Suchergebnisse

Issue 60.1 of the Review for Religious, 2001. ; Renewal Vocation Spiritual Legacy Empowerment JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 Review for Religious'helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call to holiness' ' ° by making available to them the spiritual legacies tbat flow-from the cbarisms of Catbolic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ° V~reb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2001 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. MI copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. view for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizfibeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm James and Joan Felling Adriafi Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bish6p Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Patricia Wittberg SC JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 contents 6 renewal Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees A. Paul Dominic SJ relates the biblical notion of jubilee to the teaching of Jesus and the practice of the early church in order to point to ways that we might live the spirit of jubilee in our Christian life today. 20 A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia'~ James H. Kroeger MM shares the optimism and gratitude that pervade the apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia as he summarizes and evaluates its various chapters. 30 40 vocation Who Is a Brother? Philip Armstrong CSC traces the church reality of brothers through history to the present-day challenges. Vocational Being Donald Macdonald SMM stresses that, if we Christians need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then Scripture provides the practical means to make our own this perspective of faith. 2j Review for Religious 48 spiritual legacy Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Ignatian Tradition Mary Ann Foley CND traces the originality of the missionary spirituality of Marguerite Bourgeoys, drawing upon a varity of sources including the Ignatian tradition. 62 The 350th Anniversary of the Sisters of St. Joseph Joan L. Roccasalvo CSJ gives evidence that Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises are the inspiration and source of Jean-Pierre Mddaille's Maxims of Perfection, which contain the entire spirit of the foundational documents of the Sisters of St. Joseph. 76 empowerment Till the End of My Days Agnes Cunningham SSCM identifies five factors that have proved helpful in her actively pursuing retirement. 80 Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved Laurel M. O'Neal offers a correction to our common misconceptions of death, its relation to sin, and especially the relation of God to death. departments 4 Prisms 99 Canonical Counsel: Conclusion of the Novitiate 105 Book Reviews January-February 2001 prisms Review for Religious cele-brates its sixtieth year of publication. Sixty years is not the milestone of the younger fifty or the more dra-matic one hundred. Of course, it is not in the same league as a millennium. But a sixty-year anniversary does present the occasion for a pause--a time for assess-ment, for evaluation, for celebration, for gratitude. We have so many of these "pauses" built into our ordinary life that we can forget how important their place is for the healthy living of life, including the spir-itual. The changing seasons of the year, with their cycles of growth and dormancy, present one rhythmic pattern observed in religious practices of people through the centuries. As we quantify the rhythm of a day into our minutes and hours and then measure fur-ther into days of a week and weeks of a month and months of a year, we are struck at how we humanly have built in so many pauses into ordinary living. As a matter of fact, we humans are not meant to be "energ-erizer bunnies" (as in a famous TV ad about a brand of battery) that just keep going and going, always doing more of the same. No, we are people who have waking and sleeping patterns, who enjoy times of work and of recreation, who seek out periods of solitude and of social interaction, who are marked by successes and failures and those many "gray-area" projects whose value remains unclear. We are meant to pause, to be a Review for Religious reflective people, because we are formed by the Bible--that very reflectively written account of God's dealings with his people. We have just been celebrating the biblical jubilee year as a divinely inspired pause. We Christians are a people who appre-ciate the flow of a liturgical year, with its celebratory pauses that bring home in ever new ways the key moments of our faith-life with God. Though there are these many natural and ecclesial pauses in our life, we seem to be unwilling to choose such a rhythm in our personal daily living. Both in our personal life and in our parish or community projects, we often do not take time to set and identify some intermediate goals. We rush on, instead of reflecting on what we have done up to this point, on what changes might be desirable, on how much gratitude we should have and express for all the cooperation we have received, and perhaps on what mistakes we have made and whose feelings we may have bruised. We Christians need to make time to reflect, to assess and celebrate and apologize, as our way of working with God. We need to choose to build this kind of pause into our day (like the Ignatian daily awareness examen) and into the works and projects we are busy on in concert with others. In commu-nity we need to choose to build in these pauses so that commu-nity life and community projects can make wise choices and avoid sad crises. If we choose to make "anniversary-like pauses" ordinary and so build them into our daily life, we will discover a power source that makes for a physically, psychologically, and spiritually healthy life. We have had our new year's celebration, pausing to ring out the millennium year of 2000 and to welcome the year of 2001. As we enter into this new year, perhaps we all need to look for timely occasions when we .can pause--to celebrate, to assess, to correct, to revitalize for the continuing effort. By such choices, we grow into being the reflective Christians God's word calls us to be. We meet God, in his gift of time to us, by pausing to appreciate it and use it well. David L. Fleming SJ Janualsv-February 2001 renewa A. PAUL DOMINIC Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees The celebration of any jubilee is necessarily public. It cannot be thought of except in social terms. Even in per-sonal jubilees, which are different from institutional jubilees, individual jubilarians do not make their jubilee a private affair; they invite their relations and friends to a celebration. In so doing almost all follow the unwrit-ten bourgeois rule of making their celebration an exclu-sive affair of their particular class and so upholding the social scale. When such segregated festivities are arranged by the rich (and not the poor, who anyway have nothing to celebrate because they have nothing to cele-brate with), they hurt even the rich, not just some other people, because they bring the burden of keeping up with the Joneses. The same thing happens, mutatis mutandis, in institutions and nations, with subtle but real harm to humanity. This is not a modern phenomenon but an old, unfortunate human one. Jesus saw it rampant among his people and ~ought to save them from bringing harm in this way to themselves and others. And so he did not think it unbecoming to tell his host during the meal to imagine another pattern of invitations, one that would break the tradition of inviting select persons or rich ones A. Paul Dominic SJ writes again from Satyodayam; 12-5-33 S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. Review for Religious or relatives and instead invite particularly the poor and the hand-icapped (Lk 14:12-14). When he was thus breaking new ground in the matter of celebration, was he not inspired by the good news of jubilee that he had learned as a Jew from the Hebrew Scriptures in the bosom of his Hebrew family? Going Back to the Source of Jubilee The very word jubilee is biblical, with a specific religious con-notation of joy. Though it has come into secular parlance, all those who celebrate "jubilees," personal or institutional, would do well to be aware of the term's centuries-old wealth of meaning. The joy that is now associated with jubilees in the secular or religious worlds looks back on achievements of excellence, but the jubilee joy in biblical times looked forward to achievements still to come; also, it involved the whole of Hebrew society, without excluding any class. While all celebrated the jubilee, both the haves and the have-nots, they participated in it differently. The former were behind the whole celebration, promoting it, while the latter benefited from it. The promoters were concerned with building a promising future, not so much for themselves as for others, who unlike them had had a harrowing past of financial reverses. Who on earth could have had this joyful interest in others rather than themselves except God and God's faithful people? Hearing the cry of people who, perhaps even through their own fault, had lost their ancestral holdings and consequently their own rights of freedom and dignity, God would have the losers gain back their lost land and their very persons. As all land and all peo-ple belonged primarily to God, God would ordain a time of grace once every fifty years, when good, law-abiding persons would come forward and voluntarily restore to the unfortunates whatever the latter had lost to them even by way of fair deals. The very idea of people responding to God's call to selfless joy on behalf of the deprived will be effective only to the extent that it is appreciated for its inspire~t and sensible holiness. People will be most joyful in their jubilee only when they thoroughly accept that it is a holy thing for them and declare so (Lv 25:10 and 12). The biblical jubilee is all joy only when it is all holy. It is first and foremost holy and, as such, it cannot but be joyful. It is the holi-ness of the God of joy that makes for the joy of all his people, who are to be holy like him. January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond yubilee and Jublilees This causal link of holiness to joy in the celebration of jubilees cannot be emphasized too much. The joyous celebra-tion of jubilee enjoined in Leviticus 25:8-17 and 23-55 forms part of the Law of Holiness in Leviticus 17-27. The dynamics of jubilee should be understood in the light of the most important piece in the Law of Holiness: "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lv 19:2b). How is this orthodoxy of holiness to become, the orthopraxis of joy? This is a highly practical question even though there remains the theoretical question of how it is possible that our human nature can share in the nature of God, namely, holiness. Leviticus and the rest of the Bible have no use for such questions, but hand down in God's name ways of living that are pleasing to the very God of holiness and joy. With the stunning command to human beings to be holy, there came from God clear directions about how they were to deal with one another. He wanted his people to associate with each other in ways that included practi-cal concern for the poor and the weak and the handicapped so that they would not feel left out: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Lv 19:9-10, emphasis added) This was a practical minimum test of the maximum law he enjoined on them of cultivating a loving disposition towards one another, abjuring grudges and hate (Lv 19:18-19). If people had lived in this original spirit of divinely ordained love, shown in personal dealings and shaped in concrete societal action, there would have been no urgency for such an institution as the jubilee. From the beginning, people did not abide by, but slid from, this ideal. To stem this slide and to set a minimum for the people to reach, God brought about the program of the sabbatical year (Lv 25:2-7). Its enactment, going back to the wake of the Exodus reads thus: For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat . (Ex 23:10-11, emphasis added) . Though no definite information is found in the Bible's his- Review for Religious torical books about how and how long the sabbatical law was observed,~ there is no denying that it was (see Ne 10:32 and 1 M 6:49-53), though not always (see 2 Ch 36:21). And that is why one may dare say--in this field there are as many opinions as scholars-- that the law was further developed to include remission of debts in favor of the poor and, what is more, to be generous to them. Aiming at abolishing poverty, the new law unambiguously said: If there is among you anyone in need . . do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is near," and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing . Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so. (Dt 15:7-10, emphasis added) Who could better this law? For all its beauty (if law can be said to be beautiful), who would want this kind of beauty for them-selves? Who would observe this beautiful law? Indeed, there may be people now who would question its very place in a legal corpus. Though this was presumably not the case then, still, given human nature, it would not be surprising if it was practiced in its violation rather than observance. For this reason, and with a view to getting people to observe the high ideal of the law, it was drastically changed with regard to the time of its enforcement. The new law, unlike the old, would come into force not every seven years as before, but every fifty years, heralding what came to be known as the jubilee year, called so after the instrument used for the announcement, namely, yobe! (Hebrew for trumpet). Though the sabbatical law was thus made less burdensome (one would not have had to observe it more than once in one's lifetime, given the biblical lifespan of eighty even for the. strong), still the jubilee law retained the essential burden of the previous laws, namely, reversing the trend of the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer. Its complete formulation specified four things. (1) People must allow all land to lie fallow, must live on what it pro-duces by itself and has been stored, and must share with others. (2) In selling and buying, the rich should not cheat and oppress the poor, taking advantage of their plight. (3) Those who have grown richer by buying other~' properties should freely restore them to their former owners. (4) Those who own Israelites as slaves January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond g~ubilee and j~ublilees (because in their poverty they sold themselves) have to honorably release them and their families. Was the mitigated law observed? While some scholars say that it does not seem it was ever observed,z others opine cautiously that the possibility of its having been observed in the beginning of the settlement in the Holy Land cannot be ruled OUt.3 Relying on the two applications of the jubilee law to specific situations (Lv 27:16-25 and Nm 36:1-12), we may presume that there indeed was a time when the law was in force and not a dead letter. Also, ¯ from the fact that the Greek Alexander and the Roman Julius Caesar exempted their Jewish domain of Judaea from the annual tribute during the sabbatical year,4 may we not infer that the jubilee directives were at that time not out of vogue in the life of the peo-ple? It would be interesting, then, to know how they could have been carried out generation after generation. But unfortunately no historical observance of the jubilee was recorded in either the Old Testament or the New. Anyway, from the kind of juridical Judaism found in the New Testament, we have no compelling rea-son to believe that the jubilee still prevailed in practice, leaving us to wonder what ever happened to Judaism that God founded as a contrast communitys with its liberative laws, such as jubilee. Retrieving the Jubilee after Jesus Where does this le~d us? An answer may spring up from sens-ing how Jesus responded to the moribund custom of jubilee in his time. Though the word jubilee does not occur in the Gospels, the way he looked at some issues may point to his thinking on jubilee. He was surely positive in his attitude to the Law, and so we hear the puzzling logion: "Do not think that I have come to abol-ish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to ful-fill" (Mt 5:17). In so taking his stand, he was calling for right obedience to the Law: hearing the voice of God in the word of the Law, understanding God's genuine purpose, and acting on it. If he often invited attacks by those who were on the side of reli-gion, it was to challenge them to read the L~w aright according to the mind of the Lawgiver. He pointed out, too, that in the course of history the Law was sometimes mitigated or even distorted, as in the case of divorce, because of human hardness of heart. In order to accomplish the Law, he would advocate first and fore-most a return to its origin in the heart of God and a discernment Revie~v for Religious of its true relevance for the day, guided by the signs of the times, the ongoing surprise revelations of God's ways. Inspired by such a vision of the Law, Jesus would have insisted that jubilees were not occasions to be observed merely twice in a century, whether by omission or halfheartedly or even whole-heartedly. In this spirit he would have spoken searchingly: "If it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should return to the owner the land he had sold to you in his penury, I ask you, 'Why buy at all in the first place from a needy person?' Again, if it was said of old that you should not, during the jubilee, claim your money lent to the poor, I ask you, 'Why lend at all to the poor with a view to getting it back? Rather, give to anyone who asks you and, if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.' Again, if it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should free your slaves, I ask you, 'How dare you .ever buy out your brothers or sisters and enslave them even if they sold themselves to you in their dire need? For you are all slaves of God, and among yourselves you are brothers and sisters.'" Further, he would have told any challengers to search the Scriptures and realize how God had freed their forebears from slavery and settled them in a new land, a land that was not theirs but his, so that they might know the holy joy of living together in rich fellowship and surrounded by the blessings of Providence. Finally, in Ezekiel's fashion (Ezk 20:4-24), he would even have made them face their Roman subjugation and answer whether it was not due to their forsaking the jubilee of God and ceasing to be truly subject to the God of jubilee. It would have been with such silent thoughts that he went beyond the old jubilee and initiated a new era, calling it the year of the Lord's favor (Lk 4:19) and heralding the longed-for liberty, fulfilling Ezekiel's prophecy6 and climaxing John's preaching.7 God's own aspiration was ever to create a people witnessing to his blessing. Going Forth in the Spirit of Jubilee In picking up such possible thoughts of Jesus, what is our own jubilee aspiration and how are we to realize it? We do so by becom-ing the community of God's people and striving to do away with poverty. God's own aspi.ration was ever to create a people wit- January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees nessing to his blessing. When Jesus came on the scene, he pro-claimed that constant purpose of God. When he announced God's kingdom emerging in the world, he heralded equivalendy the com-munity of God's people. Further, in imitation of his Father, he was re-creating it visibly out of the remnant that was left of the old community.8 The new community, though very much in the world, was not of it. It was fashioned to be an alternative society in the spirit of jubilee. It had its own charter, promising and promoting the fulfillment of individuals and groups in society and thus the whole society (Mt 5:3-10). Its foremost beneficiaries were the poor of all sorts, that is, those who had been all along without name, voice, or standing, like children and women, the ritually and socially outcast, and, of course, the economically awkward. Though made up of different classes, the new community would not have the distinction and segregation of the high and the low; rather, the so-called high would serve the so-called low. If such terms as highest and lowest were to be used at all, then the highest in the community would be those who, bending over for the sake of others, made themsel+es little and served them-- even washing their feet. Their insignia would not be the tradi-tional one of selfish power, privilege, and possession, but the downward mobility of service and healthy promotion of others, avoiding all competition. Their royal rule would be: "In every-thing do to others as you would have thdm do to you" (Mt 7:12). Perhaps the one incident in which almost all the above distinctive qualities of the new community came into play was Jesus' feeding the multitude and satisfying them all with the little supply of bread and fish made available by a little boy. Living in this spirit of permanent jubilee, apart from which there is no jubilee worth talking about, we dare dream of becom-ing a contrast .community of Christians, renovating the structures of the age-old world in many details and so creating places where individual and social well-being can exist. Jubilee Praxis at the Start of the First Millennium How on earth can this become part of the realm of reality? Though we may find ourselves overwhelmed by forces against true community, did Jesus not envisage such a community of the future right at the start of his ministry when he declared that the era of universal liberation was beginning there and then with him- Review for Religious self (Lk 4:21)? Did he not confirm it as he went about forming one flock On 10:16)? And, at the very end, was he not intent on drawing all to himself and forming one community (Jn 12:32)? Did he fail in all that? The pristine community of the church witnessed that he certainly did not. Indeed, it acquired early an identity of its own, distinguishing it from the surrounding com-munity and marking its way of living together. Their identity was not so much their theoretical acceptance of the gospel, but prac-tical allegiance to it with consequences in social behavior. Luke named it koinonia, meaning fellowship or communion, which "con-notes the bond of responsibility to one another enjoined on believ-ers by their assent to the gospel."9 His firsthand report of this unique phenomenon reads thus: All who believed were together and had all things in com-mon; they would sell their possessions and goods and dis-tribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of the people. (Ac 2:44-47) Perhaps to emphasize the veracity of his report, he drew another such picture: Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apos-tles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Ac 4:32-35, emphasis added) The kernel of koinonia was thus communism in its best sense, namely, the community of goods which expressed, proved, and strengthened the community of spirit.1° The trial of koinonia even brought about the institution of diaconia or service (Ac 6:1-6) to oversee the practicalities of koinonia. Nothing like it had happened before in the Mosaic period, but it did not come out of the blue. It had its clear precedents as the law~ of the sabbatical and jubilee year show. The sharing of the rich with the poor envisaged by such laws did not merely look to the temporary or intermittent allevia-tion of the hardship of the.poor. Rather, it aimed at the divine ideal of annihilating poverty altogether according to the hopeful com-mand: "There shall be no poor among you" (Dt 15:4).~ January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond j-~ubilee and 3~ublilees Inspired by Jesus, the early church learned well, translating the above command into action and initiating jubilee living. The later church, as far as the 3rd century or so, followed suit in such a striking manner that the historian Pliny thought of Christians as tertia gens, a third group of people besides Romans and barbarians. Still the ideal had to be nurtured from the beginning against natural human hesitations, weaknesses, and failures. So Paul bade the Corinthians regarding help for the famine-stricken commu-nity in Jerusalem: Strive for equality; at present give from your abundance what they are short of, and some day they will repay in abundance what you lack. Then you will be equal and what Scripture says shall come true: "To him who had much, nothing was in excess; to him who had little, nothing was lacking." (2 Co 8:13-15, Christian Community Bible) The equality of everyone in the community, whether rich or poor, will remain no more than an illusion as long as .economic inequality remains. That is a warning implicitly given by James, when he confronted Christian assemblies with their old unequal dealings with the rich and poor: For, if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say "Have a seat here, please" while to the one who is poor you say "Stand there" or "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves? (Jm 2:2-4) On the contrary, where the rich willingly forgo some of their riches in order to raise the condition of the poor, there is equal joy for both; and so James could say, "Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low" (Jm 1:9-10). Jubilee Praxis as the Third Millennium Starts With such precedents, are we going to achieve community of equals? Yes, if we enter upon unambiguous, if taxing, praxis. The first practice would seem to be self-awareness of our "chronic" failure in shaping human communities. If even now we let the societal laws considered above provoke not offense (pace Paul, Rm 3:20) but repentance, convicting us of our share of humanity's sin in this matter, we would be on the right track. Review for Religious Part of this initial practice is to realize how we, like the rest of humanity, have cultivated the pleasing or even cozy practice of good intention rather than a.ction, of fine words rather than deeds. James had reason to ask bluntly: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them "Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? (]m 2:15-16) Is this challenge any less relevant now for the church community, and in particular the talking (even if not pontificating) theological fraternity, despite two millennia of Christianity? This is, however, no time for despair, but a time for immediate, earnest, and con-sistent praxis based on the twin nature of human beings as spiri-tual and economic. The second practice could well be conscientization for both the rich and the poor. The former may not even realize what being poor actually means. I, for one, was surprised to hear a city dweller say not very long ago that he missed Sunday Mass because he had no clean clothes to wear. Situations like this must be brought to the notice 6f the well-dressed community at Sunday Mass, among whom might be found some, like a Chicago priest I heard about, for whom a shirt worn once is too soiled to be worn again on the same day. In a school run by a group of sisters, a poor child went to class in slippers instead of shoes; for punishment her teacher, a former nun, made her wear them round her neck with her belt. Such unbe-lievable things occur and need to be made known, through chan-nels such as pastoral councils, to the rest of the community. For their part, the poor must be transformed by becoming conscious of what they deserve but are denied by society, includ-ing the church. St. Vincent de Paul Societies may serve this crit-ical cause, first learning themselves and then teaching poor people their rights enshrined in Canon Law. What a revelation to hear: There are canons that can be said to promote the ~velfare of the poor and speak fibout the defense of their rights. There are canons that promote the participation of the poor in church life, facilitate their access to the sacraments, uphold the right to receive help from the temporal goods of the church, require norms on legal aid for the poor, and so forth?~ If such conscientization is to become reality, much depends on a third practice, ecclesial leadership, which at least in India rests Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees largely with the bishops and then the clergy. Who is to tell them what their praxis should or could be? That, though, is what the Servant Leadership school in Washington, D.C., has dared, train-ing leaders in community living that is intimately associated with the life of the poor.13 It is heartening to hear of a bold Indian bishop who would not oblige his priests' clamor for his support of projects for the poor unless they committed themselves to conscientiously spend-ing for the target group all the money received. Not many, how-ever, are like him, intent on being levelers, mindful of benefiting the poor wholly and so bringing all people to a level of equality. So we hear stories of bishop~ who are not loath to receive a purse on the occasion of their jubilees celebrations, in clear violation of the spirit of the biblical jubilee. Vv'hat are we to think when a bishop, to please his family, tries to dissuade a young man from becoming a brother to serve the poor and even offers to make him a priest in his diocese? Does he have a ghost of an idea, let alone a chance, to build a true community where the poor will find their due, equal place of honor and feel blessed? Would that the unworthy bishops acted on the proposal, made by themselves or their confreres at the Synod of Bishops on Justice, to "under-take an examination of the modes of acting and of the posses-sions and lifestyle found within the church itself'U4--even though they seem not to take seriously the anticlerical strictures of Christ himself. Whatever the praxis of the leadership may be, the rest of the community may aid it indirectly by their own related praxis. And this may express itself in at least three ways. The first one is com-ing to know the likes of the locally famous Indian Jesuit Bishop Saupin (who, reportedly, would, in the style of the populace, travel in a rickshaw, clad in kurta and pajamas and smoking his beedi) or the globally famous Archbishop Romero. The second is pray-ing conscientiously and hopefully, while mentioning the ordinary's name at Mass, for the metanoia and metamorphosis of bishops so that they may know the importance of serving their community ¯ (which itself exists for serving one another in charity) by witness-ing to the incompatibility of chronic poverty with the visible king-dom of God. And the third (which is difficult but must be done) is humbly calling ecclesiastical high-ups to account, even against their resistance, in forums such as the parish and diocesan coun-cils enjoined by Vatican Council II. Review for Religious The fourth practice concerns the religious who have their own sphere of leadership for good and bad. While those in the limelight engage righdy or wrongly in discussion on the religious life of the future, there are a small number, like the Little Sisters and Brothers of Jesus, whose life itself is mostly.their practice of naturally and not optionally'5 accompanying the poor by their.presence among them in their living place, by their solidarity with them in the workplace, by their adoption of the lifestyle of their poor peers, and by their hospitality to the poor and rich which makes both groups feel equal and at ease. In the economy of communion practiced b~" Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sharing and, of course, socializing with those expe-riencing poverty, misery, and humiliation. Their way has attracted the attention even of gov-ernments. A year ago, for example, a Brazilian parlia-mentary commission made an official visit to their cen-ter in order to learn prac-tices that could help solve poverty problems in their country. Hearing the expe-riences of the Focolare entrepreneurs, they marveled at the con-crete achievements of the economy of communion, achievements that seemed impossible in the current economic context. One of them said: "The economy of communion is an already proven and revolu-tionary alternative. It is a new concept of economy, a new con-cept of wealth."16 The two groups mentioned above do not have any "apostolate" whatever as other congrggations understand the term. While other groups may benefit from the innovative experience of the these two groups, still, to develop their own praxis of involving them-selves in the lives of the poor, there would be no better way than going back to their original sources.~7 For, as a~le, religious con-gregation have always been founded with real bonds with the poor. Another thing that may help various religious congregations is the zealous search for ways to adapt present missions "for the ben- In the economy of communion practiced by Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sha~ing and, of course, socializing with those experiencing poverty,, misery, and humiliation. January-February 2001 Dominic * " Beyond J'ubilee and Jublilees efit of the poor and for a more just and fraternal world."~s A sure test of this will be making sure that, whatever work they begin, it benefits the poor most, as was surprisingly advocated by Gandhi to the members of his congress party striving for India's freedom. Another thing that may promote right praxis among them is to go back, in the spirit of what Paul and James advocate (1 Co 2:26 and Jm 2:5), to their own personal origins and find how poor indeed they were. For one may wager that most of us hail from families that are middle class, but commonly are lower than mid-dle class or indeed poor, even very poor, not unlike the apostles. There is no better way of concluding all this than what Jesus said to his disciples so poignandy at the Last Supper: "If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them!" (Jn 13:17). Notes t See Rui de Menezes, "The Biblical Jubilee Year," Vidyajyoti Journal 61 (1997): 653. [See also Robert G. North, Biblical Jubilee, after Fifty Years (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Biblico, 2000), a revised edition of his Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee, 1954.--ED.] 2 See The New Jerusalem Bible (NyB) (New York: Doubleday, 1985), note Lv 25a, p. 167. 3 See The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (N'JBC), ed. R.E. Brown et al. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1991), n. 4:53, p. 78. 4 See Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 667, for the reference in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. s See T. Malipurathu, "Contrast Community: Its Meaning and Relevance for our Times," Vidyajyoti Journal 62 (1.998): 606-623, esp. 610-613. 6 It is striking that Ezk 46:7 uses the expression the Year of Liberty to refer to the Year of Jubilee. 7 See the relevant notes on Lk 3:3-14 in Christian Community Bible (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1990), p. 123. s See the note Mt 16g in NJB, p.1637, and the note on Ac 2:46 in NyBC, n. 44:28, pp. 734-735. 9 NyBC, n. 44:28, p. 734. ,0 See note Ac 2ffin NyB, p. 1803. n For the translation in the style of the Decalogue, see Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 654. 12 Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest in the Code of Canon Law, I," Vidyajyoti Journal 63 (1999): 924. ~3 See Henri J.M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1989), p. xii. Review for Religious 14 AS in Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 930. t5 Fausto Gomez suggests that the preferential option for the poor is not simply optional but obligatory. See Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 927. 16 Mariapolis (Focolare newsletter), December 1999, p. 14. ~7 See, for example, Decrees of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1995, and St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), §288. ,s Decrees, §289. The Sun The sun rose At 7:02 a.m.', standard time, the paper told me. The changing silhouettes of peaked boxes transformed into houses sided in pale pink and grays and browns proved it. But no explosion of color ¯ announced the moment, no silent fireworks to wake the sky. Only the quiet finger of God'~ tracing day-gold across the horizon. Suzanne Mayer IHM January-Februaly 2001 JAMES H. KROEGER A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia" "T he church in Asia sings the praises of the 'God of salvation' (Ps 68:20).-" These opening words set the tone of Ecclesia in Asia (hereafter EA), the postsynodal apostolic exhortation promulgated in November 1999: Clearly, themes of gratitude, celebration, and optimism characterize this document. The church sings God's praises for "choosing to initiate his saving plan on Asian soil," for sending "his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Savior, who took flesh as an Asian!" The church sees the "marvel of God's plan in Asia" and exults "in the goodness of the continent's peoples, cultures, and religious vitality" (§1). Pope John Paul II signed the document during his Asian pastoral visit to India (5-8.November 1999). The issuance of EA was the concluding moment of the special assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops, popularly known as the Asian Synod. This four-year project of church reflection and renewal began with the publicafon of the Lineamenta (1996), continued with discussion on the Instrumentum Laboris (1998), reached its apex with the month-long synod sessions in Rome (19 April-14 May 1998), and culminated with the proclamation of the postsynodal Ecclesia in Asia James H. Kroeger MM, a Maryknoll Missioner who has served in Asia since 1970 (Philippines and Bangladesh), is currently professor of systematic theology, missiology, and Islamics at Loyola School of Theology in Manila. His article was first published in Landas 13, no. 3 (journal of Loyola School of Theology). His address is Marvknoll; P.O. Box 285, Greenhills Post Office; Metro Manila, Philippine~ 1502. Review for Religqous (6 November 1999). Yes, "Asia-Church" rejoices and unceasingly proclaims God's enduring love! The Asian Synod was a multifaceted event on many levels. As EA notes, "it was indeed a moment of special grace" (§3). It was also "a celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). The synod event became "an ardent affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ the Savior" (§4), and, as the local churches of Asia gathered in Rome, "the synod fathers sought to discern the principal areas of mission for the church in Asia as she crosses the threshold of the new millennium" (§ 18). The synod's theme was much debated and carefully chosen: "Jesus Christ the Savior and his mission of love and service in A~ia: 'That they may have Life and have it abundantly' On 10:10)." AS the pope writes, this particular formulation of the theme was to "illustrate and explain more fully that Christ is the one mediator between God and man and the sole redeemer of the world, to be clearly distinguished from the founders of other great religions" (§2). The theme manifests the chu[ch's faith in Jesus and his mission; he is Savior who serves and bestows abundant life; he is to be.joyfi4.11y proclaimed in Asia. Ecclesia in Asia, a rich, lengthy document, now becomes an important signpost of evangelization for the local churches in Asia in the new millennium. An analysis of EA reveals three major sections or underlying thematics: (I) Asian realities relevant to the church and her mission of evangelization (§§5-9); (2) theological-doctrinal aspects of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (§§10-23); (3) The church's mission of love and service in Asia (§§24-49). The main body of EA is framed by an introduction which captures the highlights of the synod process (§§1-4) and a conclusion that expyesse~, the pope's gratitude and encouragement along with a final prayer to Mary, "Mother of Asia" (§§50-51).The entire document is focused on "seeking to discern the Spirit's word to the churches in Asia" (§51). Asian Context Ecclesia in Asia devotes its chapter 1 to the concrete situation of .contemporary ~sia--her r.eligious, cultural, economic, social, political, and historical realities (§§5-9). This inductive approach, characteristic ~)f current Asian theological reflection, mirrors the method and experience of the Federation of Asian Bishops' January-February 2001 Kroeger . A Continuing Pentecost Conferences (FABC). The Asian church accepts that "a critical awareness of the diverse and complex realities of Asia is essential if the people of God on the continent are to respond to God's will for them in the new evangelization" (§5). As EA notes, "Asia is the earth's largest continent and is home to nearly two-thirds of the world's population"; its various peoples are "heirs to ancient cultures, religions, and traditions." One is amazed "at the sheer size of Asia's population and at the intricate mosaic of its many cultures, languages, beliefs, and traditions." Asia is "the cradle of the world's major religions" and "the birthplace of many other spiritual traditions" (§6). Economically, socially, and politically, "situations on the Asian continent are very diverse, defying any simple classification" (§7). EA highlights various concrete pastoral concerns: rapid change, migration, nuclear power, tourism, population growth, poverty, women, and a host of additional challenges. In this complex situation the church's one ambition is to continue Christ's mission of service and love (see §50). Her approach is that of mutual exchange and enrichment; thus, EA confirms "the importance of dialogue as a characteristic mode of the church's life in Asia" (§3). Mother Teresa of Calcutta is proposed as "an icon of the service to life which the church is offering in Asia" because of "her loving and selfless care of the poorest of the poor" (§7). This "chosen" continent of Asia, with all its immensity, diversity, and complexity, holds special meaning for the church. God's only-begotten Son "took flesh as an Asian" (§I); "Behold, the Savior of the world is born to us, born in Asia" (§2). Yes, Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church" (§5). This church thanks God "for choosing Asia as the earthly dwelling place of his incarnate Son" (§50; see §§2, 9, 20). This unique gift implies a task; the church commits her energies to making Jesus, his gospel of life, and his community the church truly "at home" (inculturated) in Asia and her peoples (§§9, 20). Theological Foundations Three chapters of.EA, focusing on Jesus and the Spirit, describe a type of doctrinal orientation to the church's Asian mission. Yet the manner of presentation is decidedly pastoral; it blends theologies "from below" and "from above." It reads easily, the flow is smooth, and inclusive language is partially employed. Some insights even Review for Religious " enjoy poetic expression: "Contemplating Jesus in his human nature, the peoples of Asia find their deepest questions answered, their hopes fulfilled, their dignity uplifted, and their despair conquered" (§14). The thematic of girl is frequently found in these "theological" chapters. Jesus the Savior is a gift to Asia; this faith-gift is to be both appropriated and proclaimed. "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" (§10). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs ~n Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (§31; see §20). The church in Asia must ask itself a probing question: How do we "share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (§19)? Proclaiming the Christian faith-gift meets unique challenges, particularly in the "multiethnic, multireligious and multicultural situation of Asia" (§21). Asia has its indigenous religions, soteriologies, and savior figures (see §§14, 19, 20). This reality demands a humble, dialogical stance on the part of the church; "proclamation is prompted not by sectarian impulse nor the spirit of proselytism nor any sense of superiority" (§20; see §§4, 31, 46). And yet this genuine respect and reverence for the church's dialogue partners "does not eliminate the need for the explicit proclamation of the gospel in its fullness" (§20; see §31). By her very identity the church is "a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed" (§ 19). Affirming the relevance of Jesus for Asia (§§1, 9, 10, 18, 50) demands a particular approach to proclamation. The church "needs to follow a pedagogy which will introduce people step by step to the full appreciation of the mystery." She should employ "narrative methods akin to Asian cultural forms" and follow "an evocative pedagogy, using stories, parables, and symbols so characteristic of Asian methodology in teaching." In a word, the church must "evangelize in a way that appeals to the sensibilities of Asian peoples" (§20). Engaging Asian peoples, their cultures, and their religions (FABC's triple dialogue) demands genuine commitment to inculturation (§§20-23) and interreligious dialogue (§§29-31). Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church." January-February 2001 Kroeger * ,4 Continuing Pentecost EA asserts that Christology is necessarily integrated with pneumatology as well as Trinitarian faith. It is the "uniqueness of Christ which gives him an absolute and universal significance" (§14); one cannot "separate the activity of the Holy Spirit from that of Jesus the Savior" (§.16). The Holy Spirit, "the prime agent of evangelization" (§17), is "an absolutely vital part of the mystery of Jesus and the salvation which he brings" (§15). Jesus and his Spirit are only adequately comprehended within,the "Trinity's plan of salvation" (§15); there are no two parallel economies of salvation. There are real, complex missiological questions, and the Asian Synod and Ecclesia in Asia attempted to face them. A Missionary Community The longest section of F~ (§§24-49) focuses on the church and her mission in the vast Asian continent. Four discernible themes emerge: church as communion for mission (§§24-28), dialogue (§§29-31), human promotion (§§32-41), and agents of evangelization (§§42-49). EA presents a vision as well as concrete approaches for mission; these emerge from a particular faith stance: "The question is not whether the church has something essential to say to the men and women of our time, but how she can say it clearly and convincingly" (§29). EA recognizes "the pressing need of the local churches in Asia to present the mystery of Christ to their peoples according to their cultural patterns and ways of thinking" (§20). "Communion ecclesiology" finds strong expression in EA. The church is a "privileged place of encounter" between God and people; her first purpose is "to be the sacrament of the inner union of the human person with God." She is also "the sacrament of the unity of the human race." This means that "communion and mission are inseparably connected [and] they interpenetrate and mutually imply each other." Communion is "both the source and fruit of mission." In short, "communion give~ rise to mission and mission is accomplished in communion" (§24). The church in Asia promotes internal communion and participation on many levels: with the successor of Peter, among various sister local churches, dioceses, basic ecclesial communities ("a positive feature Of the church's evangelizing.activity"), renewal movements, the Catholic Eastern churches,, and other. Christian churches (see §§25~2:7). Internal communion emanates outward Review for Religious ¯ toward other groups throughout Asia: the variety of peoples, cultures, and religions with whom the church shares life (§25), churches and peoples in mainland China, North Korea, and the ex- Soviet territories of Asia (§28). Regional and continental associations of bishops that foster communion (for example, FABC) are recognized and praised (§26), but their profound insights are never directly quoted. ¯ .An inherent demand of "communion ecclesiology" is dialogue. This "desire for dialogue . . . is not simply a strategy for peaceful coexistence among peoples; it is an essential part of the church's mission, ¯ . . a veritable vocation for the church" (§29). A particularly helpful section is devoted to interreligious dialogue (§31), seen as % part of the church's evangelizing mission, an expression of the mission adgentes." The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." Following the lead of Nostra aerate, "the Magna Carta of interreligious dialogue for our times," the church in Asia is called to a double fidelity: to affirm her "belief that the fullness of salvation comes from Christ alone" and to gladly acknowledge "whatever is true and holy in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam as a reflection of that Truth which enlightens all people." Interreligious dialogu~ seeks "mutual advancement [and] the elimination of prejudice, intolerance, and misunderstandings" (§31). Dialogue demands will only increase with passing years. Persons must be formed to have "a mature and convinced Christian faith" that qualifies them "to engage in genuine interreligious dialogue." They need to be "deeply immersed in the mystery of Christ [and] happy in their faith community." The call to dialogue requires the church in Asia "to provide suitable models of interreligious dialogue." In the dialogue endeavor it is imperative "to revitalize prayer and contemplation" and to give witness to "the great Christian traditions of asceticism and mysticism" (§31). The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." January-Febr~ary 2001 Kroeger ¯ A Continuing Pentecost Chapter 6 treats human promotion and church social teaching. S~iving to build a "civilization of love," the church views all human development not only as a "technical or economic question; it is fundamentally a human and moral question" (§32). An integral, holistic approach to evangelization is employed, encompassing the areas of human dignity (§33), preferential love for the poor (§34), healthcare (§36), education (§37), peacemaking (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). In these diverse fields the church resists "the culture of death" in accord with her vision of"the gospel of life" (§35). Agents of Evangelization Chapter 7, titled "Witnesses to the Gospel," focuses on the church's missionary identity in Asia. The church strives to be a credible witness because "people today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories"; in the Asian context "people are more persuaded by holiness of life than by intellectual argument" (§42). EA asserts that it is "a genuinely religious person [who] readily wins respect and a following in Asia" (§23). Gospel witness in Asia needs holy men and women who themselves are "on fire with the love of Christ and burning with zeal to make him known more widely, loved more deeply, and followed more closely." Why? "A fire can only be lit by something that is itself on fire"; Christian witnessing demands "a true missionary spirituality of prayer and contemplation" (§23). Asian peoples, especially the youth, manifest this "deep thirst for spiritual values" (§6). In a word, living Christian mission in Asia incorporates and, in fact, demands "contemplative action and active contemplation" (§23). EA addresses a v.ariety of gospel witnesses: pastors (§43), religious and missionaries (§44), theologians (§22), laypers6ns (§45), families (§46), young people (§47), and those whose apostolate is social communications, "the areopagus of the modern age" (§48). Striking insights are often presented: "People in Asia need to see the clergy not just as charity workers and institutional administrators, but as men whose minds and hearts are set on the deep things of the Spirit" (§43). "The synod fathers were most concerned that the church should be a participatory church in which no one feels excluded, and they judged the wider Review for Religious participation of women in the life and mission of the church in Asia to be an especially pressing need" (§45). The pope encourages and thanks missionaries (§§20, 42, 44, 50), urging "the church in Asia to send forth missionaries, even though she herself needs laborers in the vineyard" (§44). Mission is to be central to each local church; local "missionary societies of apostolic life, characterized by their special commitment to the mission ad genres, ad exteros, and ad vitam" are strongly encouraged (§44). EA calls upon "the great host of Asian martyrs, old and new,. ¯. to teach the church in Asia what it means to bear witness." (§49). Additional Emphases The Asian Synod surfaced crucial questions facing local churches in Asia; EA reflects several of these pastoral and missionary concerns. The question of Jesus' Asianness surfaces in various discussions¯ "Jesus is often perceived as foreign to Asia. It is paradoxical that most Asians tend to regard Jesus--born on Asian soil--as a Western rather than an Asian figure" (§20). "It is indeed a mystery why the Savior of the world, born in Asia, has until now remained largely unknown to the people of the continent" (§2). To address and overcome this reality, the church must open herself to "new and surprising ways in which the face of Jesus might be presented in Asia" (§20). How can Jesus be effectively proclaimed-- bearing an "Asian face"? The subject of religious freedom arises because in various places in Asia "Christians are not allowed to practice their faith freely" (§8); "explicit proclamation is forbidden, and religious freedom is denied or systematically restricted" (§23). Christians are forced "to live their faith in the midst of restrictions or even the total denial of freedom" (§28). Governments are enjoined to "guarantee religious freedom for all their citizens" (§28), assure "immunity from coercion" (§23) in religious matters, and recognize "the right to freedom of conscience and religion and the other basic human rights" (§34). Analysis and comparison between the content of EA and the decades of pastoral reflection by Asian bishops (FABC) reveals many similarities. 'Since 1974, in its document "Evangelization in Modern-Day Asia," the FABC has promoted the local church's triple dialogue with Asia's peoples, cultures, and religions; this vision is January-Februat.~ 2001 Kroeger * A Continuing Pentecost Inculturation received much attention during the synod. repeatedly found in F~ (see §§1, 15, 18,.20, 21, 24). Again, the FABC pastoral priorities enunciated over the years, particularly the focus on the family, women and the girl-child, youth, ecology, and the displaced (see FABC VI:lS) are also highlighted by ~ (§~34, 37, 41, 46, 47). FABC itself is mentioned (§§2, 3, 26, 31), though none of its fine work is directly quoted or even noted in the copious endnotes. The theme of inculturation received much attention during the synod, and certain particular areas were identified as requiring concentrated focus: "theological reflection, liturgy, the formation of priests and religious, eatechesis, and spirituality" (§21). Central to inculturating the faith is the biblical word, the message of salvation, the sacred text; Sacred Scripture is proposed as ."the basis for all missionary proclamation, catechesis, preaching, and styles of spirituality" (§22). One may inquire about criteria for authentic inculturation; ,EA notes: "The test of true inculturation is whether people become more committed to their Christian faith because they perceive it more clearly with the eyes of their own culture" (§22). The Christian virtue of compassion repeatedly surfaces in Ed (for example, §§11, 12, 14, 20, 45, 51). The apostolic exhortation is correct in expressing the church's mission.in terms of this appealing focus. Presenting Jesus as "the compassionate friend of the poor" (§20) will find a resonance and reception among Asians. In the ' church's mission of love and service, women evangelizers contribute greatly "to bringing the compassionate Jesus, the healer and reconciler, to Asian people, especially the poor and marginalized" (§45). Jesus, the God-man, was "close to the poor, the forgotten, and the lowly"; "he wept for a dead friend [and] welcomed children"; "divine compassion had never been so immediately accessible" (§11). As the church in Asia enters the new millennium, she faces some demanding challenges. EA highlights some importfint apostolates: women (§§7, 34, 45), you.th (§§6, 47.), nuclear power (§§7, 38), peace~naking and reconciliation (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). The authenticity of the church's "mission of service and love" (§50) will indeed be Review for Religious tested; will it produce "a great harvest of faith . in this vast and vital continent" (§1) of Asia? Gratitude and Optimism Ecclesia in Asia concludes as it began on a clear note of optimism and gratitude. "Blessed be God for the peoples of Asia, so rich in their diversity yet one in their yearning for peace and fullness of life" (§50). With committed faith, "the church in Asia joyfully makes her pilgrim way into the third millennium" (§50). "Mary, model of all disciples and I~right star of evangelization, . . . look tenderly upon the church of your Son planted on Asian soil. ¯ O Mary, mother of the New Creation and mother of Asia, pray for us, your children, now and always!" (§51). In this m6od of gratitude and optimism, the local churches of Asia accept the Holy Father's gift: Ecclesia in ~sia. Its contents are a mixture of the old and the new (see Mt 13:52), a summation of Asian.reflection and insights in the Vatican II era, a presentation of the missionoagenda for Asia's faith communities, a program for evangelization iri the new millennium. All in all, EA is a much-appreciated gift. Its treasures need opening in the coming years and decades; its dream for the church--God's holy people--beckons implementation; its theme--abundant life in Jesus the Savior-- requires contemplative action. Yes, Jesus' Asian disciples affirm that the Holy 'Spirit, who moved upon Asia in times past, "moves now among Asian Christians, strengthening the witness of their faith among the peoples, cultures, and religions of the continent" (§ 18). Contemplating God's salvific deeds and wonders during the Easter Vigil liturgy, the universal chh~ch proclaims in the Exsultet: "Rejoice, O Mother Church!" In similar fashion, th~ local churches in Asia' acclaim 'God's marvels in theirmidst; they joyfully affirm the Asian Synod event as a "celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). They pray that the proclarriation and subsequent internalization of Ecclesia in Asia will confirm the church in her servant mission to bring Christ's love and abundant life On 10:10) to Asia and her peoples. Rejoice, O Asia-Church! .~anua~y-February 2001 vocation PHILIP ARMSTRONG Who Is a Brother? I am not sure the title should ask who. Maybe it should ask: What is a brother? People have been trying to frame an unambiguous answer for ages, and in the meantime new applications of the word brother have compounded the issue. My interest is to define, as best I can, that rare creature in the Roman Catholic Church known as a religious brother. What does the ordinary word brother usually mean today? Looking at that may help us comprehend ,similarities and differences of the term as applied to men who, by the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, commit themselves to what is commonly called religious life. What Is a Brother? Male siblings of the same parents are called brothers. People's close friends who are male are' sometimes compared to a brother: "He's like a brother to me." Sometimes males call one another brother when they do not know the other's name but feel some affinity toward him. The Great Depression is characterized by one of its slogans, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" In some seminary programs a man is addressed as Philip Armstrong CSC, of the Brothers of Holy Cross, wrote on mission and the vows for our September 2000 issue. His address remains P.O. Box 460; Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Review for Religious Brother, or its Latin form Frater, when he has achieved a certain level of preparation for the ordained priesthood. This use of the term creates confusion over lay/clerical identity. Volunteer organizations may use the term brother in identifying a mentoring relationship between a man and a boy, as in "Big Brothers." African Americans use the term brother to identify males of their race, using the word to indicate the relationship existing by reason of their common African origin and the consequent bonds that solidify them in matters of importance: "One of the brothers sold his house and moved." Some small religious denominations, particularly the more evangelical or those built on sociocultural ties, refer to any male fellow believer as Brother. "Next Sunday Brother Anderson will pass the plate at our service." In the Bible, Jesus uses brother to signify equality among people: "If you are bringing a gift to the altar and remember that your brother has anything against you . " Peter asks, "How often must I forgive my brother?" The terms brother and sister are used generically by church-related personnel in addressing members of the congregation: "My brothers and sisters in Christ." The common thread through all these uses may help us understand, too, why some dedicated men within the Catholic Church are called brothers. There is interpersonal relationship and open trust not based on kinship. The others have the same values, have similar goals, and use the same general methods to achieve their goals. This intangible affinity among brothers (or sisters) does not rely on blood ties yet depends on that relationship to provide a name for this closeness. The substance of such a relationship is: "That man accepts me, confronts me, counsels me, helps me as if I were his own brother." The image of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. Jesus' way of relating with men and women, whether they were righteous or sinful, offers many examples of what it means to be a brother to someone. Simply put, a brother is a man who at all times acts ds a blood brother would act. The Brother in the Church How did the term brother for a vowed religious in the Roman Catholic Church originally surface? Quite likely it arose from relationships in blood families: father, mother, brother, sister. The picture.would include the fact that few were educated as we define education, with those who possessed some "book knowledge" being Janltary-Februaly 2001 Armstron~ ¯ Who Is a Brother? considered natural counselors and mediators. Those representing the people before God and using their knowledge to help them understand and practice their faith could reasonably be called Father, because providing for his family and counseling them are importan~ tasks of the father of a family. Those exercising positions of leadership in communities of vowed women could be called Mother. Those who followed the lead of these fathers or mothers, who assisted; who undertook to fulfill the tasks related to the group's ministries, were called sisters or brothers. Over the years men religious who did not feel called to priesthood, but who assisted clerics in their ministry of preaching, teaching, or sacramental service, were called brothers--like male siblings helping their father do the work of a family farm or business. Help.ers somewhat behind the scenes, they were generally less-educated men doing the more hidden or more mundane and practical tasks connected with the priests' mission of sacred mediation and of education. In time brothers became in people's minds the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water" whose silent and nearly invisible presence was invaluable, essential, though largely taken for granted by the clergy and laity alike. By rule these men remained politically sequestered within their congregations, ha~ing no voice in choosing their leaders and not eligible to become leaders themselves. They prayed much, often apart from their clerical confreres, who in cloister or corridor would pass them by like supportive, exemplary specters. After the social and cultural disruption of the French Revolution, many groups of nonordained but vowed men religious sprang up through the initiative of bishops and parish priests who were in a position to support the development: These apostolic religious were to educate the untutored youth being lost to the church. In contrast to earlier brothers, these men were at least minimally educated and were dedicated to a professional life similar to that of the ordained. For more than a century such groups were formed, and their members went wherever there was a cry for Catholic education, even beyond the borders of their native lands. These became more known to stciety" at large, if not muct~ more visible, by their focus on schools . A concurrent reality that did no favors to many groups of brothers was their unwitting and unplanned gravitation toward ~an identity more clerical than lay. Many brothers, whether as members of laycongregations or as an arm of a clerical community, dressed Review for Religious like clerics and carried out ministries supportive of clerical min-istries. These brothers, nearly indistinguishable from priests, were extended the rights and privileges that a Christian society accorded the priesthood. As a result, a mindset developed among the brothers out of which they identified themselves more with their clerical associate~ than with the laity. It was the laity, though, from a strictly ecclesial perspective, (o whom brothers in fact related more closely. True, they were indeed set apart from the laity by their vowed commitment within a particular congregation approved by Rome. But their external, visible ministries did nothing to project a specific image of brother as distinct from the clerical, patriarchal image they had lived With for so long. "The Terrible Twos" of a Century After World War II and Vatican Council II, both productive of cultural and social upheaval (in a way, the century's "terrible twos"), all vowed religious were challenged to reassess how faithfully their founding purpose and their ministries responded to the newly emerging needs of both church and society and to renew and adapt accordingly. As communities they were to open themselves to the "signs of the times" that hinted at potentially diverging directions in life and mission for vowed religious. Congregations of brothers and mixed congregations (clerics and significant numbers of brothers) found themselves affected by the momentous challenges put before them by the church. Many members departed, fewer young men joined the community, and those who remained grew older, began retiring, and soon were dying unreplaced. These realities were running parallel to the clear and urgent call issued by the Vatican Council to the laity to exert by right a more prominent and active role in the church. Education was one of the first areas affected. As the numbers of brothers declined at a pace impossible to retard, lay people began to fill their places in schools. Along with their declining numbers and increasing age, brothers were suddenly challenged on the level of their profession as teachers and administrators even while they and others were waking to the fact they are not clerics. For brothers the question of the day became: Well, then, who are we, and what is our proper role now in the church and the world? Answers have not come quickly or easily, and some would argue they have not yet come at all. [---3~3-~- January-Februa~. 2001 Armstrong * WlTo Is a Brother? Immense energy has been expended reflecting on, discussing, and determining the identity of the brother for the church today. Some of that energy may have seeped over into trying to determine the brother's role in church and society. In neither case, however, does there appear to be widespread satisfaction with the results, and many retain a confused and hazy notion of the brotherhood as a way of life in the church. It does not help that some of the least informed and articulate on the matter are found among bishops and priests. Worse yet, many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. The foundations have crumbled on which some based their sense of self-definition. What will it take to pour new and indestructible footings? A Beginning Perhaps a judicious mix of the old and the new is the best place to begin forming a relevant and appropriate definition of a brother in today's church and world. Retaining acknowledged and presumably nonnegotiable hallmarks of the brother's state of life, but blending and refining them in the crucible of postmodern experience, intuition, and prayerful discernment, one might descriptively define a brother somethii~g like this: A brother is a lay religious ¯ committed to living a common life ¯ and consecrated, by public profession of the vows of religion, ¯ to witnessing to the presence of God in his life and in the world. ¯ He reveals his identity more by example than explanation, ¯ more by doing than defining. ¯ In short, he relates and acts like a brother, ¯ to the exclusion of no one.¯ As an equal, ¯ and as supported by like-minded associates in community, ¯ he is free to respond in a variety of practical ways, ¯ living and working fraternally with others ¯ in promoting and preserving human dignity and justice ¯ through his prophetic stance ¯ and professional expertise. The nonnegotiables of this definition consist in identification more with the laity than w~th the clergy;living in community; publicly professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; standing as prophetic witnesses to gospel vaiues; and reaching out in service to others. The postmodern experiential components are: more emphasis on a bold and perceptible expression of what being a brother means from the inside; a clear sense of reaching out to others in need as "brothering" them as a blood brother would; serving others out of a conviction of universal human equality under God; openness to the Review for Religious many forms of ministry to which brothers are free to respond by reason of being unrestrained by the ecclesiastical and cultural expectations imposed on ordained ministers; and, within community parameters, rightly seeking and achieving professional expertise in fields of interest and competence. Postmodern? Experiential? Is this more verbal gimmickry, or do these concepts add something substantial to the recipe for today's brother in the church and the world? I believe that both terms are appropriate and relevant. Postmodern is a term used by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists to refer generally to the period following the lengthy modern era that began in the 1500s and ended in the 1960s with the cultural revolution we in the United States tend to associate with events such as the Vietnam war and anti-establishment protests and also with Vatican II and its aftermath. There is no question that the events and the changed moods and understandings of the final four decades of the 20th century have had an immense impact on religious life, some of it distressingly disruptive, some creatively challenging. Experiential surely applies by reason of the mandate of Vatican II's document Perfectae caritatis and the Norms addressed to religious communities asking them to adapt and update their constitutions and rules as necessary, almost literally "refounding" their congregations. Experimentation through changing or discarding certain anomalous or anachronistic disciplinary elements in religious life was to be permitted for a reasonable time, normally eight to twelve years. The religious garb fell under this category, as did the daily schedule, areas and modes of accountability, the exercise of authority, forms and styles of prayer, and so forth. This experimentation was meant to contribute to a newly framed definition of each congregation's giftedness for today's church. Brothers who persevered in the religious life during these years had to respond creatively to the challenges of the day just to remain faithful to themselves as persons, let alone as religious in community. They were challenged to become more observant of evolving needs in the church and society and to search for w. ays to place their congregation's talents and resoui'ces at the disposal of Many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? the church. And they, some for the first time, had to go about this discernment out of a conscious acknowledgment that they were definitely not clerics. Still, if the brothers were not clerics, then who were they? Somewhat as the Christian adolescent needs at some point to confront the faith infused through infant baptism, the postmodern religious brother has had to deal with whatever motivated his entering religious life years ago. It has been a true moment of conversion for him, a fresh confirmation of the validity of his choice of a way of life. Without this process a new sense of identity leading to broader availability would have been impossible for him. Most religious have found this exercise challenging and regenerating, reminding them that they had in fact committed themselves first and foremost not to a structure, not to a profession, not to any particular members within the organization, but to God. Whatever permutations were introduced into the externals over the years, the substantial reality has remained immutably in place, and that is enough. But simply defining one's identity is not enough. Unless conviction and a comfortable acceptance of what it means to be a brother are internalized, there is little hope of either acquiring or cultivating the openness necessary for finding new and challenging directions in mission and ministry, for living community, or for attracting others to embrace the same way of life. What Will It Take? Let me personalize this conversion experience even further, because for each individual brother identity is a matter of deep concern. Unless I can perceive myself as a valid, needed, and effective player of a unique role among many roles in the church, I cannot muster and sustain the conviction that will provide the energy I require both to pursue my way of life and to face the exigencies it inevitably entails. As essential as this perception is, it alone cannot support my efforts. Unless the church, both in its hierarchy and in its wider membership, can be convinced that the brothers' way of life is important for the church and the world, I by myself will be able to do little except go about my daily ministry and life in community in the vague hope that the witness I give to the world is somehow being diffused like a healthy mist settling on persons, places, and Review for Religious events near or far. I could not do this alone. I need help from within the church. Yet, if appropriate authority at even the highest levels is struggling to understand the identity and role of the brother in the church today, from what source will the definition come? Who is the "credible authority" that will provide it? The answer is simple: the brother himself. Why not? We brothers may for the most part not be trained theologians or men steeped in the history and development of the church, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline, but we have a lifetime of experience being brothers that should count for something. We have evolved together with our vocational call, responding to challenges along the way that have forced us to question our identity, or purpose, and our reason for remaining brothers. Our prayer life, presumably "alive and active over the years, has kept us in touch with the One to whose call we have responded daily, and the resulting relationship has, we would hope, matured to the point where we can be at ease with our interpretation not only of who we are as brothers, but of how each of us is personally a witness to the reign of God. why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift? We should--and until we do we will continue to mill about, lost, confused, an.d impotent, within vague definitions of prophetic witness and ministerial service in the church. Until we are perceived by others as relevant and competent and are accepted as equal players on the field of evangelization, we will constitute a "loose cannon" threat to the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and receive little support or affirmation, nor will young men be encouraged who may be considering the lay religious life as a desirable option for their own futures. Why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift ? A Corporate Effort Beyond the effort each brother must exert to clari~ for himself what it means today to be a brother and to fashion a revived sense of January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? mission based on renewed identity, there remains, I suggest, a need for a corporate endeavor among all brothers to invite, support, and help implement a new era, a "second coming," for men in the lay religious life. Even then it is not brothers alone who must feel responsible for resurrecting both awareness of and interest in the brotherhood. In the Vatican, in the hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, and in the lay membership of the church, a fresh attempt must be made to bring about a renewed understanding of the vital role brothers play in the church as an institution and as the community known as the people of God. Because the truly authentic essence of brotherhood in religious life has to be articulated by brothers, it is they who must be the primary educators, as historically they have been in their numbers since the foundation of their congregations. Ready teachers, of course, must encounter willing students or the lesson will go unlearned and unappreciated, leaving the church and the world the poorer for it. And so brothers must seek and gain the confidence of church authority through their expertise in theologizing about and articulating the experiential essence of the lay religious life. This aim can be achieved through two practical steps. First, the theological reflection, even if informally undertaken, must unfold in a deliberate and orderly manner. Second, a path must be opened, a clear and smooth thoroughfare of effective communication between brothers and the rest of the church. To accomplish .this, good public relations will be required, for brothers have such a history of invisibility and silence that any change, if it attracts attention at all, will tend to create or exacerbate confusion in people, if not suspicion. Brothers must learn how to harness modern communication technologies and get assistance from the media, because the teachers will be implementing the most important lesson plan they have ever devised. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, brothers must continue preparing for their vocational parousia through personal effort at educating themselves to the point of absolute confidence and conviction. Nothing less will succeed in reeducating the church, let alone the world, as to the gift the lay religious life for men is now and can be to the whole of humankind. Out of what definition ought brothers to operate in the Review for Religion, s meantime? I suggest, once again, that the italic passage above on page 34 constitutes a solid working definition, one that incorporates both nonnegotiable expectations of male lay religious and elements that seem essential in a postmodern world. O~r own experience as brothers has confirmed the validity of the definition. Let us at the very least seize its substance and begin the task of refining and developing it. The task is immense and will require every bit of our faith and hope--and our perseverance. Were it not for the One who is author of our faith and our hope and who inspires us to persevere, we would find ourselves in the nearly untenable position of expecting to increase understanding of and enthusiasm for a kind of religious witness and ministry that relates directly to neither the clergy nor the laity. Happily, the God who created the world itself and made life increase and multiply can create new little worlds within it that can grow in understanding and age and grace. It is that possibility in which we place our greatest hope, and it is that God to whom we look for its realization. Postseason Christmas is dismantled again, syncopated lights from shaggy tree transported to basement. It's time to mine the darkness of these shrunken days for fire-feeding coal , and to scan the night skies, each quadrant strung with twinkling lights stretching Christmas hope across the long winter coming. Patricia Schaapp ~M .~anuary-February 2001 DONALD MACDONALD Vocational Being d note about the cleaning and restoration of Sandro Botticelli's Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child gives an account of the artist, his painting, and its restoration. "[Now we can see] Botticelli's purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject. It is this perfect union of means and meaning that makes the painting so powerful."' To speak of "this perfect union of means and meaning" is superlative praise. In most human endeavor there is a gap between means and. meaning. Achievement hardly ever matches the intention. Brush strokes on canvas, notes from a cello, lines on a page, the lie of a golf ball--rarely do means and meaning synchronize to a person's satisfacfon. Environment and Faith From the perspective of art appreciation, Botticelli is said to have done justice to his subject and himself to an incomparable degree. The power of his painting confirms this, If the union of means and meaning reached such perfection from the artist's view-point, what might be said of his achievement from the perspec-tive of a viewer's faith? What if I, the viewer, adore Christ now in our Lady's company, aware that to paint Christ and the kneeling Virgin does not just capture an abstract ideal, but real people, liv-ing still, to whom I can relate? With dynamic faith I the viewer can be drawn into (not just to) the scene as an integral part of a present Donald Macdonald SMM continues writing about aspects of the reli-gious vocation. His address is Montfort House; Darnley Road; Barrhead, Glasgow; G78 1TA Scodand, U.IC Revie~ for Religious reality. By faith I am at one with the meaning in a way I could never hope to be with just the painter's means. "The purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject" invites and challenges my faith to express itself in reflective ado-ration. The painting directs me to consider what is within me from the viewpoint of faith. The gap between means and meaning is then evident, but so is the inspiration to adore from the center of my being. The beauty of the picture has aesthetic appeal and more, showing what might be if I were fully alert to the wonder of an incarnational faith. I, too, can do what Mary does now, for I am one with her in Christ through baptism. A growing symmetry between means and meaning results in an integrated life. "The beauty of wonder caught in Botticelli's Adoration of the Virgin, reflects what is really there. It may have spectacular appeal to the imagination, but it is not imaginary. Glimpsing this wonder and trying to answer its challenge may suggest consecrated reli-gious life. Do I need to give myself radically, as did Mary, before its wonder compels adoration? Before I adore I must first see and be taken out of myself. This means that I should take note of the environment and any clutter which inhibits insight. Only then can I see what means I have at hand by which I can pursue meaning expressed in adoration. It is neither negative nor defeatist to see in the environment much that is harmful to a life of disciplined faith. The concern for God and neighbor through which authentic faith finds mean-ing lags behind other priorities. Where the current media do not ridicule or dismiss faith, they may actively oppose it whenever they feel threatened by a lived and living faith. There are then no Marquis of Queensberry Rules to govern the fight, and writers, editors, and producers know it. In its many forms--radio, film, TV, internet, print--the media cross continents. Cherished, prac-tical values are often trivialized, and the absence of reticence often coarsens what should be held in great respect. Skillful contempo-rary presentations and inveterate noise may deaden an individual's capacity to respond in wonder to the worldview seen in the Gospels and in Botticelli. Many media movers and shakers "dirty the flower with muddy hands" whenever spiritual or religious values appear on their horizons. A contemporary illustration of this is in a national newspaper correspondent's account of the presentation in London of the Sony Gold Awards for radio broadcasting. "IX] won the music presen- January-February 2001 Macdonald ¯ Vocational Being tation award . By the time he had finished his acceptance speech, he had made half the Great Room of the Grosvenor House long, if not for the grave, then at least for the cool embrace of silence. It wasn't just that he swore. Many people who stepped up that night to receive their awards displayed scan( knowledge of any noun or verb longer than four letters. The effing and blinding was ferocious, the badinage it embellished was desperate . I have sel-dom sat so long and celebrated so little."2 This is not from some drinking den after hours or some adolescent playground, but from a prestigious hotel in a capital city, sponsored by an international company. These are the winners, not the losers, evidendy cocooned in their pei'sonal world, free to pursue their own agendas regard-less of others' feelings. Obviously they succeed, with prizes to prove it. Such behavior coarsens whatever it gets near. The name Jesus Christ in that company is invariably an expletive or a joke. Many feed on that diet and develop a taste for it, and so lack the nour-ishment to grow in Christ. This is a major reason for lack of reli-gious practice generally and for the small number of persons willing to commit themselves to a life of religious consecration. Also, it is something I need to consider if I am to find the means to give myself in adoration through the perspective of faith. How much of this has a claim on me? The evidence of hearing, if I am blessed with it, is that contemporary care to be "politically correct" in speech goes hand in hand with a massive rise in offensive lan-guage, not least among the educated. The coarsening of sensibil-ity by elements of the media makes it harder to find and faithfully use the means to achieve mature meaning as the gospel would have us do. Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. I am not made.of stone--how much have I succumbed to this environment? Necessary Means Living in such an environment, I need something practical that can help me maintain a Christian perspective, both encour-aging me and challenging me. IfI have that "something," I have a means for pursuing meaning, the fullness of which, for religious liv-ing, is adoration that engages my whole being. Several practical suggestions could be made, but assimilating Scripture is one that can help, both in judging society and guiding Review for Religious me through it. Scripture, after all, is the accumulated experience of people trying to relate their society to God. More particularly, it was largely the original inspiration behind monastic and reli-gious life. Monastic life began as a statement about contemporary society and the primacy of God. It has been said that God is either 6f sole concern or of no concern. After hearing Scripture speak and then seeing that many contemporary values either opposed or limited the freedom of faith, many persons became aware that they had to cut the cable between themselves and society. Writing of the origin of monastic life in the 4th century, a commentator notes that "what is utterly clear., is the pulsing life the sacred texts give to the daily existence of the early monks. ¯ They serve as a basic frame of reference . In. memorization, rumination, and medita-tion of Scripture, words penetrated the deepest recesses of the soul and created ne~v possibilities and challenges.''3 The Spirit who so energized the word that it came ablaze with meaning and inspiration for those pioneers can do as much for me now if I do some "humble loving listening to him who speaks. It is in fact by the light and with the strength of the word of God that my own vocation can be discovered and understood, loved, and followed and my own mis-sion carried out. So true is this that the person's entire existence finds its unifying and radical meaning in being the terminus of God's word.''4 This is a colossal claim for Scripture, namely, that all strands of life can be brought together, and meaning can be recognized at the depth of my being, if only I am attuned to Scripture. The claim is for ontological meaning in my being's depths. This guar-antees a fusion of means and meaning. Scripture is a superb coun-terweight to much in current society which could keep me from God. As the light of the word slowly dawns, adoration may well be my being's basic response. Perhaps never before in the history of the church has Scripture been available to so many. The means of communication undoubt-edly facilitate this, but this does not mean that, with the media present everywhere, the Christian message is too. In my wide experience of monastic and religious life, home and abroad, for thirty years, I have yet to be convinced that this is so. To what Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. .~anuary-February 2001 MacdonhM ¯ Vocational Being 442 degree can we speak of "the pulsing life of the sacred texts" influ-encing consecrated.life generally? How many understand what it is to be "a terminus of the word of God"? I have never forgotten Protestant scholar Frederick C. Grant's comment in 1966 on Dei Verbum, the Vatican Council's Constitution on Divine Revelation: "Why not tell people what joyful discoveries lie before them in the Scriptures, what feasts of learning, what inspiration and encouragement, what sound teach-ing, what help in facing the problems and frustrations of life? As the prophet shouted, 'Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price'" (Is 55:1).s How many individually or collectively "shout" or reflect such enthusi-asm from personal conviction? Here is a superb means to assimi-late meaning, but how many habitually make it their own? Grant's approach may yet be rather new to us. It may take generations before Scripture is sufficiently bedded down among us to produce such results. Scholarship, excellent at the highest level, has perhaps not found a way of enlightening us. Source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, reader-response, structural lin-guistics, and so forth make an ever lengthening list; and so people nibble among the commentators and do not get round to assimi-lating the text. In a sad comment on his university studies, a priest spoke of "the acid rain of biblical criticism" and its effect on him vis-a-vis our Lord. If I am hooked already on Scripture and well know what Grant experienced, then current biblical commentaries and journals can help me. Regrettably, though, many of these scholarly materials seem to lack the warmth that could come from a community's fervently.shared faith; they seem not to reflect the wondrous joy that our risen Lord brought to the early church. Has any English writer, for example, during the past twenty years or so, been so fascinated withSt. Paul (man and writer) as to claim failure to do him justice if Paul does not leap from his pages and invade the reader's imagination? This is Richard Holmes's purpose in a superb biography of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wants Coleridge's voice to be heard and to domi-nate the book. (His own edition of Coleridge's poetry functioned as ~a controlling influence on the biography.) Holmes serves the poet far better than any Christian writer has served--unless I missed it--St. Paul. In the seminary, not uncommonly, Paul is approached as an Review for Religqous intellectual problem, and the student is made to jump hurdles, to no very clear purpose. Scholars give the impression of seeing Paul as a maverick, like an unconventional student the disapproving examiner never knows how to place: "He is here to be examined, and clearly is not quite one of us!" This is a pity. (Bonhoeffer believed, incidentally, that the Sermon on the Mount could never be lived in a university context.) Paul is, of course, larger than any one pen can capture, but, rooted in Christ and in people and in his own evident humanity, his experi-ence is a genuine way of fusing both means and meaning in an authentically consecrated life. No one seeking inspiration in Scripture need read a line of St. Paul. The Law, the Prophets, and the rest of the Old Testament spread a lavish table. In the Synoptics, the sharp observation to be found in a saying of Christ or in a parable can open up much to me, as can pondering the weight of wonder of a phrase of Christ in John's Gospel. One needs only to experience them to feel their power, to bring means and meaning together. Whatever the form of prayer, wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Adoration There can be no one way or best way 'of being a religious. There are presumably as many ways to God as there are human beings called to him. But, as I have suggested, if we need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then we have found meaning. Taken out of myself by what I glimpse in faith, I respond in adoration as well as I can with all that is in me. Much in contemporary society obscures this glimpse, but Scripture can be a countervailing practical means to realize meaning. The church and monastic and religious life have for centuries found their deep-est reality through the Gospels. To adore, I need only to see in faith; then, following the rhythm of my breathing, I give myself to God giving himself to me. This is true, whatever the situation or however I feel. I always return to, though actually I never leave, that center. My being is engaged. The insight is increasingly more simple. Whatever the form of prayer (sacramental, liturgical, community, or individual), ~anuary-Februa~. 2001 Macdonald * Vocational Being wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Whatever is said, sung, or signed expresses this. Far from making me a maverick on the edge of a group, adoration invites me to be at one with the church in the worship of Christ. If habitual adoration underlies all I do, I can give myself faith-fully to whatever the present moment asks of me, yet not be taken over by it, since my identity does not depend on what I do or where I am. There is always, in faith, another dimension to real-ity not limited to the frame of circumstance. I function at a sim-ple level, trying t6 be at one with God's will, which, of course, is the purpose of monastic or religious life. In attempting this, I approximate the purity of line and color by which the painter real-izes his meaning. Whatever I am engaged in and whoever is with me, insofar as I adore I can recognize the gift of God and who it is speaking to me. Then, as John's Gospel promises, I can tap into a rich stream. On the other hand, pastoral plans, catechetical pro-grams, and personal apostolates are channels that may be awash by turns with limpid idealism or murky disillusion. If I invest in them, my "salvation" depends on,their success or failure; but, if I give myself to them in the light of adoration, I will receive both pru-dence and courage to persevere faithfully far from the criterion of "what's in it for me." Risen Lord I can summarize these reflections, perhaps, with a comment from M.R. Vincent's preface to his Commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. More than one hundred years ago he indicated what might be found in a letter written from prison nineteen hun-dred years earlier. His words are relevant today: "While the char-acter of the epistle is ethical . . . it gives no countenance to resolving the gospel into a mere code of morals. The moral inspi-ration which it represents has its impelling center in a person and a life, not in a code. The personal Christ is its very heart. It exhibits Christ in Paul rather than before him. Christ is not a subject of controversy; he is not simply a pattern of conduct. He is the sum of Paul's life. Th~ view of the resurrection which this letter pre-sents is a standing rebuke to the superficial conception and loose grasp which the church too often brings to that truth. The resur-rection of the.Lord is to Paul a present informing energy and not only a recovery anda hope. He would know the power of the res- Review for Religious urrection now and here as well as hereafter. He not only lives according to Christ's life; he lives it I.n. Christ he is in the sphere of infinite possibilities.''6 Here surely is the fusion of means and meaning. As Paul keeps growing, by Christ's life, into Christ, he breaks out of prison in a letter of encouragement, alive with the light of his risen Lord. Not death itself, the ultimate in defeat and separation, can come between him and his risen Lord, who is for him "a present inform-ing energy and not only a recovery and a hope." The stance of adoration is not that of the self-made individual over against the universe, with a supporting cast of witless nobodies lost on the plains below. Life has "its impelling center in a person and a life" and therefore takes meaning from our once crucified and now risen Lord. In Christ I am lost in the wonder of it all, a new creation in view of whom I see and what I am given moment by moment from before time began. Literally, it beggars description. The silence of adoration, as it deepens, is eloquent though inadequate response. Held by the prese~nce of my risen Lord in every situation not excluding death, I too believe that in Christ I am in the sphere of infinite possibilities. He it is who gives meaning to life. Insofar as I allow him to make me his, I live to some purpose and try to express this in what I do. Assimilating Scripture is a superb means toward such maturity. Speechless adoration from the core of my being may become habitual, in view of the wondrousness of the One I am graced to see. I have not the means to ~:eplicate Botticelli's Adoring Virgin and Child on canvas, but from the per-spective of faith I am awash in that same wonder. Notes ~ National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2000. 2 Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph, London, 9 May 2000. 3 Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 298-299. 4 John Paul II, Pastores dabo ~obis (On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day), 25 March 1992, §47. s Walter M. Abbott SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican H (Chapman, 1966), pp. 130-131. 6 M.R. Vincent, Critical and Exegetical CommentaTy on the Ep#tles to the Pbilippians and to Philemon (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1897). January-February 2001 MARY ANNE FOLEY Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and ¯the Ignatian Tradition spiritual legacy In the 16th century the Society of Jesus represented an innovation in consecrated life for men, differing in struc-ture and aim from both monastic and mendicant forms and supported by Ignatius's approach to contemplation and action. Ignatian spirituality appealed also to women seeking a life of service outside the cloister, and Jesuit influence is apparent in the formation of women's com-munities as varied as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Sisters of St. Joseph in the 17th century and the Religious of the Sacred Heart in the 19th. By contrast, when Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620- 1700) was founding the Congregation de Notre-Dame de Montreal in the latter part of the 17th century, her closest collaborators were not Jesuits; they were Sulpicians, other diocesan priests, and women like Madame de Miramion who were forming similar com'- munities. As a result the congregation is usually seen as a product of the so-called French school of spirituality? Mary Anne Foley CND, who discussed women's commu-nities in our July-August 2000 issue, wrote this article.for the 300th anniversary of the death of Marguerite Bourgeoys. After translation by E Richer, it first appeared as "Spiritualitfi pour la mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys et la tradition ignatienne" in Cahiers de spiritualit~ ignatienne (April-June 2000, pp. 79-91). Her address is University of Scranton; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. Review for Religious The congregation's spirituality, however, as seen in the writings of its foundress, reveals considerable affinity with Ignatian spiri-tuality. We shall ~xplore those parallels, but first a word about the congregation's origins is in order. From Marguerite Bourgeoys's perspective, the congregation began in her own experience of transformation at the age of twenty, occasioned by her gazing at a statue of Mary. As a result of this "conversion," as she calls it, she joined a group of laywomen asso-ciated with the cloistered Congregation de Notre-Dame in her native Troyes and chose Antoine Jendret, the local pastor, as her spiritual advisor. From Jendret she learned to see the "vie voyagkre" (missionary life) of the Blessed Virgin as a model for uncloistered religious life for women. At the same time, the congregation sis-ters trained her to teach children who could not attend their monastery school and shared with her their enthusiasm for estab-lishing a monastery in New France. Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, brother of the congregation's superior and governor of the new settlement ofVille-Marie (Montreal), recognized the impossibility of establishing a monastery there at that time. Instead, he requested a single lays. oman to serve as teacher, and Marguerite agreed to go in that capacity. When she arrived in 1653, Ville-Marie was a small settlement, precarious both geographically and financially. It had been estab-lished eleven years earlier by an association of pious men and women in France who hoped to incorporate French and native people into a Christian society, thus creating a spirited church in the New World. Among the associates was Jean-Jacques Olier, founder and first superior of the Sulpicians. Unable to go him-self, he sent four members of his society to Ville-Marie in 1657 to establish its first parish. As "filles de paroisse" (women of the parish) Marguerite and the women who would soon join her were thus greatly influenced by the Sulpicians of Ville-Marie. Moreover, from Paris the third superior of the Society, Louis Tronson, was actively involved in decisions concerning the congregation and proved one of their staunchest advocates) In 1659 four recruits came from France to share Marguerite's simple, mobile way of life and her educational commitment in imi-tation of Mary's vie voyag~re. Over the course of the century, more than fifty women--native, French, and native-born French--joined this new Congregation de Notre-Dame, extending its reach from Ville-Marie to Quebec and beyond. Marguerite served as supe- January-Febr~ary 2001 rior until 1693, providing spiritual as well as practical leadership. Among her relatively few extant writings are several prayers and numerous reflections on the nature of the congregation, most of which appear to be conference notes of varying lengths. Brief and fragmentary though these texts are, they provide interesting glimpses of the spirituality that informed the congregation she founded.3 Gathering Up the Drops of Christ's Blood A brief, isolated passage in Marguerite Bourgeoys's writings presents a forceful description of the source, characteristics, and aim of the sisters' missionary activity: Consider, dear, that when you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost. How happy a sister who is sent on mission will be if she considers that she goes there at God's command and in his company, if she considers that in this work she can and ought to show her gratitude to him from whom she has received all things. Oh, she will find nothing difficult or burdensome at all! She will, on the contrary, wish to be in want of every-thing, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in disgrace. (W'W!B, 78) This passage may well represent the words with which Marguerite Bourgeoys invited the sisters to go forth from the central house in Ville-Marie to missions all over New France. Her description of the congregation's aim as "gathering up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost" is strongly reminiscent of a phrase employed by Paul Le Jeune sJ, superior of the Jesuit mission in Canada. In a letter written to his superior in France in 1633 and later published and widely disseminated, he attempted to persuade wealthy women in France to support the creation of a school for native women in New France: If they applied part [of their income] to gather the drops of blood of the Son of God shed for so many souls that are lost every day for la~k of help, they would not blush with shame on the day they appear before God to render an account of the goods for which he has made them responsible.4 Two years later he renewed the request, exclaiming, "What glory in the sight of the angels, to have gathered the blood of the Son of God to apply it to these poor unbelievers! "s Review for Religious What is particularly striking is that for Le Jeune the "gather-ing" was to be accomplished by women who worked for the edu-cation of other women. Initially he suggested that the school be run by "some good courageous widow assisted by two brave young women."6 By 1635, however, numerous women in French monas-teries, "overcoming the fear natural to their sex," had offered to come to educate native women and girls. This led Le Jeune to alter his original plan and to ask that a French benefactor endow a monastery whose members would carry out the work of educa-tion: "Will not some brave lady be found to give these Amazons of the great God a passport, endow-ing them with a house in which to praise and serve His Divine Majesty in this other world?"7 Madame de la Peltrie responded to that request, and the Ursuline monastery was soon founded in Quebec as a result. Marguerite Bourgeoys's writ-ings never indicate that she read Paul Le Jeune's letters, but, given the sisters' interest in the Canadian missions, she very likely did so during her association with the Congregation de Notre-Dame in Troyes. Thus, his use of the image of gathering Christ's blood probably influenced her directly. Furthermore, although there were no Jesuits in Ville-Marie from 1657 until the end of the century, she may also have been influenced indirecdy by their approach to missionary activity through her continued con-tact with Jesuits in Quebec. Although Marguerite Bourgeoys may consciously or uncon-sciously have adopted Le Jeun~'s metaphor for mission, she mod-ified it in several ways. In the first place, she used the word ramasser, instead of recueillir, with respect to what was to be done with the drops of blood. There is a difference of nuance here. The former term suggests picking up scattered bits and pieces, and the latter suggests taking in a unified quantity (such as a harvest),s This difference in vocabulary may not be particularly significant in itself,9 but another passage from the Writings makes it clear that for her the mission of education did indeed involve gathering up the individual drops of Christ's blood: "When you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost." January-Febr~ary 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali.ty_for Mission It is work suited to draw down the graces of God if it is done with purity of intention, without distinction between the poor and the rich, between relatives and friends and strangers, between the pretty and the plain, the easy-going and the grumblers, looking upon them all as drops of our Lord's blood. (W'MB, 201) Where Le Jeune had used the imagery of gathering the blood to describe specifically the education of the native women and chil-dren, here it seems to refer to all the individuals taught by the sis-ters. (By the time these lines were written, in the 1590s, they were probably teaching few native children.) If all these individuals are the drops of Christ's blood, they must be treated as sacred objects. Teaching, then, becomes a holy activity, since it brings the sisters in close contact with those sacred objects. Second, Marguerite underlined the urgency of the sisters' mis-sion by the way she extended the metaphor of the drops of blood. Le Jeune remarks that the souls of "these poor unbelievers" for whom Christ's blood has been shed are being lost; Marguerite Bourgeoys suggests that the drops of Christ's blood themselves are being lost. So important is this to her understanding that we may interpret her as going beyond mere metaphor in her reference to the drops of blood. Since the writing of the first Letter to the Corinthians, Christian theologians have often spoken of the bap-tized as constituting the body of Christ in a real, though mystical sense. For Marguerite Bourgeoys, those who needed to learn of Christ's teachings were his blood in that same mystical sense,l° Rather than allow even one drop of that blood to be wasted, a sis-ter would travel anyw.here she was sent and endure whatever was necessary for the mission. Indeed, the act of teaching was both sacred and urgent. A prayer for the congregation written on 4July 1693, at the end of her extended service as the community superior, reveals the con-nection she saw between the sisters' mission and the passion of Christ. Declaring that her trust was not in her own powers, she tells God: "I base my trust on the merits of the precious blood given for my ransom, and with your grace I would rather give up life itself than fail to uphold the truth of your words" (W-M!~, 163). Her willingness to lose her life in order to make Christ's teachings known recalls the desire "to endure all sorts of suffering and even to die in disgrace," which she claimed was characteristic of the sis-ter who traveled on mission in God's company. Her belief that the Review for Religious missionary congregation sisters would desire to suffer in the course of their mission echoes a passage from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola describing "the most perfect kind of humility" pos-sible for one who has decided to follow Christ: Whenever the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty would be equally served, in order to imitate and be in real-ity more like Christ our Lord, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches; insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors; I desire to be accounted as worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world. So Christ was treated before me.~ As was true for Ignatius, Marguerite Bourgeoys believed the source of missionary activity for the congregation sister to be a call from the God "from whom she has received all things." Her missionary work is thus a grateful response to God's initiative: "She goes there at God's command." If the sister's mission comes from a divine invitation, then her going will be "in his company." The implication is that going on mission is a way for her to be present to God, a way of participating in God's activity, and hence a way of becoming holy. This is why she should be able to view any deprivation that she suffers in the course of her mission as a pos-itive advantage. "To be in want of everything, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in dis-grace" is to enter more profoundly into the way of Christ, whose mission was characterized by the shedding of his blood. Imitating Mary's Vie Voyag~re While the desire to gather up the drops of Christ's blood pro-vided motivation for the sisters' mission of education, Marguerite turned elsewhere for a way to depict their way of exercising that mission: the life Mary led on earth. The 17th century was remarkable for widespread and intense devotion to Mary, notably among the members of what has been called the French school of spirituality. In order to emphasize the greatness of God's working in her, they tended to focus on Mary's humility, dwelling on both the poverty of her origins and her hum-ble willingness to serve as the future mother of God. Furthermore, their insistence on the paradoxical juxtaposition of the "grandeurs" of Jesus in the midst of his humiliations led Cardinal de B~rulle and January-February 2001 Foley ¯ SpiritnalityforMission For Marguerite Bourgeoys the primary form of devotion to Mary was to honor her vie voyag re, her missionary life. his followers to reflect at length on the life of Jesus in Mary's womb. This is apparent in Olier's prayer "O Jesu vivens in Maria" and in their reflections on the Word's action in Mary's visitafon to Elizabeth. The visitation became central to Marguerite Bourgeoys's spirituality, as shall be seen; she shared as well the French school's emphasis on Mary's "littleness" which enabled her to become the instrument of God's power. While her version of the life of Mary reflects many of the the-ological concerns of her day, some of her contemporaries might have been puzzled by its omissions and even more by its focus. She refers very briefly to what most consider the two central moments in Mary's life, Jesus' nativity and his cru-cifixion. She merely notes that the circumstances of Christ's birth reveal Mary's love of poverty and the poor and that her presence at Calvary reveals her faithfulness, her accep-tance of God's plan of redempfon. In writings no longer available to us, she may have said more, but, given the detail she provides about other events in Mary's life, Marguerite's lack of attention to the nativity and crucifixion is at least suggestive. In contrast to B4rulle, for example, the brevity of her comments and the absence of sentimentality are quite striking. Even more striking is her focus on Mary's activity, rather than her passivity. Certainly she portrays Mary as the recipient of divine favor: God chose her, preserved her from sin, and made her Mother Of God and then Queen of heaven. But Marguerite pays far more attention to what Mary did. She shows her teaching and serving the other girls in the temple and making a vow of virginity. At the time of the annunciation, we see Mary imploring, preparing her-self, consenting, and offering herself to God. After that event she visits Elizabeth, gives birth to Jesus, receives shepherds and kings, and loses and. finds her child. Having witnessed Christ's teachings and keeping them in her heart, she teaches and encourages people during his public life, and afterwards she forms and reforms the members of the Christian community, even after her death, up to the present time. Review for Religious This focus on Mary's activity is in keeping with the advice Marguerite Bourgeoys gave her sisters: "To imitate our dear Foundress, we ought to go through her life and stop at what our Lord inspires us to do" (WMB, 52). In this emphasis she differed somewhat from the French school, for whom devotion took the form of reflecting on the eternal--and internal--"states" of Christ's and Mary's lives in order to enter those states oneself. Thus, even though he considered Mary a model of priestly and apostolic activ-ity, Jean-Jacques Olier still advocated above all a devotion to the "interior life" of Mary. The French school has in this respect been contrasted with Ignatius Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises involve meditating on the words and particularly the actions of God, Christ, and the saints in order to imitate them.~2 While Marguerite Bourgeoys's random reflections are far different from the highly structured meditations of the Exercises, her focus on Mary's activity is more Ignatian than Berullian. Her approach to the life of Mary, however, was not that of many early-17th-century Jesuit writers, who cul-tivated a highly imaginative form of popular devotion that focused on the details of Mary's life. They were accused, not always unfairly, of promoting an exaggerated devotion to Mary that at times superseded the need for fidelity to the commandments.'3 For Marguerite Bourgeoys and for the congregation sisters, the primary form of devotion to Mary was honoring her vie voyag~re, her missionary life: M. Jendret told me one day that our Lord had left three call-ings for women to follow him and serve the church: that of St. [Mary] Magdalen was taken up by the Carmelites and other recluses and that of Saint Martha, by cloistered reli-gious who serve their neighbor; but the calling to the jour-neying life of the Virgin Mary, which needed to be honored, had not yet been taken up." (WMB, 142) Elsewhere she explains that because Mary was a teacher she incorporated the lives of both Martha and Mary Magdalen into her own: "The blessed Virgin, who was a teacher, included every-thing in her own person to an eminent degree" (WMB, 77). This depiction of Mary's "mixed" active and contemplative life was not original to Jendret,14 but he may have been the first to apply that analogy to women's communities. Nor was it common to speak of her vie voyag?re. Ordinarily the phrase refers to Christians who are still living on earth, as opposed to those who ffanuary-Februa~y 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali~forMission have passed on to glory or purification--and sometimes to the public life of Jesus.~s For many 17th-century spiritual writers, this earthly, transitory, active aspect of Christ's or Mary's life was less inspiring and worthy of attention than their enduring states. By their attention to Mary's vie voyag~re, then, Antoine Jendret and Marguerite Bourgeoys presented an alternative approach to one of the central symbols of holiness in the Christian tradition. That approach had very concrete implications for the little congregation in Ville-Marie. In order to fulfill their educative mis-sion throughout New France, the sisters had to remain free to move wherever there was need. However, because holiness was most often identified with separation from "the world," and because of women's supposed fragility, ecclesiastical legislation during much of Christian history sought to protect consecrated women by insisting that they remain behind cloister walls. Indeed, the two first bishops of New France attempted to impose cloister on the congregation by urging their union with the Ursulines of Quebec. Marguerite Bourgeoys's response was to point to Mary: "The Blessed Virgin was never cloistered. She did indeed retire into an interior solitude, but she never excused herself from any journey on which there was some good to be done or some work of charity to be performed. We wish to follow her in some way" (WMB, 50). Without calling into question the value of life within a clois-ter, this .passage suggests that for Mary, and for those who wish to live her missionary way of life, love of neighbor can constitute a higher value. Clearly Marguerite shared the traditional view that this sort of uncloistered vie voyagkre could be dangerous, but she believed that those who imitated Mary's way of life would be pro-tected by an "interior solitude" and by their union with God in prayer. Dangerous or not, if Mary's work of building up the church by educating its women was to continue, then it was not only pos-sible but necessary for some women to follow her way of life. The Visitation Traditionally the sisters of the congregation renew their vows on the Feast of the Visitation. This suggests that for them Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-52) is paradigmatic of their desire to become holy by going forth as missionaries. During the 17th century, however, the visitation was not nec-essarily associated with women who remained free to move out in Review for Religious order to serve their neighbor. In a reflection first published in 1679, the Capuchin Louis-Francois d'Argentan interpreted Mary's going up into the hill country as a reference to her ascent to God through contemplation and her willingness to share in God's redemptive plan. In this presentation, Mary is essentially passive in the encounter with Elizabeth, simply allowing the Word within her to speak in her.voice. D'Argentan suggests that during the visit Mary manifests humility by helping with household tasks, ardent charity (which he does not discuss further), and the way to engage in holy conversation with the neighbor. For him the ulti-mate fruit of reflection on the visitation is making "powerful resolutions to love seclusion, silence, and solitude, scorning all the rest so as to be attentive only to what is necessary, that is to say, to God alone and to the great matter of our eternity.''6 Such an interpretation of the visitation was not foreign to Marguerite Bourgeoys's thought. She too was convinced that Mary loved and was a model of soli-tude- but also was a model of conversation with others--and that the most important aspect of her encounter with Elizabeth was God's action in sanctifying the unborn John the Baptist. Nonetheless, here as always, Marguerite Bourgeoys's attention remained focused on Mary's activity and its effects. Moreover, her interpretation of that activ-ity contrasts with that of d'Argentan and even Francis de Sales, cofou

Issue 58.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1999. ; f'o r reli i , C~stian Heritages and Contempora~ Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER1999 ¯ VOLUME58 ~°~NUMBER5 Review for Religious is a forum for shared r(flection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. Tbe articles in tbe journal are meant to be informative, practical, historical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or ~ometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published hi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: foppema@slu.edu Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ° 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. 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Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER'1999 ¯ VOLUME58 ¯ NUMBER5 contents 454 perspectives The Self in Postmodern Thought: A Carmelite Response Vilma Seelaus OCD places the biblical God-related understanding of the. self, on which the Carmelite tradition rests, in conversation with the postmodern self. 470 The "World" from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican II Frederick E. Crowe SJ examines some major transitions in the Christian attitude toward the world, especially as a new context for the meaning of consecrated life. 490 brothers "Come Closer. I Am Your Brother": Being and Doing Brotherhood Joel Giallanza CSC reflects on the very identity of the religious vocation of "brother" as providing both brothers themselves and the church with a rich and prophetic spirituality. Religious Brothers: One Vocation Director's Perspective Paul Bednarczyk CSC shares his reflections on why fewer people are choosing to be brothers and on some possible countermeasures. Review for Religious 5OO journeying On Promise Making, Leave-Taking, and Becoming Avis Clendenen brings together personal experience and psychological and theological insight in addressing the reality of making and breaking commitments. 515 Charism and Membership: Surpassing the Institutional Limits of Religious Life Deborah M. Cerullo SSND proposes that emphasis on becoming grounded in the charism through a common novitiate experience would create a better synthesis of diverse ways of being members. 524 associates Identity, Purpose, Organization: Ongoing Associate Programs Rose McDermott SSJ presents a brief historical overview of associates and associations joined to religious institutes, reviews church legislation, and then raises issues about sound future development. 537 Similarity and Uniqueness in the Association Experience: Theological Reflection Roberta Archibald SSJ, Joanne Bauer SBS, Mary Mester RSM, and Jean Ustasiewski OSF share their experience of using theological reflection in a regional gathering of associates and sisters. departments 452 Prisms 546 Canonical Counsel: Impediments to Admission 552 Book Reviews September-October 1999 prisms Thy kingdom come The words kingdom and reign sound off-putting to most Americans. We have little tra-dition of kings and queens. What we have of it stems from a relatively brief past of early colonizers looking back to European roots. But when we Christians pray the Lord's prayer, we find ourselves begging God--the one we address by Jesus' word Father--that "your king-dom will come." By Jesus' teaching us a way to pray as he prays, we seem to be using language that pictures God as ruler or king and God's area of influence as a kingdom. What do we mean when we pray "Thy kingdom come"? Perhaps we can gain some cl,arity by identifying first what we do not mean. Kingdom is not to be identi-fied with any political entity. Even the age-old notion of Christendom was not tl~e same as this kingdom, and so the breakup of Christendom was not a dissolution of the kingdom. Kingdom is not a certain physical locale. The Roman Catholic Church as an institutional structure is not identified with the kingdom. The church has an important role to play in the kingdom, but it is not the kingdom itself. The church continues the mission of Jesus in proclaiming the kingdom. The church is at the service of the kingdom; it is meant to be a sign, a sacrament of its presence. The kingdom is not something that we human beings fashion or build. We may sing some songs about Review for Religious our "building the kingdom of God," but there is no reality to be done corresponding to our words. According to the gospel imper-ative, we seek first the kingdom of God. We want what God wants. We desire to be totally available to God, ready to serve, eager to do God's will. Doing the will of God involves discipleship--hear-ing the call of Jesus and responding with the total gift of self. Doing the will of God makes the kingdom present, because we are busy about what God is busy about, and so we are where God is. Above all, as our petition teaches us, we pray for the coming of the kingdom since it is God's doing, it is God's work. Jesus himself never gives a definition of kingdom, and we may be surprised that no one seems to question him. In the synoptic Gospels, he never claims the kingdom as his; it always is identified with the one he calls Abba. Only through parables do we find Jesus giving some description of the kingdom. Our Christian Eucharist anticipates the frequent parable allusions to the eating and drink-ing at the Lord's table in the kingdom. For in every Eucharist we place ourselves with Jesus in his total availability to God as he prays "not my will, but yours be done." So what are we to say about the kingdom? How are we to make this petition our own every time we pray the Our Father? The kingdom is the inbreaking presence of God to our human world and our responsive relating to God's being with us. God continues to pour out divine life--what we name as grace--and, when human cooperation is present, then the kingdom is right at hand. Just as the disciples experienced the transfiguration of Jesus, so too the kingdom is often experienced by our touching into this transfiguration kind of moment of a deeper-down reality shining out through our ordinary world. As we enter into this jubilee year, not through the alarms of some millenarians, but rather through the gospel introduction of Jesus, we hear anew Jesus' call to conversion and repentance, his admonition of obedience and watchfulness, and his appeal to be ready and waiting. We are like members of a wedding party--joy-ful, expectant. But it is no bride or groom whom we serve and cel-ebrate. It is our triune God--shining out as the redemptive presence of the Father in Jesus through the power of their Spirit of love. What do we want for ourselves and for our world? "Thy Kingdom come." David L. Fleming sJ September-October 1999 perspectives VILMA SEELAUS The Self in Postmodern Thought: A Carmelite Response This article was conceived at the end of the Carmelite Seminar of 1997 at St. Mary's College in South Bend. I had an opportunity to browse in the Notre Dame book-store, and two titles in different sections waved for my attention. The first was The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, in which Jungian author James Hillman takes archetypal psychology in a new direction. He claims that, with the soul of the world sick as evidenced by violence and corruption, individuals become sick at heart and suffer heart attacks. To restore the heart's courage and its imaginative power, therefore, the soul of the world needs the same attention that we have been giving to the soul of individual persons. Situating the individual self within the heart of the world challenges the rugged individualism of the modern self.1 The other book that caught my attention was Anthony Thiselton's Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self, in which he offers a hermeneutic of selfhood. Thiselton compares and assesses both modern and post-modern interpretations of the self in relation to Christian Vilma Seelaus OCD made this presentation in June 1998 at the Carmelite Seminar at St. Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana. It is being published also on audio- and videocas-sette by ICS Publications and the Carmelite Institute. Her address is Carmelite Monastery; Barrington, Rhode Island 02806. Review for Religious theology. Postmodern interpretations, he acknowledges, perceive the self as trapped within a network of role performances imposed on it by the power interests of others, but he argues for a deeper understanding of the self and its destiny. Postmodernism de-cen-ters the self; it denies any permanent, integrated reality to the self. It claims that identity is socially constructed and that people in different kinds of societies have quite different identity-forming experiences. Thiselton accepts the force of this, but argues for a deeper understanding of the self in relation to the biblical vision of reality and Christian theology.2 Reading Hillman and Thiselton enticed me into further study of postmodern thought in relation to the self. Before long, the complexity of the topic had my head spinning) Furthermore, post-modern debates about the very nature of reality challenged beliefs that shape my life as a Carmelite. And yet, the more perplexed I became, the more firmly did an inner conviction stand its ground: that our Carmelite mystical tradition has perennial values and insights for our postmodern world and perhaps for many worlds yet to come. In these reflections, therefore, I place the biblical God-related understanding of the self, on which the Carmelite tradition rests, in conversation with the postmodern self. I do this in two parts. Part One brings together important insights from both the mod-ern and the postmodern movements, showing a shift in under-standing the self. Part Two looks into the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross for what they offer by way of chal-lenge, expansion, or depth in regard to the self and in regard to our own spiritual journey.as we enter the new millennium. Part One Walter Truett Anderson's insightful and witty book titled: Reality Isn't What It Used to Be helped me to realize that the self in particular is not what it used to be. What did the self use to be that it no longer is? What are the shifts in self-understanding, which, for better or for worse, postmodernism names for us? How might we as Christians respond appropriately to the challenge of post-modernism? First, what do we mean by postmodern? Postmoderns claim to have superseded, to have gone beyond, previous ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving which developed in the so-called modern September-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought period. It deconstructs them, to use the "in" term. At the same time, postmodernism is far from a developed, coherent social theory. Scholars dispute whether or not it is a form of radical modernism or something distinctive after modernism, or some of each. According to Philip Endean in his foreword to an issue of The Way dedicated to postmodernism and spirituality: As the structure of the word implies, the postmodern cannot be understood for what it is in itself, but only in terms of what has preceded it: the postmodern is a gamut of reac-tions to the modern, swinging between two moods: a mood of disillusionment, as previously unquestioned assumptions and standards are found wanting, and a mood of exhilara-tion, as new and better alternatives are explored, develop&d, and advocated. Postmodern thinking draws on a wide range of sources: from cybernetics to feminism, from literary the-ory to the new physics, from cultural history to psychoanal-ysis and linguistics. Perhaps for this reason its expression can be, notoriously, opaque.4 Although the philosopher Kant back in the 18th century.paved the way, the 1960s are considered the true beginning of the post-modern era. At that time everything came into question, and all belief systems, with their traditional values, came under attack. People in the '60s began to question what they called the myth of objective consciousness: that, when you looked at things, what you saw and described was what was actually there. (At the scene of an accident, eyewitnesses often give conflicting accounts of what happened.) Today constructivists hold that the "real world" is an ever changing social creation. In the 1960s, thoughts about the self were also changing. As Anderson points out: In the '60s, people assumed that, if you developed enough contempt for your old socially adapted self, a new True Self, unsullied by any conformity, would magically appear, that a True Culture and a True Politics likewise stood in the wings--and that when they appeared they would not have to coexist with old selves, old cultures, old politics. Things didn't work that way!6 Though the '60s were the time of eruption, postmodernism con-tinues and radicalizes trends that actually began during the Enlightenment, at the dawn of what philosophers call the "mod-ern period." Descartes (1596-1650), the classical modern philoso-pher of clear and distinct ideas, attempted to provide clear and Revieva for Religious certain criteria against which our knowledge can be tested for truth. He was also intensely preoccupied with the subject who knows these ideas: the knowing person. For today's radical deconstructionists, like Derrida, such Cartesian objectivity is anathema. Derrida holds all reality to be socially constructed. Reality is simply the interpretation of the perceiving subject. Derrida insists that we cannot grasp reality because it slips by before we can catch hold of it. Everything, then, is interpreta-tion. Nevertheless, Derrida and the other decon-structionists are in a way Descartes's descendants. Descartes understands the self as an active agent, whereas for Derrida the self shifts from active agent to passive situatedness. Instead of a core something (called selJ) determining how it will respond to different situations, the situation cre-ates the self. Different situations call forth a dif-ferent self to be expressed.7 On the whole, postmoderns recognize the importance, for its time, of the modern move-ment. It brought new values to the fore. We ben-efit from the knowledge that scientific objectivity makes possible. From it come the many techno-logical wonders that are integral to our everyday life. In the moral and political spheres, modernity made room for personal autonomy and liberty and for the development of a liberal society wherein diversity is possible. Religion, too, has been enriched by modernity. Most Jewish and Christian believers, for example, no longer subscribe to a literal understanding of the Bible's story of creation in six days.8 But the improvements of modernity have a dark side: the exploitation of nature and its resources, the emergence of indi-vidualism and the consequent collapse of the sense of community, the divorce of technology from moral values, and denials of the worth of ethnic, tribal, and religious traditions. While the modern period gave us universal abstract systems and scientific "metanar-ratives," accounts of the origins and development of the universe, these often denied the existence of God or denied that God could ¯ be discovered by the conscious self. As a result, in today's world many lives are governed by efficiency, profit, success, and the will Modernity made room for personal autonomy and liberty and for the development of a liberal society wherein diversity is possible. September-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought to power without regard for ultimate human values. Talk of love, truthfulness, belief, loyalty, and so forth has little meaning. Further, advanced technology, the offspring of the modern period, has introduced a world of ceaseless change. New models quickly replace the old. Things are made not to endure, but to be consumed and replaced. Think of how quickly appliances need replacement or upgrading. Indeed, today we struggle with both the benefits and the dark side of the modern period. As science enabled the modern self more and more to carve out and control its own destiny, the self tended to be assured and opti-mistic. But today, as postmodern thinkers become increasingly aware of the self's arrogant, power-hungry dark side, the self appears to be, in fact, de-centered--no longer an active agent, but instead taking its identity from the variable roles imposed upon it by society and by its own inner drives and conflicts, conflicts which the communications media keep in constant motion. The media, especially the advertising world, tell it who it should be, how it should look, what it should own, and where it needs to travel in order to feel good about itself. Postmoderns see our opinions formed for us by the collective perceptions of the media. Under such conditions, notions of a true self give way to the self as wear-ing different masks to suit the occasion, with little sense of a solid identity underneath. We tend to become who we think others want us to be. In theory, the will of the individual is still supreme, but often it has no strong center, no belief system to serve as anchor. When everything is up for grabs, the self lacks the support of collective meaning. There is too much to choose from; this can leave indi-viduals feeling alone in a sea of options. Many people today feel estranged from others and even from themselves. When people see no value to their lives other than the imperatives of efficiency, success, or serving the power interests of others, when their "real-ity" depends on what the TV screen says is real, no wonder there are high r~ites of suicide and physician-assisted death. Veronica Brady, in an article in The Way, describes it well: "Caught in this ceaseless flow of images, the self almost ceases to exist, breaking into fragments, identifying only with the flow. Right and wrong become a matter of personal taste, depending not so much on what is done but who does it. The center does not hold because there is no center.''9 A character in Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses says: "Information got abolished sometime in the Review for Religious twentieth century, can't say just when, stands to reason, that's part of the information that got., abolished. Since then we've been living in a fairy-story . Everything happens by magic. [We] haven't a. notion what's going on. So how do we know if it's right or wrong? We don't even know what it is.'''° Rushdie's world of illusion hangs within the "actual" world of extremes of rich and poor, with millions dying of starvation as nations invest billions of dollars in developing new and deadlier weapons that are then sold to warring ethnic and tribal groups intent on destroying each other. In this context the theories of deconstructionists like Derrida and Lyotard begin to make sense. The absurdity of human confidence in its power to rule the world is becoming more and more apparent as the products of the human mind threaten to destroy us. At the same time, on the positive side, the modern period highlighted one of the deepest urges of the human heart: to be someone. The drift of cultural change is in the direction of human rights, of wanting everyone to be free to create personal identity and experience, even though, for many in our world, resources are not available. No wonder people become dishonest--seeking to have and be and do what the TV ads say they should have and be and do. The struggle to be someone is now a global struggle. Some years ago I had occasion to live in Israel for three months. The incongruities of the struggle became vivid for me when I saw, above Bedouin tents in the desert, TV antennas con-necting them with the modern/postmodern world. As Walter Truett Anderson puts it: "Every morning billions of pairs of eyes open, and billions of societies of mind set forth on the adventures of selfhood. For many the adventure only rarely rises above the level of a struggle to keep the body alive, but even the most mis-erable among us also hear the aspirations of the self---the 'me' craving reassurance that it exists and is good and the modern me that pursues happiness and believes that, whatever happiness it finds, will be what it has taken or created and not what has been handed down by fate.''~ To add a further dimension, the global struggle to be someone is seen with fresh and deep insight by postmodern psychologists who have been influenced by Buddhism. Psychologists Robert Rosenbaum and John Dyckman hold with Buddhism that self/oth-ers are empty. This does not mean that they are void; it means they have no existence other than in relationships that are con- Septentber-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought World and self mutually influence and create one another. stantly arising in the immediate experience of the moment. To say that the self is empty means that the self is not a thing and there-fore has no unchanging core characteristics or essence. It is a way of indicating that self is always completely connected to its imme-diate experience, that in the immediacy of the moment, uncon-strained by past residue or future expectations, self is always free. As the Buddhist Diamond Sutra notes, the past is gone, the future is not here, and the present cannot be grasped. This is perfect freedom.12 As the authors point out, freedom here is not to be confused with a pseudofreedom that seeks to abandon all constraints. Instead, to understand emptiness as being connected to immedi-ate experience can lead to greater generosity and compassion toward the self and others. Past experience no longer has the last word. The empty self, actualized in immediate expe-rience, binds together apparent opposites: the dynamic interchange of oneness and separate-ness. These are not mutually exclusive. The empty self is the connected self which is actu-alized in context and in relationships. Observation reveals self-identity to be fluid and constantly changing according to context and relationships. As the Rosenbaum-Dyckman article puts it, "At work we may be decisive and authoritative; when out to dinner with our spouse, we may be hesitant and deferent about what to order for dinner. Yet we believe ourselves to be the same person.°13 Postmodern psychologists repeatedly make the point that our person is not encapsulated by our skin, but exists in relation. The self is always self in relation, in action, and as such is always con-textual. They hold that emotions are always a reliving in the pre-sent rather than a recall from the dead past. If we do not need to be attached to an unchanging self, and can see change as the only constant, it becomes somewhat easier to image change in prob-lem behaviors24 Although the self may be fluid and constantly changing, it must nevertheless have a boundary, but, according to Rosenbaum and Dyckman, a boundary with infinite length enclosing a finite, definable area, different from the rigid boundaries of lines on a map. Human boundaries are not abstract, conceptual schemas, but are always embodied in constant interaction with a world from Review for Religious which they are not separate. World and self mutually influence and create one another. Such mutual influencing has the potential to stretch present definable boundaries and give glimpses into the infinite. Here the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican comes to mind. If our attitude is one of self-righteousness that places us over against the rest of the world, we will be unable to hear the challenges that postmodern psychologists offer us for continued growth in our postmodern world. Our boundaries become sealed in finitude, and the infinite capacity that is ours becomes rigid, like the lines of a map. Psychologists in increasing numbers address the postmodern shift in regard to the self, and they offer valuable insights for living healthily in today's changing world. At the same time, postmodern philosophers and psychologists do not have the last word, and so now we turn to the mystics for their insights into the self. Part Two Since human boundaries are not abstract, but are embodied and are in constant interaction with the world from which they are not separate, precisely here does the biblically based Carmelite tradition offer timeless help. Back in 16th-century Spain, Teresa of Avila wrote a book to help her daughters of the reformed Carmel relate to one another and to the world, from which they were not separate even in their cloister. In her Way of Perfection, she gives her daughters some advice that flows with meaning into our post-modern age: "I shall enlarge on only three things., for it is very important that we understand how much the practice of these three things helps us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us. The first of these is love for one another; the second is detachment from all created things; the third is true humility, which, even though I speak of it last, is the main practice and embraces all the others.''~s Many centuries separate us from Teresa and the particularity of her issues, but the interrelated dynamic of love, detachment, and humility are integral to spiritual growth in today's confusing world. Postmodernity challenges much of what we cling to by way of values and beliefs and, in particular, our self-understanding. To understand the self as fluid and constantly changing invites a deeper penetration into the Christian, Carmelite Understanding of Septentber-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought detachment. It would have us be attached to nothing, not even the most innocent of things, for in time of need they fail us com-pletely. John of the Cross insists: "To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. To come to the possession you' have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not . This places us in our center of humility.''16 Detachment and humility go hand in hand. They cre-ate an openness to new ideas, a willingness to let go of the past an, d let the context of the present create us anew. The contextual pre-sent is the place of encounter with God. The past, while it may continue to influence present behavior, is in fact nonexistent, and the future evolves out of each passing moment. Detachment opens up roads less traveled; but, if we feel attached to our current road, we may all too readily say, "This is me; this is my self." We have heard people say, "I'm a one on the enneagram or an INFP on the Myers-Briggs, so you have to take me as I am." With such a self-fixated attitude, we will less likely hear God's invitation into the infinite realms of potential self-realization. If we conceive of the self as determined by the pathways already taken, a composite of past experiences, it will be hard to let go when unknown paths beckon us onward. As Rosenbaum and Dyckman put it, "The self, as an accumulation of experience, is a prison; the self as empty, as shimmering potentiality, is a prism that, depending on its positioning, gives forth many different colors."17 In his Spiritual Canticle, John of the Cross reminds us that the woods and thicket in which we find ourselves today have been planted by the hand of the Beloved.18 God's self revelation con-tinues right within the human story. The density and darkness of postmodernity--which holds that there is a multiplicity of per-spectives in the search for truth, which denies a stable foundation of self and of knowledge--can generate extremes of uncertainty. But the de-centered self of postmodernity has its own gift to offer. It invites us, beyond the limits of what can be known and con-trolled, into a self that is mystery, into God as ultimate Mystery. The temptation is either to stay blinded in self-righteous cling-ing to the limitations of human knowledge, or to despair before the uncertainties of life. Detachment itself can be the void of despair, unless it is grounded in faith and in the experience of God. The Dutch theologian Frans Jozef van Beeck, in his contem-porary. Catholic systematic-theology series titled God Encountered, Review for Religious reminds us that "the human subject., is naturally and radically 'de-centered': the mature person's true center does not repose in the person. Authentic persons live on the strength of unfulfillable desire . Grace graciously enables human persons, along with their world, to that most natural, yet most divine of all things: freely to move toward God in total faith and abandon."'gIn the midst of alternative versions of reality, and many different ways of being in the world, with the postmodern tolerance for a plethora of possibilities, choosing to believe in something is vital. We can be respectful of others with differing beliefs and still stand firm in the faith that is ours, a faith that centers the self in God. According to the philosopher Kierkegaard, faith is the pas-sionate embrace of objective uncertainty.2° Faith bypasses the postmodern self that interprets, even cre-ates, its own reality. It bypasses human reason to plunge us into mystical depths where being and nonbeing are held in cre-ative tension by God's abiding presence to human life. At this level Rahner rightly speaks of the experience of God and the experience of self as one.2' In his insis-tence upon the possibility open to all of an immediate experience of God, Rahner writes: "I am convinced that such an immediacy between God and the human person., is of greater significance today than ever before. All the societal supports of religion are collapsing and dying out in this secularized and pluralistic society. If, nonetheless, there is to be real Christian spirituality, .it cannot be kept alive and healthy by external helps, not even those which the church offers., but only through an ulti-mate, immediate encounter ofthe individual with God.''22 The Harvard psychologist Charles Verge names this place of encounter "the divine self.''23 Here the self and God mirror each other.24 The longing of the human heart to be someone issues from God, in whose image we are made and whose love holds us in being. "Beloved of God" defines the self. The Spiritual Canticle of John of the Cross is a text that writes the self of each one of us. In the Canticle, God's passionate love for the soul, enfleshed in Christ, The longing of the human heart to be someone issues from God, in whose image we are made and whose love holds us in being. Septentber-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought stirs a passionate response and gives meaning and direction to life right within the extremes of uncertainty that surround us. To be transformed into the image of Christ, to become like Christ, con-stitutes the heart of the divine promise. Faith enables us to embrace, with passion, the ultimate objec-tive uncertainty that the mystery of God revealed in Christ is. Christ lifts the self out of its predefined situatedness with its self-interest, into love for God and love for others. God's love trans-forms the will to power, to possession, to lust, into will to love. The detachment that faith calls forth issues in genuine love even for those who differ from us. Postmodernism stretches our capacity to love. Life today beckons toward a global embrace of love; love for those who may look different from us, love for those who may think differently from us, and love for those whose values may be different, even opposed to ours. Today, in the face of our differences, love holds the special challenge of intense, respectful listening, which can only happen if the heart is humble. A humble heart is a heart detached from pre-conceived ideas and personal prejudice. According to Teresa, humil-ity is truth, and our truth is that we are all, without exception, finite, fragile creatures capable of sin and that as such we always stand on the threshold of ongoing conversion. At the same time, integral to truth is that each one of us is always infinitely loved and possessed by God. Insofar as we fall short, God invites us to continued conversion and, even more, to divine transformation. Our challenge is to live Christ's gospel of love. Such love dissolves the disharmony of suspicion and distrust, it detaches us from self-interest, and it opens us to others in humility and genuine con-cern. As Rahner sagely asks, "Why should there be any need for deception, which serves to protect the self, if the self is loved, wel-comed, accepted, and reconciled-as-one with the Other?''2s Receiving the self from God in Christ, giving the self to others in love, and serving the other's interests as one's own are mirrorings of God, the divine self-giving Trinity, in whose image we are. In trinitarian theology, love constitutes the ground of selfhood. The gospel account of Jesus at table, encircled by the outcasts of his time, symbolizes the self today cast out from itself and in need of re-centering in Christ. From the horizon of Christ, we see the incompleteness of all that is human in relation to our total commitment to Christ, but in Christ we also see ourselves con-nected with the heart of all that is. Revie~v for Religious The archetypal psychology of James Hillman invites us to this from a psychological perspective. He would have us see ourselves and others as intimately connected with what he calls the soul of the world. Today conversion extends to claiming our part in what Hillman rightly names the sickness of the soul of the world. He claims that the world, because of its breakdown, is entering a new moment of consciousness by having its attention drawn to itself by means of its symptoms. It is becoming aware of itself as a psychic reality. We now encounter pathology in the psyche of politics and medicine, of language and design, of the food we eat. Sickness, says Hillman, is now "out there" as well as "in here.''26 To situate our individual self within the heart of the world not only challenges the rugged individualism of the modern self; it also invites a deeper awareness of our connectedness with others and with planet Earth, whose beauty and balance are today oppressed by our violent consumer world. The world itself is now a patient in need of hea~ling. Postmodernism offers a broader understanding of the redeeming mission of Christ. The entire cos-mos becomes the locus of redemption. Like us, our church and civilization and even planet are all in need of Christ's redeeming, healing, transforming love. Postmodernism is globalism; as such it is the half-discovered truth of the one unity that transcends all our differences. The language of postmodernism would be alien to Teresa, and yet, as she increasingly experienced herself as centered in God, her self became increasingly fluid. She seems astonished as the boundaries of the self continue to expand. There are many exam-pies, but in her Autobiography, her Vida (chap. 15, para. 7), Teresa, experiencing herself infused with the light of God, comments: "And I, though being what I am, seem to be another person." In 23.1, recalling how God freed her from herself, she writes that "here begins another new life." In 27.1, having placed herself com-pletely in the hands of God, she says, "l saw that I was a com-pletely different person." In 27.9 she says, "One of these graces is enough to change a soul completely.''27 In the context of these remarks, Teresa specifically mentions that she is growing in either love, detachment, or humility. At the height of her mystical life, Teresa has a profound expe-rience that, on the level of the divine self, reflects the empty, de-centered, but relational, contextual self of postmodernity. In 40.5 of her Vida, she writes: Septentber-October 1999 Seelaus ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought Once, while I was reciting with all the sisters the hours of the divine office, my soul suddenly became recollected; and it seemed to me to be like a brightly polished mirror, without any part on the back or sides or top or bottom that wasn't totally clear. In its center Christ our Lord was shown to me, in the way I usually see him. It seemed to me I saw him clearly in every part of my soul, as though in a mirror¯ And this mirror also--I don't know how to explain it--was com-pletely engraved upon the Lord Himself by means of a very loving communication I wouldn't know how to describe. ¯ I was given understanding of what it is for a soul to be in mortal sin. It amounts to clouding this mirror with mist and leaving it black; and thus this Lord cannot be revealed or seen, even though he is always present giving us being. In God, Teresa is connected with the world's sin, even as she affirms the ever present graciousness of God always giving us being within the darkness of sin. God is present in Teresa, not with power and might, but in love and with an invitation to self-transcendence that is as pertinent and penetrating for us today as it was for Teresa. In 3 7.11 of her l/ida, Teresa sounds as though she is living in our present age. After lamenting the foibles of her honor-bound society, with its elaborate system of etiquette, she says, "I don't know how it's all going to end up; even though I'm not y.et fifty, I've already seen so many changes I don't even know how to live anymore. What will they do who are now being born and will live for many years?" What will we do, we who have been born in this postmodern era, this era in which we live for many years, often into our nineties? Like Teresa, we do not know where it is all going to end up. Many would say that dark night engulfs our entire world and the times in which we live. The Carmelite tradition, however, assures us that God is in the night. John of the Cross eloquently describes the meaning of the soul's journey into the night of God. In this night of faith, we discover that love is the eye of God and we in turn are to see and interpret all things through the eyes of God. From this perspective we see that we are all one in God's love and that we bear one another's burdens. By the quality of our lives, Christ would have us be bearers of hope for all who suffer the travails of poverty, violence, injustice, and oppression. Right within the many forms of death that surround us is the seed of resurrec-tion impatient for new life. As we work with our differences in families, in our civic and Review for Religious church communities, we can dare to hope that our graced strug-gle will energize efforts toward understanding, toward finding common ground within the extremes of diversity that ctiaracterize our postmodern world. What we see in Teresa's writings is a devel-opment in her understanding of herself and of Christ, who com-panions her journey. Today,. as we find the self anew, we also find new ways of seeing Christ and the Christian mysteries right within our postmodern world, without getting caught in nostalgia for the past. Again, like Teresa, we do not know where it will all end up. What we do know is that the future is present, like a seed, in today's disconcerting moment. Our challenge is to live now, to live fully (but with humility, detachment, and love) what we say we believe. The sufferings of our time are not meaningless, as sec-ular postmodernity might see them. They are integral to the groan-ing of creation in labor until it brings forth redemption, the final triumph of God's love. At its deepest level the self is caught up in the incomprehensible mystery of Love we call God. Notes I James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World (Woodstock, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 1995). 2 Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self'. On Meaning, Manipulation, and Promise (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998). 3 It also leaves me with a little anxiety that the many authors that I read be given due credit. As I prepare this paper for publication, I real-ize that much of what I read merged in my thinking as I internalized the material. 4 See The Way 36, no. 3 (July 1996): 175. s According to Anderson, Kant's work in the 18th century began with a problem that was as divisive in its time as the objectivist-con-structivist one is in ours--in this case a conflict between the British empiricists such as Locke and Hume, who saw thought as merely an instrument for understanding or using "real world experience," and the Continental philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz, who saw the mind as the supreme organizer and discoverer of all reality. This was not a postmodern debate. All parties assumed that people could appre-hend unchanging and universal truth. Kant's attempt to resolve the con-flict was his own contribution to the search for "foundational" knowledge or reality--beyond historical and cultural relativism--but it pointed toward a view of the mind as a creator of reality. Kant describes the mind as an active organ that orders and forms the raw data of experience, 1-467-- September-October 1999 Seela~s ¯ The Self in Postmodern Thought imposing upon them its own structure; we do not experience things in themselves but rather representations of them. See Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), pp. 59-60. 6 Anderson, Reality, p. 48. 7 See Robert Rosenbaum and John Dyckman, "Integrating Self and System: An Empty Intersection?" Family Process 34 (March 1995): 26- 27, and Kenneth J. Gergen, "The Social Construction of Self- Knowledge," in Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 372-403. 8 See Max Charlesworth, "Postmodernism and Theology," The Way 36, no. 3 (July 1996): 188-202, for an interesting summary of the devel-opment of modern to postmodern thought. 9 Veronica Brady, "Postmodernism and the Spiritual Life," in The Way 36, no. 3 (July 1996): 181. 10 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988), p. 313, quoted in Brady, "Postmodernism." 11 Walter Truett Anderson, Reality, p. 132. 12 Rosenbaum and Dyckman, "Integrating," pp. 28-33. 13 Rosenbaum and Dyckman, "Integrating," p. 26. 14 According to Rosenbaum and Dyckman, "Integrating," pp. 35-37, acknowledging memory as constructive, as a present contextual experi-ence, rather than as retrieval of the past, helps to avoid difficulties such as the controversies over recovered memories of trauma and abuse, which are a sensitive contemporary issue. ~s Teresa of Avila, Way of Perfection (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980), chap. 4, para. 4, p. 54. 16 The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), p. 150. 17 Rosenbaum and Dyckman, "Integrating," p. 37. is See his Spiritual Canticle, stanza 4, in Collected Works, p. 494. 19 Frans Jozef van Beeck, God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology, Vol. 2/1 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), p. 238. 20 Soren Kierkegaard, "Truth Is Subjectivity," in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 169ff. "Truth is precisely the con° tradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith, I must constantly be intent upon hold-ing fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith . " Review for Religious 2~ See Karl Rahner, "Experience of Self and Experience of God," in Theological Investigations, vol. 13 (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 122- 132. 22 See "The Immediate Experience of God in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola," in Karl Rahner in Dialogue, ed. Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons, trans. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986), p. 176. 20 See Charles Verge, "Foundations for a Spiritually Based Psychotherapy," in Religion and Family, ed. L. Burton (Hayworth Press, 1992), pp. 41-59. 24 See also her Autobiography in Collected Works of Teresa of Avila, Vol. 1, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1976), chap. 40, paras. 5 ~nd 10. Teresa here recounts two visions in which God and the soul mirror each other. See also Spiritual Canticle, stanza 12, in Collected Works of John of the Cross, pp. 515-519. 2s Quoted in Thiselton, Interpreting God, p. 160. z6 Hillman, Thought of the Heart, pp. 96-99. 27 With only a quick glance, I found chap. 20, paras. 23, 25, and 26- 28; chap. 21, paras. 8-9; and chap. 25, paras. 18-19--all referring to Teresa experiencing herself as a different person. The Salvation Cup I raise my fragile, broken cup. Accept it empty. Nothing I own can f!ll it. This is the cup of my truth, my faith in the promise, my salvation cup. Fill it with the wine of the Spirit, the river that makes fertile my barren ground, the ocean of never ending mystery. This is my cup. With it I offer my fragileness, my sinfulness and my broken promises. Heal me, Spirit of God, with theelixir of salvation. Virginia Skrdlant SHCJ September-October 1999 FREDERICK E. CROWE The "World" from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican II An old proverb, once thought to be scriptural, warns us that where there is no understanding the people perish. Scriptural or not, the proverb itself is sound enough, and I would apply it to the institution of religious life. On all sides the question is heard: Is religious life dying? I refuse to believe that the God who gave us Anthony of Egypt, Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius, and so many others down to Mother Teresa is a God who intends religious life to perish. But I do believe in the need for under-standing, so that through our input God's operative grace may become cooperative. The Pattern of Human Thinking This essay is, then, an essay in understanding, but much more modest in scope than the preceding paragraph would suggest. It does not attempt td study religious life in its essence, its proper-ties, its various manifestations. It goes back rather to a prelimi-nary question and takes one small point for study: the Christian attitude toward what we call the "world." It is my hope that, if we gain some understanding on this background question, we will have a context for an eventual rethinking of religious life itself. Frederick E. Crowe SJ wrote "The Ignatian Exercises and Jesuit Spirituality" for our July-August 1994 issue. His address remains Lonergan Research Institute; 10 St. Mary Street, Suite 500; Toronto, Ontario; M4Y 1P9 Canada. Review for Religious My approach is historical rather than analytic. It examines the major transitions in the Christian attitude toward the world. It finds a dialectic running through history, a dialectic of to and fro that is not a mere alternation, but a progressively unfolding pat-tern in which each alternation is a step forward. It concludes with the way the church is finding new meaning for its role in the world, and proposes this as a new context in which religious too might find today the meaning of their consecrated life. The advantage of approaching history as a dialectic in the sense described is twofold. First, it may lift us out of our "crisis" mood, in which we think of our present situation as a spiritual fever, as a low point from which the patient may either die or recover and resume life as it was before the crisis. In a dialectical understanding, that is not the case. The low point is an opening on a new high. Second, a dialectic follows an intelligible pattern, with each step part of a natural, though not necessarily logical, sequence. This means that, if we can plot the sequence up to the present, we may be able to establish the direction of movement and discern the path we should take into the developing and unknown future. That "natural sequence" is the pattern of human thinking in time, the way the human mind naturally works as it progresses toward fuller and fuller understanding. In itself the pattern is sim-ple enough. Faced with a problem area of any complexity, the human mind will first find some specific factor of explanation, will tend to make that the whole explanation, but will eventually see that it is insufficient as a total view. It will then discover a generic factor and will in turn make that the full explanation, only to dis-cover that this too is insufficient as a total view. Eventually, in the dialectical oscillation of specific and generic, the mind will arrive at a higher viewpoint and hold the specific and the generic in the unity of a full understanding. The Pattern Illustrated That is terribly abstract. So, before applying it to the history of Christian thinking on the world, let me offer two concrete illus-trations that show the pattern as realized in actual history. First, the natural priority of the specific is easily illustrated in human lan-guage. "So in Homer there were words for such specific activities as glancing, peering, staring, but no generic word for seeing.''1 This is "both the strength and the weakness of'early language";~ it Septentber-October 1999 Crowe ¯ The "WorM"from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican ll The term vocation was appropriated to the religious life (as it commonly still is). has the power of the concrete, but is unable to reason in abstract or generic terms. And so in learning to write English we are told to search for the specific, for the concrete descriptive word, but in the strict reasoning of, say, a legal question we may have to resort to technical and abstract language. What is true of human language is true also of human think-ing, and so my second illustration is taken from the theology of our need for divine grace. Here there was first the discovery of a specific explana-tion, namely, the fall of our first parents. This was largely the focus of St. Augustine's thinking, which centered on the difference between their state before the fall and ours after it. This idea ran its course for about seven centuries, cul-minating in the position of Peter Lombard, namely, that there are in the grace-history of our human race "four states of human liberty: the earthly paradise, fallen man, man redeemed, and heaven.''3 Our need for divine grace is understood in relation to those states. Meanwhile, however, the insufficiency of this specific step was gradually becoming apparent. There was difficulty in defining lib-erty; the doctrine of merit tended to hang in mid air; even grace itself lacked a clear definition, for what is there that is not a free gift of God and therefore grace?4 The dialectic of ideas was prepar-ing theologians for the next step, the discovery of the generic the-orem of two orders with quite distinct status in the universe of being, the supernatural order and the natural: "not only was there the familiar series of grace, faith, charity, and merit, but also nature, reason, and the natural love of God.''5 This was largely the work of Philip the Chancellor in Paris in the early 1200s. It was an epoch-making discovery, and it put the question of our need for divine grace on an entirely new basis, releasing a whole series of developments. But so intoxicating was Philip's idea that theologians made a mistake exactly parallel to the one their predecessors made in the use of Augustine: the view that this was a complete and adequate explanation. Thomas Aquinas himself, in his early writings, shows hints of this one-sidedness, not giving sufficient attention to the moral impotence that is the result of Adam's fall. Nevertheless, it was Thomas who finally Review for Religious brought, the two factors, the specific and the generic, into unity. Peter Lombard's four states remain in the Thomist synthesis, but as applying to a specific question within the genus of the total divine plan.6 The Pattern Verified in the Specific Idea of "World" I have illustrated the way the human mind naturally works in time as it advances in understanding: first, a specific idea; then, exaggeration of this idea; next, a generic idea; exaggeration of this in its turn; eventually a synthesis. I believe the pattern is discernible also in the history of Christian thinking on the idea of the world. There too I find a specific and a generic factor, with the specific the first to be discovered and exploited beyond its potentiality, and the generic the next to be discovered and in its turn exploited beyond due measure. Again let us turn from the abstract to the concrete. Concretely the first step may be located in, or at least represented by, Anthony of Egypt. Toward the end of the 3rd century, "Anthony gave away his possessions, and devoted himself to a life of asceticism, and c. 285 retired completely into the desert . Towards the end of his life, the numbers of those who turned to the solitary life of the desert increased as the result of the secularization of the church.''7 It is possible to see this development in too simplistic a fash-ion, but at least one characteristic feature is clear: flight from the world. So it produced works with titles like De contemptu mundi (On contempt of the world). It filled Europe with hermitages, con-vents, and monasteries. For twelve centuries the idea ran its course with enormous impact on Christian v.alues, Christian living, Christian institutions.8 But it suffered the handicap of being a specific idea attempt-ing to provide a total view. For one example, the term vocation was appropriated to the religious life (as it commonly still is). In this respect the laity of the church and even the diocesan clergy were deemed to belong to a lower class: they did not have a "voca-tion." A reaction was inevitable, but it was centuries taking shape. Many diverse influences were at work promoting it. Its history is a complex interweaving of those influences. There were subver-sive along with legitimate movements. But what was positive and valid in the reaction, and quite natural and basic in the unfolding Septentber-October 1999 Crowe ¯ The "WorM"from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican II dialectic, was the emergence of the generic factor in the concept of the world. The Pattern Verified in the Generic Idea of "World" The quite basic event, then, in the. emergence of the generic concept of the world was the discovery by Philip the Chancellor of the two orders: natural and supernatural. I used this earlier to illustrate the pattern of human thinking as it is found in theology (not only was there the familiar series of grace, faith, charity, and merit, but also nature, reason, an'd the natural love of God). I use it now as a basic explanatory factor for the new stage of our dialec-tic. That is no accident. It is an idea so fundamental that it is bound to appear in the history of any theological idea. It underpins all that I have to say in this section and the following. Every discovery makes its way against opposition from an estab-lishment. The recognition of the natural order had to be followed by a recognition of its rightful autonomy, and that could not fail to be a traumatic experience for the church. The history of this strug-gle need not detain us here. In essence the point is that the human race was not only created divine; it was also created human, with a need for hunting, fishing, farming, for song and dance, for math-ematics, science, philosophy, whatever lies within its potency for development. Without grace we are able, Thomas Aquinas would say, using his favorite example, to cultivate our fields and build our houses. But the full extent of that principle means that without grace we can marry and be given in marriage, form guilds among artisans, establish universities, function as nations, join in a world union of peoples, explore the boundaries of space. Further, the natural has its own laws. Natures operate uni-formly: we do not gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles (Mr 7:17). And those natural laws can be isolated in thought and allowed to develop and flourish according to their own potential. For to be human is to learn: to learn that there are human tech-niques for producing good crops, human means for controlling nature, human means of self-government, human means for gain-ing wisdom and educating upcoming generations, and so on through the list. If, then, we take a broad view of the forest, not stopping to study individual trees, we can discern here the generic factor in Review for Religious the concept of the world, the needed complement to the specific factor provided by Anthony. This generic factor is the recogni-tion of the world as good in its own right. God did not create an evil universe, but made all things that they might have being and life (Ws 1:13-14; 1 Tm 4:4). That means that we can no longer be satisfied with the negative connotation of "flight from the world." There is a positive side to Anthony's strategy: its focus on the transcen-dent. The negative side is not repudiated, but it has to be seen in relation to that focus and has to be complemented by a generic view of the goodness of all creation. But the pattern of the dialectic suggests that this step too will be exaggerated, and that is exactly what happened. In the intoxication of this new idea, there was a widespread repudia-tion of the age-old flight from the world. Convents and monasteries were emptied; instead of contemptus mundi, there was a glorification of the secular.9 And so secularism arose: what was legitimate in the discovery of the natural, what was legitimate in the declaration of its auton-omy was magnified to an ism. What was a genetic idea that should have been brought into union with the specific paraded as the full explanation of the universe. A movement for the liberation of the secular became a secularism. The secular and the sacred have to do with human thought and feeling and the human use of creation. Uniting the Specific and the Generic: New Categories Christian thinking on th~ world has gone through the two phases inherent in the dialectic of human learning: the discovery and undue exploitation of a specific factor, followed by a reaction, and the discovery and undue exploitation of a generic factor, fol-lowed in its turn by a reaction. The current need is for the inte-gration of the two factors, and the categories that offer hope of that are the sacred and the secular. This pair of terms has crept into our discussion as related to, but not identical with, the supernatural and the natural. They need more careful definition. The natural and the supernatural provide the framework of creation; they are what philosophers would call Septentber-October 1999 Crowe ¯ The "WorM"from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican 11 the ontological constituents of the universe. But the secular and the sacred have to do with human thought and feeling and the human use of creation; they pertain to the cultural sphere rather than the ontological. The natural cannot be made supernatural: as Isaiah reports the word of the Lord, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways" (Is 55:8, NEB). God is the wholly other. Grace perfects nature but does not destroy it. The natural, then, maintains its identity within the unity of God's creative plan. Catholic schools do not use a different mathematics to add and subtract, to divide and multiply. But while the natural remains what it was created to be, it can be invested with the aura of the supernatural, and in this sense the natural can be sacralized, become sacred. Bernard Lonergan provides a context in which to locate this cultural transformation: "The whole world of sense is to be. a token, a mystery, of God"; and again: "the world of sense is. a mystery that signifies God as we know him and symbolizes the fur-ther depths that lie beyond our comprehension.''~° This means that the secular, not only as a world but also in its various aspects, can in human thought and feeling be given the character of the sacred. So in primitive peoples there was a religious ritual for plant-ing and harvesting, for coming to puberty and marrying, for rev-erent remembering of the dead, and so on. All these activities are given a sacred aspect, though their natural basis allows for their secular use. But they are only potentially secular; they are not at first recognized to have that aspect. For the human race is funda-mentally religious, in the sense of being created with a religious consciousness, and has remained religious despite all the protests of unbelievers. One may say: In the beginning was the sacred. That is, what later became distinguished as the two zones of the sacred and the secular was at first all one zone, and it was sacred. Now, just as in the ontological sphere the natural component of the universe had to be recognized for what it was, the natural, so too in the sphere of the cultural the legitimately secular aspect had to escape from the domination of the sacred and assume its independent role in the plan of creation. In the course of this development, there was inevitably a conflict with the representa-tives of the sacred; inevitably too the secular won its rightful inde-pendence. "For this sacralized construct of man and his universe was impugned and impugned successfully by Copernicus, Galileo, Review for Relig4ous and Newton, by Darwin and Freud, and by the swarm of philoso-phies" at least since Descartes.~l So the struggle between natural and supernatural was repeated here, with the same exaggerations. The extremists were not con-tent to liberate the secular; they were driven also to desecrate the sacred. Concretely we might think of the relation between a sec-ular day of rest and the Lord's Day. There has been a strong ten-dency in this matter for the sacral to dictate to the secular, imposing a religious observance so strict as to frustrate the secu-lar purpose of a day of rest. But on the other side there is the des-ecration of the Lord's Day represented in past history by the extremists in the French Revolution and, some would say, by the present Sunday shopping. Uniting the Specific and the Generic: New Strategy Perhaps it is possible now to sketch the lines we might follow to achieve the desired integration of our specific and generic fac-tors. Our question is: How is the church to achieve the unity of Anthony and Aristotle, of Jerusalem and Athens, of the transcen-dent and the this-worldly, and now in particular of the sacred and the secular? Our suggestion is that what had been at first unwit-tingly sacralized was then wittingly secularized. Bur what was wit-tingly secularized can be wittingly resacralized for Christian purposes as the need arises. The pagans of Rome sacralized their meat by offering it to their gods, but the Christians could, in effect, desacralize these meats with a good conscience and, if they wished, resacralize them to their own purpose: "he who eats meat has the Lord in mind when he eats" (Rm 14:6). Again, a game of golf may be just what workers need on their day of secular rest, and present discipline in the church allows them to keep holy the Sabbath and still go golfing. But the new sacralization will be different. There will be a new understanding and a new humility. The sacred will not dictate to the secular in the latter's own sphere. It will be a sacralization through the intention of believers, using the natural end of a nat-ural entity to their religious purpose. They who eat meat have the Lord in mind when they eat; they who golf give thanks alike in the weekly Eucharist and in their outdoor exercise. A final point brings us back to larger issues: sacralization will not be merely extrinsic to the natural world. On this question Septentber-October 1999 Crowe ¯ The "WorM"from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican II Marie Dominique Chenu Op has some helpful remarks. He sees a purer presence of the church in the world creating a new kind of Christians in the world: missionaries of the gospel, and not the protectors of a civilization that they themselves have organized. The real vocation of lay people will be to show that Christianity does not despise the world, but lifts it up, consecrates it, and ful-fills it. And this new presence will unite intrinsically with the world, will make it a true partner, for the believers will read the signs of the times and through them discern the elements in the world and human history that are, as it were, naturally open to the sacred, offering the possibility of a new praeparatio evangelica. They now look for a spirituality that will integrate their life in a world that has become the main field where they must seek their sanctifica-tion. 12 Religious Life in the Ongoing Dialectic The focus of my attention has been the new path for the church in the world today, along the lines of the Vatican Council II document Gaudium et spes. We must be clear on the church in the new age before venturing to discuss religious life in the new age, for religious are Christian before they are religious; that is the order of the council in its document on the church, Lumen gen-tium.~ 3 But of course that means that the dialectic we have dis-cerned in history will apply also to the features of Christian living that religious have in common with all Christians. In that context we may anticipate the direction that applying the dialectic to religious life should take. We will understand how the religious state began as a "flight" from the "world," and we will realize that, as our conception and knowledge of that world has changed enormously, so also must our notion of flight from it. We have come a long way from St. Anthony of Egypt. I trust, never-theless, that we have not left him behind. With all reverence we may conceive an analogy with a hymn of Thomas Aquinas that the church uses in Holy Week: "The word of God, proceeding forth / Yet leaving not his Father's side." Our task is not to aban-don Anthony, but "proceeding forth" to retain his insight and transpose it into a realization of Vatican II's "church in the mod-ern world" and of religious life as it is to be lived in the coming millennium. Our task is to achieve in our own way the unity of the specific and ~he generic concepts of the world. Review for Religious Religious, then, will retain their vows, and the vows will have the meaning they had for Aquinas, a revocatio ab affectu temporalium, a withdrawal from affection for this world.14 They will have the meaning also that Anthony's flight from the world had for him in his time of secularization. And that meaning will remain even in the most sacred of times. A focus on the transcendent and the escha-tological state will necessarily involve the reevaluation of the world that the saints have always shown: not a contempt for the good of creation, but a love for the better to which the good is open. Correspondingly, there will be far more attention to the positive aspects of the vows. This movement has already begun, but it should undergo an extensive development. Similarly for the pos-itive counterpart of the "flight": contemplation of the divine. The cloistered will redouble attention to their contemplative role, and the active will redouble attention to their role as contemplatives in action. As we follow the dialectic in its future course, we would do well to consider our starting point. The first word in the gospel message is "repent" (Mt 4:17; and see the same in Mk 1:15, but with a preface, "The time has come . . ."). Our examination of conscience in this respect might ask in what degree, if any, we transferred to ourselves as perfection what belongs rather to the realm of the sacred. Medieval theologians argued at length about holiness and the more perfect state. Should the operative word be, not "holy" in the sense of personal virtue, but rather "sacred" in the sense of "consecrated to God"? Notes 1 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994 reprint), p. 87. 2 Lonergan, Method, p. 87. 3 Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1971), p. I0. 4 Grace and Freedom, pp. 14-15. s Grace and Freedom, pp. 15-16. 6 Bernard Lonergan, "Gratia Operans: A Study of Speculative Development in the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas," doctoral disser-tation, Gregorian University, Rome, 1940, pp. 36-37. The preface and introduction, from which the dialectical pattern is taken, were published in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 3, no. 2 (October 1985): 9-46. The whole dissertation will he published in volume 1 of the Collected September-October 1999 Crowe ¯ The "World"from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican 11 Works of Bernard Lonergan, soon to appear from University of Toronto Press. This section of my article simply paraphrases Lonergan's position as set forth in that dissertation. 7 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. EL. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), article, "Antony, St., of Egypt." s See, for an example, G.J. Engelhardt, "The De contemptu mundi of Bernardus Morevalensis," Mediaeval Studies 22 (1960): 108-135; 26 (1964): 109-142; 29 (1967): 243-272. On the same topic Robert Bultot published widely in books and periodicals of the 1960s under the title La doctrine du m~pris du monde. 9 The turnaround had an interesting development in the Lutheran idea. Lutheranism "does not consider the call of the pastor any more sacred than the call of each Christian to witness to the lordship of Christ in his life and work. The universal priesthood of believers., makes the vocation of every man a holy calling"; see "Lutheranism" in A Handbook of Christian Theology (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1958). Here too there is a valuable insight, namely, the vocation of every Christian, but it is not integrated into the dialectical development on the "world." 10 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 689, 692. '~ Bernard Lonergan, "Sacralization and Secularization," unpublished MS of a 1974 lecture (originally given 1973), p. 23. My whole article relies heavily on this lecture. ~2 Spirituality in the Secular City (Concilium 19), pp. 114-115. I have paraphrased, with frequent verbatim quotations, two pages of "Desacralization and the Spiritual Life" by Claude J. Geffr~ op. ~3 See chap. 6, §§43-47, on religious, in Lumen gentium, the coun-cil's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. 14 On "revocatio ab affectu temporalium," see Thomas Aquinas, De perfectione vitae spiritual#, chap. 6. Review for Religious JOEL GIALLANZA "Come Closer. I Am Your Brother": Being and Doing Brotherhood In Genesis, chapter 45, Joseph, one of Jacob's sons, has the delicate task of revealing his identity to his brothers. Having sold him into slavery several years before, they do not recognize him now in this powerful Egyptian official, second only to Pharaoh. In his self-revelation Joseph tells his brothers, "Come closer to me. I am your brother" (Gn 45:4). To be convincing, Joseph has to do more than tell his brothers who he is; he must demonstrate this through his attitudes and actions toward them. If he was truly to be their brother, then he had to do what brothers do. Only then was he gen-uinely recognizable to them. This story has a valuable reminder for religious brothers today. The name by which we identify our-selves in life and in the church reflects a rich and prophetic spirituality. "Brother" is not only a title, it is what we are. Even more, it is what we are called and committed to do among ourselves, among the people, and for the church. Also, it is ever a reality we must become: it cannot be fully and finally accompJished at the time of our religious profession. In my experience of the church and sodety today, several forces outside lay religious life often contribute Joel Giallanza csc wrote for us as recently as our May-June issue. His formation work continues at Charles Andersen Residence; 320 Brahan Boulevard; San Antonio, Texas 78215. Septe~nber-October 1999 brothers Giallanza ¯ "Come Closer. I Am Your Brotber" We need one another to be who we say we are and to do what we say we do by our very vocation. to making brothers unrecognizable, unknown, or unappreciated. One of them is that the church's administration emphasizes-- implicitly and explicitly--the clerical state as normative for min-istry and governance within the church, while brotherhood tends to become invisible or at least peripheral. Another is that in a vari-ety of cultures the term brother is used to designate seminarians and other candidates for presbyteral ordination. From this perspective brotherhood tends to be inter-preted as a transitional stage. These outside forces, how-ever, are not alone in influencing the public perception of brothers. Two internal forces come to mind. Sometimes we define our-selves or allow ourselves to be defined in negative terms, that is, by what we are not: unordained or nonclerical men religious. To go through life with "un" or "non" as the beginning of our self-iden-tity is not a good basis for explaining our vocation. It is even a less good basis for promoting vocations. And sometimes we do not reflect upon sufflciendy and articulate clearly our own identity, including the challenges we face simply because we dare to call ourselves brothers. Being Brother Immediately striking about the term brother is its relational character. It expresses both a specific relationship and a way of being in relationship. For us it assumes that we are willing to enter into relationships with others. It assumes we choose to be involved, not isolated. Though Vita consecrata does not speak extensively about the vocation of brothers in the church, it recognizes four relationships that are to characterize our way of life. These religious are called to be brothers of Christ, deeply united with him, "the firstborn among many brothers" (Rm 8:29); brothers to one another in mutual love and working together in the church in the same service of what is good; brothers to everyone in their witness to Christ's love for all, especially the lowliest, the neediest; brothers for a greater brotherhood in the church (Vita consecrata, §60). Review for Religious I would like to comment on these four relationships and on their prophetic implications. Brothers of the Lord Whatever else we may do, whatever our ministry, the rela-tionship that defines and shapes religious life is our relationship with the Lord. This must be the first and deepest of all our rela-tionships. Jesus says to the disciples, "You are my friends, if you do what I command you . I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father" On 15:14-15). Our relationship with the Lord, our friendship with God, is rooted in knowing and doing what we have learned from the Lord. To be brothers of the Lord is to know the ways of God and to do what the Lord asks of us. To be brothers of the Lord, we must be people of discernment and people of fidelity. We must probe God's will ever deeper and then faithfully put into action all that we discover. We must be skilled in seeing God in all and in seeing all in God. We thereby proclaim and live the intimate closeness of God to this world, even when global events or personal experi-ences provide no evidence or apparently contrary evidence of such intimacy. Brothers with One Another Everything we say about ourselves and about our life together will not be authentic if we do not live in such a way that our com-mon life is marked by love, mutual care and concern, courtesy, hospitality, and a genuine interdependence. Jesus tells us that we will be recognized as his followers if we love one another (see Jn 13:3 5). Note that Jesus does not say what we would be recognized as, if we did not love one another. Could we become completely invisible, thereby rendering impossible any kind of recognition? To be brothers with one another in a religious community is much more than merely getting along; it must go beyond friendly tolerance. There are two important elements here. First, to be brothers with one anothdr is to recognize and accept that we do not live this way of life alone. We need one another to be who we say we are and to do what we say we do by our very vocation. There must be a mutuality and an interdependence among us by which we September-October 1999 Giallanza ¯ "Come Closer. I Am Your Brother" strengthen and support one another. Second, to be brothers with one another is apostolic. The quality of our life together commu-nicates something about God's presence and activity in our world. In some areas of the world, we may be the only witnesses people see, the only evidenc~ they have that God is alive and active in their lives and in their culture and society. Brothers to the People Our very title brothers excludes distinctions among us. Nationality, culture, ethnic heritage, education, ministry, natural and acquired skills--all these are gifts that are to unite us, not dif-ferences to be made into walls of division among us. So too our presence among the people must communicate without compro-mise that we make no distinctions, that we welcome and are hos-pitable to all people. To be brothers to the people also influences the way we approach ministry, whatever our ministry. Our apostolic activity among the people must be a model and a means of unity for them. We must be skilled in guiding people to work together, to appre-ciate one another's gifts, and to share those gifts with one another for the good of all. Regardless of the specific nature of our min-istry, this task of facilitating union among the people is a primary aspect of our mission and message as brothers in the church and society today. Brothers for the Church There are many unnecessary distinctions in our church today. Among the most dominant are those between women and men, between lay and ordained persons. Our presence and activity in the church must strive to communicate a perspective free of the kinds of distinctions that can and sometimes do deteriorate into divisions. To be brothers for the church is to live and proclaim, in St. Paul's terms, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male 6r female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Ga 3:28). We know it was a risk for St. Paul to preach such a message two thousand years ago. In truth, it is still a risk to preach this today precisely because people can and do establish their identity in distinctions. Any message that seeks to Review for Religious remove distinctions tends to disrupt that identity, thereby stimu-lating responses that range from simple admonition to sharp antag-onism. I believe it is part of the mission of brothers in the church today to preach and to live such a message regardless of the con-sequences. Doing What Brothers Do What I have said so far pertains to being brothers, pertains to our basic identity as lay religious in the church and society. To be brothers of the Lord, with one another, to the people, and for the church will have a definite influence on our doing what brothers do. Doing what brothers do is the prophetic dimension of our life as lay religious. In terms of these four basic relationships, what do we do as brothers? Through our relationship to the Lord, we demonstrate the possibility of living the example of Jesus in today's world. Jesus' example of selflessness, of compassion, of service to others is not popular today. We observe the sustained promotion and tenacity of an individualism which condones and constructs self-contained and closed styles of life that do not readily respond to the influence or needs of others. The danger is that Jesus' example could be placed on the shelf of items that are no longer realistic or useful for our world: items that are fine for museums of ancient artifacts, but not really relevant for everyday life in contemporary culture. To do what brothers do is a clear expression of the importance, necessity, and urgency of Jesus' example for today. Through our relationship with one another, we demonstrate the possibility of love and reconciliation. In a world where self-ishness and self-containment become the ways of relating to one another, love and reconciliation become ever more rare. Personal histories, past mistakes, and present weaknesses become conve-nient excuses for not reaching beyond ourselves to love, to for-give, to be reconciled with others. And yet it is only through our humanity--with our histories and mistakes and weaknesses--that we can love one another. To do what brothers do means commit-ting ourselves to love and forgive and reconcile, and to take up whatever means are necessary to live that commitment every day. Through our relationship to the people, we demonstrate the possibility of living in peace and unity. The rich diversity repre-sented in social, political, religious, cultural, and ethnic differ- September-October 1999 Giallanza ¯ "Come Closer. I Am Your Brother" ences is too often used as a basis for creating divisions among peo-ple. And as the barriers supporting those divisions become stronger, mutual destruction appears more effective and efficient than coop-erative dialogue. Conflict, violence, war then become the usual ways of dealing with differences in life. To do what brothers do means making every effort to show that the differences among people are graces and blessings to be celebrated, not burdens and bothers to be shunned. Through our brotherly relationship with the church, we demonstrate the possibility of living and ministering in equality. This equality is not uniformity; there can and must be distinctions among the many necessary ministries within the church. The important and imperative idea here is to help maintain the link between those many ministries and the common good of the Body of Christ. To create and then vindicate situations in which peo-ple are excluded or treated slightingly is not acceptable. Ignoring such situations is also not acceptable. To do what brothers do means pointing out injustices and inconsistencies--in our society, but most especially in our church. We will not be popular for iden-tifying such realities, but to neglect doing so would contradict what we profess to be and to do. The Haunting Question Male lay religious are often confronted with the simple but haunting question "What is a brother?" Brothers themselves, as well as other church ministers, struggle with formulating a satis-factory response. I do not believe that any response, however elo-quent and theologically sound, will ever be satisfactory. Indeed, it cannot be. If being a brother and doing what brothers do is at heart a matter of relationship, then our identity as brothers will be found in our actions, in our witness and our way of relating to the Lord, to one another, to others, and to the church. Thus, the only worthy answer to "What is a brother?" is simply "Watch us! Watch what we do, how we behave. Observe our love, care, concern, com-passion. Watch us. Then you will see and know what being a brother is." Are we willing to make that response? Will the integrity, consistency, and quality of our lives withstand such close scrutiny? The precedent for this response has been established already. When asked by John the Baptist's disciples, "Are you the one who Review for Religious is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus responds, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the leper~ are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Mt 11:3- 5). Jesus' response invites a simple and direct method: observe, then report what you see. Could it be that we work to enhance the eloquence of our language and the soundness of our theology in responding to "What is a brother?" because we hesitate to say "Watch us"? Obviously, to invite close observation is to imply an integrity and a quality of life that are beyond question or com-promise. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul is boldly explicit in continuing Jesus' precedent: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Co 11:1). In fact, no less than seven times does Paul make this recommendation in his correspon-dence with the early Christian commu-nities (see 1 Co 4:16 and 11:1; Ph 3:17 and 4:19; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7 and 9). We might wince at the bluntness--almost arrogance--of his recommendation. Nevertheless, the only way to avoid rel-egating Jesus' example to the realm of theoretical ideals is by a practical demonstration of it. Only a living example can accomplish that demonstration effectively. Brothers must live in such a way that we can make this Pauline recommendation with confidence and integrity. If we believe that our God is incarnational, then the example of our own lives must be the first of all our responses to the simple question "What is a brother?" Again, we must ask ourselves about our willingness and ability to make that response. Any other response, whether from an individual religious or froma general chapter, will fall short of the convincing and transforming power inherent in a living example. Being brothers and doing what brothers do involve decisions regarding a belief and a behavior. The belief is that the example of our brotherhood, as a reflection of Jesus' own, is necessary for society and for the church today--and tomorrow. The behavior is our effort to follow Jesus with integri.ty, simplicity, and fidelity. Through our brotherly .relationship with the church, we demonstrate the possibility Of living and ministering in equality. September-October 1999 Giallanza * "Come Closer. I Am Your Brother" This belief and behavior must stem from deliberate decisions, for they will not and cannot come into being by themselves. If they do not find explicit expression in our daily lives and activities, then they do not exist at all. If we cannot invite the world to "Watch us" when we are asked about the identity and meaning of our life as brothers, then we have only words. Such words die in thin air without living exam-ples to certify their truth. Action verifies articulations; witness confirms words. When action and witness are separated from artic-ulations and words, credibility is compromised. To speak and to act, together, must constitute our effort to define who and what we are as religious brothers and, being brothers, what we do. All else is shifting sand. All else contributes to the continued invisibility of religious brothers within the church and society. Being and Doing To be brothers and to do what brothers do are inseparable. We must strive for consistency in our life so that what we per-ceive and profess ourselves to be and what we do become a single reality. Otherwise we compromise the quality of any prophetic presence and activity we would have in the world. To be and to do as brothers of the Lord, we must be men of integrity, firmly rooted in the Lord. To be and to do as brothers with one another, we must be men of communion, who willingly choose the interdependence necessary for a healthy and whole life. To be and to do as brothers to others, we must be men of mis-sion, who love others through compassion and service. To be and to do as brothers for the church, we must be men willing to pro-vide challenge, whose commitment to the church enables us to question its inconsistencies even as we continue to love it. In the Book of Genesis, the challenge confronting Joseph is both to reveal his identity and to witness to the truth of that rev-elation. He begins with a simple invitation, "Come closer to me." He invites closer scrutiny and careful listening, confident that he will be recognized and accepted for who and what he claims to be. We religious brothers, by the very nature of our vocation, must extend the same invitation in all our relationships. The witness of our integrity, our sense of communion and mission, and the chal-lenge we present will confirm or contradict the truth of what we claim to be and profess to do. Vita consecrata says that brothers participate in the "mission of proclaiming the gospel and bearing witness to it with charity in everyday life" (§60). Such proclamation and such witness are responsibilities we bear and services we provide. They are the heart of our invitation to "Watch us"--to "Come closer" and see ¯. "I am your brother." Questions for Personal and Communal Reflection These brief reflections need fi~rther refinement from the particular cultures and contexts in which brothers live and minister around the world today. In fact, the most sound theologies of religious brotherhood today will conte from within those cultures and contexts. Generic theologies of religious life, by attempting to speak to everyone, run the risk of speaking to no one. As we continue to reflect on and discuss various dimensions of our religious life, we must remain ever attentive to the specific culture and context in which we live and minis-ter. The following questions are offered as a starting point for individuals and for communities. For us as brothers of the Lord, what aspects of Jesus' example and teaching are particularly striking and significant, given the heritage of our religious congregation and the particular culture in which we live and minister? As brothers with one another, what do we desire people to see in us through our life together? What do we believe our wimess communicates to people? What evidence do we have to support that belief?. As brothers to the people, what means do we use to foster peace and unity among them? How do our ministries serve towards dialogue and reconciliation? As brothers for the church, what efforts do we or could we make in our local area to emphasize the equality of persons within the church? With what specific challenges does our heritage as a congregation con-front the church? In which aspects of our life are we confident in saying "Come closer"? In which aspects of our life fire we hesitant about saying "Watch us" in response to people's questions about our vocation? What are the principal gifts we bring as brothers to this cultural set-ring? What are the principal social and ecclesial challenges confronting us today as brothers in this cultural setting? What is the most attractive quality about our religious life in this cultural setting? What is least attractive? What means would be effective in the particular culture where we live and minister for educating the people and the church about the voca-tion of brothers? In addition to the witness of our life, what are effective strategies for promoting vocations to religious brotherhood today? Septentber-October 1999 PAUL BEDNARCZYK Religious Brothers: One Vocation Director's Perspective Religious congregations of brothers can no longer ignore the question of new membership. The "vocation crisis" is staring us in the face. We can debate more effective governmen-tal structures, we can plan new mission orientations, and we can write more documents about solidarity with the poor, but, unless new members join our communities, what will it all mean fifty years from now? The membership crunch seems to be hitting home more now than ever. In many dioceses and religious congregations, the vocation question has been moved to the forefront. At their annual national meeting three years ago, the United States bishops agreed on a comprehensive strategy for vocations to the priesthood and reli-gious life. In June 1998 the U.S. bishops' committee on vocations sponsored a national symposium that had an overwhelming atten-dance. In addition, both the men's and women's religious leader-ship conferences--the Conferences of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM), the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), and the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR)--are exploring how leadership corporately can be more active in promoting the priesthood and religious life. For the past thirty-some years, we have quietly and sometimes unconsciously watched more brothers leave our corigregations than Paul Bednarczyk CSC, of his congregation's eastern province, first published this article in Horizon, a journal for vocation directors. His address is Congregation of Holy Cross; 85 Overlook Circle; New Rochelle, New York 10804. Review for Religious enter them. We prayed for vocations, and many communities even maintained their commitment to a full-time vocation director, but few prospects have joined our prenovitiate programs. Although over the years there was a general concern about the lack of new members, still--because numbers of brothers remained in the "work force"--we felt somewhat comfortable regarding our num-bers. These days are now gone. Our congregations are aging, men are retiring, and fewer members remain in full-time ministry. Our younger members continue to be few. We must confront the new-membership question. Much has been written about societal factors that create a cli-mate unfavorable to religious vocations. Family and neighborhood structures are no longer what they once were. We are witnessing changing definitions of family: single-parent homes, blended fam-ilies, children being raised by gay or lesbian couples. In addition, physical, sexual, drug, and alcohol abuse have greatly impacted the trust and stability that families need. Individualism and mate-rialism have consumed our American culture. Authority is looked upon cynically and institutions are considered suspect. Combine that with young people's inability or reluctance to make commit-ments, and religious vocations become an uphill battle. The changing face of the American Catholic and the tension between Catholic teaching and American values also have an impact on the numbers of religious vocations. The rising multi-culturalism of U.S. Catholics challenges us. Many Hispanic peo-ple continue to abandon the Catholic faith of their ancestors for fundamental and evangelical groups. Polls claim that many Catholics believe that the church's teaching on contraception, homosexuality, and premarital sex is outdated. Although young adults in general do not see the difference between clerical and religious celibacy, they will say that celibacy is the primary rea-son why they would not be a priest or a religious. Likewise, given our democratic values, American Catholics must reconcile them-selves with a church that does not function democratically. I believe it important to mention these factors at the outset because, although they are beyond our control, they have an effect on our religious-vocation promotion. In this paper I intend to share my own reflections on why fewer people are choosing to be brothers. Although I belong to the Congregation of Holy Cross, I have shared some of these ideas with brothers in other religious congregations. We are not alone in our struggle. After five years Septentber-October 1999 Bednarczyk ¯ Religious Brothers as vocation director, I offer thoughts I have gleaned from numer-ous vocation talks I have heard and given, from many meetings and discussions withadolescents and young adults, from direct-ing men and women on both personal and group discernment retreats, and from my association with other vocation directors both regionally and nationally. 492 A Question of Visibility We religious brothers are invisible. To put it more precisely, people generally have no clear idea about who or what we are. I say this neither cavalierly nor despairingly, but as simple truth. Part of this is the reality that we are fewer in number. In the United States, according to thd 1998 official Catholic Directory, the number of religious brothers dropped in 1997-98 by 178, resulting in a national total of 6115. Of course, many of these are retired or infirm and therefore no longer engaged in part- or full-time min-istry- and so are even more invisible. Brothers in teaching congregations cannot assume that the freshmen entering our high schools in September know what a religious brother is. Even though some come to us from Catholic grade schools, many have not met a religious brother or sister and know little or nothing about religious life. If they do have a min-imal understanding oic our life, most likely their perceptions have been influenced by what they see in the media, which is often dis-torted, stereotyped, and scandal ridden. Their parents, too, a generation that had greater exposure to religious in classrooms and parishes, have limited understandings of religious life. They may have romanticized notions of who we once were or, on the other hand, may endlessly repeat stories of brothers and sisters maintaining uncompromising discipline and inflicting harsh corporal punishments. In addition, people are con-fused by the polarization of the various religious lifestyles. How do lay people find a balance among various extreme "liberal" and "conservative" positions taken by religious men and women? How do they understand community when the religious they know live in private apartments or are in scattered communities of twos and threes? Although there are justifications for various places on the spectrum, the average persons in the pews just do not understand. I think it safe to say that they are confused, just as we are at times. The question of visibility is more complex than the reality of Review for Relig~o~!s fewer members. It is, I believe, also related to a greater issue in the church. Without a doubt, within the past twenty years our church has become increasingly clerical. At a time when there are fewer and fewer priests, lay religious life is not always promoted in the church as enthusiastically or emphatically as it could be. In litur-gies all of us have heard public prayers for vocations to the priest-hood and privately wondered why we were not also praying for vocations to the religious life. I do not think these omissions are intentional. When I have respectfully asked presiders to include in their future prayers of petition a mention of an increase in candi-dates for religious life as well, I was usually met with sincere apolo-gies and a response such as "To tell you the truth, I didn't even think of it." Such admitted forgetfulness is disarming, but the response remains a telling one. Another reality is that many bishops and priests are "gun shy" of religious men and women. Since many of their dealings with us have been confrontational and neg-ative, it seems they may be choosing to either ignore or avoid us in order to avoid future hostile situa-tions. Likewise, we religious have suffered from our own antago-nisms with the clergy and the hierarchy, and we too may choose to either ignore or avoid them. My point is not to say that we are right and they are wrong, but rather that stereotypes and false generalizations held by either party only lead to further break-downs in communication and in understanding one another's voca-tions in the church. If we assume an "us and them" mentality, we add to the divisiveness that already exists here and there in our church, and it is the church, the people of God, that ultimately suffers from such internal strife. To pin the blame of our invisibility solely on the church would be both unjust and inaccurate. We brothers must own the fact that some of us have chosen to be invisible. In the neighborhoods of some of our communities, I would conjecture that most of the neighbors are unaware that there is a religious community of men living on their block. Instead of participating in the life of our local parish community, some of us have chosen instead to par-ticipate anonymously in a nearby parish that may provide a better liturgy or choir. At a time when many teaching congregations have made concerted and successful efforts at connecting the mission of We religious brothers are invisible. September-October 1999 Bednarczyk ¯ Religious Brotbers their schools with the mission and charism of their community, some brothers choose not to participate in school activities, often to the dismay and wonder of lay colleagues, parents, and alumni. Although reasons for these examples may be acceptable to us, we must realize that such choices promote further invisibility and anonymity, something which we brothers can no longer afford. Without a public presence, our hope for future vocations is dim. The old clich~ has much truth: "Out of sight, out of mind." Not being part of the clerical hierarchy has given us a unique freedom that is comfortable. I heard one brother say about the hierarchy: "It's good that they forget about us--this way they leave us alone!" We come to a religious community not to dis-tance ourselves from the existing tensions or authority in the institutional church, nor to find a supportive haven for our anger against church authority, nor, for that matter, to promote our own church agenda. As consecrated religious we are men of the church and in the church. Our vocation by its very nature calls us to deepen our baptismal commitment and our relationship with the people of God. The faithful see us and look to us for who and what we are: men who through our vows have consecrated ourselves totally to God and to service within the church. They expect us to be integral to the church: when they do not see this, they are surprised and confused. If we are going to welcome men into our communities, I believe that we must all realistically deal with our feelings and beliefs about the church of today--not the church of yesterday or tomorrow, but the church of today in all of its glory and weakness. Generational Differences The majority of us have lived through the social, political, and ecclesial turbulence of the 1960s. We experienced the devastation of political assassinations, the power of the people in working for justice, and the sense of betrayal and shame that resulted from Watergate. We mourned the violence and casualties of the Vietnam War and of the racial wars that were erupting in our city streets. We underwent our own personal and spiritual transformations after the drastic changes set in motion by the Second Vatican Council. Suddenly our equilibrium was shaken. We experienced a shift in values from uniformity to diversity, from authoritarianism to collegiality, from commonality to individuality. Review for Religious We dealt with these dramatic events and changes in a variety of ways. Some simply left religious life. It seems to have been a good decision for some, once they discovered they .may have become brothers for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, oth-ers left and we still wonder why. Regarding these departures we still grieve. And, into the bargain, some of us have stayed. What are our reasons for remaining? After these radical shifts in church, society, and culture, has our dependence upon God and one another deepened, or have we learned instead to place more trust in our own self and in our material security? Have our vows increased our joy and appreciation for life, or have they regretfully only made our life burdensome? Do we face the uncertainty of the future with excitement and hope, or with cynicism and despair? If we are to witness to an attractive lifestyle option, we must answer these questions honestly and reexamine our own commitment to religious life. Unlike many of us who were brought up with the order and constancy of a triumphal church, our young people today have experienced conflicting messages from a church in transition, and they seek, simply, truth. In the face of New Age spirituality and watered-down Christianity, there are those who, in their desire to know more of what it means to be Catholic, resort to tangible, traditionally Catholic symbols. I find it fascinating that Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is making a comeback on college campuses. In the midst of the noise and rush of their aca-demic lives, students appreciate the hour of silence in the pres-ence of Mystery. Similarly, young adults are rediscovering the virtue of Mary, and have found the rosary to be an attractive form of prayer that is identifiably Catholic. Some ofos may be quick to categorize these young people as conservative or wacky, but these are students who volunteer weekly at local soup kitchens and par-ticipate in "alternative" spring breaks with Habitat for Humanity. They are also class officers, athletes, and students on the dean's list. As I have discovered, our younger people defy the neat and tight boxes in which we tend to categorize them. Have our VOWS increased our joy and appreciation for life, or have they regretfully only made our life burdensome? Septentber-October 1999 Bednarczyk ¯ Relig4ous Brothers To live with the ideals, hopes, and dreams of the young is inconvenient and at times even uncomfortable. In my meetings with men who are exploring a vocation, I have found that it is not because of ministry, education, or social-justice convictions that they are drawn to religious life. Our church has evolved to where, if this were their primary desire, they could eas-ily do this in a Catholic institution as laypersons. They are com-ing to us first and foremost for the religious life itself. To live in the secular world as a committed Christian espousing Catholic values is difficult for them. They admit their need for a community of like-minded individuals who could strengthen their love for God and their Catholic convic-tions. They are not looking for just a nice group of people who do good work. They are looking for men who know and can lead them to God and who can give them a sense of hope in a world that has become increasingly pessimistic and destructive. They want to pray together, share their faith, and bring the Good News to people through their ministry. They acknowledge the Eucharist as central to our faith, and they have devotion to it. Since they often come from an unchurched, nontraditional back-ground, they seek structure and definition. From our community perspective, that is quite an order to fill! Some of you who are reading this are probably wincing and saying, "I thought we got away from that years ago!" To put it simply, I believe we find ourselves in the middle of a generation gap. Thirty years ago some brothers retained their habits, sat in their pews, and looked with distaste upon those who wore jeans and colored shirts and prayed on throw pillows. They thought that, for sure, religious life was quickly going down the tubes. The younger brothers, however, challenged the older brothers to renew their zeal for religious life by adapting to a different lifestyle, one that was based more on shared expressions of faith and on more interpersonal, communal living. Likewise, the younger members were taught by the elders to appreciate the tradition of our life and consequently were enriched by their fidelity to their vows in the face of change. Since some of us have lost a younger generation in our con-gregations, we have forgotten what it is like to be challenged by the young. The lively community dynamic that occurs with the mix- Review for Religious ture of generations--the elderly, the middle-aged, the young--does not happen in many of our local communities. As a result, many of us have grown comfortable with one another and in our life together. For the majority of us, the mutual challenges and exchanges that we all remember from our earlier years and that occur naturally between the young and old do not happen anymore. At forty-one years old, I am still considered one of the "young" brothers in my community. I realize that much of my religious life has been lived with men older than myself. Although I am thank-ful for the benefit of their example and wisdom, as I enter my own midlife I realize that I have been deprived of living with the con-tagious energy and enthusiasm of much younger religious. I know that I need at times to be challenged to think in new ways and to experience life differently. Most of us are middle-aged or older. If we are to have a newer generation following us, we must--even if it becomes increasingly more difficult as we age--be open to the renewal of our basic val-ues: prayer, community, and lifestyle. Ironically, those who are considering religious life look for deeper community experiences while some veterans of thirty or forty years say they are tired of the routine and demands in community. How do we bridge this gap? To live with the ideals, hopes, and dreams of the young is incon-venient and at times even uncomfortable, but I know of no other way. Although youthful idealism may need some tempering, we must admit that at least it is refreshing. We have now become the "older" brothers of yesterday, and, like the older ones of thirty years ago, we too are invited to new ways of thinking and being as we look to the next generation in religious life. I do not believe that age has to be a deterring factor. When I hosted discernment retreats for prospective candidates at our retire-ment facility, I would invite three of our elderly brothers to tell their vocation stories. The combined witness of almost two hundred years of faithful religious life is better than any vocation brochure I could ever design! Their authentic fulfillment in Holy Cross and their continuing joy and vitality were always evidence to these interested men that this life can be lived and can be lived well. Our young people look to their elders for inspiration. They hunger for the wisdom that comes from living a prayerful and reflective life with God. If, however, they see stagnation, apathy, and cynicism, they are left disillusioned and wanting. For many of us, our lives as religious have been deeply enriching and grace filled, and yet some September-October 1999 Bednarczyk * ReligiousBrotbers of us are reluctant to share these experiences with each other. We underestimate at times the power of our stories. In many religious congregations it has been the tradition to respond to "the signs of the times" and to the contemporary needs of the church. I maintain that we need to continue this spirit of openness not only to our mission and ministries, but also to our religious lives as well. The Answer Is in the Present I do not claim to have the answers for the future. To be truth-ful, my worry is not for the future, nor is it for the past. It is the present that is my concern. We can only theorize about the future, as we can only reminisce about the past. Such intellectual exer-cises tend to distance us from the responsibility of making neces-sary choices about our lives and our community in the present. In general, given the societal changes and challenges discussed above, some recerit shifts in our culture seem to coalesce with our lives as religious brothers. For example, our society displays a renewed interest in spirituality. Celebrities from Oprah to Madonna have made daily meditation chic again! With the pro-liferation of self-help and support groups for every issue imagin-able, people long for connection and belonging. They desire "to share their story" and to be validated by a group. Corporations are supportive of community service, and some school systems have included service components in their curricula. As a result, volunteerism is at an all-time high. Ironically, many authors are making lots of money with their best-selling books on how to sim-plify one's lifestyle. It would seem that religious brotherhood would somehow fit into this picture. Our life is a wonderful secret that needs to be shared more now than ever before. As religious brothers we bring, I believe, a special gift to the church. Our faith teaches us about a God whose love is uncondi-tional and whose mercy is unlimited. If faithfully and genuinely lived, our vows attest that fulfillment is to be found more in the transcendent than in the transitory. Where division and broken relationships characterize many families and marriages, our com-mitment to community life, despite its inherent struggles, myste-riously witnesses to welcome, order, acceptance, and equality. I have read many books and articles detailing futures for reli-gious life in temporary vowed commitments, lay associate mem- Review for Religious bership, satellite communities, blended communities, and so forth. All of that makes for interesting reading and good discussion, but I return to the question: What about now? How do we live now the vows we professed, however many years ago? Do we do so with the passion, zeal, and love of our early years? I do not believe that the answer to the challenges of our pre-sent situation is as simple as the reconstruction of past external structures. Our lives are much more complex today than they were thirty years ago. No one can deny that our traditional structures served us well, considering the church and spirituality of the time, but it would be naive to expect the former ways to meet our con-temporary needs. We can romanticize about the past, but we know that it is impossible to turn the clock back. I am, however, not convinced--at least in my own congrega-tion- that we are at present compelled to create new models and forms of vowed religious life. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We need to insure that the wheel we already have is on the right track. Besides, since Vatican II, a number of experimental lay and religious communities have already been formed, imple-menting exciting new models of lifestyle and commitment. How they will fare in the future, only time will tell. I am convinced that as brothers we need to reclaim who and what we are. We are men of the church vowed to a life of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. We commit ourselves to a life of prayer and mission with each other in community. Given today's society and culture, these core values are what make us countercultural. Our vows are meant to be lived joyfully, with hope. This life was meant to be lived in relationship with God and with one another. Our challenging times invite us to probe and to enter more deeply into the essence of our vows and the mysterious grace that comes with this life. I believe in the gift of religious life, and particularly in the gift of religious brotherhood. I want a future for us because I believe the church would b6 lacking without us. Knowing how much I have been enriched by my own vocation to Holy Cross, I desire to share this gift with a new generation of religious. I am sure that the majority of members in our communities desires the same, but to do this requires conversion and a courageous open-ness to the Spirit that speaks to us today--and not yesterday and not tomorrow. [--z~00 September-October 1999 AVIS CLENDENEN II On Promise Making, Leave-Taking, and Becoming journeying It has been sixteen years since I requested and received a dispensation from my religious vows. The following reflection explores--from ethical, psychological, and theological perspectives-- the experience of malting and breaking promises and leaving the vowed religious life. Principally I will be drawing upon the ethical con-siderafions of Sister Margaret Farley RSM, the psycho-logical insights of Dr. Carl Rogers, and the theological depth of Father Karl Rahner SJ. These pages reveal a slice of an experience shared by many--that is, the mak-ing of a religious commitment, living in a vowed reli-gious community for years, developing bonds of trust and friendship, experiencing a crisis of fidelity, discov-ering the personal inability/choice to sustain the orig-inal commitment, and ultimately breaking the commitment and leaving religious life. A suspicion I had as I thought about examining the psychology and theology behind the making and break-ing of promises was that Rogers and Rahner had more than their first names in common. I sensed they shared a fundamental understanding of the human person, the Avis Clendenen PhD, associate professor of religious stud-ies and director of the Pastoral Ministry Institute, teaches pastoral theology and ministry at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, where she can be reached: 3700 West |03rd Street; Chicago, Illinois 60655. Revie~v for Religimts human dilemma, and the graced and flawed human quest of becom-ing whole and free. The following reflection reveals some signif-icant connections between Rogerian psychology and Rahnerian theology and offers a way of viewing the painful process of leave-taking and becoming. The painful and hopeful contours of this all-too-familiar experience can be traversed again in openness to the possibility of deeper revelations about the choices we make that sustain our word of love. Sixteen years from my departure after a thirteen-year commitment gives me perspective and a desire to return and examine the process of making promises, breaking promises, and becoming. In the fall of 1969 at nineteen years of age I entered the Sisters of Mercy. My letter of request to enter was all of two paragraphs composed by a nineteen-year-old touched and transformed, as late teens can be, by the turbulent events of the 1960s: My reason for choosing religious life as my way of life is because this in the only life that makes sense to me, as an individual. I want to express my life as a commitment of love to God and His Church. I am not quite sure why there is an attraction to the Mercy order in particular, but I believe my potential for giving and receiving, of freedom and ful-fillment, lie within this community. By the time I would profess my final vows in 1978, all refer-ences to God in the masculine pronoun were to be stricken from my vocabulary. By 1978 1 would be a graduate of the Jesuit School of Theology, having been the first woman admitted to its master-of- divinity program. Throughout the 1970s I struggled with the weight of a patriarchal church, including the graces and conflicts surrounding the inclusion of women in all ministries of the church. I would, over the expanse of years, come to greater clarity as to my "attraction" to the Sisters of Mercy as women of valor and vision, with a deepening sense of gratitude for the reciprocity of our rela-tionship. The issues of freedom and fulfillment became bemus-ing, and the turbulent times never did seem to abate. At thirty-three years of age, thirteen years after my entrance and less than four years after my final profession, I received a dis-pensation from my vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. The following are excerpts from the letter I wrote to the provincial administrator, initiating the formal leave-taking process: To try and summarize all the spiritual and psychological investigations I have done would be an injustice to all that has September-October 1999 Clendenen ¯ On Promise Making, Leave-Taking, and Becoming gone into this decision. To say too little would be an injus-tice to the quality of relationship I have shared as a Sister of Mercy throughout these years. I feel great pain as I accept responsibility for breaking my promises. But it was the pain of remaining in religious community that finally made the decision. I have asked myself again and again about the truth and integrity of the final commitment professed in 1978. That moment expressed the insight and honesty that was available to me; and while only four years ago, it's been a lifetime. In the months I have lived alone, I have read all the journals from my thirteen years as a Sister of Mercy. I saw the patterns of my struggles repeated year upon year. I read and remembered delightful times in community. My loneli-ness lines many pages. Notes from numerous retreats reminded me of my love for God. And, oh, the growing rage at the institutional church as it demeaned me and our efforts for women's voice and body to be celebrated all places, including the altar. I do not believe that in asking for a dispensation from my religious vows I am walking away from the vision of Catherine McAuley, the works of mercy, the body of Christ, or the commitment with feminists to liberate ourselves from the patriarchy. I am stepping away from a vowed relationship among you. I promised to persevere for life. I believe I per-severed until there .was no more life for me. I am so very sorry. I do not look for understanding, I~ut I will always expect compassion for that is why we bear our name. For the compassion that has been shown me and I have shared with you, for the years of service given expres-sion to as a Sister of Mercy, for the treasured moments and persons, I will always be grateful. I remain a believer and a daughter of Catherine McAuley. I hold now with courage and trepidation her legacy, my Bible, and I turn a corner. And trust. To Give One's Word Yale University Professor of Christian Ethics and Sister of Mercy Margaret Farley's tough thinking on the meaning of fidelity and its claim of obligation form an important frame of reference in analyzing whether one has the moral sanction to end a com-mitment. Sister Margaret Farley wrote her book on commitment in the late 1980s, when the permanency of commitments in American marriages teetered at a fifty-percent divorce rate and when "defection" from the priesthood and religious life in the Review for Religious American Catholic Church continued to deplete the ranks of ordained and vowed Catholic ecclesial leaders. For many years I successfully avoided Margaret Farley's 1986 book Personal Commitments: Beginning. Keeping. Changing. Research for this article inevitably led me back to her work and the challenges to think hard about why we give our word in mak-ing commitments, why we are obliged to keep them, and under what circumstances we may be morally released from them. Farley suggests that the rise of the human-potential movement served to shift the goals of many from the challenges of permanent commit-ment, fidelity, and responsibility, toward the increasing warrant of the call for per-sonal growth and self-actualization. It was as if these two venues for being and becoming were mutually exclusive. Those who had previously interpreted their life in terms of a religious vocation began to claim the. need to transfer voca-tion from one locus to another. "It was not always easy to tell whether these were expressions of faithfulness or of irresponsibility and betrayal."' What does it mean to say you make a promise with a sense of its truth and integrity and then years later suggest that your insights and sense of integrity have changed so signifi-cantly as to justify a breaking of the bonds and a release from obli-gation? Is emotional pain and lack of personal fulfillment sufficient cause to be dispensed fr6m the vows professed in an act of freedom, a free action always given into the hands of an uncertain future? As Farley eloquently explains, commitment has to do with the free action of free persons who give their word as part of them-selves. Commitment m~ans to give my word because that word belongs to me and I freely choose to entrust it to another's keep-ing. In a sense, commitment means to share with one or more per-sons claims on my being there in a promised way with and for them. While my word is "given away," paradoxically I still pos-sess it because it is myself. In commitment we freely take on an obligation to do as we have promised. The motivation for the kind of commitment we are discussing here is always love. "By assuming certain frameworks for love, we Is emotional pain and lack of personal fulfillment sufficient cause to be dispensed from the vows professed in an act of freedom, September-October 1999 Clendenen ¯ On Promise Making, Leave-Taking, and Becoming commit ourselves to whatever we understand essentially to con-stitute this framework."2 The profession of religious vows to be lived in the mic

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R.R. mm 46 THE MERCURY. A PHANTASY. CHARI.ES WELSEY WEISER, '01. ; 5 WO spirits floating through the air Leave their mark of passing there. The spirit of the scentless spring, And summer's scented spirit bring Their breath of life and breath of love, And wave ethereal wings above The weary brow. With soothing hand They stir to life the waiting land. The azure sky, the sun and flowers, The bursting bud of woodland bowers, The tender grass, the songsters' strain Compose for life love's sweet refrain Of fellowship. (lI 'Tis evening and the twilight gray Creeps o'er the half-forgotten way, As passing on in pensive mood, Through the ancient hemlock wood, I see beneath the massive trees, Fanned by the evening breeze, A stalwart man reposing lay Beside the lonely grassy way. Tall and brawny, noble., fair, With beaming eyes and wavy hair, He forms a picture good to see— Nature's perfect mastery Commanding all. He speaks—the tones in clarion notes Upward through the branches float. He smiles—and wins with glances bright, Fellowship's most welcome light. "Nature," says he, "perfect, strong, Note and strive for ; and prolong Your days ; and usefulness, and peace, And love, from life shall ne'er cease." I fain would speak, but wake to see 'Tis only a bright phantasy Wrought by Spring-tide on the mind, That seeks in life and love to find The perfect whole. I V* . THE MERCURY 47 "RABBI BEN EZRA." ABDEL R. WENTZ, '04. [Graeff Prize Essay.] ROBERT Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra is a transcript from the natural experience of a human soul. The struggle between lower and higher ideals has already been fought on the battleground within the soul. The conflict between faith and doubt is over. Faith stands victorious. We have here por-trayed a picture not of action but of a soul in intellectual fer-mentation, the concomitant of action. The poet speaks from emotional imagination in expressing the wish of his soul to be in touch with the infinite. And the passion here described is one that is universal to mankind and one that is deepest and most widely felt in loving human nature. Other poets have attained the same depth of thought, a number have expressed somewhat the same ideas as are here set forth, but probably no poem stands in exactly the same relations as Rabbi Ben Ezra. We propose, therefore, to inquire briefly concerning the Rabbi and his part in the poem, to examine in a general way Brown-ing's philosophy of life as unfolded in the body of his religious poetry, to analyze the thought of this poem and see how the philosophy of life is here set forth, to ascertain what relation the poem sustains to the teachings of Christianity, and to make some observations concerning its rhetorical composition. Abraham ben Meir ben Ezra is the full name of the Rabbi to whom Browning assigns this monologue, but he is more commonly known as Ibn Ezra. Born in Toledo, Spain, about 1088, he started to travel early in life and visited all parts of western and southern Europe and northern Africa. His last days were spent in Rome and here he died in 1167. He was an earnest student of astronomy and won much fame not only as an astronomer but also as an astrologer and physician. In him the Platonic philosophy had an able advocate. Wherever he went he became distinguished for his great learning and his varied accomplishments, but his chief renown seems to have I im 48 THE MERCURY. been as grammarian, biblical commentator, and poet. But great as was the scholarship of the Rabbi, his piety was even greater. From all his writings and from the account of his life we gather that he was a man of extraordinary spiritual rectitude under the complete guidance of the word of God. Such was the man to whom Browning here attributes the philosophy of life. So thoroughly is Ibn Ezra adapted to the expression of such a philosophy and so well do the sentiments here expressed ac-cord with the writings of the Rabbi that the question has been raised whether Browning meant Rabbi Ben Ezra to serve as a statement of his own philosophy or that of Ibn Ezra. There are, indeed, a number of Jewish elements contained in the poem ; as, for instance, the abiding trust in a central righteous-ness. But Browning was specially fond of weaving such ele-ments into the woof of his thought; in fact, in his own nature, both spiritual and intellectual, he was not entirely free from cer-tain Jewish characteristics. Moreover, a great many of his il-lustrations and traditions are taken from among the Jews and no other English poet, with the single exception of Shakespeare, commands for the Jew the same admiration and compassion that Browning does. It seems only reasonable therefore that the poet in presenting his own views concerning life should draw some of his less important ideas from the writings of the Rabbi and thus weave into the poem sufficient coloring to ac-count for the idiosyncrasies of the individual whom he has chosen to give expression to those views. But the strongest proof that Rabbi Ben Ezra expresses Browning's own theory of life, lies in the fact that it is prac-tically a recapitulation of the very sentiments expressed in many of his other poems, as witness Sordello, Abt Vogeler, Saul, The Pope, A Death in the Desert, Reverie, and quite a number of others, all of which develop the same life-philosophy as Rabbi Ben Ezra does. Just as Cicero made use of the venerable Cato as his lay figure in setting forth his views on "Old Age," so Browning has used different personages to develop his philoso-phy, in each case adapting some of the incidentals to the indi- » ■ > THE MERCURY. 49 * * vidual personage. In Jochanan Hakkadosh we have another instance where Browning uses a Jew as his mouthpiece to give utterance to his theory of life. And in the poem under con-sideration he has placed this theory in the mouth of the Rabbi for no other purpose than merely to furnish it with a back-ground; for Browning himself explained of Sordello: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study." Being assured then that Rabbi Ben Ezra is merely a restate-ment of Browning's theory of life, it may be well before pro-ceeding to the thought analysis of the poem to try to gain some idea concerning his philosophy of life as developed in the rest of his religious poetry. This philosophy begins in his very first publication, Pauline, where its crude outlines are to be seen; it is more carefully developed and at much greater length in his next production, Paracelsus, and then re-appears from time to time among his productions, and receives its final utterance in his very last poem, Reverie. It is a noteworthy fact that Browning formed this view of lite in his youth, and that no-thing in his life experiences gave him occasion to change it, so that traces and reiterations of it are to be seen in poems cover-ing a period of sixty years of his life. The whole trend of his philosophy might be summarized in the statement that the aspiration towards divine Power and Love is the most exalted ideal for the human soul. The intensity of the universal passion of human love reaching out towards some object which shall satisfy aspiration gives him the conception of God as infinite Love and of the future life as one in which Love incarnate shall have a place. This earthly life is merely a period of probation; man here is in constant pre-paration for another life. Past influences constitute the cri-terion by which to judge of the future, and our development here is determinative of our hereafter, either for growth or de-cay. But in this life we are surrounded by innumerable lim-itations and conditions. All our attainments are bounded by the finite. The divinity at the root of man's nature is too great for the sphere which contains him, arid yet it is this very di-vinity which gives rise to aspiration. Aspiration in turn causes ' ill i. 111 , ,., ,.j,i;iMl8M ■ 50 THE MERCURY. discontent, difficulties, and failures, and these point to infinite success and goodness. Thus we are made to realize the limi-tations and imperfections of our finite existence and to strive ever onward and upward to infinite freedom and perfection. It is precisely this imperfect nature in man which gives him the susceptibility to infinite growth and development; and this is "Man's distinctive mark alone," that which raises him higher in the scale than the brute and places him "a little lower than the angels." Only by our temporal failures are we led to see the possibility of eternal success. Internal dissatisfaction with our attainments on earth induces aspiration towards the divine. Man is "a living personality linked to the principle of restless-ness;" he must recognize his limitations and work within them, never losing sight of the infinite beyond nor ever ceasing to as-pire toward that perfection of freedom. To become content with even the highest attainable per-fection in this earthly life would mean to renounce all noble de-sires and to deny the inner light. This present state must not be regarded as an end in itself and submission to the conditions which it imposes would only result in fatal loss. To fail to recognize our imperfect nature would be to deny the possibility of spiritual growth. No, we must never be satisfied with this earth and its meagre successes; we must never rest content with this stage of imperfection. We must recognize the possi-bility of higher results than any attainable on earth and must aspire to something beyond the limits of time and space. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" It is this very quality—this constant discontent with earthly attainments, this endless aspiration for something higher—that makes life a struggle and the earth a bivouac of strife. Man must be actuated by a constant and conscious impetuosity to-wards the divine, drawing new impulses out of each failure, ever realizing with Tennyson, that, "Men may rise on stepping-stones From their dead selves to higher things." THE MERCURY. Si Each failure should give rise to greater effort and higher aspira-tion. According to Abt Vogeler, the musician accepts the pro-longed pause as an earnest of sweet music, and the discords as an evidence of more highly-prized harmony to follow. The limitations of this life are only suggestions of the infinitude of the life beyond. These. temporal barriers shall become the doors opening to the eternal life of infinite beauty, happiness, knowledge and love. The little mountain rill, as it flows down, has many rough places to cross, many obstacles to encounter, many rocks and precipices to pass, but continually receiving new life from other streams it grows deeper and stronger until at last it becomes a great, deep river, and, undisturbed now by the huge boulders beneath its surface, it flows calmly on to join the peaceful, powerful ocean. So the soul, weak at first and prone to despair, must work within its limitations and by an endless succession of aspirations and failures, each failure stimu-lating stronger endeavor, make its way to God and to the real-ization of perfect Power and Love. Having thus gotten a view of the philosophy of life as Brown-ing held it, we will be better able to follow in analysis the thought of Rabbi Ben Ezra, where this philosophy is stated with greater conciseness, perhaps, than anywhere else in Brown-ing. But -first it must be said, by way of explanation, that Rabbi Ben Ezra is not argumentative in its character; it is merely the statement of facts of positive knowledge. Its view is intuitive and it states conclusions without employing courses of reasoning. We shall not expect, therefore, that the thought of the different stanzas will in every instance be arranged in strict logical sequence. Mellowed with years, the venerable Rabbi gives to the young man the cheerful assurance, " The best is yet to be," and in the quietude of life's evening hour proposes a retrospect of the day and a prospect to the tomorrow. Bidding us to trust in God te reveal His whole plan, he first considers youth. This is a period of hesitation and ambition, of "hopes and fears." All of youth's brief years are passed in doubt and indecision. But for this the Rabbi has no remonstrances, for this very doubt is S2 THE MERCURY. the actuating influence—the "troubling spark"—which distin-guishes us from the brute creation; brutes have their end of living in self-satisfaction, and in the gratification of sense are free from care and doubt. But man's greatest glory and that which attests his affinity with the great Provider lies in his noble desires and lofty aspirations which can never be satisfied on earth; this is the disturbing spark that proves his spiritual nature. We should therefore endure with good cheer the lim-itations that are here placed upon us, and, despite life's difficul-ties and discomforts, ever strive and learn and dare. For the seeming failures of this earthly life simply prove our suscepti-bility to the achievement of eternal success. Our aspiration to the unattainable raises us higher in the scale than the unpro-gressive brute, and he, who hopes to succeed in his flesh and to that end subordinates soul to body, can scarcely deserve the noble name of man. And yet the body is not without its use; all past experi-ences in the flesh serve to teach valuable lessons in this train-ing- school for eternity, and the heart of the Rabbi beats in sin-cere gratitude for the opportunity of living as a man, a part in the one great plan of perfect Power and Love. He trusts him-self implicitly to the will of his Creator and hopes thus to gain the victory over low ideals and ignoble desires. For the soul is prone to yield to its rosy garment of flesh in the desire for rewards commeasurable with bodily endowments and physical attainments. But we should not measure ourselves by the ground gained in spite of flesh; we should realize that while flesh and soul are both subject to limitations here on earth, yet neither is to be despised as all is for the best. Youth must have its struggles and disappointments but old age reaps rich fruit in consequence. For here if is that the complete man is produced and that the tendency to God be-gins. The Rabbi, ripe with age, awaits the fight with death, the only struggle now before him. "Fearless and unperplexed" he contemplates the battle with perfect serenity of soul, for his experiences have taught him what weapons and what armor to employ. Now that his youth is ended he is in a position to L4fc THE MERCURY. 53 pass sentence on that period of life. The fires of'youth have culled out the gold from the dross and the life-struggle can now at length be estimated at its true value. In youth all was un-certainty ; with age comes knowledge absolute. Each sunset brings its certain moment which suddenly calling the glory from the gray announces the death of the day and invites esti-mation of its worth. So the period of old age, tinted with glory and free from the strife of youth, affords the opportunity to prove the past, pronounce judgment on its errors and pro-prieties, and thereby "sustained and soothed" to face the future. And more than this is not possible for man ; his highest duty is to practice tomorrow the lessons of today, to follow intently "the great Artificer of all that moves" and thus catch hints of real handicraft, of true workmanship. Youth is the proper time for growth and aspiration, the proper time to "strive to-ward making," and though the efforts to make be uncouth and seeming failures, nevertheless they are eminently successful in that they secure for old age exemption from strife and the blessed privilege of knowledge. Death can then be awaited without fear. Here the mind is not harassed by arguments of "Doctor and Saint"'as in youth, but the knowledge of the Right and Good and Infinite is as absolute as the knowledge of the possession of one's own hand. Age vindicates youth by defining and separating "great minds from small" and by determining whether the principles of Right were properly ap-plied in youth. Thctruth is revealed and peace of soul secured. But who shall act as judge to pass the sentence? It is no easy task, for men of very similar traits and qualities hold widely different views. Who shall decide? The answer: each man must be his own arbiter; he alone understands the circum-stances of his own life struggle. For life is not to be judged by its deeds and attainments, else others could pass the sentence. "Men appraise the outward product," but this vulgar mass, so easily recognized and valued by the low world, is not the proper standard to use in making up the main account. True, our "work" is pleasing in the eyes of our fellow-men and quickly plumbed and tested by the world's coarse thumb and finger, but 54 THE MERCURY. the true reckoning of man's worth takes into account all our undeveloped instincts tor good, all our unfulfilled purposes. These no one can know but ourselves and these God weighs and considers. He finds value in our thoughts which we were not able to express in a mere act and His records contain even our fleeting fancies :— "All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God. whose wheel the pitcher shaped." These lines contain the one great lesson of the poem, the very-theme of its thought, namely, the manifestation of God's love in his dealings with man. Our doubts He overrules for faith; our failures He overrules for success. Our aspirations to the impossible become the essentials of our spiritual growth. It is on the wings of God's love that the spirit of man mounts from earth to heaven. This thought pervades the entire poem. The thought that man is the pitcher shaped by the wheel of God leads to the expanding of that beautiful metaphor of the potter and the clay, and this occupies the concluding verses of the poem. We are invited to examine the metaphor and learn why time passes away so rapidly while our souls lie passive. Hugest folly is the proposition that nothing endures and that the past has no bearing on the present or the future. All that has ever really existed, lasts forever. The wheel indeed may vary as it turns, but potter and clay endure. So life fleets and earth changes, but God and Soul remain forever. We are not mere shadowy existences destined to pass into nothingness; we are eternal realities. But the changing motion of the wheel is needful to give the clay its proper form and make it useful; no less are the buffetings and evanescent influences of this life's dance intended by the all-wise Creator to give our souls their proper bent and temper and fit them for their highest useful-ness. What matters it, so far as the usefulness of the cup is concerned, if the potter in the course of his work ceases to adorn it with the beautiful figures wrought around its base and fashions stern, grim scull-things about the rim? And what I THE MERCURY. 55 matters it if our Maker diminish our pleasures and make this temporal life less attractive? Not in the decorations however beautiful is to be found the proper use of a cup; no more is the highest usefulness of the soul to be found in the pleasures and ornaments of life. Heaven's consummate cup has no need therefore of earth's wheel; his only need is the Potter, to amend the lurking flaws and use His work. The Rabbi declares that never once in the whole dizzy course of his lite with all its im-perfections and failures—never once did he lose sight of his end as a vessel to slake his Maker's thirst. Just as in the opening stanza he expressed his firm assurance of a better life to come, aud his abiding confidence in God's goodness, "Our times are in His hand," so after maintaining this sentiment through the entire poem, he reiterates it once more in his eloquent closing prayer: "So, take and use Thy work : Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim ! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned ! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same[" These noble sentiments, though expressed by a Jewish Rabbi, are entirely in accord with the teachings of Christianity. An eminent writer on ethics has pronounced Rabbi Ben Ezra to be "one of the completest descriptions of the ethical life in English literature." But it is even more than that; it is a statement of pure theism and a description of sublime religious faith. It abounds in Christian sentiment and contains numer-ous allusions to Scripture of both the Old and New Testament. If Rabbi Ben Ezra were a part ot the Bible, every sentence in the entire poem would long since have been quoted in substan-tiation of some Christian teaching. One of the salient teach-ings of the poem is that of absolute submission to the Divine will. This, one of the great teachings of our New Testament, is forcibly set forth in the poem. Moreover, Christ's mission on earth was to reveal the Father not only as Power but more specifically as Love. In the light of this fact, the sentiment 56 THE MERCURY. which the Rabbi expresses becomes quite striking, especially when he says, "I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too." L^fc, The Christian religion is preeminently a religion of love, and Rabbi Ben Ezra has its very basis on God's love for man. Then, too, Christianity is essentially a romantic religion. Literature furnishes numerous instances of Christian romance. And what can be more romantic than this idea of a future life with earthly hopes and aspirations realized and Love perfected, as developed in the poem ? This hope of future existence gives to the Chris-tian religion the very source of its life. And in Holy-Cross Day we have another instance where Browning represents this same Ben Ezra as a direct advocate of Christ and Christianity. When Rabbi Ben Ezra was first published (1864), the world stood in great need of just such a message of hope and faith as the poem conveys. That was a time when skepticism and des-pondency were rapidly growing. Matthew Arnold was busy promulgating his own unbelief. Fitzgerald had just published his'beautiful translation of Omar Khayyam, and this message o doubt was being very widely read. Epicureanism and sensualism were spreading. To all these Rabbi Ben Ezra was a check. It inculcated cheerfulness and hope, destroying doubt and set-ting up faith preeminent. Some readers of Browning find in him nothing more than what is purely humanitarian and ethical, while others narrow their vision to the romantic and Christian. In reality, Brown-ing includes both. His message is twofold : he treats both the Here and the Hereafter. An so Rabbi Ben Ezta combines the humanitarian and the ethical, on the one hand, with the roman-tic and Christian on the other, and sets forth a lofty type of Christian faith as held by a man of God. In rhetorical composition Rabbi Ben Ezra is typical of Brown-ing's religious poetry. Browning is noted for his great com-prehensiveness of meaning. Few writers have used single words with such great effect. In fact, so great is his conscise- THE MERCURY. 57 ness that he is often charged with being obscure, and the num-ber of his readers is comparatively small because not many peo-ple will take the trouble to disengage the poet's real thought irom the close-plaited web of his expression. Rabbi Ben Ezra is no exception to the rule. True, it is one of the most widely known of Browning's poems and has been considered one of the easiest, but its apparent simplicity disappears before any serious effort to drain it of its meaning. The poet thinks at lightning speed and records his thoughts as they occur to him, and nothing short of an alert mind and an open spirit will suf-fice to draw from the poem its full meaning. It is recondite almost to the extreme, in places even bordering on the verge of solecism. And yet it is only natural that such" sublime, weighty thought should receive striking expression. Every sentence is pregnant with vigorous meaning. And while the poem shows in its structure no regard whatever for symmetry or proportion and no view to clearness, beauty, or nobleness of form, yet it presents the greatest consistency of teaching from first to last. This poem will be read as long as the human race endures, because it has to do with a passion that is common to all man-kind. It deals with man's growth to the infinite in a spirit of the most healthful optimism, and inspires men everywhere to high and noble thinking. Browning himself gives an estimate of the loftiness of the theme when he says in a letter to a friend: "It is a great thing—the greatest—that a human being should have passed the probation of life, and sum up its experi-ence in a witness to the power and love of God." What Long-fellow contributes to literature in his "Psalm of Life," what Ten-nyson contributes in his "In Memoriam"-—this and more Brown-ing epitomizes in his Rabbi Ben Ezra. And the late Professor Everett of Harvard pronounces it "one of the most exalted of the poems of Browning * * * * one of the most exalted in the whole range of literature." 5« THE MERCURY. RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. [Second Prize in the Inter-Collegiate Oratorical Contest] W. W. BARKXEY, '04. PASSING events in the Far East draw the eyes of the world once more toward those parts which have engaged more or less constant attention for many years. The Asiatic question with its many difficulties and complications presents the unsolved international problem of the twentieth century. How shall the equilibrium of the East and the- integrity of China be maintained? How shall the commercial powers of the world preserve the equality of trading privileges along China's inviting coast? How shall the threatening advance of Russia upon Asia be checked? Shall Anglo-Saxon civiliza-tion or the civilization of the Muscovite stamp itself upon east-ern peoples ? The last two inquiries are primary and essential, it will be admitted, in dealing with the first two. Statesmen prophets have prophesied, but struggle is no longer a thing of the future. The foretold contest is on. and it is critical. Potent energies are now at work in the Orient. Asia is evidently un-dergoing transition. Pressing circumstances must soon force a solution of the grave problem of the East and provide answers to our questions. While grim-visaged war is raging between the little island empire of the Pacific and that gigantic nation of the north, it will not be untimely to follow the course of that ceaseless, un-tiring advance which has brought Russia all the way across the Eurasian continent from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok and Port Arthur. The declaration of open hostilities between these two con-flicting nations was no surprise, but rather was expected. War was inevitable in the face of Russian aggression and dogged-ness. The current strife is only one of a series of events which have been shaping themselves for years, yes for centuries, in the history of Russia. It is the natural, logical outcome of a policy of greed and grasp which has been at the bottom of THE MERCURY. 59 every national move which Russia has made since the days of her first note-worthy monarch, "Ivan the Terrible." The real cause of the war waging today can be clearly traced to this governing policy. Insatiate Russia is not satisfied with her tight grip on Manchuria which she now practically owns and controls, but looks with a covetous eye on the independent but small empire of Korea over which Japanese influence should justly extend. In fact it was reported, previous to the outbreak with Japan, that she already had obtained large interests in the important timber regions of the Yalu Valley, and that her rep-resentative stood over the weak and pliable Emperor at Seoul with almost dictatorial power. Such is her impudence and boldness. Will Russia recede from the prominent position she has taken in northeastern China ? Never, voluntarily ! She may make clever pretensions and employ shrewd diplomatic schemes, as is her custom, but she will never withdraw from an acquisi-tion which has been the object of her ambition for three cen-turies and more, until Japan or some other power drives her back into the north from whence she came. And then she will not remain there; onward, advance, conquer and expand have been the watchwords of this aggressor of nations since the close of the Middle Ages when the terrible autocrat of the six-teenth century assumed the ambitious title of Czar and began to push the lines of his government out in all directions. When Ivan came to the throne Russia was "a semi-savage, semi-Asiatic power, so hemmed in by barbarian lands and hos-tile races as to be almost entirely cut off from intercourse with the civilized world." Since then her growth in territory and power has been marvelous and amazing. From the compara-tively small and insignificant state in Central Europe, she has gradually extended her boundaries until now she dominates about one-half of the land area of Eurasia. The Tartars were attacked and driven beyond the Ural river, and thus the entire Volga and Caspian regions were acquired. An advance was started toward the Ural mountains and the Euxine. Under the powerful and energetic despot, Petet the Qreat, the Black and Baltic sea regions were both gained; Siberia was explored and 6o THE MERCURY. conquered from the Ural mountains to Kamtschatka, and afterwards colonized; far-reaching reforms were brought about, and Russia was lifted to a place among the first-class powers of Europe. Today her dominion extends from the borders of Per-sia, Afghanistan, and India on the south to Sweden and the Arctic ocean on the north ; and from the Chinese Empire and the Pacific on the east to Germany and Austria-Hungary on the west. What giant strides she has taken in territorial devel-opment ! What a magnificent stretch of country she has been able to consolidate into one sovereign State! No other nation in the history of the world has been able to secure such abso-lute control over so large an empire and that in the compara-tively short period of four centuries. Russia's advance is steady and never ceases. Her policy is well-outlined and the goal of her ambition is clearly defined., Her real governing purpose may be deduced from her actions. Russia needs some warm water harbors on the Pacific. She proposes first to secure, if possible, these advantageous outlets without which she can never develop her almost limitless na-tural resources. Secondly, Russia evidently aims to become the arbiter and controller of the East; and, therefore, she en-deavors to stamp her order of civilization on Asia, and obtain for herself the preponderance of power in the Far East. Back of these exalted aims and ambitions is a thorough conviction among her people that the day of Russian supremacy is near at hand. "Her students everywhere claim that the world had bee?i under the Romance type of civilization and that gave way in time to the Anglo- Teutonic type under which the world is now developing and this is about to give way to Slavonic civilization to which the future belongs." Surely, if written history and current actions count for anything in judging a nation, no other than these stupenduous designs and hopes, we have briefly stated, are the basis of her aggressive spirit. Surely no other than these form the main-spring of Russia's late historical movements. Russia's political,-.commercial and industrial interests demand a more extensive seacoast, and more and better harbors. Tur-r_* r THE MERCURY. 61 key and the Powers control the Bosphorus and deny her ingress to Mediterranean waters. The Baltic is ice-bound part of the year and that seriously hinders navigation there. Port Arthur and Vladivostok also present serious obstacles to successful commerce. Where shall Russia turn, if not southward along China's coast and toward the Persian gulf, in which directions the high wave of her influence and sovereignty has been roll-ing, now slowly, now rapidly, but ever rolling for almost four hundred years ? What does the construction of her great trans-Siberian railroad mean, which now stretches across an en-tire continent, if not easier access to the Pacific ? What does a similar trunk line mean, which is now being planned to extend from the Baltic to the Arabian sea, if not a freer outlet to the world's waters ? What does her sly seizure of Manchuria, her pretended foothold on Korea, signify ? What does a war with Japan signify, if not a fixed determination to extend her power along the Chinese seaboard and gain possession of China's warm water harbors? Russia aspires to be a great sea power, but as yet she is comparatively weak along that line, as was evinced too plainly by her recent defeats at the hands of Japanese sea-warriors. In order to be prepared in time of war she must have a stronger navy, and safer inlets to harbor it. That she may develop her boundless natural resources properly, both in Europe and Siberia, and thereby increase her wealth, she must be given an opportunity to open up her industries and enlarge her trade. To hold and maintain her place among the nations, she must establish herself on the sea. Russia's prophet states-men are shrewd and wide-awake to these facts. They look far ahead, see in Russia the nation of the future, and may be ex-pected to plan their every action in accordance with their in-tense ambition to make her glorious and paramount. There is no more room for doubt. The spread of Slavonic domination in Asia is truly alarming. No observer who has followed the course of current affairs in the East will have failed to notice that glacier-like movement of Russian power over Chinese territory. England sees it; Japan resents it. It is too evident, notwithstanding her cunning diplomacy, her insincere 62 THE MERCURY. promises and agreements, and her round-about manoeuvers at times, that Russia means to retain every foot of ground she possesses and that she will never cease to advance until she has conquered and absorbed and assimilated the whole of the Chi-nese Empire, Persia, and Afghanistan; stands triumphant on the summits of the lofty Himalyas, and looks with a threaten-ing eye down upon the rich and splendid empire of India, un-less, perchance, the Anglo-Saxon shall not delay longer, but come forth to contest such wholesale occupation of Asia. Some years ago, when it was proposed to retreat from the mouth of the Amur river, Emperor Nicholas said, "Where Russia's flag is carried once, there it shall remain forever." That shows the spirit of the nation. Russia is active; Russia is greedy; Rus-sia is strong and persistent. Give her the chance she seeks to relieve her latent energies and develop her dormant resources, and she will become the most influential, the wealthiest of world powers. Give her the opportunity she covets and she will scatter broadcast over the Orient her despotic principles of autocracy with its brutality, ignorance, and oppression; force her Greek Catholicism with its error and intolerance upon the unfortunate subjects of her conquest, and carry with her a spirit of exclusiveness and selfishness deadly to the advance of pure Christian civilization everywhere ig the world. Give her the right of way and she will attain the strategic points she desires and crush out of existence the Anglo-Saxon order of civiliza-tion, which means constitutional government, the Protestant religion, liberty, equality, and education characteristic of all Anglo Saxon peoples. Stand aside, and Holy Russia will rule the world. But will the rest of the world stand aside, passive and indif ferent, and let the great Czar forward his schemes of encroach-ment and aggrandizement unhindered? Japan says No! Japan acts promptly and firmly, and all hail! to the bravp little nation who with courage stout and strong goes out to battle with this giant aggressor of the north. We admit her claims be-cause we know they are just; we glory in her victories because we know she is right; deservedly do we give her our sympathies THE MERCURY. 63 because she has put herself in line with twentieth century progress and civilization and with dignity faces an avaricious foe still moved by the customs and principles of the sixteenth century. But can she stand against such might in the ultimate contest ? Can Japan alone hold Russia in check and stop the perilous ad-vance ? It is not to be expected. If not, what will England do, England who has check-mated Russia so often in Europe, and who now has such vast commercial interests on the coast and in the heart of China, and stands guardian over such a mighty empire as India, will she allow China to be Russianized and India to be menaced ? It would seem that the final struggle must be between Russia and England. Two great orders of modern civilization have met and are ready to clash, yes they have clashed, for Japan's prototype is England, and her civil-ization is Anglo-Saxon. On the one hand, Russia, who be-lieves thoroughly that the future lies with the Slav. On the other hand, the English-speaking nations, who contend that the future rests with the Anglo-Saxon. Both stand ready to fight, if need be, for the world's supremacy. One is a supremacy of personal absolutism and oppression; the other, a supremacy of democracy with its liberty and justice. Which shall it be? Should the struggle come now, Russia would likely be crushed ;• later, after she has had time to grow and strengthen to her full proportions, who shall prophesy the end and declare which shall rule the world, Anglo-Saxon or Slav ? THE PASSION FOR SCHOLARSHIP. PROF. OSCAR G. KXINGER. THE mental attitude of a man towards his vocation is all important. Tell me this and I will tell you the degree of success which he has won or will win. Where there is a lively interest there will be also the enthusiasm and tireless energy so necessary to the perfect performance of a task. A lackadaisical spirit defeats any enterprize. The captains of in- 64 THE MERCURY. dustry have always been men with a genius for hard work. The same is true of those who have won eminence in any of the learned professions. They have mounted high because they have been in love with their vocation. To the student who aims at some notable achievement in the domain of knowledge, an absorbing passion for scholarship is the first essential. By such a passion, I mean an insatiable desire to know the truth of things at first hand. Others may be satisfied to take their information on faith. He must get at the heart of reality ; he must know things in themselves and in their relations; and to attain this he must be willing to sacrifice everything— "To scorn delights and live laborious days." Unless this passion dominate him there will be lacking the fire and enthusiasm which are necessary to prolonged effort. To think is the most difficult task a man can ever set himself. It means absorption, critical acumen, a nice balancing of facts and unerring inference; in a word, it means the analysis of a fact or truth to its ultimates and a synthesis of these ultimates into a positive thought. The process prolonged wears out the brain and exhausts the nerves. To keep it up until the end demands a will which is animated by a passion for knowledge as burning as the desire to live. Then and then only can the mind come to its full stature and utter truth which men must hear whether they will or not. This longing to know is often inborn, but may be acquired in some degree by even the dullest. The main trouble with the latter sort of student is that his mind has never been a-wakened. About his intellect a dense haze has gathered and he cannot see his way nor does he know precisely where he is. A dull ambition stirs in his heart but he cannot discover its meaning. Intelligent study is to him unknown. He tries to go through his tasks but what he gets means little to him. Often it happens that young men of naturally capable minds almost finish their course before they acquire the mental aware-ness which is the first condition of successful study. When THE MERCURY. 65 they do wake up their progress is phenomenal. Perhaps therefore, the highest function of the teacher is to awaken mind and by his helpfulness keep it awake. ' No higher reward can come to him than the consciousness that he has set one intel-lect on fire with the passion to know. Before this is possible, however, a serious obstacle must be removed. It is a motion wellnigh unusual among students and grows out of a mistaken conception of education. The student finds the college equipped with a faculty of men more or less learned who are to be his teachers in the various subjects which the curriculum offers. He expects them to set him tasks for each day's performance. In the recitations they question him on the lessons and make the necessary explanations or pffer additional information. Consequently the idea is general and perhaps inevitable that the professors educate the pupil. How-ever natural, this notion is pernicious and works incalculable harm. In the sense that the teacher acts as guide and makes easier the road to intellectual development, it is true that he is an educator ; in any other sense it is misleading. The men-tal development zvhich any man gets is always the lesult of his own specific effort. A teacher helps, stimulates, guides, "but achieves nothing without the earnest response of the pupil.' This erroneous view is largely responsible for a wrong use of the textbook. The student imagines that doing his task-work in memoriter fashion is genuine study. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Even a parrot is capable of such exercise of memory and the world has no use for human "Pollys!" A memory stored with knowledge is a great boon, but will not go far in promoting a' man's interests. Some of the greatest failures have been walking encyclopedias of facts and theories. A bookworm always has a hard time to find enough to eat. The world demands men who can think and plan and execute,—practical men who can use their knowledge to meet and solve the intricate problems of business and poli-tics. "What new truth have you to offer?" is the question asked of every graduate and on his answer depends his sta-tion. A well written article which reproduces only the •ii% 66 THE MERCURY. thoughts of other men finds its way into the editor's waste bas-ket or into the pages of the cheapest magazine. The pulpit ■which is no longer a teaching platform will face empty pews. The "dead-line" in any profession is drawn where invention dies; years have nothing to do with it. The man who keeps pace with progress and is able to interpret to others the heart of the movement will never want a hearing. Such a man is never the product of a mere textbook. For a text in any sub ject is the resume of one man's interpretation of a body of facts. Its value depends wholly on the authority of its author. At best it is only an outline. Any student, therefore, who ac-cepts the teaching without examining the facts and bringing the theory to the test of facts, is doing two things—-depriving himself of the pleasure which comes with reasoned conviction, and missing the power which such additional research confers. Either is a great mistake. The worship of the textbook induces another grievous habit which when acquired blights original work in a literary way. When a theme has been adopted as the subject of an essay the student at once searches through the library for material which when found constitutes the subject matter of his essay. Of testing, of meditation, there is little or 'none. What he says is not what the subject means to him but to another. He is like a phonograph endowed with the power of changing the form of expression without altering the thought. It were well if the saying of Isocrates were written in letters of light above every alcove: "What has been said by one is not of equal value to him who repeats it; but he seems to be the most skillful who finds in a subject topics which have escaped the notice of others." Here is the truth in a nut-shell. Let a young man determine at the outset that he will not repeat what has once been uttered except as a quotation, but will give to the world his own thought tested and tried by an appeal to things, and what he has to say on any subject will command the attention of men. Servile devotion to the textbook; re-producing the thought of others; failure to experience the truth that is presented; these are the fatal rocks on which THE MERCURY. 67 many a promising career has been wrecked. There is, too, an ethical aspect of the case which must not be overlooked. No one has the moral right to ask another to spend time in read-ing or hearing what to him is old. Truth which concerns man is so illimitable in every direction and our knowledge of it so infinitesimal that he who repeats what is common to all is guilty of a grave wrong to his reader or hearer. This passion to know fully and at first hand, if it could be-come the dominant element in the college atmosphere, would transform college life. It would quickly bring men face to face with the mystery of things and take away the indolence, the trifling, the present tendency to follow the line of least resis-tance. The four years of effort would produce scholars whom the world would welcome and of whom the college could be proud. The spirit of the scholar can be acquired and cultivated and its possession means success, as its absence means failure, in all that is highest in life. COURTESY TO STRANGERS. H. S. DORNBERGKR, '06. A stranger,'no matter where he goes, is bound to receive a certain amount of courtesy. I will attempt to show in this essay that this amount of courtesy is increasing rather than decreasing. During all ages and especially the feudal age, every stranger was sure of receiving food and shelter if he stopped at any house or castle. This was due chiefly to the fact that hotels were not very common until our own age, nor did every village or hamlet have its hotel or inn as is now the case. Then as there were no newspapers until quite recently, a stranger was also received for the news he might bring. It might also be added that the number of travelers at that time cannot be com-pared with the number of the present time. At present this hospitality to strangers is not nearly so evi- '• J Uii. 68 THE MERCURY. dent as it was in former times. The chief cause of this is our modern hotel system. Everywhere one goes he will find some kind of a hotel, no matter what be the size of the place. It may also be stated here that travelers, in most cases, would much rather pay their hotel bills than trouble some one else with entertaining them during their sojourn in the locality. Even among friends one sees this. Very often a friend will come to your vicinity and, rather than bother you, will go to a hotel. Now let us consider whether a stranger would be welcomed did he ask for our hospitality. The ordinary beggar will serve as a good example of this. It is very difficult, indeed, for one to find a home where a beggar will not receive a good meal if he goes and asks for it. Who is so cold hearted that he would refuse anyone shelter from the'cold in winter or the rain in summer? Who would not offer his bed to a sick or wounded person at his door and strive to comfort the unfortu-nate being? In some countries a stranger was always regarded as an enemy unless he could prove himself a friend. In some in-stances it even went so far as to cause the person's death, could he not do this. As we come to more modern times this feel-ing of hostility toward strangers gradually diminished until it has passed entirely out of existence, except among semi-civi-lized peoples. Another example of the growth of courtesy toward strangers is the downfall of absolute monarchism and the rise of more democratic forms of government. This last example may be regarded as not exactly on the subject by some but as it con-sists of the regard of man for man, in my opinion it is after all nothing but courtesy. A still better example is the increase of the value of human life. At the dawn of history the life of a man was held less sacred than a mere dog's life is today. This brings up still another point. In former ages, capital punishment was the mode of exacting justice. Since that time the inflicting of capital punishment has been gradually modi- THE MERCURY. 69 fied from unspeakable tortures to the entire abandonment of this form of justice except in some few cases. The modern rules of etiquette require us to be courteous to strangers. We exert ourselves in every way to please them and try our best to make them feel at home. We even go so far as to deny ourselves comforts for their pleasure. We do not allow them to spend their money. We introduce them to our friends who try to outdo us in their courtesy toward these strangers. Take for example the visit of a noted person to a city or town. Arrangements for his reception are begun al-most as soon as the the news of his intended visit becomes known. Banquets and receptions are given in his honor. He is met at the railroad station by a committee and escorted to his stopping-place. He is cheered by the crowds that gather merely to get a glimpse of him. I believe that courtesy toward strangers is increasing rather than decreasing for we of the present day are just as hospitable toward strangers as were our brethern of former times; and I believe therefore that as the world becomes more civilized, mankind will become more courteous. da I In an up-to-datest tailor-made gown,U-pi-de-i-da The boys arc wild, and prex is, too, You never saw such a hulla-ba-loo. CHORUS. — U-pi-dee-i-dee-i-da 1 etc. Her voice is clear as a soaring lark's, And her wit Is like those trolley-car sparks I When 'cross a muddy street she flits. The boys all have conniption fits I The turn of her head turns all ours, too. There's always a strife to sit in her pew; 'Tis enough to make a parson drunk, To hear her sing old co-ca-che-lunk! The above, and three other NEW verses to U-PI-DEIi, '.'. and NEW WORDS, catchy, up-to-date, to manv fp others of the popular OLD FAMILIAR TUNES; be- ■■ ' JfflHf sides OLD FAVORITES ; and also many NEW SONGS. J*W uull S0NGS OF ALL THE COLLEGES. JjWJ Copyright, Pricei $rjo, postpaid. fa mm if IJLU HINDS & NOBLE, Publishers, New York City. ^ ft ft Schoolbooks of all publishers at one store. ff1' ■> Rupp Building, YORK, PENN'A. Watch for his Representative when he visits the College PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. Geo. E. Sparkler, PIANOS, ORGANS, MUSICAL MERCHANDISE MusiC Rooms, - York St. Telephone 181 GETTYSBURG C. B. KITZMILLE,R. DEALER IN HATS, CAPS, BOOTS AND DOUGLAS SHOE.S. McKnight Building, Baltimore St. Gettysburg, Pa. k M. AMrEMAN, Manufacturer's Agent and Jobber of Hardware, Oils, paints and (jueensware Gettysburg, Pa. THE ONLY JOBBING HOUSE IN ADAMS COUNTY W.F.Odori, ^DEALER IN^k- SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS. mm* York Street, Gettysburg:, Pa. 1

NDI President Derek Mitchell and NDI Board Chairman Secretary Madeleine Albright talk about her new book Hell and Other Destinations, and her experiences as Secretary of State. She reflects on U.S. foreign policy, democratic trends, and her hopes for the future.

This podcast was recorded May 27, 2020, prior to demonstrations in support of racial equality across the United States.

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Derek Mitchell: Hello. Welcome to DemWorks. My name is Derek Mitchell, president of the National Democratic Institute.
We indeed are honored to once again to have Secretary Albright join us. Madam Secretary first, thank you again very much for doing this. Do you want to share some opening thoughts? I want to turn it over to you. Perhaps some things that have happened since we last got together about a month back.
Secretary Albright: Terrific. Thank you very much, Derek. Two important meetings I've participated in the past weeks. What was very interesting, it was the ... First was a virtual hearing convened by the house foreign affairs committee. They couldn't have testimony, so this was a briefing, and I did it alongside Derek and Dan Twining from IRI, and the subject was authoritarianism, disinformation and good governance during COVID-19. And this was the first time that the committee had done this kind of a hearing, And I think it's a very important signal that they chose to focus on the subject of democracy. And I think that it's a great tribute to NDI that we were the first organization asked to debrief the committee.
What is very, I think, positive is that leaders in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats recognize that good governance is critical to responding to the pandemic. And they know that NDI therefore has a key role to play in helping the world overcome the challenge and others like it.
DM: We discussed it at that last town hall, featuring our chairman about how she was on the cusp of releasing a new memoir about her life. This one being about her very eventful life after leaving her job as the first woman vice secretary of state. Hell and Other Destinations was released in mid April. During my time in doors last month, I read her book and it really is funny, a funny and fascinating read. So my intention today is to open up another conversation with our chairman and do so first by asking some questions based on themes from her life that she discusses in her book.
You said in your book that everyone should write a memoir. Why do you say that? And do you, or did you, have you kept a journal yourself?
SA: Well let me say this. I have thought, because basically I come from an academic background that when one looks at what happened in a certain period of history, it's very important to read people's memoirs. Now what I have found as I've analyzed memoirs, and I have, is that people write it from a different perspective. And so it's important because often we disagree on the context or what we did or what our role was. But I think it is interesting to kind of have the memoirs and it's really worth the doing. And I think especially people that have been in public positions, but everybody, I think in terms of ...
So let me just say, I have tried over the years to keep a journal. And I haven't really, because at a certain stage I was made much ... Obviously when I was young and had met a lot of people, I thought, "Isn't this great. I have to write about it." And then it always kind of stops after one month. Then, I did actually not keep a journal when I was in the government, because as we know ... I don't know if you remember, everything was being subpoenaed. But I had a lot of scratchy notes. And then what happened as I was writing Madam Secretary initially, was that when I found the schedule it was like the Rosetta Stone, because I could identify what the scratchy notes actually has something to do with. But embarrassingly, my mind would wander, and all of a sudden in the middle of my scratchy notes it was say, "Buy yogurt." And so I was multitasking even then, but I didn't keep a journal. And in many ways I wish I did, but there are so many records of the kinds of things that we all did together that I think my memoirs have been fairly complete.
DM: I felt one of the most poignant chapters in the book was the story about how you discovered your maternal grandmother's journal. It was about five or six years ago while you're going through your father's artifacts. And it turned out your grandmother had been killed in the Holocaust in 1942, and the journal, you have excerpts with the journal in the back of the book and it was written as a kind of dialogue she had ... She wanted to have with your mother and maybe with you while you're all in England. It also reads like kind of a lonely mother who wanted to connect with an absent family alone and isolated and Czechoslovakia, as things happened around her. Dangerous world was swirling in 1942 ... Well, really it started in 42 for her in that journal.
Can you talk a bit about the experience of discovering this journal, and through it your grandmother, so late and what it meant to you? Because we're also being isolated with things swirling out our doors, but also just what it meant to you to discover this and discover your grandmother so late.
SA: Well, thank you for asking that. And I ... Just for people that don't know my story, I was raised a Catholic, married and Episcopalian, and found out I was Jewish. So I can have my religious discussions sitting in a corner. But basically, I did not know about my Jewish background until 1996. And I had gotten a letter from somebody that had the names of the villages and my grandparents' names and dates right, and that was just as I was being vetted to be secretary of state, and the White House lawyer asked all the questions about taxes and nannies and stuff, but then he said, "We always ask this question of everybody. Is there anything you'd like to tell us that we didn't ask you?" And I said, "Well, it's perfectly possible I'm of Jewish background." And they said, "So what? The president is not antisemitic."
And it was only later when I was already an office that I was visited by some reporters who started giving me this disgusting index cards. These Nazis were very good record keepers and they had names of my relatives that have been sent to concentration camps. So to get to the journal part of it is my parents, we left Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, or escaped frankly. My father was in the Czechoslovak diplomatic service, and we escaped to England. And they ... When I think about all the things that happened, I find it harder and harder to get my head around it.
My parents were in their 30s, they left their families behind and went to England, where they were isolated in many different ways. We came back and I won't go through the whole story, but my father died in 1997 and he had lots of papers, and then my mother moved to Washington and she brought all his stuff with her. And when she died, all of a sudden all of it got transferred to me. And I had some hesitation in looking at anything, frankly, because of how the memories, but then what happened is when I became a public official diplomatic security moved into in my garage and were around all the time and there were all these boxes. And they said, "You've got to put these in storage." So I put all these boxes into storage and I didn't look at them, and it wasn't until 2015 that I had to find something and I went to the storage and I start poking through the boxes. And all of a sudden, there's this old envelope, and inside it is a diary. A journal. And it kind of blows my mind.
I look at it, obviously it's a ... And it's from my grandmother, and it is something that she wrote to ... They were letters to my mother describing what was going on. And it was kind of an interesting mixture of just day to day kind of things. "I did this, I washed my hair and I went shopping." And then all of a sudden it began to say things like, "They're talking about Aryans and non Aryans. I've never heard that distinction," she says. And goes through the kinds of things that the Jews in the town we're not able to shop in a variety of places. Oh, they had to give up all their warm clothes to the Nazi soldiers, and ... Just stunning. And in the middle it would say things, "How was it [Mudlanka 00:08:45]?" Which was me. "She's so cute." And it just was unbelievable.
And it was really like a message in a bottle where all of a sudden it's hearing from a previous generation in terms of their hopes and their wishes. And obviously in the most incredibly complex time. And the other thing I try to figure out, how my mother even got this and I've tried to put together what the path of it was and how stunned she must've been when it showed up. And so I have translated it, and it is in the book. But it's really very meaningful and it has hope in it, which I think is such an important part. And one of my messages just generally is that we can't control everything around us. We can only control our behavior. And I think that that's something that also came through in my grandmother's journal.
DM: It also is you talked about the various identities you have in a way as a Catholic Episcopalian Jew, in terms of heritage. And that issue of identity is a big one that we work with at NDI. And there's a big question for nations nowadays, given your past and your family, that of your family, how has the question of identity shaped you?
SA: Well, I have definitely been a lot of different things. As a child, we spent the war in England then went back to Czechoslovakia briefly, and then my father was made ambassador to Yugoslavia. I think some of you've heard me tell this. The little girl in the national costume that gave flowers at the airport, that's what I did for a living. My father didn't want me going to school with communists, so I had a governess. And then I got ahead of myself, and as people know in Europe, you have to be a certain age to get into the next level. So my parents sent me to school in Switzerland, where I was finally told how I should spell my name, because my mother used to pronounce it [Mudlan 00:00:10:44]. And so anyway, I have the French spelling and I learned to speak French. And then we come to the United States.
And so I was recently asked to describe myself in six words, and it is, worried optimist, problem-solver, and grateful American. And I think those are my identities and I'm grateful to be an American, but I'm also grateful for the background that I've had in terms of trying to understand how other people see themselves. I do think identity is important. I think we all want to know who we are. We may get surprised, but it's worth it knowing. What I don't like, and this is what troubles me and I wrote about this in my previous book on fascism is when my identity hates your identity, because that then is obviously very divisive. And it's one thing to be proud of your identity, it's another, hyper nationalism, which we're seeing that is undercutting everything. And we know that the virus knows no borders. So there are an awful lot of paradoxes that are going on now in terms of wanting to know who you are, but not thinking that you're better than everybody else.
And my, as I describe, authoritarian leaders and fascists, I begin with Mussolini. It's a matter of the leader identifying himself. And by the way, they're all his, with one group at the expense of another and makes them scapegoats. And that's why I'm very troubled by the divisions that are being exacerbated now.
DM: There's individual identity and there's national identity. And the national identity, as you say, that's most pernicious is an exclusive identity, rather than an inclusive identity, which is what we're all about. We're all about an inclusive identity. We're all treated equally. And these authoritarians are about identifying those exclusive identities, us and them, that tear countries apart and create the instability and insecurity that results. So this is a key part of what we do, I think absolutely.
During the writing process, we you able to identify the moment in your life when you knew what your life purpose was? At what point did you know what Mark you wanted to leave in this world?
SA: And it's a hard question to answer, because I do think that one of the things that was a motivating factor for me growing up was that I was, and am, a grateful American, and wanted to give back in some form. I also ... My father had, obviously, a great influence on me. So did my mother, and my father kept saying that Americans are taking democracy for granted. We had just left the country of our birth twice. Once because of the Nazis and then because of the communists. And the fragility of democracy. And so I looked at trying to figure out, in looking back, what were the different methods that I thought I could use to give back to America?
By the way, it never occurred to me that I would be secretary of state. There's some people who think I planned that. Never. But I do think that I wanted to have some kind of a role where I was able to talk about the necessity of supporting democracy. And I got fascinated by the UN because that's what brought us to America. And so kind of looking at institutional structures, but it never, never occurred to me. Nor did it occur to me, frankly, that I would be able to have a post secretary of state life, where I was able to put together the various things that I was interested in.
What I tried to do always is to make whatever I was doing next more interesting than what I'd done before. Not easy if you've been secretary of state, but the reason I wanted to write this book was to show how the various things that I got involved in related to each other and how I learned from one thing to another. My greatest talent, frankly, is dot connection, of trying to figure out how one thing relates to another.
I do want to talk about one specific moment that's so stands out. My favorite thing to do is to give naturalization certificates at the ceremonies. And so the first time I did it was July 4th, 2000 at Monticello, and I'm handing out a certificate and I hear this man. He goes away and he says, "Can you believe I'm a refugee, and I just got my naturalization certificate from the secretary of state?" And I go up to him and I say, "Can you believe that a refugee is secretary of state?" And I so believe in what America stands for and what we can do to be helpful to others, which is why I say that at this moment, the statue of Liberty is weeping.
DM: Our research in Ukraine has uncovered historical memory as a significant target of Russian information attacks. Ukrainians appear to be vulnerable to attacks that speak to evoke nostalgia for the economic stability of the Soviet period. These attacks exploit an actual democratic challenge for Ukraine, which is an economy that is not working for all citizens. In the US, what vulnerabilities do you worry similar information attacks could seek to exploit.
SA: I do think that I have been ... I love history. When I teach at Georgetown, I always try to put everything into historical context. And I have to say what I was just doing before we started this discussion was watching a program about a project in the United States about slavery. And there's ... The New York Times was doing something called 16 19, and there were some very strong arguments on Morning Joe this morning about this, between those who recollect history differently, or are trying to use it in particular ways for political movement, which we do. And I think people do that in terms of understanding what their history means.
And then one of the people there said, "History is to be argued about," which I find interesting because you kind of think, "Okay, well, we know what history is." But it goes back to your first question, Derek, about writing memoirs. Because people have different ideas of their history. I think the question is, do you have a society where you can dispute the history? And the Ukrainian one is clearly unbelievably complicated, in terms of that a modern Russia comes out of Ukraine, and that that relationship and Ukraine itself is a complicated country in terms of East and West and religion, and the aspect of communism that gave people a certain sense of understanding what the system was. They might not have gotten the kinds of things ...
Not everybody just wants the freedom to talk. Some of them want to be able to what their history is about. Are they going to have retirement? What group do they belong to? Can they send their kids to school? And I found this in a lot of research that I did about central and Eastern Europe at the time, right after the fall of the wall. What is it that the people thought that they ... What was communism and what were the possibilities of democracy? And I do think that Ukraine is one of the more complex countries, and the fact that it has been invaded, and the fact that the economic situation is something that is being pushed by the Russian hacking and the way that they operate, and their way of trying to divide us and divide Ukrainians from each other.
DM: Rebuilding a United Europe was one of the success stories of the second part of the 20th century. The last few years have seen the foundations of Europe shake with Brexit and the rise of authoritarian populace. How do we ensure that the European project continues as a liberal democratic one?
SA: I think that it is something that I ... I keep going back, trying to figure out what went wrong. Why did this happen? And I think partially we didn't appreciate enough the problems of societies that had been under communism for 50 years, and that it was much ... We spent a lot of time, I think, with a lot of the wonderful dissidents and intellectuals, and didn't think enough about how it affected the people that had had jobs. I mentioned that a little bit. And I think that also there are the issues now of this identity and the hyper nationalism, and that has been created to some extent in Europe, by the differences in the economic lives of, initially, Northern and Southern Europe, and trying to figure out why some were doing better than others, which then did lead to the fact that there were some leaders like Orban and the Poles that started blaming the other. And that was the most evident in many ways in why Brexit happened.
So these are big trends. I happen to believe in a European Union, but I think that as a structure, it also needs some fixing in terms of how it works with the different economic situations in the central and eastern European countries.
DM: In your book, you speak about how you dealt with misogyny as you progressed in your career. Can you share what helped to keep you steadfast in fighting this prejudice?
SA: I think that what is interesting ... And I often say that I went to college sometime between the invention of the iPad and the discovery of fire, but here it was a women's college. And basically we were told by our commencement speaker to get married and raise children. And I think that what I've been trying to do is to understand why women, why we're so hard on ... Tough on each other in terms of being very judgmental or finding our own inadequacies and other women. And so I have been very much for having ... Creating groups of women that can support each other.
And that is why I think it is so important, the kind of things that NDI is doing, in terms of working with women, to make sure that they are participants in society, run for office, and are respected. And I'd love talking about the fact now that the countries that are doing best on dealing with the coronavirus are ones that are run by women. New Zealand, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Iceland. And I think trying to make clear what the characteristics are of women that make that possible in terms of multitasking, of caring, not setting their children against each other, but you have to keep ... I do think that what is important is for women to support each other, and so that you're not the only woman in the room.
DM: Sometimes moments of crisis and trial like this pandemic lead to better things. What are your hopes in that regard? And also what is the significance of today's pin?
SA: My hope, this is where my optimism comes from, our young people. I love learning from my students, and students that are particularly interested in foreign policy and diplomacy. Many of whom have traveled and they speak different languages and they certainly are tech literate. And I think that they question ... I think the important part for all of us as a democracy organization is to make sure that they participate, that they do vote, that they are interested in the institutional structures in the countries where they are. But that is definitely what gives me hope. And not ...
And I think it's very important, and I say this wherever I can, that democracy is not a spectator sport. It is something that the people need to be involved in. They need to be informed. They need to be respected. And I think the other part that I often talk about, and this is so true of NDI activities, is to spend time with people with whom you disagree and try to figure out where they're coming from, and understand what their needs are, and have a dialogue with civil society, and then understand the various institutions that are important. But definitely what makes me hopeful, our young people.
DM: On this issue of hopes of how moments of crisis and trial can lead to better things, I do think that's a very important question. I really hope that moments of trial by fire are sometimes very important, to set priorities to remember what's important, and to tell you how precarious things always are. I think we can get kind of complacent about things, as we are as a country, or we as individuals, that everything is going to be simply easy. I'm sure it's not easy for any of us. I'm sure many people have gone through lots of trials in their lives, as we all have. But crises can be moments where we focus on how ... Okay, we take stock of where our priorities are, and what kind of choices we want to make, which is what Madame Secretary said. Not just ... Crisis don't just happen to you, you also have a choice in how you respond to that crisis, both individually and as a collective, as a country, as a unit.
So I do think it's an opportunity and I'm certainly seeing that NDI of having better communication and doing more to force change, even potentially in culture because of this moment that's quite different than we've ever experienced. So we should be thinking in those terms. What are the things that we can do to take advantage of this moment, even when there's a lot of stress and anxiety? To take advantage of the opportunity as well. And that's my hope for all of us at NDI, again, as an organization and individually, that we can do that. And I think we can come out better on the back end if we go through it together on those terms.
SA: One of my heroes was Harry Truman. He was my first American president. We came to the United States, November 11th, 1948. He is the one that understood, to a great extent, America's role in the world, a democracy. And understand linking domestic to foreign policy. But I think there's so many other people that I have admired. I admire the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, who married an American. And the first Czechoslovak constitution was modeled on the American one with one difference. It had a women's rights in it in 1918.
And so I think that one can have more than one hero, and I think it's important to point them out and to understand that people have gone through very difficult periods before. And I do think that what is important is to really be proud of things that we can do, and the thing that I personally am proudest of, because it put things together and how I used representing the United States was what we were able to do to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And going there with President Clinton made a big difference cause they kept saying, "We were just there. We are so grateful to the United States."
DM: Well Madam Secretary, let me just close the book conversation with a quote from the book that I saw that I just want to share with everybody that you say at the end. I think it's in the acknowledgements at the end. The central theme of this book is about how people of all descriptions can work together for common goals against the background of accelerating history. It is about trying to make sense of the world we have while attempting to contribute to something better. Madam Secretary and everybody out there, stay safe, be well. Thank you all. Have a good day, and we'll talk again soon.
SA: Thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you.
DM: Please visit our website at www.ndi.org. Thanks very much.

NDI Board Chairman Secretary Madeleine Albright



Derek Mitchell & Secretary Madeleine Albright on her past and democracy's future

Democracy (General), Podcast Listen Secretary Albright Madeleine AlbrightCountries: All Regions

Sylvester Daniels, photo taken at his home on October 28, 2013 ; The New Zion Community Advocates worked with community members age 80 years and older to have contributed to the history of Ogden city. The interviews looked at the legacy of the interviewees through armed services, work, social life, church, NAACP and educational systems in an environment where their culture was not predominant. This program has received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State history. ; The following is an oral history interview with Bettye B. Gillespie conducted on January 22, 2014 by Forrest C. Crawford. ; 21p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Bettye B. Gillespie Interviewed by Forrest C. Crawford 22 January 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bettye B. Gillespie Interviewed by Forrest C. Crawford 22 January 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The New Zion Community Advocates worked with community members age 80 years and older to have contributed to the history of Ogden city. The interviews looked at the legacy of the interviewees through armed services, work, social life, church, NAACP and educational systems in an environment where their culture was not predominant. This program has received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State history. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gillespie, Bettye B., an oral history by Forrest C. Crawford, 22 January 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Bettye Gillespie, photo taken at her home on January 22, 2014 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Bettye B. Gillespie conducted on January 22, 2014 by Forrest C. Crawford. FC: What we're doing, Bettye, is this. I've got a series of questions that I'll go through. Some of them will be follow-up questions. Feel comfortable to respond to these questions on whatever level you want. The whole objective is not just to capture all of your NAACP activist work, but to really catch a broader, deeper picture of who you are, your work and legacy in the community. So, that's my goal and it might take a little more than an hour. What we're trying to do is work through these questions, some of which might overlap a little, but we'll see how it goes. The point is that you answer whatever you feel comfortable answering. BG: O.K. FC: I think we're ready to get going – more on your life. The good thing about it, Bettye, is that in the past, Weber State has not had these kinds of histories on the local African American community members and we're really pushing to make sure we have some of that kind of history reflected in our Special Collections. I think I might have mentioned to you that we did Joe McQueen. Funny, he had different experiences than you relative to 25th Street. But then he was a jazz saxophone player. He doesn't mind telling you that he's 94 years old. BG: I remember Joe McQueen. I haven't seen him for years, but I've seen articles about him in the newspaper. As I recall the path of lower 25th Street ended (and still does) as it intercepted Wall Avenue on approach to Ogden's Union Station. The Davis Hotel and 1 Restaurant near the corner of 25th Street and Wall Avenue was owned by a gracious, widowed, "Negro" woman. I believe Mrs. Davis operated both of those facilities. As a child, I had no reason, nor was allowed to go anywhere on lower 25th Street. Billy Weakley, husband of Annabelle Weakley, owned the Porters and Waiters Club on lower 25th Street which was primarily patronized by the Black employees of the Union Pacific Railroad. My family's home was on Lincoln Avenue near 28th Street across the street from the St. Anne's Center. FC: O.K. Let's get started. My name is Dr. Forrest Crawford. I'm a professor at Weber State University and I'm here on this day, January 22, 2014 in the home of Bettye Gillespie to do an oral interview for the purpose of preserving for posterity the life and legacy of Bettye Gillespie. This is part of a variety of ongoing projects where Weber State University for many years has attempted to preserve the history of many of its patriarchs and matriarchs, and we want to make sure that Weber State does a good job of not only selecting those voices, but also making sure that those voices are representative of our diverse community, including the African American community. To that end, I am here to try to explore some questions with Bettye, and as a result, we will try to get a much wider and deeper picture of who she is, the work she has done, and the life she lives. And I might also say as a sideline, that Bettye's husband, Jim, who is no longer living, was president of the Ogden Branch of the NAACP for 33 years. FC: Those two individuals were my personal mentors when I came to this community as a student-transfer from Oklahoma to play football at Weber State. So, they were two of the first people I met when I arrived in Utah. So, it's really an honor for me to be here and it's almost like a full circle kind of experience for me and, I'm very excited about it 2 Thank you, Bettye, for giving us the privilege of filming you and, in particular, allowing me to explore these questions with you. FC: The first question is "Tell me you name." (I already know your name). What are you doing these days, what are you doing now? BG: Well, I can't say I'm doing a lot. I have done some work at Weber State and the Black Scholars United gave me a nice award and scarf; and I spoke on the occasion of a memorial honoring the life and times of Rosa Parks. I also received an award from the Weber State Alumni Association for community service. I remember when Weber State moved from 25th Street to the campus where it is now located. There were just a few buildings. The ones I remember were the Union Building and the Browning Center and the classrooms. FC: This is interesting. You earned a B.A. from the University of Utah in Political Science, and M.A. degree in Human Resource Management and received a Merit of Honor award from the Alumni Association from the University of Utah. You served two terms on the University of Utah, Board of Trustees. Since a lot of your work and legacy have been at the University of Utah, you have also been engaged in a number of activities in the Ogden area. So, the question I have is what important lessons have you learned in life to date, and if you had 25 youths sitting in front of you, what couple of things would you say are most important that they should know about. BG: My mother was from Dallas, TX and my father was from Ft. Worth, TX. When they married, they moved to Ft. Worth where the Berliner family lived. Berliner is my maiden name. A friend of my Dad's, who lived in Ogden, while visiting Ft. Worth told my Dad of the many jobs available out here, how pretty the mountains were, how nice the people 3 were and talked him into moving out here. I had heard of Utah, but I had never heard of Ogden and thought we were moving to Oregon. The first school I went to was Central Jr. High. I was 13 years old. As I recall, there were only two Black boys and I was the only Black girl attending Central at that time. I remember going to a little store across the street from Central - 25th and Monroe. The store owner and the two Black boys had some kind of incident and the store owner would not serve me and I could not understand why. I immediately went to the school principal and told him that the owner would not serve me because of some problems he'd had with the two Black boys. My principal, an imposing man, grabbed me by the arm, took me over to the store and asked "Why is it that you're not serving her because of something somebody else did?" The man explained what it was that the boys had done. The principal said that he would not allow any of the Central kids to shop at that store. Since that store sold candy, ice cream and that sort of thing he said, "Oh, no, no, no, I'll serve her, I'll serve her." As you can see I am little, always have been. He served me. This was one of the first things that happened to me after we moved from Texas. I didn't expect it. That fall, I went to Ogden High School, still only 13 years old. I turned 14 that December. One of the first things I learned was to "Hang in there." My friends were the Kinseys, Velma and Shirley. Did you know the Kinseys? FC: I remember the name. BG: Ogden High School has a large population and I believe there were about nine Black kids in attendance, five girls and four boys. I was in Ogden High's most prominent class at that time. My classmates became doctors, lawyers, dentists, business owners, 4 college professors, and one congressman. Since I was only 15 years old, I was the youngest graduate at that time – that was my "Claim to Fame." FC: Do you have an opportunity to go to any of the class reunions and that kind of thing? BG: Before my husband died, we went to all the class reunions. We quit going after my husband became ill. FC: That's interesting. Bettye, when you think of Ogden and all the time you've lived here, how has Ogden changed over the years? What are some of the things that stand out in your mind that convince you that Ogden is really evolving into a different place now? Share with us how Ogden has changed over the years. BG: When Marshall White was alive, I was a part of the Youth NAACP. We had many problems. Blacks were not allowed to swim in Ogden's public parks swimming pools. Some restaurants would not serve Blacks, nor would lunch counters, places of entertainment and some hotels. We went to the Ogden City Council meeting about Lorin Farr Park's swimming pool and some council members denied discrimination. As a result, I went home to get my swimming suit. NAACP members said I could not go out there by myself. They assigned Marion Carter and Frank Satterwhite to go with me. We were all denied. The press became involved and the incident appeared in the newspaper. Guess who said we could come and swim in their swimming pool? Weber State. FC: I remember reading about that. BG: Weber State was still on 25th Street. 5 FC: Interesting. Beautiful. You know, as you were talking about that, I remembered that in a previous interview you did with Weber State you had a chance to talk a little about the time when you and Jim moved into your home in Riverdale and there were some incidents there. Can you speak briefly on that? It had something to with someone who had thrown tar on your home. BG: We bought a home in the upper part of Riverdale, on the ledge, just a block or so away from Washington Terrace. We were just driving around and I saw a house for sale that I liked. We bought the home. Before we moved in, someone threw a bucket of tar through a large window. It caused quite a stir. The FBI, local law enforcement officers, the news media, became involved. Marshall White, President of the Ogden NAACP, was still living. My husband was the First Vice President. Since we had not moved in, we did not lose anything. But some of the neighbors decided to clean up the glass from the broken window and the tar. An elderly woman brought her grandson over, a Hispanic family from nearby Washington Terrace came. The man was a carpenter and he knew how to do a number of things. He did whatever needed to be done. The Laymen's League from Ogden's Congregational Church came out and encircled the block, joined by the Washington Terrace Methodist Church and the Young Democrats. Ogden's Episcopal Church did not have a priest at that time, but the Vicar came. A number of other individuals came, including one who sat on our porch with a rifle. We had two small children. The Stake President of the area's Mormon wards assigned his two big sons to "look out for the little Gillespie girls." Our house was on a corner with a very large yard and lots of playground equipment. We became everybody's best friend. Guess who moved across the street from us? 6 FC: The Rod Julander Family. BG: Rod was a Political Science professor at Weber State. I was a Political Science student at the University of Utah. We became good friends and solved all the world's problems almost "every day." FC: As you became more and more familiar with the greater Ogden area, who were the most outstanding characters of that time? Were there any large personalities that stood out in the community? BG: Marshall White. He was an Ogden Police Officer. He may have been the only Black policeman in the state of Utah. It was not long after we moved into Riverdale, Marshall White was shot and killed in the line of duty. My husband, Jim, became president of the Ogden Branch of NAACP. FC: Were there leaders among the non-minority who often times found themselves in collaboration and partnership with the minority community? BG: Yes. One of our lawyers was Attorney Ira, who was our consultant. Jim Kirkham was with us for 40 years and passed away just a few months ago. FC: What was life like for you? I know we talked about it a little bit, but did you feel like you had a fulfilling childhood? Did you have a nickname? BG: I was an only child. I had one white and one Japanese best friend in addition to the Kinseys, and lots of boyfriends. My mother was very protective and strict and she didn't know about my boyfriends. My other best friends were Hazel Johnson McEwen, who passed away last year and Ruby Lewis Coppadge who lives in Dover, DE. I did not 7 have a nickname. In high school, I told my gym teacher that I wanted to be in the Pep Club and since I was qualified, I got in. There was a group of boys, all of whom wore green T-shirts who stood around in the hall, meddled and made snide remarks to me. One of them was running for student body president, 14 years old and five feet tall. I stood before my very large Pep Club and gave a speech on behalf of another boy who was a much better candidate, who not only won, but also became a U.S. Congressman. The green shirt boys always hung out in the hall not too far from the girl's restroom. My gym teacher reported it to the principal. He put a stop to it. Would you believe that one of the boys ended up teaching law in one of Utah's most prestigious Law Schools? Whenever we went to a class reunion, he would always immediately run up to my husband and say "Jim, please don't let Bettye tell anyone I belonged to that green shirt gang in high school." We ended up being friends. FC: Life places all kinds of twists and turns, it's interesting. When and how did you meet Jim? BG: Well, it was quite a while. On "Game Day", we wore our orange and black uniforms. They were so cute. At that time, I had long hair. Jimmy and his military group did not know many people here. So they would attend Ogden High's basketball and football games. He saw me and wanted to know who the little girl with the long hair and the big eyes was. One of the students who knew me told him to "forget about it." "Her mother is not going to let her go anywhere with you. Her mother is really strict." After I graduated from high school, I went to Washington, D.C. where my Dad's only sister lived. I attended Howard University for two years. My father was ill and I came home 8 from time to time. I can't remember exactly when I met Jimmy, but as I recall long-time residents, Ray and Wilma Freeman introduced him to me. FC: You had three beautiful children, now all college graduates. They were actively involved in the community. They have come to be leaders in their own right and my suspicion is that this kind of shaping and influence really had an impact on their lives. The question that I have is, when you think about it in retrospect, all of them are now grown and out. How has being a parent changed you as an individual? Did it change you at all? BG: Well, it certainly influenced me. As with most mothers, I was involved in many things. I was secretary of the PTA, attended all kinds of activities and served on many committees. Our oldest daughter, Shauna, went to Sacred Heart Academy because she had no one to play with. She was only about four years old, but we told the nuns how smart she was. She knew her address and telephone number and would talk to anybody. (True) They let her in. When we took her over there, she immediately marched into the Priest's dining area to help him eat his breakfast. Everywhere she went, she took over. FC: It holds true today, huh? BG: Shauna went to kindergarten and first grade in the Ogden School District. We discovered that her first grade teacher, Mrs. Piper, was also her pediatrician's first grade teacher. When we moved to Riverdale, we had only two children, Shauna and Deon. Kendall arrived two years later. They attended school in the Weber County School 9 District. They were well behaved, honor roll students with warm personalities and far too many friends. They participated in both the school choir and orchestra – Shauna, soprano and first violin, Deon – alto and viola. Kendall was every teacher's dream – honor roll, sweet personality, too many friends, Pep Club and toyed with the clarinet and ukulele. Teachers sent her post cards from their vacation sites. For their good grades and behavior, they were rewarded with a little black Scottish terrier, "Raven", who was a member of our family for 14 years. Shauna graduated from the University of Utah in three years and taught Head Start. She is currently a Conservator Investigator for the California Superior Court in San Francisco, CA. To our surprise, Deon received scholarship offers from MIT and Georgia Tech (high math scores). She chose to go the University of Utah, majored in Broadcast Journalism, worked for KTVX and KSL for a short period of time and KUSA in Denver, CO. She is currently a writer for the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. After graduation, Kendall decided to go to Weber State University where she majored in Fashion Merchandising. She worked in the Ogden City Mall until she moved to California. She is currently a beauty consultant, promoter and distributor for Mary Kaye Cosmetics. Since their dad was still president of the NAACP, Ogden Branch, we took them to both Regional and National NAACP conventions. Deon and Shauna served on the National NAACP Youth Board and had an opportunity to attend meetings in New York City, NY. They both rode the subway despite my counsel and to my dismay. 10 FC: I think it's that fighting spirit that really, as a result of the way that you raised them was really a part of their upbringing, as they were growing up and in a lot of ways they couldn't help but to be the type of people that they are today, you know, so and I think that's wonderful and really a tribute to, you know, the very solid grounding that you gave them as parents. What about you? Let's see. You worked as Director of Equal Employment Opportunity at Hill Air Force Base. Is that right? BG: Yes. FC: For how long? BG: Twenty years. FC: For twenty years? For that long? BG: Yes. When the air force did some realignments, I received a collateral job of staffing for selective organizations. Not to worry, I received an additional staff of people who were already organized and trained. I remained the only Equal Opportunity Officer at Hill Air Force Base and the only woman Equal Opportunity Officer in the Air Force Logistic Command, our headquarters. The air force bases in our Command were located at Oklahoma City, OK; San Antonio, TX; Macon, GA; Sacramento, CA and San Bernardino, CA. We lost San Bernardino and some of our smaller bases to reorganizations. FC: I can recall in my early involvement in the NAACP, the presence of a lot of military men and women who were members of the NAACP here. I think it was because of the link between EEO, Hill Air Force Base and the Ogden Branch of NAACP and how Jim and others outreached to military personnel to become a part of the Ogden community and 11 so it makes sense to me now as I look at the bigger picture. It's wonderful that you and Jim were right in the middle of all that and helped make the NAACP the organization it is today. BG: My husband was the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer at the Defense Depot Ogden (Army). FC: Defense Depot, I remember that. BG: They had 1,400 civilians at that installation and we have 16,000 at Hill. His major job, his EEO job and his collateral job as Blood Drive Coordinator for the American Red Cross kept him plenty busy. FC: Wow! That's amazing. BG: The Social Action Office and The Judge Advocate Office had the responsibility of assuring equality among military personnel. Occasionally, a military wife would come to my office. FC: When you think about your life, when you think about your legacy, what would you say was the proudest of your life? BG: There were so many proud moments. When my children graduated from high school and college. When my EEO Office was declared the most distinguished office in the U.S. Air Force and many more - The Martin Luther King Commission, the University of Utah-Board of Trustees, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and many others. FC: There was a woman's organization you were involved, I am trying to remember the name. 12 BG: I was involved in many women's organizations – Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, YCC (formerly YWCA) and League of Women Voters. I don't know where I got the energy from, but I also taught Sunday school, third grade. I recently saw one of my third graders who is now 6'4". I also served on the Utah Merit Council (Civil Service Board), the National Endowment for the Humanities, Utah's Comprehensive Health Board, the Federal Executive Association, not all at the same time. I was president of the Ogden Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority for two terms and Director of the Youth NAACP. I also served one term as president of the Habitat for Humanity (local). FC: Teacher, counselor, trainer, mother, oh, you name it, as you say, and you've kind of done it all. It makes me think because over the years, you've had a significant number of awards and accolades bestowed upon you. As you said earlier, Weber State just acknowledged you with an award through its Alumni Association and there have been many other awards. Would you care to share some of those awards that you have received over the years? BG: Yes, if I can remember. I received the YCC award, the Juneteenth Legacy of Freedom Award, Utah State Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, Minority Bar association, Habitat for Humanity, Delta Sigma Theta Women Make a Difference statue, NAACP Rosa Parks Award, University of Utah Merit of Honor award and a Mother and Child Wall Plaque constructed and presented by a talented co-worker. FC: It's truly amazing. As we conclude this, are there other thoughts you would like to share? I recall that you were in Washington D.C. during the signing of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. 13 BG: We were at an NAACP Convention when an NAACP lawyer interrupted the session to announce that the Civil Rights Bill had passed and been signed. On a lighter note, the NAACP held a convention in Jackson, MS. George Romney, Governor of Michigan and Mitt's father was the only governor in the nation to come. We knew him from his many visits here in Utah. As we approached the Convention Center, his limousine pulled up. There were hugs, kisses and even a few tears as he explained to the Detroit delegation, "These are my friends from Utah." My husband, Jimmy, was from Oktibbeha County, Starkville, MS. He was one of 14 children, five girls and nine boys. His youngest brother was killed in a one car rollover in the only car in that town. Jimmy took us to the place where his family's farm was located. Their saw mill, sawdust, woodchips were still there. They also had a country store – long gone and a small burial area. He said that there was no noise pollution in that town and folks chopping wood could be heard miles away. FC: That's a great story, Bettye. I appreciate the time you have given me to interview you. I think that your legacy clearly outlines that the importance of family, the importance of faith, the importance of education and the importance of being involved in the community and activism. But I also think that it's a legacy of perseverance and having dignity throughout that perseverance and I think that's why you are a living legacy today. It is that you are a testament, really, to that living legacy, and I'm just hoping that I can shape my life to be at least a little bit the way that you've shaped yours. 14

"DOLL STEPS" AS A BRAINSTORMING GAME TO IMPROVE THE SPEAKING SKILL IN PROCEDURE TEXT OF THE NINTH GRADERS OF SMPN I MOJOKERTO JOURNAL BY ELIASANTI AGUSTINA NIM. 102084007 ADVISOR Dra. THERESIA KUMALARINI, M.Pd. NIP. 19521014 197903 2 001 SURABAYA STATE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM 2014 "DOLL STEPS" AS A BRAINSTORMING GAME TO IMPROVE THE SPEAKING SKILL IN PROCEDURE TEXT OF THE NINTH GRADERS OF SMPN I MOJOKERTO Eliasanti Agustina English Study Program FBS Surabaya State University elia.englishedu2010@gmail.com Dra.Theresia Kumalarini, M.Pd. Lecturer of English Study Program FBS Surabaya State University kumala_rini52@yahoo.co.id ABSTRAK Pengajaran berbicara bahasa Inggris di banyak sekolah tidak memfasilitasi siswa untuk menjadi terampil. Akibatnya, keterampilan berbicara mereka masih kurang memuaskan. Dengan demikian, guru harus menggunakan cara yang tepat untuk mengajarkan keterampilan berbicara berdasarkan kebutuhan siswa. Di sini peneliti menyarankan guru untuk menerapkan permainan brainstorming bernama "DOLL STEPS" yang bertujuan untuk membantu siswa memiliki kesempatan yang sama untuk menjadi aktif dan kritis, membangun kebiasaan untuk berbicara menggunakann bahasa Inggris, berbagi dan mendapatkan pengetahuan, berbicara dengan fasih dan bebas , berkaitan dengan topik yang diberikan , siap dengan tugas inti dalam pelajaran berbicara, dan belajar untuk memperhatikan pembicara yang lain. Penelitian ini fokus pada berbicara teks prosedur. Penelitian kuantitatif eksperimental ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana kemampuan berbicara siswa setelah penerapan "DOLL STEPS". Populasinya adalah siswa kelas Sembilan di SMPN 1 Mojokerto, sedangkan sampelnya adalah IX E sebagai kelompok eksperimen dan IX F sebagai kelompok kontrol. Untuk mendapatkan data, masing-masing kelompok diberi pre-test untuk menemukan kesetaraan kemampuan dan post-test untuk menemukan pencapaian yang berbeda. Peneliti menggunakan rumus t -test untuk menganalisa data. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa skor post-test dari kelompok eksperimen lebih tinggi daripada kelompok kontrol. Kesimpulannya, direkomendasikan kepada guru bahasa Inggris bahwa permainan "Doll Steps" dapat digunakan untuk mengajar keterampilan berbicara sehingga dapat mencapai target belajar bahasa Inggris . Keyword : "Doll Steps", Keterampilan Berbicara , Teks Prosedur ABSTRACT The teachings of speaking in many schools do not facilitate students to be skillfull in speaking. Consequently, their oral skill is still unsatisfactory. Thus, the teacher has to use an appropriate way to teach speaking based on the students' need. Here the researcher suggested the teacher to implement brainstorming game namely DOLL STEPS which aims to help students have the same chance to be active and critical, build a habit to speak English, share and get knowledge, speak in fluent and free way, be enganged with the topic given, be ready in the main speaking task, and learn to pay attention to other's talk. This study focuses on speaking procedure text.This experimental quantitative research aims to know how the students' speaking skill after the implementation of "DOLL STEPS" is. The population was the ninth graders of SMPN 1 Mojokerto, whose sample was IX E as the experimental group and IX F as the control group. To get the data, each group was given a pre-test to find their equality and post-test to find the different achievement. The researcher used t-test formula to analyze the data. The result of the study showed that the post-test scores of the experimental group were higher than those of the control group. Finally, it is recomended that English teachers use Doll Steps game in teaching speaking skill to meet the target of learning English. Keyword: Doll Steps, Speaking Skill, Procedure Texts INTRODUCTION English proficiency is a must in the era of communication and globalization. English is seriously learned by many people to have a good prospect in the communication and also to get more information of international world. It can be seen in Indonesia that English is learned by children from elementary school to students of higher education. Therefore, our government seriously provides the appropriate curriculum about this subject. English lesson in junior high school function as a tool of self-development of students in science, technology and art. After completing their studies, they are expected to grow and develop into individuals who are intelligent, skilled and personable also ready to take a role in national development. In line with the explanation above is Indonesian law number 20 year 2003 about National Education System Article 37 paragraph 1, one of them states that language study materials include a foreign language with consideration of foreign languages, especially English is an international language which is a very important utility in global society (2006 : 282). Hence, English language become the principle subject which determines student graduation. This is proven by the fact that English is the subjects that is always included in the national examination in accordance with the Regulation of the Minister of National Education Number 78 Year 2008 on National Examination for Secondary level in Article 6 states that the subjects tested in the examination include Indonesian, English, Mathematics, and Science. In the process of learning English, a teacher must be able to master the language pretty well. Moreover she must be able to master how to teach English properly and how to transfer knowledge and experience of the teacher to the learners. Thus, there has to be many efforts to do in order to create an interesting English learning that can motivate students to enhance learners' capacity in learning English. That is why, it is recommended that the teaching of English, should bring English atmosphere in it. Being a good teacher, she should be able to bring it in teaching and learning process, because if the atmosphere can not be brought into the process, the students will not get a clear purpose, why they have to learn the lesson and what is the importance of learning it for their daily lives. According to Depdiknas (2006:307), the teaching of English consists of four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing and other three components, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Each skill has different purposes to help students master English. The uppermost important language skill in learning English is a skill in oral communication or generally called speaking. As declared by Aliakbar & Jamalvadi, speaking is crucial since it is the vehicle of social solidarity, social rank, the business world and as a medium for learning language. Learning objectives of speaking have been clearly stated in the English curriculum. The goal is students are able to communicate efficiently. "Learning speaking should improve the communication skills of learners to be able to express and learn to follow the appropriate social and cultural development" (Kayi, 2006: 1). Unfortunately the current condition shows that English Foreign Language (EFL) learners, in this term is Indonesian learners, are reluctant to speak English in the classroom. The problem is commonly found in EFL class. It is caused by some factors such as they do not have the confidence to do conversation in English, they are afraid of making mistakes and then laughed by their peers, they have limited vocabulary so that they know what to say in bahasa but not in English and many more. Sometimes the topic given is too high for them so they prefer to be silent. In addition, some students did not get a chance to speak in class because of the domination by particular learners. Consequently, students have fewer opportunities to learn from speaking than the more oral students. For sure it will affect to their ability and their score in speaking skill as well. Students who do not take charge in their learning are unable to take full advantage of learning opportunities. This is a problem that faces many Asian students who are generally more reserved than western students (Tsui , 1996). As teachers, we can try to overcome students' problem by using suitable warm-up activities, in this case called brainstorming game. Basically the use of brainstorming game in teaching and learning activities is not a must considering the effectiveness and time required. However, occasionally it is necessary to use the game to support the implementation of learning English. Brainstorming game can facilitate and create a strong positive effect on the atmosphere and also relaxed for students in doing classroom learning activities, considering that English is still a scourge for most students. That warm-up activity also helps students to have an overview about the main speaking task. In addition, the nature of game is fun so it can increase students' motivation and able to overcome shyness. Consequently, they will be able to express their ideas freely because through playing the game they may not consider that they are learning. Implementation of learning strategy in SMPN 1 Mojokerto strongly support the achievement of the speaking purpose itself. Learning strategy requires students to be independent, critical, and active in expressing their opinion. However at the presentation time most of the students do not focus in listening to the speaker. Sometimes they are busy with their own tasks even do not appreciate the presenter. Moreover, frequently there are learners who like to cut the talks of presenter with things that are not discussed. This affects condition of other students and causes confussion in the classroom. Teachers will be exhausted to remind them repeatedly. Dealing with the issues above, a teacher needs appropriate strategy and media which can control the class order and boost students' score in speaking English. There are some alternatives of speaking games that can be used in order to improve the students' speaking ability. One of the games that can be used is the Doll Steps game. This game is actually taken from the Chain Story ideas that are commonly used in the teaching of narrative text and also Talking Stick, but the writer gives a little modification in the content of the media itself, so that produces a new media that is Doll Steps game. As a result students will pay attention to the presenter when she is speaking. This teaching strategy can be used in teaching any texts. Based on Competence Based Curriculum Issued (KTSP) 2006, there are five genres that are introduced to Junior High school students. Those are procedure, descriptive, recount, narrative and report text. Those kinds of texts are expected to be mastered by the students well. Among those genres, a procedure text is easily understood by the students as it is commonly found in their environment. The text can be found on the sachet of instant foods and beverages also on the box of electronic machine. Additionally, procedure text is a genre which has to be mastered by students, especially the ninth graders as it is already stated in Standar Isi and Standar Kompetensi. In procedure text, students are told the way how something is achieved by doing sequence steps. The text includes set of suggestion on how to do something, how to operate something and how to get to a certain place or direction. To apply Doll Steps for procedure text, the speaker gives direction or step. All students will be treated fairly. They will get same chance to speak, so it is expected by applying this game, students will be able to speak English effortlessly and without hesitant. Doll Steps will be very advantageous for teaching speaking procedure text of the ninth graders in SMPN 1 Mojokerto. This study will discus the activities during the learning process using Doll Steps. The implementation here will be different from the concept in general as it will be modified by the music so that students feel comfortable. Researcher found a previous study on the use of brainstorming carried out in Oral Communication classes at a Japanese senior high school which was observed by Culen (1998) entitled, "Brainstorming Before Speaking Task". Brainstorming used was Information Gap. The evaluation of the study showed that an increase in speaking time and a more positive atmosphere are two benefits that brainstorming can bring to speaking class. Based on the background and the problems above, the research conducted to investigate how the students' speaking skill after the implementation of Doll Steps is. METHOD Concerning with the research question in the previous chapter, the writer used experimental quantitative research design. According to Ary, (1985) in Denik lejar (2012) Experimental design refers to the conceptual framework where the experiment is conducted. There were two groups involved in this study, experimental group (class IX E ) and control group (class IX F), which were randomly assigned. The two groups were given a pre-test to examine whether they were in the equal level or not. Then the experimental group was given a treatment by using Doll Steps in their teaching and learning process for several times. On the contrary, the control group was taught conventionally. At the end, both of the groups were given a post-test to measure the effectiveness of Doll Steps for teaching speaking procedure texts to Junior High school. The population used in this research was the ninth graders of SMP Negeri I Mojokerto. The researcher chose two classes randomly as the samples. In this research, the researcher chooses probability sampling, especially cluster random sampling. After getting two classes, the researcher randomly assigned which one was the experimental group and which was the control group. The two chosen classes should be equal, to avoid any unexpected effect. In this study, the sample was class IX E as the experimental group, and class IX F as the control group. Each of them consists of 26 students. This study used test as the instrument. The tests consisted of pre-test and post-test. The items used in the tests were exactly the same. The pre-test and post-test were administered to know whether the model of learning is successful or not. From the two tests, the researcher got scores of speaking tests as the data. Before the tests were administered, a tryout was conducted to analyze the reliability of the test be used for pre-test and post-test also to know the appropriate test items for the students' level. The try-out test was given to the students who were given neither pre-test nor post-test. The number of the test items was just 2 instructions in the form of oral test. The results showed that the test items had a high validity because all of the components of the test items were according to the standard competency (see table 1) and has been approved by the experts (lecture of UNESA and the English teacher of SMPN I Mojokerto). While to know the reliability, the researcher used interrater reliability method. It means, one test will be administered once, but it is scored by two people. If the result from those two people are same or almost the same, means the test are valid and can be used in collecting data. Therefore, for the results showed that the test items were in high validity and reliability. Table 1 Scale of Validity Test Item Standard Competency Validity How to send a picture through e-mail How to make a glass of iced lemon tea 4.2.1 Mengungkapkan makna dalam monolog pendek sederhana dengan menggunakan ragam bahasa lisan secara akurat, lancar, dan berterima untuk berinteraksi dalam konteks kehidupan sehari-hari dalam teks berbentuk procedure Valid Valid When the students came in front of the class and produced a monologue related to the lesson given, their performance was analyzed and scored based on some aspects. They are pronunciation, grammar, fluency, vocabulary, organization and comprehension. Each aspect has its own point and description. The measurement adopted from Oller (Language Tests at School, 1979, pp. 320-323). A quantitative data analysis was conducted in this study. The scores of students' speaking tests were analyzed by using t-test­ formula because the result of the study was determined by the comparison of the post-test scores of the two groups. Moreover it is used to analyze the significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Result The Implementation of Doll Steps in Teaching Speaking The research was done on December 9th up to 12th 2014. Furthermore, six meetings were needed to accomplish the research; try-out, pre-test, treatment 1, treatment 2, treatment 3, and post-test. It is held to find out the influence of using brainstorming game called "DOLL STEPS" to improve students' speaking skill in Procedure text. It was investigated through comparing the mean scores of the pre-test and post-test between the experimental and control group. Below is the statistics table of scores of both groups in pretest and posttest. Table 2 Scores of Pre-test for Experimental and Control Group Based on the calculation of the scores, it was found that the mean of the pretest scores of the experimental group was 70.2 and the control group was 65.4. From the table above, it can be seen that the Tvalue of pretest of the Experimental and control group with the level of significance of .05 and 58 (60) degree of freedom was 1.3 and the Ttable was 2,009. If the T table was higher than the Tvalue . it means that there is no significant difference between Experimental and Control group. Oller's speaking measurement considers that both of the groups belong to level 3. From those results, the researcher assumed that the members of the two groups had equal level of speaking ability before the treatments were given. Table 3 Scores of Post-test for Experimental and Control Group From the calculation, the Mean of Experimental group was 81.9 which belongs to level 3+ and the Mean of Control group was 66.8 which belongs to level 3. It was clearly seen that the scores of experimental group the Mean of experimental group was much higher than the Mean of control group. Moreover the level of experimental is one level above the control group. The scores also have a better improvement. It can be seen at the pretest, the mean of experimental group was 70.2 and belongs to level 3. It significantly increased at the post-test the mean of which 81.9 and belongs to level 3+. It is because the experimental group was given a treatment by using Doll Steps game. The game was able to help students to produce oral speaking text fluently. The significant difference of the post-test scores of experimental The T value of post-test scores of experimental and control groups with level significance .05 and 58 (60) degree of freedom was 8.9 and the T table was 2.009. From the table above, it can be seen that the result of T table was lower than the T value. Therefore, it shows that there was a significant difference between two groups. In other words, there was a significant improvement between those who were taught by using Doll Steps game. Discussion As stated in chapter II, Kattlen (2005:31) defines that speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning involves producing, receiving and processing information. However, some teachers and pupils mean every sound which comes out of the mouth is called speaking activity. It is totally wrong since speaking is human daily activity in which human expresses the ideas through the oral words about his need, feelings and thought that he wants other people hear. It must use his oral words not the words from the texts, recorders or other people's words. In the second chapter, it can be seen that speaking is a productive skill not a receptive skill, so here the speaker must produce meaningful words not copying or imitating. Therefore, it is necessary that students not only be able to pronounce words correctly but also produce oral words fluently in order to improve the speaking skill of the students, in this case is in a procedure text. Then, the researcher favored Doll Steps game as an alternative way to ease students creates a procedure text orally. The oral words should create spontaneously which means that the words must be original words from the learners. Moreover from the contrasting scores of the post-test between two groups, it can be stated that Doll Steps game can be an effective game for teaching speaking procedure texts. The test items consisted of two instructions. In this section, the researcher tried to analyze the findings of the research which was conducted in SMP Negeri I Mojokerto. The first analysis was about the pre-test scores of the experimental and control groups. The result of the pre-test showed that there was no significant difference of both groups. It means that the two groups have equal ability. The second analysis was the post-test scores of Experimental and control groups. Table 3 shows that the mean of post-test scores for Experimental group was higher than that of the control group. Furthermore, the calculation of the t-test showed that there was a significant difference of post-test scores of Experimental and Control group. It seems that the treatments given to experimental group was successful. Table 3 describes clearly that Doll Steps game is effective for teaching speaking procedure texts. It is supported by the result showed that the scores between experimental and control were significantly different. It caused by the treatments given to experimental groups affected the students' speaking ability. The treatments were given three times. During the treatments, the researcher applied steps of Doll Steps game. At the first treatment, the researcher explained and modeled the steps of Doll Steps first. After the researcher explained the strategy and the material, the students were taught a procedure text by applying Doll Steps game. From several treatments, the researcher was sure that "Doll Steps" is effective as an alternative strategy for teaching speaking procedure texts for the ninth graders in SMP Negeri I Mojokerto. Applying Doll Steps allows the following benefits some of which are stated in the second chapter: It takes students to be a critical learner as they develop independence in practicing speaking. It allows students to practice freely. Here they may speak fearless as no one will cut or correct their says as long as it relates with topic given. All the students will be active speakers for they will get their turn to speak up. It engages students in speaking around the topic. It makes students learn to focus on what his friends' saying because in this game they should listen to the step mentioned by their friends to continue the next step. It scaffolds speaking with a variety of texts in all curriculum areas. It helps students to have a habit in speaking English. It makes students easy to produce the procedure text orally in the main activity since this game gives them chance to take and share knowledge with each other. It creates good English athmosphere in class which brings fun and purpossive learning activity. 10. Learners learn to appreciate one another. In conclusion, the calculation of the post-test from experimental and control groups using t-test showed that there was significant difference between them. Moreover the scores of Experimental group increased rapidly. It is statistically proved that Doll Steps game is effective for ninth graders in SMP Negeri I Mojokerto to improve their ability to speak the Procedure texts. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion According to the findings in this research, in the previous chapter, it can be concluded that the post-test scores of the experimental group, who were taught by using Doll Steps game are higher than those of the control group who was taught as usual. It was proven by comparing the mean of post-test between the experimental (81.9) which is considered as level 3+ and control group (66.8) with just in level 3 which is clearly stated by the statistical computation between those two groups. Moreover, it was found that the t value of the t-test (8.9) was higher than the t table (2.00). The result of speaking ability of the experimental group students showed that most of them are very good in spoken procedure with the 3+ level. Some of them got excellent scores with the level 4 even 4+. It means that most of them were able to speak the language with suffecient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversation on practical, social, and professional topics. Whereas some of them who got 4 and 4+ level were able to use the language fluently and accurately at all levels normally pertinent to professional needs (Oller:1979). Therefore, the research question of this study has been answered well. From the findings above, it can be stated that the Null hypothesis, which stated that there is no significant difference in the speaking ability of procedure texts between the students who are taught by using Doll Steps game and those who are not is rejected. On the other hand, the alternative hypothesis which stated there is a significant difference in the speaking ability of procedure texts between the students who are taught by using Doll Steps game and those who are not is confirmed. It can be assumed that teaching speaking procedure texts to ninth graders by using Doll Steps game helps the students to create a procedure text orally in a fluent way and reach a higher achievement. If the teacher implements the Doll Steps game to teach speaking of procedure texts, the students will be able to produce oral procedure text not only easily but also well structured and fluently because from the Doll Steps game they will become confident and critical learners, use their previous knowledge for the speaking task, feel free and confident through the game. Through their friends' sentences they will gain new knowledge such as new vocabulary and how to arrange a good procedure text, so that they can produce the oral text well. In conclusion, it can be said that Doll Steps game is one of the effective teaching speaking games that can be used to teach speaking production of procedure text in the classroom. Suggestion Based on the result of the study, the researcher recommends some advices which are essential. The suggestion may be beneficial for the English teachers and other researchers who conduct a study on speaking skill. For the English teacher Nowadays, when the teaching and learning process is no longer teacher centered but student centered, so the teachers should have some criterion namely: Creative teacher Creative means teachers can do variation in teaching process such as adapting and creating new technique, media, strategy or even game. Good facilitator It means that as a facilitator, teachers should be able to explore students' ability, for instance courage them to solve their learning problem, produce much ideas, give same chance to each students, and give supportive feedback. Selective teacher Teacher should selective in choosing the media, technique, strategy and game used to teach. The things must be appropriate to the curriculum, need, proficiency, and age of the students so that the learning process can meet the target. From all the characteristics above, students will be excited in practicing English orally Linked to the 2006 curriculum, the objective is to make learners able to express the text orally to be used for communication purpose (BSNP, 2006:24). Accordingly, the teacher should use suitable way, one which is giving Doll Steps game. Doll Steps game can give benefits and be implemented as an appropriate game for the students to produce oral procedure texts. For the other researchers Relating to the successful usage of brainstorming game called "DOLL STEPS" to boost speaking score of the ninth graders of SMPN 1 Mojokerto, other researchers who are interested in investigating speaking skill are recommended that they look further on other related aspects of this study. Furthermore, it is suggested to develop this study by exploring the use of this game for other kinds of genre, skills, and level of the students REFERENCES Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Sorensen, C. K., & Razavieh, A. (2010).Introduction to Research in Education (8th Ed). USA: Wadsworth engage Learning. Bartz, A. E. (2001). Basic Statistical Concept i Education and the Behavioral Science. Moorhead, Minesota: Concordia College. Brown, H. D. (2004). Language Assessment Principle ad Classroom Practices. San Francisco: Pearson Education. Cullen, B. (1998). Brainstorming Before Speaking Tasks. The Internet TESL Journal , VOL IV No. 7. Harmer, J. The Practice of English LAnguage TEaching (3rd edition ed.). Cambridge, UK: Longman. Hayriye, K. (2006). Teaching Speaking: Activities to Promote Speaking in a Second Language. The Internet TESL Journal , VOLl XII No. 11. Houston, H. (2006). A Brainstorming Activity for ESL/EFL Students. The Internet TESL Journal , Vol. XII, No. 12. Liu, T.-Y., & Chu, Y.-L. (2010). Using Ubiquitous Games in an English Listening and Speaking Course : Impact on LEarning Outcomes and Motivation. ELSEVIER , 1. Manshouri, F. (2008). Second Language Acquisition Research : Theory - Construction ad testinng. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Nunn, F., & Nunn, R. (2005). Guiding ESL Students Towards Independent Speech Making. The Internet TESL Journal , Vol. XI, No. 2. Oller, John. W. (1979). Laguage Tests at School : A Pragmatic Approach. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Longman.

Issue 63.1 of the Review for Religious, 2004. This was the first issue of the Review as a quarterly publication. ; Education Objectives Human Development Eucharistic Ce~nteri~ng Saintly Models Spiritual Growth QUARTERLY 63.1 2004 Review for Religious helps people, respond and be faithful to God's universal call to holiness by making available to them the spiritual legacies that flow from the charisms of Catholic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2004 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm 'Judy Sharp Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ QUARTERLY 63.1 2004 6 Secularism, Justice, and J~suit Higher Education-- Are They All the Same? Martin R. Tripole sJ questions the adequacy'of the justice agenda in Jesuit education and proposes to spell out the task for educators in establishing "the justice of God's kingdom" among students. 21 32 The Spiritual Development of Individuals Stanislaw Glaz SJ points out that spiritual development can proceed correctly only on the condition that we discard the illusions that we have created about our lives and likewise discard vain expectatio~ns for the future. Breaking Stereotypes Ignatius Jesudasan sJ writes about stereotypes from his Indian and Jesuit experience and calls us to reflect on our efforts to move beyond such prejudice. 40 53 A Charism Illumined: Eucharistic Anamnesis and "Viva Memoria" Hildegard Magdalen Pleva OSSR develops the crucial feature of both anamnesis and "living memory" as the ability to make past events and the person of Jesus present and active in our time. Eucharistic Devotion in the Rising Generation Randall S. Rosenberg reflects upon the desire of young people to spend time in loving contemplation and adoration of the Eucharist as a sign of growth in an integral faith life. Review for Religious 58 Teresa of Avila and Friendship Susan B. Cordsen reflects on Teresa of Avila's struggle with friendship. Teresa has much to say to us today as we struggle with what it is to be friends of Christ and friends of one another. 66 Five Faces of Rosalie Rendu Robert P. Maloney CM reflects many of the numerous new blesseds and saints of Pope John Paul's pontificate are not well known. This article attempts to acquaint readers with one of them. Growth in Faith, Hope, and Love Normandie Gaitley SSJ discovered through the setback of apparent failure and rejection God's voice in the midst of the storm calling to a deeper faith, hope, and love. 84 Mountain Caves Carolyn Humphreys OCDS describes our growth in intimacy with God through the imagery of our exeriences in entering the darkness of spiritual caves. 4 Prisms 91 Canonical Counsel: Papal Enclosure: Further Considerations 99 Book Reviews 63.1 2004 R first things first. As we begin a new year, it may be helpful to observe what is first in our lives. For example, we believe that the Eucharist is central to our living the paschal mystery. Yet we might look at whether or how it is first in our religious practice. Jesus provides us with two helps--the first, a word, and the second, an action. During the Last Supper events recorded in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus makes reference to the covenant: "This is the new covenant in my blood." Covenant, a specific agreement practice among the Middle-Eastern peoples, took on a new depth of meaning when the Israelite people understood that God had made a covenant with them] To celebrate this new relationship between God and a people he calls "peculiarly his own," the biblical covenant is sealed with the blood of a sacrificed animal. Blood--just as in out'modern-day blood transfusions--means life, not death. When the priest sprinkled blood first on the altar representing God and then on the people, this blood ritual symbolized the sharing of life between God and God's people. When Jesus says the word "This is the new covenant in my blood," he is taking the symbolic covenant of the Jewish faith and providing an undreamt-of reality to his word. In Eucharistic communion, we find ourselves given the food and drink of everlasting life. Our veins, our very bodies, our very beings are coursing with the "blood" of this new covenant of shared life, the Review for Religious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, the new Paschal Lamb. The action Jesus performs as key to our understanding is recorded only in John's Gospel account of the Last Supper. The action is Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet. When Peter objects, Jesus replies that, if he does not wash his feet, then Peter will have no relationship with him. In the face of such a harsh consequence, Peter immediately reverses his position and desires to be washed totally clean as a guest made'welcome from the travel of dusty roads--not just his feet, but his hands and face as well. For the Johannine community and for the church in her Holy Thursday celebration, this washing of the feet dramatizes the central mystery of the Eucharist, a sharing of life, giving it away, a life-in-service--"I have given you an example," Jesus says. Eucharist, meaning celebration of holy Mass, and Eucharist, meaning the sacrament of holy communion, include both word and action. God in Jesus is speaking a word of love in sharing divine life with us, bringing us from being just God's creatures to being truly sons and daughters, members of God's family. But in Eucharist God is also involving us in his very action of sharing, and so we find ourselves moved not only, to share our life with God but also, like God, to share life with all those whom our life touches--all of them our brothers and sisters! Eucharist is key to Jesus on the cross--to pay whatever price love costs--to give over his life to God and to give over his life to us. Easter, too, finds its key in Eucharist--Jesus sharing resurrected life, his Father's gift to him, with all of us so that we too might continue to rejoice in and share this life forever. Entering into Eucharist, then, we participate in the paschal mystery, the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus, the pattern of living the divine cost of sharing life given in love. . .David L. Fleming SJ 63.1 2004 MARTIN R. TRIPOLE ,,Secularism, Justice,. and Jesuit Higher Educationm Are They All the Same? Whether or not justice is present in Jesuit higher education seems recently to have become a mat-ter of high priority. In 2000 every Jesuit college or university in the nation was pressed to send representatives to a special conference in Santa Clara, California, to examine the extent to which justice was being promoted in the policies and curricula of Jesuit institutions, with a view to implementing stronger justice agendas. More than three hundred delegates attended. In October 2002 a follow-up gathering was held in Chicago. Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education recently devoted its entire spring 2000 issue to social justice.1 In July 2002 in Philadelphia, the fifth annual meeting of Col-leagues in Jesuit Business Education focused on "The Paradox of Globalization and Economic Justice." And an international conference on justice and globalization for. leaders in Jesuit Martin R. Tripole SJ last wrote for us in September-October 2000. His address is St. Josepl'i's University; 5600 City Avenue; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. Review for Religi.ous higher education was held in November 2002 at Santa Clara University. The perception seems to be that Jesuit higher edu-cation is not adequately committing itself to the pursuit of justice and something must be done about it. The pressure has grown to make the promotion of justice-- in an institution's mission statement and curricular offer-ings-- the litmus test for qualifying as a Jesuit institution. So much has this conjunction of justice with Jesuit edu-cation become the standard parlaffce at Jesuit institu-tions today that, when lay administrators, faculty members, and students refer to Jesuit education, they immediately identify it with the promotion of justice. In short, if your institution is not promoting justice, it is not Jesuit. Many educators question this symbiosis.of justice and Jesuit education. Is the purpose of Jesuit education to promote justice? Is it possible to fashion Jesuit edu-cation according to a justice model? Doesn't a liberal education in the Jesuit tradition have dimensions far deeper and more important? This article questions the adequacy of the justice agenda in Jesuit education, arguing from (1) the under-standing of the Jesuit mission as approved by the 34th General Congregation (GC34) of the Society of Jesus in 1995, (2) the inherent inability of the iustice agenda to .maintain the Catholic and Jesuit character of Jesuit higher education, and (3) the compelling challenges cre-ated in the world since 11 September 2001, in relation to which the justice mission falls seriously short. Justice and the Jesuit Mission at GC34 The identification of Jesuit education with the pro-motion of justice stems from the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (GC32) in Rome in 1975. It decreed that the Jesuit mission is "the service of7 63.1 2004 Tripole * Secularism, Justice, and Jesuit Higher Ed faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.''2 Though the congregation never defined what it meant by justice, most commentators noted the 1960s and 1970s political- and social-activist thinking reflected in the decrees and have rightly concluded that the congregation was referring to social justice. In effect, the congregation asserted in the key for-mulation cited above that every branch of the Jesuit mis-sion had somehow to justify its existence by how it promoted justice. That was the way things stood until 1995, when GC34 was convened. One would never guess, from the continuing emphasis placed upon jus-tice today, that GC34 broadened and deepened the for-mulation of the Jesuit mission so that it now includes much more that is explicitly Christian. Though GC34's thinking included social justice,3 the justice that is linked to the service of faith is now under-stood to be the scriptural and theological understand-ing of justice as "the justice of God's kingdom,':4 The aim of our mission received from Christ. is the service of faith. The integrating principle of our mission is the inseparable link between faith and the promotion of the justice of the Kingdom. In this pre-sent congregation we want to deepen and extend, in a more explicit way, the Society's awareness of those integral dimensions of our mission to which [GC32's] Decree 4 drew attention and which are now reaching maturity in our experience and in our present min-istries. (2:14) Central'to GC34's understanding of faith and the "justice of God's kingdom" is that faith entails sharing in the church's mission of evangelization and therefore pro-claiming the gospel and bringing its teaching into every culture and society (2:15). United with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and operating "within the total evangelizing mission of the church" (2:3), Jesuits are called "to promote the kingdom in all its aspects," Review for Religious including destroying the "structures of sin" and fulfilling the universal "desire to find God" and to "live by his gospel in all its implications" (2:11). The congregation, recognizing that the roots of injus-tice are to be found not only in "economic structures" but also in "cultural attitudes," explicitly states that jus-tice will "flourish" in society only when a deeper cultural transformation is achieved (2:17). Social justice is in a sense a by-product of the transforming power of "Christ's explicitly liberating presence" within history (4:8). Through inculturation, the "liberating power of the gospel" (4:3) be-comes present in every soci-ety by touching its "structural, cultural, and religious aspects with its light" (2:18). Clearly, by shifting its focus to the need to transform cultures, and integrating that effort into the church's total evan-gelizing mission, GC34 has found a deeper and mtre sat-isfying way to correct social problems than by focusing on the promotion of justice alone. Few would deny that promoting social justice is a work "integral". to the church's life. But it is another thing to assert, as GC32 seemed to do, that promoting social justice is an "absolute requirement" of every effort to serve-the gospel. Jesus seems repeatedly to have dis-tinguished the service of faith from the promotion of justice. At the beginning of his ministry, he made faith in his teaching and repentance for sin the appropriate response to the coming of tlie kingdom (Mk 1:15). He stressed the saving power of faith (Mr 9:22, Jn 3:16) and of baptism (Mk 16:14, Jn 3:5) and taught the parable of the talents (Mt 25:14-30), all without alluding to justice. And is it not fitting to proclaim the need for dis- Few would deny that promoting social justice is a work "integral" to the church's life. 9 63.1 2004 Tripole ¯ Secularism, 3~ustice, and yesuit Higher Ed cipleship of Christ (Mk 1:16-20), or the soteriological sig-nificance of Jesus' healing actions (see Mk 2:1-12; 3:7- 12), as well as the redemptive significance of his death and resurrection (1 Co 15), without mentioning justice? Jesus calls his disciples to a life of service of God and others. But the service Jesus intended is broader than promoting justice and does not call for such promotion unless just relations are lacking. Service, however, always calls for love. The quintessence of Christian living is found in our expression of love for one another modeled on Jesus' life of love (Jn 15:12). This love is manifested most of all in laying down one's life for another, as Jesus did On 15:13). It is promoting love, therefore, that would be the more adequate hallmark of the Jesuit mission. Jesuit and Catholic Presence in Jesuit Higher Education Understanding the Jesuit mission as inculturating the gospel has greater implications for Jesuit education than promoting justice does. According to GC34, a Jesuit university "must be out-standing in its human, social, spiritual, and moral for-mation" of student~ (17:11). Borrowing from Pedro Arrupe, superior ger~e.ral\of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983, the congregation ranks, as a priority apos-tolate of the Society of Jesus, "theological reflection" upon "humanism, freedom,~ m~ss culture, economic development, and violence" (16:7). The congregation~ recalls that the early Jesuits "linked Christian catechesis to an education in classical humanism, art,and theater, to make their students versed both in faith and in cul-ture" (4:10), and specifically affirms that in the educa-tional apostolate Jesuits "have a special role to play in linking Christian faith" to contemporary movements in culture (4:28). The justice mission is not broad enough to handle these goals. Review for Religious In the light of GC34's understanding of the Jesuit mission, we would do well to examine the findings of "Jesuit Education 21," the last major conference on Jesuit higher education in the United States. Held at St. Joseph's University in June 1999, the conference brought together over three hundred laypersons and Jesuits from around the world, with more than eighty presentations made by prominent educators. A close examination of the conference proceedings5 indicates much of what is troubling Jesuit higher education today. They show that more is needed to restore the Jesuit and Catholic char-acter of Jesuit institutions than promoting justice can provide. Though their concerns were distinctly pro-Jesuit and pro-Catholic, the participants never came to a consensus on what being Jesuit and Catholic means or how Jesuit and Catholic values, whatever they might be, can be pre-served. A reviewer of the published proceedings called them "fascinating" and "indisl~ensabl~e' readin_g, yet admitted he could not conclude fro---~-~hem_ what Jesuit education stood for.6 This inability to state with clarity what it means to be Jesuit and Cath_olic_may reflect an erosion of identity already underway in Jesui_~t and Catholic colleges and universities. The proceedings provide good grounds tofear that the secularization that oc~ in many Pro___testant schools in the early 20th-century is well under___way at Jesuit and other Catholic institutions as_w__ell.____A basis for this view may be found, for exa--m-~le, in ~he distinction admissions recruiters.have frequency_ drawn-between Jesuit values and Catholic ide~-~ity. Many_ said they emphasize the former and do.wnpla._y or ignore the latter as a matter of policy. But why?-The distinction, they said, enabled them to iden6fy Jesuit schools to potential applicants as institutions promoting humanistic values, rather than as schools fostering Catholic identity. The 11 63.1 2004 Tripole ¯ Secularism, Justice, and Jesuit Higher Ed effect was to make being Jesuit distinguishable from belonging to the Catholic Church. That recruiters make such a distinction as part of their effort to appeal to potential students may indicate how ingrained among students as well as among recruiters secularization has already become. The erosion of Catholic identity may be even more evident in the hiring of new faculty members increas-ingly for their professional competence and their sup-port of humanistic values rather than for an interest in fostering a Catholic culture on the campus. One admin-istrator at the conference, bluntly admitted without com-ment or apology that Jesuit institutions will no longer accept support for the Catholic mission as a factor to be considered in the hiring of new faculty. He argued that Jesuit distinctiveness is now identified with humanistic values such as seeing the world, as sacramental, showing love by deeds, and searching for ultimate meaning, and that, when the Jesuit character is understood that way, "Jesuit education can and will thrive independently of the fortunes of the institutional Catholic Church." He went on to say that, "if you were to tell faculty tomorrow to 'hire for mission' with an emphasis on Catholic rather than, or over and above, Jesuit, I know what will hap-pen . The present faculty simply will. not do it" (Francis Fennell, Proceedings, p. 446). The peremptory nature of these remarks indicates how difficult it would be to reverse the trend toward secular humanism, for the faculty are the primary decision makers for hiring in their departments. Deeper theological roots of secular humanism may be found in the increasing acceptance of a principle never accepted by the Catholic Church, that faith is a private matter. This perspective includes relegating faith matters to the theology department and campus.ministry, rather than considering a Catholic culture something all Uni- Review for Religious versity personnel can share in. Theology departments, however, eager to be accepted as legitimately academic and hospitable to pluralistic thinking, are increasingly reluctant to identify themselves with matters of faith, thereby adding to the alienation of faith from the life of the institution (Avery Dulles, Proceedings, pp. 168-169). Does Promoting Justice Foster Secularism? Jesuits may themselves have much to do with this incursion of secularism into Jesuit universities, for an identification of Jesuit values with secular humanism has been widely accepted in Jesuit circles. The favored jar-gon for what Jesuit products should be--"men and women for others"--would be an acceptable character-ization of ideal products of any secular university. Are there any institutions in favor of self-centered graduates who want to promote injustice? The common phrase makes it difficult to distinguish a good secular humanist from a good graduate of any Jesuit institution. Jesuit spirituality promotes "finding God in all things." The principle, admirable in itself and valuable for people who wish to implement their faith, is problematic when put into the hands of secular humanists, since it allows not only faith in any god whatsoever, but also the marginal-ization of the true God over against a quasi-sacral aura that envelops all things. Support for secularization has unwittingly come from equating the Jesuit mission with the promotion of justice, an equation that can be made even when faith is absent~ Such an equation allows the reduction of the Christian faith to secularly acceptable standards and makes what is specific to being Catholic optional: belief in the triune God, commitment to Jesus Christ, and fidelity to the church and its teachings. When, therefore, Jesuit edu-cation understands its mission as promoting justice, someone must ask: Is such a mission capable of preserv- 13 63.1 2004 Tripole ¯ Secularism, 3°~stice, and Jesuit Higher Ed ing the Catholic character of our institutions? It would seem not. The promotion of justice is put on a par with other advocacy movements-- not life-altering efforts, but efforts that fit into the little compartment in our lives that supports Charitable causes. Catholic Identity and the Lives of Our Students The justice-advocacy movement has the weakness of being normally integrated into the larger framework of self-identity, even when it is most effective. The promotion of justice is put on a par with other advocacy movements-- not life-altering efforts, but efforts that fit into the little compartment in our lives that supports charitable causes. We contribute to the muscular dystrophy program on Labor Day, our hearts go out to Michael J. Fox and his cam-paign for curing Parkinson's disease, the more youthful among us dance the night away to seek financial contri-butions for the fight against AIDS--but afterwards we return to the secular aims and purposes that motivate our humdrum daily lives. Self-chosen secular aims and agendas are not likely to be altered much by participation in special advocacy movements, for many students take it for granted that in any case the measure of success is the worldly standard of money, power, and reputation. Against such a back-drop, advocacy causes fulfill the contribution to human-ity that political correctness and secularized Christianity deem necessary for those who would be model citizens and good Christians, but they do not call for renouncing worldly values in the ways that Christ proposed in his Sermon on the Mount. Review for Religious Reducing Jesuit education to a justice syndrome, then, is inadequate. In order to work, such a syndrome would need to be integrated into a life-altering motivating prin-ciple. In seeking to make our students eager simply to pursue social justice, we fail to provide them with the Christian rationale for being committed to such activity. The rationale that the older generation of Catholics accepts as a Christian truism--that sharing a common humanity should make human beings concerned for the welfare of others--cannot be taken for granted in our students. Many of them operate on a sense of worth the root of which is their aggressive pursuit of self-interest. For them, being a "person for others" is a sop for the weak and sentimental. Many people thought that 1960s altruism would of itself promote everywhere an array of humanistic values consistent with the goals of Chris-tianity. We now know that this did not happen. Only faith in Jesus Christ can bring in its train the life-altering principles dynamic enough for consistent and truly humanistic, humane, human activity. Reducing Christianity to a sort of social justice makes faith appear redundant and irrelevant (when in fact full Christian faith is central). Identifying Jesuit education with pro-moting .justice caters to this seeming redundancy and calls into question any need for any sort of Catholic edu-cation and any Christianity that demands a faith com-mitrnent to Jesus Christ. It is not accidental that, as years pass, our students are less and less inclined to call them-selves Catholic or practice a Christian way of life. In effect, they have been programmed by a system that has made Christian commitment and Catholic living mar-ginal or obsolete. Justice and Ignatius's Educational Goals ls an education geared to the promotion of justice consistent with St. Ignatius's goals? Many do not think so. 63. I 2004 Tripole * Secularism, Justice, and yesuit Higher Ed Surely no one disputes that Ignatius supported the integration of the virtue of justice into the lives of stu-dents at Jesuit institutions. In a letter written to his nephew Antonio de Araoz in 1551, Ignatius indicates that education in Jesuit sch'ools should lead to positions of influence for the good of society--either in specifically Christian activity, such as being a priest, or in govern-mental and other administrative positions of~authority. He specifically mentions that persons educated in Jesuit schools may benefit society by taking on roles in "the administration of justice." But Ignatius never saw such activity as intrinsically self-motivating. Whatever field of endeavor graduates might enter, they were to be moti-vated by the desire for "God's greater service" and that of "Christ, our eternal salvation." 7 George E. Ganss shows, in his classic study Saint Ignatius' Idea of a Jesuit University,s that Ignatius under-stood his goals for the education of non-Jesuft students as part and parcel of the Christian life envisioned in his Spiritual Exercises. There Ignatius indicates that human beings are "created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls," and that everything else is created for them for these purposes.9 That same outlook on life is °brought to bear upon Part Four of Ignatius's Constitutions, which treats of the goals of his colleges (high schools) and universi-ties: "The end of the Society [of Jesus] and of its stud-ies is to aid our fellowmen to the knowledge and love of God and to the salvation of their souls." Since Ignatius saw the study of theology as "the means most suitable to this end," he declared that "principal emphasis ought to be put upon it.''l° Ganss argues, however, that the inculcation of Christian values was not left simply to the work of the-ology professors, but was integral to the life of the entire university.~l For Ignatius, all of life is brought into focus Review for Religio us through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and a commitment to Christ's mission by sharing in the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection. It would have been unthinkable~ for Ignatius to set up educational insti-tutions without orienting them and their students toward this same encounter and mission. Jesuit Education after 11 September 2001 Perhaps the most serious question to be asked of advocates of justice education is whether their agenda, in the light of the events of 9/11 and the gravity of the priest sex-abuse scandal, meets the chal-lenge of our time. The roots of the horrendous actions of the Middle East terrorists on that September day may be found on many different levels--economic, social, cultural, and religious. Surely an enlightened awareness of the inadequacy of the attempts of the United States to promote justice throughout the world needs to be brought to bear upon the kind of response we make. But, whether one is Palestinian or Israeli, European or American, Democrat or Republican, the issue is not whether to promote justice (who is in favor of being unjust?), but how to discern and implement practical methods that will satisfy people's yearnings for justice and peace. Faith does not endow Christian educators with the ability to discern what such methods might be--they continue to elude the best of political-scientists of whatever faith-- The issue is not whether to promote justice (who is in favor of being unjust ?), but how to discern and implement practical methods that will satisfy people's yearnings for justice and peace. 17 63.1 2004 Tripole ¯ Secularism, Justice, and Jesuit Higher Ed but it does provide a motive for see,king the best of meth-ods and choosing honestly the most,prudent moral action. The issues on the table since the'attacks of 9/11 are fundamental. The very survival of humanity seems to be at stake. It would be naive and platitudinous for Christian educators to think they have made their specific contri-bution merely by calling for the promotion of justice. The stakes are far too high, the dimensions of the prob-lem too great, for talk on that level to be adequate. The world has a right to expect more from people of faith. The sex scandal among the clergy also calls for a major rethinking of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. If those who have been singled out by the church to be model artisans of a new humanity have instead become instruments of dehumanization, more is de-manded to correct .the situation than a call for justice. To respond to the demands of our day, Christians are being called to a thorough reformation of their lives--abandoning self-interest and recentering their lives in the Christ who renounced himself on the cross for the salvation of the world. Christians must become persons who are themselves transformed and are at work revamping the human psyche so that it is motivated no longer by secular and material drives alone. The goal is a transformation of culture so that the person of Christ and the pattern of his life will willingly be accepted as the ideal of what it means to be human. What other efforts could Christians be expected to make? The mission for Catholic and Jesuit educators today is to go all the way or not go at all. What we need to promote is not simply justice, but a new visiofi of humanity where God's Spirit is recognized as the power driving generous and beneficial human action, rather than as optional or marginal to it, Our goal cannot merely be social justice, but the justice that destroys the Review for Religious demonic forces of the world, restores community between the human race and God, and ennobles human dignity by seeing it as a sharing in divine life. Our goal must be to spread the fire that Jesus came to earth to ignite, brightening people's minds and warming their hearts (Lk 12:49). This is what our students need to receive in our schools. The task for educators in Jesuit universities is to establish "the justide of God's kingdom" among our stu-dents. Instead of equating the Lucan principle "Blessed are the poor" with a call for economic and political jus-tice, we need to hear the Matthean principle "Blessed are the poor in spirit," which calls us to walk humbly with the Lord so that in the Spirit we can create even on earth the life of his kingdom. Doing that, we may even succeed in showing terrorists that Christ is the redeemer of the world and that faith in him is the very way to God and to wholeness and peace in human relationships. Notes ~ Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education 19 (Spring 2001), "After Justice." 2 Decree 4, "Our Mission Today: The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice," §2, in Documents of the 31st and 32rid General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, ed. John W. Padberg SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977). 3 Indeed, GC34 devotes an entire document to the social-justice agenda: Decree 3, "Our Mission and Justice," in Documents of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, ed. John L. McCarthy SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995). 4 Decree 2, "Servants of Christ's Mission," §11, of GC34. Hereafter references to the documents of this congregation are noted in the text thus: (2:11). 5 Jesuit Education 21: Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher Education, ed. Martin R. Tripole SJ (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University, 2000). References are noted in the text. 6 Dennis O'Brien, "How to Be Loyal to Loyola," Commonweal 128, no. 8 (20 April 2001): 26. 19 63. I 2004 Tripole ¯ Secularism, Justice, and yesuit Higher Ed 7 To Antonio de Araoz, On the ministry of Christian education, I December 1551, in George E. Ganss SJ, Ignatius of Loyola: The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 361-365 at 362 and 365 (letter selected and translated by Martin E. Palmer SJ). 8 George E. Ganss sJ, Saint Ignatius' ldea of a Jesuit University (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1956). 9 The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans, and ed. George E. Ganss SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), §23. ~0 St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans, and ed. George E. Ganss gJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), Part 4, chap. 12, no. 1 (§446; emphasis added). The nature of the university was different in Ignatius's day, to be sure, yet there is no reason to think that Ignatius would alter the content of this statement, even if it were directed to the Jesui~ university of today. 11 Ganss, Saint lgnatius'Idea, pp. 176-178. Song of the Thistle You brought me forth on the parched prairie where Russian thistles rolled and were caught against fences. And I like a thistle am still on a roll fencing with frustrations, but you don't leave me stuck to the wires now as you didn't then. I am still a tumbling weed that survived the dirty "thirties rolled fast by the Wind this day. Somewhere along the Way I am scattering seeds that may yet become shrubs or trees, something more than thistles and tumbling weeds. Mary Alban Bouchard CSJ Review for Religious STANISLAW GLAZ The Spiritual Development of Individuals Psychology shows us that, in the spiritual life of Christians who strive to keep the command-ments, much falsehood and aggression may go unnoticed. Sins we are not conscious of may be hidden in our soul. For sin is not only breaking a few specific commandments an&admitting some of the peccadilloes on a catechism list. There is sin when 'people neglect their own growth and ignore their life's purpose as deter-mined by God and by nature's laws of develop-ment. Anger and theft, are often the result of a sin, the sin of being immature, of not growing apace with one's years. If we want to grow, we have to be in contact with ourselves and with God. A lack of personal development leads to inner compulsions to hurt ourselves and others, as a way of believing in our own strength and showing it: We feel weak and humiliated, and then we choose to do harm in order to feel our own vitality. Stanislaw Glaz SJ is professor of psychology at the University "Ignatianum," where the address is: ul. Kopernika 26; 31-501 Krakow; Poland. 21 63.1 2004 Glaz ¯ The Spiritual Development of lndividuals Members of the clergy, psychologists, and theologians often ask what should be done to foster people's spiritual growth and thereby foster their personality development as well. What are the essential conditions for proper development and growth? As answers to questions like this one, I plan to share some of my pastoral experience of the last few years. I will point out several factors, often unconscious ones, that influence people's spiritual development in either constructive or destructive ways. One cannot name everything thht can benefit spiritual development. Many psychologists and theologians have tried to show elements helping such development, but those they have mentioned concern mainly the ascetic and theological aspects. Today the psychology of spirituality~ offers more such factors than earlier theology could offer. Reconciliation with Oneself and with Others Many psychologists believe that, before people can love their enemy, they have to learn to love the enemy in themselves. They have to effect a reconciliation between hostile elements in themselves. To the end of their lives, people retain certain personal imperfections. They need to admit their aggressive and murderous tendencies, their inclinations towards iealousy, fear, sadness, loneliness, and other emotions. It is often more difficult for us to love the enemy in ourselves than the external enemy. We must allow the sun of God's love and benevolence to shine on and into our entire being, including all that is dark and threatening and everything that is odd, awkward, or inept. Then the light of love will transform the evil (Powell 1978). A sense of guilt is often caused by a lack of rec-onciliation with oneself, a failure to face one's own truth. Psychologists say that the sense of guilt is often necessary. In providing a chance to learn the truth about one's self, it Review for Religious can be a blessing or a curse. People with a negative attitude towards their sense of guilt are not able to accept the history of their life. They rebel at the fact that they were brought up in this or that way, were born .at this or that moment of history, were not in a position to realize their dream--that they experienced deep wounds. They blame their parents and society for not giving them the opportunity for normal development. They choose to see themselves as victims, rather than accept their situation, their wounds, their limited range of experience. They must understand that their parents and neighbors did not set these limits (perceived wrongly as constraints) intentionally, but only as the unavoidable result of similar limits and perceptions in their' own lives. Thus it is necessary that people evaluate the world by new principles (Sovernigo 1990, pp. 221-223). Reconciliation with oneself plays an important role in the spiritual development of human beings. We need to accept the person we became, to accept--along with our talents---our handicaps and weaknesses, our vulnerability, our fears, and our dallying perseverance. We must look at all that we do not Jike in ourselves, at everything we would rather not see, at our low esteem. This is ~a lifelong process. We endlessly discover in ourselves things ~that are new to us. We have to accept it all, including our own incompleteness. We must account for everything in .our lives that we excluded or rejected because it did not fit in our favorite image of ourselves, an idealized and untrue picture. We must admit that, besides the love and friendliness in our souls, there also are such feelings as hatred, anger, A sense ofguilt is often caused by a lack of reconciliation with oneself, a failure to face one's own truth. 23 63.1 2004 Glaz ¯ Tbe Spiritual Development of Individuals depression, and fear; not only brave and unselfish yearnings, but also godless spheres that want to remain undisturbed and unchanged. If we do not face the full truth about our patterns of emotion and thought and behavior, we project them unconsciously on others. Facing the full truth of our life till now means more than glancing at it superficially. It requires great courage. It requires giving up our ideal image of ourself (Laing 1969). Life in Accordance with Love Happy people are~not those who can either solve their own problems or ignore them. Happy people are people aware of their value as persons living their own unique lives, being themselves, loving others and letting others love them in their limitedness. Love assumes the need of self-control, which starts with awareness of our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Love is both the skill and the wish to allow the loved ones to be who they want to be, without any insisting that they meet our own expectations. How much love we can offer to others depends on the love we have for ourselves. We are all unique. We should love our own selves, and our self-esteem should not be directly affected by our limitations and faults. Neither our current behavior, nor the behavior of others towards us, nor our feelings are the gauge of our own value, which is constant. People often evaluate themselves by .the definition of beauty and by role models put forward by the surrounding culture. Such self-evaluations are the origin of false selves that commandeer the true selves that people are given once and forever (Griin 1999, Mellody 1992). People have their genuine selves, which are the core of who they are, their essence, their spiritual entity. It is there that God is present, where their fears and sufferings do not penetrate. People who allow their own true self, their spiritual self, to direct their actions make of their Review for Religious soul a secure citadel where God lives and freedom reigns. This inner sphere is invulnerable. One can never be deprived of this intrinsic dignity. But one needs to discover it and to experience God as the foundation of all existence, of all human lives. God gives me life, and God sustains me in it. My value does not depend on passing an exam, nor on the judgment of others. It depends on my being who I am. God wants me to be myself. My value comes from no one but God. My value is my privilege (Powell 1978). The Way of Experiencing Faith Faith is not only the teaching of the church, it is not only the spiritual dimension, but it is also the proper perception of reality, the proper perception of God, of other people, and of myself. It is the art of a sane life, the art of trustful judgment of myself, of handling myself appropriately. Faith is the way to freedom. It is trust in God. It is conviction that God touches tenderly each sphere of my being, that his grace reaches all of the human soul in order to bring the light of his life there. Faith allows me to share with God all my mysteries. Faith is conviction that through Christ and in Christ human beings gained participation in God's life and that all of creation is permeated by God (Grfin 1980). True love depends not only on being free from an external sovereign, from the power of this world, and from the authority of another person, but also on being free from internal compulsions. Some ~limitations of our freedom may be occasioned by inherited behavioral tendencies. My freedom is limited when I do not know God, when I lower my self-esteem, when I create a false image of another person, when I follow slavishly the role models given to me by my parents, when I let myself be controlled by fear of loneliness, or when my perception of life and the world, is false. 63.1 2004 Glaz * The Spiritnal Development of Individuals Destructive Elements Spiritual development proceeds step by step. Many people, even when considerably along on their° spiritual iourney, may do things that impede their progress. Psychologists have tried to discover these hindrances and evaluate their consequences in both sociological and developmental terms. In their religious and social lives, numbers of people have a rigorous attitude towards themselves. The roots of such an attitude may be numerous and deep in people's unconscious. These roots may form when children do not experience unconditional love or when their parents do not treat them seriously in terms of their own self. Then the children are likely to be deeply wounded and fail to experience themselves as distinct and unique beings. According to many psychologists, their primal sense of security is injured; in other words, the children feel fundamentally unloved. Their self, their sense of the "me, who I am" is hurt, damaged, rejected by the very persons they needed to accept them unconditionally. After being treated in this way, children may react violendy against the people around them or against themselves. Such behavior is likely to bring some kind of punishment on them. Later, growing up, they may similarly punish themselves. This injustice and violence is likely to be .at the root of future violence and cruelty in the world (Gri.in 1997a). Upbringing becomes destructive when it fosters one side only, for example, only male aspects of personality like toughness and audacity, and depreciates sensitive feelings. Such treatment convinces a boy that his own and others' feelings are not important. Aggression towards the external world always corresponds with resentment towards oneself. The lack of love causes children to be fearful. They fear rejection, loneliness, and life itself. They desperately try not to disappoint their parents. They see exaggerated rigidity as a way of gaining their Review for Religious parents' love. Having no support from their inner self (for it is not developed yet), the children try to create support by imposing clear and sharp demands on themselves. Such severe attitudes towards themselves are efforts to overcome the deeply rooted fear resulting from the absence of parental warmth and acceptance. Such children do not trust themselves or others because they do not feel the support of a stable and clear relationship with their parents, nor the support of good pedagogical rules and guidelines. They are filled with suspicion and doubt, and so they perceive other people as untrustworthy and threatening. Feeling a similar vague mistrust of themselves, they seek to overcome it by sticking strictly to their own clear norms (Powell 1969). They feel well. only on the condition that they fulfill certain ideals. Their sense of their own value depends on whether people describe them as perfect children or not. They identify with "model" children so strongly that they cannot tolerate any deviation from that ideal.VV-henever they learn .that something they did was a mistake, they make their self-imposed rules and rituals more severe and uncompromising, But if persons force themselves to fit their ideals, they only torture themselves. They think that God expects them to be ideal constantly, that they should always be kind and open to others, forgetting self always. But that is not God's will; it is their own self-imposed "ideal," which often serves solely to gratify themselves, their own expectations and ambitions (Griin 1997). Lack of Love of Oneself Such an "ideal" appears mosdy in our ideal image of ourselves. We cannot accept that God created us to be who we are. We think that our imaginary idea of ourselves is more important than God's will. We do not try to develop all that God gave us; we do not accomplish numerous real possibilities in our lives. In our minds we27 63.1 2004 Glaz * The Spiritual Development of Individuals have ready pictures of ourselves deriving either from our parents and official and unofficial teachers or from own ambitions, our dreams of being some kind of hero or heroine. We may think, then, that we can do almost everything without any help from anybody. We may believe we can form the world as we wish and that we have no need to take into account the order given to the world by God. Many of us assume that we can achieve our hopes and ambitions by some kind of force. Before God this may indicate both a lack of humility and a failure to give God due respect. ~ People who push themselves higher than they are supposed to go land finally in their own prison. Resisting God is resisting life. It does damage to oneself. The egoism in people's drive towards self-actualization often leads away from love of their neighbor. It is in their work that they look for their identity and value, because they have failed to find value in themselves as God's beloved creation[ Such people have trouble admitting that they can. and do make mistakes. They look for ways to gloss over the evidences of their errors. They may push a miscalculated plan to a regrettable conclusion (provided they :do not appear responsible for it) rather than admit the wrongness of their initial decision. Their fear of anyone's negative opinion of them is stronger than their fear of doing damage: What will happen if others know how weak and fallible I am? And so they create and take on problems for other people, overestimating their own ability to control the damage. Such people lack balance. Their thought is all-or-nothing: If I do not achieve greatly at all costs, I am empty and dull, a nothing (Sovernigo 1990, pp. 228-229). Misunderstood Asceticism ~. A sound asceticism is characterized by a positive attitude towards ourselves. Its role is giving support to Review for Religious us--although people often think of it as rejecting pleasure and inhibiting our drives. The idea is the affirmation and development of life, not its negation. Unhealthy asceticism often includes a deficient image of God, which in turn may cause insensitivity and destructive desires, aspects of perfectionism. Perfectionists try to be like God. They create a system of compulsions, of detailed principles and commands. Adhering to that system and enlarging it becomes their goal in life. They deprive themselves of any pleasure; they live solely to sacrifice. They do not let themselves have any happiness because it will not last and then they will feel all the worse. They want, on their own, to get rid of anything negative in themselves. They do not trust God. They do not believe that somehow everything will make sense, that God can positively transform even what is negative in their lives. All they have to do is let God into their lives, their souls. The religious attitude of those people contains a lot of disbelief in the goodness of humanity. It assumes that people are good only when they are doing things, such as saying as many prayers as possible. Only fi solid faith in the true God brings the kind of trust that people need in order to live heaolthy and constructive lives without fearfulness. People who do not put trust in God's unconditional love for them have trouble in coping with guilt, which is present even in people who strive always to be good. People without trust in God do not understand what Jesus' carrying our cross and our carrying some of it with him are all about. They live stubbornly according to their own ideals, and their lives become rigid. Their suppressed and unmet needs attack them and appear as neurotic behavior. Perfectionists A sound asceticism is characterized by a positive attitude towards ourselves. 29 63.1 2004 Glaz ¯ The Spiritual Development of Individuals demand of themselves that their lives be altogether free of shallow or untrue motives. Such asceticism becomes a process of self-destruction (Sovernigo 1990, pp. 233-237). It seems, then, that spiritual development can proceed correctly only on the condition that we discard the illusions that we have created about our lives and likewise discard vain expectations for the future. One of those illusions is that we can create our own justice, love, and truth. And yet we have been transformed by Christ, we are called to a new life, called to a full development. To live that new life means to live in accordance with our innermost calling, not surrendering to expectations and demands that we ourselves or other people mistakenly impose on us. It means allowing God to create us and form us. Living by the Spirit's guidance and power means freedom from compulsion to prove our own value. It means life based on gratitude for all that we have been given by God. The aim of life is acceptance of that inner, spiritual reality which God gave us, which he gave us with love and in truth. The aim of life is being and living that reality and discovering the beauty of being, each of us, our individual selves, discovering and showing our original faces, faces given to us by God. Bibliography Albisetti, Valerio. 1991. Per esserefelici. Milano: Edizioni Paoline. Griin, Anselm. 1980. Lebensmitte als Geistlicbe Aufgabe. Benediktinerabtei Mfinsterschwarzach. Griin, Anselm. 1996. Glauben als Umdeuten glauben--lieben--loben. Benediktinerabtei Miinsterschwarzach. Griin, Anselm. 1997. Gut mit sicb selbst umgeben. Mainz: Matthias- Griinewald-Verlag. Griin, Anselm. 1997a. Tu dir docb nicbt selber web. Mainz: Matthias- Griinewald-Verlag. Griin, Anselm. 1999. lm Haus der Liebe wobnen. Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag. Laing, Ronald D. 1998. L'lo diviso. Turin: Einaudi. Review for Religious Mellody, Pia. 1992. Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love. HarperSanFrancisco. Powell, John. 1969. Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Mien, Texas: Thomas More Association. Powell, John. 1978. Unconditional Love. Chicago: Thomas More Publishers. Sovernigo, Giuseppe. 1990. Religione e persona: psicologia dell' esperienza religiosa. Bologna: EDB. Nothing Is Lost That's what the fossils teach, leaves pressed to carbon traces, footprints cast in pudding stone, a dinosaur with feet smaller than my hand. Nothing is lost, not even what we cannot find a trace of. Firm under our feet, those old lives live on, in new forms, rock and root, awareness of what we are and have come from. Once a mind opens, thelight is there; it cannot close. Knowledge grows and we see what we could not, learn what needed light to be clear, like seeds long still in sand till the rain softens the dark, and green horns seep through the grains toward the sun. Nothing is lost. Everything feeds on, is formed from the past. And so shall we be, someday: seed and loam for what will come. Doretta Cornell RDC 31 63.1 2004 IGNATIUS JESUDASAM Breaking Stereotypes Reality is changing constantly. Stereotypes do not. Therefore they are unreal, products of the emo-tion and imagination of individuals and groups that have a vested interest in maintaining and perpetuating illu-sions. Stereotypes are born of fear or perception of threat. They go with and generate the negative attitudes of closed minds and hearts, keeping people stuck in their prejudice. Every group has experience of stereotypes. India abounds in them--a reason why we do not progress as much as we could. Our stereotypes make us our own worst enemies. The great national task in this context is to break the stereotypes in our minds by seeing and recognizing reality, which changes and has changed from the last time that we took a look at it. What follows is an example set by a minority group, without a conscious design to break stereotypes, nor claiming to be nor setting itself up as a model of stereotype breaking. This group just did something natural. Spontaneity is the natural way to break stereotypes, which are unnatural and antinatural. One has only to watch that stereotypes do not become second nature. Ignatius Jesudasan SJ wrote this from Loyola School; Uthiramerur; 603 406 India. Review for Religious Jesuits are a worldwide and well-known male religious order and organizational network in the Roman Catholic Church. Although they are generally known by the quality of their educational institutions, they are involved in and committed to many other endeavors too. They are a missionary order; they are always to be in a state of mission, of being sent. It is in this sense that the church itself is missionary. It understands itself as being sent into the whole world by Jesus Christ, who himself was sent here by God, whom .he called Father. In other words, Christ is not for himself, but for others. The church is not supposed to be for itself, but for the world. Christians is not supposed to be for themselves, but for others. Gandhi's vision of India was something similar. His self-image and life and action manifested the same spirit. Is this something wrong? Is it not the way that everyone is supposed to be? Where then is the problem? It is in this sense of mission and being missionary--in this stereotypemthat Christians and Christian organizations have caught the attention of the Indian majority mind and consciousness. As an avant-garde organization in the Catholic Church, the Jesuits and their diverse works are not free from the stereotype. Even Gandhi was not free from it. Regarding the church and its missionaries, is the stereotype well founded? Stereotype as Prejudice. Stereotyping is people's habit of assuming that they know what in fact they do not know. It is pretending to know. If my etymology is correct, "pretend," from the Latin roots prae and tendere, means to hold out in front, to stretch forth, to put forzvard a falsehood, a mask, an empty faqade. It means to assert as real what reality denies. In life we are often involved in such contradictions, or koans as Zen masters name them. We hold what we do not hold, and know what we do not know. We do not know 63.1 2004 Jesudasam * Breaking Stereotypes Since stereotypes are founded on people's ignorance and on bigots" exploitation of that ignorance, the first and best remedy is to get to know those about whom stereotypes exist. that we do not know. In other words, we lie to and deceive others or ourselves; or else we may not know enough to be able and willing to admit and correct our ignorance. And this is what bias or prejudice is. It is judgment before knowing or hearing the case. We indulge in it because we are cocksure of our rightness. And this sense of rightness is not all wrong. Prejudices have their roots in positive or negative emotions like love and hatred, or attraction and repulsion. Behind love and hatred, and attraction and repulsion, there may be many layers of knowledge and experience. What knowledge and experience do large numbers of Indian people have of Christians that cause them to dislike or feel uneasy about them? They "know" that the church and Christians are missionary, and they take it to mean converting others to their faith and worldview. They see such conversion as a loss to Hinduism and a gain to Christianity. This is why ethnoreligiously conscious Hindus, which secular Hindus are not, perpetuate the stereotype about Christian education, Christian social work, Christian medical work, and what have you. No one asks whether the schools and colleges do it, or the other good works do it. No factual statistics substantiate the prejudice against Christians. People take no surveys among Christians or even non- Christians about conversion facts, efforts, or even conscious intentions before adopting or retaining or rejecting these stereotypes. Review for Religious Stereotypes and prejudices are not good for any group or nation, and are positively harmful to them, for they divide, scatter, and waste their precious emotional energy resources and capacities for constructive development. India's emotional unity is affected by the prejudice directed from any community towards any other community on whatever basis, be it language, religion, caste, state, or locality. It is therefore in the national interest to remove every bias, prejudice, and stereotype that any individual or community has about any other individual or community. Since stereotypes are founded on people's ignorance and on bigots' exploitation of that ignorance, arousing mass phobia regarding the ethnically different, the first and best remedy is to get .to know those about whom stereotypes exist. It is probably with this in mind that Jesus spoke with authority to his fellow Jews: "I tell you: Love your enemies, do good to them, and pray for those who persecute you." This is good advice for any nation, and certainly not bad for India. Bias-breaking Spirituality Breaking stereotypes is therefore a social, psychological, national, and spiritual service. One may engage in it consciously or not. I see an example of unconscious stereotype breaking in a small document published recently by the Indian Jesuits, containing a summary of a week-long meeting of South Asian Jesuits held recently at Mumbai to plan a course of action for the coming years. The document is called "Action Statement of the Jesuits for Living and Sharing the Good News in South Asia." The title might strengthen the suspicion already present in the minds of the prejudiced, but the actual document will show how far it is from being sectarian propaganda material. The document was not produced 6"3.1 2004 yesudasam ¯ Breaking Stereotypes for public consumption or propaganda. It is meant solely to inspire, enlighten, and direct Jesuits in their various endeavors. The Vatican and the bishops might not appreciate it, but it was not written with them in view either. Christianity as Humanism It reads pretty much like a religiously secular document. Religious faith and social commitment are nowhere camouflaged. Faith, what the meeting's delegates believe in, is the source of their motivation. Sharing this faith is the purpose of all their activity and involvement. But neither that faith nor their activity is sectarian or divisive in purpose or practice. Christian terminology is used, which is unavoidable. But it is neither propaganda, nor propagandist in intent. It is inspirational for the group, and is not directed against any other group or the common good. Denominational religious conversion does not figure in it at all, not even as a hidden agendum. All the same, personal and cultural transformation, respect for every individual and group, and human dignity, equality, and fellowship stand out as serious social concerns. The document deplores absence or shadowy presence in the culture of the land. But, instead of accusing and finding fault with the culture, it calls for struggle and sacrifice to bring about desirable change in social patterns, The realities of globalization, religious fundamen-talism, and ethnic nationalism are recognized as aggravating the social conflicts in South Asia. The confusion of values in the fast-changing society (youth falling prey to alcohol, drugs, cults, sects, violence, and sexual exploitation), gender discrimination, and the commoditization of women and of labor are clearly focused upon. Civil liberties, human rights, environ-mental concerns, community-building techniques, and Review for Religious human solidarity are seen as signs of hope even amid the conflicts and tensions. Church as National Social Service Several areas of Jesuit involvement in South Asia are reviewed and planned for. They are education, parish ministry, interreligious dialogue, youth formation, social action for empowerment of women, Dalits, and tribals, and finally Jesuits' accountability to themselves and one another. Jesuit education is open to all, but especially to the poor, the Dalits, tribals, and women. Basics of all religions and problems regarding social justice, the environment, and human rights are to find a place in Jesuit curricula. Jesuit education is to serve the full human development of the weak and the marginalized and thereby help bring about social equality. There is to be remedial education in the schools and socially relevant research at higher levels. Even the formation of Christians is given a more social than religious thrust and direction. Basic Christian communities are to blossom into basic human communities imbued with the gospel values. In a male-dominant patriarchal church and society, the document asserts the need to discover the feminine in every person and in this way change one's own mindset and enhance one's way of relating to God, the world, humankind, and all creation. It asserts the need to include women in church decisions and priestly formation, and to take up women's issues in social action. The document calls for focus on the liberative dimension of cultural symbols, language, myths, and festivals. It calls for addressing religious fundamentalism, including Christian funda-mentalism. On the side of tribals, they support traditional rights to forestland, water, and habitat, and unity in tribal diversity. On behalf of the much-fractured Dalits, the document propounds standing up for their dignity as 63.1 2004 ~esudasam ¯ Breaking Stereotypes God's children, opposing caste discriminations, working for equal respect for each man and woman, and working preferentially with and for the most marginalized of the Dalits, irrespective of their religion. In social action the meeting's delegates want to share the struggles of the poor for a fuller life, to educate the illiterate, to organize domestic and displaced laborers and help them get skilled training. For greater effectiveness and coordination, they propose greater all-India administrative linkage and democratically transparent accountability. Sharing the gospel means working for equality, for the human dignity of those to whom it is denied. Social Activism People's participation is the essence of the democratic process. In actuality, social structures exclude many from the process. Sharing the gospel in this context means working for equality, for the human dignity of those to whom it is denied. This is the philosophy behind the action plan described above. One recognizes echoes of political language, but the composers of the document are not a political party. They are churchmen to the core. They do not speak a distinctively churchy language either, but one of social activists. The plans might be high-sounding and idealistic. Everything might not be realized as desired or planned. But the goodwill is obvious, and it is unlikely to be wholly in vain or go unfulfilled. Does this mission pose a danger or threat to Hinduism? No reasonable Hindus would take it so. Denominational conversion could indeed be perceived as a sociopolitical and cultural threat, especially if it took place on a massive scale. But conversion in the values of a Review for Religious culture does not pose such a threat. The nation and its people can be the better for it. (Will the Indian people then come off the various stereotypes about church, mission, and Christians?) Reflection Individuals can challenge and be challenged by others in dialogue into greater confidence and indifference. Then they will speak without fear their critical as well as creative ideas. Then they will feel accepted with their strengths and weaknesses and will participate with joy and confidence in their own and the common works. They will come up with initiatives that could be discussed, decided, and acted upon. This might be a way of rediscovering Ignatian indifference--through structural changes more in tune with our times. This might be a way of refounding St. Ignatius's Society as our Society. No institute or nation is founded once and for all. It stands always in need of reappropriation and reidentification by new and would-be members or citizens. It is when they are happy with the country or institute that they proudly identify with it and want to strengthen it further. Such a feeling is not an individual's to produce all by oneself. Every member has a personal responsibility to it. The government or the leaders have a major structural and personal responsibility. Friends, I am passing these thoughts on to you in the hope that they may evoke some critical reflections for our common good. 63.1 2004 HILDEGARD MAGDALEN PLEVA A Charism Illumined: Eucharistic Anamnesis and "Viva Memoria" ¯ he Second Vatican Council gave the church an energizing impulse. One of its most generative instructions directedreligious orders and con-gregations to go back into their history, examine early texts and archival material for guidance in reappropriating their founders' inspiration and charism, and thus begin their own rejuvenation. The still burning embers of the Spirit's work were to be fanned into flame and illumine the path ahead in new times and new circumstances. The Order of the Most Holy Redeemer pur-sued this directive in company with their Redemptorist brothers, whose efforts brought its founder, the Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa (1696-1755), into the light. Renewed knowledge of her vivacious spirit and mystical ¯ experience was a rediscovery of the institute's charism, the life force to be reappropriated by her sisters, the call to be a living memory of the 40 Hildegard Magdalen Pleva OSSR is newly professed among the Redemptoristine Nuns; P.O. Box 220; Esopus, New York 12429. Review for Religious paschal mystery of Jesus. Our formula of profession says, "You have called me to relive in myself the Mystery of Jesus. and to be a living memorial of it." During my ten years of association with the order and two years within the community, in conversations with friends, lay associates, religious of other congrega-tions, and visitors to our monastery, I have often attempted to explain our charism, to be a "living mem-ory" of Christ (Crostarosa, Dialogues, §104). It does not mean mere imitation; it goes beyond that. My effort to expand on the "beyond" kept falling short. From this sense of inadequacy came a search for a way of defining "living memory" that would be appropriately substan-tial yet comprehensible. The Eucharistic Connection With time and within the misty atmosphere of men-tal conjecture, "living memory" began to merge with Jesus' words in the Liturgy: "Do this in memory (anam-nesis) of me." Suddenly the overlap was not just a coin-cidence of vocabulary. It included a concept of Eucharistic theology explored in graduate school. That first appreciation of Eucharistic anamnesis seemed like a bright star exploding before my eyes, initially blinding in its brightness but then illuminating everything. At the consecration of the Mass, not only is the Body and Blood of Jesus made present under the appearance of bread and wine, but the entire paschal mystery is made present, and not only present but also active among us here and now. We are not merely remembering Jesus' life and sacrifice on the cross. Those events are actively redeeming the world at this m'oment. That explanation of the Eucharistic Liturgy's meaning and power emerged from the past in response to my "living memory" question of the present. It suggested that the concept of liturgical anamnesis could clarify our Redemptoristine concept of "living memory4."1 63.1 2004 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined The form and features of this concept emerged from careful reading of Maria Celeste's Dialogues and Autobiography, which provide a rich vein of evidence of her post-Communion meditation experiences. One morning after Holy Communion I heard in the very center of my soul these words of the Credo pro-nounced: "consubstantialem Patri per quem omnia facta sunt" [one in being with the Father, through whom all things were made] so that, filled to over-flowing with divine gifts, it seemed to me that the divine essence was in me . My Lord Jesus Christ. gave me his divine heart, which he enclosed in my breast in place of my own . I seemed to enter into a new life of Love, a life in God. (Autobiography, capi-tolo 18) This morning., my whole soul was transformed into your very substance. (Dialogues, §30) Since your soul is the figure of My substance, what ~ really are you within your spirit, in your very being, if not a living image, a living copy of Me? (Dialogues, §47) After I received Holy Communion . . . I saw You within me and myself changed into You . I felt that just one word was being spoken to me, namely, "sub-stance of the Father" [consubstantialem Patri] . This transformation, O Lord of my heart, of my being into Yours, You deigned to make so many times! (Dialogues, §125) This morning I went to Holy Communion and You transformed me into Yourself so that I entered into the humanity of Your divine Word and began to sacrifice myself to the Father for all people. (Dialogues, §147) You do this precisely by the spirit of observance in terms of your Rule, which was given to Me so that you might be a viva memoria [a dynamic memory] of My life. (Dialogues, §104) These passages speak of a transformation that is not merely an imitative overlay but a participation in the substance, the very essence, of Jesus, in which he in turn is consubstantial with the Father. Nor is it a static par-ticipation, but a highly animated one that propels Maria Review for Religious Celeste "into a new life of Love, a life in God." By such participation and animation, Jesus, his paschal mystery, his work of redemption, is made present and active in our time. For Maria Celeste the incarnation of Jesus was the opening of new territory in the relationship between God and humanity, a territory into which she entered with abandon. By taking part in the Eucharist, the essen-tial act of remembering Jesus, she became substantially one with him, not merely an imitation of him. Gradually these mystical experiences revealed to her the necessity of remembering always, of living a life of remembering, a life of "oneness" with Jesus Christ. Eucharistic Anamnesis The phenomena of Eucharistic anamnesis and "liv-ing memory" each reflect the other. Yet their depth, their power to inform sacramental and spiritual appreciation, was lost over time. While the anamnetic character of the Eucharist was buried under weighty layers of theo-logical argumentation, Maria Celeste's mystical experi-ence of "living memory" was lost to obscurity for more than two hundred years. In the 20th century each became the object of a kind of archaeological dig, a treasure to be unearthed by tectonic shifts brought about by the Second Vatican Council. The crucial feature of both anarnnesis and "living memory" is the ability to make past events and the per-son of Jesus present and active in our time. This idea, however, this connection, is not enough. One must ask where this astounding concept of anamnesis comes from. The answers will more fully illuminate the Redemptoristine charism, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church gives inquirers a start: The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice . In all the Eucharist Prayers we 63. I 2004 --44 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined find after the words .of institution a prayer called the anamnesis or memorial ["Father, we celebrate the mem-ory of Christ . We. recall his passion" etc. / "In memory of his death and resurrection" etc. / "Father, calling to mind the death your Son endured . . . his glorious resurrection" etc. / "Father, we now celebrate this memorial of our redemption. We recall Christ's death, his descent among the dead" etc.]. In the sense of Sacred Scripture, the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men . They become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them. ¯ . . When the church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made pre-sent . "As often as the sacrifice of the cross . is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out." (§§1362-1364) Rooted in Jewish Liturgical Practice The memorial or anamnetic character of the Eucharistic banquet is not a conceptualization newly minted by post-Vatican II sacramental theology. Rather, it is a theological concept found in the oldest Eucharistic Prayers, which reflect how the practices of the early church were deeply rooted in ancient Hebrew liturgical tradition. "The primitive Eucharist was a commemora-tion. Not a commemoration of the Last Supper, but a commemoration of Christ, and of his saving mysteries. The idea . of a 'mere' commemoration (nuda com-memoratio) would have been meaningless to the Jewish mind" (Lash, p. 44). In 1969 Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, then director of national intex:religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee and an observer at the Second Vatican Council, wrote: "To commemorate and to remember is in the Jewish tradition never a mere Review for Religious memory, but always implies a look toward the future and a making present again" (Breaking of Bread, p. 148). The Jewish Passover Seder is the penultimate expression of the Hebrew commemorative meal, making present in real time the mystery of the Passover of the Lord God. Based upon the work of scholars in Eucharistic the-ology, among them Louis Bouyer, Louis Ligier, Joachim Jeremias, Jean-Paul Audet, and Gregory Dix, an even greater understanding .of the origins of the earliest Eucharistic Prayers or anaphoras is emerging. The most ancient anaphoras conform in structure to the Jewish prayers said at a fellowship meal, espe-cially the birkat-ha-mazon, which was typically anamnetic in char-acter and featured three move-ments: blessing, thanksgiving, and supplication (Audet in Klein, p. 410). Beyond appreciating the stylistic resemblance of early Eucharistic Prayers, it was Gregory Dix who had the insight to consider the Sitz-im-Leben, that is, the insti-tutional setting in actual Hebraic practice which gave specific meaning to these liturgical meal prayers (Klein, p. 413). Dix's insights answered a basic question: What did Jesus, as a Jew of his time, have in mind; what did he mean when he said, "Do this in memory of me" (1 Co 11:24)? "The command of Jesus did not refer to the rep-etition of a sacral fellowship meal. This could be pre-sumed as fundamental to Jewish religious practice. In other words, Jesus did not have to institute a meal, because the meal was already there. What Jesus did was to invest this meal with a new anamnetic character" (Klein, p. 414). For the Hebrew of Jesus' time, the Passover meal was not merely "a subjective, human psy- What Jesus did was to invest this meal with a new anamnetic character. 63.1 2004 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined chological act of returning to the past, but an objective reality" undertaken to make the Passover of the Lord perpetually present before God (Bouyer, p. 103). "By the power of the Lord of history, those events are in a sense made present in the liturgy, so that the worshipers are living them ag.ain in their own lives. A Jewish ritual memorial, therefore, is no mere thinking of the past; it is a memorial filled with the reality of that which it com-memorates" (Maloney, p. 265). This was the anamnetic character of the meal. When Jesus said "Do this in mem-ory of me," he invested the meal with a new anamnetic object, that is, the paschal mystery, which is the saving acts of his own life, death, and resurrection. The Implications of Anamnesis for Our Practice Celebrations of the Eucharist in which we share today are the occasions in which we call to mind the person and events of our salvation--Jesus Christ and his paschal mystery--in such a way that we render them liv-ing and active in our own time. The plural pronoun we is operative here. The priest, although acting in persona Christi, is not acting alone. The gathered community is not merely present or participating by observation. The community gathered for the memorial meal is integral to anamnesis, to recalling and thereby making actively pre-sent the person and saving action of the~Redeemer. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum con-cilium) of the Second Vatican Council declares that God's people gathered for Eucharist "offer the immaculate vic-tim through the hands of the priest, but also together with him" (§48). The Eucharistic Prayer emphasizes this integral func-tion by repeated use of the pronoun we. "We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you" (EP II). "We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living .sacrifice" (EP III). "We, your people and Review for Religious your ministers, recall his passion, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into glory" (EP 2). Indeed, the level of participation penetrates more deeply if the community offer themselves along with the gifts of bread and wine: "Father, we bring you these gifts. We ask you to make them holy by the power of your Spirit, that they may become the body and blood of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." In the consecration Jesus becomes uniquely present under the appearances of bread and wine, but also, through the Eucharistic anamnesis and the congregation's living memory, actively present within and among those gathered. This answers the question of the way Jesus Christ becomes actively present at each Eucharistic celebration. According to people's receptive memories, Jesus the redeeming Christ becomes present in those who are united with him in this memorial. In remembering, we become what we remember. Just as the anamnetic character of our Eucharist is rooted in an ancient religious ritual, appreci-ation of the effect of anamnesis is imbedded in our history. St. Fulgentius (467-533), bishop of Ruspe, speaking of the obligation of the faithful to fulfill the words of the Savior at the Last Supper, wrote: "Thus they drink the Lord's cup by preserving the holy bond of love; without it, even if a man should deliver his body to be burned, he gains nothing. But the gift of love enables us to become in real-ity what we celebrate as mystery in the sacrifice." Alexander Schmemann, the late Russian Orthodox scholar of liturgy, wrote about the power of anamnetic memory in his work The Eucharist. His words are so elo-quently reminiscent of the Constitutions of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer that they" must be quoted at length: In Christ . memory comes to reign and is restored as a life-creating power, and, in remembering, man par-takes not of the experience of the fall., but of the 47 63.1 2004 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined overcoming of this fall through "life everlasting." For Christ himself is the incarnation and the gift to mankind of God's memory in all its fullness . The essence of our faith and the new life granted in it consists in Christ's memory, realized in us through our memory of Christ. From the very first day of Chris-tianity, to believe in Christ meant to remember him and keep him always in mind . From the very begin-ning the faith of Christians was memory and remem-brance, but memory restored to its life-creating essence--for . this new memory is a joyous recog-nition of the one who was resurrected, who lives and therefore is present and abides . Faith eternally knows that the one who is remembered lives . The remembrance of Christ is the entry into his love, making us brothers and neighbors, "brethren" in his ministry. His life and presence in us and "among" us is certified only by our love for each other and for all whom God has sent into, has included in, our life, and this means above all in the remembrance of each other and in the commemoration of each other in Christ. Therefore, in bringing his sacrifice to the altar, we create the memory of each other, we identify each other as living in Christ and being united with each other in him. (Schmemann, pp. 128-130) The constitution and statutes of our order assert again and again this understanding of the Eucharistic Liturgy as the agent of "living memory":. The church continues to make present this memorial of the Passover of the Lord, a living bond of 16ve between Christians and a pledge of future glory. Our liturgical celebrations must give witness at one and the same time to the holiness of the Lord and to his loving presence among us . This silent con-templation, maintained in faith and love in the depth of the soul, allows us a personal experience of God and also permits us to enter fully into the plan of redemption . We allow Christ to relive his mys-tery in us by contemplating him in the whole of his life. (§§37-42) Review for Religious Participation by the Holy Spirit's Power The scope of this paper does not permit lengthy dis-cussion of the debate regarding consecratory elements of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. While the church in the West has long held to "This is my body . this is my blood" in the Gospels' Last Supper narrative as the con-secratory formula, the church of the East has always con-sidered the epidesis, the prayer of the invocation of the Holy Spirit, to be the essential mo-ment of consecration. Again it is Alexander Schmemann who calls the debate back to order. "Despite hundreds of treatises written in response to this question, neither aca-demic theological nor liturgi-cal studies have given, alas, a satisfactory answer . We cannot 'break through' to the genuine meaning, embed-ded in the very experience of the church, of the Eucharist as the sacrament of remembrance" (Schmemann, pp. 192- 193). Although today the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§ 1352-1353) declares the Eucharistic Prayer "the heart and summit of the celebration," specifying the institution narrative as consecratory, the very existence of the old debate reminds us to renew our attentiveness to the work of the Spirit. This attentiveness is important for appreci-ating the anamnetic character of the Eucharistic Liturgy. Each of the four principal Eucharistic Prayers includes an epidesis invoking the power of the Holy Spirit as the agent of consecration: "Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy" (EP II). By these words we acknowledge that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit Attentiveness to the work of the Spirit is important for appreciating the anamnetic character of the Eucharistic Liturgy. 49 63.1 2004 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined - that the gifts are changed. In these words we ask that we too may become h01y, becoming "a living offering to God" (Catechism, §1105) in the mystery we celebrate, the sacrament of remembrance. For Redemptoristines the vocabulary of anamnesis (memory, remember, remembrance, recall, memorial) should be like music to the ears. The charism to be a "living memory" of Jesus was revealed to our foundress during post-Communion meditations in which she expe-rienced the transformative power of the Eucharist accomplished through the work of the Spirit. Her daugh-ters are to be transformed into the "living memory" by participation in the Eucharistic banquet, which was from the beginning a "memory." By remembering we partic-ipate in the change of the Eucharistic elements into the Body and Blood of Jesus and, in turn, we are changed into the very life we remember. The Jesus of Maria Celeste's mystical experiences said: "You shall take on a memory of my life in each hour [of the day]. I shall be the lamp of all your activities, and you shall eat the living food of eternal life which was contained in the works of my life while I was a pilgrim on earth. This is the spirit of the institute: viva memoria and imitation of me just as I lived among you" (Dialogues, §§104-105). Elsewhere this level of attentive remem-bering is referred to as a "fixed gaze." To the degree that Celeste's daughters' devout recollection approximates a fixed gaze, their very lives take on an anamnetic character. Then we make the paschal mystery more present and active in real time. We become the "living memory" of Jesus. Our acts of memory, insofar as they are produced by the Holy Spirit, render us not only spiritual people (pneumatikoi) but also bearers of the Spirit (pneu-matophoroO, a living epMesis (Bianchi, p. 162). By our lives we call down the power of the. Holy Spirit into every cor-ner of the world and the troubled hearts of humanity. Review for Religio,,s My original question concerned the deeper meaning of our charism, to be a "living memory" of Jesus Christ, to make the person of Jesus present in our world in a manner that goes beyond any mere imitation. Our Eucharistic Liturgies are "pregnant with reality" (Crichton, p. 14), a reality Jesus called for at the Last Supper: "Do this in memory of me." Jesus, the incarna-tion of the memory of God, is asking us to become, in turn, the incarnation of his memory in our world. The words of Maria Celeste express self-affirmation and encourage her community today: Now that Your sacred humanity, united to the Word of God, has been glorified . it gives me such a risen life in God that it transforms me into the eternal life of God, as I await the dawning of the new day that will make me blessed for all eternity. (Florilegium, p. 95) If we have it in our power to make present and active the saving work of Jesus by our remembering, the qual-ity of that remembering, our alert presence to it, becomes so much more vital. Seeing the relation between the anamnesis and Maria Celeste's "living memory" intensi-fies our call to be contemplatives. For Redemptoristines, for all contemplatives, or for all who would live their active lives in a more contemplative fashion, the Eucharistic anamnesis can reinforce our effort to live rec-ollected lives, to order our lives by continually remem-bering (and thus reactualizing) the person, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Almost fifty years ago Thoma~ Merton declared, "In the night of our technological barbarism, monks must be as trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air" (Merton, p. 124). Just as the trees of the forest breathe transforming life into the world, our conscious and active "living memory" is, with the divine breath of the Spirit, cocreator of the saving presence of Jesus in our time. Appreciation of the anam- 63.1 2004 Pleva ¯ A Charism Illumined netic power of our "living memory" is impetus for the life and work of contemplation. Sources Bianchi, Enzo, OCSO. "The Holy Spirit in Monastic Life," trans. Brian Kerns. Cistercian Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2002): 153- 166. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Liguori, Mo.: Liguori Publications, 1997. Crichton, J.D. "A Theology of Worship." In The Study of Liturgy, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold SJ. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Or see Study, rev. ed., 1992, p. 15. Crostarosa, Maria Celeste. Dialogues, trans. Joseph W. Oppitz. Esopus, N.Y.: Mother of Perpetual Help Monastery, 1981. Dix, Dom Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. New York: Seabury Press, 1982. Florilegium: Texts from Mother Maria Celeste Crostarosa, ed. Sabatino Majorano. Liguori, Mo:: Liguori Publications, 1993. Klein, Terrance W. "Institution Narratives at the Crossroads." Worship 67, no. 5 (September 1993): 407-418. Lash, Nicholas. His Presence in the World: A Study of Eucharistic VVorship and Theology. Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum Press, 1968. Maloney, Raymond. "The Doctrine on the Eucharist." In Commentary on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ed. Michael J. Walsh, pp. '259-269. Collegeville~ Liturgical Press, 1994. Merton, Thomas. Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality. Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1996. Order of the Most Holy Redeemer (OSSR). Constitution and Statutes. Rome, 1985. Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1988. Tannenbaum, Marc. "How Mode(n Jews Celebrate Their History." In The Breaking of Bread, ed. Pierre Benoit, Roland E. Murphy, and Bastiaan van Iersel. Concilium, vol. 40. New York: Paulist Press, 1969. Review for Religious RANDALL S. ROSENBERG Eucharistic Devotion in the Rising Generation _~ .~.aismseuse M oafr tAinm SeJ rdiicda a, nhiicgeh jloibg,h inti nthge t3h Me aprecrhs 2o0n0a3l reflections of contemporary Catholics on traditional devotions. In recent times we have witnessed in the United States a rise of the devotion of Eucharistic adoration. How ought this revival to be perceived? Is it merely an attempt to resurrect nostalgic memories of the "good old days"? Or is it the authentic recovery of a lost Eucharistic piety that has had an important place in our tradition? In this "bent" world, both of the afore-mentioned possibilities could be operative. In his April 2003 encyclical on the Eucharist, Ecclesia de Eucbaristia, John Paul II recognizes "positive signs" of an increase in "Eucharistic faith and love." But he also takes notice of what he calls "shadows" with regard to this devotion. He writes: "In some places the practice of Eucharistic adoration has been almost completely abandoned. In various parts of the church, abuses have occurred, leading to confusion about Catholic doctrine Randall S. Rosenberg has taught high school theology and is beginning work towards a Ph.D. in systematic theology at Boston College. His address is 14 Eddy Street; Newton, Massachusetts 02465. 63.1 2004 Rosenberg ¯ Eucbaristic Devotion and sound faith concerning this wonderful sacrament. At times one encounters an extremely meager understanding of the Eucharistic mystery" (§10). John Paul claims that the worship of the Eucharist outside of Mass, as linked to the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice, is of "inestimable value for the life of the church." He calls upon pastoral leaders to encourage this devotion which affords the opportunity to "spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple (see Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love present in his heart." Surely this intimate language springs from the depths of the pope's personal experience of Christ in adoration: "How often, dear brothers and sisters, have I experienced this, and drawn from it strength, consolation, and support!" (§25). What are we to make of our pope's proclamation? As a faculty moderator on a recent high school retreat, I witnessed students spending some time in Eucharistic adoration. The adoration followed several days of small-group sharing and was linked with the opportunity for the sacrament of reconciliation. Without solicitation, one student remarked to me how powerful this experience was for him. This was not a student regularly involved with campus ministry, nor did he seem particularly interested in matters religious. The student asked me why this opportunity was not more available. It struck me that this generation (I am not very much older) does not carry around the baggage that many middle-aged and older American Catholics carry; that is, there is no liberal-conservative rift dividing them. I am all for healthy theological tension, but young people today are not likely to label those who spend time in Eucharistic adoration traditionalist conservatives, nor those who are concerned about social justice radical liberals. There seems to be a growing sense that the contemplative and active dimensions of the faith ought not to be pitted against each another, but rather are part of the rich and Review for Religious complex life of faith in the modern world. John E Kavanaugh SJ recendy suggested (America, 4 November 2002) that the old dichotomies of liberal and conservative simply do not work anymore. One such illuminating experience for him was an encounter with a prayer group of college students who invited him to speak on the topic of "Real Presence in the Eucharist and in Persons." Many in the church are righdy concerned about an emphasis on private Eucharistic devotion over against the communal dimensions of the faith. Influenced in part by the groundbreaking work of Henri de Lubac SJ, the church has rediscovered the social dimension of the Eucharist, namely, that this powerful sacrament is not only an encounter with the divine, but also a means of fostering unity in the church and among human beings generally. Rightly under-stood, Eucharistic contem-plation could deepen one's relationship with Christ made present under the appearance of bread and wine and also with the assembly of the faithful, the body of Christ. In the midst of our technological culture that fosters noise, clutter, information overload, and a quick fix, and in a world culture that is permeated with violence and war, I propose that we need Christic contemplation and silence. Since my conversation with the student, I have become more convinced than ever that our world not only needs silence, but also hungers for silence. One can commune silently with Holy Mystery in nature or in one's living room, but our sacramental tradition provides us with a special quiet encounter with Jesus. Many in the church are rightly concerned about an emphasis on private Eucharistic devotion over against the communal dimensions of the faith. 63.1 2004 Rosenberg ¯ Eucbaristic Devotion ! The great theologian Karl Rahner SJ--who respected the tradition deeply and engaged modern intellectual developments creatively, and who tried to convince ordinary people that they can be mystics in their everyday activities--warned against the loss of this devotion. In Mission and Grace: Essays in Pastoral Theology, Rahner suspects that those who oppose contemplation of the Eucharist are really uncomfortable with "private, prolonged, contemplative prayer in general; that the objections raised against visits as such are for the most part only a sort of ideological cover, supplied in retrospect, for a general withdrawal from the severe demands of meditation." In his final writings Rahner wrote that the worshiping of Jesus in the sacrament must not disappear. Its history may have started from unnoticeable beginnings. However, in salvation history and in the history of the church, something cannot disappear simply because it started almost without being noticed. No, as Catholics we wish, individually and together, to loo1~ to the sign of the presence of the one who has loved us and has offered himself up for us. It should not be unusual for us to kneel at times in private prayer before the Lord who has saved us. ("Eucharistic Worship," in Theological Investigations x aI0 Eucharistic adoration may also foster the contemplative dimension of a concern for social justice. A hallmark of the theology of Johannes Baptist Metz, famous for his spiritual classic Poverty of Spirit, is what he calls dangerous memories. According to him, what theology often ignores is the history of suffering. We must not do theology, he would say, with our backs turned to Auschwitz, but with a mysticism of eyes open to the dangerous memories, the me.mories of horrendous human suffering. Discourse about the war in Iraq, then, cannot be divorced from the dangerous memory of the Review for Religious young boy who lost his arms and was severely burned in a U.S. missile attack. Not only was he injured, but his pregnant mother was killed, along with his father and several of his siblings. One encounters dangerous memories in the Eucharist. As Pope John Paul has insisted, the Eucharist makes sacramentally present again the horrible sufferings of Jesus, himself a victim of injustice. In the light of the dangerous memory of the cross, Eucharistic adoration provides, if well understood, the opportunity to become conscious of and to lament the terrible sufferings of God's children in our present day. We are given a chance to commune with the one who gave us these haunting words: "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers you do to me." Christ-centered contemplation, then, may lead to Christ-centered action. Although we must avoid letting private devotion seem more important or more central than the Mass, it would be wise to listen to people, especially young people, who desire to spend time in loving contemplation and adoration of the Eucharist. Such devotion may actually build bridges across rifts in the church and in the world, actually make the church more Catholic and catholic. I am convinced that the rising generation is ready to discard divisive political labels and embrace both the prayer and the activity necessary for integral lives of faith. 63.1 2004 SUSAN B. CORDSEN Teresa of Avila and Friendship Teresa was a friend par excellence. She had tremendous natural relational gifts. These caused her great difficulty, but also became keys to her effectiveness as a reformer. Friendship is a central element in her writing as it was in how she lived her life. In her autobiography she writes, "As I grew older, when I began to know of the natural attractive qualities the Lord had bestowed on me (which others said were many), instead of thanking him for .them, I began to make use of them all to offend him.''1 The redemptive learning and teaching that flowered from her experience can be helpful for us today. In her early life, relationships were a con-stant struggle for her. In her autobiography Teresa says that a friendship of hers with a teenage relative "pained my father and my sis-ter" (2.4). She uses her own reflections to illus- Susan B. Cordsen, a lay Carmelite for twenty-one years, is doing graduate studies at Washington Theological Union; 6896 Laurel Street, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20012. Review for Religious trate and teach "the harm a bad companion can do." Later she speaks of the personal influence of a nun in the convent school she was attending: "This good com-pany began to help me get rid of the habits that the bad company had caused" (2.4 and 3.1). Both the negative and the positive aspects of friendship frame her discussions. In 1536, at the age of twenty-one, she entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. There "the par-lor" and outside relationships became a major "harm and distraction" for her. In that early period she had a vision of Christ, who "desired to make me understand that those friendships were not proper for me" (7.6). Since she did not know that it was possible to see the Lord in such a personal, experiential way, and since "the vision was not to my liking," she tried to conceal it from her-self (7.7). Concerning these friendships, she ignored other external and internal warnings as well. In 1544 a Dominican confessor, Vicente Barron, iarged her to return to personal times of prayer. Here she reflects: "Spiritual friendship is. extremely impor-tant for souls not yet fortified in virtue--since they have so many opponents and friends to incite them to evil" (7.21). Now she begins to express prayer in friendship terms with her famous definition: "Mental prayer., is noth-ing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means frequently taking time to be alone with Him who we know loves us." For friendship.to :endure, "the wills of the friends must be in accord" (8.5). Seeing Christ as "friend" who invites us into "friendship" becomes the key and model of her redeemed relationality. Yet her internal struggles remained intense. She says, "For more than eighteen years, I suffered this conflict between friendship with God and friendship with the world" (8.3). Finally, in 1554, she had her profound conversion before the statue of the wounded Christ. Yet, even here, though 63.1 2004 Cordsen ¯ Teresa of Avila and Friendship Though she was deeply reoriented toward friendship with Jesus, she was not fully freed from personal attachments. she was deeply reoriented toward friendship with Jesus, she was not fully freed from personal attachments. This came about two years later. She writes of her new Jesuit confessor, Juan de Pradanos, who led her with skill and gentleness because she was still fragile, "espe-cially with regard to giving up some friendships I had." She was not offending God, but was attached, feeling she would be ungrateful to aban-don them. This would seem to be a rather common state of affairs in people's friend-ships. The friendship is not sinful or "destructive," and to simply discard the rela-tionship would seem disloyal to the friend, and yet the attachment is the very thing that keeps us unfree and interferes with both our friendship with God and our friendship with the person. Turning to God in prayer,. Teresa was for the first time granted a rapture; she heard, "No longer do I want you to converse with men but with angels" (24.5). She com-ments, "These words have been fulfilled." How? By her withdrawing into silent prayer, ending all human friend-ships to speak only with angels and God? No. "For I have never again been able to tie myself to any friendship or to find consolation in or bear particular love for any other persons than those I understand love [God] and strive to serve him; nor is it in my power do to so, nor does it matter whether they are friends or relatives" (24.6). This freed her to become more of a friend rather than drawing her from friendship. This is because her friendship with others now flowed from her friendship with Christ. It is astonishing Review for Religious how deeply and richly she draws on the concept of friendship to express her relationship with Jesus. She notes, again and again that he is a "true" friend. This is a term she uses just before writing about the importance of the sacred humanity of Christ and how we must never seek to go beyond this. "We are not angels but we have a body" (22.6-10). The concept of friendship keeps her connected to the sacred humanity. She writes of how God treats the soul with friendship; she even prays that the Lord make a certain person "our" friend, that is, the friend of both God and Teresa (27.9 and 34.8). God enables in us a sense of mutuality whereby the soul and God understand each other (27.10). This key, friendship, continues in her "Meditations on the Song of Songs." Though a human love story and one often used by mystics to comment on the love of God pursuing and enticing the soul in the image of the bride, Teresa adds her own twist. Her meditation is really on only a few verses and treats the themes of prayer and union as she does in her other works. But here she emphasizes "friendship" and "peace." Quoting the verse "Let Him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," she asks how dare we speak them. She answers, "The soul that is enkindled with a love that makes it mad desires nothing else than to say these words." Then, after speaking of the Blessed Sacrament, she wonders whether the bride "was asking for that union so great that God became man, for that friendship that he effects with the human. race. Obviously a kiss is the sign of great peace and friendship among two persons.''2 Teresa discusses everything from "friendship" with the devil to our relationship with God as "skin-deep." Using "friendship" to express growth and union, she refers to "another kind of friendship, stronger than this," but adds that "neither is this the friendship the bride seeks" (2.20 and 2.27). "God grants so great a favor as to 6! 63.1 2004 Cordsen * Teresa of Avila and Friendship join [the soul] with himself in a friendship like this" (3.9); "how is it possible that even while in this mortal life one can enjoy You with so special a friendship [that] only those who experience this friendship will understand it?" (3.14 and 4.1). Teresa develops this human love story in many directions, including that of marriage. The fact that she uses it to reflect on divine friendship may help us reflect on the friendship dimension within marriage. As usual, Teresa not only shares her experience, but also reflects on it to help others. In setting up her Carmelite reform, she initially limits her monasteries to thirteen nuns. Here "all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped.''3 She herself knows how difficult this is in practice and tries to point out pitfalls and give guidance. Though written for cloistered women, her insights are practical for us as well. She is concerned about hav-ing "excessive love" for one person and thus failing to love others equally, feeling sorry about an affront to the friend, desiring possessions so as to have things to give as gifts, and looking for times to speak with her and often only about trifling things. Such friendships seldom help each other toward love of God. Yet because we are human we are often drawn more to one person than another and easily become attached. The crucial ele-ments are self-knowledge and awareness (4.6-8). Teresa usually does not recommend cutting off con-tact altogether, which would not be possible in the monastery anyway. "To break away from these friend-ships involving a particular fondness, great care is nec-essary at the outset of the friendship. This breaking away should be done delicately and lovingly rather than harshly" (4.9). She says to limit time together. She is not trying to destroy the friendship, only reorient it. She shows this by the way she speaks of spiritual love, which is what she desires for all friendship. "Even though in Review for Religious the beginning it is not so perfect, the Lord will gradu-ally perfect it. Let us begin by using the suitable means, for, even though the love bears with it some natural ten-derness, no harm will be done provided this tenderness is shown toward all" (7.5). Her advice regarding falling in love with confessors shows her realism and balance. The sisters should "try not to think about whether they love the confessor or don't love him; but, if they do love him, let them love him . A great principle for making much progress is to love the confessor, if he is holy and spiritual and if I see that he is dili-gent about my soul's progress. For our weak-ness is such that some-times this love helps us very much to perform great deeds in the ser-vice of God. If the love is not of this kind, there is danger . There is much need for caution and pru-dence. The best advice is that the confessor not know that there is such affection . If [the sisters] know that he is God-fearing, they should not weary themselves over any temptation . about their great attachment; when the devil is worn out, he will go away." However, if they "become aware that the confessor is turning toward some vanity," they should make their confession brief and seek another confessor:4 Teresa looks to self-knowledge, awareness, patience with our emotions, and God's grace to navigate rela-tionships. Regarding confessors she advises developing internal boundaries rather than trusting external bound-aries to keep relationships proper. Again, it is Christ the friend who shows how we are to be friends together. Teresa looks to self-knowledge, awareness, patience with our emotions, and God's grace to navigate relationships. 63.1 2004 Cordsen * Teresa of Avila and Friendship Teresa says this is "a love with no self-interest at all. All that it desires., is to see the other soul rich with heav-enly blessings" (Way, 7.1). As with all of life, this friendship is not without suf-fering. After speaking of the cross, Teresa asks, "What better friendship than that [Jesus] desire for you what he desired for himself?." (Way, 17.7). This is one of many places where she notes that one of the gifts of Christ's friendship is a sharing in his cross--but the suffering comes not from denying friendship but from attempt-ing to live it without self-interest, to have affection but not attachment. We do not reach this fully in this life. In trying to distinguish the different loves, Teresa says, "I don't think I know which love is spiritual, or when sen-sual love is mixed with spiritual love" (Way, 6.2). Yet this is often the condition we are in. We have the choice of pulling back in fear we will become attached, or of crossing boundaries, ignoring cautions as Teresa did early in her life and fostering distracting and harmful rela-tionships. Or--a third choice--we can choose the path Teresa did and respond to the invitation to friendship with Christ and trust that his grace and mercy will grad-ually bring our friendships in line with his own. In her letters Teresa shows herself to be a very human person. She chides others for not valuing her friendship enough to write more; another "owes her more." Showing great affection, she speaks of being lonely, scolds, encourages, pleads. Her words leap energetically off the pages. There is her great affection for Jertnimo Gracifin, a friendship that brings her much joy and sor-row, and is a puzzlement to others. In her "Spiritual Testimonies" she writes of a time when she "was living in great~ loneliness" and says Gracifin was the only one to "give me comfort, and he had to be absent most of the time." The loneliness continued, and she had a curious intellectual vision of the Lord placing "himself in my Review for Religiot~s arms as in the painting" of the body of Jesus in his mother's arms after being taken down from the cross,s Teresa came to acknowledge her natural gifts for friendship and to thank God for them. She allowed them to be used to draw others to .Jesus. In our world that strives to improve communication skills, set boundaries, express our sexuality neither too much nor too little, where does friendship fit in? The recently beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta spoke of the great loneliness in the United States. Sexual abuse continues to be a problem and to cause problems in the church and in the world at large. Where is the friendship that St. Teresa of Avila wrote of and lived? Teresa, teach us to be friends of Christ that we may be friends of one another. Notes ~ The Book of Her Life, chapter 1, section 8. Hereafter till note 2, references to this work will be supplied in parentheses in the text. The translations used in this article are those of Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vols. 1, 2, 3 (Washington: ICS Publications, 1987, 1980, 1985). ¯ Note 2 begins a second series of parenthetical references, and note 3 begins a third series. 2 Meditations on the Song of Songs, chapter 1, section 10. 3 The Way of Perfection, chapter 4, section 7. 4 Teresa as quoted in the translators' note to The Way of Perfec-tion, 4.8. s Spiritual Testimonies, 53. 63.1 2004 ROBERT P. MALONEY Five Faces ofRosalie Rendu On 9 November 2003 Pope John Paul II beatified Rosalie Rendu, a Daughter of Charity. She was the Mother Teresa of 19th-century France. Her energy, creativity, and courage leap out from the accounts of those who knew her.~ Fifty thousand people flocked to her funeral on 9 February 1856. What was said that day, and the articles written in her praise, remind me of Shakespeare's eloquent words: When she shall die, Take her and cut her out in little stars, And she will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night.2 The church beatifies and canonizes men and women pre-cisely for that reason: that they may shine out like stars for us, that in the midst of darkness we may see what it really means to be holy. Saints make holiness real, con-crete. In this article I offer five faces of Rosalie Rendu. Prodigious Worker and Organizer Rosalie was born on 9 September 1786, in Confort, a tiny village in southern France. At just fifteen years of Robert P. Maloney CM, superior general of the Congregation of the Mission, is a frequent contributor to our pages. He resides at Via dei Capasso, 30; 00164 Roma; Italy. ¯ Review for Relig4ous age, she set off for Paris. There she spent more than fifty years of her life in the capital's poorest neighborhood, Mouffetard. Her works were prodigious. She began as a teacher in a primary school, which she later ran. Though she herself had little formal education (biographers say she never managed to write French very well), Rosalie and others labored strenuously to teach children to read, write, and do basic mathematics along with learning their catechism. For young girls and needy women, she soon orga-nized courses in sewing and embroidering. She then founded a day-care center and a nursery school fox; the children of working mothers. For these same mothers she started a branch of the Children of Mary. In addition, she and the sisters ran a center for the distribution of food and firewood, with a pharmacy, a clinic and a clothes dispensary. She helped in counseling the newly founded Society of St. Vincent de Paul. She assisted in the reestablishment of the Ladies of Char-ity in 1840. She cared for the sick and the dying in the recurring cholera epidemics, and throughout her life she visited the poor and infirm in their homes. During the several epidemics between 1849 and 1854, withas many as a hundred and fifty persons dying in the parish every day, Rosalie and the sisters kept doing all they could. They attended to the living, accompanied the dying, and buried the dead. Though Rosalie was not an advocate of orphanages, in 1851 she took over the running of one; in 1852 she began a home for the elderly. The secret of Rosalie's enormous energy was this: she saw the face of Christ in the face of every poor person. 63.1 2004 Maloney * Five Faces of RosMie Rendu In the judgment of the theologian who examined her writings, the secret of Rosalie's enormous energy was this: she saw the face of Christ in the face of every poor person. One of the sisters who lived with her remem-bered Rosalie encouraging the community: "Love our good God very much. Do not be sparing in your duty; serve the poor well, always speaking to them with great kindness . The ruder they are, the more dignified you must be. Remember, our Lord hides behind those rags.''3 Local Superior When she was not yet seventeen years old, a seem-ingly sickly Rosalie was sent away from the novitiate of the Daughters of Charity in the hope that a change of air would improve her health. It is hard to imagine that the air was much better in inner-city Mouffetard, but she thrived there. She quickly won the hearts of the sisters of the house. When she returned to the motherhouse for "habit taking," the local superior sent a letter to the superioress general saying: "I am very happy with this little Rendu. Give her the habit, and send her back to me.''4 And so it was that she took her first step toward becoming the "apos-de of the Mouffetard district," where she would spend the remainder of her life. In 1815, when she was twenty-nine years old, she became the superior. She carried out this service for the next forty-one years, until her death. What was Rosalie like as a superior? Those who gave firsthand testimony about her noted three things: (1) Describing Rosalie's relationship with the sisters in the community, her cousin speaks of her "infinite tender-ness." She was sensitive to what went on around her. Some thought she was sensitive even to a fault. In 1844, when two sisters whom she loved died, Rosalie broke into tears and wrote, "I rebelled in some ways against the hand that struck us, yet I am confident that these two angels will obtain mercy for me.''5 Review for Religious (2) Young sisters loved her. The house where she was superior became a "formation house," so to speak, to which many were sent. From Rosalie they learned first-hand how to serve the poor. Twenty-two postulants lived with her over the years. Eighteen sisters prepared for vows under her direction, starting in 1832. At the time of her death, twelve sisters lived in her community; half of them had been sisters for less than four years. She waged war against pride. One of the sisters says: "In spir-itual direction she pursued this fault relentlessly: 'It's our number-one enemy,' she said. 'Look for it . . . it dis-guises itself to trick us and confuse us, but we must grab it by the throat and choke it.'''6 (3) Rosalie's incredibly active house was also a house of prayer. The community rose each morning at four. One sister testified: "If we had to accompany her on a charitable visit during our prayer time, she said to us as we walked: 'Let's begin our meditation!' She suggested a subject for meditation in a few simple, clear words and entered into prayer." One of her best friends, the Viscount of Melun, quotes her as saying, "I never pray so well as I do in the street.''7 Intrepid Woman By all accounts this tender woman was fearless. Rosalie lived in turbulent times. As a child she experi-enced the Reign of Terror in France; her family hid a nonjuror priest in their home. She experienced the rev-olutions of 1830 and 1848 and the terrible cholera epi-demics of 1832, 1849, and 1854. Rosalie walked among the wounded, the sick, and the dying with little fear for her own health. She and the sisters ministered to thou-sands of cholera victims. The most well-known incidents of Rosalie's bravery took place during the revolutions. When she and the sis-ters hid revolutionaries, Monsieur Gisquet, the chief of69 63.1 2004 Maloney ¯ Five Faces of Rosalie Rendu police, signed a warrant for her arrest. But the local policemen warned him that her arrest would cause a riot in the Mouffetard neighborhood. Gisquet himself went to notify Rosalie of the warrant. She replied: "I am a Daughter of Charity. I have no flag. I help the unfortu-nate wherever I meet them. I try to do good to them without judging them, and I promise you that, if you yourself are ever being pursued and ask my help, I will not refuse it.''s The chief dropped the matter. Fierce fighting broke out within the city during the revolution of 1848. The archbishop of Paris mounted the barricades in an effort to stop the slaughter and was shot dead. The fighting became even more intense. General Cavaignac, later president of France, decided on a massive bombardment of the Mouffetard neigh-borhood, but first offered the sisters safe-conduct out. Rosalie responded to his messenger: "Please thank the general and tell him that we are the servants of the poor and also their mothers and that we want to die with them.''9 Rosalie and the general became lifelong friends. --70J Friend of the Poor and the Rich On many occasions I have walked to the cemetery in Montparnasse to visit the grave of Rosalie Rendu, which is near that of Jean-Paul Sartre. Fresh flowers always lie there. On the simple stone are engraved the words: To Sister Rosalie Her grateful friends The poor and the rich She knew how to be friend to both. The poor loved her deeply because they sensed that she lived out precisely what a witness said she asked of those who accompanied her: "Welcome everyone. Speak to the poor with both kindness and dignity. Do not make them wait. Treat them as you would treat your father, your brothers, your sis-ters.'' 1° The rich, too, were attracted to Rosalie. They Review for Religious found her appeals irresistible. She knew how to engage their energies and their resources in the service of the poor. Her correspondence extends to the archbishop of Paris, superiors general, politicians, doctors, young stu-dents, relatives, and friends. She took on Frederick Ozanam and his companions as apprentices and thus par-ticipated in the birth of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. From 1833 until Rosalie's death, the Viscount of Melun visited her at least once a week to seek her advice and help in the service of the poor. Among those who gave Rosalie material aid were the king and queen, General Cavaignac, writ-ers and politicians like Lamartine and Caubert, and many local politicians and administrators. The ambassador of Spain, Donoso Cort6z, came to Rosalie's house weekly to receive a list of the poor to visit. When he himself fell ill in 1853, Rosalie assisted him until his death. On 27 February 1852 Rosalie was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor. On 18 March 1854 the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eug6nie came to visit her at her house. ¯ The daily line of those seeking entrance into Rosalie's office was long. She worked effici.ently, writing little notes to remind herself of their requests. She sought to find some response, even if inadequate, to all the needs presented to her. Rosalie knew how to engage the energies and resources of the rich in the service of the poor. Faithful, Sometimes Misunderstood, Daughter of Charity Rosalie was revered in her own lifetime. People from all ranks of society came to see her. ~ But her extraordi-nary popularity sometimes raised eyebrows in high cir- 71 63.1 2004 --79,.2 Maloney ¯ Five Faces of RosMie Rendu cles. In the latter part of her life, she suffered from the disapproval of her superiors. The troubles began in the late 1830s, when Jean-Baptiste Nozo was superior gen-eral of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity. Because of a financial scandal, strong opposition to Nozo mounted up. Jean-Baptiste Etienne was his most formidable opponent. News of the conflict hit the papers, so that much of Paris was talking about it. Finally the archbishop of Paris intervened, com-posing a document of interdict against Etienne and oth-ers. Rosalie wanted the matter to end peacefully. She had good connections with the archbishop and went to intercede with him, refusing to leave without an answer and pleading with him to burn the d

Issue 58.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1999. ; fo r relg io iu s, Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living jANUARY-FEBRUARY 1999 ¯ VOLUME 58 ¯ NUMBER 1 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be inforntative, practical, bistorical,'or inspirational, written from a theological or spt~itual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis Universi~, by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: foppema@slu.edu Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP P.O. Box 29260; \,Vashington, D.C. 20017 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. ©1999 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC .Chrfisfian Heritages and Contemporary Lfiv~ng JANUARY-FEBRUARY 199~ * VOLUME 58 ¯ NUMBER 1 contents 6 28 perspective. Apostles and Martyrs: Consecrated Life at the Bishops' Synod for Asia John Mansford Prior SVD presents the challenge of the 1998 Synod for Asia to enter into a threefold dialogue--with religions, cultures, and the marginalized. Catholic Guides in Dialogue with Buddhist Practice Paul Bernadicou SJ reviews the progress of Catholic writers in their efforts to provide a fruitful exchange between Christianity and Buddhism. 35 42 traditions Lithuanian and American Sisters: A Lively Interactive Dance Barbara Valuckas SSND describes some of the similarities and differences in the issues facing women religious in the West and in Lithuania. Serpents and Doves: The Company of St. Ursula Ann White draws our attention to the pioneering Ursuline Marie Guyart (Blessed Marie of the Incarnation) living out the vision and spirit of the foundress, St. Angela Merici, to combine the secular and sacred, the worldly and the religious. spirituality 48 The Art of Discernment: The Aesthetic Dimension Xavier Plissart MAfr explains that a basic and essential quality of disce~:nment is that it should strive to be as common as possible in its insight and process, and as universal as possible in the aim toward action. Review for Religious 61 The Still Point: Contemplation Kathy Dunne RC shares her experience and her insights into the unitive way, a way not isolated in prayer, but intimately connected with the dance between the contemplative and apostolic life. 68 82 .aging Caring for Our Own: Competent, Personal Long-term Care in a Faith Perspective Imelda Maurer CDP pictures how life in long-term care looks for some communities of women religious and the witness that is given to the human values that our faith provides. What Is My Mission in Retirement? Francis Blouin FIC clarifies the call of service especially for those who no longer serve in active ministry. 86 report Scrupulosity: Age-old Problem, Holistic Response Paul Duckro, C. Alex Pollard, and Jason Williams describe a synergistic collaboration between behavioral science and religious faith for finding an effective response to the problem of scrupulosity. departments 4 Prisms 98 Canonical Counsel: Living the Evangelical Counsels 103 Book Reviews Janualy-l.¥brllaty 1999 Many of us are familiar with the late Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal Son--a book in which Nouwen reflects on the Gospel story and Rembrandt's painting of the same title displayed in the Hermitage musuem in Saint Petersburg in Russia. Some years after writing the book, Nouwen died while he was on a journey to Russia to participate in a television fea-ture dealing with the painting and his book. Nouwen's fascination with Rembrandt's painting of the famous Lucan parable makes a special appeal to us all in the year 1999. As we continue to follow the direc-tions of Pope John Paul's apostolic letter "As the Third Millennium Draws Near," we know that the year 1999 is dedicated to seeing things "in the perspective of Christ: in the perspective Of the 'Father who is in heaven'" (§49; Mt 5: 45). Just as the previous two years were dedicated respectively to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit, so this final year preparatory to the new millennium is focused particul.arly upon God--the One Jesus calls Abba-Father. A dynamic is uniquely associated with this third year of preparation. It is the journey motif. We are to pay special attention to the fact that we human beings are '.'on the journey to the house of the Father." The God we come to know on our journeying is not just a good God but a God of forgiving love, a compassionate God. Following an allusion made by the pope, w.e might iden-tify the year 1999 as the year of the parable of the prodi-gal. Like the prodigal, we all are on the road leading home. Like the prodigal, we may have a mix of feelings about the life choices we have made and the values we Review for Religqous. have lived. Like the prodigal, in the midst of evaluating our life we sometimes find ourselves needing to throw ourselves on God's mercy--and ready to do so. In one way or another, then, we tend to find ourselves on the road with the prodigal, similar in our rue-ful disquiet about past failings and in our modest plans for a fresh start. Most important, though, is our coming to the ever new and deepening understanding of the reality of God's relationship with us--the One who keeps watching for us whenever our approach, the One who hastens to embrace us into the family. Demanding as the actual journeying of our life may be, our attention should be fixed primarily on the journey of our heart. The heart needs to be quiet and hear the questions: Where are we now in our journey? Is life for us Christians lived truly as a pilgrimage--a journey with a direction? How have we come to know God in our adult years? Is God the one we experience as so compassionate to us that we feel the pull to address God with Jesus' intimacy-of-love word Abba? Most commonly, pilgrimage evokes a picturing of a group mov-ing onward together. So, too, in our pilgrimage we are not alone. Our Christian community in all its various forms--family, parish, sodality, religious congregation--makes real that it is a "we" jour-neying together to the Father. The call to a new evangelization summons us, already known in Pauline times as a people of "The Way," to be welcoming to a humanity searching for the way. Pilgrims are known to tell stories as in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and pilgrims are known to sing songs as the psalms so often describe. As we continue our journeying in 1999, we need to tell one another our own parables of a pilgrimage home. Together we sing songs of praise to the Father "who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing'I (Ep 1:3-4). The year 1999 can be a special pilgrimage for us all. David L. Fleming sJ Januao,-Februaty 1999 JOHN MANSFORD PRIOR Apostles and Martyrs: Consecrated Life at the Bishops' Synod for Asia Nowhere else in the world is religious life flourishing-- in both its traditional and more contemporary forms-- as it seems to be in Asia. Thus, unsurprisingly, of the 252 participants at the Synod for Asia (19 April to 14 May 1998), some 90 were members of religious orders or congregations, 36 percent of the total. Among these 90 were 63 of the 188 synodal fathers (including 10 superiors general) and 27 of the 58 auditors and experts (including 8 sisters, 5 priests, and two brothers). These numbers, of course, do not represent the pro-portions of consecrated life in Asia and are not intended to. Eight sisters among 244 men reflects neither the presence nor the role of sisters--let alone other women--in the mission of the Asian churches. It was, after all, a synod of bishops, not a, meeting of religious. The ninety religious were present because religious are active in Asia today at all levels of ecclesial life. But with over a third' of the participants belonging to religious orders and congregations, religious life in Asia was not far from the surface of the synodal discussions. John Mansford.Prior SVD has worked in Indonesia since 1973 and writes from Seminari St. Paulus Ledalero; Maumere 86152, Flores-NT:r; Indonesia. During the Synod for Asia, he was liaison officer for the English-speaking press. His article is being published also in Informationes SCRIS, the in-house publicatio~a of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societie~ of ApoStolic Life. Review for Religious The theme of the synod--"Jesus Christ the Savior and his mission of love and service in Asia 'that they may have life and have it abundantly'"--does not refer directly to consecrated life, but it is central to religious life. Religious are active agents in Jesus' mission of love and service, and so consecrated life was referred to in the context of mission. The evangelical theme of the synod was explained at leng.th in two presynodal documents, the lineamenta (guidelines) published in September 1996 and the instrumentum laboris (working docu-ment) published on the eve of the synod itself (February 1998). I wish to glance briefly at these two documents before looking at the synodal documents themselves. Presynodal Documents While all the lineamenta are of interest to religious as mis-sioners, there are just six explicit observations on consecrated life in this document. Half of these are in chapter 2, on the history of Christianity in Asia. Regarding mission in Asia before the 12th century, we read: "Most of these early missionaries and bishops were monks; others were merchants and ordinary Christians" (§9). The important point here is that Eastern-rite churches have been in Asia since Apostolic times and are not the result of Western colonial expansion since the days of da Gama and Columbus. These churches in the Middle East (from Palestine to Iran) and 'in southern India (Kerala), founded long ago by "monks, merchants, and ordinary Christians," are Asian and are accepted as such amid the dominant local populations, whether Muslim or Hindu. This was emphasized time and again by the patriarchs and bishops of these churches. Unfortunately, the story is. different for other churches in Asia. In the 15th and 16th centuries, missionary activity went hand in hand with the colonial expansion of Portugal and Spain. Even today, five hundred years later and half a century since most Asian countries achieve~l political independence, these Latin-rite churches are still looked upon as Western imports. Although some churches were initiated by laypeople (in Indonesia, for example) or even were founded by laypeople (in Korea, for exam-pie), many of these missi6ners were religious. Thus we read in § 10: "Between 1510 and 1640, Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, and Theatines all established houses in Prior * Apostles and Martyrs Asia." Despite the colonial link, the lineamenta emphasize these orders' pioneering work of inculturation. Clearly, the guidelines are rereading history with the needs of contemporary mission in mind. The small, "half-hidden tradition" of dialogue in the past is about to become the great "major tradition" for dialogue in the future. "Many 'missionary-minded' religious congregations sprang up in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Several of these congregations are still at work in Asia. During t.his same period a number of Asian religious congregations of men and women estab-lished themselves in Asia, particularly in India and the Philippines. During the 19th century, for the first time women ventured out into distant lands in Asia to bear witness to Christ and his gospel and to serve the poor . They also became a very essential part of mission in Asia, especially in the preparation of catechumens and the education of children" (§12). One of the signs of renewal since Vatican Council II is the way in which education, previously domesticating, is now. more and more following a liberating model. Such postconciliar renewal is taken up in the following section on "Lessons Learned from History." Among "Significant Contributions" after Vatican II are "con-tinental structures . for the religious in Asia, such as the Asian Meeting of Religious (AMOR), [which] bring the particular churches in Asia together and help coordinate their missionary and pastoral activities" (§14). Perhaps AMOR has achieved more than any other collegial body in opening up the leaders of religious orders and congregations to the wider social realities in which they live and work. This is surely the vital role that Asia-wide bodies are filling: awareness building and ongoing formation among religious leadership. There will be no new evangelization without a shift in consciousness (one of Longeran's "conversions"). Shifts in consciousness come about when we listen to each other and discover the links between our differing situations. Ond important sign that the local churches are now becoming mission-sending churches instead of being exclusivelj~ or mostly mission-receiving churches is the emergence of new Asian mis-sion societies. In the past "the agents of mission were mostly mem-bers of religious orders, congregations, and missionary institutes. Today the local churches of Asia have a number of Asian mis-sionary institutes" (§ 15). As we shall see, this was later taken up on the floor of the synod. Review for Religious Towards the end of the lineamenta ("Agents of Evangelization," §32), the term "consecrated life" is used for the first time. This is in the context of a mission theology of religious life. "It is a very heartening thing to note that many particular churches in Asia have already established mission institutes to send missioners to other countries, even though they themselves are in need of missioners in their own countries. Asian bishops have a particular responsibility to promote mission institutes and to be generous with their personnel for mission areas. Religious orders, congregations, and mission institutes have played a very remarkable role in the evangelization of Asia from the very beginning. Consecrated life is a very privileged means of evange-lization. Persons consecrated by religious vows can dedicate themselves fully to evan-gelization work because of their radical choice of the evangelical counsels, their total availability, their capacity for origi-nality in mission methods--as the history of mission shows, their spirit of generosity and their easy mobility." In this way the lin-eamenta sum up consecrated life in Asia: its historical contribution, distinctive witness, and recent developments. Responses from Asian episcopal conferences to the lineamenta were numerous, some of which have been widely published. Those of Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and India appeared in the East Asian Pastoral Review (no. 1, 1998). The instrumentnm laboris, or syn-odal working document, is thus a commentary by the preparatory committee upon the lineamenta, taking into account the views of the Asian bishops. Not surprisingly, the instrumentum is very dif-ferent in both tone and accentuation from the initial document. It is closer to Asia. Religious life gets five explicit mefftions, and these are of inter-est: First, in the historical section, it is regretted that the pio-neering work of dialogue with cultures and other Asian religions was discontinued so quicklyi "Even though the missionaries' efforts met with many successes, it is felt that a proper understanding of these elements in the work of evangelization would have led to a greater acceptance of the faith by the people of Asia . The church's rediscovered appreciation of other religions and cultures should find greater expression in her missidnary approach" (§14). There will be no new evangelization without a shift in consciousness. Janumy-Feb~wa~y 1999 Religious today are being called to recapture these creative insights from the past. However, there is a price to pay. In continuing Jesus' mission of love and service through interreligious and inter-cultural dialogue, consecrated life in the Latin rite will have to leave behind its Western heritage and become radically Asian. This latter point was brought up many times on the floor 6f the synod. While no section in the lineamenta was devoted to religious life, the whole of §16 of the instrumentum is. devoted to "Consecrated Witness." Mention is made of the "steady increase in the number of vocations during the past decades," both to "tra-ditional religious congregations and institutes which are Western in origin; in recent years a number of new local religious congre-gations have sprung up in Asia." "In many cases o . . service pro-vided by missioners has led to martyrdom." "Witness in Asia has ¯ . . come from a great many of the church's religious orders and congregations who have made a major contribution to the growth of the local churches in Asia during the last five hundred years of evangelization. Tens of thousands of religious sisters and brothers, by their love and unselfish service to those who suffer from poverty in its many forms, have contributed to nourishing the faith of many in the church in Asia. Some of these have given an invalu-able service to local churches by establishing houses of formation, especially seminaries. They have been able to reveal the compas-sionate, loving, and caring face of Jesus to the peoples of Asia. Religious brothers have given an outstanding service to the cause of general education, vocational training, technical education, and developmental works. Contemplative religious have also made a unique contribution to the Christian mission in Asia by their prayers and their witness of complete dedication to a life of union with God." Missioners are contemplatives in action--this is a favorite saying of John Paul II. The evaluation of Catholic mission history in Asia (920, "Leaven in Society") highlights the work of religious in educating the laity. Not aJfew outstanding national leaders in cultural, eco-nomic, and .political affairs, even in countries where Christians are a tiny minority, are alumni of Catholic schools. Towards the end of the instrumentum are two more refer-ences to consecrated life, neither of which' is found in the initial lineamenta. In 942, "The Word of God and Mission," we read: "Some responses ask for a greater attention to the Sacred Review for Religious Scriptures, the word of God, in all areas of church life, especially by bishops, priests, deacons, those in consecrated life, catechists, and lay missioners. Preachers, especially missioners, should draw from the Bible and lead their hearers to take up the word of God for personal study and inspiration . God's word has an inherent power to touch the hearts of all peoples, both Christians and believers of other faiths." This link between the centrality of the biblical apostolate in mission and the centrality of the word in the life witness of the missioner came up later on the synodal floor. Finally, in "The Service of Dialogue," we read: "The mission of the church takes place in interaction with others of which dia-logue is an important aspect. Some bishops in Asia have placed an emphasis upon what they term a 'dialogue of life and heart.' . ¯ . Cloistered sisters, who lead lives of prayer and love in open friendship with their neighbors of other faiths, have shown them-selves to be among the most effective practitioners of the dialogue of life." This is one of the few references to contemplative life in the presynodal documents. While just two participants in the synod were from contemplative orders, a central part of the synod was the link between contemplation and action. God-experience and authentic life-witness are crucial. Proclamation in Dialogue During the first seven days, 191 interventions were made by the synodal members and auditors. A quick, thematic analysis of these interventions follows. Twenty-three interventions were on °interfaith dialogue, 18 on the local, church as a communion of communities (a participative, collegial church). Sixteen interven-tions were on inculturation, 11 on the church's option to accom-pany the poor and margin.alized, and 10 on the challenge of economic globalization. Another 10 were on Asian spirituality and God-experience, 7 on youth, and another 7 on the church in China. Six focused on the ancient Apostolic churches of the Middle East, 5 on issues concerning women, 5 concerning the laity, 4 con-cerning schools, 4 concerning ecumenism, 4 concerning indigenous peoples, 4 concerning family life, and so on. VVhat picture emerges from this rough breakdown? Seventy-six percent of the intervention~s (146) dealt with four main topics: the Asian churches in diaiogue with other faith traditions (43 inter-ventions), the church becoming Asian by dialoguing with living Janttary-Februat.'y 1999 Prior ¯ Apostles and Martyrs r ¯ ] cultures (41 interventions), the churches learning to dialogue with the poor (33 interventions), and the Asian church as a church of the laity (29 interventions). Thus, for the bishops and observers, the threefold dialogue with other religions, with cultures, and with the marginalized looks to the context, approach, and con-tent of the New Evangelization. In this threefold dialogue Christ will become all in all, "that they have life and have it abundantly." Clearly, members of religious orders and congregations are involved in this threefold dialogue, one way or another. In responding to Jesus' mission through the threefold dialogue, con-secrated life itself is evange.lized. It must be noted that only three interventions took up conse-crated life as its sole subject (§§2"5, 81, and 99), while three supe-riors general included religious life as one of their topics (§§68, 133, and 134). Others touched upon consecrated life as part of their intervention. Ten superiors general spoke of various aspects of mission. Some other interventions are of direct relevance to religious, those on Asian spirituality, for instance, and on the strug-gle of women. I here pinpoint a few major issues culled from these interventions. Women in Church and Society Keeping in mind that the great majority of religious are women and that the majority of missioners in Asia are women also, the few interventions on women are of particular impor-tance. Sister Filomena Hirota MME (Japan), one of the eight sis-ter auditors pres.ent, spoke on women's growing awareness and on women's movements which demand that the fundamental equal-ity and dignity of all women and girls be respected in thought, attitudes, and practices. After referring to statements by the FABC (Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences) over the years, she said: "The church in Asia has a predominantly feminine face. In many countries women constitute 70-80 percent of its member-ship. The presence of women in pastoral ministry, their service to the poor and marginated, their commitment to peace and jus-tice in ecumenical and interreligious relationships, and their sol-idarity actions in promoting the dignity and equality of all women, men, and children have been significant and important." She went. on to say: "A new way of being church in Asia calls for a church in solidarity with the cry of women in a prophetic Review for Religious way." The church is called to "become a credible sign of the dig-nity and freedom of women in society and in the world" (Fourth FABC Assembly). The church has to find a concrete way to respond to the Holy Father's words expressing regret and apology for wrongs and insensitivities toward women in the church: "May this regret be transformed, on the part of the whole church, into a renewed commitment to fidelity to the gospel vision" (Letter to Women, 29 June 1995). She made five proposals: (1) "Members of Mother Church are called to be agents of communion, to create wholesome and equal relationships of compassion and care among humankind and with nature." (2) "Theology from women's perspectives and experiences should be introduced in seminaries and mission formation courses." (3) "It is important, indeed necessary, for male members of Mother Church to discover and grow in 'feminine' insights and attitudes in imita-tion of Jesus (see FABC Assembly 1990) so that their service may be fully and genuinely human and Christian in a society where the logic of domination is destroying both human beings and nature." (4) "Future priests should be formed so as to accept women as equal disciples and companions in their evangelization work." (5) "As a concrete sign of recognition of the fundamental equality of all bap-tized persons (including their dignity and rights) and the church's commitment to uphold women as equal partners, it is urgently rec-ommended: (a) that there be a minimum of 30 percent participa-tion of women in all church organizations and councils; (b) that in the church all women, including religious sisters, be justly com-pensated for their work; (c) that women be given support and opportunities which will enable them to study theology and related subjects; (d) that in each diocese a committee be formed to address injustice, especially against women and children, and to take effec-tive appropriate action in coordination with other local, national, and international organizations; (e) that all language (which sub-consciously influences our conscious attitudes) of church-related writings reflect the equality of men and women. May Mary of the Magnificat accompany us in this jourfiey as we women commit ourselves to Jesus' mission of love and service in Asia!" Appropriate here is the intervention of Pastor Agustina Lumentut, of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church of Indonesia, The church in Asia has a predominantly feminine face. Januat3,-FebruaD, 1999 Prior ¯ Apostles and Martyrs one. of the ecumenical delegates from the Christian Conference of Asia. She noted: "In Asia many countries are afflicted by a mon-etary and economic crisis. Therefore poverty and suffering increase for men, but in particular for women who will be hit most by the rising prices of their basic needs. Often the husbands and the older children of Asian women have gone away to the big cities to find a job and never return. No 'syn-odos,' no 'walking-together' any-more for many Asian women and their families. But there is a 'syn-odos,' a 'walking-together' with women from the same reli-gion, but also from other religions, women who have similar expe-riences. As Asian women theologians have stated: 'These shared experiences can become one of the primary sources for theologi-cal reflection, for rereading the Scripture, for a new interpretation, a new perspective.' As long as Asian women find the courage to tell each other their stories and share their .experiences, they have hope. Women are walking together. But is the church walking with them?" David Fleming SM, superior general of the Marianists (inter-vention no. 68), reflected on the compelling power of feminine images of the holy in Asian religions. In Hindu spirituality female images usually stand for shakti, power, creative energy. In Bengali Hinduism great attention is paid to Durga, a feminine image of the holy that is portrayed, almost like the Woman of the Apocalypse (chap. 12) as conquering the forces of evil, crushing the serpent's or dragon's head. Such feminine images, far from inducing passivity and helpless resignation, point to great social dynamism. The many feminine figures in Asia have arisen in a context of theo-logical reflection and catechesis that-is totally different from ours and surely unacceptable to us as Christians on the level of doctrine. Nevertheless, they enshrine some religious imagery that we Christians naturally find realized in Mary. She is a holy woman of contemplative sensitivity, one who experienced God rather than analyzed God. She is full of compassion and sensitivity to the poor and suffering, in dynamic solidarity with them, sharing their strug-gles as a woman of the people in an oppressed nation. In herself she lives a harmony with God, with her fellow human beings, with nature, and with society. David Fleming ended by saying: "Much of this Asian sensitivity for what we might roughly call the 'feminine' aspects of the holy is in fact integrated into the tender and almost cbnnatural devo-tion to Mary that characterizes so many Asian Christians. I am Review for Religious not talking of an integration of doctrine or of any new theologi-cal assertions about Mary. But I believe that a culture that shows so great a sensitivity to the feminine side of the holy has a great deal to contribute to our Christian experience of Mary, not only in Asia but also in the rest of the world. It helps us see the dynamism and vitality of Mary in the work of salvation and her power to motivate us to a commitment in solidarity with the poor. In this way we can give a greater Asian content to the conviction often expressed by the Holy Father that Mary is the 'Star' enlight-ening and directing the progress of the new evangelization in our era." All this is of interest to religious, both women and men. What images of God have we internalized, which images are we proclaiming by our lifestyle and in our work? God-Experience Time and again, bishops spoke out on the centrality of authen-tic experience of the human and the divine. I take up just one example, the presentation of Bishop John Osta of Patna, India (intervention no. 37). It is, "Bishop John said, "not enough to repeat doctrinal or theoretical formulas; personal witness to a personal experience is called for." Bishop John called for a new contem-plative lifestyle for all in the church. In this "rebirthing" of the church, religious have a pioneering role: live the Christian mystew in an Asian way! Integrating prayer forms from other Asian reli-gions is not syncretism, he maintained, but a demand of our times. The bishop continued by quoting FABC (Hong Kong, 1977): "The decisive new phenomenon for Christianity in Asia will be the emergence of genuine Christian communities in Asia, Asian in their way of thinking, praying, living, communicating their own Christ-experience to others . We should beware of seeing our future mission in categories that belong to the past, when the West shaped the churches' history. If the Asian churches do not dis-cover their own identity, they have no future." David Fleming made an interesting contribution on some aspects of the "dialogue of religious experience." His nine years in Nepal and India informed his presentation. He said: "To speak to the heart of Asian people and enter into a genuine dialogue of religious experience, religious and bishops should give special attention to developing the Christian contemplative life in Asia, as well as to enriching the contemplative dim.ension within all insti- P~o__r_ ¯ ~ostles and Martyrs, tutes of consecrated life, in order to create inculturated forms of living the spirituality of each institute. This is an aspiration widely shared, but not always so well realized, by religious institutes pre-sent in Asia." He continued: "Interreligious dialogue on the level of reli-gious experience involves a giving and a receiving, so that much can be learned from the deep religiosity of people and from their religions. Such dialogue shows us concretely how the Spirit of God has been at work through the centuries in the religious expe-rience of others. We often find that interchanges with seekers of holiness in other religions open up new vistas for Christian life and especially refresh our'memory of elements in our Christian spir~ itual heritage that we have tended to forget and neglect." He gave some examples: "A genuinely inculturated celebra-tion of the Eucharist. Very often, after participating in liturgies that integrated elements from the great variety of Indian cultures-- Hindu, Muslim, animist--Indian Catholics told me how richly these inculturated liturgies moved them, touching something that had perhaps been buried and a bit regretted in their souls during their years of taking part in more Western-style liturgies." A sec-ond example: "The disciplines of yoga direct us to pay greater attention to an approach to the body that disposes us to prayer. Similar teaching exists in our Christian tradition, especially in the hesychasm of Eastern medieval Christianity. But I doubt if we will easily rediscover this neglected dimension of spiritual discipline without the help of interreligious dialogue." Another example: "Attention to the rich oriental teaching .on praying with a mantra has sparked a fruitful renewal of c'ontemplative prayer among Christians in our time, often called 'centering prayer.' A similar approach was inculcated in ancient Christian monasticism, from the Egyptian desert through John Cassian, and in the oriental Christian tradition of the Jesus Prayer. The prayer of the rosary is, in its own way, within the same tradition. But today many Christians, East and West, are rediscovering this contemplative form of prayer through interreligious dialogue." Cardinal Eduardo Martfnez Somalo, prefect of the Congregationfor Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) gave the 81st intervention. The cardinal's eight points emphasized the centrality of t~tal dedication by the consecrated person. The key to mission witness is who she or he is, not what she or he does. Cardinal Martfnez Somalo linked the Revlew for Religious contemplative and mystical dimension of consecrated life to an ascetical lifestyle. This comment is particularly pertinent as Asia suffers a major monetary crisis on top of long-standing systemic poverty and injustice. In simplicity and prayerful silence, religious undergo day by day conversion to the gospel. After the primacy of religious experience, the cardinal emphasized the need for a solid theological formation, particularly necessary as we enter into dia-logue with Asian cultures and other Asian religions. He ended on a note of joy and hope at the many vocations to religious life in Asia. These key issues echoed and strengthened the contributions from Asia itself. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Jesuits, con-trastedthose who work for results with those who live out of love (intervention no. 97). The high-quality institutions run by reli-gious orders do not automatically proclaim the love of God. Our apostolates proclaim love when they are run by people "through whom God's love shines." Similarly with the work of dialogue: we dialogue in love without calculation or ulterior motives. In our apostolates we do not proclaim self but Christ crucified. I was reminded of the saying of John of the Cross: "Where there is no love, put love, and you will reap love." A short comment, one of many during the synod, about the centrality of God-experience, came from Bishop Gratian Mundadan (intervention no. 124) of Bijnor of the Syro-Malabar rite, India: "A Hindu sadhu once told Abhishiktanandaswamy: If you want to touch the heart of Indians, every one of you must become a guru. A guru is one who has deep God-experience. Such a guru does not quote, does not instruct, does not formulate, does not dogmatize. The guru shares personal experience of God, It is not just a question of presenting Jesus Christ as the guru; every Christian needs to become a guru--deep in the experience of God. . Spirit-filled and Spirit-led aposdes began their mission with sur-prisingly great success . "Unfortunately the scenario changed. The communities of the Spirit became institutionalized. When possessions, power, and authority increased, the need to rely on the power of the Spirit decreased. The Holy Spirit remained the forgotten person of the Holy Trinity. The humble, poor servant Christ, who came to serve and not to be served, was forced to assume the status of a power-ful king instead of continuing to be the King of the heart. The church began to rely on competency and human efficiency, doc- Jamtao, oPYbruaO, 1999 Prior ¯ Apostles and Martyrs trinal as well as juridical. If the church's power and authority comes only from competency and human efficiency, then we are facing a crisis in our mission. For such a competency based on knowledge, ideas, administrative skills, and laws will search for its legitimacy in the rational, in the human. The power of the church is reli-gious, spiritual, power from heaven. When the leaders of the church are devoid of such a spiritual power, they'will take shelter in juridical power. "There is an urgent need to change this image. The leadership of the church has to change the style of functioning, to become more spiritual, free from institutional authoritarianism and fully at the service of the gospel and the world. Such a leadership will be able to animate people to God-experience and help them translate this experience into fraternal love. This is to be the original con-tribution of the gospel to Asia, where other religions concentrate on God-experience alone without any effort to serve the brethren. The leadership of the church will have to discern and activate the vari-ous charisms of the whole Christian community: build up commu-nities of love and fellowship as did the Apostles. Such a leadership will seek to strengthen the capacity of the people of God to become true faith communities as against the dichotomy that exists today between faith and life among Christians: make these communities powerful evangelizing communities, empower the faithful and enable them to face the challenges of the present day and of the future with interior power, power from above, and not with worldly wisdom and efficiency. ".Following the way of Christ, the church in Asia has to assume the way of kenosis, of self-emptying, of the cross, of loving and self-giving service. We have to develop a kenosis ecclesiology. We have to shed attitudes of power, domination, influence. Such a church will appeal to the Asian mind . Let the call of the synod to the church of Asia be a return to the sources, to the spirit and style of the early church, where the Spirit of God reigned." Asian Mission Societies Edward Malone (Hong Kong) is the long-serving assistant secretary general of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). The bishops of south, southeast, and east Asia have belonged to FABC since 1970; they are now to be joined by the churches of central Asia. Father Edward devoted his intervention Review for Religious (no. 99) to Asian mission societies: "Although the number of [Asian] Christians remains small in comparison with Asia's bur-geoning masses (2-3 percent of all Asian peoples), this 'little flock' (Lk 12:32) seeks to share its riches and discovery of Christ with neighboring peoples . They are aware that 85 percent of all the world's non-Christians live in Asia. "Responses to the call of mission and evangelization within Asia have taken a variety of forms. Most international institutes of women and men have a home in Asia. New groups and new forms of religious life, secular institutes, and lay orga-nizations have emerged to respond to the call of world mission. Yet I wish to highlight a unique ~ and essential form of mission response. This charism is that of the missionary society of apos-tolic life. In recent decades, six such societies of men have emerged in Asia: the Missionary Society of the Philippines, the Missionary Society of Saint Thomas the Apostle (India), the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of Korea, the Missionary Society of Thailand, the Lorenzo Ruiz Mission Society (Philippines), and the Heralds of Good News (India) . These societies of men who are pledged to lifelong commitment to foreign mission bring a unique--and essential-~- contribution to the church's missionary activity. "These mission societies of apostolic life contribute a partic-ular focus to mission. Their contribution is ad genres, ad exteros, and ad vitam. They direct their efforts to evangelization ad genres, to those who have not yet heard the liberating and salvific Good News of Jesus Christ; ad exteros, to peoples outside their own coun-try, cultural milieu, and language group; and ad vitam, through a lifelong commitment to this unique form of mission witness. There are countless local churches in Asia that owe the emergence of their faith and communities to the dedicated labors of such mis~ sion societies of apostolic life founded in other parts of the world. The 'time of the heirs' has come for all local churches of Asia to respond by establishing such mission societies . A local church is not intended to live alone; it is 'not a community in isolation from other communities of the church one and catholic. Rather it seeks communion with all of them' (FABC 1). This is a unique con-tribution that mission societies of apostolic life can bring to the local churches throughout Asia. Such societies can become 'bridges 85 percent of all the world's non-Christians live in Asia. Januaty-Febt'tlat3, 1999 Prior * Apostles and Martyrs of communion' by which the sister local churches of Asia can appreciate and exchange their unique gifts. In this way the gospel is proclaimed, communion is strengthened, the 'dream of catholic-ity' emerges and is concretized . Though not limited to Asia alone, their growth will result in Asians evangelizing Asians, the emergence of authentically missionary local churches, the strength-ening of bonds of communion among the churches of Asia . " Edward Malone then pointed out developments that foster or hinder mission ad genres. First, in an ecclesiology of communion, we need bridges of exchange and communion. Missioners ad genres foster communion among sisters churches. Second, churches that do not experience this exchange (sending/receiving) can become closed ih upon themselves. They could become vulnerable to local ideologies and a closed nati'onalism. Third, if ad genres mission is not promoted, there will remai~ many unreached peoples through-out Asia. Fourth, pastoral care even keenly felt must not be allowed to derail the local-church ad gentes mission effort (this has often happened: working abroad with nationals from the same church of origin does not fulfill the ad genres vocation). Father Malone con-cluded by mentioning two current temptations: (1) the "tempta-tion of success" (to settle down with the visible results of evangelization, hesitating to turn over the parishes, schools, and institutions to the local church and diocese and move out to new frontiers) and (2) the "temptation of pastoral care" (seeking to answer all the pastoral needs of a diocese and so losing the will to reaffirm the original charism, "to g9 and make disciples"). Ours must always be the motto of the apostle Paul: "Christus me misit non baptizare, sed evangelizare" (1 Co 1:17). Edward Malone's informative and provocative contribution drew two responses from superiors general of mission societies that originated in the West. Father Franco Cagnasso, PIME superior general (intervention no. 13 3), welcomed the Asian missioners, that is, those who remain authentically Asian. Their presence is positive for the whole church. They are less institutionalized and live close to the poor. Many have a valuable interiorized approach to the mystery of Christ. People from the other continents have redis-covered their Christian faith through reaching out to Asian spiri-tuality. Father Franco ~lso welcomed the fact that Asian churches were open to receiving cross-cultural missioners from outside Asia. The more the Asian churches become self-sufficient pastorally, the more they can move out to dialogue with others. Review for Religious This contribution was followed by that of Father Raymond Rossignol, superior general of the Missions of Paris (intervention no. 134). He emphasized that each and every church should be open to send and receive cross-cultural missioners. No church should be encapsulated. History has left the Asian churches with a problem: they are perceived by majority communities as being foreign (Western). Also, in the past, Western missioners have tended to dominate local church personnel. One reaction to this is for each church to look after itself without outside "interference." However, we need to find suitable ways to ensure that cross-cultural mis-sioners can be present in all churches--not just in those who are not yet "self-sufficient." Raymond Rossignol concluded by saying: "No church is so poor that it has nothing to offer others; no church is rich enough that it cannot receive from others." Formation of Religious One of the burdens of history is that Western-style churches were planted in Asia during the colonial era. In the words of the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka, Bishop Oswald Thomas Colman Gomis (intervention no. 141), "the church has remained foreign in its public image and expression, in liturgy, art, architecture, mannerisms, and presentation of doc-trine, and above all in patterns of life, especially those of her reli-gious . Most of my brothers and sisters here, I believe, would agree with me that this image remains very much a block to evan-gelization today. This synod [should] find some formula to erase this scar inherited at birth by many churches in the countries of Asia." One place to start is formation. Bishop Arturo M. Bastes (intervention no. 25) gave a tour de force, finishing his presentation a split second before the micro-phone was cut off. A former SVD provincial, Bishop Arturo of Romblon, Philippines, spoke on formation for religious in the contemporary Asian context. His exposition focused on four important shifts taking place in the Asian churches: a shift from a Eurocentered church to an authentically Asian church, a shift in our understanding of history, a shift in the model of church, a shift in our understanding of spirituality. Each shift has its impact upon formation communities. ¯ According to Bishop Arturo, the church's mission in Asia has been approached from the perspective of a Eurocentered church, Prior ¯ Apostles andMartyrs deeply conditioned by the European colonialism of the times. Formation of religious was or still is monocultural, Western or European. While religious vocations are rapidly decreasing in Europe and the rest of the Western Hemisphere, there is an ever increasing number of religious vocations in Asia. A contextual-ized formation is suited to the mentality of Asians. There should be real insertion in social reality. Asian formators are developing practical methodologies in contrast to Western academic models. Academic study needs to be accompanied by practical method-ologies in the light of Asian realities. The second shift is in our understanding of history. The great world religions Hinduism and Buddhism, whose cradle is Asia, antedate Christianity by thousands of years. Christianity was born in Asia, but has been alienated from Asia by becoming Eurocentered. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines proposed that the synod "explore exhaustively in an open and humble way the revelatory nature" of the religions of Asia and their impact on the church's proclamation of Jesus. There is much that the church can learn from other Asian religions regarding the values of God's reign. Persons beginning religious-life formation need a great feeling of respect for other religious tra-ditions which offer "salvation" even before the coming of Christ. Christian religious should not feel "superior" to people of other traditions. Asian formandi and formandae need to remain Asian even when they join international congregations. The third shift is in church models. When the church embed-ded itself in Europe, a mindset arose that considered Europe Christian and the rest of the world pagan. Unfortunately, they seem to have identified Christianity with whatever is European. Many third-world churches are striving to shift away from a tri-umphalistic model to a church identified with the social condi-tions of the people. Without a sense of the poor, there can be no genuine following of Jesus in Asia. Hence, candidates for the reli-gious life in Asia should be trained to have both an affective and effective commitment to the poor. All religious congregations today emphasize "preferential~ option for the poor." The question is: Do we really mean it? The "passing-over to the poor" is admit-tedly one of the most difficult transitions for a religious congre-gation. The fourth shift highlighted by Bishop Nrmro ~ls in our under-standing of spirituality. Traditionally we have associated spirituality Review for Religious with an institutional way of living. We need to shift our under-standing of spirituality from institutional to incarnational. More basic to each congregational charism is being rooted in the incar-nation of Christ. There is a dynamic and essential relationship between culture and spirituality in a common humanity. The three characteristics of an incarnational spirituality are self-transcen-dence, search for meaning, and the gift of self. These are at the heart of every spirituality, whether Christian or non-Christian. Globalization of the free market is attacking Asia; the prospects of the third millennium are frightening. Religious women and men of Asia should join forces to fight, con-sumerism by living a spiritual life that is accessible to their fellow Asians, whatever their creed. Bishop Arturo concluded by suggesting that religious candidates should seriously study and reflect upon the spirituality of other Asian religions besides the teachings of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The Spirit is present in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and even primal religion. The vocation of Asian religious today is to save Asia, by the wisdom and depth of Asian spirituality with which Asians feel at home, from the onslaught of materialism coming from global market forces. Asian spirituality is not opposed to the teachings of Christ, for it is a true manifestation of God's Spirit working in all peoples. Janet Wang, president of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women of Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei, spoke of dia-logue within the church: only a church in dialogue can dialogue with cultures and other religions. She spoke of mission in the light of the church as communion. The church in Asia needs to grow in dialogue of life and heart so as to be a visible and efficacious sign of communion in the multiracial and multireligious societies in which we live. While we are challenged to intensify interreligious dialogue and dialogue with culture, we cannot ignore the need to improve our capacity to dialogue within the church at the grass-roots level--among priests who work in the same parish, as well as among priests, religious, and laypeople. One of the best forms of The great world religions Hinduism and Buddhism, whose cradle is Asia, antedate Christianity by thousands of years. Prior * Apostles and Martyrs For formation to become Asian, future l rofessors need to do their special studies in Asia rather than in Rome or elsewhere in the West. evangelization in secularized societies like ours is the witness of love and reconciliation, unity in diversity, authority as service. The Spirit is calling us to move away from the image of a cler-ical institution to the building of a participatory church where priests, religious, and laypeople have a common vision of church as communion. The church in Asia will become more alive and efficacious to the extent that the laity and religious are actively involved with their parish priests in pastoral plan-ning and decision making. Sister Janet said, "Our religious communities need to be recognized as Christ-centered basic ecclesial communities within the local church." Changes in attitude, however, do not come automatically. Persons need to be formed in a gradual, experiential way. Sister Janet concluded: "May I strongly recommend, also on behalf of the Conference of Religious Major Superiors of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, (1) that seminarians be formed to a better understanding of consecrated life in the context of the ecclesiology of communion, (2) that pri'ests, religious, and laypeo-pie be formed together towards a new way of being church. With hearts open to the action of the Spirit, we need to listen to the word of God, to pray and reflect together, to search together, and in an atmosphere of dialogue to carry out pastoral planning, pastoral care, and mission outreach together as church, the family of God in Asia." Francis Adeodatus Micallef, apostolic vicar of Kuwait (inter-vention no. 43), also spoke of the spiritual formation of religious. "Spiritual formation of candidates should not suffer as a conse-quence of formation programs . Lifestyle should reflect the deep spiritual formation which these centers are imparting." The key word here is authenticity. Bishop Peter Chun Hon-Ting of Kuching, Malaysia (inter-vention no. 62), spoke on seminary formation; his comments are germane not only to clerical religious. Bishop Peter Chun empha-sized the absolute need for a sound knowledge of the religiocul-tural situation of one's country and a critical knowledge of the ReviewforReligious economic and political conditions that affect people. Many bish-ops emphasized the link between contemplation and involvement, spirituality and politics. Bishop Peter also stressed the dignity and equality of lay and clerical, the Bible as the soul of all theology, and the integration of Asian philosophies and spiritualities into the curriculum. For formation to become Asian, future professors need to do their special studies in Asia rather than in Rome or elsewhere in the West. Not far from the question of formation is that of spiritual direction. Vicente Cajilig OP, secretary to the Office of Education and Student Chaplaincy FABC (Philippines), gave the one inter-vention on spiritual direction. He said: "Spirituality in Asia, as seen by formators, is a form of journey and accompaniment. This journey follows a certain pathway that leads to interiority. The model of all models is Christ, with whom the formandi and for-mandae are configured. The directee arrives eventually at the stature of Christ." He concluded that, above all, a "spiritual pro-gramme that prepares spiritual directors themselves is important. While formation in theology gives candidates a firm foundation in the faith, the handling of the spiritual task requires added know-how on the journey of the Spirit." Schools A continent-wide synod is not the place to look at individual apostolates in any meaningful detail. Where the churches in Asia are small, even insignificant minorities, elite schools have been an important apostolate. As independent governments and majority communities have developed their own, even better, school systems (see intervention no. 125 by Bishop Leo Laba Ladjar of Jayapura, Indonesia), this traditional apostolate is being increasingly ques-tioned. The preferential love for the poor also raises fundamental questions. Alwis Sunanda FMS (Sri Lanka) put it like this: "An educational system, especially at the tertiary level, committed to the service of the values of Jesus and right relationships, orients its curriculum and research towards greater understanding of the social forces at work in exploitative societies such as exist in parts of Asia. It shines light on exploitative and liberative forces in those societies and tries to motivate students and teachers to choose a set of values different from the existing capitalistic, consumerist, wasteful, gender- and ethnically biased values. Its library and social January-February 1999 Prior ¯ Apostles and Martyrs communications would be a help to the poor and the needy, those who are marginalized, and exploited women and men." Brother Alwis, however, went on to suggest that "the social system in the context of Asia tends to ensure that Christian schools serve the interests of more affluent groups in society. How valid, in practice, is the argument that we can influence the future shape of our soci-ety by training the children of the elite in our schools? Are we not, instead, put in a position of maintaining the existing social order, to the extent that our own values and lifestyle are adjusted to continue a system of education that bolsters, if not aggravates, the inequalities? Often a glaring incongruence exists between the gospel we teach and the work we do, between our expressed mes-sage and the lives we live. We ourselves, though, might not notice this by reason of our great dedication to the cause we serve." Brother Alwis concludes, "Today we may have a better chance of being faithful to the call of the gospel by working in programs that foster nonformal education, adult education, values educa-tion, and education through peoples' movements rather than through traditional educational systems." This is just one thoughtful contribution among the many that were made about various apostolates. What is clear is that, fifty years after most Asian countries became independent, religious orders are having to look again at many of their traditional apos-tolates, successful as they superficially look. The Propositions The synod is over and the bishops are back at their posts. Some time in 1999 an apostolic exhortation will be published, based upon the 59 propositions drawn up during the final days of the synod. Two of these propositions, numbers 27 and 28, deal respectively with "consecrated life" and "mission societies of apos-tolic life and other mission societies." I did not receive a copy of the propositions, and the synodal members handed theirs back to the secretariat. From what I heard in the synodal hall, and the notes I made, I can make the following brief cominents. In Proposition 27, religious are looked upon as a reminder of the universal call to holiness who inspire a self-giving love towards everyone, especially the least of their brothers and sisters. The synod calls upon religious to undertake a renewal and revitaliza-tion of their commitment to proclaim the saving message of Jesus Review fo," Religious Christ. Formation should be Christ-centered and contextualized, faithful to the group's charisms, with emphasis upon life witness. Spirituality and lifestyle should be sensitive to the religious her-itage of the people they live with and serve. Proposition 28 acknowledges the continuing contribution made by mission institutes of apostolic life. The recent founding of mission institutes of apostolic life in Asia itself is an expression of the missionary dimension of the churches of Asia. The synod encourages the further establishment of mission societies charac-terized by their commitment to mission ad genres, ad exteros, and ad vitam. Encouraging Words Each and every woman and man dedicated to the consecrated life in Asia has received renewed encouragement from the 1998 synod to .continue the daily witness of risking oneself for Christ's sake. We have been challenged, some thirty-six years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council, to take up the language of the threefold dialogue with religions, cultures, and the marginal-ized and to flesh it out in lives of radical witness to the incarnate Word and graceful Spirit. This threefold dialogue is one integral movement of evangelization, the evangelization of the whole of life in all its myriad dimensions. As apostles of the crucified and risen Lord, we promote life in multicultural, multifaith Asia. As martyrs to the truth-giving Spirit, we endeavor to live ascetically with the marginalized. There is no reason for holding back: we have the dream, we know the strategies. We have the documents, we have the official encouragement~ The only real barrier is the narrowness of our minds and the smallness of our hearts. "Have courage, I have conquered the world!" On 16:33). "For God is greater than our hearts" (1 Jn 3:20). Janualy-Februa~y 1999 PAUL BERNADICOU Catholic Guides in Dialogue with Buddhist Practice Ion the latter 1960s Thomas Merton, prophetic here as in many ther areas with fresh religious insight, declared that, "far from being suspicious of the Oriental mystical traditions, Catholic contemplatives since the Second Vatican Council should be in a position to appreciate the wealth of experience that has accumu-lated in those traditions." His 1967 book Mystics and Zen Masters included an earlier essay expressing admiration for the 16th-cen-turyJesuit missionary effort in China, seeing that effort as a pro-logue to contemporary religious understanding. Merton was joined by a bevy of other Catholic scholars eager now to enter into dialogue rather than to proselytize in their mis-sionary outreach. In the words of the council's Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Catholics were now asking themselves how these Asian and other ways try to pierce "that ultimate and unutterable mystery which engulfs our being, and whence we take our rise, and whither our journey leads us." The council docu-ment not only gave permission to respect the teachings of these other ways, but also invited Catholic scholars to "acknowledge, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among them, as well as the values in their society and culture" (§§1, 2). Just before his tragic death in Bangkok at an East/West monas-tic conference, Merton wrote about his deeply moving sight of the Buddha sculptures at Polonnaruwa (Asian Journal, New Paul Bernadicou SJ chairs the University of San Francisco's theology department and is tertian instructor for the California province of the Society of Jesus. His address is 2130 Fulton Street; San Francisco, California 94117. Review for Religious Directions, 1993, pp. 233-236): "I mean, I know and have seen what I. was obscurely looking for. I do not know what else remains, but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and got beyond the shadow and the disguise." He wrote beautifully about these huge, silent figures "questioning nothing, knowing every-thing" with their great yet serene smiles. Another Catholic monastic voice from that period was Aelred Graham's, who in Conversations: Christian and Buddhist Encounters in Japan (Harcourt, Brace, 1968, p. xiv) recounts how he sought to pass from the area of academic study to that of firsthand experi-ence of Buddhism. In his sixtieth year, after long experience as a Benedictine, he had the opportunity to speak with some for whom the Buddha was a role model no less than Jesus was for him. He describes the value of such religious encounter as "not at the peripheral level of Christian ecclesiology, which still preoccupies so many Catholic theologians, but at the basically existential level of who we are and what human life is all about." Jesuit Guides The Jesuit missionary H.M. Enomiya Lassalle, already in Japan before World War II, eventually inculturated his Christian Zen meditational practice into a Zen-style Jesuit retreat center in the countryside at a remove from bustling Tokyo. He published his personal findings regarding the helpfulness of Zen for an enhance-ment of Christian meditation. In Zen Meditation for Christians (German original, 1968; Open Court Publishers, 1974, pp. 151- ¯ 152), he illustrates this conviction with the parable of the prodi-gal son. In the typical way of Christian meditation at the time, you would reflectively think about the youth's family circum-stances, then the effrontery of his demand for his inheritance, then his degradation after wasteful spending, and finally his remorse and return to his father's house. A deeper form of medi-tation would not simply use~ the prodigal son as a symbol, but identify with him as an image of oneself. The person meditating would thus become the prodigal son. It is myself who reveled in our father's house only to estrange myself and now hanker to return in repentance and humility. "When we perform medita-tion in this manner and begin anew each time we practice, our heart is then purified and transformed directly and immediately through meditation--rather than indirectly through intellectual Janua~y-Februa~Ty 1999 Bernadicou ¯ Catholic Guides in Dialogue In Zen the method of purification involves working on koans, but in Christianity the emphasis is on meditation and the importance of Scripture. considerations of the will." This type of meditation is similar to Zen, wherein the Zen practitioner becomes one with a koan (that is, a Zen paradox designed to break through discursive con-sciousness to intuitive insight). ~ Heinrich Dumoulin, a Jesuit colleague of Lassalle at Sophia University in Tokyo, edited in the 1970s a series titled Religious Encounter: East and West which was "intended to promote an understanding of the living unity, diversity, and meeting-ground of reli-gious phenomena, Asian and Occidental." Dumoulin's own first contribution to the series, Christianity Meets Buddhism (Open Court, 1974, p. 198), emphasized that interreli-gious dialogue can contribute uniquely toward opening up a new horizon. Both Christianity and Buddhism involve a search for ulti-mate reality, and a dialogue between the two is "perhaps one of mankind's greatest hopes." A Jesuit of Japanese origin also at Sophia University, Joseph Kadowaki, whose youthful background had been Zen Buddhism and who was later baptized a Christian, came to recognize similarities between Zen monastic training and his own Jesuit novitiate training. In Zen the method of purification involves working on koans, but in Christianity the emphasis is on meditation and the imlSortance of Scripture. After he began to practice Zen, Kadowaki found that he could read the Bible in a new light. His book Zen and the Bible (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) describes the method used in solving a Zen koan and shows how to appreciate the many para-doxical or obscure koan-like passages in the Bible. William Johnston, the fourth member of this quartet of Jesuit scholars of Zen at Sophia University, recently published his mag-num opus, Mystical Theology (HarperCollins, 1995, reprinted by Orbis, 1998). He has for more than twenty-five years been in the vanguard of the Christian and Zen Buddhist dialogue. He pub-lished Christian Zen: A Way of Meditation in 1971 (Harper and Row; 2nd edition, 1980); it provides explicit guidelines for a way of Christian meditation that incorporates Zen insight. Wordless Review for Religiot,s meditation, a modified lotus position, rhythmical breathing, and the use of koan are explored as Zen practices which can heighten Christian meditation. This interest in meditation led to his scientific investigation into its effects: Silent Music: The Science of Meditation (1974; reprinted, Fordham University Press, 1997). Johnston surveys what scientific research has uncovered about altered states of con-sciousness, brainwaves, and biofeedback. He investigates both Eastern and Western meditation by which one enters deeper lev-els of consciousness. The discovery of such meditation's "passive energy" and of other physiological and psychological benefits show its power to heal and comfort the distressed. And Johnston points out how the "nonattachment" and "knowledge of empa-thy" required in meditation can help people find genuine friend-ships and intimacy in their relationships. Thus he has added insights from modern science into the dialogue between Eastern and Western religious traditions. His Mystical Theology (1995) updates this message for many contemporary laypeople practicing meditation and finding them-selves drawn into mystical states of consciousness. John of the Cross wrote such a theology for the 16th century, and Johnston attempts it for our own century through his ongoing dialogue with modern science and with Buddhism. "Traditional mystical theology was written for monks and nuns . This is the age of the laity. Now married people who live a busy life in factory or classroom or office or laboratory aspire to a life of meditation and mysticism" (p. I0). They look for spiritual guidance as they grap-ple with problems of sexuality, social justice, world peace, and protection of the environment. Trappist Guides Also at the forefront of contemporary Catholic encounter with Asian practice are the adept Trappist advocates of centering prayer Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, who have taken up where fellow Trappist Thomas Merton left off. In his 1977 Daily We Touch Him (Doubleday Image, 1979) and 1980 Centering Prayer (Doubleday Image, 1982), Pennington explored how to adapt the principles of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Zen to Christian meditation. Daily V~e Touch Him is a simple but helpful guide to finding God's presence in one's own daily experience: "God is pre- January-February 1999 Bernadicou * Catholic Guides in Dialogue sent to us from the very first instant that he calls us into being-- and thenceforth forever he touches us at every point and level of our being. He is present to us. But are we present to him?" (pp. 14- 15). With Centering Prayer the focus is on returning to the roots of early Christian prayer, especially in the Eastern church and the patristic traditions. Centering prayer combines the best features of this Eastern Christian practice in a blend of East and West that inspires personal Christian prayer today. Thomas Keating likewise explores the Eastern Christian roots of his contemplative heritage in Open Mind, Open Heart (Continuum, 1994). The book moves beyond discursive meditation and acts of devotion to the intuiti'~e level of contemplation. Keating surveys the history of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, and follows with step-by-step direction in the method of centering prayer. He manifests how such an approach opens one's mind and heart to the contemplative dimension of the gospel. His recent Intimacy with God (Crossroad, 1996) builds on his earlier volumes by summarizing material from talks he has given in more recent years to people ranging from advanced prac-titioners of centering prayer to persons just starting out. He con-tinues to provide a Christian alternative to the appeal of Asian practices. His conviction is that our journey into intimacy with God leads us "powerfully outward, toward the bonding that we call the Communion of Saints: the capacity to relate to one another with the unconditional love with which Christ relates to us" (p. 160)~ Keating's prayer instruction parallels the apophatic style of much Buddhist meditation. Christian Theology and Buddhism An outstanding Catholic interlocutor with the Buddhist tra-dition on a more speculative and theological level is the Jesuit Aloysius Pieris, who was the first non-Buddhist to receive the doc-torate in Buddhist studies in his native Sri Lanka. His Love Meets Wisdom: A Christian Experience of Buddhism (Orbis, 1988) consists of a series of essays which explore the social as well as the spiritual side of Buddhism, its political and its religious visions, and issues important to the ongoing Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Pieris thinks that Christians can learn from Buddhism, integrating their own prophetic teaching .of love with the Buddhist mystical appre-ciation of wisdom. If heart-to-heart dialogue is genuinely pur- Review for Religious sued, agapeic Christianity and gnostic Buddhism will be mutually complemented and enriched in an integration of compassionate wisdom that could transform the plight of the oppressed poor and of our threatened environment. Pieris's more recent Fire and VVater: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity (Orbis, 1996) further expands on these liberation themes. Current Contributions Such informed exchange between Catholic and Buddhist monastics continues to proliferate in current publications. Three particularly impressed me when I recently surveyed the literature. 1. The Ground We Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian (Shambala, 1996) is a conversation between Zen roshi Robert Aitken and Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast, edited by Nelson Foster. Their dialogue begins with everyday practice rather than with philosophical and theological concepts. The result of their intense and lively conversations was to uncover the com-mon ground of meditational experience that gives hope for fruitful exchanges between Christianity and Buddhism into the future. 2. In The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Abbot (Continuum, 1996), David G. Hackett corresponds with sev-eral Trappist monks of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, dur-ing the 1970s, particularly Abbot Thomas Keating. Mter Hackett's conversion to Catholicism, he set out on a two-year stay in Japan, where he experimented with how Zen practice could deepen his Christian prayer and spirituality. Abbot Keating proved himself a knowledgeable and astute guide in his comprehension and inte-gration of Eastern ways to Christian prayer, as we might have sus-pected from his own writings. 3. The Gethsernani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics (Continuum, 1997) captures the voices of some twenty-five Buddhist and twenty-five Christian monks and nuns in a discussion of their contemplative traditions Christians can learn from Buddhism, integrating their own prophetic teaching of love with the Buddhist mystical appreciation of wisdom. Januaty-Febtwa~y 1999 Bernadicou ¯ Catholic Guides in Dialogue at an historic meeting hosted by the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. The Dalai Lama, who first suggested the conference, also recommended that it be held at Gethsemani in memory of Thomas Merton, whom he had met just before Merton's untimely death while attending a similar Buddhist and Christian monastic exchange at Bangkok. Though scholars in the field of spirituality were present, the focus of the convocation was more expressly on the everyday practice of meditation and prayer in the two tradi-tions. What steps help to progress in meditative enlightenment? What does each tradition have to contribute to our profound human yearning for an encounter with ultimate reality? What can we say and how must we respond to the compassionate wisdom with which this encounter enlightens the seeker? Prescience and Continuing Hope Just before his tragic demise in 1968, Thomas Merton stated in the Temple of Understanding meeting in Calcutta: "I think we have reached a stage of [long-overdue] religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian. commitment and yet to learn in depth from, say, a Buddhist or Hindu discipline and experience." Few realized at the time how prescient this provocative comment would sound nearly thirty years later at the 1996 Gethsemani gathering. Review for Religious BARBARA VALUCKAS Lithuanian and American Sisters: A Lively Inter°active Dance Lithuania, the geographical and cultural gateway to east-ern and central Europe, was the first Soviet republic to declare independence from the Soviet Union just as the last decade of this century began. Almost immediately, American sisters of Lithuanian birth or descent, and American sisters from other ethnic backgrounds as well, went to Lithuania to knit bonds of friendship with women who had been cut off from the, world of women religious during five decades of military occupation and brutal repression of the Catholic Church. Going in response to requests from the Lithuanian congregations,. they were sponsored by the Office to Aid Eastern and Central Europe, of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), by the Hilton Fund for Sisters; and by many other organizations including their own congregations. The sisters gave canonical consultation on the adap-tation of constitutions, assisted in the formation of the Lithuanian Conference of Mfijor Superiors, gave pro-grams of theological updating and ongoing formation, and conducted retreats and days of recollection for sis-ters who could barely remember what these were. In Barbara Valuckas SSND wrote "Lithuania: A Return to My Ancestral Home" for our May-June 1995 issue. Her address is Pilgrim Ministries, Inc.; 9 Academy Hill; Watertown, Connecticut 06795. Januao,-l~¥btvtary 1999 Valuckas ¯ Lithuanian and American Sisters the early days of this lively dance, the Lithuanian sisters encour-aged their American counterparts to take the lead although their United States partners learned innumerable steps from them. By 1997 the dance was well along, but the partners were begin-ning to shift places. In January 1997, while I was in Lithuania conducting a program evaluation, the president of the Conference of Major Superiors described plans for the first Congress of Lithuanian Sisters, to be held the following August. When I asked her about the main purpose of the congress, she' replied in two simple but profound words, "We exist!" To be able to affirm this after experiencing decades of efforts to exterminate religion and religious persons from Lithuania was a touching testimony to the deep faith and high courage of the Lithuanian sisters. Some months later, those of us who had worked with the sis-ters in Lithuania received invitations to attend the congress as guests. The invitations were addressed to "you, who have walked with us from the beginning." Our joyful response to this invitation brought us to Kaunas, the old capital of Lithuania, to be enthusi-astic onlookers as the Lithuanian sisters celebrated their own dance of survival and hope for the future. The theme of the congress was "the past, the present, and the future." The president of the Conference of Major Superiors, who had herself experienced years of surveillance by the KGB, recounted the sisters' sufferings during the years of occupation. One of her most startling revelations, however, was this: At the beginning of the occupation, there were seven congregations in Lithuania; at the end of the five decades of attempted annihilation, there were twenty-four! Some of this multiplication was due to the success-ful efforts of KGB infiltrators to fragment the existing congrega-tions, but much of it was due to the clandestine formation of new congregations. God provided for the future of the church through the courage of women who received their entire formation in secret. The several hundred sisters who attended the congress included older sisters who had entered established congregations before the occupation, sisters who had entered existing or new congregations secretly during the occupation, and sisters who had entered the various congregations since independence. These three groupings have had very different experiences of religious life, and yet they face together the challenge of bringing religious life in Lithuania into the future. Review for Religions This will mean facing and moving through the problems of the present. The speakers at the congress were very honest in naming these problems. They are not very different from the ones facing women religious in the West, although the historical context and hence the resolutions may be somewhat different. Some of the main issues identified by speakers at the congress were public wit-ness, community life, and just compensation. Public Witness As in the West, the sisters in Lithuania are grappling with the question of what it means to give public witness. At this point, much of this issue is being discussed in terms of the religious habit. Almost all of the sisters attending the congress wore habits even though they had not ordinarily done so. That is, as an American sis-ter of Lithuanian origin pointed out to us, most of the congregations had never worn habits because they had been formed during the occupation, when habits were forbidden. When Pope John Paul II visited Lithuania in 1993, however, the sisters were asked to come to their meeting with him in the cathedral wearing habits. So the sisters created habits on the spot and appeared before the Holy Father wearing them. They wore them again for the congress. The bishops who were present at the congress and some of the sister speakers expressed the wish that the sisters wear their religious dress at all times. It is worth noting that, unlike the sisters in the West, the women religious in occupied Lithuania were forced to give up their habits and their ministries overnight. Their change to sec-ular dress had not come about from reflection on the Vatican II documents and on the relationship of religious life to culture. By forcing the religious to put their habits away, the occupiers made the church virtually invisible overnight. Now the church hopes to regain its visibility, and wearing the habit or not is a central question. It will have to be resolved from within the lived experi-ence of the Lithuanian sisters, although they have been very inter- As in the West, the sisters in Lithuania are grappling with the question of what it means to give public witness. January-February 1999 Valuckas ¯ Lithuanian and American Sisters ested in learning from the sisters of the West how the habit issue wasrdealt with and resolved. Community Life o Along with their habits, the various congregations lost their buildings, their communal spaces, overnight. Many religious women were forced out onto the streets and lived there or in fields or barns until they were able to find work and lodging. All through the years of occupation, they lived in little flats with one Or two other sisters or with relatives and friends, wherever they could find a place. Now, although somd of the congregations have begun to get their property back from the government, many are still without a common space. Some of the sisters are afraid to form communities again because they have forgotten how to live com-munity life. Others are eager to try it, but feel the need for help in the skills of building community together. The middle group of sisters--those whose formation was clan-destine-- is numerically the smallest; this leaves the elderly sisters and the newest members trying to negotiate a common life :across the barriers of age and extremely different life experiences, Some of the speakers at the congress referred to these cross-genera-tional tensions and pleaded for patience and more effort to deal with them in the process of building community. A special difficulty faces the sisters who have not received' their property back or who never had common property to begin with. The elderly sisters in these congregations live in tiny flats scattered around the cities and villages. They are often dependent on the younger members for both financial support and physi-cal care. It is not uncommon for young sisters to finish a day's work only to begin visiting the individual elderly sisters, bathing them, shopping for them, and providing for other needs of theirs. These younger members are also expected to contribute their services to the growing ministries of a church that has emerged from the underground and seeks to make its voice heard ~in the culture once again. While these conditions are not directly com-parable to conditions in the West, assuring that younger mem-bers have time and space for their own formation and are not unduly burdened with maintenance issues is a Western concern as well. This situation is related to another issue narried by the Lithuanian sisters. ~ Review for Religious. Just Compensation Now that the church is free to operate in the open, the sisters are expected to give time and energy to parish ministries, catech-esis, and so forth. This is usually in addition to their full-time work in the secular economy, which provides the sustenance they and the elderly members in their care need. Speakers at the congress acknowledged the heavy burden placed on the sisters because, to date, their work for the church has gone largely uncompensated. Some speakers indicated that questions have been raised among church officials about why sisters need salaries or pensions. All of this would be very familiar to sisters from the West. Common Questions, Other Questions, Other Steps Given the similarity of the issues facing women religious in both East and West in spite of their cultural and historical differ-ences, one would assume that the dance that began at the begin-ning of this decade could go on for a long time, growing more unified as it moved into: the future. This, however, may not be the case because other dancers have moved into the space in an effort to change the dance into another kind of movement. Some of this change of step has come into Lithuania in the form of newspapers and magazines that portray women religious and reli-gious life in the West as quite degenerate. Some has come in the form of living persons. In informal conversations at the congress, some of the Lithuanian sisters spoke of making a retreat during the summer at which the retreat master gave considerable time to frightening descriptions of religious life in the West. The Lithuanian sisters heard, for example, that sisters in the West had no prayer life and that they had boyfriends. These insinuations had the effect of sowing doubt and suspicion even in sisters who had had very pos-itive experiences of the American sisters who had worked with them directly. Some of the bishops and sister speakers at the congress were quick to warn the Lithuanian sisters about negative influences from the West, especially about feminism and about failure to adhere to the teachings of the church. That some of these warnings came from the very leaders who had invited the American sisters to attend the congress may be a sign of the confusion and ambivalence toward the West that is Janua~y-Febtvlary 1999 Valuckas ¯ Lithuanian and American Sisters In every multicultural dance, there are tensions and always the danger of stepping on one another's cherished values. becoming more prevalent, not only in Lithuania, but in other countries of eastern and central Europe as well. One sister speaker exhorted the Lithuanian sisters to cling to the values of their own religious heritage and not to "turn jewels into stones." Although the majority of the grass-roots Lithuanian sisters begged'us to return to continue sharing experiences with them, seeds of doubt and uncertainty had been sown in their hearts by their own lead-ership. Since the years of occupation and Soviet-style education conditioned most Lithuanians not to trust anyone, these seeds may be falling on soil that is still receptive to doubt and mistrust. An example of this occurred during and after the congress. Speakers represent-ing both the bishops' confer-ence and the superiors' conference stressed the serious need for Lithuanian sisters to be trained in the skills of spir-itual guidance and spiritual formation of others. In fact, the sisters who had attended our workshops in earlier years had, in their evaluations, requested training in these skills. Yet our offer to pro-vide this very kind of assistance with highly trained sisters from the United States was met sometimes with polite silence and some-times with suspicious questions. In such circumstances, it is only natural to wonder about the future direction of the dance. In every multicultural dance, there are tensions and always the danger of stepping on one another's cherished values. It is clear that the Lithuanian sisters need to find their own way, a way that is true to who they are. They need to be able to say "We exist!" not just about their survival through a difficult past, but also about the present and the future. Part of that existence, however, is going to be in an increasingly interde-pendent world. If the "We exist!" is for the future, it may mean enlarging the phrase to "We exist together!" The fact that the Lithuanian con-gregations were able to move from relying on their own congre-gations to creating an intercongregational formation committee is a sign that, given time and trust, they have the inner resources to Review for Religious move to a larger "we." The initiation of this intercongregational committee had, in fact, been inspired by the intercongregational nature of the teams of American sisters who had come to work with them. The Lithuanian sisters quickly saw that a larger "we" was not only possible but very rich in its possibilities for a happy sharing of many various gifts. We sisters from the West, on the other hand, need to keep remembering that our "we" is not the only "we" in the world. We need to be willing to look at the fears and suspicions about us. To the extent that they are justified, we need to allow ourselves to be called to conversion of heart and life. To the extent that they are not, we need to live with integrity and truth and to search patiently and mutually for new dance steps. Perhaps it is in our conversion of heart together that the Spirit will lead us all in a new dance of interdependence. Dispossessed Who believing would not hope? the child asked herself, dismantling in one stroke a holy triad. But stay, time-taught. It always does. Faith came easy. She was born believing unseen worlds. ¯ And lo~? Without it, there'd be chaos. As for hope? That limpid bird fled, sickened with the weight of errant expectation-- until finally the woman lay down and cried and cried and cried and cried-- while faith and love held hands and waited. Maryanne Casey Hannan .Tanaa~y-Febtvtao, 1999 ANN WHITE Serpents and Doves:, The Company of St. Ursula I n Quebec City, high above the St. Lawrence River, some eligious women live behind a cedar fence in a convent, sup-posedly set apart from the world. Yet the world of New France, as it existed nearly four hundred years ago, comes to them every single day in the persons of innumerable Amerindians. Who could possibly tell where these women's religious life leaves off and worldly life begins? We divide life into the sacred and the secular, and have done so since the 16th century, when Reformers who thought and prayed under dull northern skies became 'disengaged from the ideas of Renaissance painters and explorers and princes of Europe's sunlit south. Ever since, we have distinguished the worldly--rev-elers and artists and livers of free lifestyles--from religious peo-ple who go to church, pray, do good works. This division blurs the truth about people in both categories, sacrecl and secular. Consider the Company of St. Ursula, a boldly daring 16th-century Roman Catholic women's community. In the Ursulines' lives, religion and worldly adventure mixed inseparably. But Ursulines do not appear in secular books that tell adventure sto-ries. Ursulines show up in books about religion, written in sober words that mask the daring quality of their thoughts and acts. The Ursulines first caught my attention in Quebec City, where their convent has stood in the Rue Donnacona since the 17th century. As I gazed at the convent's faqade, I wondered why Ann White has a Ph.D. in history and teaches at the Edmund Burke School in Washington. Her address is 5130 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., apt. 203; Washington, D.C. 20008. Review for Religious any woman would give up cultivated, comfortable French life for the frigid wilderness of Quebec. My guidebook said the nuns came to found a girls' school. Everyone knows the name of Samuel de Champlain, the explorer who established the first French settle-ment at Quebec City, but how many know the name of the woman who started the first girls' school in the Nev~ World? She was Marie Guyart, member of the Order of St. Ursula, who arrived in Canada from Tours, France, in 1639. Her name fails to appear in books about explorers' and pioneers' adventures because those are "secular" stories. Yet Marie Guyart was a pioneer. Starting a girls' school anywhere in the 17th century was a pioneering act, and starting a school in the New World for girls of warring Amerindian tribes required a large dollop of pioneering bravery. Not only Marie Guyart's physical bravery impressed me, but also her idea of adventuring in unknown spaces. She had never traveled outside the Touraine region of France, yet as she sat in her convent she pictured herself in what she called the "vastitudes" of New France. "My body was in our monastery, but my spirit was tied to that of Jesus and could not be enclosed," she said. What did she know about Canadian vastitudes? Practically noth-ing. She had never heard the word "Canada" until four years before she departed for its frosty landscape. But being enclosed within four walls of a convent in Tours did not prevent her from imagining herself founding "a -house for Jesus and Mary" in an unknown land across a vast ocean. Marie Guyart acquired her expansive, daring cast of mind from her Ursuline company, who inherited it from their founder, Angela Merici. As much a child of the Italian Renaissance as Christopher Columbus, Angela Merici founded the Ursulines just forty-three years after Columbus's first voyage. Columbus, says one of his biographers, combined Christian faith with an impulse toward expansion. We ignore the faith, concentrate on the expan-sion, and place him in our secular category. Angela Merici pos-sessed the same Renaissance combination of faith and expansiveness as Columbus, but we ignore her expansiveness, con-centrate on her faith, and pop her into our religious pigeonhole. Angela Merici did not found the Ursulines until she was in her sixties. A farmer's daughter from northern Italy, she spent years working with a group of lay Christians to relieve misery brought to Brescia, a city near her birthplace, by the French inva-sion of Italy. She helped to organize orphanages and refuges for January-February 1999 White ¯ Serpents and Doves prostitutes, and she worked in a hospital for incurables, the only hospital that would accept Brescia's increasing numbers of syphil-itics. By the time Angela Merici traveled to the Holy Land around age fifty, her skills at helping the sick and the poor were well known--so well known that, when she stopped in Venice on her way home from Palestine, the city fathers asked her to remain there and organize charitfible works in their city. She said no. Furthermore, she left Venice immediately, so that they could not ask the archbishop to command her to stay. Soon afterwards she went to Rome, where once, again there came a request to borrow her skills. This time the pope himself, Clement vii, who asked her to remain and organize charitable works in his city. Surely this was an offer that Angela Merici could not refuse. Any "religious" woman would say yes to the pope, would she not? Angela Merici said no. Her Renaissance mind fit no pigeon-hole. She went back to Brescia to formulate a vision as expansive in its own way as Columbus's vision. Her company of women, named after a 3rd-century patron of young scholars, would be the first Christian company dedicated to instructing young girls. They would also tend the sick. These female teacher-work(rs would live in the world. No medieval convent walls would constrain them; they would freely walk the streets of north Italian cities from Milan to Venice. This Ursuline plan ignored religious/secular categorizing. Though Angela Merici never met her contemporary Martin Luther, her mind grasped the same idea that his mind grasped, a very old Christian idea, that the church's lay people--worldly, sec~ ular people--hear God's call as clearly as the clergy, the church's religious people. Angela Merici created an institution that blended the religious and the worldly. A young woman joining the Company of St. Ursula would pledge herself to virginity, but she would not live in a convent and she would not wear a habit. She would live at home with her family as she taught girls and tended the sick. Before Angela Merici's time, young women faced a stark, secular-versus-sacred choice: they could marry or they could enter a convent. Angela Merici's Ursuline plan gave them another option: pursuing useful work in the world while maintaining a religious identity. Habits of religious pigeonholing make us see Angela Merici, with her piety and good works, as blandly "religious," while we ignore her extraordinary worldly shrewdness. Not only did she Review f!~r Religious have enough sense of her own purpose to spurn a pope's offer, not only did she single-handedly offer devout European young women a new vocational opportunity, but she also obtained a papal decree permitting members of her company to hold a dowry from their families just as securely as if they were marrying or entering a convent. Moreover, her Testament for the Ursulines' four-woman board of directors shows she understood that her young women would face changing circumstances in the future: "If, according to times and needs, new rules should be made, or any change introduced, do it prudently and with good advice." It was with such worldly sagacity that Angela Merici deployed her Christian faith in 16th-century Italy. She shows us what Jesus meant when he told his disciples they needed to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Angela Merici's "religious" accom-plishment is incomprehensible without an understanding of her "secular" insight. ~ As her Ursulines spread throughout northern Italy and into France over the next half century, people with a pigeonholing men-tality-- churchmen, parents of Ursulines, and Ursulines them-selves-- changed the company's organization into something more recognizably religious. When Marie Guyart became an Ursuline in 1631, less than a hundred years after the first Ursulines signed their names in a book in Brescia, she entered a convent and, she donned a habit. The Company of St. Ursula, contrary to Angela Merici's vision, by Marie Guyart's time had become a religious order like other religious orders. Yet even in a convent Marie Guyart shared Angela Merici's expansive Renaissance spirit as she thought about the danger of dying from hunger and cold or at the hands of Canadian savages. These considerations, she said, made "no change at all in the dis-position of my spirit." "Secular" explorers like Champlain were plainly not the only people in 17th-century France who dreamed great, daring dreams. In New France (whose soil she kissed upon her arrival), Marie Guyart continued to live according to the rule of enclosure. She Angela Merici's Ursuline plan gave another option: pursuing useful work in the world while maintaining a religious identity. Januaty-Febt'uaty 1999 lq/'Isite ¯ Serpents and Doves This mixing of sacred and secular in the Canadian convent yard was part of Marie Guyart's theology. and her fellow Ursulines lived in convent buildings set within a large yard on the promontory overlooking the St. Lawrence River. They stayed within the yard's cedar fence, obeying their religious rule about not going out into the "world." But this enclosure was very different from the Tours convent for Marie Guyart: In New France the woodland world came to her: Algonquins, Montagnais, and Hurons; Abenakis, Nipissings, and Attikamegues; Iroquois girls sent by their mothers to learn the elements of the Christian faith. Twenty to fifty young girls lived in a boarding school that the Ursulines established within their convent walls. Amerindian men also visited the convent, for a meal or for instruction or simply to find out what went on there. Marie Guyart wrote, "I see generous and brave captains on their knees at my feet, begging me to have them pray to God before they eat." Moreover, this mixing of sacred and sec-ular in the Canadian convent yard was part of Marie Guyart's theology. She not only wel-comed inhabitants of Canada's woodland world to her convent, but also saw her savage Christian converts as every bit as religious as those labeled religious, the Ursulines and Jesuits in New France. "A savage confesses just as well as a reli-gious," she said. The Jesuits emphasized how hard it was for Amerindian Christians to behave the way they thought Christians should behave; Marie Guyart saw in them the full capacity for Christianity. The converts' devotion, she said, reminded her of the Christians of the early church. So what do these moments of Ursuline history--the lives of Angela Mericiand Marie Guyart--show us? That enclosure in a convent is bad? That the Ursulines-were more progressive than ,other Catholic groups because at first they spurned convent life? By no means. Ursuline history shows us Christian life without religious/secular categories: Angela Merici taking advantage of Renaissance Italy's expansive spirit to create an effective vehicle .for faith; Marie Guyart joining Christ among the Amerindians while living in a convent. Jesus did not say, be a serpent or a dove, choose between the secular and the sacred. He said, achieve worldly wisdom and reli- Review for Religious gious innocence, both at the same time. The famous figures who lived five hundred years ago, at the birth of the modern age, do not fit our narrow classification scheme of religious versus secular. Emperor Charles v was as much a man of faith as he was an effi-cient 16th-century ruler. Martin Luther was as much poet as priest--so much the poet that, in the judgment of one Reformation historian, if he had lived in another age he would have produced an epic rather than a new church. Michelangelo's art fused his awe of human beauty with his awe of the greatness of God. Nonetheless, we are in the habit of relentlessly classifying these people--the "religious" writer, the "secular" politician, the "sec-ular" artist--missing the breadth of their persons and the com-plexity of their accomplishments. Not so rigidly fixed in our minds as these famous figures, Angela Merici and Marie Guyart will fly right out of their religious pigeonhole if we let them. The two Ursulines were wise enough to take advantage of Renaissance Europe's expansive spirit, faith-ful enough to take big risks for Christ. Their lives overmatch our narrow categories of secular and sacred. Each was worldly and religious, both serpent and dove at the very same time. "But you, who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15) Not in wisdoms Echoed from borrowed minds, Nor in quick phrases Caught and snatched and etched On today's tongues, Not even in the warm whispers Patterned on a mother's speech, A teacher's truth, A prophet's cry. Who do you say that I am When only you are left to form the words? When only I am left to listen? Suzanne Mayer IHM JanuaL'F-FebruaO, 1999 XAVIER PLISSART The Art of Discernment: The Aesthetic Dimension In this paper I discuss what I call the aesthetic dimen-sion of the art of discernment. I want to show that dis-cernment is an attempt to enter into the original divine creative dynamism for the whole of creation. This attempt is itself a creative activity aimed at realizing creation's original harmony. Since the whole of creation shares the same source and is directed towards the same goal, discernment should ideally be a striving towards communality. Consequently, a basic and essential qual-ity of discernment is that it should strive to be as com-mon as possible in its insight and process, and as universal as possible in its aim toward action. Theological Foundation Creation The initial insight for spiritual discernment is that God is active in our world, that creation is dynamic. The original goodness that God imparted to creation is more a life than a state: divine life continues to be breathed into the whole of creation. Essentially, discernment is a matter of seeing more accurately where and how this Xavier Plissart M_Mr has done formation work and taught in various African countries. He is currently attached to the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation Africaine. His address is: Bukavu, R~p. D~m. du Congo; B.P. 333, Cyangugu; Rwanda (Africa). Review for Religious divine "inspiration" is operative. The effort to see this depends upon our having the faith conviction that God's creativity in our regard is a genuine invitation to participate in divine life, an invi-tation that recognizes the full validity of creation's "otherness." The faith insight above applies to the totality of creation. Everything created proclaims in some way the fullness of divine life. But the proclamation acquires a special significance when we turn to. humans beings, for it depends upon their receiving an invitation to proclaim God's life and their conscious responding to it. Created in the image of God (imago Dei), we in turn become creative through our free response. We have the imagination (in Hebrew, yetzer) that makes it possible for us to integrate our actions in the flow of divine creativity, or not. Consequently, it is important for us to discern and decide how we shall orient our life and direct our actions. Context and History Divine dynamism has been at work in creation from the begin-ning, and human consciousness, responding in various ways, has shaped our world until the present day. We must, therefore, be fully conscious of the past. Discernment always implies looking back (if we use visual imagery) or listening (if we use acoustic imagery). God's conversation with the world and with humankind results in what we live and experience today. At the most personal level, St. Ignatius Loyola advises retreatants of the Spiritual Exercises to examine regularly the content and flow of their spir-itual life and life of prayer. Many religious persons and commu-nities today have gained great benefit from what is called "life review" to see God at work in their own history. It is also common practice now to try to "read" the "signs of the times" to see the underlying current. Believers find God at work, but unbelievers alike may discover the dynamism of creative energy with which they want to connect. Believing that God has been and is active in the world, we see, too, that we have the creative potential to go with or against this divine activity. In the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius describes in detail how one can become aware of inner movements that are aligned with the divine plan or that militate against it. This takes place in a context of faith and in an atmosphere of prayer. His analysis of consolations and desolations has served as a guide for many. Recently, however, spiritual writers have felt the need to widen the Plissart ¯ The Art of Discernment field of application. When we become more keenly aware of all the areas in which the Spirit of God is at work, it becomes evident that we must try to widen our horizon if we want to obtain a more accu-rate idea of God's action, a wiser discernment. Consolations and Desolations Revisited Ignatius himself implicitly recognizes the need for an inter-personal attentiveness to the Spirit when he advises that discern-ment should take place with the guidance of a spiritual director. Today we would include here the validity and even necessity of discussing the matter with one's spouse (if one is married) or a uniquely close "soul friend." An uneasiness in the friend or spouse might be a sign of desolation, and both persons would do well to become aware of it in the effort to find the will of God. Ignatius speaks of taking into account the position of the church. If with Vatican ~I we see the church as the people of God, our attentiveness to God's presence becomes broader and much more varied. Tensions in a community could well be interpreted as "desolation," or gratuitous excitement as false "consolation." We could and should make use of the well-developed techniques of group dynamics and see how a discerning insight might help us to perceive more clearly whether the movements animating a par-ticular group are from God. The vision we speak of here comes from faith; it can be of advantage only to individuals and groups that genuinely want to follow the Lord. Similarly, in discernment we do well to explore critically the meaning of divisions, resentments, estrangements, and insensi-tivity within ecclesial structures and institutions to see how these "motions" speak to us of God's creative or challenging activity in our world. Can we say that controversies on, say, contraception or feminism have nothing.to tell us about the divine activity in our world and in the hearts and minds of God's own people? I believe that an unwillingness to see the significance of such "movements" would represent a dire lack of a discerning spirit. Jon Sobrino, Enrique Dussel, J.B. Libanio, and others have shown clearly how, as we find ourselves confronted with a theol-ogy of domination, we must take into account the sociopolitical reality in order to make a valid discernment. The option for the poor which theologians of liberation advocate is not just another theological position. It is the result of a careful reading of the core message of Jesus in its relationship with the social reality. Review for Religions As the Quakers tell us, the "light of God" is also present and active beyond the confines of the circle of Christian believers. Indeed, this was also recognized in the documents of Vatican II. So we will have to .learn to discern how God speaks through the political debates of our present age, through intercultural struggles, through the economic and ecological issues of our world, and through people's search for a cosmic spirituality. Would we not say that people's uneasi-ness when faced with news ¯ items depicting poverty can be a sign of "desolation" calling for conversion and a change ¯ of heart? Would we not say that people's fear of an atomic disaster can~ be understood as a sign of "desolation" in a world which gives priority to war over peace? Would we not say that the renewed interest and practice of meditation of all kinds is a sign of "consolation" in a rediscovery of the importance of the inner world? The first, step in this reflection has brought us to the conclu-sion that, if we truly believe that God's Spirit. is indeed active in the world and if our aim is to integrate our decisions and actions as perfectly as possibly into this creative dynamism, then we will have to widen considerably the scope of our attentiveness to the divine presence. Our discerning of God's ~vill seems ~to bring us much further than it used to, well beyond the realm of personal spiritual life. No more can we think of attaining holiness through a private imitation of Christ (see Castillo). What we have examined is the first aspect of discernment, the "listening" element. It corresponds to what is called in Ignatian spirituality the "discernment of spirits" and also, in the Quaker tradition, to the simple prayer meeting. The regular practice of such discernment helps people to be more aware of God's pres-ence in their life. But it should also help friends or groups to a vision of where God is leading them communally. It can give us an insight into God's guidance for the church, for society, and indeed for the whole world. Acquiring such a common insight will be of great advantage in tackling the second aspect of discernment which we examine below. Tensions in a community could well be interpreted as "desolation," or gratuitous excitement as false "consolation." January-FebtvtaD, 1999 Plissart ¯ The Art of Discernment Anthropological Foundation: How Do We Decide? The Point of Entry Insight into the divine activity is not just an academic exercise. We have already indicated above that it has a very clear purpose. We do not "listen" to the voice of God simply to admire its har-monic quality. We want to add our voice to the symphony. Peters clarifies the distinction between discernment and elec-tion, but goes too far when he says that "the method [of election] is a way of finding the will of God, and has nothing to do with dis-cerning movements" (p. 30). Our insight into God's creative activ-ity inevitably challenges us to a response. Thus we seek not only to hear God's voice, but to discern God's will. This becomes a direct call. The general inspiration which we have discerned ini-tially takes shape gradually and becomes a specific invitation. This is where we move from a "discernment of spirits" to a process of election: we are faced with alternatiyes, and we have to make a choice. What is happening is that we become aware of a krisis, a fork in the road. This requires a diakrisis: deciding which way to go. The process of decision is always situated existentially, and it is good, indeed important, to know the path that has led to it, the approach to the point of entry. Ignatian spirituality has clarified the process itself, but has not specified precisely the scope of what to consider. In the Spiritual Exercises lgnatius's guidance in the pro-cess of election seems to be directed mainly to an individual mak-ing a decision about his or her future state of life. But commentators indicate that the principles are not restricted to such instances. Since Ignatius and his companions use similar prin-ciples for many of their decisions, it would seem that the process of election is applicable to all levels of human decision. This is indeed to be expected if we are fully aware of divine invitations at all levels of human activity. So we have to widen the scope here also. The most obvious level of decision making is that of the con-scious self. It concerns an action for which .one will be directly and personally responsible. But not many decisions, if any, are totally private. So the interpersonal is nearly always present in decision making. It is then a decision that affects those who are involved in a relationship, and we would expect that the process of discernment would implicate all participants. Decisions concern-ing close friendship and marriage are good examples of this, and Review for Religious one can widen the scope to community decisions, family deci-sions, and so forth. The moment of decision, the need for discernment, may not be obvious when persons reflect and discern purely as individuals, but may become obvious on the social level and then brought down to the personal. Good examples of this would be an eco-nomic crisis or a population crisis, each with its repercussions on the life of the community, the family, and the individual. Still wider areas of decision may involve cultural changes, religious or institu-tional sclerosis, or natural disasters. These will require decision-making processes that have a wide place of entry, but do not ignore personal elements (which are never absent). In these areas Ren~ Simon's reflection on the relationship between law and discernment is helpful. The process of election will be very different, but the basic elements will be these: insight based on some interpretative belief, examination of the challenge by means of dialogue, and proiection towards the realm of action for assess-ment and choice. With regard to the charismatic role of discern-ment in relation to institutional sclerosis, Ladislaus Boros makes the following interesting remark: "The charismatic and underiv-able aspect is essential to the church, .for God has never retired, as it were, in favor of the official ecclesial administration. Nor has he abdicated in favor of the guidance of the Holy Spirit given to the higher and highest instances of.the church. God himself is the Spirit [see Jn 3:8] blowing 'where it listeth,' [blowing] alike on children and idiots, the poor and simple, and theologians of all kinds" (p. 78). Clearly we are dealing here with a widening continuum. Division into sections is arbitrary. Yet there appear to be both an inner limit to this continuum and an outer one, limits beyond which we seem to lose control. At the inner limit we enter so deeply into the self that the processes become unconscious. The creative dynamism is still active, but escapes our grasp. Eastern religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) and perhaps certain forms of Christian mysticism situate our connection to the absolute at this level. At the outer limit we grope toward the immensity of the cosmos and fail to grasp it. This time it is the far heavens that are beyond us. Within these two limits we can set the realm and scope The interpersonal is nearly always present in decision making. Januaty-Febrnaty 1999 Plissart ¯ The Art of Discernment of responsible praxis, the point of application of the process of discernment leading to action. The Question of Universality We are now becoming more aware that any discernment in a process of election has repercussions at all levels. Wherever. the stone may fall, it creates ripples over the whole surface of the lake. Decisions involve the same universal creative dynamism, and they have effects that resound through the whole realm of responsible praxis. This would seem to make the task of discernment abso-lutely daunting: What attitude, then, can we take? Many spiritual writers indicate that discernment does not lead to certainty. This is something we must accept at all stages of the process. We try to examine God's creative and dynamic presencefin our life, in the life of others', in our society and culture, in the world as a whole. But our point of view is inevitably limited. We try to take into account the flow of our own life from the moment of birth, or the flow of history in our communal, eccesial, or social context, but we cannot see the whole picture. Then when a prob-lem occurs, when the moment of decision arises, we try to situate ourselves in this picture, to ga~ther all possible data that might be relevant, but we can see only a few elements and have.,to be con-tent with that. We want to listen to as many people as possible because each one can give us a useful insight into the light of God that illurfiines our search, but there is always more light beyond, which we cannot fathom. We do not want to be biased; we want to be "indifferent" and try to avoid undue influences from our own background, from our s6cial or physical environment, and so forth, but we cannot extract ourselves from our own existence. We may try to see the consequences of a certain decision so as to make a better assessment, but we can see only that far, and no further. Clearly we cannot take everything into account. One rather unsatisfactory way in which this problem has usu-ally been solved, at least at the practical level, was to look at the process simply from its point of entry. For instance, if the issue was to decide about my own vocation, I would simply examine what my decision on this should be in the context of my life, and leave other decisions to be made by others, for example, church offi-cials, parents, civil authority, and so forth. Or, if the issue involved natural science--whether, for example, .to continue to develop nuclear technology--scientists would limit themselves to the sci- Revibw for Religious entific possibility and expediency and leave civil rulers to decide on the social consequences. In a sense there may be a vision of faith in such a position. If each person decides validly within his or her restricted level of insight, can we not trust the original cre-ative dynamism to realize the harmony that is its aim? Perhaps. But I believe that the above position has far too often been interpreted in a minimalist way. I believe that it is defeatist and dangerous. I believe that a true vision of faith will require of us that we try to achieve as wide a scope as possible. Therefore, at the close of this paper I would like to advocate a maximalist inter-pretation of the question I raised in the previous paragraph. The Criterion of Harmony Common Discernment Spiritual discernment and discernment in view of making a decision according to the divine will have always been considered an art. This is an implicit acceptance of the tentative value of the conclusions that are reached. But at the same time it points to the totality of impact of any decision within the whole creative flow. Our attentiveness to God's voice in our life and in the world cannot be restrictive. It must always tend to its widest possible scope. Only then can the full impact of divine creativity be recog-nized and accepted. The search for the divine will in any particular instance, and the attempt to discern which course of action would best coincide with that divine will, must situate the process of examination as widely as possible. I emphasize that it is" in the measure in which this is attempted and achieved that the dis-cernment will be a valid one and that global harmony will be fos-tered. Some examples will show this more in detail. A young woman aware of God's presence in her life, believes she is called to serve God in a special way. She enters a process of discernment to find out whether and how she should respond to such an invitation. Clearly, at least three groups will have to be involved in her discernment process to make it valid. First, she will have to consult with family and friends. The decision would Our attentiveness to God's voice in our life and in the world cannot be restrictive. January-February 1999 Plissart ¯ The Art of Discernment change not only her life, but also their relationship with her. Second, the new group she wants to join will have to be part of the discernment too, since the decision means that the group will or will not go through the change of integrating her into their circle. Third, the discernment will involve the church in which the com-mitment would be made, since her decision will occur in that con-text. Traditionally, each group of people would make their own dis-cernment and, if no consensus was reached, the final say would be settled through the exercise of authority. Yet it seems evident that a greater harmony could be achieved if each group would in some way participate in a common process of discernment. The young woman can dialogue with family and friends about her pos-sible vocation. She can dialogue with the new group to see how her decision would affect her and them. Members of the group can meet her family and exchange opinions on the project, church officials could speak with representatives of the group about the decision, and so forth. If each participant is genuinely searching for guidance from above, the. decision-making process itself and the outcome of it will foster harmony among these people. Such coop-eration will witness to divine creativity at work. Another example. A local religious community wants to decide whether to continue its insertion into a depressed urban area or take on another responsibility. Traditionally, they go through a process of discernment as a group while their superiors also con-sider the decision. Though the local church community might be implicated in the decision, it might not be consulted. When groups arrive at opinions separately, tension easily arises if and when sep-arately formed opinions do not coincide. Here again a common discernment process--at various levels according to possibilities-- would undoubtedly foster harmony: Let the local religious group and the local Christian community meet and exchange on the pro-ject. Let superiors come and .discuss the issue with the local reli-gious community. Let all persons in the several groups be given a chance to go through their personal discernment process in dia-logue with each other. Let the local church authorities dialogue with the group of religious and with the local Christian commu-nity, and so forth. Let the participants allow, in each of these encounters, the Spirit of God to illumine their hearts and minds through the contributions of others. Thereby they will witness to. God's creation of, respect for, and empowering of people who Review for Religious have wonderful differences among themselves. In doing so they will certainly create harmony. A final example. A number of homeless people have occupied a derelict building and are now threatened with eviction because the area must be transformed into a recreation ground. The home-less people refuse to leave. Some local pastors support them in the name of the gospel. The local politician is under pres-sure because the potential inv

Issue 55.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1996. ; Revi for Retig ous i, a fo .m for shared res ea on on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, or inspirational, written from a tbeological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis UniversiD, by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SL UVCA.SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1996 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religiou$ Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY/AUGUST1996 *VOLUME55 *' NUMBER4 contents 342 symposium - part 3 Religious Life: Directions for a Future Albert Dilanni SM reviews three stages of religious-life renewal and sets forth those areas for future efforts. 365 expanding vision Internationality: Consciousness Raising and Conversion Janet Malone CND highlights six stages of consciousness raising in the process of a religious group's becoming purposefully international. 373 Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community Finian McGinn OFM presents the challenge of multicultural diversity in religious-life communities and some directions towards resolution. Review for Religious 388 396 new life It's Summer! A Letter to Young Religious Robert P. Maloney CM encourages those who are young to enjoy and use well the gifts of this summertime of life. Emerging Forms of U.S. Religious Life Marlene Weisenbeck FSPA identifies the motivations and the relationships between charism, mission, and ministry in the formation of new communities and styles of consecrated life. 414 425 340 431 436 witnessing I Guess and Fear Donald Macdonald SMM suggests some clarity points in the midst of current confusions in religious life. Force of Habit William Jud Weiksnar OFM reflects upon the sign and symbol value of the simple brown tunic of a Franciscan. departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: General Chapters: Current Legislation Book Reviews .~uly-August 1996 prisms FVhenT/~7 is "enough" enough? It is the common question: Did you get enough to eat? enough to drink? Is the room warm (cool) enough for you? Enough is a hard concept to define in our practical living. If people's perception of their own worth as persons is tied up in their work, when have they worked long enough or hard enough? Some people find it difficult to turn over responsibility to others or "to retire." Enough seems not to have a place in their vocabulary. Others at a younger age let work consume their days and evenings and weekends. They, too, seem oblivious to the possibil-ity of freely chosen limits. We have heard the phrase "get a life" and we know that it can be a criticism to the quick for such people. Besides questions of food and drink and work and rest, enough plays a similarly difficult role in determining security. When are there more lights outside and more locks and alarm systems than we need for reasonable secu-rity? When do we have enough money for travel and its surprises and emergencies? When is there enough money put aside for care of the elderly--others or ourselves? The danger with a money-focus is, as Jesus describes in a story, that our barns are never quite big enough to hold our piled-up wealth. When we consider healthcare in the industrialized countries, we find again the difficulty of knowing when enough medical care has been called upon and when we are moving into extraordinary and sometimes minimally enhancing medical procedures. The subtlety of enough allows us morally to steer our way between the always immoral assistdd suicide and the decision to refuse any extraordinary means to prolong life. Review for Religious For each of us, in our uniqueness, to know how to live enough and move enough and have being enough remains a rich grace-gift to be prayed for. We call the gift which helps us to say "enough" Christian discernment. To be a person who discerns demands that we be people attuned to the working of God's Spirit in our lives. Discernment is not a process of decision making that we stir up on a moment's whim. When we think of people (per-haps including ourselves) as being attuned to God, we mean that they have a serious and ongoing relationship with God in prayer and in reflecting on the Scriptures and God's workings in the world. Such people find themselves growing in a sensitivity, as all lovers do, to the ways of seeing, the desires, and the ways of acting of the one loved. That kind of sensitivity is the power source of our Christian discernment. Because sensitivity is involved, it is not something we learn by rulebooks although Jesus reminds us that "I have come, not to abolish [the law and the prophets], but to fulfill them" (Mt 5:17). As we can appreciate, the process of discerning is not a sometime thing that we can blithely manage at short notice unless we are sensitized lovers of God. The dailyness of prayer and Eucharist are privileged ways for us becoming lovers growing in sensitivity. Today we seem to live with the question of Enough? in many areas of our lives, and our personal decision about enough does not come easy. We need to enter deeply into our Catholic faith and experience Jesus' promise of "another Paraclete." Yet there is one instance of enough which remains a paradox. Can we ever grow enough in God's love that our sensitivity for discernment can say "enough"? David L. Fleming SJ NOTE: On our inside front cover we provide our E-mail address. For some of our domestic and international subscribers, it may give convenient and helpful access to our editorial office. ALBERT DI IANNI Religious Life: Directions for a Future symposium part 3 Today we often hear a question seldom asked before Vatican Council II: "How is it going with your congre-gation?" And We know immediately that the questioner is interested in vocations. Nearly always the answer is: "Quite good in the third world, but bad in the first world." After thirty years of renewal efforts, the average age of most congregations founded before the 20th century is in the 60s for male l~eligious.and in the 70s for female reli-gious. Patricia Wittberg speaks of "catastrophic decline," "collapse," and "probable demise," and Markham, of "mas-sive denial." In the 1960s religious women in the United States numbered over 200,000. They have suffered a 55 percent decline and now number about 90,000. Given their average age we can expect further decline. Male reli-gious have suffered a decline of over 30 percent. We can hedge about these cold facts, but they are a cause for deep concern. A moderate decline in vocations would be man-ageable, but such a steep decline demands that we ask searching questions about the process of renewal. There are disparities within the vocation situation. In the first world, some communities are attracting significant numbers of candidates. They are the newer communities like Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and the Albert Dilanni SM last wrote for us in September-October 1993. He is now superior of the Marist novitiate, Our Lady of Mercy, at 15 Notre Dame Avenue; Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140. Review for Retigio'us Legionaries of Christ. In Mexico the Legionaries are referred to as the. new Jesuits and are subjected to criticisms similar to those launched against Jesuits in an earlier age. (A new group with a similar name, Cruzados de Cristo, has sprung up in Mexico and is enjoying similar vocational success.) The Fellowship of New Religious Communities had sixty-three new Catholic congrega-tions on its 1993 mailing list. There are at least two dozen oth-ers) Most of these groups are traditional in theology, but creative in developing community structures and prayer forms and in their integration of the laity. Even in the third world, vocational growth is not homoge-neous. The .main areas of growth are sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, especially India and Indonesia. Brazil, on the other hand, is either stable or on the decline. The crucial factor seems to be that the churches of Africa and Asia, often surrounded by strong Muslim groups, tend to be more "conservative" of classical Catholic practices and spirituality, while the Brazilian church more than all others has adopted liberationist tendencies. Three Stages of Renewal I believe that we are in the second' phase of a three-step pro-cess in the renewal of religious life since Vatican II. The first step was the explosion immediately after Vatican II, an explosion pro-voked not only by the council but by the secular cultural revolu-tion. It was a time for rejecting all categories and trying to live in the in between. It was a time'of high experimentation in theology and lifestyles, of reexamination of all institutions including the family, traditional morality, and etiquette. In religious life we moved away from whatever seemed rigid, artificial, and stiflingly traditional, in favor of what seemed more dynamic, new, and life-giving. No longer defensive regarding the democratic ideals of the West, we sought to integrate them into our congregational existence. We dismantled structures that were in place for cen-turies, emphasized interpersonal dialogue and individual needs, decentralized authority, created leadership teams, redefined poverty, chastity, and obedience, abandoned institutional aposto-lates in favor of small-group work with the poor or the marginal, and reinterpreted community in terms of sharing quality time together. It was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a time of great creativity especially in the founding of new types J'ul),-./lugust 19~6 Dilanni ¯ ReligiousLife The second stage of the renewal, is the time of the winnowing fan, the stage of sober reassessment. of apostolate--Joan Chittister often stresses this and women's role in it--but also a time of great confusion, of loss of identity, of abandonment of loyalties, of many departures and few arrivals, of decline in morale and fear of the future. The second stage of the renewal, in which we presently find ourselves, is the time of the winnowing fan, the stage of sober reassessment. Recent books and articles from all "over the ideo-logical spectrum are calling for self-criticism and evaluation of the directions taken .by the renewal: Avery Dulles, Elizabeth McDonough, Joan Chittister, Patricia Wittberg, Martin Tripole, Mary Jo Leddy, Judith Merkle, David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, and on and on. Almos~ all urge a move beyond the individualism apparent in the so-called "liberal" model. They speak of the need of "common vision" and a "corporate sense" and "criteria by which the validity of their lives can be measured." The authors do not agree on the solution. Some call for a deeper retrieval of the community's charism (if it has a charism); others, for a real communal commit-ment to helping the poor and the oppressed; and still others, like MaryJo Leddy and Joan Chittister, for a move beyond liberalism to something even more radical or revolutionary. The third stage in this renewal process will be, I believe, a time of greater peace, when the good features of the new have been institutionalized and its excesses discarded and Catholics once again view religious life as a way to follow Christ in a more literal way. In this symposium, however, we are still at the stage of sober reassessment, discussing whether we need to shift into a new gear and or just stay on cruise-control. I approach this challenge not in despair but in hope, a hope that arises out of reading the his-tory of religious life. Before the French Revolution (1789) there were 300,000 male religious "in Europe. Forty years after the Revolution this number had decreased by more than two-thirds to 70,000. But in the 1830s a great revival began. Some 600 new Roman Catholic religious congregations were founded in the 19th century, more than at any other period, and the actual number of religious attained historic new heights. The Jesuits, who had been suppressed from 1773 to 1814, flourished as never before. A similar reflowering is not impossible in our time. Review for Religious o The contemporary crisis of religious life has been very deep. It is related to the .attempt to restate the Christian faith for an age called postmodernity. We have been adapting with great strain to a new kind of need for God, not a God of the gaps who fills in for the weaknesses of science, but a God at the center of life, a God who provides depth of meaning and answers our ultimate concern. Directions for a Future: Background Considerations ., George Aschenbrenner SJ felt that in my 1994 book I had set down criteria that might guide a reevaluation of the renewal and an effective move to the future.2 So for the present symposium he assigned me this topic: What are the criteria for judging whether a .proposed change of direction or structure in religious life will be a profitable change? What are the signs of a good change? I have interpreted his question as asking: In what directions should we move, and why? But, before we can entertain the question of directions, some background considerations are necessary. First, we must realize that the theological backdrop to religious life has shifted dra-matically. Up to thirty years ago, all religious, irrespective of their style of life, shared a theological consensus that dated back to the early church. Whether they were hermits, monks and nuns, medieval mendicants, apostolic Jesuit-type religious, or religious of the newer 19th-century type, all religious viewed themselves as primarily engaged in saving souls, their own and those of others. Christianity in general and religious life in particular were given a mystical and eschatological interpretation and were concerned with union with God and "the four last things." Intellectual activ-ity and teaching and care of the sick were important, but were subordinate to a concern for eternal salvation, the "one thing necessary." Since Vatican II, however, chinks have appeared in this higher unity, this sacred canopy, and basic questions have been asked about the meaning of Christianity and the place of religious within it. While the media and some religious focus on controversial issues of church polity like clerical celibacy and women's ordination, the deeper questions are: How should we conceive of our relationship to God? Does salvation begin on earth? What is the meaning of the kingdom of God? Within the mystical-eschatological emphasis, the dominant metaphor for women's congregations was that of becoming a ~uly-Aug~st 1996 Dilanni ¯ Reli~ous L~e "spouse of Christ." To some people of today, this may seem intol-erably sexist, patriarchal or "kyriarchal," but the image contains a core of meaning valid for both men and women. It underscores the need for an affective union with Christ and with a personal God. Mystical language was its common coinage. Commentators spoke of "spiritual marriage" and "transforming union." Many books were written about progress in mental prayer, contempla-tion, and the three stages of the interior life. Today a hunger for spirituality is still alive among religious, witness the popularity of directed retreats and the Ignatian Exercises. It is part of what David Tracy calls an "amazing resurgence in spirituality.''3 Nevertheless, our consuming interest has been elsewhere. Whereas previously religious sought to move outward from a deep interiority, we have preferred to begin with exteriority. Like behaviorists, we have been convinced that action shapes hearts and that congregational renewal would come from movement into relevant apostolates that reexpressed our charism. The "spouse of Christ" model was criticized as a "beautiful soul" spir-ituality, and its practitioners were compared to birds preening themselves. Salvation was brought down to earth, and holiness was linked with wholeness--becoming a well-integrated person-- and with service to others. "Crazy" saints like Philip Neri (who did outlandish things out of humility) were out. The fasting of Catherine of Siena and others has been understood as "holy anorexia" (Rudolph Bell's term), a subconscious protest against male domination. Unless mortification was relational--a sacri-fice involved in one's work for others--it was conside~'ed unhealthy. Better to work for and with the poor than to fast in adoration of God. As a result, a new metaphor for religious life replaced spouse of Christ. It was the image of the prophet at the cutting edge of social and political issues,, breaking new ground in the liberation and humanization of peoples, especially through systemic change in favor of the poor and oppressed. After the Jesuits' dramatic shift toward faith and justice, the charisms of most other active congregations, no matter how diverse, were suddenly found to center on these same concerns. The Roman synod of 1971 called social justice a "constitutive" part of the Christian apostolate, and many interpreted this as meaning that it was to be a necessary component of each apostolate. Most recently, however, a reac-tion has set in. Jesuits like Avery Dulles and Martin Tripole, while Review for Religious agreeing .that social justice should be a fundamental concern of religious life, resist the notion that it is an essential ingredient of each Jesuit apostolate. It is now reported that even Pedro Arrupe SJ, its principal protagonist, had second thoughts about how it was absolutized.4 Strangely, the metaphor of religious as social prophet did not attract numbers of vocations, certainly not in the first world. Marie Augusta Neal admits this and attributes it to fear of its inherent difficulty and risks. But, historically, danger did not deter but rather whetted the appetite of people intent on the religious adventure. Nineteenth-century missionaries like St. Peter Chanel boarded rickety ships on precarious one-way trips lasting eleven months to preach to peoples who had not yet emerged from can-nibalism. Could the resistance to the new prophetic stance be due to something other than fear? Could it be that, however admirable, it is not perceived by Christian consciousness to be at the center of the religious project? In what follows I will set out three directions in which we must move in future efforts toward renewal. The first two are sociological and could apply to almost any social group or cor-porate entity. They are actually dialogues with Wittberg and with Nygren and Ukeritis, whose studies I find revealing. The third direction is theological and addresses some of the questions just raised. Directions for a Future The first direction: An effective religious community must be visible. Recent authors have sounded the alarm that religious life, especially among women, is disappearing as a visible corporate entity, as an institutional presence. Joan Chittister writes that religious communities have "done a great deal to foster the prophetic individuals in their midst," but "at the same time, they have done very little to function as prophetic groups.''5 Elsewhere she dramatizes: "Religious must ask themselves what they stand for as a congregation and who knows it, because if nobody knows it we don't stand for it." She continues: "When we stood for edu-cation, health service, and the care of innocent children, everyone knew it. When we stood for insertion of Catholics into the white Anglo-Saxon world, no one called that political, and everyone knew what we were about, Religious congregations stood as bul-j~ uly-dug~st 1996 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life warks against ignorance, illiteracy, disease, abandonment, and secularism. We turned our resources in those directions. Now we have the best-educated groups in the world, each member of which is regarded with professional respect, and the most invisi-ble congregations.''6 " This is an important point that should guide future planning. If as religious we desire truly to influence others and attract new candidates, we cannot act as disembodied spirits, noncorporeal freedoms, anti-institutional angels. We must witness not only as individuals but as a collective unity. And to do so we must be vis-ible as a collective unity. Clearly, religious were more visible as members of a group when they worked in institutional commit-ments and wore an identifiable religious habit. When they left these institutions and took on secular jobs in social service, when they declined the habit and were absorbed into the crowd, they tended to lose corporate impact of all kinds, even the new one of being socioreligious prophets. "The more its members became unidentifiable," says Wittberg, "the more difficult it became for any order, as a corporate entity, to fulfill its newly defined prophetic role.''7 Another major cause of the current invisibility of religious congregations has been our readiness to embrace contemporary democracy's postmodern move toward absolute egalitarianism and nonelitism. Eager to abdicate every hint of triumphalism, we have become levelers. This is seen in the way we have interpreted Lumen gentium's universal call to holiness, which, according to Wittberg, hit like a bombshell and robbed religious of a sense of distinctive identity. It had this effect because theologians and reli-gious interpreted it politically rather than theologically or spiri-tually. "We are all called to holiness," said the commentators, emphasizing the word all, as if the point of the doctrine were to rule out all talk about more or less effective roads to holiness or about religious life being a way of perfection aspiring to something higher. But is the political point the central thrust of the decla-ration? Should we not place less stress on the "all" and more on what we are all called to, that is, holiness? Should religious not be less worried about standing out (or failing to stand out) and more concerned about redoubling their efforts to achieve holiness within their life and lifestyle? In fact, what happened was that the idea of striving for personal holiness dropped out as the cen-tral concern for religious. Review for Religious The reason for this overemphasis on the political may be due to the church's relative inexperience with democracy and moder-nity. In her sociological study of religious orders; Wittberg con-tends that the 19th-century religious congregations, sharing the restorationist mentality of the church, never really came to grips with the modern thrust toward liberty, fraternity, and equality. Rather, these congregations retreated into a fuga mundi (flight from the world), reinstated 17th-century practices, and lived in a time warp for years. In America this was exacerbated because most religious sprang from and ° worked in isolated immigrant subcultures. It is perhaps because of this that, when Vatican II opened the doors, the congre-gations went overboard in their embrace of the new forms of participative democ-racy. We eagerly adopted its absolute horror of distinctions for fear of elitism and played down all differences between religious and laypersons. As a result we vanished as visible corporate groups purporting to be on a different road to holiness.8 But can this continue? Can the concept of religious life long endure in an atmosphere of hyper-egalitarianism? Would reli-gious life ever have sprung up at all if some persons did not desire to be different and follow Jesus in a more literal way? Wittberg describes religious life as a form of virtuoso or (less frequently) heroic religiosity. Practitioners of virtuoso religiosity are those within a religion who want to go the extra mile. They want to create a zone of intensity within the field of holiness. They p(r-ceive themselves as different and, to some degree, as exemplars. Prospective virtuosi come together, says Wittberg, "in the expec-tation that their participation will help to maintain some collective good--the health and welfare of the destitute, or the conversion of heretics, or even the establishment of a utopia of saints on earth that can serve as a beacon to others.''9 Christianity and other religions have always spawned such virtuosi. Luther dissolved the vows of the monks and declared everyone equal in the quest for holiness, but soon Protestantism was crowded with Pietists, Mennonites, and Anabaptists. Later it was the Shakers and today the Pentecostals. Recently, new virtu-osi groups have mushroomed Within Catholicism: the Legionaries of Christ, the Missionaries of Charity, the Lion ofJuda, Les Fr~res We must witness not only as individuals but as a collective unity. July-August 1996 DiIanni ¯ Religious Life de. St. Jean, the Opus Dei, the Neo-catechumenate, the Focolare, the Sant' Egidio community of Rome, Comunione e liberazione, and so forth. All model themselves on the early Christian com-munity in Acts or the seventy disciples commissioned by Jesus (Lk 10), both of which seem to represent Christianity lived in its highest purity. Like the early Christians, these new groups believe that forming Christians is not easy, but requires being challenged to live one's baptism; requires a formation process, a "way" (some form of RCI& program), a sustaining community, and a partici-pative liturgy. We must accept the fact that as religious we desire to be dif-ferent and follow Christ in a distinctive way. If we are to influence others, to witness as prophets, our commitment must be in some way public and Visible. If this is perceived as a higher way, so be it. Chalk it up to diversity. We cannot blur all distinctions out of a fear of elitism. All groups that aspire for something more are in danger of elitism and must be warned against it, but their enthu-siasm should not be crushed. Members of religious congregations purport to live their Christianity in a way that is differently orga-nized, more regulated, more intense, and at times more difficult than that of other Christians. They will have an impact on oth-ers to the degree that their sacrifice is real and their corporate witness is visible. Whether through all this they always succeed in becoming men and women of God is another question. The second direction: Effective religious community should be inten-tional as opposed to merely associational, and this demands a transcen-dent corporate goal and adequate commitment mechanisms. An intentional community is a community with a purpose for the sake of which members are willing to make significant sacri-fices of their individual preferences. Examples are sports teams and the military. An intentional community is different from an associational community, which admits a plurality of goals and calls for a lesser degree of sacrificing of individual preferences. Intentional communities have a strong sense of direction. This is due to at least two things: a transcendent corporate cause and a set of commitment mechanisms, that is, common sacrificial prac-tices that reinforce commitment at a level deeper than rational persuasion. We will consider these two elements in turn. A transcendent corporate goal: Discussing visibility, we have already dealt with the need for a goal, for being clear on where the Review for Religious group stands. Here I make the further point that the goal must be one that transcends the community itself. I say this because some authors seem to believe that the goal of a community can be inter-nal to ~the community itself. Edwin Keel and Susan Beaudry, for example, propose a third ruling metaphor for religious life, beyond those of the spouse of Christ and prophecy. For them, religious life is best presented under the image of a journey together toward God. They maintain that "what religious have been seeking, whether they realize it or not, and what religious community can offer, is neither surrogate family life, nor friendship, nor the intio macy~of small groupings, but faith companionship on the spiritual journey." 10 They describe the common spiritual journey in terms of a discovery of one's personal vocation before God and an integra-tion of it with that of others. Spiritual maturity is achieved by getting in touch with what Jung calls the Self, which lies deeper than the ego and is the place where we truly meet God. The old perfection model of holiness with its rigid rules tended to flat-ten individual differences and to foster immaturity. The journey image with its new and democratic skills--province assemblies, mission statements, corporate reflection processes, confrontation techniques (all now permanent parts of religious life)--may seem messier, but is psychologically healthier. Community life is like a family going on a trip in a crowded van, constantly negotiating, sometimes bickering, always arriving, never reaching. Some of these spiritual-journey elements are valuable; but I wonder whether the journey can be the dominant metaphor of religious life. Does it not tempt us to remain in an associational model of community, which, to believe tl~e experts, does not endure beyond one generation?I' Does it not come too close to what Gerald Arbuckle has called the "therapeutic" community? Can it generate the needed intensity and direction? For all the benefits of psychology, are not psychological self-absorption and an overly intense regard for the internal aspects of community part of the cause of our present decline? Wittberg says, "'The dominant language of religious life., shifted from theological constructs to social and psychological paradigms,' that were inad-equate to explain what was distinct or desirable about the lifestyle."~2 This has gone so far that in some congregations com-munity members who desire entry into a new local community must first present a written evaluation of themselves from the July-August 1996 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life community they are leaving. In other congregations the .concern for personal autonomy and consensus has at times resulted in the election of effete leaders at the local level. Is there nota middle ground between the not-in-touch-with-their-feelings religious of the past and some present-day religious who have become too self-involved as individuals or as community? In order to form an intentional community, people must come together for the sake of a cause that transcends both themselves and their experience of journeying together. A clearly articulated spiritual or apostolic vision and ideal must draw them on. Each member must partially relinquish his or her personal, vocation in favor of the vocation of the congregation. One's personal project must be trimmed in favor of the community proiect, Older reli-gious tell stories of pioneer days in schools and hospitals when they roomed together in classrooms and toiled almost slave hours. They may stress the pain and suffering, but from the glee with which they tell the stoW we know they would not have exchanged it for the world. Their reward lies in having been part of some-thing greater thanthemselves, protagonists together in a great religious adventure. Commitment mechanisms: Historically, intentional religious groups have been sustained in their resolve not only by clear tran-scendent goals but also by a number of practices that sociologists call commitment mechanisms. These are practices, customs, or rituals that reinforce motivation by solidifying the affective ties between the members. Sociologist Benjamin Zablocki contends that the commitment mechanisms discarded by congregations after Vatican II were actually essential for community survival.~3 The primary types of commitment mechanisms were first developed in the monasteries and then adapted to other forms of religious life. They are (1) common rules and rituals, (2) boundary maintenance, (3) shared sacrifices, and (4) mortification practices. 1. Common rules or rituals include the daily horarium and schedule, spiritual exercises, meals :in common, reading at meals, and grand silence. They are found in the constitutions and in books of customs. 2. Boundary-maintenance mechanisms Fiave the purpose of maintaining a clear distinction between members of the group and other people. Examples of such mechanisms are: wearing a common habit, living together in cloistered convents, bestowing new names, and reducing the visits of family and outsiders. (Today Review for Religious the lack of vocations has spawned the phenomenon of associative membership, which renders the boundaries more fluid and lessens the sense of identity. Most recently commentators are beginning to bemoan an excessive fluidity. Their plea is that such a religious congregation cannot long endure unless there is a strong core group of full-fledged members who are strongly distinguished from others.) 3. Shared sacrifices arise out of involvement in common works of the congregation. Historically there was no stronger source of cohesion than shared sacrifices in behalf of an institute's common apostolates. 4. Mortification practices include such customs as culpas, the chapter of faults, receiving monition, fasting on certain days, taking the discipline, wearing a common habit, and wearing a veil. These worked to strip off an old identity in favor of a new one and in the process helped to cement people into a higher unity. In reviewing these mechanisms I am in no way advocating a return to all or to any of them. On the other hand, religious life cannot prosper without some structures that reinforce motivation at the affective level. To move beyond individualism we need to invent common rituals and symbols that speak to us at the level of the subcon-scious. We cannot build community by teaching a charism only conceptually while leaving it to each member to embody it in his or her own way. If our religious life has no face, our communities will end up being only comfortable hotels. In replacing outdated commitment mechanisms, we must employ new psychological insights and provide adequate room for personal differences. But these new mechanisms must have some relation to past ones. In creating them we must carefully study the older structures to see what purpose they had in the mind of the founder, to discover what aspect of the charism they expressed. The new structures must be more suited to our times, but they must also connect with and incarnate the charism and spirituality of the institute. The role of the superior is a commitment mechanism of tra-ditional religious life that is not often mentioned. We must admit, People must come together for the sake of a cause that transcends both themselves and their experience of journeying together. ~dy-AuKtwt 1996 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life however, that nothing worked better to reinforce collective unity than Mother Superior. The traditional superior, especially when he or she was also the founder, was considered a voice of God. Today, conversely, some 75 percent of religious communities of women have no superior in any traditional sense. Mother Superior has been replaced by the "director" or "animator" or by a "lead-ership team." Such language, it seems to me, confuses two dif-ferent realities, authority and leadership. The first is the attribute of an office; the second, the quality of a person. In some congregations the role of superior has been largely taken over by an appointed middle-management bureaucracy with tendencies to perpetuate itself.~4 One sister has written to me say-i. ng, "Our best leaders are in our cemetery." Without desiring to turn back the clock, I ask: Was there a resonance present in the traditional role of superior that has been lost? If past superiors were legalistic and overbearing, were the best of them not the true spiritual leaders that We still hanker for? Were they not per-sons who loved the congregation and its charism and knew how to stir hearts and shape a vision? Commitment mechanisms are making a comeback in the new congregations and in the new lay religious movements in Europe and Latin America. The Neo-catechumenate, for example, invites members into a "way" (camino), which comprises certain distinct steps, a kind of RCIA for Catholics, through which each mem-ber must pass before they are considered "formed Christians." Some of their techniques involve confrontation and mutual crit-icism. New seminaries using Neo-catechumenal techniques, all called Redemptoris Mater, are springing up in many parts of the world. The Sant' Egidio lay community of Rome invites its mem-bers to sung vespers and a commentary on the Scripture every evening. Many religious congregations use directed retreats and the renewed thirty-day Ignatian Exercises as a more personalized form of commitment mechanism. Other communities have intro-duced formal faith-sharing sessions, a kind of lectio divina in which members Ponder scripture passages or the constitutions together and then discuss them. Patricia Wittberg suggests that it might be profitable to explore the new religious movements to see how traditional Catholic frameworks for "religious virtuos-ity are being reworked, whether consciously or unconsciously. ¯ in order to address the assumptions and values of the late-20th-and early-21 st-century American culture." 1~ Review for Religiou~ Visibility, intentionality, a clear and transcendent goal, and some commitment mechanisms--these are the sociological aspects necessary to be effective as a group. For Wittberg, their lack has been the major reason why the new metaphor of religious as reli-gious prophets has not truly taken hold. Ithas failed to galvanize religious communities, she believes, because contemporary indi-vidualism and pluralism have been allowed to dominate religious life. As a good sociologist, she remains neutral with regard to the desirability of the new metaphor itself. I wonder, however, if this goes far enough. Are there not other and deeper reasons why the new metaphor of religious prophet has not really caught on? If prophecy means being on the cutting edge, the question remains: On the cutting edge of what? of politics? of social betterment? of all this, plus something more? I accept and welcome the model of prophecy, but I do question its content as expounded by many religious at the pres-ent time. I believe that the prophet must identify the deepest assumptions of the age and try to respond to its deepest hungers. Have we; aspiring religious prophets, truly engaged our culture at its deepest levels? This brings me to my third and last statement of direction. Third direction: Effective religious community demands a concept of prophecy that engages the surrounding culture at its deepest levels and responds to its most profound hungers. Wittherg and others believe that because of restorationism the 19th-century church and its many new religious orders did not come to grips with the problems of modernity. My question is: In the prophetic model as currently understood, do we do so even now? I concur with Nygren and Ukeritis, who say that those con-gregations will be revitalized that are "rooted in their relationship with God, and that, in a spirit of fidelity to their founding purpose and responsiveness to absolute human need, confront the current gap between Gospel and the culture.''16 1 agree with Chittister's formal principle that religious congregations must "release every-where in society, at every level, through every individual member, wherever the members are, and whatever separate things they do, the white heat of those congregations' charism in one great cor-porate mind and one easily seen communal heart.''17 We must engage the dominant first-world culture and do so as corporate .t~uly-August 1996 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life entities. We cannot run from it or remain indifferent. But, because we are religious, we must be careful to engage it at its deepest levels and not merely superficially. Historically, religious life flourished precisely when it was perceived as countering a culture's expressed values while answer-ing its deepest hungers. St. Francis of Assisi attracted followers, not because he was in conformity with his times, but because he challenged his times and in this way spoke to its heart of hearts. As we move toward the future, we must ask ourselves: What are the deepest hungers of our culture? Judith Merkle says that "the question which faces religious congregations today is what aspect of reality has the power to most deeply call us to life." 18. This is really the same question, for we are part of our culture, and our own deepest hungers will not differ much from those of the general culture. Some authors answer this question by insisting that we will be called to life by moving away from individualism and becoming a transformative community bent on creating a better world. In their eyes, the deepest need of contemporary culture is to achieve better rela-tionship with the poor, the oppressed, and the marginal; and this will be achieved by eradicating unjust social structures and oppos-ing oppressive ideologies like patriarchy, sexism, and racism. But is such a project sufficient? Is it at the center of religious prophecy? Is it where we address the deepest needs of our culture? Certainly, many of these ethical issues are important. They are a response to Gaudium et spes and in tune with the attempt of the-ologians to develop a more earth-centered interpretation of the kingdom. This new notion of the kingdom does not contradict the traditional view, but complements it. It asks us not to allow our desire for heaven to blind us to our duty to extirpate crass injus-tices in this world. In this view, the kingdom is not only a future heaven but the actual presence of God's power for transforming the world. So the religious project, the kingdom, has two loci. But, in many religious congregations, has the sociopolitical not become the solitary day-to-day focus? Is this not why the so-called prophetic model attracts so few first-world candidates? Have we not gone the route of liberal Protestantism, which in its social-gospel emphasis is fast losing ground to the Pentecostals and Evangelicals? In their nonparticipation and shifts of loyalty, are not lay Christians trying to tell us something? Review for Religious Can a religious congregation survive if its primary, all-inclu-sive goal is to solve complex and intractable social and moral issues? I doubt it. This is so especially when, in practice if not in theory, God is reduced to being a ground for human generativity or creativity in the social arena. Sociopolitical issues are impor-tant and can even be construed as religious in nature, but they are not at the center of the religious project. The center of the religious project is clear and simple: to affirm the existence and the love of God. This is true especially in our times, in which the major event has been the "death of God," the conviction that the idea of God is either meaningless or even detrimental. The first attitude comes from the side of science and the second from an existential-ist philosophy of life. The scientific picture as taught in many universities is one of a world that evolved by sheer chance from a big bang to con-scious, reflective beings. If through some. accident all conscious beings are destroyed, the Godless universe would be bereft of consciousness, and being would be a perpetual winter, In the sci-entistic worldview, sheer chance takes the place of God, and human life is voided of any objective meaning or purpose. Moral ¯ systems' become games contrived by human 'beings to bring about the maximal satisfaction of desires while avoiding conflict. The moral game is born of an enlightened egoism. For existentialists, following Nietzsche, religion must be ban-ished because it is repressive and life-denying and robs us of rad-ical freedom. It imposes an objective moral system that does not allow us to create values. We must choose between a life of free-dom and a God of enslavement. "Man dies at the touch of the Absolute," says Merleau-Ponty. One way in which existentialist atheism shows up in our culture is in its penchant for absolutiz-ing choice. No matter how dire the consequences, Americans will plump for choice on any issue. If there is no God, then each indi-vidual can be God, not only in general but at every moment and in every decision. This combination of scientific atheism and an existentialist absolutizing of individual power and choice has given rise, as Nietzsche predicted, to a sense of meaninglessness, to nihilism, to The center of the religious project is clear and simple: to affirm the existence and the love of God. July-August 1996 DiIanni ¯ Religious Life the banalizing of life, to the "unbearable lightness of being," The death of God has ushered in the death of man (and woman). Choosing and consuming, consuming and choosing, modern men and women are stranded on the anorexia-bulimia line--on the endless shuttle between fullness and emptiness." Is this all there is?" they ask. And many teenagers commit suicide or random murder, and others just keep on dancing. "Even more than athe-ism," says Walter Kasper, "the nihilism that flows from atheism is the real mark of the age."~9 This nihilism or voiding of meaning has its positive side. It is the modern expression of the hunger for God. It is in providing a lived response to this hunger that contemporary religious life will achieve its true prophetic role. Beyond all else, religious life must be a drumbeat proclaiming that God exists, that God's love for us through Jesus is unconditional, that it sustains us in suffering and continues beyond our death. The way for religious to engage the surrounding culture effectively is to witness that, far from crush-ing life, God alone gives it ultimate meaning and sense. I believe that at least two things must be retrieved by religious to help them achieve this truly religious end: interiority and, along .with it, an ardent desire to relate to the personal God who transcends the world. By interiorityI mean a new emphasis on the life of prayer and reflection and on being teachers of the spiritual life. Pierre Hadot, a French historian of philosophy, is influencing sophisticated the-ologians like David Tracy into bringing spirituality into the cen-ter of theology. He criticizes modern theology for its sharp division between theory and spiritual practice. Hadot insists that, unlike people of earlier times and of non-Western cultures, we Western moderns have not allowed theology to express itself in spiritual exercises. The old Stoics had spiritual exercises for com-ing into contact with the Logos, and this was one reason why Simone Weil loved the Stoics. The modern segmenting of the-ology and praxis--seen, for example, in the dropping of devo-tions since Vatican II--is one reason for the deep hunger for spirituality today. R~ligious must once again emphasize growth in personal holiness and speak to people about their experience of prayer, about their interior praxis with God. Our formation pro-grams must not fail to impart a sense that each person has 'a spir-itual life in which it is possible to make progress through prayer. Joan Chittister is correct when she insists that we cannot "confuse work with prayer, good intentions with the spiritual life:''2° Review for Religious We must regain a sense of the personal God who transcends the world, but with whom we can enter into intimate union. In a 1989 America article I spoke of our need to love God as well as our neighbor and said that the love of God cannot be totally expressed through neighbor love, Several weeks later, in a letter to the edi-tor, J. Robert Hilbert sJ wrote that "one must be careful" in draw-ing a distinction between love of God and love of neighbor. "God," he says, "is not an 'other' in the sense of a categorical object to be spoken of in parallel with other objects of my knowl-edge and love. It is rather precisely in God's transcendentality as the absolute Other that love of God and love of neighbor come together in a unique and necessary oneness.''2~ I do not know if such talk of God as the "absolute Other" does the job of maintaining the necessary balance between the immanence and transcendence of God. I am sure, however, that in their return to spirituality contemporary Christians are rebelling against attempts to blur the distinction between the love of God and the love of neighbor, even though both are absolutely necesshry and intimately intertwined. Classically God has been conceived of as higher than and dis-tinct from the world, a Creator who does not need us but who loves us even beyond our death and asks us to requite that love. In ~our effort to rethink the notion of God in a way acceptable to modernity, we must avoid the danger of turning God into some underlying catalyst for our doing :good, an ~lan vital or wisdom force. In the last thirty years, so many theologians liberationists, feminists, process theologians, all striving to develop an idea of a God who is intrinsic to our lives--may have fallen into just this trap, Have they not carried too far the idea that we are God's project for social betterment, that in some Hegelian way the Absolute is working through our creativity to achieve a world of peace and justice? I have two problems with the current political and this-worldly interpretations of the kingdom. The first is with the type of pol-itics it generally espouses, and the second with the primacy of politics itself. ¯ First, does not the particular type of politics espoused by some religious carry a great deal of questionable ideological baggage? A "politically correct" reading is .given to work with the poor and oppressed. The abortion question is often studiously avoided. Feminist publications of the most radical sort are taken seriously. 3~uly-August 1996 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life Environmentalism is fast becoming a new religion among some religious, while they fail to realize that it has become extremely big business filling many already fat pockets. A listening ear is not lent to the arguments of those who distinguish between good and bad ways of helping the poor, arguments presented in thoughtful books like Marvin Olasky's Tragedy of American Compassion. And yet anybody who is truly concerned about the poor should also be attentive to the ways in which, with the best of motives, we may be locking them into a perpetual victimhood. But, beyond these particular issues, I think there is an overem-phasis on the sociopolitical in general. Social justice and the fos-tering of the earthly kingdom is not the whole gospel nor even the center of it. The hunger for another justice beyond social justice is never altogether absent from the human heart, Social justice is important, of course, because it is the minimum, upon which an earthly Christian community can be built. When it is dramat-ically absent, we cannot remain passive. When it is dramatically absent for many years for great numbers of people, it can for a time even be a consuming passion. But we must be careful that the gospel not be totally reduced to it. For the fact remains that we die eventually and that no program of social justice exists that can prevent our death or provide meaning to our dying. Beyond social justice, the church must have something to say also, perhaps especially, to those who are about to conclude their earthly life.22 Most religious, no matter how radical their politics, do retain a strong belief in a transcendent and personal God and a faith in the resurrection of the dead. But often this does not appear to be the main focus of their life and action. Unsure of the existence~ of the devil, many religious are very adept at naming the demonic. They are sure that sin has changed and we now better understand what constitutes real sin and real virtue, Evil, they think, is not located primarily in personal sins of commission, but in 'political and economic structures and in the sins of omission that keep these structures in place. Along with this perception, they have the conviction that the new technological possibilities available to us bring new responsibilities. Thus, they are fond of repeating that, since it is now possible for the first time to feed everyone, we have a special duty to create political structures and delivery sys-tems to implement this possibility. There is doubtless much to be said in favor of this, but, religiously speaking, it contains little that is new. Systemic and structural change is simply a new aspect Review for Religious that the perennial Christian demand of love of neighbor and of the stranger has assumed today. There remains the caveat of humility: that we not think we possess the answers to complex structural problems of politics and economics and that we curb the thought that we can ever build utopia on earth. In spite ofmy theoretical recognition of social justice's impor-tance and in spite of my practical efforts, past and present, in behalf of civil rights and of the poor, I believe that, from a reli-gious point of view, the social project remains ,superficial. Metaphysically, it is ultimately uninteresting. Cornel West, the brilliant black theology professor at Harvard Divinity School, often discusses social issues on Boston television. One day he was especially aroused and ended his speech with: "My brothers and sisters, this is the real important stuf!!" I shook my head and thought: Millions of people are dead and everyone is going to die. How can a theologian give such ultimate importance to this transient consciousness show we call the world? I am more in tune with Wilfrid Duffy SM, a priest-poet friend of mine afflicted with Parkinson's, whom I took to visit Michelangelo's statue of Moses in Rome. Disappointed with Moses' worldly appearance, he wrote a poem called "The Death of Moses" which ends with these words: ~ There was no dirge-- Just hard marble, noble features, Well-spaced fingers and toes, a certain strength, and some magnificence. But no d~sert; no voice of God, Unless I was not listen.ing. Perhaps it was I who had died. In the sociopolitical vision of the kingdom as practiced by some, where is the magic Of Bernini's sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila in rapture with God? What is the meaning of fasting, prayer, personal mortification, the Eucharist, confession, the drama of conversion and grace, justification, of Jacob wrestling with an angel? Interiority and mystery seem to get short shrift in the cur-rent version of the prophetic vision, as do original sin and personal sanctification and, yes, even ultimate salvation. Have we learned the Marxist lesson too well? Annette Pelletier IHM asks some poignant questions in this regard. "Have any., of the adaptations since Vatican II pro-claimed to the people of God the basic message that grace works? yuly-August 1996 Dilanni ¯ Reli~ousLife Politics, justice, and even morality cannot be the absolute center of the religious-life agenda. What else will or can ever change the present identity crisis of consecrated persons and their various congregations into an opportunity for reform, revitalization, and renewal if not the power of Mystery to fascinate but also to convert? Has this pri-mal experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition fallen by the way-side?" She continues: "Since Vatican II, adaptation and renewal have bridged the gap between the world and the consecrated life, but of what metal has that bridge been forged? Could it be that in bridging the gap an essential element of the identity of persons consecrated to God some-how got lost? What credible and clear evi-dence do religious women and men give to show that contact with the Holy somehow, mysteriously, does make a difference?" She quotes Richard Fragomeni saying that "the Christian tradition ultimately stands in silence before the operation of grace, the wonder of surprise, and the movement of a power beyond that of human consciousness and performance.''23 To be truly prophetic in the religious sense, religious life requires an integration of these two points of view about the king-dom-- the mystical-eschatological and the sociopsychological-- both of which have their roots in the gospel. The first rightly stresses the need for a mystical union with God' in this life and the hope for ultimate union with God hereafter. The first com-mandment, said Jesus, is that we love God with our whole heart. On the other hand, the Jesus we meet in prayer and in the Scriptures is the very embodiment of a God of compassion. Jesus reveals that Yahweh is not a "generic" God (Brueggemann), but a God who is interested in justice. To be involved with the God of Jesus is to be involved with the poor and the marginal of this world. We cannot be satisfied with urging them to suffer in the hope of an eternal reward in heaven. And yet secularism remains the deepest problem of the dom-inant culture, and it is at the center of the religious project. It is in grappling with this aspect of our culture that religious ,;rill truly and most deeply engage it. The deconstructionists are hard at work trying to be rid of all "metanarratives," and the pragma-tists are banishing any attempt to ground any~statement as true, A valedictorian at Harvard recently said: "At Harvard they teach Review for Religious you that you can hold any value you want, as long as you don't hold it to be true." Television is not far behind. It continues to dis-place the deep and serious with celebrity, with hi-tech gossip, and with the tolerance morality of the talk shows. I strongly applaud Joan Chittister's suggestion that we must be corporately visible, but the principal goals she sets--educating the world about °the new social questions of the age, about sexism, racism, the environment, and multiculturalism, about the whole agenda of political correctness--all remain at the level of politics and sometimes debatable politics. There is justice and justice. Politics, justice, and even morality cannot be the absolute center of the religious-life agenda. But coming to grips with an atheis-tic secularism can, for it is a directly theological and religious issue. What is more countercultural, to say that we are going to save planet Earth or to say that Jesus rose from the dead and that this makes all the difference? Which answers our deepest and most ultimate concerns? Which, metaphysically speaking, and which, from a religious point of view, is more interesting? Perhaps the last thirty years of religious life have been fruit-ful after all. With T.S. Eliot we may be able now to cease our exploration, return home, anddiscover the place for the first time. For in thirty years we have changed and perhaps only now have the wisdom to plan a renewal and a future. In our planning for the 21st century, can we not truly join action and contemplation, this-worldly love and the inystical-eschatological--envisage, that is, a close friendship between oneself as prophet and oneself as spouse of Christ? And can we not then send them both off on a splendid quest that we might call, according to the metaphor Qf Keel and Beaudry, "a journey together toward God"? Notes * See Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 269. 2 See Albert DiIanni, Religious Life as Adventure (Staten Island: Alba House, 1994). 3 William R. Burrows's interview with David Tracy in America, 14 October 1995, p. 16. 4 See Martin R. Tripole, "The Roots of Faith-and-Justice: Critical Assessment," Review for Religious 54, no. 5 (September-October 1995): passim. s Joan Chittister, "Religious Life Today: Response to Kerkhofs," Religious Life Review 32, no. 4' (1993): 203. Dilanni ¯ Religious Life 6 Joan Chittister, "Religious Orders," National Catholic Reporter, 18 February 1994, p. 16. 7 Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. 239. s The findings of Nygren and Ukeritis also seem to confirm that the flight to democracy was not well thought out: "Assumption~ regarding the applicabilit~ of democratic forms of governance to religious life were made with little or no conversation regarding the appropriateness of this move. Centuries-old notions of obedience were dismissed and replaced with concepts such as ,listening to the Spirit' which, while challenging, lack a history of experience to provide a context that produces consis-tency in form or process" (David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, The Future of Religious Orders in the United States [FORUS] [Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1993], p. 240). 9 Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. 27. ,0 Edwin L. Keel SM and Susan Beaudry PM, "Journeying to God Together," Review for Religious 53, no. 3 (May-June 1994): 441. 1, See Elizabeth McDonough, "The Past Is Prologue: Quid Agis?" Review for Religious 51, no. 1 (January-February 1992): 82, and also Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. 193. ,2Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. 256. 13 See Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. xi. 14On developments of this sort, see Elizabeth McDonough, "Beyond the Liberal Model: Quo Vadis?" Review for Religious 50, no. 2 (March- April 1991), pp. 172-173 and 176-177, and her "Past Is Prologue," pp. 79- 82. In the latter article she is using material from Patricia Wittberg, Creating a Future for Religious Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). ,s Wittberg, Rise and Fall, p. 270. ,6 .Nygren and Ukeritis, FORUS, p. 244. ,7 Chittister, "Religious Orders," p. 16. 18 Judith A. Merkel, Committed by Choice (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 54. ,9 Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1986), p. ll. 20 Chittister, "Religious Orders," p. 17. 2,America, 2 September 1989, p. 127. 22 It is unjust to ask some to struggle to the death for a future utopia to be enjoyed only by others in the future. Even the Marxist philosopher Theodore Adorno was exercised by this problem and insisted that there must also be a justice for the dead. 23 Annette M. Pelletier, "Fascination with the Holy--and Conversion," Review for Religious 53, no. 4 (July-August 1994): 562-563,565. Review for Religious JANET MALONE Internationality: ConsciousnessRaising and Conversion nternationality in religious congregations has a price, and .l. congregations that in recent years have called themselves inter-national are now in the various stages of conversion requisite to being purposefully international or what Catherine Harmer has called intentionally international. At this point it is important for them to keep their eyes open to internationality's richness, for the changes and conversion that are requisite to being truly interna-tional bring the difficulties--the price--very much to the fore. Ways of Coping Change can be scary, and becoming an international congre-gation has been quite difficult for many communities, to the point where certain resistances have surfaced as ways of coping with this new "crisis." In working with such congregations, I have noted various ways of coping. Some groups want to downplay the full connotation of internationality in its mission sense of supra-nationality even when in fact, with acceptance and incorporation of some different cultures and nationalities, a new congregational culture has already come into being that, in many ways, goes well beyond being the mere sum of its older and newer parts. Other congregations that have called themselves international by reason of their physical expansion into other nations now deal Janet Malone CND wrote "Coming Home: The Journey Within" for our May-June 1995 issue. Her address is 24-1002 Dufferin Avenue; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; S7H 2C1 Canada. ~uly-August 1996 Malone ¯ Internationality with subtle and varying aspects of resistance throughout their congregations. In still other congregations, the resistance has been quite subtle, with efforts by some members to have their congregations refer to themselves, not as "international," but as "multicultural" or "intercultural" or as congregations "with an international character." Some congregations seem ready to rescind the appellation of internationality because of the cost in terms of both personal and corporate conversion. They would justify this retrograde step by emphasizing that they are not really international because they are present in only.a few other nations. On the other hand, if a congregation purposefully decides to become or to remain an international one, it most likely must go through, both personally and corporately, an actual step-by-step process of conversion. This involves consciousness raising. The Process of Consciousness Rai sing In this article I want to highlight the different stages of con-sciousness raising. Being consciously aware of these stages can help change "hearts of stone to hearts of flesh" (Ez 36:26) in the process of becoming purposefully international. In my January- February 1992 article "Internationality--At What Price?" I spoke about conversion; herein I shall elaborate on what I now see as the intermediate steps of consciousness raising in the conversion process. Sometimes the dominant culture is replaced by another group's culture with the result that the oppressed become the oppressor. When that happens, a congregation--using power in a way that creates scarcity, and marginalization--plays'the game of musical chairs. Whether the oppression is conscious or not, those with power marginalize others and continue the injustice. It is normal for there to be resistances, biases, prejudices, and stereotypes as a congregation becomes truly international, for various members are at different stages of consciousness awareness (and conversion) in their own. enculturation, acculturation, and inculturation. It has been my experience in worki.'ng with inter-national groups that resistance to change in the form of preju-dices and stereotypes comes from very sincere people who feel threatened by the unknown and wonder how the proposed changes will affect them. Like most things in life, consciousness Review for Religious raising does not happen all at once. Rather, it is a process of awareness and evaluation of hitherto unperceived injustices that preclude the changes necessary for conversion. The rhythm of consciousness raising is different for different individuals, and it holds a particular challenge for those in lead-ership roles in a congregation. These need to be somewhat com-fortable with the unknown, with taking risks. Only then can they encourage the members to take some requisite steps toward becoming comfortable with the attitudinal and structural changes that can eliminate subtle oppressions of which many members may be quite unaware. In so doing, they model equality and mutuality. Consciousness raising he.lps to bring about real change in the attitudes of individuals and in congregational structures that reflect the dominant culture. Consciousness raising gradually brings a group to an honest evaluation of the ways of being and doing in the group that, in many instances, are distinctive of the domi-nant, founding group. Such an evaluation can then lead to the necessary changes in praxis. Stages of Consciousness Raising Adapting the work of Gaylor and Fitzpatrick, I will now high-light six differeht stages of consciousness raising in congregations becoming purposefully international. Not linear, these six stages in consciousness raising tend to overlap in a helical fashion. The first stage, the "no big deal" stage, is characterized by per-plexity and sometimes denial that there is a problem, This can be experienced by both sides of the internationality challenge: those who are the majority and see no oppression whatsoever and those who--unaware of it or only minimally aware--are the receivers of such oppression. Thus, there can be outright denial of the injustice and dismissal of any claims of it or a trivializa-tion of the injustice. For example, in a mixed-language group where there is "whisper" translation, people in the majority group may interrupt a minority speaker in midsentence and demand immediate translation. On the other hand, members of the major-ity group may carry on a full conversation among themselves while translation is being provided for the minority group. Members of a majority find it difficult to see this kind of problem even when it is pointed out. The minority group may see this as ,the way things have always been and display a certain ffuly-August 1996 Malone ¯ Internationality passivity or resignation. In both instances there is no awareness or almost none in this "~no big deal" stage. If, however, a congrega-tion is really serious about its internationality, then each language group, regardless of numbers, deserves a sacred space to under-stand and be understood. At this stage, discrepancies between the majority's demands and the needs of the minority can be trivialized by the majority with such statements as "Oh, it wasn't intentional" and by the minority with "They don't mean to be rude." In both instances there is no consciousness or only a minimal awareness of injustices and oppression, subtle or otherwise. The second, "eye-opening" stage occurs when a member of either group, the majority or the minority, experiences such types of oppression with some discomfort. Itis very easy here to revert back to the "no big deal" stage, but at .this second stage both groups can see previously status-quo experiences in a new light. Consciousness is being raised; as Ecclesiastes 3 observes, the "sea-son" for it has come. Experiences that were seen as normal are now evaluated some-what differently. Still, this evaluation is fragile. If, as a member of the dominant group, I am not much impressed by this new eval-uation, then I. may become ambivalent and protective of the sta-res quo. If I am a member of the minority group, I may not speak out on an injustice for fear of being rejectedand labeled a trou-blemaker. Members of the majority may realize for the first time that they refer to a minority group from a developing nation as "cute" and "innocent," with "so much to learn." In this stage they come to a deeper insight into what they are really saying. The third, "on the fence" stage is that point where, although: individuals or groups in an international congregation now se,e unequivocally the injustices within the congregation towards cer-tain groups, they still do not have the courage to "walk their talk." They still try to curry favor with both sides. Being "on the fence," they maneuver between the two sides without taking a firm stand on the side of the oppressed. Although it is important to see both sides of any situation, still it is critical at certain times to get "off: the fence." The warn-ing of Jesus about being lukewarm resounds here. For example, in a congregation which has called itself international, a particular group lobbies to change that term to something like intercultural because it thinks, that will solve the discontent of some of the Review for Religious majority group. Without a critical analysis of the issues involved, many congregation members may stay "on the fence" and not try to explore possible resistances underneath. The fourth, "coming home" stage of consciousness raising is that point where an individual or a group in the international congregation moves to making public various convictions on issues integral to internationality. It is the point where the personal convictions expressed heretofore only in safe, private spaces are now shared in more public places within the congregation, although still in rather circumspect ways. This stage is both diffi-cult and challenging because "the medium becomes the message." For example, a per-son or a group may submit to the congre~ gational leadership a proposal for specific structural changes to enhance the congre-gation's internationality. The private has become public, but not as yet within the public forum of a chapter or assembly of the total congregation. The fifth, "passion" stage of conscious-ness raising is a .more integrated stage involving both head and heart. Persons immediately come to mind who have had a passion for certain truths: "I have a dream."; "Ask not what your country can do for you."; "Go and gather up the drops of blood . " This stage challenges individuals and groups to lace their reasoned and dispassionate discourse with some emotion, such as anger at instances of oppression and injustice. When expressed construc-tively and nonviolently, such anger can be an energy and .catalyst for change. For example, at international meetings where an impasse has been reached because of fears and resistances, a spe-cial meeting might be called to get at these fears and blocks to any change. The danger here can be that the only interventions rec-ognized in the group are those which focus solely on "defini-tions," "constitutions," and "canon law." The challenge is to get underneath the words to the energy of the emotions. Only when the stories of personal experiences around such feelings are shared is there any movement in the group toward some deeper con-scious awareness. Members of the majority may realize that they refer to a minority group from a developing nation as "cute" and "innocent," with "so much to learn." Malone ¯ Internationality Patience and waiting are also critically important in this stage; planting the seeds of change and waiting for them to blossom is what being prophetic is all about. It is the process of going from "mine" to "ours." For example, an important component of being international is to have an international communications office and journal, both of which are grassroots and decentralized so that inculturation can gradually occur from the bottom up. It may take some time for that dream to move from being "mine" to "ours" in an international group because of many different variables, some of which may be subtle efforts to hold on to the status quo. The sixth and last stage, "acceptance/appropriation/incorpora-tion," is the crux of consciousness raising. It is that season in the life of a congregation where being international is not just the decision of a chapter or decision-making body. Rather, it is the season where internationality is the lived reality in the group. Such acceptance/appropriation/incorporation leads to a sense of equality and mutuality in the congregation and is reflected in both personal and corporate attitudinal and structural changes. Personal Conversion Having surveyed the stages of consciousness raising about biases, prejudices, stereotypes, and resultant injustices and oppres-sion, we now explore their implications for conversion. Personal conversion may take many different shapes including intellectual, moral, and spiritual conversion. Although conversion, like con-sciousness raising, is not a linear process but in many ways a gift of the grace of G6d, yet this helical process has some distinct aspects. Intellectual conversion interfaces directly with the stages of consciousness raising. It is a seeing with new eyes that continuing to support or collude with oppressive structures and ways of being in one's congregation is wrong. Now morally aware of behaviors in these matters that are actually sinful, the members of the dom-inant group must become morally aware also of their passivity in not speaking out about an ol6pressive status quo. An attitudinal shift must occur that moves them to do something about the injus-tice, be that something ever so small in the large scale of things. When people perceive the general pattern of increased aware-ness and its call for moral conversion, they may notice the :pattern in groups not only where they oppress others but also where oth- Review for Religious ers oppress them. They should notice, too, that it is very easy for the oppressed to become the oppressors in other circumstances. Unless there is a conscious intent to break the cycle of oppression, ¯ it is likely to continue. Spiritual conversion calls members of a congregation to live the gospel in .a radical way, such that there can be true love, for-giveness, and reconciliation as the different ways of oppressing come to light. Such conversion is countercultural when there is reconciliation and not revenge. "Love is patient, kind, not jealous, does not seek its own interests, is not quick-tempered, and does not brood over injury. It does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with.the truth" (1 Co 13:4-6). Corporate Conversion Corporate conversion requires changes within the organiza-tional structures of the congregation so thfit the sense Of mutuality and equality will exist both in word and in the lived praxis. Catherine Harmer details the structural changes required to become intentionally international. These changes are summa-rized here: 1. Each of the different provinces/regions/cultural entities in a congregation has the necessary autonomy to make local decisions regarding ministry choices, personnel changes, formation, and finances. 2. The leadership in each province/region/area should normally be made up of the people of that country. 3. International congregational committees and task forces must include representatives from all areas. 4. General chapters must also be representative of the total congregation not bnly in attendance but also in plan-ning and staff. 5. Provision must be made to accommodate diverse lan-guage groups at such meetings. 6. The members of the central administration of the con-gregation must reflect its internationality. 7. The founding group should eventually cease to domi-nate in all aspects of the congregational life. Conclusion Some congregations, ~n their beginnings, were not founded as international groups.~ In recent years they may have called July-August 1996 Malone * Internationali~ themselves international because of their "physical" expansion to different nations. They go through birthpangs when this acci-dental internationality becomes a purposeful or intentional inter-nationality. This article has affirmed that various resistances to the new and the temptation to go back to the "good old days" are a nor~ mal part of such a new birth. This process, for both personal and corporate conversion, has been clarified by the application of Gaylor and Fitzpatrick's stages of consciousness raising to the matter of becoming a truly international congregation. References Jean Alvarez. "Prejudice in Religious Congregations." Human Development, Winter 1983. Christine C. Gaylor and Annelle Fitzpatrick. "The Stages of Consciousness Raising." Human Development, Fall 1987. Catherine Harmer. "Internationality: Intentional or Accidental." Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 111-118. Janet Malone. "Internationality--At What Price?" Review for Religious 51, no. 1 (January-February 1992): 109-117. Dorcas Surely, there was time to miss what might be missed: garments made, acts of charity attested to by friends and neighbors, the complexities of a simple style, feel of wool well-woven, the breathless moment prior to a newborn's angry cry. Then, did you hesitate at all on that gruff apostle's word before, gazelle-like (how else), you leapt from there to here? Leonar~i Cochran OP Review for Religious FINIAN McGINN Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community ~nheaot happens when a community evolves from a homoge- us ethnic group to a heterogeneous ethnic group? Do the inner structures of the group change? Do they have to change; if so, how far? How can we change structures to meet the multi-cultural needs of the members? Do we have any models of recent attempts toward multiculturalization of institutions? With more Hispanic and southeast Asian membership in U.S. religious com-munities, what are the areas of greatest tension? How do we pre-pare our members for a multicultural institution? Is there a different type of preparation for the older members than for the younger? Does the same phenomenon happen to public educational institu-tions, businesses, and large corporations? These are but a few of the issues confronting provincials in the United States as they realize that they have been writing more letters in Spanish to their members than those of the previous administration and that they see more and more Vietnamese-- survivors of the fall of Saigon in 1975--in their houses of forma-tion. What has happened to the province we entered in the 1950s? At that time most of us were German, Italian, Polish, and Irish-- predominantly Westerners of European descent. Now, in the mid 1990s, we have become pluralistic, much more ethnically diverse, and the old ways of doing things have begun to change. As ministers of the local :church, most of us have witnessed our parishes and other apostolates change demographically, but we Finian McGinn OFM serves as vicar provincial for the Santa Barbara province of the Franciscan friars. His address is 1500 34th Avenue; Oakland, California 94601. ffuly-August 1996 McGinn * Toward Multiculturalizin~ a Reli~ous Communi~ have failed to look inward at our own religious communities. We have tried to prepare the people in our areas of work by inviting experts to give inservices and workshops to inform the parish-ioners about the new reality they face and to help them understand the new refugee and immigrant neighbors in their midst. We have applied multicultural solutions to our apostolates, but we have failed to prescribe them for our own religious communities. Immigrants and Refugees in General What are the differences of today? Ethnographers tell us that the Hispanic, the southeast Asian, and the African American have different ways of looking at the family, at community life, work, interpersonal relationships, prayer; recreation, decision making, and at many other issues which are essential to religious life. Even though 'we see out communities beginning to change demo-graphically we continue to do what we have been doing for years. Superiors are becoming aware that many of the strategies that were used before are no longer effective today because of the dif-ferent cultural values held by the members. Is there agreement on a common hierarchy of values? How does a superior take into consideration the Asian notion of "sav-ing face" in his or her decision making? If the culture affirms dependence and docility, how does one teach independence, assertiveness and confrontation? If the culture emphasizes family, interpersonal relationships with persons of the same culture and close-knit ingroupings, how does it embrace a larger community of muhiethnic members? How do different cultural groups view the vows; how do they see religious obedience? How much does a province change to accommodate the new cultures? .Multiculturalizing in the United States presents a rather polit-ically sticky problem. At present the United States offers a con-text where xenophobia is quite present. Historically we have gone from the melting pot model to a nonwelcoming model and from: "Come but assimilate quickly" to "Don't come and, in fact; you're not welcome!" Today movements against immigration are strong; foreigners are looked upon as inferior, their culture deficient, their language an obstacle to the acquisition of English. The province is aware of and perhaps may even pick up these negative attitudes by contagion or osmosis. Minority candidates who lived in the society where antiimmigration propaganda is prevalent Review for Religious approach the province wondering in what manner they will be received. R. Otheguy, commenting on the melting pot notion of the United States, remarks: "Because of their experience with racism in this country, many Hispanics have long ago given up hope of disappearing"--of blending into U.S. society. Baker takes the reasoning a step further and concludes that Hispanics found in multiculturalism a way to become at least somewhat American and keep their cultural values at the same time. He states, "Because of the [Hispanic's] history of being the victim of racism, the result may be the prevention of assimilation and integration with a consequent need to embrace some form of multicultural-ism for survival, security, status, and self-enhancement." Ethnic minorities themselves speak of additive biculturalism and bilingualism (Cummins, 1989). The melting pot paradigm has stressed a subtractive aspect: "Acquire English and lose your native language! Assimilate into U.S. society and forget your own culture; it's a deficit." Ethnographers and multiculturalists, on the other hand, speak of English-plus and acculturation to the host cul-ture. "ApprEciate your own language and learn English too. Take on the good U.S. cultural values, but don't lose your own culture in the process!" Most minorities lean toward maintenance of their language and culture as they adapt them-selves to the U.S. resettlement process (Lambert & Taylor). Paulo Freire describes the approach whereby the dominant culture wit-tingly or unwittingly attempts to impose the mainstream culture on new arrivals as "cultural invasion . a form of cultural domi-nation." Hopefully today's religious community advocates the addi-tive approach. As in many of these issues, however, it is much easier to speak about it than to do it. How do different cultural groups view the vows; how do they see religious obedience? How much does a province change to accommodate. the new cultures ? A Pluralistic Religious Community in Missionary Lands After some years in a missionary area, the superior general of a congregation in Rome insists that groups of a congregation 3~uly-August 1996 McGinn ¯ Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community from different nations in a foreign missionary country form one province. Each small group initially came to the mission country and received a portion of the mission territory within which to work. Members of the same ethnic group struggled with the lan-guage together, worked together, prayed together, evangelized the territory together, and accepted and formed native vocations. After some years this group and others in the missionary nation are asked to begin to form one entity together with the native religious of the area. This is an extremely difficult process and almost always poses a threat to both the foreigners and the native-born religious. The foreigners are no longer the majority in the group. They brought the faith, founded the missions, trained and even baptized and formed the native religious. In fact, they are still held in awe by the native religious members of the congregation. The foreigners are older and have been trained in a different the-ology of mission. The native religious, members of the host cul-ture, know the nation and its culture much better ,than do the foreigners. They have definite ideas on what should be done in their own country but are afraid to offend the foreigners who have given them the faith in the first place. This leads to a cultural impasse. To form the one entity from many disparate groups and to agree upon a common set of values is fraught with tension. In the United States In religious communities of the United States, however, usu-ally the majority membership of the institution is of white west-ern European stock; they are members of the host culture who have been living religious life for some time and have reached a consensus or implicit agreement upon certain common values of the institution. The tension arises as other multiethnic members become a sizeable minority, become visible, and begin to make their voices heard within the membership. How do the new mem-bers fit in? How does the larger group make room for them? What interior and exterior changes must take place to allow this to happen? How Other Institutions Meet the Challenge Businesses are learning new strategies to capitalize on inter-national markets and to improve communication with foreign Review for Religious nationals. Many public school districts, impacted by the influx of immigrants and refugees, offer classes, inservices and workshops on understanding cultural differences to relate with parents and members of the minority community and to enhance crosscul-tural communication. Business and education are presently publishing ma6~y books and articles dealing with multicultural differences and ways of adapting to and understanding people of other cultures. We, as religious, have not yet tapped these sources for our own com-munities. Business Since the Peace Corps in the early 1960s, many types of cross-cultural training programs have been designed to prepare indi-viduals for life in another culture. The goal of such programs is to help the business organization reduce and' prevent business losses and personal trauma. Harris and Moran. describe at least four models of training in cross-cultural orientation programs, ranging from lectures and readings about the culturel through simulation activities and sen-sitivity training to a cultural awareness model which seeks to develop one's ability to recognize ~cultural influence~ in personal values, behaviors, and cognitions. The goals of any training in cultural awareness are the following: a)to develop one's skill in diagnosing .difficulties in intercultural communication, b) to teach one when to suspend judgment when confronted with behavior which appears odd, c) to help one become aware of one's lack of sufficient knowledge of the other culture, and d) to increase one's motivation to learn more about the culture and the people. Public School Districts Public schools train cultural staff persons in cross cultural com-munication and hire. experts of the target 'cultural groups to present orientation and inservice to administrators and both certificated and classified personnel. These inservices and workshops are offered to both new and veteran teachers and staff. The host culture is compared to the immigrant or refugee culture. Culture brokers and the cultural specialists explain the areas of possible tension and/or misunderstanding; differing'values are examined, discussedL, 3-7-7- .~dy-Aug~tst 1996 McGinn ¯ Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community and understood. The goal of the process is twofold. It seeks to offer awareness and understanding of the newly arrived ethnic group and to examine the behavior of the teachers, administrators, and staff toward this group. James A. Banks distinguishes between two types of curricula in the schools: the manifest curriculum and the hidden curriculum. It is the hidden curriculum which is more cogent and which impo.ses the implicit norms and values of the school. Hopefully, the process of cultural awareness will shed some light on the hidden values and norms of the institution. Steps Religious Groups Are Taking By far one of the most multicultural communities in the United States and elsewhere is the international community of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. From its very foundation it has been international and universal in scope. It has no set policy governing ethnicity in the local house, yet from the beginning of the institute, its communities have been from different countries, ethnic groups, and cultures. Members of the institute have con-sistendy affirmed the intention that wherever possible, their com-munities be international in membership. Although they do not have formal courses in international living, the administration does try to provide the members with experiences locally, provincially, and at the general level that will expose them to the reality of living in a multicultural commu-nity. In recent years, two continuing formation programs have helped the members deepen this expression of international, mul-ticultural living in community: They also have regional meetings and meetings of administrators. "All of these gatherings, while addressing specific questions, give the opportunity for the sisters to get to know one another and to build up understanding and relationships. [The gatherings] deepen the sense of our being from many different places and our unity in diversity" (MOtte). It should be noted that in the gatherings the sisters use three linguae francae--French, Spanish, and English as official languages dur-ing the meetings. Maryknoll , Maryknoll has developed its Cross-Cultural Training Services for those who wish to discern theircall and prepare for cross- Review for Religious cultural ministry. A team of experts directs a month-long, inten-sive preparation, including a week retreat, for those planning to work abroad. The topics discussed during the training include culture and society, adjustment to a new culture, strategies for surviving culture and language shock, spirituality, inculturation, and discernment. As always, Maryknoll continues to offer a realistic prepara-tion to both religious and lay persons who find themselves called to a global ministry. Much of the content studied in the training sessions is vital and, with a little adaptation, can easily be used in workshops for religious institutions in the United States which are in the process of becoming multiethnic. Content of a Multicultural Awareness Program Should any province wish to set up a program to make itself more multicultural there shoul~t be certain key components of the content area. The actual training program could range from lectures, workshops to an institute, or any combination of the three. The speakers at the events should be experts in various areas of ethnic studies, preferably not members of the partici-pating religious group. In the world of language-minority students, J. Cummins speaks of certain "dimensions" necessary for the empowerment of minorities. The dimensions mentioned in Cummins's paradigm for empowerment touch the very center of multicultural living. They can easily be adapted from an educational institution to a reli-gious community. Cummins stresses four essential dimensions: language, collaboration, reciprocity, and advocacy. A. Language. The language issue is important. Theoreticians speak of language shock as. they describe, the early years of a person's resettlement in the United States. Bilingualists stress :the incor-poration of one's home language into the life of the school and its curriculum. The inclusion of the minority language and culture into the school has significant effects on the personality, attitudes, and the social and emotional well being of the students and their parents. The language issue in a religious community is also of impor-tance. The minority candidate must feel at ease in the language of the .host country. At times, both community and ministry err by failing to allow sufficient time f6r the acquisition of higher cog- 3~dy-.4ug~t 1996 McGinn * Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community The emotional drain of trying to live in a society that speaks one's second language is stressful for the minority religious. nitive and academic vocabulary to emerge in second-language acquisition, and, satisfied with the conversational idiom which we hear daily, tell the newly arrived religious, "There's a great need in the ministry for a Spanish-speaking religious. You know enough English now, get to work in a barrio parish. Fulfill our need in the Spanish-speaking ministry!" (The language learner, too, may become impatient with the slowness of the acquisition process and, in his or her impatience, opt to begin ministry sooner than he or she should.) This may be a great boon for the ministry of the province, but not for com-munity life. We have deprived the candi-date and the religious community of the depth and the wisdom which both can bring to community living. In this area it seems much better to err on the side of more English. rather than less. The'emotional drain of trying to live in a society that speaks one's second lan-guage is stressful for the minority religious. No matter how proficient one is in L2, there are times when learners simply shut down. Teachers, those who have studied abroad, and linguists describe the state of one who has paid attention all day to academic discourse in the weaker language and in the evening simply blanks out and is unable to comprehend even the simplest of phrases in L2. Larson and Smalley describe language shock as a component of culture shock that has profound effects on one who is trying to acquire the lan-guage of the host society. Rese~irchers point out that the disori-entation caused by language shock can induce a whole syndrome of rejection. The newly arrived must cope with the new stress and therefore must divert attention and energy from learning the second language. The learner begins to reject speakers of the tar-get language. These speakers become the source of his or her dis-orientation and, therefore, he or she has difficulty forming identifications necessary to learn the language of the host coun-try. The problem becomes even more complex if the learner per-ceives, erroneously or otherwise, that the speakers of the target language reject the learner and his or her culture .and language. Language has many paradoxical uses. Instead of opening doors, it can close them. It can,; at times, be used as a wall, or a Revlew for Religious defense to unite a group or to keep others out. Knowingly or unknowningly, fluently bilingual speakers will use the language which other members of the community do not understand to keep them out of the circle or to provide a feeling of belonging for themselves. Unless one knows the linguistic code--he or she can-not enter the inner circle. Opportunities to study the languages of the members of the community should also be offered and even encouraged for the majority members of the religious congregation. Bialystok and Hakuta treat the types of motivation in second-language learning and come to the conclusion that few of us learn a second lan-guage as an end in itself. Most of us learn it "to gain access, through verbal interaction, to cultural dealings with people who lay claim to that language." As most of us can read a language better than we can speak it, community liturgies and prayer of the hours could be said on alternate days in either language if the members of the local com-munity were in the process of~becoming bilingual. Fine language courses with new, nonthreatening and nonbelittling methodol-ogy are offered in practically every large city of the country. Corollary 1. Spending the time and energy in the attempt to learn a language used by a large number of the religious congregation (that of the host country and that of the minority cultures) is a good investment by the province in community life. B. Collaboration. Cummins claims that where the culture of the family is not given status in the school and communities and parents are kept powerless, then inferiority and lack of school progress may result. When there is parental collaboration with the teacher there is usually success. Religious communities at times tend to take the culture of origin of the member for granted and in no way envision it as a factor in the religious formation of the individual. We tend to think that their mother and dad are like our mother and dad and that their home is like our home. With the advent of people from many diverse areas of the world, the assumption no longer works if it ever did. The following is an example from education of this type of reasoning. A successful middle-school teacher recently remarked: "I just assumed that their home was like my home and for two years in middle school I demanded at least thirty minutes of written homework. Then I visited one of the homes. It was a revelation. ~dy-August 1996 McGinn ¯ Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community The.home and local community of the culturally different are areas that the religious province cannot afford to ignore. In a two-bedroom apartment three families were living (around 16 individuals). There was no quiet space, very lit.de furniture, and little ones were scurrying all around. If any homework could be done, it would be done at the kitchen-table, the only table in the home. This would be done while the five elders were watching television at the same time in the same room. I began to realize that doing homework in'a home such as that one was notan easy task. The example was not characteristic of only one family but of the vast majority of families of Hmong students at that school." Awareness of the culture and the val-ues of the minority religious is essential. Conchita Delgado-Gaitan has many stud-ies that analyze learning experiences in the home and parental strategies used to impart knowledge and values to the chil-dren. She compared the home strategies with those used by the school of the dom-inant culture to discover convergence or dissonance. She studied the linkage between the culture of the home and that of the school. The home and local community of the culturally different are areas that the religious province cannot afford to ignore. Culture shock, discussed in most cultural orientation work-shops, is not as easily remedied as one might think. This psychic ~hock is the anxiety which results from the disorientation encoun-tered upon entering a new culture. Larson and Smalley describe how essential characteristics of good mental health are often lost just by moving into a new culture. Extreme symptoms of culture shock may pass relatively quickly as ways of coping with the new environment are acquired. More subtle problems, however, may persist and produce stress which can last for years. Paul Pedersen, in his recent book, A Handbook for Developing Multicultural Awareness, confirms that culture shock is likely to last over the visitor's entire stay in an unfamiliar culture, reappear in a variety of forms, and not be limited to an initial adjustment. Spindler and Spindler, of Stanford University, have been train-ing people in ethnographic evaluation of educational environ, ments for many years. Cultural therapy, the term the ,Spindlers use to describe a procedure of reflective, cross-cultural analysis of Review for Religious individuals of different cultures through personal encounters, has become quite famous. The aim of the therapy is to promote cross cultural and intracultural behavioral understanding. The process involves open dialogue between people of different cultures (teacher and student or a member of the host culture and one of the cultural minority). It seeks to reveal to the educator and to the minority student unconscious biases and cultural ethnocentrism. Trueba shows how culture shock experienced by the culturally diverse can have an effect on the members of the host culture, and he observes: "Therefore, it is extremely important for teach-ers to realize that they are experiencing cultural shock when they try to function effectively with children who do not share their values and expectations. Academic success requires, then, that both teachers and students build learning environments in which success is possible for both." How can we make the local reli-gious communities places which assure success and fairness for all members of whatever culture? With each of the four dimensions paternalism on the part of the member of the host culture is a temptation, Among members of the religious institute, the environment should be one of equal-ity. A paternalistic attitude in this process would promote a depen-dency which would impede empowerment and fail to promote success. On the other hand, members of the religious commu-nity who have lived in other countries and those who have strug-gled to acquire another language--of host country or of the language minority--are equipped to act as culture brokers and even cultural therapists in helping to make the new culture more familiar and less strange and in creating an atmosphere which insures fairness and success. Corollary 2. Awareness of the new cultures in the religious community should be encouraged. Study of one's own culture and that of other members of the community should be pro-moted. Appreciation of the ethnic diversity of the community by listening and telling stories without ethnocentric bias and judgment will hopefully develop respect for the legitimate cultural differences of the religious community. C. Reciprocity. Cummi~as's third dimension stresses the fact that the language minority student must not simply receive the new knowledge passively but there should be a reciprocal inter-action, a dialogue in which the minority students bring their rich-ness to the process. 3n~uly-August 1996 McGinn ¯ Toward Multicultu~alizing a Religious Community In a religious community this type of sharing appears to be difficult to attain. It demands that those who have lived in the host country all their lives and have been in the religious com-munity for many more years must begin to listen to the new ones and look at the goals and mission of the congregation from their perspective. It requires a change of attitude. In a nonjudgmental manner, one can begin to act as an ethnographer and discover new realities and appreciate the vibrant faith and the beauty in approaches to the sacred which have not been part of one's own history. To do this one must allow a forum for the culturally dif-ferent and listen to them with respect. They become the teachers. Bilingual members and members who have lived in mission lands are an asset to the religious community. Religious of diverse cultures are at different levels of acculturation, and the bilingual and former missionary members of the community are equipped to act as bridge makers in opening the dialogue between the older religious of the host country and those who are culturally diverse. Corollary 3. Reciprocity is a step toward healing the rem-nants of cultural shock. "I struggle to understand and appre-ciate the minority religious' culture, language, approach to the divine, family, and community, and the newly arrived struggle to appreciate my culture, language, approach to the divine, family, and community." ~Many demands are involved in the process, but the struggle leads to mutual respect and understanding. D. Advocacy. In a school setting, Cummins insists that the majority teachers become advocates for the language minority children. Many of the instruments used in the evaluation of minor-ity students are based and standardized on the language of the majority population, and it is often easy to detect types of insti-tutionalized racism in the school and even in the hidden curric-ula. Therefore, the minority student needs someone who is able to open doors, give advice, and accompany him or her in situations which involve power and status relationships between dominant and dominated groups at different levels of a society. When we apply this to a religious community, we can begin to consider the customs of the congregation and its particular provincial statutes to discover cultural differences which could render harmonious living difficult. Advocacy involves seeing that house libraries have sufficient current books and periodicals in the mother tongue and insisting upon minority representation at Review for Religious various levels of formation and administration even to the actual selection of superiors who are open, tolerant and appreciative of other cultures represented in the community. Benjamin Schwarz states: "Dissatisfied minorities want, at a minimum, a real voice in determining their future--but a real voice for the minority means real sacrifice for the majority." Corollary. 4. Those who enjoy acceptance in the dominant society and who are comfortable with the everyday life in the religious community spontaneously offer direction and knowledgeable advocacy. They also help to provide a voice for the ethnic minority members of the community. Toward Multiculturalization Developing multicultural awareness in a community requires many changes. Pedersen concludes his work for cross-cultural counselors by stating that the many changes involved "will pro-duce a widening ripple effect as these changes bring about other changes." He continues: "We are moving toward a future that requires us to understand persons who are different from our-selves, whatever our culture might be. Developing multicultural awareness is the strategy for our survival as well as our growth in meeting the diverse needs of a multicultural global village." In a recent letter to all the friars, Herman Schaluck the gen-eral of the Order of Friars Minor, told his brothers that the new projects which the order has embarked upon in Africa, Thailand, and the former Soviet Union were intentionally international and multicultural in makeup to sign a new way of thinking. In spite of the difficulties inherent in the understanding of an international, multicultural fraternity, the order seeks this new quality of liv-ing together. The general explains: "Paul insistently states (Ga 6) that it is not a matter of being Jews or pagans, of being cir-cumcised or uncircumcised, but of being a 'new creature.' Life in an international [multicultural] fraternity is therefore not some-thing of secondary importance or a question of strategic maneu-vering: it is rather already evangelization itself by way of example." An Apostolic Challenge We considered a number of apparently hypothetical ques-tions about a religious community evolving from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous grouping. What happens? What changes ~uly-August 1996 McGinn ¯ Toward Multiculturalizing a Religious Community occur? Can it be done? Suppose we did design workshops and planning sessions on cross-cultural awareness for the total com-munity from the insights offered by education, business, and the training programs~for foreign missionaries. Suppose, to.o, we set up processes within the provincial structures for dialogue, reciprocity, and advocacy. Would the program be successful? Certainly many changes would occur, and change is almost always tension-filled and difficult to accept. However, it would be quite exciting to embark upon such a journey. It would demand much tolerance, patience, and charity on the part of the total member-ship to ensure that the program would succeed. What a sign of forgiveness, openness, trust, and conversion such a religious com-munity could offer the world around it. The approach would cer-tainly be countercultural. Only the members themselves know whether they are willing to do this. Perhaps a religious community is the only institution which can meet this challenge. I have spent many years trying to con-vince public schools, public school districts, and even welfare departments to become more multicultural but to no avail. Conversion, forgiveness, sacrifice, patience, understanding, and charity are woven into the very fabric of religious life. These are the same virtues required to make an institution multicultural. We religious are called to be a sign. Perhaps we Can be a sign to U.S. society that actually e pluribus unum is realizable. Bibliography Baker, C. Foundations of Bilingt~.al Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1993. Banks, J.A., and McGee Banks, C.A., eds. Multicultural Education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1989. Bialystok, E., and Hakuta, K. In Other Words. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Cummins, J. Empowering Minority Students. Sacramento: CABE, 1989. Delgado-Gaitan, C. "Traditions and Transitions in the Learning Process of Mexican Children: A Ethnographic View." In Spindler, G. and L. (eds.) Interpretive Ethnography of Education: At Home and Abroad. Hillsdale: Laurence Erlbaum, 1987a. Delgado-Gaitan, C. "Parent Perceptions of School: Supportive Environments for Children." In Trueba, H. (ed.) Success or Failure? Learning and the Language Minority Student. Cambridge: Harper and Row, 1987b. Review for Religious Delgado-Gaitan, C~, and' Trueba, H. Crossing Cultural Borders: Education for Immigrant Families in America. New York: Falmer, 1991. Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury, 1970. Freire, P. The Politics of Education. Boston: Bergin and Garvey, 1985. Hanley, K., csj. Cross Cultural Training Services. Maryknoll, New York, Harr.is, ER., and Moran, R.T. Managing Cultural Differences. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1991. Lambert, W.E., and Taylor, D.M. Coping with Cultural and Racial Diversi~y in Urban America. New York: Praeger, 1990. Larson, D.N., and Smalley,'W.A. Becoming Bilinguak A Guide to Learning Language. California: William Carey Library, 1972. Law, E.H.E The VVolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993. Motte, personal correspondence, 1995. Otheguy, R. "Thinking about Bilingual Education: A Critical Appraisal." Harvard Educatiorial Review 52 (3), 1982. Pedersen, P. A Handbook for Developing Multicultural Awareness: Alexandria: A~. erican CounselingAssociation, 1994. Schaluck, H., OFM. "On the Way Towards a New Era," May 8. Prot. 083!.19. S'chwarz, B. "The Diversity Myth: America's Leading Export." The Atlantic Monthly 275 (5), 1985. Spindler, G., and Spindler, L., eds. Pathways to Cultural Awareness. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. Trueba, H.T., Jacobs, L., and Kirton, E. Cultural Conflict and Adaptation: The Case of Hmong Children in American Society. New York: Falmer, 1990. JUST PUBLISHED-- The Best of the Review - 5 The Church and 'Consecrated Life (see insert at back of book for ordering) "At a time when hope for religious life and its future is once again on the rise, the articles in this book offer an exceptional and much needed panorama of the critical issues of renewal faced by contemporary men and women religious. Elizabeth McDonough and David Fleming have done us an enormous favor in bringing together the Best of the Review in this area. I recommend this book enthusiastically; its authors take us another step along the journey to that future for religious life for which we all long." --Se~nSammon FMS Vicar General Marist Brothers, Rome 3~uly-August 1996 new life ROBERT E MALONEY It's Summer! A Letter to Young Religious J My dear brothers and sisters, It is wonderful to be young. At least, most of us who have grown older think so! Young adulthood is the summer of life; autumn and winter follow only later. In the vibrant years of youth, heart, respiration, and physical strength are at their peak efficiency. Our inner drives, too, are fully alive: our quest for meaning, our longing for deeper rela-tionships, our yearning to create a better future. I am writ-ing today to encourage you who are young to enjoy, and use well, the gifts of this summertimh in your life. Youth has many striking advantages. As the superior general of a community, I often see these in the lives of young religious, both men and women. Let me describe some of them briefly. First, youth has drive and enthusiasm. It is good to rejoice in youth's vigor. I can remember a period in my life when I could interview ~tudents all day long, prepar.e classes until late at night, be up again at five the next morning for prayer and the Eucharist, and then teach a full schedule. The day arrived when I could no longer do that. But I still look back with happy memories on the vibrant energies of youth. Young people can give with zest. And they want to give their lives to something'worth-while. They seek a cause, and when they find one they Robert P. Maloney CM serves as superior general of the Vincentians. His address is Congregazione della Missione; Via dei Capasso, 30; 00164 Roma, Italy. Revie~ for Religious ? launch into it with enthusiasm. ,Their dreams, their~hopes, their vision of the future have not yet been dimmed by bitter experi-ences, or failures, or the harsh fact' that much of reality changes quite slowly. Young people gaze at the world's needs and believe that they can make a contribution. Second, youth has imagination and spontaneity. Young people bring new horizons to communities~ They have the capacity to envision new solutions, They often feel free from rigid categories or structures that have become creaky or clumsily reinforced over the years. They find it easy to identify with the words of Vincent' de Paul that "love is inventive even to infinity.''1 They are willing to "dream the impossible dream." Spontaneity is one of the refreshing aspects of youth. Young people say unexpected things. They question practices that some of us older people never had any doubts about. At times we may find that. their questions make us uncomfortable or defensive. But we should by no means be quick to interpret youth's spontaneity as a sign of aggres-siveness; rather, it often comes from a genuine desire to seek the truth. Third, youth is able to change. Those of us who are older have ploughed deep furrows. It becomes increasingly harder for us to climb out of the ruts we have dug. The furrows of the young are shal-lower. They can be ploughed over. Their direction can be changed so that new waters run through them and new life sprouts up. That is why good initial formation is important for the young. They are pliable enough to ~hink new thoughts, learn new.ways, and create new things. Of course, youth has its struggles too, its gnawing problems. Let me dwell just for a moment on a few of these. Because youth is searching, it is often uncertain about its goals or even its values. Experience tells us that, today especially, young people have diffi-culty making a permanent commitment. There is so much rapid change in society, there is so much disillusionment with those whose values the young may once have prized, that they find it hard to decide where to sink their roots. This means that young people are often confused. They are grappling with the meaning of their live~i They are hesitant about making a definitive commitment. Experience tells us that, today especially, young people have difficulty making a permanent commitment. ff~uly-August 1996 Malone~ * It's Summer? One of the greatest challenges in ministry today is to present attractive, even risky, alternatives to young people and accom-pany them in the difficult task of deciding, Several recent studies point out that young'people seek explicit religious goals, intense community life and solidarity, and explicit and worldwide service to the most needy. Young people can certainly find these goals realized in the call to follow Christ faithfully and to give them-selves to the church's preferential option for the poor. Young people often struggle with thei~ sexuality. Of course, those of us who are older are engaged in the same~struggle too. But the young experience in an~ awakening way strong physical drive; sex-ual energy, a desire for close, intimate relationships. And, unfor-tunately, the turbulent years of adolescence often do not come to a calm, peaceful resolution, but rather to a negotiated truce, after which war may soon break out again. It is~helpful for those of us who live in community to recognize that this is a basic human story, not just ours. It is also important for the young to speak about their sexual struggles with great simplicity with a wise spiritual guide. Youth lacks experience. This is an inevitable fact. All of us expe~ rience life's joys and its sorrows only gradually. Growth takes time. Yet there is a deep knowledge and love that come only from experience. There is gold that can be refined only in the fire. Of Course, not everyone who experiences life's joys and .suf-ferings grows, But, on the other hand, no one grows without a healthy dose of realistic experience. Our ongoing formation pro-grams must. help young people reflect on their experience and grow from it. Having said all this, let me acknowledge that I have painted with broad strokes. Some of the gifts that I have described as characterizing young people are often found in good measure in those who are older too. Likewise, some of the problems that have briefly touched on above plague not just the young, buvalso their elders. Today let me lay before you, young religious, a series of chal-lenges. As .the superior general of an apostolic community, I find that these are the most important things in my heart as I think of the many young men and women who long to live religious life generously today. I call them challenges because my own per-sonal experience, with its frequent failures, tells me they are not easy to respond to deeply. Review for Religious Be deeply rooted in the person of Jesus. This seems obvious, but there is nothing more important that as an older brother I could say to you. "Remember," St. Vincent de Paul once wrote, "that we live in Jesus Christ by the death of Jesus Christ and that we ought to die in Jesus Christ by the life of Jesus Christ and that our life ought to be hidden in Jesus Christ and full of Jesus Christ and that in order to die like Jesus Christ it is necessary to live like Jesus Christ.''2 The Gospels ring with this conviction: Jesus is the absolute center. "I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus says. "No one comes to the Father except through me." "I am the vine." "I am the gate." "I am the shepherd." "I am the light." "I am the true bread come down from heaven. The one who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood will live forever.''3 Let me simply recall to you today the wonderful prayer attributed to St. Patrick: Chri]t be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in c~'uiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. I recommend two principal means for focusing on the per-son of Jesus, The first is daily meditative prayer. Make Christ the center of that prayer, especially the crucified Lord. Engage in a well-defined period of reflective prayer each day (for example, a half hour), and let the Lord capture your mind and your heart. The second means--and it is not completely distinct from the .first--is to find, love, and serve Christ in the person of the poor. They are our lords and masters. Jesus li~es on in them in a special way, particularly in the crucified peoples. It is so easy for the "world," and for us too, to become numb to their plight: the 5.7 million people of Haiti, who have been so poor for so long that their pain is no longer news; the 2.5 million Bosnian refugees, victims of "ethnic cleansing"i the 1.5 million Somalians on the edge of death by starvation; the countless Rwandans who have been brutally slain. Our contemplation of the crucified Lord can-not remain merely a pious exercise, nor can it be simply medita-tion on a past event. The Lord lives on in his members. He is .~uly-Auffust 1996 Maloney ¯ It's Summer? crucified in individual persons and in suffering peoples. The call is to see him and to serve him there. "When I was hungry you gave me to eat. When Iwas thirsty you gave me to drink.When I was naked you clothed me" (Mt 25:35-36). Learn from. the poor, and be inventive in serving them. I say this to you very directly: it is only the simple and hum~ ble who really grow in the Lord's life. Only0 they can learn the depths of God's wisdom. The saints knew this very well because they had made the gospel teachings their own. That is why the founders of communities urge. all their members to grow in sim-plicity and humility. Learn especially from the poor. They can teach all of us about gratitude for small gifts, about patience in waiting, about hoping against hope, about loving those around us, even in the midst of suffering and oppression, and about shar-ing the little that we have with our brothers and sisters. It is only when we have learned from the poor that we can be inventive in serving them. It is they who will explain to us their deepest needs, and then we can bring them gifts that will really be helpful. Your creativity and imaginativeness as young people will be nourished by what you can learn from them. They will be a life-giving source in your ongoing formation. I encou

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

Issue 34.2 of the Review for Religious, 1975. ; 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 Q 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-scription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or mgney order payable to Review ]or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to p~rsons 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 March 1975 Volume 34 Number 2 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard.; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to .Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. Typical Constitutions Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., a specialist in canon law for religious, is a member of the Jesuit Community at St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. INTRODUCTION 1. Plan. The purpose of the present work i~ to facilitate the writing of constitutions of congregations of sisters. It is in fact a typical set of con-stitutions and consists of three parts: I. Spiritual, which is a topical list of spiritual matters for the articles of the first and purely spiritual part of the con-stitutions. Legal norms and details are excluded from this part. 11. Legal, the more important legal articles of congregations of sisters, and these are to make up the second part of the constitutions. III. Statutes, which are not part of the constitutions. These consist of the lesser legal norms to which are to be appended the enactments of general chapters and the ordinances of superiors general. The present work is baled primarily on "Typical Constitutions of Lay Religious Congregations," Review for Religious, 25 (1966), 361-437, also ob-tainable as a reprint from Review for Religious; secondarily on "Proper Juridical Articles of Constitutions," ibid., 27 (1968), 623-32; and lastly on "Constitutions without Canons," ibid., 452-512, which also contains a hand-book of the canons that apply to congregations of sisters, 477-508. 2. Two parts in constitutions. The essential principle of this plan is not that the constitutions are divided into two parts but that the first part is purely spiritual and therefore does not contain legal norms or details, which are con-fined to the second part and to the statutes. The reason for following this prin-ciple is my experience, observation, and judgment that legal norms and details necessarily dry up the spiritual articles of constitutions. The Holy See ap-proved the constitutions of Visitation Nuns, effective from February 2, 1971, 191 192 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 which are divided into two books, one spiritual, the other legal. The same ap-proval had been given in the past to the constitutions of some orders of nuns, in which the canonical norms were appended to but did not form part of the con-stitutions. A juridical norm is to be accurate, clear, and as brief as possible. There are to be no superfluous words; every word is to mean something perti-nent. The result is a dry utterance, and it is evident that details are dry. Law and details have their necessary and proper place in the religious life. They are to be observed but this does not mean that they are to obstruct or to be con-fused with the spiritual. Ecclesiae sanctae (no. 14) states in effect that less stable, less general, and more detailed norms should not be part of the con-stitutions. 3. Canons should not be included in the constitutions unless this is necessary or counseled for the sense of the particular article of the con-stitutions. The constitutions are the proper law of the institute; canons and other matters of common law are the universal law of the Church. There will undoubtedly be translations of the new canon law into at least the principal vernacular languages. An analytical index or handbook of the canons that apply to congregations of sisters can be used by all congregations, and the ex-cessive number of legal articles that have been in the constitutions of each con-gregation can thereby be eliminated. As stated above, there is such a handbook of canons for congregations of sisters in Review for Religious, 27 (1968), 477- 508. 4. First and spiritual part of the constitutions. Typical topics for this first section are listed below. This section should consist of the broad, fundamental, spiritual, religious, human, and social principles of the religious life. The style should be in keeping with the dignity of the matter, motivating, and inspiring. It is to be well written but is not to be merely attractive spiritual reading nor mere narration or information. It is to lead to action, as is the second part of the constitutions and the statutes; it is a rule of life and conduct, and it is in this most important aspect that the style of current experimental constitutions is defective (Review for Religious, 33 (1974), 378-9). This section is not to be a manual of spiritual theology; it gives the more general and fundamental motivation and spirituality of the Church and of the institute. The spiritual sec-tion does not free from but presumes and demands the constant prayerful study of Sacred Scripture, the teaching of the Church on spiritual, theology and the religious life, spiritual theology itself, and other sound spiritual words (ibid.). Obviously the spiritual section should be solid and not filled in with unreal or unsubstantial motivation or spirituality. Especially for this section, the follow-ing footnotes in the article, "Typical Constitutions of Lay Religious Congregat!ons," can be consulted. These contain a listing of other articles, particularly those of spiritual content, ,often found in chapters of constitutions in the past. These footnoteg are nos. 5, 16, 19, 22, 27-9, 32, 36, 40-1, 43-6, 71-2, 74, 90, 93, and 95. From this same article, the following articles should be in the first and spiritual section of the constitutions: 1-2, the general and special Typical Constitutions / 193 purpose; 82, 94-5, the definitions of the essential religious vows; and no. 93, the law of common life in relation to poverty. 5. Second and legal section of the constitutions. This is composed in greater part of the determinations of matters left undetermined in canon law and also of articles over and above canon law. By reason of canon 572, par. 1, no. 6, the vows must be received by the legitimate superior according to the constitutions. The constitutions therefore must determine who is the legitimate superior in this matter. Canon law says nothing on the age required for elected general officials nor for local superiors. The practice of the Holy See in ap-proving the constitutions of pontifical congregations commonly demanded thirty-five years of age for such officials and thirty for local superiors. These are consequently articles over and above canon law. The more important and broader legal articles are to be in this section, those of lesser moment and less general in the statutes. Headings are put at the beginning of many articles in these two sections that the reader may see at a glance and reflect on the topics to be in the second and juridical part of the constitutions and in the statutes and also to note the general difference of the topics in these two sections. These headings therefore do not have to be retained in the constitutions. The order of the matters or articles in none of the three sections will necessarily be the same in all congregations. However, it is recommended to follow the same order in this second section and in the statutes for facility of use. Other articles of like import may be added to any of the three sections. In the juridical part of the constitutions and in the statutes, more important additions should be put in the former, the less important, less general, less stable in the latter. This legal sec-tion and the statutes have especially been based on the three articles mentioned in no. 1 above. In the article, "Proper Juridical Articles of the Constitutions," the following explanatory footnotes can be ~sefully consulted: Nos. 2, 4, ad-mission to and dismissal from the postulancy; 3, prolongation of the postulan-cy; 5, admission to the noviceship; 8, dismissal of a novice; 9, prolongation of the noviceship; 10, admission to profession; 11, anticipation of renewal of tem-porary vows; 12, exclusion from profession; and 13-5, dismissal. Articles 86, 101-2 of this section may be omitted, and 58 transferred to the statutes. 6. Statutes, which are not part of the constitutions. It is to be emphasized that this section is not part of the constitutions. Therefore, it does not demand the approval of the Holy See nor of the local ordinaries in the case of diocesan congregations. Consequently, it may be changed by the institute itself, unless the matter is one of common law, as the custom book is now changed by the in-stitute. This section is to contain the norms that are less important, less general, less permanent, more procedural than .substantial, more office and job profiles and descriptions than norms on the religious life (Ecclesiae sanctae, no. 14). Articles 3, 10, 19, 21, 23-4, 29, 33, 41, 43, 88, and 95-6 of this section may be omitted. The enactments of general chapters and the ordinances of superiors general should be placed at the end of this section. For this reaspn it can be more efficient and economical to print this section as a separate and less expensive booklet. 194 / Review for Religious, Volume34, 1975/2 7. Bibliography. In addition to the articles mentioned in no. 1 above, the following questions and answers and articles in Review for Religious will be helpful: "Too Much Canon Law in Constitutions," 15 (1956), 220-1; "The Constitutions," 19 (1960), 323-67; "Differences in Constitutions of Sisters and Brothers," 26 (1967), 507-16; "Differences of Law between Pontifical and Diocesan Lay Congregations,"' 27 (1968), 289-307; "Omission of Canons from Constitutions," ibid, 1144; "Postconciliar Norms on the Revision of the Constitutions," ibid., 1145-7; "Votes Required for a Revision of the Constitutions," ibid., 752-7; "Canon Law for Religious after Vatican II," 31 (1972), 949-66; 32 (1973), 1273-87; 34 (1975), 50-70; "Revision of the Constitutions," 33 (1974), 376-85. 8. Exclusion of added notes. It had been my intention to add some ex-planatory notes, but I later felt that this would only encumber an article that was already very long. It is sufficient to note that the duration of the postulan-cy, noviceship, and temporary profession is that which 1 consider the best. Provincial superiors and officials may also be elected in the provincial chapter. Finally, the directress of novices and her assistant do not have to be designated for any determined duration of office. 9. Based on the practice of the Holy See. The legal section of the con-stitutions and the statutes have been presented with the practice of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in approving constitutions always in mind. However, at times I have proposed suggestions of my own, for example, in art. II, 31, 59, and 115 of the legal section and art. 60 of the statutes. 10. General chapter retained as now. I found the place and manner of presenting the general chapter difficult to decide. I finally concluded that the best place was at the end of the legal section of the constitutions, with the norms of common law retained as now. PART I. SPIRITUAL The spiritual section, as here given, is composed simply of a list of the headings that should be developed in it. One important reason for this plan is to give full possibility for the expression of the distinctive character of a religious institute, which cannot be readily actuated in the legal section. As stated in the introduction, this part should consist of the broad, fundamental, spiritual, religious, human, and social principles of the religious life. It should give the more general .and fundamental motivation and spirituality of the Church and of the institute. Other topics may be added but they should fall within the principles just given. I. Divine vocation. The invitation of the Holy Spirit is manifested in the interior illumination and inspiration of the personal, close, and especially the total love of our Lord for you. 1 Jn 4:9-11, 19; PC, no. 6. 2. Response. Your response was to accept a life of personal, close and es-pecially of total love for our Lord. Col 3:14; Rom 13:10; I Cot 13:!3; Eph 3: 17-8; LG, nn. 39-40, 44; GES, no. 24; PC, nos. 5, 11. Typical Constitutions 3. Baptismal consecration. Relation of this invitation, response, and acceptance by God to baptism, or baptismal consecration, as the sacrament of regeneration and initiation. PC, no. 5. 4. Spirit and charism of the founder or foundress. 5. Relation of Rule, constitutions, and all law for religious to this invitation-response or consecration. PC, no. 2; Review for Religious, 33 (1974), 381. 6. Invitation to perfection is to the perfection of love or better still to a love that is personal, close, and especially total of our Lord and of all mankind for Him. 7. Perfect love will be attained completely only in the eternal possession of God in the beatific vision. From this it follows that life on earth must be similarly supernatural and be lived with sufficient understanding and con-sciousness of the Indwelling of the Trinity, of sanctifying grace as the par-' ticipation in the divine nature, as adoption into the family of God, of the in-fused virtues, the predominance of the supernatural virtue of charity, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and of the relation of these to the Mystical Body, the vine and the branches, and the sacraments. I Cor 3:16-7; Jn 14:23; 2 Pt 1:4; 1 .In 3:1; Rom 8:17; Gai 4:4-6; Eph 1:4-6; Rom 8:28-30. 8. Our Lord is the ideal. However, we do not so much imitate as live Him, by growing through love and in proportion to its degree into His way of think-ing, loving, and desiring, and thus in any circumstances doing what He would do. This is the source, the living, that Vatican II emphasized in its effect of witnessing to Christ. Phil 2:5. 9. The outstanding fact of the consciousness of our Lord was that He was the Son of God. Ours should be a like consciousness of being a daughter or son of the Father, the younger sister or brother of our Lord, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This should be a result of the conviction of the divine adoption. 10. Difference from the lay life is in the means to the end. Mt 5:48; 1 Thes 4:3; Eph 1:4; I Pt 1:4-6; LG, no. 11, 39, 42. 11. The purpose of the essential means, the evangelical counsels, is to con-trol the principal obstacles to the perfect lore'of God. LG, no. 44-6; Letter of the Papal Secretary of State, July 13, 1952, Bouscaren-O'Connor, Canon Law Digest, 4, 96. (a) Chastity. 1 Cor 7:32-8; LG, n. 42; Pius XII, Courtois, The States of Perfection, nn. 505-505a. (b) Poverty. Mt 19:23 ff.; 13:22; Lk 12:34; 12:23. (c) Obedience. Rom 5:!9;.Phil 2:8. 12. Religious life is ecclesial. The religious life is ecclesial because it is part of the function of the Church to promote the intensely universal and total love of Christ, which is what religious are primarily to live, and this is what they are primarily mandated to live by ~he approval of the Church of their institute and its Rule and constitutions; Vatican II places the religious life in the Dogmatic 796 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 Constitution on the Church; canon law makes religious life a distinct class of persons in the Church, with juridical existence and distinctive rights and obligations; the Church in approving the apostolic nature and constitutions of an apostolic religious institute gives its members a mandate to go forth as its apostles; in the religious life should be found primarily the sanctity that is the note or guide to the true Church; the Church interprets authentically the evangelical counsels, regulates their practice, establishes states of perfection, approves Rules and constitutions, and guides and watches over religious in-stitutes that they may remain faithful to the spirit of their founders. LG, nos. 43-5. 13. Necessity of all three evangelical counsels. Leo XIII, Plus XI, Plus XII, Paul VI, Vatican II. Courtois, ibid., nos. 33, 130, 403; Bouscaren- O'Connor, ibid., 6, 427; LG, no. 44. 14. Mass, Eucharist. The Eucharist as the center of the life and day of the religious; counsel of due devotion to the Real Presence. 15. Liturgy. The liturgical spirit should be progressive according to the norms of the Church, markedly interior, adult, restrained rather than distinc-tively emotional, and not prominently characterized by a love of novelty and change. 16. Devotions. The spiritual life of a religious should not be mere devotionalism, but devotions and practices approved by the Church should be neither excluded nor discouraged. 17. Blessed Virgin. The institute and its constitutions should necessarily emphasize the Blessed Virgin Mary in her relation to our Lord~ redemption, the Church, and to the sanctification, community life, and apostolate of the members. 18. Sacred Scripture. The reading and study of Sacred Scripture should be encouraged primarily in relation to and for the spiritual life. 19. Prayer. The broad principles of prayer and its place in the religious life should be given. Liturgical prayer does not exclude personal prayer. There should be a prescription of at least a half hour of daily mental prayer. Lk 5:16; 6:12; 9:18; 11:1. 20. Community life. Its pui, poses are: strength and perseverance to live the religious consecration by living with others of the same consecration; help in the apostolate and professional aspect of life; to enable the religious to develop socially and to have a socially satisfactory life. Anything is to be avoided that would fragment the congregation or that would factually eliminate or lower community life. 21. Apostolate. The mission of the Church must be a continuation of that of our Lord, and that of a religious institute must be to be a part of the aposto-late or mission of the Church. The primary purpose of redemption was the com-munication of divine life, and thus the essential apostolate of a religious in-stitute is that its members be an instrument, even if remote, in the communica-tion, intensification, and retention of divine life. The work should also be such as to help the union of the religious with God. The apostolic works are com- Typical Constitutions / 1117 munity works, not, outside of a rare exception, to be merely an individual work. There should be a special love and dedication to work for the poor, the neglected, the handicapped, the unfortunate, and the disadvantaged. The religious life is not mere natural development nor an apostolate of mere social work and action (GES, no. 42). All secularization of life or work must be avoided. 22. Formation. The broad spiritual, educational, professional, human, and social aspects of formation should be given in this section. 23. Cloister, Silence. In some institutes more contact with seculars should be encouraged than in the past, but cloister should be observed and the house should never lose the atmosphere of a religious house. The members of a com-munity should have the assurance of reasonable privacy. Religious silence is an aid to prayer and to an interior life, not mere politeness. 24. Mortification. The tendency to self and sin within us demands morti-fication. This must always be voluntary but much more passive than active mortification. Not everything in the Christian life is positive but nothing is purely negative. Mortification, renunciation, abnegation have as their purpose an intensification in virtue, which is always lived personally in Christ, and es-pecially in the supernatural virtue of charity. 25. Ecumenical spirit. 26. Religious and the modern world. The relation of religious to the tem-poral world should be included and based on the Constitution on the Church in. the Modern World of Vatican II. 27. The broad principles on at least several of the following should be in this part of the constitutions: suitability of candidates, pre-entrance guidance, postulancy, noviceship, juniorate, religious habit, profession, the sacrament of penance, religious exercises, correspondence, suffrages for the dead, retirement and care of the aged, sick and infirm, government, general and provincial chapters, superior general, other superiors, councilors, treasurers, directresses of postulants, novices, and junior professed, provinces, regions, houses, the Rule, and the constitutions. PART II. LEGAL I. General purpose. The Sisters of. are a pontifical (diocesan) congregation whose general purpose is the response of a personal, close, and particularly total love of our Lord and of all men and women for Him in a supernatural life that is a filial love of the Father, an intimate participation in the divine life, and whose primary and universal norm is the person Christ, un-der the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is a life mandated and guided by the Church, and by the charism and spirit of their own congregation. These are supplemented by the laws of the Church and of their own congregation. The sisters profess .the simple vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, which are an essential means to the attainment and intensification of this love. 2. Special purpose. (For example:) In their special purpose, the sisters, mandated by the Church as its apostles, are essentially to be an instrument of 198 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 God in the communication, preservation, and intensification of the same divine life in others. This they do through their life and work as Christian educators and nurses in hospitals. 3. Authorization necessary for a change in the special purpose or in the particular works. Without the permission of the Holy See the special purpose may not be changed, nor may works not included in it be added in a general and permanent manner. 4. Change in the habit. No permanent, substantial, or general change in the form or color of the habit may be made without the permission of the Holy See. 5. Right to admit to the postulancy. The right to admit an applicant to the postulancy belongs to the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior), who has also the right to dismiss her if she is judged unfit for the life of the congregation. A postulant has full liberty to leave the congregation. 6. Right to admit to the noviceship. The right to admit to the noviceship appertains to the superior general (higher superior) with the consent of her council. 7. Duration of the noviceship. The duration of the noviceship is two years. The added year is not required for the validity of profession, and the superior general with the advice of her council may dispense from it wholly or in part. 8. Dismissal of a novice. For any just reason a novice may be dismissed by the superior general (provincial congregation frequently: higher or provincial superior) with the advice of her council. 9. Prolongation of the noviceship. If the st~itability of a novice is doubtful, the superior general (provincial congregation frequently: higher superior) with the advice of her council may prolong the time of her noviceship but not beyond six months. 10. Religious profession. Upon completion of the noviceship and in the novitiate house, the novice shall make profession of simple vows or other com-mitment for three (two) years. At the end of this period the sister shall renew her vows for two (three) years. The superior general (provincial congregation: provincial or higher superior) may prolong the prescribed period of temporary profession but not beyond a year, in which case the sister must renew her tem-porary profession. OR: . . . the novice shall make profession of simple vows for one year. This profession is to be renewed annually until five full years of temporary vows are completed. The superior general . . . OR:. Upon the completion of the noviceship and in the novitiate house, the novice shall make profession of simple vows for three years or until the com-pletion of her twenty-first year, if a longer time is necessary to attain the age prescribed for perpetual profession. The superior general., may prolong the prescribed time of temporary profession, but not beyond a second term of three years, in which case the sister must renew her temporary profession. The right to admit to first profession, renewal and prolongation of tem-porary vows, and perpetual profession appertains to the superior general with Typical Constitutions / 199 the vote of her council. This vote shall be deliberative for the first temporary profession but only consultative for the renewal and prolongation of temporary vows and perpetual profession. (Provincial congregation:) The right to admit to first profession, prolonga-tion of temporary vows, and perpetual profession appertains to the superior general with the vote of her council. This vote shall be deliberative for the first temporary profession but only consultative for prolongation of temporary vows and perpetual profession. The provincial superior presents the requests for admission to the superior general, with the deliberative vote of her council for first profession and the consultative vote for prolongation of temporary vows and for perpetual profession. The right to admit to renewals of temporary vows appertains to ttie provincial superior w~th the consultative vote of her council. 11. For the validity of any profession, the following is necessary in addition to the other requisites stated in canons 572-3: that the profession be received by the superior general or a sister delegated by her. (Provincial, regional, and) Local superiors and their legitimate substitutes are delegated by the con-stitutions to receive all professions in their (provinces, regions, and) houses and with power also to subdelegate. The added period of two years is not necessary for the validity of the perpetual profession, and the superior general with the advice of her council may dispense from it wholly or in part. 12. The following is the formula of profession: 13. Obedience. The sisters are bound to obey by reason of the vow only when lawful superiors command expressly in virtue of holy obedience or in equivalent words. 14. Superiors shall rarely, prudently, and cautiously command in virtue of holy obedience and only for a grave reason. It is expedient that a formal precept be given in writing or at least in the presence of two witnesses. 15. Local superiors, especially of small houses, shall not give commands in virtue of holy obedience except in grave and urgent cases, and they should then immediately notify the superior general (provincial congregation: provincial superior). 16. The sisters are obliged by the virtue of obedience to fulfill the prescrip-tions of the constitutions, statutes, and other orders of superiors. 17. Supreme authority. Supreme internal authority is exercised ordinarily by the superior general assisted by her council and extraordinarily by the legitimately assembled general chapter. 18. Authority of the superior general. A serious reason and the deliberative vote of her council are required for the superior general (a higher or regional superior) to transfer or remove a superior or official before the expiration of a prescribed term of office. Unless otherwise specified, officials may be reap-pointed indefinitely. With the consent of her council, the superior general may prolong the term of office of (provincial, regional, and) local superiors when this is necessary. 200 / Review for Religious, l/olurne 34, 1975/2 19. The superior general has the right to transfer the sisters from one house to another and to assign their duties. 20. Provincial congregation. The congregation is divided into provinces. The original establishment and the total suppression of all existing provinces are reserved to the Holy See. All other establishment, modification, and sup-pression of provinces appertain to the superior general with the consent of her council and to the general chapter. Transfer to another province. Only the superior general with the advice of her council and ordinarily after consulting the interested, provincials may per-manently transfer a sister from one province to another. 21. The superior general shall prudently direct and supervise the ad-ministration of the temporal goods of the congregation and of each (province, region, and) house in accordance with the prescriptions of canon law, the con-stitutions, and statutes. 22. The superior general may not appoint a vicar and delegate powers to her nor may she grant a sister active or passive voice or deprive her of it. 23. If it should ever seem necessary to remove the superior general from of-rice, the general council must submit the matter to the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (diocesan: the ordinary of the residence of the superior general). If the superior general thinks it her duty to resign her of-fice outside the time of the sessions of any general chapter, she shall in writing make known her reasons to the same Congregation (diocesan: same ordinary). During the time of any general chapter, even if only of affairs, the superior general shall present her resignation and reasons to the chapter, which is com-petent to accept it, elect her successor and also other elective general officials. 24. Canonical visitation. The superior general shall make the visitation of the entire congregation at least every three years (at least once during her term of office). She shall see that the houses immediately subject to her are visited every year. The provincial superior shall make the visitation of all the houses of her province once a year, and the same frequency of visitation of a region shall be observed by the regional superior. Both may omit this visitation in the year of the visitation by the superior general. Should the higher or regional superior be lawfully prevented from making the visitation, another sister is to be delegated for this purpose. 25. The superior general may designate a visitor for an individual (province or) house or for a particular matter; (the provincial and regional superiors m~.y do the same for an indi~,idual house or a particular matter;) but to appoint a visitor for the entire congregation (in the case of a provincial or regional superior, for the ei~tire province or region), the consent of the perti-nent council must be obtained. The visitor must be a sister of perpetual vows. 26. The purpose of the visitation is to strengthen union and charity, to in-quire into the government and administration of the (province, region, and) house as also into the fulfillment of the obligations of the religious life; to cor-rect prevalent abuses, and to give occasion to each sister to speak freely on matters that concern her personal welfare or the general good. The (Provincial, Typical Constitutions / 201 regional, and) local superiors retain the usual exercise of their office during the visitation. 27. Councilors. The general council is composed of the four general coun-cilors. The superior general, although she presides and votes in the council, is not a member of the general council. She places all acts in her own name, even in matters that require the consent or advice of the council, since she alone possesses the authority to govern the congregation. 28. Although the superior general has the right of acting completely un-assisted except in matters reserved to higher authorities or that by law demand the consent or advice of the general council, yet she is earnestly counseled to seek the advice of her council also in other important matters. 29. The duty of the councilors is to give advice and assistance to the superior general in matters of government and administration, to cast a deliberative or consultative vote according to canon law, the constitutions and statutes, and to propose whatever they think is to the best interest of the con-gregation. 30. The councilors are bound to secrecy concerning all matters discussed in the sessions, as well as those confided to them by reason of their office. If a councilor violates this secrecy, she shall be admonished by the superior general. If she repeatedly violates it, she shall be corrected according to the gravity of her fault. 31. If a general councilor or elected general official dies, resigns, becomes incapable of fulfilling her duties regularly, or is deposed, the superior general with the consent of her council shall replace her by a sister having the requisite qualities, who shall hold office until the next general chapter. No general coun-cilor or official may resign her office or be removed except for a serious reason, accepted as such by the superior general with the consent of her council. 32. The assistant and vicar takes the place of the superior general when the latter is absent or when for any reason whatever is unable to exercise her office. 33. Although the superior general alone has the right to convoke the general council, when she is ill, absent, or otherwise impeded, the assistant con-venes and presides over the council. 34. When acting in her representative capacity, the assistant shall issue only such directions as are required for ordinary government and cannot be deferred; and then as far as possible she shall act according to the presumed will of the superior general. 35. At the death, resignation, or legitimate ~emovai from office of the superior general, the vicar shall assume the government of the congregation with full power and equal rights. She shall continue in this office until the elec-tion of the superior general at the next chapter, to be convoked according to art. 67. 36. In the absence or disability of the assistant, the councilor next in precedence and so on in succession shall act as the representative of the superior general. 37. Administration of temporal goods. Not only the congregation but also 202 / Review for Religious, I/olume 34, 1975/2 each (province and) house is capable of acquiring, possessing, and ad-ministering temporal property. 38. Provincialsuperior. Each province is governed by a provincial superior who like the superior general is a higher superior. The provincial superior is ap-pointed by the superior general with the consent of her council for a term of three years. She may be reappointed for a second but not for a third immediate term in the same province. She continues to govern the province until the arrival of her successor. 39. The primary duty of the provincial superior is to govern the whole province so as to promote the common and individual good. She must be an example of religious life, distinguished for her virtue and practical judgment, devoted to the interests of the sisters, loyal to the supreme authority in the con-gregation, and obedient to ecclesiastical directives. She is to be thoroughly convinced that on her administration depends the well-being of the province. 40. The provincial superior has the right: (a) To govern the whole.province in accordance with the constitutions and statutes, with the exception of matters reserved to higher authorities; (b) To give commands and make regulations in conformity with the con-stitutions and statutes; (c) To admit candidates to the postulancy; (d) To grant the sisters the necessary permissions for studies, travel, visits, and similar matters according to the established regulations; (e) To encourage and initiate good works. 41. It is the duty of the provincial superior: (a) To exercise supervision over the observance of the constitutions, statutes, and all obligations of the religious life; (b) To make the visitation of the houses in conformity with art. 24 and to submit a report of her visitation to the superior general; (c) To advise and direct local superiors in their activities; (d) To present, with her recommendations, matters submitted by local superiors that require recourse to the superior general; (e) To examine the financial statements of the houses and to make the financial reports of the province; (f) To examine the annual personnel and disciplinary reports of the local superiors and forward copies of these, along with her own report, to the superior general. 42. In extraordinary and difficult matters, the provincial superior should consult the superior general. If the urgency of the case makes this impossible, she should later inform the superior general of the matter. 43. The four (two) provincial councilors constitute the provincial council in the same way as was stated for the general council. One of the councilors shall be designated as assistant and vicar and shall take the place of the provincial superior when the latter is absent or otherwise impeded from fulfilling the duties of her offices, unless the superior general with the consent of her council has appointed another sister as acting provincial. In the event of the death or Typical Constitutions / 203 removal from office of the provincial superior, the vicar shall assume with full powers and equal rights the government of the province until the newly ap-pointed provincial assumes office or until the arrival of an acting provincial ap-pointed in the same way by the superior general. In other respects the assistant shall observe the norms established in art. 32-6. The provincial councilors, secretary, and treasurer are appointed on the recommendation of the provincial superior by the superior general with the consent of her council; they must be at least thirty years of age and of perpetual vows. The provincial secretary and treasurer may be councilors but not the provincial assistant. 44. The norms of statutes nos. 60-87 apply with due distinctions to the provincial council and councilors and the provincial secretary and treasurer. 45. Regions. Because of their distance from the motherhouse or other proportionate reasons, houses that cannot as yet be united into a province may be grouped into regions, which are not distinct moral persons. The establish-ment, change, and suppression of regions appertain to the superior general with the consent of her council. 46. Regions are governed by regional superiors who in almost all respects have the rights and duties of provincials. Their authority is delegated by the superior general but, unless an express restriction is made or is to be un-derstood from the nature of the matter, this delegation contains all the authority possessed by provincials. The regional superiors are consequently to be guided in general by the articles of the constitutions and statutes on provinces, the provincial superior, and the provincial officials. 47. By the law of the constitutions and for her lawful appointment as regional superior, a sister must possess the qualities required by common law for provincials. The articles of the constitutions on the manner of appointment, term of office, reappointment, removal from office, and relation of the provin-cial superior to the superior general all apply also to the regional superior. 48. The regional superior is assisted by two councilors and, if it seems necessary or opportune, by a secretary and treasurer, all appointed by the superior general with the consent of her council. These sisters must be professed of perpetual vows. One of the councilors shall be designated as regional assistant and vicar. With due distinctions, nos, 60-87 of the statutes, and art. 43 above apply to the regional council, councilors, and the regional secretary and treasurer. 49. Houses. For the erection of a house, the superior general must have the consent of her council and the written consent of the local ordinary. The con-sent of both is also necessary for the suppression of a house,, which likewise appertains to the superior general. (~Diocesan:) For the erection of a house, the superior general must have the consent of her council and the written consent of the local ordinary. The suppression of a house appertains to the local or-dinary after having consulted the superior general. The latter must have the consent of her council for requesting or agreeing to a suppression. 50. Local superiors. Every house, including the motherhouse, shall be 204 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 governed by a local superior, who is appointed by the superior general with the consent of her council for a term of three years. She may be appointed for a second but not immediately for a third term in the same house. The local superior must have completed her thirtieth year and be professed of perpetual vows. She continues to govern the house until the arrival of her successor. 51. The local superior possesses the authority that canon law, the con-stitutions, and the statutes assign to her and has the right to govern the house in all matters not reserved to higher authorities. 52. The superior shall devote herself with generosity and perseverance to the education and formation of the younger sisters, particularly those of tem-porary vows. 53. Directress of novices. The formation of the novices is entrusted to the directress of novices who must be professed of perpetual vows and at least thirty years of age. 54. Obligation, change, and interpretation of the constitutions and statutes. The (Rule), con~stitutions and statutes do not of themselves bind under sin but only under the penalty imposed for their infraction, unless the violation concerns the vows, or divine or ecclesiastical laws, arises from a sinful motive, or gives scandal. 55. Superiors are bound to admonish the sisters and to impose penances for violations of the constitutions and statute's. The sisters are obliged to accept the corrections and to perform the penances. 56. The superior general may interpret authentically also the statutes and the ordinances of the general chapter, but the Holy See alone can authentically interpret and change the constitutions. In a doubt about some particular point, the general chapter, as also the superior general with the advice of her council, may give a practical interpretation of the matter and the sisters are obliged to follow this interpretation. (Diocesan:) The superior general may interpret authentically also the statutes and the ordinances of the general chapter, but the constitutions may be neither authentically interpreted nor changed without the unanimous consent of the ordinaries of the dioceses in Which the congrega-tion has houses. In a doubt . . . 57. Changes in the constitutions may not be made without serious reasons. Any change must be first discussed in the general chapter, and if it obtains at least two-thirds of the votes, it shall be submitted to the Holy See (diocesan: local ordinaries) for a decision. 58. A complete copy of the constitutions shall be given to every sister at the beginning of the noviceship that she may study and earnestly strive to observe them. 59. Dispensation. No superior of the congregation, without an express con-cession from competent authority, may dispense from the laws of the Church or the decrees of the Holy See. 60. For a determined time and a proportionate reason, the superior general may dispense individual sisters, a house, province, region, or the entire con-gregation from a merely disciplinary article also of the constitutions. A provin- Typical Constitutions / 205 cial and a regional superior have the same power for their sisters, houses, province, or region, and a local superior for her sisters and house. The direc-tress of novices has the same power as a local superior but only with regard to the novices and the novitiate. 61. All superiors may dispense themselves in those matters in which they may lawfully dispense others. GENERAL CHAPTER 1. Convocation and members 62. The general chapter must be convoked as often as general elections are necessary. The ordinary convocation takes place every sixth (fifth, fourth) year at the expiration of the term of office of the superior general and on her death, resignation, or deposition. 63. (Pontifical:) To convoke the chapter for any reason other than those specified above, the permission of the Holy See is required in addition to the consent of the general council. (Diocesan:) To convoke the chapter for any reason other than those specified above, the superior general must have the consent of her council. 64. The chapter must be convoked by the superior general at least six (three, a year) months before the day fixed for its assembly. In the letter of convocation, the date and place of the chapter shall be designated, and the prayers to be said for the success of the chapter shall be prescribed. The place of the chapter shall be determined by the superior general with the consent of her council. 65. Before the convocation, the superior general must inform the ordinary of the diocese in which the chapter will convene of the date of the election of the superior general, that he may preside either personally or by delegate at this election. 66. The meeting of the chapter may be anticipated or deferred for an im-portant reason, but not more than three (six) months in either case. 67. In the event of the death, resignation, or deposition of the superior general, the chapter must be convoked by the vicar as soon as possible, so that the assembly of the chapter will not be postporied more than six (three, a year) months after the vacancy of the office. 68. The members of the chapter are: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) -- or (g) The superior general The four general councilors The secretary general The treasurer general Former superiors general The provincial superiors delegates elected by each province The regional superiors 206 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 The delegates elected by (the regions and) the sisters according to art. or (g) Forty (or other number) delegates elected by the sisters. 69. The superior general and elective general officials continue as members of the assembled chapter even though at the elections other sisters have succeeded them in office. 70. The superior general with the consent of her council may summon other sisters to assist in the clerical and similar work of the chapter. She may in the same manner invite such sisters and externs to present and discuss questions with the chapter. None of these are permitted to vote. 71. The chapter elects the superior general, general councilors, secretary general, treasurer general, and treats of the more important affairs that con-cern the entire congregation. 2. General norms to be observed in elections 72. The tellers elected for the general chapter must take an oath to perform their duty faithfully and to keep secret the proceedings of the chapter even after the elections are completed. All the capitulars are likewise bound to secrecy: The places of the tellers and secretary shall be near the president. 73. The tellers are to take care that the ballots are cast by each elector secretly, individually, and in order of precedence. The secretary draws up ac-curately the proceedings of the chapter, which shall be signed by the president, the tellers, and the secretary herself. These are to be preserved in the archives of the congregation. 74. Two-thirds of the capitulars must be present for the validity of the acts of the general (and provincial) chapter, but all must be convoked. 75. Even though a sister may have the right to vote in her own name under several titles, she may nevertheless cast but one vote. 76. The capitulars must be present in person at the election. No one may validly vote by letter or by proxy, lfa capitular in the house where the election is being held cannot be present at the election because of illness, her written vote sh"all be collected by the tellers in a sealed envelope. 77. If a capitular believes that she cannot attend the general (or provincial) chapter on account of sickness or for some other serious reason, she is to in-form the superior general (or provincial superior), who shall decide with the consent of her council whether the capitular should be excused and her sub-stitute summoned. 78. All the sisters, whether capitulars or not, are forbidden to procure votes directly or indirectly for themselves or others. Prudent consultation regarding the qualities of those eligible is permitted within the bounds of justice and charity. 79. Each of the electors shall write on her ballot the name of the sister for whom she votes, fold the ballot, and drop it in the ballot box placed before the president. 80. When all the ballots have been cast, the tellers shall first count the Typical Constitutions / 207 folded ballots in the presence of the president and the electors to ascertain whether the number of ballots corresponds to the number of electors. If the number of ballots exceeds the number of electors, the balloting is null and void. Otherwise they shall proceed to the inspection of the ballots. 81. The ballots are then opened and examined. They are read first by the senior teller, who in an audible voice shall make known the name on each ballot, then by the president and lastly by the junior teller. The votes must be recorded by the secretary. At the end of each balloting, the president must an-nounce the names of all sisters voted for and the number of votes given to each. 82. No sister may validly vote for herself. A vote is also null and void: (a) If given by one who is incapable of a human act or has by law been deprived of active voice; (b) If it is not given freely. Consequently a vote is invalid if an elector is forced directly or indirectly by grave fear or fraud to elect a specified sister or one or the other among several specified sisters; (c) If it is not secret, certain, absolute, and determined; (d) If it is blank or for an ineligible person. 83. Even if one or more votes are null and void, the election is valid provided the one elected received the number of valid votes required by the constitutions. 84. Unless otherwise prescribed for a particular election, all elections shall be decided by an absolute majority of secret votes, that is, a number which ex-ceeds half the number of valid votes cast; but if after two ballotings no one has received an absolute majority, a third and last balloting will be held, in which a relative majority decides. In an equality of votes among several candidates in this third balloting, the senior by first profession is elected; if the sisters made their first profession on the same day, the senior~by age is elected. This same norm shall resolve an equality of votes on the only, limiting, or decisive balloting of any election. 85. After the required number of votes has been obtained, the president shall declare the election legitimately made and announce the name of the sister elected. This proclamation of the newly elected superior general ter-minates the duties of the presiding local ordinary. 86. All sisters are obliged to accept any office to which they have been elected. 87. The ballots must be burned by the tellers after each session. 88. Ira sister elected as superior general or general official is not present at the chapter, she is to be summoned immediately; but the sessions of the chapter are suspended only in the former case. 89. The office of the superior general and of the elected general officials always terminates at the election of their successors. 3. Election of delegates 90. All sisters, including those of temporary vows or other commitment, have active voice in the election of delegates to the general (provincial) chapter. 208 / Review for Religious, l/olurne 34, 1975/2 Only sisters of perpetual vows, unless members of the chapter in virtue of any office, have passive voice. OR: Only sisters of perpetual vows have active and, unless members of the chapter in virtue of any office, also passive voice in the election of delegates to the general (provincial) chapter. 91. The superior general (provincial) shall publish a list accessible to all the electors, compiled with the consent of her council, of all the sisters of passive voice. 92. In each house on the day determined in the letter of convocation, the electors shall assemble under the direction of their local superior. Each shall elect by secret ballot forty (or other number) sisters. 93. The local superior shall collect all the ballots without inspecting them and enclose them with her own ballot in an envelope, which she shall seal in the presence of the electors. She shall write on this inner envelope, "Election of Delegates, house N . " and forward it immediately to the superior general (provincial). 94. As soon as possible after all the envelopes have been received, the superior general (provincial) and her council shall open the envelopes and count the votes of this first balloting. The secretary general (provincial) shall record the votes. All sisters who received an absolute majority are elected. A report of the first balloting containing a declaration of those elected, the number remaining to be elected in the second balloting, and a list of the sisters voted for and the number of votes each received will be published to all the houses as soon as possible. 95. A second voting with the same procedure will be held in all the houses on the day appointed by the superior general (provincial). A relative majority is decisive in this second balloting. The substitutes are in order the sisters who received the next highest number of votes after those elected in the second balloting. The superior general (provincial) shall immediately inform the con-gregation (province) of the complete results. OR: ,90. As 90 above. 91. The superior general (provincial) shall publish a list accessible to all the electors, compiled with the consent of her council, of all the sisters of passive voice divided into three groups as equal as possible in number according to precedence from first profession. 92. In each house on the day determined in the letter of convocation, the electors shall assemble under the direction of their local superior. Each shall elect by secret vote ten sisters from each group and a fourth ten from any or all groups and in any proportion. 93. As 93 above. 94. As soon as possible after all the envelopes have been received, the superior general (provincial) and her council shall open the envelopes and count the votes of this first balloting. The secretary general (provincial) shall record the votes. All sisters who received an absolute majority are elected. A Typical Constitutions / 209 report of the first balloting containing a declaration of those elected, the number remaining to be elected from each group in the second balloting, and a list of the sisters voted for and the number of votes each received will be published to all the houses as soon as possible. 95. A second voting with the same procedure will be held in all the houses on the day appointed by the superior general (provincial). A relative majority is decisive in this second balloting. The substitutes are in order the sisters of each group who received the next highest number of votes in the second balloting after those elected. The superior general (provincial) shall im-mediately inform the congregation (province) of the complete results. 96. (Provincial congregation) Houses immediately subject to the superior general elect two delegates, superiors or subjects, of perpetual vows who are - not members of the chapter in virtue of any office, to the general chapter. The voting is carried out and the votes forwarded to the superior general according to the norms of art. 92-5. 4. Provincial chapter a. Convocation and members 97. The provincial chapter is to be convened as often as a general chapter is to be held .and at least three (six, a year) months before the date of the assembly of the latter. The provincial superior is the president of the chapter, and its principal purpose is to elect the delegates to the general chapter. The provincial shall convoke the provincial chapter at a date sufficient for the proper prechapter preparation for both the provincial and general chapters. 98. The members of the chapter are: (a) The provincial superior (b) The four (two) provincial councilors (c) The provincial secretary (d) The provincial treasurer (e) The delegates as described in nn. 90-5 b. Sessions 99. The chapter shall immediately elect from among the capitulars by a relative majority of secret votes the two tellers and in the same way, in a dis-tinct balloting, the secretary of the chapter. The tellers for these elections shall be the two junior capitulars by first profession, and the secretary shall be the provincial secretary. 100. The chapter shall then elect by separate and secret ballotings and ac-cording to the norm of art. 84 two (three, four or more) delegates and two (three, four or more) substitutes to the general chapter. These must be sisters of perpetual vows. , 101. After these elections, the chapter shall deliberate on matters that con-cern the spiritual and temporal welfare of the province. The same procedure shall be followed in deliberations as in the general chapter. 210 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/2 102. Enactments of the provincial chapter have no force until they are ap-proved by the superior general with the consent of her council. They are then promulgated to the province by the provincial superior. 103. The chapter shall finally deliberate on the proposals to be made to the general chapter by the province. 104. The secretary shall draw up the complete proceedings of the chapter according to the norm of art. 73. One copy is to be sent immediately to the superior general, and a second copy is to be preserved in the archives of the province. The provincial superior shall immediately publish the elections to the province. 5. Preliminary sessions 105. The chapter immediately elects from among the capitulars by a relative majority of secret votes the two tellers and in the same way, in a dis-tinct balloting, the secretary 9f the chapter. The tellers for this preliminary election shall be the two capitulars youngest by first profession, and the secretary general shall be the secretary. 106. The chapter shall then elect by a relative majority of secret votes and on one ballot a committee of three capitulars who had no part in preparing or approving the reports of the superior general. This committee is to examine the reports thoroughly and give its observations to the chapter before the election of the superior general. 107. The superior general presents to the chapter two distinct and com-plete reports: one of the persons, religious life, and works; the other on the material and financial condition of the congregation since the last chapter. The financial report must have been prepared and also signed by the treasurer general. Copies of the reports should be distributed to the capitulars before the opening session. 6. Election of the superior general 108. The day before the election of the superior general shall be spent in retreat by the capitulars, and permission shall be requested for exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. 109. On the day of the election of the superior general, Mass shall be offered in the house where the chapter is held to invoke the blessing of God on the work of the chapter. If the rubrics permit, the Mass shall be the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. 110. To be elected validly to the office of superior general, a sister must be professed of perpetual vows and have completed her thirty-fifth year. 111. The superior general is elected for six (five, four) years. She may be elected for a second but not for a third consecutive term, o i 12. The superior general is elected by an absolute majority of secret votes. If three ballotings fail to produce this majority, a fourth and last balloting shall be held. In this balloting the electors shall vote for one of the two sisters who Typical Constitutions / 211 had the highest number of votes in the third balloting, but these two sisters themselves shall not vote. If more than two would be eligible by reason of an equality of votes in the third balloting, the norm of art. 84 shall limit the can-didates to two. Of these two the sister who receives the greater number of votes in the fourth balloting is elected. (Diocesan congregation of women:) The local ordinary has full power to confirm or rescind the election of the superior general according to his conscience. 113. The president shall proclaim the newly elected superior general. This act terminates the duties of the presiding local ordinary. 7. Election of the general officials 114. After the election of the superior general and after she has taken the oath according to art. 72, the chapter under her presidency shall elect the four general councilors, the secretary general, and the treasurer general. These elec-tions are made by separate ballotings and according to the norm of art. 84. Immediately after the election of the four councilors, a distinct election for the assistant and vicar shall be held from among the four elected councilors. Or: The first councilor elected shall also be the assistant and vicar. 115. To be elected a general councilor or official a sister must have com-pleted her thirtieth year and have made perpetual profession. Any one of the councilors except the assistant may be elected as secretary general or treasurer general. These two officials should possess the special competence required for their offices. The superior general .may appoint one or more assistant secretaries and treasurers. (Appointment articles) The secretary general and the treasurer general are not elected by the chapter but appointed (for a term of three years) by the superior general with the consent of her council. Both may be general coun-cilors but neither may be the general assistant. Both should possess the specialized competence required for their offices. The superior general may ap-point one or more assistant secretaries and treasurers. The secretary general is not elected by the chapter but appointed (for a term of three years) by the superior general with the consent of her council. She may be a general councilor but not the general assistant. She should possess the specialized competence required for her office. The superior general may appoint one or more assistant secretaries and treasurers. 8. Chapter of affairs 116. After the elections the chapter shall treat of the more important af-fairs that concern the entire congregation. The enactments of the chapter may not be contrary to common law. or the constitutions. 117. Matters are decided by an absolute majority. I f the votes are equal, the presiding superior general has the right of deciding the matter. The voting is public. Any capitular has the right of requesting a secret vote on a particular matter. Such a request shall be put to the public vote of the chapter, lfthe ma- 212 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 jority favors the request, the voting on the particular matter shall be secret. Or: Matters are decided by an absolute majority of secret votes. If the votes are equal, the presiding superior general has the right of deciding the matter. 118. (The provincial chapters and) All professed sisters may submit written proposals to the general chapter. These must be forwarded to the superior general or her delegate at the prescribed time before the opening of the chapter. The capitulars retain the right of making proposals thereafter and during the sessions up to the definite time determined by the chapter, after which no proposals may be submitted. l l9. At a suitable time before the general chapter determined by the superior general, committees of three or more capitulars, appointed by the superior general with the consent of her council, shall arrange the proposals and prepare a report on each distinct proposal. These reports are to be com-pleted before the chapter opens. Every effort is to be made to have these com-mittees composed predominantly at least of capitulars. The superior general may permit that some or all of the committee members be elected by the secret vote of professed sisters or that they propose names for appointment. 120. The chapter is not obliged to deliberate on every matter proposed. It may simply exclude anything that appears useless or inopportune, or it may remit a matter to the study and decision of the superior general and her council after the close of the chapter. 121. The principal affairs are: (a) Suitable means of perfecting or restoring the living of the religious life (b) Proposals submitted to the chapter (c) Determination of the contribution that each house must make to the general treasury Or: Determination of the contribution that each house must make to the provincial treasury, and each province to the general treasury (d) Extraordinary expenditures which the superior general (provincial, regional), and local superiors may authorize or make alone, those that demand the advice or consent of their councils, and those for which local superiors must recur to the (provincial, regional superiors and either of these to the) superior general (e) Norms to be observed in addition to the prescriptions of the sacred canons in alienations, purchases, the assuming of obligations, and other matters of a financial nature (f) Determination of the dowry (g) Confirmation, modification, or abrogation of ordinances of previous general chapters (h) (In provincial congregations) Establishment of new provinces or the suppression of existing ones, the uniting of provinces, or the modification of their boundaries (i) Determination of more important matters for which the advice or con-sent of the general (provincial, regional) or local councils is necessary. 122. The enactments of the chapter remain in force permanently unless Typical Constitutions / 213 amended or abrogated by subsequent chapters. Or: The enactments of the chapter remain in force until the next chapter, in which they may be confirmed, modified, or abrogated. 123. The chapter may not be protracted beyond a reasonable length of time. The superior general shall publish the elections, ordinances, and other acts which the capitulars have determined should be published. STATUTES I. Classes in institute; rights and obligations. The members form one class of sisters subjec( to the one superior general and living under the same common norms. 2. Precedence. The following is the order of prec.edence in highly official and ceremonial matters (see full list in Review for Religious, 25 [1966], 365-8): 3. Titles. The superior general shall be called. The title of. shall be given to. The title of all other religious is Sister. The superior general alone at the expiration of her term of office shall retain the title of. and have the precedence stated in art. 2. 4. Religious habit. (For example:) The habit is of suitable black materi-al. 5. The veil of the professed sisters is of black material and light in weight. 6. The professed sisters wear a silver ring on the third finger of the left hand . . . 7. The sisters are permitted to wear white habits, veils, and cinctures while occupied in duties or in a climate that necessitates or counsels this dress. 8. Dowry. Postulants shall bring the dowry determined by the general chapter. The chapter may grant delegation in this matter to the superior general and her council. 9. The superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior) with the consent of her council may remit wholly or in part the dowry of a candidate who lacks financial means. 10. A postulant dispensed from the dowry is obliged to establishone later if she receives any substantial gift or bequest. 11. After the first profession of a sister, the superior general (provincial congregation usually: provincial superior) with the consent of her council and that of the local ordinary must invest the dowry in safe, lawful, and profitable securities. ! 2. The dowries must be prudently and justly administered at the habitual residence of the superior general (provincial congregation usually: provincial superior). 13. Material entrance requirements. The superior general (provincial con-gregation: provincial or higher superior) with the consent (or advice, or no vote required) of her council shall determine the wardrobe and the sum to be paid for the expenses of the postulancy and noviceship. In particular cases and for just reasons, the superior general (provincial congregation: higher or provincial superior) has the right to dispense wholly or in part from this requirement. 214 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/2 14. A record shall be kept in a special register of all the property that the candidate brings with her to the postulancy, signed by the candidate and two sisters as witnesses. 15. The candidates, upon their admission to the postulancy, must sign a civilly valid document in which they declare that they will not seek compensa-tion for services given to the congregation before or after profession, whether they leave or are dismissed. This document is to be renewed at the time of perpetual profession. 16. Testimonials for admission. Before being admitted candidates must present these credentials: (a) Certificates of baptism and confirmation (b) A testimonial of good moral character from their pastor or another priest, unless the aspirant is already well known to the superior general (higher superior) (c) Certificates of good health, both physical and mental, from reliable professional sources (d) Other testimonials that the superior general (higher superior) may con-sider necessary or opportune. 17. Postulancy. The time prescribed for the postulancy is a year. For a just reason and with the advice of her council, the superior general (higher superior) may prolong or shorten this time but not beyond six months. 18. Every three months the directress shall give to the superior general (higher superior) and her council a report of the postulant's virtues, defects, and aptitude for the life of the congregation. 19. About three months before the beginning of the noviceship, the postulant shall in writing petition the superior general (higher superior) for ad-mission to the noviceship. 20. Before beginning the noviceship, the postulant shall make a retreat of. entire days. 21. Noviceship. As soon as possible, each province shall have its own novitiate. 22. The noviceship begins in the manner determined by the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior) The added year ends on the second anniversary of the inception of the noviceship, and on this day the temporary profession (or other commitment) may be licitly pronounced. 23. Three months before the end of the noviceship, the novices shall in writing request admission to the profession (or other commitment) from the superior general (provincial congregation frequently: provincial superior). 24. The novice shall be informed of her admission to vows so that in due time she may relinquish the administration of her property, dispose of its use and usufruct, and make a will, as prescribed in common law. 25. Before pronouncing her vows (or other commitment), the novice shall make a spiritual retreat of. entire days. 26. Profession of a novice in danger of death. Even though she has not com-pleted the time of her noviceship, a novice in danger of death may, for the con- Typical Constitutions / 215 solation of her soul, be admitted to profession by any superior, the directress of novices, or their delegates. The ordinary formula of profession is to be used if the condition of the novice permits, but without any determination of time. 27. By this profession the novice is granted a plenary indulgence in the form of a jubilee; the profession, however, has no canonical effect. If the novice should recover her health, her state will be the same as if she had made no profession. Therefore, if she perseveres, she must complete the full time of the noviceship and on its completion make a new profession, All of these prescrip-tions apply to other forms of commitment. 28. Religious profession. The written declaration of profession, whether temporary or perpetual, must be signed by the professed sister, the superior general or sister delegate who received the profession, and two other sisters as witnesses. This document shall be carefully preserved in the files of the con-gregation. 29. Three months before the expiration of each temporary profession, the sisters shall present a written petition to the superior general (provincial con-gregation frequently: provincial superior) to be admitted to the renewal of tem-porary vows or to perpetual profession. 30. When the time for which the vows were pronounced has expired, they must be renewed without delay. However, for a just reason, the superior general (provincial congregation frequently: higher or provincial superior) may permit the renewal of temporary vows to be anticipated, but not by more than a month. An anticipated renewal expires only on the day on which a non-anticipated renewal would have expired. Higher superiors.for a just cause may permit first profession or commitment to be anticipated but not beyond fifteen days. 3 I. Before perpetual profession, the sisters shall make a retreat of. entire days, and before renewal of temporary vows or commitment, a retreat of. day(s). Only the first profession must be made in the novitiate house. 32. Poverty. With the permission of the local superior, sisters may perform acts of proprietorship required by civil law. If such an act includes alienation of property or concerns an important matter, this permission is reserved to the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superiors) unless the case is urgent, when it may be given by the local superior. 33. Penance. All superiors are to strive to have confessors readily available before Communion. 34. Religious exercises. The sisters shall daily recite in common Lauds (and) Vespers (and) Compline of the Divine Office. 35. Every day the sisters shall spend a half hour in mental prayer. They shall individually prepare the matter of the prayer beforehand. 36. They shall make the particular and gen'eral examen of conscience at noon and at nigl~t. Privately and at a convenient time during the day, they shall recite five decades of the rosary and devote at least fifteen minutes to spiritual reading. 216 / Review for Religious, IZolume 34, 1975/2 37. The sisters shall accustom themselves to visit the Blessed Sacrament frequently. 38. Annually the sisters shall make a retreat of. full days. They shall observe a day of monthly recollection, which ordinarily is to be the o. Sunday of the month. 39. The sisters shall make a public devotional renewal of their vows and commitment on . . . They should renew their vows frequently in private, par-ticularly at Mass, and on the day of monthly recollection. The formula of this renewal is . 40. Superiors shall grant another suitable time to sisters who are prevented from performing the prescribed spiritual duties at the ordinary time. 41. Mortification and penance. In the practice of corporal mortification and penances of a private nature, the sisters are to be guided solely by the con-fessor; for those that are public they must have the permission of the superior. 42. Enclosure. The parts of the house subject to enclosure are the dor-mitories of the sisters, their cells, the infirmary, in a word, all places destined by the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior) for the ex-c| usive use of the sisters. 43. If the chaplain or other priests live in a house of the sisters, their apartments shall if p~ssible have a separate entrance and be separated from the part of the house occupied by the sisters. 44. The sisters shall observe the prescribed norms and usages on leaving the house. 45. Sisters living outside a convent of the congregation for study are obliged, if possible, to live in a religious house. 46. Correspondence. The correspondence of the sisters is subject to the authority of superiors, and of the junior professed, novices, and postulants also to their directresses. 47. Silence. Religious silence shall be observed according to the prescribed norms and usage of the congregation. 48. "~postolate. The sisters in hospitals shall be guided by religious and ethical principles in their professional activities. In a doubt they shall consult religious or ecclesiastical authority. 49. Care of the sick. Spiritual aid shall be promptly given to the sick. They may ask for the confessor they prefer and are to be given the opportunity of receiving Holy Communion frequently and even daily during their illness. 50. Suffrages for the dead. At the death of a professed religious or novice, the local superior shall immediately inform the superior general (provincial) and the close relatives of the deceased. The superior general (provincial) shall promptly send a notification to all the houses (of the province). 51. Departure and dismissal. The superior general (higher superior) with the advice of her council, for just and reasonable motives, may exclude a religious from renewing temporary vows (or other commitment) or from mak-ing profession of perpetual vows, also because of physical or psychological ill-ness. Religious who have made profession of temporary vows (or other corn- Typical Constitutions / 217 mitment) may freely leave the congregation when the term of the vows has ex-pired. 52. For the dismissal of a sister of perpetual vows, serious external reasons are required, together with incorrigibility, after attempts at correction have been pre~viously made without success, so that in the judgment of the superior general and her council there is no hope of amendment. The efforts at correc-tion shall include not only the admonitions but also a change of employment, transfer to another house, and other suitable means, if judged expedient for a reform of conduct. 53. If by the consent of the council expressed in secret ballot the sister has been found incorrigible and her dismissal approved, the superior general shall transmit the whole matter, with all the relevant acts and documents to the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (diocesan con-gregation: ordinary of the diocese where the religious house to which the sister is assigned is situated): (Added article in diocesan congregation:) The sister has the right to appeal to the Holy See against the decree of dismissal, and if she makes this appeal within ten days from the date on which she was informed of her dismissal, the decree of dismissal has no juridical effect while the recourse is pending. 54. In an automatic dismissal according to canon 646, it is sufficient that the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior) with the advice of her council make a written declaration of the fact, but she is to take care that the collected proofs of the fact are preserved in the files of the congrega-tion. 55. In the case of~rave external scandal or of very serious imminent injury to the community, any professed sister may be immediately sent back to secular life by the superior general (provincial congregation: higher superior) with the consent of her council or even, if there is danger in delay and time does not permit recourse to the superior general (higher superior), by the local superior with the consent of her council and that of the local ordinary. The sister must immediately put off the religious habit. The local ordinary or the superior general (higher superior), if she is present, must without delay submit the matter to the judgment of the Holy See. 56. A sister who has been canonically dismissed is by that very fact freed from all her religious vows. 57. Superior general. The residence of the superior general shall be at the motherhouse and may not be permanently transferred without the consent of the general council and the permission of the Holy See (diocesan: permission of the ordinary of the present and proposed places of residence). 58. With the deliberative vote of her council, the superior general may place certain houses and works under her immediate authority and may also transfer these to a province. 59. The office of the superior general is incompatible with that of local superior, even in the motherhouse, or with that of any other official. '60. General council. The councilors should live at the motherhouse, but in a 218 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/2 case of necessity two of them, with the exception of the assistant, may live else~,here, provided they can attend the meetings of the council, to which they must always be summoned. The councilors should not be burdened with any employment that might prevent them from fulfilling properly their duties as councilors. Or: At least one councilor, ordinarily the general assistant, must live at the motherhouse. The other general councilors must be assigned to houses from which they can attend the meetings of the council, to which they must always be summoned . . . 61. An ordinary session of the council shall be held every month, but the superior general may convoke the council as often as important affairs are to be discussed. The council may not deliberate unless the president and at least two councilors are present. 62. At the beginning of the session the miiautes of the precedit~g meeting as recorded by the secretary general shall be read. When approved they shall be signed by the superior general and the secretary. 63. The superior general shall then place before the councilors the matters for discussion. When a subject has been stated and appropriate explanatigns given, she shall allow the councilors to speak and shall take care to obtain'the opinion of each. The councilors shall express their opinions with becoming respect, simplicity, and sincerity. 64. When the consent of the councilors is required, the voting must be by secret ballot. The decisions of the council are to be made by an absolute ma-jority. In an equality of votes, the superior general may decide the matter. 65. A full council is necessary for appointments to office. If a councilor cannot be present and the appointment cannot be deferred, a sister of perpetual vows shall be chosen by the councilors as substitute. 66. The superior general may summon sisters who are not councilors for in-formation or advice, but such sisters are never permitted to vote. All who thus attend sessions of the council are 9bliged to secrecy. 67. The superior general must have the deliberative vote of her council in the following cases: (a) Condonation in whole or in part of the dowry (b) Investment of the dowry (c) Determination of the expenses of the postulancy and noviceship (d) Admission to the noviceship and first profession (e) Establishment or transfer of a novitiate (f) Imposition of a formal precept of obedience on the entire congregation, a province, or a house (g) Dismissal of a professed of temporary or perpetual vows and the send-ing of a professed religious immediately back to secular life (h) Convocation of an extraordinary general chapter; designation of the place of the general chapter; inviting of externs and sisters who are not capitulars to the chapter; excusing of a capitular and the summoning of her substitute; compiling of list or groups for the election of delegates; appoint-ment of committees for proposals to the general chapter; and approval of enactments of provincial chapters Typical Constitutions (i) Transfer of the permanent residence of the superior general or of a provincial superior (j) Appointment of a visitor for the entire congregation (k).Choice of a substitute for an absent general councilor (1) Acceptance of the resignation, removal, or deposition of a general coun-cilor or official, and appointment of a successor in these cases (m) Appointment, prolongation of term, transfer, and removal of (provin-cial, regional, and) local superiors, their councilors, secretaries, and treasurers; of a directress or assistant directress of novices, of junior professed, of postulants; instructress of tertians, supervisors of schools and studies, prin-cipals of schools, and administrators of hospitals (n) Placing of houses and works under the immediate authority of the superior general and transferring of them to provinces ¯ (o) Transfer or removal of a superior or official before the expiration of a prescribed term (p) Approval of the accounts of the treasurer general (q) Imposition of an extraordinary tax, investment of money, alienation of ¯ property, contracting of debts and obligations, making of contracts in the name of the congregation, extraordinary expenses, and other matters of a financial nature according to the norms of canon law and the ordinances of the general chapter (r) Establishment, change, and suppression of provinces, regions, and erec-tion and suppression of houses (s) Uniting of the offices of Iota1 superior and local treasurer (t) All matters remitted to the deliberative vote by the general chapter (u) Determination of matters that require the consent or advice of the (provincial, regional, and) local councils. 68. The superior general must have the consultative vote of her council in the following cases: (a) Abbreviation of the added period of the postulancy, noviceship, and temporary vows or other commitment (b) Prolongation of and dismissal from the noviceship (c) Admission to renewal of temporary vows, their prolongation, admission to perpetual profession, and exclusion from renewal of temporary profession and from perpetual profession (d) Declaration of fact for the.automatic dismissal of a professed sister (e) Transfer of a sister from one province to another (f) Approval of the reports of the superior general to the general chapter (g) A practical interpretation of a doubtful point of the constitutions (h) All matters remitted to the consultative vote by the general chapter. 69. Secretary general. It is the duty of the secretary general to assist the superior general with the official correspondence of the congregation. She shall be present at all meetings of the general council and record the minutes of the sessions. She is obliged to secrecy in all that refers to her office. 70. She shall be in charge of the general archives and of all documents relating to the history and administration of the congregation. No document 220 / Review for Religious, l~olume 34, 1975/2 shall be taken from the archives except in conformity with the established regulations. 7 I. The secretary shall compile the annals of the congregation. Every year she shall receive from the local superiors an accurate record of the principal events of their houses. Or: The secretary shall compile the annals of the con-gregation. Every year she shall receive from the provincial (and regional) superiors an accurate record of the principal events of the provinces (regions), and houses. 72. The secretary shall be attentive to all legislation and decrees of the Holy See and to diocesan regulations and civil enactments that affect the congrega-tion, and shall keep the superior general and her council informed on all such matters. 73. The preceding articles apply with due distinctions to (provincial, regional, and) local secretaries. 74. Treasurers. The administration of the temporal goods is entrusted to the general (provincial, regional) and local treasurers under the direction of the respective superiors and the supervision of their councils. The treasurers are obliged to secrecy in all that appertains to their office. 75. The superior general may appoint as many assistants as necessary to the general and local treasurers (general treasurer, and the provincial and regional superior may do the same for provincial, regional, and local treasurers). 76. Treasurer general. The treasurer general manages the financial affairs connected with the general funds. Every six months she must give an account of her administration to the superior general and her council. If everything is found in order, the superior general and the council shall approve her ad-ministration by signing the statement. 77. The treasurer general must see that the (provincial, regional, and) local superiors send a report of their administration to the motherhouse every six months. She shall examine these reports to obtain an exact insight into the financial state of the congregation and its parts and shall give the general coun-cil an accurate account of her examination. 78. Provincial and regional treasurers. The provincial (and regional) treasurer(s) is (are) appointed by the superior general with the consent of her council. Neither the provincial superior nor the assistant provincial may be provincial treasurer. The two preceding articles must be observed also by the provincial (and regional) treasurer with regard to the provincial superior (and the regional superior), her council (their councils), and the local houses. 79. Local treasurers. In each house there shall be a local treasurer, who is appointed by the superior general (provincial) with the consent of her council. Although it is preferable to separate the office of local superior from that of local treasurer, the superior general (provincial), with the same vote of her council, may combine them if this is necessary. 80. The local treasurer shall render a monthly account of her administra-tion to the local superior and her council, who shall examine and approve it ac- Typical Constitutions / 221 cording to the norm of art. 76. Every six months each house shall send an ac-curate financial statement to the superior general (provincial). 81. Administration of temporal goods. Each province must contribute to the general and each house to the provincial (or regional) treasury the sum determined by the general chapter. The superior general with the consent of her council may, when necessary, impose an extraordinary tax on all or some of the provinces and houses or authorize a provincial or regional superior to impose such a tax. 82. Houses or works whose financial responsibility appertains to ecclesiastical or lay administrators and in which the income consists of salaries paid for the sisters shall remit to the general treasury that part of the surplus established by the general chapter. 83. The treasurers validly incur expenses and perform juridical acts of or-dinary administration within the limits of their office. 84. Stocks, bonds, securities, and similar papers shall be placed in a secure safe or safe-deposit box, and the treasurer shall keep an exact record of all such deposits and withdrawals. 85. Each house must maintain an inventory of all property owned by the community. The inventory must be renewed annually for adjustment and depreciation. One copy is to be retained in the house (and another in the provincial or regional house) and one in the files of the treasurer general. An inventory is to be maintained in the same manner for all property owned by (the province and) the congregation. 86. The investment of money should not be made except on the authoriza-tion of the superior general (higher superior) with the consent of her council and ordinarily with the advice of a honest and competent financier. 87. Besides the ordinary expenses, each (province, region, and) house may expend only the sum determined by the general chapter. For other extraor-dinary expenses recourse must be made to the superior general (higher or regional superiors). 88. Provinces. In each house there shall be a provincial house so organized that the proper performance of all provincial duties may be assured. 89. Provincial councilors, secretary, and treasurer. The provincial coun-cilors shall individually submit an annual report to the superior general on the spiritual and temporal state of the province. 90. The provincial superior shall assemble her council once a month; ex-traordinary sessions shall be called when necessary or opportune. 91. The provincial superior must have the deliberative vote of her council for the following acts: (a) Condonation in whole or in part of the dowry (b) Investment of the dowry (c) Determination of the expenses of the postulancy and novicesliip (d) Admission to the noviceship (e) Imposition of a formal precept of obedience on the whole province or an entire house 222 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/2 (f) Sending a professed religious immediately back to secular life (g) Designation of the place of the provincial chapter, inviting of externs and sisters who are not capitulars to this chapter, excusing of a capitular and summoning of her substitute, compiling of lists or groups for the election of delegates, and the appointment of committees on proposals to the general or provincial chapter (h) Appointment of a visitor for the entire province (i) AppointmenL transfer, and removal of local councilors and treasurers, the assistant directress, of novices, the directress of postulants, principals of ~chools, and the uniting of the offices of local superior and local treasurer (j) Removal or transfer of an official before the expiration of a prescribed term (k) Choice of a substitute for an absent provincial councilor (1) Approval of the accounts of the provincial treasurer (m) Investment of money, alienation of property, contracting of debts and obligations, the making of contracts in the name of the province, extraordinary expenses, and other matters of a financial nature according to the norms of canon law and the ordinances of the general chapter (n) Other matters according to the enactments of the general chapter or of the superior general with the consent of her council (o) The determination of matters that require the consent or advice of local councils. 92. The provincial superior must have the deliberative vote of her council for the following requests to the superior general: (a) Erection and transfer of a novitiate and erection and suppression of houses (b) Admission to first profession (c) Dismissal of a professed of temporary or perpetual vows (d) The appointment, proposal of names, removal, deposition, and replace-ment of provincial councilors and officials, local superiors, directress of novices, of junior professed, instructress of tertians, supervisors of schools and studies, and administrators of hospitals (e) The imposition of an extraordinary tax (f) Other matters according to the ordinances of the general chapter or of the superior general with the consent of her council. 93. The provincial superior must have the consultative vote of her council for the following acts or requests to the superior general: (a) To assign the duties of the sisters and to transfer them from one house to another within the province (b) Abbreviation and prolongation of the postulancy, the noviceship, and temporary vows or other commitment (c) Dismissal from the noviceship (d) Admission to renewal of temporary vows (e) Admission to perpetual profession and exclusion from renewal of tem-porary vows a~nd from perpetual profession Typical Constitutions / 223 (f) Declaration of fact for the automatic dismissal of a professed sister (g) Other matters according to the ordinances of the general chapter or of the superior general with the consent of her council. 94. Regions. The regional councilors shall individually submit an annual report to the superior general on the spiritual and temporal state of the region. 95. Houses. At least., sisters must be assigned to a house and adequate provision made for their spiritual assistance. 96. Local superiors. A sister who has been in office for six (twelve) successive years may not again be appointed local superior in any house before the lapse of a (two, three) year(s), except in a case of serious necessity. 97. The local superior shall send a written report once a year to the superior general (provincial) on the spiritual and temporal state of her community. 98. Local officials. In every formal house there shall be two councilors. One is to be designated as assistant and vicar. In smaller houses there is one coun-cilor. The councilors must be sisters of perpetual vows. The local councilors shall write individually to the superior general (provincial) once a year on the spiritual and temporal state of the house. 99. In the absence of the local superior, the assistant shall preside and replace her in whatever is necessary for the ordinary management of the house. 100. The local superior shall convoke her council every month or oftener, if necessary. The norms on the general council, with due distinctions, apply to the local council. Local councilors have only a consultative vote except in the ex-traordinary case mentioned in art. 55 and in matters for which the general chapter or the superior general (or provincial superior), with the consent of her council, has decreed that the vote must be deliberative. 101. The following are the subjects to be discussed by the superior and her council: the fulfillment of the obligations of the religious life and the religious spirit of the community, the occupations of the sisters, the material and finan-cial condition of the house, the work of the school or institution, and the means to be used to encourage works of zeal and to correct deficiencies. 102. Directress of novices. If the number of novices or any other good reason renders it expedient, a sister shall be given as assistant to the directress. The assistant shall be under the immediate authority of the directress in all matters pertaining to the government of the novitiate. She must possess the necessary and suitable qualifications for the office. 103. The directress and her assistant are appointed for three years. Both must be free from all other offices and duties that might interfere with the care and government of the novices. 104. The directress shall grant all ordinary permissions and dispensations to the novices. 105. Every three months the directress must present to the superior general (provincial superior, regional superior) a report on the vocation, character, conduct, progress in.religious life, aptitude,'and state of health of each novice. Non-possessiveness and the Religious Vows Brother Richard DeMaria, C.F.C. Brother Richard DeMaria, C.F.C., is a faculty member in the Department of Religion; lona College; New Rochelle, New York 10801. "You can't take it with you" is an oft-cited maxim from the treasures of pop-ular wisdom, intended to temper the Faustian spirit within man by the reminder that death will separate him from all possessions, honors, and ac-complishments. The maxim applies not only to our inability to carry possessions beyond the doors of death. It speaks also to our daily experience: it is impossible to hold onto the joys whi,ch life provides. It is like the proverbial efforts of a child trying to capture soap bubbles. Rather than simply delighting in their multi-colored beauty, (he child tries to capture them and, in so doing, destroys them. So it is with pleasure: the attempt to capture the beautiful ex-perience destroys it. The attempt-to-own generates dissatisfaction, disappoint-ment, worry, jealousy, suspicion, envy, and a host of internal cancers, all of which crowd out the simple faculties of enjoyment. Possessiveness, the Enemy of True Delight This suggests an important principle: the enemy of true delight is possessiveness. He who would experience the beauty of God's world, the joys of full human life, must learn to enjoy beauty, love, achievement without try-ing, without wanting, to possess them. This approach--symbolized by open-handed arms, extended to touch without holding--is not easily learned, and yet it is necessary if one hopes to taste fully the joy which life bestows, erratically but prodigally, on those who have discerned her ways. The truly wise person is one who, for example, delights in the excitement of achievement, who knows well the joys of friendship,, who has developed an appreciation for the arts, but 224 Non-possessiveness and the Religious Vows / 225 who resists the tendency to possess them. This person knows that, because life is generous, there is no reason to cling to one particular object, person, or ex-perience. There will always be others. The possessive person, on the other hand, bent upon having certain selected experiences, fails to notice and thus enjoy the offerings of a bountiful world. This person has not learned a key truth about human life: the beautiful things in life "happen" and cannot be made to occur or to remain. The effort to force their occurrence, which in-evitably fails, only introduces disappointment and frustration, pain and anger. A new insight into religious life can be gained when it is approached in this context. The three vows, which have been considered descriptive of the religious life, are concerned with three drives within the human spirit which are particularly susceptible to the possessive tendency. It is the thesis of this paper that religious life, as it has been traditionally structured, places a person in a life style which should reduce the pressures leading to possessiveness in each of these areas. Accordingly, each vow involves both a promise to observe a par-ticular life style, as well as a pledge to seek the freedom from possessiveness which that life style is intended to inculcate. In this article, we shall consider separately these three human drives, noting both healthy (nonpossessive) and unhealthy (possessive) forms of each, showing how the religious life style should foster the former. The Vow of Obedience Essential to healthy personality is the sense of fulfillment which one feels when, with body and mind, through ingenuity and hard struggle, one over-comes the forces of disintegration and creates order, beauty and happiness. To know that one has created, has made one's mark upon the world, has con-tributed to the progress of society, is a deeply felt human need. For one who has known this self-affirmation which follows successful creative efforts, work is not drudgery but is an invitation to self-fulfillment. But we often find the possessive tendency present here, adulterating the healthy creative drive, transforming it into a force which is debilitating. The valuable drive to create can give way all too easily to a pathetic search for success and recognition and, then, the energy which should be directed toward creative activity is channeled into frantic efforts to attain or retain positions of prestige. The person who is possessive about success will avoid any under-taking unless there is a guarantee of succeeding. He will pare his life down to a few "safe" activities in which he knows he can succeed, activities in which there is no competition. When he has found something which affords him some recognition, he will jealously protect that position, resenting any newcomers who might replace him. He studiously will avoid challenge. Such are not the ways of the creative person. He, too, enjoys the taste of success and delights in the recognition which accompanies achievement. But he knows that too much concern with success is destructive, distracting,, and futile; therefore he refuses to expend excessive energies in vain efforts to main-tain positions of real or imagined importance. He knows when and how to let 226 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 go of past success: he willingly relinquishes a position when others better qualified are available. He knows when and how to accept a new challenge, even when--especially when--there is no assurance as to the outcome. Such a life is filled with challenge and struggle, and the excitement of knowing that one is attempting the "impossible." It is difficult to be such a person. It is in this context that we might consider the vow of obedience. By the vow of obedience, a religious not only promises to observe the traditions and customs of a congregation but pledges as well the intention to overcome as far as is possible the tendency to be possessive with respect to creative endeavors, the tendency to idolize success, prestige, or power. The religious life style, in which authority is defined in terms of service to the community, where ap-pointments to positions of authority are for relatively short periods of time, where~ one's "standard of living" does not depend upon the positions held--such a life style establishes a milieu which should reduce the tendency to idolize position. The life of religious community should free its members from many of the pressures which are experienced by others in a world where com-petition is the game plan and where concern for livelihood itself forces many to engage, however reluctantly, in a scramble for positions, and a subsequent campaign to eliminate all contenders, once an office is acquired. Unfortunately, there are religious who never take advantage of this freedom which the structure of their life facilitates but who allow possessiveness to color all their activities. There is no automatic relation between the religious life style and true detachment. Many are the religious who carve for themselves niches in life from which they cannot be moved; many are the religious who place great store in the most foolish of honors and distinctions and who jealously resent anyone interested in the same; many are the religious who are fearful of innovation and innovators and allow this fear to paralyze their lives; many are the religious who never experience the sense of power~and of joy which come from struggle against, and success over, difficult odds. Insecurity is not easily overcome. But the point remains that the com-munal life style can facilitate, and is intended to facilitate, a detachment from the vitiating need to achieve success or prestige. Once freed, the creative drive can be a source of happiness, joy, and growth. The Vow of Chastity Little need be said of the important role which the drive toward human relationship can play in the development of mature personality. Love has the ability to shatter, even if only temporarily, the consciousness which walls a per-son off into an isolated, self-absorbed space. Suddenly, or gradually, the ex-perience of giving and receiving love introduces one into a new understanding of life and one's relation to it; it allows one to dispense with unneeded, counter-productive defenses; and it encourages one to "unpretzel" himself, to allow himself to touch and to be touched by powers beyond the self. For many, love is the first experience, the first taste, of that "other life," that other "self," which is within ("the kingdom of God is within you"), waiting to erupt into and Non-possessiveness and the Religious Vows / 227 gladden the lives of every person. "God is love" is the way the Christian writers spoke of the sacred, and for many, perhaps most, love relations will remain the door by which they can understand and enter into the Godly perception. Because the experience of love is redemptive, a person understandably wishes to prevent it from being destroyed, diminished, or infringed upon. Unfor-tunately, this healthy wish to protect something important can, and does, easily degenerate into counterproductive efforts to possess and to demand love, which can never be possessed or demanded. And, thus, the salvific drive towards relationship is transformed into a destructive passion. The possessive person mistakenly believes that exclusivity is a prerequisite to deep, "real" love, and thus he reaches out only to those few people from whom he expects near total response. He wants undivided attention from those he loves. In his desire to keep the loved one for himself, he cuts the other off from every outside relationship, interest, and involvement, foolishly thinking that he can be all things to that person. He even views the interests and ac-tivities of the other, when these are not held and enjoyed together, as rivals to be eliminated from the field. And in a similar way, he limits his own world. Cut off thus from the sources of growth, they both die of malnutrition. That is, if they are not first destroyed by the suspicion and jealousy which inevitably plague such possessive relationships. Clinging love, so different from simple love, is a cancer which leaves its host blinded or distraught. How different is the non-possessive person! He fears the human tendency to suffocate loved ones, and therefore he is pleased when the other develops new, outside relationships and interests, knowing that they are the sources of life and growth. He fears as well his tendency to suffocate himself. He knows it is important that he never stop growing in love, that he not cease to meet and commune with the different people life brings into his world. Without denying the special importance of long-standing friendships and loves, the non-possessive person values the opportunities to commune with many people in a lifetime. As he grows in maturity, he finds that it becomes progressively easier for him to let down his defenses, to give and elicit trust and spontaneity in others, to communicate as a person to a person. In other words, he grows in the ability to love. A clarification may be necessary here: at first, the suggestions in this sec-tion might seem to reject the possibility or value of permanent relationships, especially marriage. But a call for non-possessive love should not be confused with an advocacy for that non-responsible form of love which is delighted to be freed from any kind of commitment. In every friendship and romance one takes upon himself responsibilities to the other which perdure even after that mysterious, uncontrollable attraction we call love has passed on. Which is to say that the relationship of friendship or marriage is more than simply a form of intimate intercommunion. In view of this analysis, the vow of chastity might be seen as follows: by the vow of chastity a religious promises not only to live a chaste, unmarried life, but pledges as well his or her intention to eradicate the strong, "natural" 22a / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/2 propensity toward possessive love and to overcome the "natural" propensity to restrict love and care to a few people over whom he or she can claim an ex-clusive priority. Celibacy is a call to be constantly open to relationship, to be ready to befriend any person met with a non-demanding love. Far from a pledge to live in isolation from human love, the vow of celibacy asks of those so vowed that they strive to love deeply without making claims upon others. Especially it would ask them to fuse this freedom with a concern for the lonely, the unattractive, the fearful. Because the religious neither takes a spouse nor parents children, he or she avoids the temptation to center all one's love and care upon a few people, and the temptation to regard spouse and children as people over whom one has a right to demand love. By opting to live a com-munity life, the religious places himself or herself in a milieu where both the joys and responsibilities of multirelationship are encouraged and facilitated. Thus the celibate life style is a structure which should aid the development of an enlarged and non-destructive approach to the world of intimacy. These comments are not intended to suggest that the celibate form of life automatically engenders this freedom so necessary if one is to know fully the joy of love. Many are the religious who faithfully observe the restrictions of celibate life, but who never attain its spirit: whose relationships with friends or students or colleagues are characterized by ownership, exclusivity, jealousy, and all the concomitant signs of possessiveness. Many are the religious who never find througl~ their celibate life the freedom to enter easily int6 warm, redemptive relationships, who never realize in their lives the truth of the maxim that religious are called to parent thousands. In summary: the vow of chastity has traditionally been presented in terms of sacrifice, a sacrifice which was valued because human relationships were thought to interfere unnecessarily with the search for God or the demands of the apostolate. There is, of course, truth in this argument: as we have seen, love can give birth to a possessiveness which does interfere with a person's service to God and neighbor. The vow might better be supported by a spirituality which differentiates between possessive and non-possessive relationships, which knows that love can be both the source of salvation and the source of destruc-tion. The celibate life, then, is valued, not because it involves renunciation but because it can be a step towai'd the ability to love without that possessiveness which weakens or destroys the consciousness which we call love. The Vow of Poverty Repeatedly in Christian hist6ry, there arose the temptation to embrace Manicheism: to see the world and its joys as the creation of an evil spirit and as traps for the human soul. Against this heresy, orthodox Christian theology has insisted that the God who created man's spirit also created the material world, and that, as the author of Genesis insists, He saw it, and found it to be good. Orthodox spirituality teaches the Christian that he can discover the God of the Gospels reflected in His creation: through the beauty of the world, through the joys which it brings, one meets and touches the sacred. Sensitivity to the beauty Non-pissessiveness and the Religious Vows / 229 of life is'a drive, an important ,one, by which a person can taste and see the goodness of God. The joys of life help man to venture outside his narrow self-world, to discover h~s at-homeness w~th that which is beyond, to understand the truth that one is but a branch whose fulfillment depends upon maintaining unity with the Vine. He who islinsensitive to beauty, whose mind cannot be moved by the complex-powerful-fragile world is indeed a poor man, dis-possessed of a key which can fr~e him from the prison of alienation and from the illusion of i,n, dividualism. ,~s the Christian learns daily when gathered around the Lord s Table, God [is to be found in His world, in the common bread and wine¯ But enjoyment of the world and its pleasures easily parents a possessiveness toward things which is neither healthy nor redemptive. The possessive per-sonality begins to amass, or Idesires to amass, large stores of material belongings, assuming that ownership of things is a prerequisite to enjoying them, is a means of holding onto joy. No sooner ts the beauttful encountered than the possessive person begm,s planmng ways to hold onto the source ofthat pleasure in order to insure that it can be repeated. But experience teaches that this effort to prolong-by-possessing fails¯ It succeeds only in introducing worry, jealousy, and dissatisfaction. This concern for, this worry about, owning becomes so ~mportant that the original goal of enjoyment ~s overwhelmed and forgotten. Time is spent collecting, protecting, preserving, insuringmand these become substitutes for enjoymetlt. In one's desire to hold onto a particular joy, one fads to notice, and therefor~ to respond to, the ~nnumerable joys which prodigal world offers PossessiTe people, people who desire to own a lot, are often people who enjoy very httle. The non-possessive person, precisely because his attentions and energies are not being channeled into the attainment or protection of a few chosen ob-jects of importance, is one who ~an find delight in the most unexpected places, I who is regularly surprised by joy. He understands that the person who wishes to know the joys of this life mus~ resist the ever-present, self-defeating tendency to force their attentions¯ He m!ust learn to touch without holding. Traditionally, the vow of poverty has been understood in terms of sacrifice, a "giving up" of the material world, whose pleasures are sirens to the spirit, diversions from the work of the Master¯ A more balanced, ~ncarnat~onal spirituality would teach Christians to be wary, not of pleasure itself, but of the spirit of possessiveness toward~ pleasure and the world which affords these joys. Such a spirituality woul~l teach Christians that in pleasure they ex-perience the salvific presence of the Creator, and that such appreciationsmfar from being destructive--can be invaluable aids to the spiritual life¯ This spirituality would also maintain that the attractions of the material world can be dangerous, not because they themselves are spiritually injurious, but because they do tend to excite the possessive tendency within a person. Enjoy-ment easily gives way to covetousness, worry, jealousy, frustration, all of which destroy integrity and distract from values. It is this spirit of possessiveness--the need to own, the fear of losing, the desire for more--which is injurious to the life of grace and which must be overcome¯ 230 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/2 The vow of poverty might be approached in this context: by the vow of poverty, a religious promises not only to live communal life according to the constitutions and customs of his or her congregation, but pledges as well the in-tention to overcome as far as is possible the possessive tendency toward the good things, the pleasures of this world. Communal life, where material resources are shared and where individual worry about present or future needs is considerably reduced, is a structure which should make non-possessiveness toward material things a more easily attained goal. By eliminating many of the pressures of finance which accompany a more individualistic way of life, the common life facilitates the development of that freedom from possessiveness which is essential if one is to live life fully and enjoy properly the things which life provides. This is not to suggest that there exists some automatic relation between observing the requirements of a communal life and achieving a proper interac-tion with material things. Many are the religious who faithfully observe every detail of their communal obligations but who never attain a spirit of freedom from worry and possessiveness about "things," who never come to realize that "freedomrs just another word for nothing left to lose." Many are the religious for whom the life of communal sharing represents deprivation, rather than a door to fuller experience. Nor should one deduce from this approach to pover-ty that there is no sacrifice or renunciation involved in the life of communal sharing. Within most people there is something of the Lucifer who would rather be master in hell than serve in heaven. The desire to possess, to make certain things one's own, is a strong drive, and is controlled only with con-siderable effort and denial. But the point remains: the goal of the vow of pover-ty is not a renunciation of all pleasure, but the purification of one's ability to experience and enjoy God's world. Summary and Conclusion In summary, the three vows reflect three aspects of a central spiritual goal: to experience fully human life without seeking to "possess" its joys. While vowing to observe particular sets of obligations, the religious pledges as well the intention to lead a life characterized by freedom from possessiveness--to attempt a life in which the joys of intimate relationships with people, ap-preciative interaction with things, and genuine rejoicing in successful endeavors do not deteriorate into a jealous demand for attention and affection, into a constant search for things to own, into an idolatrous quest for prestige. These are the ideals of religious life. And, to this writer, the extent to which religious have been successful in realizing these ideals is impressive: Even in times when the spirituality was quite different from that articulated in this article, the writer met many religious men and women who exhibited that joy in life which follows upon a non-possessive stance. Loving and caring in their relationships; appreciative and sensitive to the simplest of pleasures; ready to respond to the challenge with a spirit which so often spelled victory--these describe well the lives Of Non-possessiveness and the Religious l/ows / 231 countless religious men and women. It would seem, then, to this writer, that religious life works. His judgment is favorable because he realizes how power-ful is the possessive tendency within the human spirit, and what a marvelous thing it is to see it mastered. His judgment is favorable because he realizes how difficult it is to learn that "obvious" truth about human life: that "you can't take 'it' with you." The Modern Religious Community and Its Government Sister Mary A lice Butts Sister Mary Alice of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal is a member of the Department of Political Science of St. Francis Xavier University, Sydney Campus; her address is: Holy Angels Convent; P.O. Box 1384; Sydney, Nova Scotia BIP 6K3; Canada. The study of political philosophy involves, for anyone who takes on the exer-cise, a study of the term "community." In the process of such a study, it is not difficult to find some similarities between "community" as it relates to the political scene and the same word as it is used to designate particular religious groups. In the following pages I shall attempt to draw some lessons from political philosophy and then apply those lessons to the community life of religious. I want, first of all, to examine the senses in which the word "community" is used. Then I shall try to apply these findings to "religious communit.y" and specifically to the modern religious community. Finally, I shall look at a few aspects of the methods of governing a modern religious community. Community in Political Thought From the very dawn of the writings of political philosophy, there was a recognition of the fact that ~ human is created as a social being, that he or she can live a complete life only in association with other human beings. Aristotle and the Greeks in general taught that human life could be lived most fully in a small community where every citizen knew every other and each played his part "in ruling and being ruled." All through the history of political theory we recognize the inevitable conflict which must arise between the individual, on the one hand, and the group on the other. Even in philosophy itself, we speak of the whole as composed of heterogeneous parts. The smallest organisms contain 232 The Modern Religious Community and Its Government / 233 cells which strain to go off on their own and we need never be surprised if clusters of human beings living in communities will be less compact, since they are larger and looser. St. Thomas Aquinas and Medieval philosophers in general addressed themselves to the problem of the whole and the parts; that is, to the realization that individual members of any community may be for greater integration or for greater separateness simply because of their individual temperaments. The ones who are for greater integration seek security first; those for greater separateness may be simply moved by a spirit of adventure. For others, the side they choose may depend partly on the theory they hold regarding the nature of the group itself. These ask the question: Is the community a means of supplementing what the individual can do for himself or is it an organic body with a life of its own, in some sense beyond the life of the individual member? This is the question which is posed for the students of political theory. Just to illustrate how one pursues this problem, let us consider a few lines from a text in political thought describing the te~ichings of nineteenth century liberal theorists. The text reads: In the language of Emmanuel Kant, a community is a "Kingdom of Ends." A political problem . . . is a problem in human relations, to be solved with a mutual recognition of rights and obligations, with self-restraint on both sides. Within such a relationship, issues and disagreements will evidently be perennial. ¯. The liberal presumption is that their solution can be found by discussion, by interchange of proposals, adjustment, compromise, always on the assumption that both sides recognize rights and perform obligations in good faith. And the institutions of such a community are thought of as primarily providing the means by which discussion can end in a meeting of minds that reduces coercion to an unavoidable'minimum. They exert authority, but it is a kind of loose-fitting authority which is only rarely burdensome and on the whole is largely self-applied by the people concerned? Religious Community Is More than Political Co~mmunity The above

To celebrate International Youth Day 2020 Rachel Mims, Senior Program Officer for Youth Political Participation at NDI, is joined by three young leaders from Zambia, Lebanon, and Moldova. They discuss competitive youth debate as an opportunity to build political skills, actively contribute to solving social problems, and create greater space for youth inclusion in public life. For more information please go to https://www.ndi.org/youth-leading-debate
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Given Kapolyo: I don't believe in the saying young people are the future leaders. Because the truth is they tell us this for years and years and years, when I was 15 they told me you're a future leader, then I turned 20 and they said I'm a future leader, then they turned 25, and they said I'm a future leader, so then I'm now just waiting, I'm saying okay, when does the future come?
Now I think just this is time that we turn it around, and say young people should be the leaders of today, as well.
Rachel Mims: Today's young people deserve real opportunities to participate in political processes, and contribute to practical solutions that advance development. When given an opportunity to organize, voice their opinions, and play a meaningful role in political decision making, they consistently demonstrate their willingness and ability to foster positive lasting change. They also become more likely to demand and defend democracy, and gain a greater sense of belonging.
Recent global movements such as movements for climate justice and racial justice demonstrate that young people are demanding a shift in who has power, and in how that power is used, yet young people still find themselves marginalized from mainstream politics, and are limited in their ability to exercise the same influence over decision making processes. This is particularly true for young people who have experienced intersecting forms of marginalization and exclusion. At a time when global inequality is increasing, young people remain disproportionately impacted, and are expressing frustration with leaders and institutions that they perceive to be inaccessible, incapable, unresponsive, corrupt, and often repressive.
NDI works globally to support the political participation of young people through a variety of approaches that increase young people's agency, and create a more supportive environment. One approach involves helping young people develop competitive debating skills, including an issue analysis and framing, reasoning, public speaking, and active listening. NDI has supported [inaudible 00:02:05] programs in several countries, including longstanding programs in Jordan and Moldova, and more recent programs in Guatemala and Libya. We've seen the debate skills not only enhance political participation, but also contribute to holistic youth development. Debate builds practical skills that pave the way for young people to successfully engage in civil discourse and peaceful problem solving, both with their peers and with adult power holders.
I'm Rachel Mims, Senior Program Officer for Youth Political Participation at the National Democratic Institute, and today we are joined by three young leaders from Lebanon, Moldova, and Zambia, each working in different ways to apply their debate skills and actively contribute to solving social problems. As a result, they're creating greater space for youth inclusion in public life. First we'll hear from [Gibbon Carpolio 00:02:58]. Next up, Rachbenda Fou, and then Selena Decuzar. Welcome to Dem Works.
In Zambia, NDI partner with a chapter of the Center for Young Leaders of Africa, and Youth for Parliament, to gather young people from across political parties, media, and civil society organizations to debate solutions for increasing the number of young people in parliament. This debate program created an opportunity for youth from parties and civil society to change ideas, develop their public speaking and research skills, and to generate discussion around critical issues facing youth in Zambia.
We spoke with Given Kapolyo to learn more. Given, thank you for joining us today.
GK: Thank you so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to feature. First of all, I'm a young African female, my name is Given Kapolyo, I'm a young politician, I'm a student, I'm an activist, I'm an advocate, and a public speaker now. I can proudly call myself a public speaker, after I took part in the NDI public speaking that was called the Youth Debate Zambia.
I live in the northern part of Zambia. That's Kasama, northern province, Kasama, rural part of Zambia, so it was great that I was moved from the northern part of Zambia to the capital city, just to participate in the Youth Debate Zambia.
RM: Thank you, and thank you for telling us about all the different hats you wear. I hope to hear more about your activism, and other things that you're doing in politics.
Can you tell me more about your experience in the debate program? What was it like? What were some of the topics that you all discussed?
GK: We began with a training session. We covered the history of public speaking, we covered the tricks that we need for public speaking, how you draw the attention of a crowd, how you keep them engaged, and ordered. It was different young people from different parts of the country, and we were all brought together and were taught together, and then were given a topic. We were discussing how we can increase the number of young people in parliament, the number of youths in parliament, and it was a very profound experience, in the sense that we didn't just learn, then they'd give us a chance to actually show what we had learned from the training, and it was that interesting.
By the time we were leaving the training, there were people that were so confident to go back to their communities, and just speak change into their communities, into the crowds, and that was just how interesting, and just how meaningful it was to me and other participants that were there.
RM: I really love the point about public speaking, and this immediate sense of agency that young people feel, that they can go back and use their voice, and they have skills that they can start to put into use right away. Can you talk about the connection between some of the skills that you learned and your future political aspirations? I know that you're interested in running for public office.
GK: One of the things that we learned at the Youth Debate Zambia was that communication, public speaking and communication have a lot to do with politics, and with the youth standing out as a public figure, because it's they also mentioned how many great orators were [inaudible 00:06:34] were to get into public office because of how they spoke, how good they were at it, and the impacts that it just had in changing society.
For me as a young politician, first of all I must mention that the country that I'm from it's very difficult for a young female. First of all, it's very difficult for a female to make it into public office. It's even worse for a young female to make it. That, it also prepared me for how I could use my words to show people that not only will I be a voice for them, I could actually speak my heart out to them, tell them what my plans are, but then do it skillfully in a way that they buy into it, and are able to elect me, and even how because we dealt with topics on how you could make your speech relatable such that as you're telling your story somebody that is listening instantly feels like you're telling their story, and when they're able to relate with you it will be very easy for them to actually elect you as their leader, because they feel like you're a mirror of them, and then you can represent them better.
The training for me was actually a point that I think began a lot of things for me, because I knew I could speak, but then I didn't know I could use it to further my political ambition. When I went back home, in Kasana, I was able to speak to various groups. Just by me sharing my story with them, they were able to buy into the vision that I have for my ward, because I have aspirations of standing as a ward counselor next year, in our general elections, and it's been very helpful.
I've been able to know another important thing we learned is how you should be able to read your audience, so depending on who I'm talking to, I'm able to know which skills I should employ.
RM: Thank you. I know you can't see me, but I'm nodding vigorously over here, because you just shared, I think, so many important lessons with our listeners, just about how you can use these skills to further your political ambition, how things are different for young women, and how they face different barriers and challenges into getting into elected office, and how these skills help create an opening.
I want to talk about NDI's work in changing the face of politics, and it relates directly to what you mentioned about being a young woman in politics. NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and that includes their participation in leadership and politics, and I wanted to hear from you what you think young people's role is in not only changing the face of politics, but ensuring that young women have a role to play, and can participate in politics.
GK: We need to become alive to the reality that our parents will not be here 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, it is us that will be here. Every time I'm speaking to young people about young people involvement in politics and leadership and decision making and getting involved in civic spaces, I'm always telling them if we don't get involved now, then we are simply selling our future off ... Not even selling it off, we're simply giving it off for free. Because whatever our ... Those that we leave leadership to today, whatever decisions they make, or whatever they choose to do with the resources that we have, whatever they choose to do with our nation, they will not be here to face the repercussions, we will be here.
Most of our parliament, the Zambian parliament has over 158 seats, and only 2 people are below the age of 35, only two people are youth, but if we do get young people involved, then we do get young people into parliament, we will know to say this decision that I'm making today, I'm only 27, so the decision that I'm making today, 30 years from now the chances that I still will be here to answer for it and to face the repercussions of if I make a bad decision will linger in my mind, for even as I make a decision I'm thinking I'm not thinking five years from now, I'm thinking 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years from now, because I'm assured I will still obviously be here. I feel the time is now that young people actually take over and provide solutions to many of these challenges, and many of the problems that our country, our continent, and even the world is facing today.
RM: So many of the points that you just talked about really point to the need for this culture shift, and a culture change within politics. I think a lot of what you are advocating for, particularly about greater youth inclusion, can help contribute to that shift, and politics being more inclusive and representative of young people.
I just really want to thank you for taking time to talk with us today, and to share your thoughts, and I really want to wish you all the best in your run for office. I think you would make an amazing political leader, and I'm really excited to see what your future holds, and where you'll go after your participation as a young person in politics.
GK: Thank you so much. I look forward to where I go to, so I keep working towards it. And this I'm guaranteed that I will get there. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure having this conversation with you. I look forward to further interactions.
RM: Us as well. Thank you again.
For more than 35 years, NDI has been honored to work with thousands of courageous and committed democratic activists around the world, to help countries develop the institutions, practices, and skills necessary for democracy's success. For more information, please visit our website, at www.NDI.org.
In Lebanon, NDI is collaborating with the television station MTV Lebanon, for its weekly program, It's About Time, which features political leaders responding to questions from the host and from young people who have been trained in policy analysis and debate skills by NDI. MTV Lebanon hopes that by expanding debate culture in the country and by proving that young people can debate, they will pave the way for hosting Lebanon's first debates between national political leaders before the next elections in 2022. The show has achieved broad viewership, and resulted in viral moments on social media, with some political leaders saying that they tune in specifically to watch the youth debate segment. I would like to introduce everyone to Rafka Noufal, a junior Lebanese lawyer, and active participant on the debate show. Rafka, thank you for joining us for the podcast today.
Rafka Noufal: Thank you for having me with you today.
RM: I'd like to start with you giving us a brief introduction about your work, and your background, and what brought you to the debate show.
RN: I'm a 24-years-old Lebanese junior lawyer. I studied law in the Holy Spirit University, a Catholic University in Lebanon, and I just graduated from my masters to a degree. I also have a certificate of completion of the [inaudible 00:14:06] university program on international criminal law and procedures, and am a very social person who's interested in politics and in all the topics that are rising inside our country. When I knew about the TV political show It's About Time, through my university, I was very excited and more willing to join this show because I saw it as a platform to raise our voice as the young people in Lebanon, and to give our opinion and our thoughts on all the political and social and economic topics that are arising inside our society.
I work as a lawyer now, [inaudible 00:14:42] bar association, and I work in an office that takes private law cases and more specifically criminal law cases. Throughout my work, I got familiar with the gaps and insecurities inside the Lebanese legal system.
RM: I see so much connection between your ability to do this work as a lawyer and having the opportunity to dig into these pressing political issues on the debate show. Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience on the show, and talk about some of what you gained, whether it's skills that you gained, or kind of how the show maybe changed your perspective about politics?
RN: In fact, the different trainings we did with NDI were very useful on many levels. First of all, it developed our skills in public speaking, which is very important in the life of politics, and to my work also of the lawyer. Also, these trainings triggered the reason and the logic inside every mind of the young people who participate in the show, and it let us discuss and have conversations people from all over the country, so this debate program let us know how to discuss, how to debate topics without hurting other people's feelings, or other people's opinions.
RM: Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the topics that you debated on the TV show, and maybe topics that came up that were a bit more controversial, or there was more, there were maybe more emotions, or opinions that people really wanted to share?
RN: First off, my last debate at the show was about the early elections in Lebanon. I was supporting that we should have an early election in Lebanon, to change the members of the parliament, because the government in Lebanon now, even the parliament, they are not doing enough work in order to take us, or to help Lebanon go through this economic situation, this economic crisis we're going through right now in Lebanon. I was supporting the fact that we should be doing an early election, to change the leaders, to change the member of the parliament. We need young people to get inside the parliament. We need new, free minds, that are not attached to the past, they are not divided by sectarianism. We need a civil country, not a country that is divided by sectarianism.
RM: Can you talk a little bit more about your thoughts on the protest, and what you see as a way forward not only for young people in Lebanon, but the entire so many people across the country have been engaged in the protests, kind of what do you see as a vision, or a way forward?
RN: I would like to start by giving, talking about the problem between this disconnection, between young people nowadays in Lebanon, and the political parties, before talking about the protests. In fact, political parties in Lebanon are still attached to the past, and they divide young people by sectarianism. You should follow this party because you are from the sect that this party supports, or also I think that political parties inside Lebanon lack any vision for the future beyond their personal interests, and the most important point is that they deny the youth right to participate in decision making process, because they are political parties that are doomed with ... How to say it? Political inheritance, and the cultural hierarchy that says that elders know better than young people, but in fact when that's not the case when it's faced with reality, because every generation faces new challenges, different from the challenges that the other generation faced, so all of this adding to the corruption that grows like a tumor inside [inaudible 00:18:54] infecting all the aspects after [inaudible 00:18:58] for about like the environment, infrastructure, and economic crisis led to the birth of this protest and this revolution that emerged inside the streets of Lebanon.
RN: I think that young people, and I'm one of them, we saw this revolution as a window of hope to change the current corrupted situation in the country, and maybe to take part of the decision making process, to give our opinion, our thoughts.
RM: Do you see some of the topics that have come up in debates, and young people's desire to protest and take part in the revolution, do you see that as a meaningful pathway to change?
RN: I think so. I think young people believe in these social movements because these social movements are based on the free minds, and are detached from sectarianism, and from inequality between the Lebanese people, and maybe these social movements can create in the future political parties that can govern Lebanon and help it to develop like other countries in the world.
RM: This year, under the banner of of Changing the Face of Politics, NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and that includes their participation in leadership and politics. I wanted to ask you what you see as young people's role in changing the face of politics, and ensuring that young women specifically can participate and have a meaningful role in politics, and particularly in the context of Lebanon, this new politics that you all are attempting to usher in.
RN: I think that [inaudible 00:20:44] young people are making a step to bridge this gap between politics and youth people, because they are taking on important issues, such as climate change, mass immigration, and even women empowerment, however, I think that we still have a bit of problem inside the third-world countries, but as for women empowerment, I think Lebanon and and outside in other countries young people believe in gender equality between man and woman, and they don't consider gender as an indication for holding a political position.
In fact, we support us young people that competence, performances and efficiency are the only conditions for judging a person in a position of power, and not being a woman or a man. Thus, if we take charge in Lebanon, I think you will see more women engaged in the politics. For example, right now in Lebanon we are demanding the vote of the law for women's quota in all Lebanese election as a step to engage more women in the political life of the country.
RM: Do you think that this culture of youth debate, and young people sharing their voices on these important political topics, do you think that this trend will continue, in that it's important that young people continue to use debate to speak out about politics?
RN: The debating concept is important because first, it lets you build constructive arguments in a persuasive way, and you don't only talk just to talk, you have to talk with a logic and reason. Young people can express their opinion with public speaking skills, and to accept the opinion of other people without deciding them, or offending them, as I mentioned before.
RM: I really want to thank you for taking time out to share more with us about your political experience, and to talk about the political trends that we're witnessing in Lebanon. I think that a lot of what you shared can be really relevant for young people, and for others that are participating in politics, to really understand how this development skills and development of knowledge around debate can be useful for a political career.
RN: I would like also to thank NDI for all the training they did with us, and it was really a lifetime experience with them, and with It's About Time show.
RM: Great. Thank you.
RN: Thank you so much.
RM: NDI has worked with thousands of young people on the art of competitive policy debate, and has ongoing debate programs in three regions. To learn more about NDI youth debate programs, or access program resources, visit the Youth Leading Debate Initiative, on NDI.org.
In Moldova, NDI is facilitating the seventh iteration of the Challenger Program, which aims to help create the next generation of political leaders, policymakers, and civil servants. Challenger equips young people with the knowledge and skills to develop realistic public policies that respond to the needs and priorities of the people in Moldova. The youth debates take place in the second phase of the program, the policy debate school. During the program, the participants acquire research and analytical skills, and they also take part in developing a youth manifesto, which addresses important national problems faced by young people in the country.
I would now like to introduce you to Silena, who is a member of the Challenger Program, and is going to join us to talk a little bit about her experience. Hey, Silena, thanks for joining us today.
Selina Dicusar: Hello. Thank you for having me.
RM: I'd like to just start with you giving us a brief introduction about yourself, and telling us about your experience in the program.
SD: Okay. My name is Selena Dicusar. I am 20-years-old. I was born in the Republic of Moldova. Currently, I'm studying Moldova, at the international relations.
SD: I am a member of the Communication PR Department of the Erasmus Student Network Chisinau, but elections are currently underway, and I will run for Vice President. I am also participant of Challenger, and a double winner of the Best Speaker Award.
RM: Selena, thank you for that introduction. Can you tell me about your experience in the Challenger Program, why did you decide to join in the first place, and what do you think you gained from your participation in the program?
SD: It's certainly the most complex intense and in depth project that I've ever been involved in. I've had a unique experience participating in a project which changed my attitude towards politics, and taught me new skills. Firstly, I learned to value my knowledge in terms of languages and to apply them correctly in research. Secondly, I have learned to think critically, and always question any information I receive or process. And last but not least, I learned how to develop solutions.
About opportunities, yes, what I gained in Challenger helped me to properly recommend myself to the mayor of my native village, and prove that my ideas will help improve the situation in the village.
RM: Thank you. I think you brought up some really excellent points, particularly about this need to challenge information that we receive from different sources, and to really kind of understand what's being proposed for our different communities. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the debate skills? You mentioned that they connect to your political participation outside the program. What about the debate component helps prepare you for political engagement outside the program?
SD: First of all, the debate helped me understand how to make a manifesto, because we are writing manifestos in the program, and I think this is one of the most important skills that I have learned, and that have certainly helped me to engage more in politics out of the program.
RM: Great. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about I know that you do quite a bit of work on the local level, and that you've been doing some work with the local mayor, so I want to talk about this trend that we're seeing, which is a bit of a disconnect between young people and formal political institutions, and we're really seeing young people kind of disengage from formal politics. I'm wondering based on your work in the community and on the local level what you think about this trend in young people moving away from formal politics, and also if you think that working on a local level is part of a solution or a viable pathway for young people to participate in politics.
SD: First of all, it is mandatory that parties and politicians stop underestimating youth. They shouldn't only change their attitudes, but also encourage young people to join parties, giving them the opportunity to work on the issues that interest them, and unfortunately one of the biggest issues between young people, political institutions, and parties in Moldova that they don't hear each other. Young people are often not appreciated fairly, they are not heard, and these of course discourages them from further action.
Local political participation is certainly a viable path that many Moldovans are unaware of, specifically my case about three or four young people and one curator from another city work on projects in our city [inaudible 00:28:24], those are the critical shortage of young people work is proceeding slowly. Most likely this is due to the fact that such work requires time and dedication. Is almost not rewarded financially, and among our youth experience is not in the first place for all. The situation is improving, the new generation is more politically active.
RM: Thank you, Selena, and I think a lot of the points that you made about how parties need to change their strategy about the way that they engage young people is really important, and also this need to work at multiple levels, that we're working at the lower level, but we're also creating opportunities at the national level, too, and I think your work experience speaks to that as well.
I want to talk a bit about young women's participation. This year, under the banner of changing the face of politics, NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and this includes women's participation in politics. I want to ask you what you feel like young people's role is in ensuring that the face of politics changes, and that young women have more opportunities to participate.
SD: First of all, it seems to me that the new generation which is now growing up is more aware of the problems that humanity faces. This is a generation that can embrace changes slowly, and their role in ensuring that participation of women in politics is first of all to learning how to accept the leadership of a woman, and question the abilities of women and men working in the same area on the wages of equal criteria, and to better involve young women in politics we must first of all educate them because an educated woman is a strong woman who can defend her interests.
RM: Thank you. I think you know the point about it being a generational change, I think that's echoed in the other, the conversations with other young people, as well, is it seems like this generation is more willing to ensure that participation is inclusive, and then that includes young women as part of the conversation.
I really want to thank you for joining us today, and for sharing some insights about your participation in the program, and how you see your participation in Challenger really helping create political space for young people. Is there anything you want to add, in closing?
SD: I would like very much to thank the people coming here that created this program. It's a big challenge for Moldova to teach a generation of people that is aware of politics, that can change the political situation in the country, and the political culture, as well. I think if we get to teach more people how politics works, probably there will be a positive change in my country.
RM: Again, I just want to thank you for joining us, and answering the questions. I really wish you the best of luck in everything that you pursue, moving forward.
SD: Thank you very much.
RM: Thank you to our listeners. To learn more about NDI, or to listen to other Dem Works podcasts, please visit us at NDI.org.


Podcast Participants; Given Kapolyo, Rafka Noufal, Selina Dicusar.



24. Increasing Youth Political Inclusion through Debate

Democracy (General), #NDI #National Democratic Institute #Women #Citizen Participation #Youth

■■■ , I ISHHBHBKi'ffl HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. ♦ The IntercoIIepte Bureau or Academic Costume. Chartered igost. Cottrell & Leonrard Albany, N. Y. Makers of Caps, Gowns, Hoods m All College Text Books Promptly Ordered. Second Hand Books Bought and Sold. H. G. Brffltyirt, prop. Come and Have a Good Shave, or HAIR-CUT at Harry B. Seta's New Tonsorial Parlors, 35 Baltimore St. BARBERS' SUPPLIES A SPECIALTY. Also, choice line of fine Cigars. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, A, L, DillenbEck, Agent. COLLEGE. IF YOU CALL OUT C. A. Bloehep, Jeuuelei*, Centre Square, He can serve you in anything you may want in REPAIRING or JEWELRY. WE RECOMMEND THESE FIRMS. jk The Pleased Customer is not a stranger in our estab-lishment— he's right at home, you'll see him 'when you call. We have the materials to please fastidious men. J. D. LIPPY, 3XEe;rc2:ha.n.t Tailor, 29 Chambersburg Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. CITY HOTEL, Main Street, - Gettysburg, Pa. Free 'Bus to and from all trains. Thirty seconds' walk from either depot. Dinner with drive over field with four or more, ^r.35. Rates, $1.50 to $2.00 per Day. Livery connected. Rubber-tire buggies a specialty. John E. Hughes, Prop. T|PTi M Now in THE .PHOTOGRAPHER. new Studio 20 and 22 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, Pa. One of the finest modern lights in the country. C. E. Barbehenn THE EAGLE HOTEL Corner Main and Washington Sts. mM mmmmmmm U-PI-DEE. A new Co-cd has alighted in town, U-pi-dee, U-pi-da I J^KH" In an up-to-datest tailor-made gown,U-pi-de-l-da I ff J The CDepcary. The Literary Journal of Gettyburg College. Vol. XIII. GETTYSBURG, PA., OCTOBER, 1904. No. 5 CONTENTS "YANZIE MAY," 162 BY "FLORENCE EDNA." ONE—AND HIS CALL, 164 [Winner Reddig Oratorical Prize.] A. L. DILLKNBECK, '05. LIEUTENANT JACK OF THE THIRTEENTH, . . 168 BVTHALES." THE GREAT, ■ . . 173 " '04." THE BIRTH OF POLITICAL FREEDOM, . . . 176 "JUVENAL." TRADE UNIONS AND THE INDUSTRIAL CRISIS, . . 178 [Honorable Mention Reddig Oratorical Prize ] CHARLES W. HEATHCOTE, '05. "ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER," 182 "Scio." "THE SAME OLD STORY," • . 184 "AEIEIE." EDITORIALS 185 EXCHANGES 187 ^— .,." *M\ i l62 THE MERCURY. "YANZIE MAY." BY "FLORENCE EDNA." ,nk S, among the gorge's of the old Catoctin Mountains, ■" *" Rushing swiftly onward, to the dark Monocacie, In deep pools, or shallows, more magnificent than fountains Made by mortal man, can ever be. Onward, always onward, through its strange mysterious turnings Goes the mountain brook ; so Destiny, Shapes the courses of men's lives despite their yearnings, For the great unknown—Posterity. Thus, the darkest pools are ''lives of great men," Cutting deep upon the rocks of time, And the laughing shallows, lives of light men, Passing o'er them with a joy sublime. What then, shall we call those quiet places Where the water, gently flowing through, Leaves green moss, and rock-fern, living traces, Of the wondrous work it has to do? Caxi ye give no name for humble beauty? Yet, the lives of many men to-day Are but answers to the calls of duty, Such, the life of one—old "Yanzie May." ********** Just a simple "swamper " youth was Yanzie, When, with honest eyes of dusky brown, He went forth, to woo the beauteous Nagel, Fairest of all maidens in the town. " He will never win her," quoth the gossips, "Handsome lovers hath she by the score. She has answered every one with scorn-lips, Master her? can he, than these, do more? " But e'en Gossip can not close the heart-gates, ^ When the tiny god, with arrows bright, Bars the entrance for each one whom Love hates, Sends his wounded favorite, through—to light. THE MERCURY 163 '> So, in gloaming days, when Indian Summer Painted far and near, the country-side, Yanzie, in his lonely mountain cabin, Called her "Nagel May," his " bride." ******** * On the mountain summit with the snow-flakes, Two long winters passed them quickly by, Like short summers seemed they free from heart-aches Then, as Summer dies, did Nagel die. * * * * * * ^ * * * * Did he yield him to his maddening sadness, When to-night so swiftly turned his day, Lead a hermit life among the mountains, Caring not what fellow-men might say ? No, as years rolled on, whene'er in sorrow, Men below him in the valley lay, To them went, on many a brighter morrow, " Old man of the mountains," "Yanzie May." Through his simple days of noble living, From the prime of youth, to good old age, He, himself, to others gone, and giving, Passed the life of Old Catoctin's Sage. " Passed"—and now the ruined mountain cabin Is a symbol of his stay on earth ? Nay, far rather is the mountain brooklet Saving thirsty lands from curse of dearth. For, as long as men who are unselfish Live with us, and from us pass away, As the mountain waters, never failing, So, will live the " life of Yanzie May." 1 ■ wmgmm *M 164 THE MERCURY. ONE—AND HIS CALL. {Reddig Oratorical Prize Oration.) A. L. DIIXBNBECK, '05. EVER throughout the centuries that are gone when mankind in a crisis of state, or church, or liberty has stood in sore and direful need of a leader forth he has stepped upon the field of action and nobly and bravely directed the forces of righteous-ness with the pen or with the sword. Of such—heroes we must call them—the names of some have been sung in rhyme and legend and story and others by imposing masses of granite or marble have been immortalized in the hearts of their countrymen. It is true that these to a very large extent have gone to their graves with but a faint idea of the esteem in which they were held by their fellows. And of still others it must be said they died " unwept, unhonored, and unsung." Strange that the laurel wreath of meed and praise be thus withheld from the living brow of the worthy and the dead form be buried amid flowers and highest eulogies fall on the deaf ears of death. Biographies of the dead have their use, yet it were better that those worthy of the praise of their fellowmen should reap the reward of appreciation and esteem while living. God always furnishes the man to meet the call of the hour. Every clean minded and thoughtful citizen of our republic has long seen and bitterly deplored certain existing evils in our political system. Partisanship has its followers so fervid that love of party has supplanted love of country; lust for office has made positions of trust—the free gifts of a people—objects of purchase and barter; and the shameful use so often made of them has made the words of the honest Lincoln "agovern-ment for the people and by the people " a mocking paradox. Even the royal right of franchise—an American privilege fought and died for in the past—has lost its value in the sight of many. When the civil officers of a nation reach such a climax no one dare say the nation is not in deep need. Such has been the need of our land for some time past—a need so pressing it THE MERCURY. I65 •would seem that the spirit of right and freedom could voice its heartful desire in no better words than Holland's " God give us men ; a time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands ; Men whom the lust of office does not kill. Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy, Men who possess opinions and a will, Men who have honor ; men who will not lie." And the spirit of our fathers cried not in vain. Lo! from our best and bluest blood came one to meet the need and throw a life filled with honest effort into the breach Theodore Roosevelt. Born of an aristocratic Knickerbocker family, for eight gener-ations resident in our great and stirring metropolis, and which ■contributed to the cause of liberty, philanthropy, and industry ■many of its sons, he is the composite product of this sturdy age, worthy of his ancestral name. As an infant and youth he was a puny, sickly child giving dittle promise of the amazing vigor of his later life. His father, who was a strict disciplinarian, early taught him to " do things for himself" and to keep body and mind active. This good advice, closely followed at the Long Island homestead, on the Western plains, in every position he has occupied, has made him the man of vigorous body and keen mind he now is. There is certainly nothing superhuman about him, and there is no doubt that much of the splendid personality which at-tracts and charms those who are thrown in close contact with it has been the outgrowth of his own development and tre-mendous working power. Call him what they may—opportunist, crest of a wave, Rough Rider—they cannot blot out the fact that he is the man for the needful occasions. Without a doubt fortune has smiled upon him, although very often her smiles were hidden by the cloud of disappoined im-mediate personal ambitions. He failed to become Asst. Secre-tary of State and became Civil Service Commissioner instead; he failed to realize his hopes on the Police Board and became Assistant Secretary of the Navy; he was compelled to reluc- T\l> I66 THE MERCURY. tantly accept the Vice-Presidency and become the nation's-head. There is a strangeness in his career which to the thoughtful is really wonderful. Nevertheless, the opportunity always found him prepared. What are the traits in his character that make him so clearly the fulfillment of the nation's need ? First of all he is honest— honest in thought, honest in deed, honest in peace, honest in battle, honest in his speech and dealing—honest everywhere and honest to the backbone. Politicians and wire-pullers find him such ; his constituents have found him such ; his colleagues have found him such ; his enemies admit it. Did he not say to you on yonder rostrum a half-month ago "as courage is the cardinal virtue of a soldier, so is honesty the basic principle in civic life ?" This is the mainspring of his-wonderiul popularity. And going arm in arm with his unswerving honesty is the proven courage of the man. It required courage to face un-flinchingly the hot fire of Spanish bullets ; it required courage to face the wounded grizzly in our western hills. It required courage of a higher kind when, as a stripling out of college, the youngest member in the New York Assembly, he boldly stood before them and denounced his party leaders as rascals. It required more of that courage when the jeers and threatened ruin of his political life, and the waves of denunciation came to his ears. They called him a youth and a fool but he knew he was right and by his honesty, energy and courage won his fight in Albany against robbery and competition until the State from end to end rang with his name. It required courage and honesty combined to face the bribery and red- tape, of precedent when as Civil Service Commissioner he purged the system of its corruption. It required both as Police Commissioner of New York City to battle with the agents of the liquor traffic and dive keepers and Tammany until that debauched depart-ment was cleaner. He believed that his appointment of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission would be his political deathblow, nevertheless because much suffering was imminent he did what to him seemed right. THE MERCURY. 167 He believes in the people, especially the the masses, as no other man has ; he has had no end to gain, no ax to grind, no machine to build up. Why then his strenuous executive ac-tivity? The one incentive—the best and noblest man can rind—honesty and fair dealing in the administration of govern-ment. With no selfish aims, with high ideals, with love for the people, abiding honesty and courage, it is not strange after all that he has become the peoples ideal—the very Appolo of our vigorous American manhood. Whether as soldier, public officer, or as private citizen, we view the life and character of Theodore Roosevelt, there is nothing but good with a deep and wholesome motive back of it, in the example set before us. To us then, that example of him who has so gallantly volunteered to lead the way against negligence, corruption and incompetency in public places should appeal in strongest terms. Altho he is there "trying" as he styles it, " to do something worth while, there is the same need calling us. He is calling to us to come and fight in the battle of truth and right. Will we listen to his call ? The world to-day needs men of action, men of work, men who struggle among their fellows for the improvement of the race—men who are true agents of the upward, onward march of progress. The world needs men not prophets—men of moral strength, of mental and physical health, of honesty of purpose, of truth well-spoken, of good deeds well done. May the God of the nations grant that as each of the com-ing years of this young century becoming old, rings in the new year it may " Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite ; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good." M/I») wm -'.- r by the bullet what could not be won by the ballot. Perverting: the meaning of liberty, the South assumes rights and privi-leges contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, and proclaims THE MERCURY. 183 herself no longer a member of the Union ; and the hope of a peaceful secession is soon frustrated. Nerving herself for the worst, she hurls an insulting shot at the grand old flag floating over Fort Sumter. On the evening of the second day of the assault the brave little garrison is compelled to surrender, and as the sun in beauty sank in the West, so the " Stars and Stripes " were lowered from the staff; As the pale moon rose up to supplant the sun in the heavens, so the ensign of rebellion was raised over Fort Sum-ter ; and as day gives place to black night, so Peace gave way to bloody War. The rebel hosts have taken Fort Sumter, but have they con-quered ? The wires flash the wild news and the country is aroused. The call goes forth, " To arms, ye loyal sons ! To arm ! " Then loyal hearts give answer, and loyal hands grasp the sword, and beneath the old flag, with drums beating, swords flashing and bayonets glittering, forward to the front they march. Desperate is the conflict, for the destiny of a great nation hangs in the balance. It is brother in Blue against brother in Gray. But at length, after years of bloodshed and death, heaven smiles upon the Right, and to the goddess of Peace says: " Peace, thy divine wand extend, And bid wild war his ravage end." The attack on Fort Sumter has shown to the world that to pluck a single star from our national firmament is impossible; that a slave empire could not be established on American soil; that liberty and equality, the natural rights of man, are secure to all; that the " government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." But what has it cost to learn these lessons?—The lives of over one million of our dear ones—A price dear, but not too dear, for our country is now the free and common country of all, and that grand old Flag, first unfurled in Freedom's holy cause, will forever wave " over a free country and a brave people." 184 w THE MERCURY. ■THE SAME OLD STORY." "AEIEIE." HEN the Russian ships without a stand Sought out a short cut for the land, This happy message soon was sent, Which to Nick's grief a solace lent, " Our ships sank in good order." • Said he, " Kuropat-kin play a hand That soon will make those Japs disband And wish that they had learned to swim." When lo ! this message greeted him : "Retreated in good order." Then Kuropatkin thought a rest At Liaoyang would be the best Thing for his men. Around his lines He put up fences, trespass signs, Dug pits, and installed telephones. Thought he, " I'll rest my weary bones Till all those Japs are full of aches From jumping down on pointed stakes. But what would Mrs. 'patkiu say If I should come home dead some day ? I guess I'd better go to-night, And leave this long and fearful fight." So up he got and off he went, After this note to Nick was sent: "Retreated in good order." The aim to which the Japs aspire Is to sieze the enemy entire, While that of Russia seems to be, Not driving Japs into the sea, But "retreating in good order." THE MERCURY Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter VOL. XIII GETTYSBURG, PA., OCTOBER, 1904 No. s Editor-in-chief C. EDWIN BUTLER, '05 Exchange Editor C&ARLES GAUGER, '05 Business Manager A. L. DILLENBECK, '05 Asst. Business Manage* E. G. HESS, '06 Associate Editors H. C. BRILLHART, '06 ALBERT BILLHEIMER, '06 H. BRUA CAMPBELL, '06 (Exchange Editor Pro Tern.) Advisory Board PROF. J. A. HIMES, LITT.D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M.D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D.D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the join, literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Busi-ness- Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORIALS. MERCURY TO the new student, hale, hearty and fresh—and PRIZES. Gettysburg has an unprecedented number, like-wise to the alumni and friends of the college just as hale and hearty but not so fresh, THE MERCURY extends a cordial greet-ing and best wishes for your success. May you be attended with every blessing and unflinchingly grasp all noble oppor-tunites as they present themselves. And just here we would urge the new and old students to read again the statement made last year with respect to the MERCURY Prizes. Several contributions are printed in this number in competition for the prizes and others will be received and printed in the next few issues. / I* 186 THE MERCURY. COLLEGE Great has been the outward growth of the GROWTH. American Colleges in the last decade, but greater still has been their internal development, and the alumni in-terest has by no means been the smallest factor and aid in this marvelous advance. Happily we can say with all truth and ex-actness that our dear old Alma Mater has made wonderful pro-gress even in the few months which have passed since the elec-tion of our new president. So large a class of first year men Gettysburg has never before known, and the general spirit of progress, which pervades the entire college, is quite perceptible to the visiting alumnus. The enthusiasm aroused among our graduates has been marked, and it should continue to grow and increase until every son of Pennsylvania has been seized with the spirit and becomes vociferous in his praise. That this influence will react to produce greater zeal and activity, both in the college and out, cannot be doubted. If the newly awakened interest of our alumni and the untiring efforts of our worthy President have enabled us to accomplish so much within such a short time, may we not even now make this hallowed spot, known throughout the world for its acts of bravery and daring, just as famous for its educational facilities. The top of the ladder is in sight, and tho as yet far off, we have but to quicken our ardor, redouble our zeal and increase our activity to banish the difficulties and attain the goal. if LITERARY The value to the college man of membership in SOCIETIES, the Literary Societies and participation in their ex-ercises cannot be too strongly urged upon him. They supply a need which the class-room drill cannot give. They are the training-schools in the literary department of college. The measure of their success is seen in their well-stocked libraries, their well-equipped reading-room and the intelligent interest manifested in their work. It is in the society hall that the true worth of the student is shown and cultivated. It is here he puts into practice the theories learned in the class-room ; it is here he makes a personal practical application of the knowl-edge he has acquired. Especially the new men should con-sider the importance of this matter, visit the different societies, \ THE MERCURY. 187 join the society of their choice and take part in its meetings. And let us hope that the new interest shown in other lines of work this fall will also manifest itself in the Literary Societies and cause old and new members to work with greater earnest-ness and enthusiasm than has ever before characterized this ■department of college activity. " B," '06. EXCHANGES. Almost all the college monthlies which are on the desk of the exchange editor are June numbers, very few of the Sep-tember editions having as yet been issued. As a result the •exchanges contain commencement news to the exclusion of •poetry, fiction and other interesting features which go to make up a well balanced literary magazine. However many of them are very well edited and the commencement news, so interest-ing to the alumni, is presented in a very attractive form. The trend for some time past has been toward an increase in the number of pages alloted to fiction each month and it is to be hoped that this movement will not abate. Articles of a lighter vein act as a sauce so that the more serious composi-tions can be more easily digested. The June number of the University of Virginia Magazine is an admirable one in many respects, and its table of contents ■shows that the staff realize the importance of issuing a well rounded periodical. The poetical contributions are excellent and'breathe the fragrant spirit of summer. The business manager of the Lesbian Herald evidently is progressive, for a classified list of advertisers appears in the June number of that magazine. An excellent innovation it is. The Forum published 'at Lebanon Valley College shows an improvement this year, it being one of the first September numbers to arrive. It lacks an exchange department, of vital importance to every college monthly. The July number of The Phareha published by the students ■of Wilson College presents a fine appearance. Its interesting 188 THE MERCURY. contents appeals to the reader and its attractiveness is greatly enhanced by the excellent cover in which it appears. The commencement news is very well edited. The " Observations " department in the High School Argus-of Harrisburg is sprightly and original. It is an excellent high school periodical. The Yale Scientific Monthly appears \vith a particularly timely article entitled " Engineering Details of the World's Fair." The other scientific articles appearing in the magazine are presented in lucid style. Get ready for the Pen and Sword Prize Essays which will appear in the November number of the Mercury. / PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. FURNITURE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames, Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. J» Telephone No. 97. H- IB. ZOer^cLer 37 Baltimore St. Gettysburg, Pa. THE STEWART & STEEN CO. College EngTCbueTs and (pTinteTS 1024 Arch. St., Philadelphia, Pa. MAKERS AND PUBLISHERS OF Commencement, Class Day Invitations and Programs, Class Pins and Buttons in Gold and Other Metals, Wedding Invitations and Announcements, At Home Cards, Reception Cards and Visiting Cards, Visiting Cards—Plate and 50 cards, 75 cents. Special Discount to Students. A. G. Spalding «S Bros. Largest Manufacturers in the World of Official Athletic Supplies. 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Issue 10.6 of the Review for Religious, 1951. ; A.M.D.G. Review for Religious NOVEMBER 15, 195.1 After Ten Years . The Editors Spirituality of Teresian Carmel . Fr. Thomas, O.C;.D. Peace of C;hrist . Thomas A. O'C;onnor Secular Institutes . Francis N. Korth Way of Simple Love . ,James Lockeff Current Spiritual Writing . . . . Augustine KJaas The Race Problem . ~ . . . Gerald Kelly Questions and Answers Index for 19S I Book ,Reviews VOLUME X NUMBER 6 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS VOLUME X NOVEMBER, 1951 NU~BER 6 CONTENTS AFTER TEN YEARS--'~he Editors . 281 THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE TERESIAN CARMEL-- Father Thomas, O.C.D . 283 THE PEACE OF CHRIST-~Thomas A. O'Connor, S.3 . 289 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 295 SECULAR INSTITUTES--Francis N. Korth, S.J~ . 296 THE WAY OF SIMPLE L~)VE-~dames Lockett, S.J . 301 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING--Augustine Klaas, S.J.-- International Convention on Religious Life . 303 Reports on Renewal and. Adaptation . 305 Religious and Lay Helpers . 311 Prudence vs Credulity . . .~ ¯ . 313 HOW TO THINK AND ACT ABOUT THE RACE PROBLEM-- Gerald Kelly, S.J . 316 QUESTIONS AND~ ANSWERS--° 27. On Ackn~,w, ledging Gifts . 324 28. Succe~sso.r for Deceased Councilor . 32q 29. Slight°Deferment of First Profession . . . . . . . . 325 30. Can Shperior's Three-Year Term be Shortened? . 326 31. Can ~slstant Novice Master be Councilor? . 326 32. Pa~siontide Covering of Statues . 326 33. Admissioh of Deaf Applicant . 326 34. Must Altar Candles be Blessed? . 327 BOOK REVIEWS-- Officium Divinum Parvum; St. Clare of Assisi; Devotedly Yours 327 ¯ BOOK NOTICES . 329 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . . 330 TEN-YEAR INDEX-~SECOND CALL . 332 NO MORE REPRINTS . 332 ANNUAL INDEX FOR 1951 . 333 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1951. Vol. X, No. ~. Published bi-monthly: danuary, 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 danuary 15, 1942. at the Post Office, Topeka. Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.d., G. Augustine Ellard, S.d., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Editorial Secretary: derome Breunig, S. d. Copyright, 1951, by Adam C. Ellis, S.d. ~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. At:t:er Ten Years WrlTH this number we complete our first ten years of publica-tion. It seems an appropriate time to give.subscribers some facts about our history and some insight into our future. History Our first number (January, 1942) was already in the press when the war started. This number was mailed to" about 1300 subscribers; the last issue of that year w~s mailed to about 3200. Since that time our subscription list has increased gradually until now it is approxi-mately 8500. We began by publishing a 72-page magazine with large type and heavy paper. War and post-war restrictions on paper, as well as the rising "cost of everything pertaining to the printing business, forced us to cut on the quality oF paper, ~ the size of the type, and the num-ber of' pages. However, our present issue of 56 pages contains as much material as was printed in the first numbers. For more than nine years we held to our origigai price of two dollars per year. Only within this past year did we yield to pressure of rising costs; for, despite all the reductions regarding paper, type, and number of pages, our expense.s were much greater than they were in the early years of publication. Hence, in May, 195:11, we had to raise the subscription price to three dollars per year. We, did this with considerable regret, becaus~ we were conscious of the fact that most of our subscribers are small religious houses whose revenue is seldom more than meager. Our ambition has always been to publish a high-quality ecclesi-astical review, of special value to religious, whether clerical or lay. We have by no means reached the ideal; but we think we ~an say that we have published some valuable articles 'and series of articles. In our Question-and-Answer department, our policy has been to stress points that have some particular bearing on the religious life. We try to follow the same policy regarding bbok reviews. One of our special desires has been to keep a good Communica-tions department in which religious might help one another by dis-cussing some of the pract.ical problems of the religious life. We began this department with an excellent series of communications on spiritual direction. Unfortunately, we have never since been able to 281 THE EDITORS rise tO the standard set by that initial endeavor. Regarding unsolicited manuscripts, we have had only one "abso-lute" in our policy: we never accept poetry. Except for this, we have carefully considered every manuscript submitted to us. The Future In the past our subscription list has grown gradually and with a certain spontaneity, that is, without much special pushing. But there is a limit to suc,h growth, and perhaps we have reached it. We could use the special help of interested subscribers. For instance, there are still large numbers of religious communities that do not subscribe; and it seems that in many cases the sole reason for not subscribing is thai they have never heard of the REVIEW. Perhaps some of our readers would have occasion to g!ve them the information. Also, it seems to us that we should have more subscribers among diocesan priests who are directors and confessors of religious. Would it seem mercenary to suggest that a gift-subscription to the REVIEW would be just as good a Christmas present to such priests as a rabat or a box of cigars ? We must retain our new ~rice ($3.00), and we hope it will not make any substantial difference in the number of subscribers. As for articles, we still" have several in theI series on the spiritual-ity of' different institutes. These include "Salesian Spirituality," "St. Augustine and His Rule," and "Jesuit Spirituality." We have another article on secular institutes, and we shall publish more on that subject as our information grows. Also, we have a commentary. on the address on the states of perfection given by Pope Pius XII to the members of the First Congress of Religious; and we hope to pub-lish soon an English translation of the very importa.nt apostolic let-ter to religious, Uniqenitus Dei Filius, issued by Pius XI, in 1924. We would appreciate receiving good communications on practical problems, as well as suggestions concerning possible communications or articles. We close with a word of thanks to contributors and subscribers, and with a prayer of thanks to God, who has blessed us in many ways. THE EDITORS. 282 The Spirit:ualit:y !:he Teresian Carmel Father Thomas, O.c.D. THE CONCEPT of perfection which is the basis of all that has .| been written on the spirit of Carmel is that the objective of the Carmelite is a state of union in which the soul is transformed by love in God. "The state of this divine union consists in the soul's total transformation, according.to the will, in such a manner that there may be naught in the soul that is contrary to the will of God, but that in all and through all, its movements may be those of the will of God alone." (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Bk.I, ch. 11, n.2.) This ideal set before his fellow religious by St. John of the Cross is carried over from the ancient spiritual tradition of Carmel as found in the work called the Institution of the First Monks (towards the end of the 12th century, or certainly before the middle of the 13th). The tradition of Carmel is twofold. "Firstly it consists in offering to God a holy heart, freefrom every stain of actual sin; we can reach that by our labor, our efforts with the help of grace; we have reached it when we are perfected in charity . The other end of this life is a purely gratuitous gift of God: it ¢0nsists in tasting, not only after death but even in this mortal life, the power of the divine presence and the sweetness of heavenly glories." (Institutio Primorum Monachorum, ch.2.) These two elements are not separate and unrelated. "By means of purity of heart and perfection of charity one arrives at the second end, that is, experimental knowledge of divine strength and celestial glory. " (Ibid.) . While this experimental knowIedge is a gift of God, it is not for that reason out of our reach or devoid of merit. Both St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Jesus speak of a double union with God. The first consists in perfect conformity of the human will with the will of God, which union of conformity is crowned quite normally with the mystical union in which the soul divestedof self-love is penetrated with the divine life and realizes tha.t God lives or dwells within. (Cf. Ascent, Bk.II, ch.5; Interior Castle, Mans. 6, Ch. Ill, n.3.) If few souls reach this high state, it is not because God wishes that it be the lot of a few, but because He finds few disposed for such union. (Livin~l Flame, A, St. 2, n.23) . 283 FATHER THOMAS Reoiew for Religious Carmel has always been the implacable enemy of mediocrity and half measures. St. Teresa warns the world that God "refuses to force our will, He takes what we give Him but does not give Himself wholly, until He sees that we are giving ourselves wholly to Him." (Wag of perfection, Ch.28, n.12.) And St. John of the Cross gives expression to the same thought by saying, "God communicates Him-self most to that soul that has progressed farthest in love; namely, that has its will in closest conformity with the will of God." (Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, n.4) Total love postulates total sel'f-denial. Souls of the Teresian Carmel are called to a totalitg of looe. Asceticism of Carmel If the ideal of perfection is thus clearly set forth, the development of this ideal is no less evident in the writings of the Order. For the Carmelite, sanctity is to be reached by means of two practices: detach-ment and recollection, or, mortification and prayer. All the precepts of the Primitive Rule may be reduced to these. The central precept of the Rule: "Let each one remain in his celt; or hear it, meditating dag and nigh( on the law of the Lord, and watching in prager, unless otherwise jUStlg occupied, together with the prescribed recitation of the Divine Office and daily assistance at Mass, insure the primacy of prayer; while the precepts of poverty, fasting, abstinence, manual labor, silence, and humility form the background of mortification. Detachment is the negative element in the Carmelite program, ofwhich the Christian world today is perhaps overconscious. Too many spiritual men of our day have taken their impression of Carmel from the nothing, nothing, nothing of St. John of the Cross's map of perfection, forgetting th.at this nothing of detachment is dictated by the ALL of union with God. The saint who said to one of his peni-tents, "'Nothing, nothing, nothing, even to leaving our very skin and all else for Christ," (St. John of the Cross, Ft. Bruno, O.C.D., Ch.16.) was human and practical enough to realize that "unless the soul is enkindled with other and greater yearnings for that which is spiritual, it will be unable to throw off the yoke of nature or enter this night of sense, neither will it have the courage to remain in dark-ness as to all things.". (Ascent, Bk.I, Cb. X[V, n.2.) Austerity of life must be measured according to the strength of love. When love is strong, it will want to give much; when it is perfect, it will want to give all. (St: Teresa, Wag of Perfection, Cb. 32.) St. John of the Cross disavows any intention of trying to create a vacuum in the 284 November, 1951 TERESIAN CARMEL soul. As the soul is emptied of desire for creature satisfactions it is filled with desire for Christ. In fact, the saint recommends the culti-vation of an habitual desire for Christ before all else. "First, let him have an habitual desire to imitate Christ in everything that he does, conforming himself to His life." (Ascent,.Bk.I, Ch. 13, n.2) Father Gabriel finds it necessary to stress the order and discretion of St. John's treatment of this matter of detachment. "We think it. well to emphasize this advice of the Saint, for it shows how mistaken is the accusation which stigmatizes his doctrine as absolute and rigid. The principle of the necessity of complete detachment is absolute, but in its application the individual must take account of human weakness and needs. The man who would banish from his life every allevia-tion" and recreation would soon fall into a physical and moral weari-ness which would be detrimental to the spiritual life itself. Moreover, the pleasures of sense are' not always evil; there are pleasures which are perfectly innocent; but it is a question of not letting ourselves be-come attached to them. Otherwise we shall seek them in order to satisfy our own self-love, instead of using them for the benefit of our spiritual life and for the glory of God."~ (St. John of the Cross, Doctor of Divine Love and Contemplatign, p. 30, note.) Therefore, detachment is never made an end in itself. It is always looked upon as the instrument or means by which souls arrive at union with God in prayer. The most. important point of originality in the Teresian Reform was the intensification of mental prayer. St. Teresa herself introduced the two hours of mental prayer that are part of thd Car-melite day, and St. John of the Cross adopted the practice for the Fathers of the Reform. This interior prayer is the life of the vocal prayer and liturgy" of the Order, and is prolonged during the day in the.practice of the presence of God. Carmel does not view contemplation as an extraordinary grace, a quasi-miraculous favor reserved by God for a few privileged souls. "All who wear this holy habit of Carmel," proclaims St. Teresa, "are called to prayer and contemplation." (Interior Castle, Mans. V., -Ch.I, n.2.) In souls athirst for union with God, contemplation flourishes and becomes an instrument of progress on the way to per-fection and the crown of its perfect fulfillment. It is not to be confused with visions and revelations which Carmel; with St. John of the Cross, sees as extraordinary accompaniments of prayer and not in any way required in order to arrive at union with God. It is 285 FATHER THOMAS Ret~iew for Religious the teaching of the Teresian school of spirituality that contempla-tion is the normal development of the soul and postulates nothing more than the theological virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, ele-ments of the supernatural organism of the soul, the activation of which may be called connatural. This is not the place for a defense of the doctrine of acquired contemplation. Suffice it to say that in the Teresian school specula-tion upon contemplation has arisen from" a living contact with mystical facts and is directed immediately to the utility and guidance of contemplative souls. A contemplation which we can obtain by our human manner of working by means of the ordinary light of Faith and the ordinarg aids of grace (Quiroga, Don que tuao, Ch.I, p. 511.) has met with disfavor iri some circles, but a conciliatory spirit will find that the differences of various schools in this regard are little more than variations of terminology. (Cf. Gabriel, op. cir., p. 178, sqq.) Realization of Ideal Carmel's insistence upon prayer is made practical in the culti-vation of a personal love for Christ. Prayer is conceived as a friend-ship, and since the cultivation of friendship follows the laws of habit formation, each meditation is looked upon as a contact with Christ which, upon being repeated, soon results in deep esteem and strong love. This friendship inspired the Reform. "All I cared for then, as I do now, was that, as the enemies of God are so many and His friends so few, these latter might at least be devoted friends of Jesus Christ." (St. Teresa, Way .oF PerFection, Ch.I, n.2.) The Merciful Love of God manifested in the great mystery of the Incar-nation is the spiritual center of Carmel's spirituality. St. John of the Cross' insistence upon having an habitual desire to imitate Christ has been mentioned. This desire inspires a per-sistent search for God. Creatures cannot satisfy, for they are but traces of the divine. (St. John,, Spiritual Canticle, St. VII.) Con-tact with' Christ by way of faith in prayer brings the soul to the object of its search (Ibid. St. XII.), and then through suffering and the cross it penetrates and finds fruition in the "deep mysteries in the wisdom of God which are in Christ." (Ibid. St. XXXVI, n.2.) The progress of the soul through creatures to Christ, and through Christ to union with the Divinity is wonderfully traced by the Mystical Doctor. And we have only to .read his poem beginning, "How well I know the fount that freely flows, although 'tis night!" 286 Nooember, 1951 ¯ TERESIAN CARMEL to realize his tremendous appreciation for the Incarnation, and especially the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It is in the Blessed Sacrament that the Carmelite finds the daily companion-ship that inspires divinefriendship. The tenderness and simplicity of this love shows itself in Carmel's devotion to the Infancy of Our Lord. St. Therese of the Child Jesu~ is a delightful reproduction in our day of all the deep strength of the Spanish Mystics. Witness her oblation to the Merciful Love of God and the power of her thought when describing, it. (Autobiography, Cb. VIII, p. 148.) The ambition of every worthy Carmelite is to be what St. Teresa of Avila termed a deooted friend of Christ. Another practical manifestation of Carmelite spirituality is a tender love for Mary. Carmel' glories in the title of Order of Our Lady, but thisis not a mere empty honor; it is given substance in a Marian life that is marked by three traditional characteristics: imi-tation, intimacy, and consecration. The Order looks upon Mary as "More Mother than Queen" (St. Therese, Autobiographg, Ch. XII.), models' it prayer life upon her simplicity and recollection, and considers every vocation a speciMly established relationship with the Mother of God. Furthermore, far from considering its Marian life as a hindrance to union with God, Carmel's teaching is that intimacy with Mary lends greater unction to the highest mysti?al union. (Cf. Michael of St. Augustine, The Mariform Life and Marian Life in Mar~t and for MaGt, Chs. XIII, XIV.) " Carmel has for seven centuries enjoyed the special protection of Our Lady through the Brown Scapular, and considers this garment a sign of its consecration to Mary. Total dedication of the Order to the Blessed Mother is indicated by its traditional motto: Totus Mari-anus est Carmelus. Apostolate This paper on the Spirituality of Carmel seems to demar~d a final word regarding the apostolate.' After passing from the Orient and the eremitical life of its cradle in Palestine, the Order became mendicant in the West and espoused in its vocation the apostolic life, preserving at all times a leaning towards contemplation and solitude. So completely has the contemplative dominated the active in "Car-mel, that the Order has always looked upon its prayer life as its first apostolate. The life of the Carmelite Nun is founded on the principle that prayer has an apostolic value. St. Teresa placed before her nuns the 287 FATHER THOMAS very militant function of aiding God's priests by their prayer and penance. "I think," she writes, "He prizes one soul which by His mercy, and through our diligence and prayer, we may have gained for Him, more than all the other services we can render Him." (Four~datiorls, Ch. I, n.7.) T.he Church has always considered con-templatives as the apostles of the apostles. Plus XI, writing about the work of the contemplatives, says, "It is easy to understand how they who assiduously fulfill the duty ot~ prayer and penance con-tribute more to the increase of the Church and the' welfare of man-kind than those who labor in the tilling of the Master's field. For unless the former drew down from heaven a shower of divine graces to water the field that is being tilled, the evangelical laborers would indeed reap from their toil a more scanty crop." (A. A. S., Oct. 25, 192.4.) The friends of Christ, therefore, obtain the greatest victories in the conquest of the world for Him. St. Thomas gives the theologi-cal reason for this in these words, ",lust as the man who lives in grace fulfills the will of God, it is fitting (cor~grttttro est). in this relation of friendship that God should fulfill the will of man by saving others.'" (Summa Tl~eol. Ia IIae, q. 114, a.6.) And St. ~lohn of the Cross puts it this way. "A little of this pure love is more fruitful for the Church than all external works." (SloiriutaI Canticle, B. St. 29, n.2.) Since priests of the Order exercise an exterior apostolate also, they must necessarily show the influence of- the ideal of divine intimacy fostered in Carmel. Carmelite priests have the particular mission of helping souls to lead a life of interior union with God. They must find themselves at home with the problems of spiritual direction. This does not mean that the priestly ministry of a Carmelite limits itself to interior souls, since the priest of God owes his generous and zealous efforts to the whol~ Chu}ch, not excluding sinners and infidels. But when St. ,lohn of the Cross converted a sinner, he did not rest content with bringing about a return to the state of grace., He tried to lead this soul to a fervent life. One saint can do more than a thousand mediocre souls, and the great Carmel-ite Salmanticenses call attention to the great joy that is given to the Heart of Christ by leading souls to higher sanctity. (Curstts Theol. Tract. XIX De Caritate, disp. V, n. 93.) 288 The Peace ot: Christ: Thomas A. O'Connor, S.J. WHAT is the peace of Christ? What is this peace which Christ comes to give? Immediately there flashes on the screen of our minds the scene of that first Christmas. "While all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven from Thy Royal Throne" (Wisdom 18: 14). We see the shepherds on the hillside guarding their flocks. "Suddenly the glory of God shone round about them . and an angel said to them, '. behold I bring you good news of great joy which shall be to all the people; for there has been born to you today in the town of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign to you; you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with" the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth among men of good will.' " . With haste we go with the shepherds, and we find Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger. "A Child is born to us, and a Son is given to us and the government is upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God the. Mighty, the Father of the World to coine, the Prince of Peace" (Is. 9:6). God is the God of Peace (I Cot. 14:13), and His Son, the Prince of Peace. As He in prospect looked forward from His crib to the days of His earthly life, so we in retrospect look back to His thirty-three years amongst us. He has come, Zachary prophesied, "to guide our-feet in the way of peace" (Luke 1:79). Time and again His sacred lips would speak those most consoling words, "Go in peace." His first greeting to His assembled disciples after His resurrection was "'Peace be to you!" As Peter later testifies (Acts 10:36) "God sent his word to the children of Isgael, preaching peace through Jesus Christ." At the Last Supper, as the shadows of His earthly life were deepening, He revealed to His closest followers the secrets of His Sacred Heart, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not 289 THOMAS A. O'CONNOR Review/or Religious as the world gives, do ! give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid." And at the conclusion of that beautiful dis-course He summed up the purpose He had in mind in the many thoughts He had communicated to them, "These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace." What is the peace of Christ? This peace which He comes to give? God is the God of peace because He is Love Itself, and He wishes to make all partakers of His love. "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you," saith the Lord, "thoughts of peace and not of affliction" (Jer. 29:11). St. Paul says, "For God is a God of. peace, not of disorder" (I Cot. 14:33). Again, ". beat peace, and the God. of peace and love be with you" (I Cor. 13:11). "May the Lord of peace himself give you everlasting peace in every .place" (II Thess. 3:16). The peace of Christ can be considered in a three-fold way: 1. Christ is our peace in bringing us peace wi~h God; 2. Christ is our peace in giving us the means to be at peace with our fello;ccman ; 3. Christ is our peace in teaching us how to have peace within our own hearts. Peace, says St. Augustine, is the tranquillity of order. It is.that serenity and quiet calm that is of 'the very nature of perfect order. I. Peace with God Christ is our peace in' restoring the right order between sinful man and his Creator, by reconciling the sinner with his offended God. As our Redeemer, He, "the second Adam, atoned for the original sin of the head of the human race. "When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10). He is th'e atoning Victim for our sins. "He is a propitiation for our sins, not for ours only but also for those of the whole world" (I John 2:2). The sinner cannot be at peace because his soul is at war with God. Mortal sin, we remember, is .the worst evil in the world, bu( let us not forget that the second greatest evil in the "world is venial sin. Christ is our peace in taking away our sins and the sins of the world. We are His peacemakers when by our prayers and sacrifices we help in bringing to the sinner the peace of Christ. As we gaze lovingly on the Infant Christ lying in His manger, let us recall the-words of St. Paul to the Colossians (1:15-21): "He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. 29O November, 1951 THE PEACE OF CHRIST ¯ For in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible., he is before all creatures, and in him all things subsist. For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness should dwell, and that through, him he should reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in the heavens, making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." II. Peace with Our Fellow Man" Christ is our peace in re-establishing the proper order among men. This second kind of peace Christ left to the world by including men in the Mystical Body of Christ, and this in a two-fold way: First, Christ removed all barriers between nations and made them one. "You the Gentiles, says St. Paul (Eph: 2:12), "were at the time without Christ, excluded as aliens from the community of Israel. but now in Christ Jesus you, who were once 'afar off, have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself. is our peace, he it is who hath made both one, and has broken down the intervening wall. Therefore you are now no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are., members of the house-hold of God." Hence the peace of Christ does away with all barriers of race or nation or class of society. All have.been made one. "For He is our peace and has broken down the inter:;cening wall." Secondly, Christ is our peace in establishin, g right order among all men, because we have all been called into one.~.body-v-the Body of Christ. "For in one Spirit we are all baptized into one body. Now you are the Body of Christ, member for member" (I Cot. 12:12). "For just as in one body we have many members., so we, the many, are 6ne body in Christ. If it be possible, as far as in you lies, be at peace with all men" (Rom. 12:4). "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that there be no dissention among you, but that you be perfectly united in one mind and in one judgment" (I Cot. 1:10)~. "Put on, there-fore, as God's chosen ones . a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience. Bear with one another and forgive one another ¯ . . but above all have charity, which is the bond of perfection. And may the peace of Christ reign in your hearts; unto that peace indeed you were called in one body" (Col. 3:12-15). III. Peace Within Our Own Hearts The third kind of peace which Christ brings us is peace within our own hearts. He offers to set up there a tranquillity of order over 291 THOMAS A. O'CONNOR Re~iew [or Religious the conflicting emotions and disturbing affections of our heart. This is the peace which He stresses in His discourse at the 'Last Supper. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world giveth to you, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled nor let it be afraid." Christ wishes to instil in the Apostles a calmness and courage for their coming trims. He wanted to impart to them some of His own peace of mind and strength of soul with which He was approaching His passion. This same serenity of mind, this unruffled calmness of .soul, this fearlessness in the face of physical suffering were to be needed by many a martyr. His words were for all His heroes who were to suffer and to die for Him down to the end of time. They were for a Mindzenty, for a Stepinac, ~or a Beran, and for the count-less unknown priests and religious languishing in prison today. "If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also" (John 15: 20). i'These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have affliction. But take courage, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). What is this peace of Christ? "This peace of Christ," says St. Augustine, "is serenity of spirit, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of heart, the bond of love, the consummation of charity." This peace of Christ is like a radiant star in the heavens, flashing to us its bright rays of inspiration and guidance. It is a multipointed star, brilliantly beckoning us to a full possession of the peace of Christ. For in the first place the peace which Christ would set up in our hearts comes from a perfect conformit~l to the u~ill of God. He the '.'Way, the Truth and the Life" has shown us the perfect way. "Thou hast fitted a body to me," He said, "behold I come to do thy will, O God" (Heb. 10:7). "For I bare come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38). In the agony in the garden He pleaded with His Father to remove the cup of suffering but added: "yet not my will but thine be done" (Luke 22:42). Thus shall you pray: ". thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matt. 6:10). The will of God is the highroad to happiness: His commands the blueprints of peace. "He who does the will of God abides forever" (I John 2: 17). As religious, we possess Christ's peace in our obedience. By obedience we put off our own wills to put on the will of God as declared to us by our superiors., to be possessed and governed by His Divine Providence by means of our superiors. "And if peace and 292 November, 1951 THE PEACE OI:: CHRIST tranquillity of mind is desired," adds St. Ignatius, "he certainly never shall arrive unto it, who has within himself the. cause of his disquiet and trouble, namely, the disagreeing of his own judgment from the law of Obedience." (Epistle on Obedience.) Secondly, Christ's peace comes to us from an unwavering trust in God's Divine Providence. For God's Divine Providence rules every-thing. Everything that takes place, happens not by chance but in accordance with the absolute or permissive will of God; and out of the circumstances of our lives, God draws, if we allow Him, an even greater good. For "not a sparrow will fall to the ground" without our heavenly Father's leave (Mr. 10:29). And "as for you" Christ says, "the very hairs of your head are numbered. Therefore do not be afraid" (Mr. 10:31). Again Our Lord says, "Therefore I .say to you,do not be anxious for your life., nor yet for your body. Your Father knows" what you need. "Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be given you besides. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow" (Mt. 6:34). It is as if He were saying, live in the present;, love and serve God today; don't worry about the future; leave all that in the hands of your heavenly Father. St. Peter says: "Cast all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you" (5:7). St. Robert Bellarmine in an exhortation on the Providence of God says that this realization of God's Divine Providence will put us at complete rest. For we shall realize that God, knowing everything, is aware of what is both helpful and what is harmful to us. Conscious of God's power and His tender Fatherl~ love, we know that He will arrange everything for our good. With the Psalmist we can confidently say, "Even though I walk in the valley of death, I shall not fear" (Ps. 22). Thirdly, Christ's.peace comes to us from imitating His meekness and humility. "Learn of me," He says, "Who am meek and humble of heart and you shall find rest for your souls" (Mr. 11:29). Rest for our souls: peace, quiet of mind, tranquiIlity of heart. St. Am-brose, commenting on the causes of this lack of peace, compares this restlessness of heart to a fever which tosses us about, denying us all rest, burning within us. "This fever that afflicts us," he says, "is our selfishness; this fever is our lust; this fever is our ambition; this fever is our anger" (Com. on L. ch.4). Christ.promises us, if we imitate Him, pehce, rest for our souls. "Learn of Me who am meek": meekness controls th~ surges of anger, 293 THOMAS A. O'CONNOR Review for Religious bringing a tranquillity of order to our raging emotions. Learn of Me who am humble: humility establishes right order in thinking of ourselves. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (Prov. 3:34). "If anyone thinks himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceives himself" (Gal. 6:3). "He who humbles himself as this little child, he is the grefitest in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 18:4). "Unless you become like little children, you shall n. ot enter the kingdom of heaven." (Ibid.) "I therefore exhort you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and meekness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, careful to preserve the unity of the Spiri't in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:4). "Do nothing out of con-tentiousness or out of vainglory, but in humility let each one regard the others as his superiors, each one looking not to his own interests but to thdse of others. Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who though, he was by nature God, did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave, and being made like unto men" (Phil. 2:3-7). Fourthly, the peace of Christ is increased in our hearts as we become more and more unselfish, more and more Christlike. Un-selfishness cuts at the very tap'root of a thousand anxieties and frus-trations which are the bitter fruits of a life of self-seeking. We must put off our old selves to put on Christ. All selfishness must go. "Charity," says St. Paul, "is not self-seeking" (I Cor: 13:5). "For Christ did not please himself" (Rom. 15:3). Christ sought not himself in anything. "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30) must be our motto until each of us can say with St. Paul (Gal. 2:20), "It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me." Christ said, "My peace I give to you." In proportion, then as we are like Christ, in that same proportion we possess His peace. Fifthly, the peace of Christ floods our souls, in proportion as our hearts are filled with the love of. God and our neighbor. Christ said, "I am the vine, you the branches. As the'Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love" (John 15:10). "Do not love the world," says St. John, "or the things in the world" (I John 2:13). Again in the same Epistle, "He who does not love, does not know God; for God is love" (4:8). "No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us" (4:12). "And this commandment we have from him, that he who 294 November, 195 l THE PEACE OF CHRIST loves God should love his brother also" (4:21). "Jesus said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself' " (Mr. 22:37). As we gaze in loving adoration at the scene in the cave of Beth-lehem, we see primarily and above all a scene of peace. It is the peace of Christ, the peace which the Prince of Peace came to give, the peace which the world cann6t give. We see that peace reflected in the kindly face of the strong, self-possessed, mild-mannered Joseph. XT~re see that peace resplendent in the radiantly pure features of Mary Immaculate. That peace was theirs when at Nazareth they heard the disap- .pointing news that a census was to be taken, that all must register, each in his own town. That peace was theirs during the long hours of that wearisome, four or five day journey to Bethlehem, to the town of David.,That peace was theirs even when they heard the crushingly discouraging "No room" as they unsuccessfully sought for shelter. That peace was still theirs when, abruptly awakened at a midnight hour by a fear-inspiring message, they hurried away to a foreign land to save the life of the Child from those who sought to destroy Him. That peace was theirs because their wills were .al.ways perfectly conformed to the Will of God, Sbedient to His every wish. 'That peace was theirs because they trusted unreservedly in the guidance of God's loving Providence. That peace was theirs because, being truly meek and humble of heart, they had found rest for their souls. That peace was theirs because they were utterly finselfish. That peace was theirs because they loved God with their whole heart and their neighbor for the love of God. "So may the peace ot: God, which surpasses all our thinking, watch over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:7). OUR CONTRIBUTORS ~ FATHER THOMAS, O.C.D., is novice master in the Carmelite novitiate, Brook-line, Massachusetts. THOMAS A. O'CONNOR is president of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, and FRANCIS N. KORTH, AUGUSTINE KLAAS, and GERALD KELLY are on the faculty of the same theologate. JAMES LOCKETT is studying philosophy at Springhill College, Mobile, Alabama. 295 Secular Inst:il:ut:es Francis N. Korth, S.J. ON FEBRUARY 2, 1947, Pope Plus XII issued an Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia which crystallized a movement that had been developing in the Church for more than fifty years. By his action the Holy Father gave official recogni-tion to a new juridical state of perfection, namely secular it~stitutes.I In a separate article the juridical nature of these institutes will be considered. For the present let us take a brief look at the history of secular institutes. During the past century it became more and more evident that there were certain types of apostolate which could not be carried on easily by religious because of their distii~ctive garb and cloistered life. For this reason the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, an institute without common life and a di.stinctive habit, was founded in Paris about 1790. It received the decree of praise from Rome on April 29, 1853, and definitive approbation four years later on April 24. It~ constitutions were temporarily approved for ten years on May 30, 1870, with final approbation being given on June 8, 1890 (at which time the institute numbered over two thousand members). An insert in the constitutions mentioned that the institute's vows were neither public nor simply private vows of devotion. A similar organization of men, the Work of Youth, was estab-lished at Marseilles on June 24, 1821, by Father Joseph Allemand. Some of its members lived in their own homes' and engaged in vari-ous occupations in the world. There existed also other groups of a like character, such as the Virgins of Jesus and Mary (founded in 1844), the Daughters of Mount Calvary (1866), and the Sister Servants of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (1867). On August 11, 1889, the Sacred .Congregation of Bishops and Regulars in its decree Ecclesia CathoIica stated that societies which did not'conform to the traditional common life and characteristic garb would not be recognized as religious congregations or 9rders, but only as pious sodalities. Such a step was taken because of the 1There are three such recognized states of perfection at present, namely religious in-stitutes, societies of common life, and secular institutes. These constitute a threefold category of the juridical state of perfection to-be-acquired. This latter is not to be confused with the juridical state of perfection acquired, of which the episcopate is the example. 296 November, 1951 SECULAR INSTITUTES increasing number of "unorthodox" institutes. However, even after this decree, approval as religious was granted to the Lady Catechists (Novem~ber 21, .1907) who dress" as laywomen, and to the extern Sisters of the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Venerable Catherine Volpicelli (3uly 5, 1911) who live in the world. Similarly or~ December 1, 1916, the Sisters of Our Lady of Labor received the nihil obstat to canonical establishment. Mean: while, .in 1911 the constitutions of the Sbciety of the Daughters of Saint Francis de Sales were approved, in which it was stated that the Society was not to be considered as a religious congregation. During the first decade and a half of our present century, while the work on the compilation of the Code of Canon Law was in progress, consideration was given to this new type of institute whose members live in the world, but the time was not yet'ripe for an offi-cial pronouncement; hence the Code made no mention of them. These associations, however, were multiplying. They numbered clerics and lay persons, men and women; the lay element was pre-dominant. As the problem became more urgent, a deeper study of the ques- .tion was made. During the International 3uridical'.Co.ngress held in Rome in 1934, a change of policy was indicated "by Cardinal La Puma, at that time Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. As a result, approval of their constitutions and recognition as true religious was granted to the Work of Youth, of Marseilles (April, 1933) and to the School Missionaries of Saint Catherine of Siena (April, 1934). At that same International Juridical Congress, Father Servus Goyenecbe, C.M.F., made a fervent plea for the devel-opment and recognition of the new type of institute (Acta Congres-sus Iuridici lnternationali's (1934) IV, Rome, 1937, page 315). In accordance with a request of the Holy Father, Plus XI, the Sacred Congregation of the Council was maki.ng a special study of the problem. Under its auspices a meeting was held in 1938 at Saint Gall, Switzgrland, with Father Augustine Gemelli,' O.F.M., pre-siding. At least twenty-five associations, mostly of a lay character, took part. About the same time a detailed examination of the entire question was being made by Father Arcadius Larraona, C.M.F. (now Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Religious) in conner-ton with the application for papal approval of the constitutions the Sisters of Our Lady of Labor. Both the Holy Office and the Sacred Congregation for Religious 297 FRANCIS N. KORTH were interested in the study of this matter. Favorable progress was reported. A special Commission for a final review was set up. The result of all these protracted labors was the above-mentioned0Consti-tution Provida Mater Ecclesia. What about the present condition of these new institutes? How many have been approved? In what countries? From various sources I have been ableto gather the following details. I believe they are quite reliable, but I cannot vouch for their perfect accuracy. Up to March, 1950, the number of applications received in Rome both for permission to establish diocesan secular institutes as well as for the decree of praise for an institute already established totaled ninety-eight. Three-fourths of the applications came from institutes of women. Of the institutes of men, tWO-fifths were clerical. Dioc-esan secular institutes already established numbered twenty-two. Of ninety-seven applications for the years 1948-1949, the breakdown as to countries was as follows: Austria 4, Belgium 4, Canada 1, Colombia 3, France 12, Germany 9, Holland 2, Hungary 1, Italy 45, Mexico 4, Poland 1, Rumania 1, Spain 8, Switzerland. 1, Uru-guay 1. Definitive pontifical approvhl has been granted to five secular in-stitutes: the Opus Dei (Madrid), the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ (Milan), the Institute of Qur Lady of Labor (Paris), the Company of Saint Paul (Milan), and the Daughters of the Queen of the Apostles. I shall say a little more about the first four. of these institutes. In the United States a branch of the Opus Dei has been estab-lished in Chicago. Canada has at least two secular institutes: the Society of Missionary Nurses (women), founded at Montreal in 1942 by Monsignor Edgar Larochelle; ,and the Society of Lay Apostles of the Missions (24 McDougall, Ottawa, Ontario). Some other organizations reported as secular institutes include the follow-ing: Carmelites of Our Lady of Life (Avignon, France), Compan-ions of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (Lugano, Switzerland), the Company of the Child God (Antioquia, Colombia), Disciples of the Lord (Monterrey, Mexico), Dominican Institute of Jesus Cruci-fied (Orleans, France), the Institute of Our Lady of the Way (Vi-enna, Austria), Secular Institute of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Kent, England), the Society of Parish School Teachers (Saho, Uruguay), Teaching and Nursing Society (Lucknow, India). So much for the general picture. Now a word more about those 298 Nouember, 1~ 1 SECULAR INSTITUTES ¯ first four Secular institutes that received pontifical status. 1. Opus De[. The institute was founded in Madrid on October 2, 1928,. by Monsignor dos~ Maria Escriv~i d~ Balaguer. Its full name is Sacerdotal Society of the Holy Cross and'Opus Dei. The Sacerdotal Society is clerical, while the Opus Dei is composed of lay-men. The Opus Dei has two sections, one for men and the other for women (thi~ latter was started in 1930). The two sections are absolutely separated, so that they are really two completely different institutes, each with its own government. The Opus Dei was the first secular institute to obtain papal approval. It received the decree of praise on February 24, 1947, and on dune 16 of the past Holy Year (1950) the decree of final approbation. (To avoid confusion it might be welI to state that according to the current practice of the Sacred Congregation the steps ofapproba-tion are the following: (1) decree of praise of the institute (not merely a quasi or partial decree of praise), (2) approbation of the institute, (3) provisional approval of the constitutions, (4) possible renewal of temporary approval, and (5) final approbation of the in-stitute and of the constitutions. But probably more than one of these steps will be taken at one and the same time. In any case, with the decree of praise the institute becomes papal.) Opus Dei has as its general purpose the sanctification of its mem-bers by the practice of the three evangelical counsels and the observ-ance of its constitutions. One of its specific works is to spread the faith and encourage a life of evangelical p~rfection among all social classes or grades of society, ~nd especially among intellectuals. Members of Opus Dei are not religious, have no community life (for the most part they live in their own homes, though sometimes a number have a house in common), take no public vows, and do not wear a distinctive garb. (These are general characteristics of any secular institute.) The members live and act as other faithful in the world do. They dress as others in their own profession or grade of society. Their numbers include nobles, peasants, lawyers, business-men, doctors, professors, students, politicians, members of parliament, and cabinet officials. The. institute allows its members perfect free-dom in their professional work, financial activities, social or political doctrines, and in similar matters, provided of course that they act in conformity with Catholic faith and morals. Charity plays an im-portant role in the spirit of this institute. The members are to live in the world without being of the world. Hence they carry on the 299 FRANCIS N. KORTH Ret~iew for Religious apostolate also in quarters which are banned to priests and religious. The Spanish Opus Dei was built around a core of university stu-dents. Groups of one hundred were formed. Some lived in their own homes, going daily to their office or professional work. The Spanish Opus Dei has received permission to work in all parts of the world. It spread to Ireland, Italy, Mexico, and South America, and has a branch in Chicago. 2. Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ (Milan). This or-ganization was. founded on November 19, 1919, by a grgup of ¯ twelve young women who were Franciscan tertiaries. Directed by Father Augustine Gemelli, O.F.M.~ the society under the above title spread throughout Italy as if merely a branch of Franciscan tertiaries. In 1945 papal approval as a canonical pious association was received and the statutes were approved for five years. Having developed ac-cording to the pattern required for secular institutes, the new institute received papal approval (decree of praise and a15proval of its new constitutions for three years) on July 12, 1948. That made it the second secular institute so approved. It numbers about two thou-sand. In its ranks can be found doctors, nurses, government emr ployees, and members of the I'talian.Chamber of Deputies. The two principal purposes of the institute are the sanctification of the members through striving after evangelical perfection, and zeal. in starting new apostolic works or promoting established ones. In particular and in conformity with the internal disciplne of the insti-tute and of the other works in which they are engaged, the members should be active in Catholic Action, assist pontifical and diocesan apostolic works under the direction of tl'ieir superiors, and take part in other apostolic works. The Franciscan spirit is the guiding light of the institute. 3. Institute of Our Lady of Labor. This French secular insti-tute was ~he third to receive papal approval. It was founded as the Sisters of Our Lady of Labor in 1904 at Lyons, France, by Miss Rochebillard under the direction of Father Anthony Eymieu, S.J. It had received the nibil obstat to canonical establishment as a religious congregation on December 1, 1916. The actual establishment was made by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Amette, on October 31, 1917. The organization had two sections: one leading a common life in houses of the institute, and the other living in their own homes in the world. The present secular institute has a motherhouse in Paris. 4. Company of Saint Paul. This institute was founded on No- 300 THE WAY OF SIMPLE LOVE vember 17, 1920. Its purpose is the social apostolate. On June 30, 1950, the decree of praise was bestoWed. So much for the numerical data. As to the types of apostolic work in which secular institutes are engaged, there is great variety. Catholic Action, social work, helping pastors, carrying on the apos-tolate in various professions and jobs are some general categories. The constitutions of each institute would have to be consulted for its specific works. A concluding word. To avoid inopportune restrictions on the development of secular institutes, the Sacred Congregation of Reli-gious has refrained from issuing complete and definitive norms for these new institutes. Aside from the essentials, therefore, the matter is still in .the process of settling down and jelling. There are prob-ably a good numbgr of'organizations which are gradually adapting themselves to the broad outlines given for secular institutes in the Provida Mater Ecclesia. The 'N X/'ay of. Simple Love James Lockett, S.J: WE MUST NOT be disturbed at what goes on beyond bur wills outside the inner recess of Our hearts. At times our lower nature will be disturbed by anger, at other times pride, at other tim~s carnal love, at other times sickness, at other times vain-glory, at other times love of our opinion; at times combinations of these at once; and at times the lower nature will be at peace. But we do not have to wait for these respites to love God. Amidst all these things the one who loves God should joyously and peacefully live with God in his heart. These things--they come and go, boil up and die away, but our life need not be one of turmoil. It should be hidden with Christ in God. And it would seem to me that the way to fight all these things is essentially the same, namely, the way of simp.le love. Let them come and go! What difference does it make? We should glory in our infirmities, for when we feel weak, then we should be strongekt of all, because then we may all the more confi-dently and easily place all our strength where it belongs, in Gbd who is our All. By the why "~'f simple lov~ in fighting alltemptations I do not 301 JAMES LOCKETT mean to say that those spiritual writers are completely wrong when they say we should fight temptations against purity by a course oppo-site to that which we use against pride, because the courses of action they advise seem all right in both cases. But I say that they are wrong in saying that they are opposite courses, thus needlessly and harmfully complicating oub lives; really the methods they give are essentially the same" course in either case. Are we tempted to im-purity? Go away from it to the infinite Good. There we shall begin to see the greater value of the true Good and after a while the storm shall pass and the One Good shall draw us away from the other "good." Are we tempted to pride? Go away from it to the infinite Good! There we shall see the truth and the beauty and the wondrousness of humility and how b~r loving our nothingness we possess infinity. And after a while the storm shall pass and the One Good will draw us from the other "good." Are we tempted to love our opinion inordinately, are we tempted to desire not to feel bad? Whatever we are tempted to, we can go away from it to the Truth, to the infinite Good. We must put our life there, hidden with Christ in God. See how simple our life should be! It is the way. of simple love. All these complications do not represent the Spirit of our Master, flowing from the gospel. I do not mean when I say "go away to the infinite Good" that we can feel Him whenever we wish. Rather I mean in simple little peace we must unite our wills to Him, Whd "dwells in our hearts, and in simple little faith look toward Him, and He will do the rest. Perhaps soon He will make the storm stop, per-haps He will let it last a while. It doesn't matter. Storm or no storm, we will be pleasing Him and making Him smile, and we will be protected in His arms. So you see, life should not be complicated but simple. It~ is not our Lord's will that we go through the pilgrimage without the devil and our lower nature acting up. How else could we merit so that we may be eternally near Him and possess Him? But let us, in little simple love, glory in our infirmities and while using what legitimate natural means we can to shu~ the devil's mouth, trustingly go away to Jesus and Mary, living away from all these things in the interior of our hearts, where the inmost will which we can always control lies. Then the devil and our lower nature will never hurt us no matter how hard they tug at our wills, but we will increase in sanctifying grace and in our power against them along the simple road of peace. 302 Current Spiri!:u l Writing Augustine Klaas, S.3. ¯ From La Vie des Communaut~s Retigieuses-- THIS Franciscan pubIication devotes its February 1951 number to a practical summary of the first International Convention of Studies.on the States of Perfection. It was held in Rome, from November 27 to December 7, 1950, and was attended by a large number of eminent priests and religious from all over the world. After Pope Pius XII's introductory letter of approbation and direction, and the last part of Cardinal Micara's opening discourse on the ,exigencies of modern times and how religious institutes are to meet them by reforms and adaptations, VCR gi4es an outline descrip-tion of the various sessions of the convention. The general division of the topics on the .program was threefold: (1) the renewal and adaptation of life and discipline in the various states of perfection; (2) the renewal and adaptation of the states of perfection with reference to the instruction and training of members; (3) the renewal -and adaptation of the states of perfection in their ordinary and extra-ordinary apostolates. As was to be expected, the speakers and ~ctive participants on the program were mainly members of religious insti-tutes, but there were also quit~ a few diocesan priests and some lay-men. No nuns were on the speakers' list. VCR then prints a section ot: the final aIlocution of Cardinal Micara, the closing discourse of Pius XII on the concept of the reli-gious life, and lastly the Apostolic Constitution Sponsa Christi. I confine myself here to expressing the concluding remarks spoken by Most Reverend Arcadius Larraona, C.M.F., secretary for the Sacred Congregation for Religious, and the resolutions of the convention, ¯ formulated by the Capuchin, Father Agatangelo da Langasco, secre-tary of the convention. This information in VCR I supplement from L'Osservatore Romano for December 9 and I 0, 1950. Father Larraona states that one of the objectives of the conven-tion was to neglect no facet of the subject, thus giving the convention a note of universality. This objective was achieved. Certain results he says, have already been attained. The proceedings of the conven- 303 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reoieto for Reliqious tion, which are to be published later, will give an account of many other good results. Of the greatest value was the' attachment of reli-gious to and union of mind and heart with the Sovereign Pontiff, the highest superior ot? religious, who grants the status of public law to each religious institute (Canon 499, no. I). Also in evidence was the union of thought, affection, and intention of religious with the local bishops in activities of a local naturg; and finally, the under-standing, union, and mutual collaboration of religious with the dioc-esan clergy. The autonomy of every religious family is necessary for its development, its discipline, and its usefulness, but exemption with regard to external things may be interpreted more or less strictly, depending on the nature of the work being done. Catholic Action must be aided and supported, but within the limits of religious discipline. Religious must engage in Catholic Ac-tion according to the general and special directives of the Holy See. Using these directive.s they must also animate their own particular associations. The adaptation proposed by the convention must rest on a solid foundation, namely, on the primacy of doctrinal and ascetical values in the ideal religious life. This primacy has two basi~ pivots: the toows, about, which revolves the whole of religious asceticism; and common life in both its material and formal senses. Also, the internal forum has the primacy over the external. Superiors must understand that confidence in them is not imposed from without but inspired from within. There is another primacy, the primacy of the specific purpose of each religious family, with its consequent fidelity to what is essential and adaptability in what is only accidental, This specific purpose must be re-thought and re-lived according to modern times. The .adaptation of the apostolate necessarily implies co-ordination with the diocesan clergy and with local organizations. The resolutions of the convention, read by Father Agatangelo, are as follows: 1) that an effective c~usade be organized to. preach the 3ubilee now extended to the whole world; 2) that afterwards there be established in Rome a bureau of co-ordination between the diocesan and religious clergy; 3) that a center for the training of spiritual directors and spir-itual masters (such as masters and mistresses of novices, etc.) be set up; 4) that a center of literary studies be founded to train teachers 304 ~Novernber, 1951 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING for the schools of r~ligious; 5) that, for the purpose of, putting into practice the resolutions and adaptations of the convention; there be more frequent and regu-lar contact between religious superiors and the Sacred Congregation for Rel~gious, and that conventions within the various religious fami-lies be encouraged; 6) that, to preserve union and fraternity, there be instituted a liturgical Feast"of all the Holy Founders; 7) that there be a greater exchange among religious of certain elements of particular law, such as administrative experiences, law practices, and the like; 8) that there be published additional volumes of the Collectanea $. C. de Relioiosis and that pontifical documents on the subject of adaptation be collected; 9) that a s~udy institute of prac6cal administration be inaug-urated under the auspices of the Sacred Congregation for Religious; 1.0) that in all humility the Sovereign Pontiff be asked to issue a solemn document condemning the errors which are being spread con-cerning the state of perfection and giving clear and precise directives for the desired adaptations. From SuppHment de La V~ie Spirit~telle-- The S~ppl~ment for February 15, 1951 gives the content of three interesting reports to the Convention of Religious in Rome, men-tioned above. These reports will be reprinted later on inthe Acta of the convention. They contain practical examples and suggestions for the renewal of the state of perfection and its adaptation to mod-ern times. While the authors have in mind primarily the religious of France, perhaps also thos~ of Europe, yet many of their observations have a much wider if not universal application. At any rate, these rep.orts give a good idea of some of the things discussed at this all-" important assembly of religious, convoked under the auspices of the Sacred Congregation for Religious at the bidding of the Pope. I~t should be noted that these are merely samples of many reports made to the convention, and digesting them here we are not necessarily ex-pressing approval of all the suggestions. The first report is by Father A. PlY, O.P., co-editor of La Vie Sloirit~elie, and has for its subject renewal and adaptation with spe-cial reference to government of religious and the observance of the,. 305 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Rev[eto for Religfou~ vows. Before presenting his suggestions f.or adaptation, Father PI4 lays .down three important principles which he thinks should be guides in this delicate matter: 1) The main objective sought is a renewal of "spirit, or rather a re-vivifying of the letter of the law by the spirit. Changes of" consti-tutions and rules are something entirely secondary, and should be confined to points of secondary importance. 2) Old established orders and congregations are not to be replaced by certain new forms of the religious state which have appeared in recent years, or by secular institutes. However, some elements of these new types of religious life can be beneficial, if adopted and ap-plied prudently by the older orders and congregations. 3) Adaptation and renewal refer only to means, not to ends. Mod-ern times and conditions require the use of certain specific means and not of others, which may have been more practical in other times and circumstances no longer obtaining. Suggestions Affecting Gooernment Wth these three general principles in mind, Father PI~ makes five suggestions of adaptation and }enewal affecting government a'nd the laws of religious institutes. 1) Cloister. Contemplatives should retain their cloister essen-tially just as i~ is. On the other hand, institutes that have the active apostolate for their purpose, particularly of women (e. g. teachers, nurses, catechists), would profit greatly by the removal or modifica- ' tion of what is called "semi-cloister," and thus be able to accomplish more efficiently the apostolate for which they. were founded. In this connection may be mentioned the religious habit, which separates the religious from the world. There is no thought of suppressing this distinctive reIigious gar.b, but some habits, especially of nuns, could be simplified, in order to put them more in accord with poverty and with present circumstances, notably in mission countries, and also "better adapted to local conditions and climate. Furthermore, visits with the family are today looked upon with less severity than for-merly, as opportunities of parents to visit their children in religion become more frequent and the parents themselves became a part, as it were, of the religious community of their children. Also visits to parents are more readily granted, so that religious may fulfill their filial duties. These trends seem to be in the right direction. 2) Fraternal Charitg and Common Life. There is a greater de-mand today among religious for fraternal charity and common life, 306 November, 1951 "CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING manifested by sharing responsibilities, apostolic work and those unsougl~t-after tasks done for the common good, and more particu-larly by rediscovering the fruits of common fraternal charity in the conventual Mass and Office in choir. 3) Coadjutor Brothers and Sisters. The dearth of vocations to be coadjutors of various kinds has focused attention on the two "classes" of religious. Some congregations have abolished their co-adjutor group outright, while more try to reduce to a minimum the" differences between the two classes, on the points of religious habit,. prayer, training, and even work. 4) Government and Formation ot: Religious. Religious are being trained more and more for positions of responsibility and gov-ernment. In certain places local superiors, summoned to the mother-house, are instructed for a month in the duties of their new office. Masters and mistresses of novices are taking special courses designed to help them solve the problems of their office. Likewise, religious subjects are being educated and formed more and more by means of special classes, conventions, and institutes for religious. Also a fine spirit of collaboration on common projects is being shown by the various religious orders and congregations. 5) Physical and Mental Hygiene. Cleanliness has been im-proved, the means to it better provided for, and pe[mission to use the means is now granted more liberally than in former times. Present-day city life and various social upheavals seem to have serious reper-cussions on nervous balance and stability. More sleep is required and adjustments are being made along this line by religious. The hour of rising and retiring is aIso being set more in accord with modern customs. Contemplatives and the novices of active institutes are being granted occasions for relaxing the nerves. Physical exercise every day, as well as more strenuous games during recreation, are being intro-duced, as also periods of manual work, and entire days of relaxation. Vacations for strenuous workers have been found helpful. To be praised is the heroism of some superiors in refusing to accept new missions, new fields of labor, etc., when their subjects are already overl~urdened and taxed to the limit. Such over-worked .religious cannot do their tasks well and, what is mbre serious, suffer spiritually because ,they cannot do the prayer and spiritual exercises prescribed by their constitutions, thus failing victims of an unwise "activism." Regarding the Wows Father PI~ then takes up the three vows, after first saying a word 307 !~UGUSTINE KLAAS Reaieu~ for Religious about religious discipline. Young people ~oday have a high regard for sincerity. Empty conformity and routine, external action that is not .the spontaneous expression of a deep, personal, religious life,. seem odious to them. Hence, when the material practice of a minor rule becomes a serious breach of its spirit and of charity, generous youth is shocked. Although this desire in the young for "truth". must be purified, still it does have its origin in the Gospels. Hence, some novice-masters are training their charges by showing how each rule and observance is really linked up with the Gospels. This is something very opportune today. Also, it is a sign of a deep under-standing of, the rule that some communities no longer consider it necessarily a sacrilege to suggest a change or modification of their constitutions. Certai'nly wisdom and holiness are required to make such changes but it is not wisdom and holiness to refuse a priori any change whatever. This is more in evidence still when there is ques-tion ¯ of the custom book. Some recent religious congregations" of women, for fear of becoming frozen to their custom book, ,have stipulated in their constitutions that they will have none at all. Many others are seriously revising and adapting their custom books to present circumstances. 1) Vow of Pouertq. The most serious problems of adaptation today concern the vow of poverty. Economic conditions in the world have so changed and developed that poverty itself and the con- ~cept of poverty are not the same any more as they were in former cen-turies. Poverty is essentially a liberation and an imitation of the poor Christ, but it must also conform to poverty as it is really prac-ticed by the poor. H~nce there are trends towards sharing the inse-curity of tl~e poor, towards living in smaller communities and thus avoiding large buildings, which give the impression of wealth, towards doing as the poor of the vicinity do, for example, by sending the sick to the hospital and even to the common wards in the hos-pital. Contemplatives in particular are facing acute financial diffi-ties at present and they are solving them b'y doing work for which they are paid. These problems of poverty are being carefully studied. 2) Vow of Obedience. The reproach is sometimes made that the vow of obedience promotes childishnes and, immaturity, that it does not allow for a proper "development of personality." However that may be, it is true that obedience must be solidly grounded dog-matically, the judgment must be rightly formed, and the virtue of prudence must be exercised. Obedience should be a school of ma- 3O8 November, 1951 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING turity. Obedience is a holocaust, but not less a human act. 3) Vow of Chastity. There is scarcely anything that could be changed here. Considerable !mprovement has been made in giving young religious before their vows the necessary information on this subject, psychological more than anatomical. This instruction is not complete unless there is filso given young religious sonde idea of the Christian beauty of chastity and its exceptional value as a means to perfection. Of Spfritual Means In the second report Father Reginald Omez, O.P., makes some pertinent suggestions on adaptation and renewal in the realm of spir-itual means. 1) Vocal and Mental Prayer. In recent years the faithful have come more and more to understand and appreciate the liturgy. They are gradually centering their devotion on the Mass and Office. Often they actively participate in the Mass. Religious must not obstruct but rather co-operate and join in this return to the great traditional devotion of the past, and hence they should adapt their customs accordingly. Making use of the vernacular: shortening the long vocal prayers, choosing prayers of significance,--these are the things they must do, rather than continue monotonous, endless repetition ° of litanies, Paters, and Aves. ¯ The Office of the Blessed Virgin or the Rosary with its.mysteries is a good substitute for long, vocal prayers whose content belongs perhaps to another age. Mental prayer must always' be emphasized, but it should be given a more doctrinal con-tent. There is a happy return to the Holy Scriptures and the liturgi-cal books for mental prayer. " Su'rely improvements can be made on the questionable practice of reading aloud'the points, of meditation from a book, a relatively recent practice among religious. 2) Examination of Conscience. Today there is some opposi-tion to the examination of conscience among young religious, who consider self-examination something morbid, egocentric, and harm-ful. They dislike certain outmoded formulas Of examination; they detest casuistry and moralizing. They like to follow the inspiration of the moment; they say it is the intention and the charity perme-ating the act that really count and all the rest is of little importance. The examination of conscience must be retained, but the manner of doing it can be brought more up-to-date and improved by making use of the light of modern psychology and customs and by employing the better understanding we have today of modesty, humility, obedi- 309 AUGUSTINE KLAAS for Religious ence, and other virtues. 3) Mortification and Penance. Penance and mortification will always be necessary means for holiness and for the apostolate. They cannot be entirely replaced by the apostolate. However, certain types of corporal penances, seem to be no longer adapted to piesent-day temperaments or living conditions. Physically the young today are capable of great effort and fatigue when urged on by various motives, such as war. It is on the mental and nervous side that the modern tempo of life takes its toll. For this reason, more sleep is needed. Penances, therefore, that would impair mental hygiene or harm the nerves should be avoided. Also, some forms of penance are consid-ered more or less silly by the young today or at least hard to {~nder-stand. For these, others should be substituted that are more in con-formity with the generous spirit of the youth of today: for example, the giving up of certain bourgeois comforts among religious, com-forts which were suitable to another age. Furthermore, young men, used to army life, are sometimes surprised and scandalized by the soft 'comforts and conveniences found in religious houses, things that they had long ago given up. It seems that modern penance sb, ould be in the direction of work for others, manual labor, especially the menial tasks of doing the dishes, etc., where there is little risk of the sort of pride that often goes with spectacular and attention-draWing penances. 4) Retreats. Retreats are very much needed today, as well as days of recollection. .It seems that they should not be overburdened with too many exercises, but that there should be more time for the personal task of reflection and contemplation. 5) Recreation. Recreation must relax the nerves. Religiotis given to a sedentary life must be allowed suitable athletic games to exercise their muscles. Many dit~iculties of health, morality, and sp'irituality arise from the lack of normal physical development. Modern inven-tions, such as movies, radio, and television, can be used prudently for recreation, instruction, and information. Of course, the religious spirit must not suffer from these things; hence, superiors must be vigilant to correct abuses. A Year of Transition The third report is made by Father Daniel Albers, O.M.I., who suggests for all active apostolic orders and congregations a year of transition from the quiet life of the seminary to the busy ministry. This year would be the equivalent of the tertianship of the Society of. 31o November, 195 l CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING Jesus and. of similar practices, in some other religious institutes. The objective of such a transition.period of time would be a deepening of the spiritual life and, under experienced direction, a gradual intro-duction to the life of the apostolate. It is applying to religious com-munities what Pope Plus XII has recently suggested for the diocesan priesthood in the Encyclical Menti Nostrae and has himself put into practice by founding' the seminary of St. Eugene in Rome. Another desideratum is that after four or five years of the ministry the young priests be brought together once more to reflect on their spiritual and apostolic life in.order to balance and deepen both. These first years of the active ministry are extremely important ,and often set the pat-tern for the rest of life. From Reoue des Communautds Religieuses-- In the June-August (1949) number of this Belgian magazine for religious there is an opportune article by a superior general of a congregation of women on'the relations that should obtain between religious and the lay women who share their works of charity and education. An insufficient number of vocation's and tile multiplication and expansion of religious works make the present elnploying of layfolk a necessity. These lay helpers are not a necessary evil, nor persons to be merely tolerated, since they can make a real dontribution, sup-plementing the work of the religious themselves. Rather the hiring of lay help is somethng good and in accord with the Holy Father's call to Catholic Action. Religious are giving lay women an oppor-tunity to heed that call. How bring about a close collaboration between religious and lay women employees? First of all the latter must not be too numerous, since the work must retain its exterior and interior character as an institution conducted by rehglous, Lay helpers must also be carefully chosen. They must be competent, something not always indicated by the adademic degrees they may have. Their morals must be above suspicion, their practice of the Catholic religion active. They must have or learn to ,have a sense of responsibility, be supernaturally zealous and self-'sacrificing in their .work, humble, submissive to the regime of the institution, and prudently .a.postoli.c. The religious making the selection, must never, through a mistaken sense of charity, sacrifice the common good to. the particular. 311 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Review ~o~ Religto,,s What are the duties of religious towards the lay helpers who share their work? Lay helpers are not underlings, but ~olleagues. They are not under the Sisters but at their side. Therefore, they should be treated with every regard that religious would wish for themselves--with politeness, friendliness, charity, tact, etc. Reli-gious should see tO it that their associates receive from others the respect, obedience, and good will due them-. Their quarters, dining-room, and the like, should be clean, have at least a minimum of com-fort, and even a little beauty. They should give lay helpers material assistance. The author is not speaking here of obligations in justice--that is taken for granted --but over and above this religious should exercise a spirit of sisterly charity, especially in little things and in the manner in which they deal with them. If they show this charity, their helpers will spon-taneously and generously offer themselves f6r extra work: for ex-ample, as substitutes for religious, impeded from thei~ tasks for one reason or another. ' Religious owe lay helpers intellectual assistance. Teachers meetings, personnel meetings, discussions, etc., must be well organized and directed, so that they may benefit all by practical, definite con-clusion~. Suitable books, magazines, newspapers should be put at the disposal of lay helpers. Their opinions and ideas should be re-spected and humbly adopted if they are good and apropos. There should be no narrow-mindedness amorig religious as t'o whose influ-ence should predominate in the school or hospital. Neither should compete for influence, but both groups should work together in a great spirit of active Cfiristian,charity. Religious owe lay helpers moral and spiritual assistance. This is done mainly by the charitable way they do a service, for instan'ce, give a book, or some information, or a word of encouragement. They should visit a lay helper who is ill and also her sorrowing fam-ily. Much good can be done by a smile, a word here and there, a bit of advice given opportunely. They must never be too busy to give a friendly welcome .to lay helpers, even though it distracts from work and causes them to lo~e the trend of thought for a moment. A cer-tain holy religious used to say to every knock at the door: "The ,Be-loved is never disturbed." Another way to assist lay help morall!y is to furnish them an opportunity for a retreat. Conclusion: there should be union in charity, team-work in humility, joy in sacrifice, and forgetfulness of self. This is the pro-gram of the Master, a sure pledge of success. 312 November, 1951 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING From L'Osservatore Rornano~ In the February 4, 1951 number of L'Osservatore Romano ap-peared an important article entitled "Christians, be more prudent!" Written by Monsignor Alfredo Ottaviani, the Assessor of the Holy Office, it is a plea for greater prudence in judging favorably certain extraordinary religious phenomena seemingly widespread today. It is a message of particular significance for religious, whose guidance in these matters is often sought by the faithfql. No Catholic, he says, denies that miracles are possible and do take place. They have a purpose, have been in the Churdh from-the beginning, and do actually occur today. But they must be strictly authenticated, or they will discredit true miracles. Christ himself warned: "False christs and false prophets" ~¢ill arise who "will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead ast'ray, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:24). Hence, it is the right and duty of the Church to pass judgment on the truth and riature of events and reve-lations which are claimed to be due to a special intervention of God. True children of.the Church will submit to this .judgment. Fifty years ago'the Church had to warn against scientism and positivism, which scoffed at these so-called superstitions of the dark ages. Today, the tendency is in the other direction: people are too credulous and uncritical in their judgmen't of extraordinary hap-penings. They hanker for and run after these things even though they may not at the same time be practising Catholics. Sometimes persons ignorant of the Creed pose as ardent apostles of this sort of religiosity. They even criticize and condemn the ecclesiastical au-thorities for not enthusiastically running along with the crowd. The obedience of Catholics in this matter too often leaves much to be desired. Monsig.nor Ottaviani cites some recent deplorable instances of credulousness in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, and the U. S. A. (Necedah). These errors and aberrations are not surprising if we remember that religious sentiment has also felt the effects of original sin. There-fore, religious sentiment, to be sound and useful to man, must be guided by reason, nourished by grace, and controlled by the Church. I quote the following important passages from the London Tablet's (February 24, 1951) translation of this document: "The period through which we are passing stands between one of two excesses: open, inhuman irreligion or unbounded, blind re- 313 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reuieto /: or Religious ligiosity. Persecuted by the supporters of the first and compromised by those who uphold the second, the Church does nothing more than repeat her maternal warning. But her words remain unheard amidst denial on the one hand and exaltation on the other. There is no doubt that the Church does not wish to cast the wonders which God works into the shadow. She merely wants to keep the faithful watchful concerning what comes from God and what does not come from God, and Which can come from His and our adversary. The Church is the enemy of the false miracle. "A good Catholic knows from his catechism that th~ true reli-gion rests in the true Faith, in Revelation, which ended with the death of the last Apostle and has been entrusted to the Church, its interpreter and custodian. Nothing else necessary to our salvation can be revealed to us. There is nothing more for which we must look. We have everything, if we wish to make use of it. Even the most accredited visions can furnish us with new motives for fervor but not with new elements of life or doctrne. True religion abides essentially, apart from in the conscience, in the love of God ~ind the consequent love of our neighbor. And, more than in acts of wor-ship and rite, the love of God consists in doing the will of God, obeying His commandments. This is true religion. "A good Catholic knows that in the saints themselves the nature of sanctity is not composed of the preternatural gifts of visions, prophecies, and wonders, but in the heroic exercise of virtue. That God should in some way authenticate holiness by miracles is one thing, but that holiness consists in performi.ng miracles is another. We must not confound holiness with what can be and is, as a rule, an unmistakable sign of holiness, but not always sufficiently clear so as not to need the necessary supervision of religious authorities. "On this point the teaching of the Church has" never been equivo-cal. The man who turns back to events of dubious interpretation rather than accept the word of God loves the world more than God. Even when the Church authoritatively canonizes a saint, she does not by this act guarantee the preternatural character of all the extra-ordinary facts connected with his life. Still less does she approve all his personal opinions. By the same token she gives even less guaran-tee to all that is written, often with unpardonable levity, by biogra-phers with more imagination than judgment. "We repeat that in order to be religious, it is necessary to be so in proper fashion and as a matter.of duty. In order to be good Cath- 314 November, 1951 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING olics and devout people we must act with all the attention" with which we act when applying ourselves to the most serious things of life. Incredulity 'is just as harmful to the sincere believer as credulity. True, it is not everyone wh6 can form his own opinion on every point. But what are the Bishops and the Pope for? "It is a strange thing: no novice would dare to buid a house by himself, tailor his own clothes, make himself a pair of shoes, or cure himself of a sickness. Yet when it is a question of religious life, people reject all authority, refuse to place any trust in it, even distrust and disobey it (vith impunity.'. "For the last ten ~ears, while the religious authorities have re-mained hesitant, the people have acted hastily and busied themselves with wonders which, to say the least, have not been verified. Speaking honestly, we must admit that such events may be expressions of natural religious enthusiasm. But they'are not Christian events, and they give a frightful pretext to those who are out to discover at all costs the infiltrations and survivals of paganism and superstition in Christianity, especially Catholicism. Just as wrongdoing may in-sinuate itself in our daily lives, so may error insinuate itself into one or the other individual Catholic, a thing which causes no wonder to those who understand what man is. But just as sin must be recog-nized as sin if we would free ourselves from it, so too, in the case of error, we must recognize it as such. Just as the Church has the power to forgive sins, so has it also been commanded by God to redeem us from error. "Let Catholics hear the word of God which the Church, and the Church alone, preserves and repeats whole and incorrupt. Let them not run like sheep without a shepherd after other voices seeking to drown the voice of God when it is true that they oppose the voice of the Church. We have Holy Scripture, we have Tradition, we have the Chief Shepherd and a hundred other shepherds next door to our homes. Why should we offer the spectacle of fatuousness or un-healthy exaltation before those who oppose and despise us? 'Chris-tians, be more prudent,' wrote Dante in his day. 'Do not be like feathers that bend tb any wind.' The great poet urged the very same reasons that we give today: 'You have the Oldand the New Testa-ment, and the Shepherd of the Church to guide you.' Dante's con-clusion, too, is the same as ours: 'This is sufficient for your salva-tion' (Canto V, vv. 73-77)." 315 I-low !:o Think and Ac : about the Race Problem Gerald Kelly, S.J. THE title of this article was suggested by the simultaneous recep-tion of two pamphlets: How to Think about Race, by Louis J. Twomey, S.J.; and Fi:tg Wags to Improue Race Relations, by Frank A. Riley: The word "problem" 'is not in either pamphlet title, but the fact of a problem is very much in both author's minds; they wrote their pamphlets to help solve a problem. Both pamphlets refer explicitl~) to the Negro problem, but their content applies equally to the problem of discrimination against other minorities, such as the Mexicans, the Japanese, the Chinese, and so forth. My remarks will also be directed to the Negro problem, but they too can be applied to the other problems. The Problem In thinking about the race problem, the first thing to do is to recognize that there is a problem. Some people believe--or would like to believe that there is no problem. When you mention the Negro problem to them, they look puzzled, raise their eyebrows a bit, and ask icily, "'Is there a Negro problem?" Others admit the prob-lem, but explain it very simply by saying: "There would be no prob-lem if the Negro would keep his place." (These, incidentally, do not say "Negro.") No unbiassed and even moderately well-informed person can fail to see that we have a race problem--or, to be more specific, a Negro problem. And it consists not in the fact that the Negro will not keep his place but rather in the fact that white people will not let him have his place. The two-volume work, An American Dilemma, by Gunnar Myrdal, is a scholarly, factual proof of the ex.istence of the problem. And hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles that have appeared within the last decade or two give further evidence, not only of the existence, but of the magnitude of the problem. To see that we have a Negro problem, one has but to consider what ought to be and what is the status of the Negro in the United 1B0th pamphlets are published by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Boule-vard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. 316 THE RACE PROBLEM States. There is always a problem when the is falls below the ought to be. There is a problem in our personal spiri,tual lives when our conduct fails short of our standards; there is a problem in our social order when the income of the working man is not what it should be; and there is a problem in millions of personal lives and in the social order of the nation when an entire race is daily accordei5 a treatment that is contrary to the laws of God and of the nation. What ought to be the status of the Negro? Like other men, he has a human nature and he is destined, through the providence of God, for heaven. This common nature and comm6n destiny should unite men. By reason of their' common nature and common destiny they are one family. This unity is expressed through love in the natural order, and in the supernatural order through charity. And love (charity) expresses itself through kindly thoughts, prayers for one another, words of courtesy, mutual co-operation, helping one another in need, and so forth. This bond of love joins all men; the commandment of love knows no distinction of race. Like other men, the Negro is a human person, a distinct indi-vidual; and by reason of his human personality he is the subject, not only of duties, but of inviolable rights. He has the same right as other men to say "mine," and to have what is his respected .by other men. He has the same right as others to worship God. He has a right to life and liberty as long as he is not proved guilty of crime. He has a right to equality of opportunity to make a decent living, to develop his talents, to marry and provide for his family, to enjoy recreational facilities, to have his share of honor, and so_forth. These rights, conferred by God, are confirmed by the law of the nation when it makes the Negro an American cil~izen. And to these rights, the nation either adds civil rights or guarantees equality of opportunity in ob-tai~ aing civil righti. What is the status of the Negro in the United States? He is segregated--forced to live apart from the white man--and thus the law of union is violated; he is discriminated'against--treated as an inferior--and thus the law of equality is violated. His life is les.~ secure than the white man's; he has less opportunity to obtain the 'necessities and comforts of life. He is more readily arrested and more easily convicted. On one streetcar he finds a sign, "This space re-served for our colored patrons"; on another, where no printed sign is displa~'ed, he finds "unwelcome" written on white faces. While traveling he has difficulty getting proper acco{nmodations and even 317 GERALD KELLY Reoiew for Religious getting food. .He must say "sir" to the white man, but he is called, "Johnny," "Doc," or "uncle." His house is a menace to his physi-cal well-being, and his congested surroundings are a greater menace to his soul's welfare. When he tries to move to another neighbor-hood, he is repelled by violence, thwarted by restrictive covenants, or humiliated by the exodus of prospective white neighbors who flee him as 'they would a contagion: He sees his children denied educa-tional opportunities, his wife and mother denied the courtesies ex-tended to other women. Even in his worship, he must have a "spe-cial" church or a "special" place in the white man's church. These and scores of other insults, humiliations, frustrations, are the daily fare of the American Negro. Not that all the abuses are practised eveiywhere and by everyone; but the general pattern is so common, even in the North, that some.unprejudiced scholars do not hesitate to call it our greatest national scandal. It is not an acci-dental pattern; it is a calculated system of oppression and contempt. Perhaps the scholars just referred to were not conscious of the theological meaning of "scandal," but Catholics should be definitely° conscious of this. Theologically, scandal is an occasion of spiritual harm to the neighbor. Scandal is very seriously involved when white Catholics practice racial segregation and discrimination; because their conduct makes it very difficult for Negro Catholics to preserve the faith and well-nigh impossible to convert Negroes to the faith. There can scarcely be greater scandal than this. From what I have written (which is just a brief repetition of what has been said and written often and more forcefully by others) it should be evident that we have a problem. Despite. the fact that recent years have witnessed a strong trend against discrimination and some improvement in the status of the Negro, his condition is still not what it ought to be. He is still l~he victim of a policy which was described in a report issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith as a "grave derogation to the Christian concept of the individual's inherent dignity.''2 This policy involves contempt, hatred, and scandal. And the responsibility lies not with the Negro victim, but with the white people who either willingly perpetuate the policy or negligently refuse to do what they can to stop it. 2The report is printed in pamphlet form under the title The Catholic Church and Neproes in the United States. It can be obtained from the Catholic Interracial Coun-cil of Chicago, 21 West Superior Street, Chicago 10, Illinois. Five cents for single copies; four cents each for 100 or more: special rates on orders for 1000 or more. 318 Not~ernber, 1951 THE RACE PROBLEM How to think about the Negro problem? I said tl~at the first thing to do is to recognize the problem. A second thing'is suggested by another statement in the ~eport of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The report says that the "thought of a wide, general conversion of the Negroes to the Catholic Church is an illusion until and unless the attitude of American Catholics-~clergy and laity--is cornpletelg purified of approval of the segregation pol-icg or of the many deprivations of educational opportunity, of fair employment, and of decent housing that arise as a result of it." The words I have italicized indicate the second step in thinking cor.rectly about the Negro problem: we must disapprove of the segregation pol-icy, which is, in fact, a colossal violation of, justice and charity. Such disapproval, incidentally, is not a counsel of perfection; it is a strict duty, and a serious one. What to Do An evil is not removed merely by recognizing its existence. Something constructive has to be done. "But," an individual will say, "I am so small, and this evil is so great and so widespread.How can I do anything about it?" Actually, there is much that any in-dividual white person of good will can do regarding the Negro prob-lem; and it is my purpose, taking a cue from Mr. Riley's pamphlet, to indicate some of these things here. It may be noted that much that I say seems to have no special pertinence to religious. Yet it does pertain to religious, as well as to other people, and in one sense at least it has a special application ~o religious, because religious by rea-son of their position in the Church have an influence for good or bad that is definitely special. A constructive solution to the Negro problem must work "from the inside out." I mean that it must begin with correct attitudes, with an inner spirit that will be the soul of external action. Vast numbers of people do not have this inner spirit. As Francois Mauriac states forcefully in his Life of Jesus, at the conclusion of the chapter on the Samaritan woman: "He tarried for two days in the midst of the outcast Samaritans, thus giving his followers an example which was to be transmitted in vain to the rest of the world. For if there is a part of the Christian message which men have refused and rejected with invincible Obsti-nacy, it is faith in the equal value of all souls, of all races, before the Father who is in heavem" The indictment is dreadfully true, but it does not make our case 31'9 GERALD KELLY " " Review ?or Religious hopeless. Even the devil of racial hatred must yield to prayer and self-sacrifice., That is why Fifty Ways of Improving Race Relations insists much on the need of prayer, of prayer "that light may shine in the dark areas of white men's minds, that the race heresy may be put down." Any one of us has this power of prayer, and we can use it to beg for ourselves and others a vital appreciation of the truths of reason and faith that are the foundation of racial amity and justice. Many white people, it is said, are. not malicious; tl~ey simply have such an aversion for the Negro that they abhor the very thought of living with him on equal terms. I admit the existence of this psy- ¯ chologicaI problem. Yet it seems to me that it can be and is overrated.: It is not substantially different from the problem of aversion as it is sometimes experienced by one white person towards another, even .by one religious towards another. Morally speaking, the aversion itself is merely a feeling, and as such it is not culpable. Neverthless, since the fostering of this feeling can be the source of great' harm, it must be disciplined like other dangerous emotions, and proper means must be taken to eliminate or to temper it. And here again a first remedy is prayer. It should not be too much for anyone to ask sincerely for the grace to act according to Christian principles, despite'a feeling of antipathy. After all, we do this regularly when we pray for the grace, to preserve.chastity, despite strong contrary feelings. Many students of the rac~ problem say that aversion to the Negro springs from ignorance and that it disappears or.subsides when one gets to know the Negro. Some white people who have lived near Ne-groes for many years might answer this by saying that no one knows the Negro better than they, yet their knowledge has not affected their aversion. I think that one might legitimately question whether such people really know the Negro.' Real knowledge of a person im-plies something more than just being near him. Real knowledge comes in friendship, from getting under the surface into a man's heart and his feelings. The system of segregation and discrimination is itself a block to such knowledge; and it perpetuates a vicious circle by which aversion fosters segregation and segregation fosters aversion. More than twenty years ago Father Francis J. Gilligan wrote in The Morality of the Color Line:s 3This book is out of print. It is a real pioneer study--and a very capable one-~- of race relations in the light of Christian moral principles. Father Gilligan is pro-fessor of moral theology at the St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has for many years been Chairman of the Governor's Interracial Commission of Min-nesota, a commission that has done very constructive work in the.matter of race re-lations and that has published some splendid leaflets and booklets. 320 No~ember, 1951 THE RACE PROBLEM "To be forced always to seek a restaurant on th~ rear street, to be placed'always at a table in some alcove, to be compelled always to accept a se~at in the gallery of a .thea.tre, to be denied access to every respectable and standard hotel, to be driven constantly to tax one's ingenuity to secure a reservation in a Pullman, are conditions Which would occasion in every man, and the Negro is no exception, anger and despair. A white person probably can never fully realize the anxiety and hesitancy which the Negro experiences almost daily in trying to satisfy conventional needs." Father Gilligan is undoubtedly correct when he says that prob-ably a white man can never [ull~t appreciate what the Negro experi-ences. Nevertheless, any white man with good will and a good imagination can learn much by using what psychologists call "em-pathy"-- namely, by putting himself in the Negro's place, by trying to feel what the Negro feels in the various frustrating circumstances that make up the pattern of discrimination. "Psychologically, this cultivation of a strong "fellow-feeling" is perhaps the best antidote for aversion, because one powerful emotion tends to neutralize the "other. Also, deep feeling for the Negro stimulates constructive action in his behalf. Some of the greatest strides towards interracial justice have been made by ~¢hite men who had the power of sharing the hurt feelings of the Negro.' .To stimulate this "fellow-feeling," it helps to read a good auto-biography, like Dar~ $~mpl~on~, by Elizabeth Adams. For the same purpose--but to'a lesser ~legree, because the personal element is wanting--it is useful to-get a complete picture of the wrongs "done the Negro by reading An American Dilemma, or at least the con-densation of this work, entitled The Negro in America, by Arnold Rose, one of Myrdal's collaborators. I would not recommend these two works, however, without adding the caution that their other-wise. scientific and morally wholesome tone is marred, by the section that recommends artificial birth-control as a means of solving the problem ot: "Negro overpopulation." (See Myrdal, I, 175-181; Rose, 60-61.) (Before I leave the subject of aversion, I should like to add that the white man has no monopoly on it. The Negro too has an aver-sion for the white man--and understandably so, in view of what he has suffered. But, like the white man, he must be willing to put aside or temper this aversion in order to establish a Christian system of race relations. I am not stressing this here because my main con- 321 GERALD KELLY Reoiew for Reliqious cern is with indicating things that white people can and should do as regards the Negro.) From the inside to the outside--that is, from thoughts and feelings to words and actions. ~ prime rule of speech is to avoid what reasonably offends, other people. On the basis of this rule, a Negro should not be called a "nigger," and a Negro woman should not be referred to as a "negress." Both words are offensive to Negroes, as are many others that need not be mentioned here. The best way for anyone to keep this rule is to abstain entirely from using the words, because if white people use them among themselves when speaking about the Negro, they very readily use them when speaking, to the Negro. Another basic rule of speech is to be extremely careful about repeating unverified and disparaging rumors about the Negro. "Seldom in the history of mankind," wrote Father Gilligan, "has any group been more widely misrepresented, misunderstood, and handicapped by popular rumors than the American colored group." Accepting such unfounded rumors is rash jiadgment; passing them on to others is calumny. As regards both speech and conduct, I should like to stress one. point that is of particular interest to the moral theologian. In our theological treatises on the virtue of charity we make much of what are called the common signs of good will and courtesy. (Cf. "On the Duty of Loving the Neighbor, Especially Enemies," in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, VII, 299-312.) These are various little gesture~ and words that are due to all fellow-citizens, fellow-workers, neighbors, and so forth, and not merely to one's'special friends. I think it is very important that every individual white person be conscious of this duty when he is dealing with Negroes. If he says "sir" to a white man, he should say "sir" to a Negro; if he tips his hat to a white woman, he should also tip his ha~ to a Negro woman; if he says "good morning" to white neighbors, he should say "good morning" to his Negro neighbors; if he shakes hands with a white person to whom he is introduced, he should shake hands with a Negro under the same circumstances. In themselves these are small things; and any individual with good will can do them. Yet, failure to use them can cause deep hurt and humiliation, whereas their use can cause genuine elation to those who have been constantly denied them. Moreover, they manifest just what is needed to improve race relations:, good will and respect. The foregoing are ways in which any white individual can help to improve race relations, even though others do not co-operate with 322 o November, 1951 THE RACE PROBLEM him. But for any grand-scale reformation of the social order, there must be group action, as our recent Popes have stated so often. Fiftg Ways to Improue Race Relations contains many suggestions for par-ticipation in group action: for example, by be!ping'such organiza-tions as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored, People, the Urban League, various interracial councils; by .voting for good social legislation, by joining with others to urge Congressmen to promote such legisla~tion, by signing petitions to have Negroes admitted to schools that make a policy of excluding them, by joining in protests to owners of stores, restaurants, and hotels, that discrim-inate against Negroes; 'and so forth. By these and various other ways the apparent insignificance of the individual can become a very sig-nificant force in establishing a Christian social order in our race rela-tions. Specigl for Religious In themselves these points, as I mentioned previously, have no special pertinence to us as religious. Ye.t, since they pertain to all persons of good will, they certainly pertain to us, too; and we can and should carry them out in our personal lives. Moreover, they have a verst special pertinence to us because of our position of leader-ship among Catholics; we are expected to teach Catholic doctrine by word and example--and one might say, particularly by example. The best argument against segregated schools is to have our own schools unsegregated; the best way to denounce segregation in wor-ship is to have no color line in our own churches and chapels; and the best way to condemn discrimination in professions is to have our own convents and seminaries wide open to all qualified appli-cants, irrespective of race. And certainly the best--if not the only--" way to inspire youth to practice justice and charity is to be gracious exemplars of these virtues in our own daily lives. The effects, good or bad, of even our smallest public actions are tremendous. The Priest for May, 1951, published an article entitled "Black Priest," which contains the reflections of a Negro convert studying for the priesthood. Two incidents recounted in the article indicate the effects of even our small actions. On one occasion, when the author had returned to his home in the South for the funeral of an aunt, two white women, one of them a nun, came to visit him. 'On another occasion, while he was driving with some of his colored friends, he stopped to visit a monastery, . and the superior insisted °that he bring his friends in and treated them with true monastic hos- 323 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Reoiew for Religious pitality. These courtesies had a profoundly salutary .effect on his friends, helping them to see that the Catholic Church is not "a white man's church." "These incidents," reflects the author, "may seem like little things, but what if that good Sister and other lady had not come to ~ee me? ~Yc~hat if we had been turned away from'the door of the mon-. astery? For one thing, I probably would have kept the promise I made to myself never to go South ~again. But the most serious result would have been that more souls would have been pushed farther and farther away from the Church. Those were two times when I was really proud 9f my fellow Catholics. May God bless them!" Ques ions and Answers --27~ I was the priest-advlser of a girl who entered the convent four months ago. A week after her entrance I sent her a Missal, which she had said she needed. I have not heard from her. Would you please print what my re~ action should be? The reaction might include a little pain,, but it need not include surprise. Gratitude is becoming a rare virtue, even among religious. The nunqber of those who take,time out to acknowledge favors re-ceived seems to be very small. In the present instance, the girl may have failed to acknowledge the Missal because of restrictions on letter-writing in the postulancy. Restrictions are certainly necessary, but they should not be allowed to defeat the greater purpose of giving the young religious a well-balanced training in all the virtues. Superiors should see that the postulants and novices acknowledge gifts and favors or they should make some other provisions for such acknowledgements. All through our religious life much of our support is provided by benefactors. If young religious are not trained to express gratitude for small things they will not be properly grateful to benefactors When they hold positions of authority. m28-- One of our general councilors died recently. Our constitutions do not provide for the succession in place of a deceased councilor. What shall we do?' 324 November, 1951 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Canon 20 tells us to follow the style and practice of the Roman Curia when the law does not provide for a contingency. In this mat-ter of finding a successor for a deceased member of the general coun-cil, we have an indication of the style and practice of the Sacred Con-gregation of Religious in article 271 of the Normae of 1901 which reads as follows: "The councilors of the superior gerieral have a de-cisive vote in matters of greater moment. Such matters are especially the following: . . . 12° the substitution of another Sister until the next general chapter in place of a general councilor who has died, or was deposed, or is perpetually impeded." This article has been written into very many constitutions of lay religious (Brothers and Sisters), both before and after the ~romul-gation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917. Hence it offers a safe norm of action when the constitutions are silent in the matter. Frequently enough an article is added in modern constitutions to the effect that the substitute general councilor thus chosen by a ma-jority vote of the council takes the last place among the c6uncilors, not that of the deceased councilor; that place is taken by the coun-cilor next in order of election in general chapter. The other coun-cilors move up accordingly. ¯ m29-- We would like ÷o know whether, according to canon law,. it could be permitted for a good reasor~ to have the first profession of temporaryvows one year and two, three, or four days after [nvestlture? Canon 571, § 2 states that "the novitiate completed, the novice shall be admitted to profession if he be judged suitable, otherwise he shall be sent away." Commentators on the law, however, are agreed that a few days' deferment of the investiture for a good reason would not be a violation of the law. Such good'reasons would be, among others, the desire to have the investiture for all on the same day; or the desire to have both investiture and profession of vows on the same day; or because the retreat master was unavoidably delayed for two or three days. If the constitutions of a religious institute state that the superior is ap-pointed for a term of three years and that he may be reappointed for a further term in the same housemdoes this imply that the said appointed period of three years b~nds the superiors not to remove him from that posi-tion during the said time, either tooplace him in charge of another house 325 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ,Review [or Religious or to remove him altogether from authorifi/? Canon 505 does not necessarily require that a local superior be appointed for a period of three years, but merely forbids that he be appointed for a lo.nger period. The constitutions will determine the length of time a local superior is to hold office. Usually this is a period of three years, and, under normal circumstances, he should not be removed from that office. The common good, however, may re-quire his transfer to another house before the expiration of three years because his special abilities are needed there. Again, it happens occasionally that a religious is appointed local superior and, because of his incompetency, is a cause of serious harm to the community. Common sense dictates that such a person should be removed from office and not be allowed to complete a three-year term. Is it permissible for a religious appointed assistant to the master of novices to be one of the councilors to the superior in the house where pro-fessed religious llve? The assistant has very little contact with the professed religious since his duties confine him to the work of the novitiate. There are no regulations in the Code of Canon Law as to the persons who are appointed councilors to a local'superior. The con- ,stitutions may restrict this office, but unless they do; any professed member of the community may. be appointed to the local council. During passlontide is it ever permitted to remove the violet coverincj from the statue of the Blessed Virgin for one of her feasts? Or from the statue of St. Joseph when his feast occurs during that time? Or from any other statue at this season? During Passiontide it is not permitted to uncover the statues if the feast of the Titular, or of the Dedication of the Church, or of St. Joseph occur (S.R.C. decree 3396). However, if out of devo-tion to St. Joseph, the statue of the saint is exposed off the altar (extra altare) during the month of March, it may be left uncovered dhring Passiontide (S.R.C. decree 3448 ad 1 I). 33 A week ago a young woman called at the rectory and asked whether I could find some rellcj[ous community that would take her as a candidate, as she feels that she has a vocation. This may seem strange,, but the girl is deaf, a~d I know of no community in the United States that will take her 326 Nooember, 1951 BOOK REVIEWS with this handicap. Hence I'm writing you to see whether you can help me find some order or congregation of women that will take this girl. We await an answer from our readers. 34 Do the candles used at Holy Mass and at Benediction have to be blessed.'/ There is no obligation to bless altar candies (to ~e used at Holy Mass and Benediction) but it is fitting to do so. They may be blessed either on Candlemas Day (February 2) or at any other time. On Candlemas Day the form given in the Missal under that date should be used. At other times the form to be used is that given in the Roman Ritual (VI!I, 3). Book Reviews OFFICIUM DIVINUM PARVUM. German-Latln text. Fulda Conference. Herder-Pusfef, 1951. Pp. 569. Price not given. The press recently carried a not~ to the effect that the bishops of Holland have secured permission to edit a vernacular Office for all Dutch Sisters not ofili~ed by Rule to the recitation of the Divine Office. The notice has special 'relevance to the book here, noticed, inasmuch as the Fulda Conference of Germany secured such permis-sion and has published a shortened breviary for the optional use of all German Sisters not obliged to recite the Divine Office. This O~cium Pacou/o (I was informed) has be~n adopted by some eighty-thousand Sisters in a short time. One can easily see why. This handy edition has a Latin text of the "New" Psalms on the left-side, a German one on the right; the Psalms are in the transla-tion worked out by Romano Guardini. The entire arrangement strikes a good balance between the variety of the Divine Office and the brevity of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. The bishops' endorsement recommends the book for public Sunday Vespers or Compline.--GERALD ELLARD, S.3". ST. CLARE OF ASSISI. By Nesta de Robeck. Pp. vii q- 242. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 19SI. $3.S0. This is perhaps as authentic a biography of St. Clare as can be written from the meager reliable sources that are available. The Life contains only 139 pages, but it is well written and interesting and 327 BOOK REVIEWS Reuiew for Religious documents are frequently quoted. The first chapter is the history of Assi~i from Before Christ to the thirteenth century. The second covers her childhood and youth up till the time she adopted the way of life of her fellow-townsman, St. Francis. The third shows how she formed her life along the lines of that of Francis and what a deep impress his last years and death made upon Clare and the Poor Ladies who followed her. Chapter four speaks of her personal sanctity and dealings with the pope. Chapter five describes how her influence and holii~ess irradiated out to the numerous new members and houses.of the Second Order ot: St. Francis, who all looked to her as their mother. The final chapter presents her in the full maturity of ber sanctity, her last years, death, and glory. Five Appendi~es make up the last half of the book: the Office of the Passion, the Rule of St. Clare, the Testament of St. Clare, the Cause of Canonization, the Bull of Canonization of the Virgin, St. Clare. There is a three-p~ige bibliography, a two-page index, and eight excellent plates. The sp!rit .of gqntleness and charity in the service of Lady Poverty. was the spirit St. Francis passed on to St. Clare and her Poor Ladies. That spirit lives today in St. Francis' sons and daughters all over the world. Those who have any contact with them catch something of it. So will those who read this book.--C. A. HERBST, S.J. DEVOTEDLY YOURS. By Sister Berfrande. Pp. 400. Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 19SI. $3.7S. Sister Bertrande, the author of The Education of Sisters (re-viewed at length by William J. McGucken, S.J., in the first issue of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January, 1942) and director of Maril-lac House of Chicago, the large social center of the Daughters of Charity, may not be the greatest letter-writer in history, but she has left in Devotedly Yours, a very'interesting batch of letters. Intended originally "for Sisters only," her letters tell her com-munity in Chicago about all there is to tell of her extended and cir-cuitous Holy Year Pilgrimage that included the far-flung houses of Charity in France, North Africa, the Holy Land, Italy, England, and Ireland. The letters reveal zest for life, a sense of humor, abil-ity to recount anecdote and describe vividly, and devotedness and gratitude to her religious congregation. The author's wish should be fulfilled. "May these letters influence others as the journey influ-enced me: The Holy Lanai made of me a better Christian, Rome 328 November, 1951 BOOK NOTICES made of me a better Catholic, Paris made of me a better Daughter of Charity."--J. E. BREUNIG, S.J. BOOK NOTICES As a child, Helen Caldwell Day knew the sting of poverty and discrimination in her home in the South. Full of ambition she went North to enter nurses' training. Through realities on duty and trivialities off duty, she learned both the fulness and the emptiness of this life. She became a Catholic. She was married, saw her hus-band arrested and taken to prison, and after months of loneliness became a mother. She learned--what she had not known as a child --that there are white people with whom a Negro can live on terms of equality and genuine friendship. She tells about these and many other things in COLOR, EBONY. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951. Pp. viii + 182. $2.25.) THE CONVENT MIRROR, by Very Rev. Frederick T. Hoeger, C.8p.S., is a series of conferences for religious. It is the fruit of thirty years of retreats to priests, Brothers, and Sisters. They were written to help religious love their vocation ever more and more. The author himself notes in the preface that "He is inclined to go to extremes to keep from religious life the least ill-repute." (New York: Frederick PustetCo., 1951. Pp. 246. $3.00.) The fact that Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I., would take the trouble to translate the DICTIONARY OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY is in itself a guarantee that the book is worth while. A generous sampling of the volume's contents confirms this judgment. The book thor-oughly covers dogmatic theology, as well. as providing much matter from associated branches of philosophy and theology. There are a good general bibliography, a concise synthesis of dogma, an outline of the history of dogmatic theology, helpful bibIiographies under in-dividual topics, and a complete index of entries. The present trans-lation, the first in English, is made from the second Italian edition. The authors are Msgrs. Pietro parente, Antonio Piolante, and 8alva-tore Garofalo. The translator has kept faithfully to the original text, but has r~vised the bibliographies in order to make them more useful to English readers. The format leaves nothing to be desired. (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing'Company, 1951. Pp. xxvi q- 310. $4.50.) 329 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Reuiew [or Religious In LETTERS TO THE MARTYRS Helen Walker Homan gives dear illustrations of the abundantly verified statement that ours is an age of martyrs. She compares, the lives of early martyrs like Saints Stephen, Agnes, Ignatius, Sebastian, Lawrence, and others with heroes of our "day like Arhhbishop Stepinac, St. Maria Goretti, Car-dinal Mindzenty, and others. The epistolary cast of the book, as a series of letters to martyrs, may seem artificial to some and detract from the inspirational value of the book. (New York: David McKay Co. Inc., 1951. Pp. xii -]- 236. $3.00.) ONE AND HOLY, contains three lectures by Karl Adam to mem-bers of the Una Sancta movement in Germany who are making real efforts to build a bridge between Lutherans and Catholics: "The Roots of the Reformatign," "How Luther Left the Church: the Pos-sibility of Reunion," and "How is Reunion to be Achieved." The author shows how polemic has sharpened the differences and suggests that the basis of reunion may be found in a sympathetic investiga-tion of the conditions that gave rise to Luther. His viewpoint and practical proposals are worth thinking about. Cecily Hastings trans-lated the book. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951. Pp.' vii ÷ 130. $2.00.) In view of the Holy Father's recent Encyclical, "Heralds of the Gospel" (June 2, 195 I), touching again and with supreme author-ity on native cultures, native clergy, social prosperity, medical aid, lay missionaries, there is special timeliness in the translating of Father Danielou's books, The Salvation of the Nqtions (1949), and the present volume ADVENT, or the preparation for Christ and his saving message among all the i~amilie

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PLEASE REMEMBER That by sending your orders to us you help build up and devel-op one of the church institutions with pecuniary advantage to yourself. Address H. S. BONER, Supt. 1 The CClevQUpy. The Literary Journal of Gettysburg College. Vol. XIII. GETTYSBURG, PA., FEBRUARY, 1905. No. 8 CONTENTS 'WHERE PROVIDENCE PREVAILED," , . . 246 BY MISS HARRIET MCGILL, '06. THE NOVEL OF SENTIMENT,* 25.0 "IMBEM." THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE, . . . 259 BY H. F. SMITH, '07. RELIGION AND SOLITUDE, . 265 BY SAMUEL E. SMITH, '07. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A MILLIONAIRE,*' . . 268 "NOMEN." EDITORIALS, . • . 274 EXCHANGES, ". .276 ♦Contributed for Pea and Sword Prijze Essay Conteat. LiUlMUflMfti i \| 246 THE MERCURY. WHERE PROVIDENCE PREVAILED. Bv Miss HARRIET MCGIU., '06. THE woman waited; as in the lulls of the moaning, De-cember night wind, she heard the sound of sleigh bells mingled with the laughter of happy lovers, who sped swiftly by, she smiled, then gave a little sob, and smiled straight away again. "For what," she said, " if the waiting is long, one has always the past as a companion." Yes, "as a companion" and as such, Time had been kind to the woman. True, he had streaked the black hair with grey, and hardened the strong large hands with marks of toiling, but these things mattered little, for had he not left the great dark eyes undimmed? Just as twenty years ago, when they had look-ed frankly up into the face of the man whom their mistress call-ed ''husband," and smiling through their tears, spoke more plain-ly than any language the great word "courage," even so had they looked ever since into the face of Old Father Time, and looking smiled; no wonder then that he could not dim them. And the man : he also was waiting; the woman waited in a room bare and cheerless, the room of a servant in a great city, that of the man was equally bare and cheerless, it was the pris-on cell of one whom the world called "criminal." Now comes the strange part of our prelude, in the fact that neither of these people knew, how that for which they waited would come to them. Those who had placed the man in his present position, knew well how to make arrangements, by which his wife should not be permitted to see him. He was "in for life," and it was granted, even by the faithful few who remained true to the conviction of his innocence, that his case was hopeless. Yet throughout the twenty years, firmly, as upon the day of their parting, had these two believed in the hope of deliverance, and trusted, as it is the lot of few to trust. The night wind also sighed and moaned around a rude log cabin, that lay a tiny speck upon the broad stretches of the great western prairie. Lonely, sequestered, isolated, truly might ^HHHH THE MERCURY. 247 * * this humble home have been called the " Lodge of some vast wilderness," so far was it removed from the haunts of men, so little did its inhabitants know about the lives of their fellows, in the great outside world. ■ Here, upon this winter night of which we W rite, the good wife of the house, a plain, simple, country woman, who had, up to this time, lived her even, uneventful life, in a spirit of honest contentment, lay down to rest, worn with the day's work. This woman knew nothing of our convict or his wife, the story of the crime whose tragic consequences had involved him in ruin, and blasted the life of the girl whose eyes said "courage," had never even reached these humble prairie dwellers, and when Marie Cor-douy closed her eyes that night, she expected nothing but the "sleep of the just," the usual reward of her hard labor. Instead —well let us hear the story of her dream; she says, "I was there, and yet not there; for somehow I know that the girl I saw was alone, after she bade her sister good-bye, saying that she would go through the wood to the farm of a neighbor who lived about two miles away. I can see her now as she walked along, she was a pretty girl, with hair like gold, and eyes like the "bluets,". which grew all around her in the forest, as she walked among them barefoot, her shoes in her hand, for she took them off to save them, when she came to the wood. So she walked on for sometime until she came to a large rock that stood out on the bank of a stream, and here she sat down to rest, for the day was warm, and she tired. Suddenly two men crept out from the trees behind the girl. One was tall with a scar 0.11 bis face, he seem-ed to be middle aged, the other was smaller, and from his looks could have been a son of the first. Just as she sat there, with-out any thought of harm, those men rushed on the girl, and throttled her, then they carried the poor tiling, into the bed of the stream, and foully murdered her there, while the water washed away the signs of their bloody work. When it was done, they went back to the rock and tried to move it. At last they got space enough to dig a kind of a grave underneath, where they buried the girl, her shoes beside her, and the knives with which ■^^■HnuAfl-fi 248 THE MERCURY. they had stabbed her. When I saw them sneak away, through the trees, the horror of the thing awakened me." So great was this horror, that Marie awoke her husband, and told him of the dream, but, saying that it was nothing, told her to try to sleep once more. Yet again came the dream, as viv-idly as before, and then again, three times, did she have it be-fore morning came to deliver her. Still John Cordouy said that it contained no portent, and advised her to forget it, this how-ever was easier said than done, and from that nig*ht Marie was a changed woman. The dream never seemed to leave her mind, its weight oppressed her, and finding no sympathy in John, she yet persisted in telling her gruesome tale, not only to him, but to any chance traveller whom she could persuade to listen.— Finally, for the world is a small place, after all, the news of the dream reached the ears of the woman who waited. Teresa Jardain, wife of the supposed murderer, whose life imprisonment instead of death because of inability to find the body of the girl, had been secured by the man who accused him ; a man high in power, a tall man, with a scar on his face. .This man's son had once loved the dark eyed beauty of Teresa, who had refused his offer of marriage, and had afterwards been spurned by the girl, whose strange disappearance had so affect-ed the life of the Jardains, the neighbors, to whose farm she was last seen starting out. Now into Teresa's life, since her brave fight against the world began, had entered much wisdom ; it was as the " wisdom of the serpent," and with it she determined to save her husband, and see his face once more. As has been said, there were some few friends remaining who believed him innocent; to these men Teresa went, with the strange story of the dream, implor-ing their aid. At last this plan was agreed upon. Two of these men, who were fortunately wealthy and influential, went secretly to the prairie home of Cordouy, disguised as travellers. As usual Marie, eager for listeners, related the story of her dream, she seemed to find relief in telling it as often as possible. They then took Cordouy into their confidence, and proposed to him a trip through the East to the place where the tragedy occurred. BBlnflftFi THE MERCURY. 249 Marie would of course accompany them, and should she recog-nize the surroundings, identify the men, and find the body of the girl, the murderers might be forced into a revelation of the truth. In the meantime the story was to be kept secret so that they might be taken off their guard. Their plans were strangely successful, when Marie, in the course of their journey, reached the neighborhood where the murder took place, she seemed to grow more and more excited, at last she could stand it no longer, and told the others that this was the place of her dreams. Eagerly leading them into the wood, (a. strange place remember, where she had never been before,) she hurried on until she reached the rock by the streamlet, and began in her haste to dig away the earth beneath it, with her own hands. She was however persuaded to give place to work-men, who arrived with suitable tools, and soon dug from their resting place of twenty years or more, the skeleton of the girl, the knives and even the remainder of the shoes, which lay by themselves, near her head, showing that she had worn them. The story now spread far and wide, and the real murderers, fail-ing in an attempt to flee the country, confessed their guilt, and met the punishment which had been for so long a time delayed. The night winds no longer moaned around the prairie cabin, with a story of duty left undone, its sound bears rather comfort to the woman within, her mission is fulfilled, Marie Cordouy is satisfied. No longer does a captive, Paul Jardain, stretch im-ploring hands, behind his prison bars and implore it to bear the message of his innocence to the world. The weary watch of Teresa, the woman who waited, is over, for Providence worked a miracle with the passing of the night wind. [D1^B^HHHHHEthere are many novel readers who might express the bitterness -of their experience in the lines of Thompson— " Ah from real happiness we stray, By vice bewildered, vice which always leads However fair at first to wilds woe." Every man has a model for his life, an ideal, and how much -does a man's welfare depend on the ideal which is enshrined in ihis heart of hearts ! Any force which has the power of chang-ing ideals should be (both) helped and hindered in its opera-tion, aided that it may effect the greatest good and hindered Jest it accomplish the most of evil. Fiction has shaped ideals and it is moulding ideals today and in many cases this is being ■done with great injury to humanity. Too many of our novelists picture woman as an angel or a fiend. At one time they por-tray woman, as the flatterer, the seducer, the destroyer, and as-sociate her with such deadening villianies that she appears as .a veritable Medusa petrifying all that is noble in the nature of man; while at another time, under the spell of their pens she ■■■■■■■^■■■■H ■: , ' '\U- U --- v - -^ 256 THE MERCURY. stands forth as semi-divine a creature too wondrous for daily contact with the world. From a social standpoint, it is truly alarming to observe the opinions which are held by thousands-of the male sex concerning women, and not a few of these de-praved ideas can be traced to the popular novel. While wo-man can fall lower and can also attain greater heights than* man, yet the vast majority of women occupy a middle plane where virtue is a companion and the ordinary duties of life keep the angelic qualities in the background. It can safely be said that the average work of fiction is too radical in depicting the characters of women. Somewhat allied to the above topic is the illusive idea so-prominent in current fiction that it is an absolute fault to be commonplace. All real life is commonplace. It is a round of duty and service and only once in a great length of time does a man spring forth who rises above his fellows. Anything that derides the homely toil of the private citizen or makes men* dissatisfied with their station in life by infatuating them with visions of power selfishly attained, must be characterized as-pernicious, because it places false ideals before the eyes of men. There is also an influence at work today of the same nature,, that makes the securing of wealth the one thing for which men should strive, and many novels of the twentieth century are strongly imbued with this spirit. After an examination of many popular books, it is found in numerous instances that wealth is regarded as the greatest thing in the world. This is-not done in a direct way, but is brought by a hint here and a* suggestion there, benumbing reason and calling into action all that is sordid in the soul of man. Thus there are novels which speak of millions with an air of studied carelessness, while others recount the struggles of a hero who begins life as a poor boy and finally becomes the possessor of hundreds of thousands and even millions. Such ideas held out before the young peo-ple of today are most harmful. While wealth is- desirable, it is of secondary importance. It does not bring character nor happiness to its possessor, and is often a hindrance to noble endeavor. How refreshing it is when some novelist deigns to> m WIUHMWJIlllWi THE MERCURY. 257 give to the public a story of the poor, of people in ordinary-circumstances, showing to mankind that riches are not the passport to happiness. Let our writers take Thackeray for their pattern. That the ideals in our current literature may be truer and nobler, let our talented authors acknowledge Dickens their patron saint and tell to humanity the strange story of the toil-ing world. When the character of the novel of sentiment has been re-viewed, the mind naturally becomes alert to observe the effects of reading popular fiction. The results are only obvious when, after the reading of books, an investigation is made among one's friends, and every man looks into his own soul, with a view of discerning their exact measure ot influence. Many surprises await one making such an investigation, but probably the most astonishing is the fact that the opinion of many people can be known if one is familiar with the last book which they have read. In other words, too many men and women accept the statements of books without applying the test of common sense and reason. Thus, through the frailty of humanity, the novel of sentiment is efficacious for much of good and evil. The greatest fault, perhaps, of the twentieth century novel is the depraved condition of the mind which it produces. By its stimulating power the novel gives an unnatural tone to the mind and brings it into such a condition that there can be no true appreciation for the more noble works of literature. The public libraries and the ones in many colleges testify to the pre-vailing order of affairs, since it is stated on good authority that nine-tenths of all the books which are taken from their shelves are fiction. A doctor of divinity of the Presbyterian Church confessed not long ago, that while he was visiting a neighbor-ing minister and helping to conduct evangelistic services, he found a set of historical novels in the library of his friend, and having become interested, he did not rest until he had read the entire series. " During that week," he said, " I read three of those novels and I had such a feverish interest in them that I purchased the entire set as soon as I returned home." In- 258 THE MERCURY. stances of such fascination are numerous among all classes, and they are destructive to true mental development. Again, the novel of sentiment, within whose pages vice and unnatural affections are so vividly portrayed, debases ten while it is helpful to one. By many it is argued that the immoral book is the most severely moral because it shows to the reader the blackness of evil. This is a fallacy which has always been urged concerning sin; it is the siren voice of the tempter. Such arguments have destroyed the virtues of a multitude. How shall their falsity be shown ? The philosophy of the poet in the lines so frequently quoted reveals the truth— " Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, As to be hated, needs but to be seen ; But seen too oft—familiar grows her face, We first endure; then pity ; then embrace." Throughout the body of this essay a spirit of criticism has been manifested toward the novel of of the last twenty years. In view of the facts such criticism is needed. But praise should be given to authors like Ralph Connor, who has written books with a definite purpose. However, it is very difficult to select really good novels from the great mass of fiction. An inquiry, with the purpose of obtaining a basis for the discrimination be-tween the good and bad in fiction, makes a most fitting con-clusion to our observations on this subject. Under what cir-cumstances is the novel of sentiment a safe agent ? Only when some noble purpose fires the writer; only when the author has some real message for humanity in his book. Sentiment con-nected with the fickle things of life becomes a demoralizing power. The average novel is dangerous from its lack of prin-ciple and purpose. Thus it must be said that this lack of prin-ciple in most of our sentimental novels characterizes them as unfit for a place in our libraries. THE MERCURY. 259 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. BY. H. F. SMITH, '07. ■** their greatness to the long struggle between France and England," says Thiers in his History of the Consulate and Empire, in speaking of the sale of Louisiana by Bonaparte to the United States. This statement contains two views in them-selves somewhat debatable: First, Whether the United States is indebted for its birth to France. Some think in all proba-bility we would have gained our independence without the aid of France. This could be so and yet the indebtedness not be lessened, for France did help us by the revival of spirits and by material means in the battle of Yorktown. Second, that we are indebted for our greatness to the long struggle between France and England, and not so much to ourselves, we shall en-deavor to establish. In so doing let us look at matters from the French side instead of the American side, and it is proper to do this, since it came to us through French statesmanship with little agency of our own. ' Except the Floridas, the thirteen original colonies with their western claims extended to the Mississippi. Colonization was for France a question of life or death. The French were es-pecially active in this line. As colonizers they far exceeded the English in brilliancy. They were more energetic, persis-tent and courageous; but when an eminent Frenchman had achieved anything great, he was so v?in or ambitious as to wish no other Frenchman to share his glory and would even in some cases war against a rival; furthermore he was not sus-tained by the home government. But the primary cause of lack of results was internal dissention, a constant warring among themselves. Had the energy which they directed toward one another been applied to the obstacles to be overcome, " they would have been consumed as a pathway through the Alps was eaten by the vinegar of Hannibal." The noble Champlain, the indefatigable La Salle, Cartier, Jberville, and Bienville, all figured in the establishment of set- 26o THE MERCURY. tlements in Louisiana. Men were kidnapped and sent over by the thousands. Women became so scarce that cargoes of marriageable girls, filles a la cassette, so-called from the little trunks in which each prospective bride carried the trosseau pro-vided for her by the government, were sent over and on arrival at the levee, were speedily and happily mated. But in a series of wars culminating in the defeat of Montcalm by Pitt and Wolfe combined, all of what were before known as the Colonies Western Claims, were lost and France had only New Orleans and the unexplored area west of the Mississippi. On account of these misfortunes France thought it best to-give up her scheme of colonization and develop home interests. So, desiring an ally in her weakness, she secretly ceded Louis-iana to Spain. This treaty was long kept secret and was much lamented. When the news was broken to the Creoles, the con-sternation was similar to that of the Acadians when they were entrapped. This stripping of France of her American posses-sions created a craving for revenge which was fully satisfied when she helped to tear the thirteen colonies from England, The Louisiana subjects remained true to the French in their hearts, although Spain ruled them generously. Napoleon now became almost absolute ruler with the title of First Consul. He had marvelous schemes of colonization and immediately set about to regain Louisiana. Godoy, who was the power behind the throne in Spain, fearing a probable attack by England, negotiated a treaty very advantageous to us, satis-factorily establishing boundaries, and the " right of deposit " at New Orleans. But when Spain became hopelessly dependent on France, Godoy resigned in despair. A treaty was then negotiated with Berthier, Bonaparte's agent, by which France was to have Louisiana and also the two Floridas while Spain was to have a kingdom of at least one million subjects taken from the French conquests in the northern half of Italy, over which was to be set the Duke of Parma, husband of the infanta, the daughter of Carlos IV. This treaty was negotiated Oct. I, 1800, and was considered by Mr. Adams the source of our title to Louisiana. The king of Spain did ■■nCMBlnMIMrlBwHtHMHMMIIl THE MERCURY. 26 r not as yet sign the treaty. All subsequent treaties were but modifications of this. After some time Napoleon sent his brother Lucien to Madrid to finish the treaty, but he did not succeed in obtaining the king's signature because Godoy who was recalled to power suc-ceeded in bribing him and thus baffling Napoleon. France then prepared to take Louisiana by force and would probably have succeeded if the San Domingo Revolution had not occur-red and blocked all the schemes. But on Oct. 15, 1802, Na-poleon through his agent secured the king's signature but only under most exacting conditions. The United States now comes upon the scene. A new Presi-dent, Jefferson, sat in the presidential chair. " Peace is our passion," was one of his favorite sayings. When it became known that France was dealing secretly with Spain for the retrocession of Louisiana, the West and South, who hated the Spaniards, became wild lest the French getting New Orleans would close the lower Mississippi to commerce and thus ruin them. Accordingly a new minister,' Robert R. Livingston, was sent by us in August, 1801. He was set against the supercilious, deceitful, and arch dissimulator, Talleyrand, who denied every-thing, with some truth, for as yet the king of Spain had not given his signature. But we received definite information from our minister in England. Jefferson thought that trouble was imminent. In 1802 Morales, the civil officer of New Orleans, abrogated the right of deposit, closing absolutely the Mississippi to the United States. This right had been enjoyed since the treaty of 1795. By that treaty it was to last for three years; but at the end of that time, the right was suffered to continue. Now that the right was taken away, the alarm in the West made war seem inevitable. But matters were somewhat calmed by the Spanish minister at Washington and the Governor of Louisiana disclaiming the action of Morales. Jefferson now hit upon a scheme to allay the turbulent ill-humor of the settlers; but in this plan he 262 THE MERCURY. builded far wiser than he knew. He sent a special envoyv James Monroe, to buy outright New Orleans and Florida, with #2,000,000 in hand. The French envoy at this point used his influence to get Napoleon to do away with the interdict of Morales. Monroe had definite instructions : I. He was to purchase, if possible, New Orleans and the Floridas, and he might expend up to #10,000,000 rather than lose the chance. 2. Should France refuse to sell even the site for a town, the old right of deposit as granted in 1795 was to be tried for. Should that fail, further instructions were to be awaited. Jefferson was de-termined to have peace, and showed great moral courage and strength of character in maintaining so steadfastly, in that war-like age, his noble attitude. But if Napoleon would not have wanted to sell Louisiana, no statesmanship or money on our part could have bought it. After they had first sold it to Spain, there was nothing but re-gret, which was not satisfied until negotiations for its retroces-sion were begun. We have seen with what zeal these were pushed. Now that it was in his grasp again could anything tear it from him ? We have said that Napoleon had marvellous schemes of col-onization. The building of a New France in Louisiana was one of them. But his plans were doomed to failure. His own campaign in Egypt and the project for the great invasion of India by Massena had first come to naught; now his schemes in the Occident were meeting with disaster. In San Domingo,, general and army had perished under the weapons of the blacks and the stroke of pestilence. The gloom of a mighty European struggle was ominously looming up on the national horizon. At this time occurred the incident in the drawing room of Josephine, when Napoleon, without any ceremony,, went up to the British ambassador and after an insulting con-versation said that he would have Malta or war. Joseph, Napoleon's other brother, first became apprised of Napoleon's intentions and then informed Lucien. Their cha-grin and astonishment were unequaled. Napoleon had deter- ' Pe.2±fj:#uvaiatf#IHwlBIMR^KHAB[lafl THE MERCURY. 263 mined to get funds to carry on his war with England, to dis-pose of the whole of Louisiana, quite independently of any de-sires or wishes on our part. We see now, as we said in the beginning, our acquisition of Louisiana, and hence our great-ness, depends on the- long struggle between England and France. Napoleon had determined to do this without in the least consulting the Chambers or people of France. In so doing he was risking exile or even his life. His brothers, therefore, were greatly concerned and determined to prevent him from doing this. They formed a plan by which Lucien was to see Napoleon first, and if possible break the ice or lead the conver-sation to Louisiana, and then Joseph was to appear; in this way Napoleon would not suspect their collusion. Lucien found Napoleon in his perfumed bath. He tried to broach the Loui-siana topic, but Napoleon always talked about something else. Finally it was time for Napoleon to leave his bath and they had not reached the Louisiana subject. At this point Joseph knocked for admittance. Napoleon said he would stay in his bath a quarter of an hour longer and had him admitted. Lu-cien whispered to him that he had not yet broached the sub-ject. A stormy interview followed, only Napoleon's shaggy locks and gleaming eyes were above water. Their tones reached a very excited pitch and Joseph rushed at Napoleon. And here occurred the wonderful bath-room incident. Napoleon was so angered that he raised himself from the water and then suddenly fell back, giving Joseph a good ducking. Lucien then followed with a quotation from the Aeneid, which drew the electricity from the cloud and discharged it harmlessly. Then when Joseph had withdrawn, followed an almost equally stormy interview with Lucien. But this only hastened the matter, Na-poleon being anxious to commence his war with England. Words cannot describe the labor and extent oi the work which Livingston accomplished. He won the admiration and respect of Napoleon and Talleyrand. One of his duties was to obtain payment of the spoiliation claims. He wrote a series of papers elaborately setting forth the expediency for France to 264 THE MERCURY. dispose of New Orleans and the Floridas to us. These, per-haps, won him the respect of Napoleon. Far in advance of other statesmen he even showed that it would be best for France to sell us that part of Louisiana north of the Arkansas River, which turned out to be the best part of the bargain, in order to separate Canada or the British'from her province. Then, too, he had to deal with Napoleon, who would accept no counsel, and the wily Talleyrand. Furthermore, he did not have very definite instructions. But, as said in the beginning, we would never have gotten Louisiana by any efforts of Livingston or anybody else, had not Napoleon desired to dispose of it. Now when Livingston had all but accomplished his task, Napoleon offered the whole of Louisiana, and Monroe came in over Livingston. Napoleon had another object in selling Louisiana. If he should retain it, England might, through her all-powerful navy, wrest it from him ; while .in selling it to America, he would make a power which one day would humble England. Marbois, the French agent, and Livingston and Monroe were on very friendly terms, which greatly facilitated matters. Of course our commissioners never dreamed of the whole of Lou-isiana, but Livingston agreed to take it, and three treaties were made: 1. As to the cession; 2. As to the price, and 3. As to the spoiliation claims. It cost us #1 5,000,000, minus the spoli-ation claims. As Jefferson was a strict constructionist, he really overstepped his power in his own opinion. A storm of opposition arose which was gradually overcome. We have not time to discuss this opposition or the results, but will merely state a few of the results: (l) it secured to us the port of New Orleans, the entire control of the Mississippi, and it doubled the area of the United States ; (2) it strengthened the bond of Union in the Southwest; (3) it gave new force to arguments for internal improvements; (4) finally, it weakened strict con-struction and encouraged the interpretation of the Constitution according to the spirit and not the letter. - THE MERCURV. 265 RELIGION AND SOLITUDE. SAMUBI. E. SMITH, '07. WHEN these terms are considered in the sense in which they are ordinarily used, there seems to be a certain impropriety in using them together. The average man thinks of religion as something tangible. Not infrequently is the re-mark made concerning someone that he has very little religion; •which statement would point to the fact that religion is often considered as a kind of veneer, which can be placed over the lives of men for the instruction and helping of those about them. How then can solitude, which implies a separation from men have any relation to religion ? The preceding idea of religion is a very superficial one, although it is widely accepted. Religion has a deeper significance ; it is as its root meaning implies "a thinking again;" it is potential rather than kinetic •energy; it is z;«planted and never /m«jplanted into an indi-vidual. Such is the quality that is to be considered in connec-tion with solitude. All religions have had their origin in solitude. Ab'ram was sent by God into the eastern wilderness ; Moses was alone with Jehovah on Sinai; David had much time for reflection while tending his flock; the prophets were children of the desert; John Baptist was a son of the wilderness; and the Saviour of the world had his forty days, and very often during his active ministry he felt the loneliness of the midnight hour. Thus, in •solitude, there sprang forth from the souls of these men the principles which are the foundation stones of Christianity. Mohammedanism had its beginning in a cave a few miles from Mecca. Mohammed left the busy city and retired to that lonely spot for days at a time. He said that it was there the angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him of heavenly things which he should make known to his fellow-men. The new faith spread over many a mile of sea and land until it reached the rock of Gibraltar, and the Moslem hordes were dreaded in the great cities of Europe. Such was the power of the religion which was conceived of in the lonely cave near Mecca. As 266 THE MERCURY. the beginnings of great religions are studied it is found that all burst forth in solitude. Solitude has been the conserving force of every religion. The lonely vigil, the contemplations on divine things, has done more than the preacher and sword in keeping alive the great religions of the world. The monk in his gloomy cell, who-spent almost countless hours in meditation and fervent devotion,, gave the impetus which made the Roman Church the mighty agent which it has been. Even the savage races of mankinJ can be called upon to furnish examples. Without a doubt the crude religion of the American Indian was kept up by the in-fluence of solitude. In his solitary journey through the forest he saw his religions in the rocks and trees and streams. Where the Indians were deprived of their solitude by the advent of the white man, almost immediately they lost their faith in the Great Spirit. Christianity, today, shows the relation between" religion and solitude. The greatest preachers are those who-spend the most time apart from the rush of the world; the most truly religious are those who have spent many an hour in solitude. When the lives of the great ministers of our country-are considered, it is found that nearly all of them were brought up in the country, where the youth is compelled to spend a great portion of his time with nothing to keep him company but the voices of nature. Indeed, it can be said that every re-ligion enjoins its devotees to spend a part of each day in soli-tude. -Thus religion and solitude are very closely'related, and one is inclined to speculate as to the grounds on which this relation) exists. There must be solitude before religion can manifest itself. To understand how this can be true it is imperative that religion should be defined with the greatest precision. Al-ready it has been shown that it is not a tangible thing. But the definition must not stop with this statement. Religion is intuitive; it is a divine essence rising up in the sub-conscious-mind ; it is a spark which shows unmistakably that man is in-deed a son of the Infinite. Thus the religious impulse of the lowest savage is just as strong as is the desire of the civilized 1.1,. ,11. THE MERCURY. 267 man to worship a supreme being. Religion, lying as it does in the sub-conscious mind of man, how can it manifest itself unless there is solitude during which it can lise up? But this spark of the Infinite, religion, which abides in the darkest chamber of the soul, is a peculiar thing. If it is continually-forced back by the authority of the conscious mind, it at length goes out forever, and man is left destitute of the greatest power of his existence. Such a state of affairs does not often come to pass, but it can happen. But how can one conceive of this infinite spark as perishing? It is merely a small part of the great Infinity, which may have a million finite parts lost, as it were by atrophy, and yet remain the same. If, on the other hand, the divine spark is allowed to rise into the conscious mind, it fires the imagination and intensifies every purpose of the man. In the light of this reasoning one can easily see that solitude is of vital importance to religion. Thus, as religion is considered in its true nature, it is seen that religion and solitude are supplementary to each other. Re-ligions have sprung forth in solitude and have been kept alive through its influence. To those accepting the superficial view of religion, many ot the inner workings are inexplicable. For example, they cannot account for the fact that many a man turns to religion on a sick bed, or when he is suddenly removed from the walks of men into the solitude of a wilderness. But those who appreciate its hidden meaning understand that such conduct is due to the divine element which has sprung up dur-ing the solitary hours. Such is the relation of these two terms made plain, which seem at the first glance to be so foreign to each other. 268 THE MERCURY. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A MILLIONAIRE. [Contributed for the Pen and Sword Ptize Essay contest.'] WHEN Columbus discovered this new world, he little knew that he was opening to the known world the greatest discovery of that or any other age. When three centur-ies later George Washington fought for the freedom of the colonies and, having succeeded in that, helped organize and guide the thirteen colonies on the road of progress, even he with his almost prophetic insight could not foresee what a won-derful future was in store for them. Now this lusty young giant stands with his feet firmly planted on the Isthmus of Panama, his bulk reaching from Ocean to Ocean, from Canada to the Gulf, a hand reached eastward in the Philippines, another extending into the frozen north, Alaska. Covered with farms and forests, factories and cities, honeycombed with mines, bound in the bonds of fraternal friendship by almost two hundred thousand miles of railroad, inhabited by a people the most pro-gressive and civilized of any living; is it any wonder that with all these advantages, natural and artificial, he has rapidly forged to the front in riches also. The natural advantages sur-pass those of all Europe. Now in the midst of this amazing national growth there has been a wonderful growth in private riches. When the country was young and poor the people were also poor. With the rapid settling of the West, the opening of coal and iron mines, the invention of the locomotive and the steamboat, the wealth of individuals rapidly increased. Yet up until the Civil War huge private fortunes might be counted on the fingers of one hand. But after the Civil War begins the period of inventive and industrial advancement, the age of the millionaire. Now a millionaire is a man who by inheritance, in-dustry and economy or by other means too numerous to men-tion, has become possessed of a million dollars or its equivalent. He may have come by this sum honestly or dishonestly but it is the responsibility which comes with this sum of money of which we will take notice. iPIMMIfBm^MW THE MERCURY. 269 Let us take the millionaire from boyhood. He is probably no brighter, no different in outside appearance than the average run of boys, yet by saving a dollar where the other man spends two, by judicious investment where money will the most surely and rapidly increase, these by the time he has reached manhood have made him a comparatively wealthy man. Of course no matter what his morals, his ability to earn money has been held up as a model to other struggling youths, his past has been re-hearsed by the Oldest Inhabitant, boyhood chums are proud to call him by name, so by his example many are willing to jise or fall. Here his responsibility as a moral factor begins. All the while his fortune is increasing until some day when he "takes stock" he finds he is a millionaire. If he is not vastly different from the majority of us, he begins to get a little more exclusive and distant. His old acquaintances gradually fall away and he seeks new friendships among men of his own business standing. If he is selfmade there are no doubt a few rough corners to be smoothed down and polished up in order that he may not appear at a disadvantage among his fellows. This process is usually one of marriage. All this time he is looming larger and larger in the public eye and more and more do newspapers devote space to his goings and comings. Indeed he has no privacy, his every act is under the scrutiny of a lynx eyed public. Now let us glance at a few calamities for which the million-aires of this country may be justly held responsible. There was a time when ability was the measure of success. The time also was when thrift was considered a virtue. Once our poli-tics were pure and uncorrupted. Equality between men as spoken of in the Constitution was not a joke. Honesty in business was a maxim. Human life was regarded as precious not many decades since. Divorce was synonymous with dis-grace. In a word the American people have seen the day when virtue, not money, was the goal of every honest man's ambition. Now all this is changed. Why ? Who are respon-sible for the change? When men like Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Seward, Lincoln, , I : , 27o THE MERCURY. Douglass and others thundered in our legislative halls, there was no thought of their money. The taste of the people had not been debauched by a bribed press, which by skillfully ad-vertising the merits of their customer and belittling the ability of his opponent render it almost impossible for a poor man to secure high office. For example look at our Senate. No men of tremendous personality and ability sit in seats made famous by their predecessors. No orators arise and hold their hearers spellbound by the power of their oratory. No indeed. Instead there sit in our once glorious Senate a body of men whose money has been the open sesame to halls to which their brains would have been found an insurmountable barrier. This ignoble condition is laid at the doors of the millionaires. Again, what has changed a people from a race thrifty and economical, always striving (and usually succeeding) to live within their income, into a people rushing, with a frenzy that amounts to madness almost, in pursuit of the Almighty Dollar? Isn't it the extravagance of the rich from whom the people model their deportment? Million-dollar homes, yachts, autos, balls, operas and the like have such an irresistible attraction for the majority ot people that it is only a man of the most in-flexible will power who can live his life undisturbed by the glitter of much gold. So overwhelming is the desire to possess the fixtures enumerated above that men throw all virtues and vices aside, in order-to secure them. Robbery, embezzlement, fraud and even murder are the agents used in extreme cases. The ostentation of the millionaire is responsible for this. In the magazines of the past year there have been a number of articles pro and con as to whether we have an American Aristocracy. Our Constitution says all men are created free and equal and for almost one hundred years this doctrine was held sacred and we prospered. But with the coming of the millionaire all that was changed. Believing that because they owned more valuable real estate and more gilt-edged bonds than their poor neighbor, they were of superior clay, our mil-lionaires began to ape the degenerate though genteel aristo-cracy of Europe. And those who have occasion and oppor- THE MERCURY. 271 tunity to observe say that they have aped not too wisely but too well. Forgetting that a cad is not a gentleman, that cul-ture, education and brains, not money, give grace and elegance in speech and deportment, some of our would be Aristocrats pose and strut with an affectation of superiority that would be insufferable, were it not so ridiculous. So many owners of >much money gladly take the responsibility for opening the breach of class between man and man. Joseph Folk, swept into the Governor's Chair by a tidal wave ■of reform votes, reached his position by the conviction of bood-lers in the city of St. Louis. When Folk began his now famous •investigation, whom did he find were the bribers, lawbreakers and corruptors of public morality ? They were rich men, the ■financial backbone of St. Louis. It is the same everywhere. The wealthy, the millionaires, have bought outright whole ■city councils, legislatures, judges and have even carried their infamous designs into the nation's lawmakers themselves. In-deed the venal character of our judges have caused the poor to give up all hope of justice when combatted by a man of wealth. And in business men eminently respectable, men above re-proach, lend their names and influence to schemes which, if attempted by an ordinary gold-brick speculator or bunco steerer, would result in that worthy rusticating behind the bars of some penal institution. But because there are millions in it, it is considered high finance to unload Lake Superior, U. S. Ship-building, Amalgamated Copper and Bay State Gas, on a public dazzled by the prospect of sure dividends which never come; and rendered trustful by an eminently respectable directorate. Year by year the man of the monster death has been feeding thousands of victims through the negligence and greed of corpor-ations. This number has increased so rapidly that the President thought it worthy of mention in his last message to Congress. It was high time; men in mills have been burned, maimed, crushed, torn and mutilated; either because the price of their work was so low that they had to constantly work under the •shadow of violent death, or because the owner, squeezing every last cent, refused to place safeguards around death-traps. So : 272 THE MERCURY. long as a mill, railroad or factory pays dividends, what matters it how many poor wretches are ground to fragments, providing: their death does not entail any extra expense on the firm P This criminal disregard of human life does not confine itself to-a purely impersonal matter like a mill or factory. It takes a form of amusement when reckless men crazed with the mad-ness of much money hurl giant automobiles through crowded city streets, at express-train speed. The desire to make a dol-lar was never better illustrated than in the case of a Western) railroad which, by removing a switch-light to save the oilr caused a wreck which hurled scores of human beings into eter-nity. Last but not least, look at the responsibility which million-aires bear to the gravest danger which threatens us at the pres-ent day. We will consider divorce, because the divorce evil1 had its inception among the moneyed class in this country. The home is the bulwark of all lands and all peoples. Where the home is sacred there courage, fidelity and all kindred vir-tues flourish. There also are found the brightest ideals. Ir* this country in the last ten years there has been a flood of divorces so overwhelming that almost all churches have taken* steps to check the evil. On the most trifling charges the bondr which should bind men and women for life, has been rudely snapped asunder, and all over the land we see the distressing; sight of homes desolated and families scattered. Beyond any doubt the millionaires must be held accountable for this. In> New York the so called Four Hundred has more divorces to-the square inch than any similar body of people in this country. Since New York sets the fashions and the rest of the country sheepishly follows, this fashion soon became the reigning fad" in Smart (?) Sets. Other States anxious to keep in the proces-sion enacted lax divorce laws until South Dakota made six-months residence equivalent to divorce. This is the greatest responsibility which rests on the shoulders of our millionaires. Now for a summing up of the misdeeds for which our moneyed men must some day suffer. Overlooking the fact that in our belief no man is fit for heaven who selfishly spends- .MM _ . THE MERCURV. 273 forty thousand dollars a year on himself, what have millionaires individually and collectively done ? They have corrupted our politics, made bare money the criterion of success, destroyed the desire for thrift and economy by lavish expenditure, en-couraged dishonesty directly and indirectly, made a joke of equality between man and man, have made divorce so common that it excites almost no comment, have encouraged race sui-cide and have by gifts of money, dishonestly earned, pauperized ■a portion of our people. They have lowered the ideals which made this republic possible. In a word, if the people have not degenerated under the paralyzing influence of huge fortunes, it is because the heart of the people beats time, in spite of all inducements to the contrary. If they have degenerated it is because of the examples cited above. And weighing all these facts, taking into consideration the good done by much money, we are led to believe, half unwillingly, that it would have been better to have held fast to the conservative principles which ruled in the days of our grand-fathers. A more contented, happy people we should certainly be in place of a nation of vulgar money-grabbers. We would not, of course, have been a world power, with a navy to sweep the seas; but we would have been more respected and feared than we are now. And last and most important, we would have been consistent to the high ideals of which we gave promise in our National Youth. But it is done, our course is changed, time alone can tell what the future has in store for us. As a body our millionaires have much to answer for. Yet setting our faces to the right, let us all in a simple, unassuming way do what destiny has marked for us and all will yet be well with the grandest republic on «arth. ■■■■■■Hi THE MERCURY Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class Matter VOL. XIII GETTYSBURG, PA., FEBRUARY, 1905 No. 8 Editor-in-chief C. EDWIN BUTLER, '05 Exchange Editor CHARLES GAUGER, '05 Business Manager A. L. DILLENBECK, '05 Asst. Business Manager JOHN M. VAN DOREN, '06 Associate Editors H. C. BRILLHART, '06 ALBERT BILLHEIMER, '06 H. BRUA CAMPBELL, '06 Advisory Board PROF. J. A. HIMES, LITT.D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M.D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D.D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Busi-ness Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORIALS. How swiftly the months pass ! One after another in endless succession they come and go, yea even with this issue the MERCURY adds another year to its history and closes forever the pages of another volume. If it has been any improvement over its predecessor, if it records with any reasonable precision the literary attainments of the student body, and if it is worthy of preservation in the archives of the College, then our labor has not been bought without a price and the high mark, to which we have been endeavoring to approach, has not been entirely missed. As the last line and the last word is written and the time for our departure is come, we go, but not until our faithful contri-butors, our patrons and loyal friends, than which there are none more loyal, are assured of our sincere gratitude and apprecia-tion. THE MERCURY. I 275 Without you our existence would have been impossible, with you the most happy relation has been enjoyed. If we have merited commendation the glory is to you, if censure, we are the chief offenders, and by the much importunity we invite all criticism to be placed to our credit. We bequeath not un-willingly to the associate and assistant staff a very generous portion of this rich legacy—if it may not improperly be so termed. That the termination of the close relation as a staff and as friends of the staff has inevitably come we regret but at the same time remember the sweet incense which the memory of the past year will send so often floating through our minds. This alone is reward enough and for our efforts a princely re-compense. Not even the trained minds of philosophers would be able to divine the origination of the .mysterious ideas and current rumors which are frequently promulgated without authority or xredence. For the benefit of those who may not know it, we announce that a few philosophic prodigies have been secured and are really matriculated with the student body, though the MERCURY has been unfortunate enough not to have had the honor to publish any of their esoteric cogitations, and even they would not perhaps venture a solution. The hypothesis nevertheless is agitated and really believed by some that the MERCURY will cease to be the organ of the College Literary Societies ; will cease to be a medium for the publication of the Literature of merit in the College; will cease to print the different prize essays and preserve them for future reference; in fine will cease to exist after this issue. We have said, just where such incongruous fancies first originated seems to be somewhat of a mystery. The claims are unfounded from the start but from some inexplicable cause they have seized many of the students. As our college publica-tions, unfortunately, are wholly student papers their existence of course depends on the pleasure of said body. The position we presume to maintain with regard to the continuance, dis-continuance or uniting with our weekly we will not define here 276 THE MERCURY. for obvious reasons. The decision of such a grave problem should receive the careful, thoughtful and deliberate attention of the members of our literary societies. In any event the staff deems it advisible to lay down here the present status of affairs for the benefit of those who are in-tensely interested and not now of the student body. Financially the Journal is by no means embarrassed. If there be an en-cumbrance at all, it will be insignificant. Generally a surplus over and above current expenses has been handed down from manager to manager, if this indicates anything. Relerring to the numbers of the magazine now on file, this volume is not believed to be inferior to its antecedents, yet we are not pre-sumptuous enough to flatter ourselves with its superiority. Who have "fought and bled" for it in the years past have writ-ten us very encouraging letters which have been voluntary contributions on their part. Generally speaking, we do know the students of the College have not supported the magazine by liberal literary contribu-tions but we believe since many other interests which formerly slumbered are now throbbing with life and activity, the MER-CURY will also within a comparatively short time receive its due apportionment of interest and enthusiasm. EXCHANGES. With this issue of THE MERCURY the "Ex-man's" qurll will be handed down to his successor. We desire to take this our last opportunity to extend our farewell greeting to all of our exchanges. Realizing that criticism, to be essential to good work, must be both appreciative and corrective, it need not necessarily be PERFECT criticism—we have endeavored to make this the cri-terion for our criticisms. If we have given offense by any un-just remarks, we ask pardon; if not and you have profited by our suggestions, give us the praise. If we have praised you and done it honestly, yours is the satisfaction, ours is the ap-preciation. In either case, believe us to have done it in a kindly spirit of helpfulness. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. FURNITURE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames. Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. * Telephone No. 97. I3C. 23. H3en.a.er 37 Baltimore St., Gettysburg, Pa. THE STEWART & STEEN CO. College Engravers cund (Printers 1034 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa. MAKERS AND PUBLISHERS OF Commencement, Class Day Invitations and Programs, Class Pins and Buttons in Gold and Other Metals, Wedding Invitations and Announcements, At Home Cards, Reception Cards and Visiting Cards, Visiting Cards—Plate and 50 cards, 75 cents. Special Discount to Students. A Complete Encyclopedia of Amateur Sport Spal&ing's Official Athletic Almanac FOR 1905. EDITED BY J. E. SULLIVAN (Chief of Department of Physical Culture, Louisiana Purchase Exposition)- Should be read by every college student, as it contains the records of all college athletics and all amateur events in this country and abroad. It also contains a complete review of Olympic Games for the official report of Director Sullivan and a resume of the two days devoted to sports in which savages were the only contestants, in which it is proved conclusively that savages are not the natural born athletics we have heretofore supposed them to be. This is the first time in which the athletic performances of savages have ever been systematically recorded. This is the largest Athletic Almanac ever published, containing 320 pages. Numerous illustrations of prominent athletes and track teams. Price 10 Cents. For sale by all newsdealers and A. G. SPALDING 6 BROS. New York, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Boston, Buffalo, St. Louis, San Francisco, Montreal, Canada ; London. England. Send for a copy of Spalding's Athletic Goods Catalogue. It's free. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. BEGKER & GOUINS CHAMBEBSBUBG ST., Dealers in Beef, Veal, Lamb, Pork, Sausage, Pudding, Bologna, Hams, Sides, Shoulders, Lard, Prime Corned Beef. SEFTON & FLEMMINGS LIVERY Baltimore Street, First Square, Gettysburg, Pa. Competent Guides for all parts of the Battlefield. Arrangements by-telegram or letter. Lock Box 257. J. I. MUMPER. 41 Baltimore St., Gettysburg, Pa. The improvements to our Studio-have proven a perfect success and! we are now better prepared thaw ever to give you satisfactory work- You will find a full line of Pure Drugs and Fine Stationery at the People's Drug Store Prescriptions a specialty. 50 YEARS' EXPERIENCE E.C. TAWNEY Is ready to furnish Clubs and! Boarding Houses with . . . - Bread,Rolls,Cakes,Pretzels,ete At short notice and reason-able rates. 103 'West Middle St., Qettysburir TRADE MARKS DESIGNS COPYRIGHTS AC. Anyone sending a sketch and description may quickly ascertain our opinion free whether an invention is probably patentable. Communica-tions strictly contldontial. Handbook on Patents sent free. Oldest agency for securing patents. Patents taken through Munn & Co. receive special notice, without charge, in the Scientific American. A handsomely illustrated weekly. Largest cir-culation of any scientific Journal. Terms, $3 a year; four months, (L Sold by all newsdealers. MUNN & Co.361Broadway- New York Branch Office. 625 F St., Washington, D. C. Shoes Repaired —BY— J. H- BR^E^, 115 Baltimore St., near Court House. Good Work Guaranteed. J. W. BUMBAUGH'S City Cafe and Dining Room Meals and lunches served at short notice. Fresh pies and sandwiches-always on hand. Oysters furnished! al year. 53 Chambersburg- St. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. EAGLE HOTEL Rates $2.00, $2.50 and $3.00 per day. MAS A CAPACITY OF 400 GUESTS —-^ GEO. F. EBERHART, PROPR. s.s. Dealer in Picture Frames of All Sorts. Repair work done promptly. will also buy or exchange any second-hand furniture 4 Ohambersburg St., GETTYSBURG, PA. Alumni, Students, and Friends Your Subscription is Needed SEUD IT X3ST. If You are in arrears with your subscription kindly cor-respond with the Business Manager. Our Microscopes, Microtomes, Laboratory Glass-ware, Chemical Apparatus, Chemicals, Photo I Lenses and Shutters, Field Glasses, Projection I Apparatus, Photo-Micro Cameras are used by 1 the lcaiiingLab-__^__ oratories and I Govor'nt Dep'ts» IKS Round the World | SCOPES Catalogs ' Free Bausch & Lomb Opt. Co. ROCHESTER, N. Y. [New York Chicago Boston Frankfurt, C'yJ i PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. Geo. E. Spacer, PIANOS, ORGANS, MUSICAL MERCHANDISE Music Booms, - York St. Telephone 181 GETTYSBXJBG C. B. KITZMILLE,R DEALER IN HATS, CAPS, BOOTS AND DOUGLAS SHOE.S. MeB^o^^.ing' Gettysburg Pa. h. M. AWJTEMAN, Manufacturer's Agent and Jobber of Hardware, Oils, paints and (jueeqsware Gettysburg, Pa. THE ONLY JOBBING HOUSE IN ADAMS COUNTY W. F. Codori,. -^DEALER \N<*r Beet Ftork, limb, tul writ §m&®$& ePC#MAi RATES TO CLUBS — York Street, Gettysburg, Pa. -■ft fI Bill