him unless we are often thinking of Him?" Brother Lawrence of tl~e Resurrection, o.C.D., asks so log-ically. 1 St. John the Baptist's words, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (Jn 3:30), can hardly be. more aptly applied than to our interior conversation. How many times do not our rules or constitutions or by-laws exhort us to recollection. Yet, how often do we not have reason for embarrassment in the face of our feeble interior prayer. While urged to "direct every thought to God alone 1Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice o! the Presence of God (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., 1926), p. 38. 86 with every possible yearning of love,'"-' we find ourselves not just a little short of the ideal. The saints and the proficient in the spiritual life find their interior conversation with God one of their greatest joys. For them, ordinarily, no system is necessary. Recollection is simply the response to the presence of their beloved. Thomas of Celano wrote of St. Francis: " . . . he would often speak with his Lord in words. There [in solitary places] he would make' answer to his Judge, there entreat his Father, there rejoice with the Bridegroom, And in order that he might make the whole marrow of his being a whole-burnt offering in manifold w~Lys, he would set before his eyes in. manifold ways Him who is supremely simple. Often with lips unmoved he would ruminate within, and, drawing outward things inward, would uplift his spirit on high. And so the whole man, no( so much praying, as having become a living prayer, concentrated his whole atten-tion and affection on the one thing which he was seeking from the Lord.''3 For ~he less proficient in the spiritual life, recollection, though an undeniable joy, is often a burden. Not as spontaneous . as the saints, we find ourselves at a loss for words before God, not from awe, but from lack of something to say that is worth-while and attractive. If the saints run in the path of prayer, perhaps we can describe our way of interior prayer as a limping. We try to get aiong; we try to speak more with Godl but how far we are from being the athletes of the spiritual life that St. Paul would haste us be! If we have not yet been healed of our spiritual lameness by the name of Jesus (Acts 3:6), then it would not be out of place for us to use a cane to help us walk interiorly with God. Using a cane is much better than sitting still. Of course, a "-' Constitutions o/ the Capucbitt Friars Minor o/ Saint FrancD (Detroit: 1945J, art. 90. 3 Brother Thomas of Celano, The Li',,,'s of S. Fram'i.r o/ .4ssisi London: Methuen and Co., 1908), pp. 233-234. 87 CONAN MCCREARY Review for Religious cane is only a 'substitute for a better thing. When the better thing comes (that is, the spontaneous conversation with God in love) it is time to lay aside the substitute. Taking our cue from the Precursor, wh~ wanted Christ to grow greater and himself to become less, we might use the mnemonic line LESS ME as a cane, a means of giving us something to say to God in recollection. Each letter stands for~ a topic of conversation. The topics are merely suggested in the scope of this article. Not much imagination is required to expand each point according to personal tastes or needs. L stands for Lady, our Blessed Mother. It is always fitting to begin our recollection with her; we can either speak to her personally, or we can speak to our Lord about her. E stands for Eucharist. This may remind us of our reception of Holy Communion in the morning, and we can renew our affections; or, we may use it as an occasion of making a spiritual communion. S stands for Spirit, the Holy Spirit who dwells as guest in the center of our hearts: the very love of the Father and Son! S stands for secret. This can mean our little secret of reaching out to God often during the day, our favorite ejaculation as, "All for You, Jesus!" It can also mean our nosegay for this day. M stands for meditation; we have here an opportunity to renew the affections and resolutions of our morning meditation. E stands for examen, that is, the subject of our par-ticular examen with all its difficulties, which we can talk over with our divine model. This system, while it embraces many of the major s[tb-jects that spiritual writers recommend for recollection, is cer-tainly not everything. But it is something. It is a definite step 88 March, 1959 LESS ME toward turning our interior conversation to God. It is a help for us to make our exteriorly silent moments interiorly joyful and fruitful. The objective of a system of recollection is to dispose ourselves for two of God's most precious gifts: the consciousness of His presence and the spirit of prayer. When St. Paul exhorted the Ephesians to be interior men, he gave them a promise of great things: He told them that they would come "to know Christ's love which° surpasses knowledge" and that they would be filled with the fullness of God (Eph 3:19). As Christ continues to increas~ in us and in our interior con-versation, we will come to know more and more what St. Paul meant. SOME BOOKS RECEIVED [Only books sent directly to the Book Review Editor, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana, are included in our Reviews and Announcements. The following books were sent to St. Marys.] The Graces of Christmas. By Bernard Wuellner, S.J. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. $3.00. What Is a Saint? By" Jacques Douillet. Translated by Donald Attwater. Hawthorn Books, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, New York. $2.95. Who Is the Devil? By Nicholas Corte. Translated by D. K. Pryce. Hawthorne Books, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, New York. $2.95. Anne de Xainctonge: Her Life and Spirituality. By Sister Mary Thomas Breslin, U.T.S.V. The Society of St. Ursula of the Blessed Virgin, ~Marygrove, Kingston, New York. The Eucharist and Christian Life. Second Series. By Aloysius J. Willinger, C.SS.R., D.D. Academy Library Guild, P.O. Box 549, Fresno, California. $2.00 (paper cover). 89 ,Joseph !:he In :erior Life Sister Emily Joseph, C.S.J. TO ACHIEVE the perfection of his being, a man must cultivate the interior life with an attentiveness which not only equals but surpasses, that spent on his external activi-ties. One of the major causes of the restless, disturbed, frus-trated personalities in society today is the neglect of this interior life. At times we are tempted to look upon this as an ill peculiar to our present age; but a glance at the Old Testament shows that the same indifference to the life of the spirit pre-vailed long ago. "With desolation is all the land made desolate," laments Jeremias, "because there is none that considereth in the heart" (Jer. 12:11). And in figurative language he refers to these depthless creatures as "broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jet. 2:13). Throughout Holy Scripture the secret of the spiritual life is enunciated again, and again: "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21); "All the glory of the king's daughter is within" (Ps. 44:14); and it is finally spelled out by the elo-quent St. Paul, who poses a question that contains the great soul-shaking reality of life: "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Cor. 3:16). Awareness of the presence of this divine Guest within the soul constitutes a sine Cilia non for the development of the interior life. Anyone who has read the Gospels, or even lis-tened to the reading of them at Sunday Mass, has heard the fact as St. John presents it in Christ's own word~. "If anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (John 14:23). perhaps it is the profound mystery concealed behind these simple words which overwhelms the ordinary intelligence, with the result that an impact of grace almost as 90 ST. JOSEPH forceful as that which swept Saul from his horse on the road to Damascus is required before one comes to grips with the fact of the indwelling of the Trinity in the soul which is in the state of grace. Granted this impact of grace and the resulting awareness, three aspects of the cultivation of the interior spirit present themselves: (1) Who is this divine Guest? (2) What inter-feres with my attention to Him? (3) What contributes to my intimacy with Him? We read in the Divine Comedy that Dante, embarking upon his unfamiliar journey, felt the need of an experienced guide and selected for this purpose one whom h~ was proud to call his master--the poet, Vergil. Following his example, we would be wise to search out an experienced master of the interior. life and learn froin him the answers to the three questions mentioned above. The names of many may come to mind, but surely there is one saint whose unique prerogatives stamp him as being pre-eminently suited to instruct and guide others in the way of interior growth. This is St. Joseph who, as Leo XIII said, is next in dignity to the Mother of God. (ParentheticaJly', it might be asked why" St. Joseph would be chosen in preference to our Blessed Lady as a guide in the development of the interior life. The answer to that question will be given later in this. paper.) The three Persons of the adorable Trinity dwell within every sou! living in grace. To each of these Persons the soul bears a special relationship which is indicated by the names which man has been inspired to confer upon Them. Man is the child of God, so he calls God ~Father." Through the mystery of the Incarnation and l~edemption, man can claim as his elder brother God the Son. And as man depends for his physical existence upon the breath of life, so he lives his super-natural life by the power of the Holy Spirit. The interior life of St. Joseph rested upon his unique relationship with each of the three Persons of the Blessed 91 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religiot~s Trinity. In Father Faber's phrase, he was the "shadow of the Eternal Father." He was in men's eyes the legal father of Mary's child, Christ the Son of God. And he was the divinely selected spouse of the virgin who had conceived by the over-shadowing of the Holy Spirit. St. Joseph was too humble to be overwhelmed by the dignity thus conferred upon him. Like Mary, he pondered these mysteries deep in his heart. Small wonder that no recorded word of his has come down to us! How could the feeble tongue of man give utterance to the thoughts, too deep for words, which God's mysterious choice of him evoked? Here ii the first lesson St. Joseph would teach us, namely, not to make public the spiritual favors which God deigns to confer upon the soul, but rather, as the Imitation of Christ says, "to keep secret the grace of devotion." Each soul is uniquely loved by the Holy Trinity. For each soul God has a specially designed pattern of sanctity which will necessitate His conferring unique graces which can be neither shared nor understood by others. "The kingdom of God is within you." To the extent that one concentrates upon this interior kingdom, the external' world diminishes in importance. One gains spiritua{ perspective, the material becomes subject to the spiritual, and peace, the tranquility of order, ensues. In his first Epistle, St. John utters the uncompromising advice: "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world . For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life" (I John 2:15-16). Herein lies the answer to the second question regarding the divine Guest of our souls, namely, What interferes with my attention to Him? Only mortal sin will drive away the indwelling Trinity and destroy the supernatural life. But the interior spirit can be reduced to what might be called a comatose state if its strength is sapped by the distractions of the world. One who embraces the religious life enjoys a comparative security against the allurements of the threefold 92 March, 1959 ST. JOSEPH concupiscence St. John mentions. Against distractions, how-ever, no one has yet found air-tight protection. And distiac-tions are the bane of the interior spirit. In general, distractions can be reduced to five categories. First, there are those which arise from the responsibilities and occupations of one's state in life. They may range from the problems faced by the community laundress or cook to thos~ of the college president or superior general of a large congregation. They concern matters Which the faithful ~s~rvant of his Lord must handle prudently and efficiently for the'good of souls and the harmonious functioning of community life. They may involve irritating, even exasperating, negotiations with unreason-able associates, either within or outside the "framework of religious life. "Here," one might be tempted to say, "St. Joseph has had no experience!" Such is far from the case. St. Joseph was' in business. He" had to earn a living and.support a family. Into his carpenter shop came customers of every type: those who challenged the price he set for a piece of furniture that had required expensive materials; those who came on one day with.one set .of directions for their new barn and the next day appeared with an entirely different plan. . Nazareth had its share of complainers, of inconsiderate and selfish add annoying townspeople. The .incidents which crowded into St. Joseph's day might be paralleled in the daily routine of many a religious. Amid them all he remained unperturbed. In each of his customers he saw a child of the 'Eternal Father, a brother of his foster Son, an actual or potential temple of the Holy Spirit: Thus he warded off the distracting irritations which cropped up like weeds in the course of his .business Iife. Many in religious iife are spared the anxiety of financial ~problems, but to many others they are a rich source of plaguing distractions. Those who are faced with responsibilities of this kind usually hold a position as head of a community. They should, then, turn confidently to St. Joseph, head of the Holy 93 SISTE~ EI~IILY JOSEPH Review for Religious Family, for advice as to how they can prevent this kind of distraction from interfering with the interior, spirit. "Discuss the problem with the Holy Trinity, as I always discussed such problems with my foster Son," St. Joseph says. "These prob-lems cannot~ be ignored; but they must not be allowed to assume an exaggerated importance. Keep first things first. Increase you~r love of the spirit of poverty, so dear to the divine Child who chose the chill cave of Bethlehem for His birth-place and a stranger's tomb for His burial. You must develop, too, unlimited trust in God's bounty and providence. Remem-ber the incident of the Kings' arrival in Bethlehem? ,The valuable treasures which they presented were entirely unex-pecte. d and provided for the traveling expenses for us dur!ng those days of flight into Egypt when I had no source of in-come, In all times of distress" learn to say: 'God can pro-vide; God did provide; 'God will provide!' " A third,, and fertile, source of distractions is what men in the world call ."politics." Within community life one is less often distracted by the political problems, of the world. The religious seem-to apply spiritual principles to this depart-ment of life with considerable facility. It is the question, "To whom will God.grant authority in this house where I must live n,e.xt year and how will he exercise that authority?" that yields a rich crop of distractions. Idle speculation upon the superiors to be appointed within the community, needless com-mentary (often uncharitable) about the policies and directives of superiors, resentful acceptance oi: the superior's decision --all this has the soporific effect of a powerful drug upon the interior life. The gospel presents an inspiring example oi: how St. Joseph would direct us to act in the face of an unwelcome, not to say unreasonable, order given by an unattractive superior.~ Picture the scene on a street corner in Nazareth when the proclamation of the proud Roman ruler, Caesar Augustus, was posted. The decree stipulated that every Jewi.sh citizen must go to 94 March, 1959 ST. JOSEPH the city. of his fathers and there be enrolled. Fiery resentment ran through the crowd as they read the. unexpected order. Impatient, critical remarks and sneers passed from one a.ngry Jew to the other. One in the.crowd, however,, re.ad the decree sil.ently, humbly.- ~For Joseph, it was an expression of God's will, made known to him through His legitimate representative. Granted, it would entail inconvenience and hardship for him-self and especi.ally for Maiy. Still, it was God's will and .with-out question, he set about complying with the order. From long practice, phrase ~after phrase from a .familiar psalm sprang to. his !ips: ".Behold I have longed after thy precepts; quicken me in justice . I am ready, and am not troubled: that I may l~eep thy commandments . Thy word is a lamp to my. feet, and a light to my paths. ~ I will rejoice at, thy.wqrd.s, as one that hath found great spoil" (Ps. 118: 40, 60, 105, 162). Could one seek a more excellent .guide for overcoming the obstacles to growth of the irlterior,spirit? The.distracti°ns just mentioned may well be avoided by the truly fervent, religious who ha~ gained ~a ~d.egree of mastery of th~ spirit of[ humble obedience. Yet he ~ay be less facile in avoiding distractions which arise from the lot common to the fallen sons of Adam, namely, sickness, trials, misfortunes, whether personal or pertaining to his dear one~: To love is to wish for the well-being of the beloved. How can one be otherwise than distracted when confronted with a serious situa-tion, say within one's family, which portends unhappiness, physical suffering, or spiritual danger from one bound by the closest of human ties? The answer is given by the very word "distraction" which comes from a Latin word that means "to draw in a different direction."" One who is intent upon the development of the interior life directs all his thoughts, all his desires, all his concerns ~and anxieties to the attention of the divine Guest dwelling within his s0ul. "My thbughts are not your tho[lghts, nor your way my ways," says the Lord (Isa. 55:8). The truly interior man strives ever more and 95 SISTER EMILY JOSEPIt Review .fo~" Religious more earnestly to think with the mind of Christ, to see God's hand in afflictions as well as in blessings, to recognize in the cross the sign of God's ineffable love. St. Paul makes explicit ¯ reference to this when he writes to the Corinthians: "In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed: we are .strakened, but are not destitute; we suffer, persecution, but are "n.ot fc~rsaken;., though our outward man is corrupted, yet .the inward man is renewed day by day.~.~., . Winlie" we logk not ~at the things which are sden, but,:::a°~:."the¯ thir~gs ~vhich. ard not" seen. For.the things which are.%e~n, are temporai(¯:bfii~ the tl~ing~ which are not seen, are "etet~nal." ([I Cot. 4~'8ii1.'8) From the many trials which St:7!.-j:~seph experienced, may be selected, and studied with a"--.'~.k;ii~:w to seeing how a man . of truly interior spirit reacts to aglfi:~i0ns. Consider the loss of the .bo~, Christ on the trip to~::~erusalem. Imagine the parents' and anxiety when the' : ; ! covered absence. The anguish of St. Joseph may even"~.~Pe surpassed that of our LAdy since as head o~ the famii~.(~'~!:was regl~onsible for ~heChild." We do not read of.:hh~::~:b'fiiplaining, self-reproach, ¯or,a~omztng expressmns of ~rmf-:~'J'n~:almost every scerfe where .~. ¯ We meet him in the gospel;, St.' ~h~i3h shows himself a man -"~ " "bf a&ion. As soon as the Bo~,'s absence was diSco~;ered, he .~ ' '.bdgaff a vigorous search for Him. "Thy Father ~hd I," Mary ' . as to te!l her Son when¯ He was found, ~'have .sought thee ¯ ¯ .sorrowing (Luke 2:48). Within those distressing days and nights of searching, St. Joseph experienced all the desolation, : .the 'fearsome pain of loss endured b~ souls deprived of God's ":'.:.~ensible presence. Here was the crucial test of :his spirit of .,.7 ?:"iinterior prayer. May it not be, since .experience proves that ".:::.-;[:prayer is almost utterly":impossible in such affliction, that one i'].:~:.::.::[ i:.:!tingle phrase from a Messianic psalm constituted his three-'.,:prayer? ."My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Ps. 21:2): .just asno one is immune from trials and thd distractions they beget, so~ no one c/in live in this world without sociM con- 96 March, 1959 ST. JOSEPH tacts. Man is constituted by nature a social being. Grace perfects nature. One must attain sanctity as a member of the Mystical Body. This is the whole tenor of the teaching of Christ, the import of His sacramental system, the design He instituted for His Church. Yet, paradoxically, social contacts are a prolific source of distractions for one who strives to live an interior life. In fact, all four categories 9~f distractions men-tioned above could be telescoped into this one. Every joy, every sorrow, every dFsire, every undertaking of the day elicits reactions from or is directed toward someone with whom we are associated. Holy can we possibly devote ourselves to the interests of. the other members of the Mystical Body and yet prevent them from inaking intrusions upon our interior.,iife? St. Joseph.directs us again, and his direction is that ofl 'a devoted Hebre~i~'ivho had penetrated deeply into the manner of serving God."." From the first pages of the book' of Genesis, man had worshipedGod by sacrifice. According to the pre-cepts of the Jewish law, Joseph offered the regularly prescribed ~ sacrifices. But more than that: upon the altar of his own :~ heart he offered constantly the joys, disappointments, toils, ¯ fears, and vexations that resulted from his social contacts. Joseph did not live in silent isolation. He lived close to Jesus and Mary; close, also,-to the townsmen of Nazareth, the strangers of Egypt; and too close, for comfort, to Herod! The man of interior spirit comes to the hour of sacrifice we~iring a "coat of many colors," woven of the threads of his daily social contacts. This garment clings to him closely, seems, in fact, to be part of him, and is part of the sacrifice of his entire self which the loving servant of God makes to his Lord and King. But, because in God's mercy he lives in the New Dispensation, he may unite his daily~ hourly sacrifice to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which is offered "from the riging of the sun to the going down" (Mal. 1:11). And even as, by the myst~ery o. transubstantiation, the bread and wine are changed int6 the Body and Blood of Christ, so the insignificant offering 97 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religious of a tear, a smile, a headache or a heartache will be transformed and absorbed into the "clean oblation" so acceptable to the Lord. To grow in the interior life is to increase one's intimacy with the indwelling Trinity. There are certain positive meas-ures one can take, as is evident from the life of S~. Joseph, in order to secure this increased intimacy. Although they must bE mentioned successiv.ely, it is difficult to assign them an order bf importance. First there comes to mind, naturally, the silence of St. Joseph--not the silence of a taciturn man, but the reverent silence that accompanies worship. Noise, bustle, feverish confusion create an atmosphere inimical to the interior spirit. The mere absence of these elements, however, may denote nothing more stimulating than the stillness of a corpse. The silence, conducive to interior' growth must be. a vital, dy-namic force such as the silence which accompanies the falling of the dew, the germination of seeds, :the ripening of. ~vheat. "I will lead her into the wilderness: and I. will speak to her heart" (Osee 2:14). In hushed tones the divine Guest speaks of His love. In cool, tranquil silence He will be heard. Closely allied to this need for silence is the need for detachment. A poet of our own day, T. S. Eliot, has phrased it for us: Teach me to care and not to care; Teach me to sit still. This seems to have been St. Joseph's motto. For instance, w. hen the angel instructed him to return home from Egypt; the directions were vague, incomplete. Joseph pondered: Should he return to Bethlehem or Nazareth? His heart was unattached, he did not care; yet he did care: Would Bethlehem, now under the rule of Archelaus, be as safe for the divine Child and His Mother as was Nazareth? Prudence rather than the attractions of the place determined Joseph's choice of Nazareth. Again, ¯ when he first learned that Mary was to bear a child and the angel had not yet revealed to him the mystery of the Incarna- 98 March, 1959 ~ST. JOSEPH tion of the Word, Joseph showed that not even his beloved spouse was so dear to him that he would compromise his conscience. Only to God and to His law did he cling with resolute attachment. Several times in speaking of St. Joseph's conduct it has been intimated that there freqfiently welled up within his heart a phrase or passage from the familiar psalms of his royal ancestor, David. Like every other devout Jew, Joseph had learned these psalms as a young boy and recited them often at the prescribed hours of prayer. It is not surprising, then, that in times of trial, amid frivolous or .irritating ~ompany in his shop, or in the quiet, reposeful evenings at the little home in Nazareth the inspired words would be in his heart and on his lips as he turned his thoughts to the God he loved and with whom he wished to converse. For the interior man no prac-tice could yield richer rewards than the cultivation of similar familiarity with the virile, expressive prayers which the Church has wisely and artistically incorporated into the Divine Liturgy. The practice of ejaculatory prayer is close to this; but why settle for something less than the best? The psalms bear the infallible stamp of approval of Holy Mother Church who declares .them divinely inspired ~by the Holy Spirit. And now it is time to answer the question posed earlier in this paper. Why should St. Joseph be chosen in prefer-ence to our Blessed Lady as a guide in the development of the interior life? Simply because St. Joseph had something that our Lady never had and he can therefore teach it to us, namely, devotion to her! St. Joseph learned ~o love God more by watching Mary love Him. He learned to spe~k to God more effectively by joining his voice with hers. He offered a nobler service to God through serving her. Mary is more than a guide along the way to sanctity. She is the mediatrix of all graces. Joseph is an experienced, inval-uable guide, a master par excellence of the spiritual life; but one can achieve intimacy with the Holy Trinity without his 99 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious guidance. But Mary is indispensable since in the divine econ-omy (as most theologians hold) all graces flow to us through her. Hence, devotion to our Lady, Temple of the Blessed Trinity, holds a prominent place in the life of one who would grow in the interior spirit; and none can be found to surpass St. Joseph in de~otion to his beloved spouse, Mary the Mother of God. Survey Roman Documents R. F. Smith, S.J. THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE will survey the contents of Acta Apostlicae Sedis during the months of .October and November, 1958. Throughout the article all page references will be to the 1958 AAS (v. 50). Pius XII In the first two issues of AAS which appeared after the election and coronation of Pope John XXIII, the text of the speeches and addresses given by Plus XII in the last weeks of his life were published. On September 28, 1958 (AAS, pp. 745-48), Pius XII broadcast a message to the people of Ecuador on the occasion of the third National Eucharistic Congress of that country. He told the Ecuadorians that Christian life is innocence and openness in children; purity and moraliW in adolescents; integrity and fidelity in matrimony; unity and mutual help in the family; brotherliness and mutual respect among all human persons; justice, charity, and peace in social 'relations. But all of this, he pointed out, is impossible. without the strength that comes only from the Eucharist. In another radio message on September 17, 1958 (AAS, pp. 741-45), Pius XII spoke to the International Marian Congress held at Lourdes. He told the members of the Congress that in this critical hour Mary wishes to teach her children the true sense of human life by showing its relation to that other life which alone will give men true and perfect happiness. At Lourdes, he concluded, a window has been opened on heaven; and he begged his listeners 100 March, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS to pray earnestly that hatred and discord may end, that the insolent voices of lust and pride may be stilled, and that the peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding may dawn upon the world. On August 29, 1958 (AAS, pp. 674-79), Pius XII delivered an allocution to the International Congress of the Third Order of St. Dominic, telling the tertiaries that they should be marked by the possession of St. Dominic's characteristic ardor for the defense of the Catholic faith; for the Church expects from them a collabora-tion as efficacious as was that of the saint at the time of the Catharist and Waldensian heresies. He exhorted them to a life of prayer, noting that though they could not give long hours to contemplation, still they could cultivate a permanent attention to the things of God by a devout study of Scripture, the liturgy, and patristic writings. Likewise he urged on them the necessity of an unceasing battle against everything that could be an obstacle to their full growth in the life of Christ within them. Finally, he encouraged them to participate in Catholic Action, pointing out the especial need for lay workers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Pope con-cluded his allocution by suggesting to his listeners to keep before their minds the example of their patroness, St. Catherine of Siena. On September 14, 1958 (AAS, pp. 696-700), Pius XII addressed members of the International Office of Catholic Education. He warned them that for a school to be Christian it is not sufficient that it provide a course in religion or that it impose certain prac-tices of piety; in additon it is necessary that truly Christian' teachers communicate to their students the riches of a profoundly spiritual life. Hence, he added, the exterior organization of the school, its discipline and its program, must be adapted to the school's essential function of communicating an authentic spiritual sense. The students, he continued, should be" taught to unite them-selves to the life of the Church by participating in the liturgy and the sacraments; they should be initiated into works of the apostolate; and the horizons of the Church's missionary work should be opened to them. Moreover, they should be taught never to conceive their future careers .merely as social functions with no relation to their status as baptized Christians. Rather they should be trained to regard their future work as an exercise of their responsibility in the work of the salvation of the world, convinced that by seriously engaging themselves as Christians on the temporal level, they at 101 R. F. SMITH Review for Religion,s the same time realize their highest spiritual destiny. After express-ing his regret that Catholic schools do not always receive due support from public authority, the Vicar of Christ concluded by saying that the work of every Christian teacher is to announce the Savior to those who are ignorant of Him and to perfect those who already know Him. On September 9, 1958 (AAS, pp. 687-96), Plus XII addressed the members oi~ the International College of Psychopharmacology. In the principal part of his address the Holy Father considered the morality of using such drugs as chloropromazine and reserpine. Morality, he said, demaads first of all that there be the deepest respect and consideration for the human person, since a human being is the noblest of all visible creatures, made to the image of God by ci:eation and through redemption inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ. Even when afflicted by the severest of mental maladies, he added, the human person remains superior to all brute animals, for he continues to be a being destined one day to enjoy the immediate possession of God. The Pope then went on to summarize for his audience the moral teaching he had given in the allocutions of February 24, 1957 (see the summary given in gEVXF.w FOR RELIGIOUS, 16 [July, 1957], 228-33), and on April 10, 1958 (see gEV~F~W FOR RELIGIOUS, 17 [Sept., 19581, 293-96). A~ter expressing his regret that in some regions tranquilizing drugs are abused because they are at the free disposition of.the general publi.c, the Pontiff concluded his address by urging his hearers to continue their researches for the relief of human suffering. On September 5, 1958 (AAS, pp. 726-32), Plus XII addressed the International Society for Blood Transfusion, telling them that it is necessary to inform the general public about the laws of heredity, especially as they refer to the transmission of blood deficiencies and defects. Accordingly, he said, it would be good to organize bureaus of information and consultation like the Dight Institute in the United States where young people planning marriage could be informed about these matters. The Vicar oi: Christ concluded by noting that the Dight Institute does not aim to repress fecundity nor does it give information on the method to be used in "planning" families. A week later, September 12, 1958 (AAS, pp. 732-40), Plus XII spoke to the International Society of Hematology on the means of preventing the transmission of defective hereditary traits. The solu-tion to this pr6blem, he said, can not be found in artificial insemination, 102 March, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS which is forbidden not only to the unmarried, but also to the married. Neither is voluntary adultery permissible, since no married person may put his conjugal rights at the disposition of a third party. Like-wise direct sterilization may not be utilized; for such sterilization, whether temporary or permanent, whether of the man or woman, is illicit by reason of the natural law. The Pope added, however, that in given cases indirect sterilization may be permitted. Thus if all the conditions of the principle of. double effect are present, a woman may at the direction of her physi.i:ian take certain types of pills to cure a malady of the uterus, even though the pills may cause temporary sterility. After expressing his alarm about the favorable reaction of some moral theologiang to recently discovered drugs that can be used to induce sterility, the Pope went on to condemn artificial birth control. He pointed out, however, that the Ogino-Knaus method is morally justified if it is used for proportionately serious reasons, adding that eugenic considerations may be such. He praised the practice of adoption, .remarking, however, that it is necessary that children of Catholics be given to adoptive parents who are also Catholics. In the latter part of' his allocution the Pope pointed out that while one might advise against marriage between persons with a hereditary blood defect, still one could not forbid such a marriage, since the right to marry is one of the fundamental rights of the human person; moreover, in this whole area it must always be re-membered that men are not generated primarily for earth but for heaven. The Vicar of Christ also said that if a married couple discovered after their marriage that they possessed the blood defect characteristic of Mediterranean regions, this discovery would not in-validate their marriage, unless the absence of every hereditary defect had been made a condition of the marriage contract. Similarly, the "Rh situation" can not be regarded as a reason for the nullity of a marriage, even when this situation results in ~he death of the children from the first pregnancy; for the object of the matrimonial contract is not the infant, but the right to the accomplishment of the natural marriage act. On August 17, 1958 (AAS, pp. 701-05!, Pius XII broadcast a message for the conclusion of the traditional Catholic Week held in Berlin. He t61d his German listeners that the city in which they were meeting was a symbol of a divided people; nevertheless, as he reminded them, the days they had just spent together should show 103 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious how communion in a common faith can unite them in spite of all material barriers and frontiers. He urged the Catholics of West Germany to increase their generosity to the refugees from the East and exhorted Catholics living in the Communist zone of Germany to do everything in their power to attenuate the effects on their children of schools that are without God and against God. Finally he pleaded with his listeners not to separate religion from life. It is always difficult, he said, to make a man a Christian; and this is doubly so today since the age of technique we live in can easily make men lose sight of spiritual and supernatural values. Christians today, he added, are much like Christians of the primitive Church--almost suffocated in a milieu of paganism. Catholics, therefore, of today need heroism to so live that they may be the s~It of the earth. On September 7, 1958 {AAS, pp. 679-83), Plus XII addressed the International Congress of Classical Archaeology, remarking on the constant interest of the Papacy in archaeology and pointing out that much in the pre-Christian era was a preparation for the coming of the Gospel message. On September 8, 1958 {AAS, pp. 683-87), the Pontiff addressed the International Congress of Judiciai~y Officials, advising them to be diligent, precise, and impartial in their work and urging them to be deeply aware of the inalienable rights of God over men and human affairs. The last document to be noted from AAS of this period as coming from the authority of Plus XII is a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, approving under the date of May 24, 1958 {AAS, pp. 711-12), the reassumption of the cause of Blessed Joseph Mary Tommasi (1649-1713), confessor, Theatine, and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. John XXIII The remaining pages of the issues of AAS during the period under survey were concerned with the details of the death of Plus XII (AAS, pp. 761-836) and the election and coronation of John XXIII (AAS, pp. 837-908}. During the course of the latter events, the new Pope had occasion to make four addresses which should be noticed here. Immediately after his election on October 28, 1958 (AAS, pp. 878-79), the newly elected Pope addressed the Cardinals of tl'ie conclave, giving them the reason why he had chosen the name of John. It was, he said, the name of his own father; the church of his baptism had borne the same name, as do innumerable churches throughout the world including the Lateran Basilica. Moreover, the ¯ name John was the one most used by Popes in the long history of 104 March, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS the Papacy. Besides, he added, St. Mark, patron of Venice, also bore the name of John. But above all, he concluded, he had chosen the name because it was the name carried by the two men closest to Christ: John the Baptist and John th~ beloved disciple. The second address of John XXIII was given on October 29, 1958 (AAS, pp. 838-41), when the Pontiff broadcast a message to the entire Catholic world. After addressing all members of the Church, especially .those suffering persecution, the Holy Father gave striking evidence of his desire to work for peace. He called on the leaders of the world to work for peace rather than war, pointing out to them, however, that external peace can never be had unless men first enjoy peace within themselves. During the Mass of his coronation on November 4, 1958 (AAS, pp. 884-88), the Vicar of Christ delivered a homily in which he said that in his coming pontificate he would strive to achieve one thing more than anything else: to be a good pastor and shepherd for the entire flock of Christ. A d.ay later (AAS, pp. 900-902}, John XXIII spoke to the representatives sent by various countries to his coronation, reiterating to them his desir~ to work for peace. Three other documents concernifig John XXIII should be noted here; the first two (AAS, p. 904) give the text of telegrams sent by him to Cardinal Mindszenty and to Cardinal Stepinac, who were unable to attend the conclave; the third document, issued under the date of November 17, 1958 (AAS, pp. 905-06), is a letter to Monsignor (later Cardinal) Tardini, appointing him Secretary of State. This survey may be fittingly concluded by listing here the im-portant dates in the life of the new Pope as given in AAS, p. 902: Birth at Sotto il Monte, Italy--November 25, 1881 Priesthood--August I0, 1904 Domestic Prelate--May 7, 1921 Titular Archbishop of Areopolis--March 3, 1925. Consecration as archbishop--March 19, 1925 Apostolic Visitor--March 19, .1925 Apostolic Delegate--October 16, 1931 Titular Archbishop of Mesembria--November 30, 1934 Apostolic Nuncio--December 23, 1944 Cardinal--January 12, 1953 Patriarch of Venice--January 15, 1953 Election as Pope--October 28, 1958 Coronation--NovemBer 4, 1958. 105 Views, News, and Previews ~'~EVIEW,,FOR RELIGIOUS hopes to make "Views, News; and I'~Previews a standard part of each of its issues. In it will be published brief items concerning matters of interest to religious, such as anniversary celebrations of the founding of religious orders and congregations, educational and hospital matters, letters to the editor, and so forth. Readers of the R~.\,~Ew are encouraged to send such items to the editor. No such items can be returned to the sender nor can the l~Ev18w guarantee publication of any particular item. In 1956 the National Institute of Mental Health awarded Loyola University, Chicago, a five-year grant for developing mental health curricular materials for Catholic seminarians. After almost three, years of research and development, the Loyola Project, is now prepared to make public its preliminary work. The materials prepared by the Project on Religion and Mental Health are intended for eventual use in training men for the priesthood. The overall purpose in preparing the materials is to bring the facts and accepted conclusions of the behavioral sciences'to bear on the training and work of the con-temporary priest. When the materials have been completed and tested, they will be offered for use in Catholic seminaries throughout the country. The Loyola Project is under the direction of the Reverend Vincent V. Herr, s.J., and the Reverend William J. Devlin, S.J. Further details about the project may be obtained from either Father Herr or Father Devlin, at Loyola University, 6525 Sheridan Avenue, Chicago 26, Illinois. Father Joseph Lamontagne, S.S.S., is interested 'in obtaining a list of books that would help spiritual directors to prepare a can-didate for entrance into religious life. Father Lamontagne is interested in the matter because he is convinced "that a number of candidates fail to make the grade because of lack of sufficient preparation." Readers of the REw~.w who know of such books should write to Father Lamontagne at 184 76th Street, New York 21, New York. Registration for the summer session at Dominican College, San Rafael, California, will take place on the afternoon of June 27; classes 106 VIEWS, NEWS, AND PREVIEWS will begin on June 29 and extend until August 8. Besides'offering a complete program of undergraduate work, M.A. programs will be offered in biochemistry, education, English, history, and religion. The College also offers a five-year summer program' in theology and Scrip-ture; the program leads to either an M.A. degree in religion or a certif-icate in theology and is under the direction of the Dominican Fathers. The College will also offer for the sixth consecutive summer the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine Leadership course. Campus resi-dence is available for sisters and lay women; for priests and brothers there is the possibility of residence with the Marist. Fathers. For further information write to: Sister M. Richard, O.P., Director ot~ Summer Sessions, Dominican College, San Rafael, California. The forty-fourth annual convention of the Catholic Hospital Association will be held May 30 through June 4, 1959, in St. Louis, Missouri. The theme, of this year's convention will be "Management --A Sacred Trust." Some of the topics to be discussed at the con-vention are: management's effect on patient care: the management function of the department head or supervisors; personnel selection, placement, and motivation; management of materials, machines, and money; management of hospital markets; the importance of the in-dividual in intra-departmenfal and external hospital public relations; a program on management from the viewpoint of the mother house; a review of social changes that will be affecting the hospitals of the future; and ways of making the Catholic hospital more Catholic. Blessed Joseph Mary Tommasi, whose cause for canonization is noted in this issue's "Survey of Roman Documents," was born at Licata in Sicily on September 12, 1649. He was the eldest son of Duke Julius Tommasi of Palma; at fifteen he renounced his primo-geniture rights and entered the Theatine order at Palermo where .he was professoed on March 25, 1666. He was ordained priest in, 1673; and from that year until his-death he lived at Rome, principally at San Silvestro al Quirinale. He was one of the most learned men of his time, specializing in .scripture studies, ecclesiastical history, patristics, and especially Roman liturgy; in the last named branch of studies he is still an important authority. On May 18, 1712, he was created a cardinal. After a life of great austerity and charity, he died on Jan-uary 1, 1713. He was beatified by Pius VII in 1803 and is com-memorated on March 24. 107 QUESTIONS AND ANSW~.RS Review for Religious Saint Xavier College, Chicago, announces its twelfth summer-session Theological Institute, June 22-July 31. Two programs are offered: 1) A five-summer program leading to the Master of Arts Degree conferred by the Dominican College of St. Thomas Aquinas of River Forest, Illinois. 2) A three-summer program leading to a certificate in theology, Sacred Scripture, and canon law. Priests, brothers, and seminarians, as well as sisters, are admitted to both programs. The Reverend Reginald Masterson, O.P., Professor of Theology at St. Rose Priory, Dubuque, Iowa, Director of the Institute, and twelve Dominican Fathers comprise the teaching staff. For further information address: The Director of the Summer Session, Saint Xavier College, Chicago 43, Illinois. Question,s Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph ~. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] m5-- Why do we have so many outstanding novices and so many mediocre religious? This is certainly a large question. Some religious fortunately rise above their formation; but ordinarily the mature, cap'able, pro-gressive, and spiritual religious is had only by a suitable, competent, and sufficiently prolonged formation. It is obvious that all aspects of such a formation have been lacking in many institutes. Novice masters can so readily mistake external regularity for an interior life. Perhaps no principle of the movement of renovation and adaptation is of greater value than the insistence on individual formation and the necessity of a spirituality founded on personal conviction. The latter, ordinarily speaking, is the measure of the permanence of the novice's "spirituality. "The same thing happens in many of our young men that we encounter in so many Christiins of our day. They were born, grew up, and lived in an atmosphere that was Christian more by tradition than by conviction. There are so few Christians of conviction and of life; they so readily fall before difficulty and sacrifice. Many of our youth when assigned outside the house of formation, placed in contact 108 March, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS with the life and spirit of the world, and deprived of the aid of living in a house of studies gradually descend to making a pact with a mediocre life. Others, and they are not so few, collapse after scarcely one conflict of soul. Others, and not always the more nu-merous, retain their fervor." Reverend A. Cecchin, O.S.M., Acta et Documenta Congressus Generalis de Statibus Perfectionis, III, 155-56. "To form the moral judgment the mistress will devote herself to making" her subjects understand the justification for the regula-tions and customs to which they are subjected. While leading them to obey supernaturally, even without understanding, she will try as far as possible to do away with the automatism which leads religious to fulfil the tasks assigned to them without caring about their pu.r-pose or their value. In order to form the conscience permanently, it is essential that she should not be satisfied with forming habits devoid of all convictiofi which disappear in a changed environment as soon as the surroundings of the novitiate have been left. Without tolerating the spirit of destructive criticism it is necessary to develop moral convictions which prevent routine from depriving one's cuso tomary actions of their spiritual value and their attractiveness." Rev-erend Reginald Omez, O.P., Religious Sisters, 235-36. ¯6- Our constitutions state: 'tin affairs of minor importanc% it is always advisable for the mother general to ask the opinion of her councilors but she is not obliged to follow it." Isn't this article too restrictive of the authority of the mother general? Any superior is evidently obliged to seek the consent or advice of his council when this is commanded by canon law or the con-stitutions. The practice of the Holy See in approving constitutions places great emphasis on the office of councilor, and the constitu-tions usually recommend that any superior should seek the advice of his council in 'other important matters. This recommendation should be followed even when it is not contained in the constitutions. The only matters that remain are those of lesser importance and of no real importance. It is evidently restrictive of the authority of a superior even to recommend that he seek .the advice of his council ¯ in such matters. He would then be deprived of almost any power of acting without the advice of his council. Therefore, the article quoted above must refer only to matters of relatively greater im-portance. 109¯ QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious --7-- Is there any law of the Chur~:h on the color of the glass of the sanctuary lamp? The Code of Canon Law (c. 1271) does not legislate on the color of the glass of the lamp that is to burn constantly ~before the tabernacle in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. Therefore, car~onists and moralists do not discuss this topi'c at a~ny length and very frequently do not even mention it. On June 2, 1883, the Sacred Congregation of Rites replied in the affirmative to the.follow-ing question: "May the usage be tolerated of using lamps of glass that is not transparent or translucent but colored, for example, green or red?" (SRC, 3576, 5). It is certain from this reply that colored glass, and in particular green or red, is tolerated. Some canonists, moralists, and rubricists affirm that such colored glass is permitted. The reply does not prescribe but evidently presupposes as preferable transparent or translucent (clear) glass. Therefore, the literal sense of the one law of the Church on this matter is that clear glas.s, is p.referable but colored glass, and in particular green or red, is tolerated. Another argument for the clear glass is that white is the liturgical color of the Blessed Sacrament, and this is undoubtedly the reason why clear glass is preferred in the reply of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Because of thisofficial reply and the color of the Blessed Sacrament, liturgists and specialists in church building and furnishings are more apt to emphasizd the ~lear glass. O'Connell- Fortescue, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, 6. note 5: "The glass of the lamp should be white but colored glass is toler-ated.': O'Connell, Church Building and Furnishing, 235: "The glass of the lamp that burns before the tabernacle should be white (the color of the Blessed Sacrament), but colored glass is tolerated." Directions for the Use of Altar Societies and Architects, 35: however, the glass vessel is visible, it should be of white (clear) glass, which is the liturgical color of the Blessed Sacrament, though the use of colored glass is tolerate~d.'' Anson, Churches Their Plan and Furnishing, 112: "Most liturgical authorities recommend that the glass vessel . . . should be white, this being the color associated with the Blessed Sacrament, according to Roman usage. The Sacred Congregation of Rites has tolerated lamps of colored glass, e. g., red, blue, green.". O'Shea, The Worship of the Church, 195: "White or clear glass is to be prel%rred to colored, although that is 110 Marc]~,1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS tolerated." Reinhold, The American Parish and the Roma~r Liturgy, 25-26: "Sermons have described how the iittle red light gives the Catholic churches an animated character, their climate of divine presence, and how visiting Catholics feel at home and called to prayer wherever the 'little red light' shows that the church is 'in-habited' by God. Actually, however, the sanctuary lamp should not be red but colorless . Thus, this is not only a law but also an observance against our own modern custom, and this for the very important reason that separate colors have a symbolical meaning. Colored lights are never to be used for the Holy Eucharist in any form whatsoever because the Body and Blood of the Lord, the ful-heSS and source of all sanctity, is to be symbolized by an unbroken or full light which more properly signifies the divine presence. The components o~ white or the partial colors Imade visible through a prism or in a rainbow) are fit to represent only partial sanctity or holiness by participation. If we use externals to point to spiritual realities at all, we ought to use the correct ones." I do not see why white, the color of the Blessed Sacrament, is not verified by a white as well as a clear glass. The former can appear to give an even whiter light. For the same reason, it can be held that a white glass is in accord with the preference of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. As is evident also from the quota-tions given above, not all the authors who place greater insistence on a white glasg understand this term exclusively in the sense of a clea'r glass. My conclusion therefore is that, because of the official reply and' the color of the Blessed Sacrament, either white or clear glass is preferred; any other color is only tolerated. At the Venl sanctlficator of the Offertory and at the Last Bless-ing in Mass, does a priest begin the gestt, re of extending-elevating-joining the hands from the table of the altar or from his breast? From his breast. The rubrics state clearly for both of these occasions that the priest is to stand erect before he begins the gesture. (Ordo et Ritus Servandus in Celebratione Missae, VII, 5; XII, 1) It would be a highly peculiar gesture if the priest, while standing erect, were to begin the extension ~of the hands from the table of the altar. {Cf. Van der Stappen-Croegaert, Caeremoniale, II, De Ce!ebrante, 16; De Herdt, Praxis Liturgica, I n. 140; De Carpo-Moretti. Caeremoniale, n. 325) 111 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religion, s 9 May the head be bowed in making a simple genuflection?" Neither the body nor the head is to be bowed in any simple genuflection (on one knee), not even when the holy name is said while genuflecting nor in the genuflections at the Consecration (Cf. J. O'Connell, The Celebration of Mass, 260, and note 88). 10 Our constitutions .state: "It is the duty of the tellers to take care that the ballots are cast by each elector secretly, carefully, individually and in the order of precedence (Can. 171, ~ 2)." What is the meaning of "carefully"? The sense of "carefully" or "diligently" is obscure, and this term is therefore often omitted from constitutions. The several meanings given by authors are that the tellers should perform their duties carefully, so that there may be no reason for complaint; without loss of time and "with a careful handling of the ballots; that they should be vigilant lest any voter cast more than one vote or extract any vote already cast; and that they should carefully examine and record each vote. Our reception of the habit, first profession of temporary vows, renewals of temporary vows, p~rpetual profession, and public devo-tional renewals of temporary and perpetual vows a!l occur at Mass. On such occasions, is the priest obliged to say the Leonine Prayers after a low Mass? It is at least safely probable that he may omit the prayers after Mass on all these occasions because of the extrinsic solemnity added to the celebration (Cf. J. O'Connell, The Celebration of Mass, 179; Mueller-Ellis, Handbook of Ceremonies, 100; Wuest-Mullaney-Barry, Matters Liturgical, 442; Van der Stappen-Croegaert, Caeremoniale, II, De Celebrante, 130; Callewaert, Caeremoniale, 120, 14; De Amicis, Caeremoniale Parochorum, 157, note 81). I read the following article in the constitutions of a congregation of brothers: "The management of the temporal affairs of the house, tb~t is, the acquisition of the necessary provisions and clothing and tb~ repairs of the building may be entrusted to his supervision [the l-,'al brother assistant]. He shall therefore see to all these things 112 l~larch, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS according to the instructions given to him by the local superior." Wouldn't it be advisable for congregations of sisters to adopt such a delegation of authority? Yes, at least in the larger convents. All are urging a more maternal and spiritual government, but few are giving any attention to the overburdened local superior. She is usually also the bursar; principal of the school; has the care of the material condition and all material necessities of the convent, scl~ool, and members of the community; and is burdened also by the swarming minutiae of lesser permissions and minor disciplinary matters. This practice is harmful to maternal and spiritual government and to the general efficacy and dignity of the office. The burden could be sensibly lightened by delegating such matters as the maintenance and ordinary repairs of the convent and school, the usual material necessities of members of the community, lesser permissions, and minor infractions of re-ligious discipline to the local assistant. 13¸ Why do we stand for the /lngelus at noon on Saturdays during Lent? The Regit~r~ ~'~eli, which replaces the ~lngclt~s during Paschaltide, is always said standing. The ,'lngelt~s is said kneeling except from Saturday evening until Sunday evening inclusive. The reason for standing during Pa~chaltide is aptly explained by Jungmann, Public Worship, 202: "As early as the second century people regarded not merely the first week after Easter but the entire seven weeks which followed Easter as a festal time. They called it Pentecost; the name referred not just to its concluding day ('the fiftieth') but to the whole period. During this time no one was to fast; nor should one pray kneeling, but only standing, because we are all risen with Christ. In consequence the l"le~'tr~mus ge~ua was never used at this time. And that is why to this day we still pray at least the antiphon of our Lady (Re~/i~t~ cac/~) only while standing up. The same law applies also, and for the same reason to the Sunday and the Sunday ,4~tgclns." The same law applies because Sunday is the memorial day of the Resurrection (ibiJ. 10). CabroI, Liturgical Prayer, 81-82, expresses himself in similar fashion: "St. Irenaeus, in the second century, well explains this: 'We kneel on six days of the week in token of our frequent fails into sin; but on Sundays we remain,standing as if to show that Christ has raised .us again and 113 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious that by His grace He has delivered us from sin and death.' " The liturgical day is computed from Vespers to Vespers. Since during Lent Vespers in choir are said before noon, the /Ingelus is said standing at noon also on Saturdays during Lent. The same norm 6f standing and kneeling applies to the final antiphon of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Office. A genuflection at the words, "And the Word was made flesh," is neither prescribed nor forbidden. The form of the gngelus and the indulgences for its recitation~ may be found in the Raccolta, n. 331. --14- Is the indulgence lost by any change whatever made in an indulgenced prayer? Canon 934, § 2 reads: ". but the indulgences cease entirely if there has been any addition, omission, or interpolation [in the prayer]." However, on November 26, 1934, the Sacred Penitentiary replied that these words of canon 934, § 2 were not to be under-stood rigorously as applying to any additions, omissions, or changes whatsoever but only to such as changed the substance of the prayers. (Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, II, 236) ~ 'hat is the law of the code on discussions by religious capitulars concerning those competent for elective offices? A private or public discussion among the "capitulars on the merits and demerits of particular persons for the 'offices to which the elections are to be made is not mentoned in the code and consequently is neither commanded nor forbidden by canon law. The constitutions of lay institutes often contain a statement to the effect that prudent consultation regarding the qualifications of ~hose eligible is pe.rmitted within the bounds of justice and charity. Such consultations are at least very frequently necessary, for example, the religious of the United States will rarely know the religious of England, France, or Germany who have the qualifications necessary for a superior general. This is almost equally true of any large institute or province. In a small institute or province such consultations will not be generally necessary, but even in these some individual electors will often find it necessary to consult and seek information ~on those qualified. It is also true that even in a smaller institute those of one age level, locality, or field of work are often 114 March, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ignorant olc the abilities and accomplishments oF rhose olc osher levels, localities, and fields of labor. It is rarely expedient to hold such discussions publicly in an assembly of the capitulars. They should consist of private discussions among a few or of individual consultation. These consultations are to be limited to a sincere seeking and giving of information on the abilities and defects of particular persons insofar as these are necessary or useful for forming a judgment on the suitability° of the person for the office in question. They should be Free oi~ any persuasion or even of counselling a capitular to vote for or against anyone. The common and greater good of the institute should be the motive. All motives oF mere personal Friendship or aversion, oF pushing a religious because he is from one's own province oi" country, as also and especially the formation of blocs or parties are dearly out of place. --16-- Our constitutions state that there are to be two councilors in every formal house and a bursar in every house. Must there be a bursar also in non-formal houses? Yes, and this is an obligation of the Cod~ of Canon Law. A formalI house is a religious house in which at least six professed religious reside, of whom, if it is a clerical institute, at least four must be priests (can. 488, 5°). Canon 516, § 1 commands that at least formal houses are to ha(,e councilors and recommends that smaller houses also have councilors. Non-formal houses of lay institutes more frequently follow this recommendation by having one councilor in these houses. Canon 516, ~ 2 states absolutely, without any distinction of formal and non-formal houses, that there is to be a local bursar i:or every house. Therefore, there is to be a local bursar also in non-formal houses. Canon 516, § 3 enjoins that ordinarily the office of local' superior is to be separated from that of local bursar but permits the combining of the two offices in the one person when this is demanded by necessity. Even if the~ particular constitutions affirm that these offices are absolutely in-compatible, they may be combined in a case of necessity. (Cf. Larraona, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 10-1929-36, note 713) Vari-ous terms are used for the bursar in different constitutions, for example, treasurer, procurator, procuratrix, stewardess, econome, economa, administrator, administratrix, and so forth. 115 Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1957 SISTERS' INSTITUTE OF SPIR-ITUALITY. Edited by Joseph E. Haley, C.S.C. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958, Pp. 387. $4.00. The 1957 Institute of Spirituality for Sister Superiors and Novice Mistresses, sixth of these summer programs, has its proceedings collected into this handy volume. Those not able to attend may thus participate in some of its benefits. Moreover, those who were there may refresh their memories from this volume and in it study the ideas put forth in their objective reality, free from the coloring of local personalities and enthusiasms. The purpose of these pro-grams is "to provide . . a deeper and clearer understanding of the theological and canonical principles basic to the religious life." Since, the preface argues, "an unfortunate dichotomy between the apostolate and [personal and community] spirituality exists in' the minds of too many religious and in the very program of formation," the 1957 Institute "sought to dispel this misunderstanding and further the integration of the two aspects of the Christian life by exploring the whole province of the apostolate as the contifiuation of the Redemptive Mission of Christ in His Mystical Body for the glori-fication of the Father and the salvation of mankind. Guided by faith ~nd inspired by hope and charity, the apostolate is a fulfilling of the Divine Will and a powerful means of personal sanctification and community development." Certainly the organizers of this Institute are to be congratulated on their realistic choice of theme as well as for their orderly programming of talks closely connected with the general subject of the sessions, not to mention their never-to-be-sufficiently-praised in-terest in the spiritual life of American religious women. Like most proceedings, however', the various contributions are of unequal value. As readings, too, they suffer from their oratorical quality, invaluable in the assembly hall but deleterious to their natural appeal as material for private study (though, logically enough, they are, in part at least, not unsuitable for public reading--say in the refectory). This is no fault. Everyone knows it is of the nature of proceedings to have a certain bombastic quality which the mind privately reading 116 BOOK REVIEWS abhors, for example, page 177; ". . . when our buoyancy and optimism and trust and confidence is put to the ultimate test . " Father Louis J. putz, C.S.C., a determined foe of unrealistic spirituality, lays out on a thought-through, carefully written basis the theology of the apostolate. His presentation is solid, occasionally witty: "No one can deny that the lay apostolate is very much in the air. Unfortunately, for many priests and religious, they would just as soon see it stay there." He speaks first of the mission of the Church in the twentieth century, that is, to continue to effect the Incarnation, in the wide sense of the word, of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He lays down the general lines of the program of :the Church, but with theological insight and enough concrete illustration to give his outline more reality and vitality than such roughly limned sketches usually have. Through the second chapter Father Putz expounds on the mission of the Word. There are many points, here particularly, where he shows how practical attitudes have to be the result of dogmatic tenets, He goes on to treat in a theologically penetrating way the mission of the people of God. In dealing with the personal and institutional apostolate and with apostolic spirituality, he makes practical sugges-tions, showing in his attitudes the influence of the writings of Car-dinal Suhard, whom he cites in his bibliography. Finally he considers the influence of religious on the lay apostolate and pronounces some good dos and don'ts. In general, the sweep of Father Putz's thoughts, their direction, is not as striking as some of his excellent insights. And a littie more care on the editor's part would have eliminated the verbatim repetition of a full paragraph of Father Putz's matter; see pages seven and thirty-eight. Father Elio Gambari, S.M.M. ("Recent Decrees of the Holy See Regarding the Apostolate"), undertakes to explain the Church's mandate for religious as well as the connection between the aposto-late and the spirituality of an institute. While he does not do this at a purely juridical level, his general orientation is more there than anywhere else. A member of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, Father Gambari speaks with prudent authority relative to the historical and actual juridical position of religious institutes in the life of the Church. Father Charles J. Corcoran, C.S.C., has as his subject "The Apostolate as a Means of Sanctification." Though as a section this part of the Institute is more carefully edited than some other parts, 117 ]300K REVIEWS Review for Religious his first conferences are perhaps a little too sermon-like to effectively embrace subject matter useful to the purpose of the whole Institute; moreover, his explanation of the apostolate as a means to the sanctification of the individual never quite "jells" in spite of the fact that he is given additional opportunity to clarify his position by a question put to him on this point. Father Corcoran, however, makes some excellent points in insisting that the emphasis of novice-sl~ ip training be more on principles than on minutiae of observance. Moreover, in his conferences on prayer there is a short exposition of the method of the school of Cardinal de Berulle, an explanation which, for clarity and brevity can scarcely be surpassed. Sister Mary Emil, I.H~M. ("The Apostolate of Teaching"), pro-vides some high points of the sessions. She speaks with a deep, inner understanding, enthusiasm, and (except where she places St. Jerome in the wrong century--a slip surely) learning. Her well-documented and, statistically speaking, solidly based analysis of the present teaching situation in Catholic schools gives her the opportunity to make suggestions which wise superiors surely will consider. One telling point (to give an example) is where she says, "Our retreats could have interpreted our work and its integration for us, but often they did not, because the masters ,.0ere not teachers themselves o'r did not know we had this problem." Wise retreat masters will follow such a useful suggestion from the floor. Another example of her penetrating insight is had where, in speaking of vocations to the religious life, she discards as useless the notion that God has only old-fashioned graces for modern girls. Father John J. Lazarsky, O.M.I., speaks on the subject of hospital and social work. However, he comple.tely avoids treating the second part of his subject.' It is clear from what he says that his 'experience in hospital work has been first-hand, extensive, and valuable. It is also clear that he made extraordinary efforts in his proximate preparation for the talks by. gathering useful data. One feels, nevertheless, that there was a deficiency in or omission of what should have been the next stage in the development of l~is material-- a calm period in which to assimilate it and to extract useffil con-clusions from it. Teaching catechism is the subject on which Father Joannes F/ofinger, S.J., expresses some personal views. Sympathetic as one should be to some of the aims the veteran missionary has in mind, one wonders whether or not some generalizations in his criticisms 118 March, 1959 BOOK REVIEWS of contemporary method may not be too universal, some of his projected substitutions too vague. Be that as it may, his views, or rather his enthusiasm, can stimulate constructively critical attitudes in us and prevent deadly humdrum from enervating our use of methods which, though they have proved effective in the past, need" constant evaluation for their effectiveness in the present situation and equally constant adaptation to current problems.--EAgL A. V~E~S, S.J. THE CHALLENGE OF BERNADETTE. By Hugh Ross William-son. Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1958. Pp. 101. $1.95. The Lourdes Ceatenary has been another great triumph of Mary. To a happily surprising degree, it has been also the'triumph of her confidante, St. Bernadette. The new books about her have been many; and they are good--so good that her friends read them one after another, with unflagging eagerness. Properly speaking, Hugh Ross Williamson's Challenge of Berna: dette is not another life, but a powerful interpretation of her life, and of Lourdes, as a divine sign of the truth of the Christian revelation in the face of a contradicting world. The author is perfectly at home in the literature of his subject and master of the historical, cultural, and theological background. ,He writes with the ' style of an experienced man of letters. In this brief review only two points can be singled out. By a remarkable combination of hard-headed realism and of perceptive gentleness, Williamson makes a positive, importanv contribution toward a better understanding of the characters who surrounded Bernadette and .trie~d her mettle. This applies especially to his treatment of the Abb~ Marie-Dominique Peyramale, her parish priest, and of Mother Marie-Th~r~se Vauzou, her novice mistress, They are redoubtable figures; but they have their qualities, just the same-- qualities which Bernadette valued highly. The other point is simply the main theme of the book brought to its focus. The challenge of Bernadette is the challenge of a saint who lacked everything the world covets and admires. It is the simple integrity of her Christian faith and piety, divinely sealed by the charism of miracle. It is Mary's challenge and Bernadette's to a world that isalways bringing upon itself the wages of its self-conceit~ It is God's challenge, through them, to repent; for the Kingdom of Heaven is very near at Lourdes.--EDGAg R. SMOTHERS, S.J. 119 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious LIKE A SWARM OF BEES. By Sister M. Immaculata, S.S.J. Second Printing. Buffalo, New York: Mount St. Joseph Mother-house, 1958. Pp. 213. $3.50. The Sisters of st. Joseph of Buffalo here have their history recounted right back to the days of three hundred years ago when a good bishop of Le Puy in France and Father Jean Pierre Medaille, S.J., collaborated to provide initial inspiration and impetus. The newness of the way of religious life begun by these sisters shocked narrow traditionalists at first; but criticism eventually had to grow silent, as it always does, in the face of good works blessed with God's graceful favor. The book will be of particular interest to those who work with these sisters and would like to know more of their spirit, and local history or to those who aspire to join their zealous ranks.--EAgI. A. WEIs, S.J. GOD'S HIGHWAYS. By J. Perinelle, O.P. Translated by Donald Attwater. Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1958. Pp. ix, 339. $4.25. When a distinguished writer turns, for a change, to the work of translation, the reader is assured of a resulting product worthy of his best attention on a double count. Donald Attwater has enriched our vocation literature with an English classic in God's Highways, giving us a charming rendition of Father Perinelle's volume on religious vocaton. The well-known Dominican author addresses his pages primarily to those consecrated to God in religion, including secular institutes, ~ut notes that all Christian perfection has a common basis, whether lived in or out of the cloister, and that hence lay men and women, striving for a deeper life, will find inspiration and guidance in these chapters. The lucid style and vigorous thought captivates the reader from the start, expressing, as it does, a po.werful conviction that "for beauty, grandeur, fruitfulness and happiness not one of the happy ways. of life equals that which is wholly dedicated to the Lord, for not one of them is given over to so sublime a love." Father Perinelle does much more than write another book on the vows. He lucidly portrays the in'planting and growth of a vocation from its first tiny beginnings, and one instinctively cherishes the desire that many young people may come under the tutelage of so wise a director. For this purpose the opening chapters ought properly to be read long before one enters the cloister. The pity 120 March, 1959 BOOK REVlEWS is that many a later reader will sigh and utter to himself, "If only I had known all that while I was fighting my hard way into religion." Appreciation of the implications of any life in God's service will require understanding of the fundamental God-given habits of faith and charity, which are perhaps too little appreciated in the process of sanctification. Both these divine-gift "virtues are adequately presented in the second and third sections of the book. The wonders of charity, one feels, as portrayed in these scintillating pages, would turn earth into heaven if they could be fully realized. Yet this charity "is no leveller, it does not kill natural affection"; nor does it save us from still finding ourselves "like men with loads on their shoul-ders, some going up and some coming down the same narrow staircase: try as they may, they can't prevent their loads sometimes banging into one another." A fourth section treats of the general topic of religion as a fundamental virtue, and a "fellow of charity," resulting from our life in Christ and uniting us to Him in His priesthood. Seldom is the truth so convincingly put, in vocation treatises, that consecration to God in religion arises from the priesthood of Christ from which it derives both its existence and its worth. Before the specific treatment of the vows, a preliminary chapter makes it clear that these vows are not the invention of the Church but were introduced by Christ Himself through the Apostles. By their observance the Savior wished to reproduce in His followers ¯ the characteristics of His own life, but His advocacy of them is by way of counsel not precept. Chastity is exhibited first in its most attractive splendor, a loving gift that cannot be mere abstention. The subsequent pages on the pracdce of the virtue are precious in their sound and resolute actuality, presenting an alluring positive picture of the lovely virtue of virginity. Neither is "consecrated maidenhood" a mere addi-tional ornament of the Church; it is rather a vital organ, not a halo but a heart; a virtue, too, that is blessed with a nobler fertility, enriching the Church and society with "Fathers" and "Mothers" of a higher order. Poverty is viewed as. it took shape historically, from gospel beginning to our time, and with many legitimate varieties, under the Church's guidance and legislation, meeting the varying needs of persons and conditions. Special emphasis is lald on the recent 121 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious prescriptions of Sponsa Christi and allied documents in regard to the work of contemplative nuns. The impressive litany of dos and don'ts rehearsing ~he practice of poverty is attractive in its sane and good-humored realism. An impressive treatment of obedience closes the book, exhibit'-. ing the singular value of this virtue and vow in t~ostering true, spiritual, Christian freedom. "The service of God to which obedi-ence calls you is not slavery--it is freedom." Again the historic growth of obedience is traced, from the older hermits through St, Augustine and St. Benedict to our own times inclusive of secular institutes. Obedience is shown to offer endless opportunity for meritorious acts while there is a minimum danger of "sin against it. "Such is the illogicality of divine mercy." The author's treatment substantiates to the full his own final evaluation thus summarized: "Understood and practised in this way, obedience and its sister docility are educative, manly, expansive and fertile virtues." Once more be it said, the fine flavor of a translator's consum-mate art, added to the author's brilliant mastery of his subject, makes this book a valuable and engrossing addition to our vocation literature.--ALovsluS C. KEMPEP,, S.J. THE YANKEE PAUL: ISAAC THOMAS HECKER. By Vincent F. Holden, C.S.P. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1958. Pp. xxii, 508". $6.95. Books have already gone on the market with the titles Yankee Batboy, Yankee Bob, Yankee Doodle, Yankie Rookie, Yankee Tab-ernacle, Yankee Yachtsman, Yankee 8tran#er, Yankee Privateer, Yan-kee Pasha, and Yankee Priest. Granted that it is difficult to be original in one's choice of title these days, Father Holden's selec-tion, Tt, e Yankee Paul. has the ring of a hackneyed phrase about it. This is unfortunate, for the book is good. The archivist of the Paulist community has done his noble group excellent service in commemorating its one hundred years of fruitful ministry to America by his publication of this p

Issue 13.1 of the Review for Religious, 1954. ; A. M.D. G. Review for Religious JANUARY 15, 1954 Apparitions and Revelations . Aucjusffne ~. Ellard Screening of Candidates . WilliemC. Bier ¯Reading for Religious . Edward F. ~aresch6 Aurelian Spirituality . Sister Mary of Carmel Book Reviews Questions and Answers Communications VOLUME XIII NUMBER 1 RI VII:::W FOR RI::LIGIOUS VOLUME XIII JANUARY, 1954 NU/vlBER 1 CONTENTS APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS: ATTITUDES TOWARD THEM Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. 3 PRACTICAL REQUIREMENTS OF A PROGRAM FOR THE PSY-CHOLOGICAL SCREENING OF CANDI-DATES- William C. Bier. S.J .13 COMMUNICATIONS . 27 READING FOR RELIGIOUS---Edward F. GareschL S.J .2.9. SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS . 34 AURELIAN SPIRITUALITY~ister Mary of Carmel, R.P.B .3.5. "APPARITIONS" OF OUR LADY . 45 PAMPHLETS AND BOOKLETS . 46 BOOK REVIEWS-- The Spiritfiality of St. Ignatius Loyola . 47 BOOK NOTICI~S . - . 48 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 49 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 1. Special Confessor for Individual Sister .53 2. Special Spiritual Director, Not Confessor .53 3. Blessing by Mother Superior' . . 54 4. Successive Terms in Different Houses .54 5. Length of Years in Office for Superior General .55 6. Terms of Office for Superior General . 55 VOCATION INSTITUTE . 56 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January, 1954. Vol. XIII, No. 1. Published bi-monthly: January, Ma~ch, May, July, September. and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J., Adam C. Ellis, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J., Francis N. Korth, 8.3. Copyright, 1954, by Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before wrltlncj to us. please consult notice on Inside back cover. Review for Religious Volume XIII January--December, 1954 Published a÷ THE COLLEGE PRESS Topeka, Kansas Edited by THE JESUIT FATHERS SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is in~lexe¢l in the GATHOLIG PERIODIGAL INDEX Apparit:ions and Revelat:ions: At:t:it:udes t:oward Them Augustine G. Ell~ird, S.J. ASIDE perhaps from fully cloistered nuns, one could hardly be so ill informed about what is going on in Catholic circles as not to notice how often in recent years apparitions and reve-lations from heaven have been reported and what a great stir they make among the people. Troublesome times were always wont to bring, forth a multi-tude of such prodigies. Our days, after the two world wars, the attacks of communism, the threats of atomic catastrophes, and all the disturbing effects of these great movements, are unsettled in a high degree. Moreover--a point in which we differ markedly from previous generations--the means of communication now are so fast and far-reaching that any extraordinary occurrence can become known almost immediately throughout the widest areas. One might suppose that in our enlightened and skeptical and materialistic century a rumor of marvelous happenings would create doubt and cynicism rather than eager enthusiasm to participate in whatever appears supernatural. The contrary, however, seems really to be the fact. At least in one case the excitement became so great and disor-dered that it was necessary for tbe ecclesiastical authorities to launch an excommunication against tbose who were letting their feelings run away with their reason (Heroldsbach, near Bamberg, Germany: nineteen persons were excommunicated: July, 1952). Throughout the whole Catholic world there seemed to be so much excessive credulity toward reported celestial visitations that it was felt im-perative to publish an emphatic warning in the semi-official paper of the Holy See, L'Osseruatore Roneano (February 3, 1951). Some of the best-known of these real or alleged celestial interventions are listed on pages 45-46 of this number of the REVIEW. If one is to distinguish true from false and to preserve an intel-ligent and balanced attitude toward what he hears recounted, it is necessary to have some little acquaintance with what a well-instructed Catholic should think about apparitions and revelations. AUGUSTINE G. }~LLARD ¯Importance of the Right Attitude The importance of taking the proper attitude toward apparitions and revelations can be very great. If Christ our Lord should deign to appear and speak to one, it is clear that He should be received and heard with the great.est rever-ence. Simi!arly if some other person from heaven, say the Blessed Virgin, should honor one with a visit or message, one ought to re-spond with becoming respect and gratitude. God would be singling one out individually for a favor, and even working a miracle to cbnvey it. If the apparitions and revelations be objective and one's reaction right, they sometimes turn out to be the most significant graces for one's own personal sanctification. On the other h.and, one can also make poor use of them, or even let oneself become, the dupe of hal-lucinations, and then the evil consequences can be disastrous. Good Effects The lives of the saints are full of examples of favors of this kind that led later on to other and greater graces. To say nothing of St. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus--because one might argue that it was not merely a private apparltion--we could instance such cases as the following. St. Teresa of Avila experienced very many visions and revela-tions and was much helped by them in becoming the great saint and apostle that she was. Once she beheld a seraph lancing a fiery dart into her heart and she heard Christ Himself ~ay, "In future you will be jealous, for My honor not only because I am your creator and your king, but as My true spouse. My honor is yours: your honor is Mine." Such an experience could not but have a most potent in-fluence upon her subsequent spiritual development. Referring to a number of her visions, she wrote: "I could never regret baying seen these heavenly visions and I would not exchange them for all the good things and delights of this world. I always considered them a great favor from the Lord, and I think they were the greatest of treasures; often the Lord Himself would reassure me about them. I found my love growing exceedingly" (Life, chap. 19: Peers's translation of the Comptete~ Works of St. Teresa, I, 188). St. Catherine of Siena could not be formally and visibly espoused to Christ with a ring and other ceremonies withou,t being powerfully stimulated to advance in sanctity and in the service of 4 danuarg, 19~¥ APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS the Church. A succession of visions helped Joseph of Cupertino, the great Italian Franciscan miracle-worker of the seventeenth cen-tury, to become the incredible .saint that he was. Several of the great religious, orders are indebted in greater or lesser measure for their origin, or at least for their actual historical course of development, to" apparitions and revelations. Saudre~u lists numerous.examples of this fact (L'Etat M~tstique, 1921, p. 221). It is said that the confirmations of both the Franciscan and the Dominican orders were owing in part to visions granted to Pope Innocent III. When St. Francis asked for approbation for his nascent order, the Pope seemed unwilling to give it, and many ~of the cardinals were actively opposed to the move. Then the Pope had a dream in which Francis appeared supporting the Lateran Church which seemed to be in danger of collapsing. Something similar hap-pened five years later in favor of St. Dominic and his order. Ac-cording to t~adition, the founders of the Servite order (seven young men of Florence, in the early part of the thirteenth century) had a vision of the Blessed Virgin and were inspired by her to give tip the secular life and devote themselves to God ,exclusively. Later on, in another vi.sion, she gave them their habit, their name, and an indi-cation as to what rule they should adopt. ' The history of the Church, especially of its devotional life, abundantly illustrates what a mighty influence apparitions and revelations can have for the faithful generally. Outstanding instances that occur to the mind at once are the mission of St. Juliana of Liege (i 193-1258) in bringing about the institution of the solem-nity of Corpus Christi; St. Simon Stock (c. 1165-1265) and the devotion of the scapular; the apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary and the tremendous force now of the cultus of the Sacred Heart; Lourdes and all the pilgrimages to that shrine; and lastly, Fatima and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Without apparitions and revelations there .would have been no St. Jeanne d'Arc; without her, Frefich and European history would be very different. Owing in part at least to a special revelation St. Catherine of Siena was able to induce Pope Gregory XI to re-store the papal curia from Avignon to Rome. Evil Results On the other hand, private revelations or apparitions, and their counterfeits especially, can also have very serious evil consequences. AUGUSTINE G. I~LLARD Reaie~u for Religious Those that are really genuine a~e at best and in themselves graces of an inferior sort. They belong to the extraordinary phenomena that occasionally mark the pursuit of virtue. Like other miracles, they are not'supernatural in the absolute sense. Of themselves they do not give one a greater participation in the divine life and a Fight to a higher degree of beatitude in eternity. One can be favored with miracles, or even work them, and still in the end find oneself ex-cluded from the company of the elect. "Many will'say to me in that day, 'Lord! Lord! did we not prophesy in Thy name, and cast out demons in Thy name, and do many miracles in Thy name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of iniq.uityV " (Matthew 7:22.) Some good people are like the ancient Corinthiafis whom St. Paul had to instruct about the relative values of "spiritual gifts" and charity: "Now, earnestly desire the grdater gifts; and yet I will point out to you a far more excellent path," namely that of charity. Then follows the celebrated passage in praise of charity: "If I spoke With the languages of men and of ~ingels: . . . But the greatest of these is love" (I Corinthiaris 12:31-13:13). Moreover the spiritual masters always call attention to the fact that there are many great dangers and difficulties connected with this unusual type of divine favor. It is quite possible to make bad use ~)f good graces. True apparitions and revelations may be misunder-stood and misinterpreted. Instead of being used for the purposes for which they are given, they may be diverted to faulty human ends. They may lead to pride and presumption, and thus eventu-ally to spiritual catastrophe. They are peculiarly apt to lessen the purity of one's faith and charity. At the very least they may dis-tract one from the greater and better graces of the .supernatural life. False visions and revelations, besides playing havoc with the lives and virtues of those who imagine that they receive them, can lead whole multitudes astray, deprive them of the benefits of the proper practice of their religion, and make religion' itself a mockery to outsiders. For thes~ reasons theologians and enlightened spiritual directors always try to discourage people from developing too much interest in these minor, though indeed more spect.acular, manifestations of divine favor. APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS Wrong I, nitial Attitudes . . Among the generality of 'lthe faithful, e~pecially those who ar, e less intelligent or less well educated, there will always be the ineradi- . cable human tend.ency to get e.xcesslvely excited over-fresh reports of supernatural occurrences." There will always .be some who are gul-lible enough to accept almost any rumor. They are curious to have some experience of what is mysterious and weird.-. They are eager. to obtain some divine favor or other. Influencing one another and exemplifying the faults of crowd psychology, they almost inevitably go beyond the limits of sound reason and the cautions of their ec- Clesiastical superiors. Devout individual souls of some proficiency or ambition in the spiritual lif~ often succumb to an inordinate interest in private ap-paritions and revelations, but in a different way. They would dearly love to receix~e some special personal attention from God or the Blessed Virgin or the saints in heaven~ ~It would be wonderful to have ~ real experience in som~ way of the supernatural. They appreciate the joys of spiritual, consolatiori a'nd would gladly enjoy the maximum of them. An unusual sign :from God, actually vis-. ible or audible, could miraculously facilit;ite their efforts to make progre.ss in the interior ways. They would feel more like the saints, who, they imagine, lived in a world of supernatural phenomena. Aiming 'too muchat extraordinar~r ex.periences, rather than at the more prosaic practice of virtue, they would find some of their fondest desires gratified.' Such tendencies appear at times in very pibus and excellent souls. Nevertheless all spiritual authorities are unanimous and urgent in counseling people who are cultivating the interior, life not to desire or seek anything of the kind. Instead of occupying themselves with favors that are of inferior worth and sometimes positively danger-ous, they should concentrate on the more desirable graces, those that properly sanctify one and enhance one's solid virtoe. Otherwise they may fall victims to various hazards and deceits. A very humble man would be preoccupied, not with looking for special, extraordinary favors, but irl endeavori~ag to lessen his unworthiness of'aug favor. A-prudent'man would be wary "about getting himself into many distractions from what he should really be about; One who is on the watch for marvelous phenomena may indeed get them, not from above, but from the insidious evil spirits, ever-ready to turn to their purposes a c.ravir~g that is not wholesome.~ ' " 7 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD Reuiew for Religious No 'one is more emphatic in cautioning good people not to seek apparitions and revelations of their own, or does it with more au-thority, than the great mystical doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross. Reading. what he has to say about such phenomena should cure a sensible person of any hankering that he may have for the marvelous element in ~he spiritual life "Ascent of Mt. Carmel, II, chapters XVI-XXXII). - Thus, for example, he writes: "In order to come to this essential union of love in God [that is, the state to which St. John is guiding his readers], the soul must have a care not to lean upon imaginary visions . for these cannot serve it as a proportionate and proximate means to such an end; rather they would disturb it, and for this reason the soul must re-nounce them and strive not to have them. For if in any circum-stance they were to be received and prized,, it would be for the sake of the profit which true visions bring to the soul and the good effect which they'produce upon it. But i~ is not necessary, for this reason, to receive them; rather it is Well always to reject them for the soul's benefit" (op. cir., Peers's translation, I, 134). The best effects of such divine communicati'ons are received in souls that resist, rather than seek, them. "Let confessors direct their penitents in faith, instructing them frankly to turn away their eyes from all such things, teachingthem how to avoid the desire and the spirit of them that they make progress, and giving them to understand how much more precious in God's sight is one work or act ~f the will performed in charity than are'all the visions and communications that they may receive from Heaven, since these imply neither merit nor demerit" (op cir., I, 184). Recipients" Attitudes But suppose now, no matter what a person's previous attitude toward visions and r~velations has been, that one really occurs, or at least seems to occur. What i~ one to think? What should one do? If it is not quite evident at once, without any examination at all, that what one seems to see or hear is from above, one should try to disregard it arid pay no attention to it. One should rather en-deavor to 'busy oneself with something else. Such is the advice of the saints and theologians. Thus St. Teresa writes: "Both with infirm and healthy souls .there is invariably cause for misgivings about theke things until it becomes clear what kind of spirit is responsible. I Januar~l, 1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS believe, too, that it is always better for them to dispense with such things at first, for, if they are of God, dispensing with them will help us all the more to advance, since, when put to the proof in this way, they will tend to increase" (Interior Castle, "Sixth M~insions," chapter III; Peers's translation, II, 280). Soon after such an occurrence one should of course consult a prudent director, give him a full account of the whole matter, and then be sensible enough to abide by what he says. In c~se it is immediately and perfectly evident that one has to do with a visit or message that is really of divine origin, then one should receive it with becoming courtesy. What this' will consist in will depend upon who has appeared or who' is speaking. If, for instance, it be Jesus Himself, as happened to St. Margaret Mary, or the Blessed Virgin, as at Lourdes, one would show the utmost rev-erence and respect. If an angel or a saint from heaven or a soul from purgatory should be the visitor, one's reception would be what is fitting under the. circumstances. Any communication would be listened to. The next thing by all means is to see one's director "and let him know just what happened. Then, with becoming docility a'nd humility, one should be guided entirely by his judgment. Patience also may be necessary; it may not be possible for him to come to a conclusion at once. This is exactly what the saints did themselves, and what they recommend for others. Thus one submits to the Church, and is safeguarded from following in the devious ways that history records of many deluded visionaries. What is private and unofficial is sub-ordinated to what is public and official. Care to keep in agreement with the infallible Church is the only sure means of avoiding illu-sion, not to say hallucination. Even if for a time there should seem to be a contradiction between God giving directions immediately in a revelation and God directing through the Church, one should fol-low the Church's rep, resentatives. It is thus that God is truly pleased. One time St. Teresa was instructed in a revelation from the Lord to make a certain foundation. Her superior, Father Gratian, desired that she should make another one instead. She obeyed promptly and simply. Father Gratian was aware of the difficulty, and being surprised that she did not object, later on questioned her about the matter. Teresa answered that she acted as she did "because AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD' '"::: ' '." ~', Reoieto for Religious faith tells me that the orders of Your Reverence are the expression of the will of God, whereas I am never sure of my revelations." Showing the proper diffidence in oneself and docility toward au-thority is a sign in favor of one's vision or locution, and may be a means of promoting its acceptance. On the contrary, excessive in-sistence on having a direct personal communication from God might lead to suspicions against one and resistance. One may feel that something divine and very excellent is being neglected or lost, and to bear this trial well may test one's patience and humility. But if it r.eally be from God, in His own good time He will make it tri-umph. Thus it was on13i after the death of Blessed Juliana of Liege that her divine commission to help bring about the feast " : Corpus Christi achieved the desired result. Sometimes a person gets some practical injunction in a private revelation; for example, to promote a certain devotion, to take steps toward raising a shrine, to make a pilgrimage, and so forth. Here the first great rule is to begin by seeking prudent ,counsel from one's director or superiors, and to conform to it. The second general principle is not to do anything of the kind unless independently of ¯ the supposed revelation there seem to be good reasons for it. Thus one follows both supernatural good sefise and the revelation. Then the suggestion from above becomes the occasion rather than the principal cause of what is done. The more extraordinary the un-dertaking appears, the greater must be the reasons otherwise known which justify it, the greater one's care in considering the whole mat-ter, ands the more cautious one's general attitude. Humility and amenability to direction are both excellent signs of union with God and means of getting co-operation from others in doing the work of God and of the Church. Reported Apparitions and Revelations The great practical problem for most of us is what attitude we should take, not toward visions or locutions of our own--most of us do not have very many!--but toward the apparitions or revela-tions that we hear or read about. In Catholic spiritual literature there are volumes and volumes from the saints and other devout persons purporting to give new re-vealed knowledge On the life of Christ, for instance, or on His Pas-sion, or on the experiences of the Blessed Virgin. Moreover the public press nowadays very frequently has news 10 danuar~l, 1954 APPARITIONS AND P~EVELATIONS reports about alleged recent revelations. The Scapular, for Septem-ber- October, 1950, gives an account in particular of fifteen appari-tions, of the ]31essed Virgin since Fatima, and it adds, "There are reports of others in Spain, Poland, Roumania, and Sicily, but so far the news is sketchy and incomplete" (pp. 3 ft.). There are also the apparitions listed by the Clergtl Montbtv (Ranchi, India) and re-ferred to at the beginning of this.article (see pp. 45-46). The query what stand-we should adopt toward such reports affects all of us and nearly all- the time. To disregard true messages from heaven would be unbecoming, displeasing to" God, and inju-rious to ourselves. But neither do we wish to be duped by the vic-tims of hallucination. Here we may consider a simple and obvious solution of the problem. It will be very easy. to apply and very safe. But unfor~ tunately it will not always be available, especially in the beginning when popular interest and excitement are at their height. In an-other article we.can discuss the distinctions and difficulties that meet one who inquires into these matters more thoroughly. For the pres-ent let us be satisfied with the simplest answer. This plain and facile solution is, "Follow the approbation or disapprobation of the official authorities in the Church, either the Pope or the bishops! If they have not spoken yet, by all means sus-pend judgment, and wait until they do!" , The Church can judge. The" supernatural is her special field, and in it she has a unique competence. She also has the accumu-lated ~xperience and wisdom of twenty centuries. Her theologians know the criteria by which to distinguish the supernatural from the natural, Her investigators can judiciously gather all the evidence for the facts. They can visit the place where the. vision is said to have occurred and interrogate the persons most intimately concerned. When appropriate, they can bring in witnesses that are expert in science, medicine, psychology, and other specialties. They go about their work calmly and critically, not excitedly and enthusiastically. Finally, they have the peculiar assistance of the Holy Spirit. Hence' they can come to a well-founded decision. It is never, however, proposed as infallible. We cannot judge. Of all .the people who hear or read of the apparitions and revelations that are currently reported not one in a hundred knows the principles on the basis, of which critical judg-ments about them are to be made. Even if everybody did know 11 -AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD those criteria well, still practically they could not ascertain the ~acts reliably. Because of distance and remoteness, or lack of opportunity to inquire carefully, 0r--perhaps most of all--want of sufficiently trustworthy a, ccounts, it is really impossible for nearly all persons who merely read or hear such reports to get a critically certain, fac-tual foundation for judgment. Hence, for want of evidence, they are not in a position to pronounce. Therefore, the sensible thing to do is to follow the official deci-sions of the Church~ whether episcopal or papal. One alw.a.ys does best precisely in agreeing with the Church. She does not expec.t what is proposed as divine revelation to be received as such without miraculous intervention demonstrating that God corroborates what His messenger says. She does not go to either of the two extremes of roundly denying in advance all private visions or locutions or Of readily admitting those that are being bruited about. With the competence of a.specialist in the domain of the supernatural, and with absolutely unique promises of aid from the Holy Spirit, she investigates individual cases with great care and pro-nounces decisions that should command the respect of all. Besides, one who thinks with the Church will preserve his sense of perspec-tire and attach relatively little importance to private revelations as compared with the great official public revelation entrusted long ago to her by Christ and the Apostles. During the interval that elapses between the first report o~ a new vision and the approbation or disapprobation of the ecclesiastical au-thorities, the best and the most prudent thing that one can do is to be patient, hold one's opinion in abeyance, and await the official judgment. Otherwise one runs the risk of rejecting, what is au-thentically of divine origin-or of sharing in the evil consequences of hallucination or downright imPosture. To be intelligent about the whole matter in a very general way, one 'might well review, the principl.es that should guide one's thinking by reading the pertinent pages in some such work as Tanquerey's The Spiritual Limb, pages 700 ft., or Poulain's The' Graces of Inte?ior Prayer, pages 299 ft. "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world". (I John 4:1). ."Test everything; hold fast to what is good" (I Thessalonians'5:21). 12 Prac!:ical Requiremen!:s of a ¯ Program for t:he Psychological Screening ot: Candidat:es William C. Bier, S.3. [EDITORS' NOTE: This is the second of two articles adapted from papers presented at the Fordham Institute on Religious and Sagerdo~al Vocations, duly, 1953.] THIS article begins with a premise established previously,I name-ly, that psychological' testing has a role to perform and a con-tribution to make in the selection of candidates for the reli-gious life; in other words, that such a program is theoretically de-sirable. The purpose of the present article is to consider the practi-cal feasibility of such a procedure. In other words, would the in-auguration of such a program at the present time be a prudent step? Prudence of Such a Program Father 'A. Pl~, O.P., in a rather remarkable paper bearing the significant title, "Unconscious Attraction to the Religious Life," writes as follows: "If the psychologist can give us warning at the outset, it would surely be a sin not to ask for his services. The sacred character of grace, especially the grace of vocation, as well as respect for the hu-man person make it a serious olSligation for us to use every possible means to avoid mistakes about vocation.''2 With this statement I think that few would be in disagreement. The crucial question, however, remains: Can the psychologist give us warning of unsuitability in the case of an applicant? There is difference of opinion on the answer to the above que.s-tion. Father Felix Duffey, C.S.C., has written an over-all excellent book on this general subject, called Testing the Spirit.3 At the be.- ginning of his book, he gives a scriptural quotation which might be taken as a very apposite motto for any whose work involves the dis-cernment of vocation. The quotation from I Timothy 5:24 reads lWilliam C. Bier, S.J., "Psychological Testing of Candidates and the Theology of Vocation," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, XII (1953), 291-304. 2A. Pl~, O.P., "Unconscious Attraction to the Religious Life," Religious Life: II Vocation. Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1952, p. 109. SFelix D. Duffey, C.S.C., Testing the Spirit. St. Louis: Herder, 1947. WILLIAM C. BIER Review [o~ Religious as follows: "Some men have faults that are plain to view; with others, discovery follows upon. the heels of ,inquiry." Although Father Duffey is much impressed by the need of sound mental health among applicants for the religious life and writes the book for this reason, he believes, nevertheless, that the use of mental aptitude tests for the examination of candidates for the religious life would be "imprudent.''4 When we inquire into the basis for this conclusion, we find that he assigns tw.o reasons. The first is this: psychometrics (psychological tests) are not infallibie. One may legitimately ask what method, particularly in so difficult a matter, is infallible? If the use of psychometrics is imprudent becat~se the tests are not infal-lible, then the use of any other method would have to be judged equally imprudent. Certainly the substitute solution proposed by Father Duffey is not infallible, whereby spiritual directors and supe-riors, with the aid of a series of questions proposed by the author and without any particular training in the field of psychology, are left to judge of the psychological suitability of candidates. In the course of explaining these questio.ns, Father. Duffey makes a large number of astute and helpful recommendations,, but it seems that the over-all res,ult of such a method would be a return to the "unscien-tific and haphazard experimentation" in determining the mental health of candidates to the religious life, against which the book is aimed. The second reason given by Father Duffey for the rejection of psychological tests in the evaluation of candidates is that no reli-gious aptitude tests exist. In this respect, Father Duffey is perfectiy correct; his supposition, however, may be questioned, because no specific religious aptitude tests are needed, as vcill be seen later in this article. The question which must be asked with respect to psychological tests and their use in 'the evaluation of candidates for religious life is th~s: Have the techniques of psychological testing advanced to a point where they are able to furnish us with helpful information relative to applicants before admission? To this question I give an unhesitatingly affirmative answer: they can furnish us' with such in-formation. Whether the actual use of them will be prudent or not depends on how they are used. At the present time there is great need to stress the importance of the proper use of psychological tests. I have had occasion to observe 4lbid.o p. 6. 1# danuartt, 1954 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCREENING the reaction of Catholics to the psychological-testing movement over a period of years, and I have frequently noticed an initial suspicion of these tests give way to enthusiastic endorsement when it is seen what these tests are able to do, for instance, by way of prediction in school work. Yet this enthusiasm for psychological tests is some-times extreme and riot sufficiently tempered by an appreciation of their limitations. This matter is mentioned here because it is pos-sible to discern something of the same process under way with re-spect to the use of psychological tests in ~he examination of candi-dates for religious life. An initial reluctance to employ such adjuncts seems to be growing in some quarters into an overenthusiastic and oversimplified acceptance. When it is bruited about that such tests have been used with a certain degree of success, there is a tendency to think that all that is necessary is to find out what tests have been used and to give them. A series of articles, published in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS during 1949, 1950, and 1951, may perhaps have contributed to the above viewpoint. In these articles .the use of psychological tests is recommended as a help in evaluating the fitness of applicants for the religious life; and in terms of the practical initiation of such a pro-gram it is suggested that, when nothing better is available, the pro-gram could be begun were dne of the members of the community to take certain courses in psychological testing. The following quota-tion is drawn from one of the above-mentioned articles: "The ideal prerequisite is that some member of the community be trained in the field of psychometrics. As a .preliminary step, sev-eral basic courses in tests and measurements may suffice. In lieu of trained personnel, the services of someone who is sympathetic to testing, who will conscientiously adhere to manuals of directions, and who will be extremely careful in interpreting results may be utilized."s It is evident that the above writer considers that a training in psychometrics is sufficient for the director of such a program. For reasons explained more adequately later in this article, I am unable to agree with these recommendations. It would be my opinion that a much broader training in psychology is needed to undertake the in-terpretation of psychological tests in such an important matter vocation and with a special-interest group, such as applicants for the SSister M. Digna, O.S.B., "A Tentative Testing Program for Religious Life," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, X (1951), 75-76. 15 WILLIAM C.'BIER ¯ Review [or Religious' priesthood and religious life. The recommendations offered in the above quotation assume that psychological testing is automatic to an extent which, in my opinion, cannot be supported in theory and which consequently is dangerous to apply in practice. It is clear that the present article assumes so .mething of a middle position in this matter. On the one harid, I fed that psychological testing has developed to a point where it can prudently be used in the selection, of candidates for religious life. On the other hand, I consider it essential that such a program be set up in an adequate manner. With the wrong approach, more harm than good can re-sult from the attempt. The crux of the matter, from a practical point of view, is how the program would be developed. The re-mainder of this article will consider the practical requirements for the adequate inauguration of such a program. Once the principle is accepted that psychological tests have a con-tribution to make in judging religious vocation, it becomes dear that there are different ways in which this principle may satisfactorily be applied in practice. The program suggested below is only one wa3', and it is certainly not the only way, in which the above principle can .be applied. The main advantage in outlining a program of applica-tion is to illustrate the level upon which the work needs to be done, and to ~all attention to certain requiremdnts which must be met in any application of psychological testing to candidates for the reli-gious life. Requirements of the Program What is necessary" above all else is that a p~ogram for the psy-chological testing of applicants for the religious life should be put in the hands of the right person, and this person is, ideally at least, a member of the religious institute in question, who has had adequate psychological training. This combination is particularly desirable and advantageous; but if it cannot be had, then the first requirement .may be waived, but not the second. It is essential that this program be" in the hands of h competently trained psychologist. Such a per-. son will be able to make a maximum contribution if he has had the experience of living a religious life, but he can still make his essential contribution even if this is not the case. What is needed is not merely acquaintance with psychological testing, but a general training in psychology. I would think it imprudent for anyone to undertake the administration of such a program who does not have at least a 16 January, 19.~4 PSYCHOLOGICAL ~;CREENING ' master's degree in psychology; and it would be highly desirable that the director haxle'more training than that, not only thebretical, in terms of courses, but practical, in terms of experience. This sort of testing is not a field for novices and beginners in psychology; it re-mains a difficult task even when one is able to bring to it the maxi-mum which modernlpsychology can offer in training and experience. The director assumes responsibility for the prog.ram in the.sense of,select~ing the tests-and procedures to be employed, supervising if not actually.admin!stering the tests, and above all interpreting the' test results. The interprethtion of.the test result~ is the ~rucial part of the program, and this is the portion which is far from ahtomatic and makes the fullest demands in terms of psychological, tra.ining,' understanding, a'nd i.nsight. As a result of the testing prggram,.th~ director will offer to the" religious superior ~ re~ofiarfi~ndation 0ri each candidate ~e~ted. Tl~e' prog.ram director serves as a. spec.ial consultant to the superigr in tile s~lection of candidat'es'. 'In this respect, the role of the program ad-i .ministrator i.s pur~ely ,advisory, so that the sgperior loses none of his l!berty of actidn. He does, .however, secure more information aboi~t each candidate than would otherwise be available to him, so that hisi judgement of suitabilitylmay have a more adequate foundation. A program, such as the one suggested, supplements, but in no way sup~ plants, the traditional sources of information oh the suitability, of candidates. This aspect will be most adequately achieved if the recommendation of the program director on tile suitability of each candidate b~ made independently of these traditional sources of in-formation. The shperior will then have at his disposal, when he comes to make a judgement on the suitability of the candidate, both' sources of information, so that his decision may be truly as well founded as it is possible to make it. Tests Prior to Admission " My recommendation would be that these tests should be given" to the applicants prior to admission, as it is only in this way that the information derived from them Jan possibly aid the superior in determining the application of candidates. There may be some diffi-culty in arranging for the testing of candidates prior to entrance, but, the benefits of so doing repay whatever effort is involved. It may be noted that it is not necessary that all the candidates be brought to-gether in one place for such testing. It is quite feasible to have sev-, 17 ~¢II~LI.~I C. BIER eral testing centers, and since the first tests are group tests;'as will be explained, it is entirely possible to have them administered by some one else, Who can be easily trained for this limited purpose, and the test results sent to the program director. The only other alternative would be to wait until after admission and to give them during postulancy or noviceship. This is not only a second-best solution, but one which Icould not recommend at all. A number of reasons combine in pointing to the desirability of conducting the tests prior to admission. In the first place, it is easier at that time for the applicant to cooperate in taking the tests to the extent needed for their validity. It must be recognized that most psychological tests of personality rely for their validity upon the co-operation of the respondent and must assume that the questions are answered frankly and honestly. There are very few personality tests whose rdsults are unaffected by deliberate attempts at falsification. This is a limitation in the use of most personality tests which must be appreciated and. faced. Prior to admission, the proper atmosphere of cooperation can more readily be created by letting the applicant see that no favor would be done him by accepting him into rel{gion if he were not suited for such a way of life. He can be led to accept this viewpoint on natural grounds (a misfit in life is a misfortune at any time, but doubly so in religion) and for supernatural motives (he .wishes.to enter religion only if such is God's will for him). It is not implied that it is impossible to obtain such a measure of co-operation after admission, . but it is then more difficult because the individual already has a position to protect. To leave religion, even shortly after admission, involves a loss of self-esteem, fear of criti-cism on the part of others, the thought of failing one's family and one's friends, and many other intimate and personal considerations, all of which operate as a temptati6n to reply to tests in a manner calculated to make oneself appear in a favorable light rather than to give an accurate picture of oneself. The judicious applicant usually keeps the fact of his application to himself until after he has actually been accepted, precisely in order not to create for himself the kind of pressures mentioned above. It is well known that it requires much more courage to leave religion, when one finds that one is unsuited, than it does to enter; but what may not be so readily appreciated is how quickly after admission these defenses mobilize, and their mo-bilization, perhaps in ways so subtle as to be hardly appreciated by the individual, would interfere with the test results. 1"8 danuarg, 1954 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCREENING Closely allied to the above reason for holding the tests prior to: admission is the added advantage to the applicant that his unsuit-ability for religious life be made known to him as soon as possible. The difficulty of readjustment to life in the ~vorld after a period in religion is well known; and, if this readjustment can be spared the applicant, it is clearly beneficial. From the point of view of the religious institute, when the tests hre given only after admission, there will be an inkvitabletendency to let the doubtful candidates stay and give them a trial, since they have already entered. Experience proves that this is the precise trouble with doubtfully suitable religious. They are accepted in the first place because they are doubtful and hence not clearly excluded. For the same reason, they.are passed on from the postulancy to the novitiate, and from the novitiate to temporary and perhaps final vows. At each stage it becomes more difficult to reject them, not because they are any more suited for religious life, but simply because they have been in.religion for such and si~ch a length of time. The place to eliminate doubtfully suitable c~indidates is at the time of ap-plication. The attitude to be adopted in the case of doubtful candi-dates has been discussed in the previous article.6 The final reason for recommending that the tests be given prior to admission is a technical one but, in some ways, it is the most compelling reason of all. It is this: Were the tests given during tulancy or noviceship, it would be impossible to interpret the re-sults. Introduction to the religious life is a profound experience, and it seems that such an experience would have inevitable repercussions in the psychological make-up of the individual. However, at the present time we know next to nothing of the impact of religious life on psychological functioning, and hence we have no base line where-by to interpret the results of psychological testing given during a time of intense religious experience, such as the postulancy and nov-iceship certainly provide. It may be objected that part of the function of the novitiate is to determine the suitability of novices for life in religion. While such is undoubtedly true, it would seem that this principle is some-times misunderstood. Primarily, the function of the novitiate is a positive one: to train the young person in the following of Christ through the practice of the evangelical counsels and the particular rules of the religious institute. The novitiate assumes the suitability 6REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, XII (1953), p. 291. 19 WILLIAM (2. BIER Review for, Religious "of its novices; its fundamental function is to train them. Second-arily, it is true, the novitiate tests suitability, but only as the latter develops as a. corollary flowing from novitiate training. Suitability is essentially an admission problem, and /'/arm results when admission problems are passed on to the novitiate. They then become novitiate problems, to the detriment of the essential function of the novitiate, which is training in the religious life. When unsuitability develops in the novitiate, it should be an unsuita.bility which was not ap-. parent upon application, and which only appeared under the more protracted and more penetrating scrutiny of the novitiate. Kind of Tests Ernploged At this point consideration may be given to the kind of psycho-logical tests which would be employed in the evaluation of candi-dates for the religious 'life. The specific tests to be employed is a technical question for psychological experts, and in a general discus-sion it is advantageous to refer only to the kind of psychologic~il tests to be used. Specific tests "can only be chosen in the last analysis with respect to a specific situation--hence in terms of a speqified r~ligious institute--and this is an additional reason why the ques-tion of specific psychological tests cannot be introduced into a gen-eral discussion. In order, however, to discuss even the kind of psychological tests to be employed, it is necessary to introduce, some specification with respect to the type of religious institute concerned. To illustrate the principles involved, the instance of a religious institute accepting candidates for the priesthood will be chosen. This case is sufficiently general to provide considerable immediate application,, and to make it possible for other religious groups to consider the application of these principles to. their own specific-situations. Among psychological tests there are what are referred to as group tests, i.e., tests which can be administered to a group of people at the same time. It is recommended that the program of.psychological' tests for applicants for .the religious life start with tests of this kind. All applicants would be required to take these tests prior to admis-sion, and they could be administered in smaller or larger groups de-pending upon circumstances, and in whatever, way would prove generally most convenient. These tests would be chosen and de-signed to furnish information on the suitability, of candidates in two general areas: academic or intellectual suitability, and psychological 2O danuar~l, 1954 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCR~NI~q~/ or personality suitability. In the area of academic suitability, investigation would be madd~ of intellectual ability and academic achievement. It is rec~inmended that ability be measured by two tests, preferably two tests taking different approhches to the matter, e.g,, a spe,ed test and a power test, thecomposite of the two tests being taken as an over-all index of-academic ability." One or more achievement tests may be. given, and their function wo~il~l be to determine the relationship between abil-ity and performance. Ideally, achievement should be on a par wi~b" ability, and notable discrepancies between the two become helpful, and someti~m~s important, interpretative factors. It is evident that a certain level of ability and academic per-formance is needed for the course of studies leading to the priesth, ood and 'for the subsequent work of the ministry. It is true, however, that various indices of such ability and performance are already available, for instance, in school marks. It might be thought, there-fore, that psychological tests for these attributes are an unnecessary duplication. Tests in these areas are not, perhaps, essential; but they are desirable, and they can be very helpful. In school marks, ability and application are mixed in unknown degrees, and in terms of preparation for the priesthood, it becomes important' to sift out the relative roles of each. Religious training can furnish the moti-vation needed for appIication to study, but it cannot supply ability, where the latter is lacking. Added application can compensate for deficient ability, but only within quite narrow limits. It is a fre-quent fallacy .to assume that, with an individual of limited ability, the same amount of extra application and diligence will spell success higher up on the academic ladder as it did earlier, for instance in col-leg~ as it did in high school. It cannot, do so, however, because an equivalent performance at the higher level requires greater abifity, and an individual who has already been achieving only by reason of added application is overwhelmed on reaching the higher level of academic work. Consequently, a reliable estimate of ability, as distinct, from" application, is needed in order properIy to evaluate the academic suitability of candidates for the priesthood. Furthermore, applicantscome from different schools; and unless one is familiar with each school, it is difficult to evaluate the significance of the grades attained. There is the further advantage of comparing all of the applicants, from whatever school, according to the same cri-terion, and this aim is achieved when all of them take the same psy- WILLIAM (~. BIER Review/~or Religiou.s chological tests. It must be remembered that selection in'this case is not merely for the work of a few years, as for entrance to college,but for a lifetime undertaking; and in a matter of such importance, it would, be more appropriate to speak of checking and re-checking, rather than of unnecessary duplication. Recall, too, the general role suggested above for these tests, namely, to furnish an independent estimate of suitability. An applicant's school grades, °for instance, may be so low as not to recommend him, but hi~ teachers explain this fact as due to the necessity of work outside of school or to an unusual amount of extracurricular activities. The superior wishes to know whether this report is accurate, or whether it is rather a charitable interpretation on the part of his teachers, influenced per-haps by.their opinion.of the applicant as a person and, it may be, as one judged by them .to be a desirable candidate in all other respects. The psychological tests will furnish the superior in a case of this kind with exactly the independent estimate which is needed. Finally, since suitability must be judged on a total basis, the ability level of the applicant may be important in terms of his personal tendencies, as will presently be explained. Since the over-all function of the program of psychological tests is ~o offer supplementary information on'the suitability of candi-dates, the information furnished in the area of psychological suit-ability is the most important, because it is'in this area that the least :information is usually available. It~will be recalled that" Father Duffey, quoted at the beginning of this article, felt that' the psycho-ilogical testing of applicants for the r~ligious life was not currently :feasible because no religious'aptitude tests are a;cailable. I should like .at this point to develop the notion suggested earlier that no specific~ :religious aptitude tests are needed. What we wish basically to discover with respect to the applicant :is whether he is a mature, stable, well-integrated person: in a word, a fundamentally normal person. If he is such, the~a he is, psycho-logically speaking, a good prospect for the religious life. Some per-sons by reason of their psychological dispositions will.find religious life naturally more congenial than others~ but it must be appreciated that. what is needed in terms of the evaluation of candidates is an estimate, not of congeniality, but of fundamental compatibility and suitability. The individual who is psychologically unsuitable for religious life is such because he.,is, in general, not a psychologically well:integrated and well-balanced individual. He would not,.be toa January/, 1 ~,5 4 I~SYCHOLOGIC~tL SCREENING well suited for many other things as well; .religious life is only one of them. However, he is more unsuited for religious life than for cer-tain other things because of the added psychological demands of ligious life. The conclusion to be drawn from this premise with respect to psychological tests for applicants for religious life is evi-dent. Specific religious aptitude tests are not needed; what is needed is an estimate of the general maturity, integration, and balance of the personality. Hence we are able to employ psychological tests which give us this sort of information. It must be recognized that the only basis for estimating the likelihood of psychological adjust.- ment to religious life is the previous adjustment manifested by the individt~al. It may be taken as a fundamental principle in this mat-ter that there is no reason to expect an individual successfully tO adapt himself to the demands of religious life if he ~has nbt anteced-ently been able to adjust to the .ordinary problems of life. -Thus, the psychological tests employed are aimed at providing a reliabl~ estimate of the psychological adjustment of. the, individual, as veal, d in previous inter;personal relationships and life .situations~ Here, even more than in the area of intellectual testing, reliance. should not be placed upon any single test, but several should be em-ployed and the composite result of all considered in arriving ~it .a decision. The questionnaire type of personhlity tests, when admin-istered in the proper atmosphere where the answers will be given frankly and honestly, can furnish very. helpful and reliable informa-tion about personality maturity and integration; but they can well be supplemented by certain of the less-structured, i.e., in technical terms, the projective personality tests. From the several, personality tests which are administered comes the basis for the judgement of psychological maturity, stability, and integration. Such an indi-vidual is, from the psychological point of view, .in the words of canon 538, ". fit to bear the burdens of the religious state," Another factor v~hich must be considered, however, is attraction for the religious life. Not everyone who is suited for religious life is attracted to it. Granted that this attraction is fundamentally a grace, is it not likely that it builds on a certain.natural disposition of cl-;ar-acter and personality? Since the priesthood and religious life make an effective appeal to only a relatively small portion of our Catholic young people, most of whom would be psychologically suited, there must be something different about them, and it seems quite likely that such differences would descend into the psychological compo- 23 .WILLIAM C. BIER Reoie~o ~:or Religious nents of personality. When we a~tually administer psychological tests to groups of candidates applying to enter religious life, we find that. they do score somewhat differently on these tests than other comparable groups. The earliest findings in this respect were mis-interpreted, and it was concluded that religious and seminarians as a group were characterized by marked abnormal and neurotic tenden-cies. Actually, of course, these findings simply meant that these groups were different from the population at large, and that the psy-chological tests were sensitive enough to pick up these differences. These findings do have one important bearing, however, on the use of psychological tests in the screening of candidates, and it is this: serious mistakes in interpretation will almost surely be made if test resul~s, with a special group of this kind, are accepted at their face value. Any personality test which is employed, whose norms are based upon the general population, will have to be adapted for use with candidates to the religious life. The degree of adaptation is ' something which can only be determined through actual use, and this clearly reinforces the viewpoint presented earlier 'chat the use of these tests is not automatic, and cannot be. made so at the present time. This is unquestionably work for the psychological expert, and for him alone. Results so far obtained in the use of psychological tests with religious men and women indicate that psychological adjustment as applied to life in the world and life in religion is an analogous con- Cept, meaning that it is partly the same, and partly different, in the two cases. It is partly the samebecause the same psychological re-sources at the disposal of the individual are employed in the two cases but adjustment is partly different because the demands are different, and so too are the psycholbgical satisfactions involved. A word on the interpretation of test findings may be in order at this point. It is evident that some .applicants would exclude them-selves on intellectual grounds alone, no matter how stable and well-integrated their personalities. It must be remembered that we are .considering the case of an applicant for the religio~s priesthood, and a certain level of intellectual ability is clearly required in such.,a case. .On the other hand, some applicants would exclude "themselves on .personality grounds, no matter how.high their level of intellectual ¯ .ability. In certain other instances, however, the interrelation of .ability and personalit~ proves decisive. A man of somewhat limited .ability but well-integrated personality might be judged suitable, PSYCHOLOGICAL SCREENING while a second applicant of the.'same ability, but of a less-balanced personality, could be judged unsuitable. In such a case, it is neither ability alone (which presumably is low, but not impossible) nor personality integration alone (which while poor is not itself pro~ bibitive) which is judged unfavorable, but the combination of the two. An applicant of limited ability would find the course of s~udies for the priestl~ood a constant strain, and prolonged stress of this kind is calculated to accentuate any personality.difficulties which might already be present. Final Portion of the Program Thus far, reference has been made only to group psychological tests in the evaluation of candidates. It is necessary that the group-testing progr~am be supplemented by a certain amount of individual testing. Depending upon the size of the group of candidates to b~ examined, individual intelviews may be feasible. If it is possible "to make arrangements for them, they are very helpful. Such inter-views will be most advantageous if held after the group testing, be-cause they can then be made to supplement the information derived from the general test results in a most helpful way, and can prevent misinterpretation which might possibly result from the use of test results alone. Whether it is feasible to arrange individual interviews or not, it will sometimes be necessary to resort to supplementary in-dividual testing. There will always be some cases in which the group tests will give inconclusive results, and it would be unwise, if not unjust, particularly in the earlier stages of a testing program, to settle the matter on the basis of group tests alone. At this stage, it is my recommendation that the program should have consultants. I would suggest that one consultant be a clinical psycholggist and the other a psychiatrist. Only those candidates would reach this stage of the program in whose case the group tests ¯ gave positive reasons for doubting their suitability for religious life. It is not necessary, nor, as far as I can s~e, is it desirable that every candidate for religious life be interviewed by a psychiatrist; but ~ucl~ is necessary in some cases. The group testing reveals the cases in which such a psychiatric judgement is needed. Thus, in the difficult and doubtful cases, the director of the testing program has the inde-pendent judgement of two experts to guide him. It would be my conception that the clinical psychologist and the psychiatrist serve as. consultants to the program director, and even in these cases the latter 25 WILLIAM C. BIER .assumes the responsibility for the bver-all recommendation on the candidate which is given to the superior. The .final recommendations on each candidate which are made to the superior may profitably be divided into those which are favor-able, unfavorable, and doubtful. Sometimes even when group and individual testing is complete, the only judgement which can be made on a candidate, in fairness both to the applicant and to the reli-gious institute, is that he is a doubtful prospect for religious life. Yet everi here, which is the least satisfactory outcome, the program has something to offer, because the doubt is in all cases a positive one and the superior knows the reasons why the candidate is a doubtful prospect. In work of this kind humility is by all means necessary. Indeed, any other attitude would be preposterous in a matter where the outcome depends on the interplay of God's grace and man's free will. It.is clear, therefore, that a program such as the one described in this article will not solve all admission problems, nor can it be expected to do so. Its contribution, though genuine, is limited. Even with 'the help of such a program, mistakes in admissions will be made, but almost surely there will be fewer mistakes and they will be less seri-ous. One of the great advantages of a program such as the one out-lined above is that it makes it possible to profit to the utmost from the mistakes which are made. It is assumed that the records of the tests will be kept. If the program director will then study the progress of the applicants in religion, he will learn much, both about his tests and about his predictions based upon them, and this is in-formation which can be gathered in no other why. Some of the tan-didates tested will leave after admission, and it is evident that infor-mation about such candidates, as far as it is obtainable, will con-tribute substantially to the improvement of the program. It would seem that a sustained program of admissions and follow-up, such as that projected here, would be a particularly valuable adjunct to reli-gious admissions which depend ultimately upon the superior, and superiors change frequently according to the provisions of canon law. A program of this kind can help a new superior avoid some of the mistakes of his predecessor. A program of psychological tests such as that envisioned here can be of some immediate assistance in the selection 6f candidates. It is clear, however, that such a program must be considered to be in 26 danuar~!, 1954 COMMUNICATIONS an experimental stage for some years, while the test results are per-mitted to validate themselves against time and against the progress of the candidates in religion. A judicious use may be made of the test results even in these early years. The tests will, however, be-come more valuable in time, when their, validity has been verified. In conclusion, .I would stress the fact.that psychological testing can touch only the natural foundation for religious vocation, which in its essential aspect is the work of God's grace. Its role, therefore, though genuine, is limited; but when applied prudently, it will al-most surely be a helpful adjunct in the most difficult task of scru-tinizing the suitability of those who, inspired by'a right intention, present themselves as applicants for admission to religious life. 'ommun{cal:{ons Reverend Fathers: The article on the particular examen in theJuly, 1953, issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, entitled "A New and Vital Approach," by Father De Letter, S.2., was thought-provoking. You invited com-ment. It'seems to me that there really are. religious (and let's hope there are many) who after years of striving after perfection cannot derive much help from the particular examen if they merely try to break an unwanted habit or work against their pet sin. There are even some, perhaps many, who cannot for the life of them find out what their predominant fault is; And this is not to be wondered at. Surely fervent religious can be expected to reach a certain stage of perfection beyond which it is hardly possible perceptibl~/to go, though they do advance in holiness continually as they increase in sanctifying grace, even without their knowing it. Should such drop the particular examen? By no means. Also for them it is a great aid to perfection. But for them especially is the new and vital approach suggested by Father De Letter. . I don't know just how new this is. It is certainly new in its presentation in that issue. But it has long been practiced in many different ways by religious here and there. And it is the only sen-sible way of handling the particular examen for those who have made such progress in the spiritual life as suggested above. 27 (~OMMUNICATIONS Now, to be practical. Take a good religious who wishes to prac~' rice the particular examen and has no special fauIt to overcome. This religious wants to be very close to God always. But he is extremely busy all the day long in the various tasks assigned to him. He is prone to forget God's presence. Looking about for ways and means of remaining in the presence of God, of being intimately united with Him always, he recalls that the saints and ascetical writers tell us that 6he of the best means is the fervent utterance of ejaculatory prayers or aspirations, made either' orally or mentally. He makes it the subject of his particular examen to keep close to God by saying such prayers often during the day. Between tasks, as he goes about from place to place, etc., etc., he quietly (and always fervently) says some little prayers. To make the matter doubly meritorious, he learns scores of indulgenced ejacu-lations and makes it a point to use only those and thus be a constant helper of the holy souls. Any prayers, different prayer~ remember. The purpose is recollection, walking in the presence of God. The means, the prayers, mental or oral. He calls twenty prayers said a unit. For each unit he marks one. If in the evening he has ten units, he marks simply 10 in'his booklet (which must always be' around and never neglected). That means 200 ejaculations during the day. ' It is almost'unbelievable hbw one can grow in union with God by means of a particular examefi like that. --"UNLESS YOU BECOME." Reverend Fathers: On what authority the price df Lex Propria was given (in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, Nov., 1953, p. 330), we.do not know. However, this particular work was a one-printing edition solely for' Benedictine Abbeys and Convents. Notices to this effect were sent to Benedictine superiors and .an order card was included on which the only price given was 75 cents per copy, plus postage. Furthermore, all orders had to be placed before July 15. We have received a num-ber of orders since you p.ublished the wrong price (50 cents). We trust you will correct this in your next issue. --THE ABBEY STUDENT DRESS. 28 Reading J:or Religious Edward F. Garesch~, S.J. RELIGIOUS life remains the same in its essentials througl'i the ages, but how different are the circumstances in which the reli-gious of different periods have to live. This is notably true in regard to the supply of reading matter and the choice which religi6us of this time have to make among a multiplicity of books. In more simple ages. the volumes which religious read were few and preci6us.~° "In the days when everything was written by hand, books weke of great price and value. Now, the many devices for the multiplicatidn of print have d~luged the world with.books arid booklets and peri-odicals. On the one hand religious are offered volume after volume composed especially for their own use; on the other hand the eno?- mous quantity~of.secular publications intrudes even into the cloister." It is interesting to note.that, ifi spite of the great development of forms of entertainment, read, ing still holds its place as a popular: amusement. Hence the greater number of books and periodicals have this as their primary, purpose. They seek to tempt, readers to buy and' read for the motive of interest and amusement. "Serious and factual book~ are alsomultiplied withc~ut end. Every issueof the weekly book supplements contains a surprising number of titles; and of course not nearly all the published books can be reviewed. Many o~ them are not even mentioned. Through school libraries and the like, many religious have access to some of these current pub-lications. As to magazines, the revenue publishers secure from ad-vdrtising or from immense sale of copies makes them publish editions so large tfiat hardly anyone reads them thr6ugh. A Real Problem Now all this presents a real problem tothe devoted religious who wishes to love and serve God and to help his ffeighbor to.the'best of his powers. He knows that reading is a great means of instruction and of advancement in the spiritual life, that it is a source of infor-. marion useful in his work. But how shall he choose among so many books and periodicals? How shall he solve the problem of what is best for him to read? Someone may say that obedience will solve the problem for him. But the older religious especially, and those employed in important 29 EDWARD F. GARESCHI~ \ Reuiem for Religiou~ and responsible positions, are given a great deal of liberty in the choice of what they read. Even the younger members cannot always secure personal and specific guidance in this matter. Thus one may fall into a desultory habit of reading which deprives the mind and the heart of much precious sustenance and guidance, and wastes time which might be much better used. A careful consideration of this subject of what is best to read or leave unread ought to be helpful for many religious who sincerely wish to be as wise and holy as they can. To read is to feed one's mind, imagination, memory, and feelings. One can draw a close parallel therefore between the proper selections of mental and bodily food. A great deal is written and said nowadays about the importance of choosing .the right nourish-ment. Everyone is alert to the dangers of infected or contaminated food. The right proportion of hydrocarbons and proteins, of vita-mins and minerals, is known to b~ important for the preservation of health and strength. The danger of overweight and underweight, of a deficiency or excess of the elements of nutrition, is generally known. Importance of Reading But good spiritual, mental, and even emotional nourishment is no less important: indeed, it is far more essential to one's w~ll-being because the soul is so much superior to the body. Our happiness and holiness depend in gr~at measure on the nourishment we give our spiritual selves. Though conversation and experience are also very important, one of the great means by which we nourish our soul properly is the correct choice of our reading. Food ought to be appetizing in order to be more easily digestedl Similarly, reading that holds our attention and interest is usually more readily assimilated. To read out of custom or out of a sense of duty is meritorious, but things so read are not as likely to impress us and stay with us as those in which we are interested. Hence, when we choose books that appeal to us, they are more likely to help, everything else being equal. But these interesting books ought to be solid, important, and of special help to us. The great variety of spiritual books now available ought to make a choice easy. Superiors surely will be desirous to provide fo~ every religious what he most likes and needs in the way of spiritual nourishment. One plan that seems good and practical, for the large communi- 30' January, 1954 READING FOR RELIGIOUS ties, is to have a community library, with a librarian who will see to it that the worth-while spiritual books are quickly secured. Any religious, even from another house, can write to the librarian for the books he wishes to read, to be mailed to him in a special cover and returned in the same cover within a specified time. In this way, without too much expense, many religious can have the benefit of the community library. The community librarian will also become expert in advising religious about their reading. Several small com-munities might group together to support a central library; or the large communities might let the smaller ones share, perhaps for a small fee, in the facilities of their central library. These are means of ensuring that each religious may have the book he likes and needs. Life is so short find the good books are so numerous that we shall never be able to read them all even if we use every moment of our reading time. Why waste the precious hours, therefore, on use-less or inferior reading when the best is none too good for the hour-. ishment of mind and heart? Foremost among worth-while books are good lives of the saints. What could be more interesting in itself to the follower of Christ, who aspires t9 close and perfect union with Him, than to read how other souls attained that union? For-tunately, modern lives of the .saints try hard to tell the truth about the subjects of their stories, and so it. is possible for the religious who reads to learn a. great deal about holiness-in-action. Books of Devotion There are also many books of devotion, written from various ~iewpoints and about many subjects. Some of them are very old, written centuries ago, but are now appearing in new editions. There are also excellent modern books, whose style and manner are espe-cially adapted to the present-day mind and taste. It is to be noted, however, that these books, though they all beaf the imprimatur of the Church, are not all of equal value or authority. In fact the imprimatur means merely that there is nothing in th~ book against faith and morals. It does not mean that the authority issuing the imprimatur agrees with all the statements and ideas in the book. Each book has as much authority as its author can command. Even of the saints it is said that not everything they wrote was necessarily holy. Still more is it true that not everything in Cath-olic books of devotion is necessarily wise and prudent. Some empha-size one phase of piety, some another. Some recommend one devo- 31 EDWARD F. GARESCHi~ : tion and others insist dn quite different ones. Some good.souls inclined to be like ~he man who leaped on horseback and rode off rapidly' in all directions. They want to practice all devotions at once, .to follow all the different systems of asceticism. By .assimi-lating so many different spiritual ideas, good in themselves but gulped down indiscriminatingly, they contract a spiritual indiges-tion. Good spiritual books come under the second and third classes in Bacon's statement that some books are merely to be tas~ed, others to be chewed and swallowed, and still others to be digested thor-oughly. To read the Gospels or the Imitatibn of Christ, slowly and thoughtfully, may bring more spiritual benefit and solid nourish-ment than many times the hours passed in reading hastily less-abiding spiritual books~ Recreational Reading But nowadays the mind craves lighter and more recreational food, just as the bodily taste demands sweetmeats a~ad hors d'oeuvres. StiII,°even in recreational reading, the religious owes it to himself to exercise a prudent choice. How extremely foolish it.is, to ~ay nothing. worse, if one who is vowed to Christ takes up w?rldly and tainted .stories, magazines, and books. If be has no business with such books and periodisals, he freely opens his mind and imagination and feelings to the contamination of the world--an act of great unwis-dora, to say the least. Newspaper reading is almost needful for religious who teach, who write, or who have to deal with others. But what a difference there is between reading and reading when it comes to the news. Here a great waste Of time is possible when the reader wants to pore. over every item. SeIective reading will give, in a few moments, all that is worth-while in the daily papers. One can become accustomed also to very rapid reading which gathers the gist of the article in a frac.tion of time. About magazines and papers, nearly everything may be repeated that was°said about books. There are so many good ones; why waste time on the tainted and the trivial? Some experienced readers refuse to read any book that is less than a year old, because within a year the value of some books, if they ever had any, has quite disap-peared. Time is so precious and life is so short that when you do read a magazine be sure it i~ Worth-while. One way to insure the right sort of reading is to have it conven- Januar~t, 1954 RE!~DING FOR RELIGIOU~ iently at hand. We have said a great deal, in writing for lay folk. about the "book at the elb0,w." When we have a few moments to spare, we are not likely tb'go very far for what we reid. Rather, we pick up the book oh' periodicM that is nearest and begin to read it. Hence, to have good books and periodicals at hand is a great step towards getting them read. On the other hand, to keep worthless and trivial literature at a distance i~ the' best way to avoid wasting the precious moments we have for reading. The publishers, whether of books or magazines or newspapers, know this principle well, and they act:upon it to get their publica-tions bought and read. Wherex~er we turn, we see newsstands, book departments in stores, book and magazine counters even in drug-stores. It is the easiest thing in the world to pick up one's reading matter from all these sources, wherever we go. Henc.e, even into the Catholic home there pours a flood of best sellers and of popular magazines and newspapers which carry the world and the flesh into the sacred family circle. People wonder why they have so many distractions ~nd temptations, why their thoughts are often so trivial, why they dwell so little on th~ things of God and the interests of the Church. The reason is that they are victims of the powerful and ceaseless propaganda of high-salaried circulation managers and book agents. "'Dieting" Required Even into religious institutions some of these worldly and often- 'tainted publications find their way, and they are dressed up and flavored so as to deceive even the elect. But the poison for the soul is more deadly than that which ~nly affect~ the body. And, after years of reading these worldly publications, even religious need a strong antidote to keep them firm in faith and hope and love. It is hard and sometimes trying to .confine one's reading to what is best and noblest. Yet it is the o,nly reasonable course for a reli-gious to take. So also it is difficult at times for those who have to go on a reasonable and normal diet in order to preserve their health to keep strictly to what the doctor orders. In the one case as in the other, the reward is great. It is good to be healthful and vigorous, well nourished and of normal girth of body. But it is still" a hap-pier thing to be clean and strong of spirit; to have a mind, a heart, a will helped and nourished by a great faith, a burning hope, a vig-orous charity. Our conscious life of the mind is made up of a succes- EDWARD F. GARESCHI~ sion of thoughts, memories, impressions. If these are pure and joy-ful, holy and clean, then our life itself is so, because our thoughts color our days and bring them their sunshine or shadow. The ino ward life of thoughts, of will, of motives and desires is what makes us happy or unhappy, and we cannot readily perceive how much this is affected by what we read. ~,rhile thd religious ponders these things for his ownspiritual good and inner happiness, his charity will make him desire to help others also to choose well what they rea'd. ~vrhen you conceive an enthusiasm for a good and holy book, y.ou will be able to recom-mend it to others with more genuine interest, x~rhen you yourself choose your reading wisely and well, you will have more influence on the laity and even on your fellow religious to promote good reading. SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS We have received, with the compliments of The Most Reverend John Mark Gannon, Bishop of Erie, a beautifully bound and printed volume entitled l~VIemoirs¯ --The Semlrlarg 01: Montezuma. It contains the documents and writings of Bishop Gannon, Chairman of the Bishops' Committee for Montezuma Seminary, and of. his episcopal associates. The volume was prepared by The Very Reverend James M. Powers, Director of Charities in the Diocese of Erie. The book has not been placed on the market at this time; the present limited edition was subsidized by Bishop Gannon. This story of superb American Catholic charity which con-. tributed upwards 9f $1,500,000 to the education of Mexican priests, and of the seminary which to date has trained some 770 priests for the ministry in Mexico deserves wider dissemination. Cahiers de dosdphologie is a new periodical founded l~y the Research and DocL umentation Centre at St. Joseph's Shrine, Montreal. The Centre, which was estab-lished 'a few years ago, purposes to collect microfilms and publicatlons on St. Joseph and to promote various kinds of research, "to foster Josephology." It will be p.ublished twice a year. Price in American countries: $2.50 per year: $1.25 per copy. Address: Centre of Research and Documentation, St. Joseph's Shrine, Mon-treal 26, Canada. San Juan de la Cruz: Valor Psicologico de s& Doctrina, by Ft. Victorino Capanaga de San Agustln, won first prize among all the competitive works sub-mitted to the Spanish Universities on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the birth of St. John of the Cross. This study of the psychological value of St. John's mystical doctrine contains a long introduction, a section on the "structure of the soul," and a final section on "mystical phenomena." We received it from: Imp. Juan Bravo, 3, Madrid, Spain. No price given. 34 Aurelian Spiril:ualit:y Sister Mary of Carmel, R.P.B. [EDITORS' NOTE: The institute of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood was founded at St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, by Mother Catherine Aurelia in 1861. It is a contemplative institute and should be distinguished from the Sisters Adorers of the Most Precious Blood, an active congregation. The present article concerns the con-templative institute, which has monasteries in Canada and the United States, as well as in Rome, Cuba, and 2apart. A monastery flourished in China until it was suppressed by the Com.munists. The mother house for the French-speaking section of the institute is at St. Hyacinthe: for the English-speaking section, at London, Ontario. ] BECAUSE of the centuries of Christian thought behind its intro-duction into the schools of spirituality, the teaching of Mother Catherine Aurelia of the Precious Blood, embodied in the Rule of her institute and in her writings, is enriched with the spiritual treasures of these schools and influenced by them, while presenting and maintaining individual characteristics. It hol~ls a reflection of the dignity and glory of its elder brothers and sisters in the history of the Church and from its lowlier place among them radiates a new light. If it is young in its almost one hundred years of existence, it is old in its devotion, the Precious Blood. This devotion extends to the age of the Apostles. Saint Paul writes of it in a sublime manner ¯ in his Epistle to the Hebrews, and Saint Peter associates with it the adjective which has become almost a part of the word. "Precious Blood" was written for the first time by the Prince of the Apostles in his first Epistle. The' devotion goes back further, to Calvary and the.sacred Passion of Our Lord, even to Hi~ infancy when, in the mystery of the Circumcision, He shed the first drops of His ,blood. Still further back through the centuries preceding the comii~g of Our Redeemer, His blood was prefigured in that of the sacrificial animals of the Old Law. Father Faber, in his excellent work on the Precious Blood, would take us in contemplation to the ageless now before the creation of the world and show us in his inimitable way the unbe-ginning procession of the Precious Blood emerging from the mind of God. With these ancient and sacred realties arching the edifice of her life of prayer, the Sister Adorer of the Precious Blood has an obliga-tion of nobility. She must be marked with the characteristics of a 35 SISTER MARY OF CARMEL Reoieto for Religious family that posesses an eternal crest--the shield of the Precious Blood of 3esus. In a world of great and worthy exterior activity, in an age of actionists, insignificance lends to the hiddenness of the life of the daughters of Mother Catherine Aurelia.In this they possess a s~trong bond with her and her cofoundresses to whom the Most Reverend Joseph LaRocque, Bishop of St. Hyacinthe and founder of the in-stitute, could say, "Nothing could surpass, beloved Daughters, the insignificance of your origifi . " Influences~ In the direction of Monsignor 2oseph Raymond, later to become cofounder of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blbod, we.find the earliest and the most prolonged notable influence on the soul of Aurelia Caouette, latdr Mother " Catherine Aurelia of the Precious Blood. The importance of that influence is brought before us in the wo~ds of Bisfiop 3oseph LaRocque which he spoke to the members of the community shortly after Monsignor Raymond's death' on the feast of the Precious Blood in 1887. "My. dear children," said the founder, "read the writings of your Father who had such great zeal for the sanctification of your souls; you will find therein the sub-stance of his piety and his heart." While still very'y~ung, Aurelia Caouette received, in the words of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the inspiration which was the first indication of her vocation in life: "I feel in my soul all tl~e energy of tfae Divine Blood. It is a generous Blood which aspires o~ly to be shdd." In the fact that she was a tertiary in the order of Saint Dominic can'beseen the.,early influence of the Dominican Rule on her soul-li~e. Her attraction to the great Dominican, Saint Catherine of Sienal remained with her throughout the futhre years, although it is possible that the saint's outstanding devotion to the Precious Blood was its power. A Carmelite influence may be found in the modified similarity of the cloistered life of her spiritual daughters to that 6f their eider sisters of Carmel and in the blending of austerity with the lighthear~e~lness and joyful gaiety characteristic of Saint Teresa of Avila. That the spiritu.ality of Saint Ignatius of Loyola notably affected that of. Mother Catherine Aurelia and her spiritual datighters IAny" influences which came to the foundress in an e'xtraordinary manner have been omitted. da.nttary, 1954 AURELIAN SPIRITUALITY ! is evident. In chapter three of the Rule, which treats of mental prayer, we read, "The Adorers will therefore apply themselves with the greatest diligence 'to this holy exercise using principally the method o,f Saint Ignatius of Loyola." Here it is well to emphasize that, contrary to a general misinformed opinion, the "'method" of Saint Ignatius is not a set mould depriving the soul of that liberty of spirit in .which God delights; and to safeguard the religious against this error, she is cautioned: "Undoubtedly when the Holy Spirit makes His Divine operations felt in the soul, instructing ~nd directing her, she has only to abandon herself to the attractions and impressions which He communicates, without restricting herself rigorously to a method.': AlWays concerned with the prayer-life of the religious, the insti-tute provides advice for all. The beginner is encouraged by this prac: tical directive: "For the use of persons unable to meditate easily, Saint Ignatius toward the end of.his Spiri.tua.1 Exercises proposes three ways of praying appropriate to the dispositions and cap, ac.ity of those lea~t accustomed to prayer." There follows a detailed expla-nation of these in an extract from the Spiritual Exercises by Bel-licius. And through t'he pages of her Spiritual Directory, the Adorer is. guided in her conduct to the h.eighlts of contemplation, should God favor her with this gift. It is worth noting the co'nclu.din~ sentence in this section: "The soul should commit herself with docility to the direction of a wise and enlightened man and faith-f. ully obey him." The importanc~ rightly attached to the particular examen by the founders and foundress of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood marks a further influence by the Saint of Loyola. An echo of his military strategy is held .in "Experience never fails, to prove these happy results in favor of souls who. make good use of the arms and method of the particular examen." The annual retreat is also to be made, as far as possible, after the method of Saint Ignatius. Lastly it is interesting to note that the Ignatian influence affects not only the prayer-life of the Adorer but extends to all her 'em-ployments: "No matter what employment is given her, she shows neither sadness, discontent, disquiet nor unhappiness." Saint Ignatius regarded all things as means to the glory and service of God, and the daughters of Mother Catherine Aurelia are urged to become ac- 37 SISTER MARY OF (~ARMEL Review for Religious quainted with¯ this holy indifference as it was understood by Saint Ignatius. The reciprocal influence of Bishop LaRocque and Mother Cath-erine Aurelia, founder and foundress of the institute,.is summarized in the words which he used when distributing the Rule books to the young community: "I must present the first copy to your Mother Foundress, as the representative of the whole Institt~te, of which she is truly the Mother, as I am the Father. I could have done ¯ nothing without her, as she would have done nothing without me." These lines also evidence the submission of the foundress, who penned the following excellent tribute: "O Father of our religious life, what do we not owe thee for the past! What do we not owe thee for the future--for the doctrine, the spirit you have left us: for the blessed pages that your hand has traced for us." Essential Principles The essential principles which gave birth to Mother Catherine Aurelia's requirements of her spiritual daughters, as found in the Rule and customs and in her writings, are worthy of consideration. There was a definite sense of balance evident in the outlook of the foundress. We can remark this first in her conception of God as holy and merciful. Her realization of His holiness is emphasized in her imposition of adoration and reparation as prima~y duties: and the religious are invited to represent to themselves the greatness, the pow.er, the infinite.majesty of God and their own misery, extreme in-digence, and profound baseness as motives for remaining annihi-lated in the divine presence. God, Who is infinite holiness, is out-raged by the sins of mankind, and Mother Catherine Aurelia calls upon her .daughters to make reparation and, as it were, places in their hands uplifted in prayer the expiatory chalice of the Precious Blood. The infinite mercy of God gives confidence to the religious of the Precious Blood in their intercession for sinners; and day after day, year after year, they plead for them, untiring in their ceaseless quest for souls. How could their efforts wane, with these words of their foundress and leader echoing in their hearts: "Beloved virgins, I conjure you to be holy! To become so, fix your feet on the rock of Calvary. It is ~here you will find the swiftness of the stag in order to run to the conquest of souls without ever deviating from the path which God for this purpose has traced out for you. It is there you will find the strength to fight valiantly and generously. For your 38 ,January, 1954 AURELIAN SPIRITUALITY armour you will have prayer, penance, separation from the world and the mortification of your body, heart and soul." Participating in Mother Catherine Aurelia's conception of Christ, her spir.itual daughters regard Him principally in His charac-ter of Redeemer accomplishing redemption by the shedding of His blood. Each day at the moment which marks the time of His death on Calvary, the religious, prostrate before Him, say: "Jesus has shed all His Blood for love of us and died on the cross. Let us adore Him and thank Him." The approach to Christ is one of reverence and of confidence, from which emanates desire. The intensity of that de-sire bursts forth in sincere efforts to bring to souls the fruits of the Precious Blood shed so fully for all. Christ, the High Priest, by His own blood obtained for us an everlasting redemption, as Saint PauI tells us. In her Rule, in the conferences of her Father Founder and in the counsels of her Mother Foundress, the Sister Adorer of the Precious Blood is invited to regard Christ as her Spouse also, "united with Him no less by sentiments of tender love and persevering piety than they are closely and especially consecrated by the Vows of Religion." Mother Catherine Aurelia's outlook on human nature was a recognition of its potentialities. She saw ir capable, as it is, of op-posites-~ its power to sin, its power to love God. She beheld the sublime possibilities of the human soul aided by grace, never effaced by the greatness of sin because of the power of the redeeming Blood ba treasure of which the Adorers are, in a sense, administrators in the interests of those who are not of the perfect age of grace, retarded by ignorance, indifference, or sin. "By dwelling on creatures the mind is kindled into loving divine goodness. For all the perfections scattered throughout thff universe flow together in him who is the spring of all goodness. If therefore the goodness, beauty and freshness of creatures so draw our hearts, how much more then God who is their source? Creatures are but rivulets, he is the main stream.''~ Thus teaches Saint Thomas Aquinas, and these dispositions towards created things are evident in the writings of Mother Catherine Aurelia. She was conscious of the beauty of nature. By it her thoughts were lifted to heaven and to the omnipotence of God, not to creatures, for even in the most per-fect of them she found inadequacy. 2Thomas Gilby, Philosophical Texts, n. 127. 39 SISTER MARY O1~ CARMEL Review [or Religious' _Perfection Having briefl~r considered these conceptions, it is interesting to observethe ideal ofperfection as it is understood by the members of the.community, an ideal handed down by the founders and fdundress. For their, spiritual daughters, perfection consists in ui~ion with God. They know that religious perfection must built on the foiafidation of Christian perfection'; that all Christians share the obligation to fulfill our divine Lord's command, "Be you therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"i that the duties coinmon to all the followers of Christ are to b~ fulfilled according to on'd's st~ite with intensity and exactitude. A )eligious must direct ti~i steps tothe perfection of love and in this consists the genera!. spi~!t Of the ~eligio'us state, while she must possess also the particular spirit of her community. For contemplative religious this consists in the" striving after, advancing in, and perfecting of the interior life and:in the faithful dbservance of the rules and constitutions of her c6fiamuni~y. 'Saifit Paul has saitl, "This is tl~e will of God, yotir' Sandtification."" The daughter of Mother Catherine Aurelia might v~ith all truth say, "This, my Rule, is the Will of God for me, the means of my sanctification." The. Rule is not mere letteri It is spirit too. The latter gives life and love and meaning to the former. Destiny In the preface of her Rule, the religious is given the glorious des-tiny. of the community--to retrace and reflect, as much as possible, the imag~ of the divine charity in the shedding of .blood. Christ loved His Father in a sublime act of reparation; He.loved mankind in offering to men redemption by His blood. The heart, of the re-ligious must b~, as it were, a replica of the love-filled heart of Christ, offering that-love in which hers is immersed by her fidelity to the obligations she has embraced. Her love for her fellow beings' com-mences in the cloister and reaches out to embrace the world and be-yond. Mother Catherine Aurelia, in the burning desire of her heart, had said that she would like to see the words, "Charity, Union ~nd Concord," written in letters of gold on the wails of all her monas-teries. That was a symbolism of her desire that the perfection of charity be inscribed in the thoughts, words, and deeds of all of her spiritual daughters in their associations with one another. The Crucifixion of Our Lord is the most silent and the most tre- 4O AURELIAN ,SPIRITUALITY mendous "I love y6u" ever known. It is a divine love song Written to the rhythm of blood softly falling from "His great wounds. What an exalted ideal of love is set before the religious! She must bring to souls the fruits of Christ's sacrifice--sanctification and salvation. In doing so she must, as has been stated, retrace and reflect as much as possible the divine charity. Her day is the Passion! Its dawn finds her prostrate in union with.Jesus in the Garden of 0lives. At dusk she is in hdoration of Jesus Christ in the mystery of His death and burial and in adoration of the eternal repose which God takes in Himself. How can she be happy with the weight of divine sorrow ~on-stantly within her? This is one of the delightful paradoxes of our holy faith. The daughter of Mother Catherine Aurelia experiences the indescribable happiness bf union with ~he Beloved. Than this, no greater happiness can exist on earth. Moreover she hag the flap: piness of proving her love by participation in His desires, His suf-ferings, and His sacrifice. She has the enviable certainty of knowin~ the willof the Bdloved at each moment of her life and in Him the strength to fulfill it. She enjoys the contentment of doing what she desires to do upon earth in following her ~tocation and has the well-founded hope of continuing in the perfection of her vocation of adorer thrqughout a joyous eternity. The silence of the divine charity which she endeavours to reflect is in her seclusion from the world and, in the cloister, more inti-mately in the hi.ddenness of her life with Christ in God. Particular Ends Sharing the common end of all contemplative religious, the Sis-ters Adorers o~ the Precious Blood have four special ends. (1) To render repeatedly their loving homage to the ~dorable blood of God made Man, poured forth for the sal3ration of the hu-man rude. "To adore[ Ah this is her unique element on earth," Mother Catherine Aurelia had written of each spiritual daughter, and her loving homage is a homage of adoration. Her whole life. is constituted to attain this end, and the means are prudently presented to her in her Rule and hdr Spiritual Directory. (2) To glorify and honor in a particular manner Mary Im-maculate in her Conception. This is a complement of the aim Of her religious life. Seven years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception fell from the lips of the Sovereign 41 SISTER MARY OF CARMEL Revieu~ [or Religious pontiff, young Catherine Aurelia and her cofoundresses assumed for themselves and for all generations of their .religious community the joyful obligation of paying special homage to the Mother of God in the exalted privilege of her Immaculate Conception. Long years before Our Lady came from heaven to the Cova da Iria to appeal to all her children to be mindful of bet heart, the foundress appealed to her religious to take their delight in that pure heart, urging them to learn how the holy Heart of Mary takes her greatest delight in the privilege of her Immaculate Conception. Through the Immaculate Virgin we have the Precious Blood. In view of the sbeddlng of the Precious Blood, Mary was given the privilege of immaculacy from the first moment of her conception. It is a necessity that the one devotion be associated with the other. Into the dovecote of Mary's Immaculate Heart, Mother Cather-ine Aurelia placed her daughters. She enkindled in them a courage .which cfin come only in having M~ry Immaculate as their co-worker and mediatrix, "that her daughters might be strengthened. To what purpose? ". to work for the glory of the Blood Divine!" (3) To assiduously adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. "Assiduously" gives to the religious some idea of the in-tensity of the adoration expected of her. It must be a painstaking, persevering adoration. She is in the presence of the Blessed Sacra-ment many times in the course of the day; but in the moments which constitute her hour of adoration of ,lesus in the Blessed Sacrament, her obligation is more specific, more personal; for then the entire community is depending on her to fulfill in a direct manner in its name the third principal end of its existence. It is then that she is expected to accomplish the desire of ~lesus by offering His blood and with it to unite the offering of her entire being for His service and glory. (4) To devote themselves (as victims), if God will accept them, and continually offer to the Lord the merits of the blood of Jesus Christ to obtain the conversion of sinners. It may be noted here that the Holy See cancelled the expressions "victim," "immolation" in the Rule and Spiritual Directory; and in keeping with the spirit of this directive the Sisters themselves changed the dialogue in the cere-monial of profession. However, since it is evident that Rome did not object to the idea of complete self-giving which the founders in-tended by such expressions as "victim" and "immolation," the founders' writings are kept unchanged. 42 danua~/, 1954 AURELIAN ~PIRITUALITY "Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to make sacrifices for them." These words of Our Lady of Fatima remind forgetful mankind of the fecundity of sacrifice and of our duties towards our fellow beings. Meditation on them will bring a realization of the saneness of this particular end of the vocation of a Sister Adorer of the Precious Blood and of the necessity of this purpose. Because many do not make their share of sacrifices for sinners, there must be others who will assume the responsibility of filling up what is wanting on the part of the human race. The indifference, ingrati-tude, and sinfulness with which the Precious Blood is treated, the want of respon.se .to divine love, urge the daughter of Mother Cath-erine Aurelia to embrace her vocation as a reparatory soul, and over and dyer again she is reminded of this by her holy founders and foundress. She "offe.rs herself in union with Him, her.Model, and her Spouse of Blood." The merits of that blood are ransom which she offers for the conversion of sinners. F.rom.her fidelity to this purpose of her vocation emanates a consolidation of true interests, a solidarity which strongly unites her to her fellow creatures through-out the world although she is exteriorly separated from them by the nature of that vocation and the sacrifices she has embraced. Suffering Suffering is inseparable from man during his sojourn on earth. His attitude towards it affects his endurance of it, for endure it he must. A burden willingly assumed is a lighter burden. Mother Catherine Aurelia regarded suffering as an opportunity. Every occasion of it was grasped avidly because she had a true sense of its value. Her Redeemer and Spouse had taught her this and her life was a testimony of her appreciation of the cross. She called her spiritual daughters "Virgins of Calvary" and referred to sufferings as their jewels. To a woman, jewels are precious because of their value, and they are an adornment. See, then, what sufferings are to the Adorer of'the Precious Blood! They are not depressing, some-thing to be avoided. They are a precious adornment. Just as the wounds of Jesus are an eternal, glorious proof of His infinite love for us, sufferings willingly accepted are,. to the daughter of Mother Catherine Aurelia,' so many opportunities of imitating her Spouse, of making her like unto Him, and of testifying her love--small wounds indeed compared to the great wounds of Christ, and often,hidden; but wounds, nevertheless, telling Him of her responding love. On SISTER MARY OF (~ARME~L Review [or Religious the occasion of taking her departure from a daughter-house of her community, the foundress said, "I leave happy in the thought that we are going to suffer and' to suffer much." This was not an atti-tude occasioned by an isolated circumstance, but it was her constant regard for the cross. Labour "St. Thomas considered the contemplative life, to which are added exterior Works, the most useful and meritorious. This life is yours, for though contemplatives, you have your hours of work ac-cording to the Rules and obedlence. Thus wrote Bisl~op LaRocque and thus, too, did Mother Catherine Aurelia regard labour: "Wholly penetrated with sentiments imbibed from the pious ex~rcises of prayer, of Mass and of Holy Communion, the Sisters will each morning take up with holy joy the yoke of labour and observanc.es truly crucifying. They will submit thereto like humble sinners, dbing eveiytbing' in a spirit of expiation, and to accomplish the special end of our Institute, which is to save souls, not only by player but also by work, which our blessed Father Founder regarded a~ one of our principal penances." Again, Bishop LaRocque im-posed labour upon the members of the community as a compensation for the austerities of the great religious orders. A thirst for fruitful penance was expected of his spiritual daughters. This is to be satis-fied by the joyful acceptance of the work allotted to them; a gen-erosity in assisting the overburdened; a peace, calmness, 'and gravity in the performance of their ta~k~. The horary of t'he. community presents a well-ordered" day, gua.rding the hours of prayer from the " intrusion of ill-regulated manual duties, and instilling into the hours of Work the spirit of continual prayer. Glory to the Blood of Jesus . - Glory has been defined as knowledge to which is linked admi~a-tion, as splendour, honour, renown. In these definitions we per-ceive that the "heart-cry" of the daughter of Mother Catherine Au-relia, sincerely accepted, is weighted with a responsibility~a respon-sibility to do all within her power, assisted and enlightened by 'God, to increase her knowledge of the mystery of the Precious Blood; arid as that knowJedge becomes expansive, there emanates a relatively in-creasing admiration, . and the Sister Adorer is filled with the desire to give glory to the blood of Jes{as. It is her duty, as well as her de-sire, to pray incessantly that the Precious Blood may be known; 44 January, 1954 "APPARITIONS" OF OUR LADY loved, and received with ardent faith by all men: It is therefore ob-vious that the plan of Redemption, the Incarnation, the seven blood-sheddings, the Sacred Passion and death of Our Redeemer, and the Blessed Sacrament are subjects for meditative prayer dear to the heart of every Adorer, for in them her knowledge is increased and her zeal animated to radiate from the. confines of her hidden life to souls throughout the world; and for them her supplications become more fervent that their knowledge, too may increase and that fitting homage to the adorable Precious Blood ensue. These dispositions must impregnate each moment of the life of the Adbrer, and the very beginning of her foundress's sublime, "Remember, O my DaughtEr," bursts with startling suddenness into the words that bring an awareness of the obligation attendant on her throughout each moment of her life, "that the cry of thy heart should be, 'Glory to the Blood'," and in this is the unifying and culminating purpose of the varied duties of her particular vocation. The spirit of the community is a challenge that is taken'to, the extent of the individual's understanding and appreciation of the concept!ons of the founders and foundress and to the extent also of her own generosity aided by the grace of God. "APPARITIONU' OF OUR LADY° The August, 1952, number of The Clergy Monthly contains a list of alleged apparitions of Our Lady during the years, 1931-50. The list was first published. by a German magazine in Europe in December, 1951; and up ,to that time only two of the apparitions had been approved by ecclesiastical authorities, whereas four-teen had been rejected. Six were still undecided. Whether any further decision has been made on these six, we do not know. Following is the list as it appeared in The Clergy Monthly: Approved 1932/33 Beauraing, Belgium. 2 boys. 3 girls. 1933: Banneux, Belgium, 1 girl--12 years old. 8 apparitions. Rejected, 1931: Ezquioga, Spain. 2children: later up to 150 "seers." 1937/40: Heede, Westphalia. 4 girls--12-14 years, old. apparitions. 1944: Bergamo, Italy. 1 girl--7 years old.12 apparitions. 1947 : Bouxieres-aux-Dames, Belgium, 1947: Espis, France. 1947/49: Forstweiler, Wiirttemberg. 1 woman. 8 apparitions. 1948: Assisi, Italy. Crowd. A statue of Mary moves. 1948: Gimigliano, Italy. 1 girl--13 years old. More than 100 45 PAMPHLETS AND BOOKLETS 1948: Lipa, Philippines. 1 postulant in a convent¯ 1948: Aspang, Austria. 1 man~61 years old. 1949: Fehrbach, Palatinate. 1 girl--12 years old. 8everal apparitions. 1949: Hasznos, Hungary. Crowd. 1949: Lublin, Poland. Crowd. "Our Lady weeps." 1949/50: Heroldsbach, Bavaria. 4 girls and other children. Many apparitions. Undecided 1945: Codosera, Spain. 1 girl--10 years old; later up to 100 "seers." ¯ 1946: Pfaffenhofen, Bavaria. 1 girl--22 years old. 3 apparitions. 1947: Tre Fontane, Rome. 1 man, 3 children. 1947: Urucaina, Brasil. 1 priest. (Cures.) 1948: Cluj, Rumania. Crowd. 1950: Acquaviva Platani,. Sicily. 1 girl--12 years old. 7 apparitions. PAMPHLETS AND BOOKLETS THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin: The Chris-tian Life Calendar, by Rev. Gabriel W. Hafford and Rev. George Kolanda. $1.00. CATECHETICAL GUILD EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY, St. Paul 1, Minnesota: Mary Talks to Us, by Don Sharkey. 15 cents.--The Family Rosary, by Joseph A. Breig. 15 cents. FIDES PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, Chicago 10, Illinois: Con[irmation, 25 cents, THE GRAIL, St. M~inrad, Indiana: From Five to Nine, by Bruno McAndrew, O.S.B. 25 cents.--Our Mother, by Emile Neubert, S.M. 25 cents.~ur Lady of the Hermit, by Paschal Boland, O.S.B. 5 cents.--Little Saints, by John and Margaret Moore. $1.50.---Friends Indeed, by Robert Wood, S.M. 15 ccnts.-~Be You Perfect, by Robert B. Eiten, S.J. 15 cents.--The Mass Year. 35 cents.--His Name Is desus, by Julia C. Mahon. $2.00. SCAPULAR PRESS, New York City 16, New York: Life with Mary, by Thomas McGinnis, O. Carm. 50 cents. SHEED AND WARD, New York 3, New York: Are We Really Teaching Relig-ion?, by F. J. Sheed. 75 cents. ST. JAMES FRIARY, Riverton, Illinois: My Spiritual Director, by Ft. Athana-sius Steck, O.F.M. 50 cents. TEMPLEGATE, PUBLISHERS, Springfield, Illinois: A Map of Prayer, by Fr. R. H. J. Steuart, S.J.--The Path of Prayer, by Ft. Vincent McNabb, O.P.-- Contemplative Prayer, by Pete de la Taille, S.J.--The One Thin9 Necessary, by Rev. Bruno Scott James.-~Detight In The Lord, by Fr. Daniel Considine, S.J.-- Fifty Meditations on the Passion, by Archbishop Goodier, S.J.--Wbat Is Contem-plation, by. Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O.--A Treatise on Interior Prayer, by Dom Innocent Le Masson.--Meditations on the Litany of the Sacred Heart, by Juliana of Norwich.--"A More Excellent Way," by Archbishop Goodier, S.J.--Treatise on the Religious Life, by Dom Innocent Le Masson. 35 cents for each booklet. 46 THE SPIRITUALITY OF ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. By Hugo Rahner, S.J. Translated by Francis John Smith, S.J. Pp. xvll -I- 142. The Newman Press, Westm;nsfer, Maryland: 1953. $2.75. Although the title does not suggest it, Father Hugo Rahner's purpose in this book is "to present the development of the essential features and history of the spirit; of service in the Church." St. Ignatius Loyola was a man of the Church with an ideal of perfection essentially formed by service in the Church. Hence, the origin of his spirituality provides the author with a concrete ex-a, mple in which to study the development of the essential features of the spirit of service. Each of the three influences that went into the spirituality crystallized in the Spiritual Exercises is considered: first, the influence of Ignatius's family, country, and culture: then, the in-fluence of traditional Christian piety, especially as it reached Ignatius in the Imitation of Christ and in the spiritual readin~ of.his conva-lescence- conversion at Loyola (Ludolph of Saxony's The Life of Christ and Jacopo de Voragine's The Golden Legend); finally, the decisive influence of the mystical illumination granted to the saint at Manresa along the banks of the River Chrdoner. In this experience "Ignatius, the pilgrim and the penitent, was made over into the man of the Church"; here he became aware of how his limitlessly ex-pansive love for God was to be submitted to the service and given form within the visible Church. Turning from the development to the history of the spirit of service in the Church, Father Rahner merely indicates the historical continuity of this spirit by sketching its characteristics in a few key "men of the Church": the first St. Ignhtius, of Antioch (whose name Inigo de Loyola appropriated after his conversion), St. Basil, St. Benedict, St. Augustine ("the greatest of all the men of the Church"), the Sienese Saints Bernardine and Catherine. In this perspective St. Ignatius of Loyola appears as one of the long series of providential figures raised up by the Holy Spirit at critical times in history to re-emphasize the truth that there is no true service of God that is not service somehow in the visible Church. This study is as rich as it is brief. The text reads so easily (thanks to the fully satisfactory translation by Francis J. Smith, S.J.) that one needs to consider the twenty full pages of documenta- 47 BOOK NOTICES Reoietv for Religious tion in order to realize that Father Rahner has given us here nothing but the distilled essence of an immense work of research. All who love "that true spouse of ,Jesus Christ, our holy Mother, the hier-archical Church" will be grateful for the understanding of the spirit of service in the Church afforded by'this book. All to whom Ig-natian spirituality is important will find in Father Rahner's work a most penetrating insight into the meaning Of the Spiritual Exercises. --JOHN FRANCIS CLARKSON, S.,J. BOOK NOTICES REDEMPTIVE INCARNATION, by Albert L. Schlitzer, C.S.C., continues Notre Dame's University Religion Series, Theology for' the Layman. This book covers the matter usually treated under Christology, Soteriology, and Mariology in seminary manuals. The topics are proposed as questions in pleasing imit~ition of St. Thomas Aquinas. In each case the theological sources are cited: Sacred Scrip- " ture, Fathers of the Church, councils, papal decrees--all concluded by a clear statement of the theological development of doctrine. In-cluded at the end of each chapter are review questions and addenda showing the impact on daily life of the truth studied. Differences of opinion among theologians are sometimes indicated but generally not developed. Little space is given to modern speculative develop-ments. Thus the Blessed Virgin Mary as co-redemptrix in objective redemption is barely mentioned and hesitatingly so. No mention is made of human solidarity with Christ in His redemptive "work. Nothing is said of Mary's Queenship. But professors of college re-ligion may very, profitably examine this paper-bound book before selecting a~ text for their classes. It is a theological work, devoted to sources and an understanding of the faith, rather than a mere phi-losophy of religion. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University ~f Notre Dame Press, 1953. Pp. x -t- 337. $2.50). All religious should be interested in PROGRESS IN THE RELI~ GIOUS LIFE, by' Bernard J. Kelly, C.S.Sp. The book is written with the priest-religious in mind, but everything in it is of val,ue to all re-ligious. Father Kelly's basic principle is that the religious life is a call to growth in perfection; in other words, the divine call which brings one to the novitiate does .not stop with the taking of vows~ We are all called to make progress, and the reading of this book will danuarg, 195 4 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS encourage us to answer the call. It gives an analysis of the meaning of progress and then in a very practical way shows how the mature religious can and does make progress through the use of the sacra-ments, prayer, the vows, and the other things that make up the life of a religious. (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1953. Pp. 128. $2.50.) BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS [For the most part, these notices are purely descriptive, based on a cursory exam-ination of the books listed.] BRUCE PUBLISHING CO., 400 N. Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wis-consin. , , The Quest ot: Honor. By E. Boyd Barrett. "Honor," writes the author, "calls for courage andindependence; it demands that a man be indifferent to what people may say or think. Honor is con-cerned about doing what is right, and not about winning p~aise." The short chapters in the' book contain much good advice on how to be honorable. Pp. xi ~ 122. $2.50. Character Calendar. By Sister M. Fidelis, S.S.N.D., and Sister M. Charitas, S.S.N.D. Revised edition by Sister M. Charitas. Con-tains a practical meditation, based on the liturgy, for each day of the year. Pp. viii + 280: $1.85 (paper). The Less Traveled Road. By Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O. A memoir of Dom Frederic Mary Dunne, O.C.S.O., the first American Trappist Abbot. "I have found Him using the Trappist life to form Dom Frederic, and Dom Frederic to form the Trappist life. So I am going to try to give you a glimpse of the divine Smithy at work and to show how He hammers a soul on the anvil of time to shape it and temper it for eternity." This is the author's promise; the book is its fulfillment. Pp. viii ÷ 250. $3.50. Mg Monthlg Recollection Day. A compilation from the spir-itual treasury of Very Rev. William Gier, S.V.D., edited by Bruno. Hagspiel, S.V.D. Contain~ a meditation or conference for each monthly-recollection day throughout the year; also introductory and concluding spiritual thoughts and practices. Pp. x ÷ 177. $2.50. A Rich Young Man. By dohn E. Beahn. A partly fictional story of St. Anthony of Padua. Pp. 250. $3.25. Spiritual Steps to Christmas. By Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysit~s F. 49 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious Coogan. "A thought a day through Advent to the glory and peace of Christmas morning is the substance of this book." Pp. 116., $2.25. Paul the Apostle. By Giuseppe Ricciotti. Translated by Alba Zizzamia. This author of a fascinating Life of Christ says: "It seemed I should continue for the disciple the work I had done on the Master." The present book shows that the life of the disciple may be summed up in his own words: "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." A scholarly study, with complete general index and special index of Scripture quotations. Pp. xi -[- 540. $7.50. THE FAMILY ROSARY, 432 Western Ave., Albany 3, N.Y. Father Pettton's Rosary Pra!ler Book. Contains 180 short reflec-tions pertaining to the Mysteries of the Rosary. Material "prepared by a Trappist monk at the request of Father Peyton. Pocket-size, beautifully printed, and well bound. Pp. xxviii+228. $1.00. FIDES, 25 est, rue Saint-Jacques, Montreal, Canada. Principes de Vie Sacerdotale et t~e[igieuse. By the Most Rev. AI-bert- F. Cousineau, C.S.C., former Superior General of the Congre-gation of the Holy Cross. Contains a brief biography and an expo-sition of the spirituality of Father Moreau, the founder of the Con-gregation of the Holy Cross. Pp. 262. $2.00 (paper). FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York 58, N.Y. The Training of Cor~verts. Contains the record of the first mis-siological conference ever held in the United States. Pp. vii -}- 165. $2.00 (paper). $1.50 in lots of ten or more. M. H. GII~L AND SON, LTD., 50 Upper O'Connell St., Dublin, Ire-land. A Guide for Catholic Teachers. By M. T. Marnane. In the Preface to this book, the Archbishop of Dublin says: "This book will show with cogent and persuasive warmth the method by which a Catholic teacher may, while striving for due professional excel-lence, achieve the goal of bringing the mind and will and body and emotions of every pupil into c,aptivity to the truth of Jesus Christ." Pp. xiv q- 164. 9s. 6d. THE GRAIL, St. Meinrad, Indiana. Nothing but Christ. By Killian McDonnell, O.S.B. A.Bene-dictine approach to lay spirituality, designed to help men and wom-en in the world to live a spiritual life according to the spirit 6f St. Benedict. Pp. xiv + 185. $2.00. .50 ,danuary, 1954 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS B. HERDER BOOK CO., 15 South Broadway, St. Louis 2, Mo. General Education and The Liberal College. By William F. Cunningham, C.S.C. The book is the fruit of much thought and discussion on the part of leading Catholic educators in the United States who had worked for more than a decade on the problem of Catholic liberal education. Pp. xvii -}- 286. $4.00. E. M. LOHMANN COMPANY, 413 Sibley St., St. Paul 1, Minn. Large Saint Andrew Dail~t Missal. An entirely new edition of this very popular missal, prepared by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B. It contains the latest Masses; proper feasts for the United States; various feasts kept in some places or by certain religious communi-ties (e.g., St. Maria Goretti, St. Louise de Marilloc) ; larger type for notes, commentaries, and the English text throughout the Missal; the Easter Vigil; etc. Available in same bindings and prices as the previous edition with the exception of the cheapest binding, which is now $6.25 (formerly $6.00). MCMULLEN BooKs, INC., 22 Park Place, New York 7, N.Y. Light on the Mountain. By John S. Kennedy. The story of La Salette, told "with a freshness and charm that will delight all." Pp. 205. $3.00. The Story of Father Price. By John C. Murrett, M.M. This is an abridgment of the author's original biography of the cofounde~ of Maryknoll, Tar Heel Apostle. Pp. 116. $i.50. Come, Holy Ghost. By Bishop Francis Xavier Ford, M.M., D.D. Contains twenty short chapters, each developing some aspect of devotion to the Holy Ghost, especially with reference to one of the invocations of the "Veni, Sancte Spiritus." . Pp. xii -4- 113. $1.50. St. John of God. By Norbert McMahon. The story of the founder of the Hospitallers of St. John-of-God and patron of the sick and the dying. A very readable biography. Pp. 205. $2.75. Jesus, Son of Mar~ . By Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen. Illustrated by Rafaello Busoni. Bishop Sheen's only juvenil'e; first published in 1947. $I.00. MONASTERY OF THE VISITATION, Wilmington, Delaware. "'The Siloer is Mine." A brief history of St. Joseph's Monastery of the Visitation in Wilmington, Delaware, commemorating the first centenary of foundation from the Monastery of Montluel, France. Pp. xii q- 117. 51 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS NEWMAN PRESS, Westminster, Maryland. ' John the Baptist. By Andr~ R~tif. A study of The Precursor, especially with reference to Scripture and the writings of the Fathers. Pp. x -b 122. $2.50. Wb~ I Entered the CoJ~oent. Edited by Rev. George L. Kane. In the Preface the editor aptly states: "There are scores of helpful books and pamphlets on the subject of religious vocation, but most of these are, of their nature, abstract and general. There seemed a need in vocational literature for case histories to show the applica-tion of the theological principles in specific instances and to manifest the workings of God's grace in individual souls. It is the hope of the authors and the editor that this book will help to supply that need." A random sampling of these accounts by twenty-one Sisters indicates that the hope is realized. A real contribution to vocational litera-ture. Introduction by the Archbishop of Boston. Pp. xvii q- 214. $2.50. PRENTICE-HALL, INC., 70 Fifth Ave., New York 11, N.Y. The Springs of Silence. By Madeline DeFrees (Sister Mary Gilbert, S.N.3.M.). Another story of a religious vocation and of life in the convent, told with simplicity, with delicate realism, with a fine sense for the humorous--without overdoing it or forcing it. Well written, well printed, and attractively illustrated by Hazard Durfee. Pp. x -t- 173. $2.95. FREDERICK PUSTET (20., 14 Barclay St., New York 8, N.Y. Trinitg Whom I Adore. By Dom Eugene V.andeur, O.S.B. The prayer of Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, with a commentary. Translated from the French by the Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery, Menlo Park, California. Pp. xxviii -f- 163. $2.75. SHEED ~ WARD, 830 Broadway, New York 3, N.Y. Shepherd's Tartan. By Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, O.P. A man (meaning the male of the species) has to begin this book by looking up the meaning 6f "tartan." He finds that the

Issue 13.4 of the Review for Religious, 1954. ; Review for Religious JULY 15, 1954 Religious and Modern Needs . . Jordan Aumann Mindfulness . ¢. A. Herbsf Duns Scofus . Berard Vogt Aposfolic School . Slster M. Ange~ic]a Apparitions and Revelations . .~ugustlne G. Ellard Spirlfual Opiates . Joseph P. Fisher Saints in No-Man's Land . George Syrne =~uestions and Answers Beatifications, 1951-1952 Communications Book Reviews¯ NUMBER 4 RI VII:::W FOR RI::LIGIOUS VOLUME XIII JULY, 1954 NUMBER CONTENTS RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MODERN NEEDS--3ordatt Aumann, O.P. 169 MARIAN YEAR PLAY . 178 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 178 MINDFULNESS~. A. Herbst, S.3 . 179 COMMUNICATIONS . ' . " . . 183 DUNS SCOTUS, DEFENDER OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEP-TION-- Berard Vogt, O,F.M . 184 THE APOSTOLIC SCHOOL--Sister M. Angeli¢ia, C.S.J . 187 SACRA VIRGINITAS . . . 192 OUR ADDRESSES . 192 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS: SOME CLASSIFICATIONS-- Augustine G. Ellard, S.J . 193 BEATIFICATIONS, 1951-1952 . 205 SPIRITUAL OPIATES-~Joseph P. Fisher, S.J . 207" TO ALL THE SAINTS IN NO-MAN'S LAND~George Byrne, S.3. 211 NEW CONGREGATIONS . 216 CONGRESS IN BUENOS AIRES . 217 COMMENTARY ON LITTLE OFFICE . . ' . 217 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 22. Advice for Mystic . . 218 23. The Occasional Confessor . 219 24. Approval for Revised Customary . 219 25. Licit Disposition of Income . 219 BOOK REVIEWS-- Kateri of the Mohawks; The All-Present God; The Holy Spirit in the Christian Life; Through Him, with Him, and in Him . 220 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 223 BOOKLETS AND PAMPHLETS . 224 NOTICE FOR PUBLISHERS . ¯ . 224 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1954, Vol. XIII, No. 4. Published bi-monthly: 3anhary, March, May,duly, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J., Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Gerald Kelly, S.J., Francis N. Korth, S.3. Copyright, 1954, by Adam C. Eilis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before writing to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. Religious Life and Modern Needs Jordan Aumann, O.P. THE General Congress On the States of Perfection, held at Rome in 1950 under the auspices of the Sacred Congregation of Religious and with the approval of Pope Pius XIi, brought to the attention of the Catholic ~orld the keen interest and paternal solicitude of the Supreme Pontiff for the condition of religious life in the modern~ world. The Congress, however, was not an unex-pected and isolated event; rather it was the culmination of a. well-laid i01an for the renewal of the primitive spirit in religious insti-tutes. As early as June, 1939, th~ Holy Father addressed 'an allocution to the members of the Gene'ral Chapter of the Friars Minor and urged them to striv~ earnestly to ,recapture the spirit of their Seraph'ic Father. Since that time, both the Holy Father and the Sacred Con-gregation of Religious have repeatedly admonished religious to re-new their interior spirit and adapt themselves to the urgent ne"eds of the presefit day. With the publication of the Acta et Documenta of the 1950 Congress, religious superiors have a handy guide for the fulfillment of the Pope's desires.1 The volume contains theological and can-onical treatises on the state of perfection as well ~.as many practical suggestioris for the adaptation and renewal that are'requested b,y the Holy See. The .Mind bf the Church ' Between 193~ and 1950, in'allocut-ions and letters to the Fran-ciscans, Jesuits, Redemptorists, Dominicans, and CanonS of St. Au-gustine, the Holy Father has stressed the need for certain adjust-ments in religious institutes in view of the conditions of modern life and for a revival of the spirit of the founders in the various in-stitutes, s, The Pontiff realizes all too keenly that in encouraging an ! !Cf. Acta et Documenta: Congressus General(s de Statibus Perfectionis, published in 1952 by Pia Sbciet;i San Paolo, Via Beato Pio X, Rome, Italy. sin an apostolic letter to the Society of Jesus on June 26, 1944, the Pope warned against the "heresy of action." In a letter to the Master General of the Domini- ¯ cans on July 16, 1946, he urged the Friars Preachers to hold fast to She regular life, monastic observances, assiduous study of sacred truth, and solemn recithtion of the Divine Office, warning them not to make a constant practice or custom of that whi'ch is only a laudable exception. ' 169 JORDAN AUMANN Review for Religious adaptation of the religious life and a return to the primitive'spirit of the founders, he is issuing a bold challenge to all religious insti-tutes. For that reason he has repeatedly warned that none of the essential elements of r'eligious life and spirit can be changed or jetti-soned, but only the accidentals and the techniques of the apos~tolat~. In his address to the Congress. on the States of' Perfectiori,3 Cardinal Piazza outlined the program of .ad,aptation and renewal and gave a precise expression of the intentions of the Holy Father this impor'tant matter. The central theme'of the Congress. w~is an accommodata renooatio, that is, a renewal of the primitive'spirit Of religious institutes adapted to the needs of the pr.esent day. Conse-quently, changes are to be made on two levels. First and most im-portant, there must be in every religious institute a return to the spirit that animated the founder and earliest members of that insti-tute. Secondly, adaptations and accommodations must be made in regard to the apostolate of each religious institute. Cardinal Piazza insisted that every religious institute should be a living continuation of the mind and spirit of its founder, for the , religious.life is ever actual and vital. If there is danger that this spirit is languishing in any institute, let that institute reform its structure, renew its directive organs, and refashion the means to end to fit the needs of the da3}. Yet, all this must be done with the approval of proper ecclesiastical authority. The best and most efficacious renewal of the spiril~ of any r~- ligious institute is a ~return to the spirit of the founder, an exact ob-' servance of the constitutions of that institute, and a promotion of common life and fraternal cha,rity. The dilemma proposed by the Cardinal can be expressed ver'y briefly: "Renew your spirit or die." But even in the midst of renewal and adaptation, major superiors Will avoid the shoals of extreme conservatism and a mania for nov-' elty. When it c~mes to the ques~i~on of adaptation in an3] religio~.s institute, the need is particularl~r felt in the field of the apostolate. Nevertheless, the urgency of the times ,demands an_d justifies an ad-justment in the accidental structure of the internal life of l~he ihsti-tute as well. Certain thing~ do not admit of a change without' the destruction of the institute. Such things belong to the substanfi~ii ele- 3Noti~ that the Congress was purposely designated as a congress on the states'of perfection in order to include the members of various secular institutes. "While not religious in a juridical sense, the members of secular institutes, since'they live un-der vow, nevertheless belong to the state of perfection. July, 1954 RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MODERN NEEDS ment; for example, the juridical personality, the essence of thevows, the special' scope and characteristic spirit of the institute, and the ¯ common laws of religious life as found in the Code of Canon Law. But in regard to the methods and techniques used in the field Of the apostolate, great.adaptation is possible and desirable. If.the modern religious is not making contact with souls, if his schedule of life is at variance with that of the people to whom he is sent to min-ister, or if he is not as expert in his field of activity as are the laymen working in the same field, then'adjustments are surely in order. But at thi~ point religious superiors are reminded of the admonition of Pope Pius XII in his apostolic exhortation, Menti Nostrae, that new forms and methods in the apostolate must always be under the care and vigilance ot~ the bishops. For it is a regulation of canon law (cans. 456, 500, 630) that whenever religious are charged with the care Sf souls, they are subject to the local ordinary in that re-spect. In other words,' it is the mind of'the Pope that religious or-ders be bound by profound loyalty and obedience to: .the. Holy See and the'hierarchy. Adaptation, not Mitigation Solne religious may be tempted to welcome any change or adap-tation as a mitigation of the primitive spirit and regular observance. Both the Holy Father and representatives of the Sacred'Congrega-tion of Religious have warned that such is not the intention of the ¯ Ho!y See. In :a stirring address to the 1950 Congress, Father R. Lombardi, S.J., stated that if the needs of the time are great, so also is the need for truly religious men and women. The Church today needs religious who are animated by true charity and detachment from the things of the world, and we should expect to find many such.religious in the various institutes.' Unfortunately, we some-times find that those very men and women who have publicly bound themselves to the serious obligation of striving after perfec-tion under the vows are content to do the very minimum that is re-quired or, what is worse, they turn back again,to the very things they have voluntarily surrendered. "The times also require, said Father Lombardi, religious supe-riors who will have the leade~rship and courage to revive the spirit of the foun.ders in their own institute or province. No adaptation or renewal can come .from belo.w; it must come from those who .before God are res.ponsib!e in a large measure for the religious observance and p.e?sonal holiness of their subjects. Cofisequently, superiors have a difficult task. They are not entrus'ted with the mere enforcement. 171~. JORDAN AUMANN Reuieu~ [or Religious of an inflexible law; they must understand the needs of the times, the talents and weaknesses of their subjects, and the spirit ~f their religious institute. The superior must in every instance stri~re to act in the same way that the founder would act were he alive today. Consequently, the revival of the primitive spirit and an 'adapta-tion to present-day needs can in no sense be understgod or inter-preted as an excuse for the m~tigation of the rules and practices, of religiousllife. The Holy See has insisted that the spirit of the insti-tute, its proper e'nd and scope, and all that is requ!red for the pres-ervation of its spirit and end must be carefully safeguarded and pre-served. The renovation must be inteinal and spiritual. To think that a mere change in the legislation of a religious in-stitute will effect this renovation is as dangerous as it is erroneous. Such an attitude, stated Bishop Ancel of Lyons, is an implicit be-lief in a kind of materialism which holds that mere structural modi-fications suffice to provide the desired renovatioh. The real purpose, of the renovation is to, revivify the primitive spirit of the institute and to help the members strive more successfully after Christian,per-fection. .Only fervent religious can stand an adaptation and only strong religious can live for any length of time under dispensations. But, the Bishop continued, the desired renovation and adaptation will not come about merely by having superiors insist on the literal ob-servance of the constitutions. We must at no time lose sight of the two elements contained in the present program: revi'val of the primi-tive spirit of the institute and an adaptation to the requirements of the apostolate. Interior Life and the Apostolate No religious institute exists primarily for the apostolate or for any particular work. in, the Church. The Basis of the religious'life is the profession of vows which are used as instruments in attaining the perfection of charity. The primary purpose of the religious in-stitute is the sanctification of its members. Consequently, the true vocation and goal of the individual religious is to strive to become a .saint and the primary function of the religious superior is to assist and guide subjects to'sanctity, especially by fostering observance of the constitutions of th'e institute. This point is all important for a correct understanding'and evaluation of the religious life.4 4Cf. the,, definition of the religious state in canon 487, the statement of the purpose of religiou~ life in canon 488. and the enumeration of the obligations of religious superiors in canons 592-95. ~ 172 , JuI~,1954 RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MODERN NEEDS But Christian perfection and sanctity consist primarily in char-ity, which is an interior perfection. To this end, the con~tltutions of religious institutes prescribe an external conduct and mode of life that will lead religious more readily to the perfection of charity. Thus, the constitutions of 'the Dominican.Order explicitly state that the four essential means for attaining Dominican sanctity are the regular life, monastic observances, the study of sacred truth, and the solemn recita.tion of the Divine Office and that none of these means may be substantially altered. If the constitutions of a religious institute have received the ap-probation of the Holy See,it is because they have been judged fitting means- to the attainment of evangelical perfecuon. It follows, there-fore, that whatever touches upon the essence of the vows and the substantial elements of the regular life cannot be modified or changed without destroying-the religious life as it is juridically de-fined by the Church. Moreover, no religious subject or superior is free to abandon permanently any of these substantial elements of the constitutions of his institute,s In addition to those elements that pertain to the very essence of religious life, the constitutions contain particular legislation for the preseryation of xhe spirit and aim of the institute. In this 'respect also there are things that cannot be changed without destroying the distinctive spirit and character of the religious institute. Thus, liturgical prayer is characteristic of Benedictine life, the assidu6us study of sacred truth is the mark of the Friar Preacher,. and p.o,v,- -erty is the dominant note in Franciscan life. ~ The above elements pertain to the interior life of the members of a religious institute and are directed to the attainment of pe'rfec-tion. For that reason they are of primary importance. But the Church also 'approves of a mission or apostolate for each religious in~itute, with the understanding, however, that the ~hurch may subsequently restrict or enlarge the scope of the apostolate without destroying the nature and spirit of the' institute itself. For the ~apos-t61ate is and always remains a secondary element in the religious 5The religious under vows has promised obedience to the constitutions as expressed and commanded by his superior, but the religious superior does not have unlimited power in giving commands. He must abide by the limitations placed on his au-thority by those same constitutions. The subject has vowed to obey what is-in the constitutions; the superior may not gratuitously abolish any prescriptions in the constitutions nor may he demand more of the subject than the constitutions themselves demand. ¯ 173 JORDAN AUMANN Review for Religious life; the first and most important function of any religious institute is the sanctification of its members.6 From what has been said, it follows that success in the aposto-late as a preacher, teacher, writer, or social worker is not a necessary. indication of the holiness and worth of a religious. Success in these activities may just as ~asily be the result of purely natural talent, ambition, pride, or t~e love of financial gain. A religious is not a good religious except through the observance of the constitutions which he vowed to use as a pattern and guide in his struggle for holiness. Indeed, even that does not suffice, for the observance of rules is of no value for sanctification unless motivated in some way by the love of God. The energy consumed in the labors df the apostolate, the hours spent in the classroom, pulpit, or sickroom, the inconvenience of traveling from one mission to another--none of these is the sole criterion of the value' and worth of a religious. For it is not the work that makes us holy, but the love with which we do it. This does not mean that the activity of the apostolate need ever be an obstacle to deep spirituality or even to the observance of one's constitutions. The admonitions of the Holy Father are very clear on this point. The present Pontiff encourages modern religious to strive with all their hearts to become apostles in the true sense of the word. And surely, such great founders as St. Francis, St. Dominic, and' St. Ignatius have shown us that exhausting labors are com-patible with profound sanctity. What was the secret of their suc-cess? It was due in no small measure to the fact that they never ceased to be great lovers of God and souls and .men of prayer.7 6In the ancient religious orders there was a much closer relationship between the aim or scope of the institut~ and the spirit of the institute, so that in some cases it may be difficult to change the aim of the institute without destroying the peculiar character of the institute itself. This is especially true of the older contemplative and mixed orders. The same situation does not hold true in regard to the modern active institutes. Nevertheless the same principle applies to all forms of religious" life: the work of the apostolate should proceed from a deep interior life. 7What is to be done when the individual religious judges that excessive activity is harmful to his growth in sanctity? Objectively, the answer is simple: the first obligation of the religious is to sanctify himself; the primary function of the su-perior is to help his subjects grow in holiness. But if the superior insists that the activity be continued, what can the subject do but obey, trusting to find a way to use excessive work as an instrument of sanctification and letting the superior an-swer to God if there be any culpability in such a situation? In an allocution to the Discalced Carmelites in September, 1951, the Holy Father warned superiors that they are not to be infected with a machine-age mentality so that they treat their subjects like so many machines and lose sight of the human personality. 174 dul~ , 1954 RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MODERN NEEDS. Once it has been seen that the primary purpose of th~ re.ligious life is the sanctification of,its members° and that the apos~olat( should rightly prdceed from a deep interior life, it should bk evident that there is no contradiction or paradox in the directives that have beenissued from the Holy See. The first task is the revival of~ the primitiye spirit of religious institutes and a concerted effort to bring all religious back to regular observance and th~ common life. Then, the major superiors, following the directives of the Holy" See, will make suitable adaptations of that revitalized religious life to the needs of modern Christians. In some cases the adaptations may take unexpected turns. It may mean that this or that religious institute will find it necessary to abandon parishes in areas where there is no longer a shortage of diocesan clergy; others will realize that they have drifted into all manner of apostolic works, good in themselves, but outside the scope of the institute and the aim of the founder; still others will discover that they have almost completely aban-doned the principal work which was entrusted to them by the Church. It is at this point that couragequs superiors will be needed, for there is a strong temptation to succumb to passive disobedience to the Hol.y See. As Cardinal Piazza pointed out in his discourse at the 1950 Congress, if religious do not live their constitutions as conscientiously as possible and hold themselves to .the aim and work of their institute, there is no longer any distinction among religious institutes and, therefore, no reason for their existence as dist'inct groups or societies. Points for Adaptation In the various allocutions, letters, speeches, and written reports published in the Acta et Documenta of the Congress on the States of Perfection, certain points have been stressed in regard to the desired ad~aptations of religious life to modern needs. While allowing for different circumstances in various countries and religious institutes~ there are general lines which such adaptations should follow. More-over, all adaptations should be visualized and planned against,the background of the Pope's admonition that proper ecclesiastical " channels are to be observed. Observations on the cloister are to be found in Sponsa Christi as well as other documents~ that have been issued,by the Holy~ See. There is no indication that an attempt is being made to abandon the cloister; rather, the cloister is to be safeguarded even when reli-gious institutes assume some form of the apostolate that brings.the 175 ,JORDAN AUMANN Review [or Religious members into close contact with the world. It is still true that the world is to be kept out of the cloister as much as possible and that the religious are to leave the cloister only~ to bring the things of God to the world. The Holy Fat~er has urged many times that religious should make use of modern inventions in the work of' the apostolate and that they should equal and even surpass lay people in the same areas of work. But work for the sake of work or work done for a purely natural motive has never been advocated. If the apostolate is un-dertaken with such an attitude, it can be as much an obstacle to the perfection of the religious as any other impediment to spiritual growth. Much less should the works of the apostolate be measured or' motivated by purely monetary values. The apostle is such by reason of his love of God, his. commission by the ,Church, and his zeal for souls. As to the religious habit (and this principally affects .women religious), the Pope advised the teaching religious in September, 1951: "The religious habit: choose it in such a way that it becomes the expression of inward naturalness, of simplicity and spiritual modesty." Many congregations have been prompt to obey this suggestion of the Pope and have refashibned habits and veils that were unsanitary, uncomfortable, and a source ,of amazement to the laity. At various times the Hdly Father has stressed the importance if the common life and urged that superiors be truly paternal (or ma- ~ternal). The religious life should be a family life and the superiors~ should respect the individual personalities of their subjects while the subjects hold each other in truly fraternal affection. So ~losely is the common life linked with the vows and regular observance that it can be said to be the very foundation of religious spirit and dis-cipline. Consequently, anything that militates against the common life--such as personal income, excessive individualism, prolonged absences from the cloister, or unreasonable dispensations from com-munity exercises--should be eliminated as much as possible. Lastly, the very Constitutions tha~ regulate the life of an institute may at times be in need of adaptation. In his address to teaching religious the Ho~ly Father observed: "Followed in letter and in spirit,-your constitutions, too, facilitate and bring the Sister all she .needs and must do in our time to be a good teacher and educator. ¯ . .' It is possible that some details of the school schedules, certain 176 duly, 1954 ° RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MODERN NEEDS regulations--simple applications of .the Rule---certain customs which were, perhaps, in harmony with past conditions but Which today merely hinder educational work, must be adapted to new cir-cu'mstances. Let superiors and general chapters proceed in this mat-ter conscientiously, with foresight, prudence, and courage, and, where the case demands, let them not fail to submit the proposed changes to t~he competent eccles{astical authorities."_ American Adaptations It may seem that the directives and suggestions of the Holy See have little application in the United States, since from the very be-ginning there has been an'adaptation of religious life to the needs of the times. However, we shall undoubtedly find, after an honest self-examination, that we have been somewhat remiss in regard to the second aspect of the quest'ion: the renewal of the primitive reli-gious spirit and the subsequent deepening of the interigr life. Th'ree dangers or excesses especially threaten the religious life in the United States: naturalism, the loss of the spirit of mortification, and ex-cessive activity. In a country where there are many demands on the religious in the field of the apostolate and where there is no long-standing tra-dition of a Catholic" culture, it is understandable that naturalism may quite easily pervade the religious life. If the religious observ-ances and customs seem foreign or artificial to ~he American tem-perament and if the religious habit itself is gradually looked upon as an academic gown or judge's robe, to be worn only for certain functions, the religi6us may readily lose sight of the meaning of re-ligious life. Only a serious attempt to live the regular life and to actualize the spirit of his institute will make the religious con. stantly aware of his distinct state. Only a deepening interior life and super-naturai motivation will preserve the religious from the taint of naturalism. The loss of the spirit of mortification may be due in large part to the fact that many religious live under a permanent dispen-sation from the penances and mortifications prescribed by their con-stitutions, as well as the fact that the standard of life in the United States is noticeably higher than that of other countries. Whatever be the cause, there is no doubt that the universal teaching of spir-itual writers on the necessity of mortification in the spiritual life has never lost its value. Here again, a more scrupulous observhnce of the constitutions and a revival of the primitive sp_irit of the religious 177 JORDAN AUMANN : institute will go a long, way to check the inroads of mitigatibn and laxity. "Sufficient has already been said concerning the true role of action and t~e apostolate in the religious and spiritual life. It remains merely to observe that religious who are overburdened with many external activities can har'dly hope to be scholar~, writers, or stu-dents; religious who return to the cloister in a state of nervous ex-haustion are rarely in a mood that is conducive to prayer, medita-tion, or the common life; and religious who live only for the works of the apostolate are in danger of drying up at the source and of missing the real purpose of their religious profession: to strive for personal sanctity. The HQIy Father has imposed upon religious the twofold task of reviving the primitive spirit of their founders and of adapting re-ligious life and work to the needs of the Church today. It is a chal-lenge to religious to live as perfectly as possible the life which they have voluntarily embraced. If the task is accepted and the challenge is answered, we shall undoubtedly begin, to raise up saints for our times. MARIAN YEAR PLAY Counted as Mine is a play of three acts, six scenes, with a modern-dress cho-rus, suitable for performance by high school and college students or by little the-atre groups and parish drama clubs: It is the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Hope of America. Written by a Poor Clare, the author of the play, Candle in Umbria, and of the book of poems, Whom I Hao'e Looed. $1.00 per copy. Order from: Rev. Mother M. Immaculata, P.C., Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Route 1, Box 285-C, Roswell, New Mexico. OUR CONTRIBUTORS JORDAN AUMANN teaches at the College of Saint Teresa, Winona, Minnesota, and is the literary editor of the Cross and Crown Series of Spirituality. C.A. HERBST is a spiritual director and teacher at the Jesuit Juniorate at Florissant, Missouri. 'BERARD VOGT, of Christ the King Seminary, St. Bonaventure, New York, is a leading authority on the teaching of the great Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus. SISTER M. ANGELICIA is professor of psychology and edu-cation at Marymount College, Salina, Kansas. AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD is a mem-ber of our editorial board. GEORGE BYRNE is professor of ascetical theology at Milltown Park, Dublin, Ireland. JOSEPH P. FISHER is master of novices at Flo-rissant, Missouri. 178 , /V indt:ulness C. A. Herl~st, S.J. ROUTINE can be a blight in the religious life. It can be like the rust of which Our Lord spoke, which consumes, or like the thief that breaks through and steals, treasures of potential merit for eternal life. We want to give our life to God whole-heartedly. That is what a religious is supposed to do. They espe-cially are called religious, says St. Thomas, "who dedicate their whole life to the divine service, withdrawing themselves from worldly affairs" (II-II, q. 81, a. !. ad 5). We want to real-ize our ?eligious life, to make it real, to make it religious life. Oh, yes, we go through each day of our life in religion according to the order of the day from the time we rise in the morning till we go to bed at night. We do our work and are obedient and all that, but how much of all this is mech~inical! We just go through the motions often, whereas in a life dedicated to God our aim ought to be to put our whole heart, as much as possible, into each of our actions. When we pronounce our vows, we make our religious profes-sion. We profess publicly and solemnly to lead a religious life. That is our way of life now. We profess to practice the virtues of ¯ religious living in°a striking expert way. We are professionals. We follow the profession of religion, and religion is the virtue by which we render God due worship and reverence. We are supposed to be perfectionists at that. Nothing but the best is good enough for us. That is what everybody expects of one who'follows a profession, who'claims to be expert in his specialty. A doctor of medicine is supposed and expected to be first-rate in his' line. He is expected to have the best technique, to keep up on the most up-to-date medical practices and procedures, to know his field thoroughly, to read the most recent medical journals, to consult with other specialists. Woe to the medical man who fails in any of these things! His sloth or carelessness or neglect will soon bring him into ill repute in a pro-fession where the standards are so high. He may lose his patients and will be forced to drop out of his profession. Religious are professionals. They profess to give their whole attention to the practices of the religious life, a life lived in com-mon under a rule in the practice of poverty, chastity, and obedi-ence, }~n which they are obliged to tend to perfection. In order to 179 C. A. HERBST Reoiew for Religious maintain the high standards of our profession we must be raindful of our obligations. To practice poverty properly, we must be mind-ful of poverty~ We are mindful of our vow of poverty when we frequently call to mind that we have a vow of poverty. So it is good to renew our vow often. We should do this especiall~ when we are called upon to practice it. After all, we take the vow in order to practice the virtue. As we are so often told, anyone can take a vow; but practicing it carefully is a different matter. T.he b~st way to be mindful of poverty is to wish to experience at times some of its effects; or, better, to see to it that we actually do experience them. I want to get along without things. I do not want what I do not need. And, since our poverty consists rather in dependence than in penur% I want to get permission for thifigs, I am eager to ask permission for things. When I doubt whether I need permissign or not, I get it anyway because I want to feel the effects of poverty. When I ask.permisSion for things I say, "I vow poverty to my Blessed Savior." I want what He had. I want to feel it as He did. I want to be mindful that being rich He became poor for our sakes, that through His poverty I might be rich (cf. II Cor. 8:9). Nor do I want to "stick" to things. If I have some little thing I very much like and feel attached to, I get permission to give it away. If'we are mindful of a thing, we think of it often.' If we are mindful of a thing, we love it. "Where your freasure is there is your heart also," Our Lord said. When I am mindful of chastity, I love it, I treasure it. When we loveand treasure a" tiling, we are very careful of it. We take no chances on having it soiled or on losing it. As a virgin soul in love with the Son of God and the Son of Mary, I treasure chastity, I love chastity, I jealously guard chas-tity, I am careful of chastity, I am mindful of this wonderful virtue so lovingly enshrined in my vow and 'often say, "I vow chastity to my Blessed Savior." "I want what You had," I say to Him. So We are very circumspect about persons, places, and things. When we are mindful of chastity, we are not scrupulous but just careful in our dealings with others, of where we go and what we do and hear and see. It__ is foolish to look for trouble. There are many temptations we need not have, should not have, dare not have. If we are careless in what we see and read, try to hear everything, let the sensuous and pleasure-loving world in through all the avenues of our se,nses, and are always seeking the comfortable and avoiding the disagreeable, we are not mindful of the defenses of chastity. We 180 dul~], 1954 " , MINDFULNESS practice mortification of the senses and shun worldliness in order to guard the outworks of this beautiful and delicate virtue. When I keep the rules of modesty, I am mindful of chastity. When I mor-tify my eyes, my ears, and my affections, I prove that I love the purity of Christ. When often during each day, in practicing these little mortifications, I say, "I vow chastity to my Blessed Savior," I am mindful of my determination to lead a virgin life. I am mindful of my vow of obedience when, on being told to do a thing I do it and pray, "I vow obedience to my Blessed Savior." Obedience of execution--that is, doing externally what I am told to do--is obedience of the first degree; but I am not satisfied with that. If I am truly mindful of obedience, I want to pass to a higher de-gree. I not only do what I am told but want to do it, will what the superior wills because that is God's ~will for me. I'line up my will with that of the superior because in doing that I am conforming my will to God's will. That is love: the union of two wills. I am still more mindful of obedience if I try to see things the superior's way, conform my mind° and judgment to his way of thinking. This is the third and highest degree of obedience; sometimes called "blind" obedience, it is not really blind at all but rather very keen-visioned and enlightened. When I am thoroughly mindful of obedience, I obey not only faithfully and willingly and lovingly but with joy. The perfect and infinitely lovable model of obedience is Jesus at Nazareth. With what joy this loving Child must have obeyed Joseph and Mary! One can scarcely imagine anything like reluctance or sourness in Our Lord's obedience. The atmosphere was filled with gladness in that wonderful home. And so it should be in ours; and that not only in the practice of obedience, but of poverty and chastity too. What gives me the greatest consolation in my religious life is that, when I "do what the superior says, follow carefully the order of the day and the prescriptions of the rule and the customs of the house, etc., I am most certainly doing God's will. I just cannot make a mistake in being perfectly obedient. Should an official in the house, or the local superior, or the highest superior for that matter, make a mistake, I myself am doing God's will by obeying in everything save sin. I show that I am mindful.of obedience by doing lovingly and joy-fully for God whatever I am directed to do. To be mindful of poverty, chastity, and obedience: to expressly renew my vows and prayerfully and carefully bring my actions under them and so practice the virtues they enshrine: this indeed is a 18"1 C. A~ HERBST Review for Religious bl~ssed mindfulness. To be mindful, too, that I am profssional, that in the service of God I am following the highest of professions here on this earth, will b~ing my religious life to its "highest vi[ality. There are some other things, too, of which I should be mindful in order that I may lead a vigorous and highly meritorious religious life. Purity of intention--frequently, fervently, lo4ingly re-offer-ing to.God all my works and prayers' and joys and sufferings for the salvation and sanctification of myself and others, in adoration, reparation, thanksgiving, and petition--is one of the chief general means to perfection. To say frequently, fervently, thoughtfully, lovingly, "All for 3esus through Mary," or "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," is to turn all our good or indifferent actions into the pure gold of merit for eternal life and to win for souls graces beyond measure. Mindfulness too of the presence of God is a wonderful, easy, joyous, consoling, and elevating practice. The Old Testament seems to have emphasized the idea of God present near and around us; the law of love brought by Christ Our Lord emphasizes God within us. "If any man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (3ohn 14:23). God, the Most Holy Trinity, lives in my soul as in His temple, as in His shrine. How the pray-erful, lingering, loving thought of this presence rejoices and elevates the soul! And He lives not in my soul only, but in my body. "Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, w, ho is in you, whom y6u have from God; and you are not your own?" (I Cor. 6:19). "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are" (I cor. 3:16-17). "Not my will but thine be done" was Our Lord's repeated prayer in the Garden of Olives. He is but praying here as He taught us all to pray in the perfect prayer, the Our Father. To be mindful of this under the aspect of abandonment to God's holy will in the duty of the present moment will bring great peace and joy into the heart of a religious. No one, I think, has ever presented this in finer fashion than Father de Caussade in his book Abandonment to Di-vine Providence. "The present moment is the ambassador of God to declare His mandates. The heart listens and pronounces its 'fiat.' . . . No soul can be truly nourished, fortified, purified, en-riched, and sanctified except in fulfilling the duties of the present 182 dult!, 19 5 4 COMMUNICATIONS moment. What more would you have? As in this you can find all good, why seek it elsewhere?° Do you kno.w better than God? As He ordains it thus why do you desire it differently? Can His good-ness and wisdom be deceived? When you find something to be in accordance with this divine wisdom and goodness ought you not to conclude that it must needs be excellent?" (I, i, 5 and 7.) Finally, there is mindfulness of the greatest of all the virtues, charity. "And the greatest of these is charity." "Love one an-other." This is the new commandment which the Divine Son brought down to Us from the bosom of our Father. This is the law of love. We should be mindful especially of Christ in our breth-ren. See Him there and love Him there. "What you do to these the least of m~rb r/ethren you do unto me." If we were mindful of this there would be an end to harsh and uncharitable attitudes of mind toward others and to rash judgments. Uncharitable talk and criticism would be no more, nor jealousy, nor faultfinding, nor deeds that wound the soul. Mindfulness of Christ in our brethren is most important in a religious family. It makes a heaven of a re-ligious house. "Little children, love one another." ommun{catdons Reverend Fathers : In the November, 1952, number of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I read a communication by Sister M. Immaculata, P.C. (Abbess). I was forcibly struck by this statement. "It is not what enriches us but what effaces us that leads to union with God" (p. 314). This very sentence has ever been and continues to be a positive mental and spiritual stimulus in my spiritual life. It has helped me more than any sermon or conference to conquer pride, especially pride of am-bition. It smoothed many a rough place for me. When pride as-serted itself and all was in a turmoil, this sentence proved to be a sacramental by calming my spirit and restoring peace. I hereby wish to express my grateful appreciation to Sister M. Immaculatao P.C.--TEACHING SISTER. 183 Duns Scot:us, Det:encler ot: t:he Jmmaculal:e Concepl:ion Berard Vogt, O.F.M. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS was born in Scotland in 1266. He entered the Franciscan Order at an early age and pursued his studies at Oxford. One of the more eminent theologians of the thirteenth century, he taught with great distinction both at Ox-ford and at Paris. He was called to Cologne in the summer of 1308 and died there unexpectedly in November of the same year. Duns Scotus is the leader of the Franciscan school of philosophy and theology. It is a historical fact .that popular Catholic tradition for centuries inclined towards belief in the doctrine of the Immaculate Concep-tion, as is evident from the introduction of a special feas~ of the Im-maculate Conception into the liturgy of the Church and from the gradual spread of the feast throughout Christendom. But the the-ologians and Doctors of the Church hesitated to ascribe this beauti-ful privilege to Mary because they found it impossible to solve cer-tain inherent difficulties, until Scotus appeared upon the scene and offered his p~e-redemption solution which p~epared the way for and ultimately was incorporated into the solemn dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception. The central difficulty was the Pauline teaching concerning the' need of universal redemption, found in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans: "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death has passed into all men, because all have sinned." Duns Scotus made two important contributions to the contro-v'~ rsy. Admitting that Mary as a descendant of Adam stood in need of redemption because of the sin of Adam, he offered a novel solution to the subtle difficulties which had for so long baffled theo-logians by introducing into the solution of the problem the idea of pre-redempti6n and a distinction between order of nature and order of time. ' The views of the theologians may be stated generally by quoting the following passsage from the Summa of St. Thomas: "If tBe soul ot~ the Blessed Virgin had never been defiled by original sin, I84 gulg, J954 $ DuNSSCOTUS this Would derogate from the dignity of Christ according to which He is the Redeemer of all mankind. It may be said, therefore, that under Christ, who as universal Savior needed not to be saved Him-self, the Blessed Virgin enjoyed the highest, measure of purity. For Christ in no wise contracted original sin, but was holy in His ~¢ery conception . The Blessed Virgin, however, did contract original sin, but was cleansed therefrom before birth." (III, q. 27, a. 2, ad 2.) The Subtle Doctor answers this argument as follows: on the contrary, in defending Mary's prerogative of the Immaculate Con-ception, I am in fact attributing a more exalted and perfect role of redeemer to Christ, inasmuch as redeeming grace Which preserves from original sin is g,reater than that which merely-purifies from sin incurred. Christ was Mary's Redeemer and Mediator more per-fectly by preservative redemption. By preserving Mary from original sin in view of the foreseen merits of His sacrifice .on Calvary, Christ not merely redeemed her, but pre-redeemed her. This implies far greater grace and a far greater excellency of redemption. Scotus thus laid to rest the century-old objections derived from the Pauline doctrine concerning the need of universal redemp-tion, found al?eady with St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. Ber-nard, and later with the scholastic doctors. Rightly understood the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception will not offer any difficulty pre~centing Mary's noble prerogative. The need of incurring orig-inal sin, and equally the need of universal redemption by Christ, was not denied by Scotus. Nor did he claim that Mary as a daughter of Adam escaped this universal law. Mary was a d~lughter of Adam, he explained, before she was an adopted daughter of God. Therefore she was subject to original sin and in need of redemption. As a child of A'dam, she would in the ordinary course of events and according to the ordinary course of nature have incurred Adam's debt like other men. But in the order of time God could give her sanctifying, grace at the very moment of her conception. In this way Mary, though a child of Adam in the order of nature, would be made a child of God by the infusion of grace"before original sin could take effect in her soul. Inasmuch as generation precedes sanctification, Mary was a daughter of Adam before she became an adopted daughter of God. Therefore, she must have been in need of redemption, because sub-ject to original sin. But though in the order of our thoughts our 185 BER!kRD VOGT minds may dwell on Mary---conceived first as a daughter of Adam and then sanctified as a daughter of God, this does not imply a pri-ority of time which would demand in the soul of Mary" two succes-sive states, one of sin and the other of grace. There is only in her at the first moment of her existence a twofold relation: that of a daughter of Adam, for which she was indebted to her. human gen-eration, subject to the common law and establishing the debt of sin; and that of a daughter of God, which she owes to the privileged sanctification which protected her from the consequences of the common law find extinguished in her the debt of sin by a special ap-plication of the foreseen merits of the Savior. The Subtle Doctor sums up his views thus: "Mary, then, needed redemption more than anyone else. She needed redemption so much the more, the greater the good conferred upon her. Since perfect innocence is a greater good than remission of sin after a fall, a greater good was conferred upon her (by her Divine Son) by pre-serving her from original sin, than if she had been purified after-wards. Neither was it necessary on that account that Christ should have first suffered, because Abraham was purified from orig-inal sin which was in his person by virtue of the foreseen Passion of Christ." (Rep. III, dist 3, Qu. I, n. 8; ed. Vives xxiii, p. 264.) Duns Scotus exercised enduring powerful influence on the devel-opment and eventual dogmatic proclamation of the doctrine of the, Immaculate Conception. By his historic defense with its luminous definitions and distinctions, e.g., his pre-redemption theory and his suggestion of a distinction between the order of nature and the order of time, the Subtle Doctor cleared the dogmatic ground and greatly contributed to a final victorious solution. Cardinal Merry del Val in a letter to Fr. P. Pauwels, July 4, 1904, says of Scotus that he carried the torch of Mary's non-for-feiture of grace as on the crest of a wave to its ultimate triumph. ABOUT FRAUDS Some people who want to get money without effort are wont to request gifts and Mass stipends in the names of certain priests and missionaries. The victims, real or intended, are often sisters. Some priests whose names have been used in this way suggest that all such requests be refused unless those making the requests. can furnish positive identification. Similarly, we might again call attention to the fact that no one is authorized to solicit subscriptions for this REVIEW, 186 The Apos!:olic School Sister M. Angelicia, C.S.J. AT A GENERAL CHAPTER conducted at the Nazareth Motherhouse of the Sisters of Saint doseph of Concordia, Kansas, in dune, 1953, it was decided that an approach should be made toward the organization of a school for aspirants to the religious life which would be in connection with the mother-house. A committee was appointed to investigate the possibilities of such an organization. The first step taken by the committee was to locate convents or motherhouses to which were attached such schools for aspirants. As indicated in the Catholic Directory, there were sixty-eight mother-houses having schools similar to the type which the community had in mind. For the purpose of gathering information relative to the new project a questionnaire was formulated and was sent to each of these sixty-eight motherhouses. Fifty-seven, or approxi-mately eighty-four per cent, of the questionnaires were returned. The information received was both interesting and enlightening. The questionnaire, together with a digest of the answers, is given at the conclusion of this article. Before taking further steps in the organization of this school, we consulted the local ordinary, the Most Reverend Frank A. Thill, D.D., Bishop of Salina. The project met with his whole-hearted approval, as will be seen later in his letter to the priests of his diocese, as well as in those addressed to parents and their chil-dren. Moreover, since our congregation is a papal institute, and since our constitutions state explicitly that no new works are to be added without the permission of the Holy See, the mother general inquired from an official source whether the permission of the Sacred Congregation of Religious would be needed. She was informed that, in view of the remarks made by Father Arcadio Larraona, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, at the 1952 meeting of superiors general in Rome, special permission of the Holy See was not needed for starting this school. A resum~ of Father Larraona's remarks has been made public. Since its contents were very helpful to us, and since it seems to be of vital importance to anyone planning to organize a school for aspi-rants, we quote this resum6 in full: 187 SISTER M. ANGELICIA Review for Religious "Apostolic schools are of comparatively recent origin, the .earli-est of them dating from about the middle of the last century. They have now become increasingly common in religious communities of women, as they are the general practice in communities of men. The Holy See has issued practically no legislation on the organization of such apostolic schools. The S. Congregation is patiently awaiting the guidance of experience. "These apostolic schools are not permitted by the S. Congrega-tion for cloistered nuns, or for religious whose lives closely approxi-mate to that of cloistered nuns. This is not.a real law of the Holy See, but rather a guiding norm, based on Rome's desire to avoid any semblance of pressure when there is question of a vocation calling for such special qualities as those required by the contemplative life. "The S. Congregation regards apostolic schools as internal schools of a religious community. This point is of canonical im-portance in determining the degree of freedom to be allowed the community in the organization and administration of these schools: a) those which do not require any actual signs of vocation to the religious life: b) those which demand at least the seeds of vocation to the religious life; c) those which require signs of a vocation to a specific type of religious life. "In any case, the organization and rules of an apostolic school should not lose sight of the fact that the girls in them are young. The atmosphere as far as possible, shoul~l be that of a family. The apostolic schools should not be turned into a noviciate in miniature. There should be nothir;g to interfere with the full freedom of the candidates in the final determination of their vocation. The pro-gram of studies should not be so highly specialized as to make ad-justment to a different type of life outside difficult. Teach the girls, first of all, to live good Christian lives. No asceticism at ,the expense of the moral law. Avoid~ whatever might even remotely result in deformation of the natural qualities and virtues of the candidates.''I With encouragement coming from every .direction, especially from our bishop, for the opening of an apostolic school by the Sisters of Saint 3oseph, it was thought best to begin,to make it known to the public. Publicity concerning the school appeared in many Catholic papers. The two most important announcements 1Cf. Acta et Documenta Congressu~ lnternationalig Superiorissarurn "Generalium, 1952, p. 274. These remarks on apostolic schoq!s form one part of Father Lar-raona's "Concluding Instructions addressed to the Reverend Mothers General," on the last day of their meeting in Rome, September 11-13, 1952. 188 Jul~,1954 THI~ APOSTOLIC SCHOOL were those ap1~aring in the diocesan Catholic Register. The first of these, entitled "Apostolic School to be Opened in Concordia in 1954," appeared in the November 1'5, 1953, issue of the Catholic Register. Excerpts from this article are as follows: "Concordia.--In the fall of 1954 the Sisters of Saint Joseph will open an Apostolic School in connection with their Mother-house in Concordia. "This preparatory school is intended for young girl's who show signs of a religious vocatio,n and who wish to join th~ Congregation of the Sisters of. Saint Joseph when circumstances permit. It is especially for those aspirants to the religious life who have not the opportunity of attending a Catholic h~gh school or who are placed in circumstances detrimental to a religious vocation. "The mode of life at the preparatory or Apostolic School will be practically the same as that of resident,students at an academy. The young women will follow the regular high school course as prescribed by the State Department of Education. All the advan-tages of the regular high school course will be available to the stu-dents in the Apostolic School . "Work in the classroom will be regularly and agreeably inter-rupted by daily indoor and outdoor recreational activities. The girls of this school will be allowed to return to their families during the summer vacation as Well as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter vacations. "Those interested, .or who desire further information, may write to the Mother General, Nazareth Motherhouse, Concordia, Kansas." Bishop Thill .not only gave his whole-hearted support to the organization of an a~ostolic school but he asked that each parish in the Salina diocese finance the monthly board and tuition fee at the new apostolic school for any deserving girl whose parents could not afford the sum. His Excellency announced simultaneously that he was prepared to accept personal financial responsibility for ten such girls in the school of the Sisters of the Congregation of Saint Joseph of Concordia. Excerpts from the Bishop's letter concerning the school are as follows: "Rev, erend dear Fathers, Venerable Religious, Parents and Chil-dren : ' "Because I simply do not believe there is any such thing as a Divine vocation to embrace the, wrong vocation, I am concerned in a very vital and humane way with the establishment of the new 189 SISTER M. ANGELICIA Reoiew [or Religious Apostolic School by our Sisters of the Congregation of St. 3oseph of Concordia. I have been a priest too long, and a Chancellor and ¯ a Bishop, to be able to see anything desirable or even tolerable in the crushing frustrations and black unhappiness that burden so many men and women in our modern world. "In other words, I want to see the largest possible number of girls in this diocese given the opportunity to spend the critical years of their l~ves in an atmosphere that will help them to put first things first . It does not matter if the girls who enroll become religious sisters or not. Many of them will; but those who don't will have a first-class Catholic high school education, fitting them for places of trust and leadership in the parishes from which they come . "The openin~ of this school will certainly be good news to the pastors of the diocese. I recommend its purpose and its needs to the consideration of all our priests, and I hope they will agree with me in thinking it worthy of our enthusiastic and generous sup-port . "In conclusion, may I say to all of you, priests, people and children, that today's struggle is not primarily and exclusively a struggle against anything at all including even the struggle against bad tendencies and sin. It is, more fundamentally still, a struggle for something. Indeed, it is a struggle to be something, to be another Christ, possessed by the torrent of His life and of His love that alone can save the world. " As this paper is being, written the applications ot: aspirants to the apostolic school are coming in in a very satisfactory manner. If these applications continue they should gealize an enrollment of at least thirty students or aspirants to the religious life when the school opens in September, 1954. The Questionnaire and Replies I. DO. YOU MAINTAIN A PREPARATORY. SCHOOL FOR THE RELI-GIOUS LIFE? Yes, 50; No, 6; in former years, 1. ¯ 3. WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR SCHOOL? It is called: ' (A) A Juniorate, 13. (B) A.School for Aspirants, 26. ¯.(C) A Preparatory School, 9. ¯ . . (D). Others? Scholasticate, 1. ¯ Candidature, 1. 190 HOW LONG 'INKS IT BEEN ORGANIZED? Average, 23 years. duly, 1954 THE APOSTOLIC SCHOOL. 4. DO YOU FAVOR SUCH A SCHOOL? YES, 48; NO, 2. IF "YES" GIVE THE MOST OUTSTANDING ADVANTAGES.The most com-mon answers were: (A) "Prepares for the religious life." (B) "Fosters vocations." (C) "Gives members to our community." (D) "Gives a more solid foundation for future religious life." (E) "Our best vocations come from the juniorate." (F) "Because of the great percentage of vocations resulting." (G) "It gives girls a chance to study their vocations in surroundings con-ducive to spiritual life." 5. APPROXIMATELY W~AT PERCENTAGE OF ASPIRANTS BECOME RELIGIOUS? Average, 54%: range, 7% to 100%. 6. WHAT EDUCATIONAL LEVEL DO YOU ADMIT GIRLS? (A) First year high school, 41. (B) Second year high school, 21. (C) Third year high school, 26. (D) Fourth year high school, 26. 7. WHAT IS THE LONGEST TIME THE ASPIRANT IS KEPT BEFORE ENTERING THE POSTULATE? (A) One year, 2. (B) Two years, 4. (C) Three years, 14. (D) Three and one-half years, 7. (E) Four years, 19. 8. WHAT COURSE OF STUDY DO THE ASPIRANTS PURSUE? (A) "The regular high school course," 18. (B) ".College preparatory," 5. (C) "Classical Course," 2. (D) "Academic," 19. (E) "Academic and Commerce," 1. 9. ARE THERE REQUIRED SPIRITUAL EXERCISES? IF SO, OF WHAT DO THEY CONSIST? (A) "Daily attendance at Mass," 50. (B) "Rosary in common," 21. (C) "Spiritual reading," 24. (D) "Morning and night prayers in common," 21. (E) "Meditation," 18. (F) "Vespers," 6. (G) "Attendance at Benediction," 8. 10. HOW MUCH TIME IS GIVEN TO RECREATION? Average number of hours, 2~. WHAT TYPE OF RECREATION IS FOLLOWED? (A) "Indoor and outdoor sports," 44. (B) "S~tuare dancing," 24. (C). "Singing," 24. (D) "Dramatics," I0. (E) "Needlework, card-playing, etc." SISTER M. ANGELICIA 12. 13. WHAT FEE ISCHARGED FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR? $133.93 is the average yearly fee. The fee for one year ranged from ten dollars to four hun-dred dollars. IS THE TUITION FEE REFUNDED IN CASE THE ASPIRANT EN-TERS THE COMMUNITY? YES, 1; NO, 49. ARE INCIDENTAL EXPENSES 'MAINTAINED BY THE ASPIRANT'S FAMILY?. YES, 44; NO, 6. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. DO THE ASPIRANTS SPEND VACATION PERIODS AT HOME? YES, 43; NO, 2: "PART TIME," 1. (A) Christmas, 41. (B) Easter, 23. (C) Thanksgiving, 21. (D) Summer, 33. ARE ASPIRANTS EXPECTED TO FOLLOW ANY SPECIAL, PRO-GRAM DURING VACATION, PERIODS? IF SO, WHAT? YES, 15; NO, 31. See question 9 for suggested program. ARE VISITS OF RELATIVES RESTRICTED? YES, 39: NO, 7; IF RESTRICTED, EXPLAIN. NO ws~tmg permitted during Lent and Ad-vent in majority of cases. The first Sunday of the month is suggested for visiting friends and relatives. DO YOU HAVE REGULATIONS FOR CORRESPONDENCE? YES, 43: NO, 5; NO ANSWER, 2. ESO THE ASPIRANTS WEAR UNIFORMS? YES, 49; NO. I. SACRA VIRGINITAS According to a news announcement in The Register, the encyclical Sacra Vir-ginitas, which Pope Plus XII issued on March 25, 1954, is now available in pam-phlet form, complete with footnotes, from the NCWC Publications O~ce, 1312 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington 5, D.C. OUR ADDRESSES We have three different addresses. It would help considerably if all who com-municate with us would note them: 1. Business communications, such as subscriptions, renewals, etc., should be sent to: REVIEW FOR REL!GIOUS, 606 Harrison St., Topeka, Kansas. 2. Boobs for review should be sent to: book Review Editor, REVIEW,FOR RE-LIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana. 3. All other editorial communications, such as ma.nuscripts, questions, letters for publication, etc., should be sent to: The Editors, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, St. Mary's College, St. Marys.' Kansas. 1'92 Apparitions and Revelations: Some Classit:ications Augustine G. Ellard, S.3. IN A PREVIOUS discussion some el~mentary suggestions were offered as to what attitudes one should take toward private ap-paritions and revelations, whether one's own or those reported of others (REVIEW FOR' RELIGIOUS° XIII [3anuary, 1954], 3-12). Now it is proposed to recall some of the descriptive classifications of such 6ccurrences that help one to think more intelligently and clearly'about them. ~[. DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS In an apparition a person or object is presented before, the con-sciousness of somebody at a time and place at which that presence is naturally inexplicable. For example, at the baptism of Christ a dove symbolizing the Spirit of God was seen descending from above and lighting upon Him (Matthew 3:16-17; 3ohn 1:32-34). On the same occasion a voice from heaven was heard proclaiming, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.''1 In a revelation in the proper sense God communicates some truth to one I~y way of speech. He does not manifest to one the objective truth itself, as He would in infused knowledge. He does express His ideas on it and thus let one know His mind about it.Of course it is also possible for the Blessed Virgin or an angel or a saint from h.eaven to speak to one. Evidently such an occurrence would be more than natural. Speech need not necessarily be in words; equivalent signs are con-sidered amply sufficient. Apparitions are in some way seen, revelations heard. Either may take place without the other. But they do come together so often that it is logical to treat them both at the same time. When, for instance, Bernadette Soubirous saw the beautiful maiden at Lourdes, she also heard the words, "I am the Immaculate Conception!" 1. Apparitions: Oculqr, In~aginati~e, Intellectual Probably the commonest classification of apparitions is that based upon the faculties involved. Some visions are external, sen, ]New Testament quotations in this article are taken from the translation made by Francis Aloysius Spencer, O.P. (New York: Macmillan, 1943). : 193 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD Review for Religious ;sible, perceptible to the eyes, ocular. In this case an exterior objective reality of some sort outside of one is simply and literally seen. Thus, for example, Constantine is said to have beheld a cross in the sk~, with the inscriptiori, "In this sign shalt thou conquer!" When many people together perceive an apparition, the presumption is that it is external and really activates the eyes. Such were the appear-ances of Christ after the Resurrection; such also was the vision of the multitude at Fatima. Other apparitions take place in the interior senses and are termed imaginative. They are not imagina~ry, like hallucinations, but real and true in their own way, which, however may be misap-prehended. When one sees something, an image of it is produced not only upon the retina of the eyes but also in the interior faculty that psychologists call the imagination. God could easily bring about such a likeness without there being any corresponding exterior ob-ject present. Nor, if it should be of divine origin, would there be an hallucination and deception. It would convey to the mind in a merely internal way some truth intended by God. The vision granted to St. Peter and recounted in Acts 10:9-16 seems to be of this type. Peter "fell into an ecstasy; and he beheld heaven opened, and a kind of vessel descending, as it were, a great sheet ldt down by the four corners to the earth, in which were all kinds of quadrupeds and reptiles of the land, and birds of the sky." As is evident from the whole story, the apostle learned from this symbolic representa-tion in his imagination that he was to admit Gentiles as well as Jews into the Chur4b. In practice it may be very difficult to differentiate between ocular and imaginative visions, but if they are true and of divine origin it may be of only theoretical interest whether they be the one or the other. A third form of apparition is purely intellectua!~ Some person or. object is presented directly to the seer's intelligence, without the mediation of the eyes or the interior senses. This sort of vision is like that whereby an angel would see things, and therefore it is de: cidedly superhuman. It is also quite an indescribable experien~ce, except ~of course remotely and analogously. Of a vision of this kind St. Teresa wrote: "Jesus Christ seemed to be by my side continu-ally, and as this vision was not imaginary, I saw no form"--that is, it was not represented in her imagination--( Life, Ch. 27 : -Peers's translation, I, 170). 194 dulg, 1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS 2'. On "'Seeing" God . : ¯ ¯ The great mystics often speak of "seeing" God, as well as of having visions of lesser persons or objects. Hence an immense dif-ference must be noticed between visions that have as their object the Creator Himself, in whatever sense He is said to be seen, and created persons or things. There is all the distinction between having to do with the infinite God Himself or with some finite creature. Mystics "see" God in at least two senses. At times their infused contempla-tive knowledge of Him, which is usually obscure and general, be-comes relatively so clear and definite thht they feel it must be described as "vision" rather than, for instance, as contact. Of con-templative vision St. Thomas writes: "In contemplation God is seen through the medium which is the light of wisdom elevating the mind to perceive divine things, though not so that the divine essence itself be immediately seen" (De Veritate, XVIII, 4). In addition to this and as a particular favor in some cases contemplatives are granted special manifestations of God, or of Some of the divine at-tributes, or of the Blessed Trinity, and these they speak of as "visions of God." Thus Blessed Angela of Foligno, a great Italian mystic of the thirteenth century, describes such visions: "When the most high God cometh unto the rational soul, it is at times given her to see Him, and she seeth Him within her, without any bodily form,and she seeth Him more clearly'than one mortal man can see another; for the eyes of the soul behold¯ a fulness, spiritual not bod-ily, about which I can say nothing at all, for words and imagina-tion fail me. Moreover in this vision the s6ul is delighted with un-utterable'delight, and then she looketh at nothing else save that alone; for this it is that filleth the soul beyond all that can be reck-oned." (Visions and Instructions: ch. 52; apud Poulain, The Graces of Interior Pra~ler, p. 267.) - '. .: 3. Reoelatfons: Auu'cular, [magi'f~ative, Intellectaa[ '" ,o.Like apparitions, revelations or locutions fail into three grou.'ps; according to the faculty to wlqich they are ~mmediately addressed. Some of them include r&l external ~unds'and ate perceivM b) the ~ear. An e.xample from the New Testament is that' of,.tl-ie utterance described in. John 12:28-30. . In a-'talk ~to:~the'.p~ople_ of. Jerusalem shortly before .His: :death Jesus 'said'; ' "'Father;" save Me from. this hour!, But for thi~ very ptirpose.:.I ,came.io this : hour. Father, gl.orify Thy-name! There::came:.theret~bre.a::.Voic'e,:~out of-'heaven., !k,have 'both glorified it,. and. wil.! glorif'.y;:it~:!again.' Thecrowd,, ac~ 195 Review [or Religious cordingly, who stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered. Others said, 'An angel has spoken to Him.' Jesus addressed them and said, 'This voice has not come for My sake, but for yours.' " Other revelations are directed straight to the interior senses and are termed imaginative. In normal communic~ations between "human persons there is a double threefold process. In the speaker there is first of all thought, then formulation of it in words in the phantasy or imagination, and lastly utterance of it with the vocal orgahs. In the hearer the correspohding steps occur in the reverse order: audi-tory perception, representation in the" phantasy, and finally under-standing in the mind. When G6d, or an angel, communicates His ideas, He can skip the first act in the bearer's process and address Him~lf directly to the imagination. This is very~ probably what happened to St. Joseph when an angel of the Lord appeared to him "in a dream-vision, saying, 'Arise and take the Child and His mother, and fly to Egypt, and remain there until I tell thee; for Herod is about to hunt for the Child to destroy Him' " (Matthew 2:13). A spirit, whether divine or angelic, can also impart ideasI directly to one's intelligent:e, and thus we have purely intellectual lodutions and auditions. Lucie Chlistine (a distinguished French mystic, a woman of social position and the mother of several children: whose personal notes, written only for her director, were published under this pseudonym after her'death in 1908), says of a certain intellec-tual communication of this nature that she received: "Whilst at prayer this kind God deigned to fi!l my soul with His light and said to me interiorly: 'I myself am the glory.' . . ; The divine words. ,carry with them an ineffable unction by which the soul recognizes in some manner the voice of God. Moreover, they impress them-. selves forcibly upon the soul and operate what they utter. I had ob-served this before I read about it. These interior accents cannot bear any comparison to those words which sometimes are formed ~y the imagination." (Spiritual Journal of Lucie Christine, pp. 24-25.) 4. Special Terminology 9f St. dohn of the Cross St. John of the Cross has a classification of supernatural "lwords" and a peculiar terminology, for them that are original. Since his divisions and his ways of naming them are very often re-fer~ ed to, one .who wishes to be well-informed in the field should know them. With respect to "supernatural locutions, which are apt to come to the spirits of spiritual persons without the intervention" 196 duly, 1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS of any b~dily sense," he writes: "These, although they are of many kinds, may,. I believe, all be reduced to three, namely, successive, for-mal, and substantial" (Ascent of Mr. Carmel, II, 18; Peers's trans-lation, I, 208): "Successive words" are not really language coming from another person, as St. ,John himself explains in what immedi-atel~ follows; they are nothing more than words formed by certain people in the depths of their own personality while in a state of pro-found recollection. In.such utterances one is rather speaking to one-self. "Formal words" do come from somebody el'se, and outside of periods of recollection as well as within them. St. John adduces the example of the archangel Gabriel who spoke to the prophet Daniel about the coming of the Messiah. "O Daniel, [ am now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest undersand . Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, that trans-gression may be finished, and sin have an end . and everlasting justice may be brought; and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled; and the saint of saints may be anointed . " (Daniel, 9:20-27.) "Substantial words" are those that promptly and vigorously effect jtist what they express; thus, for instance, if one were overwhelmed with fear and God should say, "Fear thou not!" one "would at once be con.scious of great fortitude and tranquillity" (Op. cir., I, 219) . 5. Reoelations: Public and Pr~'oate Of all the distinctions to be made between revelations the most important by all means i~ that beween public and private revela-tions. Public revelation is that which was made long ago, meant 'for mankind generally, and entrtisted to the Church.It is a primary purpose of the Church to guard, interpret, and proclaim to all the truths of this revelation. It originally came into the world from God through the prophets and especially through Christ and the Apostl'es. All other revelations are termed private., even though in par-ticular respects they may take on a very popular character. " They are indeed messages from God, or at least from some sacred person. They hre not addressed directly to the Church as such, and they never :become a part of the deposit of faith. One could not accept them ~ith "divine and Catholic faith." Certain apparitions and revelations of the Blessed Virgin cutting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have attained con- ~iderable importance in the 'life of the Church. The use of. the 197 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD Reoiew for Religious Miraculous Medal goes" b~ack,: tb.'i'fii~i~earahces.~of' the Mother° of' G'6d . to-SiSt&~Catherine Labour& of the Daughters of Charity, in the year 1830 at ¯Paris. Everybody knows about Lourdes, and now also Fatima. Another case that became famous in France, but is less well known generally, is that of La Salette. Near La Salette, in eastern France, in the year 1846, two children, Melanie Calvat, a girl of fifteen, and Maximin Giraud, a boy of eleven, affirmed that they had seen "a beautiful lady" while engaged in watching some cows near a stream. They received a message from her to be con-veyed to all the lady's people. It inculcated the necessity of doing penance and of leading a good Christian life. Also each of the chil-dren was entrusted with a special secret. Eventually these secrets were transmitted to Pope Pius IX. Over this vision there raged for a considerable time a great controversy. Finally, after careful in-vestigation, it was officially approved in 1851 by the Bishop of the Diocese of Grenoble. On .the occasion of the centennial celebration it received a certain papal confirmation in a letter sent by Pope Pius XII to the Superior General of the Institute of the Missionaries of La Salette. II. FATHER STAEHLIN'S OBSERVATIONS Not lohg ago the Spanish Jesuit, Father Carlos Maria Staehlin, published in Razon y Fe (1949, vol. 139, pp. 443-464; 546-562: vol. 140, pp. 71-98) the results of an elaborate study of apparitions and revelations as they have taken place in the history of the Church during the last 150 years. 1. The Two Currents First of all, Father Staehlin points out that in this record two currents of apparitions and revelations are to be distinguished: the m~jsticaland the non-ro~lsticali The first current is observ~ible in men and women who were favored with the central phenom~hon of mysticism, that is, infused contemplation. Typically this line is exemplified in the saints, or at least in very hMy. persons of mature .age. In these people, there-fore, were to be found both a sup.erior form of mental prayer and a high degree of virtue. At times, and in some cases only, to increase their ¯intimacy with God they were .granted apparitions of various sacred persons or things. Re'velations given in connection with such apparitions are of course private, and .may also be:.,calied particular. In'th~ lives:of: the saints there occurs also at/other kind of revelation that may be termed social. It is meant mor~ for the. good of nu- 1'98 du1~,1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS merous other persons than for the advantage of the individual re-cipient. The .communications concerning the Sacred Heart made to St. Margaret Mary and those of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes ex-emplify this social type of private revelation. 2. Apparitions to non-M~tstics The second general current comprises those cases in which the persons favored with visions are nbt mystics. Oftentimes they are children. These visions reported by non-mystics seem to be sea- ;onal, tending to occu'r in the spring and summer months, between March and October. The recipients are usually uneducated'persons; nearly always wbmen or children, and girls-~rathe~'than 'boys.When a man sees a vision he is .apt to-be in the "company of a woman;-ahd kbe sees more than he does. If the,seers be~children, one or-mbre of them often enough'has a ~ather who drinks heavily. There seems to be a certain" tendency for these apparitions to follow the la~sical type of Saint Bernadette-or the more recent pattern set by the chil-dren at Fatima. In a few cases the effect upon the religious life of the community or even of the Church has been very great: but as a rule, no matter how great the excitement at first may be, the total result is not impressive. Manifestations in which Christ appears are more often within doors, whereas those of the Blessed Virgin are more frequently ob-served in the open air. Since the time when devotion to the Sacred Heart became widespread apparitions in which Our Lord figures tend to focus upon His heart. Strangely enough, when the place is in the vicinity of the Blessed Sacrament there is usually no connec-tion between it and the apparition. The appearances of the Blessed Virgin taking place outdoors do not generally present themselves abruptly: they are introduced by some sound or sight that does not naturally fit in with the circ.umstances, but attracts attention and prepares for what is to come. ~° 3. Zones and Periods "" Looking over lists of apparitions that have been reported one can easily discern certain zones, or parts of the world, and periods of time, in which they are especially numerous. Staehlin refers to one zone, without however naming it, °embracing some twenty villages, in which there was, as it were, an epidemic outbreak of visions. In Belgium in the single year 1933 there was a comparatively large number of them; Staehlin lists the places and dates for eighteen, and says that the enumeration is far from complete. 199 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD Reoieto for Religiou.s 4. Constellations It is also noticeable that apparitions tend to occur in constella-tions, that is, in groups with a certain unity of place, time, and sub-ject- matter. Numerous minor occurrences of this kind cluster around one that is of major importance and renown. Thus a full critical account of the origins of Lourdes would chronicle many visionaries and visions besides St. Bernadette and her experiences. She is the one whose claims have been approved, both by the Church officially and by the common assent of the faithful, and she is the only one who was canonized for her virtues. But there were other persons who reported having seen apparitions at about the same time and place. For the names of some of those who Said that they had had such visions and the places and times at which they occurred, see Staehlin, volume 139, pp. 555-56. It is said that at Fatima also there were other apparitions beside~ those to the three little shep-herds. 5. Multiplication Multiplication is another mark that Staehlin observes in his study of apparitions. Once a particular vision is recorded in the literature it is apt to be repeated. The following is an example. In Agreda, Spain, in the seventeenth century there was a Franciscan ab-bess named Maria de Jesus. Continuing the work begun by the famed visionary St. Bridget of Sweden, namely, completing the Gospel accounts from private revelations, Maria wrote the celebrated and highly controversial book called The Mystical City of God. It is a history of the life of the Blessed Virgin. .Because of its ques-tionable character the process for her beatification which had been begun was discontinued. Mother Maria recounts in great detail this incident from the passion. When Jesus had been fastened to the cross and the soldiers wished to clinch the nails, they were about to turn Him and the cross over, thus leaving Him with His face on the ground. His mother, unable to bear the thought of that additional cruelty and indignity, most earnestly besought the Eternal Father not to permit it. Accordingly He sent angels at once who supported the overturned Jesus and cross in the air above the rocky ground while the executioners hammered back the nails (Part II, Bk VI, .Chapter XXII, n. 1386). In the next century, after Mother Maria's work had become widely diffused among the. devout nuns in the convents of Spain, Sister Joan of the I.nca.~.n.~tion, of .,t.he Discalced Augustinians in 2OO July/, 1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS Murcia, had a strikingly similar vision, reported in very much the ~ame way. In our century Sister 3osefa Menendez, of the Spanish Religious of the Sacred Heart, whose book Christ's Appeal for Love i~ making her increasingly well-known just at present, also saw in a vision and reports exactly the same incident. (For the original wording in all three cases, see Razon y Fe, 1949, vol. 139, pp. 559- 560). - 6. Four Patterns It is not difficult to observe that even those apparitions which seem original or at leas.t have no particular connection in time or place tend to follow certain definite patterns. Of these Father Staeh-lin distinguishes four: namely the reformatory type, the pastoral, the innovating, and lastly one representing the passion of Christ. The first two, the reformatory and the pastoral, inasmuch as they involve prophecies regarding the future, may be termed apocalyptic. The third and fourth, introducing something new or somehow reproducing the Passion, are of a .more devout form. Apparitions falling into the reformatory pattern may be de-signed to change either religious or political conditions. In times of stress and strain in Church or state there is wont to be an excess of them. A typical apparition seeking reform in religious matters would first point out the tragedies and calamities that afflict the Church. Then the cause would be indicated, for example, the faults of the clergy and religious men and women. An exhortation would follow urging them to do. perian~e and again take up the fervent pursuit ~of virtue. Finally the happy results would be depicted in glowing colors. ~The Church and civil society are al.ways laboring under great evils or dangers of them; some reformatory movements are always in progress; some of .the troubles disappear in time; and in a few respects at least there is positive change for the better. If the prediction is not completely verified, one can invariably say either that not enough effort toward penance and amendment was made or that the rest of the prophecy is still to be fulfilled. The pasoral pattern of apparitions is the one with which we are all most familiar. Popular devout literature and th~ conversations of pious people thrive on it. Such appearances, which are said to be very numerous, tend to conform to this broad scheme: some chil-dren, playing outdoors, unexpectedly notice a sight or sound that att~rac.ts or directs their attention. Abov.e the branches of a tree or in a.~;clearj,g they notice a white feminine figure, they are addressed by 20,1: AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD . Reoiew for Religious it, am:l finallyo.tbey are invited to return to' the site on subsequent days. Soone~ or later the figure makes itself.known as the Blessed Virgin, and eventually she manifests some secret or other to the young seers. Sheoften requests that a shrine be erected there and promises a miracle to give divine assurance for everything. There is a message that is to be made public (an example, therefore, of a revelation that is private, but with a social purpose): the good should do penance and pray more for mankind. At last somethi.ng takes place which is in.terpr~ted as the miracle. Evidently the ap-paritions at Lourdes. and Fatima fire outstan, ding examples and models of this pattern. These two are also among the very, very few that have been approved and that have achieved importance. Scores, if not hundreds, of others, have created only a local or a passing stir among the people. _New devotions' are usually the object of the next, the inno-vating, type of visions. In her attitude toward these the Church is likely to be much more severe and critical, and the reason is that novel forms of religious practice very often imply notions that are wrong or dangerou.s°to the faith. In 1937 a decree against certain n6velties was issued b~" the Holy Office. "Everybody knows that such new forms of Worship and devotion, sometimes ridiculous, very often a useless imitation of similar devotions already legiti-mately established, or even a corruption of them, are. multiplled from day to day and widely propagated among the faithful in sev-eral places, especially in these latter times, to the great surprise and bitter reproach of non-Catholics" (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, XXIX, 305). It is easy for certain devout souls to feel inspired to insti-tute, say, a new scapular or a nea, v ~et of Fridays or Saturdays in honor of the~'r favorite celestial"patron. Apparitions of the fourth pattern represent the passion and crucifixion of Christ. Some of the seers who witness them are stig-matics. Anyone somewhat conversant with devotional literature will know of examples. A notable recent case is that of St. Gemma Galgani (1878;1903). So much for the observations of Father Staehlin. III. NEGATIVE TYPES 1. Diabolical Apparitions Besides apparitions or revelations from the mansions of heaven, there are of course others that come from the dungeons of the nether regions. In gent~ine cases these are really and truly supernatural in, 202 July, 1954 APPARITIONS AND REVELATIONS the sense of being beyond the possibilities of visible nature. The lives of the saints contain many instances, and therefore the sanctity of the human person concerned is no proof that his or her super-normal experiences are all good. Of these appearances some are at once and clearly diabolical; they are generally of a terrifying naturd. Others seem at first to be holy and conducive to piety, but they are always deceptive, and sooner or later manifest indications of the evil tendencies that they subserve. At'a certain period in his life and at hours when he should have been studying, St. Ignatius used to ex-perience visions that seemed to make for devotion and prayer,/but eventually he noticed that it was always at the wrong time and place, and he concluded that what he was seeing was a temptation rather than a grace, and really something designed to distract him from God's work. Besides_preternatural appearances that emanate from the evil spirits there are others also which are in reality natural, but mistakenly attributed to evil spirits. 2. Hallucinations and Illusions A distinction relevant to apparitions and revelations that is hu-miliating and unpleasant for subjects, but nevertheless of prime practical importance for their directors and everybody else who has anything to do with them, is that between authentic and apparent manifestations of the supernatural, or, in other words, between the really miraculous and hallucinations or illusions. In hallucinatio.ns one judges that he sees or hears something that is simply non-existent; there is not even a good foundation for the mistaken per-ception. Illusions are false interpretations of something that is true and objective; for example, a man suffering from delirium tremens sees a stick and takes it to be a snake. Th~se aberrations .of tile mind can in some cases have a very close resemblance to truthful judg-ments. A perfectly balanced person may be deceived in a particular case, and the most acute discerner of spirits may find it exceedingly difficult to make the appropriate distinctions with assurance. Hence the great necessity of exercising extreme precaution in pronouncing upon any occurrence that has the semblance of the supernatura~l. Not long ago a certain French doctor and psychologist wrote a study of "interior words." It was based par.ticularly upon. a num-ber of books published in recent years 'arid purporting to give pri-vate divine revelations or locutions. Of his whole investigation he gives the general conclusion as follows: "These reflections, suth as they are, allow us to see in many cases of 'interior words' a natural 2O3 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD Review [or Religious psychological mechanism, independent (inasmuch as it is a process) of'the religious character of their content: a mechanism of projec-tion, of compensation, of mental dialogue expressed in language. The classical criteria~ conformity to the teaching of the Church, sanctity of life, quality of charity, submission to the magisterium of the Church, are evidently indispensable. It seems to me that they are not sufficient. Is it not proper to consider as well whether a natural ex'planation cannot account for them, in whole or in i0art?" (Vie Spirituelle, Supplement, May 1953, 165-175; Dr. Suzy Rousset, " 'Paroles interieures'--remarques'psychologiques.P"e)r-haps, therefore, modern psychologists and psychiatrists capnoint out the precise mechanisms and processes which explain the fact, long ago noticed by SL. 3ohn of the Cross, that a devout person may seem. to hear God speaking to him interiorly, whereas in reality the person is talking to himself through his subconsciousness. The distinguished contemporary Carmelite authority in "spir-itual theology,"' Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, has made a special study of visions and revelations, and published the results in a work devoted exclusively to that subject, Visions and Revelations in the Spiritual Life (1950). Toward the end of this work he em-phasizes the point that the old rules for the discernment of spirits do indeed indicate whether a movement of soul or what .seems to be an interior locution is good or bad and whether it is ultimately from the divine spirit or the diabolical spirit, but they do not enable one to judge that, if it be from God, it proceeds from Him preter-naturally rather than naturally. What appears in consciousness as a divine locution may be from God and may be a great grace, but, from these rules alone, we are n6t justified in concluding that it comes from Him in the special way characteristic of revelations in the proper sense. "In the present state of the psychological sciences, in view of data which may be reasonably expected, it must be main-tained that the mechanism of the interior voice may sometimes be natural. Unless we succeed in disproving this hypothesis, we can-not cor~clude that God has certainly intervened" (p. 119). A devout soul can write a whole book, all of it most excellent spiritual doc-trine and seemingly dictated to the writer by God h'imself. It can be most conducive to one's advance in sanctity, or to that of others. Nevertheless the whole product may be really due tO the processes of nature and grace, and may not require any miraculous intervention from God. ,204 duly, 1954 BEATIFICATIONS, 1951 -I 952 3. Fraudulent Reports In addition to genuine apparitions there are some that are simply fraudulent. A person may gain notice and admiration and perhaps even many other advantages by acquiring the reputation of being in direct and supernatural communication with the powers of heaven. Moreover prestige and profit may accrue to places where appari-tions have been reported, and men seeing the commercial possibili-ties may, in good or bad faith, help promote the popular interest and excitement. A subsequent paper will consider certain practical problems that arise when one has become, or at least seems to have become, the re-cipient of apparitions and revelations, and also when one reads about those that are said to have been granted to other persons¯ E eatit:icatlons, 1951-1952 Pope Pi~s X, who was solemnly canonized, May 29. 1954, was born in 1835, died in 1914. He was the first Pope since St. Pius V (died, 1572: beatified, 1671: canonized, 1710) to be raised to the honors of the altar. An account of the pontificate of Pius X, as well as a table of important dates, was published in the May, 1954, number of the REVIEW (pp. 114-24). This account, written by the Archbishop of Madurai, was first published shortly after the beatifi-cation of Pius X, which took place on June 3, 1951. On the occa-sion of the beatification, Pope Pius XII said of his blessed predeces-sor .' "Through his person and through his work God wished to pre-pare His Church for the new and arduous tasks that awaited bet in the troublous future; to prepare in time a Church at one in doctrine, firm in discipline, et~icient in her pastors; a generous laity, a people well instructed: a youth sar~ctified from its first years; a Christian conscience alert to the proble, ms of social life. "If today the Church ofI God, so far from retreating before the forces that would 'destroy all spiritual values, suffers and fights, and through dlvlne help advances and redeems, it is due in great part to the far-seeing action and the holiness of Plus X. Today it has be-come clear thSt his whole pontificate was directed according to a divine plan of love and redemption, to prepare souls for the very 205 BEATIFICATIONS, 1951 - 1.952 struggles we are facing, and to ensure victory for us and for the fu-ture." The foregoing translation is taken from The Clerg~t Monthlt.t, XVI (duly, 1952), 227. We are indebted to the same publication for the following accounts of others who were beatified in 1951; also of those beatified in 1952. Blessed Atberic Cresc[telli: born, 1863: died, 1900; beatified, Feb. 18, 1951. Of the Foreign Missions of Milan. He was cruelly martyred during the Boxer rising after twelve years of self-sacrificing work in the China mission. In his case, as in other cases, the Holy Father remarked, "Martyrdom is but the cr6wning of an entire life of daily heroism and of continual compliance with the will of God." Blessed Francis Anton{ Fasani: born, 1681; died, 1742; beati-fied, April 15, 1951. A Franciscan Conventual priest. He spent thirty-five years in his native town of Lucera, 'teaching the young friars and then governing the convent and the province of his order, combining with these offices an intense apostolic and charitable ac-tivity. He liked to recall his humble origin, and among the poor who crowded the door of the convent for their daily bowl of soup, with filial respect and love he acknowledged his mother, "the poor Isabella." Blessed Joseph Diaz Sanjurjo, O.P., and tuaent~l-four coropan-ions. Beatified, April 29, 1951. In Tonkin, during the bloody persecution of 1856-1862 under Tu-Duc, thousands of Christians were cruelly tortured and put to death. One group of four was beati-fied by Pius X on April 15, 1906. The cause of another 1,288 was introduced in 1917; and from among these a first group of 25 has now been beatified: 2 bishops (Spanish Dominicans), 4 native priests (2 Dominicans and 2 Tertiaries of St. Dominic), and .19 Christians of every class of society. Blessed Placide Viel: born, 1815; died, 1877; beatified, May 6, 1951. One is deeply struck, said the Holy Father on the occasion of her beatification, by "the contrast between the temperament, the character, the antecedents of this little peasant girl--shy, awkward, without instruction, without the least experience of life in the world --and her career of exceptional, not to say unique, activity." Out of seemingly unpromising material God's grace fashioned an out-standing personality. Placide Viel was the daughter of a Norman farmer. When eighteen, she joined the young and struggling Congregation of the (Contin.ued on Page 214) 206 Spirit:ual Opia!:es Joseph P. Fisher, S.J. TWO of the most fundament.al and most consol!ng truths of the spiritual life are that the will of God is man s peace and that the providence of God is most loving. Practical acceptance and living out of these truths has brought and will bring many to holi-ness. There can be no sanctity where a person has no "devotion" to the will of God and little trust in divine providence. While all this is true, there is another side to the question, as there is to mbst questions. And this "other side of the question" has some impor-tant relevance to both the private and social lives of religious. Wrong understanding of these great truths can bring about great personal and great public harm. The pagan Lucretius in that terrible line, "so great a mass of evils has religion been able to foist upon ~nan-kind," fixed in a few words the awful effect of religion gone bad. Perhaps it would be well to listen to a pagan, ancient or modern, present his picture of a Christian and the will of God. -Thus then would our pagan speak: "If Christians live according to the faith that is in them, for them the will of God is the end of life. In all things great and small a Christian must love and do God's will and bear patiently whatever God allows to come into his life. If he is sick, that is God's will and he must bear sickness patiently and even gladly if possible. If there is a drought and the crops fail, that too is God's will and a true Christian must bear it without complaint. If in God's providence a man has been born into a poor family, that is for his best and he should worship the strange ways of divine provi-dence. If a working man cannot find employment, that is God's will and he must submit humbly--remembering that God cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. If taxes are high and there is much corruption in government and unequal distribution of wealth, God has permitted these things, and His will must be rev-erenced. If the children are starving and the wife is sick and there is no opportunity for work, God has seen fit to allow that and man must meekly accept His will." Truly religion thus pictured is the opium of the people. Man~s urge for ~elf-preservation, for the advancement of his family, for his well-being in this life is stifled. He is made the pawn of priests, 207 JOSEPH [9. FISHER Review for Religious he is made a slave of inaction. Religion;has bound him hand and foot and made him a completely useless citizen of the state. We may now imagine an objector adapting the above picture to fit a religio,us more directly. To a religious God's will is especially dear. It should be his meat and drink. Only by complete aban-donment to the divine will can he lead his life as he should and reach' sanctity. Heshould hav~ ~o desire of his own but should will only what God wills. When he has come to such conformity, then only will he have true peace. So when sickness comes, em-brace it patiently, eagerly. It is a dear possession. Hold on to it as to a loving gift from God. Become a victim of the divine good pleasure. When failure comes, do not run from it; it is God's will and hence a blessing. When you are misunderstood, called to task unjustly, do not complain; this is God's will. Adhere to it. No matter what comes into your life, ~t is God's will. Be satisfied with it and it will sanctify you. The consequence of carrying out the foregoing "ideal" to its logical conclusion would be this: a sick religious holds on to his sickness as the will of God and does not try to rid himself of it; a struggling religious sees impending fdilure coming and welcomes it as God's will; a sincere religious finds himself the subject of petty persecution and, convinced it is God's will that he bear it, does so, when it is driving him to distraction. Even if the ordinary Catholic and ordinary religious do not see the speculative answer to the difficulty just proposed, in practice they solve it for the most part themselves. But it would be well if they understood the theory too. Certainly it is God's will that a Christia~i accept with patient resignation his lot as a poor man, the sickness of his children and wife, the lack of employment and such-like hardship. That is one thing. But it is quite another to give the impression that he may not and even ought not do something about righting the situation. To speak as if the .will of God ends with patience and resignation under adverse circumstances is to make something of a caricature of the divine will. It may be presumed that God wants something done about an unjust condition. If unscrupulous men have by their c~imes forced a man into an unjust condition, far fr(~m its being true that he ought to be content to re-main in such a condition, the man may be bound in conscience to do what he can to right the wrong. The truth then is this: in such cases a man has to accept with patience and resignation the existing condition as at least permitted by God, but he has to work with en- 208 Julq, 1954 SPIRITUAL OPIATES ergy to bring about the just order which God primarily wills. So the mark of the true Christian is not to accept willy-nilly whatever untoward event the providence of God allows to befall him, and to rest there; but rather, even while conformed to the divine will, calmly to set about bettering the situation when that can be done. There is plenty of room for the practical application of this prin-ciple in our modern world, where there are many cases of unjust and inhuman living conditions that call for reform. As for the religi6us, certainly he ought to hold the will of God dear. And certainly he ought to become as conformed as possible to the Will of God. But he ought to know what is and what is not the will of God. God's will is not necessarily that he remain sick if he becomes sick. When he is sick, of course he ought to see in this illness God's will and endure it patiently, but he also ought to realize that it may be God's will that he use some means to insure recovery. If he has a rule--as most religious have--to the effect that he should take proper care of his health, then this would indi-cate God's will in the matter. And certainly superiors consider it understood that their subjects do what they reasonably can to pre-serve their b~alth and to retrieve it as far as possible when it is lost. This again is an expression of God's will. The same principle holds in the case of failure and blame. A good religious accepts in a spirit of resignation such trials permitted by God but it is often clear that the same divin~ will wants the re-ligious to do something about rising from the failure or removing the blame. One's vocational-ideal is the surest means of diagnosing, so to speak, the divine will in any particular matter. What my vocation demands of me, that for me is clearly God's will. It hardly has to be pointed out that the conception of divine providence implied in the objection given above is faulty. There are plenty of people who think of the providence of God as a guarantee of an easy way through life here on earth. One will be able to live, 'they dream, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. God's providence will ward off financial difficulties, sickness, death of the young--all th~ hard things of life that test a man's belief and hope in God. To see their mistake, these people need only to consider. God's plan for human life, rather than their own imaginings as to what it is to be. A frequently repeated illustration will make the point clear. A provident father is not one who gives his child all he asks or all the child thinks is for his good. Children, even older children, frequently have a very poor idea about what serves' their 2O9 aosi~p~t p. Fis~ true good. A young child might want to play with a sharp, shiny knife, but no one would consider the father good who gave in to the child, no matter what kind of squall was raised. Children used to dislike school. Even though they raised a fuss and said their parents and teachers were cruel, a good father, foreseeing their needs be~ter than they, would insist that they continue their schooling. Tb'e father knows the end in mind and he knows the means to the end. And frequently the best means are the most repellent to the young. In this, grown men and women are often like children. God their Father knows better than they the end of human life and the best means to get there. Frequently these means look very harsh to God's children, but our good Father does not let this deter Him from doing what is really best for His sons and daughters. God wants our true good more than we do ourselves and He knows what it is and how to obtain it. Trust in His directing and loving providence is the only proper attitude on our part. God's providence over men is, therefore, not apampering provi-dence. Rather it is strong and it demands strength. We are taught this in the life of Our Lord when He was tempted by the devil, first to a distrust of divine providence--"command that these stones be made bread": and then to a rash and presumptuous demand 'on providence--"throw thyself down." Our Lord's answer to Satan teaches us the proper balance in,our attitude toward divine provi-dence: "Not by bread alone does man live"--man's end is not temporal but eternal: God provides what eventually best leads to our eternal happiness. Hence we must trust that all things work unto good for those who love God. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God"--we should not presume on divine providence according to our own ideas of what is good for us. Such presumption would surely lead to disappointm.ent and distrust and at first to lack of private enterprise and then to trust of self alone. Only, therefore, when the Catholic doctrine on the will of God and providence is misunderstood and exaggerated does it make spir-itual opiates of these truths. Religious obviously in their own lives and in their dealings with externs should be mindful of these very consoling doctrines, but mindful in such a way that they do not give a basis to critics for the charge that the doctrines stifle the true life of man. Rather they should evidence by their lives that these great truths are springs of life more abundant. 210 To All t:he Saint:s in No-Man's Land George Byrne, S.J. W~E CANNOT imagine a bishop in our days addressing a letter to "All the saints that are in Chicago"! St. Paul would" have done it; indeed, be might more reasonably have ex-pected to find them in Chicago than in pagan Rome "delivered up to shameful affections." Yet to us the word "saints" suggests a no-man's land, reached by hardy explorers and possessing a climate of rarefied atmosphere, which only men of superhuman constitution can breathe. Doesn't the Church reserve the title for her heroes and look for miracles to confirm her choice? There must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Either St. Paul was using a little flattery, like the politician appealing to the "keen intelligence" of a stupid crowd, or we have failed to grasp his meaning. We may at once admit our failure: flattery was not a Pauline weapon. He knew what man .was: but he had a clear vision of what man should, and could, be: "To all that are at Rome ¯ . . called to be saints." On the one hand St. Paul might quarrel with our title, in "No- Man's Land," insisting that it should be "Every-Man's Land"; on the other hand, he could accept it, as true to his own words to the Ephesians: "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity." The choice was made in "No-Man's Land." It was made in God's kingdom: "In the Father's house of many mansions"; in the climate of "pure love," an atmosphere truly so devoid of all breath of dis-ordered self-love that no man could live there if not strengthened by a power more than human: "for man shall not see Me [God] and live." Plato and Lo~e Not one of us would say to a friend, "You are unlovable, as you are incapable of love." Does any young couple, pledging a love "till death do us part," think for a moment that they do not know what it is to love? Yet the divorce courts are a sad witness to their ignorance. Love is a beautiful thing, a strong thing. It is not pas-sion, a fitful outburst to grasp for self the pleasure of a passing urge. ,211 GEORGE BYRNE Reoieto t~or Religious "Love is as strong ag dearth . . . many waters cannot quench love." In spite of his cold intellectual outlook, Plato did not fail to see the elevating power of love, even amongst his crude pagan gods. In his Symposium (197) he, wrote: "He whom love touches walks not in darkness . . . Love set in order the empire of the gods--the love of beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In days of old, as I said, dreadful, deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled b.y Necessity, but now since the birth of Love, and from Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, I say of Love that He is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in all othe~ things . . . He is our lord, who sends cou, rtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness; the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, soft-ness, grace, regardful of the good, regardless of the evil . . . glory of god and men, leader best and brightest, in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which Love charms the souls of gods and men." As we .read the words of the tSagan philosopher, we approve. We can even fancy that a fold of Love's mantle rests on us. Even "those who have no part in him," as Plato said, desire him. No one is willing to admit that Love has no message for him, or that Love's message is Utopian! Sainthood and Love Why, then. is the call to "Sainthood" treated.as if it were a call to Starland, where ordinary mortals cannot dwell? It is so treated: we have only to suggest that Tdm or Harry, down the street, are, "holy," to draw a smile, in which Tom and Harrywould be the first' sharers. Yet they would be the first to resent being called un- Christian, or being taxed with lovelessness. They, and those who, with them, call themselves "ordinary Christians" forget that' a call to."ordinary" Christian life is not the Master's call. "Be ye perfect,~ as your heavenly Father is perfect," is addressed to all. The re-ligious life is called a "state of perfection" because, on the negative side, many obstacles found in the world are removed; and, above all, on the positive side, every means is at our disposal "to develop the supernatural life in our souls. The great variety of religious congregations in the Church is determined by the nature of the 212 dul~t, 1954 To SAINTS IN NO-MAN'S LAND work to be accomplished for the Kingdom of God and the different talents of the workers. But all religious.congregations pu~ love, true charity, in the foreground. In the words of St. Ignatius, "the interior law of charity and love" must be the animating principle of every religious constitution. Without the inner working of the Holy Spirit of Love, - external rules couldlead only to formalism. In God's creative plan, Iove and sainthood are identified. Let us repeat St. Paul's text: "He chose us in him [i.e., in Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity.". St. John puts it more emphatically: "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is charity." "'Love IS His Meaning" In one of the mo~t beautiful books written, Revelations of Divine Love, Juliana of Norwich, tells us that the afiswer to her query of the meaning of all was: "Wouldst thou witten the Lord's meaning in this thing? Wit it well: Love was his meaning. Who shewed it to thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Where-fore shewed it He? For Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. : . .And I saw full surely in this and in all, that ere God mhde us He loved us.~ .In this love our' life is everlasting. In our making we had a beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning." Our earliest catechism lesson taught us that we are made to the "image of God." Perhaps the lessons passed all too quickly to "duty" as the rule of life. There were the commandments--only ten; but, as we turned the pages, the details grew; and our young lives seemed hemmed in by a solid hedge of "don'ts." A doctor of the law captiously .asked Christ: "Which is the great command-ment?" He little expected the answer: there is really only one-- Love, reaching to heaven, and pouring itself out on earth. The greatness of man is being an image of God; the image of God is in his soul. In what ultimately is greatness of soul found? St. Jerome aptly drew the distinction between philosophy and re-ligion. "Plato," he said, "located the soul of man in the head; Christ located it in the heart." In a word w~e have the difference between the "clever" man and the "saint." Few can be outstanding as philosophers; there is no limit'to growth in love. The.Immacu-late Mother mounted the hill of Calvary with Mary Magdalen; the_ 213 ' BEATIFICATIONS, 19 5 1 - 1 9 5 2 Review/:or Religious peniten't thief confessed, with St. John, that God is Love. At first sight it might seem that the type of sanctity is different in different religious institutes: for example, that a Carmelite recluse has little in common with a nursing, or teaching, sister. This view is clea~ly superficial. Their duties are different, but for all, love is the soul of their sanctity; and they may happily kneel side by side at the altar rail to receive into their hearts the Heart of Love. To be truly religious and not to love is unthinkable. BEATIFICATIONS, 19S1-1952 (Continued from Page 206) Sisters of the Christian Schools and was trained by the holy foun-dress, St. Marie Madeleine Postel (canonized in 1925). With prophetic insight the foundress recognized the latent gifts of the young religious and made her the assistant general at. the age of twenty-five. Six years later, when the foundress died (1846), Placide was elected to succeed her. For thirty years she governed this institute with remarkable efficiency--a most able organizer, a gifted educationist, a religious superior of fine tact and heroic pa-tience and humility. Blessed Julian Maunoir, S.d.: born, 1606 ; died 1683 ; beatified, May 20, 1951. "The Apostle of Brittany." During forty-two years he preached popular missions t~hroughout Brittany, at that time spiritually very neglected, and trained numerous priests for the same work. His incredible labors resulted in a deep religious trans-formation of that country. His life and work, said Pope Pius XII, are a lesson of optimism. His remarkable missionary methods are worth s{udying even today (teamwork, instruction.s and sermons, songs and pictures, processions, retreats for the elite.). Blessed Marie Th&&e Couderc: born, 1805 ; died, ~1885 ; beati-fied, Nov. 4, 1951. ~A slmple peasant girl, she became,the foun-dress of the Institute of the Cenacle (1827)~, whose aim is to give the Spiritual Exercises to women of every class. Through a series of misunderstandings, she was deposed from her office of superior and spent the last fifty years of her life in obscurity, heroic humility, and patience. In 1952 the Cenacle had 2,000 members in Europe and America. Blessed Rosa Venerini: born, 1656; died, 1728; beatified, May 4, 1952. As a girl she gathered poor children to teach them their 214 BEATIFICATIONS, 1951 - 195 2 prayers and Christian doctrine and thus gradually came to found the institute of Maestre Pfe, which today has some fifty establish-ments in Italy and North America. At first her work was regarded, as an innovation and met with man}, obstacles. One objection Rosa and her companions had to face was that women had no right to teach Christian doctrine, since it was to men that Christ had said, "He who heareth you, heareth me." Blessed Raffaela Porras (Raffaela-Maria of the Sacred Heart): born, 1850; died, 1925; beatified, May 18, 1952. Together with. her elder sister Dolores she founded in Madrid the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart. At forty-three she was prevailed upon by her critics to retire from the government of her institute as incapable; the opposi-tion party was led by her own sister, who succeeded her as superior general. She spent the rest of her life, 32 years, in obscurity and suffering: painful but fruitful years. Her institute at present counts fifty-six houses in Europe, America, and Japan. Blessed Marfa-Bertflla Boscardfn: born, 1888; died, 1922; be- "atified, dune 8, 1952. Born of poor Italian farmers and seemingly little gifted, she was a real Cinderella at home, at school, and after-wards in the Institute of the Sisters of St. Dorothea, which sh~ joined at seventeen. But she revealed herself a most devoted and skillful nurse and for most of her religious life she worked in the hospital of .Treviso, where she spent herself in the care of the sick and (during the first World War) of the wounded soldiers. Though suffering herself from a serious disease, she continued her service till obedience obliged her to undergo an operation: but it was too late and she died at the age of thirty-four. Often misjudged by her superiors, she w, as venerated by doctors and patients, and the cause of her beatification was taken up soon after her death. She was extraordinarily humble, the catechism was her favorite book, and the way she chose to follow was the most ordinary way, the via dei card (cart road), as she put it. She prayed that she might "rather die than do a single action in order to b,e seen." Anthon~t-MarV Pucci: born, 1819; died, 1892; beatified, June 22, 1952. He was moved by his devotion to Mary to jbin the Or-der of Servites. After his ordination he was sent to Viareggio in Tuscany where he worked first as curate for three years, and then as parish priest for 46 years, till his death. In this office he showed himself really "another Christ"; in him, the Holy Father said, "~e can contemplate an authentic image of the divine Redeemer." 215 NEW CONGREGATIONS Review for Religious "The Gospel teaches that there is a powerful grace of sanctifica-tion for priests, Obtained by the merits and prayer of Jesus Christ. Did He not ask the Father, in His sacerdotal prayer (JolSn 17: 17- 19) to sanctify them in the truth, as he was offering Himself as a 'victim in a sacrifice for them? The grace of the Catholic priesthood has, since nearly twenty centuries, produced incomparable fruits in every country of the world, and tl~e number of Saints endowed with the priestly character is constantly.growing . . . There is nothing greater on earth tban a holy priest." Blessed Anthony-Mary is for all priests "a luminous example in the exercise of the sacred ministry." His whole life was a sermon "because there was perfect agreement between his words and his ac-tions."' His self-devotion to his flock--in teaching Christian doc-trine,, spending long hours in the confessional, guiding ~he young,' and especially in helping the sick during a terrible cholera epidemic --was admirable and conquered all hearts, thougb it was a time of strong anticlericalism. But he "was not content with his own indi-vidual action"; he became a precursor of modern Catholic Action by establishing associations for every category of his parishioners-- children and adolescents, men and women--whom he imbued with his own zeal. He also founded the Institute of the Servants of Mary, a nursery of catechists and teachers. He started societies of St. Vincent de Paul (which were still new at that time), and open-ed the first seaside hor~e for poor sickly children. New Congregat:ions The Sisters, Home Visitor.s 0'f Mary.have the special apostolate of convert work among Negroes. This community was organized four years ago in Detroit under,the patronage of Edward Cardinal ~Mooney. The sisters teach religion to boys and girls who attend the public schools and to adults; they also conduct recreational pro-grams, plan clinics, conduct classes in home making and home nursing, and carry out other social . service activities. Their mother house is at 356 Arden Park, Detroit 2, Michigan. .The habit is a simple navy blue dress, coat, and hit in present-day style. , The Sons of Mary, Health of the Sick will specialize in medical and catechetical work for the missions and will train many of the 216 dul~ , 1954 NEW CONGREGATIONS Catholic natives to be nurse-catechists. This congregation of brothers was founded by Father Edward F. Gareschd. The novitiate was established at Sylva Maria, Framingham, Massachusetts, with the encouragement and help of. Archbishop Cushing. The habit is of dark blue with a dark blue cord around the waist; a rosary with white beads hangs.from~ the cord. Not exactly new-is the congregation of Dominican Rural Mis-sionaries. This institute was f~unded in France and was affiliated with the Dominican Order in 1932. At that time they numbered 20. They'now number 427, with 69 houses (65 in France, 1 in Switzerland, 1 in Canada, and 2 in the United States). The houses in this country are in Louisiana, ~where tile first was opened in 1951. The sisters are dedicated,to the spiritual welfare of the people of the rural areas, especially within the framework of the parish, and without distinction of race, color, or creed. Further information about this congregation may be obtained from Mother Marie St. Paul, O.P., Convent of the Epiphany, Gross Tete, Louisiana. CONGRESS IN BUENOS AIRES An international congress on the states of perfection was held in Buenos Aires, March 3-11, 1954. The Sacred Congregation of Religious convoked the co~gress and sent a delegation headed by its secretary, Father Arcadio Larraona, C.M.F. The Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Dr. Santiago L. Copello, presided at the ~ongress; Father Larraona was its general director. Since the congress' was on the ':states of perfection,~' it included not only religious but also others who are dedicated to the quest of evangelical perfection, such as members of secular insti-tutes. There were representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. COMMENTARY ON LITTLE OFFICE ~ Father John J. Kugler, S.D.B. is the author of A Commenta(y on the New Little Ottice. The book contains parallel columns of the new Latin version of the Psalms and an English translation; also verse-by-verse notes on the Psalms, and a liturgical explanation of each hour. This book should be very helpful to reli-gious who are using the Little Office with the new version of the. Psalms. It should be noted, however, that this is not the new edition of the Little Office which was described by Father Ellis in a recent article (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, XIII [May~ 1954], 149). Father Kugler's book refers to the standard edition of the Little Office with the new version of the Psalms. The price of the book is $2.00. It may be obtained from: Salesiana Publishers, 202 Union Ave., Pater-son 2, N.J. 217 uesffons Answers --22- Have you any advice for a nun who thinks that God has begun to fa-vor her with mvstical graces and who cannot find any priest to direct If it be simply impossible to get direction from some competent person, read something that is to the point. Probably the best brief., treatise in English is the relevant part of Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life, pp. 637-740. An excellent work on prayer is Lehodey, The Wags of Mental Prager. Much the most thorough-going book on the direction ~'f mystics is Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prager (enlarged edition, 1950). This last book would hardly be suitable for self-direction for many people with less education; they would find it overwhelming and confusing, rather tfian enlightening and helpful. All the general principles of Catholic asceticism apply to mys-tics; in fact, they apply to them more fully and strictly. Souls fa-vored by God with greater graces should be more eager to love Him with all their hearts, to keep all the divine precepts and counsels, to be quite mortified, observant, zealous, and so on with all the virtues. If the Holy Spirit seems to be inviting one to a simpler, more passive, form of prayer, ~nd if, all things considered, it appears to be more promising than any other that one-could Eursue, then" one should give oneself up to

Issue 40.1 of the Review for Religious, January 1981. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every Iwo months, is ediled in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are Iocaled at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1981 by REWEW FOR RELiGiOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at SI. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year; $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: Rt:vt~:w t'oR Rt:Lt(;tOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. .~eremiah L. Alberg, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor January, 1981 Volume 40 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW t'ott RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's Universily; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW t'OR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. ++Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from Universily Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Review for Religious Volume 40, 1981 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Jeremiah L. Alberg, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Sep-tember, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1981 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOtJS. Toward a Method for the Study of Spirituality Edward Kinerk, S.J. Father Kinerk is presently on sabbatical leave, doing post-doctoral studies in spirituality at St. Louis University. He resides at Jesuit Hall; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108, A former professor of historical theology once described spirituality as a "gl0b" area. He explained this rather inelegant label by pointing out that spirituality enjoys an unlimited wealth of resources but possesses no tools for getting those resources organized. "I understand what it means to do history orto do theology," he objected, "but what does it mean to do spirituality?" StUdents contemplating work in spirituality will take small comfort in his remarks but they will know exactly what he meant, for, unlike most other academic disciplines, spirituality lacks both formal definition of its content and methodology proper to itself. Studies in the history of spirituality, prayer, religious life, Scripture, psychology, theology, and any number of authors and movements can be most beneficial in themselves, but where does one find the unifying principles to bring all this knowledge together? The occasional reader, who finds this or that work personally rewarding, will not be troubled by such abstract concerns,but this vagueness of content and style can be ~a formidable handicap for those who undertake a more thorough study, either for their own enlightenment or with the thought of being of service to others. In .the latter case one must analyze spiritualities, interpret them in their historical-cultural context, compare and contrast them to other spiritualities, and finally develop criteria for criticism and evaluation. The tools for such reflection are not commonly available in the way that they are for other disciplines, including theology.' Part of the difficulty lies in the very nature of spirituality. Except for the 3 4 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries it has been rare for theological speculation to elicit passionate responses on the part of Chris-tians, Spirituality, on the other hand, always makes at least an implicit appeal to the heart; it is much closer to people's lives and emotions than is theology. This is to be expected, but it places the "academic" study of spirituality in an awkward corner precisely because the material lends itself so immediately to practical application, the pastoral. Consequently, spirituality as a discipline finds itself more often called upon to train spiritual directors and retreat-givers than to engage in reflection. This onesidedness is risky. Spirituality can-not afford to neglect the mistakes or the riches which are a part of its heritage; nor can it forego with impunity the arduous task of using the theoretical pro-cess to correct the subtle mistakes of common sense.~ In a recent article for REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, Father Alan Jones chronicled the split between devotion and theology--head and heart--and called for the redevelopment of mystical theology in order to "combat the tendency to anti-intellectualism today, particularly in areas where religious experience is concerned.-3 Using William Johnston's definition of mysticism as "wisdom or knowledge that is found through love,'" Father Jones sug-gested contemplation--which includes all levels of knowing--as the means of bringing reflection into religious experience and religious experience into theological reflection. Father Jones's concern to bring head and heart together must be a con-stant preoccupation for spirituality; the great classics were developed more in the chapel than in the library, though they depended on both. However, I believe that we have an auxiliary task which is less "creative" and more "organizational" in character. In order to bring the vast and often unwieldy material from the history of spirituality into the arena of our prayerful reflec-tion it must first be arranged into digestible form. The purpose of this article will be to suggest some questions or distinctions by which such arrangement can proceed: in other words, a method for the study of spiritualities. Of course, this is an ambitious undertaking, and 1 will protest in advance that ' Theologians may protest that method is a problem for them, too, but at least work is being done. Recently David Tracy has suggested five basic models which have influenced theologica~ inquiry: orthodox, liberal, neo-orthodox, radical, and his own "revisionist" model. See David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (Seabury, 1975), pages 22-34. Tracy has been influenced in part:through. his long association with the thought of Bernard Lonergan. In a very important work, Method in Theology (Seabury, 1979; first published: Herder & Herder, 1972), Lonergan ~ipplied his transcendental method to the task of developing a method in theology. 1 will cite Lonergan only briefly in the course of this article, but 1 need to acknowledge that the influence of Method has been considerable. 2 For an explanation of the relationship of the realm of common sense and the realm of theory, see Lonergan, Method, pp. 257-258. ' Alan Jones, "Spirituality and Theology," Rt~vm'w ~oR R~.l.~G~Ot~s 39 (1980), p. 171. ' William Johnston, The Inner Eye of Love (Harper & Row, 1978), p. 20. Jones cites this on p. 170 of his article. Study of Spirituality / 5 these are remarks "toward a method." But since the need is great, I hope that .any venture in this direction might prove useful. Spirituality needs (1) a definition of itself, (2) some tools for analyzing a particular spirituality, (3) some guidelines for relating a spirituality to other spiritualities, and (4) some criteria for evaluation. In the pages that follow I will make attempts in the first three areas and then conclude with some limited thoughts about the fourth. What Is Spirituality? Everyone has a notion of spirituality, but efforts to pin it down in defini-tion can, be frustrating. It is everywhere yet nowhere; its scope is so vast-- potentially as vast as the sum and depth of all human experience--that workable content virtually disappears. Spirituality has been described as "life-style." If we realize that this means more than length of hair and particular preferences for food and clothing, this definiton is actually quite good. A person's spirituality is the way in which he or she lives in accordance with basic values. The famous Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, has given this a more philosophical formulation: "The way in which [an individual] acts and reacts habitually throughout his life according to his objective and ultimate insights and decisions.''~ The strength of such a definition lies in its completeness; its weakness is that it is too complete. We are left afloat on a sea of private human experience with no markers to make this or that dimension of experience stand out. These defini-tions are good because they include everything, but they are not workable because they distinguish nothing. And without distinctions analysis is impossible. What should we look for in a workable definition? First of all, a definition of spirituality for the purpose of study should limit the material to what is expressed. Nothing canbe studied unless it iscommunicated in some way. It is true that spirituality must deal with the mysterious depths of the human per-son in relationship to God and that. this mystery often defies conceptualiza-tion. However, it is usually open to communication through symbolization; and this, too, is a form of expression. Spirituality studies expressions, and these expressions can be conceptual or symbolic: they can be words, or they can be art, music, architecture, or indeed any form of human activity. Of course, an individual's full experience of his or her relationship with God can never be adequately expressed., not even symbolically. This is simply a dif-ficulty which the study of spirituality must accept; we can only examine what is expressed and yet we know that the expression is never exhaustive of the reality. Secondly, a definition of spirituality should contain the idea of personal ~ Hans Urs yon Balthasar, "The Gospel as Norm and Test of All Spirituality in the Church," from Spirituality in the Church, Christian Duquoc, editor, Concilium, vol 9 (Paulist, 1965), p. 7. 6 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 growth. There is no spirituality for an animal, nor do we ever speak of God's spirituality.~ What distinguishes the human condition is growth beyond self, self-transcendence. There is a restlessness which is a constant striving to move from the less~ authentic to the more authentic. This is why spirituality gravitates so readily to psychology, and it is precisely the point at which the greatest care must be exercised not to confuse the two.7 Finally, as indicated earlier, a workable definition must contain markers: terms in the definition which orient the material by distinguishing what is important from what is unimportant. Without some means of making distinc-tions the material of spirituality presents an undivided sameness inimical to study. Markers differentiate that material; and this, in turn, facilitates ques-tions for analysis. The particular selection of markers will necessarily be somewhat arbi.t.rary. Here I have chosen to view any spirituality primarily from the standpoint of expressions of the authentic and expressions of the inauthentic. A spiri'tuality, then, is the expression ofa dialecticalpersonal growth from the inauthentic to the authentic. There are three ingredients in the definition: expression, dialectical personal growth, and authentic-inauthentic. Expres-sion need not be clarified further. Growth has been called dialectical to underscore the fact that all spiritual growth is a simultaneous "yes" to one thing and a "no" to something else. Each step toward the authentic demands a corresponding rejection of the inauthentic.8 The Gospel of Luke manifests this dia.lectical character in its expression of the beatitudes: every benediction has its corresponding curse (Lk 6:20-26). Inauthentic and authentic are the markers referred to above. The total authenticity of a human person would be his or her complete self, transcendence in love. Conversely, total inauthenticity would be complete self-alienation, self-centeredness in hate. For our purposes, however, expres-sions of the authentic and inauthentic will normally be but partial representa-tions of these absolute states. In a famous line from the Imitation of Christ, for example, compunction is an expression of the authentic while vain knowledge is an expression of the inauthentic;9 they are signposts along the ~ Process theologians may take exception to this. In a di-polar notion of God one might be able to speak of God's spirituality: "God in his consequent aspect receives into himself that which occurs in the world, so that it becomes the occasion for newer and richer, as well as better~ concretions in the ongoing movement of divine activity," W. Norman Pittenger, "Process Thought: A Contem-porary Trend in Theology," Process Theology, Ewert H. Cousins, editor (Newman, 1971), p. 27. Even if one were to accept this position, it would be quite difficult to move from the idea of a spirituality of God to its description. ' It is very easy for spiritual direction to become psychological counseling. Of course, sometimes this is desirable because it is counseling which is needed, but often we slide into a counseling framework simply because it seems to have more substance than spiritual direction. This again reveals the necessity of definition and methodology proper to spirituality. a Lonergan views this as a fundamental characteristic of religious development. See Method, p. II0. Study of Spirituality / 7 way. Furthermore, specific expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic are not always univocal, even within the sam, e spirituality. In the Cloud of Unknowing, meditation on Christ's passion can be either an expression of the authentic or the inauthentic, depending on the stage of one's contemplative development.'° Questions for Analysis In an age as hermeneutically conscious as our own, it need not be stressed that a pre~'equisite for the analysis of any spirituality is some understanding of its historical-cultural context. To be unaware, for instance, that the end of the Roman persecutions coincided with the great movement to the desert in the fourth century would be to miss the opportunity for many insights into the roots of desert spirituality. The historical-cultural context is available for anyone who wishes to take the time to do someresearch. Our project assumes that this research can and will be done, but we are concerned here with something more general. Questions for analysis must serve two purposes. They must provide a means of organizing the material of a spirituality in such a way that the material can be more easily assimilated. In other words, they must teach us how to read and. how to retain what we read more effectively. The other pur-pose is that of comparison and contrast. The questions for analysis must be such that they canbe asked more or less equally of any spirituality. It is only by putting the same questions to many different bodies of material that we can begin, the,process o.f comparing similarities and contrasting differences which will lead us to deeper understanding. The first question flows immediately from the terms of the definition: what.are the expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic? An effective way to begin answering this question is to make a list. Reading through the SpiritualExercises of St. Ignatius, for instance, we would observe that shame and confusion, sorrow, tears, anguish, intimate knowledge, poverty, humility and gratitudeI' are but some of the expressions of the authentic; and we could do the same for expressions of the inauthentic. Making a list is a good way to begin because it directs us to the text with a simple and specific objective: how does the spirituality express what it values and what it rejects? An exhaustive 9 "I would rather feel compunction of heart for my sins than merely know the definition of com-punction," Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, edited with an introduction by Harold C. Gardiner (Image, 1955), Book I, chapter 1. ,o The Cloud of Unknowing, by an anonymous fourteenth-century Englishman, edited and in-troduced by William Johnston (Image, 1973), chapter vii. , '~ Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, translation by Louis J. Puhl (Newman, 1954). Shame and confusion, sorrow, tears and anguish are from the First Exercise of the First Week, #48; intimate knowledge of Christ is from the First Comtemplation of the Second Week, #104; poverty and humility are from the Two Standards, #147; and gratitude isffrom the Contemplation to Attain the Love of God, #233. 8'/Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 list is rarely possible or even desirable, but we do want to be certain that we ini-tiate our analysis by carefully gathering all of the pertinent expressions. A list gives us the concrete expressions from which to work, but it is too one-dimensional to be of more than limited value. By itself a list cannot single out those expressions which are of special importance, nor can it fit them into a pattern of meaning. What we lack is an organiz.ing form'2 which could give the expressions depth and a relationship to one another. In the SpiritualExer-cises an excellent illustration of such a form is the image of the Two Stand-ards: the Kingdom of Christ verstis the Kingdom of SatanI' ~ The Kingdom of Christ gives depth and relationship to t.he expressions of the authentic while the Kingdom of Satan does the ~ame for the inauthentic. Intimate knowledge, poverty, humility, gratitude and the like contribute definite nuances to the understanding of the nature of these two kingdoms; and the expressions, in turn, receive their full meaning only in relationship to the complete image. The Two Standards are the unifying image for expressions in Ignatian spirituality. While Ignatius himself gives the organizing form of the Two Standards, it is often necessary to uncover a form which is not itself one of the particular images used in a given text. Such would be thecase in the Life'ofAntony by Athanasius. ~4 Clearly the text does not lack for images, but the best organizing form is rather the structure which Athanasius employs to develop his story: a series of four withdrawals by Antony, each one into greater solitude. The authgr uses these withdrawals to highlight periods of development in Antony's life, and each period unifies a corresponding set of expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic. In the first withdrawal Antony left his home to li~,e on the outskirts of the village with an older ascetic. The expressions of the authentig and the inauthentic are characteristic of a "novitiate" period: zeal, faith, desire for purity of heart, imitation 6f the older ascetic were set in opposition to anxiety over f~mily, money, fame, difficulties of asceticism and sexuality. In the second withdrawal, closing himself into a tomb,, the chief ex- '~ The identification of basic units (expr~essions of the authentic and the inauthentic) and the discovery of the forms by which these expressions are related have a slight resemblance to struc-turalism. However, a double caution is in order. In i!s extreme sense structuralism can become an ideology in which all we can know about a system are its basic units and their associations; further meaning would be denied. In a less ideological sense structuralism is a method of inquiry which can be more friendly to theology and spirituality, but even here--as the term can be 'very am-biguous- l wish to make clear that my own use is limited to exactly what has been described in the text. '~ Spiritual Exercises, #13~,- 148. ~' St. Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, was probably the author of the Life ofA ntony shortly after the hermit's death in 356. Antony represented a prototype .for the desert fathers, and, whatever the historical accuracy of the Life, it c~ertainly had a profound influence" on desert spiritqality. This important work is once again available in English: Athanasius: The Life of St. AntOny and the Letter to Marcellinius, translation and introduction by Robert C. Gregg, preface~ by William A. CIcbsh (Paulist, 1980~ Study of Spirituality p~'essions of the inauthentic are wild imaginings, terror and the temptation to flight, while defiance of the demons, perseverance and faith are expressio ~ns of the authentic. From the tomb Antony went to live in an abandoned fort in the desert where he was besieged by the demons. A hint of weariness from the clamor of the demons is the only expression of the inauthentic while expres-sions of the authentic reflect Antony's growing strength: confidence, utter equilibrium, purity of soul, and so forth. Antony's final withdrawal was to the "inner mountain" which is described in paradisal terms. The expression of the inauthentic most characteristic of this period is pride in the power God has given him; while the expressions of the authentic are the manifestations of the power of the Spirit working through Antony: overpowering the demons, curing the sick, instructing the monks and confiz lnding the heretics.~ It is not always possibly to find a single form o of material together. One rather difficult text is tt fine analysis of this spiritual classic, Bernard SI truths which they [the four books of the Imitati~ ranged according to a precise play, a rational s~ dialectic."~6 Much of the difficulty is due to the sl of thoughts useful to the spiritual life, possibly There is a variety of equal themes, and so no sine could give unity to all the expressions. The most o is to discover, or invent, several forms which toge into useful patterns. As a corollary to the organizing forms we can i of the authentic and the inauthentic for stages of s life is a type of growth but in many well-devei specified stages,'7 and the key for detecting thesl sions of the authentic and the inauthentic. When ~ authentic becomes an expression of the inauthen growth has been crossed. An example of this ha~ i the Cloud of Unknowing: meditation on Christi! the authentic for the beginner but just the oppt vanced in the spirit of contemplation. Sometimes 'image which will tie a body Imitation of Christ. In his ~aapen has noted that "the n] enfold have not been ar-ructure, or a psychological yle of the work: a collection by more than one author. le form can be found which ne can do in such a situation ther best gather the material dso examine the expressions !iritual growth. All spiritual 9ed spiritualities there are ~ stages lies with the expres-particular expression of the tic, then a stage of spiritual dready been furnished from passion is an expression of ~site for someone more ad-the stages of growth will be '~ The four journeys: leaving his home to live on the outskirts of a village (Life of Antony, c. 4); living in the tomb (Ibid, c. 8); from tl~e tomb to the abandoned fort (Ibid, cc. 11-12); and the withdrawal to the inner mountain (Ibid, cc. 49-51). ,6 Bernard Spaapen, "A New Look at an Old Classic," from Imitating Christ, E. Malatesta, editor, Religious Experience Series, vol. 5 (Abbey Press, 1974). This work is a translation from the French Dictionary of Spirituality. " Frequently a spirituality will describe the break between an unreflective Christian life and the desire to lead a more spiritual life. Another break occurs later when the Christian leaves the period characterized by struggle and "spiritual achievement" and moves more into a climate of sur-render and "spiritual giftedness." The classical distinctions have been the three ways: purgative, illuminative, and unitive. 10 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 the structure giving unity to the material, but this will not always be the case. The second question for analysis comes from the idea of personal growth. A ~pirituality which reaches the state of expression does not appear out of the vacuum, but it is the maturation of much personal experience. One or many have traveled a similar dialectical journey from the inauthentic to the authen-tic and from this experience comes a wealth of valuable insight. This insight, which embodies both the techniques and the lived experience of the journey, can be called wisdom, and it is the ob)ect of the second question: what is the wisdom of a particular spirituality? To discover the wisdom of'a particular spirituality we must look at its teaching. In what special manner does a spirituality propbse.to find God, and what experience flows from its techniques of encounter? In the Life of Antony, for example, wisdom comes especially from the experience of solitude, x~hich for the desert fathers meant struggle with demons representing every imaginable thought or feeling. The wisdom of the Life of Antony is expressed in a long speech by the hermit to a group of other hermits assembled for the occasion.'8 This speech, often called a speech on discernment, is a description of what to expect in solitude and how to deal with whatever (or whomever) occurred. The wisdom of the desert employs some of the most colorful and varied imagery in the history of spirituality, but it is always characterized by the detection and diminishment of interior turmoil in order to find and preserve apatheia.'9 A very different example, though with striking parallels, is fouhd in the wisdom of St. Ignatius. The Spiritual Exercises express wisd6m not in speeches but in appendices: rules for thinking with the Church, rules for eating, rules for discernment, and so on. Ignatian wisdom, however, is not contained equally in all these rules but in one special and famous set: the rules for the discernment of spirits.2° As mentioned above, the primary image of lgnatian spirituality is the Two Standards, and the go~.l is to serve with Christ who wishes to spread his Kingdom and defeat the Kingdom of Satan. Now these kingdoms will enjoy victory or suffer defe~t as a result of our particular choices. However, the kingdoms are distinguished from each other less by the ,8 Life of Antony, cc. 16-43. ,9 Apatheia was the ascetical goal of the desert fathers. It was not apathy but rather a state of in-terior calm and recollection. Athanasius described this state in the Life of Anthony: "The state of his soul was one of purity, for it was not cpnstricted by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor affected by either laughter or dejection. Moreover, when he saw th'e crowd, he was not annoyed any more than he was elated at being embraced by so many people. He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by reason and steadfast in that which accords with nature" (c. 14). Perhaps the best summary of desert wisdom is contained in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399), especially in his Praktikos. This has been translated together with Chapters on Prayer and published as Praktikos: Chapters on Prayer translated and edited by John Eudes Bamberger, O.C.S.O. (Cistercian Publication, 1970). ~o Spiritual Excercises, #313-336. Study of Spirituality object of a particular choice than by attitudes. Consequently, the disciple of Christ must differentiate between objects of possible choice according to authenticating.feelings (attitudes) or their opposites. The rules for the discern-ment of spirits, are Ignatius' wisdom for making this all important differentia-tion and decision. There is no need to multiply examples. Wisdom gets at the heart of a particular spirituality because it taps the special experience of the person or persons who have lived it. Often referred to "thoughts" in describing the struggle of solitude and to apatheia as the goal of that struggle. For Ignatius, the key word would be discernment. On the other hand, there need not be but one wisdom for every spirituality. Moving beyond the Spiritual Exercises one could speak also of a wisdom of obedience in Ignatius. The 0b)ective~is to identify the central insights of a spirituality; insights, however, that flow from matured experience. Finally, we.should underline the fact that questions for analysis--expres-sions and wisdom--are effective for focusing and organizing the material, but they certainly do not exhaust its riches. In addition to the fact that no set of questions can ever draw everything from the material, a spirituality will always retain a certain opacity regardless of how carefully it is scrutinized; ~and we will always find ourselx~es returning to the source for clarification, new insight, and personal edification. However, at some point in time we must determine that an analysis is finished, both in the number of questions asked and in the depth of the answers. It is the suggestion of this article that the two questions given above will focus and organize the material sufficiently to enable us to turn to the wider arena of comparison and contrast of different spiritualities. Questions for Comparison and Contrast Bernard Lonergan has described method as"a normative pattern of recur-rent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results.''2' What we have thus far isnot a complete method but its foundation. Questions for analysis provide a normative pattern of operat!ons which can be applied to. any number of particular spiritualities, but only continued application fol-lowed by comparison and contrast will yield cumulative and progressive results. Now the general matter for any comparison and contrast would normally be the exprbssions of the authentic and the inauthentic, the images and forms which give them unity, and the expressions of wisdom. From this one could proceed in any number of ways depending only on time, interest, and avail-ability of sources. Let us suppose, for example, that someone was interested in the general topic of prayer and that he or she had some familiarity with both 2, Lonergan, Method, p. 4. 12 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 the Cloud of Unknowing and the works of John of the Cross. Even an exami-nation'of the titles would reveal that "cloud" and "night" are expressions of the authentic for both. A study of the similarities and differences between the Cloud's understanding of "cloud" and John of the Cross's understanding of "night" might prove to be a straightforward and interesting investigation into the meaning of apophatic prayer.2' Ordinarily the work of comparison and contrast will draw heavily on our ability to understand the relative hist6rical-cultural contexts. This can be given some direction, however, if we keep in mind two principles for compari-son. The first is that a spirituality cannot help but reflect certain cosmological perspectives. As a result we should always ask: what understandings of space and time shape the relationship between self, world, and God for a particular spirituality? For example, the Life of Antony used a simple cosmological framework which placed a person on top of the world but under two concen-tric hemispheres: the air, which was the abode of the demons, and the sky, which was heaven and the abode of God. Thus, to go to God one had to leave the world and ascend through the air, and this meant battles with the demons. Today we experience ourselves through a cosmology which is couched in evolutionary and psychological terms. Instead of place, time is the important parameter: it is no longer "up" and "down" which correspond to the authen-tic and the inauthentic but "transformation" and "regression." The discovery and investigations of the unconscious have forged a new vocabulary for our descriptions of evil, human growth, and the nature of freedom. The unconscious has also given us a new locus for expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic. The cosmology of the day--be it Antony's, our own, or any other--will not only shape the expressions of spirituality but it will also locate those expressions in accordance with its perception of the relationship in time and space of self, world, and God. ~: The cosmological questions can be made specific. The question, "'Where is Christ?" yields interesting resolts when asked of St. Basil the Great (fourth century) and St. Ignatius (sixteenth century). Each has a passage about Christ the King and his call to men and women to follow him, but note the different images for describing where Christ is and the practical consequences for discipleship. For Basil: "Where is Christ the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your course. Forget all earthly delights.''23 Ignatius, however, perceived the world as friendlier potential for the self's encounter with God: "Consider Christ our Lord, standing in a lowly place in a great plain about the region of Jerusalem . ,,2, And instead of forgetting the world in order to go to Christ in heaven, Ignatius See note 28 below. Basil, "An Introduction to the Ascetical Life," From St. Basic, Ascetical Works, TheFathers of The Church vol. 9, translated by Sister M. Monica Wagner, C.S.C. (New York, 1950), p. 9. Spiritual Exercises, #144. ¯ Study of Spirituafity / 13 encourages people to follow a Christ who "sends them throughout the whole world to spread his sacred doctrine among all men, no matter what their state or condition.''25 We can do similar comparisons for time. "'When will Christ come?" For St. Paul and the early Christians the answer was, "Soon!" But for most of the Church's history until recently, the question of time hasn't been that impor-tant. Most Christians tended to regard the world as having a certain timeless stability. The important time was not Christ's coming in glory but the individ-ual's meeting with Christ at death. Today, however, an evolutionary con-sciousness has made time very important. When will Christ come for someone imbued with the vision of Teilhard de Chardin? He will come when the human race, now responsible for cooperating in its own evolution, will have (with God's grace) brought about the kingdom. Statements about time and place are not theological statements; they are descriptions of world views. The location of a spirituality within its particular cosmological framework makes possible the comparison and contrast of similar expressions which come from widely different historical-cultural con-texts. It would be far beyond the scope of this article to attempt to outline the world views which have shaped and been shaped by western thought, but it is worth mentioning here two books which are particularly insightful: Romano Guardini's The End of the Modern World and John Dunne's A Search for God in Time andMemory.~6 Guardini has mapped out four cosmologies fun-damental to the history of western thought: classical, medieval, modern, and post-modern. If we take into account that much has occurred which might further clarify his analysis of the present (post-modern) period, this work is very useful. Dunne has given the study of world views an interesting refine-ment by pointing to the different~ ways in which autobiographies have been written: a story of deeds (classical), a gamut of experience (Augustine), a lad-der of experience (medieval), and a story of appropriation (modern and con-temporary). This does not do justice to the nuances given by Dunne, but the distinctions he introduces are invaluable for appreciating the genres under which spiritual growth has been described. A second principle for comparison and contrast is that there exist specifi-cally different, yet equally valid, spiritualities within the Church. In other words, spiritualities differ not only because of various historical-cultural backgrounds, but they also differ according to type. Of course, a rigid and exclusive classification would be impossible and undesirable, but the varied emphases of many spiritualities suggest that we might discover several models which would help us to better understand similarities and differences. ~ lbid, #145. 2~ John Dunne, A Search for God in Time and Memory (Macmillian, 1967). Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World, edited with an introduction by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, translated by Joseph Theman and Herbert Burke (Sheed and Ward, 1956). "14 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 To develop models it Js necessary to select criteria for differentiation. This selection, always arbitrary, establishes the parameters by which the models are distinguished. Here the criteria will be "attitudes" toward two potential loci for expressions of the authentic: the world--including human society and institution--and history--especially change and conversion. We can deter-mine the models by asking this question: does a spirituality view the world and/or history as a positive locus for expressions of the authentic?2' If a spirituality is not positive toward either we will call it apophatic; if it is positive toward both we will call it apostolic; if it is positive toward the world but not toward history we will call it city-ofrGod; and if it is positive toward history but not toward the world we will call it prophetic. At one extreme, answering "no" to both the world and to history, are the apophatic'8 spiritualities. These are the mystical spiritualities known to us today primarily through the Cloud of Unknowing, John of the Cross, and Thomas Merton. For an apophatic spirituality, the chief expression of the authentic is negation of the specific image: one goes toGod through unknow-ing or through darkness. It should be stressed, however, that the apophatic spiritualities do not necessarily hold that the world is evil or that history is meaningless; one need only think of the concern and involvement of Thomas Merton. The apophatic spiritualities emphasize a wisdom of contemplation through negation, and the goal of that contemplation is the love and knowledge of God. A curiosity of apophatic prayer is that its central insight-negation- should never be practiced by a beginner. Both the Cloud and John of the Cross counsel that apophatic prayer is not for everyone, that beginners should definitely rely on the media.ting image, and that there are signs by which one can know if he or she is called to this form of prayer.'9 At the other extreme, answering "yes" to both world and history, are the apostolic spiritualities. An apostolic spirituality views the world and history as a locus for self-transformation, Its expressions can vary greatly. Ignatius was concerned with "the defense and propagation of the faith and the progress of souls.''3° For Ignatius holiness was found through an involvement with the 27 The idea for this came to me from reading John Macquarrie, Christian Hope (Seabury, 1978). In a s~ction called, "A Typology of Interpretations" (pp.86-88), Macquarrie works out four types of Christian hope: individual vs. social, this-worldly vs. other-worldly expectations, evolutionary vs. revolutionary, and realized vs. future. 2a Apophatic: in speaking of God one can either affirm certain truths (kataphatic theology) or, realizing that God is beyond any conceptualization, one can speak o'f him by negation (apophatic theology). The apophatic mystics are those whose way the the way of unknowing. This can be found to a high degree in many mystical writers, and the chief source for ~their apophatic vocabulary is the work of a mysterious Syrian monk of the t:ifth or sixth century who has been known through the ages as Dionysius the Areopagite or pseudo-Dionysius. 29 Cloud of Unknowing, c. 75. John of the Cross~ Ascent of Mount Carmel, translated, edited, and introduced by E. Allison Peers (Image, 1958) Book I1, c. xiii, pp. 219-223. ~0 Ignatius Loyola, The Formula of the Institute, as contained in the papal bull, Exposcit debitum Study of Spirituality world in an attempt to spread the kingdom. Ignatius' successor, Father Pedro Arrupe, wants "the conversion of the individual" but he also wants to "transform the world into a fit habitation for justice and humanity.''3' It is important to distinguish apostolic work from apostolic spirituality as that model is being described here. Everyone is called in some way to the apostolate, but not everyone seeks God primarily through involvement with the world and the transformation of its history. When a particular spirituality adopts the vocabulary of involvement and transformation in its expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic and in its statement of wisdom, then it exem-plifies the essential marks of the apostolic model. A city-of-Godspirituality, saying "yes" to the world and "no" to history, is characterized by the location of expressions of the authentic in one special place in the world to the exclusion of others. This place, which then becomes a reflection of the kingdom of God, could be a monastery, the home, or even the individual human heart. St. Benedict summarized his wisdom in the form of a Rule: how to live the kingdom together in the monastery. The Imitation of Christ counsels flight to the safety of our own hearts where "you will see the kingdom of God come into your soul.''32 A city-of-God spirituality has probably been the norm for most Christians throughout history, and it is also a characteristic of every other type of spirituality, even if not the primary one. Whenever we focus on a particular community or on our own heart we are highlighting the city-of-God dimension of our spiritual lives, The prophetic spirituality finds expressions of the authentic in .history but not in the world. The Old Testament prophet offered interpretations of history as well as judgments. The radical poverty of St. Francis of Assisi was a judgment of the abuse of material wealth and it was a sign of hope in a God who would fulfill all promises. Prophetic spirituality is often characterized.by living one or more of the gospel values to an extreme: Francis and poverty, the virgins and ascetics living a life of celibacy while awaiting martyrdom in the early Church, or the gospel-motivated civil disobedience in our own times. While prophetic spirituality often contains the dimension of a "challenge" it certainly need not be a gloomy spirituality--as witnessed by the joy of St. Francis. Once again, we must not adhere to these models too rigorously. The ex-amples given above illustrated the tendencies of their respective models to a marked degree; but most spiritualities, includ!ng those mentioned, are mix-of July 21, 1550. Translation from Th~ Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, translated and edited by George Ganss (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), p. 66. ~ Pedro Arrupe, "The Challenge of the World and the Mission of the Society," opening address to the Thirty-Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus. Published in .4 Planet to Heal translated with notes by John Harriott (Ignatian Center of Spirituality, Rome, 1975), p. 312. ~ Imitation of Christ, Book 11, c. 1. 16 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 tures of all four, with perhaps one or more predominating. With this caution. in mind we could make use of the models to organize and clarify the dif-ferences and similarities we observe among the various spiritualities. For ex-ample, both Ignatius of Loyola and John of the Cross were sixteenth-century Spanish saints who shared the same geography and culture. The spiritualities of both these men are familiar enough to us that we would not be surprised to find a number of significant differences in spite of similar backgrounds. We know that consolation is an important part of the spirituality of Ignatius: it is an expression of the authentic, something to be sought in prayer. For John of the Cross, on the other hand, consolation in prayer was often a sign of the in-authentic: the contemplative advancing in prayer should neither seek consola-tion nor trust it when it came.~3 This apparent contradiction is resolved when we remember that we are dealing with two very different models of spiritual-ity. John, the apophatic mystic who shuns specific images so as to approach God in the "night," is consistent within his model when he rejects consola-tions. Ignatius, the apostolic man who finds God in the world through specific choices, is consistent in asking to have these choices confirmed through con-solation. Apophatic and apostolic are different paths of spiritual growth. Towards Evaluation Ultimately evaluation is the responsibility of the Church, and over the cen-turies she has generally given a wide latitude to the expressions claiming to be of the Spirit. As long as a spirituality refrained from making its charism nor-mative for all Christians, maintained a balanced view of theology and human nature, and did not habitually defy the directions of the hierarchy, the Church has been at least tolerant if not actively supportive. Ronaid Knox has catalogued a number of exotic spiritual movements beginning with the Corin-thian community, and his very thorough work is an encyclopedia of spiritual aberrations together with the appropriate judgment of the Church.3' Negative criteria are much easier to establish than positive, and the records of the Holy Office detail specific distortions to be avoided rather than positive principles on which to build. But, then, most great spiritual leaders did not consult the Vatican archives in order to construct a charism; they responded to the work of the Spirit and left the editing to others. Nonetheless~ it is possible to point out three indicators of a good spirituality: good theology, good sense, and good results. Good spirituality must flow out of the Christian communi-ty's understanding of the gospel and hence must exhibit good theology. Spirituality is a human movement, and so good spirituality should reflect a keen sensitivity to the human condition--good sense. Finally, a good spirituality will produce good results because it will be the work of the Holy Spirit-- "Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty" (Jn 15:5). John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, cc. 4, 7. Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford University Press, 1961). Study of Spirituality / 17 Good theology and good sense are not abstract principles which can be ap-plied unerringly to any new situation. In most cases they are the culmination of a long process of give and take between the Church and the proponents of a new spirituality. On the one side there must be an increasingly sympathetic understanding of the expressions of the new spirituality; on the other, there must be a growing clarification of the meanings of those expressions. Let us take St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans as an example. The cry for the vita apostolica--a return to the life of the gospels in penance, poverty, and preaching--did not appear suddenly in 1206 when Francis over-came his fear of leprosy. The twelfth century had already witnessed a large nu.mber of spiritual movements toward the vita apostolica, and many of these movements were in tension with the Church. A change in the socio-economic climate, the abuses of wealth especially among the clergy, and the Church's own reforms of the eleventh century had brought about a hunger for new ways of expressing the spiritual aspirations of those who did not feel called to the cloistered life of the monastery. The Cathars,3~ the Humiliati,~6 and the Waldensians~' were some of the better known movements which answered to this hunger. Almost inevitably there was resistance from the official Church. If we leave aside misunderstandings and personal animosities, this resistance was usually on theological and pastoral grounds. Theologically, the new movements presented opinions ranging from the outright dualism of the Cathars tothe denial of the validity of a sacrament administered by a corrupt priest. Such theological opinions, which touched the sacramental nature of the Church, could not be tolerated. Pastorally, the issue was normally over the right to preach. Did a person who took the gospel seriously and lived poorly have the right to preach without the permission of the local clergy or bishops? Both the Waldensians and the Humiliati approached Rome for approval but were rebuffed on the question of preaching. No one denied the need for greater poverty, and the pope himself called ~' The Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were especially active in southern France from the middle of the twelfth century. They were virtually a distinct religion with their own organization of dioceses. Theologically they were influenced by the Bogomils of Bulgaria whose theology can be traced back to a Manichean dualism. ~6 The Waldensians were an evangelical movement founded by Valdes, a merchant from Lyons~ They attempted to remain orthodox but were forbidden to preach at the time of the Third Lateran Council (I 179). ~' The Humiliati appeared in northern Italy during the second part of the twelfth century. They were forbidden to preach in 1179 but were eventually reconciled to the Church by Innocent III in 1201. He gave them a threefold rule which regulated the men as canons regular, the women as religious, and a group of married people as a type of third order. For an interesting treatment of the dealings of Innocent Ill with the Humiliati see Brenda Bolton, "Innocent lll's Treatment of the Humiliati", from Popular Belief and Practice, edited by G.J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge University Press, 1972). 18 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 the bishops and clergy to task for their failure to preach the gospel;38 it was a c/uestion of finding the right form. What took place in the twelfth century was a twofold development whereby the new expressions of spirituality were being clarified against the theological-pastoral demands of the Church; and the Church was learning to listen with more sympathy to the different spiritual needs of her people. By the end of the century the time was ripe for Francis and Dominic. Of course, the phenomenon of St. Francis was not just the inevitable out-come of an historical development. It was also the special work of God's grace in a man who was both generous enough to respond to the call for a life of radical poverty and humble enough to listen to the voice of the Church. Nonetheless, that long century of development points to the kind of prepara-tion and hard work out of which true spiritual insight is born. Nor did Innocent lII's approval of Francis in 1209 complete the process. As numbers increased problems did also. Good sense and a sound understanding of human nature called for certain modifications. More structure and organiza-tion were needed which could channel the charism without destroying it. Pro-vinces were established, local houses and superiors appointed and a year's novitiate was required.39 If we shift back into our own century we realize that the Church is con-stantly faced with new expressions of spirituality arising from the legitimate aspirations of a people hungering for God. These new movements need ~to be examined in the light of good theology and good sense, and they need to receive the sympathetic understanding of the Church. A serious study of spirituality can make a genuine contribution to this endeavor. First of all, a new spirituality needs to identify, and then clarify its expres-sions. This is the work of analysis described earlier. What are the expressions of the authentic and the inauthentic and the forms which organize them? What is its wisdom? Only after these questions are carefully answered does theological evaluation become possible. When we know the expressions of the spirituality and their relationship to one another, then we know its theological stance and we can judge it. The analysis will also reveal the spirituality's perspective on human nature, its understanding of the human condition. While great care must be exercised here, it would violate good sense to have a ,8 In his treatment of the twelfth century, M.-D. Chenu wrote: "Peter the Chanter had denounced the 'most dreadful silence' (pessima taciturnitas) of the clergy, and both Peter and Innocent Ill had invoked a phrase from Isaiah (56:10) to repudiate "these muted dogs who don't have it in them to bark," M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century." Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, selected, edited, and translated by Jerome Taylor and Lester L. Little. preface by I~tienne Gilson. (University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 244. ~9 For a discussion of these developments, see Cajetan Esser, Origins of the Franciscan Order, translated by Aedan Daly, O.F.M: and Dr. lrina Lynch (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1970); see especially Chapter Ill: "First Crises and Attempts to Overcome Them." Study of Spirituality / 19 spirituality which proved to be psychologically destructive. It has unfor-tunately happened in the history of spirituality that "leaving the world" has become an occasion for hatred and destruction of the self or the body rather than a love for God?° Finally, analysis of a new spirituality will reveal its in-ternal coherence or lack thereof. This is important because personal growth demands a certain degree of unity of purpose and technique, and a spirituality which seems to move in many different directions at the same time will only provoke confusion and frustration. While this may appear to be obvious, it is not always so easy to recognize. For example, a spirituality expressed entirely in a nineteenth-century idiom might exhibit good theology and good psychology, but unless it is able to translate itself coherently into the language and forms of the twentieth century there will always be an unnecessary tension from trying to operate in a world view, a cosmology, which is no longer our own. This was one of the reasons for Vatican II's call for adaptation in religious life. In addition, a new spirituality needs to be understood externally, and this is the work of comparison and contrast. From the Church's standpoint, evaluation will be enhanced wfien a spirituality is known in relation to other spiritualities both past and present. This much goes without saying~ But such an external understanding'can also be quite useful for the spirituality itself. One of the habitual dangers for a new movement is to see itself as being unique in respo ~nding to the call of the gospels. Time and time again this has resulted in sectarianism and heresy. When a spirituality understands itself in the con-text of.history it will be better able to appreciate its uniqueness without overestimating its importance. 40 An extreme example of this might be found in the Cathars who practiced (though rarelY,) a form of suicide by starvation called endura. This occurred only after the reception of the consolamen-turn which was a conbination of baptism and Eucharist. Once the believer received the con'- solarnentum he or she was to live without any sin whatsoever. It was in fear of a relapse that some chose to end their lives as soon after consolsmentum as possible. The Treasurer As Professional Paschal Phillips, O.C.S.O. Father Phillips is a member of the monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey; Lafayette, OR 97127. Ulnder the bland title of this article lurks a contentious thesis. I hope to demonstrate that the function of the provincial treasurer is a specialized, pro-fessional calling, importantly distinct from related professions such as accounting or management, but every bit as clearly definable and of crucial importance to religious communities. The practical issue of all this appears in the damage done through failure to recognize or effectively utilize this unique function, and the concomitant misjudgments concerning training, qualification, and role recognition. Problems of Definition At the outset, the multiplicity of terms presents a hurdle with symbolic overtones. Titles such as "procurator" "econome" "cellarer" "fiscus" and "minister" vie with more commonplace old standbys like "treasurer" and "business manager" in vague but roughly interchangeable usage. The fact that such nebulous nomenclature has continued points to a lack of reflection on the common nature of the office underlying the multiple titles. Admittedly the office, which we shall for simplicity's sake henceforth call "treasurer," does admit of multiple definitions, since it changes not only from congregation to congregation, but, even more radically, with the person-alities of the incumbent and of the major superior served by the incumbent. In fact, it is usually easier to note major differences in the function which ensue from each provincial election than it is to discover a consistent pattern of divergence between the "economes" of congregation X and the "proc-urators" of congregation Y. 2O The Treasurer as Professional / 21 Besides, any congregation is free to define the duties of its various officers without having to make special reference to neat patterns convenient to the writers of magazine articles. It might follow that analyzing the functions of a treasurer is spreading nets to catch the wind, and that the function--if indeed there is a function at all--is characterized mostly by its lack of fixed form, for its utility lies largely in adapting to present circumstances and local custom. This is certainly true so far as peripheral duties such as bookkeeping go. But, under all the pluralism, a hard core of significance remains that may reward further reflection. The Core Function We live in a world of professionalism. Our first thought, in any need, is to call in a specialist. But routine can create problems. We are so used to calling in an "ologist,"'or training a member of the community to become one (which amounts to the same thing) that we hardly notice, much less reflect upon, the rather delicate set of questions that ought to proceed the call: Do we need help? Is this area important? Wti6m shall we consult? How Will the answers we get be conveyed to the community and its superiors? How will they be adapted to our needs? And how will we know that the answers have been accurately grasped, and emotionally accepted? The core-function of the provincial treasurer appears to be discovered through asking questions such as those, and providing some approaches to the answers. The function might be defined as liaison between the religious pur-pose of the community, and "the world" as organizational (business, legal, financial aspects). An example may clarify. Take the question of accounting: in many a congregation, any sentence which connects the words "treasurer" and "professional" automatically elicits the image of technical accountant. After all, the thinking goes, do we not carefully train teachers and cooks, pro-vincials and novice masters? So send the treasurer off to the university, and turn him or her into a C.P.A.! But there's the rub! We may have trained a C.P.A. who can perform a useful function-- but we have not trained a treasurer. This is not to deny that technical accounting abilities are one of the building blocks, but it does sug-gest that one building block does not make a whole structure. Reconstruct the scene from, that unfamiliar vantage point which defines the treasurer as the person who provides the liaison between the religious com-munity as religious and "the world" as organization. Obviously, accounting expertise is essential to understand and analyze much of what the organiza-tional world has to say to the religious, as it is also essential to translate some of the organizational and support problems of the community into a concise form that can be understood by speakers of "business-ese." But to stop at that point sets the stage for a familiar scenario: a treasurer who conceives his entire function to be that of expert in accounting (and he exists in a milieu where the tacit assumptions all reenforce this point of view), produces ever 22 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 more sophisticated and technically accurate quarterly reports, and submits them in all their complexity to a superior and council whose ability to under-stand them is no more sophisticated than it ever was. In practice the community ends with some poorly conceived mixture of ad hoc remedies. For example, the superior himself burns the midnight oil, hoping to assimilate the skills which enable business executives to glean their impressive insights from such corporate accounts. What has happened is that the already overburdened superior has taken on what is actually the core role of the treasurer. He is attempting to interpret to himself what the business world is saying, and the results are not always happy. The major superior has no time, really, to handle this added, and usually unwelcome chore. Neither does the training nor the personality traits which qualify a good religious superior easily blend well with the demands of business administration. Fur-ther, the superior is there~by subtly insulated from one key source of counsel, and this in an ominous way, since the change is scarcely noticed. Another common reaction of sophisticated reporting to .an unsophisti-cated audience is one of bland beffiddlement. An increasing percentage of council and community simply announce that they have no time for that sort of thing. They are sure that"such i~pressive figures must mean something, and "it is so comforting to realize that we can depend on such a skilled and dedicated treasurer." This remedy: so called, operates in the reverse of the one before. Now it is the treasurer who is isolated from needed feedback and in-telligent questioning, and the treasurer slowly begins to make decisions (or, more commonly, subconsciously to set things up so that only one decision can be made) which should have involved the superior's informed judgment from the start. The misunderstandings and confusions which result, and which so often are blamed on instincts for power or on exaggerated professionalism, are at root only the natural concomitants of poor role-definition. The above examples are painted in bold strokes. In practice any trained treasurer makes a more or less intelligent effort to translate the economic trends revealed by the analysis of the community books and by a general familiarity with the business cycle (changes of interest rates, increasing cost of government, red tape, inflation), and in those cases where this function is handled with skill and sensitivity, there is no doubt that the treasurer's office is being well served by its present incumbent. However, the main point is precisely that a function so delicate and so important should not be performed in a fit of absentmindedness. Few realize that there is the exact point where unreflective instincts, presenting a hastily conceived adaptation of the secular counterpart found in stockholders reports, as unverified assumption that "they" got the message, in short, amateurism, can effectively negate the benefits arising from professional accounting, skilled business analysis, and all the rest. The Treasurer as Professional / 23 Title and Function It should be apparent that one of our problems stems from the very title "treasurer," with its built-in connotation of "bookkeeper." Things are slightly better in more ancient Orders where the person filling this liaison role is called by some more generic title such as "procurator," but the basic prob-lem of role-definition usually remains unexamined. It is entirely possible that the "core function" we have been elaborating could be performed by someone other than the titular treasurer. Indeed, one of the problems is precisely that such is often the case, that, for lack of reflec-tion on the situation, this crucial liaison function is poorly performed by per-sons who scarcely realize they are even involved in such a role. Take, for example, these instances where some dedicated lay person now holds the office of provincial treasurer. There can be no question of these indi-viduals' technical skills, but, on the other hand, there can be little chance that they could ever deal with the community on the deep level of two-way com-munication that is needed to perform this liaison function. Yet someone must be performing that function--however imperfectly--or else the community would be left on the legendary "Cloud 9," a not unknown circumstance, sad to relate. Whoever that "someone" is, he or she is the de facto treasurer, while the holder of the titular office doubtless remains, skilled in his other profes-sion which is valid in itself but different in scope. Still, the very essence of the liaison function does d~mand an alert, in-formed, and up-to-date acquaintance with modern business and government trends. It is doubtful that any community officer except the treasurer would have the time, or even the inclination, to remain permanently qualified for the role. So if the titular treasurer is not the one functioning in the liaison role, our foregone conclusion is that sooner or later the function will be indifferently served. The essential connection between membership in the religious community and the liaison function is illumined more by practice than theory. At the risk of running one example to death we return to the quarterly accounting report. If the treasurer saw liaison as his or her primary function, the first question would still be "where can I hire a skilled .accounting technician to generate thoroughly reliable and professional figures?" Even the second question might be equally unsurprising: "Have I assured myself that I have the technical expertise to evaluate, accurately and professionally, the implications of the figures so presented?" (Already the field has broadened: the evaluation would, of necessity, include factors not strictly within the purview of an ac-countant.) It is the next step which becomes more demanding. "Exactly who are the real power-people and opinion-molders in the congregation, ~:egardless of title? And which items in this mass of data are the ones they need in order to make the decisions pertinent to th'eir role?" And, "Considering the individual personality, background training, and press of duties experienced by each such individual, what is the most effective way to present this data to him or 94 / Review for Religious, I/olume 40, 1981/1 her?" (These questions can lead to the elaboration of some very unorthodox but extremely effective financial reports!) /. It is a rare treasurer who sees the answer to the last two questions as so cen-tral as to demand more skill, more time, more thought and, if available, more training than the elaboration of the figures themselves. It is a rare community which would not be enriched and facilitated if the treasurer did just that. But it also seems next to impossible that any outsider, no matter how sagacious or trusted, could really have the indispensable in-depth understanding of the per-sonality limitations, the real power distribution (as distinguished from a table of organization), and the sundry lapses in hearing skills which form the living matrix of intramural communications. Perhaps fortunately, the liaison function is not usually looked upon as at-tached to the highest echelons of power. Yet, it is all too easy for casual observers, who already have the treasurer pigeonholed in a relatively trivial technician's role, to see any such outreach into the one indispensable function as an intrusion on the role of the superior. Such a reaction, though, is more concerned with shadow than substance: the very essence of the liaison function is to assist, not supplant, the superior in making informed decisions, and to assist, not supplant, the community in understanding the options open to them. Areas of Practical Concern The many excellent circulars on taxes, social security and related subjects coming from the offices of CMSM and LCWR provide opportunity for a quick, but necessarily very rough, check-up. These documents certainly sug-gest impending changes in life-style, deteriorating legal immunities, new norms of economic security and other important long-term adjustments of our community lives. Are these coming changes being considered in advance in every community? Do the CMSM circulars filter down at all? If not, perhaps the liaison function could improve to fill the void. Before noting more current problems, a somewhat dated example might provide historical insight. Between Leo XIII and circa 1970 there was a grow-ing rift between the papal social encyclicals and the employment policies of certain Catholic institutions. Areas of tension have run all the way from the areas of unionization through wages, pensions, and fringe benefits, to on-the-job working conditions. The business world of the United States had somehow tended to come more into line with the encyclicals than religious! Fortunately, this is largely water under the bridge; the majority of Catholic religious orders have recently shown an informed awareness of the problems of Christian employment, even in cases where lack of funds has made it very difficult to know how to respond. But it did take a long time, in some cases a scandalously long time. And the evident surprise which has overtaken more than one provincial administration when the "dear, dedicated lay-teachers" or the "sweet smiling nurses" hit the picket lines, would argue some degree of The Treasurer as Professional / 25 failure in their early-warning system. It is hard to imagine that the fumbling, uncertain--sometimes obscurant-ist- labor relations poli~ie~ ~l:iich charaCteriZed churchly institutions before 1970 would not have been improved if there had been in each congregation one person who was consciously aware of his or her duty to become fully in-formed concerning these trends, and to communicate them to a congregation which was itself aware of having appointed him to such a post-- and respected his function. In short, if each community had possessed a treasurer who was expected to perform the core-function of that office, and trained t.o do it, and if each such treasurer had been left enough time from routine mechanical ac-counting chores to function thus, the whole tale would have been quite dif-ferent. In the absence of that function filled, too often surprise and misinfor-mation proved a poor substitute for expertise at the bargaining table, and in the delicate reestablishment of truly Christian relationships afterward. Even though the labor relations example can be classified as historical in most communities (not all!), it still cannot be written off. For example, the presence of Douglas Frazier of the United Auto Workers on the Chrysler Cor-poration Board of Directors is no doubt just the tip of a large iceberg. Already in Europe workers' representatives on the top levels of management are a commonplace. Is anyone looking up from the accounting books long enough to start formulating a response, or thinking out alternatives, or evaluating present practices, or otherwise preparing for the day when the staff at Hospital A and High School B will be demanding board representation-- per-haps on the management level of the parent religious community itself? Insurance programs reveal another type of need. Too often "profes-sionalism" in the treasurer has been equivalated to the qualification requisite in some other profession simply because no one has noted that the liaison function is a separate profession in itself. We have already noted how this tends, in the accounting function, simply to distance the treasurer from the needs of the community superiors who are not businessmen and therefore can-not be reasonably expected to get maximum benefit from financial anal~,sis designed for business executives. In the related questions of insurance coverage, the problem takes a slightly different twist, although profes-sionalism (again the wrong profession!) here also ends up searching for the solutions that are most effective in the business world. In practice, we end by asking "How can we most expeditiously fit our community into insurance programs written for secular concerns?" The results are often ingenious and admirable examples of the professionalism of the insurance industry. But if someone in the communitY were professionally alert to the peculiar nature of a religious organization as such, he might well end up asking, "What are tl~e unique needs of this community, regardless of what fits the secular organization?" The answer may be quite surprising, and almost always results in unexpected savings and administrative simplification. Fortunately, the question is being asked more and more, and, as a result, some 26 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 specialized insurance policies are being written from the ground up to fit the unique needs of Catholic religious orders. But it should have happened sooner, and the questions should have been asked in many more quarters. Even today too many religious are paying insurance premiums for maternity benefits! The center-stage projects of the hour are probably energy conservation and socio-political activism via proxy voting and the like. Both problem areas carry implications of long-term and profound changes in community life-style. Both, too, are typical in their relations to the treasurer as professional. The current pattern of response is often enough characterized by aimless drift, unplanned, sporadic action, or responses evidently dominated by oen-thusiasts in the community who may or may not have a grasp of the long-run legal and economic implications. Since these areas do have overtones which are none of the treasurer's pro-fessional concern (although hopefully he or she will be deeply concerned as a committed Christian and religious), it follows that the treasurer should not be trying to direct the basic policy decisions in these affairs. But the complexity and multiple legal interlockings involved also suggest that someone--some one-- in each community has to be in a position to study the question from an overall point of view, and to do so with a trained expertise. Some individual must eventually take responsibility for gathering all available information and casting it ina form that alerts both officers and community to the implications for life-style, future economic security, hazards to legal immunities, and all the rest. Further, whereas ad hoc studies can be commendable, some one has gotto stick to the job and follow through, lest the community of 1985 be still acting on the circumstances of 1975. Both by a process of elimination and by logic, this important and irreplaceable function sooner or later (probably sooner) comes home to roost in the treasurer's office, If the incumbent is viewed as a mere technician who handles the computer printout, the community response will, in all probabil-ity," follow the too familiar pattern of muddling through very deep muddles. The rapid erosion of those tax exemptions which form.the practical economic basis of most religious communities provides another field of con-cern for the treasurer as professional liaison officer. Few communities have ever even done any daydreaming, much less planning, about the impact of various all,too-probable changes in the. tax laws. The tendency is to cling mutely and hopefully to the leaky ship. Thisis a wise procedure so faras day-to- day operations are concerned. But some one somewhere in the community should be monitoring, injecting caution into long-range plans, alerting superiors and community to the dangerous side effects of this or that policy, and noting, at least in passing, such unexamined drifts as the slow tendency of both tax courts and local officials to forget the tacit but once universal assumption that religious communities are families (for example: the recent The Treasurer as Professional / 27 tendency to raise zoning problems about sisters living together in a convent situated in a zone for single families; the erosion of the rights of superiors to make decisions for dying, unconscious, or elderly confused members of the community; difficulties with state officials who insist on nursing-home regulations instead of family rules for convents caring for a few elderly sisters, and so on. It is all of a pattern: we are being redefined as "strangers" -- and no one seems to notice). Unfortunately, the personality who gets maximum satisfaction out of the tidy details of bookkeeping is only rarely the same as the one who can perceive social or economic change from afar off. The rare exceptions are indeed pearls of great price. But the core-function is impossible, even for the pearls, if the only training they receive and the only role expectation they encounter are directed exclusively toward the routine of day-to-day administration. Conclusion In the twelfth chapter of Romans, St. Paul surprisingly lists "administra-tion" among the gifts of the Spirit. Indeed, he lists it just after prophecy and before teaching, preaching and almsgiving. It would be ridiculous to apply his thought literally to any specific church functionary, treasurers included--no doubt he had wider nets to spread. But Paul does thereby warn us not to trivialize the administrative functions in the Church into routine mechanics and technological computer-feeding. Faith, judgment, and spiritual insight are necessary, and the community which restricts its gifts of time, training, and trust to major superiors, novice masters, and theology faculties may be quenching the Spirit in a vital area of action. Reflection on the real core-function of the treasurer may lead in most cases not only to a deeper appreciation, of that office, but t9 some understanding of the damnable frustrations connected thereto. Hopefully such reflection could also lead to a major review of the qualifications for the office, along with adjustments in the organizational and psychological matrix which is required for its effective fulfillment. Admittedly there is no place where anyone can go for training in this most delicate function (the author is hatching a plot in this regard!), but probably such training is little needed at least at first. The first Step is to identify who, if anyone, performs the liaison function in the community and then to recognize that function as needed, legitimate, and welcome. Much else will follow naturally. The Eucharist, Priesthood, and Renewal Neil J. Draves-A rpaia Father Draves-Arpaia is a priest attached to Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish. The mailing address is: P.O. Box 160; Scottsdale, AZ 85252. Priesthood is not intrinsically linked to celebration. It is first, and ultimate-ly, united with self-giving, and therefore, sacrifice. And since the sacrifice of-fered by Christians at Eucharist is the victory of Christ which has brought us salvation, it is impossible, once we have grasped the depth of meaning and the redemptive grace of the eucharistic sacrifice, to be any other way than "celebrative." Those who would reduce the Mass to sober ritual, executed with rubrical precision and stone-faced devotion, or those who would see it as a moment for "religious merriment" have moved awfiy, in either direction, from the core mystery that the eucharistic celebration is. For me, the amuse-ment of one group and the solemn piety of the other are both suspect, and neither adequately speak or witness to priesthood to being a priestlypeople. What then might we look for? 1 believe it is necessary to move away from speaking on the Mass for a moment and concentrate on the daily life of God's people. Self-giving, self-forgetting love, sacrifice (whichever term we use) once placed within Christianity must be evaluated in light of the Cross. The eucharistic sacrifice then has "cruciform" implications, and we must look to a cross section of responses and attitudes that come forth from God's people in Christ. Priesthood is a visible sign in our midst of the reality of sacrifice, specifically in the life of a person who is priest, and in the believing communi-ty that would be priestly. Both must express in clear terms and behavior that something two-fold is happening in their lives: that, first, their personal rela-tionship with God is solid and radically oriented towards incarnating the first 28 The Eucharist, Priesthood, and Renewal and greatest commandment, and, then, that their human relationships are more than superficial and nice, but solid, radically oriented towards incar-nating the second and greatest commandment. How might we begin to make evaluation of these? I'm convinced that the priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood must look to the life of prayer, be it expressed in formal, informal, public or private prayer-styles. There we must begin to ask if, when we go before the Lord, we are truly inter-ceding on behalf of one another. This will give us an indication of how much and to what degree we are in touch with human life and the genuine human needs of those around us. If we cannot bring ourselves to intercede, then we cannot fulfill our principle role as priests or as a priestly people. This is especially significant to the role of the priest-president at the eucharistic sacrifice, for without a continuous sense of intercession in the daily life of the priest, the eucharistic prayer will be formula-oriented and not at all like the priestly prayer of Jesus, who went to the Father on behalf of the people. Next, we must look, priests particularly, to our horizontal prayer: our beseeching and inviting the people to come forward as instruments and missionaries of love. It might not always mean using words, nor may it require lengthy "shar-ing sessions." Priestly people and ordained priests need to know more about the fact that in any "priestly" experience, the action must speak louder than the words. The religious leaders of Jesus' day, from the picture we get from the Scriptures, had words that spoke more loudly than their actions. Jesus called his disciples to the converse: action over words, both in G~d-oriented matters (faith) and people-oriented matters (charity). It's also important to keep in mind that Jesus had the least to say when he was crucified. It was at that moment alone that his Gospel call to love hung totally on pure act. What can we conclude with regard to priesthood and its place within pres-ent renewal and the Eucharist? Liturgical renewal cannot have the impact it is meant to have if it is not preempted by a priesthood that speaks clearly on the issue of "self-giving." For the decade and a half since the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was issued by the Council, the Church has heard stressed that "the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed," and that the faithful should approach the sacred mysteries with the proper dispositions so as to cooperate with grace, for the liturgy to produce its full effect. If the Eucharist is the summit, what is the base of Christian activi-ty, if it is not self-giving? And what is the proper disposition with which we ap-proach the eucharistic celebration, if it is not a readiness and willingness to be of praise and thanksgiving, openness and intercession, primarily in attitude, secondarily in words? Priesthood, both ministerial and the priesthood of the faithful (but prin-cipally the ordained priesthood)in itself must begin to look more like the eucharistic sacrifice to the Father with the people of God assembled. It must show itself "in the flesh" to be a continuum between brokenness and wholeness, of movement from the confines of secular humanism and/or 30 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 religious elitism (clericalism, fundamentally among priests themselves and the structures in which they function) to a sharedness, not solely in matters of, priestly service to the Church, but in the basic issues of their lives, issues which are common to all lives. Priesthood, as an instrument of renewal and in its ef-fect upon the Eucharist, becomes an incarnational experience, for it takes the Word and makes it a Verbum Dei: fleshes it, clothes it, directs it towards the kingdom. The moment becomes a means for priesthood to have within it a holiness that is greater than that of the scribes and pharisees since it acts on rather than talks about the concrete issues which face the world today. So, at the base of Christian existence the priesthood is motivation for the Lord's people to join in sacrifice both at the table of the Lord and at the table which is the world. The nature of this life of self-giving requires unconditionally simple signs which speak to the people, like the signs of bread and wine. But signs of love in the daily life of the priest become obscured when humanness is over-taken by a rank-ism in the Church which, in turn, degenerates priesthood into a separate class aloof from the laity and ineffective in speaking about their life experience except in the most "lofty" sort of ways. As the liturgical renewal called for a stripping of secoridary elements which found their way into the eucharistic celebration over the centuries, the priesthood, too, if it is to be an aid in the deep renewal of the Church, must have itself stripped of non-essentials. Like the eucharistic sacrifice of the Roman Rite; priesthood must begin to face the people and become more accountable to them. It must have its distracti'ng bells quieted. Priests, one would hope, can more effectively speak the language of the people and must appreciate how much priesthood's unique gifts come from the people and must return to them. It must witness a praise of life by the priest's readiness to help the human condition in each per-son's struggle to become reconciled to God. Priesthood, to me, expresses its thanksgiving best when priests themselves show a humbleness (which active thanks implies) before God and people, plus an openness which allows for the person of the priest to be nurtured by the community he is calling into fullness. This call to intercession is a vehicle, not for doing some thing for others, but as a preparation, a prayer, to be with them. To pray on behalf of others re-quires that the priest be half of the person who is neighbor. This would mean that we move beyond any limited and debilitating spirituality which might suggest that God hears the prayers of priest over those of the laity. The truly intercessory prayer that is Christian is the one which seeks from God a "oneness" with the p,eople to whom the priest is sent, as did the prayer of Jesus, "that all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us." Intercessory prayer speaks of sacrifice, for it moves away from the tendency to badger God for things for ourselves and others, and, when made by a priest, requests that he, here and now, will become the response the Lord would make to those in need. It is occasion for furthering solidarity in the Body of Christ (person to person) and for furthering solidar-ity in the Body of Christ (person to person) and for allowing the Holy Spirit to The Eucharist, Priesthood, and Renewal use priesthood as sacrament (God to his people). When intercession is made by a priestly, people, they pray to be the response the Lord would make to the world's needs, and the Church then can be a "kind of sacrament of union and unity." In this way, personal needs, while neither denied nor overlooked, become secondary for the moment, and the needs of others become primary for the moment. Intercessory prayer does not give us the chance to be self-seeking, or to approach God with the long multiplication of words that would make prayer manipulative and evasive. It helps us to understand more precise-ly why Jesus r~jects this as authentic prayer and replaces it with a simple prayer of unity that begins, "Our Father in heaven." The prayer of the priest (or of a priestly people) allows for lives to blend, and there will be less cause for disparity in the p.riest's daily life and his ministry at Mass, for this sacrificial celebration at the "summit of the Church's activity" will be an authentic summation of what has been. Priesthood has everything to do with self-giving, and as it forces its way out of entrapments it becomes an event, an encounter with what is real. The same applies to the entire people of God in Christ. Events, or moments of self-giving, are times of celebration and joy for they are an exodus from slavery, from the death of isolation and self~centeredness. It is on this issue where renewal is most needed: moving people away from thinking in terms of what they "do" to how they position themselves towards God and neighbor, the way they choose to be. The vocation of priest and of the priestly people leaps away, so to speak, from cultic functions and attendance at such, to a covenant in the eucharistic sacrifice, because there have already been preliminary celebrations ofthis mutual, self-forgetting love among Christians wherever they meet between the times they gather at table in the grace and peace of God, our Father a'nd the Lord Jesus. Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua: A Friendship in Perspective Paul Conner, O.P. Father Conner teaches moral and spiritual theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His address is: St. Albert's Priory; 5890 Birch Court; Oakland, CA 94618. Catherine Benincasa's public life is more widely known than her personal life: during the six hundred years since her death, attention has been so drawn to her astonishing political impact on the Europe of her day that she is fre-quently called one of the most influential women of history. Within our own decade Catherine's enduring intellectual and spiritual authority has been heightened through her being declared one of the two women doctors of the Church. Little wonder, then, that the private life of this Sienese woman has escaped widespread notice, and yet in regard to human friendships, for instance, few life histories are as intriguing, both in scope and depth of development. I would like to focus attention in this article on the dominant human rela-tionship of her short life of 33 years, her friendship with Blessed Raymond of Capua. This relationship could be understood adequately on its own merits, but I find that it takes shape so much better within the immediate religious setting of Dominican life in which it was born and flourished. Looking to the Lord Jesus is indeed first; but after this, every religious family that seeks the essential features of its life must turn to its founder. Tempting as it might be, I do not claim that friendship is an essential feature of Dominican life, at least as friendship is ordinarily understood--though there are superb examples of it in the Dominican heritage, past and present. What is interesting though, is that Dominic did give the spirit of friendship to 32 Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua / 33 his followers, since his own life was so rich, even overflowing, in friendship, human and divine. A glance, then, at his life, together with what might be termed a theological consideration of Dominican friendship, will form a helpful con-text within which to view Catherine's and Raymond's unique friendship. St. Dominic In spite of popular misrepresentation of St. Dominic in later centuries as a stern, inquisitorial figure, conclusive, historical evidence shows him to be an exceptionally loving person. More than three hundred depositions for his canonization; his first biography written by his friend and successor, Jordan of Saxony; the Lives of the Brethren, collecting eyewitness accounts of the early years from all over the order, all tell of the many men and women in various walks of life who cherished friendships with him. Jordan speaks of Dominic's lifelong, radiant mixture of charm and reserve that attracted and held men's hearts. His best modern biographer in English, Bede Jarrett, puts it this way: "God's greatest gift to man in the order of nature, and almost the greatest even on the supernatural plane, is the gift of making and securing friends; and judged by this, Dominic was indeed blessed by God.'" The first brethren assure us that perhaps no one among them had a greater taste for fraternity than Dominic. He enjoyed friendships of varying degrees with his followers, and, like his Lord, chose from among them a "beloved disciple," John of Navarre. With the many communities of sisters that he founded, Dominic always maintained a personal bond, helping them in temporal but particularly spiritual needs, instructing them so that they absorbed his own spirit and dedication to truth. Besides 16aving us a descriptive portrait of Dominic, Blessed Cecilia kept a valuable record of his Roman ministry. She relates that during his visits to the sisters he either "exhorted them to greater spiritual ef-fort or merely sat among them, refreshing them with the charm of his conver-sation and sharing with them the experiences of the day.''2 The range of Dominic's friends outside the order was extensive. Legendary is his beautiful relationship with St. Francis. TheLives of the Brethren records that the two "became but one heart and one soul in God and enjoined their sons to foster this brotherly spirit until the end of time." Dominic befriended men and women converts; family members of people with whom he worked, such as the two daughters of Count Simon de Montfort; women recluses in Rome; bishops and cardinals--even popes. Gregory IX, in the bull of Dominic's canonization dated 1234, wrote that Domin'ic was ' Bede Jarrett, O.P., Life of St. Dominic (New York: Image Books, 1964), p. 122. 2 See M. H. Vicaire, O.P., Histoire de saint Dominique (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1957), V. 11, pp. 278-279. 34 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 bound to us by ties of deep friendship, before we were raised to the pontificate; his life carried with it in our eyes certain proofs of heroic holiness . We are convinced, as also are our people, that through his prayers God may do us mercy, and that one who was our friend on earth will still in heaven hold us in no less ~ffection. Wherefore. we have determined to add his name to the number of the saints.~ The prominence of friendship in Dominic's life noticeably influenced his early followers. Numerous touching friendships among them are a matter of historical record: Jordan of Saxony and Henry of Cologne, Jordan and Diana d'Andalo, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, and the two Dominicans of particular interest to this article, Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua. Theological Atmosphere A certain theological atmosphere has surrounded and, I would say, condi-tioned the development of Dominican friendships throughout the history of the order. This is as it should be, since Dominican life, like Christian life, tends toward fullness of love--primarily with the I ndwelling Divine Persons, but secondarily with all men and women whom God loves. This Christian love, or charity, is the main indicator of vitality and growth in the life of grace. Thomas Aquinas was the first theologian to penetrate into the mystery of charity by way of human experience of authentic friendship, applying his understanding to God's love for us and our love for him.4 A distinctodynamic seems to have resulted, creating the theological atmos-phere to which I refer. Dominicans have looked first to faith for conviction about divine love and friendship with God and God's friends. They have then looked to their personal experience of human friendship with God. They have found, particularly in prayer, that their experience 6f divine friendship served as corrective, if need be, and certainly as goal for their human friendships. These two experiences, the human and divine, mutually illumined and en-riched the other, each according to its competency. I would hazard a guess that a practical result of this theological atmos-phere has been that individual Dominicans were richer or poorer in friend-ships with other Dominicans depending on the age in which they lived. Let me explain. In all ages genuine Dominicans are very discriminating about their friends, owing largely, I think, to this conditioning theological atmosphere. They tend not to let natural instincts for friendship predominate, unless each particular relationship can be harmonized with divine friendship. Authentic charity as their chosen goal must determine everything in their lives. Besides rarely find-ing people enough to their natural liking in the baffling assemblage the Lord calls together in religious communities, their faith and theological orientation ~ See M. H. Vicaire, O.P., Saint Dominique, La vie apostolique Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1965), p~ 90. ¯ See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, lI-ll, q. 23, a. I. Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua / 35 yield such a high ideal that natural potential alone is not enough to satisfy them. But in ages when many members of a Dominican community or province or the worldwide order are deeply one in mind and heart about essential goals and ways of Dominican life, friendships abound, even without much founda-tion in natural similarities. Close bonds are formed on the basis of similarity of thought, love for and dedication to the highest, most valuable, and most permanent of realities. On the other hand, history indicates that Dominican friendships are rare in times of wide diversity in mind, heart, and life concerning essentials of a com-mon calling. In these circumstances, with little in common by nature or by grace, profound friendships are the exception. Masculine-Feminine Complementarity in the Order of Preachers Before focusing on the profound relationship between Catherine and Raymond of Capua, let us look at an additional feature which Dominic built into the very structure of his order, namely masculine-feminine complemen-tarity. In Dominic's mind, the men and women of the order were each to con-tribute something essential to the order's goal of contemplating and spreading sacred Truth. His plan was that the nuns should pray and do penance, and the friars should preach. With this complementary power, no obstacle could pre-vent the accomplishment of goals. To assure from the beginning this complementary feature of the order, Dominic established at Prouille (southern France), in 1207, an arrangement he had known from his years as a canon regular in Spain: the "double-monastery" where friars and nuns lived side by side, each in separate convents yet joined in one common life. Later, wherever he had men, Dominic himself established the feminine counterpart: in Madrid in 1217; in Segovia, Saragossa, and Palencia in 1218; in Rome in 1221. He intended the same in Bologna with Diana d'Andalo and a group of her friends, but died before doing so. This planned masculine-feminine complementarity was emphasized throughout the order by the custom of calling the friars "Preachers" and the nuns "Sisters, Preachers, or Preacheresses.' '~ Saint Catherine, Doctor of Friendship Our context is now sufficient for turning to Catherine and Raymond, two Dominicans who personified in their friendship the masculine-feminine com-plementarity of their order. In her writings, Catherine was such a preacheress that, as noted above, she has been declared a Doctor of the Universal Church. Happily enough, she has See Paul M. Conner, O.P., Celibate Love (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1979), pp. 54-56. ~16 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 left explicit teaching on human friendship, particularly :in Chapters 41-44 of her famous Dialogue. Briefly, she sees positive temporal and eternal benefits as well as distinct dangers. An enduring benefit is that we do not lose human friendships at death. Rooted in happiness in God, the saints in heaven also share one another's hap-piness and so color their own beatific joy with "more abundant., delight and contentment." Catherine looks at friendship on earth as "consolation, sweetness, com-fort, and joy." Friends here help one another "grow in grace and virtue," and they provoke each other to honor and glorify the heavenly Father. A serious danger arises from human friendship which begins primarily as spiritual love but slowly becomes predominately sensual. To bring con-secrated persons to this end, Satan will insidiously engender a distaste for religious life, inducing them to search for pleasurable compensations in friendships. Prayer is judged in terms of self-satisfaction and is eventually dropped. "Worldly conversations" become more and more appealing and help stifle former desires for prayer, purity of spirit, suffering for God, and fraternal charity. Why does God permit this outcome? It is because he desires to purify the person from his unrecognized imperfection of loving creatures with a love mainly "passionate" or "sensible." After a friendship becomes established, the person might observe, for example, that his friend pays more attention to others than to him. He experiences disappointment and suffering. There are, then, two possible outcomes. His suffering can bring the deepened awareness that he has been seeking self in a love he thought wholly generous--the Father's hoped-for outcome. This insight will give birth to healthy "distrust of self" and to a more perfect love, charity, for all persons, including his par-ticular friend. This happy result, Catherine asserts, can occur only i.n someone "enlightened by faith," who desires "to walk in the virtues.especially prudence and discernment." A person, however, who is "ignorant in the faith" and not striving to walk in virtue, a person who "has no life," as Catherine puts it, will find the experi-ence of diminishing sensible satisfaction in prayer a great danger. He may well follow Satan's lead and give himself up to "confusion, tedium of mind and sadness of heart, abandoning any virtuous exercises." To such a person, friendship will eventually mean ruin and inner "death." Despite her medieval view and expression of things, Catherine's general teaching on spiritual friendship stands clear: it is good if the result is authentic charity, not self-love. Catherine lived her teaching, filling her short life with an amazing range of men and women friends. One among them was unique. Catherine and Raymond Born of the noble Delle Vigne family of Capua in 1330, Raymond entered Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua / ~17 the Dominican Order at age seventeen. During studies at .Bologna he excelled in scripture and patrology before obtaining the lectorate degree in sacred theology. He taught in Dominican priory schools between 1358 and 1362, and for the next four years served as spiritual director to the nuns of his order at the monastery of Montepulciano. In 1367, he was elected prior of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a principal Dominican community of men in Rome. Raymond was sent to Siena some six years later to be Regent of Studies for the young men of the order in training there. And so it was that this man of extensive education and experience came to meet Catherine in 1374, the consequence of both her praying for a confessor capable of guiding her in her evolving mystical experience, and of the order's appointment of Raymond tO investi-gate and direct her life. Catherine promised Raymond obedience, and after some time of testing her authenticity, he came quickly to understand her and her spirituality. From the beginning they admired each other, Raymond recognizing in Catherine a woman of fine intellect, intense striving for sanctity, and tireless apostolate; Catherine in Raymond, a man of intelligence, tact, breadth of understanding, and development in virtue. Upon this basis their friendship grew firm and profound. Frank admission~ in their writings and biographical events reveal that they came to know each other intimately. Catherine opened her whole soul to Raymond, who by his counsel and authority over her, helped her come to full self-knowledge. In four short years their relationship had become very important to both of them. When the pope called Raymond to Rome in 1377 to be prior again of the convent of the Minerva, Catherine's letters speak of her "torment" and the "particularly hard and painful" experience this first separation from her "intimate friend" occasioned. She asked the Lord, who had "imposed upon me a royal and very poignant trial., to strengthen me in this privation which language is so incapable of expressing.''6 Understandably, news from Raymond alwaysbrought her joy. Later correspondence gives further indications of the quality of their love. Once, when Raymond had turned back from a papal mission to Avignon because of impending ambush, Catherine affectionately reproached him. He misread her intention, and so she wrote: "You have thought that my affection for you had diminished; but you are mistaken . l love you as I love myself; and I have hoped that the goodness of God would also make your affection perfect.-7 In her numerous letters, Catherine customarily addressed Raymond as her ~ See Letter 119 quoted in Johannes Joergensen, Sainte Catherine de Sienne (Paris: Editions Gabriel Beauchesne, 1929), p. 187. 7 Josephine Butler, Catherine of Siena (London: Horace Marshall & Son: 1894), pp. 289-290. 38 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 "beloved Father," or "friend of predilection," or by the pseudonym that so pleased her, il mio Giovanni singolare--presumably in comparison to the Lord's preferential friendship for St. John. During the last months of her life, in extreme weakness and suffering, Catherine wrote a long report of her mystical experience to Raymond,. ad-dressing him lovingly over and over again: "My most sweet Father." In Letter 232 she tells him of a vision wherein she saw .herself entering by love and desire into Christ through the wound in his side, "accompanied by my Father St. Dominic; Giovanni, my friend of predilection; and all my spiritual children." It had been revealed to Catherine that the pope would send Raymond to King Charles of France and that she would die before his return. Raymond relates that she took him into privacy and "talked continuously, her large eyes shining., saying such strong and beautiful words." Often she "grasped his hand and smiled beautifully." Then, accompanying Raymond to the port of Ostia, she "knelt,., and crying, made the sign of the cross.''8 In their few years together, Raymond and Catherine collaborated in many undertakings, helping each other both naturally and supernaturally. Raymond, for example, was cured through Catherine's prayer from the plague which decimated Siena in 1374. He then joined her in relief work among the city's victims. Afterwards they went together in retreat to the tomb of St. Agnes of Montepulciano. Later in Pisa, Raymond was with Catherine in the Church of St. Christina when she received the stigmata. She prayed that the wounds be made invisible, and so it was that Raymond was the only person to bear public witness to the miracle. In 1376, the two met in Avignon in a successful attempt to persuade Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. They traveled back to the Eternal City together, spending some time there with each other before Raymond's final departure. During their political actiQity, Catherine and Raymond turned to each other for support. She admired his political wisdom, most often following his advice which opened up new dimensions and possibilities to her. Together they promoted the crusades and prayed and worked for the reform of the Church. To counter a fear and reluctance in his character, Catherine would urge Raymond, when events demanded, to act bravely and with courage. In-deed, they cooperated in every way, so much so that one biographer con-cludes: "Catherine and Fra Raimondo were both working for the same ends, and aided each other with a mutual exchange of ideas, energies and counsels.''9 In the realm of grace, Raymond received instruction from Catherine for his spiritual progress. She was ever mindful of him in prayer, and even after See Hyacinth M. Cormier, O.P., Blessed Raymond of Capua (Boston: Marlier, Callahan & Co., 1900), p. 58. Arigo Levasti, My Servant Catherine (London: Blackfriars Publications, 1954), p. 140. Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua / 39 her death, Raymond testified that his spiritual stamina came from his con-tinued communications with Catherine in spirit. Before their final parting, Catherine wrote to Raymond: "1 beseech you to collect into your own hands any writings of mine which you may find and the book (the Dialogue); do with all of them whatever you deem is most for God's honor and glory.'''° Even in his overbusy life as Master General, Raymond worked successfully to promote Catherine's canonization, gathered and preserved all her writings, and found time to compose her first biography, a task that took him fifteen years. Dealing principally with her personal rather than public life and bringing to light the most touching incidents and her most characteristic traits, Raymond's is a surprisingly objective account. From it all later biographers have drawn their material. Conclusion Without doubt, in their close knowledge and love of one another and in the cooperative ministry they exercised, Blessed Raymond of Capua and St. Catherine of Siena exemplify the masculine-feminine complementarity of the Dominican Order. Their friendship helped each of them, as well, toward sanctity. We began by saying that Catherine's personal life could be better understood within its Dominican context. It has also become clear that through her own personification of the spirit of St. Dominic and of the charism he gave to the order, the latter itself stands better revealed. Friendship between Dominicans may not be an essential feature of Dominican life, but throughout the last seven hundred and fifty years, few friendships recorded by history surpass those between Dominicans. The order is fertile soil for close ties between persons fired by its goals and fully given to its ways. Could one not even say that the more Dominicans are Dominican, the greater the likelihood, today as in past centuries, of Dominican friend-ships? Letter 102 cited in Cormier, op. cit., p. 134. Service of the Heart: The Quest for Authentic Prayer in Judaism Michael Maher, M.S.C. Father Maher teaches Scripture at the Mater Dei Institute of Religious Education in Dublin. His last article appearin.g in these pages was "Old Testament Poetry and Religious Experience Today" (March, 1979). Father Maher's address is Woodview; Mount Merrion Ave.; Blackrock, Co. Dublin; Ireland. Everyone who has made an effort to develop a meaning,ful prayer-life knows how easy it is to allow regular prayer to become a mechanical ritual rather than a vital and elevating experience. But the danger of allowing prayer and worship to become a perfunctory recitation of hallowed formulae or a conventional performance of traditional rituals is not special to our age. The problem seems to be permanently contemporary, and Jewish religious tradi-tion seems to have been continually on guard against it. Ever since Isaiah sternly chided his co-religionists who honored the Lord with their lips while their hearts were far away (see Is 29:13), the leaders of Israel continued the prophet's task of safeguarding the truly spiritual and per-sonal character of the people's devotional life, and of ensuring that the indi-vidual's prayer should always be animated by a living faith, should always be the expression of sincere love, and should always involve deep feelings and devotion. The rabbis, and their successors right down to our times, used the word kavvanah to express the attitude of interior devotion and personal involvement that should accompany every prayer and every religious observ-ance of the devout Jew. Directing the Mind The word kavvanah which became part and parcel of Jewish devotional 40 Service of Heart / 41 literature is derived from a verb meaning to direct, and implies directing the mind to God, concentrating the attention on the prayers being recited, saying them in a spirit of devotion, and excluding thoughts and feelings that distract one from the experience of encountering God. When one prays with kavvanah one's heart and lips agree, and one's whole person is involved in the awesome act of appearing before one's Creator and Lord. This is what the Talmud' means when it says that "when a man prays he should direct his heart to heaven" (Berakoth 31 a). Another Talmud text declares that if a man does not put his mind to the performance of a religious duty his act is not a religious act at all (Rosh ha-Shanah 28b). These same ideas find another formulation in Pirke Aboth or the Sayings of the Fathers, a compendium of maxims that have been popular among all Jews since the early Christian centuries. Here the sage's warning runs as follows: "When you pray do not make your prayer mere routine, but a plea before God for mercy and grace" (PirkeAboth 2:13). To avoid the routine against which this saying warns the reader, and to minimize the danger of prayer becoming a merely mechanical recitation, the rabbis of the Talmud urged that something new should be introduced into one's prayer every day (Berakoth 29b). These and similar declarations created among the Jews an awareness of the importance of personal involvement in prayer, and by the Middle Ages the statement that prayer without kavannah or concentration is like a body without a soul or a husk without a kernel, had become proverbial. The Shulchan Aruch, a sixteenth-century law book which was regarded by all Jews up to our day as the authoritative guide to religious living, stated that "a little prayer with kavvanah is better than a lot without it." Although this declara-tion did nothing to diminish the prolixity of Jewish prayers or to shorten synagogue services--the Sabbath morning service, for example, lasting more than three hours--the spirit behind it continued to motivate pious Jews in their quest for sincerity and moral earnestness in their prayer. Just as the prophets of old rejected prayer that did not come "from the heart" (Ho 7:14; see Ps 108:1), the.rabbis o f the Talmud regarded prayer and worship as"a ser-vice of the heart" (Taanith 2a; see Sifre on Dt 10:12), and the Jews in general knew that prayer which was not a heartfelt, experience was not prayer at all. ' The word Talmud means "teaching," and is the name given to a body of writings that incor-porates what were at one time the oral traditions of Judaism. The Talmud records the laws that regulated the daily life of the Jews, as well as the general lore, legendary and otherwise, that formed popular Jewish culture. One version of the Talmud developed in Palestine from about the year 200-350 A.D., while another version was formulated in Babylon in the period between 200 and 500 A.D. The'Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah (see next note), and like the latter is divided into six orders, which in turn are divided into tractates. Both Mishnah and Talmud are quoted according to tractate. Each tractate deals mainly with one special topic. Thus, for exam-ple, the tractate Berakoth--the word means "blessings"--deals largely with prayer matters. 42 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 Calm and Composure However, if the teachers in Israel regarded kavvanah as an indispensable quality of true prayer they realized that it was not something that can be easily acquired or retained. A text which has come down to us from about 200 A.D., and which is recorded in the Mishnah,' declares that "none may stand to say the Tefillah3 save in sober mind" (Mishnah, Berakoth 5:1). The text then goes on to say that "the pious men of old used to wait an hour before they said the Tefillah, that they~might direct their heart to God." The Talmud commen-tators on this passage remarked that one should not say the Tefillah while im-mersed in "idleness or laughter, or chatter, or frivolity or idle talk" since these are obvious impediments to the concentration and composure that should characterize one's communion with the Holy One. So important was this concentration and composure in the eyes of the rabbis that they recom-mended that one should not attempt to pray at all when one is agitated or preoccupied by distracting thoughts. They state, for example, that one should not pray on return from a journey in case one might not be able to give proper attention to prayer (Talmud, Erubin 65b). Another text which dates from the early Christian centuries declares that "One whose dead relative lies unburied before him is exempt from reciting the Shema" and the Tefillah . Because when a man sees his loss before him he is distraught" (Dt Rabbah 9:1). These recommendations convey the idea that one must control one's mind, one's imagination, and one's feelings before engaging in prayer. This teaching of the rabbis was to be expressed by Maimonides (died 1204), the great Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, who wrote as follows: Before engaging in pra'yer one must free one's heart from all preoccupation~s, and regard oneself as standing in God's presence. It is therefore proper to sit a while before praying in order to direct the heart and then pray calmly and devoutly. However, the Jewish teachers realized that the proper dispositions for prayer cannot be acquired during a few moments of concentration before ac-tually beginning to pray. The quality of one's prayer is greatly influenced by 2 The Mishnah, literally "repetition," is the name given to a collection of teachings that are attrib-uted to rabbis who lived in the period between 150 B.C. and 250 A.D. These teachings were codified by Judah the Prince in the middle of the third century A.D. However, in the compilation of~his Mishnah, Judah used earlier collections of rabbinic teachings. ~ Tefillah, meaning "prayer," is the name given to the Jewish prayer par-excellence which con-sisted of eighteen benedictions or petitions. The Tefillah was recited three times daily, in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. Those who attefided the synagogue recited it there, while others recited it in private. The petitions of the Tefillah substantially go back to New Testa-ment times. ¯ The word Shema simply means "hear." It is the name given to a prayer traditionally recited in the morning and in the evening by every male Jew. The prayer, or rather confession of faith, begins with the passage, "Hear, O Israel." (Dr 6:4-9)--hence the name--and continues with Dt. 11:13-21 and Nb 15:37-41. Service of Heart / 43 the whole tone of one's daily life. Nahmanides, a thirteenth century Jewish mystic and scholar of Spain, was aware of this when he wrote: When you pray, remove all worldly considerations from your heart. Set your heart right before God, cleanse your inmost thoughts, and meditate before uttering your devotions. Act thus all your days and in all things, and you will not sin. By this course your deeds wil! be upright, and your prayers pure and clean, innocent and devout, and acceptable before God. Know Before Whom You Stand When Amos wished to warn his fellow-Israelites about the punishment that awaited them because of their infidelity he said simply: "Prepare to meet your God!" (Am 4:12). These blunt words were given a broad interpretation and the rabbis applied them to the preparation needed for prayer. Such an interpretation of the text is by no means unreasonable, because prayer is a meeting with God, and as such it cannot be lightly undertaken. Prayer for the rabbis in particular was a matter of what they called chutzpah, that is, an act of, boldness, even of impertinence. For who can have a right to appear before his creator and Lord, to address him, and to expect an answer? Yet the Jewish sages knew that prayer was part and parcel of Israelite life, and that the great heroes of old, like Moses, David, Jeremiah, had all prayed. Therefore, although the rabbis spoke of God as ".the Holy One, blessed be he," and addressed him in prayer as "Lord, King of the Universe," they never hesitated to present their every plea before him. The Talmud teaches explicitly that "'chut:&ah, even against God is of avail," meaning that God cannot resist one who prays, and that the Lord of Glory does not rejec~ his servants who approach him. Yet, lest the chutzpah involved in prayer go beyond boldness and con-fidence, and become insolence and offense, rabbinic tradition was careful to insist on the reverence and respect that should characterize one's attitude in God's. presence. The rabbis recalled tha,t when the Israelites saw the glory of God on Sinai "their souls fled" and the~, trembled in holy fear. If Moses and the generation of the Exodus who had experienced so many manifestations of God's power and goodness were unable to stand with confidence in his presence, how much more should the less privileged generations of the people feel overcome by his might and majesty? Rabbi Eliezer (c. 100 A.D.) gave this advice to his disciples: "When you pray, know before whom you stand, and in this way you will win the future world" (Berakoth 28b). A slightly modified version of this text became known to generation after generation of Jews who read the words "Know before whom you stand" inscribed in many synagogues over the ark which contained the scrolls of the law. Such an inscription reminded the worshippers of the awesome meaning of prayer, and forcefully suggested that all levity and casualness were inappropriate in the praying congregation. Other synagogue inscriptions that conveyed the same message were Jacob's words as recorded 44 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/1 in Gn 28:17: "How awesome is t his place! This is none ot her than t he house of God, and this is the gate of heaven," or the psalmist's declaration "1 keep the Lord always before me" (Ps 16:8), or the well known verse from Isaiah, "Ho-ly, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts," which was also to have an important place in Christian churches and in Christian prayers. These, or similar words, were continual reminders of synagogue worshippers that an attitude of flip-pant self-assurance or a casual or indifferent mood are unbecoming in one who genuinely strives to enter into communion with his God. However, lest the dignity of God and the serious nature of prayer frighten off the would-be worshipper, other texts which instill an attitude of trust in God's presence were at the disposal of those who went to the synagogue to pray. The Jerusalem Talmud laid down the general principle that the Jew need never hesitate to approach God in prayer: "When a man is in trouble let him not cry out to the angel Michael or to the angel Gabriel, but to me, and I will answer immediately" (Berakoth 9, 1.13a). The traditional Jewish Prayer Book began with a series of biblical texts which were designed to create an atmosphere of adoration and devotion in the worshipping community. Texts such as "O Lord, I love the habitation of thy house" (Ps 26:8), or "But as for me, my prayer is to thee, O Lord" (Ps 69:13) were calculated to set the scene for serene reflection, and to express an awareness of God's love and goodness without which prayer is impossible. So while the Jew's attitude to God contained an ingredient of reverent fear, and while his approach to his Lord was characterized by a sober recogni-tion of the divine majesty that 'cannot be flouted, his relationship to God was also marked by trust in a personal Being who, far from being an arbitrary despot, is a God in whom power and love are one, and who cares for those who approach him with faith. The Talmud taught that "one cannot deal familiarly with heaven" (Berakoth 33b-34a), but it did not set God outside the reach of the average Jewish believer. Gestures of Reverence In Old Testament times the temple in Jerusalem was for the Israelite "the house of the Lord" (Ps 27:4). The perpetual lamp which burned in the temple (see Lv 24:2f) was for the rabbis of later times a witness to mankind that God dwelt among his people (Talmud, Sabbath 22b), and the religious leaders of Israel strove to instill into the people a deep respect for the place where God had set up his abode. The Mishnah records the following prescription that was framed in order to ensure that the biblical command to "reverence the Sanc-tuary" (Lv 19:30) would be fulfilled: A man should not behave himself unseemly [in the temple area]. He may not enter the Temple Mount with his staff or his sandal or his wallet, or with dust upon his feet, nor may he make it a short by-pass; still less may he spit there (Mishnah, Berakoth, 9:5). Of course the ultimate aim of this prescription Was to honor the God who Service of Heart / 45 was worshipped in the temple~. The rabbis are explicit about this when they state that just as one does not revere the Sabbath but him who commanded the observance of the Sabbath, so one is not to revere the sanctuary but him who gave the commandment concerning the sanctuary (Talmud, Yebamoth 6a-6b). The authors of these rabbinic statements understood the importance of an aura of sacredness that can help to make one conscious of being in the divine presence, and that can help to generate the I~avvanah that makes prayer meaningful. Biblical tradition prescribes no particular postures or movements for prayer. But we do find mention of several physical postures that are meant to give expression to one's spiritual and menta

Issue 34.1 of the Review for Religious, 1975. This was the first issue edited by Dan Meenan, S.J. ; 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 (~ 1975 by Review [or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.75. Sub-scriptiqn 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. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor January 1975 Volume 34 Number 1 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Review for Religious is published in January, March, May~ July, September, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edi-tion of Review for Religious is available from University Microfilm; Ann Ar-bor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1975 by Review for Religious. Symposium on Continuing Formation Peter W. Cantwell, O.F.M. Sister Margaret McGovern, R.S.M. Brother Ronald Perry, F.M.S. In the following is given the text of three talks given in March 1974 to the Combined Major Superiors' Conference of Australia. PRINCIPLES OF CONTINUING FORMATION By Peter W. Cantwell, O.F.M. (Father Cantweli is Deputy Head of the Department of Pastoral Studies at Yarra Theol?gy Union in Box Hill, Australia, and a Director of Formation for the Franciscan Fathers. His address is: Franciscan Retreat House; 39 Sackville Street; Kew, Victoria 3101; Australia.) The most obvious question to ask at the beginning of a paper such as this is: Why continuing formation at all? The Need for Continuing Formation The first answer that comes to mind is: There are no professionals in living! We never graduate from the undergraduate status in the katter of life and liv-ing. And the other side of the coin is: It is surprisingly easy to become a drop-out from the university of life, to become someone who feels that he has now arrived and earned a rest and doesn't need to learn any more, and that it is now time to rest on his laurels! Well, in God's dealings with His chosen people, as soon as laurels were seen as things to rest on, then the People of God were broken in some very real way. To be a follower of Christ is a process of con-tinuing conversion of heart; we never have the faith in a static sense, but it is something that grows in us and must keep.growing. Augustine described the process of faith as: Hands groping in the dark. It is very easy, and very human, to give up the groping and find a comfortable niche. So the real question is not: How do we justify the time given to continuingformation? but rather: How do we justify not making it more of a priority than perhaps we do? We should not be asking "Why?" but rather "Why not?" 3 4 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 One of the answers sometimes given to the "Why not?" question is: Someone else has to do my work while I am away, and besides l am not con-tributing to the Province during that time. The second statement is invalid, for surely ! am preparing myself to be better equipped when I come back. And possibly the first statement reflects a certain mania for productivity and an ap-proach to religious life which is over task-centered (work is primary) rather than person-centered (the person is primary). But beyond the more general human need for continuing education and re-education-- being experienced in many fields today quite outside Church circles: teachers, nurses, management, and so forth--there are several very clear reasons from within the Church which emphasize the need for continuing formation. Vatican II specifically challenged religious to respond to the needs of the contemporary world and thereby make themselves more striking and credible witnesses to the gospel. It demanded of religious that they be attentive to the signs of the times and that they speak the good news to the people of this century and not the last. The challenge of Vatican iI was and is virtually a mandate for rebirth, and it was the impetus of Vatican II which stimulated the search for a new identity for religious orders and congregations. This mandate for rebirth was made doubly complicated by the rapidity of the changes occurring in society around. Not only did religious have to catch up on ~a world that was already in front, but on a world that was accelerating at a frightening rate (see Future Shock). So in religious life at the moment we have not only abandoned many struc-tures which have ceased to be useful and begun to search for new horizons--a challenging enough task on its own--but we have to try to accomplish this in a rapidly changing environment. In a recent article Karl Rahner analyzes the whole question of change in reference to religious life and concludes that one of the primary demands on religious today is to cope with a situation of change where many of the familiar landmarks have gone for good. This in itself puts considerable pressure on people: It requires a deeper and more solidly based personal maturity to be able to cope with change than it did to live year after year in a fairly codified, unchanging, structured, more conforming religious life. So if I were to try to sum up the need for continuing formation, the sum-mary would run something like this: --if we want to keep growing as persons, we need it. --if we want to answer the challenge of ,Vatican 1I, we need it. --if we want our witness to keep pace with and be relevant to today's world, we have no other option. Definition With that in mind I would like to try to give a description of how 1 see con-tinuing formation: The facilitation of the continuing growth of the whole person so as to promote a deeper and fuller commitment to the person and mission of Christ. Symposium on Continuing Formation Put perhaps in a more simple form, I do not ~believe that the central goal of continuing formation is to give people a lot more knowledge or produce people who are a lot better informed (though that is part of it, as we shall see), but rather to help the person: believe more in himself, believe more in life, believe more in Christ. This demands a real wrestling with myself in the radical depths of my faith-committed humanity, a continuing conversion~ as I try to inch forward in growth towards a fuller realization within myself Of the fullness of the Person of Christ. IMPLICATIONS Growtl~ and Attitude Change The first term in the description is "growth." Growth is and must be the central issue in continuing formation (or any formation for that matter). And something that is closely associated with the whole notion of growth is attitude change. What is an attitude? In my day-to-day living what determines the way l am ~oing to act in various situations is the set of attitudes which my life ex-periences to date have taught me. An attitude could then be simply described as "the way I perceive a situation," and it determines the way I will behave in a given situation. If my attitude towards change is that it is unnecessary, then my behavior will probably be one of resistance. If my attitude towards myself is one of general insecurity, change will be threatening for me, and 1 will resist again but for a different reason. Attitudes are usually fairly deeply engrained, they are a distilled product of my life experiences to date, they are very much tied to the center of my per-sonhood, "where I am at now." So they change only slowly and with much ef-fort. Attitude change is usually described as a threefold process, involving: firstly, beginning to let go of the old outlook and behaviors ("unfreezing"); secondly, looking around for a new frame of reference and new behavior models ("changing"); and thirdly, trying to solidify the newly acquired outlook and behavior so that they become a permanent part of the person's functional repertoire ("refreezing"). I would like to group the,first set of principles for continuing formation un-der these various dimensions of attitude change. '° Unfreezing" The first thing we are asking the person to undertake in attitude change is to venture out of an accustomed way of acting and to look around for new possibilities. Any person does this only with great caution, very tentatively, and. in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance, and is more likely to be too slow rather than too fast in the process: Hence: 6 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 If we are aiming at real growth, we can expect varying degrees of resistance, because we are asking persons to venture out into strange territory. In this venture it is very necessary that I see the need to move and am willing to take the risk involved. It is no good if you are trying to drag me along by the scruff of the neck. So: We cannot force people to grow or be renewed. A lot of time must be spent in eliciting the molivation Io want to grow. The effectiveness of a program depends to a large extent on how open the people participating are to the goals of the program, I feel it must be a terribly strong temptation for a superior, often out of sheer desperation, to use a large amount of moral and even physical pressure on those who are dragging their renewal heels to do programs that they simply do not want to do. Well, they might learn some new information, but they cannot possibly grow unless they want to. Father Nebreda, in his framework of catechesis, speaks of pre-evangelization: a kind of remote preparation for the proclamation of the good news. I think we need a type of pre-evangelization in the renewal work, almost like watering the ground before the plough comes along. There is a basic psy-chological axiom which says: People cannot be taught or learn who feel at the same time that they are being attacked. I feel that at times we need to spend more time watering the ground, gently listening to people and freeing them from the threat that they are about to be put through the compulsory sausage machine. Quite frequently we might find a surprising willingness under the camouflage of opposition. The next principle is perhaps self-explanatory: The longer a person has been in a relatively unchanging structure, the more resistance there is likely to be to change. Behavior patterns that have been in operation for a longer period of time, especially with people who are less secure in themselves, tend to become such a part of the person that change, while dearly Wished for, should not be expected. 1 often feel that the best and most that we can do for such people is to create opportunities for growth, encourage participation, but be open to the possibility that change may not be likely and that psychologically the person will remain where he or she is. The superior is then faced with the difficult situation of trying to find a niche for him which will be meaningful and enable him to feel that he is contributing something worthwhile, which will not de-mand change, but at the same time not create unnecessary hardships for those in the community who are trying to change. Quite a job! The last principle in this section is one which is very important: Real growth involves risk-taking and pain and tension, and may include the need for special help for a period of time. Sometimes, no matter how well one prepares a program and how well one screens people for it, an individual comes along who cannot cope with it and Symposium on Continuing Formation / 7 wl~o suddenly finds that he needs specialized help. (l would evenlike to extend the.principle and say that at some of the more critical phases of our individual growth most of us need something more than the ordinary help!) But to get back to renewal. In our experience, some superiors tend to overreact to this temporary inability of one of their subjects to cope. Well, if casualties con-stantly happened with the one program then one should ask some serious questions about the program. But an equally valid approach where real growth is concerned might see such a time of passing personal conflict as a not-to-be-unexpected factor of real efforts to grow, and if rightly handled by the right person such conflicts can be catalysts for very real growth. In fact we grow only through tension and conflict. And it could be far better for such tension and conflict to come to the surface in a controlled situation such as a program rather than when the person is busily engaged in the normal commitment to the apostolate. I am saying that to want "growth without casualties" is unreal and is perhaps wanting to avoid one of the unavoidables in growth. "Changing" We now come to the second stage of attitude change. Having tried to let go of an accustomed way of acting, the person is left in a state of confusion or doubt. That is an uncomfortable feeling, and gives rise to a strong motivation to resolve it. There are two ways that the person will usually try to do this. The first is to try to have a clear idea of the new goal that he is heading for, to seek to try to establish a new conceptual framework, to find ideas and ex-planations which are more in accord with life as he now sees it: lectures, books, reflection, the experience of others, and so forth--all the ways that we can find things out. He is looking for a new vision as to where he is heading. It is here that we treat of the place of new information in continuing education: Input and new information is an essential element of growth, but it can be, and often has been, wrongly made equivalent to growth. I think we all know the positive need and real benefits of new information, so just let me state some of the things that worry me about overemphasis on in-formation. Knowing does not necessarily by any means mean doing, and knowing how I should change does not mean that I am any closer to actually changing. I believe that in the early days of renewal within the Church we made the error of thinking that if we could get the latest lecturer with the latest idea on the latest subject then all would be well and we would immediately transform our orders and congregations. Such a notion of growth is one-sided. Know.ledge is essential, it provides a necessary frame of reference for un-derstanding experiences, and it elicits motivation for further growth. But the identification of knowledge with growth, as I think often happened in the older type of seminary training, can have unfortunate consequences. From the in-dividual's point of view it tends to produce the person who can mouth the latest I~ / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 catchword (be it "caring and sharing" or "togetherness" or whatever) without there being any internal experience to go with it and make sense of it. And from the point of view of the congregation in the context of renewal, it leads to disappointment and cynicism because the expected fruits are not forthcom-ing. But to get back to the positive side, the first need of someone who is trying to change is to have a real and valid frame of reference so that he can see and understand where he is going. A second need to help him in this crucial mo-ment of change is to see this new vision realized in some way or another in the lives of significant people around him. Such significant people would include those who are trying to inject the new ideas (fine words without example are dry), but more particularly the people back hgme, the members of the com-munity and province, and possibly most particularly the leadership in the province. So we say: Change of attitude is greatly assisted where the leadership in a province (overall, not just the provincial or general) approaches some kind of exemplification of the goals of renewal. "Refreezing" The final stage of attitude change is the "refreezing," which simply means that we try to make sure that the acquired learnings persist and become a nor-mal part of the person's behavior. And here the whole environment of a com-munity and a province plays a very significant role. It is not unusual for people to undergo some change, but not be able to maintain it. Many mental hospital patients, for instance, recover in hospital where they are away from the interaction with members of their family or other persons who played an important part in bringing about their breakdown. On leaving the hospital in a reasonably healthy state ofbody and mind they go back to the old context of relationships which promptly brings about a relapse. Either the behavior patterns were not deeply engrained enough, or the environment and atmosphere were so negative as to be destruc-tive. Hence the principle: If growth changes are to be lasting, there is need for a supportive environment and con-tinuing reinforcement. An extreme example of this would be: a religious is removed from an en-vironment which is hostile to any change, given a short intensive program which requires a lot of reintegration on the personal level, and is then returned to the same situation with no follow-up! The more intensive aspects of personal renewal need to be prepared for, nurtured during the moments of change, and solidified through support and follow-up. In other words there needs to be an atmosphere of renewal in a prov.ince, renewal cannot be considered a "oncer" which we now get all our people through and then get back to normal life and work. Some of our friars reflect this wrong attitude when they now say: "1 have done my renewal!" Symposium on Continuing Formation / 9 The Whole Person The second aspect of our definition is that continuing formation is meant to promote the growth of the whole person. I would like to touch on a couple of principles very briefly. The first principle really sums up two things I have said already: Real renewal in a province requires an atmosphere which is "person-centered" as con-trasted to "task-centered" (excessive concern with productivity). If renewal is an urgent need today, then it must come first in practice as well as theory. One of the tensions that many religious whom 1 am counseling are facing today is that numbers in the congregation are dwindling, the same number of commitments is being maintained, and so people are being stretched beyond their elastic limit., and break. That is almost the direct opposite of the at-mosphere which is needed for real renewal. If people are going to be able to have the time and energy necessary to do some real personal reflection and reintegration, to keep pace with changing life today, and to survive in their religious commitments, then possibly they should be doing less than they were before--at least till they do some catching up! The second principle has ]already been touched on too: The whole person--intellectual, spiritual, human--must be considered if renewal is to be lasting: I feel the emphasis has been something like this: the intellectual has been overcatered for, the spiritual has been undercatered for, and the whole human dimension has often been completely neglected. Enough has been said on the intellectual area and the need for information. What of the spiritual? The last part of the description of continuing formation says.~that the overall and primary goal of renewal is "to promote a deeper and fuller commitment to the person and mission of Christ." The faith-prayer-Christ dimensior~ must ob-viously be the air we breathe when talking of renewal, for nothing makes sense outside of this framework. Today, at the very grass roots of religious con-gregations, there is a real awakening of a need for spiritual direction and counseling, .for depth of prayer and the need for reflection--maybe because these have been partly left out of some renewal efforts to date! On the human level, the level of normal personal maturing, the level of adequate preparation for the various stages of life (especially the later stages), the level of the development of a sense of self-worth and self-value, the whole field of a psy-chology and theology of leisure and the creative use of leisure time, we have often been abysmally lacking. But the other papers will fill this out more. The third principle: The whole of each person must be considered if renewal is to be lasting. To achieve this the different members of a province need to have access to a variety of programs. The simple point 1 am making by way of principle is this: In any province we have a variety of people with a variety of needs: the young and the old, those 10 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 who have done a lot of renewal and those who have done little, those brought up under the older formation programs and those under the newer, those who need pre-evangelization and those who need follow-up, those who need something pretty solid for a longer period of time, those groups with special needs (for example, superiors), programs for a single community, coedu-cational programs, intellectual versus experiential programs, and so forth. We cannot hope to find an ultimate program that will suit everyone, that we can put them through, and then imagine that all is done. Finally: A n atmosphere of renewal in a province, and a variety of possible programs to cope with differing needs, is more likely to avoid the dangers of polarization (where few people get a lot and the rest nothing). I feel that a province should, as far as possible, move as a whole,.but within a very broad unity. Pluralism within a broad unity. That might mean that some members need to do less and move more slowly, and others more and move more quickly. A variety of programs helps to spread the leaven as far as possi-ble and avoid dangerous splitting. Conclusion By way of conclusion, I would like to do no more than mention three broad principles which might help us to be as realistic, and even as optimistric, as possible about religious life today: Because growth is a slow and painful process, we should not expect too much too soon from any person or program. Conflict is functional: that is, growth occurs only in a situation of reasonable conflict and tension. In the absence of all ~tension a group stagnales. One of the goals of renewal should be to create a wise pluralism within a broad unity so as to be as open as possible to whatever direction the Spirit moves in. CREATIVE RENEWAL AND RELIGIOUS WOMEN By Sister Margaret McGovern, R.S.M. (Sister Margaret McGovern, R.S.M., is Director of the Social Work Department at the Mater Hospital; Pacific Highway; Crows Nest, N.S.W. 2065; Australia. She is also deeply involved in renewal work for religious throughout Australia.) The previous paper described some of the principles which must be considered when offering and organizing continuing education programs for members of religious congregations. The next paper by Brother Perry outlines in detail how some of the existing programs attempt to meet these needs and shows where there are gaps and overlapping. Here we should like to attempt to tease out some of the difficulties in renewing the total person, with particular application to women religious. Programs designed to stimulate the process of renewal in Symposium on Continuing Formation the individual should not be confused with renewal itself. The latter is the work of the Spirit in the human heart. Programs of renewal are merely predisposing stimuli to the person to enter into the process of rendering himself more aware and able to appreciate and cooperate with the action of the Spirit. Multiple Options of Renewal Stimuli A very basic and fundamental principle here is the necessity of keeping a wide variety of programs continually open as options for a variety of people. We all need education and continuing formation in all aspects of total Chris-tian living. We need to learn and learn again, so that we may deepen and broaden our commitment to the truth who is Christ. Some of us need depthing in one particular area at one stage of our lives, and something quite different at another. Where people's needs are concerned we cannot have a neat, chronological, tightly-boxed sequence of renewal programs. For instance, it seems quite reasonable to presume that people who have been out on the apostolate for fifteen years might like a fairly intensive period of renewal. But even within that one group, what each wants and what each gets from any given program will, predictably, be quite different. (Incidentally~ the attitude behind phrases that one often hears today; "They've had their renewal," "She has done her renewal," betrays a very superficial outlook. Renewal must be a life's task.) Pluralism of opportunity is essential in any attempt to provide stimulus for an individual's growth and conversion.-Conversion is ultimately an individual phenomenon between God and the pers.on concerned: The community does play an important role in terms of support, atmosphere, and encouragement, both humanly and spiritually; but ultimately each individual must face his own conversion alone and against the background of his own individual uniqueness. So there can be no package deals for conversion. Nonetheless, our social condition means that stimuli to growth and renewal will often be provided by some kind of organized course, retreat, and so forth. Optimal Size of Programs Probably the most effective programs are those offered on a small group basis where the chances of remaining uninvolved or untouched are lessened. If a course is offered on a small group basis there is far more likelihood that it can be tailored to the needs of this particular group of people, thus lessening the frustration of those who have already been through a particular experience but are asked to do it again "for the sake of those who haven't done it yet." A small group renewal experience is more likely to get to where the person is at, and to be real formation as well as imparting a certain amount of information. Both of these elements are essential, as the other two papers emphasize. Types of Programs The kinds of continuing formation programs which might well operate for 12 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 the renewal of the total person over a period of years would include the following: updating in some of the key areas of modern theology; exposure to a variety of experiences in prayer forms; opportunities for indepth spiritual renewal, as, for instance, in varied forms of retreats (small groups, private, directed, communal), time in a house of prayer, individual direction; education in methods, forms, and process of community sharing; programs which foster self-awareness in relationship to others; workshops which assist the superior to learn to operate comfortably and.effectively in that role; some education on an even broader basis, for instance, some psychology, sociology, history and so forth, on the principle that some understanding of human and social phenomena lessen the threat of change and adaptation. Some of these programs are more directly spiritual in nature, others are more oriented to the development of the full, human person. Some will be more pertinent to a person at one stage of her growth and others at another. But both are necessary to grow into full maturity in Christ. Combining Resources A major problem is worth mentioning here. Organizationally it is very dif-ficult for major superiors, particularly if working merely with members of their own orders, to continually provide such a wide variety of programs as is suggested here. Intercongregational cooperation would seem to offer a partial solution. While it is quite true that it is important for some of the.renewal ex-periences to be assimilated just with members of one's own congregation (for example, a re-discovery of the charism of the founder), many of the other programs suggested could well be offered on a broader basis, particularly those that are information-oriented. And while major superiors are being mentioned, another point could be made: that it is very important for the major superior not only to arrange programs for the other sisters, but insofar as possible to at-tend and participate and thus model what renewal is all about. Is The Latest The Best? One of the less fortunate attitudes around in the renewal field today is that of equating the latest with the best. There are many courses and programs and experiences provided in the whole field of renewal, and they tend to wax and wane in cycles of popularity, and as the need determines. But they are all'valid and even necessary in the right context.~Choice made on the basis of"the latest is the best" can be not only unhelpful but be positively retrogressive, as for in-stance in the case of a person d6ing a fairly advanced program without the necessary preparation. One of the most recent renewal booms has been in the area of directed retreats: six to eight days, thirty days, and so forth. One cannot avoid the im-pression that a great number of sisters are enrolling to do one of these because it is the latest renewal "must." Speaking to this subject, David Fleming says: Symposium on Continuing Formation The accomplishment of having spent thirty days in prayer can easily be set up as a false criterion for determining who the really renewed religious are. It is not so much a con-scious putdown of the "have nots"., but rather a whole atmosphere is being created for the desirability and even necessity of being among this new elite in order to be the good religious (See David Fleming, S.J., "The Danger of Faddism and the Thirty-Day Retreat," Review for Religious, 1974, p. 97.) What we must try to do is to continually provide a wide variety of renewal opportunities to satisfy a factually wide variety of needs, including the latest types of programs but not overemphasizing these. It is a subtle and ticklish thing not only to spread the canvas wide but to present the various facets of the canvas objectively, so that those who are beginning a renewal process in their lives will begin at the right place, without at the same time feeling inferior to or outmastered by those who have been on the path for some time. And perhaps one of the more difficult and time-consuming tasks of the major superior is to keep encouraging each member to continually grow from where she is at and in whatever way she feels best. What of the Non-Participants? We need to make sure that renewal stimuli can get to all--or maybe we should say that all have the opportunity of getting tO renewal. Over recent years there has been a spate of workshops in the areas of personal awareness, communication skills, and so forth. These are good and necessary and serve a specific function. But what of the sisters who are not touched by these and who are perhaps frightened of becoming involved in such a course? We have left behind, in many cases, the second novitiate concept and taken on four to six week renewal programs. These are usually quite eclectic in terms of offering a broad smorgasboard of renewal possibilities. But not all will be touched by these either. What of them? For major superiors this differential rate of participation can be worrying, as it can seem that the more they supply to their communities the more it looks like a case of "to those who have, more will be given." And the worrying other side of the coin is the impression that the fearful ones are falling further behind. It is unfortunate if renewal becomes a cause of polarization, and yet, in many communities, it appears to be just that. Creative Leisure One of the questions that needs more attention in renewal today, especially for female religious, is the whole question of education for some form of creative leisure. The appreciation of and provision for Ieisure was by tradition abysmally lacking in many women's congregations. This has no doubt been responsible for a lot of the maladjustment and discontent of many women religious who were trained in and lived under that system. We are not talking about an easier way of life! We are speaking of the opportunity, and the regular opportunity, to just stop and be, to be able to get out of and away from 14 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 the pressure of the normal workaday job, to restore, revitalize, and refresh one's inner body and spirit., in whatever way each individual best enjoys do-ing that. Leisure is the chance for me to experience myself in relation to myself, others, and creation. Some appreciation and cultivation of leisure is very necessary to cultivate prayer in depth. We are still very heavily tainted by the good old Protestant work ethic of productivity, consumerism, materialism, getting the job done even if it means working ourselves into the ground doing it. And often we do just that and ruin even our productive hours of work ,because we are too exhausted or dried up. Leisure includes simple things like taking exercise--according to the medical profession a very healthy activity. How many women in your com-munity get any regular creative exercise: playing tennis, squash, golf, swim-ming, doing yoga, going on bush walks, and so forth? Women by their nature are creative: someone cooks nicely, sews beautifully, paints, and so forth. But how often do they get the chance to do it just for the sheer joy of doing it? And in the leisure field there are limitless possibilities in adult education courses: pottery, basket weaving, literature, history, and so forth. In many cases for women religious this part of their lives has been neglected for so long that. they almost have a need to be educated towards leisure and the creative use of such. And this is where leadership is needed in terms of providing opportunity for and positively encouraging women religious towards developing themselves in this area. Conclusion And that brings us back to where we started from: that renewal can only be thought of in terms of a continual, ongoing, lifelong process embracing the whole Christian person, body, mind, and spirit. That means trying to keep the body fresh, the mind informed, and the spirit as close to the Lord as possible; These conditions assist the woman religious today to witness to the simple gospel message of the good news of Christ in a world where the only constant is change, where adaptation is continually being demanded of her, and where the pressure on her to really be something for modern man is steadily increasing. RENEWAL AND CONTINUING EDUCATION: WHAT IS HAPPENING AND WHAT HAPPENS? By Brother Ronald Perry, F.M,S. (Brother Ronald Perry has contributed much to the renewal of religious life in Australia and is the Director of the Sydney Archdiocesan Institute of Counselling. His address is: Marist Brothers; 16 Dorahy Street; Dundas, N.S.W. 2117; Australia.) We may distinguish forms of continuing education under three possible headings: remedial, retraining, and continuing stimulation. By "remedial" we mean any form of continuing education that involves updating in all its variations, where, the attitude change that we all vaguely call renewal is'en- Symposium on Continuing Formation couraged or stimulated or begins to take place. The religious life document from the council is subtitled the "appropriate renewal" or the "adaptation and renewal" of religious life. Most renewal programs are heavily geared in this direction with the stress often on what is "new." By "retraining" we mean the process where we either prepare a person or a group for a new role or task or, without such specific goals, strive to develop the talent and potential of individuals or groups. This is basically a process in-volving a good deal of time and depthing. This retraining may be developmen-tal, and aimed therefore at improving the potential of a person in a rather general way; or specific, where it aims to prepare a person for a specific task or role, such as novice master, spiritual director, counselor, and so forth. In either case it involves much forward planning, consultation with the person con-cerned, a reasonably clear statement of aims, and often withdrawal from pres-ent activities for a time. By "continuing stimulation" we mean the type of program where we aim to call persons to continuing conversion, to recall the challenge and the grace of the gospel gift and call, and to depth the experience of the faith again. This we must do always. But in particular we must ensure that it can happen at every stage of a person's passage through life. This type of program is also always "new" but in a different sense of new to what we were referring to abo','e: it is the newness of the gospel and its constant challenge to us. RENEWAL IS OFTEN REMEDIAL Factors in Renewal Firstly, it is important to reflect on where renewal leads us and what is in-cluded. As we try to analyze the different aspects of renewal programs and the different sorts of skills and knowledge that are required for us to begin to change in a very fundamental way, three distinguishable aspects emerge: (a) We need a great deal of new intellectual knowledge that will enable us to establish new cognitive frames of reference to help us think with the Church. Specifically today this means becoming up-to-date in thinking with the Church, in, for instance, the whole new emphases in dogmatic theology that have emerged since the Council. Again, moral theology is a particularly impor-tant area where a fuller understanding of sin, reconciliation, penance, law, and authority is very important to enable us to move away from an approach to morality that was geared primarily to laws and "do's and don't's?' Recent developments in Scripture, what it means and what its central importance is in the life of the Christian, must be a vital area of concern in all our attempts at renewal. (b) We need a new capacity to share in community. This second aspect of renewal seems to consist in the development of a real capacity to share with others and to support others in community (in whatever situation that might happen to be), to share one's faith vision with others, and to communicate in charity and truth. This has been one of the great riches of the renewal in the 16 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 Church over the last several years. It reflects something that is happening in society at large, and has led us, by comparison to older forms of religious life, to a deeper understanding of the Church as community. (c) We need a new possibility of self-understanding and self-awareness before God. It has always been said that real renewal is personal renewal, and one aspect of the movement away from structures is that each person is called and challenged to look at himself more closely, more truly, and to face himself before God in a way that is more genuine (see Review for Religous, 1974, pp. 78-84 for an illustration of this). These three areas involve great variety and richness, and their attainment also means overcoming some difficulties, as for instance the development of a particular climate and particUlar skills. But it would seem that we have no choice in facing all three of these areas. The Church frequently calls us to this. Even if we would escape such a call, the pressure of our own contemporaries on us to become more effective witnesses of the Christ of the Gospels leaves no other alternative. The Process of Renewal It is difficult to analyze what we actually expect from all sorts of renewal programs. Perl~aps the following various expectations. schema might tie together some of the Personal self-awareness P A W Listening PRAYERFUL R C I (ableto meet) Community Development A T T Loving HOPEFUL Y I N (tolerant) New frames of reference E O E Relevant COMPASSIONATE (knowledge) R N S (understandable) S Development in the three areas of personal self-awareness, community, and new knowledge will result, if it happens properly, in a new understanding of and new capacity for prayer, but understood in a very different way to "saying prayers." Such a development will take time, and many religious have agonized through the difficulty of abandoning some prayer, shortening their time of prayer, rejecting some forms of prayer, finding some prayers meaningless, and so forth. The above diagram is not meant to imply any miraculous immediacy of results; it is more a question of what does happen frequently and what can happen for all of us. And if our prayer becomes more truly genuine, it should appear as a more credible witness in the action that is the apostolate both inside one's own community and beyond it. In that apostolate, then, we shall be relevant, what we say will be un-derstandable, we will be able as St. Peter suggests to have an answer for those who question us about the faith. We will also be more loving people in that we are more tolerant of others, more open to them however different they may be to us in belief or way of life. And we will be listening people because, with such a message, we are' able to meet them. Therefore, the person who is renewed by whatever process would be seen as Symposium on Continuing Formation prayer-ful, because in a real way in contact with the Lord and expressing that directly; hope-ful, because he is able to offer the world its only hope of un-derstanding meaning in life and seeing hope in what we live; and com-passionate, because able to live with and suffer with and be with fellow humans as Jesus, incarnate on earth, was able to be. Some Principles for Renewal Some principles that apply in the renewal of the whole person would include the following: (a) Development in one area without the others can be problematic. For in-stance, to be offered a solid diet of new understanding of theology without an additional capacity to understand self and to share with others in community, can produce isolated and confused people. On the other hand, to offer people considerable personal development through counseling, group work, and even spiritual direction, without an adequate understanding of the moral and dogmatic principles that are relevant can also lead to confusion. (b) Very few people are too rigid for some change. We often despair in renewal programs and cause polarization because we feel that many people are too rigid to change. I think we need to remember that we have come from a very structured situation and a very structured upbringing. This is probably true of ordinary Catholics, but particularly true of religious, and it is a slow process to change that older frame of reference~ A few people will be too.rigid in character structure to change, but this is the exception rather than the rule and usually results from some personality difficulty. But we should not give up on people too easily. Rather, as suggested by Father Cantwell in the earlieroar-ticle, we should be able to cushion the demands for chahge so that people are asked only to do a small amount at~a time and in ways that can be seen as valid and true for them. (c) This principle of renewal is really a corollary of the last: it is vital not to omit any group. It is very easy to concentrate on the younger ones and the pliable middle age ones! But this is just another way of reinforcing possible polarization. (d) Often, in the initial stages of renewal, it will be important to encourage and help develop some key leaders in order that through these people and their efforts the process will permeate the whole group. This is not the only possible method, and many successful programs have begun with a gathering of the whole province and operating on the principle of unity. However, the latter is not always easy to carry out. In any case, some special attention will need to be paid to encourage leaders to act as bridge-builders: that is, to encourage those who can see what needs to be done, to help them do it with as little aggression and hostility as possible, and with as much resp.ect for each age group and each person as possible. (e) Finally, and perhaps most obviously, renewal is written first in the lives of men. Persons leading renewal must be seen as credible. 1~ / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/I Types of Programs As we have said already, many types of programs with varied goals are usually gathered together under the one head of renewal. For instance, many a "month of renewal,' is based largely on lectures (knowledge), but takes place within the context of a large group of members of the same community or con-gregation, so that the whole dimension of community development and the challenge of deeper self-awareness become very significant elements of the overall experience. On the other hand, some courses in moral theology, while focusing prin-cipally on lectures and new information, cannot but challenge one's personal understanding of conscience, sin, law, and so forth, and therefore include a good deal of the self-awareness aspect of renewal, though less of the com-munity element. A number of courses on spirituality and spiritual theology are very deep challenges to personal awareness and depthing, would include some know-ledge, but may play down the community dimension a good deal. The in-dividually directed retreat is a good example of this. Some types of community development sessions that focus on group in-tei'action seem to consist mainly of an ensemble of what we have listed as com-munity development and self-awareness. Some sessions that involve training in communication skills would appear to concentrate almost entirely on com-munity development. It might be worth noting here that in the final section labeled "Continuing Stimulation," what has been variously called self-understanding, self-awareness, and so forth becomes self-appraisal, self-examination, self-depthing, the theological experience of conversion and reconciliation . . . because obviously the "self" part means "self before God." RETRAINING: LEARNING THROUGHOUT ONE'S ENTIRE LIFE In the first place we have already mentioned the obvious need for special training for special appointments. We could well ask ourselves if we are always prepared to give sufficient time to this, to look far enough ahead, and to prepare people sufficiently for the actual program. Secondly~ there is the obvious necessity for us to develop the talents that God has given us. But this is a somewhat paradoxical question in Christianity. Two quotations from the Holy Father illustrate this. The first is from Populorum progressio: In the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfill himself, for every life is a vocation. At birth, everyone is granted, in germ, a set of aptitudes and qualities for him to bring to fruition. Their coming to maturity, which will be the result of education received from the environment a0d personal efforts, will allow each man to direct himself towards the destiny intended f9r him by his Creator. Endowed with intelligence and freedom, he is responsible for his fulfillment as he is for his salvation. The second quotation is from a recent talk by the Holy Father on religious life (5/11/72): Symposium on Continuing Formation Let us be clear: the form of religious life must not sacrifice natural talents or personal charisms. It must serve the vocation of each person. And it is a very heavy task for you, Superiors, to see to it that each of your sisters may develop in it, may be treated with con-sideration, be recognized and loved, and be able to bring the best of herself to her com-rhunity and to the world. However, the paradox of the Gospel, which you, more than others, are called to accept :fully, must not be forgotten: "For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mr 16:25). Be assured: this love ofthe Lord, lived to the extent of renunciation of yourselves, cannot remain without fruit. Bringing you deep joy and the hope of eternal life, it will mysteriously open up for souls the way to the God of love. Yes, in this sense, do not fear to be fully religious. This is a problem for each Christian as he or she faces life. In religious life it is both the vow of obedience and our commitment to each other in com-munity that are necessary constraints to our "self fulfillment." This is a reality of our commitment, and any renewal that refuses to face it is utopian and un-christian, and certainly is not closely connected with religious life and the demands, both personal and apostolic, that it makes. However this is not to say, as the Holy Father emphasizes, that we can afford to "despise natural talents or personal charisms." A third aspect of retraining we hear voiced in all circles today, but par-ticularly among professional people: the necessity for commitment to lifelong education. The phenomenon of professional obsolescence is becoming in-creasingly frequent. Do we realize on the merely practical level how many religious feel a bit obsolescent? Finally, we may need a structure of some kind to facilitate retraining: for instance a committee, a director of studies, to take close consultation with per-sons about their potential and hopes. Again, we are not advocating "doing one's own thing" and that that is the only, or even primary, goal in retraining. Any such studies are obviously done in the context of the whole province, its commitments, and its capacities. (For a general treatment of the various aspects of continuing education, see Review for Religious, 1972, pp. 226-36; 1973, pp. 1325-35.) The Needs of the Different Age Groups The needs of the different age groups must be considered in all retraining programs, It may be useful here to highlight .some of the needs that seem to surface most readily in th~ religious life context. The Young The young have a special need for ideals: frames of reference that point high for them and help them to make the effort to take on the mind of Christ by means of the life style and prayer structures that are offered them. We must be very careful today not to structure too much for the young. But it is worth noting that many novices and junior professed these days complain about not being clear enough on what is expected of them. While we do not wish tO return to an older, highiy structured framework, this demand makes a valid point that all of those concerned with formation must take into account. 20 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 Next, and perhaps even more obviously, the young need welcome-- welcome from the person in charge of their formation and welcome from the total community. They do not belong and they are aware of this. To a small extent they accept it but it is a great thrill for them gradually to come to be-long to the group they have joined. (Could I point out here the need for them to learn their traditions, the traditions both in their origins, and in the local history of the group which they are joining?) Under this same heading they need reasonable support from each other, coupled with the chance to build up a community, to recognize others, and allow them to be different. They also need, and this is perhaps stressed less, independence. They need to gradually learn the solitude and the capacity to be alone, a learning very fun-damental in growth towards real celibacy. This includes the capacity to gradually face themselves. We cannot demand this too early of the young, and ttie excessively long periods of silence in older novitiates were not always help-ful in this regard. On the other hand, an excessive stress on community may not be the answer either. The young also need a forum to work out their questions. They will ask some of these aggressively, and people in formation know to their cost that they have to accept and allow for much of this questioning these days. But while they do allow for it, they do not need to become doormats! All these various needs demand some new goals and ideals, some values that are chosen and followed, some structures that are agreed on and kept to but that are real and relevant. It also assumes that psychologically these y.oung religious are very much on the way to self-discovery, even though the journey has just begun. Early Apostolic Life In their early apostolic life many of the above needs continue with perhaps these additions: They need to acquire professional skill and competerice. This is absolutely essential today and is strongly emphasized in Perfectae caritatis. They need to grow in the capacity to help each other in community. Sometimes the pressure for growth in professional skill crowds this out a little. Like all young people serving in the apostolate, they need the chance and the help to take initiatives, to strive, to succeed, to be recognized, to take risks, to fail, and to be supported by the older members through all this. The task of the older ones is not to withdraw and let them "fail or succeed," but to support them with their maturity and experience, and not to let themselves (the older ones) lose confidence in their role just because they do not have all the bright ideas ~or the quickness of thinking of some younger people. Their maturity, their balance, and their experience are things that the young simply cannot have or do without. They need continuing idealism, encouragement and assistance to center their lives on Christ and to grow towards Him (Eph 4:14). This assumes that Symposium on Continuing Formation they gradually become accustomed to "belonging" to Christ in this community with which they are gradually becoming identified. Middle Age At the present time some of the skills needed and the qualities to be ac-quired by the middle-aged religious would include the capacity to lose hold of some of their acquired frames of reference and to adopt new ones. This is often quite difficult for some middle-aged religious. It is so frequent to hear a major superior say that it is not the old ones who make changes difficult, but those in their forties and fiftie!! Such a change of attitude includes the whole process of "unfreezing" that Father Cantwell has referred to in his earlier paper in this symposium. Then there is the need of the ability to face oneself, with the inevitable feel-ing of failure that often becomes so clear at this stage--a fairly common feel-ing, but that does not make it any easier, is it not also a vital introduction to the meaning of redemption? Such a person also needs the ability to free himself or herself from excessive serf-preoccupation (again not an easy task), to see others as other, whether young or old, and to experience some inner unity. There is also the need to continue to use leisure properly, creatively. And it seems vital at this stage to receive, and to know how to receive, close personal friendship and support, and to be able to give this same support to one's peers. In later middle age some of the above needs may well continue but we may add: the capacity still to use one's potential to the fullest possible extent (it is so easy at this stage to "retire" too early); to appreciate one's own richness at a time of life when that has to mean more than one's capacity to work and to produce; and to have and to use leisure. Another vital feature of this time of life, which is perhaps just as true of earlier middle age, is the need for an opportunity to have a group situation where these personal issues can be face~t. At this stage of life it is almost in-evitable that one must face oneself deeply and personally, and as this often needs to be done with another or with others, supportive group situations are really necessary. This group may also feel the need of separate courses where they are not under pressure from the young or old. Old Age Religious at this stage need to be valued and helped to belong. It is easy for them to feel "out of it." They need to know that the values they have lived by are not abandoned. Often they are reasonably open to change, but only on con-dition they know clearly that the essentials are not denied. Such affirmation and support are an important gift that we owe to our older religious. They should be able to teach compassion to the middle-aged person. Often only the patience and understanding of an older person can help a somewhat younger person to be more tolerant and a little less task-oriented. 22 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 Older religious also need to be asked to hand on their wisdom and their traditions, and to know that their function in life--be it prayer or com-panionship- is valued and appreciated and wanted. CONTINUING STIMULATION I have used this title to indicate that .not all our courses need to use "newness" as the criterion of their excellence. This "newness" has been a strong emphasis in renewal programs in recent times and much of it is both ex-plicable and justifiable. However we always have a continuing need of conver-sion: a need to be joined anew to Christ, to be detached from our own selfishness, to find God's will. It is noteworthy that the article on "spiritual direction" in Sacramentum Mundi lists the process of spiritual direction as i. helping a person to self knowledge; 2. helping a person to self acceptance; 3. helping a person to detachment from his own ego; 4. helping a person to find the present will of God. This is a process that continues at every stage of a person's life, and for which we always need courses and helps that are relevant and stimulating. While "newness" is necessary, it is not the only criterion. Conclusion Finally there is an obvious danger of institutionalizing renewal., and then we shall have to start again. To avoid this it is most important that .personal responsibility be fostered, that opportunities be sought and provided, and that mutual caring and sharing be constantly deepened and encouraged. The New Law for Religious: Principles, Content, Evaluation Kevin D. O'Rourke, O.P. Kevin D. O'Rourke, O.P., is a canon lawyer and the Director of Medical Moral Affairs; The Catholic Hospital Association; 1438 South Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63104. In 1959, on the feast of St. Paul, January 25, Pope John surprised the Catholic Church by announcing that there would be an ecumenical council. At the same time, he stated that the law of the Catholic Church would be revised. After Pope John's death, Pope Paul continued the work, appointing in 1963 a Pon-tifical Commission for the Revision of the Code of Canon Law consisting of forty cardinals. In 1964, he appointed seventy consultors to the Commission. in 1965, tlSe cardinals and consultors were placed on 13 study groups or com-mittees (coetus studiorum) and the revision of the Code of Canon Law began in earnest. The various committees have.held meetings to discuss the needs of the Church insofar as law is concerned. At present, several sections of the revised Church law are nearing completion. The section of the revision in which we are interested, De institutis perfectionis, has been completed in its preliminary form. After 14 general meetings between November 1966 and May 1974, with much work being done by the consultors between the meetings, a tentative set of canons has been produced. These canons will be presented to the Commis-sion on Revision for review, and then, if the practice followed with other sec-tions of the revision is adhered to, they will be sent by Pope Paul to the bishops of the world for evaluation. Because of the nature of the matter, perhaps they will be sent to conferences of major superiors as well. After comments, obser-vations, criticisms, and additions are received, the Committee on Institutes of Perfection will rework the section in light of the additional material and then present it to the Pontifical Commission for Revision for final approval. Since the Holy Father, in collegial union with the bishops, is the legislator in the Church, nothing will be final until his approval is given to the new text. 24 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 Though the tentative text has not been published officially, several accounts of the work of the Commission have been published in the official journal of the Pontifical Commission for Revision, Communicationes.' These accounts, along with some articles written by members of the study group composing the canons, enable us to form a rather accurate picture of the principles, outline, and content of the new canons.~ The purpose of our endeavor, then, will be to present the principles, outline, and content of the new canons for institutes of perfection, and to offer an evaluation of the work that has been completed to date. PRINCIPLES OF THE REVISION Though the first two meetings of the Committee, then known under the ti-tle, De religiosis,3 were productive, at the third session the group determined to formulate principles before proceeding further. These principles would make the work orderly and the discussions less abstract. Accordingly, principles were formulated in accord with the Decree on Religious Life of Vatican Council I I, Perfectae caritatis, with the document implementing the conciliar decrees for religious, Ecclesiae sanctaeo and with the Principles for the Renewal of the Code issued by the Pontifical Commission for Revision? As a result of the Committee's discussion, the following principles were formulated to guide the revision of the laws for institutes of perfection. Spirituality Principle 1. The canons should be stated in such a way that they foster the gift of religious vocation and the presence of grace in the life of those consecrated to the Lord. In other words, the juridical formulation of the canons ought to be harmonized wisely with the theological and mystical elements which lead to the fullness of the spiritual life. Through this principle, the Committee wished to avbid a multiplication of norms and to dispel the idea, held even by some in the consecrated life, that formal and external observance of general or particular laws would lead to perfection. In order to implement this principle, the Com-mittee did two things: Scriptural statements and theological elements were added to the canons, and pastoral canons, hortatory in nature, were als6 employed. aCommunicationes, 1970, pp. 168-81; 1973, pp. 47-69; 1974, pp. 72-93. 2j. Beyer, S.J., "De institutorum vitae consecratae novo jure," Periodica, 1974, pp. 145-68; 179- 222; Mark Said, O.P, secretary of the Committee, "'Progetto della riforma della legislazione codiciale: De religiosis, un giro d'orizzonte," manuscript of a talk given in 1974 to an international conference of major superiors. , 3The title was changed to institutes of perfection after the fourth session, April 1968. Thus, religious life was no longer the paradigm for other institutes in which people practiced the evangelical counsels. The practical changes resulting from this new vision are significant, es-pecially insofar as terminology is concerned. 4Communicationes. 1969, p. 80. The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation Individuality Principle 2. The second principle is: the common law of the Church ought to be to foster and conserve the patrimony proper to each religious family. This patrimony consists in the proper and particular charism, the goal, mission, spirit, character, and the tested tradition of each institute. Hence, the canons should be general, all detailed and minute regulations being eliminated since the proper liberty should be afforded each institute. The tendency to group all persons devoted to the following of the evangelical counsels into one category is hereby renounced by the Church. In this manner, the canons will stimulate the self-understanding in each institute, increase an appreciation of the charism of the institute, develop an awareness of the graces received and of the role of the institute in the mission of the Church, and prompt institutes to study and conserve the spirit of the founder. This principle, of course, is in accord with the documents of the Council and seeks to overcome the "leveling" influence of the Code of Canon Law which legislated in too great detail. Subsidiarity Principle 3. The third principle follows from the second. While the constitutive or es-sential principles of the consecrated life should be precisely and clearly stated, other norms should have a certain flexibility so that they may .be applied fit-tingly to different conditions and needs of the Church and institutes of perfec-tion. Essential principles are the same for all institutes dedicated to the evangelical counsels, but in other norms, especially disciplinary norms, sub-sidiarity is needed in order to promote apostolic life and allow adaptation to social and community needs. This principle is contained in the general princi-ple approved by the Pontifical Commission for Revision, but it is applied in this section more liberally because people in institutes of perfecti6n have answered God's call to vocation and should ha~,e greater maturity and respon-sibility. Shared Responsibility Principle 4. The fourth principle, following the admonition of the Conciliar fathers, postulates the need for a more democratic exercise of power in the internal af-fairs of institutes of perfection. Hence, canons which concern the governmental structure.and administration should allo~; representation and cooperation of all members of the institute. Each institute should design suitable governmen-tal programs in light of its nature, spirit, goals, and apostolic mission. Ample freedom must be afforded to develop particular methods of representation and participation in government. Respecting the genius and spirit of each institute, governments should be designed so that the same person does not have office for too long a time, nor too often. Equality Principle 5. The last principle, developed after the Committee had undertaken its 26 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 work,5 concerns equality. Insofar as possible, all institutes of perfection should be treated the same. Hence, there is no longer any distinction in the common law between orders and congregations; between regulars and non-regulars; between solemn and simple vows, granting that there may be some theological difference. Moreover, the Committee sought to eliminate the divisions and divisiveness which arise because of exemption. Hence, exemption, in accord with the documents of the Council, is stressed as a quality affecting the internal life of a community that possesses it. Lastly, the Committee sought to remove all signs of discrimination between institutes of men and women, and between members of each institute. Distinctions might be retained by particular in-stitutes among members, but they are no'longer contained in the general law. The motivation for eliminating all these distinctions was to allow the necessary freedom, thus enabling institutes to find their own identity, to rediscover the spirit of the founder, and after prayer and study, to formulate a body of legislation adapted to their own needs. In doing this, the Committee was aware of certain risks, especially in institutes with less experience; but the risks were considered worthwhile in view of the potential benefits for each in-stitute. For purposes of convenience, I have given each one of these principles a ti-tle. Hence, the five principles which guided the consultors as they wrote the new canons for institutes of perfection might be entitled: 1. The principle of spirituality 2. The principle of individuality 3. The principle of subsidiarity 4. The principle of shared responsibility 5. The principle of equality CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW LAW FOR INSTITUTES OF PERFECTION As a result of these principles, according to the secretary (relator) of the Committee, the consultors sought to incorporate certain characteristics into the law during its formulation.6 These characteristics are noted in the following paragraphs. Respect for the Activity of the Holy Spirit All institutes of perfection come into being as a result of the love of the Holy Spirit. God inspires the founder of a community to choose a way of life which enables people to follow Christ more closely. After the institute is ap-proved by the Church, the influence of the Holy Spirit continues; and those who wish to remain faithful to their vocation must follow the way of life given to the founder under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is why there is such respect for the charism, vocation, genius, mission, spirit, and tradition of each institute shown in the new canons. ~See Said, "Progetto," p. 6. ~lbid., p. 7. The New Law." Principles, Content, Evaluation Respect for Suitable Autonomy As a result of the principle of ~ubsidiarity, the legislation avoids detailed and minute statements. Autonomy and diversity are promoted by allowing in-stitutes to make the necessary applications of general principles whenever possible. Respect for the Theological Element The consultors realized that they were writing laws, but they also realized that the laws were stated in the Code of Canon Law in an arid and stultifying manner. Hence they sought to give the new laws greater theological flavor, realizing that they were writing for people who were totally dedicated to the pursuit of perfect charity. Respect for Maturity In the future the particular laws of institutes of perfection will be more im-portant than the g~neral laws. Through the particular laws, the character of the institute will be formulated, and in it the specific characteristics of mission and vocation will be stated. Without doubt, an institute will require members who are mature and capable in order to compose this legislation. Moderators and members of the institutes will be given responsibilities of self-determination that will require prayer, insight, and maturity. Respect for Rights of the Church Founded upon the word and example of Christ, institutes of perfection are a gift from God to the Church, the Body of Christ. Hence the Church con-serves and guides these institutes under the direction of the Holy Spirit. All members of institutes of perfection must be committed to building up the Body of Christ, according to the vocation of each institute. People in institutes of perfection have the obligation to bring Christ to the world. Hence, this legisla-tion recalls continuously that the life of people in institutes of perfection must be lived in union with Christ. But in order to live in close union with Christ, those in institutes of perfection must be in close union with the Church. CONTENTS OF THE PROPOSED NEW LAW In this section, I shall give an outline of the proposed law, then make a few preliminary and general remarks, and finally discuss various points in the con-tents of the proposed law. Outline of the Proposed Law INSTITUTES OF PERFECTION Preliminary Canons cc. 1-6 Part I Common to Institutes of Perfection Title I Constitution, Institutes and Their Parts cc. 7-13 21~ / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 Title I1 Dependence of Institutes upon Ecclesiastical Authority cc. 14-24 Title III Government of Institutes of Perfection cc. 25-36 Title IV Administration of Goods cc. 37-43 Title V Admission into an Institute cc. 44 Article 1 Requirements of Candidates cc. 45-49 Article 2 Formation of Candidates cc. 50-56 Article 3 Incorpora.tion into the Institute cc. 57-64 Article 4 Formation of Members of the Institute cc. 65-67 Title VI Obligations of Institutes and Their Members cc. 68-75 Title VII Separation from an Institute Article I Transfer to another Institute cc. 76-77 Article 2 Departure from an Institute cc. 78-82 Article 3 Dismissal from an Institute cc. 83-87 Article 4 Juridical Condition of Those Separated from an Institute cc. 88-90 Part 1I Proper to Different Institutes of Perfection Preliminary Canons cc. 91-94 Title I Religious Institutes cc. 95-99 Chapter I Article I Article 2 Chapter II Article 1 Article 2 ¯ Article 3 Title II Title Ill Monastic Institutes cc. 100 Monks cc. 101-106 Nuns cc. 107-109 Religious Institutes Dedicated to Apostolic Works cc. I10- 113 Canonical Institutes cc. 114-115 Conventu.al Institutes cc. 116-117 Apostolic Institutes cc. 118-120 Institutes United for Apostolic Life cc. 121-124 Secular Institutes cc. 125-127 General Remarks on the Proposed Law In order to treat adequately and clearly the various forms of institutes dedicated to the consecrated life, the matter is divided into general and par-ticular considerations. Though some of the titles contained in the first part of the division are also contained in the Code of Canon Law, the matter is treated in an entirely new manner, and for the most part, the content is changed con-siderably. The matter in the second part of the division is entirely new. The main purpose in this section of this article will be to present a rather detailed account of the contents of the new law for institutes of perfection. Since the text is still under development, changes will be made in it before it is submitted to the episcopal conferences; and many more changes will be made in it before it is promulgated. Hence, specific statements should npt be con-sidered as final. Nonetheless, the general thrust o.f the new law can be perceived The New Law." Principles, Content, Evaluation by concentrating on what has been formulated thus far. In translating from the Latin, I have tried to be accurate rather than elegant. The text, therefore, with all its clauses and phrases may not read as smoothly as it would if originally written in English. One familiar with the Code of Canon Law will notice that many new terms are used in the new law. The main reason for these changes is the fact that religious life is no longer presented as the paradigm for all institutes of perfec-tion. Hence, more general terms had to be found which would be applicable to all institutes of perfection. Following are some of the terms used in the Code and their counterparts in the new law: Code vita religiosa = religious life religio = religious institute religiosi = religious subjecti = subjects soperiores = superiors domus = house votum = vow novitius = novice novitiatus = novitiate magister novitiorum = novice master professio = profession professio perpetua = perpetual profession professio temporaria = temporary profession New Law vita consecrata = consecrated life institutio perfectionis = institute of perfection sodales = members sodales = members moderatores = moderators sedes or coetus = house or group sacra ligamina = sacred bonds receptus or sodales nuper recepti = candidate or new members tempus probationis = canonical probation magister probationis canonicae = master of canonical probation cooptatio = incorporation cooptatio perpetua = perpetual profession cooptatio temporaria = temporary professibn Preliminary Canons The preliminary canons contain the principal elements describing and defining the consecrated life, a life devoted to a closer following of Christ through commitment to the evangelical counsels. Naturally, these preliminary can6ns are applicable to all institutes of perfection, the individual types of in-stitutes being described and defined in the second part of the tract. There are six preliminary canons. The first presents the theological elements of the con-secrated life by describing the various characteristics which constitute and specify it. It states: I. Life consecrated through the profession of the evangelical counsels is a stable form of life, by which the faithful, following Christ more closely, are dedicated totally to God loved above all, so that by a new and special title they are ordered to the honor of God, to the salvation of the world, and to the building up of the Church, seek the perfection of charity in the service of the kingdom of God, and become clear signs in the Church foretelling heavenly glory. 2. Which form of living in institutes of perfection, constituted under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and canonically erected by the competent authority of the Church, the 30 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 faithful freely accept, who through vows or other sacred bonds, profess to observe ac-cording to the particular laws of these institutes the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and who are united to the mystery of the Church in a special manner by charity, to which the counsels lead. Though the purpose of this presentation does not include analyzing the various definitions given in this tract, because of its importance, we shall schematize the theological notion of the consecrated life in the following out-line. Consecrated life: 1. is a stable form of life 2. dedicates people to God loved above all things 3. orders them by a new and special title to: a. the honor of God b. the salvation of the world c. the building up of the Church 4. enables its members to seek the perfection of charity in service of the kingdom of God and witness heavenly glory in the Church 5. is constituted by inspiration of the Holy Spirit 6. is canonically erected by competent ecclesiastical authority 7. is accepted by professing, through vows or other sacred bonds, the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, according to the laws of particular institutes 8. unites the faithful to the mystery of the Church in a special manner through charity to which the counsels lead. The charismatic nature of the consecrated life is stated in the second preliminary canon. It affirms that the status of those in institutes of perfection, though not pertaining to the hierarchical structure of the Church, does pertain to its life and sanctity and must be held in honor by all. Both clerics and lay people may be called to this state by divine vocation and thus participate in the saving mission of the Church. The evangelical counsels, the third canon declares, are founded in the teaching and example of Christ. They are a divine gift to the Church from God and it is the duty of the Church to conserve this gift. In early versions of the revision, the right of the Church to govern institutes of perfection was spelled out here, but this power is now treated in Title I1. The fourth canon repeats the thought of Lumen gentium, no. 46, by stating that the profession of the evangelical counsels, though entailing the renuncia-tion of certain values which are to be undoubtedly esteemed, does not detract from a genuine development of human persons, but rather by its very nature is helpful to that development. Those who profess the evangelical counsels, by their consecration do not become strangers to their fellowmen or useless citizens of this earthly city, for even though they sometimes do not directly assist their contemporaries, still they help them spiritually by prayer, sacrifice, and preaching the gospel. All, however, also those who offer service to others and direct the building up of the earthly city to God, give testimony to Christ so that the Heavenly Father may be glorified in all things. The distinction between clerical and lay institutes is explained in canon five, as well as the difference between institutes of diocesan right and pontifical The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation right. The distinction between clerical and lay institutes is slightly different from that of canon 498, no. 4 in the Code. Clerical institutes are now defined as institutes which assume the exercise of sacred orders in their particular legisla-tion, said legislation being approved by competent authority. Institutes of pon-tifical right are erected and approved by the Holy See, while diocesan institutes have been erected by a local ordinary but not by the Holy See. The last preliminary canon declares that what is stated concerning members of in-stitutes of perfection pertains to both sexes, unless the context or nature of the case indicates otherwise. This has been called the principle of equality by the secretary of the Committee,~ but the content of the canon fails to justify this laudable title. Part I Those Things Common to Institutes of Perfection Title l The Constitution of Institutes and Their Parts This section was originally entitled, Concerning the Erection, Union, and Suppression of Institutes, Provinces, and Houses. Though the same matter is treated, the title was changed to that given above. In view of the new structures in the Church, such as the national conferences of bishops, and the application of the principle of subsidiarity, this section is changed considerably from the legislation of the Code. Diocesan institutes may be erected by local ordinaries provided the con-ference of bishops, avoiding unnecessary duplication of institutes, grants per-mission. To divide an institute into parts, to erect new parts, or to join existing parts pertains to the authority of the institutes as determined in particular law. To erect a house (sedes) or group of an institute pertains to the competent authority stated in the particular law, provided the consent of the ordinary of the place has been given in writing beforehand. Consent of the ordinary to erect a house of the institute carries with it the right to live according to the spirit, particular go~l, and particular means of the institute, to carry on the works proper to the institute, any condition contained in the permission to establish the house being observed. Moreover, clerical institutes have the right to es-tablish a church or public oratory and to carry on the sacred ministry, the com-mon law being observed. In order to change the apos.tolic purpose of a house or group, the consent of the local ordinary is required, unless it concerns the inter-nal government of discipline of the institute. Changes in institutes which affect matters determined by the Holy See require permission of the Holy See. The permission of the Holy See is also required if two or more institutes unite to form a new institute, or if they unite, one institute retaining, the other surrendering, its identity. Suppression of institutes also pertains to the Holy See which has the right to dispose of the property of the institutes. Suppression of a part of an institute, a province or a vicariate, pertains to the general chapter of the institute in accord with particular law. The supreme moderator may suppress a house, the ordinary of the place having given his consent. If 7Communicationes, 1970, p. 176. 32 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 there is difficulty, the Holy See should be consulted. Property of a suppressed house should be distributed according to particular law and justice, the inten-tion of the donors being observed. Title !! Dependence of Institutes upon Ecclesiastical Authority The revision of the Code has two sections on government; one concerns the dependence of the institute upon the Church, the other the internal government of the institute. The principle underlying the section which outlines the relationship to the Church is that an institute of perfection is constituted for the service of the whole Church. Hence, it is subject to the authority of the Church in order to insure that it achieve its own purpose and cooperate in effecting the common good. Members of institutes of perfection, therefore, are subject to the Holy Father by reason of their bond of obedience. Moreover, it pertains to competent ecclesiastical authority, led by the Holy Spirit, to moderate and interpret the practice of the evangelical counsels and to approve stable forms of life so that institutes will grow and flourish according to the spirit of the founders. The canons insist that in order to preserve their doctrinal and spiritual patrimony, institutes have autonomy of internal government and of particular legislation. The Holy See as well as the bishops must respect this autonomy. This statement is significant because it indicates that internal autonomy is a right, not a privilege nor an exemption. The possibility of exemption is mentioned in this section. Exemption, as Lumen gentium (no. 45) informs us, is the power of the Holy See to remove an institute of pe.rfection from the jurisdiction of the local ordinary and subject it to himself or another authority of the Church, in order to provide better for apostolic service and for the spiritual growth of members of the institute. Only the possibility and purpose of exemption is mentioned, no explanation being given of its meaning. Since exemption is a particular act of the Roman Pontiff, it is not fitting that it be limited through a definition of law. Institutes that are exempt carry on their apostolic life in cooperation with the local ordinary as outlined in Christus Dominus (nos. 34, 35) and Ecclesiae sanctae (1, nos. 22- 40). Thus, the new law states that houses and members of institutes are subject to episcopal authority according to the norms of law. The specific rights of local ordinaries in regard to diocesan institutes are enumerated. In respect to a diocesan institute, a local Ordinary has the right: I. to approve particular laws 2. to confirm changes in particular laws proposed by the general chapter, unless the ¯ matter pertains to the Holy See 3. to give dispensations from the particular law in single and particular (per modum ac-tus) cases 4. to visitate houses of an institute for pastoral reasons or if a particular reason warrants 5. to call members of the institute in their territory to external works of the apostolate in keeping with the purpose and slbirit of the institute, observing religious discipline and obtaining the consent of the competent moderator. The New Law." Principles, Content, Evaluation if the diocesan institute is located in more than one diocese the local ordinary of the principal house approves the particular law, other concerned ordinaries being consulted, and grants proper dispensations. If the principal house is to be moved from one diocese to another, the consent of both local ordinaries is re-quired, Institutes of pontifical right are subject immediately and exclusively to the Holy See in internal government and discipline, any laws to the contrary being observed. Members of these institutes are subject to the local ordinary in the public exercise of divine worship and the external work of the apostolate, ac-cording to the spirit, purpose, and discipline of each institute. Moreover, the local ordinary must visitate houses of pontifical right in regard to the above mentioned matters if grave reasons seem to require it. The last canon of this section calls for regular meetings between local ordinaries and moderators of institutes of perfection in order to improve and coordinate apostolic activity. Title 1II The Government of Institutes of Perfection In this section, the moderator or superiors of the institute are urged to accept and fulfill their responsibilities in a spirit of service toward the com-munity, governing more by promoting cooperation than by imposing precepts. Sufficient authority is provided, however, so that the moderators may wisely and prudently provide for the common good and the growth of individual members. Extensive use of the principle of subsidiarity makes this section of the new law much different from the law of the Code and the attitudes and customs in accord with the Code. In particular the section states the following: Moderators and chapters of institutes have authority to govern individuals and groups within the com-munity, carrying out their pastoral mission according to the particular laws of the institute. In clerical institutes, moderators have ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the internal and external forum. In exempt institutes, moderators possess a greater participation of ecclesiastical power and exercise it in accord with general and particular law. Major moderators in clerical instituti~s are called ordinaries. Moderators should follow the example and command of Christ: "Whoever is great among you, let him become the servant" (Mt 20:26). Moreover, they should recognize and promote the human and Christian dignity of the members, in regard to the exercise of authority, members should display an ac-tive obedience, both in executing and in initiating apostolic works. So that this might be achieved more harmoniously, moderators should listen to the members and consider them as collaborators in working for the good of the in-stitute and the Church. In order for one to be a moderator, whether supreme or subordinate, one must be incorporated definitively in the institute for a period of time deter-mined by particular law. The length of term for each office, which is determined by particular law, should be temporary, unless the spirit of the institute in- 34 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 dicates otherwise for the office of supreme moderator. For the good of the in-stitute and in'order to improve the quality of government and the spirituality of the members, particular law should provide that moderators do not stay in of-rice for too long a period. Hence, when they complete the time prescribed in particular law, they should not assume the office of moderator again until some years have expired. The supreme moderator of an institute should be designated by canonical election according to norms of particular law. Other major superiors are designated according to particular law, that is, they are either elected and then confirmed by the supreme moderator, or appointed but only after adequate and free consultation. Particular law should provide for the appointment or election of minor superiors. Members of the institute must follow the norms of common and particular law in all elections. Moreover, they must vote only for those whom they consider in the Lord to be more worthy of office, avoiding all abuses, especially that of procuring votes for themselves or for others. In order to improve communications, at regular intervals the supreme moderator should send a brief report on the condition and life of the institute to the Holy See. Moreover, moderators should communicate pertinent statements of the Holy See to the members in their care. Moderators should visitate, according to norms of particular law, houses and members under their care. Members should be honest with their moderators responding in truth and charity to legitimate questions. No one should hinder members from fulfilling their responsibilities. The spiritual duties of the moderator are considered carefully. Besides be-ing solicitous about their duties, moderators are to help members seek and love God, foster fraternal communion, promote the growth of the Church and the love of fellow °man, and help members draw closer to Christ through the prac-tice of the evangelical coun~eis. Frequently, they should communicate the word of God to the members, be present with them at the liturgy, stimulate them to the practice of virtue, and instruct by word and example in observance of the law and the worthwhile traditions of the institute. Moreover, let moderators help them in their personal needs, visit and care for the sick sedulously, correct the unruly, strengthen the weakhearted, and be patient to all. The thoughts of this canon, even some of the words, are taken from the Rule of St. Augustine. Moderators must have a permanent council, constituted according to par-ticular law, and must use the council in fulfilling their responsibilities. Consent or consultation is required according to common and particular law. Chapters and councils fulfill their office according to particular and common law, work-ing for the good of the institute or a particular group. In consultation and meetings discretion should be observed so that each institute may be effectively and aptly governed according to its spirit and goals. Moderators should leave the members free in regard to the direction of conscience, the particular law of the institute being observed. Unless members petition it spontaneously, moderators should not hear their confessions. The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation Though no one should be bound to confess to a particular priest, worthy con-fessors should be provided regularly. It is desirable that members freely and faithfully open their hearts to their moderators. Title IV Temporal Goods and Their Administration Because the administration of temporal goods in institutes of perfection is subject to the common law of the Church and also to the civil law of particular countries, this section is rather brief. In composing this,part, the Committee sought to state the principles which would foster the practice of poverty and to eliminate all requirements contained in the old law which discriminate against communities of women. The section begins with the statement that temporal goods of institutes of perfection are ecclesiastical goods and as such are Subject to the general laws concerning the patrimony of the Church, unless particular or common law states otherwise. If the particular s, pirit of an institute warrants, particular law may limit or eliminate the power of acquisition, possession, and administration of temporalgoods. Hence~ each institute should form laws which foster, protect, and express the practice, of poverty according to the spirit of the institute. Witnessing to poverty and charity, institutes should give alms and gifts when possible, particular laws being observed:. Major and minor moderators should have a treasurer, constituted accord-ing to particular law, who administrates temporal goods under their direc-tion. Particular law, following common law, should statelwhich actions exceed the goal and manner of ordinary administration. At proper times determined by particular law, administrators should give an account of their responsibility. For the validity of an alienation which exceeds the amouqt set by the episcopal conference, the consent of the Holy See is required. Title V Admission into the Institute The legislation concerning this most important topic is general, the burden for insuring proper selection and formation of candidate being put upon the in-dividual institutes. The law states that any Catholic may ibe admitted to an in-stitute of perfection who, endowed with a divine vocation, is fittingly prepared and approved by proper authority and has the qualities required by common and particular law. The rest of the title is divided into four articles, the first article concerning the preparation of those to be received. The right to admit candidates pertains to major superiors according to the norms of particular law. This responsibility should be fulfilled carefully so that only those are admitted who are of proper age, have the required health, maturity, and aptitude for the life and mission of the institute, experts being consulted to ascertain the presence of these qualities if need be. The following would be admitted invalidly to an institute: 1. those who are not yet 17 years of age 2. a .spouse who is still married 36 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 one who presently is bound by vows or other bonds in an institute of perfection one who conceals a. admission into another institute of perfection b. substantial indebtedness c. the need to render an account to legally constituted authority. Other impediments to valid admission may be stated in particular law. Before candidates are admitted they must present testimony of baptism and confirma-tion as well as the fact that they are free to enter the institute. Recent converts should not be admitted until their steadfastness is demonstrated. Particular law requires additional proof of candidates' worthiness and their freedom from impediments of particular or common law. If necessary, moderators may seek confidential information as well. Article 2 treats the formation of candidates. The purpose of the time of canonical probation,, by which the life in the institute is begun, is to enable the candidates to consider more carefully, their divine vocation, to experience life in the institute, to test and prove their commitment and worthiness, and to im-bue their hearts and mind with the spirit of the institute. The place for canonical probation may be erected, moved, and suppressed by the supreme moderator with the consent of his council. Particular law, in addition to other conditions for the validity of canonical probation, may define requisites in regard to time, provided (dummodo) the duration of canonical probation em-braces at least one continuous year. The purpose of the canonical probation requires that it be made under the direction of a master according to particular law and be adapted to the nature and goals of the institute. Many of the op-tions in regard to apostolic activity during the time of canonical probation con-tained in Renovationis causam are not contained in the new law, the institute being allowed to determine how the time of probation will be spent as long as the goals are fulfilled. Some of the innovations contained in Renovationis causam .were not thought to be successful by the Committee.8 The master of canonical probation (fgrmerly the novice master), a member definitively admitted to the institute, is design.ated according to particular law and may have assistants; but the direction of the canonical probation is the responsibility of the master under the authority of the major moderator. The formation of candidates should be under the direction of carefully selected and well-prepared members who are free from other responsibilities that would im-pede their work, most important for the institute and the good of the Church. The master and assistants should discern the vocation of (he candidates, leading them gradually to the way of perfection proper to the institute, ac-cording to the norms of particular law. The master and assistants should help the candidates develop Christian and human virtues, and educate them in the spiritual life according to the purpose, goals, spirituality, and history of the in-stitute. Other members of the institute should cooperate in formation through prayer and example. The candidates must be conscious of their responsibility 8Beyer, "De institutorum . . . novo jure," p. 200. The New Law." Principles, Content. Evaluation / 37 to cooperate actively with the master and respond to the grace of their divine vocation. In institutes which have members of different categories, the proba-tion fulfilled for one category is valid for the other, unless particular law states the contrary. Candidates may leave the institute if they wish and may be dismissed by competent authority of the institute, according to particular law. The canonical probation being completed, if the candidate is judged worthy, he or she may be admitted to the institute, otherwise she or he should be dismissed, unless there is doubt about worthiness, and then the probation may be prolonged, but not beyond six months. Article 3 is concerned with incorporation (cooptatio) into the institute. Find-ing an English word to serve as a synonym for the Latin "cooptatio" is rather difficult. A literal translation would be "election," but this does not seem to describe what happens when one professes vows or other sacred bonds in an in-stitute of perfection. The Code of Canon Law used the word "'profession" but this is a form of"cooptatio" which is proper to religious communities. Having considered many possible words, I have settled upon "'incorporation," being open to a better alternative in the future. Whatever the word, the event and process under discussion is clear; it is the action and the effects of the action by which one temporarily or permanently binds oneself through vows or other sacred bonds to follow the evangelical counsels according to the spirit and legislation of a particular institute of perfection. The canons state: No one may be incorporated into an institute, unless in the manner prescribed by particular law. Incorporation carries with it the rights and obligations defined in particular statutes, being observed under legitimate authority. Through incorporation the institute assumes the respon-sibility, under a new title, of leading the member to his goal according to the statutes of the institute. After canonical probation, incorporation should be made for a definite time, but not for less than three years or longer than nine years, unless particular law states otherwise. By temporary incorporation, members assume publicly the observance of the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, made firm either by vow or some other sacred bond. Particular law may permit, however, that in temporary incor-poration of the member, in place of a vow or other sacred bonds, one may be bound to the institute by another bond, the nature of which must be defined carefully by the same particular law. Always, h6wever, the member must be so incorporated that one is held to lead one's life according to the norms of the in-stitute under the authority of the legitimate moderator. For the validity of temporary incorporation, besides the conditions set down in particular law, the following are required: a. at least 1,8 years of age completed b. completion of valid canonical probation c. judgment of worthiness made according to the requirements of par-ticular law d. admission by the competent superior. 31~ / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 When the time of temporary incorporation is completed, one who freely petitions and is judged worthy should be admitted to definitive incorporation; otherwise one should leave or be dismissed. However, if it seems opportune or if the member spontaneously requests, the period of temporary incorporation may be prolonged by the competent moderator, not however beyond three years. Through definitive incorporation members consecrate their lives to God by a sacred bond of its nature perpetual, and also are admitted fully into the in-stitute. For valid definitive incorporation, besides the conditions of particular law, the following are required: a. at least 21 years of age completed b. previous incorporation completed, according to canon 58 c. judgment of worthiness made according to the requirements of par-ticular law d. admission by the competent superior. Those who are incorporated are bound to live according to the norms of their institute. Article 4 provides for the formation of incorporated members of the in-stitute. The new law considers the education or formation of incorporated members as well as candidates. This article gives general notions which in-dicate the necessity, purpose, and duration of continuing education and forma-tion. The details are consigned to particular law. In every institute, after first incorporation, the formation of the members must be perfected so that they will be able to lead more fully the life of the in-stitute and carry on its mission more fittingly. Hence, particular law must define the duration and purpose of this formation, being mindful of the needs of the Church, the conditions of the times, as well as the goal and spirit of the institute. During this period of formation, members should not be assigned to offices or other work which impedes their formation. This formation, under the guidance of qualified people and accommodated to the capabilities of the members, should be doctrinal as well as practical, in accord with the needs of the institute. If possible and fitting, useful academic degrees should be ob-tained. The formation of those who are destined for sacred orders is governed by common law and the course of studies (ratio studiorum) proper to each in-stitute. Throughout their whole life, members should seek spiritual, doctrinal, and professional development, and moderators, insofar as possible, should provide the time and means to do this. Title Vi Obligations of Institutes and Their Members The principal responsibility of each institute is to understa~ld its vocation in Christ and in the Church, to preserve faithfully its particular nature according to the spirit of the founder, and to strive sedulously to achieve the goals of the community, being attentive to the signs of the times. Members should keep in The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation mind that they have responded to the divine call by profession of the evangelical counsels; accordingly, being more and more liberated from the things which might diminish the fervor of charity, they are bound to live solely for God and His kingdom. Members of institutes of perfection should make the following of Christ in the Gospels the supreme rule of their life. All members have the responsibility of cooperating wholeheartedly and diligently in the building up of the Body of Christ, according to the vocation of each institute. Solicitously, therefore, let them be careful so that through them the Church show forth Christ more vividly day by day. Each institute, according to its nature and proper character, should define by particular law in its own rule of life the manner in which the counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience should be observed. Each member ought not only to observe faithfully and integrally the evangelical counsels, but also order his or her life according to the statutes of the institute, and so strive for greater perfection of charity. Let the contemplation of divine things and assiduous communication with God be as daily food to people consecrated to the service of God and the Church. Avidly, therefore, members should peruse meditatively the Sacred Scriptures, participate in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, prac-tice mental and vocal prayer, make a yearly retreat, and perform other spiritual exercises according to the norms of particular law. It is earnestly recommended that members participate daily in the sacrifice of (he Mass, and according to the condition of each one, receive the sacred Body of Christ. Let them go to confession frequently according to the norms of particular law and the counsel of their spiritual director. Moreover, let the members employ other means, whether natural or supernatural, useful for fostering the spiritual life, whether common to all or proper to their own in-stitute; most especially, let them examine their conscience, visit the Blessed Sacrament, and pray to the Blessed Virgin, especially by reciting the rosary. The members, living in fraternal community rooted and founded in charity, should be an example to others of the universal reconciliation in Christ; hence let them show forth the gentleness and kindness of Christ in their life. Title VII Separation from the Institute When treating this matter, the Committee sought to simplify the process by which one departs or is dismissed from an institute of perfection. Hence, the practice of having separate processes for those in simple and solemn vows was eliminated, as well as the differences arising from exempt and non-exempt in-stitutes. Secularization and exclaustration were dropped from the new law, as well as the distinctions between apostates and fugitives. Moreover, in accord with the principles of subsidiarity, many of the decisions which were previously made by the Holy See are now made by the institute. As a result of the simplifications and in response to the needs of our times, a person who does not cooperate with the community may be dismissed more easily than in the legislation contained in the Code. Hence, the rights of the institute are 40 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 protected more readily than they were under the legislation of the Code which gave greater protection to the individual religious. Article I Transfer to Another Institute One may not transfer from one's own institute of perfection to another un-less one has the consent of each supreme moderator and the deliberative vote of each council. Particular law should define the time and manner of proba-tion, which having been fulfilled, the member may be admitted to a new incor-poration according to the statutes. One who has been definitively incorporated before transfer, after completing.probation is definitively incorporated into the new institute; one who was not definitively incorporated assumes temporary bonds, lasting for at least three years. Until the new incorporation, the sacred bonds remaining, the particular rights and obligations that the member had in the previous institute remain suspended; when the new probation begins, however, the member is bound by the statutes of the new institute. If one is not admitted to incorporation or refuses it, one must return to the original institute unless he or she obtains a dispensation from bonds or the preceding time of incorporation has already ex-pired. Through incorporation, a member is joined to the new institute, the sacred bonds, rights, and obligations of the original institute ceasing. Article 2 Departure from an Institute The supreme moderator, having heard his council, for a grave cause may concede to a member definitively incorporated into the institute that he or she may live outside the institute, and, though still under sacred bonds, be free from obligations which cannot be reconciled with the new condition of life, but not for more than three years. A member in this state remains under the care of the superiors; however, he or she lacks active and passive voice. One who completes the time of temporary incorporation may leave the in-stitute if he so wishes. A member who during the time of temporary incorpora-tion for a grave cause petitions to leave the institute may be given an indult to depart definitively by the supreme moderator with the consent of his council. A definitively incorporated member who for most grave reasons considered before the Lord petitions an indult to depart from the institute may obtain it from the supreme moderator. In order to validly concede this induit, the supreme moderator needs the consent of his council, which for this case must consist of at least five members. Hence, if ordinary councilors are absent or lacking, others should be called according to the norms of particular law. Voting for this consent should be done secretly. An induit to depart from the institute, accepted in writing by the member, carries with it ipso iure a dispen-sation from vows or other sacred bonds and from all other obligations which arise from incorporation. A member who removes himself from the prescribed community life or from the jurisdiction of the moderator should be solicitously sought and helped by the moderators so that he might persevere in his vocation. However, if The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation within the time determined in particular law, but never less than three months, two warnings have proved useless, or the member does not return, he may be dismissed from the institute by a decree of the supreme moderator with the consent of his council. Article 3 Dismissal from an Institute A member, the time of temporary incorporation having expired, may be dismissed by the competent moderator if there are just and reasonable causes either on the part of the institute or the part of the candidate. Observing justice and charity, physical or mental infirmity, even if contracted after incorpora-tion, constitutes a just cause for dismissing one whose temporary incorporation has expired, provided the judgment of experts states that the member cannot lead the life of the institute without doing damage to himself or to the institute. Members temporarily incorporated may be dismissed by the supreme moderator of the institute with the consent of his council, respecting particular law. In order to carry out such a dismissal, it is required: a. that the cause of dismissal, either on the part of the institute or on the part of the member, is grave though it need not involve culpability b. that if the cause is culpable, warning were given in writing and proved useless c. that dismissal is not because of ill heait~ unless it was maliciously kept secret before incorporation, or unless the judgment of experts urges the dismissal in order to avoid injury to the member or the institute. The causes for dismissal should be manifested to the member in writing, full liberty to respond being granted. The response of the member, which ought also to be in writing, should be submitted to the supreme moderator and his council. Members definitively incorporated may be dismissed by a decree of the supreme moderator with the consent of the council, observing the norms of general and particular law. In order to carry out such a dismissal, it is required: a. that the causes of dismissal are grave, culpable, and juridically sound b. that before ~the dismissal, two canonical warnings which threatened dis-missal if not observed, have proved useless c. the causes of the dismissal were communicated to the member, and full liberty of defense was given after each warning. The responses of the member, given in writing, should be included in the acts which are submitted to the supreme moderator and his council for examina-tion. The supreme moderator with the consent of his council may dismiss im-mediately a member: a. who publicly professes apostasy, heresy or schism b. who attempts or contracts matrimony, even if only civil 42 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 c. who culpably was the cause of serious and most grave exterior scandal or injury to the institute. The decree of dismissal must be communicated as soon as possible to the member who has the right of appealing to the Holy See within ten days, with suspensive effect. When a member is dismissed legitimately, ipso facto all bonds, rights, and obligations coming from incorporation also cease. Article 4 Juridical Condition of Those Separated from Institute A member in sacred orders, dismissed from or having legitimately departed from his institute, in order to exercise the sacred ministry, must be accepted ac-cording to law by his own or another diocesan bishop. An institute, in a spirit of equity and gospel charity, should show proper concern for former members. In the report that is made to the Holy See, mention should be made concerning members who have been separated from the institute in any way whatsoever. Part II Things Proper to Different Institutes of Perfection In this section the different kinds of institutes of perfection and their par-ticular characteristics are considered. The foundation of the distinction between these various types of institutes is the manner of apostolate carried on by each one. In order to compose and divide this part, the Committee had to consider intently the theology of the states of perfection and the constitutive elements of the various types of institutes. The content and the theoretical and practical considerations that underlie this section of the new law have been ex-plained clearly and thoroughly by the secretary of the Committee, Mark Said, O.P., in the recent issues of Communicationes) Part II begins with four preliminary canons which apply to each kind of in-stitute. The first three canons contain the principles formulated by Vatican Council II for the vitality and renewal of religious life, and the last canon in the group confirms the eremitical life as a valid form of evangelical perfection. The canons state: There are many institutes of perfection in the Church, displaying various charisms of the Spirit and having different gifts according to the grace which has been given them. These institutes follow Christ more closely either by prayer, by active works which benefit mankind, or by communicating with people in the world. Therefore, given these differences from the Holy Spirit, the mind of the founders and their proposals concerning the nature, purpose, and character of the institute, as well as its sound traditions, must be followed by all. Norms which concern the basic elements, that is, the mind of the founder and proposals concerning the nature, purpose, and sound traditions of the in-stitute, are to be placed in the principal lawbook of each institute, whatever that book might be called; and just as these norms must be approved by the competent authority in the Church, so they may not be changed without per-aCommunicationes, 1973, pp. 63 ff.; 1974, pp. 73 ft. The New Law: Principles, Content, Evaluation / 43 mission from the same authority. Other norms, concerning life, government, and discipline, are ratified and gathered together by the competent authority of each institute, which authority, however, may change and adapt them accord-ing to particular law. In composing these texts, the spiritual and juridical should be combined, and norms should not be multiplied without reason. Though the wording here is not as clear as it might be, the meaning is ap-prehended easily. Basically, these laws repeat the distinction of Ecclesiae sanc-tae concerning constitutions, which are more general and permanent, and directives, which are concerned with changeable and less important items?° This distinction will be familiar to religious who have taken part in general chapters over the past few years. In addition to institutes of perfection, the Church recognizes the eremitical or anchoritic life by which the faithful, withdrawing more strictly from the world, consecrate their lives to the praise of God and salvation of the world through the silence of solitude and by assiduous prayer and penance. An anchorite, recognized in law as a religious, is one who professes under vow the three evangelical counsels and follows a definite rule of life under the guidance of a competent religious superior or local ordinary. Title 1 Religious Institutes These canons contain the essential and integral elements of the form of consecration known as the religious life. For most people, this type of institute of perfection is the most commonly encountered. The laws state: In each religious institute, the members must assume the responsibili!y of the three evangelical counsels, this responsibility being strengthened by public vows, at least at the time of definitive profession, and they must lead a common life ac-cording to the norms of particular law. The public witness which should be rendered to Christ and to the Church by these institutes involves separation from the world according to the spirit and purpose of each institute, as well as use of a fitting habit prescribed by particular law as a sign of the consecrated life. The profession of chastity for the kingdom of God carries with it the obser-vance of celibacy as well as perfect continence by which love of God and of all men is increased and manifested. The profession of poverty for the following of Christ involves, besides a life of work and simplicity, total dependence in the use and disposition of goods, and at least the cession of the administration of one's proper patrimony. Unless one makes a renunciation of patrimony already acquired or to be ac-quired according to the norms of particular law, members are held to make a will, and in view of future profession, to dispose freely of the use and usufruct of their goods. Whatever is acquired by members of the institute through their own work, stipend, or pension, belongs to the institute. The profession of obedience in imitation of Christ carries with it total ~°lbid., 1970, pp. 12-4. 44 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/1 dedication to the will of God through submission to moderators taking the place of God, offered in a spirit of faith and love according to the regulations of law. Religious should live in community in a house legally constituted, which house may have its own church or oratory in which the Eucharist is celebrated and reserved so that it is the true center of the community. Chapter I Monastic Institutes Monastic institutes are religious institutes whose members, according to the particular traditions of each institute, lead an anchoritic or coenobitic life by conversion to God through prayer and labor so that through apostolic charity and the contemplation of divine things they seek only God and His kingdom. This chapter then considers first monks and afterwards considers nuns. The principle responsibility of monks is to offer humble and noble service to the divine Master within the confines (septa) of the monastery. Monastic in-stitutes which are ordered totally to contemplation remain always a lustrous part of the Mystical Body of Christ and speak of the richness of treasures in the Church; hence, even though the need for active apostolic work is great, let them remain firmly in their state of life. Institutes, however, which would assume some legitimate apostolate or work of Christian charity, should pursue only those things which are consonant with the spirit of monastic life. Monastic institutes, per se, are neither clerical nor lay. A religious house of monks, under the care and government of a proper moderator, is called a monastery, and of itself is an independent entity, particular laws being observed. The moderator of an independent monastery, who is usually called an abbot, is by right a major moderator. Monasteries of the same monastic families may be united in federations, and these federations may be united in confederations, with the permission of the Holy See. Each federation or con-federation is governed by its own law, the autonomy of each monastery, however, being preserved. Each institute should state in its particular law the norms for the monastic and priestly formation of its members. Transfer from one monastery to another of the same family or the same rule may be made with the consent of both moderators and the deliberative vote of the chapter of the receiving monastery, particular law being observed. If one transfers, monastic profession is not repeated, unless particular law states otherwise. Other forms of transfer are governed by common law. Nuns, a more noble part of the flock of Christ, legally are those women who are dedicated primar, jly to a life of contemplation. Those things that are stated concerning monks apply to nuns as well. Monasteries of nuns affiliated with an institute of men receive their way of life and government from the statutes of these institutes. It is fitting, moreover, that they be helped in pur-suing their proper vocation by spiritual care of the institute to which they are affiliated. The papal cloister, which uniquely disposes for contemplative life, The New Law." Principles, Content, Evaluation / should be observed in monast erles of nuns. Statutes concerning the papal cloister in particular law are t~o be approved by the Holy See. Other .I monasteries should observe a cloister that is accommodated to their particular spirit and defined in particular lalw. I Chapter II Religious Institutes~Dedicated to Apostolic Works In institutes dedicated to apostolic works, apostolic activity pertains to their very nature Hence, the whole~ life of the members should be imbued with apostolic spirit, ~nd the total apostolic activity should be informed by the spirit of the instttute. Apostohc act~vtty should always proceed from an intimate union with God and should nourish and confirm this union. Apostolic activity, exercised in the name of and un[ler the guidance of the Church, should be I carried on in ecclesiai commumo,n. Works proper to the institutes should be retained faithfully though adapted to the needs of the times and places, using new and opportune methods" Members of institutes dedicated to apostolic works, by reason of their very vocation, are bound to help bishops and work for the good of the Church under the direction of their own moderators. Bishops and moderators, either alone or in groups, should take common coIunsel in planning the works of the apostolate that will be carried on by the members. Institutes have the right to carry on their proper works, the requirements of law being observed. When opportune, bishops and moderators should e~nter particular agreements for ordering and improving collaboration. In three successive articles theI proposed canons then treat of three kinds of institutes: canonical institutes, conventual institutes, and apostolic institutes. Canonical institutes offer d~wne praise, especially through solemn worship, and they carry on apostolic works[ especially by exercising the priestly ministry in parishes. In order to foster r~gular life, parishes should be committed to them which are close together or close to the principal house. Many indepen-dent chapters of regular canons~ may be brought together under the same leadership; many institutes of the same canonical type may be confederated under an abbot primate with th~ permission of the Holy See. Conventual institutes intimately join the apostolic life with divine praise and regular observance, and they also offer the particular witness of an austere life. Members live a fraternal iif~ in common, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist and the Liturgy of ihe Hours, an

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

Issue 29.1 of the Review for Religious, 1970. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDI.TORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Eilard. S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to R~wEw vog l~uG~ous; Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63~o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ~9xo6. + + + 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 Provirice Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright (~) 1970 by RZVzEw' FOR RELIOIOUS at 428 East Preston Str~:t; Baltimore, Mary-land 21202. Printed in U.S.A. Second class posta[~e paid at Baltimore, Maryland and ai addiuonal mailing offices. Single copies: $1.00. Suhscsiption U.S.A. and Canada: $5.00 a year, "$9.00 for two years; other countries: $5.50 a year, $10.00 for two yean. Orders should indicate whether they ah: for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to RFvu~w FOR RI~LIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions; wl~re ~ccom-padded by a remittance, should be sent to Rgv~zw ~OR RELIGIOUS; P. O. ~X 671; Baltimo~, Ma~land 21203. Chang~ of addr~, bu~ co~es~nd~ce, and ord~s not a~ ompa~ed a remittance should be g~Ltotous ; 428 East ~eston Ma~land 21202. Manu~ripts, ~itofial cor- ~s~ndence, and ~oks for r~iew should sent to REVIEW FOR gELIOIOUS; 612 Hum~ldt Building; 539 North Grand ~ul~ard; Saint ~uis, Mi~uri 63103. Qu~fions for answering should ~ the Qu~fio~ and ~we~ ~tor. JANUARY 1970 VOLUME 29 NUMBER 1 REVIEW FOR Volume 29 1970 EDITORIAL OFFIG'E 539 North Grand Boulevard St. Louis, Missouri 63103 BUSINESS OFFICE 428 East Preston Street Baltimore, Maryland 21202 EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Published in January, March, May, July, September, Novem-ber on the fifteenth of the month. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOLIS is indexed in the Catholic Peri-odical Index land in Book Re-view Index. Microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS i8 available from University Mi-crofilms; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. GEORGE WILSON, S.J. Community. and Loneliness Not another article on communityl Haven't we all heard enough on that subject to last us through our next ten general chapters? Perhaps. But I hope the reader will excuse me if I muse a bit out loud on some questions in this area which I feel we have neglected in spite of the deluge of analyses, anathemas, and recipes to which we have been treated in recent years. The reflections which follow will have only the merest semblance of any order. I make no apology for this. It happens to represent for me the state of the issues, which recurrently bob to the surface of my consciousness like the flotsam from a variety of experiences with religious men and women over the past six years. It strikes me, incidentally, that flotsam may be a particularly apt word inasmuch as some of these experiences involved rather disastrous shipwrecks. We might make a good beginning by taking eight giant steps backwards to a typical religious community in the year 1962. (We now know that such a thing never existed, of course; beneath the surface each com-munity was really very different. In those idyllic days, however, we might very well have lived under such an illusion.) We heard about the Council---the typical first reaction was "I wonder why?"--so we prayed for the gentle rain of the Spirit. We prayed for the success of the Council more or less as we would have prayed for a Eucharistic congress. We prayed for rain and we were treated to a ty-phoon. And not least in the area of what we came to call "community." We might even have to remind our-selves now that the word "community" was hardly ever heard before the Council. And certainly if we used it at all, it was not with all the psychological baggage with which it is currently burdened. In those ÷ + George Wilson, $.J., teaches theol-ogy at Woodstock College in Wood-stock, Md. 21163. VOLUME 29, 1970 + 4. 4. George Wilson, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS days we might have spoken of "common life"--but that was such a different thing. I hope I will be for-given the whimsical reflection that in those days "com-mon life" was frequently used to engineer the rigidity which precisely destroys all life, whereas today our more likely mistake is to invoke "community" in order to perpetrate all the most bizarre diversities which haven't the foggiest connection with the people with ¯ whom we live. Lest this latter remark be misconstrued, let me .hasten to add that it is not in any way a plea for more togetherness. I suppose at this point I am just suggesting that we abandon the futile gesture of trying to baptize the many sensible, good, and apostolic things done by religious with the tag "community." If indeed they are sensible, good, and apostolically profitable, they will remain so even without the tag, as long as the religious lives up to his or her basic commitment to the group. At any rate, I think we would all admit that "com-munity" has taken on new burdens in the renewal years. The new factor consists in the conscious emphasis on personal enrichment of the life of the individual through the intimate sharing of life with similarly dedi-cated persons. This is not to suggest that religious life in previous decades did not bring rich personal satis-faction to the lives of many wonderful and wonder-fully human beings. It is one of the cruel illusions of some of our fiery reformers to think that they dis-covered the category of the personal--cruel to others because it seems to cast a shadow over the accomplish-ment of their great lives of service, but even more cruel to the reformers themselves because, being, an illusion, it prevents them from seeing precisely the beauty of lives lived for years at a steady, if less ro-matically intense, warmth. One is tempted to think of beams and motes and so forth. Be that as it may, the difference between then and today is not, I would submit, that between coldness and warmth, but rather between a then in which the warm personal successes and the cold impersonal failures were just lived, and a today, in; which they are consciously sought after (warm personal relationships) or consciously and ruthlessly knocked down (the merely functional, computerized, impersonal civilities). People were always warm (some) and cold (some) and they still are today (some of e~ch). Wheat and cockle and all that. It is just that we religious have as a group grown more reflective about how it happens; we have evolved a new set of forms which define and give contemporary expression to warmth and coldness (and we .are evolving even newer forms at a dizzy pace); and we are more consciously searching out the ways to increase the successes and minimize the failures in the process. All of which is good. Religious communities not only should be places in which the full development of human personal potential for life and love and happiness takes place, they should also be evidently such. Signs which don't communicate are worse than anomalies: they have the fateful chameleon capacity to become counter-signs. Let it be proclaimed once and for all: a man or woman giving his or her life to Christ in a religious society should find there the ac-ceptance and warmth and affection which any hu-man being has a right to look for in his commitment to any other person or group of persons. Unfortunately this still does not get us out of the woods. I say unfortunately, because I am afraid that many religious feel that the mere affirmation is enough by itself to answer all difficulties. To draw a bold caricature which probably never happened, I ~aave the recurring fantasy of a contemporary religious say-ing: "A religious community should be an intimate group of people who are in love with one another. I don't feel that way about any of the eight people I live with and I certainly know non~ of them feels that way about me. So this isn't a community, and I'm get-ting out of this farce." Put in such a starkly simplistic form, some of the ambiguities which lurk within our thinking about community are thrown into a new light and some finer honing of our questions is called for. What degree of intimacy can a person realistically hope for with eight people selected more or less at random by somebody who won't be living with them? Yes, the community should supply warmth and personal sup-pol: t--but just who is the community when I say that? Does the community commit itself to being my only source of deep personal relationships and human ful-fillment? Need it always and in every instance even be the primary source? Is it possible that by failing to face these questions we have created a thought pattern in which the individual religious is unwittingly taught to have entirely unrealistic expectations and then when these cannot be met he or she is compelled to seek their fulfillment elsewhere? It has been observed in the case of marriage that our current high divorce rate can be directly attributed to the fact that modern man's ex-pectations from marriage are, contrary to a superficial view, actually much higher than in the past; would the increasing rate of departures from religious life be say-ing the same thing about our expectations concerning it? I would not pretend to answer all of these difficult questions in the space of a brief article. But perhaps we + 4. + Loneliness VOLUME 29, 1970 5 + ÷ ÷ George Wilson, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 6 may move the dialogue along a bit by examining a couple of areas: (l) the people with whom I should expect to find "community" when I commit myself to Christ in a religious group, and (2) one of the false understandings of community under which we may have been unwittingly operating. First, to the people. The operating principle of many religious today would seem to be that I should be able to attain to deep intimacy with all the members of my local community or else it is all a sham. I will leave aside the question which the older religious, often quite legitimately, is frequently heard to ask, namely, what in the name of all that's holy do they mean by "deep intimacy"? My presumption for the moment is that the people in question are attempting to point to something real of which they have already had some experiential taste and which they do expect to find in religious life, however halting they may be in articulat-ing what they mean by it. In other words, I can also sympathize with their common response of "if you don't even sense what I'm talking about, that's even sadder than the fact that we don't have it here." At this point the meaning of "deep intimacy" is not my con-cern. But leaving it descriptively for the moment at the level of a vague but real experience whose presence or lack can be grasped by any sensitive human being, my question is rather: With whom should I reasonably expect to achieve it? There is a "tradition" (of very recent vintage, I sus-pect) which would be shocked that the question is even raised, since sell-evidently this kind of relationship has to be achieved with one's local community. To which my question in return would be: is it all that self-evident? I ought to find a~ceptance and warmth and affection in the community of people to whom I have committed myself, but does this lead me realistically to expect a relationship of deep intimacy with the eight members of my local community? At about this point in the dialogue it is not unlikely that someone will be thinking: "But just look at the community of our first foundersl They had this kind of deep relationship, but we've lost it." The comparison is frequently made and I would like to suggest that it masks a fateful equivocation. To use the word "com-munity" to describe a handful of people who freely and individually sought each other out through a proc-ess of long personal contact and testing, and then to make this a model for one's expectations when one is assigned to a random collection of eight individuals out of a 500-man (or 35,000-man) congregation to which I commit mysel/-~this is surely courting intellectual con- fusion and psychological disaster. The founding group had a sense of community and generally very intimate relationships. (Would one seem too cynical if one were to suggest that we have probably romanticized even the latter element? A sober reading of our early histories would suggest that for all their vision and charisma our founders generally had to be very hard-headed, down-to-earth wrestlers in order to. survive the fierce opposition which their vision generated.) The fact that they had both these elements in one integrated, lived way should not make us forget that they are two different things. Perhaps a parallel drawn from a related area may be of some assistance here. The movement known as the Teams of Our Lady (or by its original French title, Equipes-Notre Dame) consists of married couples who are established into communities of six couples each. It is important to note that the couples do not as a rule choose the other couples with whom they will de-velop as a team; the leadership of the movement usually gathers them on the basis of factors such as geographical proximity and so forth. The goal of the team is to help one another grow in holiness, which involves assisting each couple to find the ways to express love in the various situations into which their marriage and family life call them. The forms and practices of the spiritual life vary from couple to couple. The role of the other couples in the team is to foster the individual couple's unique growth, not to dictate a particular recipe for conjugal sanctity. The point of the parallel is that the testimony of the couples in the movement reveals that they have discovered experientially the distinction be-tween a successful team and what they call a "cozy team." A given team which is functioning well may gradually develop also into a cozy group; the couples and their children may begin to socialize apart from the explicit team structure, they may begin to gravitate to-ward other team couples in deep friendship. Or they may not. The point is that couples find that this factor is not essential to the success of a team. Teams can reach great depths of spiritual sharing and mutual assistance and growth without a great deal of socializ-ing or what one might call camaraderie. Indeed there are teams whose rating on the latter scale is very high but in which nothing of significance with regard to the goal of the movement is happening. It will be instantly objected that the supposed paral-lel is fallacious because of course these couples already have their primary needs for intimacy satisfied else-where, prior to entry into a team. The objection has some merit; certainly the parallel limps. On the other hand, it would be a bit cavalier to dismiss it out of + 4, VOLUME 29, 1970 4. 4. 4. George Wilson, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8 hand simply on those grounds. We must face the fact that when we admit the inadequacies of the parallel we are not thereby justified in ignoring the facets in which it does touch home in spite of its hobbling gait. Nor--more importantly--may we thereby surrepti-. tiously insert the assumption that the religious must of course find his or her admitted needs for intimacy satis-fied within the local cgmmunity. Despite the weak-nesses of the parallel I submit that this notion remains at this point in the case exactly that, just an assump-tion. What are we to say of its value? It occurs to me that we might make a better assessment of it if we pose some specific situations for ourselves. Suppose that a given sister or brother or priest, were to discover that he or she finds it much more pleasant to be with, say, a member of the lay faculty or some parishioner or fellow nurse than with members of the local community. A deep and rich friendship has evolved through sharing important experiences together. There may be several such relationships. The religious may honestly face the fact that he shares a deeper level of friendship with people beyond the community than with those inside ~t. Should this be a disturbing discovery? Should it lead to the conclusion that this religious group ~is only a hollow facade and that honesty dictates a resignation from the group? My own personal answer would have to be negative. If I might take a stab at describing the stages of the re-cent development of community life styles, I would suggest that it has proceeded along the following lines: (1) the "lived" stage mentioned above. There were de facto some rich friendships in religious communities. There was also an explicit doctrine which inculcated fear of any human warmth. The healthy were always able to put this doctrine in psychological brackets and go on about the business of living, which is to say, trying to be human. The less healthy were more crippled by the tradition or, as a perhaps harsher judgment would have it, allowed themselves to be crippled by it. At this stage relationships outside the community were the ultimate no-no. (2) The explicit doctrine was gradually battered down by the new openness to in-sights from the human sciences, if it did not simply crumble from the weight of its own unreality. Friend-ship, warmth, openness became values to be consciously striven after. Rather ironically we rediscovered that fusty old English word "Thou~' (as .in "I-hyphen- Thou"; but never in hymns, pleasel) and eyeball-to-eyeball became the image of the day. But this was all to be within the community--it is no accident that our word "pagan" has as one of its earliest meanings simply "an outsider." And although the explicit doctrine of suspicion of friendship was finished, an unwritten tradition had evolved very quickly, according to which the community where friendship had to be discovered was the local community. In the meantime a third step was taking place, one which deserves a separate paragraph because it repre-sents the present for many religious. Having been con-sciously opened to the value of the human, they discovered that it existed outside the religious group as well. They inevitably began to experience the rise of friendships with persons outside the group. In some communities the explicit tradition quickly adjusted to this new fact by seeing it as a natural consequence of openness to personal relationship and accepted it as a good thing; in others the notion has had a more bumpy ride. For all, the -~ituation became more tense when father or brother or sister found that there were many more inviting people outside than in. The new tradition has created an intolerable bind for many. They are being told in effect (1) that every human being needs some deeply fulfilling human re-lationships, (2) that these should not be fostered out-side the community, or at least (3) that even if outside relationships are acceptable one should be able to reach that same level of intimacy with those religious with whom one happens to live as a result of the need for a teacher of remedial reading---a placement deter-mined by someone who in all probability will not be sharing the local community situation. At this juncture I am not. sure whether I have more .to fear from my. friends than my attackers. I can imagine one group hailing me because I have shown that they were right all along, that all this deep relationship business was exaggerated and all we really have to do to have .community is to be civil. (Sometimes things get so bad in dealing with this mentality that one is almost tempted to agree and settle for that, but civility seems to be one of those things you cannot have all by itself; either we aie going forward to love and warmth or else we are soon back in the cold jungle.) A group .on the opposite side is saying: "Of course that's not what he means. What he's clearly shown is that the only solution is to let everyone choose his or her own local group. Then we' can reduplicate the intimacy of our founding fathers." A third group is made up of the poor harried school,supervisors and provincials, and they are probably muttering in the corner that I have leveled another juvenile a.ttack against that old straw man, the im-personal bureaucratic sturcture, when they have had ÷ 4. ÷ ÷ ÷ 4. George Wilson, S.$. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]0 their insides torn out trying to respect the personal needs of individuals in the face of important com-munity commitments. Which means it is time for fixing our position. I am not going back on my stand affirming the importance of warm and deep human relationships for all human beings and therefore for all religious. Nor on the other hand am I convinced that a group of people which has a job to do can simply let its members form all its subgroups on the basis of free association untram-meled by the facts of broader common commitments. And I have the greatest sympathy for those in the com-munity who have the difficult task of reconciling per-sons, pegs, and holes; their service, far from being mere bureaucracy, is generally one of the most excruciatingly personal ones in the whole community. No, our solution lies neither in shrinking back from personal relationships nor in totally free association. I would suggest that the sources for an answer are in two places: in the broader pool of the larger religious community and in the open personal concourse of religious with the outside world they serve. A religious need not feel especially troubled on discovering that there are no close personal friends among those with whom he or she happens to live, provided that some-where in the larger religious group there are those with whom such a relationship exists. And the com-munity should foster the normal means by which such relationships can flourish and grow: the chance to choose vacation partners, freedom to visit and recreate to-gether without the other members of each one's local community feeling slighted, trips within reason (proportioned by the same responsible norms which two lay friends might have to use in making such a decision, such as available funds, other commitments, and so forth). Beyond the incarnated friendships of those in different local communities warm relationships with other men and women outside the community should be expected to arise, be fostered when they do, and be given the normal modes of expression which suit such relationships (if sister has to be home by midnight on a particular occasion, it is not because she is sister but because she is an adult human being with a responsibil-ity to perform as an adult the next morning--and that is something she should be free to discover for her-self by trial and, alas, error). In this way we can ease the impossible demand which has been placed on the local community by the tradition of unreasonable ex-pectations. We will of course still have to be open to growth in the depth of our relationships in the local community. We will have to be on our guard lest the needs of more withdrawn members of the local group go unattended. But paradoxically, it is just possible that we may be better able to meet these basic demands of love on the local scene if we do not expect that scene to fulfill all our human personality needs. All of this might become more acceptable doctrine if we were to examine the normal patterns of mature and healthy individuals-in-community. It is quite natural for the mature adult in our society to func-tion within a wide diversity of social circles simul-taneously, to have his own needs met and to meet the needs of others in a variety of ways and on different levels. This is true even of that most intimate of com-munities constituted by the one-to-one relationship of marriage. The husband lives on one level with his wife, on another in his field of occupation, on still another with a few very close male friends (with whom his wife may or may not be on such close terms), on another with more casual social acquaintances; he may even have a select group with whom his only contact may be a weekly game of handball. The wife's circles will be analogous; in some instances they may range more broadly than his, as for example in the parish or neighborhood. At times their circles will coincide, at times not. They will strive to enlarge the areas they share (which may not necessarily mean that they do the things together; they learn to enrich each other by sharing what they have done separately). But one thing is sure: they know that if they demand even of this re-lationship that it satisfy all their personal needs for intimacy, it will become involuted and shrivel up and die. It is true of the couple; it is true of the family on a different level; and it is true of the individuals in a given local religious community. If we are supposing, then, that a particular religious will not have any really close friend within the group with whom he or she must share years of human life and work, are we not exposing the religious to a frightening risk of loneliness? This very real question brings us to the second area in which it was suggested that we might clarify our thinking, namely, a false understanding of community which may unwittingly be causing a lot of unhealthy departures from religious life. Actually it is really a false understanding of loneli-ness rather than immediately one of community which is at issue; but on a given level these are really correla-tive notions, and our understanding of the meaning of loneliness has its impact on our expectations from com-munity life. The issue was brought home most force-fully to me in a response by Thomas Merton to an ÷ ÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 ]! George Wilson, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ']2 interviewer's question, as reported in Motive for Octo-ber,. 1967. The interviewer touched on the issue of celibacy and solitude; and Merton's answer read in part: I think I can say I have experienced levels of loneliness that most people do not allow themselves consciously to admit. From a certain point of view I can say bluntly that to exist as a man without relating to one particular woman-and-person who is "my love," is quite simply a kind of death. But I have enough experience of human love to realize, too, that even within the best of relationships between man and woman this loneliness and death are also terribly present. There are mo-ments in human love in which loneliness is completely tran-scended, but these are brief and deceptive, and they can point 9nly to the further and more difficult place where, ultimately, two lonely and helpless persons elect to save one another from absurdity by being absurd together--and for life (pp. 36-7). This explicitation of the fact that there is a certain kind of loneliness experienced within the most intimate of unions and even in its peak moments can be of in-valuable assistance in clarifying our expectations from religious life in community. Whether we consciously admit it to ourselves or not, we.do tend to interpret the meaning and value of various human experiences by comparing them with expectations from other ways of life. This is a perfectly human process, for man is, after all, a prudential being. But the worth of the process depends on the realism with which we view the two situations. It is my convic-tion that a number of religious have made the decision to leave, religious life on the unhealthy basis of a judgment that the loneliness of religious life would be assuaged by the relationships available in lay, and particularly married, life. It is important to be dear 0n what is being asserted here. It should be evident that there is no criticism of these people intended, and certainly not a condemnation. Nor is there any at-tempt to dispute their assessment that indeed for them life with this particular religious group had become intolerable due to the type of loneliness they actually experienced. What is at issue is the use of a principle according to which religious life itself would involve a loneliness that is unique to it and would therefore be ".solved" by departure from it. This is, I believe, an unreal assumption and any decision based on it is un-healthy because unreal. Clark,Moustakas has written a precious gem of a book .which .should be required reading for all religious in formation. Entitled simply Loneliness (Prentice-Hall ';Spectrum". :paperback), the brief work makes a valuable contribution to our discussion from two points of view. Moustakas first alerts us to the fact that the one word "loneliness" can actually cover two distinct reali-ties. One consists in the experiencing of my fundamental human uniqueness, separateness, and inalienable re-sponsibility for myself and my decisions, and actions. No one can stand in my shoes, no one can do "my thing." This quality of genuinely human experience, which Moustakas .calls existential loneliness, is quite simply a part of being human: Loneliness is as much organic to human existence as the blood is to the heart.~ It is a dimension of human life whether existential, sociologidal, or psychological; whatever its deriva-tives or forms, whatever its history, it is a reality of life. Its fear, evasion, denial, !and the accompanying attempts to escape 'the experience of being lonely will forever isolate the person from his own existerlce, will' afflict and separate him from his own resources so thht there is no development, no creative emergence, no growth in awareness, perceptiveness, sensitivity. If the individual does not exercise his loneliness, one signifi-cant capacity and dimension of being hum~in remains unde-veloped, denied (pp2 When we allow ,ourselves to experience this reality in all its dimensions; we discover that is, is a gomplex phenomenon which includes both the painful acknowl-edgment of our igclination to evade responsibili.ty by leaning on someone else as well as the exhilarating discovery of the Ipower of our deepest self and its capacify for respo.hsible accomplishment.-This kind of loneliness, which belongs to every adult's life, has to be distinguished from ~inottier reality which is call'dd by the same name but is really the anxious fear. of being left alone. Moustakas calls this latter loneliness anxiety: Loneliness anxiety results from a fundamental breach be-tween what one island what one pretends to be, a basic alienation between man and man and between man and his nature (p. 24). Modern man is ;plagued with the vague, diffuse fear of loneliness. He goesI to endless measures, takes devious and circuitous pathways] to avoid facing the experience of being lonely. Perhaps the !loneliness of a" meaningless existence, the absence of values, convictions, beliefs, and fear of isolation are the most terribl~ kind of loneliness anxiety (pp. 26-7). The fact that. twqt.very different realities can go by the same name g~ves r, lse to the question: When a religious laments the loneliness of the religious group and de-cides to resolve ~he tension by separating from the community, tehic~ lcind oI loneliness is he or she at-tempting to resolve? Please note that I am not trying to answer the ques-tion in any particular case. It may very well be that the .individual may have wakened to the very valid realiza-tion 'that life in this particular group does involve such a measure of pretense, superficiality, and meaningless Loneliness VOLUME 29, 1970 George Wilson, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]4 forms that he or she is in danger o~ total self-estrange-ment. When there is the concomitant realization that the individual is impotent to do anything about this destructive communal pattern, it may be the better part of valor to shake the dust of this group from one's shoes. (What one in such a case makes of his personal commitment to serve God as a celibate-- which need not be in this community--is a broader question whid~ would take us beyond the scope of this article.) On the other hand, there is the possibility that a person may be unwittingly seeking to evade the existential loneliness which he just happens to be ex-periencing more painfully now than at previous stages of his growth; and this would of course be an impossible quest. This kind of loneliness is just part and parcel of being human; and no change from one community to another, even if the latter is the community of marriage, will change that fact. It might seem that all of this leaves us with a de-pressing prospect: we are going to be lonely come what may. Here Moustakas' second contribution opens vistas unsuspected by the togetherness generation, for he re-minds us of the positive value of the experience of loneliness. Loneliness is a condition of existence which leads to deeper perception, greater awareness and sensitivity, and insights into one's own being. New images, symbols, and ideas spring from the lonely path. The man living his life, accepting all signifi-cant dimensions of human existence is often a tragic man but he is a man who loves life dearly. And out of the pain or loss, the bitter ecstasy of brief knowing and having, comes the glory of a single moment and the creation of a song for joy. In creative loneliness there is an element of separation, of being utterly alone, but there is also a strange kind of related-ness-- to nature and to other persons and through these ex-periences, a relatedness to life itself, to inspiration, wisdom, beauty, simplicity, value. A sense of isolation and solitude is experienced, but a relatedness to the universe is maintained. Only through fundamental relatedness can the individual de-velop his own identity. The individual's loneliness is an ex-perience in growing which leads to differentiation of self. The person's identity comes into relief as he breathes his own spirit into everything he touches, as he relates significantly and openly with others and with the universe. Without any deep and growing roots in the soil of loneli-ness, the individual moves in accordance with external signals. He does not know his place in the world, his position, where he is or who he is. He has lost touch with his own nature, his own spontaneity (p. 50). Paradoxically it is only in the creative experience of our aloneness that we can come to realize the gift which we alone can bring in relatedness to those we love. It is true that only the love of another opens us up to the acceptance of our own worth (a point which must be emphasized to complete the picture, necessarily limited by Moustakas' perspective); but it remains true that the actual experiencing of our unique worth is our own act, one which inevitably isolates us even from the lover who stands outside en-couraging us to seize our own goodness and value, to create our true self: In actualizing one's self, one's aspirations, ideals, and inter-ests, it is often necessary to retreat from the world. One must have strength enough to withstand the temptations which arise when one is completely alone. This does not mean becoming uprooted or alienated. It means accej~ting the existential na-ture of man's loneliness and seeing Its value in the creation of being, in the emergence of self-identity, and in a more fundamental, genuine life. Cast in this light, loneliness be-comes an illuminating experience and it leads to greater heights (p. 50). The Christian should be the first to recognize the deep truth in this phenomenological description. Is it not simply another of the myriad rich forms in which the paschal mystery presents itself? All genuine life is life-through-death. In proclaiming His way Christ was also disclosing the inmost law of human life. The freedom of vocation is not the freedom to evade this law, but the freedom to choose where we will experience it. We may be alone within a religious group or alone alongside a marriage partner or simply alone in the midst of the human crowd. But alone we shall be. Whether this death of aloneness becomes the resurrec-tion of love and relationship is the real issue. That will depend in any case on our willingness to accept the loneliness and in the acceptance to be raised beyond ourselves: Loneliness is as much a reality of life as night and rain and thunder, and it can be lived creativ~ely, as any other experience. So I say, let there be loneliness, for where there is loneliness there is also sensitivity, and where there is sensitivity, there is awareness and recognition and promise. Being lonely and being relatedare dimensions of an organic whole, both necessary to the growth of individuality and to the deepening value and enrichment of friendship. Let there be loneliness, for where there is loneliness, there also is love, and where there is suffering, there also is joy (p. 103). We all need acceptance and warmth and intimacy. Our religious group should at least make it possible for us to achieve it or else it is not a community at all, much less a Christian one. But the group can no more supply for the painful task of passing through the loneliness of self-acceptance, which is the price of self-transcendence, than could any marriage partner. That cup, and that privilege, is ours. Except that by an awesome mystery Christ has also made it His. + 4- 4- VOLUME 29, 1970 ]5 GERALD~A. McCOOL, S.J. Commitment to One's Institute: A Contemporary Q estion Gerald McCool, S.J., is visiting asso-ciate professor of philosophy at Bos-ton College; Chest-nut Hill, Massa-cusetts 02167. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16 The* question whether his institute as it concretely exists retains its right to bind his conscience is no longer a rhetorical one in the mind of many a religious subject. Directors of conscience who have been con-fronted with this question by religious of diverse ages in many different congregations are aware of this fact. They are also aware of their own increasing difficulty in finding satisfactory answers to the problems posed to them by religious concerning the nature, extent, and duration of the commitment to a concrete religious institute which even perpetual vows entail today. The origin of these problems is in part sociological. In-stitutes have changed radically in the past few years, and the rate of change has been uneven. Different groups in the same congregation look on the Church, the world, and religious institutes quite differently and entertain what seem at times irreconcilably diverse hopes for their future. Communal agreement is hard come by, and the unity in life and work which in the past contributed to a religious' sense of peace and se-curity no longer manifests itself on the empirical level. Naturally directors of conscience are not ignorant of the efforts being made by almost every institute to reach agreement on their basic religious and apostolic goals. They have learned during the past few years the im- * This article is a revision of a paper presented at the Seventh Biennial Institute in Pastoral Psychology, held at Fordham Uni-versity, June 16-20, 1969. In its present form it is focused more sharply on the current problem of commitment to one's own institute. The original paper, entitled "The Conscience of the Religious Subject," will appear in the forthcoming volume, Con-science: Its Freedom and Limitations ed. William G. Bier, S.J. (New York: Fordham University, 1970). portance of urging patience and charity on religious of all ages and persuasions. As defection rates increase, however, and morale problems become more grave, even in institutes which are going through the process of renewal, directors are becoming painfully conscious that much more is needed than exhortations to faith and supernatural hope in the future. Too many religious are beginning to question the assumption which under-lies such exhortations--the connection between God's personal call to them and their commitment to their institute. A genuine doubt 'is ~growing in their mind as to whether total commitment to their institute in the traditional sense is the more perfect form of Christian life today. Some may ask indeed whether the form of life led in their institute as it is, or promises to be in the immediate future, represents a truly moral way of living. These questions, of course, have been raised in the past. They recur at every period of trouble, re-newal, and reform in the Church and in religious life.1 That they should recur again today is in itself a cause for neither surprise nor disturbance. What is troubling, however, is the discovery on the part of religious and their directors that trenchant answers to them are so difficult to find. The New Situation in Religious Lile This inability to find a clear and persuasive answer to the contemporary difficulties concerning a religious' commitment to his institute does not come from simple failure of nerve, unimaginitive rigidity, or impatience at the rate of change, although these factors are opera-tive in the present crisis in religious life. It is rather the resultant vector of two forces whose interplay has still to be examined with sufficient care and penetra-tion: (1) the effect of institutional change on a subject's commitment to his institute in a period of open ended ecclesial evolution and (2) the powerful impact upon religious life of the theological pluralism which now exists, and will in all likelihood continue to exist, within the contemporary Church. The interplay of these two forces has created a new situation in religious life in which it is no longer possible for the individual re-ligious subject or his director to determine the nature, value, and obligation of his commitment to his in-stitute and to his fellow religious through a simple x St. Thomas replied to d~fficulties of this sort in his Summa contra Gentiles, III, 130-8. Suarez produced a similar defense at the time of the Counter-Reformation; see William Humphrey, Fran-cisco Suarez: The Religious State. A Digest o] the Doctrine Con-tained in His Treatise "De statu religionis'" (London: Burns and Oates, 1884). Commitment VOLUME 29, 1970 ]7 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18 application to his individual situation of the theology of the religious life which carried religious safely through the early years of the post-Vatican renewal.2 The existential development of religious life and the rapid evolution of theology have confronted the individual religious with a problem of conscience with which they cannot cope alone. The individual religious and his director require the aid of theologians and the help of their own institutes. And they will receive that help only if firstly institutes and theologians together accept the fact that the early post-Vatican period is over and that a new religious and theological situation is in existence now, and if secondly the institutes, with the careful help of theologians, make clear and definite decisions about their life and work based on an in-telligent commitment to a theology of the religious life which they accept. In the early years of post-Vatican renewal, the director of conscience found in the post-conciliar theology of the religious life a clear grounding of the supernatural value of the life of the counsels and an exposition of the relation of institutional structure to personal vocation. With their help he was able to work out a ~ For the influence of process thought on Catholic philosophy, see Leslie Dewart, The Future o] Belie] (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966) and the stimulating and provocative article of Eugene Fonti-helle, "Religious Truth in a Relational and Processive World," Cross Currents, v. 18 (1967), pp. 283-315. Its influence upon highly respected theologians can be seen in three important articles which appeared recently: Wilhelm Kasper, "Geschichtlichkeit der Dogmen," Stimmen tier Zeit, v. 179 (1967), pp. 401-16; Avery Dulles, "Dogma as an Ecumenical Problem," Theological Studies, v. 29 (1968), 397- 416; and George Vass, "On the Historical Structure of Christian Truth," Heythrop Journal, v. 9 (1968). For the newer approach in moral theology which will affect religious life, see George Curran, Christian Morality Today (Notre Dame: Fides, 1966) and Absolutes in Moral Theology (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968). The Catholic theologian whose name is closely associated with the new theology of hope, esehatology, and earthly realities strongly influenced by the independent Marxist philosopher, Ernst Bloch, is Johannes B. Metz; see his Theology o] the World (New York: Herder and Her-der, 1967). These books and articles are simply a random sample of recent publications by serious and influential writers. There is no doubt that we are in a period of rapid and profound theological development. We must realize, however, that the process epistemol-ogy and metaphysics which are winning increasing favor with serious Catholic theologians does not simply call into question the philosophical grounding of the traditional Christian wisdom spir-ituality associated with the names of Augustine, Bonaventure, and Thomas, which underlies so many classics of the spiritual life; it also challenges the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of some of the most influential post-Vatican theology of the religious life, notably that of Karl Rahner. Ignorance of ~his fact can cause woe to an unwary retreat director, especially in communities of younger religious. It can also be a source of trouble for congrega-tions which are rewriting their constitutions. satisfactory understanding of the mutual obligations of subject and institute with which he could handle per-sonal problems of commitment in congregations as they then existed. This theology also enabled him to cope with the personal problems of the early post-conciliar years when many congregations dragged their feet in implementing the Vatican II reforms. It proved a rea-sonably satisfactory instrument for solving the prob-lems of individual religious in the later and more dif-ficult period of communal involvement in renewal in which community division with its consequent fear and hostility became a problem for many institutes. If we simply review the history of those stages in the evolution of religious life we may be able to see why the re-ligious and his director were able to deal with the question of religious commitment as an individual prob-lem then and why it is that today they are no longer able to do so. Post-Vatican Theology: Nature and Value o] Reli-gious Life Post-conciliar theology defended the value of the counsels as an integral part of the Church's eschatologi-cal witness and indicated the role which religious in-stitutions play as visible signs of her holiness,s In doing so it clarified the reasons which justify the renunciation of fundamental human goods through the three vows. It also explained the ecdesial basis for the authorita-tive specification of the religious life in institutes in which a life of rule is lived under the direction of re-ligious superiors. Religious belong to what Karl Rahner has called the charismatic element in the Church. Their conviction that God has called them to follow Christ in the re-ligious life is based on a non-formal process of in-ference which Saint Ignatius has called the discern-ment of spirits. Their decision to follow the divine invitation is freely taken. "Its motive is growth in the service of God and their neighbor and in the intimate union with God which Christian writers from patristic times have called holiness. The renunciation of earthly goods which the vows entail is justified because it is the manifestation of the Church's eschatological faith and hope. Through this renunciation religious institutes give living public witness to the Church's certitude that life's significance does not rest exclusively on the encounter with God in the use of His creation but on the lived 8See Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, v. 3 (Baltimore: Helicon), pp. 58-104 and SchriIten zur Theologie:. v. 7 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1966), pp. 404-79. See also Ladislas M. Orsy, Open to the Spirit (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968). ÷ ÷ ÷ Con~mltraent VOLUME 29, 1970 19 4, Gerald A. McCooi, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~0 hope of an encounter beyond the limits of space and time.4 A religious community in the visible Church is a response to a common charismatic call in which its members participate and which is the supernatural bond of their union. Since that call is given in the Church as a summons to give stable social witness to her holiness and hope, communal life of the counsels acquires visible form in the diverse religious institutes. Thus the interior charism unique to each institute finds the external expression through which it can be thema-tized and communicated; and the interior bond of charity which binds its members to God, to the Church, and to each other receives verbal expression in its con-stitutions.~ Consequently religious vows are not taken in vacuo. They are always taken in a specific institute whose constitutions thematize the charismatic vocation to which each religious commits himself. Through her approval of the constitutions the visible Church commits her-self to the religious as authentic witnesses of her life and hope. On the basis of this theological justification of the nature and value of the religious life, the religious sub-ject at the beginning o[ the post-Vatican renewal was able to set down some general principles for the forma-tion o[ his conscience in relation to his commitment to his institute and to the legitimate demands on him which followed from it. (1) His decision to follow the religious life is morally justified through its public eschatological witness and through its service to God in the life of His Church. Its nature is distorted and its moral value compromised if it degenerates into an irresponsible flight from par-ticipation in the world through fear or dislike of God's creation. From the theology of the free person in the Church it follows that an individual call to manifest her sanctity through the public witness of the counsels should come in every generation to a number of generous Christians. Not only may Christians be religious, some of them should be. (2) Although the constitutions of a religious institute are not identified with its common charismatic call, its inner spirit, and its internal bond of charity, the con-stitutions cannot be separated from them either--a fact * Rahner, Schrilten, v. 7, pp. 404-34. r We notice here the strong similarity between the relation established by Rahner in his spiritual theology between institutional structure and charismatic call and the relation established by St. Ignatius between religious rule and the interior law of charity in the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. which Saint Ignatius saw most dearly. The constitutions of an institute are not purely juridical regulations with little or no relation to its interior spirit. They are the medium through which the religious vows can specify and maintain a perduring commitment to a common way of life. Consequently, superiors, in fidelity to God and to the Church, have an obligation to see that they are observed. For, if a way of life is allowed to grow up within an institute which is at variance with the specific manifestation of the. Church's holiness which it has been called to manifest, that institute has lost the supernatural justification for its existence. Thus com-plete freedom to follow individual decisions cannot be permitted to a subject in a religious institute. A Christian called to religious life is called to accept a limitation on his freedom through obedience to his institute and its superiors. ($) Furthermore, since he shares in a common charismatic call which is incorporated in a specific in-stitute, indications of the divine will should ordinarily come to him through his institute and its superiors. Although there can be legitimate conflict at times, it is hard to reconcile a religious vocation with the convic-tion that the subject must make every important decision on his own responsibility and that the moral authority of a religious superior is restricted to his right to offer counsel. As one religious order recently expressed it: "A man who, time after time, is unable to obey with good consdence, should take thought regarding some other path of life in which he can serve God with greater tranquility." 6 The theology of the religious life which flourished after the Council not only gave the religious subject a dearer picture of the nature and value of the religious life than he had previously possessed; it also provided him with the principles through which a number of the problems arising from the conflict between obedi-ence and his moral conscience could find an answer. A proper understanding of the theology of the religious life made it clear not only that the constitutions of an insitute specified the obligation of the subject but that they also specified and restricted the legitimate authority of his superior. Superiors may rule only in accordance with the constitutions; and, in an institute whose reason for existence is to manifest the Church's sanctity and supernatural hope, they must rule religiously. Through his vows the subject has acquired a claim upon the conscience of his superior. For he has received a per-sonal call from God to a life of individual witness and Society of Jesus, Documents of the Thirty.First General Congre-gation (Woodstock, Md.: Woodstock College, 1967), p. 55. 4. Commitment VOLUME. 29, 1970 21 + 4. 4. Gerald A. McCool, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS service within a specific community. Not all of the de-mands which God makes on him can be determined by following uncritically in a quasi-automatic way the gen-eral orders of superiors. A number must be determined in-dividually by the discernment of spirits. Since the subject's vocation has been entrusted to his institute, he has the right to the personal direction and understanding of his superior in his efforts to discover God's personal will for him. The superior in turn has the inescapable obligation to provide it, and to provide it as a religious superior and not as the director of a secular enterprise. Further-more, a religious institute is a community of free in-dividuals within a visible Church to which they have a definite responsibility. God will inspire them through thoughts and desires to move their institute to greater service to His Mystical Body. As they are bound to communicate these thoughts and desires to their superiors, superiors, because of their responsibility to their institute and to the Church, are bound to listen to their subjects and to consult them individually and collectively. The "Relectant'" Stage oI Post-Vatican Renewal In the period immediately after Vatican II these principles were not the commonplaces they have long since become. Older religious can still recall the thrill of their discovery through personal reading or through the conferences of retreat masters. Government at that time often left much to be desired in many a religious institute. Superiors, who were at times quite ignorant of the theology of the religious life, ruled impersonally and on occasion gave the impression of a political mode of action which did not show the proper regard for the rights of the subject and the true interests of the universal Church. The problems of conscience which this mode of government created for intelligent, sensitive, and far-seeing religious are too well known to call for repetition here3 Nonetheless the informed religious subject or his di-rector felt that they could chart a reasonably clear course of action through which a subject could fulfill his personal call to genuine Christian life and activity in true commitment to his institute. Most of .the problems of that time, after all, were simply the result of a subject's living in an institute whose life and government were not in accord with the approved theology of the religious life. Subjects who were equipped to do so would work for the reform of their 7 For a well documented and frank account of these problems, see Robert W. Gleason, The Restless Religiou~ (Dayton: Pflaum, 1968). institutes through personal action. Others, while wait-ing [or the coming reform of their institute, could fre-quently solve their problems by using the principles of traditional moral theology concerning the reaction of a subject to an unjust command. Difficult as this period was psychologically, it was not a period in which the religious subject necessarily felt discouragement about the ability of the approved theology of the religious life to solve his present problems and bring about the eventual renewal of his institute. The Period o[ Rapid Evolution and Renewal After this initial period of hesitation and resistance, religious institutes entered into the general movement of renewal and reform to which each congregation was asked to contribute through a revision of its consti-tutions. As it proceeded, that task proved more diffi-cult than most religious anticipated that it would be. It was at that period that the beginnings of the present question of the commitment of the religious to his institute began to manifest itself. Once a movement of evolution and reform gets under way, commitment to the existing constitutions of an institute becomes provisional. It is---or was--assumed that in their re-vised form they will be a more exact expression of the present charismatic call which God is now addressing to the institute. Yet, since the constitutions specify the common commitment of the subjects to the insti-tute and to each other, their sudden mobility, after a long period of stability, has affected the bond of union in the evolving communities. Problems now arise in the conscience of the religious concerning his relation to his community and his fellow religious which were not there before. When the post-Vatican reform began it was rather generally agreed that the period of communal discern-ment of spirits would reach its consummation in a renewed institute to whose revised constitutions the individual subjects could commit themselves with peace of soul. But in a changing world and in a changing Church, who can say when the period of evolution will come to an even relative rest? And now that we are learning to think of God and His revelation in terms of process and event rather than of substance and stable judgment, can we any longer feel that stable constitu-tions are any longer desirable or even possible? Does not that make any set of constitutions provisory and relative? Furthermore, discernment of spirits is not an automatic process whose success is guaranteed. It is a delicate work of grace. Human resistance, weakness, and obtuseness can prevent it or delay it until the 4- VOLUME 29, 1970 4" "4" Gerald A. McCool, S.$. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS "~4 kairos, the providential time allowed by God, has passed. Religious, both subjects and superiors, who are con-cerned with changes in the life and work of their institute know very well that the movement of renewal, like every human movement, is not the outcome of a simple impulse of the Holy Spirit but the resultant vec-tor of multiple and complicated forces. Secular ideas and desires are in the heart of every man. Worldliness and spiritual blindness will make their contribution to the movement too. That is why the process is called the discernment of spirits, and that is why, like every discernment of spirits, it is a risky business. In the process of discernment of spirits whose term is still undefined, an ambiguous situation is created concerning the very nature of the life to which the mem-bers of the institute have given their vowed commit-ment. If the present constitutions are to undergo revision, perhaps indefinitely, what is the subject's com-mitment to them in their actual form? If the institute should take a wrong turn or miss its kairos, what will be his commitment to the constitutions in the future? It would appear that the religious subject is invited to enter upon an indefinite process of judging his institute in its fidelity to the call of grace and that his individual judgment will have a radical effect upon his commit-ment. It is not surprising, therefore, that uncertainty about their future commitment to their institute has begun to trouble the consciences of many religious and that divergent hopes and fears concerning the form of its future life and work make them perplexed over the attitude which they are called to take in relation to their superiors and fellow subjects. At a time when the future of his institute is undefined, when should a superior or a fellow subject be deferred to as a religious who is exercising under grace his authentic call as a prophetic leader and when must he be resolutely and uncompromisingly opposed as a traitor to the institute? In what does loyal commitment to one's institute con-sist at the present time? What is charity, and what is selfish cowardly silence for the sake of peace and per-sonal survival? These are the difficult questions which the director of conscience is asked to solve time after time. The task of aiding the religious subject to discern the movement of the Spirit from the distorting influences of human infidelity, complacency, and weakness has been complicated by the rapid evolution of theology in the post-conciliar Church. The theology of the Church, of revelation, of grace and nature, has been the subject of considerable, and sometimes turbulent, debate dur-ing the past few years. The consequence has been a renewed discussion concerning the nature of Christian holiness, the force and duration of the vows, and the value of the witness of the counsels in their tradi-tional institutional form. This lively discussion cannot fail to call into question the fundamental understand-ing of the religious life which is taken for granted by many sets of constitutions. More may be involved than simple adaptation and renewal. Perhaps radical and total revision may be called for in the light of a newer theological understanding of the religious life. Should that be the case, what then becomes the status of loyal commitment to the constitutions of one's holy founder? Nevertheless, working on the principles of classical post-Vatican theology, the director of conscience felt until fairly recently that he was in a position to guide a religious toward the solution of his problems about commitment to a divided and changing institute. Since the Church had invited religious institutes to reform their constitutions, it was a safe assumption that many of them were no longer adequate expressions of the community's charismatic call. Furthermore, since com-munal discussion on various levels was the recom-mended means, there were good prima facie grounds for the assumption that the interplay of different points of view would be the means employed by the Holy Spirit to manifest the form of life and work to which the institute should now commit itself. Classical post-Vati-can theology also gave the reason why this process could be expected to lead to radical changes in some insti-tutes, s The type of religious life suited to monastic-contemplative communities is very different from that demanded by an active-apostolic group. The order and form of life and prayer, the religious virtues re-quired of subjects, the relationship between subject and superior differ widely in these two types of institutes. In the past this essential difference was not sufficiently appreciated, and active congregations, especially of women, received a set of constitutions which were not suited to their active life. In such groups we could an-ticipate great changes. Likewise we would expect that at a period in which the secular institute is coming into its own some institutes or groups within existing institutes would be moved by the Holy Spirit to adopt this form of life for their active apostolate. Church historians during the post-Vatican period of renewal reminded religious and their directors that ~ Orsy, op. cit., pp. ÷ 4- 4. ¢o~t VOLUME 29, 1970 25 4. 4. Gerald A. McCool, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS movements of renewal and reform within religious groups were often the result of the work of charismatic leaders. And often the prophetic action of such leaders led to dissension and ultimate division in their own institutes. The work of the Spirit can be accomplished through bitter disagreement and ultimate division of groups which were once united. This was true of the divisions among the Franciscans and the Carmelites. It was true in the United States when the Paulists seceded from the Redemptorists to form a new congregation. On the basis of these historical and theological con-siderations, which are quite familiar to anyone who has even a general acquaintance with the post-conciliar literature, directors of conscience were able to derive a number of principles to handle problems of religious commitment in divided and evolving institutes. These prindples, which worked successfully and still retain a good deal of their validity, can be summed up as fol-lows. (I) Since it is not inconceivable that the interplay of conflicting hopes and fears which divide an institute may be destined by God to lead either to a painful but providentially destined division or to a dearer under-standing of the future form of life to which a united institute can commit itself, the individual religious sub-ject cannot deny in an a priori way that in the same congregation commitment to the institute and corre-spondence to their special grace may reveal itself in dif-ferent subjects through fundamentally different orienta-tions. Whatever may be the consequence which God ultimately intends, these diverse hopes and fears can be a faithful answer to a charismatic call which, for the moment, remains a common one. If they should lead to an ultimate division, the new institutes will be re-lated to each other through their origin in grace. They will be filial or sister institutes. (2) Therefore the individual religious subjects who find themselves in such an evolving situation are still united by the bond of fraternal charity and justice. Each is still called upon to contribute in the measure of his ability to the clarification of the future options which are emerging now. (3) Meanwhile the subject remains under the obedi-ence of the institute through whose constitutions his vocation is specified at the present time. Its rule, its superiors, and his fellow subjects retain the claim on him conceded to them by his vows. Since its mem-bers are being led to their future vocation through their present institute, ways of acting or of withdrawal from common activity which violate the justice and charity he owes them are not permitted to him. The New Situation in Religious LiIe Today, however, the director of conscience is begin-ning to wonder if it is safe for him to handle individual difficulties about religious commitment on the basis of these general principles. In the first place they are based on the theology of the religious life which is associated with the Constitution on the Church and the Decree on the Renewal o] the Religious Li]e for which he could once assume general acceptance among religious. In terms of that theology religious life is justified on the basis of its witness to the sanctity and eschatological hope of the visible Church. In the second place they rested on the assumption that unless there was striking evidence to the contrary each institute was passing through its providential kairos and was being led by God to its providential renewal or division. In the third place they took for granted that, unless clear evidence to the contrary existed, each religious could be assumed to have given a stable commitment to his institute and to his fellow religious, the nature and extent of which was given accurate expression through the constitutions. On the basis of that commitment, a supernatural bond existed among the members of the congregation. They were a family, a society within the Church with all the rights and expectations which membership within such a family entailed. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the religious subject or his director to make these assumptions as confidently as he did in the past; and if they cannot be made, the whole context within which problems dealing with religious commitment must be solved has been changed. There are many reasons for their present difficulty. To begin with, it is no secret that the movement of renewal is not going well. The defection figures are becoming alarming. Many religious, rightly or wrongly, seem to have reached the conclusion that in the movement of reform their institute has missed its kairos. Either it has failed to yield in time to the move-ment of the Spirit or it has yielded too much to the spirit of the world. In any event, these religious have decided that the form of life and work prescribed by their institute is no longer the way in which they can do the most for God. Other religious have withdrawn interiorly and made no secret of their withdrawal. Even though they remain within .the institute, they are alien-ated from it and leave their fellow religious uncertain about the depth, extent, and duration of their com-mitment to it. The longer the present unhappy stage of renewal continues with its increasing number of ÷ ÷ ÷ ~omm~ment VOLUME 29, 1970 ÷ + 4. Gerald A. McCool, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS defections and interior withdrawals, the greater will be the uncertainty of the religious subject concerning the commitment of his fellow subjects and even of his su-periors. And, if he can no longer be certain that their actions are proceeding from commitment to the insti-tute. how should be behave toward them? Should he continue to deal with them in all simplicity as fellow religious? Or should he be prudent and follow the ordinary rules of political morality? Furthermore this disturbing ambiguity concerning his fellow religious' commitment to the institute does not come simply from ignorance of the judgment which they have made, perhaps definitively, about its [actual state. It also comes from uncertainty about the norm which they are using to measure its spiritual health and prospects for the future. Increasing theological di-versity, legitimate enough and even necessary within the larger body of the Church, is beginning to lead to di-versity among the members of the same institute con-cerning the nature and end of the religious life, the virtues which should characterize religious, the hope to which they witness, and the extent and duration of the commitment which they make to the community and consequently to each other through the three vows. That such diversity exists today among the mem-bers of religious groups is clear enough to anyone who has been engaged in the work of religious renewal. Often it lies beneath the surface, dividing religious who are not yet fully conscious of the depth and extent of their division. It shows itself, however, in retreats, in discussions, and in reflections about the formation of religious when different conclusions flow from dif-fering presuppositions which should be analyzed and clarified. Consequently, for many a religious subject his in-stitute has become a very unstable community. He has the uneasy feeling that its constitutions in their present form, even after their revision, and the style of life and work which its superiors prescribe or permit, through uncertainty, expediency, or a genuine desire to "paper over differences" for the sake of peace, no longer ac-curately express the nature, extent, and duration of the commitment which many of his fellow religious are making in reality to his institute in its actual, concrete form. Yet the commitment of his fellow religious creates the bond which makes the institute a living reality. Its duration makes the community a stable family; the depth, extent, and primacy which it occupies in a religious' life determines the depth and breadth of his association with his community and the priority which that association holds among the other commitments, professional and social, in his life. A notable change in the commitment of a significant number of individ-ual religious cannot fail to modify the nature of their institute. Thus, after a certain limit, ambiguity about the object, depth, and duration of its subjects' present commitment places the real nature of their institute in doubt. This doubt in turn creates a second doubt in the mind of the individual subject about his own obli-gation to the organization as it presently exists in the real order, and this doubt cannot fail to afl~ect his own commitment. Obviously this is an escalating process which, ultimately, can lead to a major change in an institute or even to its destruction. This agonizing doubt about the real nature of his institute today as a result of the change in the commit-ment of his fellow religious is the new problem of commitment which is troubling the peace and under-mining the vocation of many religious who weathered the storms of the earlier periods of renewal quite success-fully. This time, however, neither he nor his director can solve the problem by themselves with the resources which they now possess. The nub of the problem is a doubt which the religious cannot resolve himself. Since he cannot read hearts, he must be able to as-sume with reasonable probability that the vows as they are specified in his institute accurately express a genuine and stable union of minds and wills among its subjects. If he cannot make that assumption, he does not know what it is to which he has pledged him-self through his commitment to his community. Neither does he know what communal support, natural and supernatural, he may expect in return. Need to Eliminate Ambiguity To eliminate this ambiguity, or at least to reduce it to the proportions which are compatible with the existence of a viable religious community, existing in-stitutes, especially the larger ones, will have to confront more clearly, and perhaps more courageously than they have done so far, its two major sources: the uncertain relation between their constitutions and the genuine commitment of their subjects and the unanalyzed re-lation between their constitutions and the theology of the religious life on which they rest. Some institutes will be asked to examine more honestly their present state. Does their religious life as it is actually lived conform to the ideal which their institute proclaims? Prolonged compromise and delay of genuine renewal, even for apostolic and economic reasons, inevitably lead to ambiguity concerning the real commitment re-quired of a subject in the institute and can easily lead 4- 4- 4" Commitment VOLUME 29, 1970 29 4. 4. 4. Gerald A. McCool, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS today to discouraged alienation among the young and generous. Other communities are being asked to ex-amine more carefully whether they are called to lead a contemplative or active-apostolic life. Although they are different vocations, both are viable. Is it not possible that in some institutes a division into separate groups following each of these vocations might be a healthy, and perhaps a necessary thing?9 Theological Pluralism and the Constitutions Because of the increasing theological diversity which is already affecting the Church of the present and which will mark the Church of the future even more pro-foundly, it will be necessary for each institute to clarify the theological suppositions which justify its basic choice of life and work. The development of philosophy and theology within the Church, the ihfluence of process philosophy and theology upon Catholic understanding of ecclesiastical structures and the formulation of doctrine, the impact of a newer understanding of the relation of grace and nature, of eschatology and earthly values upon Catholic understanding of the spiritual life have had their effect on religious' attitudes toward prayer, penance, action, contemplation, and service of the Church. That there is a diversity on many of these topics and that such diversity will continue is a fact that we must accept. That there will be and should be a much greater range of free opinions in the Church of the future is a position which most theologians accept today. And if such diversity means, as it seems it does, diverse understandings of the nature and value of re-ligious life, this is a fact which we must accept and whose implications we must analyze. When diverse theological opinions become free in the Church the right to live one's life in the light of them must be respected. If they are solid enough to base the commitment of a total life, the legitimacy of a religious institute based on them can hardly be denied. If, on the other hand, the solidity of opposed theological opinions remains strong enough to ground the commitment of a total Christian life, the legiti-macy of a religious institute grounded on them cannot be questioned either. Thus we may find in all likeli-hood that there will be in the Catholic Church re-ligious living accordingly to theologically diverse under-standings of the religious life. What would not make sense, however, is that they should be endeavoring to do so in the same institute. For it is difficult to under-o For a provocative discussion of this point, see Felix Cardegna, "Future Forms of Religious Life," Catholic Mind, v. 66, (1968), pp. 9-13. stand how constitutions embodying one fundamental conception of the religious life could thematize a com-mitment to an opposed one. Such constitutions would be simply a juridical form concealing basic differences. They could not be the vital expression of communal witness and spiritual unity. Consequently religious congregations, especially the larger ones which have the resources to do so, must examine very soon the theological presuppositions which lie at the basis of their constitutions. Do their con-stitutions express a conception of the religious life which is still viable and to which they wish to give the witness of their lives? I[ not, then they must change the constitutions, even though they express the dearest thought of the holy founder. If so, then they must spell out their fundamental theological position.s, even though there may be other opposed positions which are now free within the Church. If this is done, the individual subject will have a chance to see what it is to which the institute commits itself and to judge whether or not he wishes to make the same commitment. Retreat directors will have a better chance to help individual religious in their endeavor to find the will of God and novice masters will be in a better position to give solid answers to the reasonable questions of the young. This will not be an easy task. It will take openness, skill, and the employment of the best theological talent which a congregation has at its disposal. Its urgency, however, is becoming more apparent every day and we may anticipate that before long the general chapters and congregations of the larger congregations will be obliged to address themselves to it. 4. 4. 4. VOLUME 29, 1970 SISTER M. TERESANTA RYS, C.S.F.N Recreation, and Relaxation in Religious Life ÷ ÷ Sister Teresanta writes from Marian Heights; 1428 Mon-roe Turnpike; Mon-roe, Connecticut 06468. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS The Psalmist says: "Have leisure and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). Recreation and relaxation presuppose leisure time. The term leisure will be used repeatedly in this paper and hence must be defined. The concept of leisure cannot be expressed in simple synonymous terms. To do so would be to risk misinterpretation. The explanation of the con-cept will form the introduction to this paper. Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude--it is not simply the result of external fac-tors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend, or a vacation. It is, in the first place, an attitude of the mind, a condition of the soul, and as such is utterly contrary to the ideal of "worker" in each and every one of the three as-pects under which it was analysed: work as activity, as toil, as a social function. Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is a pre-requisite to the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear, and those who do not remain silent do not hear.leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping one-sell in the whole of creation. - Leisure is not the attitude o[ mind o[ those who actively intervene, but o[ those who are open to everything? From the outset it can be seen that leisure is meant to lead us to God. This is not to imply that time, activities, and negative aspects as off-duty time and non-work activi-ties are not related to leisure.2 But these are not of its essence. Regarding the elements of time and activity, ". 1Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis ol C, ulture, trans, by Alexander Dru (New York: New American Library, 1963), pp. 40-1. a See Roll B. Meyersohn, "Americans Off Duty," in Free Time: Challenge o] Later Maturity, ed. Wilma Donahue and others (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1958), pp. 45-6. leisure is unobligated time which can be spent in any way one wishes. It is supposed to be refreshing, diverting, and enriching, and what set of activities provides for such qualities is to be a matter of personal taste." s Philosophers, spiritual writers, and psychologists throughout the ages have acknowledged the predomi-nance of the divine motive in leisure, but at the same time they have emphasized the physical benefits as well. Plato, for instance, says: But the Gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down the succession of recurring feasts to restore them from their fatigue, and gave them the Muses, and Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, as companions in their feasts, so that nourish-ing themselves in festive companionship with the Gods, they should again stand upright an~erect.' One author paraphrased Thomas Aquinas' position on leisure by stating that the man who reasons and contem-plates "must occasionally relax the tension of reason by resting the soul. This rest of the soul is a form of pleasure.''5 Currently, Father Kevin O'Rourke, O.P., notes that man is a composite being--body, soul, mind, emotions. These work as a unity. Just as a body has need of refreshment, the emotions and mind need it, too. This refreshment they get from recreation.6 Because the world in which we live places so much value on work and activity, many persons, including religious, determine the worth of an individual by how much and how well she produces. Whatever is done must have a utilitarian purpose or it is worthless. The individual be-comes a functionary. This, in spite of the fact expressed by Alexander Reid Martin: So the poets and philosophers for thousands of years have agreed upon the supreme importance of leisure. But modern man apparently cannot avail himself of this blessing. With more leisure time available, there is a lessening capacity to en-joy it and to use it creatively and constructively. Modern man finds that he cannot relax to order.7 As religious who are pressed for time, zealous to do all we can to further God's glory through our various apostolates, we must beware of the fallacy of overwork. Throughout the Christian centuries we have become imbued with the idea that work is noble and good, and that it is through work that we will help achieve our sal-vation. Many of us have, as stated, accepted the fallacy of 8 Ibid., p. 48. ' Plato as cited by Pieper, Leisure, p. 19. ~ e Father Emmanuel, O.C.D., "The Need of Relaxation," Spiritual LiIe, v. 7 (1961), p. 222. ~ See Kevin O'Rourke, O.P., "Recreation in the Religious Life," Acta Records (Chicago: Acta Foundation, 1964). 7Alexander R. Martin, "The Fear of Relaxation and Leisure," American Journal o] Psychoanalysis, v. I1 (1951), p. 45. 4" VOLUME 29, 1970 + + 4. Siste~ Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the worth of an individual based on her ability to work. We have allowed ourselves to believe that unless we are occupied, we are wasting our time, we are allowing our-selves to be idle, and idleness is a breeding ground for the devil's wiles. Even our recreations have taken on a functionary air--the knitting to be done, the stockings to be darned, the papers to be corrected--all, so that we wouldn't waste timel Sixty years ago, Bishop John L. Spalding noted: We are too busy, we do too much. And the temper our rest-less activity creates makes us incapable of leisure, which is the end of work. The man is worth, not what his work is worth, but what his leisure is worth. By his work he gains a livelihood, but his leisure is given him that he may learn how to live, that he may acquire a taste for the best things, may acquaint himself with what is truest and most beautiful in literature and art, in science and religion, may find himself, not chiefly in the nar-row circles of his private interests, but in the wide world of noble thought and generous emotion? (emphasis added) There are some people who feel that leisure must be justified, for example, we relax or take recreation in order to work more efficiently or in order to restore our strength and energy. This is to revert to pragmatism. Joseph Pieper, a philosopher of our day, notes that how-ever much a person may restore health and energy through leisure, this is not primary, because leisure, like contem-plation, is of a higher order than the active life, and this order cannot be reversed. No one who looks to leisure simply to restore physical, mental, or spiritual powers, will ever enjoy the real fruits of it. He states: The point and justification of leisure are not that the func-tionary should function faultlessly and without a breakdown, but that the functionary should continue to be a man --and that means that-he should not be absorbed in the clear-cut milieu of his strictly limited function; the point is also that he should retain the faculty of grasping the world as a whole and realizing his full potentialities as an entity meant to reach wholeness? The philosopher elaborates this point and states that celebration is the soul of leisure and that since it is so, the justification and possibility of leisure is the same as that of celebration of a festival--and that basis is divine worship.1° The history of religions concurs in this judge-ment: whether in the days of Greece and Rome or in the Christian era, the "day of rest" was a day reserved for divine worship. This time was withdrawn from any specif-ically utilitarian ends: Separated from the sphere of divine worship, the cult o| the s Bishop John L. Spalding, "Work and Leisure," Spiritual Lile, v. 10 (1964), p. 78. ~ Pieper, Leisure, p. 44. lo See ibid., p. 56. divine, and from the power it radiates, leisure is as impossible as the celebration of a feast. Cut off from the worship of the divine, leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman. The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere kill-ing of time and by boredom, which is related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost.~ Fear of Relaxation Before proceeding to the practical application of the above stated principles, it may be well to examine more specifically why religious tend to have what amounts to a fear of relaxation and recreation, why they tend to be so utilitarian in their outlooks. Many pre-Vatican II constitutions, in the chapters deal-ing with recreation, did stress the importance of partici-pation. Many encouraged religious to occupy themselves with handiwork, which supposedly gave them a sense of satisfaction in contributing to the common good even dur-ing hours of recreation (as though their conversations, their interest in fellow religious were not a form of contributing to the common good). One may ask how a person could give undivided attention to another when she was busy darning or embroidering? Father Kevin O'Rourke notes that individual religious must contrib-ute to community recreation--it is a time of giving our-selves to others and hence an obligation in charity,x2 Although the Vatican Council did not say a great deal about the recreation of religious as such, it did note in the Decree on the Ministry and Life o[ Priests that they should "readily and joyfully gather together for recreation." 13 And Pope Paul, in Ecctesiae sanctae, ex-plaining Per[ectae caritatis, notes that with regard to the order of the day: "Religious. should also have some periods to themselves and be able to enjoy suitable recrea-tion." 14 Nevertheless, it must be admitted that our novitiate training, the customs of communities, and the consti-tutions have taken their toll regarding attitudes toward recreation and relaxation. Because of these influences, many religious experience guilt feelings regarding the use of leisure: When we are not busy, we feel guilty. We are torn between hours spent efficiently organizing our lives and the minutes we set aside to waste. For many regard recreation as a waste of time ÷ and have devised ways of relaxing while washing the car or en- + 4. u Ibid., p. 59. ~ O'Rourke, "Recreation." ~ Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents o! Fatican H (New York: Guild Press, 1966), p. 551. "Paul VI, ~tpostolic Letter Ecclesiae Sanctae (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1966), p. 34. Leisure VOLUME 2% 1~70 35 ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS gaging in strenuous exercise. Indeed we are still men who lead lives of quiet desperation. Perhaps I should feel guilty not because I have done too little but because I have tried to do too much. Unlike the poet, I have been so busy that I have lost my playful sense of wonder. I have forgotten to accept myself as I am and have been driven to exhaustion by futile strivings to be someone else. That is why I cannotpray, forprayer involves, a turning of my whole being toward the Lord~(emphas|s added). Some people can rest and relax on holidays and during rest periods set aside for this purpose, only when they are told to do so. They cannot permit themselves to stop, bu~ rely 'on outside authority--they are victims of a com-pulsive, authoritative regime, which can be either inner or outer or both. "In any case, a system of bargaining develops. Work and play become part of a reward and punishment philosophy. Rest is something that has to be earned. All of this smacks of a philosophy dominated by a God of vengeance Of the Old Testament and not of the God of mercy of the New Testament." 10 Some individuals relax only when they have some physical illness, because then they feel justified. The problem of retirement is closely allied to this. Some persons refuse to give up, because they feel they are letting the community down. When they are all but forced to retire, there may follow a rapid disintegration of the whole personality--organic, emotional, intellectual, and moral, because the person's phil6sophy of life prohibited true, healthy relaxation and the creative use of leisure time.17 To return to generalities, there always exists the dan-ger of allowing the sister's work to dominate her life; this isespecially true when she likes the work she is engaged in. Everything is controlled by the task to be performed--even when she recreates, she does so in order to function more effectively, and recreation otherwise becomes meaningless (as does prayer, incidentally). Be-fore long, her specialty pervades every aspect of her life, and she becomes enslaved to one view. Such a sister must take care to place work in its prdper perspective in the totality of her religious life. Work may lead us to God, but it may also distract us from Him. To maintain this proper perspective, prayer and meditation are essential,is Those who tend to be busybodies would also do well to recall a study made by E. D. Hutchinson on the bio-graphical data of many creative minds--poets, authors, composers, and so forth. He found . that the experience of sudden creative insight never oc- ~Envoy, v. 5 (1968), pp. 114-5. Martin, Fear of Relaxation, pp. 43-4. See ibid., p. 44. Envoy, v. 5 (1968), pp. 116-7. curred during the peak of mental effort, but always during a period of relaxation . in general, Hutchinson f,o, und that following a long period of what he calls "obsessional preoccu-pation with a problem, during which nothing was accomplished and there was considerable frustration, the creative thinker relinquished the problem completely. After he had relinquished this compulsive preoccupation for a period of weeks or months, the whole answer would come to him out of the blue. Hutch-inson calls this period of relaxation the period of renunciation of the problem.~ Scripture supports this contention: "The wisdom of the scribe cometh by his time of leisure; and he that is less in action, shall receive wisdom" (Sir 38:25). The pejorative significance of the inability to be leisurely and to relax is also impressed on the person's inability to rest, even in sleep. Some people feel they always have full command of their senses, which causes tension. When sleep is related to this compulsive feeling of having to be alert, it surely cannot be a means of re-laxation. It may also be pointed out that the fear of relaxation is typical of people who are unwilling to depend on others for anything--their independence becomes compulsive, and it is sometimes paraded as the virtue of self-reliance or .individuality. Such compulsive independence is indi-cative of self-distrust, actually, and of the inability to truly relax because of the imminence of intense emo-tional conflicts,a0 Those who feel that they must always be busy in some "useful" activity are the ones who subscribe to the idea expressed in the saying: "Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do." The idea of keeping busy to keep out of trouble expresses it similarly. This attitude shows itself in the person's inability to play and to ~,ork in a leisurely way. Again, those who are dependent upon a fixed routine or schedule indicate the presence of internal conflicts. The routine is self-imposed and they either comply or defy it, but they are not free. Hence, they. are unable to truly relax and use leisure time creatively. To them, leisure is always freedom [torn something, not freedom [or something.21 Such persons put themselves into straigh~ jackets and do not want to be free, to act on their own, because in doing so, they set inner conflicts into motion. Leisureliness in Work Binding ourselves to work is binding ourselves to a utilitarian process in which our needs are satisfied. Our whole lives are consumed by this process. We must ask ~Martin, Fear o[ Relaxation, p. 44. ~See ibid., p. 46. ~See ibid., p. 48. 4. + 4. Leisure VOLUME 29, 1970 + 4. 4. Sister Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~8 and answer the question: What causes a person to be so bound, and how can she free herself? Joseph Pieper an-swers: . to be tied to the process of work may be ultimately due to inner impoverishment of the individual: in this context everyone whose life is completely filled by his work (in the special sense of the word work) is a proletarian because his life has shrunk inwardly, and contracted, with the result that he can no longer act significantly outside his work and perhaps can no longer conceive of such a thing~ (emphasis added). And now, what can be done about the problem? Much, of course, depends upon the willingness of the individual to admit to herself that she is so addicted, to whatever de-gree. Without this admission, there can be no cure. Once this is made, the individual must enlarge the range of interests she has. She must learn to make leisureliness a part of her life and not limit herself only to work-related interests. But "the provision for an external opportunity for leisure is not enough; it can only be fruitful if the man himself is capable of leisure, and can, as we say, 'Occupy his leisure' or. 'work his leisure'." ua Of course, it does little good to tell a person, or for a person to tell herself, that she must not have guilt feelings or fear of relaxation. There must take place concrete efforts at relaxation and recreation--the way to develop a sense of leisure is to be leisurely. Initially, the guilt feelings will remain and may, indeed, occasion more guilt and fear. But it is only in repeated efforts and with the encouragement of someone who appreciates the value of recreation ". that I can hopefully come to appreciate the need for worthwhile recreation to sustain the religious values upon which I have grounded my life." ~4 When one is able to recreate well, one is able to pray and work well. A well-balanced, mature personality will be the conse-quence. Finally, "when the individual is able to say and to feel that convention, schedule or routine is his slave, then the compulsive needs to defy, comply, or rebel do not arise, and healthy relaxation and leisure become possible." :5 Prayer and Education Throughout this paper thus far, it has been stated that leisure is a spiritual attitude, that leisure is of a higher sphere than activity, that leisure is justified by divine worship, and that prayer is necessary to maintain a proper balance between work and leisure. It would seem from this that leisure is closely related to our prayer life. Per- Pieper, Leisure, pp. 50-1. Ibid., pp. 54-5. Envoy, v. 5 (1968), pp. 117. Martin, Fear o/Relaxation, p. 48. haps as religious we ought to delve more deeply into this aspect of leisure. "Prayer requires leisure, and it ought to become our leisure." ~0 Again, this presupposes that we know what leisure is. Here especially we should note that neither prayer nor leisure are utilitarian. Both prayer and leisure are those times when we need not try, but simply be hu-man, as perfectly human as possible.27 During these times we can simply be ourselves, and not be striving to be someone else, or to be striving to measure up to some goal. Forcing artificial prayers into our minds is not praying in a leisurely way. We must learn to allow the Holy Spirit to pray in us as He wills. Prayer affords us with the opportunity to get rid of preoccupations. Simply going over the day or some plans, while keeping in mind that these are for the Lord, consti-tutes prayer, and is an excellent means of banishing pre-occupations. Preoccupation with work, recall, leads to compulsive action and an inability to be leisurely; by the same token, it leads to an inability to pray: "Activism and its roots are as much in a lack of leisure as a lack of prayer." ~s Accepting prayer as leisure will help us to relieve our daily tensions; but this can be only if we do not regard leisure and prayer as a duty or as a means of relieving ten-sion. By just praying or recreating, we ease tension. And, of course, this will redound to the benefit of the commu-nity in which we live. Carrying the idea of prayer as leisure a step further, we can see a relationship between a Mass and a commu-nity recreation well celebrated. For in the Mass there is a dialogue between God and His people. There is commu-nication. Now, recreation to be really recreative must involve communication, too: "It is not stretching a point to see community recreation as the extension and fruit of the festive dialogue of the Mass; in itself it has something of the nature of a ritual and might indeed be considered a sacramental for community." .oa So, if we personalize the community recreation, if we "celebrate" it in a leisurely way, we are preparing ourselves for a personalized celebra-tion of Mass. It was noted that the task of education is to help in-dividuals to an awareness and appreciation of what is best in our culture, because in doing so, we are aiding them in acting more perfectly human. Some authors question -~ David B. Burrell, C.S.C., "Prayer as Leisure," Sisters Today, v. 37 (1965-6), p. 410. ~See the re[erences first given in notes 1, 15, 26. = Burrell, "Prayer as Leisure," p. 413. n Aloysius Mehr, O.S.C., "Community Exercises in Religious Life," REvmw for RE~.lcloos, v. 21 (1962), p. 337. ÷ ÷ ÷ Leisure VOLUME 29, 1970 39 Sister Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS whether we should classify any aspect of leisure, recre-ation, or relaxation as "better" or of a higher type. This is not intended. What is meant is simply that, because appreciating such things as art, music, drama, and litera-ture involves the use of our more perfect faculties, they are of a higher class than those involving the use of less perfect faculties. Nor is it intended to imply that either use of leisure time is to automatically be exclusive of the other at all times. Once. again, leisure time should be spent so as to add to one's total personality--but let us not forget that this includes, most importantly, our spiritual and intellectual stature: "Leisure time, profitably employed, should bring every Sister to a consciousness of the reality of God, whether it be through listening to beautiful music, look-ing at an art object, or reading a literary work that ex-plores the depths of the human heart." a0 The type of education that an individual receives will affect her attitudes toward leisure. Consequently, it ought to be our endeavor to give our Sisters a very liberal educa-tion, both formal and informal. Certainly, in today's world, we need specialists in the field of education. But those chosen as such must be careful lest their specialty become their all-consuming interest. And those not chosen to specialize in a given subject, must avoid the error of not being interested in a given field--be it music, art, literature, or whatever--because then they would fail to enrich themselves. Communities must be sure to provide sufficient opportunities for their members to develop their potentialities and interests, lest these be allowed to atrophy. If the sisters have sufficient leisure time and adequate opportunities, more of them should become more original and creative. They will con-seqfently become more perfectly developed as whole persons. The typ~ of education our sisters receive ".must offer them access to the wealth of thinking and specula-tion, to the arts and sciences, that lie at the basis of the best in our culture . The goal of education should not be so much to teach as to offer the opportunity to ex-perience growth of the total personality, including, of course, exercise of the mind and the aesthetic skills." 31 Only then can we justly expect them to make good use of their time, both on the job and off it. And we shall be acting to prevent many problems which inevitably arise =Sister Marian, I.H.M.~ "Leisure Time: A Spiritual Asset or Liability," REVIEW FOE KEL~CIOUS, V. 20 (1961), p. 365. =George Soule, "Free Time--Man's New Resource," in Free Time: Challenge to Later Maturity, pp. 75-6. in later years when persons have not learned how to act leisurely. We must be honest and admit that many sisters look upon leisure, recreation, and relaxation as an escape from.the toils of the day or from the monotonous exist-ence some may have to endure for various reasons. And so, it would seem, they quite naturally turn to the ever increasing viewing of television, listening to "light" music, or reading pseudosophisticated reading material found in some current magazines, all of which require little mental exertion. Education plays an important role in aiding sisters to become selective in the type of activi-ties chosen for use in their leisure. Otherwise, the sister ". will never become the educated, cultured woman her profession as educator on any academic level demands; much less will she furn out to be the mature religious woman who can say without any reservation, 'I live, yet it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me'." as Some may object, stating that they have not been thus educated or trained. The community may then choose to conduct workshops for this purpose, using their own sisters whose profession has trained them to be knowledge-able in the various fine arts. Sisters themselves could con. verse with these professionals and learn to be selective. Not liking to read, listen to good music, or view art is not really reason enough not to engage in these activities. Sisters must learn that they can acquire a taste for them. Granted, this is not easy; it depends upon the willingness of the individual and her repeated efforts. The cultivation of an interest in the arts is as much her responsibility as the understanding and skill she is required to have in her profession. I[ there is a separation between the cultured professional and the zealous religious, the inevitable resuh is a divided personality.33 Finally: Religious women must be women of discernment. They must come to see and be convinced that compartmentalization of their minds interferes with their raison d'~tre--that of trans-forming themselves into souls owned by Christ and changed into Him. Their recognition of the genuine values inherent in the good use of leisure time, will, in reality, bring them closer and closer day by day to an adherence to the truth, and to the One who is Truth Itself.** Once again, this is not to imply that physical activities ÷ are never to be used, nor that leisure is not ever meant for ÷ simpler types of relaxation. These are needed, too, be-cause they fortify both mind and body by not making difficult demands on either. ILei~re, Sister Marian, "Leisure Time," p. 365. See ibid., pp. 370-1. Ibid. VOLUME 2% 1970 41 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Play Under the general heading of "play" we can develop many ideas. ]?or example, our work may become play-- when we aquire a relaxed attitude toward it as opposed to compulsive preoccupation: "Enjoyment comes from doing the best I can without the anxious feeling that I must do everything or be dubbed a failure. The fact that I reserve time for living the inactivity of recreation gives me the presence and peace of mind I need to respond fully to the moments." 36 The Sacred Scriptures have repeated incidents of play: God created the sea, with all its schools of fish and many ships, "to make sport of it" (Ps 103:25-6); exegetes of the Bible apply the passage from Proverbs 8:27-31 describing an observer of creation to Mary who "was delighted every day, playing before him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men"; and, of course, there is the famous incident of David playing and dancing before the ark of the covenant (1 Chr 15:29). Perhaps we should take the example, lest we take our work too seriously and it make us its slave and we become proud and self-sufficient. We must be serious about our work to a point--but, then, we must find enjoyment in it.3n Because play involves successes and failures, it helps a person to adjust to these in the more serious business of li[e. Because it teaches the person to "rub elbows" or socialize, play teaches teamplay: The experience and training received in good play are indis-pensable to the well-adjusted individual . Play is training in ajpplication and concentration, and it is training, in socializa-aon. ;. There is no better means o[ turning interest away from self and such unhealthy things as phantasy and self-centeredness toward the objective world of-things and people than absorption in play . Play. is an indispensable train-ing in the serious work oF lifeY The primitive drive of aggression in an individual adult is satisfied for a part in work and education. But not all excess energy and aggression can thus be diverted. Another outlet is found in play. Besides providing such an outlet, play teaches us to overcome dislikes and hatreds which may otherwise develop to unreasonableness. Unless excess aggresiveness and energy are released in some beneficial manner, it will produce mischief and mental illness.3S The discussion on play quite naturally brir~gs to mind a~Envoy, v. 5 (1968), pp. I13. so Mehr, "Community Exercises," p. 338. S~Arthur Timme, "The Significance of Play and Recreation in Civilized Life," Mental Hygiene, v. 18 (1934), p. 54. ~ See ibid., pp. 54-6. other, more active forms of recreation and relaxation. It should be understood that active leisure applies to all. Some would tend to limit it to chronologically young persons. Perhaps a bit of an explanation would be useful, especially when we recall that Alexander Reid Martin warned that unless a person learns to use leisure properly, she may experience a rapid disintegration of her person-ality once leisure is more or less forced upon her. Actually, it is unfair to label an individual by age, be-cause it deprives her of equality. Thus labeled, a sister is judged, not by her personal qualities or lack or them, but by what is expected of her because of her particular age. George H. Soule notes that no one has yet exactly pin-pointed the essence of aging, either physiologically or psychologically, but that most experts agree that the differences within an age group are far greater than differ-ences between age groups.3~ To be arbitrarily placed in a group often leads to a person's reacting as expected, and this in turn influences the deterioration spoken of, at whatever age level. Generally speaking, however, youth can and does find opportunities for recreation and relaxation. There re-mains the danger of being overzealous and overambitious and of acquiring a sense of responsibility that they must take on added burdens as the congregation's median age rises. Of this, the young must beware--they, too, must develop leisureliness, which will not allow them to be-come preoccupied in any endeavor. The ability to be leisurely and to be able to recreate ourselves should be grasped by middle age, because . by this time most of us have reached a plateau in our jobs or professions. This is not to suggest that, t~or the specially qualified or generally ambitious, there are not further peaks to be climbed. But for the generality of us, I think, we have probably attained the peak of our job or career, and it is time to relax. We can still do our da),'s work, honesdy and competently. But we can also start thinking of our souls. By thinking of our souls I am not speaking purely in a religious sense, though I would not for a moment discount the importance of that. I am thinking rather of a reexamination of ourselves as individuals and of our lives up to this pointwto what extent we have found meaning and to what extent we have failed to find meaning, and then to realize quite soberly that this comparative leisure we have earned may stretch on for us for perhaps another quarter of a century.'° Normally, because an individual has achieved her work goals by middle age, she also derives most satisfactions from it during these years. Thes~ satisfactions she usually shares with the community, and the community should be a~ Soule, "Free Time," p. 62. 4°Clark Tibbits, "Preface," in Free Time: Challenge to Later Maturity, pp. xi-xii. ÷ 4- 4- VOLUME 29, 1970 43 ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS an in~entive for the individual to advance herself even more.41 But once again the sister should beware of be-coming too engrossed in her work and her own personal satisfactions, because this. will narrow her other interests. Then, when she later becomes less efficient and no longer gets such satisfactions, she will have little to go back on: "We are told that people stranded without interest goals, who seem to have no rationale of existence, often become frustrated and lapse into physical or mental illness." 42 This applies to any age group, but since satisfactions are greatest in middle age, perhaps this is the most dangerous age in regard to the fallacy of overwork and underplay. The so-called senior members of the community should not, by any means, be excluded from active leisure-time activities. It is most important that these sisters be kept active and creative, since their physical ability to work is limited, as is their sphere of interests. The community must make special provision for an organized leisure-time program for these members above all. It would be well if they had some professionally trained sisters to accomplish this. More and more colleges are providing courses in recreation leadership, because of the demand in society for such individuals. Surely, it would be to the community's advantage to have such trained personnel. These same sisters could conduct workshops for the local homes and offer suggestions as to how recreation periods could be more relaxing and more beneficial: "Sound rec-reation programs may promote good will, tolerance and understanding, and may improve societal relationships, all of which are significant to the maximum develgpment of personality." 4a Concerning the use of leisure time by all age groups, we find that all activities fall into one or more of the following categories: social and cultural advancement, creative expression, entertainment, recreation, personal development, fostering life, creative maintenance, and classification and ordering.44 These groups of activities bring about certain desired effects: diversion, which counters self-center~dness; expression, which reverses feel-ings of frustration; the struggle ]or survival, useful against regression; creativeness, a method of liberating thwarted instincts; membership, which combats feelings of iso-lation and lonesomeness; participation, to maintain a ,1 Nels Anderson, Work and Leisure (New York: Free Press, 1961), p. 180. '~ Ibid., p. 257. *a Raymond A. Snyder and Alexander Scott, Pro/essional Prepara-tion in Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954), p. 5. ~See Maurice E. Linden, "Preparation for the Leisure of Later Maturity," in Free Time: Challenge to Later Maturity, p. 89. sense of self-esteem; social acceptableness, to help main-tain a good self-image; recognition, which counteracts embitterment; meaningfulness, to aid in establishing the true value of nature and life; contemplation, which con-tributes to effective judgmental functioning; sharing, to aid in improving a person's opinion of herself; and simple enjoyment of living.4~ The achievement of the above mentioned effects, certainly, will contribute to a more perfect personality. All of them result from the proper use of leisure activities. All o£ them can be achieved by any individual who de-sires to do so. But some may ask for more concrete exam-ples of how to acquire these abstract values. There are any number of ways, of course, and each way must be suited to the individual, who must consider her own physical and psychological needs. In selecting recrea-tional activities, the sister should always keep in mind that which will give her the most satisfaction at a given time. The activity in which she can best create, achieve, find beauty, fellowship, and relaxation, is of more lasting value than one which yields only one or two satisfac-tions. 46 Following is a list of activities which might be engaged in by sisters. The list is only suggestive, and not all-inclu-sive. It is offered merely to aid sisters in selecting activi-ties to make their leisure time more profitable. Active games and sports: Dodge bail, relays, softball, basketball, bowling, volleyball, rope jumping, bicycle riding, swimming, ice skating, and calisthenics. Social activities: Card games, barbecues, parties for special occasions, puzzles, dancing, and various table games (scrabble, parchesi, monopoly). Music: A cappella choirs, action songs, community singing, instrument playing, composing music, listening groups, music appreciation courses, music study groups, and music instruction. Arts and crafts: Drawing, carving of various kinds (soap, wood, and so forth), needlework, painting, paper craft, and sewing. Drama: Theatre attendance, charades, choral speech, creative dramatization, and song impersonations. Nature and outing activities: Excursions or trips to art museums and to places of religious or historic interest; flower arrangement; gardening; and nature study, col-lection, and identification. Literary, languages, and related activities: Creative writing, lectures, reading, mental games, radio and tele- ~ Ibid., pp. 89-92. ~See George D. Butler, Introduction to Community Recreation, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 240. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in recreation leadership. Leisure VOLUME 2% 1970 45 ÷ ÷ ÷ vision programs° and study groups in literature or lan-guage. Seroice activities: Directing glee club, orchestra, dra-matic groups, assistance in organizing holiday celebra-tions, and assistance in public relations programs. The preceding list should at least indicate the wide diversity of activities which bring satisfaction and re-laxation to various individuals.4; If there is a recreation leader, she should be sure to consider differences in age, interest, skills, place available, time, size of the group, and the funds necessary and available.4s Having a recrea-tion leader, whether on a local, regional, or provincial level, would surely enhance the recreation program. It would be more organized and more e~cient and con-sequently more beneficial to those involved. Special mention must be made of vacations as a form of leisure. Recently, communities have increased the length of vacation periods and have relaxed regulations governing the way vacations are to be spent. Actually, nothing in canon law regarding religious specifies that a religious must have a vacation, but it seems that some kind of vacation is a normal requisite for an individual. It is doubtful that visits to one's family and relatives should be counted as a vacation, because these are often marked by strenuous activity and loss of sleep, so they are not physically relaxing. Even if they provide relax-ation, they can hardly be considered a religious vacation: "A vacation for religious should serve the purpose of intensifying the community spirit.'° 49 A vacation should be taken in a place away from the regular religious houses, where sisters could get together to rest, play games, and get to know one another: "In relaxation and recreation the religious see one another in a new light, and often discover remarkably fine qual-ities that they never knew existed. In my opinion there is nothing like a good community vacation for fostering a good community spirit." 50 It is recognized by superiors and sisters that all of this is true and good, but obstacles, especially financial ones, will always remain. Nonethe-less, everything possible should be done to carry out a vacation program. Regarding the idea of individual religious saving gifts or offerings to pay for the vacation, it would seem con-trary to present canon law which states that gifts received by an individual become the property of the institute. Even if the religious asks permission, the asking of per- Sister Teresanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 46 See ibid., pp. 253-8. See ibid., pp. 264-72. Questions on Religious LiIe (St. Marys, Kansas: R~wEw FOR R~.mious, 1964), p. '112. Ibid., p. 113. missions usually pertains to what the religious needs, not what she desires. It the community permits sisters to make trips and visit their families, the community should pay the expenses. The community ought not insist upon or condone a policy of those who get the money, get the trips:51 Common life also requires that, generally spe.aking, equal opportunities be given to members of a commumty. Hence a superior could allow the members of his community to make a pious pilgrimage provided that he supplied the necessary ex-pense money for such members of his community as do not have relatives or friends who are willing to pay for them.~ However, as witnesses of the poverty of Christ, religious themselves should not desire unduly long and expensive vacations, for poor persons are unable to take such vacations. For Senior Sisters The final part of this paper will be devoted to the area of leisure, recreation, and relaxation for senior sisters. Of course, what has already been stated applies to all sisters, seniors included. But it cannot be denied that these sisters need and deserve special treatment; hence, aspects of leisure which pertain specifically to them will be treated separately. The senior sister as a member of society has, like most others, leaned on her role as worker. All other roles-- friend, citizen, adviser--revolved around her worker role in life. When she retires, she must learn to use her time and place her values differently, because new relation-ships to persons and things develop. "If mental and physical deterioration are to be avoided, new interests and new goals must be found, or old interests and aspira-tions rediscovered . The recreation program offers a fruitful means of satisfying activity for them." 53 As with everyone else, however, the primary responsi-bility for appropriate use of leisure rests with the sister herself. There are some recommendations that will help her to benefit from her new-found role. As suggested by Dr. Maurice E. Linden, these are: (I) Continue to develop your resources. Contrary to popu-lar opinion, the human m~nd continues to develop its capacity well into the seventh and eighth decades. (2) Increase your social effectiveness. Because older people have fewer human drives to contend with, they can channel their energy, thus becoming more socially effective. (3) Enjoy your wisdom. It can be a great source of gratifica-tion now, formerly denied because of inexperience. ¯ t See ibid., pp. 64-5. ~ Ibid., p. 63. ~Arthur Williams, Recreation in the Senior Years (New York: National Recreation Association Press, 1962), p. 18. VOLUME 2% 1970 + ÷ ÷ Siste~ Te~esanta REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 48 (4) Advance the tenets of human progress. The experience of the older mind gives it the capacity to diStinguish the good from the bad, thus enabling the community to preserve values built up over a period of time. (5) Externalize your interest. As a result of many successes in life, the older person should have the ability to be less selb centered an.d more interested in other people. (6) Place your value in quality. Again as a result of experi-ence, the older mind is capable of seeing the intrinsic value in both persons and things, and those formerly considered insig-nificant now are appreciated. (7) Don't be a spendthrift of time. Maturity enables a per-son to appreciate the value of time and aids her in spending it profitably. (8) Make your human relationships durable, It is a quality of a mature person to be unswerving in devotion to persons and to principles. (9) Don't capitalize on dependency. It is a responsibility of the young to care for the old; but well-adjusted older persons prefer to be as independent as they are capable.of being. (10) Exercise judicious independence. It is unwise to with-draw from the currents of daily life and thus deny the young people the benefit of accumulated experience and knowledge ~" These are just some suggestions that senior sisters may find helpful. It would seem that they are striving to ad-just to their situation. The communities must do all that is possible to aid these sisters, through the establishment of an effective program for the use of leisure. As men-tioned, more than in other groups, there is a definite need for trained personnel for this program. There is a need for a varied program, suited to the individual sister: "Diversity is the keynote of the per-manently successful program." 55 The program should be so planned as to include every sister. And every sister should be encouraged to participate, guarding against the tendency to just sit and watch. But her participation must be voluntary. Only in this way will her real abilities shine forth, and only in this way will she give vent to self-expression. Above all, if the program for the aging sisters is to be successful, it should be designed to improve community living. Those charged with developing the program must have confidence in the senior sisters and must be cognizant that ". older people can learn new skills, but., they learn more slowly and need to engage in recreational activities at their own pace." 56 Dr. Carol Lucas con-ducted a pilot program of study at Columbia University and authored a book in which a recreation program for ~ Linden, "Prep

Issue 67.1 of the Review for Religious, 2008. ; Mission Praye~r Consecrated Life Spiritual Supports QUARTERLY 67.'I 2008 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul V! said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih review@slu.edu ¯ \Veb 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 McD6nough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2008 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distrihution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such perntission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 67.1 2008 contents prisms 4 Prisms 13 23 mission Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission James P. McCloskey CSSP envisions creating an experience of "common ground" among people of goodwill within religious congregations about the many issues that cause division. Personal/Group Reflection Questions An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission James H. Kroeger MM reflects on the "mission motive" mentioned first by the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference: a deep sense of gratitude to God. prayer A Dream, Ash Wednesday, .and the Word Godelieve Theys OCSO shares a dream that has profound implications for finding God's Word alive and powerful, having always new things to say. Pedagogy of Prayer Jghn Carroll Futrell SJ reviews many aspects of our Christian prayer and suggests practical ways of making our lives more prayer-filled. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Pray Passionately Brendan Kneale FSC addresses the need to bring to our prayers a passion of the sort found in the wording of many Psalms. Revie~v for Religious 54 6O 67 consecrated life 0 The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries Clifford Stevens cautions that, as soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary concern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the window. Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons M. Regina van den Berg FSGM argues that the experiences that travel and the media make possible are often escapes from reality, while the limited environment of the enclosure can widen our horizons. Religious Brotherhood Today Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR sets. forth the challenges facing religious brothers' congregations, especially within the South Asian context. 74 85 spiritual supports Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Vincent Genovesi SJ presents a solid theological and pastoral response to the questions raised about the usefulness or necessity of the rite of reconciliation. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Mentors Mentored: Spiritual Companionship with a Saint Lou Ella Hickman IWBS shares her experience of choosing St. Edith Stein to be her mentor as she mentors others on their spiritual journey. departments 89 Scripture Scope: Reading the Sermon on the Mount 94 Canonical Counsel: Personal Records of Community Members 100 Book Reviews 67.1 2008 prisms As we move eight years into the 21st century, we could well take stock of how we are measuring up to the vision and mission set before us by John Paul II's apostolic letter "At the begin-ning of the new millennium." As the pope noted, we are not in the peren-nial process of inventing a new program each year or even each century. The program consists in the plan found in the Gospel and in the liv-ing tradition of the church. "It has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved, and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem." But this Gospel program has to be translated into pastoral initiatives that are adapted to the circumstances of each local church and each local religious com-munity. That is the action call as we begin anew with the favor of another year. Where do we begin? There can be no other beginning than the challenge issued by Vatican II's Lumen gentium, chapter 5: the universal call to holiness. All our pastoral planning, all our religious renewal efforts, all our peace and jus-tice endeavors are measured by the clarity of our focus on holiness. In the way we live and in what we do, the question is most realistic and practical: Do we want to become holy? Is that our desire for others? There can be no growth in holiness without our entering more fully into a learning how to pray. While a widespread interest in spirituali- Review for Religious ties and spiritual practices is a contemporary phenomenon, the foundation remains a personal prayer life. Prayer, even in its most contemplative and cloistered forms, opens our hearts simultaneously to the love of God and to the love of our brothers and sisters. It is our Christian prayer that enables us to be shapers of movements and events in our local situation and sometimes even more widely in the world. It is prayer that roots us in the truth that "without Me, you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). When we pray, we acknowledge the primacy of Christ and, in union with him, the primacy of the interior life and of holiness. Prayer itself needs to be nourished consistendy with a listening to the Word of God. As we continue to steep ourselves in Scripture, we find ourselves warming to the passion of sharing the Good News. This passion leads to a new sense of mission--mission not reserved to specialists or to lands different from our own. Yet witnessing to our faith vision must happen within a context of sensitivity to the differ-ent religious and value paths of our fellow citizens and to the diversity of cultures present within our own country in which the Christian message is expressed. In challenging all of us ordinary Christians, the pope writes: "A new apos-tolic outreach is needed which will be lived as the everyday commitment of Christian communities ahd groups." As Vatican II's Gaudium et spes §34 says, "The Christian message does not inhibit men and women from building up the world or make them disinterested in the welfare ofotheir fellow human beings: On the contrary, it obliges them more fully to do these very things." Review for Religious is privileged to play its part, through its many authors, in sharing insights and encouraging practices for this Christian mission. David L. Fleming SJ 67.1 2008 mission JAMES P. Mc CLOSKEY Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Ensnarled in traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I began to listen to a radio talk pro-gram more intendy than usual. I'was searching for words of consolation on a long and tedious drive. What I found was a fascinating--and stirring--discussion about reconciliation. The topic was abortion, but the focus of the discus-sion was the search for "common ground." The hour-long program was a recapitula-tion of meetings that occurred during the past year. The meetings were organized by women who had opposing positions on the issue of aborti6n. Representatives of both groups described themselves as feminists. The partici-pants in the year-long discussion were women accustomed to the public forum. That is, they were intelligent and articulate spokespersons James P. McCloskey CSSp writes from Congregazione dello Spirito Santo; Clivo di Cinna, 195; Roma 00136; Italy. Review for Religious for "pro-life" and "pro-choice" positions. During the year there had been unsuccessful attempts by some to cancel the series of meetings, angry leaks to the press about the discussions, and genuine fearfulness on both sides. But the meetings took place. And the result was extraordinary. Women who did not accept the position of other women who, in their opinion, allowed the law to regu-late their bodies listened nevertheless with compassion as their colleagues recounted their religious-faith con-victions, their differing understandings of the human person, and ~their simple--and different--biological beliefs. Other women, who could not theretofore abide the notion that females could terminate what they believed to be a human life within them, responded with empathy towards women whose scientific and human-istic principles were simply different from their own. In the end, members of neither group changed their positions. But also, in the end, members of both groups grew in respect and compassion for their "opponents." They achieved a form of "common ground" that will serve as the basis for future relationship and conversa-tion between them. Not for discussion of abortion do I raise this exam-ple, but as a way of envisioning and creating a similar experience of "common ground" among p~ople of good-will within religious congregations that were founded for mission and for service to the poor. The existence of multiple cultures within congregations, mirroring the multiple cultures within the Catholic Church, is evident. These cultures are related to the different languages, tribes, national identities, and ages within the congre-gations, but they are not confined to them. The social scientist Edgar Schein defines culture as "the deeper 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic 'taken-for-granted' fashion an organization's view of itself and its environment."1 In Schein's view the most useful way to think about culture is to imagine it as "the accumulated shared learning of a given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cogni-tive elements of the group members' total psychological functioning.''2 Since the publication of Schein's work, the under-standing and perception that most members of an orga-nization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness that many organizations contain multiple cultures or subcultures. Noting that some orga-nizations may have only fragmented, disjointed cultures, Joanne Martin has asked whether culture needs to be something internally consistent, or whether it can be inconsistent and expressive of difference. Can it incor-porate confusion, ignorance, paradox, and fragmenta-tion? What are the boundaries around culture, and how do cultures change?3 By multiple cultures within a religious congrega-tion, I mean the presence of differing and sometimes opposing worldviews under the umbrella of having been founded for a single purpose and with a single Rule of Life. Similarly, among Catholics in general, some define themselves as God's "pilgrim people," a term that implies moving towards the kingdom of God but not yet achieving it. Others think of the church as the kingdom of God here on earth. These different understandings translate into different understandings of morality, sac-ramental life, liturgy, and hierarchy. They are some-times called differences of "style," but they are more profound than that. Review for Religqous In religious missionary congregations, founded for "the spread of the gospel to those who have not yet heard it," it is no wonder that multiple cultures are the order of the day. On a large scale, those differences are racial, linguistic, ideological, generational, and ecclesi-astical. We make national and tribal attempts at "enculturation" of the life of our congregation and its values within a particular set-ting, translating ideals into prac-tice- often with success but not always. Within our congrega-tion's American subculture, mul-tiple differences of culture, are often experienced just as acutely and intensely as in international subcultures. Even in the "real 'life" of persons in one community, such as the same parish or school, different worldviews emerge that challenge common living. Recently, in a community-room conversation, a priest said, "It is impossible to be both Republican and Spiritan." He said it with the force of true conviction, and the Republican Spiritans in the room grew silent and began to seethe. In one prov-ince there are celebrations of the Tridentine liturgy, and there are those who question whether the celebration of daily Eucharist is ideal--or even spiritually healthy. The understanding and perception that most members of an organization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness ,that, many organizations contain multip!~e cultures or Subcultures. 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mis~ion There are liberals, conservatives, social activists, phi-losophers, and papists. A morley--and gracedmcrew! Undercurrents of cultural difference emerge in quiet discussions concerning the role of lay associates in the congregation; concerning the rising influence of the "southern" provinces, where candidates are many and new energy and vitality overshadow the elders of the "north"; and concerning members who choose to live and work in "untraditional" settings, interpreting "mis-sion" in a different way. Undercurrents rise to the sur-face during provincial elections or national assemblies, when stakes are high and the level of well-being is at risk. Sometimes an "elephant in the room" is studiously ignored during discussion of clergy sexual abuse, sexual orientation, financial accountability, or institutional assessments. In congregations with a missionary orientation and an international membership, the formal "cultural" training of members tends to be thorough and highly professional. Degrees in cross-cultural communica-tion, missiology, and anthropology abound. Experts in interreligious dialogue, ecumenism, and international development are fairly commonplace. Candidates in for-marion spend a period of ministry in another cultural context before definitive commitment, and most new members are assigned to countries not .their own. It is usual for members to achieve fluency in a second or even a third language. .Why, then, do we often find it difficult to talk among ourselves? Is it simply the human condition that the "traditionalists" will oppose the "progressives," that tribal alliances will win out over competence in choosing leadership, and that "turf wars" will decide who controls property and finance? We opted for more. Review for Religious And we know that the divisions are sinful reminders of our weakness. And so what is the solution to the dissolution? The solution is a simple one--a commitment to sustained and deliberate conversation for the purpose of achiev-ing "common ground." Following the model employed by the pro-life and pro-choice advo-cates, it is imperative to establish "rules" for dis-cussion. It is urgent to listen with care and real empathy. It is important to proceed with respect and humility. No one We know that the divisions are sinful reminders of . our weakness. person fully embodies the congregation's ideal mem-ber. Together, the members bear worldwide witness to the values espoused by its founders. No one perspective is to be eliminated or misjudged. The effort to engage in this conversation is fearful and intimidating. But it is the only way that differences can be respected--and, ultimately, that the persons expressing those different opinions will be respected and loved. The meaning of "mission" has changed since the foundation of the Spiritan congregafon in the 18th cen-tury. Far from an imposition of a foreign culture upon a people, mission is no less than sustained, purposeful, and respectful dialogue. It is a commitment to remain at the table, conversing honestly until the Spirit speaks. W-hat greater witness to the "mind of Christ" is possible than the example of a community determined to "linger at the table" and fully invest itself in genuine, honest conversation--for mission? 67.1 2008 McCloskey ¯ Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Notes t Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), p. 6. 2 Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), p. 10. 3 Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4. 2o o Personal/Group Reflection Questions Where does my sense 6f mission come from--directly from God, from superiors, from the community in which I live? What give me a continuing sense of confirmation and support for my mission? When do we talk about our mission-~our individual ministries or our corporate ministry together? What makes this conversation helpful? What makes it painful and contentious? Review for Religious JAMES H. KROEGER An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission ~/~y mission? This perennial, persistent question mits of a variety of valid responses. Asking why is fundamentally a question of "mission motivation." Why evangelize? Why be Jesus' disciple? Why concern yourself?. What ends does mission really serve? The bishops of Asia continually grapple with these questions as they explore the evangelizing mission of the church on this vast continent of four billion people, where less than three percent of the burgeoning masses are Christian. Although these leaders of the church in Asia have elucidated several reasons for engaging in mission, what is striking is the "mission motive" they James H. Kroeger MM has since 1970 served mission in the Philippines and Bangladesh. Currently he is professor of Mission Studies and Islamics at the Loyola School of Theology; Ateneo de Manila University; Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights; Quezon City 1108; Philippines. jkroeger@admu.edu.ph 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission mentioned first during the fifth plenary assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). Collectively they forcefully asserted: "We evange-lize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God, the Father 'who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing' (Ep 1:3) and sent the Spirit into our hearts so that we may share in God's own life. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts transformed by the grace of God" (FABC V). The Asian bishops vigorously affirm: "That is why it is so important for us Christians to have a deep faith-experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rm 8:39), that love which has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has ,been given to us (Rm 5:5). Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Note some of the words and phrases that the FABC uses to describe this motive for mission: "gratitude to God," "grateful hearts," "spiritual blessing," "given to us," "love received as gift and mercy." Indeed, mission is viewed as a gi~, graciously given, gratefully received, and generously shared. Gratitude is a powerful motive for energetic evangelization. The Image of Gift All cultures and peoples give gifts, particularly on special occasions and at significant life events: birthdays, weddings, holidays, anniversaries. Gifts bond people together, they express gratitude and appreciation. Gifts are chosen personally and carefully, to please each recip-ient. Often gifts-are exchanged at the same moment, further cementing families together, and friends too. Asians have elevated gift-giving into an art. What would Chinese celebrations and the Lunar New Year Review for Religiot~ be without generous gifts offered in red envelopes (ang-pao)? In Korea the ritual celebration of one's sixtieth birthday (hwangap) is an occasion for lavish gifting. No Filipino feels comfortable without bringing some pasa-lubong-- large or small--when returning home. Probably it is the experience of giving and receiving gifts--so deeply human--that prompted Asia's bishops to see gratitude for abundant grace received as a fit-ting image and motive for mission. This gift image expresses Christian thankfulness for God's unique, gra-tuitous, gift--Jesus the Son. Each day in the Eucharist, a Greek word that means thanksgiving (eucha-ristein), we say "we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks." Frequently in the Mass the Prayer over the Gifts refers to the "holy exchange of gifts." To help in grasping the deep meaning in the image of mission as gift, this "Asian" reflection now presents three interrelated moments of what might be termed "gift missiology." Three "R" words capture mission-as-gift: Recognize, Receive, and Reciprocate. Recognize by being profoundly aware of the uniqueness of God's gift. Receive by personally appropriating God's gift. Reciprocate by sharing God's gift with others. :The first moment in hppreciatin g "gift missiology" is ~to become deeply conscious of th~ depths of God's love. Recognizing the Gift The first moment in appreciating "gift missiology" is to become deeply conscious of the depths of God's 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission love, the love of the Trinity. The mission decree of the Second Vatican Council (Ad gentes) noted: "The pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. This decree [divine plan] flows from that 'fountain of love' or charity within God" (AG §2). Mission originates in the centrifugal love of the Trinity; our missionary God shares of his essence which is love. God the Father gifts us with his incar-nate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One can receive no greater gift. Prayer and contemplation facilitate a depth-awareness of this great gift. The New Testament is replete with expressions of God's magnanimous generosity. Paul reminds the Romans: "Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift considerably outweighed the fall . Divine grace, coming through the one man Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. The results of the gift also outweigh the results of one man's sin . Jesus Christ will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve" (Rm 5:15-17). As one con-templates God's profound generosity, gratitude wells up in_the heart, leading one to proclaim "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift" (2 Co 9:15). Recognizing God's gifts also means being pro-foundly aware that we do not earn or merit the gifts; they come from God's generosity, as Paul explains to the Ephesians: "This was to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We Review for Religious are God's work of art" (Ep 2:7-10). Paul encourages the Romans to humbly receive God's gifts: "I want to urge each one among you not to exaggerate his real impor-tance . Our gifts differ according to the grace given us" (Rm 12:3-8). As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he promises them: "I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that Spirit of Truth. ¯ ." (Jn 14:16). Jesus' prom-ise is fulfilled at'. Pentecost: God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ,ethnic, or cultural background. "They were all I ~ filled with the - Holy Spirit .The Spirit gave them the gift of speech [to] proclaim the marvels of God" (Ac 2:1-12). The early Christian community--and our church today--have been assured of God's continuous generos-ity: "You will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed" (1 Co 1:7). Paul notes that all gifts have one source: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit . All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people just as he chooses" (1 Co 12:1-12). God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ethnic, or cultural background; thus, "the Holy Spirit came down on all the listeners . All were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit should be poured out on the pagans too" (Ac 10:44-45). Peter proclaims God's graciousness in Jaffa, saying: "I realized 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission then that God was giving them the identical gift be gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and who was I to stand in God's way?" (Ac 11:17). Mission originates in this profound consciousness of what the Father has graciously wrought in Christ Jesus and their Spirit, continually manifested in the church. St. Th~r~se of Lisieux expressed her awareness of God's gift when she concluded: "My vocation is Love! In the heart of the church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus, I shall be everything." Receiving the Gift A transformed consciousness that fully appreciates God's graciousness will receive the gift of faith with a joyful heart. One need only recall how this precious gift has been given and received. One could ask: Why of the four billion people in Asia have I been privileged to receive the gift of Christian faith? Who were God's instruments in transmitting the gift to me? What price did my parents or the missionaries have to pay so that I would have this great treasure? Who are the holy people in my life who have helped me appreciate God's gifts? Reflecting on these questions will facilitate a more per-sonal reception of God's gifts of grace. When Jesus engages the Samaritan woman at the well, he challenges her to have a deeper appreciation of the gift being offered: "If you only knew the giJ~ God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water" (Jn 4:10). Writing to the Corinthians, Paul invites them to a more profound awareness of the gift of being a Christian; he says: "People must~ think of us as Christ's servants, stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. Review for Religious What is expected of stewards is that each one should be found worthy of his trust . What do you have that was not given to you? And if it was given, how can you boast as though it were not?" (1 Co 4:1-2,7). Both the Samaritan woman and the Corinthian community are to appreciate that, since they have been recipients of God's gifts, they themselves are now able to be gifts to others. Precisely because one is loved, has experienced God's love, and has thus become lovable, one can reach out to others with the gift of love. This is the transformed ° - consciousness that God's gifting creates in receptive individuals. One is reminded of what the Asian bishops have said: "Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flour-ish" (FABC V). A deep reception of God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to minis-try. This was the "conversion" experience of St. Paul; the Lord affirmed: "This man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and ¯ before the people of Israel" (Ac 9:15). Paul personally owns this gift: "I have been made the servant of that gospel by a gi~ of grace from God who gave it to me by his own power" (Ep 3:7). Paul celebrates God's choice, noting that: "God never takes back his gi)~ or revokes his choice" (Rm 11:29). Reception of God's gift is a continuous, ongoing '~ A deep reception of, -God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to ministry. 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission process. Paul reminds his beloved Timothy (and us) to keep growing in receptiveness (appreciation, personal-ization, appropriation) of God's gift: "You have in you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you; do not let it lie unused. Think hard about all this, and put it into practice" (1 Tm 4:14-15). Reciprocating God's Gift The New Testament passage that best captures this third moment of gift missiology is: "What you have received as a gift, give as a gift" (Mt 10:8). The logic is simple: if one truly appreciates a gift, one wishes to share it with others. The desire to gift others is the best and clearest manifestation of authentic gratitude. The New Testament letters of James and Peter add further insight: "Make no mistake about this, my dear brothers: every good gift, everything that is perfect, is given us from abtve; it comes down from the Father of all light" (Jm 1:16-17). "Each of you has received a special gift, so like good stewards responsible for all these different graces of God, put yourselves at the service of others . . . so that in everything God may receive the glory." (1 P 4:10-11). Pope John Paul II'S 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (EA) provides several insightful per-spectives on how the church in Asia is to "reciprocate" (return, repay) the gifts it has received. "The church's faith in Jesus is a gift received and a gift to be shared; it is the greatest gift which the church can offer to Asia" (EA § 10b). "Blessed with ~the gift of faith; the church [is to become] a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed . The great Review for Religious question now facing the church in Asia is how to share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (EA §19a & c). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs in Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (EA §3 If). The perspective of "mission as gift" contains sev-eral insights on the approach or manner of mission in Asia, which is necessarily dialogue. Christians treasure the gift of their trinitarian faith, offering it freely, even enthusiastically, to others. The gift is offered with a sincere heart, yet all evangelizers know that people are free to accept or reject the gift. The dialogue partners, such as Muslims and Buddhists, also have gifts to offer: the riches of their faith and their personal "God experi-ence." Thus, a wonderful exchange of gifts can result. All people who ha~e the gift of faith need to collaborate so that through sharing their gifts they can" enrich the poor and needy in their midst. The Asian bishops were indeed most perceptive in their reflection on a renewed motivation for mission, listing gratitude first among several possible motives. Recall what they said: "We evangelize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts trans-formed by the grace of God . Without a personal experience of this life received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Paul's well-worded exhortation to his co-evangelizer Timothy provides a fitting conclusion for these reflec-tions on the gift of mission (gift missiology). In Paul's words, Christifins can find a reprise Of their recognition, reception, and reciprocation of the gift Of faith. Paul writes: 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission "Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you .Never be ashamed of witness-ing to the Lord . Bear hardships for the sake of the Good News . Accept the strength that comes from the grace of Christ Jesus . Proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it . Do all with patience . Make the preaching of the Good News your life's work, in thoroughgoing service" (2 Tm 1:6, 8-9a; 2:1; 4:1,5). Mary Keeping Shabbat There would be nearly nine months ahead Of seventh-day worship in synagogue, Sitting with her sisters and her mother In the women's rows, opposite the minyun Of their men, her secret blossoming within her, Thrusting against the homespun of her gown. She hugged its warm folds, the warm hand Of her mother covering her own. For Jews Seeking signs to believe in, or to disbelieve, The signs were there every Shabbat - seventh- Month, eighth-month - that a daughter of righteous Parents was boldly with child, Her Joseph betrayed! Her betrayer someone here among us! Watch where She turns her eyes. But she only turns her eyes To heaven, while saying her Shabbat prayers, Singing the Shabbat psalms, a bright-haired Mary, keeping Sunday in her womb. Nancy G. Westerfield Review for Religious GODELIEVE THEYS A Dream, Ash Wednesday; and the Word In my fifty years of living in a Catholic mon-astery, an important element of my religious development has been to pay close attention to dreams. My daily life involves prayer, ritual, music, liturgy, silence, study, and work, while my nights, more than sleep, are often filled with religious imagery, prayer, and music as part of dreaming. In the Christian tradition there is a long, often neglected history of dreams pro-viding spiritual insight. John Sanford captures this in his book title: Dreams: God's Forgotten Language. Clearly much of the modern world has forgotten the significance of dreams~ as car-riers of spiritual teachings, and unfortunately, even in religious tradition, we often leave these divine messages of the night unattended. Godelieve Theys OCSO.came from Belgium in 1962 to help found her new Cistercian home at Redwoods Abbey; 18104 Briceland Road; Whitethorn, California 95589. prayer 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word It was in a dream that St. Joseph was warned by an angel to take the holy Child out of Israel for protection from a king who would kill the newborn King. Joseph knew the power of dreams and followed the instruction provided in the night. Where are we in our willingness to listen and follow the dream messengers? Growing older as I am, I recently recalled a dream in which I was told, "You should at least write a book to serve human-ity." This made little sense to me at the time. I did not see myself as an author, and I had no desire or inten-tion to write for others until recently. In the past year I was so deeply moved by a specific dream that I now find myself creating material that seems to want to be shared widely. Though I am not writing a book, I still hope that my experiences may help others realizer that dreams can give'insight into the mysterious reality we call the religious or the spiritual. Religion, while in gen-eral being about dogma and tradition, is also personal, being about the soul's movement towards God. Key to monastic living is to find the divine in all of life's experi-ences. Like St. Joseph, we are called to listen to angelic voices in the night, to listen to dreams as insights into religious living. Last year during Lent I had an indelible dream. For much of this year I have been trying to hear fully the message that it offers. The dream has changed me and continues to do so. The dream was this: It was Ash Wednesday. I was aware that the morning liturgy mate-rial was already typed, but that the evening material was not. I left the church and went for a morning walk outdoors, as I often do. There I saw something alive on the ground. I bent down and touched it. It was the Word for the evening liturgy, alive under my hand. I was moved to tears. It was a numinous experience. I Review for Religious wondered what to do? Should I keep this living Word with me until after lunch, protecting the Word so that it would not be destroyed or die before it was typed for the evening service, or should I return immediately to the community and get it typed right away? I was per-plexed. I awoke singing the refrain of the song "Deep Within." My words were: "Deep within I will plant my law, not on stone, but in your heart. Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." I could not recall making any decision. Besides the music, the thing that jumped out for me in the dream was the breathtaking feeling that in touching the Word I was experiencing the living pres-ence of God. In the dream ~- - - this experience of God . ¯ in the Word comes after I leave the church and take a walk amid some of nature's beauty. For me this confirms the church's i'~ life and traditional struc- ', tures and also my rela- , tion to our monastery's natural environment. Going outdoors, as in my dream image, reminds me of the evolution of consciousness itself. Awareness develops through our contact with the: outside world, through relationship with the world around us. Living in the heart of a forest, I am blessed in knowing the world as divine creation. For years I have walked daily in the beauty of our landscape to be restored. Walking and attending to nature is a way of quieting the mind and refreshing the soul. The wonder of the natural world offers my constant .mental activ-ity the opportunity to be touched by the realm of the In touching the Word I was experiencing the living presence of God. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word senses. In this dream of finding the Word alive, on the ground before me, my senses seem to come fully alive and open me to the deeper experience of this religious moment. Might the Word be more available than we imagine if only we were more attuned to this possibility? Seeing with our eyes, hearing with our ears, touching with our hands---how much of life are we missing and how much spiritual potential lies undiscovered simply'because we are not aware? This dream calls me to greater attention because in it I saw the Word, alive, under my hand. I felt its pulse. It was like a little bird that could' not fly and was waiting perhaps for me to pick it up, hold it gently, quench its thirst, that it could recover its strength and fly again. It was truly an experience of the sacred to feel this life under my hand, to feel the living substance of it. In that moment there was an immediate relationship between God's Word and me. Eros, relatedness, was involved. I was deeply moved; my heart was touched to the point of tears. The Word needs to be seen, to be heard, to be spoken, to be listened to, and to be fol-lowed so that its message can get through and heal the depths of the heart. It is important to me that this Word was found, not only outdoors, but also on the ground, on the earth in front of me--not above, not in the air, not transcendent. Here a divine Word was putting itse!f right in front of me, like something that was lost. There it was, all by itself, needing my help, needing me to keep my eyes open or miss a divine manifestation. Iv am reminded of the story of the rabbi who was asked, "How is it that God doesn't speak to people as he did in the past?" The rabbi answered: "Because no one bows low enough any-more." Bowing low is a gesture of humility that we may Review for Religious lack. As modern people we seek the spiritual above and beyond, outside the world of matter, and perhaps are not humble enough to see what is right before us. But, returning to the dream, what is before me is the Word. Living in a contemplative community, I am regularly in touch with the Word of God in Scripture-- and in the Rule of St. Benedict as well. These are important for my daily life. In this tradition there is nothing more powerful than the teaching in the opening verse of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Before the evangelist, the prophet Isaiah told us: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God will stand firm" (Is 40:58). And Jesus himself said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Mt 5:18). In reflecting upon the Word as it comes in the dream, I am reminded that there are many words--vol-umes upon volumes filled with them--and there is the Word. This dream clearly reflects the power of the Word. As Heidegger said, "language is more than little puffs of breath." Words are wellsprings of energy, giving us the power to communicate with one another, to share our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Words bring us into relationship with the world around us and with our inner world as well. They put us in touch with our past, lead us into the future, and help us realize actual Words bring us into relationship with theWorld around Us and with, our inner world as well. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word situations and attitudes in the present. They tell us what is in our mind and heart. Words both wound and heal. They are not only expressions of our conscious life, our ego identity, but also of our unconscious, as it comes through in dreams. They often have deeper meanings than what they stand for in ordinary life. They are chan-nels to our deeper and truer identity. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVl, in his book Salt of the Earth reminds us that "the word revealed in history is definitive, but it is inexhaustible, and it unceasingly discloses new depths. In this sense, the Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, speaks with his word to every age and shows it that this word always has something new to say.''1 The Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, who is God's definitive Word, "always has something new to say," but are we prepared to listen? Listening to my dream, I return to Ash Wednesday and sense the meaning of Lent, a meaning that tells me that, through deeper listening and closer attention to both dreams and daily life, we might come to greater awareness of the Word as it reveals itself to us. Nonetheless, I can-not help wondering why the Word, as it comes in this dream, does not address itself direcdy to me. Why does it not communicate what it expects me to do? I do not know what choice I made about taking care of the Word I was holding. It was only when I woke hearing the song "Deep Within" that I came to sense the message of the Word in this dream, the message of "Follow me." Turning.to the Gospels, I think of Jesus saying "Follow me" in several instances. The words of the song in my dream return: "Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." The Word will bring us back, will reveal our true selves, if only we are Review for Religious willing to follow the path of Jesus, the path of becom-ing a new being, with the only true name we have: I am. To follow Jesus as the enlightened one coming out of his baptism as the Son of God, the Beloved, involves living in relationship to the Word. We must entrust ourselves to the flow of life and consciously live the seasonal changes from death to new birth. Like the day that flows into night, we are always in transformation. Nothing remains static. Laziness, not striving to be con-stantly awake, locks us into one place and we stagnate and decay. Commitment to following the Word leads into the paschal mystery, the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. We are to let go of our attachments, not only to material possessions, but also to family, profession, social group, community, even to institutional religion. Like the rich young man who asked Jesus what he must do to have life, we must let go of what we have or who we think we are. We are to sell all and follow the path that leads to greater life, and, as Thomas Merton said when he was at Red, woods in 1968, "we have to stand on our own two feet." Along the same line, Elizabeth B. Howes wrote: "To sell all., means to renounce that right to choose the specificity of one's own desire and to let oneself be molded by the Patterning of the moment. Through such conscious choice, we give back to its true owner what we have been given. It is as if our life were on loan. We either take it and run away to shape it as we will, or we turn it back to its Source in a volitional act of choice, which makes us co-creators with the process of God.''2 To follow God's law planted in our heart is to find our true identity and to know the sacredness of the liv- 67.1 2008 ing Word, as in the image of my dream. This journey of which I write is the task of our lifetimes. Notes ~ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 62. 2 E.B. Howes, Jesus' Answer to God (San Francisco: Guild for Psychological Studies Publishing House, 1984), p. 89. Longing for Easter Give us Easter, the brilliant wine of the Kingdem, the days when He might appear at any moment and we in his presence become speechless with joy, shy with wonder. Give us Easter, when we can forget (not from shame) the dark pain that went before, or see it as one sees, from the bright rooms of home, the troubled road by which one traveled back Give us Easter and spring and the words of songs we always hoped to learn Give us always Easter. Kate Martin OSC Review for Religious JOHN CARROLL FUTRELL Pedagogy of Prayer HTan persons grow only through their relation-ips to the realities that enter into their self-awareness. This is a matter of integration, of becoming more and more whole rather than more and more dis-persed. Integrated selfhood is achieved only by free commitment to a life-meaning. People actualize their personal identity by faithfully choosing all their lives to express their identity in an authentic way. ~: The total human development of persons gifted with Christian faith calls them to integrate into their growth their relationships with other persons, with themselves, with things, and especially with God. Graced confessing that Jesus is Lord is recognition that the central rela-tionship of their life is their personal relationship with God. To bring this relationship into self-awareness is to pray. I shall suggest in this article a pedagogy of prayer. I shall offer reflections on what prayer is. Then I shall make some practical remarks on how to pray. Finally John Carroll Futrell SJ has written for this journal about ten times, beginning in 1958. His address is 3601 Lindell Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63108. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer I shall respond affirmatively to the question "Can we pray?" What Is Prayer? When we pray we meet God. Perhaps the best description of prayer is that it is a loving, personal encounter with God. C.S. Lewis remarked: "Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person." Our problem is to verify this encounter. Encounter may take many forms. Close friends can encounter each other by talking or being silent, or even when they are physically far from each other, because they are always in personal commu-nion. It takes two to make an encounter. I can reach out to you, but, unless you receive me and give yourself to me on the personal level, we can have no true encounter. When you reach out to God, God is there to receive you. This loving personal encounter is prayer. God is present, whether we "feel" that presence or not. We know this is true because God has revealed it to us. We know it because we have the gift of faith. The Holy Spirit present in us enables us to confess that Jesus is Lord. We must insist with faith on the fact of God's constant, transcendent, loving presence, even when we feel nothing but dryness. Our own coming to encounter God is the human dimension of prayer. Prayer as a human activity is mak-ing ourselves present to the presence of God within us, so that we can recognize God's presence in everyone and everything around us. Prayer requires of us the labor to get ourselves together, body, feelings, imagination, intelligence, will, desires, place, time, environment--so Review for Religious that we can truly be present to the presence of God in loving, personal encounter. Our essential praying, then, is accomplished by the will to pray even in the midst of distractions or of total dryness. If we have the sincere desire to pray, then, at the bottom of our heart, deep within us, there is a loving encounter with God, even though it is not consciously felt at the top of our head. St. Paul put it perfecdy in his Letter to the Romans: The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For, when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God, who knows everything in our hearts, knows perfectly well what the Spirit means. (Rm 8:26-28) A problem for many people attempting to verify the encounter with God which is prayer is that they begin with their own idea of good prayer, as determined by lack of distractions, no dry-ness, a continuous feeling of consolation. A false notion of prayer makes true prayer unverifiable. The problem here may be that we are seeking God for ourselves rather than for love of God. Instead of welcoming God's personal presence personally, we turn God into an 0/~ect, a thing we can acquire to fill a need. Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. Prayer leads us from self-centered need to other-centered love. This passage from need to love is illuminated by reflection with Freud on human growth toward matu-rity as a movement from need to desire2 As infants we all begin as quivering bundles of needs. We relate to Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. 67.1 2008 Futrell * PedagoG of Prayer all the realities that come into our awareness--espe-cially our mothers--as objects there to satisfy our needs. Need seeks self-satisfaction, the absorption of the other into myself. Freudian body imagery is revealing. Need means self-affirmation of my own bodily presence only; this annihilates all that is not myself by consuming it bodily. As long as I am operating chiefly from my need, I affirm myself only as an object, a needy body-thing, just as I affirm others only as objects to satisfy my needs. Freud shows that it is in passing from need to desire that we come to human maturity. In his terminology, when I desire another person, I affirm the reality of the other as a subject, as a free mysterious person, with inalien-able rights and always beyond adequate representation in concept or image. In desire we recognize what is not ourselves and affirm its free otherness. It is only in affirming others as persons that we realize ourselves as persons, as free subjects open to personal relationships. VChen we pass from need to desire, we can say, "It is now for the first time that I truly experience myself as a person, for it is only in your presence that I am." The poet e.e. cummings put it perfectly: "i am through you so i." When we apply this Freudian model to prayer, it is dear that in its initial stages prayer would reflect as in a mirror the emptiness of our need for God. From expe-riencing this need we shall pass gradually to the desire for God in God's infinite otherness. Even on the human level, desiring the other as unique and thus infinitely different from me is the greatest love. "I love you" becomes "You exist!" To love others is to will their pres-ence as irreducible to me. In recognizing their unique-ness, I recognize an absence in their very presence, the inalienable freedom of their otherness. Review for Religious Thus, desire--love--is not a static, finished thing. It is an ongoing living thing. Because of this fascinating and wonderful presence-in-absence, even a moment of intense personal union opens upon a new frontier, a beckoning from beyond towards deeper union. Another person remains an unfathomable secret. I cannot know this secret through thought or images or even bodily union. I can know another person only through love. In The Art of Loving (chap. 2), Erich Fromm points out: "In love, I know you, I know myself, I know every-body-- and I 'know' nothing. I know in the only way knowledge of that which is alive is possible for man--by experience of union--not by any knowledge our thought can give." The only way to full knowledge lies in the experience of love. This experience transcends thought; it transcends words. Thus, if I can have no full knowledge of God in thought, if theology is at best negative, then posi-tive knowledge of God can be achieved only in the act of union with God. In prayer we know God by lov-ing God, by welcoming God's gift to us in the loving experience of God's presence-in-absence. Prayer always remains desire, opening ever more widely toward ever fuller union, as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cr6ss powerfully attest. Ren~ Voillaume insists that we will be less satisfied with ourselves in prayer the more closely we approach God. This lack of satisfaction is a part of prayer, a proof of unfulfilled desire, which can only grow with growth of love. Far from satisfying thirst for God, prayer increases it. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: God does not offer himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us he is eternal discovery and eternal growth. 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer The more we think we understand him, the more he reveals himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold him, the further he withdraws, drawing us into the depths of himself. The nearer we approach him through all the efforts of nature and grace, the more he increases, in one and the same movement, his attraction over our powers, and the receptivity of our powers to that divine attraction. (The Divine Milieu, pp. 119-120) As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, "by prayer we render ourselves capable of receiving." St. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that the more we make progress, the more we discover that God infinitely transcends all that we can ever know of God. "To find God is to seek God without end." Thomas Merton noted that "progress in prayer is a continual burning of bridges behind us." Prayer, then, is faith, openness, listening, welcome, surrender. It is not through speculation or through study of theories of prayer and of love that we learn to pray and to love God, but only through the exercise of prayer and of love. We must sweep away all preconcep-tions and simply listen to God. Jesus told us in a parable what our attitude should be when we pray. We should be the good soil that nurtures the seed planted in it by the Divine Sower, accepting the word with faith. Just as we find Christ in the Eucharist under the appear-ances, so we must seek the reality of encounter with God under the words and gestures of our prayer. The soil where the word is sown is the heart, the center of our person. If we do not receive God here, our prayer is marked by boredom and routine and falsehood. We must be present to our own heart, where God is seek-ing us in spirit and in truth. All of our authentic prayer begins in our heart, in the activity of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.2 Review for Religious We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. The great masters of prayer always have seen as true prayer the "interior understanding and relish" that is born of the Holy Spirit's illumination of our spirit. This prayer may be very dry. Our prayer may often be quite simple: just a period of repeating the same thing to God over and over until it becomes part of us. Prayer can be a tor-ment until we are transformed into what we are say-ing. Christians who really pray have always known that "by their fruits you shall know them." The criterion of good prayer is not sensible consolation, but whether we continually live a more loving life by the power we receive even in very arid prayer. When we seem lost in our own confusion, distracted, and hardly present to God except in a prayerful word or two, there still may be in us, through the Holy Spirit's presence, a desire that we eventually experience as power, strength to serve God and our neighbor with our whole being, no matter what the cost. Thomas Merton's teaching on prayer emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is .seeking us in our hearts, where we come to ourselves. It is difficult to enter into the silence of our hearts, the place where no one else can enter, where we must put off our masks and no longer hide.3 This is where God calls us: "Give me your heart, your very self." Here we allow God to judge us, God who invites us to a full life. Here we learn to be at home We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer with God, beyond our emotions and our intellectual life. We learn to overcome our fear of what is there and our temptation to go back to what is familiar. God is at home where we are truly ourselves. Merton put it, "Prayer does not consist in an effort to get across to God, but in opening our eyes to see that we are already there." The good that we seek through prayer is not the self-satisfaction of a "successful" prayer according to our own idea, but the formation of an attitude of total surrender to God in every detail of our daily life. This good God gives, through the more or less active coop-eration of our effort to pray. This is the pearl of great God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. price always to be sought in prayer. It is this which transforms us in Christ and prepares us always to say yes to the Word of God calling us at every moment of our lives. Brother David wrote, "Only life lived to the full measures up to the task of contemplation" (Gratefulness, p. 64). A life of ongoing prayer will draw us deeper and deeper into the presence of God, until we shall experience it in situations that do not immediately suggest God's presence. Then we are praying always, even though our conscious attention is elsewhere. This is what the masters of prayer mean by finding God in all things. God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. God comes to us in every situation we face: in our work, in our play, in the people we meet, in all our duties. All of these serve as invitations to welcome God here and Review for Religious now, to let God challenge us to live our Christian life perfectly. If we understand prayer this way, there are never places where prayer is impossible. Perhaps we need to change our way of understanding prayer. Louis Evely has said, "We're not asked to choose between God and world, but to discover God in the world and reveal God to it." It has been well said that there are no part-time human beings or part-time Christians Or part-time con-templatives. When we confess that Jesus is Lord, no sin-gle moment of our lives is outside this relationship.4 We can live prayer at all times, whether formally praying or not. What are we really seeking at all times during our life? What is our basic operational orienta-tion? What is our heart's treasure? This may be other people, egoism, money, pleasure, popular success, or it may be God. Whatever it is, it pervades all our actions, rules our individual choices and our spontaneous actions and reactions, constructs our world, without our being conscious of it all the time. If my basic existential ori-entation is to God, I am praying always, always having a loving personal encounter with God. Thomas Merton summed it up perfectly: "If I find God I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find God. And the only one who can teach me to find God is God's self. So pray for your own discovery." How to Pray Since prayer is a loving personal encounter with our forever faithful God, our human effort during any period of our life must always be to make ourselves present to God: to enter into our own faith experience of the Spirit of the risen Jesus at the bottom of our heart, where God touches our life. This is the meaning 67.1 2008 Fuvrell ¯ Pedagog~ of Prayer of all human prayer, whatever the method or style. The criterion for judging which method or style to use is simple: "Does it work?" Does this method at this time bring us into God's presence? Is it enabling us to live a life of love for God, other people, and myself?. A particular method of prayer may meet this crite-rion for years. But normally there will be times when a method is no longer right for us. Then we must experi-ment with various methods. We must be open to all pos-sibilities: God can use anything as a way to encounter us. Our part is to discover a way of finding God now. It may be a hope-filled darkness in which we wait willingly for subde energies of faith and love to return. The best prayer for me now may be meditation on the revealed truths of faith. People sometimes reject this method as "talking to myself." Well, why not talk to ourselves if God, who can make use of anything, is there and listening attentively? At times the best prayer may be lectio divina: slow thoughtful reading of Scripture or of other spiritual writings, stopping sometimes where we experience some heartfelt understanding. God works with us incarnationally, and so the method of prayer that works usually fits our temperament and cultural climate. Some older persons may be drawn to slow recitation of the rosary or to reading set prayers reflectively. The method for other persons_ may be singing or playing a guitar or adopting various body positions. The criterion always is "What works?" The great contemporary master of prayer Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB proposes two excellent ques-tions for evaluating our current method of prayer: (1) Is my prayer truly an expression of my prayerfulness, gratefulness, sorrow, compassion, and so forth? and (2) Does my prayer make me more prayerful? Review for Religious Two millennia of Christian experience show that it is fairly normal for people to be led gradually from more active methods of prayer to quieter, more passive methods. The way of praying may become simply enter-ing into a deeply felt attitude and resting in it: being thanks, being open, being praise, being begging when we feel our radical poverty deeply. In this prayer, when we become aware of our mind or imagination running off in various directions, we simply let those distractions fall as we keep coming back to our deep attitude of being. The Psalms fit this form of prayer because they express deeply felt attitudes, often in just a line or half line. Just a few verses of a psalm may help for days or even weeks. For persons who are feeling far from God and overwhelmed with cares and anxieties, the first few lines of Psalm 40 can be of great help: I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Stop at words or phrases. Let them sink in, and let your own thoughts rise. Stay there until you feel that the Holy Spirit is leading you to the next word or phrase. Another important form of. prayer to learn, consider-ing our tendency to rush on, is repetition: coming back to interior movements we experienced during previous periods of prayer and letting the Spirit deepen these movements and draw us closer to God and away from what holds us back. There are times when we should simply "plough the rock until it bear." 41 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of t, he life of Jesus in the Gospels. In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. This contemplation can take many forms and range from fairly discursive reflection to simple presence to Jesus in a scene. The proof that our method of contem-plation of Jesus is right for us right now is the experi-ence of being more and more transformed into him in our daily living with and love of other people. We must be ready to recognize when the prayer to which God calls us now is simply to enter into the void and wait in darkness for God. We realize that for us at present God is nowhere else than in this purifying empti-ness. A Jesuit friend of mine once told me that the only way he had been able to pray for weeks was to stand holding his arms up in supplica-tion. There were no thoughts, no images, not even a deeply felt attitude-- nothing. Yet he knew that this body prayer of emptiness was what God wanted of him then, beyond any thought or feelings. Even in desolation we are called to pray by "remembering consolation." W-hen darkness overcomes us, our prayer must be a faith that remembers what we saw, felt, hoped, and loved when we were filled with light. It can be helpful to think about prayer as a place. Sometimes it is a garden, beautiful, full of flowers, sweet scents, and birds singing and fountains play-ing. Sometimes it is a mountaintop, where we would Review for Religious like to pitch a tent and stay. Sometimes it is a desert. Sometimes it is a "blah" place, where all we can say is "God, here I am in my blahness." Sometimes it is a rock that we cling to with bloodied hands. And sometimes it is an empty tomb. For me, sometimes, it is a boat, when I feel as exhausted as Jesus was when his disciples woke him to calm the storm. Then all I can say, before falling asleep, is "Jesus, I'm with you!" A friend of mine, a sister, returning very blue and worn from a day of apostolic work, composed a beauti-ful prayer out of this feeling of prayer as a place: Dear God, tonight I'm tired and discouraged. I want to just give up and walk away. I'm in the basement and I want to go to the attic. In the basement, I'm lonely. In the attic, I'm alone, all one. In the basement, I crouch in the dark damp coal bin and dig up bones from the past. In the attic, I quiedy open the trunk lid and think about the treasures of the past - some painful, some joyful - but treasures nonetheless. Rain in the basement beats me to the cold hard concrete and I feel suffocated. Rain in the attic has a restful pitter-patter, pitter-patter, as it softly sings, "I love you, I love you, I love you." In the basement, I'm closed off. The windows are darkened and covered with weeds. I cannot see the sun when it does shine forth. In the attic, there is no way to keep out the warm sun of your love as it shines through the leaves on the trees. It makes delightful patterns for my enjoyment. And so, dear God, I ask you to take me from the basement to the attic. I ask for aloneness, I ask for treasures, I ask for soft soothing rain 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer and warm loving sunshine. I ask to feel your love. I do believe., help my lack of belief. Prayer Flows out of Life Situations Whatever method of prayer we use, as body-per-sons in space and time, we must seek to compose our-selves interiorly and, if possible, to choose a place that will help us to be present to the presence of God. We know that our body conditions the state of our con-sciousness. And so it is vital to take the time, perhaps a long time, to compose ourselves before praying: to enter into a deep silence of the body and imagination and feelings. Methods like the Additional Observations in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (§§73-86) or the preparations in the old meditation books or yoga or transcendental meditation or Zen or Sadhana can be helpful. The great 19th-century master of prayer Theophane the Recluse described prayer truly as "stand-ing before God with the mind in.the heart." If we are to pray, we must commit ourselves to make time for it: time to calm ourselves down, time to allow God to rise up in our awareness, to become God for us. We must discern the rhythm of prayer that we need at this time in our lives, and we must be faithful to it even when we do not feel like praying. We know that our most essential duties are not always those that we feel like doing. Nevertheless, we do fulfill them because of the importance they have for us, their priority in our lives. The operational proof of what our priorities are is the quality time that we give to them, not what we may verbally affirm about their importance. Time is the most precious possession of human beings, and what we do Review for Religious with our time is the behavioral proof of what we value in our lives. If we really put a high priority on prayer, we regularly give quality time to it. As in human love, there can and should be steadfastness even when we feel dull and lack spontaneity. And, of course, both love and prayer seek imaginative ways to transform routine and revivify themselves. Can We Pray? If we exercise our faith and our creativity and our common sense, we can pray. We can bring ourselves and take time and wait to encounter God. We can look to see whether our hearts have left space for God to come and meet us. For two thousand years the purpose of Christian asceticism has been to make space in our hearts for God to encounter us there. The difficulty of prayer is that it is the entrance into the bottom of our hearts. It places us before the wall of grace and the invisible. This involves going out of our selfish self, which makes prayer so diffi-cult. It is a true purgatory--a purification. This difficulty is overcome only by the Holy Spirit. To consent to pray is to consent to place ourselves before this wall and to wait with faith and hope for God to lower the wall. The lowering of the wall is the progressive coming of God to our deep self. Here only God can overcome. To believe that we have solved the problem ourselves is to show that we have lost the batde. Here, truly, we gain our life only by losing it. Our prayer should lead us to the still point of our being, the root of our existence, the center of our awareness of our unique individuality, where we are touched by the divine creative act and where, in silence and in darkness, we understand that God is God. At this point of our dependence upon God, we find God 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer in a presence that is absence, in an emptiness that is filled with God, in the knowing that is not knowledge but love. This, I think, is the command of God to the psalmist: "Empty yourself out and see that I am God." Descend to the depths of your own being, to the very point where you spring up out of my creative love, and there you will find me. Here God's presence is felt as breaking in on us, breaking down the wall of selfish self-love that limits our encounter with God. We see that this same wall keeps us from truly loving others as Jesus commands us to do, and that it keeps us from hearing and respond-ing to God's word in all the events of our lives. In this prayer we become filled with the light of the Spirit of the risen Jesus, who will illuminate all our experiences and will bring us at last to find God in all things. Often in this prayer we encounter God in his breaking in on us, and we feel no need or inclination to speak, because everything is understood in love. We simply surrender to God in his transforming action on us. But this is not a prayer of inaction. At no time do we feel more fully alive. For some people this is the habitual form of prayer. For others it happens only rarely. In all our prayer we should be listening to God, ready to welcome him, as God sometimes welcomes us, in a moment of great clarity or great joy.5 Notes i For this insight I am indebted to Jesuit psychoanalyst Dr. Denis Vasse, of Lyons, France. 2 "To cqntemplate means raising our eyes to a higher order that challenges us to measure up . Only the heart is high and deep enough to hold this vision." Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 64. 3 "The heart in biblical culture, and also in a large part of other cul- Review for Religious tures, is that essential center of personality in which the person stands before God, as the totality of body and soul, as T who is thinking, will-ing, and loving, as the center in which the memory of the past opens up to planning of the future . The significance [of] the heart., reaches the sanctuary of personal self-awareness in which is summarized and condensed the concrete essence of the person, the center in which the individual decides upon himself, in face of others, the world, and God himself." John Paul II, Audience at the Gemelli Clinic, 28 June 1984. 4 "Work should not make us stop praying. But when my work becomes my only prayer, it won't be prayer much longer. Its weight will pull me off center. We can hear it quickly when a clothes dryer spins unevenly. Why can't we hear it when our lives do the same? It may be time to stop and reload. It may be time for nothing but prayer, time to disengage ourselves, to find our center, and to re-engage ourselves from the heart. Then our work will truly be prayer, It will be contemplation in action." Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, p. 195. 5 Listen to C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, near the end (p. 307): "He is coming . The air was growing brighter and brighter., as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one . The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming . I cast down my eyes." Personal/Group Reflection Questions 1. Have I had the experience of trying to teach someone to pray? What did I find to be helpful in teaching someone to pray? What obstacles did I experience? 2. What is my favorite way of defining or describing Christian prayer? 3. How do I respond to Brother David Steindl-Rast's question, "Does my prayer make me more prayerful?" 67.1 2008 BRENDAN KNEALE Pray Passionately of we look at Roman liturgical practice as a form f prayer, it does not seem to encourage pray-ing passionately. Of course, there is a good reason for this--the litur~.¢ is a public, not a private, form of prayer. It expects us to bring to its formalities and rituals a preparation of intense personal prayer. Some devout Catholics, perhaps, find rich emotional con-tent in Gregorian chant if they bring to it a suitable background. Also, the Roman Liturgy does include an extensive use of the Psalms, which are full of passion-ate prayers that any of us can find to be deeply mov-ing. Consider such passages as these used in the official Liturgy of the Hours: Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth . . . For you my soul is thirsting--my body pines for you . . . My soul shall be filled as with a banquet., my soul clings to you . . . Brendan Kneale FSC, a retired professor from Saint Mary's College of California, is now on the staff of De La Salle Institute; 4403 Redwood Road; Napa, California 94558. His email address is bkneale@dlsi.org Review for Religious Let the faithful rejoice in their glory, shout for joy., let them praise his name with dancing. Tremble, 0 earth, before the Lord . I bow down before your temple, filled with awe. The Lord's voice flashes flames of fire. He sends fire and brimstone on the wicked. No one can escape his hand. Praise him with full voice . Ring out your joy to the Lord. There are dozens of passages like these. The Liturgy cites, also, some of the strong language of St. Paul, who certainly expressed himself with passion. We have intimations of how emotional and intense Christ's own prayer was, notably in the garden and on the cross, culminating in: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Likewise, when he declared that he came to "cast fire on the earth." He no doubt was reflecting the strong feelings of his previous prayer. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit communicated himself with the symbolic "sound of wind and tongues of fire." This ought to stir our emotion, as when we sometimes refer to "fire in the belly." It did so, surely, for canonized saints, many of them known for the intensity of their prayer life. Here, however, it seems fair to ask, "Where is the passion in the wording of the Our Father, the arche-typal prayer Christ left us?" Answer: It is certainly there for people who have no "daily bread," and for those of us acutely aware of our need for a. ~'supersubstantial bread." Similarly, if we are full of-faith and devout sen-sibilities, we will experience a yearning, in the words of the Our Father, for "forgiveness of sins" and a fear of being "led into temptation," and for a strong desire to be "delivered from evil." The same goes for other seem-ingly bland prayers of our tradition. If we but bring our 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pray Passionately true situation to such prayers, they will become quite passionate. In older terminology, it is with "fervor" that we should pray. Later Traditions Many modern religious orders have a community spirituality which translates into language that seems at best to be sentimental rather than passionate. An example can be found in English translations of 17th-century texts on prayer. When one of its masters, St. John Baptist de la Salle, wrote "The Method of Mental Prayer," his language in translation was made to sound pallid. Thus, in English versions, we find him frequently urging us to pray with "sentiments of faith." It does not seem adequate to translate the French sentiment into a mild, neutral, and comfortable English word like "senti-ment." In fact, bilingual dictionaries would have allowed translators to use much stronger alternatives. The question arises: How does one bring passion to prayer? Soldiers in any kind of combat do not have to ask that question. Neither do we--if we let ourselves realize how abruptly death may come for us, if we really think about the greatness and goodness of God, if we realize our guilt, if we are at all sensitive to our inner longings, if our mortality weighs down on us as it should, if we are sensitive to our capacity for the infinite, if we admit a yearning for communion with the saints, if we feel deeply the needs of those for whom we pray, if we are persons of genuine loyalty, if we are aware of our past ingratitude and our utter vulnerability. In other words, as the masters of prayer have always taught, we must prepare for our prayer by realizing how desperate our condition and situation is, how great and good God is, how important prayer is, how linked we Review for Religious are to our fellow human beings. Many such deep con-victions are acts of faith and stem from insights aris-ing- out- of experience, meditation, and study--and, of course, from grace. "The Holy Spirit prays in us." We become a version of "deep calling on deep." After the effect of "cool" literature on prayer, one suspects that the rise of devotion to the Sacred Heart and other devo-tions helped compensate for prayer's lack of warmth, and even coldness, in this world of ours. It is evident that passion invigorates prayer, but also the converse holds. Prayer can stir spiritual pas-sion, which then often takes the form of zeal for various charitable works and also for personal discipline. Unfortunately, sen-timent and shallow many of us, since genuine emotion depends on deep convictions and full realizations about serious things. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? The source is true faith, real conviction, theological insights, realizations stemming from deep meditation--that is, things deep in the mind. There is always, however, a danger of self-deception and of artifi-cially stirred-up shallow feelings, ephemeral sentiments. St. La Salle, mentioned earlier, was a man of feeling. He lived in times when emotions were intense over serious internal church struggles. And he had his own battles with civil authorities and with incomprehension by his contemporaries, clerical and lay, so that his own prayer was challenged at a deeper level than most of us and thus felt more keenly. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? feelings may have to suffice for 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pra~ Pa~ionatel~ Where, for us, do the occasion and quality for pas-sionate prayer come from? They arise from experi-ences eliciting fear, gratitude, desperation . . . feelings which call forth our faith and convictions. At the start of our interior prayer, we often include an introduc-tory exercise: making our situation "real," recalling viv-idly, stirring our faith and hope, gratitude and humility, awakening ourselves from somnolence. Frequently Repeated Prayers Prayers that are frequently repeated should not be perfunctory, but should be recited "once more with feel-ing." There is a danger that prayers like the rosary could plunge us into mindless rote. That is where the ancient admonitions about study and reading can be applied. Prayers like the ~'osary will be infused with emotion if we bring to them a rich background of gospel meditation and theological study. Thus in the rosary such insights may prepare as many as ten ideas or rousing images to accompany our recitation of the ten beads in each decade. Every one of us can become a "vas insigne devotionis," rich in insights that stir our emotions and direct our will. The rosary, then, can be prayed passionately. Of course, to recite vocal prayers poorly is often an act of faith and so has value. St. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have written somewhere that one differ-ence between rote vocal prayers of petition and atten-tive and involving prayers of petition is not that one is answered and the other is not--rather, if both are prayed with faith and goodwill, one is more consoling than the other. That is one difference. There are oth-ers. A prayer that is passionate is likely to be extended, sincere, satisfying, richer in intention, fortifying of our faith and hope., instead of a routine burden. Review for Religious Dryness There is no such thing in this life as a perpetual emotional high. One experience that the saints have often undergone is spiritual dryness. Sometimes, it seems, such periods are imposed by God as trials, but could it be that sometimes they are self-imposed by our own neglect? If we fail to use the sources of inspiration and energy--such as attention, study, sensitivity, insight, consistency, solitude, detachment--then we can expect aridity. The Language of Prayer Perhaps, looking back at the word "sentiment" and recalling the passionate words of the Psalms, we can say that the language used in prayer is important. Paying attention to the stirring words of the Psalms can bring life back into our prayer. Depending on the occasion, .however, vocalized prayer should vary appropriately: ritualistic or hiero-phantic, informal or personal, intense or calm and reflective, importunate or resigned--adoring, grateful, repetitive, vivid, meditative. We do not want to over-dramatize our lives, but one suspects that prayers of petition, at least, do need heartfelt words--the more passionate the better. In any case we have the promise of St. Paul in Romans 8: "When we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words ¯ . . the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God." 67.1 2008 CLIFFORD STEVENS The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries consecrated life G.K. Chesterton, before he created the Father Brown detective stories, tried his hand at the genre by writing a clever story called "The Club of Queer Trades," a tale of a fraternity of tradesmen who had managed to come up with unusual ways to make a living. In it a man makes his living giving excitement to people who lacked excitement in their lives and adven-ture to those who lacked adventure. He would send them sinister and intriguing messages, or leave strange objects on their doorstep, or send them secret packages, all designed to add some spice to an otherwise humdrum existence. I thought at one time if I had not become a priest I would set up a place called Chesterton Square with a number of odd shops and busi-nesses doing business there: a Bottle Shop, a Kite Unlimited Emporium, and imposingly on Clifford Stevens has written for us at intervals since 1975. His addres~ is Tintern Monastery; EO. Box 910; Kemmerer, Wyoming 83101. Review for Religious one corner of the square an Institute of Impracticalities, which would answer any need that was totally and clearly not practical, such as ordering an elephant for a wedding, or sending a truckload of balloons to a sick child. A monastery is and must be, if it is to be true to its character, a true Institute of Impracticalities. We exist for no "practical" purpose; we are useless, as far as most people are concerned, and there is nothing "practical" that we can mention as our particular achievement. We have to cultivate "unpracticality" almost with genius, or else that particular disease, fatal in some cases, called "practicality" takes over and everything is sacrificed on the altar of "practicality." This has been the bane of monasteries from time immemorial and has been responsible for the eclipse of the monastic life sev-eral times in history. I am thinking particularly of the monastery of Fountains in England, where "practicality" drove peasants off the land, made the monastery some-thing of an economic empire, built sumptuous build-ings, and got the monastery involved in the dynastic and ecclesiastical power struggles of the time. The greatest illusion in the contemplative life is the conviction that the financial support of the monastery is the key problem and the critical concern of community life. This has never been. true. The critical factor in con-templative life is the cultivation of intimacy with God and the fashioning of a pattern of life to enable every single member to do exactly that. As soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary con-cern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the windows. God blesses the monastery only to the extent that it is an oasis for leisure with God. Then blessings for the support of the life come 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities in abundance, mysteriously, magnanimously, for God takes care of his genuine lovers, and they are never in want--for anything. The basic principle for the financial support of a monastery is this: Will the God for whom we have forsaken the world of business and commerce and the piling up of even legitimate wealth be any less gener-ous with us than the stock market and margin of profit would have been if we had devoted our lives to that? There is one answer: God will not only second our efforts by the action of his prov-idence; he will anticipate our needs. Those who doubt this usually are willing to sacrifice something of solitude, something of silence, something of contemplative tranquillity, and something of intimacy with God for so-called "practical" reasons. God usually gives them what they want, but that is all. The deeper gift for which they have forsaken all is denied them, for the simple reason that they have lost the hunger for it. A strange kind of practicality. The ancient monks made it clear that the treasurer of the monastery was the Providence of God. This does not mean that they did not work or made no provision for the morrow. It just means that they were not depen-dent upon their own efforts: even their own efforts had to be blessed by God. They simply did .not depend on bank accounts or huge commercial enterprises to sup-port their monastic life. God's providence, and their own efforts under that providence, were their only security. This is certainly "impractical" as far as the normal business of human life is concerned, but the monk is not in the normal business of living. He has made God his companion and his passion, and, while he works hard Review for Relig4ous to support his monastic life, he is not dependent upon the "economy." Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their money will come from. It comes, when it is needed, from their own labor or from the action of Providence. As a matter of fact, the monk has become a monk to be free from those kinds of concerns, and, if he wants to get involved in them, God usually lets him have his way, but the intimacy with God that is - the heart of his existence and his chief preoccupation slips from his fingers. His hope and expectation are not really in God, but in the margin of profit, in the interest on stocks and bonds, or in the sale of the next crop. The treasury of Divine Providence never runs out, and God richly supplies his lovers with everything. Those who doubt that have all kinds of arguments to the con-trary, but what they do not have is that closeness to him for which they became monks in the first place. In this day of huge commercial enterprises, financial scandals in religion, and the juggling of stock portfolios and investment opportunities, we have to steer clear of anything that resembles the placing of our security in money. Every monastery needs money, and the financial support of the monastery has to be provided for. But the financial support of a monastery comes from God and his providence and not from the juggling of investments and the margin of profit. When a monastery truly needs money, it comes in bundles, from the most unexpected Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their moneywill come from. 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities places, and there is no need to buy mailing lists and carry on massive mail solicitations to accomplish this. If there is any choice between depending on a fat bank account and depending on Divine Providence, there is no doubt where the choice would have to be. Certainly not in the bank account, which can fail for all kinds of reasons, but Divine Providence never fails. We have only to look around us to see the disas-ters that occur from an opposite conviction. The clas-sical image is that of the wheeling-and-dealing Father Urban in J.E Powers's Morte d'Urban, who is convinced that hobnobbing with the rich and mighty is the sur-est way to. ensure the prosperity of his congregation. Or the tragic monsignor in John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions who found himself embroiled in scandals and political intrigues unworthy of his office because of his concern about money for the "good of the church." As Paul Evdokimov hasindicated, certain biblical truths get lost in centuries of overgrowth, and from time to time we have to be recalled to the startling dyna-mism of the gospel. It is no visionary enthusiasm that brings religious to their utter dependence upon Divine Providence and reminds them of God's loving care. But they forget that, as redeemed human beings, they are enfolded in his love, and that his benevolence is the very basis of their creation. What they need to recall is a profound metaphysical and theological truth: everything in human life is part of the philanthropy of God, and it is by the exercise of that philanthropy that the inacces-sible God makes himself accessible to our experience. From the generosity of the Godhead comes every gift with which we are endowed and every benefit of our human condition. That includes the margin of profit and whatever benefit we gain from economic prosperity. Review for Religious Even those who do not depend upon Divine Providence are dependent upon it. It is simply human shortsighted-ness that does not see the beneficent God behind the human drama. The wisdom of the saints ends up being the most practical of impracticalities. Some Texts "In building, we need not act as people in the world do. They first get the money and then begin to build, but we must do iust the opposite. We will begin to build and then expect to receive what is necessary. The Lord God will not be outdone in generosity." -- St. Alphonsus Liguori "The more you abandon to God the care of tem-poral things, the more he will take care to provide for all your needs; but if, on the contrary, you try to supply all your own needs, Providence will allow you to con-tinue to do just that, and then it may well hhppen that even the necessities will be lacking, God thus reproving you for want of faith and reliance on him." -- St. John Baptist de La Salle "Now is God not able to send, perhaps tomorrow, sacks of money to my door?" -- St. Camillus de Lellis And see Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1985). 67.1 2008 M. REGINA VAN DEN BERG Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons Tfte practice and rule of enclosure in the convent is en misunderstood, by those who oppose it and those who defend it. It is misunderstood as a way of keeping the world and its evils out, of limiting contact with the world. Enclosure actually succeeds in doing quite the opposite: it enlarges the world. Rather than keeping the world out, it confronts us with it. Rather than keeping evil out, it forces us to face it. Rather than limiting our world, it expands our horizons. It is not only enclosure that expands our horizons: other prac-tices of the religious life do so too. The other practices include common meals, prayers, and recreation, limited use of television, internet, telephone, and email, and also limited travels and visitors as well. The reader may think I am playing with words, for it seems paradoxical at best that all the above-men- M. Regina van den Berg FSGM taught philosophy at Seminary Rolduc in Roermond, the Netherlands. She recently moved to Mater Ecclesiae Convent; 4510 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Religious tioned practices serve to widen our horizons. It is" not my intention, however, to play with words, but rather to point out a common mistaken notion that "experiencing the world" and "widening one's horizons" are incom-patible with enclosure and other such practices. In his essay "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family," in Heretics, G.K. Chesterton makes the essential distinctions upon which I base this article.1 Chesterton uses the distinction to defend the institu-tion of the family; I apply it to the religious life. When people say that they want to "experience the world" or "widen their horizons," they commonly mean that they want to increase their knowledge of the world and the things in it. They want to do this by learning or by experiencing, virtually or firsthand. It is nearly super-fluous to point out that modern technology enables us to learn and experience all manner of things with the greatest ease and speed. We can experience the world in so many ways: by traveling, by looking at internet sites, by watching television, by communicating via the internet with people we have never met face-to-face, by joining clubs. It is obvious that enclosure and the other religious-life practices I mentioned allow at best a limited experience of the world in this sense. These various experiences of the world, however, have some common elements. For one, the knowledge we gain and the experiences we have often do not affect us as persons. They do not make demands on us as per-sons. We, after all, select the experience we want to have: the persons we want to be with, the places we want to go. We choose people who are agreeable to us, and when we travel we want to relax, not be challenged. Perhaps we look on the internet or watch television to learn, but often just to be entertained. However inter- 67.1 2008 van den Berg, * Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons However interesting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may ieave our inner world untouchedl esting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may leave our inner world untouched. They do not make us grow in Christian self-knowl-edge. When people truly want a life-changing event, Chesterton says, they could effect "a much more roman-tic and even melo-dramatic change if [they] jumped over the wall into the neighbor's garden. The con-sequences would be bracing.''2 We go on vacations or browse the inter-net because we Want a "change," because we want to escape from the everyday, but escapes may blind us to the here and now. The internet provides a fine example. How easily we become so immersed in it that we lose all sense of time, of the people around us, of duties awaiting us. Analogies limp, but this experience is like taking a photograph. To get as much as possible in the picture, we not only use a wide-angle lens, but we also back up. We become observers. Everything becomes small, and details disappear. There is a lot in thepicture, but we see very little. We do the same when we try to know and experience endlessly new things. Enclosure and the other religious-life practices zoom in, so to speak, on a select portion of the world. This new focus enables us to look more closely at the objects in the picture. We do not step back as observers to take the picture, but we get a vivid three-dimensional picture of a select part of the world by being a part of it ourselves. In a Review for Religious limited environment we begin to see in a different way. Confronted by the reality of the here and now, we begin to see details. We notice more of what is there to be seen. With enclosure and the other religious practices, we find ourselves in a special environment with companions we did not choose. They become real sisters of mine, and I cannot merely observe or ignore them; I must live with them. They are not all like me, even if we share a common vision. Some are of a different temperament than I am; I am irritated by some of their peculiarities. Enclosure makes me live with them, and in learning to love them I am enlarging my world. Once we are at home in our limited environment, the reality that is present to us, it encourages us to notice many details: the sunshine on my face as I sit here, the spider crawling up the wall, the sister next door coughing. Then we can respond to the details: to be grateful for the sunshine, to marvel at the spider, to see if my coughing sister may need something. The present reveals itself as fascinating once we see it from up close. Enclosure does not keep the evil things of the world out. Quite the contrary: in the wideness of the enclo-sure, evil has plenty of room to raise its head. I suspect I am not the only one who thought that my congrega-tion should be grateful that I was deigning to enter the community. Being so used to the company of people of like character and inclination, I had no idea that I could be anything but kind--until I was confronted with sisters who were quite unlike me. Then I began to become humbly grateful that the congregation accepted even someone like me. Those who think that enclo-sure somehow forms and preserves a comfortable space 67.1 2008 van den Berg ¯ Enclosure and Other Ways to W'uten One's Horizons where like-minded people can indulge their whim for a lifetime of silence have never lived in a religious com-munity. Enclosure is demanding. Enclosure has no intention of satisfying selfish desires for privacy, for a place where we can escape from the world. It is rather the case that we impose enclosure upon ourselves because we know our human weakness. Knowing that we sometimes would like to escape from the demands of the enclosed world, we bind ourselves to it as self-protection for our weak moments. There is a sense, of course, in which enclosure creates a certain "place apart," but not in the sense of privacy. Privacy in the sense of "my space" would not be compatible with the vows and total surrender of religious life. But the silent place apart is intended to widen horizons, to attune us to the reality of God's presence. As an aid to communion with him, enclosure widens our horizons beyond our imagining--into the wideness of his eternal being! If readers have agreed with everything so far, they may still maintain that enclosure, even if it opens the door to the world, still seems a terribly boring enter-prise. Imagine a life without travel, without television, without internet, without a change of companions. Is this not a recipe for boredom? At least, the reader may surmise, the apostolic religious still have the excitement of the apostolate, the possibility of being transferred, but the contemplative nuns must even forgo that. Add to enclosure the regular routine of the religious life, and the recipe for a dull life seems foolproof. But here, too, Chesterton makes an excellent point. People travel far and wide in search of adventure, but when they do so they by definition fail. They fail because "adventure" refers to something that happens to us (peradventure, Review for Religious by chance), not to something that we attain or that we can find. When we plan a vacation, we know what to expect and plan it often to the smallest detail. But in everyday life in enclosure, one never knows what to expect--here is adventure! And, to quote Chesterton once more, "the thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect.''3 Not only are there two divergent ways of experienc-ing the world, but, I maintain, one is better and truer than the other. The first way of widening our horizon often fails to touch and change us as persons. It tends to make us observers of life, not participants; we avoid the challenges that help us grow. It can more accurately be described as an escape from the world. The truer way to experience the world, the way of enclosure, widens our horizons and opens us up to the drama of good and evil, to the graces of the present moment. This reality is demanding and life-changing. Enclosure, the common life, a~d the limited use of media and communication all serve to reveal and enlarge our world--but not by logical necessity. People can enlarge their world through travels and narrow their world in the enclosure, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Those who run into the enclosure to escape from the world discover all too soon that they have run in the wrong direction. Their escape from the world is to be found elsewhere: in the often world-nar-rowing experiences of the media and in other self-selected experiences that do not demand much from us. It is not surprising that the practice of enclosure is paradoxical, that by limiting physical space and limiting our experiences we in fact enlarge our experience. The 67.1 2008 van den Berg * Enclosure and Otber Ways to V~ulen One's Horizons Christian faith is founded on paradox. Through Jesus' death we receive life. Through the seemingly world-nar-rowing experience of the enclosure and other religious practices, the horizons of our hearts and minds can be expanded to God and to his concerns and to his world. And that, precisely, is the point of enclosure. The Weaver Weave the threads. Brown for the earth, Red for the fire, Blue for the air, Silver for the water. Weave the threads. Brown for humus, Red for passion, Blue for reason, Silver for the spirit. Weave the threads. Brown the Father, Red for His Son, Blue His Mother, Silver the Comforter. Weave the threads. Fibre of God. Fibre of men. Fibre of life. Weave into harmony, One in the Cosmic dance. Sister Margaret Anne OHP Review for Reli~ous ANTHONY MALAVIARATCHI Religious Brotherhood Today I n attempting to say what it means to be a religious rother today, we must be clear about what broth-erhood is. To discover afresh the most effective way of being a religious brother today, we must look at the tradition of brotherhood in the church. The brotherhood of Jesus and his ordinary follow-ers (Mt 23:8) and the brotherhood of Jesus and his spe-cially chosen disciples, the apostles (Mk 3:13-15), are already two strands of brotherhood at the very outset. Both were meant for the proclamation of the kingdom of God. The brotherhood of the first Christian com-munity in Jerusalem was~ meant to give witness to Jesus' resurrection. The brotherhood of religious life started with cenobitical life. The lone hermits became com-munities of brothers receiving spiritual guidance from abbas (fathers, animators). This kind of brotherhood Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR, a former theology professor and for-mator now doing retreat work, presented this paper at a brothers' convention in Sri Lanka. His address is Santa Maria; George E. Silva Ma~atha; Kandy, Sri Lanka. anthonymalavi@yahoo.com 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi ¯ Religlou~ Brotherhood Today was making a united and concerted effort to live the gospel radically. Brotherhood in History In the period that followed, brotherhood began a new phase. Penitents entered "monasteries" and gradu-ally became members or at least began to live the life of the community. There seems to be no historical connection between th~se "penitent brothers" and-the stream of brothers popularly known as "teaching broth-ers." In the 17th century St. John Baptist de la Salle brought together a group of teachers to educate the badly neglected children of poor working-class families. So did St. Marcellin Champagnat in. the 19th century. Disillusioned by the growing secularism in French soci-ety and its impact on youth, the founder of the Marist brothers established schools for the underprivileged. The Brothers of Charity came together to care for poor workmen, the sick, and the mentally handicapped. Brotherhood: A Prophetic Lifestyle Teaching the poor and marginalized is not an exci~- ing apostolate today. It does not hit the headlines of even Catholic newspapers. That is because so many religious congregations have been doing it for three hundred years. At their origin the education of the underprivileged was simply not being taken care of by anybody. When Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers, began his teaching, the education of Catholics was illegal in Ireland. Religious life as a prophetic move-ment was reincarnated through works of mercy. The brothers, influenced by St. Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity, did what the society of the time failed or refused to do. They brought a strange but nevertheless Review for Religious refreshing message that drew the attention of the world as Mother Teresa did in our times. That was the secret of their success. Congregations of brothers, therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today? What must we do to convey God's message afresh? What is it that society refuses to do today and would convey a prophetic mes-sage if we did it? Today many works of mercy, including teaching, are no longer prophetic. Many others do them now. Governments have undertaken the tasks of teaching, nursing, running orphanages and technical schools, and so forth. ~ Congregations of brothers, But we need to remember that it was the example of religious con-gregations dedi- - cated to serving the earthly well-being of those in need that paved the way for governments and other secular organizations to take up welfare services. therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today ? Institutions and Status Brothers' institutions do excellent work, much appreciated especially by the laity. But the institutions give the impression of material well-being, security, and status, especially in the third world. Brotherhood, of course, has less status than the priesthood, which is one of the reasons why brothers have fewer vocations. Nevertheless, brothers' institutions do have status. To all appearances the vast majority of those who want to join our communities come not because they have 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi * Religious Brotherhood Today heard Christ's call to radical discipleship but because they are attracted by the status and security of the insti-tutions. In factl congregations that do not have institu-tions have few vocations. Widespread unemployment and lack of talent for modern cutthroat competition seem to be the underlying reasons for the many "voca-tions" in the third world. Unfortunately, in too many instances the enjoyment of status and security continues to be the lifelong hidden motivation. As their numbers dwindle, the brothers are being for+ed to give up their apostolic commitments one by one. For various reasons such as pressure from bishops and priests, parents, and old boys [alumni] and because of understandable emotional attachments, the most prestigious institutions will be the last to be given up. This will worsen the image of the brothers and con-sequently the quality of the vocations they get. Since many hold on to their status and security, it is most unlikely that radical measures will be taken. And so the faster religious life in its present form dies, the better it is. For then God will be able to raise radical disciples for Christ from the stones of the earth (Mt 3:9). Congregations, Too, Die Part of the crisis of religious life is the probability, if not the certainty, of dying out and entering the annals of history. The reality of death looms over all reality except over the only Real One. Heaven and earth must pass away, the church must pass away (Rv 21:1-2, Heb 12:22). Even the kingdom of Christ must pass away into the kingdom of the Father (1 Co 15:24-28). If all this is true, then our congregations can hardly be eternal. We must pass away when we have adequately served God's eternal designs. If so, our dying as a group, Review for Religious with all its glory and achievements, will also be a ser-vice. Even the thought of it can be a painful, if not traumatic, experience. It is surely a historical moment when God calls us to bring our self-offering to a climax by embracing his plans in the darkness of faith. Like our Divine Master, we too may be called to give life to oth-ers by an unquali-fied submission to God's designs. In the glorious days of the brotherhood in the church, our faith may not have been so much in God as in our numbers, institutions, and achievements. Our group's willing submission to God's unknown ways will bring life to the world in an abundance which our congregational achievements could never even dream of matching. The history of salvation unequiVocally offers all believers a planofaction in time of crisis. The Remnant The history of salvation unequivocally offers all believers a plan ~of action in time of crisis. It may be new to us who have got used to large numbers, but it is a beaten path in salvation history. The faithful were often led by God to negotiate crises by means of the Remnant. The word remnant indicates how great the destruc-tion of God's people will be. "Only a remnant will remain" (Is 10:22). Surely Christ had in mind a remnant when he called his disciples "little flock" (Lk 12:32) and when he said "Many are called but few are chosen." In the Scriptures the remnant is a tiny minority of those 67.1 2008 Malaviaratchi ¯ Religious Brotherhood Today leading religious lives in the eyes of God. These few continue to believe and remain faithful in the midst of widespread infidelity. The concept shows punishment for sin and God's faithfulness, which remains untouched by human infidelity. The faith in the remnant is an essential aspect of hope in the Bible. The Remnant Today If, as religious, brothers are to have hope, they must first realize that it is to run institutions that large num-bers are needed, whereas to give witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ a few are more than enough. These few must turn back to their founders and rediscover that it is exclusively for Christ's gospel that they were brought together in the first place. Second, they need to adopt a prophetic lifestyle and thus become clearly visible signs: Their lifestyle will be visible: ¯ (1) if they have a community lifestyle that is tangibly religious, that is, God-centered with a strong contemplative dimension. ¯ (2) if they live this life not in legal rigidity but in evangelical fidelity. This needs special attention since post-Vatican II freedom has often resulted in Western permissiveness. As a part of this evangelical fidelity, those who fail to live this life should be asked to leave whenever the superior, with the com-munity, comes to that conclusion. ¯ (3) if they embrace a clearly visible life of poverty, that is,can external life of utter simplicity. In every reform movement within reli-gious life, there has been a return to radical simplicity. Our world in the clutches of consumerism is crying for a modern-day Francis of Assisi. ¯ (4) if they engage in a service that others do not do and reach out to people whom society does not care for. In this way, small groups of brothers will create a Review for Religious counterculture which the Union of Superiors General has described as one with "passion for Christ and pas-sion for humanity." They will give prophetic witness to the spiritual dimension of human life in a world of increasing secularism, to brotherly lives and work in a world of increasing individualism, to evangelical sim-plicity in a world of increasing consumerism, to God's preferential love for those that society does not care about in a world of increasing self-centeredness. In a word, religious brotherhood will be prophetic through and through, a transparently radical form of discipleship of Christ. Zen°Poem for Thomas Merton For Brother Anthony Weber OCSO Abbey of the Genesee A white cloud Near a picket fence Close to a white rose, Walked a white-habited Trappist Praying an ivory beaded rosary Ignoring a cawing crow Noticing a disappearing cloud; Flower petals falling, The fence rotting; His scapular, dusty With prayers ascending, Approaching darkness Amid a forested hermitage. William J. Bly 73 67.1 2008 VINCENT GENOVESI Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? spiritual supports We would quickly recognize the mockery made of love were lovers to ask each other only "What must I do to avoid hurting you?" We expect lovers to share a deeper ambition: "What more can I do to show my love for you?''l The same is true of our relationship with God. When our commitment to our spir-itual and moral growth is seen as a response to God's invitation to love, it would be rather insulting to play at love and revel in testing love's limits. As honest and true lovers, we do not spend time anxiously determining how far we can go before our love relationship with God is strained to the breaking point. Instead, our earnest desii'e is to discover how we can foster that relationship. It is in this context that we come to under-stand more fully the meaning of human sinful- V'mcent Genovesi sJ is professor of theology and campus minister at Saint Joseph's University; 261 City Avenue; Merion Station, Pennsylvania 19066. vgenoves@sju.edu Review for Religious ness. Sin is best understood not so much as an isolated act, but rather as a relational reality. It is deliberately breaking our love relationship with God (mortal sin) or knowingly straining that relationship (venial sin). Of course, our love relationship with God is played out largely in our human relationships. St. John reminds us that, if we profess to love God while failing to love our neighbor, we are liars; we cannot love God, whom we have never seen, if we do not love the neighbors whom we see every day (1 Jn 4:20). It is important, too, that we remember the testimony of human experience--that any love relationship can suffer from thoughtless neglect and eventually die without our notice. To grow as faithful Christians, we must ultimately make decisions for ourselves, but it is folly to believe we can or should make all decisions simply on our own, without any help. Yes, we entrust our moral life to the guidance of our conscience, provided, of course, that we have first honestly, carefully, and prayerfully sought to inform our conscience properly. Even when we do this, however, we do not always live as we know we should. We get off track, and it becomes helpful or even neces-sary to seek guidance, encouragement, and exhortation. At times like these the sacrament of reconciliation can offer assistance, especially when we are not in regular dialogue with a spiritual director. Behind Catholicism's centuries-old practice of sacramental confession, there is a wisdom whose depth can be more appreciated in light of Vatican Council II's theological insights and psychology's contribution to a fuller understanding of the human person. Still, many sincere Catholics, even priests and religious, question the usefulness or neces-sity of the rite of reconciliation. Such questioning must be addressed. 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Doing Wrong versus Sinning As background for our discussion, it helps to recall that Catholics are expected to confess serious or mor-tal sins at least once a year.2 Significantly, the accus-ing is done by ourselves. ("Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.") Sins are committed only by sinners--people who freely decide to live in various ways that they know to be hurtful to their own well-being and/or the well-being of others, and so must judge themselves to be unloving and in the wrong. In acknowledging that entering into sin requires both knowledge and freedom on our part, Catholic tradition teaches that no one sins by accident--just as no one truly loves by accident. Both to love and to sin are choices or decisions. Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas did not think it likely that persons who are honestly trying to live as good Christians would easily or frequently rupture their love relationship with God by choosing to sin seriously: "Although grace is lost by a single act of mortal sin, it is not, however, easily lost. For the person in grace does not find it easy to perform such an act because of a contrary inclination." Aquinas means that it is pre-cisely our love for God and others that will make it difficult for us to sin, or deliberately do anything that would put our love relationship in jeopardy.3 In light of Aquinas's teaching, and in keeping with the true nature of love, we may conclude that, although it is possible to sin mortally in one particular act, it is not always a simple matter to isolate that act. It is not likely, in other words, that we would sin mortally in an act that is totally out of our character, or in an act that we have not predisposed ourselves toward. Rather, our relation-ship of love for God and others will probably change and deteriorate before there is any outright rupturing of Review for Religious the union, which is why we must be all the more atten-tive to the daily responsibilities of love. In essence, all sins of commission are expressions of "the one great sin of omission, failure to love.''4 While this failure offends God, we too suffer as a result of our sinfulness insofar as we come to find ourselves within the narrow confines of self-centeredness. It is a confinement that brings with it a death penalty, for in failing to love we become members of the living dead (1 Jn 3:14-15). Thomas Aquinas acknowledges the human destructiveness of sin when he says that sin is indeed an offense against God, but that "God is offended only by those things that we do against our own true welfare.''5 Although:.some of our actions may be undeniably hurtful and wrong, our tradition reminds us that we are not always or n, ecessarily morally guilty of sinning in doing these things. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that "imputability and responsi-bility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors" (§1735). A similar idea appears later in the Catechism: "Unintentional ignorance can diminisl~ or even remove the imputability of a grave offense . The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pres-sures or pathological disorders" (§ 1860). We do well to All sins of commission are expressions of ",the one great sin of omission, failure to love." 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? remember, however, that if because of our insensitivity, lack of awareness, or curtailed freedom we are not guilty of sin when doing something that is in fact hurtful and wrong, we have no cause for self-satisfaction and com-placency. The less sensitive, aware, and free we are, the less we are fully human. Therefore, whatever stands in our lives as an obstacle to our free commitment in love is to be seen as something to overcome in our growth toward maturity as human beings and as Christians. In no way should this obstacle be relished as excusing us from sin, because the sad truth is that even without sin we may regrettably have done something hurtful to our-selves and others and are all too able to do so again. Three Reasons for this Sacrament In light of what it means to be a sinner--knowingly and freely failing or refusing to love God and others--it is clear that it is not the role of the priest-confessor, nor is it within his power, to determine definitively whether the penitent has or has not sinned, or how .serious that sin may be. In fact, no human being can rightly call another human being a sinner because reading another person's mind and heart is the prerogative of God alone. Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, "although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God" (§1861). And so it does us all good to remember that "God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but God looks at the heart" (1 S 16:7). Why, then, encourage the sacrament of rec-onciliation? I offer three reasons: the social nature of life and sin, the incarnational dimension of our Catholic tradition, and the moral growth that comes from hum-bly taking possession of our sinfulfiess. Review for Religious The Social Nature of Life and Sin: We need a deeper sense today of the social implications of our sinfulness. No sin is totally private, because in sinning we produce a change within ourselves that invariably influences our dealings with others. Thus no sin really remains "secret"; its effects will somehow leave a trail. Furthermore, whenever we hurt someone, we also hurt all those, including God, who love and care about that person. This means that an appropriate expres-sion of our sor-row should include seeking forgiveness and admitting publicly that our sinfulness has alienated or distanced us from both God and our neighbors. T.he sacrament of reconciliation serves this purpose, for through our encounter with the priest, who is both God's servant-representative to penitents and the people's minister before God, we testify to our desire to be reintegrated into the community of God's love and the company of his people. It is possible that appredation of the social nature of sin would be enhanced were parishes to pro-vide communal penance services more frequently. Catholicism's Incarnational Dimension: Moreover, pre-cisely as human beings who live as body-spirits, it is tremendously helpful for us to incarnate, "flesh out" or "enact," our sorrow and our need for forgiveness through recourse to sacramental confession. In addi-tion, God wants to "enact" his forgiveness of us through Whenever we hurt someone, we aiso hurt all those, including God, wh~; love and care " about that person. 67.1 2008 Genovesi ¯ Room for Sacramental Recondliation? the priest's guidance and comfort. And so, just as Christ puts flesh on our Father's love for us, so the words of absolution put flesh on Christ's forgiveness and mercy. Fortunately, too, I think, many priests today are deeply sensitive to the essentially social and incarnational dimensions of Christian living. As a result, in assign-ing a sacramental penance, they ask penitents to move beyond simple recitation of formal prayers and to seek reconciliation with God and neighbor through spe

Issue 45.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1986. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REVIEW [-'OR REI.IGIOOS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single,copies: $2.50. S(~bscription U.S.A. $ I 1.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. 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. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor Jan./Feb., 1986 Volume 45 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR REt.tGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department ~Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindeli 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 portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Review for Religious Volume 45, 1986 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63i08-3393 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S~M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, September, and N6vember 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 Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion:of each issue of REVIEW FOR REEIGIOOS is also regularly available on cassette.recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. The Price of Poverty Donald Macdonald, S.M.M. Father Macdonald is well known to our readers for.his frequent contributions. He continues to reside, and may be addressed at ,.St."Jo,seph's; Wellington,Road; Tod-morderi, Lanc.; OLI4 5HP; England. /~ n elderl~ lady came to the sacristy after Mass and gave (f9r her) quite a large sum of money to the priest "for shoes.for that poor man whoread at Mass,today." The reader was in fact a Unive.rsity lecturer with an income, way beyond anything the lady .hadever known, who chose .to" dress shab-bily with down-at-heel sandals. He had more choices ,as ,to lifestyle than the lady who pitied him. Similarly, one has heard a religious conducting a seminar on poverty, forcibly arguing that if one is to be true to the Gospel and the founder's charism, rootlessness i~ really what is meant. The word poverty is too weak to enshrine the concept. He himself wasoenjoying a prbfessional salary with his own bank-account, not one penny of which ever went to his congregation. ~ It is not just .or even,chiefly a matter of human fallibility, but of unreality which is an ever present risk in discussing evangelical poverty. So often the appearance bears no relation to the fact. Even the possibility of discussing poverty argues a degree,of unreality, as most people are either born into or forced into the poverty trap by. circumstances. One can see this in. a third-world context where, paradoxically, evangelical.poverty is almost impossi-bly difficult to live since the blistering reality is so obvious, and the main thrust of.society is to .race away from it. Perhaps G. K. Cheste_rton offers a way into the discussion in suggesting that humanity is the basis for under-standing poverty. He believed that a man ought to know something of th~ embtions of an ihsulted maff, not 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 by being insulted but simply by being a man. And he o.ught to know something of the emotions of a poor man not by being poor, but simply by being a man. Therefo~'e in any writer who is describing poverty, my first objection to him will be that he has studied his subject. A democrat would have imagined it.~ Statistics obviously have their place, but are no substitute for fellow-feeling. Religious,_ asked "to be poor both in fact and spirit" (Perfectae Caritatis 13) can, therefore, consider a genuinely poor person in the con-temporary world as a touchstone of reality. Contemporary Poverty A young woman, a soldier's wife was counting the hours until her husband came home on leave. He did come. He had a woman with him whom he sat-.on a settee while he went upstairs and packed a suitcase. He came down and said to his wife: "Well, that's that then; I am off." Such w~is the end of her married life. The biblical type of weakness, vulnerability and poverty is often seen in a woman on her own. 1 cannot see that.the pattern is fundamentally different today. The religious who wants the feel of poverty could do worse than examine her experience. Ratherothan spend days and dollars in meetings discussing th~ topic, much better siarely to visit such people who, regrettably, are to be found within walking distance 6f so °many religious houses. Why talk when we can walk and meet the reality in person?-Poverty is first felt, not discussed. ; That woman is truly poor. She loved her husband and wanted his childre~n i~n a lifetime together, but she was told in the crudestpossible way that her love was worth nothing. She was .nobody to him. "In practical terms she had ceased to exist. She did not even rate,.a letter.or word of understanding or explanation. Yet he was everything to her. One can glimpse'~the emotional-poverty in a person with an immense capacity for love who is unable to express it as she is unwanted and rejected. She is, therefore~, porr in her very identity as her love, which is essentially herself, is apparently woi-thless. ~ As a married woman growing into the ~role, she ~knew who she-was. It was no part-time occupation she had chosen, but a full-time:life to which she had given herself. In view of her particular rejection, inevitably ques-tions must surface as:to her personal worth. Who amq now?Is the best I liave to give worth nothing? Failure. of any kind c~in bring humiliation. Here is a woman who could not keep her husband'. Friends who 6nee welcomed her into their homes as a married woman are now less keen as she is on her own. People will talk about her, scarcely handicapped .by knowing tittle of the true situation. The , ~e Price of Poverty self she once saw and recognized is now seriously shattered, and it will take more than cosmetics to put the pieces together again.-Could she~be worth less? Clearly emotionally impoverished., she is, too, almost 9ertainly econom-ically poor.:.Can she continue living in her ,house? Once budgeting with her husband's income as together~, they tried to build a home, now the home which she helped furnish~ and in which she may have expreSsed her own ta,ste, has ,to beobroken up. Perhaps even the physical fabric in which, to a degree, she~had invested herself will have to go too. She has been literally .uprooted. Her future is a lottery. Have her career or work prospects been handicappedin marrying? How ~nd where is she to five? What is she to do? C~ntemporary Questio.ns _ For anyone seriously wishing to understand poverty with~a, view-to .living it, inevitably the q,u, estion must arise, if this is poverty what am I living? Arriving at that woman's house what would I say to her? Is~the level of religious poverty such that, without ~iving a personal history, one can communicate with her at quite a deep level? Does the religious have expe-rience of rejection and failure? Has the ~reoligious ever felt worthless? Ever lived inca loveless house? Ever been~unable to express love? Has the religious ever been lost in the pre,sent and afraid of the future? By the same token, has one received such warmth, love, affection and security that one can ,,only feel for someone ,who quite ol~viously has not? " Self-respect might suggest that.if she is a poor woman What am I? On the deeper level of~emotion where all of us fu, nction, does religious p, overty sugges, t.that ! came from Sinai with a tract or from life.with fellow-feeling? The religious who has attempted to live "poor both in fact and spirit" will speak the POOr w.oman's language owit.h an immediacy which is first felt rather than~expressed. Poverty means limitation. In aworld where destitution is rampant the meaning of poverty may be obscured. De~stitution means absolutely no choice, and is indefensible as a wa~y of life. Poverty implies limited oppor-tunity. The former has no choice, the latter hasAittle. ~o Chesterton, in the essay mentioned earlier, felt it necessary to say that -"a poor man is a man who has not go~ much money." This seems self-evi-dent to the point of banality, butJif it is su.ch a truism why does it appear to have escaped the lifestyle of so many religious? If that was taken as a rule of thumb, possibly much of the rat!onalizing of evangelical poverty might go. "If a poor persbn can afford it I can consider, it. If not, I can't." It may be that a limited budget with a need to count the pennies should be built into any realistic framework of poverty as a way of life, which, of cours.e, is not 6,/ Review for Religious, Jan:Feb., 1986 .the same.as penny-p.inching. If'circumstances'don't dictate it,.those who freely chorse such'a life should. -.- With whom does one identify? Whatever "evangelical" means, it cannot mean otinreal. The link between religious life imd poverty should be pro-gressively instinctive fo~ the mature person. It was a young married woman caught in the poverty trap who 'summed it all up! "You get to the point that you" doh't.think about things you can't afford." Horizons inevitably narrow. °A poor person with limited opportunity has presumably little choice as to the people be4ives among. He cannot choos~ his neighb0rh~0od, as many testify ~ho would give heaven and .earth to get out of a district if only to give the,children a better chance, "but cannot. For those who find work it is often a dead-end job. Educational and culiural opportunities, vacations and recreations are .similarly limited. If such is not bifilt irito the fabric of evangelieal~poverty we geem to have missed much of the point. Poor people tend to be marginal people in terms of statm, influence 'and opportunity. One bf the gt:eatest tragedies of poverty, it has been noted, is the'inability of'so many people to make afy contribution to society since so m.u.ch potential ig never given the chance to develop. This does not just disqualify many from co.mpeting in whatis called "the rat race," Where the prizes, however won, are strictly personal,-but limits their contribution to life in general and their family and neighborhood iia partic-ular. "Why, therefore, should the religious gibe at being subject to'such limitations, perhaps iffbeing i/~nored, used or patronized? Poverty feels like" that. The very insecurity of contemporary religirus life could be a chance to identify with such marginal people. There are so mar~y marginiil people even in the affluent sqcieties of Western Europe and theUnited Sta'trs, and surely the religious should not leave them behind. InSecurity is in the air. Li~,ing within such limits; the religious will be treated as such. In any case he can do no other. He has no choice. If his place in the pecking order determines how he is treated, in choosing poverty hr'ha~ chosen (o be last. Wh3~ should anyone choose such a~qife? To play at it is one thing, but to choose to live permanently within such limits is something else:~ After all anyone who has ever lived in India, for ekam~le, will have se~n there many "MotherTe'resas," as no doubt they'are to be found all over the globe, but. it can still be puzzling as to why the average ~:eligious might choose that road. Most people,,sensibly, want to widen their horizons, so whychoose limitation in t~rms 'of relationships, lifestyle, dress, travell OlS~orttinity? When poor people used to say that "pove'rty's no disgrace, but 'tis a great inconvenience," someone wh'o grew up as one of them thought the com-ment too rriild for what was ih'fact "a hampering drag upon them.''2 Most resist being pushed to'thb mai-gin so why. would anyone want to live there? 1he Price of Poverty It is hard to see a.nyone choosing this, oti~er than as'a voluntary, short-term contract, yet, apparently, religious have chosen this frr life. Unless this choice is und~rpinned by an integrating vision which can give it worthwhile meaning, any such lifestyle wilLsurely fragment under the age-old tension of catering to champagne tastes on a beer income. It is not in unredeemed human nature to choose less arid be content. There is in much of religious poverty as lived today a close analogy with Parkinson's Law,3 ih as much as affluence expands and is seen to be necessary,as goods and money, become available. Yet if one lives on a figed income in an economic climate of inflation, one cannot spend money.as if there is no tomorrow. I cannot entertain as perhaps I .would like. Not can the°main consideration of "tra'Jel abroad" be a valid .passport. Limitation will be Written into whatever I do. Basically the choice of this lifestyle is made because the.religious choose Christ who chose a stable in preference to a palace and consistently l~eld to that even in death.-It is said that the best fighter.is the hungry fighter, and whoever really wants 'God in Christ must train.to sacrifice anything that gets in the way. The point of poverty, then, is to remove the clutter and tension which would tend to crowd God out. The Methodist sbholar Gor-don Rupp underlined this in a general point: "Never had so many men so" many great possessions as in our modern affluent societies, and what Jesus said about these things no Bultmann has ever been able t0 demythologize. If these things blind the spirit, and if the pure of heai-tsee, then I should find a thousand within the Church on the road.to perfection for every hundred outside."4 The outlook of the consumer society can suffocate feeling for God. The point of evangelical poverty is made more'specific in-an instructive misprint in my copy of the breviary, where St. Paul is m.ade to say of, Christ that "rich as he was, he made himself poor for your: sake in order to make you rich by means of his property (sic)" (2 Co 8:9). This is undoubtedly the logic which appeals to the printer andthe rest,ofus;.but what St. Paul said, of, course, was that it,was in his total poverty that Christ enriched us. "Here everything has been lost in translation. ,In an at.tempt to make sense of the text, nonsense has been made of the Gospel. To see the influence, of this insight on St. Paulqn that same second letter to the Corinthians can be of immense practical help in assimilating, the reason for evangelical poverty and~so nourishing its continuing dynamic. First Put On Christ Invariably Paul~ begins with Christ. Seeing him in his conversion, bap-tism and daily life--"even if we did once .know Christ in the flesh, that~ is I! / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 not how w6knox~.him'now" (2 Coo5:16) he isso enthralled by what he sees that he can only, compare its effect on,him to the creation of light: "For it is the God ~who said, "Let light .shine out Of darkness,'~vho has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of:God on the face of Christ" (2 Co 4:6). He knew his world and himselLto be literally re-created anewin Christ:~ Reality,- no matter how it presents itself, now comes to him in the face ooLChrist, _so he comes to see what God is like in a sacramental world and,progressively, becomes lik~ what he sees. Whatever happens to ,Paul is always in Christ. So illumined, life is shot' through with Christ as he sees God giving himself in the happenings of every day. The more he reflected on God giving .himself to us in Christ the more he was possessed .by what he saw: "For the love 6f Christ overwhelms us when we reflect." (2 Co 5:14). To think that Christ had givenhis life for Paul.in the absolute poverty of crucifixion and death! He,could refuse;Paul nothir~g. Living in such a world, helogically believed that the response of Christians.should be "to. live no longer for themselves but for ,him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Co 5:15): In other words, the selfish, self-centered core in all of us, which can imprison us in self as cruelly as a child in a ~chbol playground without an adult present, has now been broken up. In Christ, one moves from self to selflessness: Onelives now for Christ as the wholeness of his sacrifice registers, and one comes to realize what an enthralling discovery one has in this unprecedented gift. Even atomic calculations cannot quantify this: So seismic ig the effect on one who.glimpses the reality that Paul can only see .the person given that insight as a wholly new type of being, since, "for an~,one who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new .one is here" (2 Co 5:17). One's outlook, value-sys-tem and life itself are now a response to God giving himself.in Christ. That this can take place in the ordinary, everyday world of pagan-Corinth Paul is assured, since.~'for our sake God made the sinless one into~sin, so that in him we mi.'ghi become the goodness of God" (2.Co 5:21). In human nature at~lts worst seen in the,cruclfix~on and death of the s~nless Christ, our-Lord plumbed the depths of human evil and weakness insofar~as one person could, and so enables Paul to see that everything is redeemable in the death and resurrection_of Christ. Nothing can hold .us in Christ. CruCified as his° Mother stood and watched, and buried in ,another man's grave, this it is~ that roots the experience of Christ in the humanity of every age, not least our own. What of course was h.appening was "God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men's faults against them. : ." (2 Co 5:20). Glimpsing this, Christians like Paul become "ambassadors for Christ :. as The Price of Poverty / 9 though God were appealin~ through us" (2 Co 5:20). The message, of course, is,simply to "be r~conciled to God" (2 Co 5:20). Ideally the Christian reaches the point of so assimilating Paul's o]nsight that he/she can do no other 'than share it. For the religious, poverty is part ofth6 price paid t,o'preserve that insight. AllLelse gradually falls'away, no longer seen as having any real claim on us in'the light of Christ: "And we, with our. :. faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of th~ Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect" (2 Co 3:18). All of this takes place not in some Gnostic, esoteric enclave, but in the streets of wherever the Christian happens to be, since "this is the work of the Lord.who is Spirit" (2 Co 3:18). The first and continuing step for anyone who would live genuinely evangel-ically poor, therefore, is to ~put on Christ. Contemplation is clearly primary. First recognize what it is to be christened, and poverty for the sake of Christ becomes a logical necessity. Whatever obscures that vision must go. In Everyday Life While it is true that Paul "was caught up into paradise and heard things which must not and cannot be put into human language" (2 Co 12:4), the second letter to the Corinthians makes it all too plain that' he does'not stay there. It is in the present, in the unpredictability of everydaY life that he sees Christ, and this is marvelously encouraging for anyone attempting to.live poor for Christ. Rich as he was in Christ, people and circumstances will so often combine to subject Paul to an experience not unlike that of the contemporary poor woman mentioned earlier. So often he will be stripped of. everything but his faith (see 2 Co 1:8). -For some, Paul's "all would not be enough. He invested not just the Gospel but his self in Corinth "For my own part, I will gladly spend and be spent on your sohls' behalf, though ~you should love me too little for loving you .too well" (2 Co 12:15). The man wh'o brought Christ to them at such physical and emotional cost is i'educed to writing them a letter in an attempt, to-establish himself again (see 2 Co "3:1-3). "Someone said, 'He writes powerful and strongly-worded letters, but when he is with you, you see only half a man and no preacher at all" (2 Co 10:10). It is not just gratuitous rudeness nor personal dislike, but Paul's nonacceptance as a genuine apostle that is at issue, sohe is afraid that "your ideas may get corrupted and turned away from simple devotion to Christ" (2 Co 11:3). Paul and his Christ are not accepted. His very identity, therefore, is questioned. In an attempt to try and reestablish some lost status he is humiliated into having to give something of his own'record to show that he was not in it for himself, as was suggested neither a naive, misguided 11~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 convert nora "con-man" taking advantage of them: "lashes. beaten. stoned.:., shipwrecked., false brethren., sleepless., hunger, thirst. cold., anxiety for all the churches" (2 Co I 1:23-29). Was all this for nothing? He gave everything, yet had not made first base with an influential, articulate group in the Corinthian church. He has deceived no one, yet if a man's good faith is questioned, as was Paul's, he is really poor, for, without that, he, has no currency left. Corinth and life generally.taught Paul that,.such paradox is of the essence of an apostle's life: "We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and ~behold weolive; as punished, and yet .not killed; as sorrowful, yet always .rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Co.7:8-10). Read as experience,and not liter.ature, in these passages 9ne will come close to the mind and life of a poor Christian man. Integrity, reputation, achievement, personality, wealth and so much more that can give a. person self-respect and a worthwhile life are so often taken, and the individual is then dismissed as worthless. Even obvious achievement is seen as a mirhge. To be poor feels like that, seemingly unable to make a contribution though one gives one's all. Paul is so aware of the power of the Gospel and the'powerlessness of the Christian as he tries to communicate it, that it would almost seem a contradiction in terms had not his life followed that pattern since first he gave himself to ~Christ. Perhaps he was never closer to his Lord than in this powerlessness. If the Christ he preached, the faith they received, the life he lived does not suggest integrity, he has ,nothing to offer except an appeal: "Open your hearts to us; we have taken advantage of no one" (2 Co 7:2). . To be reduced to speaking like that, one must be poor indeed. Against that background, too, incidentally, Paul is trying to collect money to help the impoverished Jerusalem church! (see 2 Co chs. 8-9): Part of the cost of becoming a Christian in those da~s may have meant, for ma.ny, broken family and community ties resulting in real poverty at so-many levels. Paul was also economically, poor in Corinth:. "When I was with you and ran out of money I was no burden to °anyone" (2 Co 11:9). For whatever reason he judged it best not to accept help from the Corinthian church. This led. to further misunderstanding, not least.in leading some to assume that his message must .be as ,cheap as its presenter. As so often with the really poor person it seems to be "heads you win, tails I lose," whatever way the coin falls.- Whenever he could ,t~oVmake ends meet, "I robbed other churches by accepting Support from them in.order to serve you" (2 Co. 11:8): These were the other communities in Greece Paul had set up on his way south to ¯ 7he Price of Poverty Corinth, and it must Surely have been an additibnal burden when he was aware of being helped by people who had little enbugh themselves, since "the troubles they have been through have tried them hard, ~,et in all this they h.ave been so exuberantly happy that from the depths of their poverty they .have shown themselves lavishly openhanded" (2 Co 8:2). Evidently poor themselves, they were so eager to help the poor in the Jerusalem church "begging and begging us for thefavor of sharing in this service" that in so doing, "they offered their own selves'first to God and, under God, to us" (2 Co 8:4-5). Such are the people helping Paul; so at one with the mind of their Lord ~that.they, too, from'their poverty, are helping to make others rich. ~' Think ~of the effect oon Paul of such behavior--the bread~he e~its he owes to ~them, ~is also their faith builds up him and so many. They have learned much in a short time. It must be the experience of so many religious across the world that it is largely because of the faith and generosity of such people today that they are able to,live and work. Sucl~ support should.have a marked effect on the way we live. Personal Limitations Emotionally and ecohomically poor in a world in which any religious can. find himself; St. Paul also works within the limits of a ~human frame. The most individual of:men, he is always recognizably himselL Even those who tend to lay all that~is wrong with Christianity at. Paul's feet might acknowledge~that there is something, much or little, in their own characters that they might wish to change, if only to be more effective witnesses to Christ. Paul knows this too. One of the greatest benefits of time spent in Paul's company is to see him operate within the'limitations ~of a genuinely human personality - which is just another expression Of the intrinsic poverty which everyone shares. After each one of us was made they broke the mould. Paul is ever conscious of "a thorn in the flesh" which so bothered him that he pleaded ~;ith God to remove it (see 2 Co 12:7-8). Whatever~ it was, Paul knew he woifld be:.so mhch more effective if only he could b~ rid of it. His .prayer was notanswered. Instead, he was given one of his greatest, most encour-" aging insights, which can help anyone conscious of the poverty of his or her . own resources: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Co 1~2:9). Paul was fine as he was. The fewer his reserves the more must God supply. The~greater his personal inadequacy the ~more pressing his claim on God: So the ultimate paradox for Paul was that when he looked at himself in 12 / Review for-Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 the mirror of his apostolate and saw much that he could wish changed, he saw what was really there, a poor individual man with all his limitations, loved by.God in Christ. His obvious weakness was a claim on God's power. So he could relax and learn contentmeht at a very deep level: "and t.hat is wh~ I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hard~hips, persecuti~ons, and the_ agonies I go through for Ch_rist.'s sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Co. 12:10).~ The religious inevitably oware of some of his limitations would do well to assimilate that insight. As someone yowe.d to. poverty, he can even integrate his own limitations within,the co~mforting simplicity of that Gospel perspective, perhaps coming to see why Paul could s~y "No wonder we do not lose heart~ T]3o~ugh our outward.humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly ren~ewed" (2 Co 4:16). As ever, the o~,erriding.belief in God gi.'ving himself in Christ in.the present moment is the dynamic of evangelical pove~y. o Repeated experience w.as to teach Pgul this, even when he felt shattered as his identity as a .genuine apostle is queried, pioneering a way for the Gospel, or facing the growing pains of an expanding Church. Often he finds himself as a leader withotit an army, let down by people from whom he had expected support. Because of his fighting polemic Paul ran the risk, not always successfully avoided; of being unfair to others and no doubt had the chance to repent at leisure ,The physical and emotional strain at times must have been severe~ but it is again all part of carrying the treasure of the Gospel withinthe heart of a poor man. So,he saw that "we are r~o better than pots ofearthenware to contain this treasure, and this proves th~it.such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God's alone" (2 Co 4:7). o~What is attractive is that in circumstances which would liave discouraged ¯ many of us, or have us return home to lecture, write our memoirs, or dine. out on our experiences for Christ, Paul never gave up.-He went forward into the situation, and there found God in Christ with a security,given only to those who give up everything for. him. His life as glimpsed in this letter. shows that "human indeed we are, but it is in no human strength we figlit, our battles" (2 Co 10:3). He expresses this superbly when he admits that "we are in difficulties on all sides, but never concerned; we see no answer to our problems, but-never despair;., persecuted, but never deserted; knocked down but never killed" (2 Co 4:8-9). Again, one should not let the literary construction mask the human reality. Paul is not some superman (canonization is invariably posthu-mous), but a man in Christ, which is why problems, mistakes, anxiety and fear never ultimately crush him since they are seen as reflecting Christ. He ~he Price of Poverty / 13 is always in Christ and so in circumstances where our first move might be to the doctor, the bottle, the cotinselor or the return ticket, Paul's is always to Christ. So when he is in trouble, he sees what is happening to him." ~Always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus" (2 Co 4:9). He lives in Christ as Chrisriives in him, not least in suffering and heartbreak. So real is this that "the sufferings of Christ, it is true, overflow into bur li~,es~," and in that.very experience as Christ is there, "there is overflowing comfort, too, which 'Christ brings" (2 Co 1:5). Up against it, seeing no way through, Paul believes Christ to be an indwelfing presence not a distant model. He shares the experience, often nailed to Christ through people and circumstances beyond his control. So a man, who, like his Lord and so many on earth, knew much of failure, tears and poverty, at the same time, in the pow.er and love of the r~sen Christ,'sees that in his suivival~ though so powerless, "the life Of Jesus; too, may al.ways be seen in our body" (2 Co 4:10). The poverty-stricken Paul~is enriched, in Christ, even using suffering and failure to help reconcile him and his world to God. -,; . ~ Nothing in his experience, therefore, is pointless. Successive centuries have no doubt learned more from the failures of Paul and his Lord than from the successes of their commentators. So a poor man, with at times scarcely a hold on life--"we were so utterly, and unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself" (2 Co 1:8)--learned to rely on the richness of God. He must have found much time for prayer and reflection or he could: never have read so much into the poverty of the human condition, these passages do not read .as emotion recollected in tranquillity so much as the discovery of the presence of God in Christ when all seemed lost in a harsh, uncaring world. Under God, Paul learned that lesson well. And so, from his own experience of poverty, at many levels, he was anxious and able to pass on what he had found, thanking "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any. affliction, ,with the.comfort with which we ourselves are comforted byGod" (2 Co ! :3-4). Paul seems hypnotized by the word comfort, since the experience was so real in the.middle of his at times frightening poverty~ The religious lookingfor the vision and stamina to be "poor both in fact and spirit," would do well ~to spend time in the company of such a man who found so much of richness in his own poverty: "For what we preach is not ourselves, but J~us Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servant for Jesus' sake" (2 Co 4:5). In any consideration of the vast topic of evangelical poverty there is both a community and an individual dimension. This article is simply meant 14 / Review for Religious, Jan,-Feb., 1986 as an aid to personal reflection. The Benedictine histbrian David Knowles, in the epilogue to.one of his classic studies of English medieval monasticism, was of the opinibn that property and wealth were contributory factors in its decline. No groups nor individuals could do much about it, as wealth "clUng like pitch." This is surely a human development, not especially a medieval one: If a corrective cannot be found for the individual religious in the Gospel,.a founder's manuscript ru!e, and a contemporary poor person, it is doubtful if le~slation and discussion wiil make it real. It is for the individual to see. , o NOTES -~G. K. ~hesterton, "Slum Novelists and the Slums," in _Heretics LondOn 1905, p. 277. 2Florri' Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford Penguin Books 1973, p. 31. ~C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law: "W0~k e~pan'ds so as to fill the time available for its completion." 4Gordon Rupp, The Old Reformation and the New, Epworth 1967, p. 60. On Silence There is the silence that nurses a sleeping child and the silence that is violence without equal. There is the silence that purifies the notes of birds and the silence that betrays the noise inside our lives¯ There is the silence that comes wrapt in a piece of sky .and the silence that is overcast and threatening. -There is the silence that nourishes our sensitivity to life and the silence that is shattered by soul-destroying work. There is the silence in the dew drop's other world and the silence'thff( is manufactured and pressure packed. ~There is the gilen~ that is tl~e gentlest of friend~ and the silence that is filled with loneliness. There is the silence that takes us by thb hand and: leads us deep into the heart of'Peace. "~ N0el Davis 257 Abercrombie Street Red fern EO. Box 130 Chip~aendale, N.S.W. Australia Harvesting Silence: A Desert Spidtuality Anthony Wi.eczorek, O Praem, ~Father Wieczorek writes: "The very times when life and prayer seem to have fallen apart may well be God's attempt to get our attention and make us face the sort of ~hings we all too easily hide from with our busy and carefully structured lives." His previous article, "Cominitment: Dying and. Ri~ing to S~lf," appeared in the issue of July/August, 1985. Father Wieczorek may be addressed at St. Joseph Priory; 103 Grant Street; De Pere, Wisconsin. 541.15. How does a person go about harvesting silence? The question is an impoflant one to people who find themselves standing amid acres of the stuff. How does a pe~,son gather' together silence," emptiness, and stillness? They creep up.so unobtrusively that their coming is unfioticed until, that is, it is too late. The life that had been so filled with purpose:and people and things to do has .grown distant, separated by a moat of 'silence. But no watery moat is this. It is a moat, rather, of sand and arid wastes, of emptiness and stillness, for silence grows only in desert conditions. What is there, then, to harvest in a desert? . What ,grows there? What value, what purpose can it have? These questions are more pragmatic than they sound: What is. to be: made of life that had been lush with' activity, that has been filled with.purpose when suddenly the activity is gone o seems meaningless and unnecessary? What value has an existence that has lost the art of awareness? What can be made of a life whose dreams and plans and goals have all shriveled up in a blast of desert air so that life seems lost and out of control? The desert, though, is not a punishment to endure. The silence and stillness is a gift that must be received, a crop that must be harvested. 15 16 / Review for" Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 I I have never been in a real, geographical desert but the image of one that pictures provide and that emerges in my imaginings is that of an endless expanse of sand and sky. In the desert that I imagine and inwhich I make my anchorage, there is literally nothing to see. Oddly enough, that is its whole point. A desert is a most carefully constructed work of art. Nature, and God, have taken great effort and artistry fo create an empty backdrop, a single sandy sheet. From the looks of it, it was time well spent; for a desert is not only beautiful, it is functional as well. The desert has an anonymous function that is carefully hidden. In the desert's emptiness there is nothing to hide behind, nothing to conceal; there is nothing to distract. By the very fact of its emptiness, the desert is a perfect place for revelation, a perfect place for confrontation. Hosea spoke of God luring Israel back into the wilderness so that it would once again have to deal with God's revelation. What makes a desert is precisely its paucity of distractions. There the silence is both vocal and visual. It was to such an environment that God called Israel. God called Israel to the desert lJecause it is a place of confrontatitn. = A desert is not geographical; it is an attitude, a cond.ition, a state of the soul. Nor are deserts fixed areas of terrain. Deserts-lie waiting beneath the sarface of skin and sou!. They bubble up, from time to time, like springs of sand that rush out and flood into life. Deserts can appear overnight or sometimes in a~single, often climatic, moment. We close our eyes one unsuspecting night to the lush greenness of our lives only to awake., to nothing, to a howling empty expanse of sand and sky. Deserts are works of art, created not without some little effort. They do not appear randomly or-by accident. God creates deserts in our lives whenever God's patience runs dry. God creates deserts out of thelushness of our lives to force an issue we have otherwise avoided. M~ike no mistake, our lives are indeed lush, not with vegetation, but with things to do, thoughts to ponder, problems to solve, people to meet, greet, to make love and war with. Duti.es, tasks, responsibilities, projects are the trees, plants, shrubbery that have been planted within our lives but which have grown and multiplied at a rate and in a density that isall their own. Many of us, however, have allowed them to grow out of control. The lush foliage that .fills our days and lives~is our alibi. There is so much to perceive, so much to do, so much to read and consider and wonder at, can anyone, human, or divine, blame.us for atleast being selective with our attentiveness? For missing,something here and there? We have so many revelations to deal with in even a single day, how are we to know which is the most impOrtant, the most necessary? We have attempted, though, to cover, not only our Harvesting Silence / 17 tra.cks ~with all our foliage,but God's as well. Prepare ye, then for the dr~ught Whereupon God shall create:in and a~ound us,-from the chaos of our lives, a single, simple desert from which shall emerge in bold silhouette the real, the. true, the ,necessary. Dfteo when I am in a. desert there are two passages that frequently come .to mind. One passagd is from Ursal Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. It is a story about a young man struggling to become a wizard. At one point in his training he. is given this sage bit of advice: ¯ ~ You thought, as a boy, that a mage is on6 who can do anything. So I , thought, once: So did we all::And the truth is that as a man's real power . ~grows and his khowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows nar-or. ower:- until at last he chooses n~thing, but does only find wholly what he must do . ,~ The trick, it would seem, is to find that must do. It is easier said than done. But difficult though it may be, it~ strikes me as being nonetheless true. ~The key to the finding seems to revolve around getting in touch with limitations, the paucity of resources and talents wherein lies our realistic avenue of . growth.-The desert seems a fitting place for recognizing one's limits, the truth about oneself. ." ¯ .The other.passage that comes'to mind treats the same theme, this one from Annie Dillard's Teaching a ~Stone to Talk: I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. W.hat a blessing it would be "to ~asp your one necessity," if only, that is, one knew what-it was. To speak of doing what one "must do" is the same as sp6aking of what is "necessary,"~ and both require the same str~uggle, namely, hacking thr6ugh the jungle of options, choices and aliernatives in ~vhich ~we find ourselves. Times of decision, be they 'great or small, would be so much easier if only we could, perceive the necessary from all the possibiliti.es. There are simply too many choices, too many ways. In such times it is important io disentangle the seemingly necessary from the truly necessary. The de,eft is an excellerit place to do so; the desert is a refuge from the unnecessary. In the.desert one learns quickly what is involved .in returning to riecessity. One of the fi~'st things discovered is l~recisely how necessary the desert is. In the silence and starkness of the desert the unnec-essary has a way of shriveling up a.nd falling away or, in its self-ordained has~tb, of passing usoby. And when it does so, when all is finally quiet and deserted, when we stand surrounded by void, then look and listen well. What emerges from the stillness is that which we seek. I sit in my desert and watch a parade go by. There are clowns and 111 / Review for ,Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 bands, important people in convertibles smiling and waving, Each one wants those on the sidklinesto join them, to take up ranks bohind them, It is the parade,of the unneceskary. Right now I am watching it pass by. I am waiting for"the still, small voice I've heard follows, behind." Sometimes amid: all the noise it goes by unnoticed. Clowns, bands, and crowds make almost as mubh~ noise as winds,, earthquakes and fires. T6 hear it, .then, one must wait and listen attentively. : ~ ~ " ~ ~. ~ . While I wait I notice something about the parade; Us~ually parades move along slowly, butnot 'this one. I ~vonder if it doesn't resemble more a race, a marathon,'than a parade. It reminds me of the joke ab6ut the airline, pilot who was hopelbssly lost but making excellent time:° I wonder ¢vhere the parade/race ends? I don't think it does. It looks a little funny but obviously it isn't~ Everyone heems so serious. I'm beginning to feel guilty and irresponsible just sitting here. ~But l haven't heard the yoice yet, the. still, small one. Actually, I'm:rather glad they ~'e rushing on. They all make me nervous., ~ Gradually the parade moves on. And still I sit, silently waiting. I think the voice is also shy. lt figures; small, still things usuallyare. There are two possibilities: one, it's watching me to see whether l'm safe b~efore it,co, mes out; or, two, it doesn't know that I'm here. Either way, I'll.wait. It will be along sooner or lat.er, that is, if it's necessary. A desert is anything but empty; despite all appearances t9 the ontr~ary, it is filled with an i~i~ense silence. It is so silent and Calm and stilithai~every breath, every heartbeat booms. It is incredibly difficult,oif not impossible, to be uhawat~ in a desert. The sparcity of gcen~ry seems somehow to cleanse the senses. The silence that is both vocal and .visual! Washes over the eyes an~l ears and all the'other senses. In fact, so acute does sensing become that, it can assume an alfiaost paranoic nature. The irony is that.';vhile we imagine things that' are not there, we tend to deny whak is. We struggle in the intense desert silence,~struggle with wafiting to believe with all our hearts "it is'only a mirage," yet haunted by the question "Was it real? Is it~iteal'? The desert silence makes~us realize that, havir~g been so dulled by the Sens6ry:"blitz of life, we hav~ 10st the art of l~erception. There is so muchto see and hear and behold that we noqonger.know.how: Either We have learned to sc?eeh so effectiv~ely, the noise and pace of our lives orwe are blinded an~i:deaf~ned by it all: in either event, once in'the'desert' with so little to sye'and hbar we find we really do not know h6w {o do ~either; But then, that is the°poini"of being in the desert. Harvesting Silence / 19 The desert is a place for not. only confronting things divine; it is first, and perhaps primarily, a place for encountering things human. In a desert wh~t first.is confronted is consciousness. What better way to appreciate sight and Sound than to have,them takenaway. In the desert., where there is nothing, to .see, we learn again how~ to see. In the desert, where there is nothing tohear~but the howling of the Wind, we learn how to listen to ~the spirit. But what" we see and .hear first with our rediscovered senses is ourselves. In the°desert~ in becoming Conscious of ourselves, we paradoxi-cally discover that self-consciousness is the antithesis of consciousness. I do not mean by self-corisciousness the knowledge and recognition of the truth ~about~ourselves. The Christian tradition is adamant about self-knowledge as the starting point in-the search for God. Hear, for example, the iestimony of St. Isaac of Syria, a sixth-century desert father: i~' Enter eagerly into the treasure-house that'lies within you, and so you will see the treasure-house of heaven: for the two are the same, and there is but one single entry into ihem both. q'lie lhdder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within you. Dive into yourselfand :in your soul you will discover the rungs by which to ascend. ° Or, for example, ten centuries later,Teresa of Avila writes in a similar vein: It is no small pit~; and'should cause us little shame, that, through bur own fault, we do not .understand ourselves, or know who we ate. Would ~it not ¯be a sign of great ignorance, my daughter, if a person were asked who he o o was and could not say, and had no idea who his fatheror mother.was, or from what country he came? BecOming conscious of ourselves, both for its own sake and as a means to union with God, is indeed well aitested in theChristian~traditi0n. What is not as-well documented, or.at leastnot as talked about; is the adverse effect self-crnsciou~ness has on ou~ i~bility to be conscious and aware, to perceive not 0nly God, but~the world in which we live. It takes great ignorance, great childlikeness to be consciously aware. On the other hand it is quite impos~sible to be both self-crnscious and child-like at the same time; people are'either one or the other. For example, a child does riot care how he or She looks to oth(rs. This unself-cohsciousness so characteristic of children 'we call innocence. 'It is innocence. It is inno-cence that allows a child to be enthralled when an adult's self-conscious concern for propriety and dignity would compel them to be less conspicu-ous, though'also less perceptive. Annie Dillard-calls innocence "the spirit's unself-conscious state at any momenl~°of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness .and total concentration." How.many adults have ¯ the freedorri, the unself-co'nsciousness it takes to coricentrate with recep- 20 /~Reviewfor Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 tiveness and devotion? Those, to be sure, who are most childlike in attitude and orientation. And is this not the point behind the command to :'die to self" in order to follow Christ? Can Christ live in us if we are filled with our self?. Perhaps, too, only children.can enter-the kingdom because it takes a child's unabaslied ability to see and hear to perceive it. Children are life's tourists. They walk about gaping and gawking at every thing and eve.ry one. We permit:.them to do so, to look foolish because they are, after all, only children, who don't yet know any better. But we_ deprive ourselves of the same ability and freedom to stand and behold the ordinary and extraordi-nary things in our lives and in our selves. We let self-consciousness interfere with satisfying our thirst to be truly conscious and aware of the hidden mysteries of life, hidden because to see them we must get down on our hands and knees with our backsides exposed for all to see and crawl about or simply sit motionless for minutes and hours and wait as life unfolds according to its own whim or inner law. To be ~ruly ~ware, truly, conscious of any thing°or any one, let alone God, we must be willing and able toleave ourselves and enter into the reality of the thing or person we are with. Counselors call it attending, the rest of us call it listening, the ability to truly be with another, to share that person's experience; to enter into that persoi~'s life. To attend, toe listen, like any form of consciousness, takes self-emptiness. The desert,s unself-conscious silence is paradigmatic of the emptiness we~need to emulate in order to be aware. We cannot find the. emptiness to be truly receptive, truly devoted, truly conscious, if all our senses are already filled to overflowing with se/f-consciousness. ~ Outside my window and down a little hillside, used to stand se.veral ~trees and different sorts of unruly shrubs. When the trees had bee~n cut down and .the shrubs cleared away, lo, there all at once appeared the river that had hid behind them. In a similar sort of way, self-cons.ciousness comprises much of the lushness that blocks off our ability to see beyond ourselves, to perceive the almost insanely mysterious world we live in. The desert, though, is much too hot and dry to produce much vegetation. The aridity of the desert similarly bakes away our own self~onsciousness. We sit and sweat in our deserts until our senses open like pores and we once again can perceive the horizons we obscured ~with ourselves. ~ In the desert we learn unself-consciousness through a form of sensory deprivation. ,There is so little to see and hear in ~the desert, so little to do that we become deadly bored, even with ourselves. As a result., we launch out a ravenous hunt for something or,~anything to see or hear. For ex~ample, fa:sting cleanses t.he palate. After even a~day 9f fasting.e.ven~ the simplest broth tastes remarkably good. So in the desert, when our senses fast, we Harvesting Silence rediscover the beauty of the little and unnoticed things of life, thingS otherwise lost in all the lushness; ~ III There is another quality to deserts, they are excellent places to get lost. There are very few land' marks in a desert. Ev6n the sand dunes shift. That is why people who iraverse the desert wastes often do so at night, when they can at least rise the stars as navigational guides. All of' this is quite distressing, especially to those exp~e~'ienced with desert lifel IQlost of us have lives With Paths well worn from da.ily routines, habitg, and regul~roPatterns of behavior. We seldom stray from those paths and so'seldom face the reality of gettirig lost. For all our-fi~eedom of will and actionl most of us are likg trains committed to a given track. BUt at least that way. our lives are fairly stable, regular, an~ predictable. At ~uch and such a time we do this and that, and th6n the next routine is followed-- a.nd God help those who try to disrupt the pattern. And so we mbve quite confidently and assuredly ~tirough our lush little jungle lives. At any given moment we~kno~v where we are and what comes next. One way of knowing that we have b~en spiritually teleported ~nto a d~sert is when ~the old routine no longgr works. The stability has become ihstead sterility. Or we may find ourselv.es ina degert as a resultof_some "derailment," some experience or event that thro~vs-us off the carefully laid pattern of our lives. Our first response to this is¯ frequently anger, then panic. The anger is a response to the realization of how thin the veneer is to the ¯ iJlusion that we are in control of bUt lives, that we indeed are not the masters ~t:bur destiny. Then come~ the ~anic when we find our lives are increasin.gly Without purpose or direction. The former goa!s no longer seem as satisfying or even worth the effort. The sense of aimlessness grows and deepens until we rffust adfiait that we, our lives, are lost. The trumpets have all died nbw. Their ruckus.was only to set the stage, .like the wihd, earthquake, ahd fire, for "what is to follow. Before the duthority of the trumpets all other sounits quail. Before their power all else stands dumb in awe. The silence of the other sounds forms an open fieldo that draws all attention.to a sblemn, solitary figure. Bravely and boldly I shout out, "The ti~e has come! I hi~ve grown up. Now I am¯ ready to go oui in ~earch of my destiny! I am going out in search of myself to myself. I am laundhing'an expedition whose ~oal it is to discover and encounter ~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 God!? Secretly and equally as silent, the ramparts surrounding the king-dom of heaven make ready for this new assault. But don't mistake the actions, they do not raise new battlement, nor do they send out patrols and war parties. Rather, they assemble and make ready the rescue crews that will search for this new expedition's survivors. Many o~us, at one time Or another, do strike out in search of our lives. Our main goals are past exp~.riences of mastery over earlier tasks and duties. Ultimately, these expeditions, sooassured of success, all wind up in the ~me pla, ce~ h.opelessly lost in some or another desert. Our prey, whether pu.rpose, mea0~ ing, desti ~ny, br God had led us.on unexp~ectedly to a place we never intended to go. We followed it fearlessly into l~he desert and sud.denly find it is too late, too late tO go back, too lost to go ahead. Our careful plans, otir former experience~ had not pl:epared us for this. We are lost, empty, alone; well do we fit into the environment of the desert. At times when we mhy feel this way, lost and empty, without meaning and control, in desperate need of guidance and direction, we should not lament, for the strategy is Working. Th~ strategy of ~ear~hing for God is simple: get yourself so hope.lessly lost that God fias nochoice but to go out and find you~ This much is simple, and most p.eople accomplish it without even trying. Unfortunately, it is only half the str.ategy. The rest is much more 'distas~teful but becomes easier to swallow the longer and more hope-l~ sly we. remain lost. The remainder of the° sti'ategy is this: we must be willing ~0 be found'and (this is the clincher) we m~t agree to being found~i on God's terms. The whole magnific~'nt adventure, whether we entered upon it willingly or found ourselves thrust into it, has this as its purpose: agreeing to God's terms for being found, recognizing and. accepting our dependence upon God. I've wandered around in circles for a longtime ~ithout wanting to be found. It's not that I like being lost, it's just that I'm not ready to accept the terms for being found. Don't forl yourself, God's magnanimity is not without its own sort of conditions. God's conditiOns, however, arise not out of stubbornness; they are mediated by necessity. If, for example, a person wants to become an Olympic athlete, one of the conditions that must be met to fulfill that dream is submitting to the rigors of training and practice. Faced 'with those conditions, that person may opt to observe the games rather than participate in them directly: It's not enough to. wants.to be found; one must need it so m~uch that he or she is wilting to le.t go of other things and embrace willingly. ~he ~necessary conditions. 0.ne of the hardest conditions to accept is letting go of the way I would like to go and follow instead the way ! feel led. The reason mhny peoPle get. Harvesting Silence lost to begin with is because they didn't follow the directions they were given. I want my life to lead in this direction but by following it the feeling of hopelessness and aimlessness only-continues more strongly. My alterna- ¯ tives are two: keep going the way I want even if it means staying lost, or giving in and following with greater commitment the way I feel compelled to go. In my ingenuity I present to God a third plan: "Couldn't we both wander around my path together? That way I could go in the direction I want and you would be with me so I wouldn't feel lost. It may not be the waY home but at least it's easier and more scenic than the way you want to go." No,l don't think so. When we find ourselves in a desert, it may be that we need to reassess the path that led us there to begin with, the routines and habits we so blindly foJlow, that we assume are so necessary. The desert silence and emptiness are not a punishment; they are created as the location for finally confronting the truth about our lives. In the desert, God lives and acts and interacts accord!rig to God's own rules and pace of life. The harvest the desert offers may well be a different,'more spontaneous; a freer and more conscious way of life. It may not be as stable and predictable or as important as one of our own choosing, but it may be more conducive for perceiving clearly the necessary presence of God speaking and poking through our well-~orn paths at unexpected times. The ironic thing about deserts is that they are excellent places to be found. In contrast to our often harried lives, deserts are so bleak and stark that God has no trouble finding us.o ° Waiting for Warmth: A February Poem The water's running cold as 1 stand before the mirror waiting for it to warm before I wash and shave and comb my hair. l'm waiting, too, for something else to flow, for a coldness in me to go, warmed in the light of a love that won~ run out as 1 grow,o.ld. ~Neath my winter stillness something stirred. My eyes pooled with melting fears. A quiet spring cleared my doubts away whi!e.washing "my f~ce with tears. Jerome Schroeder, O.EI~I. Cap. Martin Fraternity 843 West GarfieldBlvd. Chicago, IL 60621 Toward a Theology of Health Care Robert A. Brungs, S.J. Father Brungs is Director of the Institute for Theological Encounter with° Science and Technology; His article is based on an address delivered to a meeting of the Health Care. Province of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration on the occasion of a week-end of prayer and reflection. Father Brungs may be addressed through his office: ITEST: 221 N. Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. There is always a temptatio.n, when speaking about the role of a specific group in a larger group, to become quite general, or even utopian. I am deliberately trying to turn my back on that temptation to.day. I cannot and will not adequately address the "role of women in the Church"; the most significant reason for this incapability is that I am not a woman. What I hope to do is to set up a rough framework really a set of boundaries --that should be determinative in any discussion of the role of anyone in the Chin:oh. There is an easy language now in vogue. We glibly speak about our "role in the Church": the role of men, the role of ttie women, the role of the priest, and so on. I would submit that the language is inexact, blurring the reality and therefore dangerous to, and possibly even subversive of, our service to God. We do not "play" or "fulfill" roles in the Church; we live our lives in the Church. The Church, as we ~would all agree, is the developing kingdom of God~ It is that seed 'of the final, blessed kingdom which as St. Mark tells us "is sprouting andgrowing;how he [we] does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then. the ear, then the full grain in the ear" (Mk. 4:27-28). "Sh6 [the Church] becomes on earth," as Vatican II states, "the initial building fbrth of that kingdom [of Christ and of God]. While she slowly grows, the Church ~trains toward the consum-mation of the kingdom and, with all her strength, hopes and .desires [italics 24 Toward a Theology of Health Care mine] to be urfited in glory with her King" (Lumen Gentium, 5). I am stiggesting here that our relationship in and withthe Church is absolute. "Our life in the Church" is precisely and only that, namely, our life, our only life. The Church. is not an association of people in which we fulfill some function but which we can leave to perform another function in some other association. It is not like a man or a woman working in a business, and aiso living apart in a family. The Church demands as she must demand--total commitment and total dedication. Once we have put our hand to the plow there is no turning back, no alternative except betrayal. "Role-language," I fear, can finaliy obscure that rock-bottom, basic commitment. Our lives as religious are intrinsically apostolic (and therefore "service") lives 'not roles. That is the promise we have made to God and to which we have bound ourselves by'vows. Having said that, let us look again at our world, our universe in Which Church is, in which we live. We live in a real universe that has (God-given) boundaries. The universe, created and redeemed by God, has a structure, and structure impliesdimit. This universe in which we live, of which we are a part, is limited, even though what we see as its limits may not be the true ones. °We live, because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, in a new creation: "And for anyone who is in Christ,'there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God's work" (2 Co 5: 17-18). That world in which we live is created in and through the 'Word of God, and the world and all mankind finds its end and goal in the fullness of the Word-made-flesh. This first fact offaith°~bsolutely undergirds and specifies our understandir~g of ourselves/as-human as men and women since that meaning is found'in, and founded upon, the meaning of Christ's humanity. ~ ~. To understand the meaning of our lives in 'the° meaning of Christ's lifr, we must also.understand the meaning of the Christian community, of the Church: "Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we-know him now" (2 Co 5:16). We now know Christ~ sacramentally, in the Church which° is his body. Thus, an understanding of the Church is necessary, along with a spirituality that consciously, prayerfully, and lovingly recognizes the communal aspects ofour lives as Christians. In this community of God's people we undergo the transformation frorri self-absorption (doing our own thing for our own ends), through the cross (the painful death to our own desires), to the resurrection (the loving conformity of our wills to that of.the~Father). Our life in the Church is.the uneven, painful.but joyous response to that most fundamental commandment Christ Jesus hasgiven us: "You must therefore be perfect just as y~ur heavenly Father is perfect'~ (Mt 5:48). Jesus Christ as Lord is the goal, the 26 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 destiny of the entire race as an interpersonal community. The community of Christ's people of which we each are members .in union--is not merely a sociological grouping; it is the sacrament of Christ.present in the world, a prix;ileged community sacramentally, symbolically, representing, fulfilling, and manifesting the goal to. which .we are all directed, namely, the fully established kingdom of God. "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 P. 2:9). A second fact of fait.h is our membership in a chosen people, in a community set apart to serve and praise the Lord. There are many w.ays of approaching the mystery of Christ and its meaning for an understanding of.our humanity, and, of course, our sexuality. Since we live in a fallen world redeemed, indeed, but not yet t.otal!y so the best we can do as humans, and that haltingly, is to live sacramentally. The authentic human is integral; and we are not. Much of our search for a meaning of the human is a search for an integrity not given us. here. Our physical reality, as sacramental, as symbolic, points to a reality~that it does not contain. We live not in terms of fruition but in hope. We.cannot now co.reprehend the truth of the fully human; we can only live toward it. To seek a non-fallen expression.of ourselves as human in a yet-to-be-fully-redeemed world is to seek for that which will not be given. This, t~en;js a third fact: we are dis-integral, still seeking our fulfillment as human in the full and final kingdom of God. But, looking ahead.to that final kingdom, there are some things we can say. The~ Scriptures offer us no systematic definition of the human, nor.do they intend to do.so. Full unders~tanding of our humanness is to. be had only in that final kingdom which is still shrouded in mystery. But we can say some things even though their full meaning eludes us. ,.They ca~ at least serve as. guides~. For e.xample, in the fulfilled kingdom of God we shall be integrally human. We don't understand what human integrality is, but we do know some things it is not. We shall not be beasts, nor shall we be angels. The Catholic doctrine is that we shall have bodies, identifiably and recogniz~ably our own and, therefore, specific. We shall remain enfleshed. The imperfections and disabilities that are ours in this world will fall away. We have no detailed knowledge of the risen body, and both Saints Paul and A.ugustine remind us of the futility of speculation in this realm. Biat we know that we are not seeking a return to some "golden age'--back to the Garden of Eden in .order more fully to understand ourselves. Adam and ¯ Eve are not the models of our final humanness. Rather, Christ and.Mary the second Adam and second Eve as integral humans, integrally related and united, contain all the meaning of our authentic humanness. Toward a Theology of Health Care Thus we have a fourth fact: our fullmeaning will be found in Christ.and Mary integrally united with each other. In summary: in any discussion of our lives in the Church, we must remember some facts of faith: (l) our understanding of ourselves is to be found in the meaning of Christ's humanity; (2) that.~neaning includes our membership in a community set apart to serve and praise God, as he wills it; (3) in the present course of salvation history, we are disintegral and seek ¯ our fulfillment elsewhere, in the final Kingdom of God; (4) our full meaning as humans--as individual specific human beings incorporated into God's community' -is to be found in Christ and Mary, in the integral unfallen r~lationship between them. At this point, you might well be asking if I have indeed avoided the tempta~tion I mentioned at the beginning. These are general statements, it is true. But I believe they are necessary to locate our discussion. What they say, essentially, is that we do not live in a vacuum. Our lives, our options, and our meaning are not unlimited. There are precise, significant limita: tions in ourattempted service of God. These limitations are summed up in that term we use so often: "The Will of God." Yet the Will of God most often remains mysterious as it must, Since it is only in fulfillment that we shall know as we are known. But the mystery is not one of total ignorance. The boundaries in which that Will is to be followed have been :revealed to us, and the four facts I have mentioned above are a part of that boundary within which.~ we are:to act. Still, we must get more specific. You are not just women; you are Consecrated women. More, you are not just consecrated women; you are members of" the Franciscan Sisters Of Perpetual Adoration, and then, laboring in their Health Care Province. These facts also act as:bouridaries within which your .service of .Christ and of his Church occur. They are not restrictions in that service; rather they are charismatic delineations of your promiseit service. They represent ybur response to the needs of the community of God's People, a response prompted by the Charism of your foundress. That spirit is a determining factor in how you face the future of your apostolic commitment to ~the growth of God's kingdom qn the Church. But as we all know a charism is given to an individual for the good of the community, for the growth and' strengthening of the Lord's Body. And within that Body ~ there is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of services to be done, but always to the same Lord;oworking in all sorts of different w.ays in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is ,28 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 for a good purpose. One may have th, e gift of preaching with wisdom given him by the Spirit; another may have the gift of preaching instruction given him .by the same S.pirit; and another the gift of faith given b~- the same Spirit; anot ~her again the gift of'healing, through this one Spirit; one, the power of miracles; another, prophecy; another the gift of recognizing spirits; another the gift of tongues and another the ability to iiaterpret them. All these are the work of ofie and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different'people just a'~ he chooses" (1 Co 12:4-11). St. Paul goes on to discuss the Body of Christ, and says: "Now you together are Christ's body; but each of you is a different partof it'(12:27). We are each of us unique, a unique gift of Godto his Church and finally to his fulfilled kingdom. Each of, us I, you, each human .being has a unique, irreplaceable, never-to-be-repeated history with God. Each of us has been given an unrepea~ble set of talents and lack thereof, perfections and lack thereof, strengths and concomikant weaknesses. And each of us .has responded to God out of this being which is ours alone. Each.of us has lived in a perfectly irreproducible history, with relationships to other humans, to other segments of creation and to God. Each, in brief, brings to the Church and to God irreplaceable, unique gifts that cannot be substituted for by anyone else. And it is as individuals that we live in and help make up the commun, ity of God. We live in that community, bear responsibility in it, live out our love in it so deeply that our being a member of that community becomes an irreplaceable part of us and we of it. Although it may seem paradoxical, we are finally "communal individuals." As with each of us as ,individuals, so with those consecrated families of men and women within the Body of Christ. Each religious family--as with each Christian family has its own unique history in the Church, and unique gift to the Church, and unique service to the .People of God. In discussing our role in the Church, we must combine our'individual gifts and history with ~the mission that our religious family has offered to the Body of Christ and which that Body has accepted. We cannot, in brief, deny our gifts nor our history. This weekend you will be praying and Speaking fromoyour own history as a religious comm.unity and from your own gifts particularly your gifts of being women--and there I can be of no help to you. But I believe I can say some things of value with regard to your apostolic charism. And it is to a discussion of this apostolate that I intend to move now. It would be well to consider the place of the healtti care apostolate in the life of the Church. The Health Care Al~ostolate In the ninth chapter of thb Gospel according to St. Luke we. read: Toward a Theology of Health Care / 29 ~He [Jesus] called the Twelve together and ~gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. ~ This gives a clear link between proclaiming the kingdom of God and healing. Thus it is very important for us to articulate and specify the reasons for the Church's institutional presence in and through you and your partners and helpers in the apostolate of health care, or bett~r, of heating and caring. If the Church is going successfully to face decisive changes in health care, and if you are goings,to continue, and deepen, your service to the Church in caring and curing, it is necessary for us to understand as fully as possibie the Catholic dimensions of health care. What are the reasons for the Church's long and deep involvement in health care an involvement that has been so eloquently witnessed by the Work of your community for a century? Is health care--or let us say it better, the care of the sick, the aged, and the weak--is this care something that the Church entered upon historically because no one else was doing it? Or is there something in the very heart of Christian reality that calls forth no, demands such activity? I believe that each one of us here wouldin.stinctively, and rightly, respond that the care of the sick, the weak, and the aged is not peripheral 'to the Gospel. Rather we instinctively know that it is a duty imposed on us by the Lord. There are at least three central reasons for the Church's emphasis on the healing.apostolate that I would like to mention today. They are not exclusive in the sense that there are no others, nor are they cleanly separable from each other. But each of them is very important to our fuller understanding of what the. health care apostolate means to the Church. And each may be helpful as you discern your role of mission in, to, and for the Church. Tl~e ;Great Commandment .First, we have the "second greatest" commandment that our Lord passed on to us: to "love our neighbors as.we love ourselves." This, as we all know, is given a very concrete specification in chapter twenty-five of St. Matthew's gospel:. "For I vbas hungry and you gave.me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and yo.u made me welcome'; naked and you clothed me, sick and'you visited me, in prison and you'came to see me . Insofar as you did this to one of the leasLof these brothers of mine, you did it to me.~ The care of the ~sick, then, is one of the ways in which we Christians ~ / Re?iew for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 carry out that new and solemn command of Christ, given to .us on the night before he died to heal us all: "This is my commandment: 'love one ~nother as I have loved you." Before it is anything else, then, the care of the infirm is an immediate, direct response in charity to the love that our Lord has shown to us. In itself, this would be reason~ enough for the Church's presence in health care. But there are at least two other important aspects basic aspects, really to her involvement in this apostolic work as well. Messianic Sign The first of these'other-reasons can be found in the seventh chapte.r of St. Luke's gospel. The pertinent passage is solemn enough to permit a rather long citation: ,~The disciples of John gave him all this news [the healing of the centurion's servant and the raising from the dead of the.son of th~ widow of Nain, which Luke mentions immediately prior], and John, summoning two of his disciples.~, ~ent them to the'Lo'~-d to ask, "Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait° for someone else?" When the men ieached ~Jesus ¯ they said: "John the B~aptist has sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one °°°who is to come or have we'to wait for someone else?" " It was just then that he cured many people of diseases and afflictions and of evil spirits, and gave the" gift ~of sight to many ~. who were blind. Then he gave the messengers their answer: "Go back and tell John what you have seen and .o heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are Cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimedto the poo.r an.d happy is the man who does not lose faith in me." In this passage Jesus is, in effect, telling John the Baptist that he (Jesus) is doing that~work which Isaiah foretold would accompany the presence of the Messiah among his~ people. Thesd acts of healing were the oOnly credentials he would give to the one Who was to go before him. The blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, and so on, all these are witnesses to the presence of the Messiah among his people. Th'ey are the living witnesses to the da~vning of. the messianic times--the only witness John would receive. But now the Messiah arid Lord is still present to his people sacramentally in the Eucharist. And the Church~the .Bride in her health~ care apostolate, in her working to heal the sick and care for the infirm, witnesses to that eucharistic presen~ of the Lord. In her work to help~the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers be cleansed in all that-~-she says to us, and to the world, that the Messiah and Lord is still among-us. Thus, caring for: and healing the sick is a quasi-sacramental, witness .to the continuance of the messianic times inaugurated by Jesus Christ and continuing in the Church until he finally returns to us-in glory to make all Toward a Theology of Health Care things fight. The distress in the world illness~ decay, and death--which revelation tells ug is the result of sin, is slbwly being overcome in the Church, and will indeed be overcome completely in heaven. It is the task of the Church to witness to the life of him who is her life. By her existence she witnesseg to'his existence. By her involvement in the care for and healing of the ill, the oppressed, and the poor-:through your commitment and your devoted work--she says both that the Lbrd is still with us sacrfiment~illy, andthat; when he returns to us in all his glory, we shall all be healed of all our infirmities. Your work in hospitals, then, is a profound statement of our belief that the Lord is with rus still. Thus, on this score as well as that of a direct response in charity, the health care apostolate--since it witnesses to the messianic presence of Christ and to the sacramentality of the present age is central"t6 the faith, to Christian living. It is one of the mbst important .~iays we have to say that "ther6 is a new creation, the old creation has gone, and no~ the new one is here." A Church, that did not witness to the presence of the healing Christ through the~'caringfor and°curing the sick, would be radically unfaithful in her proclamation of the Good News of God's saving presence to his people. SO, let no one disturb you as to the importance, to the centrality to the faith, of your ~apostolic commitment. witness to the Last Time , Thirdly, through you who are engaged in health care as well as in other ways, the Church witnesses to her faith that.°ur bodies will rise to glory through God's powerful gift to us. The resurrection of ohr bodies is one of the great truths entrusted to the Church. It is also one of the truths that we h~,i,e great difficulty'~with, as did the Jews and Greeks. The Jewish Sadducees rejected the notion of the resurrection of the body, and the Greeks were content to.snigger and mock it. In the aftermath of St. Paul's speech in the Areopa~gus in Athens (Ac 17:30-33) we see this nonbelief: God overlooked that sort of thing [thinking that the deity looks like anything in gold, silver, or stone that has been carved and designed by a man] when men were ignorant, but now he is telling everyone everywhere that they must repent, because he has fixed a day when the whole world will be judg&d, and judged in righteousness, and he has appointed a man to be the judge. And God 'has publiciy proved this by raising this man from the dead.- At this mention of rising from the dead, some of them burst out ~ laughing; 6thers said; "We. would like to hear you talk about this again." But it is that ill, corruptible, even corrupting body in the doctor's office ¯ or in the hospital bed that will ris6 into glory! It is that body which you ~2 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb:, 1986 wash or soothe or treat that will be with God forever. There is a serious need right now for the Church to make her instincts on the meaning and significanc~e of the human .body !n our salvation and glorificatio.n more But even now, despite our ignorance, there'are still some things we can s.ay, though not as ~well as we should b~ able. We are not, for exam~ple, saved and glorified in g.eneralities, but in our particularities. We shall, be saved~and glorified as men or. women, as white, black, yellow, or red, as persons of a definite time and place and ethnic background. Our glorified bodies will not be some kind of "generalized matter." These bodies of ours mine and each of yours--are the only. way in which our spirits are manifested in created reality. Our bodies are, and will continue to be, the unique material signature 9four spirits in creation. My spirit,.y0ur spirit., cannot manifest themselves in any old body, but only in my body, on.ly in your body. The union of body ~and spirit that is I--that unique harmony that alone is I is very specific, now and in heaven. This conclusion comes directly from the Church~s dogmati~ position that we shall rise phy.sic.ally, and recognizably ourselves. The health care apostolate--the care of specific people with specific problems, real people who.hurt is one of the most impo .r?tant ways that the Church, the Bride of Christ, has of proclaiming the truth that our bodies, in all their particularities, are sig0ificant, are good, are holy, are-to be saved, are to be glorified. We shall return to this ~notion later on, but for now let us merely say that this belief in, and witness to, the resurrection of our own bodies gives a further intrinsic meaning to the (~hurch's institu-tional concern with and commitment to the healing of the body and caring for the sick. You are saying, by your touch, that this body is significant to salvation and glorification. Changes in Mi~dical Practice ~o ~ It needs no stating here that, as in many other areas of Catiaolic life, there are quite severe stresses in the Catholic health apostolate. This should corrie as no surpris~ to any of us. In fact, if these stresses were not present, we could only conclude either that our health institutions were not providing modern health care, or .that these institutions were no longer Catholic. Since neither conclusion is true, stress is inevitable. Tensions and problems arise from many sources: from profound changes in medical practice itself; from a growing shortage of nuns in ~the health care apostolate; from. a.loss of control of hospital administration and policy; from increasing governmental intervention in health care; and, finally, °from some of the same confusion that is present in the rest of Catholic life. Toward a lheology of Health Care Here, I shall consider only some of the profound changes in medical practice that have occurred in the last quarter century, Even within that relatively narrow area I intend to mention only two aspects, hardware and attitudes. We are aware of the growth of technological medicine which has placed so much new hard~vare between the patient and the doctor, and has raised the cost of medicine so much. This does not imply that technological medicine is bad or is inappropriate, merely that it is different. But the new technology does tend to separate the doctor or nurse from the patient. It tends to emphasize "cure" as "care." It can make the practice of medicine seem more .mysterious and less tiuman to the "patient.' Finally, the proliferation of hardware could (although not necessarily Will) lead the health care professional to an unconscious, indeliberate attitude ~that~the patient is some sort of a "thing" to be "repaired." The growth of this kind of attitude toward patients is but a part of the growth of a technological point of view foward human beings that is occurring in almost all phrts' of western societY. A question for health-care professionals, as for all of our society, is whether or not we are beginning to "lo0k oh human beings as some,things, to be manipulated at whim. The increase in medical technology,.of "hardware," between the patient and the health-care professional demands our attention, but it is not the greatest change inthe practice of medicine in the past twenty-five years. ,Up till now, the greatest impact of this increase in medical technology has probably been in the realm of cost. But the attitudes that can be engendered should not be overlooked. We cab leave this for~a moment so as to look ata far more'profound, and far less discussed, change in medical practice. A ,New Def'mition of Health 0 . Several years ago the ~World Health~Organization (WHO) developed ~and promulgated a new definition of health that reflects a significant shift in 'medical practice. To an extent, this shift is the source of much of the stress in the health-care apostolate. I used a relatively, neutral term--~ reflects--to describe the activity of WHO. To say that the WHO definition caused the shift would be an overstatement. Probably it would be more accurate to state that the WHO definition reflected a Change in attitude already well begun. Whatever cause and effect may be, there is a significant difference between the WHO definition and what most of us lay people think medicine (and health care) has been and ought to be. WHO defined "health" as a state of complete physical mental and social well-being. With a new definition of "health" can new definitions of .34 /.Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 "health care" be far behind? There are several key words in the WHO definitio~n th.at ought to be looked at carefully since ~hey imply a shift even a radical shift in our understanding of health care. The first word that needs consideration is "complete." "Complete" contains a very c.urious notion indeed. This word would have us believe, against all available evidence, that complete well-being is available in °this life. If one were so inclined, one could find in the concept of complete well-being a.denial of many Christian beliefs, from a denial of original sin to a denial of the existence of heaven. Christianity, through its teachingon original sin, warns us against expecting complete well-being on any level, in this world. It is only in heaven that total human justice and well-being will be achieved. The WHO definition, at this level, becomes a salvational statement, premised on the notion that salvation (complete healing of our ills) is achievable somehow through human knowledge. But let's not pursue this aspect any further here.Just on the pragmatic level, we all live with the knowledge that we are all going to die sometime. That knowledge in itself is incompatible with "complete well-being." Perhaps the word "complete" was thrown, into the definition just to make it look better. Still, in a world where health-care resources are at best gravely limit~ed, and where costs are. extremely high and getting higher, the notion of "complete. well-being" is nonsense. More, it is, as has been stated, anti-Christian if it is taken seriously. Health as Social Well-being Perhaps the most significant concept in the definition, insofar as it impacts on Catholic health care, is the relation of "health'~' to "social well-being." This statement reflects probably the greatest single shift in medical practice over the last thirty years, and the one of most immediate concern to the Catholic understanding of health care. It is centered in ttiose "medical" practices that have most agitated Catholics in health care;. the wide-spread dispensing of contraceptive medications and mood-altering drugs, abortion, and contraceptive sterilizations. They all find their rationale in the phrase "complete. social well-being." Most dispensation of contraceptive pills, IUD's, and so forth, have had very little.to do with the physical state of the women to whom they were given: The same, of course; can be said of abortion, contraceptive sterilization, and of course, the pervasive use of mood-expanding and mood-depressing drugs.¯ More often than not, the contraceptive and abortive technologies are resortedto for socio-economic reasons, or simply because the "patient" (or should we say "client"?.) did not~esire another baby. The use of these technologies, in by° far the largest number of cases, .does not serve the-pursuit of physical Toward a Theology of Health Care health, but rather the woman's (or her consort's) quest for convenience, the absence of distress, material possessions, and so f6rth. In a word, the health care profession has efitered--with seemingly little reflection into the "happiness-business." "This means," as George Will has stated in an article in The Washington Post, "that happiness is a medical commodity; happiness is the doctor's business. That, in turn, means almost everything is the doctor's business, so. medicine becomes a classification that excludes nothing, and hence does not classify." This change of attitiade in medical practice is of enormous implication" and concern for Catholic health care. Is the Catholic health concern to be directed exclusively to the removal of pathological barriers to good health and/or to 'the alleviation'of physical painand distress? or is it to be directed to "happiness," to "complete. social well-being"? This is~an immediate and very seribus question. And it is a questi.6n that is going to grow even more urgent in~,the future. Here, it might be well to look ahead just a bit to get a wider perspective of what these questions imply for Catholics, both individuals and institu-tions, in the rest of this century. . Future Questions There is a very good chance that the notion of"health" as "complete. social well-being': could easily become, within the next twenty-five years, the "complete. :. well-being of society. "This is not atall as farfetched as it may seem at first blush. Letus look at this carefully because it will have an almost unimaginable effect on the Church herself and, hence, on her institutional health care apostolate. We are now facing the greatest technological (as well as cultural and especially religious) challenge we human beings have ever know~f: the growing capacity technologically to master ourselves: For the first time in human history we.face a technological Challenge so powerful that it will have to be met primarily in terms of human ends; not merel3~ in t~rms of' techniques, means, and instrumentalities. These new techniques are so "powerful that any overreliance upon "bioethics," or even medical-moral theology, will be misplaced. The grave problem both for society and for the Church is one of meaning, not one of means. Among other things, any understanding of medical practice--in the light of emerging biotechnologies and bio-industries--must include the contemporary scientific-technological frame of mind out of which value judgments are most likdy to be made. The scientific-technological frame of mind is basically instrumental, since it has grown out of a mathematical worldview. That frame of mind looks on all things, human beings included, as essentially quantifiable and ~16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 manipulable. Michael Zimmerman has stated it most succinctly: "For us [contemporary humanity] to be means to be re-presented, or transformed and rearranged, according to. our desires and projects." As science and technology increasingly turn. toward knowledge of and power over the human., this spirit of transformation, applied to society on a broad scale, will become increasingly worrisome. Will our society feel that these new technologies will achieve their l~otential on an ad hoc, individual level? It seems doubtful. Rather, it seems° more likely that it will be decided that the full potential of biotechnology and bio-industry .can. be achieved only through systematic application across the society, i,e., by a methodical and methodological application. A~ .systematic technological intervention into the human requires some con-trolling ideological consensus of what it means to be human. These new p0we~, to be applie~d systematically on a society-wide basis, must be tied to some dominant notion of the human. It is important to discover which systdm is likely tO be dominant. With biotechnological capability, the dominant notion of medicine will no longer be returning people to some generally accepted norm of health, but rather the creation of new norms of health. That is to say that these new capacities will be directed finally to building new human beings. Th~ principal reason for any society-wide application of biomedichl or biogenetiC technologies is more order, less randomness, in the human situatibn. In consid~ering changes in the human to be passed on to future generations in order to develop new norms of health, one is really talking about eugenics. It is necessary for us to realize that the proposals being made for the use of biotechnological power will be directly aimed at buildi~ng a eugenic, society. Any.s0ciety-wide advance in improving the human stock will inevitably demand new criteria for social (and medical) judgment. As we move from con~ei'n for the physical health of individuals to the well-being of society, br 6f the species, what criteria will be applied to the medical use of bio-scientific discovery? It is most likely one is tempted to say necessary that the criteria for the social applications of, bioscience will be,the basic canons of-experimental science0wedded to the desires and demands.of the dominant cultural system. The three canons of experimental science are simplicity, predictability and reproducibility. In the. technological mode, "simplicity" becrmeso efficiency. Any rational attempt at eugenics demands a "predictable" product. Without such a predictable result, one might as well be content with what we have now. Moreover, if these predictable results are not "reproducible,~' eugenics must remain a fleeting dream, because random- Toward a Theology of Health Care ness will not have been overcome. As the philosopher, Charles Frankel, has stated: The most astonishing question of all po~ed by the advent of biomedicine, . probably, is why adults of high intelligence and considerable education so regularly, give themselves, on slight and doubtful provocation, to unbounded plans for remaking the race . Wight unites the Puritan radicals, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and the Maoists is the deliberate intention to create a "new man," to redo the human creature by design [italics mine] . The partisans of large-scale eugenics plannings, the Nazis aside, have usually .been people of notable humanitarian sentiments. They seem not to hear themselves. It is that other music that they hear, the music that says that there shall be nothing random in the world, nothing independent, nothing moved by its own vitality, nothing out of keeping with some idea: even our own children must not be our progeny but our creation. This "nothing random," "nothing ind.ependent" is the hallmark of experimental science. In the laboratory, the. system under investigation must be as tightly closed as possible. No random variations can be tolerated if the results are to be,reproducible. If the variables cannot be accounted for and controlled, no valid experimentation is possible. The systematic social application of biotechnology based on the canons of experimental science demands the closing ~of the social system and demands that no random, uncontrolled variations take place. In brief, the social system will have to become :the laboratory. Laboratory science is necessarily based on quantification and requires complgte freedom to transform and rearrange the 15asic structure of matter. If such science is to be applied to human beings in any kind 0f a collective fashion, it will demand the unrestricted control of social life. Judging from proposals now being made by many social planners not .to be confused with sociologists these technologies will be used in such a systematic fashion. We,can already see an example of this in the "culling process" in the widespread practice of abortion for :'fetal indications" to remove the burden of the care of such persons from society. The widespread socially orientate°d application of biotechnology~ will not be directed toward individual therapy, as medicine has been in the past. At best such application can be said to be "therapeutic" for society, for the "good of the species," or for some other abstraction. The notion of "nothing random in the world, nothing independent, nothing moved by its own vitality, nothing out of keeping with some idea" should alert us immediately to the source of the dominant social ideal being presented to us as the basis of the social use of these novel technologies. We have here~ ~11 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 in fact, a Gnostic salvation scheme that is essentially anti-Christian: "Gnostic" is taken from the Greek word for knowledge and refers to all those heresies that would provide salvation through human knowledge. Here we have anothel in a long list of salvation schemes oriented toward that final state When justice, .achieved solely through human effort, ~ will pervade the eiirth in historical time. It postulates the temporal perfectibility of the human and of creation. Biotechnology ra.ises questions that have to do with ends and purposes,~that depend on a deep understanding of the human. !n recent "advances," the question has always been set by the "innovator." The question has always been posed in favor, of the specific short term goal of the innovator; usually in a sentimental form. Take the three great reproductive ~technologies of the last twenty-five years: contra-ceptibn,~ abortion, and °"test-tube babies." In none of the issues has the question been posed beyohd short-term individual effects. Thes~ questions (with the answer almost~given) have been: "How can you think of denying people the techhology available to regulate and control the number of children they will have?" ',How can you deny a woman the ~right to those technologies.that will guarantee her control over her own body?" "How can you deny a~marfied couple, deeply in love,.a biological child of their own?" There is a thread common to each of these questions. They ignore history. They take for granted that individual acks of people ("between consenting adults, and so forth") are self-contained and have no relevance either for society or history. Nonetheless, the broadei" questions, must posed. The. meaning of the technology involved in things like contraception, abortion, and in vitro fertilization is critical in any approach to Catholic health care. Across the biotechnological spectrum we have moved from "sex without babies" (contraception and abortion) to "babies without sex" (in vitro fertilization and cloning.) ~ ~ The separation of sexual union from procreation (through contracep-tion and abortion) was, and is, necessary to build a social attitude willing to consider a~ human being as a product of technological achievement, as we now have with the successful birth of a "test-tube baby.," We 6annot allow ourselves to look at these new technologie.s only in themselves, without connection either to What has come before and what is most likely coming in the future. To treat them only in-themselves is to forego qiving in history,~ As has been stated several times, the essential question facing us in' the advance of biological science, technology, and industry (along with its implication for rriedicine) is ~-what it means to be human. We must face squarely whatever costs to human freedom and dignity that might be Toward a Theology of Health Care involved in these new technologies. In vitro fertilization, for instance, is not only some benign new technique that' will be used only to help"~ some Unfortunate, infertile couple have its own biological child. It can provide such an opportunity, but it is also the linchpin in the construction of a fully orchestrated eugenics program. We would be naive, even blind, if we ignore the eugenic probabilities thus opened up. o : Our society and this is especially needed in the Catholic approach to medicine--still has the opportunity to decide what description of "the human" it wishes to call its own. A society based on:laboratory models and techniques is not inevitable unless'we choose either the description of the human as essentially malleable, tO be transformed; to be rearranged, to be disposed of at Will, or else choose not to. think about these things at all; There is already sufficient momentum built into biotechnological advance to arouse serious anxiety unless we clearly and cleanly face ~in issue whose outcome is so momentous to our society and especially to the Church. To do nothing in:this matter-is a powerful statement in favor of'this momentum. And the apostolate of health care will be the first to feel this challenge. '~ ~ What Now? :When St., Paul was dragged before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, he exclaimed: "It is for our hope in the resurrection of the dead that° I am on trial'~ (Ac 23:6). And it is for our belief in the resurrection of the body that we are .on trial today. And nowhere does this trial have a greater impact than on those religious whose life is dedicated to the care and cure of the sick and the infirm. As was mentioned earlier, one of the faith-bases of our health care apostolate as an institutional involvement of the Church is the witness to ther meaning, the significance and dignity, 6f the human body in our salvation and glorification. We are not spirits using a body that we will some day leave behind, nor bodies merely moved by a spirit. We are the harmonious union of body and spirit. Neither "aspect of that union can be enhanced at the expense of the' other; neither can be mutilated 'for the sake of the other. Much of our .medical. (and social) attitudes toward the body are at least implicitly dualistic. We speak and act as though we were "persons" (somehow really disembodied) using a body. Often enough we seem to consider our personality as purely spiritual. This simply is not true! Our personalit3~ is spiritual-material. We are not,: nor will we ever angels. We cannot treat our bodies merely at whim without inflicting severe damage on ourselves. Many (if not all) of the reasons given for the nontherapeutic practices in medicin are couched in terms expressive of the 40 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 dualism of "using my body" or having "control over my body.", This is true, by the way, even of the majority report of the Papal Birth-Control Commission prigr to the issuance of Humanae ~Vitae. Despite its overwhelming concentration on the body, the modern attitude, even the medical attitude, is basically spiritualistic. This is seen even in the use of "person" in. liberation rhetoric. In essence, it is a call for "neuterization.'. There are no "persons"~ in this sense in which the word is so often used. There are rather on.ly womenoand men~ Persons are by nature specifically bodies, as men or women, as black,° yellow, red, or white, with a specific ethnic backgrgund, and so on. We are not,going to be saved and glorified as a "human~_nature.'' We are going to be saved as ourselves and this includes our accidents as well as our substance. The Catholic Premise It is n_ecessary for us as Catholics to develop a deeper,, more explicit u~nderstaiading of our bodies. This burden of enriching the Church falls on cache.of us, but most urgently on theologians (the~ theoreticians) and on those health-care professionals (the practitioners) working together in a communal defense of the Church's very profound instinct about the holiness and sacramentality of our bodied existence. It is in the area of ah explicit doctrinal understanding of that.sacredness and sacramentality that our approach to, such~questions as technologies of contraception, abortion, contraceptive sterilization and laboratory conception must be made. Here especially, male and female, practitioner and theoretician, we must all work together in a fruitful, enlightening, enriching defense of the sacramentality and holiness of bodied life. Together,-we must recognize~ defend, and enrich the Church's instinct that we worship God only as the bodied creatures he made us. Continually the Church i~ accused of "physicalism" in her understanding of sexual morality .--~-~ and, let's face it squarely, most of the complaints raised about the Church's, position on many medical practices are concerned with reproductive technologies of one kind or another. ~VCe hear very few, if any, complaints about the Church's position on the use of prosthetic devices artificial limbs,:pacemakers, or (sometime in the future) the implantation of microprocessing chips in the brain to enhance our calculational ability. No, the .real arena, of struggle is reproductive medicine. And here the Church is.accused--both by doctors and moral theologians, or ethicists as they like.to be called now of physicalism because it defends "the natural.,," But what is really involved in this "defense of the natural" is not a blind anti-technological stance, nor is it prudery, nor is it physicalism, nor.is it some kind of old-fashioned nostalgia. Rather, it is the Church's realization Toward a Theology of Health Care / 41 that, male and female, we are in the image of God, and that our sexuality is absolutely tied to our worship of God. The Church's stance is not anti-technology, but it is pro-worship. This has many :more doctrinal ramifica-tions than we can go into here, but it at least means that we cannot technologically interrupt or short-circuit the woi'shipful communication of life-giving potentiality. This is not some old-fashioned "physicalist" view, as some moralists would have us believe. The Church's view is rather hopeful proclamation that we spiritual-material creatures can escape the narrow-ness and absurdity that comes from the consideration of our bodies as "secularized," without sacramental, life-giving, value. Thus, both on the level of dedication to health care and as women, you have the burden and opportunity of enriching the Church's understanding of our bodied life. This is one very significant aspect of your lives as women in the Church. Your vocation places you at the point of conflict on two whole sets of issues. The first is the true exaltation of the feminine both in the Church and in society. The second is health care: The world is telling us that the prime function of the body--and especially of a woman's body---is pleasure. It is saying equivalently that it is an elegant toy. But as Christian men and women, we must say that it is far more than that. Apart from anything else it is a vehicle of the sacramental imparting of the Holy Spirit. Not even God can affect us without some, bgdily medium--(though perhaps 1 had better be careful about saying what God cannot do!) Mar~ ~s Model In terms of your lives in the Church, I would venture only one suggestion, andl I will cast that in a paraphrase of St. Paul's statement to the Philippians: "Let that heart be in you that w.as in Mary." I believe this is tremendously important. The place of Mary in salvation history has not been as fully developed as it can be; It has not been sufficiently pondered. She has, on the contrary, been treated in a very shallow, even if chivalric fashion--"One just can't say enough nice things about Mary." So much of the writing (and praising) of Mary could .almost be summed up in the words of the song "Oh, look at her; ain't she pretty?" But the Mary I'm suggesting to you is one with a terrible, vocation; to stand at the foot of the cross and accept that horror and pain into,her life, There was nothing sweet or sentimental.about it. She had to accept that her Son, part of her,~ was dying. In a sense, she had to ratify in her life the fulfillment of Christ's life on earth (death and resurrection) as she had ratified his humanity (in the Incarnation). Let us look to Mary. As the Fathers of Vatican II have stated (Lumen Gentium, nn. 55-56): 42 Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 She stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently await and receive salvation from him. With her, the exalted Daughter of Sio.n, and after a long expectation of the promise, the times were at length fulfilled and.'the new.dispe~nsation established. All this occurred when the Son of. God, took a human nature from her, that he might in th~ mysteries of his flesh free man from sin~ ~ ° The Father of mercies willed that the consent of the predestined mother sliould precede the Incarnation, so that just as a woman contributed to death, so also a woman should contribute tO life. This contrast" w~ verified in.outstanding fashion by the mother of Jesus. She gave to the world that very life which renews all things, and she was enriched by God with gifts befitting such a role. The unity inherent in the "two-in-one flesh" theme (see Gn 2:14 and Ep 5) is the unity of Christ and-his mother at the moment of the Incarnation the unity by which the Holy Trinity is truly present in history. That unity is the creation of the Church at Pentecost in which the Holy Spirit is truly given. The Church is constituted, as Mary is constituted, by the~presence of the Spirit which is the gift of Christ, a creative Spirit. That unity is constituted also in the worship of the Church in. which the Church comes to be by the presence of her Risen Lord in that sacrifice by which he saves. That statement may seem on a first.hearing to be somewhat vague and abstract, so let'stry to make it clearer. Mary's place in'God's saving history was to be asked to accept God's New Covenant with his people. She said "Yes." And that New Covenant that God offered was the Son of God-made-flesh.' Mary's accepta~nce was not merely passive. Her receptivity was creative; the.humanity of Christ was her gift--remember the Council's words "The Son of God tOok a human nature from her. "' At that point Mary and Christ enter into a relationship of the masculine and the feminine that is integral (both are sinless), total, and which will endure forever. It is that relationship (again of masculine and feminine), that "two-in-one-flesh" unity of Christ and Mary, which provides the meaning of the fully redeemed creation. Please note several things here:°we are not putting Maryand Christ on the same level, either as though Mary were divine or Christ"only human; we are not talking about a relationship that we Understand ° it is a union that is integral, i.e., fully redeemed. We don't understaiad this, but we can make some statements. Mary is the ideal and exemplar (see Lumen Gentium, n. 63) of the Church now and of the whole creation ultimately perfected. Mary is the true and full splendor of the created order. She stands in a relationship with Christ in terms of her femininity. Because she is the mother of God, Toward a Theology of Health Care Theotokos, she is understood as the model and archetype of the Church. If creation in Christ (creation fully reestablished and conformed to the Father's will) is the meaning of creation, then Mary is the one complete creature ever created. Her constitution as immaculate expresses the truth not only of the feminine but also of creation and of the Church, a °truth summed up in the term "Mother of God." Or again as Vatican II says (Lumen Gentium, n. 68): In the bodily and spiritual glory which she possesses in heaven, the Mother of jesus contihues in this present world as the image and first flowering of the Church as she is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, Mary shines forth on earth, until the day the Lord shall come (see 2 P 3:10), as a sign of sure hope for the pilgrim People of God. Finally, .let us note one more thing. We usualJy associate Mary's virginity with God himself being the Father of Christ; that is to say, the fact of no human male intervention in the birth of Christ accounts for her virginity. But that is merely a factual explanation that does. not even approach the depths of this mystery. It is of enormous importance for us to note that Mary's virginity is fruitful in a child. This is something that we less-than-integral, sinful, creatures cannot yet understand. But if Mary is indeed the exemplar and splendor of creation--and as the mother of the Body of Christ in all its aspects, she is--then somehow fruitful virginity will be the final human posture in the perfected creation. Somehow or other, as fulfilled in Mary, the splendor, the fullness of creation is feminine. Please remember that what I have been talking about is terribly mysterious, and none of us knows any detail, nor, indeed the full reality. In a sense, I have been. discussing poetry rather than a well worked out theology. But that theology has to come; the truth of the feminine depends on it. And it has to come from the prayerful, feminindy devoted lives of women in the Church. Conclusion Well, then, where does all this leave us? Particularly, where does it leave women in the Church who have promised their lives to Christ in the mission of healing? It leaves them precisely where most of us would rather not be, namely, at the intersection of those two lines of severe conflict that I mentioned earlier. They stand with, and in some way as an extension of, Mary, at the foot of the cross. This was her sublime call, to accept within her life first that child whose Incarnation in her was the will of the Father. Then she had to accept within herself the death of that one whose life she had spent her life serving. 44 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 I do not believe that it is old-fashioned or wrong-headed to state that women's love is especially creative. It is the life of the woman to accept, and having accepted, to nurture new life. We are waiting for that continuing new life in the Church. All that I have offered here is another invitation to the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. All I can say about this is that there is a good precedent for the offer. To fulfill their lives as women in the Church committed to the service and healing of the ill, the aged, the infirm, religious women in the health-care profession witness to the radical importance and significance of womanhood and the healing love of God. On both accounts they will be reviled by the contemporary world. God offered the First Covenant and the Last Covehant to women: to Eve who refused to nurture it and so brought no new life to the world, and to Mary who did accept it and brought forth and nurtured that new life who is the Christ. Adam's ratification of Eve's refusal brought death; Christ's ratification, of Mary's ac~ceptance brought life. (Note that both the male and the female are involved in both covenantaloffers). The cross! I remember vividly one of the.episodes that Fr. Teilhard de Chardin wrote about in one of his books. He was writing of his life as a chaplain in the French army at Verdun in 1916. On one afternoon there was a more than usually brutal battle for a small hill called Froideterre. Shortly afterward in a moment of quiet, Teilhard reflected in his diary on the battle of Froideterre. He mentioned the total absurdity in which all these young men died. Then he thought to himself that someday the French government would erect a monument on that hill and wondered what that monument ought to be. It occurred to him that, in view of the horror and absurdity of that battle, only a cross could memorialize that battlefield; only in the Cross could such absurdity be redeemed. In our own lives, too, the absurdity can be redeemed only in the cross. Only there shall we find any meaning for ourselves. The Lord God never promised us anything in this world save a share in his Cross. I hope I have intimated that there are enormous riches embedded in the Church's demand that we consider our bodied lives as worshipful and worhipping--that we take ourselves, spiritual-material creatures, as seriously as God. Our bodies are not toys; they are temples of the Spirit of the living God. There are no answers presented in these statements. The only real answer we can give is our lived response to God's offers to us. It is here, and only here, although it requires much faith and effort, that we can base the health care apostolate and your womanly lives in the mission of healing this sadly abused world and its people. Unoriginal Sin and the Grace of the Ordinary Rachel Callahan, C.S. C. In the issue of March/April, 1985, Sister Callahan contributed her article, "The Grace of the Ordinary." Now she takes up the theme again. Sister may still be addressed at the C.S.C. Consultation Center; P.O. Box 1521; Adelphi, Maryland 20783. Sin and grace. There is a paradox in how these two separate, not only distinct but apparently contradictory realities are so enmeshed in the human experience. This article is written out of a profound sense of grati-tude that everything, including our sinfulness, can be "grace" because of the transforming touch of a God who calls himself Love. When I was a child growing up in a small New England town which still had its ethnic parishes, one of my Irish aunts always used to go to the Italian parish for confession. I asked her why she did this. She laughed and told me that no matter what she said to the old Italian pastor he always listened and said in his still broken English: "Now for you penance, once the beads--and go and sin some more." The man was legendary in town as a down-to-earth, holy person who reached out to everyone. While his send-off from the sacrament might at first sight :seem a little unorthodox, it was profoundly real. My aunt never thought it was broken English but only good human sense. When we stop to reflect on the human experience, sometimes it's hard to separate sin and grace. My most gracious actions which genuinely further the kingdom are tainted by motives of selfishness or pride. My most secret or frightening sin carries seeds of grace. Human motivation is so complex that to try to sort out categorically all the sin from the grace can sometimes lead to an inward-turning self-absorption so that energy for 45 46 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 the-kingdom gets lost. This is in no way meant to deny the reality and efficacy of discernment of spirits but only to suggest that in the complexity of human experience we try not to be too judgmental even witli ourselves. The Lord reminds us that the wheat and the chaff grow together till the harvest. Becoming a grim reaper of the weeds will also damage the wheat. In a splendid little book, What Are They Saying About the Grace of Christ?, Brian McDermott, S.J., offers this observation: we need to acknowledge in our quest for social justice and systemic change that to eradicate sin completely from the social structures would in all probability destroy the structure with whatever limited capacity it might contain for good. This doesn't suggest any less dedicated commitment to social justice but simply the reality that in human experience sin and grace are often embedded together. In order to look at this a little more closely let's examine the notions of grace and sin as developmental phenomena. McDermott looks at grace through five vantage points which might be considered developmental stages, certainly not static events. The first moment is grace as accep-tancemi. e, that bed rock, deliciously wonderful good news that God loves us unconditionally, just as we are, no strings attached. This quite over-whelming good news is from our beginning but often our awareness of this is gradual. The deepening, ongoing realization of this reality is the lifelong gracious project that our faithful God has for us. ¯ The second moment of grace is conversion. When Jesus came to his public ministry, the people that drew his special attention were the sick, the sinners, and the Pharisees. Wonderful news he ate with sinners, with the outcast! McDermott points out two foci of conversion. The conversion that we ordinarily think about is Jesus' offer of gracious liberation to the sinner to be converted from his/her sin and the guilt which weighs down, demeans, focuses in on self in condemnation. McDermott highlights another kind of invitation to conversion,-one quite startling. Jesus offered to the Pharisees the invitation to be converted from their goodness. The Pharisees are portrayed as preoccupied with their own goodness, claiming it as their own, and profoundly self-absorbed in their own righteousness. It is a somewhat jarring notion to consider being converted from our goodness. After all, isn't that precisely what we are called to become: more and more "perfect'--(only Lk 6:36 says "compassionate"). But the point is that our focus needs to be on the good God. We are invited to let God be God, i.e., Love, and not be terribly pre-occupied with our spiritual bank accounts. God's grace can never be overdrawn! Both of the movements, the conversion from sin and the equally important conversion from good-ness move us away from self-absorption towards un-self-focused celebration. Unoriginal Sin / 47 God ,saves us and sets us free from both our sin and our goodness. The next three moments of grace ar6 closely linked--discipleship, community, and service. Being learner, student of Jesus, listening, hearing in n~w ways is never finished. As the gracious God works with me I become a "we" person, ministering to and being nourished by the most ordinary kinds of human interactions so that finally the good news of how much I/we are loved gets fleshed out in service. What is amazing is how patient God is in all of this and how impatient we can be. We often try to "run" in his service before we let ourselves "be held" by his acceptance. Early experience of call and vocation often appeals to the desire to serve at a time in human development when we dream great dreams of doing great deeds. And years later, as we live into our limits and learn more and more that all is grace, we learn that God's love is what counts more than our own generosity. Now how does sin fit into this picture. Do we dare think even meta-phorically about sin as grace? First of all, I am using the word "sin" in the biblical sense. One common biblical notion of sin means essentially "miss-ing the mark." Jesus knows how proficient we are at missing the mark. We are by very reason of our human-ness "missers-of-the-mark." Each of us carries not only the generic woundedness of being sons and daughters of Eve and Adam but we ~lso carry what I observe as a psychologist: our own "personalized original sin"--those deficits or traumas in our back-ground that predispose each of us towards brokenness and missing the mark. Let's look at a few examples. Early deficits in parenting, not because of parental malice but because of parental limitations, .or circumstances such as death, illness, or poverty can leave a person bruised or perpetually "hungry." Ordinary needs for nurturance and attention are experienced more intensely, leaving a person feeling very vulnerable or very entitled. Unconscious wishes to make up for deprivation in this area can lead to difficulties in relationship. Either clinging, "take care of me" behaviors or an "I don't need anybody" stance can create interpersonal~problems. And until a person understands and works through this he or she is somewhat captive to these unconscious pulls. Another example of this personalized original sin is genetic makeup. The longer that I work with individuals in therapy the more respectful I become of genetic realities which impact personal!ty as well as hair color. Some persons are more predisposed towards depression, which is a psy-chobiological reality, not simply an emotional state. Studies show a famil-ial pattern in this which suggests both nature and nurture at work. We know that how we think can influence how we feel, and that persons suffering from depression often have to do some work to correct crooked 411 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 thinking, But we also know that this phenomenon is a chemical reality and often needs chemical intervention, much in the same vein that a person with diabetes or malfunctioning thyroid needs medication to balance the system. Anyone who has ever struggled with the day in, day out miasma of a real depression knows that it is not only very painful but also that, despite the fact that many people carry on their lives reasonably effectively, when depressed, one often feels himself or herself to be no good, doing nothing right. Since sometimes we make the mistake of confusing feelings with reality--e.g., "I feel like a bad person, therefore I am a bad person"--these negative feelings about self produce guilt and hopelessness, and it's easy to magnify one's sense of sinfulness in ways that are paralytic. Fortunately combinations of cognitive therapy, exercises and medication, if needed, are very effective in reversing this condition which has a genetic

Issue 18.5 of the Review for Religious, 1959. ; ~ Review for Religious SEPTEMBER 15, 1959 Friendship'~ Among Religious By Columban Browning, C.P. 257 Conquering Serious Sin By John C. Schwarz, S.J. Perpetual Vows, ~ By Hugo j. Gerleman, S.J. Mother Anna Tabouret By Sister Mary Kenneth, H.H.M. 265 273 279 Survey of Roman Documents Views, Newsi Previe~ ~ Questions and Answers Book ReviewsEi" VOLUME 18 293. 3bo 303 °- NUMBEK 5 Volume 18 Septem.ber 15~ 1959 Number 5 OUR CONTRIBUTORS REV. COLUMBAN BROWNING is stationed at Mother of Good Counsel Seminary~ Warrenton, Missouri. REV. JOHN C. SCHWARZ is stationed at 892 W. Boston, Detroit 2, Michigan. REV. HUGO J. GERLEMAN is instructor of tertians at St. Joseph Hall, 2601 North Union, Decatur, Illinois. SISTER MARY KENNETH is stationed at 17435 Northwood Avenue, Lakewood 7, Ohio. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, Sept. 1959, Vol. 18, No. 5. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Edited by the .Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ec-clesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mis-souri. Copyright, 1959, "by The Queen's Work. Subscription price'in Ior. S. A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Editor: R. F. Smith, S.J. Associate Editors: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly,, S.J.; Henry Willmering, S.J. Assistant Editors: John E. Becker, S.J.; Robert F. Weiss, S.J: Departmental Editors: Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; E~arl A. Weis, S.J. Please send all renewals, new subscriptions, and business correspondence to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Please send all manuscripts and editorial correspondence to: Review for Religious, St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. Friendship Among Religious Columban Browning~ C.P. IT WOULD BE HARD to find a religious who has not been warned about the dan'ger of particular friendship. It would be equally hard to find a religious who has not experienced an amount of conflict in striving for a balanced attitude toward friendship. Most religious have heard the warning about particu-lar fr.iendship many.~times: in the novitiate, in retreats, in monthly conferences, and in spiritual books. The warning about false friendship is, of course, a very necessary one. There can be a real danger of forming an exclusive friendship that hinders a religious in the singular love of God that is the primary goal of the 'religious life. Such a friendship can even become a serious threat to the chastity that religious pro-fess. Religious souls sacrifice the normal outlets of their emotions which other young people find in the married state. Since com-plete adjustment to a life of chastity is not always easily attained, there is a natural tendency for religious to seek emotional com-pensation in those closest to them, namely, their fellow religious. The danger of this is greatly aggravated in one who is not fully mature in his emotional life. And it is often a common danger for those who are new in the religious life. These newcomers in the religious life are in a process of adjustment, and it is easy to understand that they may meet with an amount of emotional tension. This tension can easily seek relief in the exclusive attach-ment to a fellow religious. Our purpose here is not to repeat the age-old and ~¢ery neces-sary warning. Enough has been said about this already. The nature and signs of false friendship are sufficiently known to all: exclusiveness, jealousy, the need for signs of affection, daydream-ing about the 'friend,' and so on. We presume this knowledge, and we fully realize all the potential dangers involved. Our purpose here is to suggest that overemphasis of the dangers of particular friendship may perhaps produce a very harmful effect. And this effect is to make religious afraid to have any friends, It may even give rise to a general atmosphere in a 257 COLUMBAN BROWNING Review for Religious religious community in which all friendships are looked upon with an eye of suspicion. Corruption in the arts can tear down rather than build up, and so can the corruption of friendship. But just as we do not condemn beauty as such because of its abuses, so also we must not despise friendship just because it sometimes goes awry. Particular friendship is a characteristic of the emotionally immature religious. There can be a place in religion for those who are lacking somewhat in maturity though they may require more in the way of protection and guidance. But we feel that the greater number of religious are mature enough to avoid the corrupting force of particular friendship. And this being so, is it right that all religious be deprived of good healthy friendship just because for some it is a grave danger? In other words, it is a question of proper balance. If a sane and balanced view is not taken by superiors as well as individual religious, there is a serious danger that an atmosphere emerge in which human hearts must of necessity turn to granite. The result will be that the warmth of charity will vanish and a cold, im-personal spirit will chill the very life of the community. Friendship is an .integral and very necessary part of human life. It is one of the good and higher things of life that can be a positive help toward a more whole-hearted love for God. Just as music, art, literature, and beauty of all kinds are intended to lift up the mind and heart to God, so also is God's gift of friendship. The inspired word of God more than once praises the boon of friendship. We read in the Book of Sirach: "A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one find~ a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth. A faithful friend is a lifesaving remedy, such as he who fears God finds; for he who fears God behaves accordingly, and his friend shall be like himself." (6:14-17) This being so, surely good wholesome friendship should not be excluded from the religious life without a ,hearing. The lives of many religious saints strongly endorse the words of Sacred Scripture. As examples, we need only recall the strong bond of friendship that existed between St. Teresa of Avila and Mother Anne of Jesus or that between St. Therese and her three sisters in Carmel. The friendship of these holy souls was certainly 258 September, 1959" FRIENDSHIP AMONG RELIGIOUS not a hindrance but rather a. help to their more perfect love of God. That such has been the case in the lives of these great saints should be proof enough that friendship in itself is a gift of God for our sanctification. The Need for Human Friendship No human being can live a normal life without friendship. God made man a social being, and his entire life is lived in the company of others. God gave man this company because by his nature he needs it. This need is greater in a woman than in a man. A woman has greater emotional needs, and one of these needs is for support in her strivings. When a young persdn steps inside the door of a novitiate, he does not leave this basic need behind him. By that step he sacrifices the normal means of finding his support. But the need very definitely remains. Pope Pius XII singled out this fact in the words he addressed to the superiors general of religious women assembled in Rome in 1952. He said! And now dearest daughters, we pass on to exhort yo~ urgently on two points. First, motherly affection in the guidance of your Sisters. ¯ Psychologists say, and it is probably true, that when in authority it is harder for woman' than for man to find the exact balance between severity and kindness. This makes it all the more necessary fo.,r you to cultivate your motherly feelings. Remember that for your sisters, as for yourselves, religious life demands a great sacrifice. They have given up their families, the joys of married life and a home of their own. It is a sacrifice of great worth and importance for the apostolate of the Church, but it is none the less a sacrifice, and those possessed of greatness of soul and delicacy of sentiment feel it the most keenly . . . and you as superiors general should be the first to breathe into the common life of your sisters the warmth of family love. (Acta et Documenta, 1952, p. 333) When a young person enters the religious life, he is de-termined to surrender his whole heart and soul to God -- to find in Him the complete realization of all his ambitions. He is putting himself on the way to that goal. But he is not ordinarily capable of that whole-hearted love from the beginning. As he learns the first steps of religious life, he will need the strong support and encouragement of the Master or Mistress. Even when he finishes the novitiate, he will not be completely rooted in God, so that he will still need human support. To his dying day, in fact, he will most likely be very much on the way. He will, in other words, need strong human support all along. 259 COLUMBAN BROWNING Review for Religious He may find this support in his superiors, his confessor or spiritual director. But realism forces us to admit that a religious frequently does not find the most ideal support at these sources. Personalities enter in; there is fear of authority'that lurks in the minds of so many, to say nothing of the many other compli-cating, factors. Frequently, therefore, a religious may need the firm support that comes from friendship. And where should he look for this friend if not among his fellow religious? A true friend will not aggravate the burdens by agreeing with all com-plaints but will rather animate the confidant to bear his trials patiently and help him to reach higher in his spiritual ideals. It all comes down to this: When a religious is learning to love God with all his heart, and all his life he is learning this, he cannot live in an absolute vacuum. Being human, he will need the firm support of human friendship. If he tries to live without this or if circumstances force him to live without it for a long time, there is grave danger that his ideals will gradually diminish. From sheer lack of ability to "go it alone" he is apt to find him-s~ lf falling back rather than going forward. And in this situation he may find himself turning his attention back to the things that he has given up, and sooner or later he will realize that he no longer has any real desire to live all for God. We wonder how many ex-religious would still be happy religious today if they had had the support of true and loyal friends. From what has been said, it may appear that relying on the help of friends is a very imperfect thing in itself, and may be admitted only as a crutch for the beginner. But such is not the case. In God's plan of providence He has made man with a n~ed for friendship, and He intends that it be an important factor in his sanctification all through life. St. Aelred, who has written a beautiful treatise on this subject, makes this" clear. He says that friendship "is possible between the good, it makes progress between those who are better, and it is consummated between those who are perfect." He also says: "Wonderful must he be who can afford to do without friends and without love. More wonderful than God Himself." (De amore amicitiae) St. Teresa of Avila stresses the advantages of friendship in living a spiritual life when she says: It is a great evil for a soul to be alone in the midst of such great dangers . I would advise those who are giving themselves to prayer, particularly at first, to form friendships . . . with those who are doing 260 September, 1959 FRIENDSHIP AMONG RELIGIOUS the same thing. It is a matter of the last importance, even if it lead only to helping one another by prayer . Now, if in their dealings with one another, and in the indulgence of human affection not even of the best kind, men seek friends with whom they can refresh themselves. I know no reason why it should not be lawful for him who is beginning to love and serve God in earnest to confide his joys and sorrows to another. [Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans, by David Lewis (West-minster: Newman, 1943), ch. 7, pp. 54-55,1 From such ahthoritative statements it is evident that true friendship between human beings is patterned after God's own friendship with man and that its goal is closer union with God Himself. As the austere hermit St. Peter Damian so beautifully expresses it: "When I look on thy face, on thee who are dear to me, I lift my gaze toward Him Who, united to thee, I desire to reach" (Letters, 2:12). Still on the psychological plane, let us consider the matter in relation to the religious vow of chastity. Dangers to chastity are usually cited as the motive for avoiding particular friendship. But may we not say that true and healthy f~riendship can be one of the greatest protectors of chastity? The religious has sacrificed the normal emotional outlets. Keeping his basic emotional needs he is, in a sense, in a state of violence in the religious life. Here we must recall what we have already said -- that the religious is destined to find his all in God, but that reaching this goal is a life-long process. The warmth of well regulated fri~nd-ship is the normal and God-given support to help the religious to learn to live entirely for God. When he has the comfort of such friendship, he will ordinarily tend to regret less what he has given up. As a result he will find more contentment and natural joy in the religious life. Without this support he is apt to ex-perience a kind of emotional starvation. S~ch a state produces tension, and tension is a fertile source of unlawful desires. A tense religious is in danger of acting hastily and seeking com-pensation for what he is missing. Much of this tension could be avoided if the religious did not feel so alone and unwanted. True supernatural love and friendship, in other words, can give the religious a sense of dignity that fosters purity. Another thing that may be to the point here: There seems to be an ever increasing number of religious who suffer from what doctbrs call psychosomatic illnesses. Ailments develop for which the physician can find no physical cause. Doctors usually diagnose these ailments as being the effect of nervous tension. How many 261 COLUMBAN BROWNING Review for Religious of these poor religious feel that they have any real friends in the religious life? Must we not say that much of this could be avoided if the medicine of human friendship were in better standing? The best antidote to tension and nervousness is contentment. And human nature is ordinarily not contented and at rest without the warmth of human love that is the effect of friendship. Certain Qualifications Lest we appear to be a little too idealistic and too trustful of human nature, a number of qualifications may. be in place. The first has to do with the need for universal charity in religion. We know that charity toward all was one of the key doctrines of our Lord. And since the religious life is the embodi-ment of His teaching, it is obvious that supernatural, universal charity must always hold a prominent place in any religious community. At first sight our proposal may sound like a denial of this. If misunderstood and misinterpreted, it could .indeed become such. No religious can ever exclude anyone from his charity. As far as community life is concerned, a uniformity and consistency must be observed in all dealings with fellow religious. But at the same time it is contrary to human nature itself to expect a religious to feel the same toward all. Inevitably he will feel closer to some than to others, and he will be able to speak more freely and confidently to these. It is among these that he will normally be inclined to seek his friends. To expect otherwise would be to. do violence to human nature itself. And we need to recall that human nature is not destroyed but rather elevated by living a spiritual life. At the same time, preference for these few should never lead the religious to spend all his time with them or to form a clique with them. When this happens, we have a counterfeit of true friendship that is inconsistent with" the religious life. True friendship does not narrow the human heart but rather expands it and makes it capable of loving all more. When we think maturely, we judge things by their true nature rather than by their occasional abuses. Are we, therefore, to forbid all re-ligious to have any friends just because there is some danger of abuse? The occasional abuses should be dealt with individually 262 September, 1959 FRIENDSHIP AMONG RELIGIOUS rather than be considered a pretext to~condemn the entire tree because of a few bad fruits. Another necessary clarification pertains to superiors. It is a good and true principle that a superior should deal with all his subjects alike. It is a false principle, though sometimes quoted, that a superior should have no friends. A superior must maintain an equality in all his external dealings with his subjects. But he too is human and needs a friend -- perhaps more than does the ordinary religious. The very burdens he bears may require that he have some human support lest those burdens crush him. To deny him this outlet is to be cruel and inhuman. Of course, such a friendship in a superior contains potential dangers. There'is the danger of his showing preference for his friends in an external way, to the great detriment of peace and contentment in' the community. There is the further danger of his letting his friends determine his policies as superior, also a grave abuse. But again, are we to condemn something that is good and necessary in itself just because of a few abuses? The surest way to avoid such abuses is by appointing only those as superior who are mature enough to exercise prudence and good judgment. Very small houses present a problem all their own that needs to be considered. The fewer the number of religious in a house, the greater is the need for universal charity and: the greater need for one or two friends to avoid isolating themselves from the rest. There is no need to stress the severe trial of living in a small house that is divided. But again we must remember that this state of things is a counterfeit of true friendship, and the whole question of friendship should not be judged by such abuses. A religious who is assigned to a small house may find him-self in a situation in which close friendship is practically im-possible. His companions are few, and he may not be able to feel close to any of them. The same inability to make friends may arise from other circumstances, even in larger houses~ When such situations exist, the religious is forced to, do without what is ordinarily necessary for happy living. But the religious who has cultivated only healthy friendships will be able to meet this challenge and will accept this cross from the hands of God for his purification. If we are to be purified and made capable of loving God more, we must a~ept the crosses that God sends. 263 COLUMBAN ]~ROWNING And just as He sometimes cuts away other supports that are ordinarily considered basic necessities in order to purify us, so also in the case of friendship. The religious must therefore be prepared for such situations and must see them in the light of God's all loving providence for him. Bearing this cross patiently will expand the heart and equip the religious to be more mature in friendship when the opportunity for them arises again. Finally, lest we give the impression of overlooking in practice the real danger of friendship becoming particular and exclusive, another clarification is in place. Of course, there is always an amount of danger of this. Even a true and healthy friendship can deteriorate. But this is a matter to be dealt with in particular cases. For many there is practically no danger of particular friendship. For most the danger is remote. For some it may be called serious. These particular dangers should not determine the mentality of a community toward friendship so that every-one who has a friend is considered suspect. A community that adopts this attitude as a more or less official policy creates a situation in which Christian charity is severely paralysed. Instead of the religious "living together in unity" and working together in the charity of Christ, bickering, discontent, selfishness, and downright cruelty can become the order of the day. When religious are forced to live in such an atmosphere, the heroism that is so necessary for anyone to develop the fulness of Christ is frustrated, o ¯ Conclusion The religious life has as its goal the binding of human hearts more closely to the God of all love. In striving for this goal, ev.ery religious is held back by the limitations of fallen human nature. Because of these limitations and the consequent failings that somewhat mar the perfection of every religious soul, there is a tendency to emphasize the negative to the detriment of the positive elements of the religious life. When a general atmosphere of negativism arises in a religious community, the vital spirit of the members of that community is severely paralysed. We feel that this negativism too often shows itself in the attitude toward friendship. May God speed the day when His wonderful gift of friendship is judged, not by occasional abuses, but by the positive incentive it provides for a whole hearted search for God. 264 Conquering Serious Sin John Co Schwarz, S.J. INA MEMORABLE address to the clerical students and priests at the Catholic University some months after her entrance into the Church, Clare Boothe Luce commented on the singular importance of love in the service of God. "All the world they say, loves a lover . And never before have I been together with so many young men who are deeply in love, for the first and last times in their lives. For you are to be the truest of all lovers: the priests of God's altars." Her graceful words a~e easily extended to all who consecrate themselves to life with Christ, to life with Love. For the religious deeply feels that his or her vocation precisely consists in striving to be "the truest of all lovers." But lofty as such aspirations surely are, the weight of d~ill human nature remains a constant factor and a daily experience. The actions of no less a saint thaff His own first vicar drew from' our Lord the comment, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Thus serious sin, the sorry surrender of the high aspirations of love, remains a possibility even for men and women who have taken their place in the consecrated, protected ranks of religious life. Temptation, even sharp temptation, remains altogether possible. The free-living and often loveless world around us will attempt to turn that possibility into glittering reality. And the urges and impulses of fallen human nature, pressuring from within, may add further strain. Hence, this presentation of basic reflections, remedies, and counter-measures against serious sin may not be amiss. Because the flesh remains weak, therefore serious sin cannot yet be filed under "impossibilities," and forgotten. Moreover, the experience of mortal sin could prove as productive of be-wilderment as of remorse. Nor will sure counsel and direction always be at hand. Especially if the experience were to be com-plicated by the shock of repetition, the path ahead could become greviously entangled. Hence some considerations on this little-frequented area of religious life may be of interest even to "the truest of all lovers." Now even serious sin can produce some profit, if the ex-perience prods one into a necessary check-up on key points of 265 JOHN C. SCHWARZ " Review for Religious religious observance and consecratip~i~ As physical pains signal the need for medical care, perhaps heretofore ignored, so it is with conduct of which conscience has voiced flat disapproval. A deepened sense of authentic humility can also result, as well as an increased, practical sympathy for the trials which others are experiencing from time to time-- students, for instance. And one will surely learn that mere general exhortations to avoid temptation may help little when the danger is close and vividly felt. Check Fading Motives But to check the key points of one's ~eligious observance, a valuable technique for av.oiding mortal sinas well as for remedying it, will involve attention to far more than me.re.exterior regularity or promptitude. That does have its importance, definitely. But the giant-step forward will be taken with the realization that serious sin, especially when repeated, exposes the slow fading of true values in the mind. The key to decisive will power, as Father Lindwo~sky has so strikingly demons.t~a.ted,1 lies in the vital realm of motivation. One's spiritual motives or values may have become, distant relatives living in the suburbs of the mind, ac~n?wledged, recognizable -- but t~ken for granted. Such ¯ motives perhaps no longer m?tivate,, or at least are diminishing in their impact on daily thought a.nd conduct. New knowledge is not the primary need, nor some scheme for "developing will power" after the manner of strengthening a muscle. Rather, persuade those distant relatives to move once again into the immediate family, day by day and hour by hour. Deep., attentive meditation with our blessed Lord on the basic truths of existence becomes necessary. Such truths are presented to the mind and heart in the annual retreat when reflections are made on the purposes of the vows, on our origin and diVine destiny, on the practices of religious life, on Christ's love as the only. happiness for the religiou~ soul. Possibly medi-tation has been failing to cut through the too-familiar exteriors of truths considered, and examinations of conscience may have ¯ lagged in their role of providing re-nourishment at crucial points in the exhausting day. Perhaps bit by bit the mind has slipped into the heresy that what Christ asks first is service, action, ~Johann Lindworsky, S.J., The Training of the Will (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1929). 266 September, 1959 CONQUERING SERIOUS SIN results, success, achievement -- an attitude more "at home" in General Motors -- failing in daffy practice to see that what He seeks is my whole mind, my whole heart, my whole soul -- in a word, myself. For that is what He has offered to me: Himself!. Temptation Topples Weak Motives Amid the undeniably wearing regimen of a long year teach-ing or nursing, the intimate grasp of the mind on basic truths, and above all on Him whom we love can falter. All feel this in greater or lesser degree. Add a sizeable f~ding of spiritual values with a startling growth, on a particular occasion or over an ex-tended period of time, in vividness of some temptation and trouble may loom just ahead. Or again, if sound and cherished values fade, the onslaught of some unforeseen crisis -- whether with superiors, students, declining health, or something similar -- will find human nature subtly craving compensation. If Christ becomes remote, thickets of temptation will crop up close. These foregoing notions, largely based on the scientific research of Lindworsky, a renowned priest-psychologist, find an interesting echo in the distinguished spiritual author, Father Edward Leen: "We fail, not because our wills are irresolute "or our passions strong -- but because we allow our intelligence to be obscured as to the meaning and purpose of life.~ It is no~ s0~ much our will that is at fault as our intelligence.'"-' If such notions seem to some an overly-academic approach to a concrete problem of serious sin, it may be noted that there is little of novelty here. Christian philosophers have been teach-ing for centuries that the will, although capable of free action, is nevertheless deeply dependent on what the intellect points out as desirable or not desirable for me l~ere and now. If a religious decides on such a check of his or her sense of spiritual values, on exterior observance, and consequently on union with Christ our Lord, it will be well to review also habitual performance in .situations calling for patience, for consideration of the feelings of others. A sharp tongue, a trigger-quick temper, a habit of freely commenting on the actions and personalities of others (always a gentle boost to one's own hungry ego) -- these cannot be ignored when clear signs appear for a necessary 2E-~-war~ Leen, In the Likeness of Christ (London: Sheed and Ward, 1936), p. 223. 267 JOHN C. SCHWARZ Review for Religious strengthening in any area of a religious life. Just as in the physical side of human life health means the well-being of all .parts, so spiritual sickness is easily caused by the collapse of any single part with a resultant weakness poisoning the entire system. Prescription: over-all strengthening. Such an over-all strengthening may come at high cost. But let a religious take heart whatever the cost. Our companion on the way is He who three times lifted Himself in agony from the dust.y road in Jerusalem and did not falter even at the blood-dimmed view of Calvary rising before Him. And this for me! as Paul exclaims. Courage is Christ's, a precious gift available to all who come to Him for it. Let a religious take heart, moreover, in the realization ~hat his or her will remains a powerful faculty ready to serve. That will-power is not debilitated, not collapsed, not "weak." But motives may have grown pallid. The will itself remains in normal condition. One has perhaps previously read such small testings of will .power as, "Couldn't you refrain from this or that for-bidden action if you were assured of death in its next perform-ance?" Seriously reflecting on such a'n eventuality, one is generally prompt to concede that such a motive (note!) would prove a quite effective spur. The will would briskly respond. Motives of a social nature, for one consecrated to Christ, should hold a special attraction. Blessings for souls on earth or in purgatory can be merited abundantly by sacrifice of self. Hopeless millions in the nation's slums, prisoners languishing in Communist camps, the afflicted and confined in a tSousand in-stitutions -- to submit but a few examples -- all these need Christ; and all can be helped wonderfully by the powerful prayer of self-discipline for and with Christ. Alertness in Temptation A further point of considerable moment in combating an inclination drawing a person toward the vortex of sin: prudent, alert conduct in time of temptation. A down-deep reluctance to wrench oneself from an unlawful attraction of some sort or another or a habit of delaying, of dallying and wondering -- such are the gradual weakenings which are the prelude to collapse and inevitable anguish of soul. Said Byron: "There are no 268 September, 1959 CONQUEt~ING SERIOUS SIN pleasures which the world can give comparable to those it can take away." On conduct in temptation, Fr. Gerald Kelly, S.J., observes: "A not uncommon source of mental disquiet among religious is the fact that they develop the habit of 'playing close to the line,' of taking 'little chances' in their reading, their entertainment, and so forth. Half-heartedness in the observance of chastity induces interior conflicts, even when it does not lead to open mortal sin.''3 Here obviously is a point for serious self-examina-tion: has one a set policy of nog only avoiding, but shying far from that which tempts? The Sacred Heart spoke to Margaret Mary in unmistakable words of half-hearted religious. He is whole-hearted. It is essential to see clearly the occasion of sin which has proven dangerous, to have clearly in mind, honestly and openly, that this or that place, reading, time of day, situation, or com-bination of circumstances can cause temptation to grow intense. Facing this fact, the wise person will either exert every possible effort to trace a wide path around the trouble zone, or, if that be impossible, at least halt for a brief moment of recollection and prayer beforehand. Even staunch St. Peter experienced one of the great agonizing falls in Christian history when he lingered in a hostile courtyard. Such courtyards await in every life, but many wisely learn from Peter to shun them. Reaction to temptation, though without panic or nervous-ness, should be instinctive. I become suddenly aware that my hand rests on the sizzling stove. Do I calmly reason, debate the issue, "Well, should I keep it there or not?" Rather, the reaction is swift, instinctive. Let there be an equal, recoil before tempta-tion. Of a married man, sincerely devoted and faithful, novelist Stephen Vincent Bengt wrote: "And there comes a time, no matter what the intention, when a new face heaves into view and a spark lights. I'm no Adonis, God knows, but it's happened to me once or twice. And I know what I do then. I run. I run like a rabbit. It isn't courageous or adventurous or fine . But I run. Because, when all's said and done, it takes two people to make an affair and you can't have it when one of them's not there." 31954 Proceedings of the Sisters' Institute o[ Spirituality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), p. 102. 269 JOHN, C, SCHWARZ Review for Religious. In time of difficulty and temptation some 'relief may be achieved by physical change, taking a "break" for a few moments, fresh air, getting up, walking ---all such sudden motion and switch of environment jars the growing mood with which tempta-tion fascinates the mind and paralyzes the will. This fracture of mood discourages temptation even when it does not dispel it altogether. If one is alone, a companion to talk with might be found. If one is.idle, a quick recourse to interesting work or some engrossing distraction of mind often helps. A handy book or periodic.al may assist. The airline pilot, warned of a storm area ahead, does not make a simple act of trust in the capacities of his ship. He alters his course, avoids heavy weather altogether if humanly possible. He knows too much is at stake for a gamble. A Prayer-in-Action Present-day psychiatrists wisely warn against excessive focusing on problems such as are under consideration here. A worrisome :preoccupation with such matters only adds to their damage. Psychiatrists suggest rather that at least equal attentiOn be turned to the person's general outlook on life some-what in the manner suggested earlier in this article (on the refreshing of motives and values). Everyone concedes the in-juriou~ effects-of brooding, for instance, over this or that possi-bl~ gyrhptom of illness. If you don't truly have the affliction, v~oric)i inay soon obtain it for you; and if you do have it, worry may double it. The same thing occurs in the spiritual life. But this is not to outlaw intelligent concern and intelligent attention go the meanS Of disciplining whatever conduct is intolerable in life. An aid in this direction will be a limited, reasonable plan of self-restraint. How might this be done? Suppose a religious determines to undertake some small denial of pleasure or inclination twice each morning and twice again in the second half of the day, each time offering the peaceful decision to our Lord as a prayer, a prayer-in-action, begging iiumbly the needed grace of selfconquest for His sake. This will impose no weighty burden, attract no attention, cause no morbid focusing on the problem. Bypassing some item at table, assisting another when inconvenient to do so, postponing a desired relaxa-tion for ten.minutes, knuckling down to a task for which attrac, tion is absent, and, perhaps best of all -- an appalling suggestion offer.e.d with apologies-- arising promptly with the unfriendly 270 September, 1959 CONQUERING SERIOUS SIN clamor of the morning bell! Each of these, c~upled with a short aspiration of loving prayer, will recall to mind and heart that my true motives .aim always in one direction only. This is not suggested as the fa~miliar development of virtue "by repeated will acts." Rather, this is the conscious development of intimacy with our Lord by offering deliberate expressions of love to Him repeatedly. These expressions of love are offered in actions, in which I place Him first, my own inclinations second. This is prayer-in-action. A check can profitably be made at noon and at night: "Did I make my prayer-in-action twice, or more?" Let this check be made strictly, renewing then the Morning Offering and the Mass offering as well -- and return happily to duties "through Him, and with Him, and in Him." A Loving Lord Within Our Catholic faith highlights God's revelation to us that when the soul is in the state of grace God Himself dwells in that soul in a very special, intimate manner. God is her.e: Fat, her,, Son, and Holy Spirit -- all Three; and my heart especially re-sponds to the presence of the eternal Son .whos, e perso.n.~al lo~y_e has changed and colored my entire life. He is here, right, here, in the truest sense, a companion, a source of strength, a fortress against loneliness and that illusion of isolation which tl~e shock. of sin can bring. Father DeJaegher's little volume, One With Jesus (Westminster: Newman, 1948), will provide powerful assistance to many in attaining a new depth of insight into what God's indwelling can mean for daily living. The basic fact that God Himself dwells within can and must be a source of that st.rength which only a person who loves and is loved possesses, in the face of tdmptation. The human heart craves love, to love and be loved with true concern, personal attention and attachment. Christ offers us such love if only we will look to Him, clearly seeing the Heart of hearts offered to us. For that love, every earthly sacrifice is paltry in comparison. Great singleness of heart, supercharged with" Christ'-s grace, releases within any human personality power otherwise unsuspected. Singleness of heart: a Frances Xavier Cabrini~ a Matt Talbott or Therese of Lisieux, a Cornelia Connelly or 271 Philippine Duchesne, an Isaac Jogues,. Charles de Foucauld, or Elizabeth of the Trinity. These had one love only. Even in secular life, models of astounding singleness of determination are readily found: a Charles Lindbergh on his epic Atlantic flight, fighting the deadly paralysis of fatigue, doing cramped calisthen-ics in his narrow cockpit, reciting endless multiplication tables, and triumphing. For love of our Lord, then, a blueprint has been submitted for constructing (or re-constructing) an interior citadel against the lethal foe, serious sin. That blueprint outlines four basic steps: (1) A general check on fundamental spiritual truths. Love needs reasons. Familiar truths must be revitalized; familiar motives must sink new roots. (2) Prudent, alert conduct in the presence of t.emptation. (3) A new plan of self-restraint as love's prayer-in-action. (4) Insistent recollection of God truly within. For Christ's love is our whole existence, and our love must flow into action. The apostles, recall, had fished all the night in vain, without the Lord. But when He appeared, it took only a word, a change of approach, and success overwhelmed them. Thus He proved once again that He is indeed the way, the truth, and the life. For religious most of all, Christ is our way, our truth, and surely our very life if we wish to be "the truest of all lovers." 272 Perpetual, Vows Hu~jo J. Gerleman, S.J. IN HIS POEM, "The Ballad. of the White H6rs~," G. K. Ches-terton probes into .the radical differences between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of pagan]sin -- old and new. One of the marks that he sees in the true Christian is his fidelity to his plighted word: And whether' ye swear a hive of monks, Or one fair wife to friend, This is the manner of Christian men, That their oath endures th~ end. [Bk. V, ll. 2~6-79] Therefore, by this sign will men know. ~'the ba~bari~an come again," that he will be fickle, unstable in his i~romises, .untrue to his vows and oaths. There is no way of knowing exactly what generation of men Chesterton wished to brand with his characterization of the neopagan, but one wonders whether our present generation may not have been included in his vision. Certainly when we consider the present attitude toward the marriage vow, we see what was once regarded as a sa~red and lasting obligation made frequently a matter of a passing whim. There is no need to give the.statistics of divorces since they are so well known. We also know that to some extent even Catholics have been affected by this plague of inconstancy in marriage~ Has this easy attitude towards a sacred and serious promise infiltrated even into the religious life? I have no ready statistics in the matter, but I think it safe to say that even religious are not immune to the tendencies of the age in which they live. Certainly the standard of living in a country, the level at which luxuries and comforts are enjoyed, affects the poverty of religious. Likewise ff a spirit of independence and impatience of restraints prevails in an age, it will make its influence felt on the religious. So it would not be surprising if infidelity to marriage vows and a general restlessness and instability in the face of difficulties, both so noticeable in many. men and women in our times, would 273 HuGo J. GERLEMAN Review for Religious find a counterpart in the lives of religious. Rather it would be surprising if this were not the case. 'It seems in a true sense that the spirit that should enter into the making of a vow is counter to a spirit that is running through our age. One element expected in the spirit with which vows should be taken can be typified by the common expressions, "to burn your bridges behind you," "to put your back to the wall."~ .Those expressions are obviously taken from warfare, from-battle, from fight against strong forces. Those warriors who burn their bridges behind them and who put their backs to the-wall cut off all chance of retreat. To survive they must overcome the enemy that confronts them. They have said "no" to their fears and to any possible cowardice. They are giving themselves psychological support by cutting off avenues of escape which poor human nature is prone to take. They, as it were, .force themselves to be brave -- now they have to fight it out. Whe~a person makes a vow, he does a like thing. He freely promises God to do the better thing; at the same time he realizes that he will come upon difficulties in making good his promise. In order to forestall the weakness of vacillating human nature, he wants to assure:himself of an undeviating will that will secure the performance of-the act under all circumstances. For this purpose he freelyobinds himself under sin to carry out what he is promis: ing. In-thus stabilizing his will by the vow we may say that he is putting his back to the wall, that he is burning his bridges behind ,him He is ~now committed to bravery, to heroism, if need-be, in meeting the attacks on his resolve. There are;~of course, many other considerations that enter the mi'nd and' affect the heart of one taking a vow. The vow, after all, is a means to an end. Through it the person taking the vow certainly wishes to give special honor to .God, to bind him-self more closely to his Creator, to be united to Him more in-timately in charity, and so om But with all these there is the intention to establish himself enduringly in his resolution, to confirm his will when difficulties arise. Stability of will, fidelity to his .promise-iso-what he is seeking. This ~otive has a place in the taking of every vow, but it has a special place i'n the taking of perpetual vows. Why this is so is perfectly clear. A perpetual vow means that perpetually, ¯ for all :the days of life left to a man, he is bound under sin to keep 274 September, 1959 PERPETUAL VOWS his promise to God. He deliberately wanted this, .freely bound~ himself. It means that, as far as :his own will is~ c?ncerne~, no change can be made; he is free to move in .only on~ direc~tion. He must until his dying day (when it is a question .of .the vows of religion) will to be poor, chaste, obedient. If he does not, he is unfaithful to his promise. This finality of his exc.lusive, dboice is what makes his vows perpetual. . . Of course, there is the possibility ~that in ~spite of the firm will-set of the religious an objective difficulty becomes manifest that is an impediment to the perpetual living' of his vow~s. In that case there is place for a dispensation by competent authority. - But it is an objective difficulty; therefore, as far as the.will of the individual is concerned, it can tend in only one direction until it is clear that the will of God indicates another way of life. This is all very obvious, but it is ~trap~ely tr~i~'"'that in the day-to-day living of one's life a person can let even the° obVious become blurred or keep it in the far corner of consciousness.' There have been not a few religious who V~ere boundby perl~etual vows but who gradually, almost imperceptibly~ s~arted .thinking in another way and lettihg their will tend in the.wrong direction. With this they began veering off the true course Of the religious life and hardly noticed it. As they became comfortable moving in their new direction, they began to depart even more from their religious ideals and manner of life. After some time .they found: themselves fully conscious of thinking and moving in an entirely different direction from that in which they~ shbuld" h~e:been tending. And they found that they were quite content' to be" in this condition. The thought of the finality of their selfgiving to God by perpetual vows had lost meaning by_then.:_T.he, will had been drained of its original decisiveness to be faithful-to:the end: Then difficulties, temptations, counter-attractions became, argu-ments for giving up their way of life. They .ended .by wanting to be dispensed from their vows . "" When a religious comes to such a pass, it:.might seem that the only sensible thing to do is to get that dispensation. NoW it may very well be that on the part.of the institute this becomes desirable; for when a member has lost the spirit of-the 'religious life, when the ideals of an intimate following .of Christ_ ar.~ gone, when it seems that he will not be content in religi.on,~-then the congregation or order may well judge, that the individua! is no longer a desirable member. This on the part of the institute, ° 275 Hugo J. GERLEMAI~ Review for Religious However, it seems that the individual ought to have the following truth clearly pointed out to him. He still has his per-petual- vows and is under the obligation, if it is at all possible at the stage at which he is, to recapture the spirit he has lost, to refashion the ideals he has let fade, to win back his peace and happmess in the following of Christ. This will no doubt require a hard struggle with himself. It will require humility, true reliance on God. The religious will have to pray and pray sin-cerely for the one thing needed just now. He may have to endure days of darkness and distress until God deigns to restore the light and peace that he has forfeited. It may seem to him that this is asking too much, ~hat it is laying too great aburden on weak human nature. Yet this is precisely what the obligation of his perpetual vow would demand. He solemnly promised to remain firm under difficulties, even those that are wholly or partially self-made. For his courage and comfort he may reflect that others have worked themselves out of a similar difficulty and recovered their original view and generosity to go on in pgace and happiness to the end in their vocation. Some seem to'fall into the state described above because of a r~ther unrealistic outlook on the vows of religion. They seem to imagine-- even though they have often been told the contrary -- that with the pronouncing of the vows difficulties in keeping them disappear, or at least are of such negligible force that one hardly notices them. Such a view, bf course, manifests a radical misunderstanding of the true nature of religious vows. As was said earlier, in a true sense it is precisely because real difficulties are exp.ected in one's striving for perfection that. the vows are taken. They are con-cerned with strong, dedp, hnd abiding human passions. It may be that these are somewhat dormant at the time the vows are pronounced, but it is rather to be expected that in the life of every religious at some time instincts and passions will reassert themselves, that the passion of sex, the passion of self-will arid independence, the passion of acquisitiveness will clamor for fulfillment, and that vehemently. This does not indicate that it was a mistake to take perpetual vows. It proves rather that it Was riot a mistake to take them -- they are now being experienced as necessary supports of the will to remain constant and faithful in a life of sacrifice, of generous self-giving to God. Now is just the time when the remembrance of them should give that help which weak human nature needs, if the religious is to remain 276 September, 1959 PERPETUAL VOWS faithful to the way of life which he has pledged in all seriousness to God. Right from the beginning, along with the deep conviction of the dignity and value of his intimate following of Christ in the life of the counsels, the religious ought to cultivate a growing spirit of fidelity and loyalty to God through the observance of his vows. He should keep his face set toward the mountain top of final perser~ierance in his way of life, as Christ set His face toward Jerusalem and the sacrifice to be consummated there. "But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how distressed I am until it is accomplished" (Lk 12:50). " . . . he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem" (Lk 9:51-52). And when the dread hour of His crisis came upon Him, He told His disciples: "But he comes [the prince of the world] that the world may know that I love the Father and that I do as the Father has commanded me. Arise, let us go hence" (Jn 14:31 ). And He went all the way, even to death on the cross. It is hoped that what has been said makes clear how great an error it is to have recourse too readily to the thought of a so-called "temporary vocation" as an easy way out of the obli-gations of one's perpetual vows. Authors who use the term surely wish to have the nature of such a vocation carefully under-stood. We are dealing with fallen human nature. When the vision of faith grows dim and the motives which depend on it become weak so that the person is no longer willing to face the true nature of the religious life and its demands, he may be inclined to hide his want of fidelity by thinking of himself as having only a "temporary vocation." This is readily granted by all, I believe, that even after a person has pronounced his perpetual vows, it can become ap-parent that there is a clear, objective difficulty in the way of continuing his religious life. Some loyal, determined religious have found that God in the mysterious designs of His providence apparently does not want them to go on as religious in spite of their own sincere will in the matter. The religious may be in certain danger of losing his mental health; he may not be able to succeed in the studies required in the institute that he has joined; his leaving may be necessary to provide for his parents who are in serious need. These and other objective reasons may exist that give grounds for the legitimate withdrawal from the religious life. Oftentimes this is experienced as a real hardship 277 HUGO J. GERLEMAN and is done against his own will, in the sense that it is only because of the conviction that such is God's will that he can bring himself to accept a dispensation from his vows. Such persons, of course, have no reason for any fear or anxiety. God knows their heart and their fidelity to the promise made to Him. He Simply has other plans for them. In His wise and loving ~r'oqidende He has allowed them to live for a period under re-ligious vows for their own ultimate good. Such then are sometimes called temporary vocations. But to use the term "temporary vocation" in any other sense, when there is question of perpetual vows, would seem to be a misnomer -- even something of a mockery. Certainly the religious cannot of his own volition, when the going becomes hard or interest is waning, determine that he has only a temporary vocation. As soon as he becomes conscious of entertaining such a thought, he should immediately reflect that, as far as his own will is concerned, he has left himself only one legitimate choice, and that is to fulfill the obligations of his vows to the end with the help of God. His vows are perpetual. This perpetual engage-ment can be terminated only if God so wills it. If the religious is not careful right at the start to confirm himself in his true posi-tion, he may gradually let himself be beguiled into a wrong way of th!nking. From the very first days of his religious life he ought to orientate himself in one direction and all along make sure of maintaining this orientation lest he allow himself to be thrown off course by the winds of adversity. God's attitude towards the taking of vows is revealed in the book of Ecclesiastes, where it is written: "If thou hast bowed.anything to God, defer not to pay it: for an unfaithful and foolish promise displeaseth Him: but whatsoever thou hast vowed, .pay it. And it is much better not to vow, than after a vow not to perform the things promised." (5:3-4) . St. Ignatius, who seems to have been the first to make the devotionabrenewal of the vows a matter of rule, gives the ex-ercise a threefold purpose: to increase the devotion of the religious, to renew in them the memory of the obligation by which they are bound to God, and to confirm themselves more solidly in their vocation (Constitutiones Societatis Jesu, IV, 5). The religious would .do well to recite each day the formula of his° vows and to renew in all sincerity the oblation he made of himself on the day he vowed to God perpetual poverty, chastity, and obedience. 278 Mother Anna Tabouret Sister Mary Kenneth, H.H.M. THE CONGREGATION of the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary is unique in the annals of American history in its ~mmigration to the United States as a community just ten short years after its French foundatiom The leader and the inspiration, the enthusiastic spark and the driving force of this daring venture, was a truly remarkable woman, Mother Anna Tabouret. Marie Tabouret was born December 1, 1828, in the peaceful little village of ~Nomeny in the province of Lorraine during the turbulent period of French history caused by the downfall of Napoleon. The shadow of tuberculosis darkened the Tabouret home in 1830 claiming the lives of an infant brother and the father, and threatening the life of the mother. Almost inevitably the two-year-old Marie became the undisputed center of attention in the bereaved household. - -- MariMe asdhaomueld T raebcoeuirveet ,a w seulli-taedbulec aetdedu chaetrisoenlf;, adnedte drmesinp.iete.d. hthea~t ill-health she herself tutored the child. Marie. proved to be so talented in music that by the.age of five she had mastered the fundamentals of this art. Although the mother saw the necessity of education, her maternal love blinded her to the child's most obvious need -- discipline. Marie grew accustomed to having all her desires gratified and her whims satisfied. With a child's keen sensitivity to adult weakness she .was quick to tak~ ad-vantage of her mother's love and her own delicate health. If she were crossed or her wishes thwarted, she would put her hand dramatically over her heart and exclaim, "Mon coeur! Mon coeur!" All thought of punishment would then be forgotten. The family housekeeper, a frequent witness of Marie's' temper, tried in vain to convince her mistress that such willfulness needed to be curbed. The child's legal guardian, appointed by her father; joined his counsel to that of the housekeeper; and finally it.was agreed that Marie should be sent to the village school where she could mingle with boys and girls of her own age. In class Marie learned to her astonishment that the other children were not impressed by her Cry of "Mon coeur!"; on the contrary; 279 SISTER MARY KENNETH Review for Religious they placed a much higher value on strength than they did on weakness. Thus the first restraint upon her strong, will was imposed by her school mates who made it clear to Marie that her own will could not and would not always prevail. When Marie was twelve her mother died and the grief-stricken orphan was taken to live with her guardian. Her frail constitution, further weakened by loneliness and sorrow, made her an easy victim to typhoid fever. After long weeks in bed and longer months of supposed recuperation, it was discovered that a serious curvature of the spine had developed to further impede her recovery. Although unable to attend school regularly for some years, she was able to receive her first Holy Communion with the other children of her age. On this day of days her heart was sad and lonely while her body was still weakened by illness, but she poured out all the desolation and sadness of her soul in prayer to the God truly present within her. When her health improved, she was sent to Paris to study at the Conservatory of Art and Music where she majored in piano and organ and where her talents were recognized as ex-traordinary. Sorrow again appeared in her life when her trusted guardian absconded with a portion of her inheritance. Although stunned by this unexpected treachery, Marie managed to com-plete her education by a prudent management of her finances. During the latter part of her stay in Paris she became the penitent of the great Dominican, Lacordaire, an opportunity which was one of the most powerful and influential graces of her entire life. His influence upon her spiritual development was to be almost limitless, transcending both time and place. His oft-repeated admonition to those who sought his advice was, "Strive to live always on the highest level of spiritual endeavor." Later she was to hand down this advice as a precious tradition to her community. At the completion of her education, she returned to her native province where she became organist and choir directress for several village churches. To an onlooker, and perhaps even to herself, her life seemed already set in its future course; but in reality her life work had not even begun. The first link in the chain of events which would forever unite the destiny of Marie Tabouret with that of a future religi-ous community was forged in her meeting the Reverend John 280 September, 1959 MOTHER ANNA TABOURET Joseph Begel. Through her work as parish organist she came into contact with this scholarly priest, pastor of two small adjoining parishes, who was deeply concerned with the religious education of the children under his care. Although Napoleon III had per-mitted passage of a bill returning education to the control of the Church, he was secretly anticlerical and was merely biding his time. Father Begel had obtained permission to use the town hall of Dommartin-sous-Amance for his religion classes; but as Napoleon's true attitude became more evident, this permission was rescinded. The problem of finding another suitable place for the classes was solved when Mlle. Antoinette Potier, a well-educated and well-to-do woman of Dommartin, offered the use of her home. She welcomed this chance to be of service to the poor of the village; and when Father Begel's :efforts to obtain religious teachers failed, she provided a home for a lay teacher, Julia Claudel, whom he employed. When the actual work of the ~chool began, Mlle. Claudel was assisted by the mistress of the house, An-toinette Potier, and her faithhfl house-keeper, Marie Gaillot. These three ladies, united by their common interest in the school, soon requested of Father Begel a simple program of daffy re-ligious practices which they might perform together. Through Father Begel, Marie Tabouret became acquainted with the school in the Potier home and was introduced to the three women who were conducting it. As she listened to Father Begel explaining his dream of providing qualified teachers for the poor and neglected villages of France, her own enthusiasm and interest were enkindled. In the quiet-spoken Antoinette Potier were detected the lineaments of a great sanctity already being proved in the crucible of physical suffering caused by tuber-culosis. As Marie considered Father Begel's ideals and then studied the gentle way in which these ideals were being brought to actuality, she was filled with a desire to be a part of this great work. At the age of twenty-seven.she received Father Begel's permission to join the little group. Soon other young women joined in the aposto!ate and Father Begel was able to staff schools in both of his parishes. When Mlle. Potier, on behalf of the others, asked for a more definite rule and a completely religious manner of life, Father Begel gave them a sodality manual to follow and suggested that they wear a blue uniform in honor of our Lady. On the feast of the 281 SISTER MARY KENNETH Review for Religious Assumption, 1855, the group assisted at Mass in the village chapel, dressed in a blue merino uniform with a cape of the same material, a white collar, and a simple peasant cap. They thus attracted no unwanted attention from an unfriendly government. During the next three years Father Begel studied the regu-lations of other congregations and finally drew up a constitution which he submitted to the bishop. On August 29, 1858, the bishop approved their rule but not the suggested title of the congre-gation. He wrote, "You propose to give to it the name of the Assumption of Mary. Permit me, M. le Curd, to submit there-upon my thought. I should prefer a name less high sounding and I would propose to name these daughters the Daughters or Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary." Until this formal approval Was granted, the sisters had been permitted to make only private vows; but now four of their number pronounced public vows in the little chapel at Domo martin. They wore for the first time a starched white cap with a fluted frill, a black veil, and a silver band ring. On this occasion Antoinette Potier received the religious title of Mother Magdalen and Marie Tabouret became Sister Anna. Of this happy day, Mother Anna was later to write: "At last the day of our perpetual vows. It witnessed our solemn consecration to God. True we had vows but being only condi-tional we were in constant apprehension of being obliged to separate despite the bonds of charity which united us. Our union of views, our common desire to promote the greater glory of God, to instruct the poor, ignorant and abandoned children in small localities, to assist the poor and the sick out of our own poverty, to endure this poverty, humilition, and self-denial of both soul and body. But what of all this? Now we are permitted to consecrate ourselves to Jesus, soul, body and mind. What matters hardship?" ~ :When the community numbered twelve professed members, the sisters were able to staff four schools in the area, a seeming indication that their work was taking a firm root in the soil of France. As Napoleon's true attitude toward the Church became more and more evident, Father Begel courageously attacked the duplicity of the Emperor; and his refusal to permit the singing of the Te Deum in thanksgiving for the seizure of the Papal States resulted in the loss of his two pastorates. He was forced 282 September, 1959 MOTHER ANNA TABOURET to confine his priestly activities to the direction of the new re, ligious community; and the authorities then struck back in-directly by refusing the sisters teaching certification and by hampering their work in other small, annoying ways. At this time of crisis Father Begel received a request for the sisters to go to America to teach at a settlement of French immigrants in Louisville, Ol~io. Four of the sisters volunteered;. but as their difficulties with the government increased, it was: suggested that all might migrate. Bishop Amadeus Rappe (~f Cleveland wrote that he would welcome the entire community to his diocese. Sister Anna was greatly interested in the American venthre;- but she feared that the trip would be too strenuous for Mother Magdalen, whose health was rapidly failing. Mother Magdalen saw in the Bishop's invitation an answer from God to all their problems and prepared to sell her property to pay the expenses itnimvoel vweads itnh es ufcuhtu arne ucanrddeirntaakl,i nCgh.a Trlhees BLiasvhiogpe roief ,N daensctiyn eadt tthoi:s' further the progress of the Church in Africa by the foundation of the White Fathers. When the sisters consulted Bishop Lavi-gerie, he congratulated them on their fulfillment of his dearest dream, a missionary apostolate. Mother Magdalen directed the preparations for the trip, even to. the packing of her own trunk, although it was obvious to all that her death was near. On May 7, 1864, the saintly found-ress died, quietly and serenely, after making her act of resigna-~ tion to the will of God. Father Begel, the co-founder of the infant community, was almost inconsolable, Immediately the° community was involved in litigation as Mother Magdalen's relatives endeavored to break the provisions of her will. When their efforts proved successful, the little band of sisters was left practically destitute. In the dilemma and confusion resulting from Mother Magdalen's death and the loss of her property, Sister Anna, now appointed Mother, became the pillar and the support of the community. Behind her firm hand which grasped the reins of government was a brilliant mind equipped with unusual fore-sight and practical wisdom to cope with the multitudinous prob-lems that beset them. Physically she seemed inadequate for the task, b~it spiritually she was equal to the challenge of each new 283 SISTER MARY KENNETH Review for Religious day. She saw the futility of staying in a land where government opposition prevented them from doing the work of God. She realized the folly, humanly speaking, of going to America without funds of any kind; but when Bishop Rappe wrote, "You will find in America the same unfailing Providence you found in France," she placed herself and her community confidently in the hands of God. At the end of May, 1864, the little group, including Father Begel, ten professed sisters, one novice, and four orphans, sailed from Le Havre for America. As France grew smaller and smaller, finally fading entirely from view, they realized that they would never see their home land again. The voyage was further.saddened by the death of one of the orphans; and as Mother Anna gazed at the still little form, it seemed to her that the first link with France was already broken. The travelers arrived in New York on June 14, 1864. Bewil-derment at their inability to comprehend even a single word being spoken around them added to the confusion they felt as they waited, penniless and homeless, for official entry into the country. Their actual destination was Louisville, Ohio, where they received a heart-warming welcome from the enthusiastic French settlers. Father Begel, leaving the sisters at Louisville, went on to Cleveland to consult with Bishop Rappe. Upon his return Father Begel announced that the community was to be given the opportunity to purchase a farm of two hundred fifty acres in Pennsylvania. He glowingly conveyed Bishop Rappe's description of the fine 'brick building which was already on the property and praised the graciousness of the Bishop in making the offer to them. In his account of the farm, Father.Begel omitted mention of the fact that other communities attempting to live there had been forced to abandon the place because of its desola-tion, inaccessibility, and the difficulties involved in farming the swampy and rocky ground. Leaving two of their number at Louisville to teach the children of the French immigrants, the other sisters cheerfully and enthusiastically journeyed on to their new home. The sight that greeted them was enough to daunt the courage of the bravest. The property did indeed boast the praised brick struc-ture; but surrounding the building for acre upon acre were unhealthful swamps and thick, dense woods. The road leading 284 September, 1959 MOTHER ANNA TABOURET to the front door was nothing but a muddy path overgrown with weeds; the front yard was a marsh filled with rotting tree stumps: Vegetation of all kinds struggled for life, but the wild unconquered growth was far different from the trim lawns and neat gardens" of their beloved France, It was here in this hostile wilderness that the true qualities of Mother Anna's character reached their full flowering. With-out money, without friends, speaking a foreign language, she began a foundation that endured and prospered. Humanly,. her task seemed impossible, her obstacles insurmountable; but with' an unwavering, confidence in God she set herself to the work of accomplishing the impossible for His honor and glory. Her sound .practical judgment decided that the clearing 6f the land must be their first task if they were to survive at all From daw~ to dusk they labored -- these gentlewomen whose hands had been trained for the needle,rather than the plow. As they worked in the fields, felling trees, draining swamps, or plant-ing seeds, they sang hymns or played, the rosary. A potato crop was Mother Anna's first objective; .and when this harvest failed, dark days of misery and hunger descended upon the .community. Their troubles seemed to increase from day to day wi~h illness striking both sisters and orphans. This was the ~eriod" of which Mother Anna was to say, ~"Thing's were *too black to permit our feeling blue:" Finally she realized that thei~ 'affairs had reached such a crisis that unless help was forthcoming the whole venture would dissolve in failure. Her efforts to convince Father Begel of their dire situation had been unsuccessful as his only solution was the advice, "Take one more ~rphan and God will provide,for His own." Mother,Amia was willing to suffer any hardship to ensure the success of their° mission; .but when the very life of the congregation seemed at stake, she was cer-tain that the hour for action had struck. Without consulting Fathe~ Begel, she set off for Cleveland with Sister Odile and Sister Mary of the Angels. They walked. barefoot along the muddy ruts of the road into Youhgstown,~ Ohio, a distance of twelve miles, stopping at a creek to wash their feet and don their shoes before proceeding to the depot. After a trip on the night train, they arrived in Cleveland where kindly pedestrians directed' them from corner to .corner until they arrived at the Bishop's house. His amazed expression 285 SISTER MARY KENNETH Review for Religious prompted a speedy explanation of why they had come, unan-nounced, unexpected, uninvited: They blurted out their hopeless dilemma ~strangers .in d strange land -- no means of support -- no. means of communication with their American neighbors -- no food --- the failure of their crops-- the sickness of the orphans. Later Sister Odile was to admit, "I disgraced the community by sobbing aloud." -~- The bishop listened attentively and then asked, "What if I bid you remain and do the best you can, relying on Divine Providence?" Mother Anna replied, "We would obey, Bishop, but we have not sufficient food, clothing, nor bedding. We have orphans." We have sick ;sisters and sick children. Bishop, please, tell Father Begeltoi~ta~ke us home. France will not let us starve." The bishop gave them a small sum of money; but far more important, l~e assured them that if they. would remain and trust in_God, their, obedience would be r~warded. Perceiving in his words the ex.p~essed will of God, Mother Anna returned to the Vill~ and united all the efforts of the struggling community in a concentrated act of obedience. In an amazing way, the seemingly hopeless situation of the sisters began to improve. Everything thai Mothdr Anna's hand touched seemed to prosper; her will wbuld not admit defeat when she was acting under obedience. The wild, uncUltivated land gave way when faced with her de-termin_ at~ionto establish productive gardens and fruitful orchards. She worked side by side with the sisters in the field, laughing with this one, coaxing another, but always watchful that the work~progressed. . i .Wh.e~ m~ o~re o.r.phans arrived than could be cared for properly, she enlarged the housing facilities for both sisters and children. After two additions to the convent she had a suitable chapel erected for the Blessed Sacrament. She kept down building costs by producing the necessary materials on the farm itself. A saw mill-was built in the woods~ and she sought expert advice in select-ing .the trees to .be felled. The better lumber was then set aside to be seasoned for future buildings. A brick kiln. was erected in the front yard, and she herself sup~ervised the makir.g of the bricks. -. One of the most startling decisions for the little French community was Mother Anna's determination that they should become Americanized as completely and as quickly as possible. 286 September, 1959 MOYHER ANNA TABOURET She was convinced that all must learn the English language if they were to be effective in a teaching apostolate; and when a teacher of English was hired, she herself set the pace in acquiring a second tongue. At a time when money was very scarce she paid the necessary fee to have the community incorporated in the state of Pennsylvania. Her foresight in this particular matter was completely incomprehensible to her compatriots. When the deadly scourge of smallpox struck at the neigh-boring countryside, Mother Anna led the sisters into the homes of their American neighbors to nurse the victims of the epidemic. Thrusting aside all thought of personal contagion_ and fear, she turned all available convent space into hospital wards for the children. All through the long days and interminable nights of the siege, the sisters, under Mother Anna's leadership, fought the treacherous foe of infect_ion which had invaded the homes of the sick. One of the oi'iginal account books lists the cost of smallpox medicine at eighty-two dollars. A small fortune for those days! The heroism of the sisters at this ~ime evoked the admiration of their neighbors~ Catholics and Protestants alike; and as a token of gratitude the city of Lowell~ille, Ohio, pre-sented the community with a small sum of money. The gift came at a most opportune time,-for Mother Anna was struggling with the problem of settling.the debt on the Villa property. In an effort to raise the necessary three thou~sand dollars, the sisters had been soliciting fundg from the workers on a railroad that was being constructed near the Villa. When the officials of the company heard of the sisters' need, they encour-aged their employees to contribute generously. It was in gr,atitude for this unexpected assistance that Mother Anna offered to have the sisters care for any railroad men who were'injured or" taken ill" on the job. ¯." A two-room addition tO Father Begel's house, served as the infirmary which became known to the railroaders-gs "The Sisters~' .Hospital up Lowell Hill." As word spread of the excellent car.e g~v~en by the sisters, a larger building with suitable equipment soon .be.came necessary. The foundress decided ~to erect a hospital on the Villa property which would be large enough for the increased number of railroad patients. With her natural instinct for business she formulated a plan by which she could finish the clearing of the 287. SISTER MARY KENNETH Review for ReligioUs Villa woods, utilize her saw mill, and acquire the needed building funds. She drew up a. contract with the officials of the railroad by which they agreed to buy from her all the railroad ties she could produce. The constant buzzing of the mill from early morn-ing to late evening proved that the little saw mill was now her greatest asset. To solve the labor problem Mother Anna hired the vagrants whose predominant fault had lost them their rail-road jobs. Always a prudent women, she exacted a pledge of each one as she hired him. "I'll never touch a drop of the ~ld stuff as long as you boss me," was the frequently repeated promise as the recruiting of workers progressed. Instinctively, these rough men yielded her a ready obedience. With the erection of the hospital the. apostolate of the sisters was extended to include the care of the sick; and as the scope of the community's labors was enlarged~ more postulants applied for admission. With the .increased membership Mother Anna was able to supply teaching sisters to the nearby towns in Ohio and P~ennsylvania. In 1870 a group of~ ~isters volunteered to go to the diocese of St. Joseph, Misso.u~._i, in response to the bishop's plea for teachers. After other ~ssions had been established in Missouri, it was decided that the western group should function as a separ~ate community. In 1871. the separation was approved, and the sisters in Missouri formed a~ distinct congregation whose motherhouse was later to be establi.shed at Ottumwa, Iowa. Although Mother Anna was an eminently practical womari dealing efficiently with the details of ev.eryday life, spiritual values always occupied the foremost place in her mind. The ideals inspired by Lacordaire ever urgdd her to keep both herself and her sisters on the. very highest planes of ~piritual endeavor. Her character was marked by a rugged virility which scorned the unusual and the spectacular; if she was firm with her daugh-ters, she was even more rigorous with herself. In her dealings with her subjects she could accurately gauge the severity with which they could be dealt, and she did not exact the same gener-osity from all. Her personal opinions never biased her deci~i0ns and her keen intellect was able to weigh all sides of a question dispassionately before reaching a final' decision. In the governing of her community she insisted upon absolute obedience, and re-joiced when she received it. Anything and everything that made her daughters happy contributed to M~ther Anna's own happiness. She often planned 288 September, 1959 MOTHER ANNA TABOURET surprises for the community recreation hour and announced one night that soon a benefactress from France would be coming to pay the d0mmunity a visit. This lady was a trusted friend of the sisters who not only was greatly interested in them but also was able to render them invaluable assistance. When the time for the visitor's arrival came, Mother Anna invited all the sisters to the parlor where a °beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin, more than life-size, awaited them. As a pledge of the community's devotion to Mary, this statue was placed above the high altar of-.the chapel where it remains today. It is at the foot of the community's benefactress that on each recurring August fifteenth the Mother of God is proclaimed the "supreme superior" of the congregation in an act of consecr~ition composed by Father Begel and recited by the General Superior. In the twenty years of her superiorship Mother Anna had guided her community in its struggle from seemingly impossible beginnings to circumstances in which the sisters were able to serve effectively as instruments of God's providence in the fields of education and charity. During this time her own health, "always deScate, l~ad been further weakened by the hardships of establishing the foundation. By 1882 the community seemed firmly established in America as evidenced by the increasing number of American subjects and the increased number of missions. Mother Anna believed that the time had come for the sisters to hold a canonical election. She, therefore, asked the Bishop's permission to resign, giving as the reasons her failing health and her desire that the sisters might freely elect a superior. The sentiment of the community was strongly opposed to her resignation and to the election of a new superior. While awaiting the Bishop's reply, patiently and humbly, Mother Anna began making quiet preparations for her retirement by moving her sleeping quarters to the attic with the other professed sisters. She seemed impelled b~ a powerful intuition that her retirement was near. The validity of her presentiment was apparent to a~l on July 1, 1883, when Mother Anna was stricken with a complete paralysis of her lower limbs. The Bishop, now compelled by the hand of God, accepted her resignation and presided over the election of her successor, Mother Odile. Mother Anna cheerfully resigned herself to the will of God and with characteristic foresight made plans for her new life as 289 SISTERMARY KENNETH Review for Religious an invalid. Her heart knew no idleness as it was constantly given to prayer, but she must have occupation not only for her mind but for her hands as well. After sorting and arranging the voluminous correspondence of Father Begel, she wrote an in-valuable life of the founder, who had died in 1884 and who had been replaced by his nephew, the Reverend Nicholas J. Franche. In addition to her writing she was now able to utilize her knowl-edge and love of music, and an organ was brought into her room to enable her to teach the young sisters the principles of harmony and theory. During the hours remaining after music lessons, thousands and thousands of postage stamps were cut, sorted, and packed for a community of Belgian missionaries. These priests used the stamps to make works of art which were then sold to ransom young African children. While busy with her stamps or needlework, the invalid was able to receive and enter-tain the many visitors who climbed to her attic room in search of advice or prayers. In the early days of her illness she had predicted that she would be an invalid as many years as she had been superior. The sisters laughed at this notion; but as the years passed on and death claimed more and more of the younger members, leaving Mother Anna to her life of suffering, many began to suspect the truth of her prophecy. She once confided to some of the sisters, "God has purposely forgotten that -He put me here in this corner. He sends me showers'of graces, but, you see, I owe Him a huge debt and have never been able to make a big payment. He is such a Good Master that instead of commanding His servants to bind me and cast me into the outer darkness He heeds my prayer, 'Be patient, dear Lord, and I will pay Thee all.' I must continue to work so that when He calls for me He will find me at my post:" For twenty long yea.rs she remained at her post, seeking no favors, asking no special services, denying' herself the luxuries of pity and idleness. Physically she had much to suffer; but the sufferings resulting from her difficult position in the community caused her~greater pain, for she still exercised tremendous power while ~ossessing no authority. Consulted by superiors and sub-jects alike,-she n~eticulously chose the prudent word so as to prevent wounding the charity of the community. Sometimes she reproached herself because the sisters were so very willing to serve her,.and she worried lest this service be rendered to her 290 September, 1959 MOTHER ANNA TABOURET personally rather than to" Christ through her. In .1902, as she approached her seventy-sixth birthday, some of the sisters recalled that her twenty-year prediction' was nearing its ful-fillment. Although Mother Anna had aged through the years as the paralysis progressed, the changes had been so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. Early in 1903 a severe cold led to pneumon-ia, and because her condition seemed critical she received the Last Sacraments. After the anointing she apparently regained her strength, but by May of that year it was obvious that her exile was almost over. When Mother Patrick, the General Superior, ¯suggested sending for Father Franche in order that she might be anointed again, the invalid merely replied, "As you will." The little girl who had screamed and stormed to have ¯ her own way, was now a woman of seventy-seven, eage~ bnly for the will of God. Father Franche hastened to the room of the "Saint of the Garret" as one priest had called her. She smiled as he approached the bed with the holy otis. After the anointing she received Holy Communion, and in about the time it would take to consume the Host she was dead. The Bridegroom had come and called for her at the "post" where she had been waiting for twenty years. Mother Anna was buried from the simple yet beautiful chapel that she herself had planned and erected. After the Requiem Mass the funeral procession passed down the ~ront yard which she had claimed from the wilderness, in front of the convent she had built, near the orphanage she had loved, past the hospital she had erected, in full view of the farmlands she had cleared, until .it reached the little cemetery she had plotted out for her daughters. She was buried near Father Begel, her friend in life and her companion in death. Over her grave her daughters erected a cross to let the world know that they had found The Valiant Woman. Future events were to prove the truth of their conviction. The tiny grain of mustard seed blown by the providence of God from the native soil of France to the strange, harsh ground of America has taken root and sprung up yielding more than seven hundred fifty professed members. "All these rise up and call her blessed." The status of the congregation, once diocesan, is now that of a pontifical institute, conducting elementary and 291 SISTER I~ARY KENNETH secondary schools, hospitals, confraternity classes, and a home for crippled children. The steady progress and consistent growth of the community, together with the efforts of her daughters to prove themselves worthy of so valiant a mother by the practice of holy humility are the best evidence for the validity of her epitaph: She hath looked well to the paths of her house; and hath not eaten her bread idle. (Prov 31:27) 292 Survey of Roman Documents R. F. Smith, S.J. IN THIS ARTICLE a summary will be given of the documents which appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (A_AS) during April and May, 1959. Throughout the survey all page references will be to the 1959 AAS (v. 51). Two Consistories On March 12, 1959 (AAS, pp. 177-83), John XXIII held two consistories. In the first, a public one, His Holiness bestowed the red hat on three cardinals who had been previously created on December 15, 1958. In the second and secret consistory the Pontiff confirmed Cardinal Tisserant as Camerlengo of the Sacred College for the year 1959; he likewise ratified the election of Bishop Paul Cheikho as Pa-triarch of Babylon for the Chaldeans, published the list of prelates appointed since the last consistory, bestowed three cardinalatial churches in Rome, and accepted various postulations for the pallium. Easter Messages On Holy Saturday evening, March 28, 1959 (AAS, pp. 241-45), the Vicar of Christ broadcast to the entire world the customary Easter message. The living Church, he told his listeners, is the ever-present confirmation of the Resurrection of Christ. Like her founder, the Church has experienced enemies who sought to entomb her; but also like Him she has always risen again. Accordingly, he said, the feast of Easter should lead Catholics to intensify their fidelity to the Church. But, he continued, Easter also has a message for thd spiritual life of each of the faithful. Easter, he pointed out, is a mystery of death and life; so it is that at this time each of the faithful is asked to die to sin by purify-ing his conscience in the sacrament of penance and then to nourish himself with the vivifying flesh of the immaculate Lamb of God. The next day (AAS, pp. 245-52) the Pope delivered an Easter homily during th~ Solemn High Mass which he celebrated in St. Peter's. Speaking first of the passion and death of Christ, the Pontiff Observed that the passion of Christ is both sacrament and example; it is the first because it contains and transmits the power of divine grace;, and it is the second because it prompts all of us to the practice of that patience of which Christ is the supreme teacher. Then reflecting on the Resur-rection, the Pontiff pointed out that in this mystery of Easter the 293 R. F. ~SMITH Review for Religious Master of life has triumphed over death and His victory is the victory of the Church throughout the ages. Accordingly Christians must face the future with confidence, in spite of all .the machinations of the Prince of Darkness. For the victory of Christ over death is our guarantee of victory over the obstacles to justice, liberty, and peace. Saints, Blessed, Servants of God Several of th~ documents of the April-May issues of AAS were devoted to St. Pius X. On April 11, 1959 (AAS, pp. 316-18), the Holy .Father sent a written message to the people of Venice on the occasion of his sending to that city the relics of St. Pius for a month's stay. The sending of the relics, said the Pontiff, fulfills the prophetic words spoken by the saint when he left Venice for the conclave at which he was elected Pope: "Dead or alive, I shall return." His Holiness went on to say that previous to his own election as Pope he had hoped to be buried in Venice near the tomb of St. Mark; since, however, that is now impossible, he expressed the wish to be buried in St. Peter's near the altar of Pius X, his predecessor both in Venice and in Rome. On May 10, 1959 (AAS, pp. 373-75), the Vicar of Christ broadcast to the Venetians a panegyric of St. Plus X at the conclusion of the month of devotions in his honor; and a similar panegyric (AAS, pp. 367-71) was preached by him in the Piazza of St. Peter's to the faithful who had gathered there to welcome back the relics of St. Pius after their stay in Venice; onthe same occasion the Pope also gave a panegyric in honor of St. John Bosco whose relics were being brought at the same time for a stay in St. Peter's. On April 12, 1959 (AAS, pp. 289-94), John XXIII performed the first canonizations of his reign by solemnly declaring the sainthood of Blessed Charles of Sezze (1613-1670), confessor, Franciscan lay brother, and of Blessed Juana Joaquina de Vedruna de Mas (1783-. 1854), widow, foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity. During the Mass after the canonizations the Holy Father delivered a homily on the two saints. Using a thought from St. Francis de Sales to the effect that Christian devotion and sanctity can be reached by everyone no matter what his state or condition of life may be, the Pontiff proceed-ed to show how the two new saints admirably prove the Salesian doc-trine. St. Charles was of a poor family; St. Joaquina was of noble birth; St. Charles was a farm laborer; St. Joaquina was raised in surroundings with no lack of material things. Yet both the one and the other reached the heights of sanctity. On April 13, 1959 (AAS, pp. 304-07), the Pontiff delivered an. allocution to thbse who had attended the canonization on the previous day. The two saints, the Pope said, teach us that the things that are worthwhile are not the things of the world, nor human honor, nor nobility of family, nor wealth, but the will of God. 294 September, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS On March 11, 1959 (AAS, pp. 325-27),' the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued a decree approving the two miracles required for the beatification of the Servant of God, Helen Guerra (1835-1914), foun-dress of the Oblate Sisters of the Holy Ghost (popularly known as the Sisters of St. Zita). On the same date (AAS, pp. 328-30) the same Congregation also approved the necessary miracles for the beatification of the Servant of God Mary Margaret d'Youville (1701-1771), foundress and first superior general of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns). Five weeks later on April 19, 1959 (AAS, pp. 387-90), the Congregation issued the decrees stating that it was safe to proceed ¯ with the beatification of both the Servants of God mentioned above. Then on April 26, 1959 (AAS, pp. 337-42), John XXIII issued the apostolic letter, "Renovans faciem terrae," by which the beatification of Helen Guerra was proclaimed to the Church; in the document the Pontiff points out that Leo XIII was moved by the Blessed's zeal for devotion to the Holy Spirit to commend special prayers to all Catholics during the Pentecost octave and later to write the encyclical Divinurn illud munus on the Holy Spirit. On May 3, 1959 (AAS, pp. 343-48), His Holiness issued the official notice of the beatification of Mary Margaret d'Youville in the apostolic letter, Caritatis praeconium. In the notice of the beatification the Pontiff singled out charity to-wards others as the commanding trait of the new Blessed, a trait that merited for her the title of "the mother of universal charity." On April 27, 1959 (AAS, pp. 352-54),'the Vicar of Christ delivered an allocution to Luccan Catholics present for the beatification of Blessed Helen. Having recalled that she was the teacher of St. Gemma Galgani, the Pontiff said that as St. Margaret Mary was the divine instrument for spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart, so Blessed Helen was God's instrument for spreading devotion to the Holy Spirit. Her own life, he continued, was a luminous manifestation of the superabundant fruits which the Holy Spirit infuses into those who are docile to His action. He concluded by saying that the life of the Blessed has a vital lesson for today; we n~eed a new coming of the Holy Spirit, a new Pehtecost to renew the face of the earth. O.n May 4, 1959 (AAS, pp. 363-64), His Holiness gave an allocution to the Canadians present in Rome for the beatification of Blessed Mary Margaret d'Youville. Pointing out that she is the first Canadian-b0rn blessed, he urged his listeners to imitate her profound faith, her perfect living out of various states of life, and especially her intense and. supernatural love of the pobr, the sick, and the unfortunate of every kind. On November 20, 1958 (AAS, pp. 274-77), the Sacred C~ngrega-tion of Rites approved the introduction of the cause of the Servant of God Aloysius Palazzolo (1827-1886), priest, founder of. the Sisters of the Poor (Italy). On January 28, 1959 (AAS, pp. 27~-78), the same 295 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious Congregation approved the reassumption of the cause of Blessed Mar~ of Providence (1825-1871), virgin, foundress of the Helpers of the Holy Souls. To Priests and Religious On February 10, 1959 (AAS, pp. 190-95), the Roman Pontiff gave an allocution to the Lenten preachers of Rome, discussing with them the traits that should mark their preaching. Wisdom, simplicity, and chari-ty, he said, should mark the sermon work of a priest. Wisdom should be shown in the choice of subject matter and the Pontiff recommended the following for their sermons: sin and its punishment, private and pub-lic worship, the sanctification of Sundays and holy days, the duties of the married state, the education of children, respect for the human person. Simplicity, he continued, should lead them not to seek their own renown but to work for the instruction of their hearers, while charity should urge them to seek only one thing: to draw their listeners to the love of God. On March 12, 1959 (AAS, pp. 198-202), the Pontiff addressed the members of the Apostolic Union of the Clergy, pointing out to them that a priest before all else must be a man of God. Like Abraham, a priest has left his own home to seek the land of promise in which, if he is true to his vocation, he will find Christ and Him crucified. Scrip-ture and the EucharisL he continued, must be the food of the priestly life; speaking of the latter, he said: "There is no perfection nor true love of.God Or of Christ without a profound devotion to the Eucharist." He' concluded by reminding his listeners that their love for souls must lead them to prayer, contemplation, and penance, for "This kind is driven out only by prayer and fasting" .(Mk 9:28). On April 21, 1959 (AAS, pp. 375-81), the Pontiff delivered an exhortation by radio broadcast to the clergy of .Venice gathered in the Basilica of St. Mark to honor the relics of St. Pius X. His Holiness began by remarking that a priest is granted what is not given even to the angels. Accordingly a priest must reflect this dignity in every aspect of his life and conduct. He advised his listeners that care of their own soul, manifested in prayer, recollection, study of sacred doctrine, and careful use of the sacrament of penance, must come before every pas-toral preoccupation. He emphasized this point by quoting St. John Chrysostom: "If the priest possesses all the virtues, then he is like the best kind of salt; and with it the whole people can be seasoned. This - will be done by seeing the priest ~ather than by hearing him; for the first way to learn is by seeing the good; and the second way is by hear-ing it." The Pope concluded his exhortation by urging his listeners to continued loyalty to the Church and to the pursuit of all human values, natural and supernatural. 296 September, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS On April 16, 1959 (AAS, pp. 307-13), the Pontiff delivered an allocution to all branches of the Franciscan family on the 750th anni-sary of the pontifical confirmation of the Franciscan Rule. All branches of the Franciscans, the Pontiff stated, .are faithful to the fundamental points of the original Franciscan Rule: poverty, obedience, charity. Franciscan poverty, he went on to say, emphasizes the serene joy that comes from the giving up of material possessions. Obedience, especially that to the Roman Pontiff, he continued, is a necessity of religious life; history shows that obedience to the Holy See has led to success in the life of religious orders, while lack of obedience has led to unfortunate states of insubordination and unruliness. Finally he noted that charity has always been the soul of the Franciscan missionary spirit; it has made of the members of the Franciscan family conquistadors of souls for the triumph of the name, love, and kingdom of Christ crucified. Messages on Various Subjects Under the date of February 15, 1959 (AAS, pp. 206-08), John XXIII sent a written message to the first Eucharistic Congress of Cen-tral America. The Eucharist, the Pontiff declared, infuses into the heart of man a new energy of supernatural love which strengthens while it purifies human love. The Eucharist unifies the entire man until there is created in each individual the perfect man, created to the image of God and conformed to. the example of His Son. Moreover, he added, the Eucharist also helps human relations; for by calming the tumults of the spirit, it leads to goodness, justice, and mercy. Finally the Eu-charist strengthens family life; since Christ's love has given us the sacrament of the Eucharist, it is there that the highest spiritual union between man and wife can be realized. On April 19, 1959 (AAS, pp. 313-14), the Vicar of Christ sent a radio message to the faithful of Belgium on the tenth anniversary of the Belgian radio program, "The Missionary Hour." His message to the Belgi.a. ns can be summarized in two quotations which His Holiness took from the writings of Plus XII: "The missionary spirit and the Catholic spirit are one and the same thing." "The Catholic vitality of a nation is measured by the sacrifices it makes for the cause of the mis-sions." A week later (A_AS, pp. 349-52) the Pontiff addressed a group of Italian women devoted to the assistance of missionaries. He told them that missionary cooperation today is. urgent and imperative, for the last ten years have been critical ones for missionary activity. He pointed out to his listeners that missionary cooperation is not exhausted by material aid; if it were, then the problem of the missions would be only a human problem. As it is, however, the problem is a supernatural one; and material help, while necessary, is neither the principal nor the only form of assistance. To such help there must be added prayer and 297 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious above all suffering. He concluded by reminding his audience that mis-sionary cooperation will not only help the missionaries but will also revitalize their own dioceses and parishes. On February 10, 1959 (AAS, pp. 205-06), John XXIII sent a writ-ten message to the First National Congress of Spain on the Family, telling the members of the Congress that three principal loves exist in the heart of man: conjugal love, parental love, and filial love; to harm these loves, he said, is to profane what is sacred and to lead to the ruin of one's country and of all of humanity. On March 1, 1959 (AAS, pp. 195-97), the Pontiff addressed the Ninth National Con-gress of the Women's Italian Center; he reminded his listeners that the family finds its guardian and protector in the wife and mother of the family; hence in the face of present dangers to the family, they must as wives and mothers turn all their efforts to the preservation of family life. On May 1, 1959 (AAS, pp. 355-59), the Pontiff gave an allocution to a group of Italian workers, telling them that true happiness consists in not losing sight of man's supreme goal; hence he urged them always to seek celestial things even when they endeavor to raise their level of living. OH March 18, 1959 (AAS, pp. 202-04), His Holiness addressed members of the International Symposium on Prophylaxis, assuring them that their work was a labor of real charity, since they endeavor to prevent those physical and psychical disturbances which obscure the splendor of the divine spark that is human reason. On May 4, 1959 (AAS, pp.359-62), John XXIII spoke to the participants in the Third Italian Congress of Catholic Newspapers and Periodicals. He urged his listeners to employ the arms of truth and of charity in their work and advised them to be kind even when fighting what is wrong according to the saying of St. Augustine: "Kill the error, but love the erring." He concluded by exhorting his listeners to publish works that will reflect the wisdom, love, and beauty of God. On April 11, 1959 (AAS, pp. 303-04), the Pontiff addressed an international group of war veterans; he told them that peace can not be decreed by any earthly power but mt~st flow from the interior of each individual man. On April 1, 1959 (AAS, pp. 299-301), the Pope spoke to members of the Federation of Catholic Universities; he pleaded with them to con-centrate on building up a strong wall against today's materialism, con-cluding by asking them to be Christ-bearers, since Christ is the apex of all knowledge. On the same day (A/KS, pp. 259-60) the Pontiff ad-dressed the Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists. He encour-aged them in their study of the unity and responsibilities of a Negro- African culture. He pointed out, however, that the Church is not to be identified with any one culture, for her work is of another order -- that of the religious salvation of man. Nevertheless, he added, the 298 September,. 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Church is always ready to acknowledge, welcome, and animate all that is to the honor of human intelligence. He concluded his talk by urging his audience to have sympathy for and to collaborate with other cultures. On April 7, 1959 (AAS, pp. 301-02), the Vicar of Christ ad-dressed the members of the First Ciceronian Congress. He told them that because so many today pursue the study of mathematics and of tech-nology, it is necessary to stress Latin and similar subjec.ts; otherwise men will become like the machines they make: cold, hard, loveless. On February 16, 1959 (AAS, pp. 204-05), the Pontiff delivered the first radio message to Japan from V.atican City Radio, urging Japanese Catholics to greater sanctity in their lives. Miscellaneous Documents A decree of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation, dated February 28, 1959 (AAS, pp. 272-74), provides that a~l military vicars should make an ad limina visit to Rome every five years. In a special document of February 18, 1959 (AAS, p. 228), the Holy Father appointed the members of a Commission to organize the coming diocesan synod of Rome. By the apostolic letter, Boni pastoris, February 22, 1959 (AAS, pp. 183-87), John XXIII set up new norms to govern the activity of the Pontifical Commission for Motion Pictures, Radio, and Television. On March 6, 1959 (AAS, p. 271), the Holy Office prohibited the diffu-sion of all representations and writings which present the devotion to the Divine Mercy according to the forms proposed by Sister Faustina Kowalska; the removal of any such representations which may already be exposed for worship was left to the prudence of the bishops. On April 4, 1959 (AAS, pp. 271-72), the same Holy Office forbade Cathohcs to vote for candidates who are associated with Communists and who favor them in their way of acting. In a special radio message of April 27, 1959 (AAS, pp. 314-16), the Holy Father requested prayers during the month of May for the success of the projected General Council. 299 Views, News, Previews ST. CHARLES of Sezze, one of the two saints whose canonizations are noted in this issue's "Survey of Roman Documents," was born in 1613 in the small town of Sezze, Italy, a few miles to the south of Rome. Born Giancarlo Macchione, he received only a rudi-mentary education which taught him to read and to write; at the age of twenty-two he was received, against the wishes ~of his relatives, into the novitiate of the Roman Franciscan Province and was given the name of Charles. After his profession he was appointed to various houses of his province and was finally stationed in Rome at San Fran-cesco a Ripa where he continued to live until his death. Outwardly he led the humblest kind of life, being employed as gardener, cook, sacristan, and beggar for the community. Inwardly, however, he led a life of sublime mysticism. He was the recipient of many extraordinary mystical graces: visions, transverberations, intuitive knowl.edge of con-sciences. To Alexander VII, Clement IX, Clement X, and Clement XI he predicted their election to the papacy. The trials of his life ~vere comparable to his privileges. He was subject to intense interior desola-tion;" God also allowed him to be tried by vehement passions, especially those of anger and lust; and apparently it was only his practice of severe and continued penance that permitted him to persevere in the path of ~anctity in spite of the temptations to which his passions led. At the order of his superiors he composed in prose and verse a consider-able number of spiritual writings which are characterized by a style as simple as it is profound. A few of these writings have appeared in printing, but the great majority of them remain unpublished. St. Charles died on January 6, 1670; he was beatified two centuries later by Leo XIII; according to the decree of canonization the commemoration of St. Charles is to be made on January 6. St. Juana Joaquina de Vedruna de Mas, the second of the two saints mentioned in this issue's "Survey of Roman Documents," was born at Barcelona, Spain, on April 16, 1783, to a family both pious and well-to-do. Even as a young child she was the recipient of many signal graces, not the least of which was the ability to see God in all the events that happened to her. At an early age, she felt drawn to the religions life and at twelve she expressed a wish to join the Carmelites. Religious life, however, was not yet in God's plans for her; and at the age of six-teen she married a Barcelona lawyer, Theodore de Mas. Nine children were born to the marriage, six of whom later became religions. During her years of marriage, St. Joaquina showed herself a model wife and mother. When Napoleon invaded Spain, Joaquina and her children 300 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS were forced to flee from their home, while Theodore fought with the Spanish troops to repulse the invader. Soon after peace was established, Theodore died, worn out and exhausted by the hardships of the cam-paign against the Napoleonic invasion. Widowed at the age of thirty-three, Joaquina devoted herself to the care of her children. After they were raised and provided for, the desire for religious life reasserted it-self once more; and at the advice of a Capu.chin father she founded a new congregation, the Carmelite sisters of Charity. The purpose of the new institute was to educate the daughters of poor families and to care for the aged. At the time of the foundation of the institute St. Joaquina was forty-three. The rest of her life was largely occupied with the train-ing of her daughters in religion. Courage, humility, work, and joy were the characteristic qualities she wished to see in her religions. Her own spiritual life was characterized by an ardent devotion to the Most Blessed Trinity as well as by the practice of heavy penances. She died in Barcelona on August 28, 1854; at the time of her death her congrega-tion totaled twenty-~ven honses. St. Joaquina's cause was introduced on January 13, 1920, and she was beatified on May 19, 1940. Her feast is to be kept on August 28. The last command of Christ before He ascended into heaven was, according to Mark 16:15, "Go into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The command thns laid upon the whole Church through the Apostles should have special meaning for religions who have bound themselves to be the perfect followers of Christ. For this reason it is salutary to reflect on how much is still to be done before the gospel is preached to every creature. Of the 2,684,660,000 persons in the world professing a religion, only a little more than 31% are Chris-tians, while not quite 19% are Catholics. Even more sobering is the realization that only 47 % of the world's religions population is mono-theistic, the larger part of the human race being polytheistic, pantheis-tic, or the like. Missionary activity, then, must continue to be one of the primary activities of the Church and it is to be expected that as in the past religions will make that activity one of their chief preoccupa-tions. Inforrnations catholiques internationales for June 1, 1959, contains a valuable, country-by-country survey of vocations to the priesthood in Europe today. According to this survey Spain, which in 1769 pos-sessed 65,823 priests, now has only 23,372. In relation to Spain's total population, there is one priest for every 1,264 inhabitants; in this con-nection, however, it should be remembered that most of Spain's priests are massed in the northern part of the country, the southern part be- 301 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS ing decidedly lacking in priests and vocations. A survey made in Spanish seminaries during the years 1952-1957 showed that 30% abandoned their seminary studies during that time. Of all the European countries Portugal is worse off with regard to priests and vocations, having but one priest for every 1,773 inhabitants. The loss in seminaries in Por-tugal is high; only about 20% of those entering seminaries persevere in their studies and are ordained. Ireland is exceptionally well off, for it has one priest for every 593 inhabitants; it should also be noted that esch year for every Irish priest ordained for work in Ireland itself, another Irish priest is ordained for work in countries other than Ire-land. England with a total of 7,040 priests has one priest for every 1,214 Catholics. A notable characteristic of English vocations is the large number of late vocations. Holland is well off with regard to priests, having one priest for every 480 Catholics; since, however, most of these priests are not engaged in parish work, the actual working ratio is one priest in parish work for every 1,220 Catholics. It should also be noted that Dutch religious priests constitute 13% of the total number of priests in missionary work. Perseverance in seminary studies is a prob-lem in Holland; in 1925, 5~)% of those entering seminaries were ordained; at the present time, however, that percentage is down to.25 %. Belgium has one priest for every 878 inhabitants and has 30 vocations to the priesthood for every .10,000 population. West Germany has but one priest for every 1,568 Catholics; it consequently needs priests badly but an increase in vocations does not seem likely in the near future. Austria too needs priests, having but one priest in ministerial work for every 1,439 Catholics; it has been estimated that the country needs 1,700 more priests to adequately meet its needs. Italy possesses 1 priest for every 1,008 inhabitants, but the priests are badly distributed. North Italy has many priests, while the southern part needs a large increase in them. 70% of those beginning seminary studies drop out of the seminaries before ordination; moreover the age level of Italian priests is high, 55 % Of them being over 50 years of age. 302 uestions nswers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] You have often said that it is the sense of canon law, the mind and will of the Holy See, and the doctrine of authors that a diocesan congregation should become pontifical. I ha~e heard others either refuse to accept or deny this bpinion. In anticipation of this objection, I carefully refrained from stating my own opinion in an article on this matter and explained the question from the opinion of others (R~.vx~.w FOR R~.LIGXOUS, 9 [1950], 63-68). The conclusion of the article is pertinent to the present objection. "The reader is now in a position to give his own answers to the questions of this article. These answers should be based primarily on the mind and will of the Holy See and on the common opinion in the Church. If the will of the Holy See is evident with regard to any action, arguments in favor of or contrary to that action are simply a matter of indifference." This question is outside the field of personal opinion, since the Holy See every five years asks a diocesan congregation in effect: "Have you or do you intend to make a petition for pontifical approval, and if not, why not (Quinquennial Report, n. 4)?" Father Gambari, an official of the Sacred Congregation of Religions, was recently asked the same question and replied: "Yes, indeed, it is the mind of the Holy See that the diocesan communities which have the conditions required become pontifical. Diocesdn character is only a stage of preparation for the pontifical character . The mind of the Church is that diocesan communities become papal, so they must be connected with the Holy See directly rather than to the Holy See through different bishops (1957 Sisters' Institute of Spirituality, 155)." What do we get out of becoming pontifical? This question or objection is now being proposed quite frequently. My conjecture is that the objection has its source in the unwillingness to abandon the false opinion that diocesan status is permanent and definitive, whereas it is only initial,' temporary, and probationary. The objection is founded on the profit motive, which has its legitimate place but not against the expressed will of the Ho!y See. The intrinsic arguments for pontifical approval were also given in the article cited in the preceding question, from which I quote the following: "The intrinsic arguments for seeking papal approval emphasized by the authors cited above are: (1) the government and the constitutions of the institute 303 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious receive a greater authority; (2) the central and internal government becomes stronger; (3) the unity ~f'government, spirit, and ministries of the institute is preserved; (4) the institute is endowed with a greater stability and is thus better able to preserve its original nature and accomplish its original 'purpose; (5) the life and government of the institute become more ,autonomous; (6) the institute has a greater liberty of diffusion and thus of increase. To these can be added: (7) the more autonomous character of the institute naturally begets, a greater internal initiative; (8) the immediate subjection to the Head of all Christendom and the wider diffusion of the institute are more apt to engender the universal viewpoint of the Holy See; (9) the constitutions approved by the Holy See and examined and corrected by specialists will very likely possess a greater excellence and utility." (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 9 {1950], 68) Are more American diocesan congregations becoming pontifical? The answer is slowly and cautiously in the affirmative. As will appear from the figures given below, 1957 was a more optimistic year. These figures are taken from the unofficial publication, L'Attivit~ della Santa Sede. They are evidently incomplete. This publication gives the names of the institutes that were approved. The ages of the twelve American congregations that received their first pontifical approval are very interesting. Their foundation dates, as given in popular manuals, put them in two distinct classes, the very old, and the rest; but not all of the latter are very young (18"33, 1842, 1854, 1858, 1858, 1859, 1859, 1864 and 1902, 1916, 1918, 1929). The average age of the former group is 106 years. We have given the conditions necessary for pontifical approval at least twice in the past and we quote them again. " . . . a diocesan congregation should not delay its petition for pontifical ap-proval until it has the size that admits or demands a division into provinces. Unless special difficulties exist against this petition, and such difficulties must be explained to the Sacred Congregation, the diocesan institute should request papal approbation as soon as the necessary conditions are verified. These are: a) the congregation by a sufficient test of time should have given proof of stability, religious observance, piety, and spiritual profit of its works; b) it is sufficient that the con-gregation number one hundred and fifty members. It is not required that the congregation have houses in more than one diocese." (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 11 [1952], 14; 12 [1953], 253), These conditions demand merely that the diocesan congregation have grown to a vigorous youth. Pontifical approval is not to be requested in the weakness of infancy nor in the uncertainties of childhood, but we are not to conceive pontifical approval as a refuge for the aged nor as a geriatric stimulant. 304 September, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Decree of Praise Total United States Definitive Approbation Total United States 1943 9 0 -- -- 1948' 5 0 5 0 1950 7 0 14 1 1951 9 2 -- -- 1953 8 1 3 0 1954 3 1 3 1 1955 1 0 2 0 1956 6 2 3 1 1957 24 6 18 2 72 12 48 5 Something strange, at least in my opinion, occurs at times in relation to our local and provincial chapters. A local superior will preside at the election of the delegate and substitutes in his house; and yet, because his term of office has expired, he himself will not be a member of the provincial chapter. The same thing happens to a provincial when his term expires after the provincial but before the general chapter. Am I right in thinking these occurrences strange? If so, how can they be avoided? An ex officio member of a chapter loses his membership if he no longer holds the same position at the beginning of a chapter; for example, a brother provincial who has ceased to. hold that office, even if only after the provincial chapter, is evidently not an ex officio member of the general chapter. The new brother provincial is, since he holds the office to which the ex officio membership is attached. This is also ob-viously true of a local superior when an ex officio membership is attached to this office. It is not contradictory but at least somewhat incongruous that an elected delegate from a house would ente.r a general or provincial chapter as a delegate of a house after he had been transferred from it. The same thing is true of a delegate of a territorial group. It would be almost equally incongruous to transfer religious, from houses or territories of groups after the convocation of a general or provincial chapter and before the completion of the house or group election of delegates. Such transfers would make it more difficult for the religious to know thos,e qualified as delegate~. All transfers of superiors or subjects of this nature could also expose the higher superior to the suspicion of self-interest or intrigue. ~here is no law of the code nor any general practice of the Holy See on this matter. The following minimum legislation would be necessary in the constitutions to avoid the situations described above. (a) From the date of the convocation of the general chapter until its completion, 305 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review [or Religious no provincial may be changed from his cffi~e. If his term expires during this interval, it is extended automatically by the law of the constitutions until after the general chapter. (b) The same law is to be enacted for local superiors when ex officio membership is attached to this office and if there are no provinces; if there are provinces, the law extends only to the completion of the provincial chapter. (c) .Elected delegates and substitutes are not to be transferred after their election from the house or territory of the group. This extends also to a removal of local superiors elected as either delegates or substitutes in other groupings. (d) After the convocation of the general chapter and until the local chapters are completed, religious are not to be transferred, except for an urgent reason, from one house to another or, when territorial groups are in use, from one territory to another. Such legislation is contained in the constitutions of some lay insti-tutes. Usually it goes beyond the minimum norms and forbids the change of any superior or religious from the date of convocation until the close of the general chapter, either absolutely or outside of necessary and urgent cases, for example: "From the date of convocation of the chapter, the transferring of religious or superiors from one house to another is p.ermitted only for grave reasons, approved as such by the general council. The same holds for the deposition of superiors." Such norms may also be contained in the customs; and, if they exist neither in the constitutions nor customs, at least the minimum norms given above should be followed as principles of prudent government. The avoidance of such situations is a sufficient reason for the competent higher superior to prolong the term of a provincial or local superior, since the Holy See itself admits the sufficiency of this reason in approving constitutions. In our pontifical institute of simple vows, all the religious pro-fessed of perpetual vows are members of the general chapter. In the reply to our quinquennial report, the Holy See told us to institute a system of delegates. We do not want delegates; we wish to retain our' vote. What are we to do? There can be no objective obscurity or confusion as to what you are to do when the Holy See has told you what to do~ As stated before in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, there are published corrections of constitutions which show that the Holy See was demanding a system of delegates at least as far back as 1887. The purpose of a system of delegates is to secure competent membership from the entire institute but to confine~ the chapter within a workable and efficient number of members. A system of delegates is also necessary now for the general and regional chapters of nuns. The necessity of delegates was explained and em-phasized in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 10 (1951), 187-90. 306 September, 1959 QOESTIONS AND ANSWERS Our pontifical congregation is not divided into provinces, but we are considering such h division. How many members would each provinc'e send to the general chapter? If we decide rather to include a division into'regions~ in our constitutions, how many members would each region send to the general chapter? In institutes divided into provinces, the provincial is a member of the general chapter in virtue of his office. This is true also of the superiors of vice-provinces, quasi-provinces, regions, and vicariates. The elected delegates from a province to the general chapter are almost universally two, most rarely three or four; and they are practically always elected in a provincial chapter. The Holy See has approved, even recently, variations of this norm, for example: "one or two delegates according as the province has less or more than a hundred members"; "one delegate for each province but two delegates for any province that exceeds three hundred." The practice on delegates from vice-provinces, quasi-provinces, regions, and vicariates varies. In some constitutions, they are given no delegates; in others all are granted one or two; and in some institutes one or two according to the number of professed religious in the territory, for example, one delegate if there are less than forty religious, two if forty or more. At summer school this year, a religious was complaining of the fact that a very large house sent only the same number of delegates to the general chapter, e.g., a house of twelve would have the same representation as a house of seventy-five. I brought out the fact that, according to our constitutions, a house sends one delegate for every twelve professed members. Why don't all institutes have this fair norm? Both of the institutes in question h

Issue 10.5 of the Review for Religious, 1951. ; A.M.D.G. . Renew for Religious SEPTEMBER 15, 1951. Christian Heroes . J. Pu~z Joy in Heaven . Richard L. Rooney ¯ PassionisHc SpirH'uallty . Fidells Rice Modesty ¯ ¯ ~ . ,~ .~ . C- A. Herbs÷ Grace o~ Our Vocation . P. De Leffer Communion for O~hers . . Clerence McAuliffe A Vocational Newspaper Questions and Answers Book Reviews ,VOLUME X i' =, NUMBER 5' RI:::VI W FOR RELIGIOUS VOLUME X SEPTEMBER, 1951 NUMBER GONTENTS CHRISTIAN HEROES-~3. Putzo S.J . 225 Heroism of Everyday Life . 225 The New Saints ¯ " . ZZ9 The New Beati . 235 JOY IN HEAVEN--Richard L. Rooney, S.3 .2.3.9 PASSIONISTIC SPIRITUALITY--Fidelis Rice, C.P .2.4.1 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 246 MODESTY--C. A. Herbst, S.J . 247 ETUDE SUR LA PAUVRETE. RELIGIEUSE .2.5.2. THE GRACE OF OUR VOCATION---P. De Letter, S.J .2.5.3 COMMUNICATIONS--A VOCATIONAL NEWSPAPER . 260 OFFERING COMMUNION' FOR OTHERS-~Clarence McAuliffe, S.J. 261 MEDICO-MORAL PROBLEMS . 265 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 20. Alienation of Property for $100,000 . 266 21. Alienation of Sacred Objects: Relics, Images, Vessels . . . . 266 22. Extreme Unction before Major Operation .268 23. Letters of Golden Jubilarians . 268 24. Novice Master at Coun~i~ Meeting . ¯ " . 268 25. Communion to Ambulatory Sick . 269 26. Hail Mary's on Feast of Annunciation . 270 I'~EW MEDITATION BOOKS . 270 BOOK REVIEWSw Pastor's History of the Popes; The Love of God and the Cross of Jesus; The Gifts of the Holy Ghost . 273 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 276 BOOK NOTICES . 278 TEN YEAR INDEX OF REVIEW--MAYBE . 280 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September. 1951. Vol. X, No. 5. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation, Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka. Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Editorial Secretary: Jerome Breunig, S~ J. Copyright, 1951, by Adam C. Ellis, S,J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price]! 3 dollars a year: 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Befoie writing to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. Christ:ian bleroe It~UR DAYS call for heroic living. The greatness.and diffi: ~ culties of our time are su.cb that no disciple ofo "~hrist.is allowed to remain satisfied with mediocrity." This, saying of Plus XI has often been quoted. The Holy Year was" meant-to stir up Christendom to greater fervor, that it might be an:active, l'eaven for'the much-needed renovation of the world. The numerous beati-fications and canonizations of this last year put beforeus outstandi'ng Christian heroes whose example is meant to stimulate our mediocgity~ Heroism is the test applied by the Church to candidates for .beati-- fication--not a human, stoic heroism, but a heroism inspired by personal love, by charity, and sustained by the Holy Ghost dwellin~ in the soul. At the beginning the typical saint was the ma'rtyr, th.e Christian who had been a witness to Christ by. dying for Him. ,But soon it was realized that, in the absence of persecution.s, there can be an "unbloody martyrdom" by heroic fidelity in liv'ing for Christ, Thus, by the side of martyrs, the names o,~f. outstanding "confes~ors~j came to be added in the martyrology. Heroism always remained the test of genuine sanctity, and the Congregation of Rites, .When studying the cause of'a confessor, has chiefly to discuss the hiroism his virtue. Is there evidence that he possessed in a herbic degree.the theolggical virtues of faith, hope, charity and the cardinal.~ri~tues :of prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, with the virtues connected with them'? , .' ~ :: " , But what is required for heroic virtue? It is not easy tO dete~ mine thi's notion. Benedict XIV, in his treatise on'the beatification of the servants of God, has given all the elements, but he has:not made the synthesis, and one may say that the notion remained some:~ what indeterminate. This gave rise, 'within the ,Congregatigrl of Rites, to different conceptions of heroic, virtue. This. difference' de-layed the cause of the servant of God, A. Gianelli. The same reason may explain why until this year no child or ado.lescent ever passed the test, for the classical conception insisted 'on "extraordinary,~.' manifestatidns of heroism. There was room for progress 'tow~i'r'ds greater precision and, accor~ding to a recent articl'e by.~a consultor:of 22'5 J. PU~Z Reoieto for Religious the Congregation of Rites, the well-known Carmelite, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, a distinct progress has been made during recent years. (Cf. Etudes Carmelitaines, 1949, pp. 175-88.~ This progress has not only a juridical importance for the process of beatification; it interest~ ascetical theology as well, since all Chris-tians are called to sanctity, and the type of holiness required by the Church for canonization determines the ideal of Christian perfection after which all must strive. T.he true Christian is the saint, and the saints are the standard by which we must guide and judge ourselves. Our imitation of.them must be based on a precise notion of what sanctity-~heroic virtue--consists in. Aqcording to Father Gabriel, the work of elaboration and deter-mination took place chiefly between 1916 and 1922, under the direct inspiration of Benedict XV. It can be followed in the decrees of the Congregation of Rites published on the occasion of the declara-tion of heroic virtue especially in the decrees concerning A. M. Gianelli (AAS, 1920, pp. 170-4)'and 3. N. Neumann (AAS, 1922, pp. 23-6). As a result, we are told, the Church is now in possession of a concept of heroic virtue more synthetic, less complicated and less abstract, more definite and easier to apply. This notion was clearly expressed in 1916 by Benedict XV, when he declared that "sanctity consists merely in conformity with the divine will, expressed in the constant and exact fulfillment of the duties of one's state." Sanctity, as the decree of April 11, 1920, explains, cannot be judged by an abstract standard. The saints cannot be reduced to one type. Heroism will vary according to each one's temperament, state of life, and other circumstances. It will not always show itself by extraordinary or stupendous deeds. For, as the decree' states, "these require a suitable occasion. But such occasions are rare and do not depend on the will of man; persecutions, for instance, plagues, or earthquakes cannot be produced at will. Hence, if holi-ness consisted in such deeds, it would follow that holiness itself does not depend on the will of man--which is absurd." The heroism to which all Christians can aspire is the exact and constant fulfillment of their concrete daily duties. "Comrounia sed non communiter,'" according to the motto of St. John Berchmans, doing common things but uncommonly well. What makes the saint is not the nature of his actions, whether extraordinary or common, important or insig-nificant; what counts is the intensity of his love that rules and in-spires all his actions. 226 September, 195 ! (]HRISTIAN HEROES Such fidelity implies real heroism, for nothing is more difficult to human nature than constancy. To be moved in everything by the will of God only, without being influenced by the ever-active sensi-bility, the sudden movements of the passions, the sense of fatigue, the ups and downs of one's n~oods.---such constancy supposes that the soul is under the perfect domination of the Holy Ghost and totally oriented towards its last end. Father Gabriel wrote in the same article, "If it were not so, if it were not perfectly purified, if other motives distinct from the love of God were still active (they can all be reduced to self-love, the root of all inordinate love of creatures), .then it would inevitably act more than once under the impulse of these motives and thus deviate from the pure fulfillment of the divine~ will." In such a soul "we admire a human nature tbat has reached a singular harmony and perfection--its spiritual forces keeping the sensible fac~lties in docile submission or completely conquering their resistance, so as to realize to perfection the task prescribed to it by the Lord: the perfect fulfillment of His holy will by a total, constant, ~nd generous fidelity to the daily duty." "Such sublime conduct, kept up over a long period, and without failure, is completely above the powers of human .nature left to itself . It alone suffices for evangelical heroism, for it makes man perfect in the way the heavenly ~Father is perfect." (Quoted by Benedict XIV in his treatise on beatification, III, c. 21, n. 10.) ! "'The heroism of the ordinary life has officially received a place by the side of the classical extraordinary heroism," wrote D. Pietro Brocardo. (Cf. Satesianum, 1950, p. 197.) Benedict XV's suc-cessor, the Pope who stressed the universal call of Christians to sanc-i. ,t~ty, often expounded this conception. Sanctity, according to Plus ~KI, is not something "exceptional," it is but the Christian life lived fully and intensely according to each one's vocation. Sanctity is but ~he fullest and richest expression of Christian life. It is the divine perfection proposed to all, from the humblest believer to the gigantic ~gures of hagiography. If not all are called to the same height of ~anctity, yet all are called to sanctity. His most famous pronounce-ment on this topic is his allocution published in Osservatore Romano, ~Jan. 6, 1928, on "the terrible everyday duty," given after the reading bf the decree of the heroic virtue of Brother Benildus, a humble leacher who had spent his whole life in elementary schoo.ls: "A humble servant of God, whose whole life was all modesty hnd silence, all very commonplace and very 'everyday.' But in such 227 Reoiew for Religious an. everyday- life how much there is that is not common! This everyday, always the same, with the same occupations, the same ~;eakness~s, the same miseries, has rightly been called 'the terrible ev'e'ryda3f:' How much strength is required to stand up to this ter-rible, this crushing, this monotonous, this asphyxiating everyday! An. un'c6mmon irirtue is very necessary to perform--not with an all too'° frequent negligence and superficiality but with attention and inner fe'rvbr of spirit--that series of common actions which fill our e'4ceryday life'. 0' "Holy Church is never a more equitable judge and a wi~er teacher of bdlinesk than when she honors these humble lights, so often unnoticed even by those who had the good fortun~ tosee them shine finder their i'er~, eyes. Extraordinary things, great events, magnifi-cei~ t enterprises arouse the noblest instincts: in the commonplace, on the:contrary, that is, in the flat and obscure everyday task, there is nothing exciting or fascin.ating. Yet this is the stuff the life of most men' is made of. How often do extraordinary circumstances present therfiselves in a lifetime? They are very rare, and woe to us if sanc-tity were reserved to extraordinary circumstances! What would the greater part of'~nankind do? For it is certain that all without dis-tinction are called to sanctity." " B'roth~r B~nil~tus was beatified twenty years later, on April 4, 1948. On that occasion Plus XII, too, spoke of the heroism of the ordinary life. Benildus was neither a founder, nor a mystic, nor a miracle-worker; h~.was a,~simple schoolmaster. His only claim to the honors' of the YChurch was his fidelity to duty--to his rules and the daily grind of the school. But such constant fidelity to the details of his di~ty, his radiant charity, his serenity in difficulties could only flow. frorrl a'ddep[and vigorous interior life and habitual union with Goal. ' :. ¯ During th~ Holy Year a variety of saints have been' beatified or e~rmn~zed." Maria Goretti w~s only eleven when she died, but she Was canonized as a martyr. Yet, even this extraordinary form of htroisrd;, the Pope pointed out, presupposes the "ordinary" heroism of the'daily life. Among the new beati is the first adolescent ever t'gised to the altars, Dominic Savio. So far, the youngest confessor ~fioni~ed is S~."Stanislaus; but he was a young man of eighteen ~nd, besides bein~ a religious, his life was out of the ordina.ry, Dominic died before he was fifteen, and his life was the very ordinary s~hool-b'oy life. The criterion of heroic virtue exposed by Father Gabriel 228 September, 1951 CHRISTIAN HEROES ,seems to havi~ made it possible for children and adolescerits to pass the test required for tl~e supreme honors of the Church. The eight saints canonized during the Holy Year of 1950 brought "the total number canonized by Plus XII tO twenty-two. Saints Emily de Rodat and Maria Goretti were also beatified by the present Holy Father. Among the canonized we find seven confessors and one martyr; one bishop, one priest-founder of a religious insti-tute, three foundresses of religious congregations, and three who attained sanctity "in the world": a middle-aged woman, a young woman, and a girl. Four are Italian, two French, one Spanish, and one from Latin America. Five belong to the nineteenth century, while the fifteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries each claim one. St. Jeanne de Valois (1464-1504) Jeanne de Valois, daughter, sister, and wife of kings, seemed to be so high-placed only to be the more cruelly humiliated and cast away. Her birth was a bitter disappointment for King Louis XI who already had a daughter and wanted a son who could succeed him. Misshapen by nature, she was sent away from the court and brought up by strangers. When still a child, she was bound by a political marriage to the young Duke of Orleans who detested her and who, when twenty years later he l~ecame King Louis XII, had his marriage annulled, makin,g of the rejected queen an object of public ridicule. But the greater her disgrace in the eyes of the world, the more clearly stands out her moral nobility and spiritual greatness. The "royal Cinderella," as she has been called, showed no bitterness, no morbid self-pity; she accepted everything with sincere humility, deep love for God and for men (including her husband for whom she never ceased praying and who became one of the best-loved kings of France), and whole-hearted application to the work God had given her. The king, on sending her away, made over to her the duchy of Berry, and during the six remaining years of her life she resided at Bourges, her capital, administering the duchy with such success that she earned from her pebple the title of "the Good Duchess."A'mid 229 J. PUTZ Review [or Religious the splendor of her court she secretly practiced" the most rigorous penances. In 1500 she realized a long-cherished project, the founda-tion of an order'of the Blessed Virgin, the Annqnciade. Its members were to take as their means of sanctification the imitation, the repro-duction of M~ry, by practicing, her "Ten Virtues" as found in the Gospel. She herself, though continuing to rule the duchy, made her religious profession and wore the habit under her worldly d~ess. She completed her work by founding a Third Order, the "Order of Peace,': whpse members, living in the world, were to work for peace and reconciliation. The Order of the Annonciade flourished for centuries, but was almost destroyed by the French Revolution. At ' present it has a half dozen bouses in Belgium, France, and England. When Joan died in her fortieth year she was immediately venerated as a saint. Her cult grew, miracles multiplied, but she was not formally beatified until 1742. Pius XII solemnlY proclaimed her a saint on May 28. In his homily the Holy Father stressed the saint's work for the promotion of peace; in heaven, he said, she continues to pray for the extinction of hate and for fraternal concord, so that the nations may form one great family, striving with united for~es to ensure prosperity and peace for all. On the following day, in an address to the numer-ous French pilgrims, he described the spirituM characteristics of the saint--spirit of faith, devotion to the Mother of Jesus ("an infallible test of the true. Christian"), union with Jesus in suffering--and gave her as an example tO French Catholics, particularly to the women of France "on'whom in the present crisis devolves a mission 9f supreme importance." SI. Mary Ann of Jesus (1618-1645) Born in Quito, Ecuador, of Spanish parents, this Saint of Latin America--"the Lily of Quito"--showed a precocious attraction for the things of the spirit. She took the three vows at ten and lived the live of a solitary in a room of her sister's wealthy home,.leaving it only to go to church and to visit the poor and sick. She practiced heroic austerities and was favored with sublime prayer. In 16~}5, when Quito was visited by earthquakes and a deadly plague, she publicly offered herself as a victim for the sins of the people. The skourge abated, but she was seized with a malady-which put an end to her short but intense life. She was only twenty-six. 230 September, 1~51 CHRISTIAN HEROES She was beatified by Plus IX in 1853. In 1946 "the Parliament of Ecuador declared her a "national heroine." Her canonizatiorl, the last of the Holy Year, took place on July 9.In his homily the Holy Father stressed three aspects, of her life: (1) immaculate purity; (2) ardent charity, which she practiced towards every misery, spir-itual and material: when she was powerless to help, she tried to obtain help from God by prayer, expiation, the offering of her life; (3) extraordinary austerity, inspired by the desire to expiate the sins of men. She offered herself as a~victim for the salvation of others. This question of mortification needs special stres.sing in the mod-ern world, the Pope said. "Not all, especially nowadays, understand this kind of penance; not all esteem it as they should. Many of our contemporaries despise it or neglect it. Yet we should know that for our fallen nature penance is absolutely necessa.ry. Unless y.ou do pena.nce you will all perish. Indeed, nothing heli3s more efficaciously to conquer our passions and to subject our natural instincts to the control of reason. And when we have won a victory over ourselves it is sweet to exp'erience a divine joy which surpasses' al'l earthly pleasures." In his allocution to pilgrims the following day, the Pope re-marked that we "who. live in the full light of the deyotion of the Sacred Heart may well admire the holy intuitions of this innocent victim who, at the beginning of .the seventeenth century, was led to make of reparation the centre of her spirituality." St. Vincent Strambi (1745-1824) St. Vincent Strambi was one of the great bishops and upholders of the Church's independence in the face of totalitfirian rulers. After being ordained a priest in 1767 he was received into the Passionist Congregation by St. Paul of the Cross himself. He was a great preacher of missions and director of souls (among his penitents was the Blessed Anna Maria Taigi) and filled high offices of authority in his order. In 1801 he was, much against his will, appointed bishop of Macerata and Tolentino by Plus VII. He administered his dio-cese with the zeal of another Charles Borromeo. Preoccupied chiefly with the formation of the clergy and the diffusion of religious in-struction, he brought about a religious renewal among priests and laity. When he refused to take the oath of. allegiance to the ustirping regime established by Napoleon he was expelled from his diocese in 231 J. PUTZ Review for Religious 1808 until the fall of the Emperor in 1813. In 1823 he resigned his see and died soon after in Rome, where Pope Leo XII had made him his confidential adviser." In the midst of his intense activity and the vicissitudes "of his life he never relaxed anything in the austerity of his private life. He was beatified, in 1925 and canonized on June 11, 1950. In his homily the Holy Father made an application to the countries where the Church is being oppress, ed by the secular power: "The Church can be attacked, she cannot be conquered . If under the present difficulties--which in some countries seem graver than those referred to above--some souls are disconcerted, wavering, or anxious, they should remember the promises of Jesu~ Christ and try to imitate the invincible fortitude of this saint as well as. his other virtues." St. Anthony Claret (1807-1870) St. Anthony Claret was another great priestly figure of the nine-teenth century. Born at Salient in the north of Spain, he practiced for a tired his father's trade of cloth-weaving, but eventually was able to follow his heart's desire and join the seminary of Vicb. After his ordination in 1835 and a few years of pa.rish work, he conse-crate'd himself with extraordiriary success to ~he preaching of missions and retreats throughout Catalonia. His zeal inspired other priests, and in 1849 he founded the Congregation of MissioriarySons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, commonly kno.wn.as the Claretians. The same year he was sent to Cuba as Archbishop of Santiago, to b~ing about there a much-needed reform: In this post of exceptional diffi-culty he achieved considerable results, though several attempts were made on his life. After seven years he was recalled to Spain to become the confessor of Queen Isabella II. In the revolution of 1868 he was banished from his country. He attended the Vatican Council where he spoke eloquently for the definition of papal infalli-bility. Soon after, .on Oct. 24, 1870, he died in France. Besides preaching some 10,000 sermons, h~ was an ardent apostle of the press. He wrote 120 books and pamphlets (144 volumes), founded religious libraries, and promoted the diffusion of good literature. He was beatified in 1934 and canonized on May 7, 1950. The work of this powerful apostle is carried on by the Cl~iretians who in 1949 celebrated their first centenary. They count at present Over 4,000 members in 24I establishments all over "the world. Their chief work is education, missions and retreats, and the aposfolate of 232 September, 1951 CHRISTIAN HEROES the press. In Rome they ~un the Poliglotta Press and edit the Corn-mentarium pro religiosis et missionariis. St. Emily de Radar (1787-1852) .' At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French Revolu-tion and the long wars that followed it bad accumulated in France and Europe immense miseries, spiritual and material. Then Provi-dence raised up numerous saints who, impressed by the needs of their time, devoted themselves to remedy them. Rarely in the history of the Church do we find so many religious institutes springing up every-where, dedicated to the prac.tice of various v~orks of corporal and spiritual mercy. In this providential reconstruction women had a prominent share, and this explains why among the saints beatified or canonized by Pius XII there ale so many religious foundresses of this period. Emily de Radar was beatified by Plus XII in 1940 and canon-ized by the same on April 23, 1950. Born of an aristocratic family, she was brought up by pious parents but passed through a period of worldly frivolity and religious indifference. Converted during the Holy Year of 1804, she decided to consecrate'her life to the service of God. After trying several religious institutes, her visits to the poor made .her realize the great need for Catholic schools: She immedi-ately set to work: she had found her vocation. With three other young women she opened a school, and thus the Congregation of the Holy Family was started. Today it has over 200 houses in Europe and South America--schools, orphanages, hospitals. The H01y Father, in his homily, stressed the precious services rendered by reli-gious institutes of women: "When we consider the admirable enterprises of this saint, when we remember what her congregation and the other religious institutes --almost innumerable--have accomplished, we cannot but proclaim that the Church and civil society as well owe very much to all these religious women. If we did not have them, if God by His heavenly inspiration did not continually and in every century raise them up, if He did not sustain them by His help, who could fill their place? Let all, then, learn to praise them as they deserve, to help them as they can . And may the religious zealously and strenuously strive to live up to their lofty vocation." Saints Bartolomea Capltanio and Catherine Gerosa (1807-1833) (1784-1847) , Bartolomea Capitanio and Catherine Gerosa founded together 233 the Italian Sisters of Charity, after the model of St. Vincent de Paul's Sisters of Charity. Bartolomea began her apostolate at fourteen, teaching, little children. Soon her simple and strong personality drew to her, as to their mother, the young, the poor and afflicted of her little town of Lovere. Seeing the need to organize the ever-increaging work she joined forces with another saintly worker of the same town, Catherine, who was twenty years her senior and had already opened a hospital for the sick poor. Bartolomea died a few years later, at the early age of twenty-six. Her spiritual notes and instructions, as well as a considerable number of her letters, have been published. She left the young institute to the care of Catherine (who had ~dopted the name of Vincenza), an extremely bumble woman, yet an efficierit worker and able organizer. During the fourteen years she had still to live, the congregation continued to expand 'rapidly Today it counts nearly 9,000 religious in some 500 houses. Barto-lomea' was beatified in 1926; Vincenza in 1933T.hey w~re canon-ized together on May 18, 1950. St. Maria Gorettl (1890-1902) No canonization war received with greater enthusiasm than that of the humble village girl who died for the preservation of her purity The ~tory of her martyrdom is. known to all our readers. Her popu-larity and the speed of her promotion to the highest honors of the Church ha~e been equalled or surpassed in modern times only by the Little Flower of Lisieux. Her cause was introduced in 1938 and concluded in 1945. The solemn beatification took place on April 27, 1947, and she was canonized three years later, on June.-24, 1950, forty-eight years after her death. " (Teresa of Lisieux died on Sept. 30, 1897, was beatified on April 29, 1923, and canonized on May 17, 1925. Aloysius Gonzaga was beatified fourteen years after his death, bu~ another' centu.ry passed before be was canonized.) In spite of her youth, Maria was capable of heroism, and this heroism showed itself also in the pardon accorded to her miarderer on her' deathbed and in. the superhum~t'n patience during the extremely painful operation by which,the doctors tried to save her, withou~ putting her to .sleep,. D.ur!ng those tWO. long., hours Mary never complained but kept invoking the help of the" BlEssed Virgin. For .sush :heroism, the Holy F,a.ther point.e~d 6ut.in his allocution, the 23~, September, 195 I. CHRISTIAN HEROES courageous child had prepared herself by the daiIy practice of the virtues of her state: "It is true that it is above all purity that sho~e in Maria Goretti's martyrdom, but with it. and in it the other Christian virtues tri-umphed as well. In that purity there was the most evident and sig-nificant affirmation of the perfect control of the soul over matter. In that supreme heroism, which cannot be improoised, there was the tender, obedient," and active love for the parents, self-sacrifice in the hard work~of every day, poverty accepted in an evangelical spirit and sustained by trust in Providence, religion embraced tenaciously, deepened ever more, ~ssimilated as a treasure of life and nourished by the flame of prayer; the fervent desire of ~lesus in the Eucharist, and finally--the crown of charity--the heroic pardgn accorded to the murderer. All this forms a rustic garland, so dear to God, of country flowers which adorned the white veil of her First Com-munion and, shortly after, her martyrdom." The beatifications of the Holy Year, like the canonizations were eight in number. The total of those beatified by Pope Plus XII at the end of 19~0 is now'fifty-two; this includes the twenty-nine Chinese martyrs. Among those beatified during the Holy Year we find one priest, one boy, and six foundresses of religious institutes: two Spanish, two Italian, and two French. All except one belong to the nineteenth century. Blessed Vincen~ Pallo~f~ (1795-f850). Vincent Pallotti was the apostle of Rome at a difficult period of histo~-y.-After his ordination and a double doctorate at the Sapienza, he started his apostolate among students and it soon became clear that Rome possessed a holy priest. He was made confessor of Propaganda College, the English College, the Roman Seminary. On all of them his influence was deep. But his preferences were for the poor and the workers; he opened professional and agricultural schools and pro-moted t?ade unions. His zeal embraced the whole world and every" need, spiritual and material. For this "universal" object he founded the Society of the Catholic Apostolate (a society :of" priests and Brothers living in common without public vows, commonly known ,235 J. PUTZ Reoieu~ for Religious as the Pallottines) and the Sisters of the Catholic Apostolate. He took a special interest in the conversion of England and sent to that country some of his best men. He realized, more than a century ago, the immense possibilities and the necessity of the lay apostolate, and Pius XI called him a "pioneer and precursor of Catholic Action." This bold and far-sighted planner was a man of incredible humility, considering himself an obstacle to the progress of the Church and accepting without a word the most cruel humiliations. He always kept his predilection f.0r the poor, giving them even his own clothes. He died of a pleurisy contracted as a consequence of giving his mantle to a destitute man. Today 3,550 Pallottines and 2,900 Sisters of the Catholic Apos-tolate continue the saint's w.ork in many countries. Vincent's beati-fication was the first of the Holy Year; it took place on Jan. 22, exactly 100 years after hi~ death. A few days later the Pope pointed out "this great sacerdotal figure" as an example to parish priests and preachers. His sermons, he said, were always directed to the ur~uro nec.essarium; his confessional was eagerly sought after and surrounded with extraordinary effects of grace, "May his spirit be renewed in every one of you and infuse into your apostolate that .irresistible glow of love which the doubting, uncertain, and suffering men of today need so much." Blessed Marla-Soledad Torres y Acosta (1826-1887) Maria started her apostolate of charity in a squalid quarter of Madrid. With her h'elp the parish priest opened a hospital for. the ¯ poor. Eventually she had to take charge of the whole work, which she stabilized and perpetuated by founding a religious congregation, the Servants of Mary. Her institute during her lifetime spread from Spain to South America. At present it counts some 1,600 members. She was beatified on Feb. 5, 1930. Blessed Vincenta-Maria Lopez y Vicuna (1847-1890) Vincenta was born of an aristocratic Spanish family. Sent to Madrid for her higher education, she became interested there in the charitable Work of her aunt who, shocked by the difficulties and dangers of the lives of domestic servants, had opened a home for them. Vincenta refused a brilliant match arranged by her father and 236 Se'ptembe¢, 19:51 CHRISTIAN HEROES took the vow of chastity. After her father's death she used her con-siderable fortune.to develop her work of social assistance. To further extend it she founded the Daughters of Mary Immaculate for the protection of young women. At'present they number, nearly 2,000 members in various countries. Their hostels for domestic servants, working-girls or students provide for the material and spiritual wel-fare of well over 30,000 young women. She was beatified on Feb. 19, 1950. Blessed Paola-Elizabeth Cerloli. (1816-1865) Like Vinc~nta she was bor~ of a noble family in Northern Italy. But at nineteen, not feeling called to the religious life, she followed the wish of her parents and married an old widower,Count Buzecchi, forty years her senior. After the death of her husband and three children she was then tl~irty-eight--she consecrated her time and income tO assisting the poor peasants and farmhands of the sur-rounding country. In 1857 she started a religious community, the Sisters of the Holy Family of Bergamo, for the care of orphans and morally abandoned children. In 1950 this institute counted some 300 members. The saint was also instrumental in founding a simi-lar institute for men, the Priests of' the Holy Family. The brief of canonization compares her with St. Joan de Chantal, an angel in four states of life, girl, wife, widow, and religious. She was beatified on March .19, 1950. Blessed Maria ~e Mattias (1805-1866) Maria was born in the diocese of Gaeta. When she was seven-teen, she attended a mission preached by the Blessed Gaspar del Bufalo, a friend of Blessed Vincent Pallotti and founder of the Mis-sionaries of the Most,Precious Blood. The holy preacher to whom she opened'her soul recognized her great gifts and entouraged her to take up the apostolate of Christian education. She began by gath-ering the little children in her parental home, and in 1834 she founded.a convent and a school. This was the beginning of the in-stitute of the "Adoratrici" of the Most Precious Blood, which today has 215 houses in Italy and 172 in other parts of the world, with some 2,000 members. She was beatified on Oct. 15, 1950. Blessed Anne-Marie Javouhey (1779-1851) The child of a farmer of Burgundy, she grew up amid the horrors 237 J., PUTZ Reaie~a [or Religious of the French Revolution, sometimes risking her life. in order to hide and assist priests. At nineteen she vowed perpetual Chastity and re-solved to dedicate her life to the education of children and the care of the sick. As other girls joined her in the work she c~nceived the plan of her new congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph, called "of Cluny" from the place of the mother house. Soon she made founda-tions in mission countries, Africa, Pondicherry, French Guiana, and others. A woman of remarkable energy and intrepid enterprise' (King Louis Philippe said admiringly, "Madame Javouhey, that's a great man"), she frequently visited her missions, worked for the abo-lition of slavery and for the organization of public services in the colonies. From the start she realized the necessity of forming an indigenous clergy, and in order to accelerate the work she brought to France the first Negro candidates for the priesthood. Today the Sisters of St. Joseph are found in every part 'of the world, working in schools, hospitals, leper asylums, and other institutions. She was beatified on Oct. 15, 1950. Blessed Marguerite Bourgeo~ys (1620-1700) This blessed takes us back to the seventeenth century and to the great period of ~he Canadian missions. John de Brebeuf was mar-tyred in 1649. The Ursuline missionary-contemplative Marie de l'Incarnation died in Quebec in 1672. Margaret, who had first tried the contemplative life with the Carmelites and the Poor Clares in her native France, found bet vocation when .the Governor of Montreal came to France and tried to find a teacher for the children of the French garrison of Ville-Marie. She offered her services and in 1653 reached Montreal, where she .began bet apostolate by teaching the catechism and visiting the sick in their huts. In 1658, with some companions whom she bad brought out from France the previous year, she founded the congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, which became an important educational factor for the whole of Canada and. since 1860, for the United States (at present 5,680 members). Margaret, "schoolmistress and itinerant mis~iorlary,;' opened mission schools ff;r Indian girls, many of whom became zealous Sisters in the institute. Thus, as the Pope remarked in his address to Canadian pilgrims, she realized among the "savage" Huron girls what St. Francis de Sales had dreamt of for France, a congrega-tion of non-cloistered "secular daughters." She was beatified on November 12, 1950. 238 September, 1951 JOY IN HEAVEN Blessed Dominic Savlo (1842-1857) Blessed Dominic, beatified on March 5, is the Benjamin of the confessors raised to the altars, since he was not quite fifteen when he died, The son of a modest but deeply Christian family, he very early showed a special earnestness and resoluteness in his piety. His First Communion, which he made at seven, .definitely set his will towards the goal of sanctity. In 1854 be was received by Don Bosco into the oratorio of Turin. Here~ under the saint's direction, and fos-tered by special graces, his spiritual life developed rapidly; but after two ~,ears a sickness obliged him to return to his home, where he died a few months later. His life was written by Don Bosco him-self. The decree declaring the heroism of his virtues was published in 1933. The beatification of this youthful masterpiece of divine grace--grace to which he corresponded heroically--will no doubt encourage new studies on the nature of sanctity and .especially of children's sancti~j'. [EDITORS' NOTE: The foregoing article is reprinted with permissi'on from The Clergy Montfily, a magazine published in India.] Joy in I-le ven Richard L. Roone}', S.J. "I,"HE Archangel in charge of the recording angels had called a | meeting of the guardians of religious. They were met in his skyey office high above the battlements of heaven. "Quite frankly, Angels, my aide~ are alarmed about this whole business," he was telling them. "The number of 'kicks,' complaints, criticisms and 'crabs' that l)hey have to record for religious is prepos-terous. They're even wondering if these human creatures will be satisfied and happy and content even here in heaven! They have found one hope, however. They feel sure that Purgatory will take all the 'kick' out of these kickers. You Gufirdian Angels do a grand job keeping your charges living up to their vows and observing the larger phases of religious life. It is time, nevertheless, that you went to work on this complaining business. It may relieve their human ,239 RICHARD L. ROO~EY feelings to 'crab' 6r to criticize. It doesn't add to God's glory or to their own merit however. So please, now, to business." The guardians, your own among them, filed out of' .the office and winged earthward. They came, each of them equipped with ques-tionnaires like the following. How would you answer them if your Angel Guardian put one before you during your next examen? 1. Do you find yourself complaining quite often? 2. What (or who!) is your p, et peeve? 3. Do you "kick" about the weather, the c~ll or the room you have, the house you are'in, the food you are. served, the work you have been assigned? 4. Do you ever "crab" about superiors or their directions? 5. Have you a few kindred souls with whom you get together to talk over the way things would be done if you were in charge of them ? 6. Do you firm., and vocalize about it. that the community is a pretty dull, or annoying lot? 7. Are you heaping up a pretty severe judgment for yourself by judging others . . . and that right severely? 81 There is a lot of sense in the little poem: Two men looked through prison bars; One saw mud, the other sad2 stars. Well, what do you see in the rest of us most of the time? 9. Do you accept the ordinary pin-pricks of daily religious life without grumbling? (Remember you are an especially selected member of a thorn-crowned Head.) i0. Can you put all of ydur words and remarks, both within the community and to externs, on the paten of tomorrow's Mass and know that they will be acceptable to God? After scanning the above you may find that it will be a good thing to take your particular examen off such undisturbingly im-practical generalities as humility or charity at large and particularize it at least on keeping a strict guard over your "kicking" tongue. If so, go to it! The best of success to you! Know that you will be a delight not only tO your. fellow religious but to the saints and angels and God Himself as well! 240" Passionist:ic Spiri!:uali!:y' Fidelis Rice, C.P. IN THE INFINITE 'reaches of eternity, within the secret council of the Godhead, the Wisdom and Love of God decreed that all of creation should reflect in.a unique way the ineffable perfections of God. Because God is absolutely infinite--that is, without any limits whatever--no creature could ever exhaust the divine imitabil-ity. Since the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word, is the Exemplar of all that is, iherefore each creature is called upon in its own distinct way to teA1 us a little more. about the vastness, the goodness, and the perfection of the Word. "All things were madd by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made." In the realm 6f souls our reflection of the divine holiness is to be accomplished by a participation in the Christ-Life. For each soul is predestined from all eternity to manifest in time the eternal Holiness which is God. There is a uniqueness, then, in the destiny of each soul. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who" has blessed us with spirftual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ. As He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight, in charity." (Ephesians, 1:3, 4.) Here the great Apostle reveals to us that our holiness is planned and designed in eternity, but according to the pattern of Christ. We are all called to mirror the holiness of the Word, but each soul in a different way. There is, then, a wondrous blending of unity and multiplicity in the pattern of holiness. Christ is one, the unique model of all holiness. But because of the limitations of our nature, because of our very creaturehood, each one of us will reflect the holiness of Our Lord in a so.mewhat different way, just as various artists in painting the same subject will use a varying contrast, a difference of light and shadow, greater or less use of chiaroscuro, until the completed can-vases, while basically the same, will manifest vast differences. ¯ So it is that in the various religious orders and societies, approved by the Church, there is a difference of pattern in the design for holi-ness, although, all are dedicated to the one supreme objective--the perfect imitation of Christ. The essential spirit of each religious order is imparted, first of 241 FIDELIS RICE Retaieto for Religious all, by the founder of the institute. Plus XI clearly states that the various founders of religious institute~ were guided in a special way by the Holy Spirit, who seeks alway,s to communicate to the Mysti-cal Body.of Christ the graces purchased by His precious death upon the cross. "For what else did these most illustrious men do in founding their institutes, but obey the inspirations of God? There-fore, let their followers show forth in themselves those characteristic traits which the Founders imprinted upon their several Institutes. Let them not fail in this." ("Unigenitus"; A.A.S., Vol. XVI, p. 133.) The key, therefore, to essential Passionistic spirituality is to ,be found in the life and work of Saint Paul of the Cross, and Passion-ists can be called "Passionists" only insofar as they adhere to his teachings and to his spirit. ° It was the unique genius of Paul of the Cross to combine in one Rule the best features of two apparently contradictory or opposing states of life. For he willed that his religious should cherish and foster the contemplative observance of choir monks, centering all in the liturgical, prayer of the Office, while at the same time fulfilling the sublime vocation of a missionary apostolate. In the mind of Paul of the Cross, missionary activity should flow spontaneously, from the life of prayer, thus verifying the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas that the function of the apostolate is "tradere contemplata aliis"--"to'give to others the fruits of contemplation." Because the consuming passion of the life of St." Paul of the Cross was love for the sufferings of 2esus Christ, he wanted his religious to share, in a special way, in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. That is, the Passionist vocation is in a special way a vocation to a life of reparation. The inmost spirit of the Passionist Rule is the spirit of solitude, penanee, poverty, and prayer. In unforgettable language Saint Paul of the Cross described the spirit of his institute in a cir-cular letter which he sent to his religious for the Feast of Pentecost, May 2nd., 1750. "Most beloved Sons, you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, as dead to all that is not °God, r~main in the most perfect detachment from all created things, in true poverty of spirit, and in detachment from sensible consola-tions. Assisted by the most holy grace of ,lesus, direct all your zeal to this end--to be recollected in interior solitude; then you will become true adorers of the Sovereign Good in spirit and in truth . Never withdraw from the holy Wounds of Christ, but ever strive 242 September, 1951 PASSIONISTIC SPIRITUALITY more and more that your souls become hidden in and entirely pene-trated by them." (Letters: Vol. IV, p. 226.) Saint Paul of the Cross was one of the most privileged of mys-tical souls with which God has endowed the Church, but his very mysticism bore the unique character of his vocation. For although he received the grace of the "transforming union" or "mystical mar-riage"-- the highest grace of mystical prayer--at a very early age, yet for over fifty years thereafter he continued in the profound suf-ferings of the Dark Night of the Soul, a fact which Father Garrigou7 Lagrange, O.P., calls almost unique in the lives of the saints. Because Paul of the Cross was a master of prayer, it is not to be wondered at that he should insist upon a spirit of constant prayer. for his followers. In his Rule .he states in the very first chapter that "Prayer is one of the chief objects of our Congregation." The Passionist Rule, as it is observed in our monasteries in the United States today, prescribes, beside the Divine Office, two hours of mental prayer each day--an hour in the morning, and an hour in the eve-ning. Including the time that is devoted to the Divine Office; the Passionist, in the daily routine of his monastic day, spends close' to five hours in prgyer. One of the features of Passionistic prayer is the observance of the night office, for Passionists rise ea, ch morning at two o'clock to chant Matins and Lauds before the Blessed Sacrament. This observ-ance lasts one hour, and the religious retire again at three, to rise once more at dawn for Prime and Tierce. This nocturnal observance is one of the cherished ~xercises of the penitential spirit bequeathed by Saint Paul of the Cross to his sons. In order that the spirit of prayer might always be preserved in the Congregation, Saint Paul prescribed most riggrously that Pas-sionist monasteries be built always in places of solitude, and with every safeguard that the spirit of solitude be not violated nor intruded upon. Hence, even when built in the heart of large cities, there must always be sufficient acreage for gardens and privacy for the solitary walks prescribed by rule. Many of our 'American "monasteries are now surrounded by teeming residential sections, but when they were built they stood alone, in the midst of solitude. The cities have come to the monasteries, but because of the wise prescriptions of the Rtile the spirit of solitude is still safeguarded. However, the spirit Of the Passionist Congregation is also a spirit of apostolic activity. As the present Superior General, Most Rev- 243 FIDELIS RICE Review for Religious erend Albert Deane, C.P., wrote in a recent circular letter to the Con-gregatio, n: "On the day it would cultivate the contemplative life ex-clusively, the Congregation would cease to be what 'our Holy Founder instituted. Nor could he be said to be a good Passionist, who without legitimate cause would'omit to do what he could to attain the apostolic end of our Congregation, although under the p.retext of better caring for his own salvation. His religious profes-sion demands otherwise of him." In this ~ame document, our Most Reverend Father General has beautifully epitomized the heart of the Passionistic spirituality: "For our spirit, dearest Sons, can be likened to a'pyramid, made of the spirit of prayer, penance, and the apostolate, but held together by the fire of devotion to Christ suffering, having no other apex to which the ~exalted Passionist life converges than our configuration to Christ Crucified, whom we must preach by word and by example: 'We preach Christ and Him Crucified.' This is what the words say which we carry engraven over our hearts; this reminds us, if perhaps we sometimes forget, of our very name itself, for we are popularly called 'Passionists'.',' . The primary work of the Passionist Congregation, then, is a reflection of its inner'spirituality--the preaching of popular mis-sions, and retreats to the clergy and religious, as well as to the laity. Passionists conduct no schools, except for the education i~f their own subjects. They engage in parish work only as an exception, and for clearly defined needs in a particular locality. They are above all, preachers of the Passion of 3esus Christ. To this end they take a special vow to promote in the hearts of others, devotion to the Pas-sion of oresus Christ. They do, however, engage in foreign mission work, and they are likewise working among the colored in the South. Saint Paul of the Cross was a staunch advocate of enclosed re-treats for the laity. Cherishing, as he did, the wonderful advan-tages of holy solitude, it is not surprising that he would wish to share these advantages and blessings with the laity. And so he wrote into his Rule the prescription that in each monastery rooms should be provided for lay retreatants. In most of our American monasteries we have special retreat houses for men, and a flourishing retreat movement is an integral part of our Passionist family life. Because Paul of the Cross was consumed by the love of Jesus Christ Crucified, he burned with the desire to bring the riches of His death to the souls of men. He was profoundly aware of the 244 September, 1951~ . PASSIONISTIC SPIRITUALITY meaning of the priestly vocation, and realized fully that a p~iest must always communicate to the Mystical Body 6f Christ the life purchased by the sufferings of Ouk Lord. But he knew, too, that the most fruitful apostolate is that which is the overflow of prayer, rather than a substitute for it. Hence it was that no matter how gifted a missionary might be, no matter how eloquent on the mission-platform, and no matter how great the demand for his services, Saint Paul of the Cross rig- . orously required that each missionary spend a suitable portion of.the year in the solitude and quiet of the monastery. Although far wise to reduce this to a mathematical formula, the founder of the Passionists imposed upon superiors and missionaries alike the obli-gation to. preserve always in the Congregation this time of with-drawal each year from the exhausting round of activity. The demands for our services have grown with the years, and no fixed calend,a'r tan be drawn up which governs the exact details, but our superiors still strive faithfully and sincere!y to arrange the schedule for-each mis-sionary, so that he may spend a sufficient amount of time.withih the mona.stery each year. Saint Paul of the Cross was profoundly con-vinced that "one Religious who is a. man of prayer and lover of solitude will bring forth more spiritual fruit from the ministry than a thousand others who are not such." (Letters, Vol. III, 418.) .,. The Passlonlst family circle is made up of three groups: tl~e priests, the students or clerics, "and the lay brothers. ¯ In most of our American monasteries all three groups are found, for most of our monasteries are also houses of study, or seminaries in which young men are preparing for the priesthood. Our lay brothers, a shitable time after the profession of their perpetual vows, are admitted to }ecreation with the priests; and the recreation is common ~f(;r these two groups. The students remain always in a separate r~creation. The day's horarium.is divided bet.ween prayer and study. The day is spent in silence, except for the two brief recreation periods each day. Three days of fast and abstinence are .observed each week-- Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. During the entire time of Ad-vent and Lent, Sundays included, abstinence from meat is the rule within the monastery. Paul 6f the Cross does not want his sons to forget that t,hey must bd men of penance. For this reason, too, san-dals are worn on the bare feet, and a ro.ugh woolen h.abit is worn the year round. The Passionistic ideal;" then, is to share as intimately as possible 245 FIDELIS RICE. o in the sublime virtues which shone, forth so re~splendently on Cal-vary. It is the vocation proclaimed so sublimely by Saint Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Colossians: "Who now rejoice in my sufferings foF you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church." (Colossians, 1:25.) So it was that that other P~ul, Paul of the Cross, sought to instill into his followers a burning love for the Crucified, a love which would make them conform their own lives by penance, solitude, prayer, and poverty, to the ideals of Calvary, that they might go forth to preach the glories and the ignominies of the Cross of Jesus Christ. The r~assionist spirit might be summed up in one word, "Stau-rosophy," for "stauros" is the Greek word for the Cross.; ,The sons of Paul o'f the Cross must remain ever absorbed by the wisdom or the "philc~sophy" of the Cross. Wisely has the Church selected the Introit for the Mass on the Feast of St. Paul of the Cross: "Christ0 confixus sum cruci." . "With Christ I am nailed to the cross." (Ga-latians, 2:19.) No other words of Sacred Scripture could epitomize more simply the ess.dntial spirit of this great lover of the Crucified, and of the form of life which he has bequeathed to his sons, who wear that habit of mourning first shown to Paul of the Cross in vision, by the Mother of God, when she told him to founc~ an order whose members would devote their lives to mourning for the sor-rows of Her Son. OUR CONTRIBUTORS F1DELIS RICE, writer and missionary, is on the mission band at St. Joseph's Passionist Monastery, Baltimore, Maryland. J. PUTZ, the editor Of Clergg Month-lg and author of Mg Mass, and P.DE LETTER, a recent contributor to American ecclesiastical journals, teach at St. Mary's theologate, Kurseong, India¯ RICHARD L. ROONEY is on the Queen's Work staff and editor of Action Now. C.A. HERBST and CLARENCE MCAULIFFE are o£ the faculty of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, . , : PLEASE NOTE CAREFULLY The sul~scripfion pHce of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is now: $3.00"per year for" Domestlc.end ,Canadian subscriptions; $3.35 per yeer for all for~icjn subscrip-fio'ns. For further de~'ails please see inside back cover. 246 Modesty C. A. Herbst, S.J. ~4 ~t man's looks betray him: a man of good sense will make him-self known to thee at the first meeting; the clothes he wears, . the smile on his lips, his gait~ will all make thee acquainted with a man's character" (Ecclus. 19:26, 27. Knox version). This' is the Holy Spirit's description of modesty. Following His directive, St. Thomas teIIs us that this virtue is concerned with "the movement and actions of the body; that all of them, those gone through in fun as well as the serious ones, may be decent and proper." (Summa Theologica, 2-2, q. 160, a. 2.) Dress is also included. The cardinal virtue of temperance controls pleasure coming from food, drink, and ' sex, the most difficult things. Modesty, a part of temperance, takes care of the lesser. A subordinate in the hierarchy of authority takes ~in hand the little things. Modesty is therefore not at all the s~me thing' as chastity or purity, as many quite commonly presume, though it may be more or less connected with it. Not one's interior only but one's exti~rior, too, must be con-formed to the .norm of right reason. The easy and evident way for u_s to strive to achieve this is "to imitate Christ. "We must look with the eyes of the soul on that wonderful leader 'beautiful above the sons of men' in the ordinary dress He wore at home . Erect of body and with perfect composure His gait was neither too hurried nor too slow. There was nothing soft or effeminate, not.hiog childish or lackadaisical about Him. Neither could anything gloomy or exasperating be seen in Him, nor was there any assumed gravity. He was not singular nor finicky. His Whole being breathed sweetness, joy, kindness, majesty." (Le Gaudier, De Perfectione Vitae Spirit-ualis, Pars IV, caput xviii.). "Jesus began to do and to teach," first to tellus by His exampl~ how tb act, only later by His words. Our exterior modesty should be, as His, for the glory of God. "So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." It should make us more like God. "God cre~ ~ted man to his 6wn image: to the "image of God he created him." Man's likeness to God is, of course, in the soul, in his interior sanc-tity, but that interior dignity and perfection should shine forth, so 247 ¯ C. A. HERBST Reoeiw [or Religiou~ to speak, in the ,modesty of his exterior as through a beautiful and translucent garment, or as the rays of the sun make a cloud all silver and gold. That "image of God" ou.ght somehow to be mani-fested in the body. "Because man's body alone of all the animals on earth is not bowed down to the ground but so made that it can better contemplate the heavens, it can justly be said' that it is made more t6 the image and likeness of God than the bodies of other animals, as Augustine says. But this must not be understood to mean that the image of God is in man's body but that the very form of. the human body represent.s the likeness of God in the soul like a trace." (S. Th., 1, ,q. 93, a. 6.) The importance of modesty in the life of a religious can hardly be overestimated. One is forced to this conclusion from reading the masters of the spiritual life and by noting the Christian tradition through the centuries. The statement made by St. Ambrose in this matter is a classic. "Modesty must be preserved in our very move-ment, carriage, and gait. Our habit of mind is reflected in our body. "Thence the real man hidden away in the heart, the light-headed 6r careless or turbulent man or, on the contrary, the more serious or steady or more upright or more mature man can be ascertained. The motion of the body, therefore, can be called the voice of ~he soul." (De Of Kciis, I, 18.) St. Bernard says: "Modesty is the greatest of orn~ments in reli-gious, especially in the young. This is so true that if they do not cherish it there is little hope of their becoming good or virtuous . Lack of external composure in the body is a sign of an indevout mind." (Ad Quid Venisti?, xvii.) Knowing how very closely bod~r and soul are united we are not surprised to hear Hugh of St. Victor say: "As of a wandering mind are born disordered move-ments of the body, so when the body is brought under discipline the soul is made strong. Little'by little the mind within is brought to rest when under the watchful eye of dis.cipline its disorderly move- "ments are not allowed to flow to the exterior." (Delnstttuttone' " " Novitiorum, X.) So exterior modesty m.akes even a greater contri-bution to the soul than it does to the body. St. Vincent Ferrer'thought that a warrior of Christ could never free his soul from disorder if he did not first endeavor to rid his body of what was unseemly. From all of which it would seem to be clear why modesty is so much emph.asized in the beginning of the re!igious life: modesty of action and, incidentally, "modesty of words," which 248 Septernber~ 195 l MODESTY is silence. Even a beginner.can superimpose upon himself external order in the blessed hope that from it will come to him an array of spiritual goods. For it is easier to bring one's exterior under subjec-tion than one's interior. Mqdesty has a great apostolic value. St. Basil says that a virgin should "be seen by those who n~eet her to be such in habit and gait and every movement as to reflect the likeness of God. The eyes of those who behoId her should be incited to modesty and their mind instructed in virtue. They.should hold that sight in honor and, as I have said, show deference to and revere that image of God. As pictures of' satyrs make one laugh and as sad pictures fill the mind , with sorrow . so a virgin, since she is the picture--nay, the very reproduction--of purity, should even if merely seen raise the thoughts of those who behold her up to God . Avirgin, therefore, should be very careful to reproduce in herself the divine image in all t.hings." (Patrologia Graeca, 30, 714-715.) St. Francis of Assisi was most eloquent by his modesty. "It is told ofthe blessed St. Francis that he said one day to his companion, ~'Let us go to preach,' and so went out, took a turn in the city, and returned home. His companion said to him: 'BUt father, are v~e not preaching?' 'We have already preached,' he answered. That sedate-ness and modesty with which they, went through the streets was a very good sermon; it moved people to devotion and to contempt of the world, to compunction for their sins, .and to the raising of their hearts, and desires to the.things of the next world. This is a sermon in action, more effectual than one in w6rd.". (Rodriguez, Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, II, x, 1.) The very sight of the young Saints Aloysius, Stanislaus, John Berchmans, and Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother raised men's hearts to God. The gr.eat in-fluence for good of the pr.ayerfuI, recollected, and modest bearing of those who love God is but another striking instance of "actions speaking louder than words." That is why St. Ignatius said: "And hence it will follow that, considering one another, they will increase in devotion and praise our Lord God, whom every one must strive to acknowledge in another as in His image." (Constit. S.d., P. III, c. i, n, 4.) .The beginner must practice modesty, and by doing so he exer- Cises himself in many virtues. But modesty is also the mark of the perfect. A well-ordered exterior shows great interior'perfectlon. The man who has achieved this has already made great'prggr.ess. One 249 C. A. HER,BST Reveiu~ for Relig:ous who habitually and gracefully has his exterior under control has gone far in the direction of self-mastery. If one has to be mortified to be decent, as our novice master used to say, what constant mortifi-cation and vigilance must be necessary .to put on the modesty of Christ. For this, persevering and almost heroic self-conquest is neces-sary. In this connection it might be well to remark that if we put ourselves through the discipline and took all the pains from a super-natural motive to put on modesty, which is the etiquette of God's ch.ildren, that the children of .the world do to don good manners in public and social life, our merit would i~deed be surpassing great and our spirit of sacrifice supreme. "And they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruibtible one" .(I Cor. 9:25). But then, "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light" (Luke 16:8). Founders of religious orders have given special directives, "rules of modesty," for regulating external deportment. As those given by St. Ignatius of Loyola even now influence many thousands of reli-gious, it might be well to give some of them here. "All must be exactly careful to guard the gates of their senses (especially their eyes, their ears, and their tongue) from all disorder, and preserve themselves in peace and true internal humility, showing it in silence when it is to be kept, and when they have to speak, in the circum-spection. and, edification of their words, in the modesty of tbelr coun-tenance, gravity of their gait and whole carriage, without any sign of impatience or prided' (Constit. S.d., P. III, c. 1, n. 4.) "In all out-ward actions there should appear modesty and humility, joined with religious gravity. The bead should not be turned this way and that way lightly, but with gravity, when need shall require; and, if there be no need, it must be held straight, with a little inclination forward, without leaning on either side. For the most part, they should keep their eyes dowfi, neither immoderately lifting them up, nor casting them now one way., now another. Wrinkles on the forehead, and still more on the nose, are to be avoided, that there may appear out-wardly a serenity which may be a token of that which is interior. The whole countenance should show cheerfulness rather than sadness or any less moderate affection. The lips must neither be too much. shut nor too much open. The pace should be moderate, without any notable has,.te, unless necessity should require it; in which case, however, a care of decorum should be had. In fine, every gesture and movement should be such as to give edification to all men." (Rule~ 250 September, .MODESTY or: Modesty.). St. Paul says in another connection: "When I was a child,. I °spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the tlSings of a child" (I Cor. 13: 11).'A child must hear and see and taste and smell and touch every-thing. But when he grows up he is willing to put away the things of a child--nay, is eager to. We can hardly imagine a grown-up going on playing with his toys. A man loses taste for such things. So is one as he becomes spiritually mature gradually weaned away, as he attains to th~ full stature of Christ, from the surface pleasure of the senses and the allurements of sense satisfaction. This is the more true the more he grows to relish the things of God. Then the curious ears and roving eyes and anything unbecoming in the countenance. carriage, and gait of childhood give place to that maturity and serenity proper to men and women at horhe with their Father the King. The practice of modesty is not only for religious propriety, or edification, or mortification, or to foster recollection, or to make pos-sible and encourage spiritual development and high interior activity. It is also to keep, our soul from becoming sick or maimed by venial sin or perhaps even killed by mortal sin. "Death is come .up through our windows" said the prophet (Jer.°9:21). St. Bernard comment~: "Death enters our windows when, with prying eyes and itching ears. we insist upon administering to ourselves the deadly cup of distrac-tion." (Sermo 24 in Cantic.) And St. Ambrose: "Who, midst so many bodily passions, midst so many snares of this world, can go along safe and undefiled? The eye sees: the mind is perverted. The ear bears: our attention is drawn away. We sm~ll something: our thoughts are 9bstructed. The lips drink: sin enters in. We touch" something, and we are inflamed with desire." (De Fuqa Saeculi, cap. 1.) That is why Christ, so mindful of human, weakness, instituted for the very end of life a special sacrament for the removal of the re-mains of sin contracted through seiase experience. At the last anointing the priest places the~holy oil "'on the eyes because of sight, on the ears because of hearing, on the nostrils because of smell, on the mouth bedauseof taste and speech, on the hands because of touch, on the feet because of Walking" (Council of Flore~nce, Decretum pro .Arrnenis) saying: "By this holy anointing and.by His most tender mercy may the Lord forgive you whatever guilt you have con- 251 C. A. HERBST tracted." St. Thomas explains: "This sacrament was instituted to" heal us. For a bodily cure we do not take medicine that will restore the whole body but those parts in which the root of the disease lies~ So the sacramental anointings should be made only on those parts where is found the root of the spiritual sickness." (S. Th., Suppl. q. 32, a. 5.) In conclusion, let us listen.again to a few words from that great master of the spiritual Jife, St. Bernard. "With the brethren be re-served, gracious, modest, affable, gentle, and on your guard. Be .strict with yourself but not in such a way as to be a nuisance to others . Every gesture and word, your way of acting, look, gait should be characterized by modesty and reserve. Let there appear nothing con-ceited or stilted in you, no boldness or anything overbea.ring . As the fear of the Lord puts order into a man's lif~ and prepares his whole interior for blessedness, so modesty brings his exterior under subjection. You should not become so familiar with anyone as to be completely forgetful of propriety in his presence." (Ad Quid Venisti?, xvii.) After all, "we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men'~ (I.Cor. 4:9). And His Divine Majesty is always pres-ent, too. "In him we live, and move, and are" (Acts 17:28); ETUDE SUR LA PAUVRETE RELIGIEUSI: The Sisters of Providence (Les Soetirs de la Providence) in Montreal have "trans-lated into French six articles on poverty which appeared in the REVIEW FOR RELI-GIOUS and published them in a booklet. The articles are: "M~y Religious Buy and Sell" (V, 50) and the "Gifts to Religious" series by Adam C. Ellis, S.J.; and 'The Spirit of Poverty" (VIII, 35) by" Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. The "Gifts" se-ries includes: "The Simple Vow of Poverty" (VI, 65), "Common Life and Pe-culium" (VII, 33), "Personal versus Community Property" (VII, 79, and "Some Practical Cases" (VII, 195). Copies of the booklet, called Etude sur la Pauvret3 2eliqleuse, may be obtained from P~ovidence Mother House, 2311, rue Ste-Cath-erine Est, Montreal 24, P.Q., Canada. Cost: 40 cents per single copy; 35 cents in dozen lots or more. ¯PLEASE NOTE C~AREFULLY The subscription price of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is now: $3.00 per veer for Domestic end Cenedian subscriptions: $3.35 per year for ell foreign subscrip-tions. For further deteils pleese see inside beck cover. 252 The race ot: Our Vocal:ion P. De Letter, S.J. [EDITORS' NOTE: In the March number of this year the author of "Why Do They Leave?" concluded the article with an inspiring section headed "Why Do We Stay?" In the present article Father De Letter's analysis of the grace of our voca-tion forms something of a theological counterpart and complement to the latter question. He points out the different graces included in the grace of vocation, namely, the grace of state, the grace of perseverance, the grace of progress, the grace of keeping the rules, and the grace of supererogation. He next gives the solid theological basis for trust in the grace of vocation and concludes by describing God's part, the actual graces of light" and strength, and ours, the conditions for our 'trust. "I will put great trust in the grace of my vocation," wrote St. John Berch-roans among the first of his watchwords. It is of this gr~ice of vocation that Father De Letter writes.] ~i~/JE 'OFTEN HEAR or read about the grace of our religious W" vocation. No doubt we often thank Our Lord for this most precious 6f His gifts. Wi~at exactly is it? Spiritual au-thors use the phrase in a twofold sense, first as the free divine gift by which God calls to the religious life, and secondly as the special helps of grace which enable religious, who have followed the divine call, to meet the demands of their state and to persevere in it till death. 'The second meaning, that of the special helps, of the grace of our vocation will be used. This grace is a reality of our everyday life.,If we allow it to play its part to the full, it may and does make a difference for our own pe£sonal interests and for the souls for whom we labor. For this reason it is well worth studying more closely what the grace of vocation implies and what is the basis of our trust in it. Then it' will be self-evident how we should exploit this God-sent treasure. Grace of State All religiogs, we are told, are offered and receive the grace proper to their vocation. As any other Christians, those who are called to a definite state of life with its definite purpose are offered by the Lord the graces necessary to pursue ,effectively the end of their vocation. This is true both of the general l~urpose of every religious life, which is to seek after Christian perfectioia.or holiness, and of the specific end of each particular order or congregation. Grdce of" Perseuerance in God's Friendship ¯ First'of all, religious are offered and, unless they'wilfully refuse, ~.ctual!y recei~re the actual graces needed to remain permanently on the path thatleads to perfection, "that is, to persevere in sanctifying grace. 253 P. DE LETTER Review for Religious These graces are needed. Theologians commonly teach that without the help of God's grace no one can maintain himself in His friend-ship, because fallen human nature is weak and inclined to evil. But these graces are always offered, theologians reassure us, to all who sincerely endeavour to 'please God and to preserve His love and friendship. And why? Because God's love is faithful: He does not allow to be sr~atched from His hands those who sinqerely desire to be His. If that is the case for all Christians in the state of grace, then it is more true for those whom a special divine call ~lestines for an ever growing perfection of grace. Religious, therefore, m~y count in a special way, by virtue of their very state in life, on the fidelity of the Giver of all graces. He enables them day after day and hour after hour throughout their religious life to avoid every grievous fault. Grace of Progress There is more than that. It is the fundamental duty of state for religious to advance continually in grace and perfection. That again is not possible without the help of God's grace. Our faith teaches us,. infallibly, that no good work for heaven can be performed with-out God;s gracious help. If that is so, and if religious grow in grace precisely by the works of virtue ' (and the reception of the sa.crame,nts, which grace enables them to do properly), then we must say that their Fathe~ in heaven, who is Love, cannot expect them to do thes~ works and not give them the needed help which He alone can give. That is why religious have and receive the graces necessary for the good works that are to lead them on to perfection, the goal of their vocation. ' Grace of Keeping the Rules and Obeying What are these good works? They are, naturally, commanded by the specific end of each religious institute. Concretely, they are laid down in the rules and constitutions: these outline the particular manner in which a religious vocation is to work out its ideal of Christian perfection, These laws and ways, therefore, differ for different institutes.' Hospital sisters, teaching religious, and contem-platives, are not expected to labour for perfection by exactly the same good works. Their respective rules point out to them "by which paths they are'to draw nearer to God. To follow these pathh ~nd no other, each one in the particular.office that is assigned him by the inst.itu, te and. in the community where obedience placed him, .is pnmista.kably the du.ty of state of. every re, ligious. And so all.~e.li- 254 September, 1~ 1 THE GRACE OF OUR VOCATION gious are offered each day the necessary grace to keep the rules and-fulfil their office: because fidelity to these duties is the concrete way for them to advance towards perfection and fidelity is not possible without these graces. Not every Christian, theologians teach, is at all times offered the grace needed for good works which are not of precept but are supererogatory, because, there is no clear indication that God's will demands these works from them. Only for such good works as are certainly willed by the Lord may we expect His grace to be guaran-teed. But the case of religious is a special one. Though the good ~works demanded by their rules are not, genera'lly speaking, strictly of precept (not at any rate when the religious laws do not bind under pain of sin) and are therefore in a true sense supererogatory, yet the very nature of religious rule implies that God clearly wills those works. His good pleasure and desire is expressed in the rules. By that very fact He also guarantees to ~eligious the necessary graces, ;¢¢ithout which they would be unable to comply with His good pleasure. , This conclusion applies equally to the acts of virtue which obedi-ence to superiors imposes on religious. Commands of religious supe-riors generally (exception being made for orders given in virtue of holy obedience, in whicJ~ the vows are involved) bring to their sub-jects the same kind of obligatiofi as the rules impose. As such, therefore, they do not bind under sin; yet they express to us unmis-takabl~ y the divine wishes. Religious receive the necessary actual graces for obeying the orders of their superiors as they do for keeping the rules. Though these acts of virtue, because not imposed under sin, are supererogatory in the strict sense of the word, yet they are, for religious, guaranteed as possible by the grace of their vocation. "Grace for Supererogatory Acts of Virtue There are additional virtuous actions which are not demanded of religious by rule nor by orders of superiors, but to which, they believe, a special inspiration of the Hgly Ghost invites them. Such good works, for example, extra .acts of mortification, or prayer, or humility, or kindness, are altogether free in the sense that no rule nor direction of obedience imposes them. These are not immediately covered by the grace of the religious vocation. To them will apply the teaching of theologians about supererogatory good works: not unless the invitation of God's grace be sufficiently proved genuine and ?eliablecan they count on His special help to follow up these inspira- 255 P. DE LETTER Review for Religtous tions. It should be added, however, that religious are, from their very state of. life, more opeh to these special invitations of grace. Why?" Because their fundamental duty of state is to aspire after perfection, and not all particulars that appertain to the practice of perfection are or can be determined by the rules or by obedience. Accordingly, religious need these special inspirations. Other things being equal, there is a greater probability that in the case of religious these inspirations of grace are genuine and reliable. To that extent and in that 'indirect way they also belong to the grace of the voca-tion. At this juncture the task of the spiritual director comes in to provide rehglous with sufficient guarantee that allows them safely to follow up these interior invitations. Without this sanction the danger of self-delusion would be real. That danger is excluded from all that falls within clearly known duty. Herein religious may and must depend on it that grace will not be wanting them, if only they themselves are not wanting to grace. Why is it so? Whai: is the dogmatic and theological basis of our trust in the grace of o.u.r vocation? Doctrinal Basis of Our Trust We have already hinted at the intrinsic reason why the grace of our vocation includes all the particular graces needed to fulfill our duties according to the rules and constitutions and the commands of the superiors. It is the following. God cannot command the impos-sible, because of His infinite wisdom and lo,;,e. Of religious He asks a constant strivin~g after perfection: that is the meaning of the reli-gious vocation. They find the concrete way to strive for perfection detailed in the laws of their institutes and the directions of their supe-riors. But to do all that is involved in keeping the rules and in obeying, many good works are needed which no man, religious not excepted, is able to do without the help of grace.: For two reasonsi both because these virtuous actions require a faithful effort which after original sin is not possible for long without grace; and because these acts are supernatural and of their very nature suppose the super-natural help of grace. If then God expected religious to live up to the demands of their vocation and did not at the s~me time give them ~he necessary graces, He would be demanding the impossible. Dogmatic Foundation The. ultimate foundation of this conclusive proof is nothing less than the highest possible authority on revealed truth: ,the infallible 256' ,September, 1~51 THE GRACE OF O~JR VOCATION teaching of the Church. The Council of Trent defined that it is not impossible for men to keep God's commandments; it condemned the contrary assertion of the Lutherans as heretical doctrine (DB 828). In St. Augustine's words the Council explained how men can, in spite of fallen nature's weakness, have the moral strength to do what God commands: "When He commands, He admonishes you to do what you can and to ask for help to do what you cannot, and He helps so that you can" (DB 804). Later. the Church condemned another heretical proposition of dansenistic pessimism which stated that "just men cannot keep some precepts of God even though they wish and try to do so, with the strength they now have; and the graze which would enable them to keep those commandments is also lacking" (DB I092). An infallible teaching, therefore, guarantee, s that we have the necessary graces to keep the commandments. That teaching aimed directly at those divine precepts which oblige under pain of sin, particularly of mortal sin. It may also be extended, though this conclusion is no longer infallible, to divine commands in a less strict serise of the word: to those expressions of the divine will which, though not binding under sin, .yet certainly manifest His desire ind. good pleasure. The Church's Authorit~I This latter is the case, as we well know, of the ordinary religious rules. We have a guarantee for it in the Church's approval both of religious life in general and of the particular religious institutes. The ¯ Church's sanction of the state oflife lived accordin'g to the three evangelical counsels is found in her age:old practice, which dates back td the early Cbristlan centuries, of approving and encouraging tbe monastic institute and the ascetical life. At the time of the Refor-mation it led to an infallible pronouncement, again at the Tridentine Council, by which she declared that the state of viriginity or celibacy is preferable to the state of Matrimony (DB 980). As to the appro-bation of particular institutes, theologians today are agreed in saying that in the solemn approval of religious orders the doctrinai judg-ment that the religious orders,, are apt means to reach Christian per-fection is covered by the Church's infallibility. In the less solemn .confirmation of other religious institutes, the Church's authority in-' volved is not the big.best; yet. that.approval also shares, according.to .the. degree, of the authority" that gives it, in the same fundamental guar.ant~.e:.of truth which is divine. Accordi,ngly? Catholic theology ¯' 257 P. DE LETTER Review for Religious is unanimous, in declaring that the obligation for religious to work for perfection according to the pattern designed in their respective laws is, because of the Church's approbation, the'clear expression of God's will for them. "On this doctrinal foundation rests the teaching of theologians who, like Suar~z, hold that the grace of a religious vocation includes the spe.cial supernatural aids required to live up to the ideal which is proposed to the religious by their institute. He wrote: "Since all ap-proved religious orders are deservedly regarded as founded by the special Providence of God, there is no doubt that each enjoys a'spe-cial divine assistance proportionate to its vocation, and hence greater in proportion as its institute is more exalted and difficult and organ-ized for the greater service of God and the more far-reaching good of the Church" (Rel. S.J., I, 6, 9). What holds good for reli-gious orders as a whole, also applies to the members. The graces of their vocation which effectively enable them to pursue the end of their institute are the concrete expression of the divine assistance that flows from God's special Providence over them. Religious, therefore, are building .their trust on the safe rock of Peter when they firmly believe in the grace of their vocation. More-over, does not the experience of the religioh~ life come to teach them that the Lord does not disappoint that trust? When and in the measure that they are faithful to their calling, they find out what these graces of our vocation mean in practice. Graces of Light and Strength As actual graces in general, so the graces of our vocation are of two kinds which, more often perhaps, are found together rather than isolated. First there is light for the mind, generally more affective and practical" than purely sp~e~uiative and cold (for they are meant to lead to action), by which the meaning and reality of the religious ideal, duties, privileges, favors, appear more clearly, more appealingly, and more exaltedly worthwhile. These' actual graces of light, on occa-sion standing out very markedly, at other times more dim yet really present, give a deeper and new understanding of the rules, of the ideal of poverty; chastity, obedience, of the community life and of our daily tasks of education, missionary work, medical charity, sacred "ministry so that the good works by which religious strive after sand-tity. take on their deep, often hidden, meaning. Together with that light goes a grace of strength and courage for'the will and heart, 25'8 September, 1951 THE GRACE OF OUR VOCATION tempering and steeling one"s whole moral an~ spiritual structure, actually enabling religious to live according to their light. These graces of fortitude, patience, and ability, make Jrpossible to keep up ¯ the effort for progress, and bravely and gladly to accept and take up the small and on occasion bigger crosses involved in the faithful ful-filment of their daily duties. These graces of strength, at times ex-perienced more forcibly, at other times, perhaps more commonly, perceived in humble and dim faith, smoothen the path towards per-fection which often is rough and always uphiIl. The remembrance of these graces received in the past is a precious confirmation" of Our faith and trust in the grace of our vocation. Condition of Our Trust That faith and trust is rightly ours on one condition: that we do, sincerely and hum.bly, what in us lies to answer the graces we receive. There is little need to insist on the first and foremost part in this cooperation with grace which we may take for granted, namely, that we live in the state of sanctifying grace. Progress in grace supposes the st'ate of grace. Unless the substance of the spiritual life be there, we cannot expect further grace~ for progress. These graces, according to the ordinary rule of Divine Providence, are usually given in proportion to oui" fidelity in accepting and answering them. One way of showing this desire of receiving and exploiting those graces is our faithful and insisting prayer for them. According to the hint of the Council of Trent we quoted above, our asking for graces may well be the condition for receiving them. We may even count on the abundant divine aids guaranteed by the grace of our vocation if we sincerely and generously trade for spiritual profit with those we receive. No doubt even then no one can vouch for it that he will never fail God's grace, even though grace does not fail him. We know it too well, human frailty remains in religious as well. And we need not be surprised at our daily faults of weakness which, we may confi-dently hope, involve but little guilty negligence. Provided. only we know how to exploit those very failings to deepen humility and a sense of our need of prayer and trust in the Lord, they do not seri-ously impair our fidelity to grace. Our desires and deeds continue then to express our sincere gratitude for God's great gift, our call to the religious life. Then we may and must always count on the grace of our vocation. 259' A Vocational Newspaper [Contact, a bright, four-page, two-year-old vocational newspaper from the arch-diocese of Boston, may be of interest to readers of the REVIEW who are not ac-quainted with it. The following description was written by a staff member of the publication. For further information write to: Director of Vocations, Room 622, 185 Devonshire St., Boston, M~,ss. ED.] Maintaining that "Personal contact between an interested priest or religious and a good potential candidate becomes the only real vocation program," Father Francis A. Barry, director of vocations in the Boston archdiocese, thought that a vocational newspaper might provide a natural occasion for conversation or 'even extended talks on religious vocations. The paper was given the significant name: Contact. Experience has shown the idea was a 'good one. Contact, a monthly during the school year, began publicati.o.n in October, 1949. His Excellency, the Most Reverend Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, the founder of the special vocational program, is the adv.isory editor. The editor is Father Barry. He is assisted by eight associate, a makeup, and ten contributing editors. The latter include diocesan and religious priests, Brothers, and Sisters who write columns, features, reviews, and editorials. His Excellency financed the project during its initial year. The religious orders and congregations having houses in the archdiocese shared the major ex-pense since then. , Distributed gratis" to pupils of parochial or other Catholic schools, from the seventh grade through the senior year in school as well as to Sunday schools, rectories, and seminaries, the circulation now tops 50,000." Increased solely by ~ear-say advertising, the mailing li~t now re'aches out to thirty-one s.tates, the Philippine's, Cuba, Italy; France and Canada. The italicized, three-column, colored logotype carries the triple message: Information, Inspiration, and Action. To attract the young people's attention, each issue is printed with bright color spots, ac.cording to the season or month. Adjacent to some of the standing heads appears a small portrait of the editor of the column, showing his religio.us habit ahd giving his name and address. Feature pictures and action shots of'the apostolate of teaching or social service highlight each issue. Provocative headlines dot the pages: It Seems to Me . Horizons, Meet. some religious com- 260 September, 1951 COMMUNION FOR OTHERS ~nunity, Looking Out . thought from the seminary or the novi-tiate, Do You KnoW?, Parents" Column, and Around tile Diocese. Parochial high school reporters keep copy flowing to the desk of the editor of the last-mention~ed column. Contact reiterates the words of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII: "This vcJcation, thisloving call makes itself heard in manydifferent ways, as many as the infinite variety of accents in which the Divine Voice may speak: irresistible invitations, affectionate and repeated promptings,gentle impulses."--SISTER MARY REGINA, S.S.,J. Offering Communion t:or.Ot:hers Clarence McAuliffe, S.3. SISTER LOUISA sat placidly at her desk filling out the spiritual bouquet. It was the community's gift to Sistdr Mercedes who was to make her p~ofession next day. Sister Louisa was adding her contribution to the various specified good works-- rosaries, s{ations, visits, penances,, aspirations, Masses, Communions. It was an easy and congenial task and she contributed generously. But when she had finished, she found a question e.ngaging her mind,. a question she had never asked herself before. She had added five to the total of Commuriions to be offered for Sister Mercedes. 3ust what did it mean to offer Communion for somebody else? She ~had been doing it for many years. Her relatives and friends were always pleased when she told them that she would offer her Communion for them. Yet she had to confess now that she really did not know what she meant wh'en she told them that'she would offer her Communion for their intention. Many religious besides Sister Louisa have been puzzled by the same question. Nor is its answer easy to find. The purpose of this article is to clarify what we mean when we tell others that we are going to offer our Communion for them. It is important to remember that Communion produces certain effects that are inalienable. For instance, Communion automatically increases sanctifyin~ grace and most probably has the power,to con-fer more of this grade than any other sacrament. We do not transfer 261 - CLARENCE MCAULIFFE Ret~ieto for R'eligious any of this to others when we offer our Communion for them. Again, the increase of active love for Go~t and our neighbor which is the .special effect of the Eucharist and which depends on the fervor of our thanksgiving, is not surrendered by offering Communion for somebo~ly else. So too, the strength to resist temptations, the cooling of disordered feelings, since these are special though secondary effects of Communion and depend also on the fervor of one's thanksgiving, are incommunicable. The same is t6 be said of the additional right to a glorious bodily resurrection which is acquired by the worthy reception of Communion. Finally, the remission of venial sins which results automatically from Communion, if the recipient has sincerely revoked all wilful attachment to them, cannot be transferred to any other person. From all this it is ~lear that the principal benefits accruing from the Lord's Table remain with the communicant. In fact it might appear that no spiritual gifts remain which can lend real meaning to our promise to offer Communion for somebody else. But there are. When we ~o to Holy Communion we ordinarily do extra praying and a certain ambunt of mortification. We make a suitable prepara-tion and thanksgiving. We also fast beforehand. Now we all know that prayer and fasting are subjective acts of virtue, ~nd when made by a person in the state of grace, they have a three-fold value in the sight of God. For the sake of brevity, the theologians use tbre'e tech-nical words to express this three-fold efficacy. They say 'it is "meri-torious, satisfactbry, and impetrative." What they mean is that every act of virtue wins more sanctifying grace (meritorious efficacy), removes some temporal punishment (satisfactory), and pleads with God for spiritual and temporal favors (impetrative). In addition, therefore, to the sanctifying grace which comes spontaneously from each Communion, a person also gets more sanc-tifying grace from his acts of virtue elicited before and after receiving the sacrament. Since we can never give one iota of sanctifying grace, no matter by what means it is acquired, to another person, it is evi-dent that the grace proceeding from these acts of virtue at Commun-ion time is also retained by the communicant. However, the satisfactory and impetrative efficacy of these acts may be relinquished in favor of others when we offer Communion for them. Suppose we consider first the gift we make when we hand over the satisfactory fruits of our Communions. Ordinarily we are able to make a fitting preparation for the 262 oep*e,noer, I95 ! COMMUNION FOR OTHERS reception of Holy Communion. Not only do we fast, rise early, kneel down, but we also make acts of faith, hope, confidence, desire, humility, and perhaps acts of perfect love for God. Now each of these acts of penance and of prayer, by reason of our good subjective dispositions which accompany them, has the power to take away some temporal punishment. Moreover, since we are the ones who do the penance and say the prayers, we have the right to have our otot~ temporal punishment lessened by them. What happens, then, when we offer Communion for another? We transfer this incalculable benefit to the other party and, if he is in the state of grace, he receives it. The same is to be said of'the~ prayers we say at the moment when we receive our divine Lord and during the time that He remains pres-ent within us. We communicate the satisfactory value of all these prayers to the other person. Instead of shortening our own purga-tory we shorten the purgatory of another. We', so to speak, suffer vicariously and gratuitously for some one who has no real claim to our sacrifice. If we reflect for a moment, we shall also understand why the satisfactory efficacy of these virtuous acts preceding, accompanying, and following Holy Communion exceeds that produced by the same acts elicited at some other time. We suppose, of course, that our fer-vor (and by that we refer not to our feelings, but to our acts of will) would be equal in both instances. We shall also understand why Communion remits more temporal punishment than other prayers listed in a spiritual bouquet--for example, rosaries or visits to the chapel. We take for granted, of course, that our cooperation would be equally diligent and that the same number of acts of virtue would be made. Otherwise it could easily happen that a rosary re-cited devoutly and animated by many acts of virtue would remit more temporal punishment than a Communion prepared ~or and received listlessly and negligently. Buy other thin~s being on a par, there is an objective reason why Holy Communion should take away more temporal punishment than the rosary or other pious works. The truth of this statement rests .on the fact that ordinarily the acts of virtue we make in connection with Communion are more fer-vent (here again we do not refer to feelings of fervor) and more numerous than those evoked by other works of piety. This is pa.r-ticularly tru~ of the prayers we say during our thanksgiving' after Communion. And it should be noted that temporal punishment is 263 CLARENCE MCAULIFFE Review for Religious canceled in proportion to the fervor and number of our.tSrayers. But why should our prayers after Communion be more fervent? Because Christ is then physically present within us. As a result of His sacramental presence, both the number and the quality of the actual grac'es showered upon us are ~uperi6r to those which necessarily accompany every pious supernatural work. After Communion our Savior inserts a continuous stream of vivifying actual graces into our minds and hearts, and these graces have as their general object, not to arouse merely confidence or faith or humility, but love itself, the most noble of all the virtues. If we ponder these facts, we shall. readily see. why our prayers after Communion have a singular power to reduce the debt of punishment incurred by somebody else. So much for th~ satisfactory value of Holy Communion. We can be comparatively brief in treating of the sacrament's impetrati've fruit because it rests on the same principles we have been discussing. By offering Communion for others, v~e also mean that we trans-mit to them the petitional power of both our preparation and thanksgiving. The very same acts of virtue have not only a satis-factory, but also a pleading or intercessory value. They implore God to brant spiritual and temporal f~vors. Here again, since we are the ones who do the praying, we are the one~ who have a right to obtain the favors. But we,relinquish this right in fav~)r of other~ when we offer our Communion for them. We forget our own needs; we fore-go some benefits that would surely come to ourselves. ~re sacrifice ourselves for the other party. Of course, we must remind ourselves again that we cannot surrender those benefits that flow spontaneously from the Sacrament, such as the remission of venial sins, the growth in love for God and other people, the new title to everlasting glory and the curbing of unruly impulses. But there are many other spiritual and temporal favors that every person needs. There are .many that we ourselves need, even though we often do.not know precisely what" they are. Yet we forget our-. selves and transfer the intercessory vigor of our Communions to others when we offer Communion for them. It is like writing a let-ter of recommendation f6r som~ one else to obtain a benefit that you yourself need and have a right to; and it is a letter of recommenda-tion that you know is certain to be heeded. It is well to remember also that this impetrative efficacy of~Com-reunion is likewise of exceptional ~luality, just as the satisfactory efficacy, and for the same reason. The number and kind of actual 264 September, I~51 COMMUNION FOR OTHERS graces stirred up in the soul after. Communion exceed those accom-panying other good works. .Consequently if we co-operate with them, our acts of virtue will be correspondingly more fervent so that their pleading value is enhanced. Unfortunately, most of us probably do not pray explicitly "after Communion for the person for whom' we offer the Communion. This is, of course, not necessary since our intention made beforehand suffices to obtain for the otber~the satisfactory and impetrative fruits of the sacramefit. However, if we do remember to pray expressly for the' other person after we have received Communion, we shall un-doubtedly increase the value of our gift for him. It stands to reason that our Savior' listens to our. requests with a more willing ear when He is actually present within us with His Sacred Humanity. We recommend, therefore, the practice of praying explicitly after receiving Communion for the person to whom we relinquish the benefits. We may even ask Our Savior to grant certain spedfic favors, especially spiritual ones, to the other party. In conclusion, then, we cannot give away to anyone else the ¯ principal fruits of our Holy Communions. These we have itemized in the beginnihg. In addition to those listed, we might also add that when an indulgence is granted for the reception of Communion or for some prayer said,before or after receiving the Sacrament, we can-not offer it for another living person. Nevertheless, we do a singular favor foi others .when we offer a Communion for their intention. We sacrifice'for theirbenefit the satisfactory and impetrative fruits which are won by our acts of virtue preceding, accompanying, and follow-ing Holy Communion. MEDICO-MORAL PROBLEMS Medico-Moral Problems, Part III, by Gerald Kelly, S.J., contains complete dis-cussions of euthanasia, therapeutic abortion, organic transplantation,, and adult baptism. Also included are discussions of co-operation in illicit operations, the delivery of a. hydrocephalic infant, and lobotomy for pain relief. The booklet is published by the Catholic Hospital Association of the United States and Canada, 1438 South Grand'Blvd., St. Louis 4, Mo. 50 cents a copy; 12 for $5.25; 50 for $,20;' 100 for $37.50. Parts I and II can be obtained at the same place and at the same prices. 265 uestdons and Answers --20- An unexpected opportunity has arisen to sell a piece o{ communlt~ property {or $100,000, which is much more than we could get for it under normal circumstances. But the property must be transferred.withln ten days, otherwise the offer will be wlfhdrawn. VVhat shall we do about gefflng permission of the Holy See? Fortunately His Excellency, the Apostolic Delegate, now has faculties from the Sacred Congregation of Religious to permit the contracting of loans, sales, and alienations of property belonging to a religious institute, when the sum involved does not exceed a half million gold dollars, provided that the conditions laid down in canons 534 and 1531 be observed. We take this opportunity to inform our readers that the Sacred Congregation of Religious has also granted two other special facul-ties to the Apostolic Delegate: to dispense.religious for the reception of Holy Communion from the obligation of the Eucharistic fast so that they may take something by way of drink or m. edicin~, when their physician considers the keeping of the fast injurious to their health; also to shorten or prolong the postulancy prescribed by the Code of Canon Law (see Bouscaren, Canon Lau2 Digest, Supplement 1943-1948, p. 131, under canon 858). m2 I-- I have heard that permission of the Holy See is required {or th~ aliena-tion of notable relics and images. Is it proper ÷o infer that relics and ¯ venerated images may be bought and sold? Does his include sacred vessels? To .buy and sell is only one form of alienation. Hence it does not follow as a general rule that relics and venerated images may be bought and sold simply because the Holy See at times gives permis-sion to alienate such things. Since three distinct things are included in this question we think it advisable to treat each class separately. Relics. Canon 1289 states very plainly: "It is unlau~[ul (nefas) to sell sacred relics." To do so would be to commit a sin of simony. However, it would not be sinful to charge and pay for the metal case in which the relics are usuhlly inclosed. Canon 1281, § I tells us that "notable relics or precious images, and likewise all relics or images 266 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Which are honored in any church with great devotion on the part of the people, cannot be alier~ted validly nor transferred permanently to another church without the permission of the Holy See." What is me~tnt by notable relics? Paragraph two of canon 1281 gives us a list of notable relics: the body, head, arm, forearm, heart, tongue, hand, leg, or that part of the' body in which the martyr suffered, provided it be "entire and" not too small." Such relics may not be alienated without the permissi6n, of the Holy See. Since it is for-bidden to sell. relics, alienation here must be taken in its other meaning, that is, to give away, to lend, and the like. The permission of" the Holy See would be required also to alienate relics which °are not notable; provided that they are honored in a church with great devotion on the part of the faithful. Small relics in the possession of private persons do not come under canon 1281, but they may never be sold. Precious [maqes. Ecclesiastical goods (church property) are shid to be.precious,when they have a ~pecial value by reason of artistic, historical, or material content (canon 1497, § 2). An image is said to be precious if it was painted by a great artist, or was made of precious materials, and has a notable valu&, that'is, over 1000 gold life (about $335 in our present money). Such images, as well as others which are not precious but which may be called venerable because of the great devotion of the faithful towards them, may not be alienated without the permissiqn of the Holy See. Sacred Vessels. Things are said to be sacred when they are .destined for divine worship by reason of their consecration or con-stitutive blessing. Canon 1305 tells us that "an article of sacred equipment which is blessed or consecrated loses its blessing or conse-cration . . . if it has been put to degrading uses 6r has been exposed for public sale." On the other hand, canon 1539 states that "in the sale or exchange of sacred things no account of the consecration or blessing is to be taken in determining the price." We may say, there-fore, that sacred vessels may be sold privately by one individual to another, or by one moral person to another (a church or community to another church or community) provided no extra charge is made for the blessing or consecration. But sacred things may not be exhibited publicist for sale without losing tbeir blessing or consecra-tion. This applies principally to auction sales and to the placing of a sacred object in the window or in the show case of a store open to the public. 267 QUEST, IONS AND A .NSWERS Reuieu) for'Religious We may conclude by adding that a consecrated chalice and paten do not lose their consecration'by being regilded (canon 1305, § 2). May exfreme unction be admlnls+ered before any major opera÷ion? For the valid reception of extreme unction the subject must be in " danger of death ¯from sickness or old age. If the person who is to, undergo major surgery is already in this condition, he is capable of receiving the sacrament before the operation. It may be that this is ge~nerally the case, but it is not necessarily so. Some operations which may entail a great deal of danger are performed for removing some chronic condition which might not become dangerous, without the operation, for a long time. Such patients cannot be anointed before the operation. In practice, it is not easy to decide whether to anoint a person. before an operation or t6 hwait the outcome of the operation. ¯ There is no universally-established practice; nor could there be: Some patients are clearly not capable of receiving the sacrament before the operation; others are clearly capable; and still others are "borderline cases." Moreover, the pastor or chaplain has not merely to decide whether the patient can be validly anointed l~ut also to judge when the anointing would be most appropriate and beneficial. Our ¢ons+ffufions +el[ us +ha+ "[eff~rs fo +he S~s+ers as well as +hose senf by +hem shall pass +hrough ÷he hands of +he superior who may read +hem," In view of +hls s+a+emen+, may a eAenera[ chap+er eAranf +o 9olden jubilaHans +he prlvllecAe' of seal[n~ +belt leffers before ~ivlng ÷hem ÷o +hl superlor7 "-['he general chapter has no power to change the constitutiofis, unless the constitutions themselves give it that power, which is not likely. On the other hand, since the constitutions' do not oblige the superior 'to read all letters which pass through her hands, the general chapter could recommend that superiors refrain from reading the letters of golden jubilarians, but it could not take away the right to read them which is contained in the constitutions. The general chapter may likewise request that the constitutions be changed in this matter, if that be the wish of the majority. Such a request for a change in the constitutions would be made to the local ordinary in the case of a diocesan congregation, or to the Holy See (Co.ngrega-tion of Religious) in the case of a pontifical institute. 268 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Ret~iew /:or Religious m24-- Is the novice master to be present at the discussion of the general council which follows upon his report on the novices who are preparing for first professlon? Canon 563 reads as follows: "During the course of the year of novitiate, the master of novices, conformably to the constitutions, must present to the .chapter or the higher superior a report con-cerning the conduct of each of the novices." Strictly speaking there-fore, the master of novices makes his report to the chapter (in inde-pendent monasteries! or to the higher superior, but not directly to the gefieral council, unless the constitutions prescribe this. Hence a written report should be given the higher .superior who, in turn, will communicate it to the general council. Many constitutions have an article based on art. 300 of the Norrnae which says that "whenever in the general council the novices or the novitiate is discussed, the mistress should be called, who will make known her mind on the subject under discussion, or submit opportune information." There will be no need (and certainly no obligation) for the master of novices to remain at the council session after he has given the infor-mation prescribed by canon 563. If necessary, h~ can always be called back for further information. ~-25-- Is it permissible for sick Sisters who are not completely bedridden to ¯ receive Holy C~ommunion by the cell of a Sister who is confined perman-ently to her bed. These Sisters can manage to get around although the doctor's orders are that they rest as much as possible. Likewise the sana-torium in which they stay has' an elevator and the chapel is on the first floor. The general rule is that all should receive Holy Communion in the chapel if they can conveniently do so. If the Sisters are so sick that they are obliged to miss Holy Mass, even though they are up and about their rooms or in the corridor, they may receive Holy Com-munion on the floor on which they li~'e. As to the elevator: if the Sisters use .it to go to'another floor for their meals, then they should use it likewise to go to the chapel to receive Holy Commu'nion. In general one may say that if going to the chapel for Holy Com-munion would lengthen the time for the Eucharistic fast, or would put ar~ additional strain upon a sick Sister who is not confined to her 269 NEW MEDITATION BOOKS Review [or Reh'gious bed, she may receive Holy Communion on the floor on which she lives. --26-- Is the practice of saying I000 Hall Marys on the Feast of the Annun-ciation ÷o be considered a superstition? Everything. will depend upon the motive a person has in re-peating the Hail Mary that often on the Feast of the Annunciation. If this is done simply out of love for Our Lady, there is nothing wrong with it, since, it is a laudhble act of devotion. ~If, on the other hand, the practice were based upon a ~purious ,revelation, or a sup-posed efficacy which it does not have of its own nature (that of intercessory prayer), then it might be superstitious. New Medi!:a!:ion Books Like St. Teresa of'Avila, many religious,need a meditation book for many years to help them in their prayer. Four such books, writ-ten as helps for contact with God in prayer, have recently been pub-lished or reprinted. The authors are a German Capuchin, an Ameri-can Jesuit in India, an American Benedictine, and a Hungarian bishop. The books vary in purpose, content, and form. Direct, ~arnest, Practical One of the books is the fourth volume of MEDITATIONS by Father Bernardine Goebel, O.F.M.Cap., translated by Father Berch- 'mans Bittle, O.F.M.Cap. Adapted for the use of the Friars Minor Capuchin, the direct, earnest, and practical reflections will help any follower of the Gospel. The present volume is for the'time from Trinity Sunday to the Twelfth Sunday biter Pentecost. The meditation for Sundays is usually on the Gospel of the.day. Some of the topics developed f6r the course of a week are the Eucharist, the Mass, faith, hope, char!W, and love of .neighbor. Each meditation begins with a brief sum-mary of the meditation followed by a brief introductory paragraph, develbps two points w.ith a consid,eration and*application, and ends with a prayer. (Province of St. Joseph, 1740 Mt. Elliott Ave., Detroit 7, Michigan, 1950. Pp. 264. $2.50.) Prodac~ of Missionarg Zeal From the 'mission.field ~f Ifidia comes MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY 270 " September, 1951 NEW MEDITA'FION BOOKS DAY by Rev. P. J. Sontag; S.J. It has recently been reprinted in an attractive two volume set. The first volume containin~ I87 medi-tations covers the first half of the liturgical year from Advent to Trinity Sunday. The second volume complete~ the year bringing the total number to 369. Most of the meditations are based on the life of Christ. Meditations on the Apostles Creed, the Our Father, the sacraments, on social justice and Catholic Action are included, as ¯ ycell as meditations for the First Fridays, the lit.urgical feasts, feasts of special saints, and over twenty meditations "honoring Mary. Though the meditations'were l~repared specifically for the l~iity, priests, seminarians, and all religious will find them belpful. Each meditation fias two or three (the. additional gives the account from Scripture) preludes and three ¯points which contain ample matter for reflection. For the colloquy, the author modestly hnd wisely con-fines himself to suggesting the person, Our Lord or a saint, to ad-dress. The set belongs to the Science and Culture Series and has a preface by the general editor, Joseph Husslein, S.J. (The Bruce Publishing Company, 400 N. Broadway, Mil,waukee 1, Wisc., 1950. Pp. I, xviii q- 476; II, ix q- 466. $10.00.) Goal ol: Monasticism Volume three completes THE.SCHOOL OF THE L, ORD'S SERVICE by, Rev. Bernard A. Sause, O.S.B. (author of "Bene, dicti~e Spirit-uality," REVIEW, X, 7). The set gives a meditation based on the Rule of St. Benedict for every day of the" year. The present volume for the ninth to the twelfth month contains the text of the Rule of St. Benedict and thirty meditations on ea'cb .of the foll~)wing four subjects: spirit of detachment: good zeal': practices, interpretations. and attitudes that have grown from the Rule: and intimate union with God. There is a bibliography and a composite index for the three volumes. Each meditation contains a carefully developed consideration, an examen for the day, and a practical application. The considerations are enriched by quotations, examples, and commehts ~arnered from Benedictine tradition, The sources are given after each meditation. The author's" development of zeal is especially noteworthy. He pre-sents the virtue of zeal in a concrete, appealing'manner by singling out for each day of the month a Benedictine monk, nun, or lay Brother who exemplified some aspect of zeal in his or her life. Not all of the exam, plats are canonized saints. The book deserves and 2'71 NEW MEDITATION BOOKS rewards a careful, prayerful reading. (St. Meinrad, Indiana: The. Grail, 1951.' Vol. iII, Pp. vi q- 575. $4.00.) Devotion and Inspiration Rt. Rev. Ottokar Proh~szka, bishop of Sz~kefeh~rvfir, who died on March 28, 1927, was an outstanding and saintly prelate and a gifted, prolific writer. His MEDITATIONS ON THE GOSPELS are brief, s.wift-moving reflections on the entire life of Our Lord. He presents a text from the New Testament, gives a few short reflections, and leaves preludes, affections, and colioquies to the exercitant. The meditations should be a source of devotion and inspiration to many. The author w!;ites in the introduction to his work: '"I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.' I wish to serve this purpose of Jesus at His Incarnation, and to that end I am sending this book out into the world. It is intended to assist in the development of the life of Cbrist within our souls . Christ is God Himself in human shape, and I have to adore Him, and delight in His sublime beauty, in the depth and unique quality of His Soul, in the powerful originality of His mind, in the charm which He diffuses and in the life which flows forth from Him. My soul hangs upon His lips and hearkens to His every word. I see God reflected in Him as in a mirror; I bow my head upon His bands and surrender my heart to Him. He is God's Instrument; He will form me and harmonize thd conflicting elements within me." The present Newman edition bad three volumes fin one. The authorized translation from the Hungarian is by Margaret de Pill. Father C. C. Martindale, S.J., has written the foreword. (Wes.t-minster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1951. Pp.: I, xiv + 229; II, ix + 322; III, viii + 282. $5.50.) SPIRITUAL BOOK ASSOCIATES (381 Fourth Ave., New York 16, N.Y.) September Selection--R. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. Our Saviour and His Love for Us. $6.00. October Selection--Henri Petitot, O.P. The True Story of Saint Bernadette. (Cf. REVIEW, May '51, p. 161). $3.50. 272 ¯ 8ook Reviews THE HISTORY OF THE POPES. By Ludwlcj yon Pastor. Translated by E. F. Peeler. Vol. 36: Benedict XIV (1740-1758). Pp. 513; Vol. 37: Clement XIII (1758-1769). Pp. 4S8. B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, Missouri. $5.00 per volume. This REVIEW (September, 1950) carried a notice of Volume 35 of the English Pastor, showing Pope Benedict XIV in the opening years of his pontificate working "with a pistol at his head," 'a weapon held by Catholic sovereigns demanding that he let them run the Church as well. ' It was particularly in m'eeting their concerted attack on the Society of ,lesus that Benedict XIV fought for his papal powers. Now Volume 36, the latter part of Benedict's pontificate, and 37, that of Clement XIII, come t6 hand, and their entire content is predominantly devoted to later phases of this titanic contest. Even so they bring the st.ory only to the end of the second last Act, and tfien break off while the~ translator works on the ddr~otternent. Will the Society, in the end, be suppressed? Will this regiment, of twenty-two thousand religious, in some forty provi,ces, 600 col-leges and over 1400 churches, be sacrificed? Read the next volume to foll~w shortly. To religious of both sexes, and members of whatever type of canonical organization, this story cannot but have deep and abiding interest. That it chanced to be the Ignatian Society against which the storm broke was because it was the "Swiss Guard" of the day, and the ruler of the Swiss Guard can expend his troops in battle, or order them back to the barracks to disband. Despite the faults and human weaknesses of the papacy's de-fenders, the story leaves them with the honorable distinction of. "canonical" death in the line of duty. Certain European monarchs were persuaded that the papacy had to be cut down to reasonable size. As the Minister Tanucci put it (37, 13) : "Certainly the primacy of the Pope was incontestable; he was the supreme head and centre of the Church; he had the right to summon a General Council, and he was infallible, but only when 15e made decisions in conjunction with the Bishops. But the Papacy in the form it had assumed in his day would have to. be abolished." 273 BOOK REVIEWS "The only way to treat the Pope was to . . . kiss his feet and bind his hands'~ .(28). So, under forms of exquisite politeness and courtly'deference, a violent strtiggle was waging. If the current tyranny of atheisti~ Commu, nism were being carried, on under the appearance of Catholic Leadership, if Marshal Stalin had his official minister at the Vatican to shape Catholic policy,.we could all the easier understand the high and mighty language of "unavoidable administrative necessity" that permeates these endless pages of eighteenth century despotism: It was proved with mathematical precision again and again that the mon-archs were but acting for the Church's good in withstanding the Pope, etc. Have we not heard these tunes being aired in our own day? Will it. be different in the twenty-second century, or the twenty-fifth? Details are all irrelevant; the contest wages still: evil has not prevailed, but it availeth much--GERALD ELLARD, S.J. THE LOVE OF GOD AND THE GROSS OF JESUS. By ÷he Rev. Regl-nald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. Transl~÷ed by Sisfer Je~n~e Marle, O.P. Volume Two. Pp. vi q- 461. B. Herder Book C;o., Sf. Louis, 1951. $~.00. This volume carries forward and completes Father Garrigou- Lag~ange's studies on divine love and the perplexing trials that are apt to befall souls fairly far advanced in the way of that love. Briefly this is the content of it. Part one deals with "crosses of the senses." These ar4 understood to be just what St. 3ohn of the Cross describes as "the night of sense," and hence here we ,have Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's interpretation of that portion of St. 3ohn's doctrine. Correspondingly the second part is taken up with St. dohn's !'night of the spirit." Both sections, therefore, are concerned with what one might term the dark, distressing, disconsolate, phase of the mystical life. Part three is headed, "The Life of Union through desus and Mary." Among the themes considered are the inhabita-tion of the Blessed Trinity, the unity and sublimity of the apostolic life, the priesthood of Christ, His kingship, the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model of reparation, and St. 3oseph as a model of the hidden life and first among the saints. As parts one and two would com-fort'and strengthen one who is suffering, the rigors of the night of the soul, so this third part has much that is positively very magnificent and inspiring. The Three Ages of the Interior Life is expressly offere~l to the 274 September, 1951 BOOK REVIEWS public by Ft. Garrigou-Lagrange as a synthesis of this work and Christian Perfection and Contemplation (vol. I, v). Hence it shares in the merits and demerits of that larger and later work. These were discussed at length pro and con'in this REVIEW previously (Novem-ber, 19'49, pp. 297-317; March, 1950, 78-95). ' Since The Love of God and the Cross of Jesus was subsequently incprporated in The Three Ages and presented there in the form which the author now prefers, it seems rather surprising that it should be translated and published at this time. Except for scholars who wisl~ to see both studies, one who wants Fr. Garrigou- Lagrange's ideas on these matters should preferably seek them in the later and more definitiire work--AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD, S.J. THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST~ By John of St. Thomas. Trenslated fro~ the Latin by Dornin~c Hucjhes, O.P. With e Foreword by Walter Farrell, O.P. Pp. x -f- 293. Sheed end Ward, New York, 19SI. "$3.7S. Now Fr. Hughes has done, and in beautiful form, for English readers what Madame RaissaMaritain did a number of years ago for the French, that is, he has made a translation of the celebrated

Issue 5.4 of the Review for Religious, 1946. ; RE VOLUME V / J,ULY 15. 1946 " Nu~BE~,~- ' , , CONTENTs "ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION~Cyril VSIlert. S.J. " " 21,7 A TIMELY PAMPHLET . ¢ -.'. . , .' , 228 ~CONCE~NING DISTRACTIONS~ha'rles F. Donovan, S.J, ~ 2;29 IN CASE YOU DON'T KNOW IT~ * 232 "SAINT APPEARED TWICE"--CIem~t J. McNaspy, S.J . 233 ~ PLAN OF SELF-DENIAL WITHIN THE 'REACH OF ALL ~ "Robert B. Eitem S.J . " 239 gP~LS ~ORVOCAT~ONS ., . ~,.~ 2~ SPEAKING' OF NAMES--Claude Kean.O.F.M . DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . ,249 OUR CONTRIBUTORS " . . TWO HE~RTS--W. H. Hingston S.J '. ~ 251 ANN~N~EMENT . - . ~. ~_. ~-25~ RECEPTION OF SEMINARIANS INTO RELIGIOUS INSTI~UTES~, Adam C, Ellis, S.J . :BOOKS RECEIVED . ' ~ ' 263 /QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ' ,~ 22. Permission to Use G~ld Watch . 23.,Number of Delegates for General Chapter: Soliciting Votes 26~' 24. Use of Income from Special Fees '. . ~. 26~ 25. Religious Candidate Whose Parents Have,Bad Reputation 266~ ~ 26. Going to Confession in Order of Seniority . . ~ . 266 27. Communion Sundays ahd Contests to Promote Frequent Communion 267 28. Order of Precedence in Mdther House " " 268 BOOK REVIEWS-- ' , ~,~ The Mystical Life; Meditatio~ on the Passion: The Catholic Centre: Mission for Samaritans: Forming a Christian Mentality; How to Medi-tate; The Mystical Baldy of Christ: La ~iete Eucharistique: John Henr~ , , . Newman: Centenary Essays; The T h"ird Day Mano'logy: Mast'er and~ - Model: Dove Flights: Kyrie Elei~on:XTh~ P~ychology of Liturgical MU- " sic; The Life,of Father Pro 271 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. ~uly, 1946. Vol. V. No. 4. Pu~lisfied bi-monthly; January, March:May. July, September. and November at the C011ege.Press,4 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas. *by-St. Mary's College. St. Marys, ,~ansas, . with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered' as second class ~atter/~anuar), ~'15, "1942. at the Post O~ce, Topeka, ~Kansas. under the act of March 3:. 1879. EditgrlaL Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J. G, Augustine Ellard. S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Editorial Secretary: Alfred F. Schneider. S.J. " Copyright, 1946, by Adam C. ElliS, Permission is hereby. ~ra~n t e d for- quota't m:"n ~s. of reasonable length, provided due credit "be given this review and the auth6r.' Subscription price:, 2 dollars a year. Printed*ifi ~. Before writln~ to us,,please consult notice on inside 'back over~ ¯ ~' Or~gin~°l ~in ~nd Educa :ion Cyril Vollert, S.J. ~OST OF US who try to keep up with educational ~V~ controversies and discussions have~ become some-what surfeited with reiterated assurances that the one hope of salvaging this creaking world, so near the shoals of disaster, is education. We are told that education can save democracy, resolve the .c~lass struggle~ and confer on man. the good life.- " The striking t~I-iing is, much of this is true. But to realize'these great expectations education must be rightly conceived and rightly directed. It must be true education for man as he actually is; and it must be aimed at the right goal. Most of the. arguing about education is futile, and therefore fruitless, ' because those whd contribute the never~e.nding stream of articles, addresses, and books about education are so'often, unrealisticAn their view of the p.er~son who is to b~educate~d.or are wrong in t~eir idea.of t~e~upshot ofthe educational process. They are trying to stee~la rudderless sh~p throagh an uncharted sea to an unknown port. unless[we are right.in our notion of~the objec-tive to be a.t~ta[ned and of the~p.erson wh9 is to be educated, we are scarcely,.in a position to decide what the ~educational process ought to ~e. , . I,n this article.I s~all not pr3sume to fix the ~ltimate goal of education. Readers of this periodical know very. ~well what it is: ,God, whom we are to possess in the eternal happiness of the beatific vision. Nor shall I rashly attempt to outline an educational program. My purpose will be to describe the beneficiarydr" such a program and to indicate 217 CYRIL VOLLERT ' Reoiew /or t~elipiotts the proximate end to be achieved. The artist cannot pro-duce a masterpiece unless he knows the material he has to work on. Neither can the teacher succeed in transforming an uneducated person into an educated person unless he understands man as he actually is. The raw material of the educational' process is a boy or girl born in original sin, and still suffering the results'~ of original sin. This statement is not naive. It is not a bogy of a bygone day. It is true today and Will remain true for all time. Such a view is the only realistic view. Any other notion is false, or at least inadequate. But even tki'e truth that the person to be educated began life in original sin and still staggers under the burden of the consequences Of origi-nal sin may be distorted. To see the truth, two extremes have to be avoided: a vapid optimism and a groundless pessimism. Clear vision is n~eded, unobstructed either by rose-colored lenses or by smoked glass. The optimistic vie.w, credited by romanticists to the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau but "actually as old as Pel~ag~us in the fifth century and his iritellectual ancestors, is that every man at his origin is wholly good. Let him alone; do not hamper or misdirect the natural play of his thought-processes and appetites; and he is capable of 'ifidefinite growth ingoodnegs. Signs of the break-up of the "electiv~ System" point to th~gradual abandonment of this view. But many. educators still do not know wh~t is to replace this shallow optimism. Rousseau and Eliot are no longer the .leaders to the promised land. Nevertheless the typical modern educator remains a Pelagian. /] The pessimistic view is also hoary with antiquity. Its crudest form, Manichaeism, regards all matter as evil. Therefore man, so far as he is a corporeal being, is evil. He is hopeless till he. gets out of his Body. A less irrational 218 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION variety of this pessimism is the notion, characteristic of uncontaminated early Lutheranism and Protestantism generally, that original sin intrinsically corrupted man, l'eft him forever a sinner ihcapable "of morally good actions, and destroyed his free will. Nothing can really correct the depravity of Lutheran.man. His defilement can be covered up byChrist's merits, but he himself stays a sinful wretch, utterly corrupt. A trace of this idea of man, greatly diluted, is found sometimes among Catholics, even amdng educated Cath-olics and religious. They may have a notion, not very-pre-cisely formulated, that man's nature, though not wholly corrupted by original sin, was inwardly wounded so that his understanding, considered on the purely natural _level, is now intrinsically darkened and his will is intrinsically weakened. Those who harbor such an idea of man may have been Subjected to defective instruction On this point; or they may have failed rightly to grasp what was correctly taught; or they may have had teachers who repre-- se, nted a very small, and practically unimportant,-minority opinion tfiat man actually was thus injured by original sin. But there is no sound theological basis for this per: suasion. The truth is that man, coniidered simply as natural man, is as whole today, in intellect and will, as was man regarded in his purely natural endowment when he came from the creative hand of God. In other words orig-inal sin left man in no worse condition, on the purely human level of his mind and will, than he was before Adam cast his momentous decision against God. What is true in all that we hear about the disastrous effects of Adam's sin is this: the first man deliberately renounced God and thereby lost the supernatura! endow-ments which God had conferred on him for the whole 219 CYRIL VOLLER~. 'human~ race. Adam was created not Reoiew for Religious only in'a state~ of ¯ na.tural:perfecti0n, but .was elevated to.the~sonship of God by sanc._tifying grace,. Mor9o,ver,, to~ complement th!s~divine -gift and to enable Adam to preserve it for0himself and .the entire human family, God added other remarkable.gifts, notably, t_he.~gift of.integrity whereby all hispowers affd faculties were perfectly~subordinated to his. reason and.~.wi11., and the gift of immortality whereby his. body.~asi~sub~, 'jected to his~soul so that it was liberated from the necessity of fa!ling into corruption and death. These inconceivably .great bounties, all of ,,them beyond ,the capacities ,of human na°ture, Adam. received for himselt and for all his,~descend- By:_sinning Adam lost~them all~. He lost originals, jus-tice for himseff 'and fo~ his posteri.ty., His children and his children's children down to the end of time (with the unique)exception, ofo.th~ Bles'sed V4rgin'Mary).were begot-ten in.a-sta:te,.of estrangement from God. Instead' of.being ,bOrn sons. and daughters of God in sancti£ying grace: the,y. were,born.%without that relation to God,,,.the-only Fight relation.to God once God bad,elevated mankind i(in. Ada_m). to:the,supernatural level:~ ~They were born ~in,:the stat&of . ~ ~W.ith the sin inherited from" Adamgo theieffects.of, the sin:loss'[0f,the othe'r accompanying 'gifts, integrity, and im-morgality.:,,. ThereforeAdam's~children,are worse off ~ihan-he~-~ as.,.~ Forthey all come into°the,W.ofld withbut.-the grage of di,v, ine~sonship,, without integrit~y, without immottalit, y: ,Adam s,mn £change mankind for the wors~, ifi!,soul and.in :,, --But Adam's~ sin ,did not wreck his. human nature as. such.' We are no w6rse Off now than we ~oul'd have been if God had never elevated Adam to be His ~ad0pted son, with this exception: we ought to be biafn with sanctifying 220 July, 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION grace, and we are not; find so we are born in a state dis-pleasing to.God, a state of sin. ~l~rue, if we ~compare ourselves with .A'dam as he actually was in Paradis'e, we are far .inferior,,. We are deprived'of the supernatural and.preternatural Preroga~tives¯ that. made him so extraordinarily perfe~t~a man. P~i0r fo baptism we lack the divine sonship he had; and so we come into the world as sinners. And even though.we-.recover tl~e . grace of divine sonshil3 in baptism, we lack the gift of integrity: and so we find in otirselves an unruly mass of conflicting .powers, the 10w~r at odds with the higheL th6 body unsubservient to the soul. We lack the gift of immor-tality,. and so we succumb to illness, wounds, gradual cor-ruption, and death. But if we regard only Adam's nature itself unperfected by any of these gifts, oar own natures ar'e just the same. Adam's-nature, left to itself, ,had the sameelements and equipment as otirs. If he had not had the gift of integrity-he. too w.ould, even without any sin, have experienced the same conflict among his faculties. His senses would have sought their own pro~er objects just as gtubbornly as ours do,-against the will's consent. 'His body .would have been exposed to illness, decant, and death. All this appears, quite reasonable. Our first pgrents, as ,they .actually were, with God's supernatur.al and preter- ' natural gifots added to" their natural make~up, were clearly superior to .tis. Bui if we disregard Whatever is preter-n~ atural arid supernatural, we headily seb th~at they .had the same nature as we their children have. : Only one thought, nagging at our memories of what We have heard and read, keeps thrusting forward an objdc-tion; we have been taught that, as a result.of original sin, ourintellects have been darkened and our wills have been weakened. This ii :the very statement in the elementary 221 (~YRIL VOLLERT Re~oiew for Religious catechis~ most 6f us have studied: "Our natur~ was cor-rupted by tl~e ~in of our fi~st parents, which darkened our understanding, weake.ned our will,.and left in us a strong inclination :to evil." ' ' This brings us to the heart of our discussion:, just what this statement means. It means that, without the gifts of original justice,'-particularly integrity and immortality, our minds are less able to acquir~e truth and our willsare less firm in pursuing good th.a.n if we had those, gifts. I~ does not mean that original sin has .intrinsically harmed our minds and wills so that their natural power to khow and ¯ will has b~en destroyed or i~apaired, ~ The doctrine taught by the familiar catechism of our childhood is of course true. But the trUth.admits of better wording; and the recent revision of this catechism puts the matter more clearly: "The chief punishments of Adam which we inherit through original sin are: death, .suffe)ing, ignorance, and a" strong inclination to sin." What~ever is taught by the ~.hurch about t.h~ darkening of the intellect and the weakenirig of. the~will can be under-stood, and actually is understood by .all great theologians;, in .the sense of a deterioration as compared .with the mind and will of man in the state of c;riginaljustice. .This is easily perceived, in .the °casfi of the will. God ~en~riche, d Adam;s nature, with the'gift of integrity, which lined up .all his powers and passions under, the control of his reason and will so that his animal appetites could not take the initiative in attracting ~him toward evil and could no~ prevail .against the command of'his will., In punish~ ment for his sin, Ad,am lost thisomarvelous gift for him-self and for all of us. We do not possess the gift of integ~ rity, and'so *there is lacking in us the perfect order among. our various powers ~and appetites which that~ gift would have proc~ured. In. other words, we are subject to unruly 222 dulq, 1946. ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION c'oncupiscence, which means simply that each of our .appe-tites seeks its own good heedless of the good. of the whole person. When an attractive object confronts any of our senses, that sense can immediately reach out for the object quite independently of. the will's.consent, and even against the will's command. By that very fact our will is weakened. Concupiscence pulls us toward the tempting object even though we realize that taking it involves sin. We .may "already have reached out to seize it before the mind adverts to what we are doing: And even after the mind does take notice, the enticement still persists, the tug is still felt. We are much less able to resist the allurement than if the Senses were fully under our cohtrol. The will may say, "No!" Sense appetite says, "Yes!" And both will and sense appe- .,.rites. are mine. I am being torn between a higher and a lower good. I can resist, because :my will is still in charge. But often I give up; especially if, the battle is a long one. My will does not resist; I surrender, satisfy my lower craving at the expense of moral good, and so I sin. Adam in the state of original justice would have under-gone no such struggle. His will could simply have said, "No!" The sense appetite would, have straightway obeyed. Indeed, the sense appetite could not have been attracted to the object in the first place without the assent of the will. Therefore'my will is weaker than his; but only because.of the pull of concupiscence. My will, as a natural faculty just in itself, is in no way weakened by original sin. The same is the case with our intellect. Adam had a preternatural gift of infused knowledge. We have not. Therefore our understanding is dark as compared with his, for .his was bathed with divine light. If Adam had not ~inned, he would not have handed on his special, infused gift of knowledge to his descendants. For this knowledge 223 CYRIL VOLLERT Review [or Religious was a personal gift with-vc~ich God eciUipped the~fii~st-man, created.aS he Wasin adulthood in intimate communion with God and with a special office as teacher of the children.he was to beget. ~: ~ ._ ,. ~ - ~ :,~,.- ,~ Adam had, yev other endow, menfs~perfecdnghis intel-lect, Alohg with. the sanctifying grace that~ele~ated him to dupernatural heights went the infused'~virtues, theological and moral. Among these are faith and prudence,., which resided, in his intellect. These'he would h~ve~transmitted: But. he sinhed,~and,so could not. transmit sgnctifying grace and, all 'the:accompanying.gifts. We,~ born without.~sanc-tifying~, grace, begin life deprived of the infused virtues, .includidg " those ,.which would have.equipped ~our minds With a habitual~aptitude for higher truths, In this respect, too, our. minds are defective as com#ared with his before the Eall: . _ ~Bu~-here we must'consider another factor, which is :sel~ dora,well,brought out. In sinning, Adam~ lost, 'besi~h sanctifying grace>~ith its cortege of infused.'virtues, ,th~ preternatural~ gif~s~: of,integrity and immortality. with:~heqos£of, immortality~w_¢nt the loss of impassibility, 6r :immuflitw,.to~sfl.ffering, disease, and death~.,~:~His body was no longer.perfectl~ subject;to his sou.L: ~ ~ From' Adam.weinherit ~bgdies ~bereff of these~ gifts. .Not bnly are we sfibject to 'conCupiscence,~ b6t me-have .,bodies unprot&ted, from ~harm-bythe -g "~ "f t~s~ .:.o.~lm~"m -ortahty and impassibility.,. Ou~. souls are immorthl, ~but tEey ha.re not the' pow&~to i~part., i~mortality to bur bodies. ~us.left ,their nat6ral ~eakness; our bodies easily giveAn, to f~tig~e, .to a thousand different, diseases,',to, the decrepitude of advancing age, .and~:.to dissolution. All. this,,has weighty ~consequences for ~0ur ~no~ledg~ and our (apacity to learn. Obviously~ ,the,pull 0f-c6ncu~iscence,is a tremendous obstacle to the acquisition~of knowledge. Web.have a kin~ 224 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION ship for the concrete, the. sensible. Higher truths, especially the truths of theology, ,religion, and metaphysics, hav~ -little charm for most people. They waht to know and experience what is pleasant and easy. Whatever has a sur-face interest excites them. The clang of the fire-engine bell~ upsets the class; not only children in third grade but university students, and the professor himself, feel the urge fo rush to the window. Philosophy is hard put to it to rdsist the seduction of the radio. Mathematics runs a poor ~second to.movies. A game of ball in the nearby playground is. more fun than geography or arithmetic. Shakespeare. and Thackeray have less appeal than the funnies. Another important consideration, is the fatigue that goes with thinking. Continuity is essential to study. But the brain soon wearies and seeks distraction. Even under -the most favorable circumstances, sudh as absolute quidt. freedom from interruption, and robust health, mental con- ¯ centration is extremely hard work. We know how right Aristotle was When he remarked, "Learning is'accompanied by pain[" The experience of students is well formulat,ed in a wise man's saying that has passed into a p~overb.: "Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance." But ideal circumstances are rarely granted to us. Leisure for thinking is a luxury. The very necessity of caring for the bbdy's needs takes up the most valuable portion of our time and eneigies. The majority of mankind must spend half or more of each working day in sheer toil for bread~ What leisure is left is without the freshness of mind required for acti,~e thought. -Even when a person has leisure and opportunityfor learning, his bodily condition is often a deterrent to efficient °study. The eye too soon grows dim, and reading has to be rationed. Hayfeve-r, sinus infection, a cdld in the head, the hundrei:l ills that plague mankind, all. militate against the ¯- 225~ CYRIL VOLLERT ~ Revietu /or Religious attention, correlation, and penetration required for ¯ rained.thinking and for the mastery of but a single province of human kno,wledge. ~f~to such bodily distresses we add the emodonal~bias that s~ems froni concupiscence and ,impedes the disinter-ested pursuit of truth, if we take account of the environ-. mental restrictions that, as in Soviet Russia', block access to th~ sources of truth, and if with allthis we mix in the lying propaganda, rooted in selfishness or in bigotry,, that not only closes off truth but teaches error, we can go very far in explaining the darkening of our under~tandin.g that is a result of original sire , Truly, our ability to gain knowl-edge is grievo.usly inferior to that of Adam when, before he rejected God's grace, he was shielded from all these evils by his preternatural gifts of immunity to concupiscence, suf-f~ iing, and bodily dissolution. But our natural faculty of intellect was in no way intrinsically injured by original sin. Our intellect and our will are the same now, considered as purely natural perfec.-' tions, as they would have been if Adam had handed down to-us original justice instead, of original sin. Our intellec-trialand volitional inferiority results from our lack of the preternatural gifts that would have removed all obstacles to their perfect functioning. Such is the teaching of all front, rank theologians, a teaching based on their study of revelation. The punish-ment of original sin, St. Thomas notes, is restricted to the withholding of the supernatur;il goods gi:anted by God to. our first father-for transmission to his posterity.1 ~ Su;irez agrees with Aquinas: The common and true doctrine is that the powers of man or of his free will, rhgarded from the standpoint of the perfection they would ha~,e had in the state of pure nature, were not diminished in iCompendium Theologiae, 1 226 Julg, 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCXTION fallen nature by original sin; they are inferior only when compare~' wxth the strength and integrity conferred on them by original jus-rice. -~ - St. Robert Bellarmine teaches the same doctrine: The corruption of nature resulted not from the lack of any natural gift, nor from the presence of any" evil quality, but from the . sole loss, owing to Ada~'s~sin, Bf the supernatural endowment.8 Thus the raw material of our educational endeavors is ~the boy or girl, the young, man or woman, with intelle'ct and will essentially unimpaired on the natural plaiae. Our aim in education should be to develop this goo,d natural equipment and to transfigure it with all the super-h~ itural ,goods Christ has given to the Church for t.he benefit of His brethren. Revelation, the Church, the sacraments, ~sanctifying grace,'the infused virtues and. actual graces and all that the Church_disp0ses of for building up the body of Christ must raise and0perfect the souli of men together with their" faculties, xspecially their powers of inteIlect and wiff. The proximate purpose of our educational work must be to train.the youth entrusted to us so to master thdmselves that, within ~he. supernatu0ral sphdre to which they have been re-elevated by Christ, they may pumue the Truth which is God, and embrace the Good, which is also God. The closest possible approxim:ition to the original in.tegrity must be the goal to which we lead our limping, students. This is no mean ambition for those whose life'long voca-tion lies in the classroom and on the campus. The same goal.is the one we religious propose to reach in our own self,education. But in addition to the bottom-less treasury of graces open to all Catholics, we enjoy,'in" our ascetical striv~ings, certain freedoms that can bring us much closer to the original freedom Adam had. Our privi-lege js brought home to us by the matchless,champion who ~DO gratia, prol. 4, c. 8, n. 5. 8De gratia primi hominis, . 5. 227 CYRIl., VOLLERT -upheld t~ae greatness of the religiot~s state against pertly attackers of his day~ ¯ The exercise of perfection requires that a person 'd6 away witl~ whate~'er can impede him from directing his affections wholly to God; ¯ for in~this consists the perfection of charity. There are'three obstacles of this sort. T14e first is the desire for external good£ This' is removed by the vow of poverty. The"second is the proclivity for pleasures of sense, among which lustful delight isthe keenest., This is surmounted by the vow ol~ chastity, The third obstacle is the deordination of th~ human will. And this.is corrected by,the,vow of " obedience.4 Thus with intellect and will intrinsically good and unspoiled in their natural soundness by original sin, we C~n with Ggd's grace'overc0me all hindrances and eventually make ou~r .own, in limited degree, the perfection of tl~e sec-. ond Ad:;m, J~sus Christ. We cannot, indeed, ever in this" life attain to the integrity of original justice; Christ did0not ~ restore that extraordinary privilege to redeemed man: ~ BuS as brothers and sisters of the God-man, or truer still, as living members of His body, we can get closer to the second ~dam, and therefore closer to God, 'than the first Adam was ~ in his primeval innocence. And so our last state can .be better ~han the first. ~ '~St.'Thomas, 8umraa, II-Ilae, q. 186, a. 7. A TIMELY PAMPHLET~ ':The Guide Posts of the Almighty to Perma~ient Industrial,Peace" presents a "plea for .the Ten Commandments as the only solid basis for lasting peace, industrial and international. The section which describes the rights and dutie~ of 'labor and management is particularly"excellent. Every emp!oyer and every laborer might well read this with profit. The pamphlet is from the pen of the Most Rev. Richard J. Cushin.g, D.D., Archbishop og Boston, and is published by the Radio Re151ies Press, St. Paul, ,Minnesota. Price: I0 cents. ~ 228 Concerning Dis :ra t:ions Charles F~ Donovan, S.d. THERE is an aspiration which I should like torecom-mend; yet I fear it might be misunderstood. It is: "Jesus, be my distraction." Now distractions are bad, they are sappers of spiritual energy, things to be avoided. And obviouslq we' do not intend to couple the name of Jesus with anything evil. But. there are certain characteristics of distractions which would be worthwhile if transferred to the thought of Our Lord, namely, their persistence, their fascination,.and their seeming ubiquity. It is these qual{- ties ofdistractions I have in mind when I say, '"3esus, be my distraction," which is a brief way of saying, ",lesus, be the magnet of my mind, the channel of my thoughts, the theme of my day from task ~o'task; when dut.y of any sort commands the center of the stage, lurk in the wings of my heart, and the moment I pause, the moment I am free ~et the spotlight of my soul rest on You alone." Every day at Ma~s the priest exhorts us, "'Sursttm corda'" (Lift up your hearts). And we respond,"Habemus ad Dorninurn'" (We have them lifted up to the. Lord). This lifting we reaflifm daily is not our passive elevation by God to the state of grace. When we receive grace,~Christ stoops and does the lifting. Yet even with grace we may remair~ earth-bound and inert. The lifting w~e profess when we say. "'Sursurn corda'" is an active elevation, our cooperation with Christ, an ~ffort to use His grace to meet Him on His own level. As Dora Augustine Baker puts it in the 'vigorous English of Shakespeare's time, we mean the "forced but very facile elevations of the will, that bluntly or blindly heaves itself up towards God." We-heave ourselves in spirit 229 CHARLES F. DONOVAN Review for Religious towards God in hope and love and joy. A distraction-, therefore, is truly a fail--not necessariI~ a fall in the sense of sin, btit a descent from the heights of communion with Christ. If we are habitually distracted we really should answer the priest, "'Habemus ad humum'" (Our hearts are fixed on the earth, on dust, on our own level). There is a fervor, a preoccupation with God which in the face of a present and pressing tluty, like signing checks or making out report cards, could be called a distraction. Some of the saints have been "bothered" by such distrac-tions. Saint Ignatius, 'for instance, sometimes had to be dispensed' from reading the Office because during it he would experience ecstasy and thus be kept from other daily business. Saint Teresa was often afraid to think of God, lest she experience some divine visitation that wquld interfere ~vith her work or embarrass her in public. BUt most of us need have no worry about such piotis distrac-tions. It is not often the thought 6t? God-that makes us' shabby workers. Our trouble is generally not that prayer keeps us from mundane things but that mundane things keep us from prayer. Our mind-wandering tends to be from God to creatures, the kind of distraction to wh{cb that religious referred who complained, with healthy self-criticism, that his new superior conducted-such prolonged ~zisits at chapel after meals that he ran out of distractions and had to' pi~ay. Now if we really have .our hearts lifted ad Dominum, if our habitual tendency and spontaneous impulse is to think of Jesus, then distraction in prayer becomes not impossible, but at least unpleasant and of slight Spiritual d~nger, like a ¯ fly buzzing around our prie-dieu. There are also distractions whicb occur all day !ong even in non-prayer time, but which don't actually keep us from our work. These are, therefore, rather potential thah 230 July, 1946 CONCERNING DIS, TRACTIONSj real distractions. Theyare our worries, our enthusiasms, our pet interests, the things which are just outside the. focus of our attention or just below the surface of consciousness, to whichthe mind tends to revert over and over dttring the day. If these concerns, these potential distractions,-are intense, the person who has them is said to be preoccupied or to "have something on the mind." Wouldn't it be won-derful if we were so intimate with Our Lord that we could be said to have Jesus on our mind? Of course, that is the ambition of all religious, to be so in love with Our Lord that He is our dominfint interest, our hobby, the object of . our ardent enthusiasm, our companion day and l~ight. Finally, there are the distractions which we seek, favor-ire" topics to which we let: our mind lazily turn in moments of relaxation, familiar themes which we find congenial and. particularly helpful when we are trying to get to sleep. The subjects that we choose for such distractions are indicative of our spiritual health. _The old saying, "Tell me~ whom you, go with and I'll tell you what you are," is applicable to mental as well as to persgnal companions. If wespon-taneously- turn to worldly thoughts, then we a.r.e very probabl); worldly ourselves. If our favorite reveries are spiritual, our character is most likely spiritual. Habitual 'and sought distractions, the recurrent musings of our idle moments, can be of tremendous influehce in our - spiritual lives. They not only indicate character; they also form character and spiritual taste. Wl~at we think ofand enjoy thinking of~when we are free, when the rule is not directing us, and the choice of mental occupation is up to ourselves, both manifests and shapes the inner self., These chosen reveries can be the occasion when temptation is most .likely to assail us. They can be little secret escapes from the cloister and from the spirit of religious life. Therefore it is of first importance that we cultivate lofty and holy 231 CH'ARLES F. DONOVAN mental companionships so that our idle moments will be in keeping with the tone of our religi0,us profession and will strengthen rather than dissipate our religious spirit. As ~ Kempis says (Bk.iii, ch.58)~ "That cometh in'to my mind which by custom pleaseth me best to think upon: and where my thought is accustomed to be, there is that which'~I love." What nobler~ theme, what~holief com-panion gould we have for our unpres~ribed and effortless meditations than Our Lord Jesus Christ? Wouldn:t we be in a blissful state of spiritual perfection if~. during the day's work we looked forward eagerly to those moments of rest, especially the moments ~ before sleep, when-we would be able to think easily and lovingly of. ,lesus, and say with the poetess, "I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart?" In Case You Donq: Know It-- The Catechetical Guild Educational Society publishes a first-class magazine entitled Catholic Youth. $1.50 per year, for ten issues: 15" cents pet"copy; quantity rates to ~chools and churches on r~quest. Write to: CatholicLYouth, 128 E. Tenth Street, Saint Paul. I" Min-nesota. Another Catechetical Guild project is Post-Reporter, Catholic Youth's own newspaper. It is published every second Monday during the school year. $1.00 for full school year; 5 cents for single copies: bulk rates on application. ¯ Address, as above. The Dominicari Fathers~'of the Province of St. Albert tile Great publish The Young Dominican for the benefit of young men~ho aspire, to become Dominican students. The paper is attractive and informative. Copies are sent.on request. Address requests to Brother Bede's Mail Box, Dominican House of Studies, River Forest, Illinois. The Missignar~r 'Sisters of Mother of God recently began publi-cation of The.Ark, "a. monthly periodica, l devdted to ecclesiastical and' cultural affairs, p~rticulaidy Of Eastern Rites." "Subscription: $2.00 per year; 25 cents per copy. 232 Sain : Appeared Clement J. McNaspy, S.J, AM WRITING this just after giving Holy Commumon in.one.0f the.'most favored and sacred spots in our coun-try. It is the nearby convent infirmary. .The com-municant was a lay sister of the Religious of the Sacre'~d Heart. I don't know her name. The convent is .really c~alled the College of the Sacred Heart; it is located in Grind Coteau, Louisiana. If you have never heard of Grand Coteau, let me assure you.that it is one ~f the least worldly villages anywhere. T.here is no motion picture in town. There is not even a chamber of commerce. A stranger would probably~call it a "sleepy" town. Yet few towns in the United States have known such spiritual activity. For one. thing, Grand Coteau boasts a retreat house where the spiritual, exercises are made almost weekly by sizable groups of laymen. There is too a desuit-novitiate within the city limith; and no ridigious need be tol~l that a novitiate can hardly be called a "sleepy" place, especially at recreation time. But Grand ,Cot ea 'u s c.laim to. veneratioo goes far .beyond this. o As you ~drive'along Louisiana. Highway No; 5 toward the. outskirts of the village of Sunset, you are sta~rtled by a garish-(fortunately, somewhat fadi'ng) 'placard: National Shrine, Saint A15peared Twice." ~An'd the sign points to Grand Coteau.,Jhidden beneath pines and oaks and moss, one mile north of the highway. -l~his gives away Grand Coteau's secret. One of the very few first-class miracles performed in the United Sta~es and officially accei0ted by the Church took place th.ere, in ¯ that very infirmary where I w.as just privileged to gi~re 233 CLEMENT J. MCNASPY Review for Religious Holy Communion. No, the miracle didn't happen yester-day. Yet o'nly a few weeks a~o we buried ninety-six year old "Tante Yomme," who when in school at'the convent had been a witness of the miracle, the last surviving wit-ness. Besides, private archives have a way of annihilatink even decades of years; and the kindness of Reverend Mother Superior of th~ College of the Sacred Heart has put into my hands these treasured documents, original affidavits and first hand descriptions. It is engaging to read among them Sister Mary Wil-son's personal account: how she was cured of~a disease diagnosed as incurable. There glo.w warmth and imme-diacy in the young novice'-s story. She hurries along, ingenuously, simply, impatient of conventional syntax and punctuation, not even careful to sound completely consist-ent. Here are her own words, as copied from the document heretofore unpub!ished.1 Tie very next day (December 10, 1866) I was worse than I had ever been before up to that time, all hope of getting better abandoned me; I felt getting weaker and my sufferings were so intolerable that it seemed to me that it was impossible to bear them long--Given up by the Doctor I disposed myself to receive the.Holy Viaticum this was oix the 10th of December and on the llth the Father gave me the - last Plenary Ifidulgence. One of our dear Mothers brought me a picture of Blessed Berch-marts on~the 6th and said that the community was going to make another Novena to Blessed BerchmansI looked at Mother and in my incredulity asked her, if there was any other saint left that they had not already importuned; for my dear Mothers and Sisters had already made so many novenas that I thought neither God nor the Saints were willing to confer any favor upon me ". I do not think I had eaten an, ounce of food for about forty days, during that time I had taken nothing but a little Coffee or ,tea which" for a week before I recovered, I could no longer take; and for two weeks no medicines had been administered--the Doctor said 1To facilitate reading, dashes have been inserted in the text. 1946 "SAINT APPEARED TW~rCE'' it was useless 'to torture me more so he stopped giving me any; the last two days I was unable to swallow even a drop of water . ¯ Owing to the condition of my mouth and fongue it was greatly feared I would not be able to swallow the Sacred Host--the Father therefore gave me but a sm~ill particle~it was with great difficulty that I could receive even this; the Father perceiving it remained b~; my bed,side with ciborium in hand until he had the perfect assurance that I had swallowed it,~this however could only be affected by means of a teaspoonful of water, and attended by. intense palm Being Unable to speak I said in my heart: "Lord, Thou who seest how much I suffer if it .be for your honor and glory, and the salvation of my soul I ask through the intercession of Blessed Berch-mans a little relief and health, otherwise give me patience to suffer to the end, I am resigned"--then placing the. image of Blessed Berch-mans on my mouth, I said: "if it be true that you can work miracles, I wish you would do something for r~e,--if not I will not believe in you. ~I can say without s~cruple or fear of offen'ding God, I heard a voice whisper: '~Open your mouth." I do so as well as I felt some one put as it were their finger on my tongue and immed~ ately I was re|ieved. "I then heard a voice say in a distinct and loud tone: "Sister, you will get the desired habit, be faithful, have confi-dence, fear not!" I had not yet opened my eyes, I did not know who was by my bedside I turned around and said aloud: "but Mother Moran I am well"--then standing by my bedside I saw a figure he held in his hand a cup, and there was some lights burning near him--at this beautiful sight I was afraid--I closed my eyes and asked: "is it Blessed Berchmans", He answered: "Yes, I come by the order of God, your sufferings are over, fear not !" I opened my eyes but he was gone. The Sister infirmarian had gone down to the chapel to receive Holy Communion. I sat up in the bed I felt no pain. I was afraid it was an illusion and that my cure was not real--I turned over and over in the bed but without pain--I then exclaimed: "It is true, Blessed Berchmans has cured me." , The Sister infirmarian soon returned from the Chapel and made her'act of thanksgiving before a little altar in the, infirmary. I did not speak to her: in about three quarters of an hour Mother Superior came in to see me, fearing at the same time to find me in the agonies of death,--but what was not her great surprise when she met my eyes which had not been opened for six days and heard me wish 235 CLEMEN'T J. MCNASPY Review ?or Religious her good morning. Mother in utter amazement drew back and exclaimed: "and what, those eyes!" then s~eing my mouth perfectly healed.she added: "that mouth!" On and on, page after page, Sister Mary Wilson details her dreadful illness, how the doctors had given .up ,hope, and the aftermath of her cure. Equally impressive, also in these archives, are the sworn accounts of D~octors James G. Campbell and Edward Millard, both.of whom certify, in stolid.professional language, to the miraculo~us cure. Dr. Millard concludes in these words: N(~t being able to discoveb any marks of convalescence, but an immediate r'eturr~ to health from a most sever~ and painful illness, I am unable to explain the transition by any ordinary natural laws. I hereby declare under the sanctity of.my oath that the above state-ment, according to the~best of my knowledge and belief is entirely true. (Sig1~ed) Ed. M. Millard. M.D., Grand Coteau, La., Feb. 4th, 1867. Sister Wilson's close friend, Mother Moran, has for-tunately also left ah eyewitness account. Her sisterly sympathy for the young postulant so .eager to receive the habit is felt as we read along: ' Wednesday evening, Miss Wilson asked me if it was night; for her eyes being continually closed, she could not distinguish' between night and day.On hearing my answer, she rejoined: "I never more expect to see the l.ight of day. I cannot pbssibly endure such suffering much longer." - She then with perfect composure gave me several commissions, requesting me t~ attend to their execution after her death; she expressed her lfiappiness in dying at the Sacred Heart (Convent), and entrusted me with the expressing of her thanks for all her Mothers and Sisters from whom, she said, she had received so many p~oofs of affection and tender charity. Her weakness was so great, that-her voice was scarcely audible, and she spoke with such difficulty that it required over an hour to articulate these few" words. Next morning I was surprised to fintl her still living: this day, Thursday,. certainly surpassed all that had preceded, in the intensity-of pain; her half opened mouth displaying a tongue swollen, inflamed and raw, gums and teeth all 'clotted with black corrupted 'blood, 236 "SAINT APPEARED TWICE" excited an involuntary sensation of horror followed by a deeper ,senti-ment of the most. tender compassion in every one. who saw her in this condition. Mother Moran goes on to tell how exulta~ntly Sister Wilson leaped from what was thought her deathbed, and she reports the physician's reaction when he ~ame to visit his dying patient: Not being able to assign any natural ~ause capable of producing such an effect, .he several times repeated: '~Really, Miss Mary, I can-not understand it! But one thing is certain, if you recover, it is cer-tainly' not to medicine or to my care that you are to attribute your cure." - Among other interesting documents from the convent archives are the-sworn testimonies of Fathers Nachon, Benausse, and Serra, all from th~ nearby. Jesuit college, who had assisted the postulan.t with the last sacraments. Each of these Fathers writes in his own hand, in a personal way, with distinct individual touches. As you read along you wonder if they thofight it odd of Blessed John Berchmans to by-pass his own brethren's house to appear in a neigh-bo~ ing community. If they felt sensitive on this point they surely show no-indication of it: in fact, they seem almost proud that the Blessed had chosen one of their spir-itual charges to work perhaps his greatest miracle. More arresting, probalSly because less technical and formal, is a letter from Father Na~hon to a. Miss M~ry Perry, who would seem to be a non-Catholic. Writing enthusiastically just four dfiys filter the miracle, the~Father tells ~f tlqe fl~ry ~tirred up fill around Grarld Coteau~ ~The moral that he draws is~ possibly .l~ss significant in ourbwn. claywhen Loubdes and Fatima are so widely talked about. He writes: You see, child, that the time of miracles is not entirely passed away. There is nothing astonishing for us Catholics, since we know that~the saints are powerf.ul with God and that nothing is impos- 237 CLEMENT J. MCNASPY sible to God. We may rejoice it has happened amongst us because it excites us to devotion, and contributes to. animate our faith. No wonder that the Archbishop of New Orleans immediately started canonical proceedings to investigate the miracle.' Rome moves proverbially slowly, l~ut after tire-less probing and cross-examination the Church was at length satisfied and set its seal of approval on 'the mirac~- lous healing. It was officially accepted for the canonization of the young Blessed; who henceforth is' thought of as peculiarly belonging to Grand Coteau. For generations now the citizens of the little village have simply taken their privilege for granted. They are not at ali surprised that Heaven should have chosen Grand Coteau to break through to earth. And visitors usually make just that comment. For there are visitors to Grand Coteau, even though no one pushes publicity. Thereare the devoted alumnae who return to dear "Coteau" to see favorit~e old teachers or justthe hallowed, tastily land-scaped grounds. Students of the modern college, and academy attract relatives'and friends. And often enough devotees of azaleas, live-oaks, or Acadian lore are drawn to Grand Coteau. All these, quite naturally, spend some time in prayer in the infirmary. Periodically a .group of" retreatants from the retreat house will also come, and once a year the Jesuit novices and scholastics pay a pilgrimage of homage to their young con-frere. "The small room where the apparition took place has been cony6rted iiato a tiny chapel dedicated to St. John Berchmans. Onl~ two quiet mu~al~ and a notice placed where.the Saint stood remind one that this is one of Ameri-ca's treasUred shrines. "° " ,238 , A Pla°n of.Sei -denial Wi!:hin :he Reach of All Robert B. Eiten, S.J~ ~N ~CATHOLIC LIFE the principle of self-denial holds ~an important place. Yet it is a fact known to all that in i?his~ matter of self-denial there is danger of going to extremes--of failing either by defect or by excess. Those :who are too ,easy on themselves practically exclude the likelihood or even the possibility Of their reaching high perfection.; they go against the injunctions of Our Lo~d and the Chur.ch, and they oppose the common teaching .of ascetic writers. On the other hand, those who overstep their powers and go to the other extreme run the risk of broken health, shattered nerves, and even the loss of vocation. These latte} try to follow a special path without a special c,all; with only ordinary g.races at their dispoiaI they try to follow a way of life that is possible only with .e~xtraordinary grace. There havd tJeen, and there are, souls who have a special vocation to continuous heroic mortifica-tion and even vOluntarily-sought sufferings. These souls need" particular guidance; what we say here is not for them. But concerning those souls--whether priests, religious, or lay peoplemwho Seek high perfection with the aid, at least normally, of only ordinary graces, one might ask.: What~measure "of self~denial and mortification is to be expected of~ them? The answer to this question is~ con-tained in the following program. 1. To begin with, a large number of acts qf-self, abnega,ti0n and mortification can be practiced by ca?~fullg observing the Commandments, thelaws of the Church, and 239 ROBERT B. EITEN for Religious the duties of our state of life includiag the rules and customs of_our religious institute; and by patientl~l bearing those sufferings which a life of carff, ul and reasonable fidelity to grace imposes on us. This does not mean that one will never slip here and there;, for to observe peffectt~l over a long period of time the rules of at least some religious insti-tutes requires special graces over and above the ordinar!l or~es.~, It is well for religious to remember that this is no small program; for a careful observance of the rules makes. great demands in the matter.of self-effacement and morti-fication. St. 3ohn Berchmans declared that the common life was his greatest mortification. 2. Many sufferings, hardships, sorrows, and denials come to us in the ordinary pro.vidence of God. Some~times Divine Providence makes great demands. This was the case during Wokld War II when many, besides sufferingth~ loss of dear ones, had to er~dure such things as destruction of property, poor wages, nearly impossible rationing limi-tations, and so on. It is clearly the will of God that we bear such sufferings at least without complaint, and patiently. Sufferings of this kind may come to us from queer, sorts of cau.ses, cond.itions,, a~nd occasions. They~ .m~,ay come from superiqrs.,I from e~quals,, o.r frominferio, rs; from.t,he i~justice and frqm the justic~e of. others; from ,the sins, o.r.even from the generous but tastl~ss cha~rit, y of°others; or from inani-mate. creation, as~ ~n, othe cas~ "of bad Weather, t~ornadoes, floods, and so fbrth. 3: The, well-estab!ish.e~l and reasonable c.onventions, of polite society which make for proper refinement;~etiquette, ci~lture, neatness, and general social decency, algo provide 1Obviously the fact that we might be assisted only by ordinary graces should never be a pretext for carelessness in observing our rules. Thus we must seriously apply ourselves to their observance as far as we can and ask.God for the h~elp needed tO observe them perfectly. 240 _ '." ~JuJv, 194~5 ~ ~ ~ A PLAi~I OF.SELF-DENIAL~ ~ ~_ ~mucb material for self-abnegation and restraint. We, ought -~to respect these conventions" i'n a spirit of love" of the neigh-bor for the love :of,God since-these things make'life more ~ livable. Theie is r;o reason why their observance cannot-be ~upernaturali~ed. Included here are, such-things as table _ .manners, which should be exquisitely delicate but Without _.affectation; deanlinehs and neatness about our person,. office,- and room; .proper restraint in both the quality and.~ oquant~tg of' food; proper deference shown towards certain /persons.by reason of their age, sex, and rank;~ politeness and the avoidance of all vulg~arity; and, in general,, restraint in our conversation. "- Here it is well to include the mortification involved correcting deflects of disposition" and character. These -('&fects make Us deficient and negligent in the performance . our,duties and their are annoying to others. Slipshod .work, absent-mindedness, failure to return things, frequent boast" fulness, sarcastic language, a ~failure to keep appointments, "all are examples of the defects here referred to. In brief, we should always be and act the perfect, cultured Christian~ gentleman. We may well keep in mind St. Anthony'.s saying_that a saint would be-at home in any society. Such. deportment too (to dwell on another point casually) would be an effective means of fostering and getting voca, tions, oY°Ung people would be fascinated by what they. see -in us and would want to share with us that life which seems _to bring with oit, as it should, such refinement, culture, and fine iense .of propriety. ~ 4. Besides the foregoing instances of the cross which, ° wd~might say, are imposed upon us, there still remain mor~ ~tificati0ns and sufferings which we freely impose on our-~ Selves. ~ In other words they are entirety-voluntary, ~vith-" ' out° any obligation of i~recept or necessity~ All founders ROBERT B. EITEN ~-°-~ " ' Reti~ew for Religious; -of tel.i~i6us orders and all great spiritual~ writers, agree that voluntary penances are in some way an essential element of serious" tending towgrds perfection. Besides-the exercise humility and the cross, these v~oluntar~r penances prsvide,.~ for the.exercise of other virtues. o True, these voluntary mortifications must be practiced° prudently .and under the directi6n of the superior or of a goqd spiritua~l director. Norm.ally we should not, orat least need not; wait for them to propose what v61untary mortifications are to be practiced. Usually such things as ¯-spiritual attractions, reading, the insi)irations of gra~e, and~ so forth will suggest to us what might be done. After thiriking over the matter seriously, we propose, to .our. superiors or spiritual directors what vol~untary mortifica~ tions we .would like to practice. We then follow out their directions. This obedience will protect us against excesses ",in ~ith~r direction. Of course.no one needs permission to practice any of the mortifications mentioned or suggested under No. 3~ above.~ In spite of all the safeguards provided,by consulting,, and following the advice of superiors and spiritual diiectors in this matter, there remain sd,me obscurity and uncertainty - as to what and bow much voluntary mortifica.tion should ¯ be undertakenl An excellent practice might be, perhaps~. to,ask God to. send us in His providence those physical and , mental sufferings which are proper to help us reach.tl'iat~ d~gree o~ perfection to which He has called us. Such a request, if it is sincere, includes the firm resolve to conform ~ourselv~s to His will in all sufferings and hardships__w~hich He-may fiend us. ' 5. Fi~nally, it is not too much to expect fervent souls to, have at least the desire to .desire affronts, humiliationk re~'roaches, misunderstandings, and so forth. A better, dis- positidn:wouldbe to d~slre, tolong for, and to love thes~;~: ver~ things just to be like Qbrist and to help Him mo~e~" ~ffectively in the great workof the redemption. : However . ~ofi"hcco~nt of human misery and frailt~ a soul might.not these ~eneroOs dispositions. If' one has, howeqer, the'desire_to desire these things, he is by that very .disp0si-tion ~rep.aring himself for an actual desir~ and love of. :~ffronts, humiii~tions, and.so on. 7 " Here we might add that souls ought to try to mairftain a ~pi~i~ of cheerfulness in all circumstances of life; whether -'these be e'asy to bear Or very tr~ring. S. uch a spirivadds much, me~it ~and abnegation to mortifications alrea'dy practi, ced. 'A~nd how such a c6nstaht cheerfulness impresses others f, or. the better! To be cheerful at all times're~u~ires gr.eat abne-gation- anal perhaps at times a special grace.Well mi.ght We, ask,God to give us this .grace. ,,:o ~ The t~oreg~ing program of self-denied seems to be pos-sible for all. No one-will ~oncede that- it is an easy one; ~and, yet no' one can Say that it is impossible. It is sweetly: r_easonablg, not violent; yet it will make us like Christ ~Crfi~ified and will make us active collaborators with Him in the g.reat work of the redemption. '~?' P~erh£ps someone, may ask why nothing has been said~ ,.~bout gictim souls, that is, souls who offer themselves and their whole lives with all the sufferings, ti:ials, humilia-tions, mortifications, and so forth contained:therein to Gbd ::.~":jus~ as Christ did upon His entrance into the~ world °-(.~f: Hebrews 10: 5-10.) By. way of reply we may say that: souls who feel themselves supernaturally" urged to ~:his kind of offering, may follow si~ch an urge. Obviously tl~e motive for so doin~ may vary. ,It might, for example be to offer self for the' same intentions that .Christ had; or tb fill':up in one own s flesh~ what is wanting in C.hnstos ¯ o - . 243 ~ROBERT B,~ EI~TEN = ,~, ~ pfission~ fOr"~the Church.-- f.~Colos~sians 1 : 24~ 5 : Thi~--- ~victim-life, th~s.3pds(Slgte-of the cross and suffe)~ag; i~ ¯ grand:vocation., It does not, however, n~cessarilg in~olve~. any more moriifica~ions tha~ tBose~ we have ~mentioned,butT only gives special force to the ~o~i)e f6~ beating them:. _ If however there is question of a victim-sohl in the limited sensd that is, of one who_ ~sks for exceptional ~uffe)i.ng, what should be done? .No~ally,~one should~ not ~.permitt~d to makesuch'a request for-sufferi~g,~asq~ -may show a lack of humility and can emily lead to illu- ~s~ons( But if it is clear that an-individaal-has a special vocation for this type of life, then such a one should fi~stbe thoroughly,t~sted. After suNcient p~oof of the call to such a l'ife of ~uffering, the soul may offer itself to God in this very cult vocation. ~ ' "' " Let us hope that the abov~ Pr9grhm wiil clarify -'t}rs,fo~ us and that we.may "by the mercy of God"~present :our '"~odies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto"God; ~0fir] re~sonable service" (Romans 12;, 1).= . ~I am 'much indebted to De Smedt (NOtre vie surnaturelle, volume 2, "pp.~472 252) not only for much of the ~aterial- found here but also in some wag fdi~the i~spiiation to write this article. ~ -~ .APP[AL5 FOR VOCATIONS ~ .~ ~he following vocation folders and pamphlets rely chiefly on excelle~t and well cffosen photographs to make their appeal: Modern Samaritans, from the NoVitiate "df~ the Alexian Brothers. Clayto~. Missouri: How about gou? (an appeal t~pros~ pective ~riest candidates) and Co~e In (an appeal for fay. Brothers), b6th from "~th~ Dominican House of Studies. River Forest, Illinois:'A Life to Give, from th~ Sisters of St. Casimir, 26.01 W. Marquette Road, Chicagq 29, Illinois: Dominican Sisters: St. Marg o~ the Springs, from the Novitiate.-St. Mary 6f tile Springs, Columbus 3. Ohio;Whg a Hospital Sister? by Rev. Dr. L. Rumble. M.S.C., fiom Radio Reply Press, St. Paul, Minnesota. * Our Ladg's Fz, ends, by Rev. Ju~ Senieur, O.F.M.Cap., describes the work t~e R~gina ~leri Society for the spiritual and financial suppprt of priestly and reli-'~ gious vocations. It. is .published by the Catholic Uni4ersity Cofiference of-Clerics and Religmus. C.S.M.G,, Cathohc Umverslty, Washmgtqn 17, D. C.~ . :~ '-- " 244 - "~,HE visitor,~a gray-hai~ed alumnlus of th~ college~, ~was [~, movifi~ about the° crowded recreation room o[ the faculty" friars, greetirig old acquaintances and ~aking new ones. He approached a card table where, over unfin-ish~ ed pinochle, three.~ unfamiliar friars stood awaiting him. "Tom Casey, class of '13," he ~smiled brgadly, hand extended. "Onesimus," .smiled back the first. "Eleuthe[ rius," smiled back the second. "Symphorianus, smiled the third. And albeit no stranger to Franciscan-phenomena. Tom Casey, class of '13, blinked hard and made a que4~r frog-like noise in°theback of his throat. "Where do you peo131e[get those names?'" he dazedly wondered. Here were names not found.~ven in his prayey-book Litany of the~Saints-though .surely there are enough odd ones in that long list! NOr had he ever, iffal[his long years and his wide travels, encountered those names among the living. If~the~y reminded him~of anything~subsolar at all, it:wa~ of Pullman sleeping cars---or of the Latin play in hi~:.4ophbfiiore year:~or of just" plain "printer's pie:' '~ What a downright shame, his meditation concluded, that nbr~ m~il"youhg men, oprobably christened :John, Wflham, Pat-rick; should now have to confront mankind as Oneslmus, "Eleutherlus, Symphorianus! -~ ~" Undoubtedly,~the religious n~mes of many of~us~d6 ~starfli~ the si~cular eai. They may at first hav~ ~tarfiede v~e ~n our ~own. Wi~: i~robably had "h.oped for something, con[ ventio~al; but the superior, with the finality"~of Z~icl-Jar~, siinply ~declared, "This is hi~ (or her)" r/am'e," and uttered bizarre syllables. A'ndothat was'that. Or, if permitted to CLAUDE KEAN Review for Religious choose our names, we probably found the community's nomenclature as depleted as Kresge counters at closing time on Christmas Eve; and what we got was what all earlier customers hadjudiciously foregone. So the names that many ,of us bear are admittedly unusual. Are they, therefore, absurd? Or may it not be that, compared with the proper names of many layfolk (names which were selected from unrestricted possibilities), our abnormal names are actually quite normal? or oub apparently mean-ingless names are at least relatively, fraught with remark-ab, le significance? From stray evidence now and then I have long sus-pected that the answer lies in our favor. From a half-hour of recent research, I now know for certain that it does. The "research" consisted in a mere scanning of proper names in the.telephone book of a representative eastern clty of the United States. Under the A alone, I found a hundred proper names, male and female, much morfi extravagant than any ever imparted to friar or monk or Sister¯ or Brother. ' To be specific, who. of us, even though destine~dot9 teach geography, is named Maryland, .or Virginia,; 6r,Columbia, or Dallas; or St,aten, or~ Reno? O~who of u~, e,ve ~n~th0.u.gh a ngt,ed nature-lover,. ~ . .bears the. name of Fern,~.~,or,Ivy, or Myrtle, or Reed, or. Violet, or, Daisy,~ or Pansy?., ~ Or ,who of .us, e.ven,thgugh avowedly interested in the classic, long,ago," wears toga-like the name of Homer, or Ca.to, or ~.~Virgil, or Caesar, or th~ myrtle-laden name of Phoebe, or Penelope, or Vesta? Or what choleric character among us is openly known as'Hasty?--what phlegmatic as Tranqu.ilisim~?-- what cynical as Burr?mwhat loquacious as Verba or Vow, els? Yet, as the telephone book plainly attests, laymen who possess these given names do walk and breathe, 246 SPEAKING OF NAMES A few names that occur-under theosame letter A savor of surrealism: Bushrod,.Hedgecomb, Hunk, Whip. Others would seem to suggest endearment: A1icebelle, Birdie, Bowie, Dernie, Goldie, Hommey,-Libby," Shorey, Sibbie, Trudie, Wadie. A sizeable percentage looks yearningly,- though uncertainly, towards the glory that,was Rome and the grandeur that was Greece: Aetha, Al"eathea, Cleora, C1evius, Euna, Iola, Lathena, Lesbia, Nova, Orpha, Thea. Several others walk in veiled oriental mystery: Arsinoe, Bayan, Desma, Zelma, Zetta. There is something of a faded Elizabethan charm in Clift, Bourne, Dell, Teare; and something suggestive Of remote constellations yet undiscovered in Arie, Angrous, Elsir, Louv~enia, Norment, Ord, Sigrid. The rest, howeyer symbolic, are not ~iuite clear in their allusions, and must be listed as mere vocables: Alonda, Armeita, Awillda, Beekman, Belva; Buxton," Demleta, Ena, Grice, Kermit, Lola, Lona, Lora, Ponten-ciano, Reta, Rulloda, Velma, Wilda, Worth. Now, it is no concern of mine--apart from the admin-istration of baptismmwhat names people bestow upon 'their offspring. In the exercise' of American freedom of expression, they may even, if they so wish, prefer numbers to names. (Ripley discovered not long ago anAmerican youth with the proper name of "Eleven."). Nor-do I in the least imply that odd names denote odd characters, that "that which we do call a rose by any other word would" not "smell as sweet." My sole contention is that, as mere~ alphabetization, the secular nomenclature equals in singu-larity, and .frequently even excels, the religious. And ~he Bell Telephgn¢ Company is. my star witness. But names are more than vocables: they are symbols. And the modern secular trend in names indicates the com-plete secularization of modern thought. Gone now are 247 CUAUDE KEAN Review/:or .Religious the.days~when~ the-names of~_men-=:as well as of the,ships they° sailed,and the ,new lands they discovered--were drawn from the rich vocabulary ~of Catholk,Faith. Gone,~ too, for the most part, are the days when devout Protestants turned to their Bibes in search of worthy nami~s for their newborn. In an age turned materialistic, men are more and mor'e taking ~their names not from God's great, but~from the:world;s great: from poets and philosophers of, a~cient Rome and Greece;. from~literati~urs of later eras (my tele: phone~ list includes Milton, Addison, Scott, Emerson, Haw-thorne~) ; from .modern scientists, like Burbaiak and Edison, and modern statesmen, like Roose~celt and Churchill. ° In even'.m6re articulate expressionof, th~ materlahstlc spirit if has now b~6m~ th~a~epted prhctice tona~e pkr-s6ns fiot¢.Mte~ other persons~ but affei things hft~r flbra . and:fauna,~ and geograpb~cal~it~s; and '~vefi mechanical objects.~ -This~ ph~ndmenbfi wOuld, to~do:i~'.ju~tlce~ ~req~i~ a Chesterton's~afysis: :.~ut,ev~n'on tge gu~face~ ~4t, to c~!l,~a.gifl ~'Petunia;,)'.;~or a;boy "Ohio", or '~Derrick":. '(and theg~ does.~,exist, a.[.b~y with: that name), is2 nbt]perceptibly ~ny;~more~?ra.tio~al.~,than. to. call ~a ~favorite .p.etuma.~ . Ger-tr~ fle,:5,or~.the stxte of OhiO~"Harold,'' or a~derrick,,,on 4be property', , "~ rl' .~1,~,- .".d" " , ¯ '~ '~ -,-~ ~. - :~ ~TBa'~: be ,to,hea~n, ~he~.figm?s" that we~rehg~ous-bear ar~,the -names obpersons. , ~nd" at"that,~ no ord~narF per-sgns: -Pe~ha~s~hose'p~rs6nshv~d m~the fat-off ~ast. "Per-ha~ little' i~'kfiooh Oaboot-them~x~pt ,tfi~t "a ~N~o or'3 Tr/j~h~r'~fi ,Diocletiah ~Ut th~ to death:; W~rid has not e~n th~"vag~egt memory 6f~the~.~-'rYet~they are the truly gr~at"~of"the 'h6~an race;.and ~God knows them~well., In their :flames ~we have inherited a, lustrous lggacy~ of honor, ~ special tide-to: protection and~aid. And in-.those names~ we h~ve~,6ur~inspiration fovholy living and DECISIONS OI/: THE HoLY SEE. dying--as :Ruskin .words it; . l~ifting hol.y hands without-wraith, and sinking to blessed ~sle~p.withoht fear." So what 6dds if ~the lay-w0rld pities 0r plllor,es us fdr ohr names? 0 What odds if not one person in ten cab pro~ nounc~e those, names fl~uently, and~,,not one in twenty can ~spell them correctly? We know the inner worth of those flames. And as to their ,outward form, well, an occasional glance at the telephone book will afford us unfailing peace hnd satisfaction. ~ .~o~yember'21, 1945:o The Sac~'d P~nite£tiary announced th~/t His " Holiness Pope'Pius XI~i in ari audience granted to the Cardiri~l Pen[- . tenfiary M~jdr ~n Ndve~ber 8, 1~45, h~d gracio~s~ grafit~d t~al indulgence o~ fifty days to the f~thful who devoutly,k~ss the ring of a p~efect apostohc. Th~s ~s t~ same indulgence which the faithful may gain by devoutly k~ss~ng the r~ng of an archbishop or bishop (Pr~es et Pta O~era, n. ~}0). Prefects apostohc are prelates'in m~s~ slon countries who govern a t~rr~tory call~ a prefecture apostohc. Usua!ly they. are not b~s~ops: h~fi~ the special ~r~nt recbunt~d 'abd~. Pemtent,ary answered ~ree questions regarding the p~ous exerc,se of the Way qf the Cross: I. According "to a decred.,dated August 6, 1757, it~ is~provided that for the pious exercise~0f the Way df the Cross, when otherwise a disturbance might be daused, a~priest and two clerics or cantors may ~ake the rounds, pausing at each station and reciting the accustomed prayers, while the faithful ie~ai~ing ia' their places give the responses. Question: Does this de~i~e.~ hold~ .only fgi, th~ ~.bublic~, exercise~ of the Way of the Cross made in a church, o~ does it hold ~hefi this exer-cise is m~de~by religious in their chapels?. - Answer: In the a~rmative to the first part, in the ndgative to the second. II. Questior~: Whether under the circumstances-mentioned in the decrees of Februa~'y 27, 1901, and of May 7, 1902 namely, when 2~49 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE all the religious cannot go in a body from station to station in their chapel without causing a disturbance be~cause of the smallness of the place they can gain the indulgences connected with the i~ious.exer-cise of~the Way Of the Cros~ i'f only one re, ligious (B~roiher or Sister) makes the rounds f~om station to station and reads aloud ~the accus-tomeffprayers, while'rthe rest remaining in their places rise and genu-flect there.for each station? Answer: In the affirmative. " III. Question: Whether in the same circumstances already de-scribed for religious and following the same method, the faithful who live a common life, as mentioned in canon 929 of the Code of Canbn Law, can gain the indulgences attached to the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross if one man or woman, respectively, makes the rounds of the stations of the Wa.y of the Cross and recites the cus-tomary prayers? Answer: In the affirmative. Questions I and II tell us that in a religious community chapel it is not necessary to have the priest recite the prayers for the Way of the Cross; it suffices for one of the religious, Brother or Sister, to make .the rounds from station to station and to recite the customary pray-ers. ~ This has be~n explained before in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (I, 1942, p. 424; IV, 1945, p. 61). Question III extends the same privilege to communities of the faithful living a common lifb, for instance, nurses in/training in a h~pital, old folks living in a home, orphans, studehts at a boarding school, an~ so forth, so that the group may gai.n the indulgence in the chapel if one of their number, man or woman, makes the round of the stations and says the accus-tomed prayers, while the rest remaining in their places answer the prayers and rise and genuflect at each station. OUR~CONTRIBUTORS o ~LAUDE KEAN is on the faculty of Holy. Name College~ the Franciscan house of studies, Washington. D. ~C. He formerly taught at St. Bonaventure College anc~ served as spiritual director of the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn. W.H. HING-STON is spiritual director at ~lesuit Seminary, Toronto. CHARLES F. DONOVAN has just completed a year of ascetical study at St. Robert's Hall. Pomfret Center, Connecticut. CLEMENT ~1. MCNASPY is a professor of classical languages at St. Charles College, Grand Coteau. Louisiana. ROBERT B. EITEN, a professor at the University of Detroit, is much interested in ascetical subjects. CYRIL VOLLERT and ADaM C. ELLIS are members of the theological faculty at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, K~nsas. 250 Two I-[eart:s* W. H. Hingston, S.J. IN HIS RADIO address at the close of the Fatima jubilee (October 31, 1942) Pope Pius XII consecrated the wsrld to the Immadulate Heart of Mary. In the same year, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he pub- -licly repeated this. consecration and ordered that, as a per-petual memory of this solemn consecration, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary should be celebrated annually in the universal Church. In obedience to this, order the Sacred Congregation ' of Rites had a new Office and Mass com-pose& and these were presented .to the Holy Father for approval on December 10, 1943. A decree of the Congre-gation of Rites, dated May 4, 1944, which incorporated the text of the new Mass and Office, ordered that the feast 15e celebrated annually on the Octave day of the Assump-tion, August 22. ' Despite the fact that the decree promulgating the feast was issued two years ago, this year may be the first Oppor-tunity for many of us to make,~use of the new Mass and Office~. The occasioh seems an apt one for recalling some of the basic thoughtspertinent to the devotion to the Immacu-late Heart of Mary, and particularly for considering the relation of thii devotion to theworship of the Sac'ted Heart of Jes~us. Obviously there is an intimate link between the devo-tion to Mary's Heart and tha(which we render to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The same saint was employed by Provi-dence to initiate simultan, eously both devotions. No hearts *This article appeared in slightly different form-in The Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, December. 1945, pp. 778-782. It is reprinted here with permission. 251 .W.~ H. HINGSTON Review [or Religious were ever so united by resemblance and by affection as those of .Jesus and~ Mary. The very flesh of Jesus came from Mary alone through the power of the Holy Ghost. Yet under,the outward likeness of the two beautiful devotions there are fundamental differences; and it is the purp.ose of this a~rticleto set forth briefly the resemblances and the dif2 ferences as a help toward an und~rst~indirlg piety. ¯ There is an essential 'difference to b~ observed from~the oai'set between the Form fff devotion paid to the Sac}ed Heart of Jesus and that paid ~o the Heart of HiS Moth'~r, .be.cause of the fact that in one instance veneration is ren- "d~red tO a divine Person and in the other t0a human son. Since all devotioh goes to the person whom we invoke or honor, it is e¢ident that there must be an infinite distance in this regard between the cultus of the Heart of the God- ¯ man and the cultus of the Heart of .Mary; between honor shown to God_and that shown to a creature no matter how highly favored. ~ To mark t~is essential distinction it seems pre, ferab, le, when speaking of the~ heart ofMary alone and'apart from the heart of Jesus, to use .the words H61y Heart. 0f.Mary, or Immaculate Heart, or Most"Pure Heart of Mary: rati~r than '"Sacred'" Heart ofeM~ry. That i~s whhtthe~Church d6es. Sh~ employa the.title Sacred Heaitof M~ry onl~ in the combified "title of ihe Sacred "Hearts of 5es~s and Mary. Apart°from t'h!s~ preliminary consideration, which.is of a general nature and recalls that first and most essential dis~ tinction which is never lost sight ofo by Catholics but is s~mply taken for granted, there ale other .important dis-tinctions to be made. They relate to the-three chief way~ in which we can co sider a~ay°devo~iofi, or:t0 tde t fire leading aspects under which a dev6t~on may be stud~ed. These are: i'ts ma.,terial object, its f6~mal obje~ct, it.s sp~dia.l 252 appeal~:-i'Th,ough these.wolds ~ay~ ~ound a bit 'technica),~: ~:.-x.~_~;tlSey-~ire very Useful :and '~ccurate;~ and we have all ::.(~li~rized ~ith them thrs~gh~the explanatiSns ~whidh-~e ~a~e Often~h~eafdof the de~otion to the.S'acred Hea;t Jesus. Now on each of these three fundamental ~eadings, ~;~Which together sum up a devotion, the differences between_ "~he~cultus of the Heart of Jesus and that of the H~art Mary are mgmficant and p~ofound. ¯ ~ -~irst~ then, as to the material object. In both devotigns .~a humafi heard.of flesh is presented forour veneration. Yet " ~t Once,we note a profound difference. ~The hea?t of Jesu.s :~" isin ~tself an object of ~doration. It is adorable because ~ is g~a~t.Bf that ihdividual human gature which the Divine :~ ",W0rd" mbec~0 m"m g " ~ncarnate took to H"~ m s~elf and" made Hi_s .Very own.~ It' is part of Him. Though a created object, ~-t~gfigh-a mgtenal thing, ~hough Buman flesh, .~t ~s ~he.heart ~f the Son of God madeMan. The honor, we kh~w /'~ m~s~inciude ad;ratiom "In contrast to this; iff the --,:~ 2~i~n ~to .the heart of Mary such ~eneration i~ refid~fed as~" ~ay~ be paid to a 5feature, b~t nothing o~ the adoration. ~ t~at belongs to God Mone. - N~vertheless, adoration is not the .principal act in th~ ~Tdevotion ~,t~ .the Sacred Heart. The human h~art.of the ;~Sa~ior is:~resented to us nbt primarily.that, we may r~nder ~-~,adoration~ bui because of what it stands for, the hu~" -heart:being the natural symbol of human love.~ T. he_~ight 6f the heart of Jesus spontaneously calls to mind His human -i~ l~ve,for His Father and for us. Uoiversally the he~r(is ~.,. looked upon .as the organ, or at least the symbol-of,ldve. ~So fiatural_a symbol of love is it, that in every lan~uhge the h~art.of a ~an is taken for his inward dispositions.--Aman" ~:. <" .- who - is generous, kind, sympathetic is spoken o~" as big--. ~,'hearted, ~tender-hearted, and so f~rth; or else; if he m~ni- 253 ,W H HINGSTON , ~ ,7~ * ~ ~Reoteto for Reltgtous ,, fegt no such pleasant~characterlstlcs,~ he is spoken of as hard-., h_eart~d, cold-hearted, heartless.~ - --~ N~w that thes~e preliminary observations .have beeri ~ade, we daft completeour statement regarding the materml - j,obj~ct i~ the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus~an'd,say' F_hat it-is His heart of flesh taken as the natural symbol Of " His hhman lo;¢e. The natural sy.mbolism of the heart p.la~cs a large pii,~t in the devotion, which would not be underitandablewith-.-. out'~t. In the devdtion to Maryls Heart on the contrary, the symbolism of the heart is faint and not at all empha-. sized, ,th~ reason being that it i~ not.so much her~love as her pUrit~y and her fidelity that we consider. Our attentibr; ~alled far more to the purity, htimility: and. Other vir~ue~ of ithat most faithful heart than to the~ qualities of its love., It ts~ riot hard to discover the reason why in the,devotion to t~he Heart of Jesus such emphasis is placed on the natural sym-b01ism of the heart, and why such emphasis, is lacking, from, "the'~correspbn.ding devotion to the Heart of His Mother. This will become still more apparent when we consider the_ ,f, ormal object of each devotion. A first difference between. "the t~vo devotions is thus found evenin the matefial object; which in both devotions is the heart of flesh, but in ~ach t~e~ ~ l~eartfis viewed under a somewhat different asp, ect. ~A setond and more pronounced diffe~rence lies ifi tl'ie~ - .formal object of. each,, d~voti6n. - The formal object of the devotion to Jesus' Heart is His human love for m~n. ,-,, Note in'the first place t.hat it is His human love which is stressed: -~a'ther 'than His divine love. Coeterrial with the FatheY~' '/he Wor& the~Second Person of the m6st adorable,_Trini_ty~, ,has known from ~everlasting and has loved witff an eteriaal love,each one of us. Yet it is not this eternal lovebelonging -to His divine n~ature that we c~nsider in His Sacred Heart:,,~ ~, ' dul~l, 19~ 6 "~ ~ ' ' TWO HEART~. . .~ We~ read-therein His huma~-10k~e. The symbolism of the heartdna.kes this perfectly clear, for tl~ heart i~ the symbol ~ of h~uman love, no~of divine love._ Besides, the love'of ['Jesus is presented to us as a suffering love, andonly the" .human in Him can suffer. " We venerate the human love b_y .which a divine Person loves us. Yet Christ's eternal love 5, belonging to His divine nature, though it is not and cannot properly be symbolized by any .natural symbol," is by no, ,means excluded from this°devotion. -After all, we love that ,Person Himself who loves us and suffers for u , and Him as He is, whole and entire Hisvery self, .the~ one living principle of a lov~ that is both human'and divine. The.Woid having been made flesh, having becorhe P0S- - sessed of a human °nature like ours, now loves-with a love that began only at His Incarnation, that is truly .human,- -xhat is ~harged with all the emotions of man's spiritual will -*and is colored with all those feelings that have their roots -., in- the sensitive part "of man's bodily make-up. Christ, though~a divine Person and not a human person, loves even ¯ in the, manner that human p~rsons love. He experiences, 'tOo, the consequences of human love, even to the suffering ~ Which unrequited love entails. The greater the capacity_ ~-~ .for loving, the greater the capacity for. suffering. The more -. rintense and unselfish theaffection, the ,greater the anguish-when such affection, goes unrecognized .and is not returned: Note in th~ sed6nd place' that it is Jesus" human love ° ~or. men that. is .the formal object, rather than His htiman 10re for His Father. Undoubtedly Christ, in the-human" nature that He had made His own, loved FIis Father with a,_ll the strength Of His human will; yet it is not this lmre -for His.Father that is dwelt upon, but His love for mdn_. '-"Behold the Heart which has so,'loved men," were His words to St. Margaret Mary. In contrast to this we find that in the devotion to the" Most Pure Heart.of Mary the formal object,, insofar ~is it ¯ is love and not fideli.ty, is love for her 3esus and for her _G~d, not her love for ma'nkind, at least not primarily her 10re for.mankind. We do not positively exclude from our-~ thoughts in this devotion the motherly ,love that she bears to all mankind; but our attentiofi is focused on something ¯ ~lse, rlamely, on the complete and unique absence of all self-love, on the absolute fidelity to grace, on the devotedness of-- M~ry's heart to God. . " Thirdly, there is the special appeal to be considered in each of .these two devotions, outwardly so alike. ,Here the contrast is most marked. In the devotion to_ His Sacred Heart, 3esus makes an appeal to us by His very love for to love Him i[~ return. He opens His breast, bares-His'heart - to us, reveals it afire with love for. us, bleeding for us, ~giving itself to uS without holding back anything, even t~o the Cross, even to the Eucharist; He even humbles Himself before us and shows us the wounds thiit our indifference and -. coldness have inflicted upon Him, piercing His v.ery heart. His fs a suffering love, arld.there is an awful pathos in'His hOpeal, t-he appeal of the~ Son of God begging of His crea~ tures the favor of being loved in return. Our Savior appea~l~. ~strongly to our feelings; but it would be a grave mistake 6n_ our.part and a complete misunderstanding of His plea were we to content ourselve~ with~ giving Him in answ~er mere;. ~ pious sentiments. He ga~e us deeds! He pleads for real reparation, exercised not so much in the way that at6nemen~ ~ is usually exercised, ~amely, by works of pe~nance, bfit° rather by works~ of love, especially through the ever more ,perf~ect doing of His Father's will and the perform~ance of acts ofde~votion towards Himself in the Eucharist. In "the devotion to the Most Pure Heart of Mary~ there" duly, 1946 " Two HEART~ -is also an appeal, of course, but it is not an impassioned appeal, nor are we besought to love her. She does not show us the love of her heart for us, as 2esus does, and beg us to love her in return. Unquestionably Mary has loved and actually does love us much, incomparably more than any one, save only her Son, has loved us; but there is nd allusion ~o this in her appeal. Mary's love is also like her Son's, a suffering love; and it is significant that those sufferings by which she shared in the Passion to such an extent that she is deservedly styled Queen of Martyrs were all endured in her sinless heart; for of bodily sufferings we bare no record. It is furthermore a historical fact that c6mpassion for the broken-hearted Mother--so bravely standing beside the.Cross, as St. 2ohn presents her, or with the torn and lifeless-form across he/ lap, as Christian piety has long depicted her first led the faithful into the sanctuary of Mary's suffering, heart. Nevertheless the sorrows 0f Mary form the object of a distinct.and much more ancient devo-tion in the Church; and in the devotion to the Most Pure Heart the thought of compassion is not prominent. The heart of Mary° is usually depicted encircled with fragrant roses to denote the flowers of many virtues, with~ which it is adolried, not with,thorns. The specia! appeal in this devo-tion is reilly a .very ge.ntle and very sweet and persuasiv.e invit~ition to highdr ~hings. ~ It is a call to .lead an interior life and to imitate the Blessed Virgin by purity of,life, ,by perfect.chastity~ of;th~ affectigns .which are to be. dlrect~ed ~ avcay"~ro, m°creatures,wl~oliy tO G~d, by the practice' of all those wrtues that are particularly dear to her Son. 2esus, because He is God, draws us by the cords of Adam to himself, to the Divinity. Mary because she is a creature draws us, not to herself but directly to her Son, to .her God, to Him who is in truth her child, born of her, yet 25.7 W. H. HINGSTON Review for Religious who can say of Himself: "I and the Father are one'.' (John 10:30). "Amen I say'to you, before Abraham was made, I am" (John 8:58). "Philip, he that seeth Me, seeth the Father also" (John 14:9) " The two.devotions closelycorrespondwith'one another, yet each in its own sphere. They are not on the same footing. Devotion to the Heart of Mary is really a beau-tiful pendant to the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. Her heart is, after His, the most beautiful thing in all creation, because in every way the most perfect copy of His. Upon such beauty the angels gaze in rapture. To portray it is beyond the reach of words. Yet in contemplating Mary's loveliness let us guard against the mistake of far~cying that her very greatness keeps her aloof, a sublime but ethereal beauty far removed from us, dwelling above all angels and saints in the court of the Most High. The symbolism of ~tie heart ought to save us frdm. this baneful illusior~ and should impress' upon us that Mary's is a warm and comfbrting loveliness, tender ~and sweet, and constant and motherly. The tho~ught of this should .fill us~ With confidence rather than with awe. Shh can be approached in all our needs and in our every mood. She can comfort as.none other can, for the heart of the Virgin Mother has experienced sorrow of e;cery kind and has ,known such depths of human v~oe tha~ all other anguish compared to hers must seem bearable and light. But, far and above all, tile heart of Mary overflows with joy; and no one can approach her in thought and no( feel happier for it. She takes her children by the hand and leads them straight to the Sacred Heart of Jesus along the way of encduragement, and hopefulness, and holy joy. The resemblanees between the two devotions are man, r and obvious. Reflection and meditation bring out the differences, and with clearer knowledge comes a deeper 258 July, 194i5 TWo HEARTS understanding of both these lovely devotions centered upon two human hearts that beat in unison. What does the devotion to the Most Pure Heart of Mary add to our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus? It supplies an additional motive for trust in Him. Mary is so approachable, so understanding, so near to us! She is just one of ourselves. 'And withal how close she is to Christ! How dear to His Heart! How worthy by her stainless purity to plead the cause of us poor sinners with Him, who is the fruit of her womb, and to lead us to Him. Besides, a'better realization of the fundamental differ-ences thatexist between the two devotions brings out cer-tain aspects of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of desus which otherwise might never have been so clearly under-stood. In'this sense devotion toMary's Heart is seen to be a complement to the devotion to the Sacred Heart, which ii itself rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation, with which Mary was so intimately associated in the divine plan. But, best of all, there is the encouragement given us by Mary's life to lead an inner life. The attractiveness of . Mary's example is .best studied in its source, her heart. There we can appreciate the exquisiteness of her every action, feel the warmth of her tender affection, and breathe in the entrancing fragrance of her purity, which rises like incense in a pure white cloud from the selfless sanctuary of her immaculate heart. ANNOUNCEMENT It is even more ditScult to get pap~,r now than it was during the war. For this reason we are reducing the size of the REVIEW from seventy-two pages to sixty-four pages. The amount of matter in each number ~ri!l be about the same as we are using more small type than usual. .We shall return to the 72-page issue just as soon as we can get some guarantee of a regular supply of paper. 259 Recept:ion of Seminarians int:o Religious.lnst:it:ut:es Adam C. Ellis, S.3. ON JULY 25:194 l,.the Sacred Congregations of Religious and of Seminaries issued a joint decree regarding the reception of ex-seminarians into a religious institute and the admission of ex-religious into a seminary. This decision was duly" publi.shed in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (1, 1942, p. 71), as was also a private an-swe~ regarding the same given on May 11, 1942 (III, 1944, p: 67). A number of problems have arisen regarding this decree. Recently we received copies of Commehtarium pro Retigiosis which had been delayed by the war. One of these (XXIII, 1942, pp. 226-237) contains an interesting commentary on this decree written by His Eminence, Cardinal La Puma, then Prefect of the S. Congregation of Religious, who died in 1943. Although the Cardinal did not intend to give.an authentic interpretation of the decree but me.rely a pr!vate or doctrinal interpretation, as he himself tells i~s, yet since he was co:author of the decree there is no other person better qualified.to explain it to us; and we are happy to give our readers the substance of his commentary. We shall omit those parts which pertain to the reception of an ex-religious into a seminary, and confine ourselves to the parts which are of interest to-religious the reception of an ex-seminarian into a religious institute. For a better understhnding of the matter, we repeat here that part of the decree which pertains to our special subject: ~ "Likewise, before those who for ahy reason whatever have left a,semlna[y are a'd-miffed fo a religious family, the religious superiors shall have recourse to the S. Con-gregation of Religious, which will inform them of their opinion (;ud;clum) after having cons;dared all the circumstances of the case." The fact that the document issued by both Congregations jointl~r is called a decree should not be_overstressed, since-it provides little more than.a caution and a necessary re~medy to secure the faithful observancd of certain important prescriptions of t_he Codewhich have been treated too lightly. Much less is this document to b'e considered as a general decree, or new law, since it was not prepared in a plenary session, and it was not approved in focma speci~ica by the Holy Father. 260 SEMINARIANS RECEIVED INTO RELIGION The decree does not establish a new impediment to entrance-lnto' religion or into a seminary; nor is previous permission, properly so-called, to be asked from the SS. Congregations to admit a person into a seminary or into a religious institute since this is left to the proper superiors. The SS. Congregations are to be consulted; and after con-sider~ ng tl~e case,, they will give their opinion (iudicium) ; but thereby they'will neither admit nor impede admission, nor defer it, nor render it more difficult. The SS. Congregations had no thought or intention of. granting to Ordinaries, even indirectly, the faculty to oppose the flee entrance of' seminarians into religion except in the cases explicitly mentioned in the Code--that is, in the case of seminarians and other clerics in sa~red orders and even for these only within the strict and well considered circumstances mentioned in canon 542, 2°, first case: Let us now explain the terms of the instruction quoted above. By seminarg is meant an ecclesiastical.college in which those who aspire to the clerical state are,prepared according to the prescriptions of the law, even though a few lay students are admitted. ;A college to which both clerical and lay students are admitted almost indis-criminately chnnot be called a.seminary. To admit to a seminary means to receive a person as a seminarian; to be dismissed from or to leave a seminary supposes that one who has been a seminarian ceases to be an aspirant to the clerical state by reason of dismissal or voluntary withdrawal. To adn~it to a religious f~mitg means to admit one as a true member, that is "to the novitiate, of a religious institute in which pub-lic vows. are taken, but not to a society of men living in common without public vowS. The words "those who for any reason whatever have left ~a seminary" apply to those who are dismissed from a seminary by superiors as well as to those who leave voluntarily, thereby bidding farewell to their vocation to the clerical state, even though they do so unwillingly because of pressure brought to bear upon them from without. The phrase in question does n_ot apply to those who have completed their studies in a seminary and await ordination outside; "nor does it apply to those who have left a seminary in order to fulfill their, military service but intend to return afterwards, and thus do not renounce their vocation. What about those who Ieave a seminary because theg wish to enter religion? An authentic reply of the S. Congrega6on of Religious given to the question on June-25, 1942 says that "the decree does not 261 ADAM (2, ELLIS affect those who leave a seminary or college in order to embrace the life of religious perfection in some religious institute since these are provided for in'canon 544, § 3." Another class of seminarians who are not subject to the decre'e are those who~though they have truly left a seminary, either by reason of dismissal on account of a lack of talent required, for st6dies, or because they thought they were not called to the clerical state now ask to be admitted to the class of lay brothers in a clerical institute or as lag religious in a non-clerical institute. This means that an ex-seminarian in the strict sense of the term may not be admitted to a religious institute as an aspirant to the priesthood. He may, however, be received as a candidate for the lay brotherhood in a clerical insti-tute, or as a Brother in any non-clerical institute. There are some non-clerical institutes in which a few members are promoted to the priesthood while the majority are Brothers. In this case the ex-seminarian could be received as a Brother, but not as a candidate for the priesthood. If a religious superior wishes to receive an ex-seminarian in the strict sense, that is ohe who has been dismissed from a seminary or who has given up his vocation to the priesthood of his own accord, he must have recourse to the S. Congregation of Religious for its opinion on the case before he can admit him to the novitiate as a can-didate ~:or the priesthood. Meanwhile, however, provfded the superior has re~ceived ttie necessary testimonial letters and is morally certain that no impediments exist, he may admit the ex-seminarian in ques-tion to the postulancy or first probation preceding the novitiate while he awaits the opinion of the S. Congregation regarding his admission to the novitiate. In order to avoid useless delay, which may be harmful to voca-tions, the S. Congregation requires the following documents and tes-timonial letters, written or at least signed by the rector of the semi-nary: (1) testimony regarding the moral and intellectual.qualities of the ex-seminarian; (2) testimonials regarding studies made, as well as progress i~i them, and grades obtained in examinations; (3) tes-timony or opinion about the inclination or propensity of the aspirant towards the religious state; (4) finally, testimony regarding the reasons why the candidate left the seminary and the manner of his doing so, namely, whether he was dismissed or left of his own accord, and whether he left after finishing his studies at the end of the scho-lastic year. These dbcuments should accompany the petition of the 262 duly, 1946 '- BOOKS RECEIVED candidate and should be sent to the S. Congregation of Religious by the religious superior together with any other information which may be judged opportune, either in confirmation, or by way of example, or; finally, as a possible refutation of the statements of the rector of the seminary. Books Received (ApriL20 .to June 20) THE NEWMAN BOOK SHOP, Westminster, Ma~iyland. The Sacred Ceremonies of I2ow Mass. 'By Rev: Felix Zualdi. C.M. $2.00, More About' Fatima and the Immacidate Heart of Mary. By Rev. V. Montes de Oca, C.S.Sp. (No price given.) Life of St~ Stephen Harding. By J. B. Dalgairns: $2.50. A Mystic Under Arms. By' Ft. M:-Eugene Boylan, O.Cist.R. (No price given.) The Spirit of Christ. By Father James, O.F.M.Cap. $2.50. Counsels to Confessors. By St. Leonard of Port Maurice. $1.50. FREDERICK PUSTET COMPANY, New York and Cincinnati. Spirit in Darkness. By Rev. Fr. Brice, C.P. $3.50. H. DESSAIN, Malines, Belgium. Caeremoniale: Pars Altera: De Celebrante. Auctc;r~ J. F. Van Der Stappen. (No price given.) THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. Wisdom /or Welfare. By Sister M. Dolorita, S.S.N.D. mentls in Genere. By Emmanuel Doronzo, O;M.I. $3.75. Shoulder.- By Rev. Thomas J. Hosty. $1.50. $2.00. De Sacra- Straight from the THE MARIAN FOUNDATION, San Antonio. The Golden Thread of Netoman. By ReV. William R. Lamm, S.M. (Paper). $.50 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, New York. St. Paul: Apostle and Martyr. By' Iglno Giordani. $2.50. B. HERDER BOOK ~OMPANY, 'St. Louis. The Mysteries of Christianity. By M. J. Scheeben. $7.50. Christianity: An Outline of Dogmatic Theology for Laymen. By Joseph H. Fichter, S.J. $2.50, JOSEPH F. "WAGNER, INC., New York, Scriptural References for the Baltimore Catechism. By G. H. Guyot, C.M. (No price given.) (No price given.) THE DECLAN X. MCMULLEN COMPANY, New York. Most Worthy of All Praise. By Vincent P. McCorry, S.J. ST. ANTHONY GUILD PRESS, Paterson, New Jersey. Frances Schervier: Mother of.the 'Poor. By Sister Pauline. 263 May a superior grant a Sister with simple vows permls~ion~ fO use a gold watch? A moderate use of an article made of gold is not. in itself, con-trary to the vow of poverty. This is evident from the fact ,that some constitutions approved by" the~HolY See prescribe the wearing of a gold ring. Frequently the constitutions or legitimate custom forbid the use of articles m_ade of gold. In such cases the superior dould not grant permission for the use of a gold watch. But if there is no such prohibition, the, superior may grant the permission, provided that the watch is not so expensive as to cause surprise to the faithful who see th~ religious wearing_it. This element depends upon. local circum. stances and customs. A possible solution for the 'problem involved might be'to have the watch removed from its gold case and put into one of less precious material. ~ 23 Accordln9 to canon law how many delegates are necessary to make up a general chapter representing a community of one thousand Sisters? May delecjafes of the general chapter of a religious communlfy induce other members o{ the chapter, before the election of the mo÷her general has taken place, to vote for a certain group of Sisters whom they wish have fpr council members? Canon 507, § to tells us that "in elections which are made by chapters, the universal.law as set forth in canons 160-182 shall be obsdrved, as well as the constitutions of the institute which are not contrary to this universal lawJ' The Code leaves th.e organization of general chapters of religious institutes entirely to the constitutions. Constitutions approved by the Holy See. usually provide that every house of twelve or more members is represented in the general chapter by the local superior and by at least one delegat~ elected by the mem-bers of the local community. Smaller houses are grouped together to form a unit of from twelve to eighteen members. This group then elects one delegate from among the local superiors and one from amdng the subjects. If the institute requests it, the S. ~ongregation of Religious will allow large communities one delegate for every twelve Sisters. Thus a community of fifty Sisters would be entitled 264 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS to elect four delegates from that community. Paragraph two of canon 507 states explicitly: "All must abstain from seeking votes either directly or indirectly for themselves or for others." This law is dear and needs no explanation. Howe:oct, the constitutions frequently allow the members of the chapter to seek information from other chapter members regarding the qualifications of certain individuals well-known to them. Insuch a case the mem-bers bf the chapter ~hould give the information required, but should abstain from positively urging any member to vote for another mem-ber. Their ~duty should be confined to giving the information requested~ according to the best of their knowledge, in all charity and sincerity. It may be well to note i~ere that 'the delegates elected by the indi-vidual communities sh0uld not be instructed regarding persons to be voted for. This would clearly be contrary to the canon quoted above: The community must have confidence in the good judgment of the delegates ,whom they elect. --24--- A college has regular tuition and board and room charges. Over and above these charges_there are fees in various departments for certain courses, for instance in home economics for food, interior decoration, and s6 forth; in the music department, for the use of musical instruments. In a~ word, these fees are for things used, for materials, instruments, and the llke. Tl~e sum total of fees charged in any department make up the budget of that department. Must such fees be used only as described or may they also be used for the general cjood of the department, for instance to buy supplies, such as records, in the music department; to give the students of that particular department an. outing; to finance a student's trip to-a con-ventlon as a representative of that department? As long as the fees charged to make up the budget of any si'ngle department are used in that dep~rtment~ both justice and Canon Law ate satisfied. ~:~he purchasing Of instruments and stipplies needed for -the laboratory experiments of the department are certainly for the benefit :of the students, and the same inay be said regarding the travel-ing expensesof a representative of the department who is sent to a .convention. And it is perfectly in keeping with the law of,'the Church to use any balance left over at the end of the year to give the students of that department an outing or some other entertainment " to which, payment of the fee for board and tuition gives them no right or cl:aim. 265 QUESTIONS AND ~NSWERS Review for.Religious ' m2Sm, Our constitutions havi~ the following provision regarding candidates for admission: "Their parents must have borne a good reputation; and should these have been under repute of any enormous crime, or have been condemned in any criminal court, the aspirants cannot be received." Does this artlcle of our constitutions oblige us 1o reject an aspirant whose par-enfs are divorced and remarried? Since the constitutions seem to have in mind a crime against the civil law and a condemnation in a civil criminal court, divorce and "remarriage would not come under the prohibition of the constitu-tions. The requirem'ent of a good reputation on the part of the par-ents looks to the edification of th.e faithful. One may say that the parents have lost their good reput~ition if the faithful would be scan-dalized by the admission of their daughter into a religious commun-ity. Hence in our practical case, if the divorce and remarriage are things "of the past, forgotten by most people, there would be no diffi-culty in receiving the aspirant. If they are recent events,, p~udence must dictate whether the reception of the candidate into religion would cause disedification or not. It may be well to note that the constitutions do not positively forbid the reception of the daughter of parents who have a bad reputation, as is the case in the second part of the article quoted. Hence it seems that such a candidate could be admitted even though her parents are divorced and remarried provided her reception would not cause scandal to the faithful. In some instances at least, it might be a cause of great edification: for instance, if it became known that the daughter was entering religion to aton~ for the sins of her parents. --26-- I heard recently of a community of Sisters in ~vhlch custom demands that they go to confession in seniority. Do you know if such a cu'sfom really exists? Would it not be against canon law? It seems to me that confes-sors' might easily recognize their penitents in such circumstances. It is not clear just what is meant here by going to confession "in seniority." If it means "according to seniority groups"---e.g. senior professed, then junior professed, then novices there seems to be nothing particularly harmful about the custom. This arrangement according to groups would simply facilitate good order and could hardl~r be a source of embarrassment to individuals. Very likely our correspondent refers to a case in which indi- 266 Julg, 1946 QUES'~IONS AND ANSWERS Oiduals go according to sepiority. 'We t6o have heard of such a custom, although we do not know of any definite pl_ace where it exists. Strictly speaking, this custom is not against the l'etter of canon law; at, least, we are not aware of any provision of law which forbids it." It'seems to us, however, that such a custom is not in accord with the spirit of canon law. For one thing--as our corre-spondent points Out" it makes it very easy for confes'sors to recog: nize ~oenitents, for if the confessor knows the community at all he will. very likely know something of the order of seniority. This is often embarrassing t6 a confessor and it.is also an obstacle to the perfect liberty of spirit enjoyed by a penitent. At least, many penitents can confess more freely when they are not recognized as individuals. An added inconvenience for the penitent, if individual seniority is insisted on, is the fact. that those who immediately follow her will always know ju,st howlong her confession takes. Also, if she does wish to take a long time, she may be embarrassed at the thought of delaying the others. m27-- What is the mind of the Church on such matters as havln9 contests between 9fades to have the most Communions in a week, and on havln9 compulsory Communion Sundays under those circumstances where the-external pressure on an individual to receive Communion is very 9rear2 The principle for solving questions like this was clearly formu-lated in a reserved instruction issued by. the Congregation of the Sacraments on December 8. 1938. The text of this instruction may be found in The Canon Law Dfgest, II, p. 208. A synopsis of the instruction was printed in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, III, p. 268. The same number of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (III, p. 252) contained the translation of a very thor6ugh commentary on this instruction by Father Emile Bergh, S.3. For an adequate discussion of this impor-tant matter we refer our c~)rrespondent to the text of the instruction and to Father Bergh's article. Answering the question very briefly, we should say: Any prac-tice which induces pressure to receive Holy Communion is wrong and should be changed without delay. If '!spiritual treasuries," contests between classes, Communion Sundays, and so forth, are had at all, they should be conducted in such a way that all indi;ciduals will feel perfect freedom to abstain from Communion if they wish. 267 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Revleto ~or Religious According to our constitutions, .the order of precedenc6 among .the Sisters is as follows: The .superior general always and everywhere precedes all the Sisters including local superiors. Then come: the general council- Ior~ accorcfing to the order of'thelr election; .the secretary general; ~the treasurer general: former superiors general in the mother house (in other houses they follow the local superior); the mistress of novices'. Is this order of precedence to be interpreted as ¯follows? (I) All general officers taEe -precedence over the local superior in pres;ding over the assemblies of~ the mother house community. In other words, in the event .that the superior cjeneral is not i~resent, who presides over the assemblies and exercises of the mother house community? (2) Just what rank and authority, does the Io~al s~perlor of the mother house hold in the mother house? (3) If the mistress of novices is a councillor and the local superior is not, does that fact dispense the mistress of novices from being subject ~o the local supe-rior and excuse her from a chapter presided over by the local superior? (4) Does a councillor stationed in any house other than the m~)ther house take precedence over the local superior? Before answering the specific questions asked above, it may be helpfial to analyze the concept of precedence. Precedence is a sign of g~e~ater honor because of greater e~cellence. It consists in the right to occupy a more honorable place i~a church, in processions, or in assemblies; or in the right to act before others. for instance, to cast a vote ahead of others. This right of precedence supposes-in the person who enjoys it a certain excellence or dignity which places on others the obligation of reverence or obedience to them. Among religious the right of precedence is conferred upon an indi-vidual religious because of th~ office which he holds. Such.an office may or may not have authority over others attached to it. Thus superiors in a religious institute (whether they be general, provincial; or local superiors) have precedence over their subjects by reason of their authority to govern them (canon° 106, 2°). Other officials such as councillors, secretaries, bursars, mistresses of novices, enjoy the right of precedence because of the dignity of their office .even though it does not carry with it any authority over other professed r.eligious. .From the foregoing' it is evident that in assemblies in which no authority is exercised, such as the presence Of a religious community in chapel for the recitation of the office or of othe~ prayers in com-mon, or attendance at meals in the common refectory, it is quite 268 1946 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS r~asonable that-some officials enjoy" pre.cedence over the local superior', even though they-be subject to her in the external discipline of ._the house. They would rank higher in the order of preced.ence~ and would take.a higher.placein the chapel or in the dining room: but .they would not exercise" any, act of authoritg in either place: Such acts "of authority in general:assemMie's belong to superiors only, not to officials who do not enjoy authority over others by reason of their- - office. . The order of precedence in any particular institute is determined by t'he constitutions and by the customs of that institut~e (canon 105, 5°). The common law contains no provisions governing precedence of officials within a .particular institute. According to the present practice Of the S. Congregation,of.Reli-gious, precedence in religious congregations ,is as follows: (1) The superior general precedes all superiors, provincial as well as local, always anti everywhere. (2) The general councillors come next, in the. order, of their election, then the secretary .general and the treasurer general, but only in .the general mother house' in other houses they take their places after the local superior. (3) Former supe~riors gen- ¯ eral come after the treasurer_general, but only in the mother house. Some constitutions give precedence over local s.uperiors to the ~general councillors and to the secretary and treasurer general. Such provisions~ of older con'stitutions would prevail over the piesent practice of the S. Congregation. Any doubts, especially with regard to recently approved constitutions, should be solved according to the pr.esent practice of the S. Congregation. (4) The provincial superior has precedence in all the houses of his province; i~rovincial councillors, provincial secretary and treasurer take precedence but in the provinr cial house only: in other, houses they come after the local sup~erior. Regarding the local superior of the mother house: (1) She gov-erns the community of the mother house just as a local superior ggv-erns a local~ house, that is, in all things pertaining to the community as such,'but subject to (he limitation put upon local superiors by the law of the Church'and by the constitutions. (2) Evidently the superior general takes precedence over the local superior everywhere and at all times; she is not subject to the local S.uperior of the mother house. (3). Unless the constitutions or legitimate "custom~ have exempted higher officers and have made them-directly depend.ent on the superior general, the general councillors, secretary and treasurer ¯ general, exTsuperiors and so forth, are all subject'to the local, s.uperior 269 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS even thotfgh in public assemblies they take a higher place. (4) So,me constitutions provide that the first councillor or any one of the coun-cillors appointed by the superiqb general~ shall be local superior of the mother house. ' The mistress ot: novices and the novices are subject to the local Superior in all matters pertaining to the general discipline of the house (canon 561, § I). The fact that the mistress of novices is also a general couricillor would not change her relations to the local supe-rior of the mother house unless the constitutions or legitimate custom place her direct.ly and immediately under the superior general. In this latter case ~i distinction would have' to be made. In her official capacity as mistress of novices, she would still be under the general authority of the lo.cal superior together.with her novices by reason of the legisla-tion- of the Code; but in her private capacity ~s a general councillor she'would n6t, but: would be directly finder the authority of the. supe-rior general. We are ready- now to answer the questions asked above:. 1. In the absence of the superior general, the local superior of. the mother house presides over .all assemblies of the mother house com-munity. Officials--such as general councillors, the secretary general, the treasurer general--may precede th~ local superior in such assem-blies, that is they may occupy a higher place of honor; bfit they do not fireside, tl'iat is they do not exercise any authority, ianless legiti-mate custom gives them the right so to do. 2. The local superior~ of "the,mother house exercises the same authority over the community as such as does any other local superior over her community. All Officials, the superior genera.1 alone excepted, are subject to her regarding the general discipline of the house, unless -the constitutions or "legitimate custom have exempted higher officials from her authority and have made them subject to the superior gen-eral alone. If the mistress of novices is a councillor and the local superioress. is not, the former wo~uld still :be subject to the local superior in. the chapter of faults presidedover by the local superior, unless the coun-cillors have be~n~explicitly excused from such s.ubjection either by the constitutions or by legitimate custom. , 4. NormaIly a general councillor stationed in another house wh{ch is not the mother house does not take precedence over the.local superior unless the constitutions or legitimate custom explicitly so declare. 270 THE MYSTICAL'LIFE. By Pascal P. Parente, S.T.D., Ph.D., ~J.C.B,.A, s' s o "c,ate Professor of Ascetical Theology,. Catholic University of America. Pp. x ~- 272. B. Herder Boo~( Company, St. Louis, 1946. $2.50. This is the companion volume to the same author's The ~tscet[cat Life, which appear.ed two years ago and contained an announcement of this work. With it Father Parente completes his systematic sur-vey of the spiritual life, and gives us the first study of the kind to ema'nate from an American theologian. Thus it possesses a certain histo'ric~l distinction. In content it is just about what one would expect in a brief intro-duction to mysticism. The first part of it is entitled "General Aspects and Basic Elements of Mysticism," the. second "Mystical State~ in Particular," and the third "Mystical Phenomena."' The last chapter discusses the practical questions of direction for mystics, the perusal of mystical literature, the vocation to the mystical life, °and desire for it: Without saying much about the controversies which have enlivened mystical theology i~i recent years, Father Parente generally steers a middle course between the doctrines of the" extreme schools. \ He is a strong advocate for the distinction between acquired and infused ~onteinplatlon. Rather singularly and originally he pro-poses that the difference is neither specific nor one of degree,-bu.t one of iaianner, of the way in which contemplation comes to one. It is highly uncertain whether St. Teresa, for instance, and others who ha~e experier~ed the diversity, would agree that there is not a greater distinction. In describing the prayer of quiet, the first of the "infra-ecstatic states~,'' the author writes: "As a matter of fact, God by reason of His omnipresence does not enter but simply makes Himself known to the soul" (page 121). Is there any such perception or . experience in" acquired Eontemplation? The vocation to mystical graces is not universal, but, at least practically, restricted to a limited number ofsouls. 'It is rather characteristic of this ~rork that it opens with an inter[ esting account of the ancient pagan mystery cults. It contains rela-tively much from Scripture and also from the Fathers Of the Chfirch that illustrates or supplies analogues to mystical phenomena. The cases botfi of Teresa Neumann and of Padre Pio of Pietralcina, the 271 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Relioious first stigmatized priest, are .treated professedly. ~-G. AuG. ELL/~RD, 8.2. MEDITATION ON THE PASSION. Compiled from Varlou~ Sources, with an Introduction" by the Reverend Reginald Walsh, O.P: Pp. rift ~ 305. The Newman Bookshop, Westm. lnsfer, Maryland, 3946. $3.'/5. "Reaction to a meditation book, especially t'o a book on the P~is-sion, is aft'extremely personal thing. What strikes a responsive chord in one person may prove dull finduninspiring to another. Yet, in spite of the uncertain personal factor; this book is .likely to please and to be helpful to almost anyone who sincer.ely wishes good meditation matter on the Passion. The various chapters treat of the entire Pas-sion'with thoroughness, yet without that meticulousness that makes one nod drearilywhile preparing his meditation. The. points are well planned and gasiiy fixed in the mind. The reflections are sound and agreeably warm. The colloquies--well, it seems that in affy meditation book colloquies have to be taken as "the bitter with the sweet." At least, this reviewer (behold :the personal element!) would be well pleased: if all meditation books dis.pensed with the Ohs .and Abs that give colloquies the fingernail-on:the-blackboard effect. But it is only fair to say ~hat if you like colloquies, you will likethese; and if you do not like them, you can. easily skip them, for they are clearly labeled. The meditations were composed originally by a ~ister who was mistress of novicek for thirty years. The editor has omittedthe parts that applied to ieligious women as such; hence the present edition is useful (decidedly so) to ~ill.--G. KELLY, S.3. THE CATHOLIC CENTRE. By Edward Ingram_ Watkln.Pp. 261. Sheed' and Ward, New YorE, 1945. $3.00.- The republishing of this book Six years after its first appearance is subely, due as much to the book's intrinsic merits as to the fact that Mr. Watkin's more recent Catholic Art and Culture has made his name and w(~rth known to a greater number of readers. This earlier work takes its name from the fact that "Since Catholic Christianity is the supreme :and most complete revelation of religious truth, and the philosophy which it implies the most.balanced and comprehen-sive i.nt~rpretation of human experience, we shall expect to find Catholicism and the philosophy it demands occupying a central position between all extremes and one,sided excesses, reconciling and 272 dulg, 1946 ~ BOOK, REVIEWS balancing[them,by m~aintfiining the p~ositive truth they'contain'~aiad rejecting their~exce~ses and exclusions." The detailed exposition of the ways in which Catholicism is central,~ complemented realistically by the fa~t, that "As. actually~ practiced and understoo& ho.wever, Catholicism is not the perfect oia media, nor do.es .it occupy the exact centre of. human thought and action" because of~human 1.imi-" tations "gives, the author materi:~l for a skillfully integrated., bogk. He~outli~es the ideal, searches out and b~ings under a very uncom~ .plimentary spotlight remediable defections from the ideal; and pro-poses various readjustments by .way of constructive criticism: The attentive reader will not always agree with Mr. Watkin, but he cad hardly fail. to-be,prodded into serious thinkihg oi~ fundamental .questions.--C. DE MUTH, S.,J. MISSION FOR SAMARIT.AN$. By Anna Dengel, M.D. I~p. x -[- 126. The ~,:~ Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1945. $1.75. Medical rriissions is" a,live subject,in the Catholic' mind. Here we hav~.~short .bier-comprehensive treatment from the pen of a pioneer in the movement. The doctor'and the religious in Mother Dengel speak on every page. Not only is she a skilled practitioner,~but she hfis~studied ~he;history °bf:her :field thoroughly. Her statements,~are carefully~ weighed anff sulS~orted; by c0nvincing~evidence. ceeds in stirring the heart to an.appreciation for her ideal,~the win_ning 6fpagan souls for,Christ by~supplyin~ them with.the expert medical ~a~?e of religious .doctor~ and.nurses. Christ is responsible; :for the Catholic attitude~'towards the s!~ck: He first healed men's bodies and.then won their~souls: Mother Dengel has it ~thiit one purpose of His coming was to. renew the weak.ened h~man"body for.the sake of thesoul. She~ puts before us the response ofthe Church tboChrist's~example and precept. ~ Universal care ,of the si~k and°diseased'has flourished wherever~Christ's Church has~ reache& The lat~er half~ of the book is of intriguing'interest. ~ The medi-c~ il situation of mosto of,our mission~fields, includingeven the,,Negroe.s and white vagrants of America, i~ briefly but chpably described. Tbe picture is indeed pathetic, all the more so because ignorance, super-station, and~lack of facilities i~ccount for so much needless suffering. Mother De_ngel shows us ou~ opportunity: if with complete unselfish-ness we devbte ourselve~to the restoration of pain-wracked bodies, we can be sure that the grace of Christ, working through us,¯will take care of their souls. R.D. HUBER. S.J. ,.273 BOOK REVIEWS FORMING A CHRISTIAN MENTALITY. By the Reverend Killan J. HennHch, O.F.M.Cap. Pp. xll -t- 288. Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., New York, 1945. (No price g~ven.) This book, designed as a companion volume to the :author's Youth Guidance, was written to aid priests, teachers, and parents in their direction of'young people. The work is divided into two parts. The aim of the first is to promote the spirttuahzatlon of individuals in their preparation for married life. The second part continues this project with a description of the Christianization of the famil,~ through the liturgy. Father Hennrich's qualifications for this task are attested by his many years of experience in dealing with'adolescents and by th6 dozen or more books he has written in the past several decades-on various phases of Catholic social activities. The exposition is rather abstract and impersonal, almost wholly unrelieved by graces of style, variety, or sprightliness. But preachers and educators who study the book perseveringly will find that it outlines a sound program for the instruction and religious guidance of young men and women. C. VOLLER'I', S.~I. HOW TO MEDITATE.BY Rev. John P. Roothaan, S.J. Translated by Rev. Louis J. Puhl, S.J. Pp. viii + 72. The Newman Bookshop, Westminster, Maryland, 1945. $1.25. First published in 1837, Father Roothaan's little treatise De Ratione Meditandi has become the classic exposition of the so-called "Ignatian Method'" of prayer. Not that St. Ignatius ever intended that religious and other pious persons should confine themselyes to this.rigidly methodical form of prayer for the rest of their lives. He himself "suggests bther forms in his Spiritual Exercises; but he intended it to serve as an introduction to and foundation for a life of prayer. Hence the translator tells us in his introductory note: "It is an undeniable fact that here even the most unlettered beginner will find a clear, easy, fruitful method of meditation that can easily be adapted., to personal needs and dispositions." Normally the religious who has seriously practiced this funda-mental method of prayer, as explained by Father Roothaan, will in due time pass on to the practice of affective prayer: but even he will find it helpful if not necessary to fall back occasionally upon the method d~scribed by the author. It is always a safe refuge in time of spiritual dryness and affliction. ¯ 274 July, 1946 ,~ BOOK REVIEWS Thi~ little book should b~ in the hands of every novice. Older ¯ religious will 6nd it u~eful reading "to spu'r them on to greater dill-gence in practical .and fruitful prayer, and zeal in the pursuit of per-fection." This reviewer .regrets exceedingly that this English version of Father Rootbaan's classic was not publ.ished ~n pamphlet form so as t6 give it a wider distribution.--A.C. ELLIS, S.J. THE MYSTICAL BODY OF, CHRIST. By Frledrlch Ji~rgensmeler, D.D. Transl,,fed by H. Gardner Curtis. Pp. :~09. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, J945. $3,00. The first section of this book discusses the biblical doctrine.and offers an excellent presentation of the importance and place of the Mystical Body in the divine plan of salvation. The second part develops the author's conviction that this ~ys~ery is the fun~amental~ principle of asceticism. /, The translation from ~bicb this photographic reproduction was ma'de is yery disappointing. After comparing several sections of the book, sections of ten to fifteen pages in length, with the original German, this reviewer was astounded at the many inaccuracies found in the translation. Furthermorel ~t times, phrases, clauses (in fact, sometimes' whole sentences) have been~ omitted. For example, we. read (p. 64) : "The Second Person of the. Godhead u, nited mankind to Himself in a hypostatic union." And, again (p. 81) : "Christ is distinguished from the Father and the Holy~ Ghost by the circum-stance .of His human, existence." .Needless to say, the original Ger-man does not have such ambiguous-(to say.the very least)~ doctrine. The last paragraphs of pages 65~.~66, and sections of pages 69 and 70 are very inaccurately translated. In general, religibus who have not studied theol0gy will find this book too ponderous. Sections, especially the treatment of the Mys: .tical. Body in the ascetical life, will be .helpful. But we cannot ,. recommend the English translation.--M. LA PIETE EUCH,~RISTIOUE By J. F.Ber~ube, s.s.s. Pp. 151. La Libr'-'qrle Eucharls÷ique, 514,.avenue Monf-Royal Est, M<;nfreal 34, 1945. (No '" prlce-given,) The source,, the means, ~nd the end of a11 our life of grace is 2esus Christ. The Holy Eticharist, ~because it c6ntains the whole Christ, must therefore be the source, the means, and.the end of .our spiritual 275 BOOK REVIEWS R~oieto [oF Religidus life. How the Eucharistic Christ, in the ~acrifice of the' Mi~ss, in Holy Communion, in the Real Presence, is the all and all of our tioliness, and fl0w we should respond to these profound truths-- .l~his is the book's important message to the faithful. It is followe.d by two eloquent~ inspiring pronoi~ncements of Pius XII