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Issue 45.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1986. ; Vocation Ministry A Sociological View of Commitment Religious and Secular Institutes Imagination Within the Act of Faith Volume 46 Number 2 March/April, 1986 REvIEw FOR REI,IGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at'Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REVIEW EOt~ REI.IGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, M O © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELtGIOOS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $ I 1.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS: P.O. 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Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY I0010. The Vowed Life in a Secularized World Desmond O'Donnell, O M.I. Father O'Donnell's earlier "Focused Freedom: To Someone in Formation"appeared in the issue of January/February, 1985. He is a General Councillor for his community and, though often on the road, may be addressed at its Generalate: Oblati di Maria; C.P. 9061; 00100 Roma Aurelia, Italy. ouring out a plethora of easy answers to complex questions does not bring us any closer to permanent solutions. Neither is it helpful to offer a new one-word solution for everything taking place in the Church at this time. And yet secularization might be a useful umbrella-word ~,to explain much, of what is taking place both, to the Church and to the vowed life today. If it is in fact found to be a satisfactory seminal term, it will also help us to focus rather than to diffuse our response. It can aid the process of discernment. Situating the Question The good news about our way of life is that a deep spiritual renewal is being experienced by many and that the importance of prayer is being rediscovered. There has been a notable updating in theology and real--if not always successful--attempts to build authentic faith-communities. There also is a growing freedom and practice of discernment about our apostolates and about our private lives as well. There is other news which does not' seem so obviously good, such as the large numbers who left us, the small numbers joining and the increasing median age. In some places, community life is moving towards becoming politely-shared space, enclosing many unspoken polarizations about deep realities among us. Authority has tended to go from heavy-handedness to 161 "i69/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 ¯ laissez-faire and so consensus about anything of serious communal signifi-cance is often hard to come by. Governments gradually move in to take over our institutions, either because we have chosen to let them or because they have helped themselves. The degree to which all this is related to secularization is disputable, but related it is, and I will try to show why this is so. Before we go into this, may I look at some more personal experiences of vowed people in most countries today--experiences which I think are related to secularization even more deeply than those mentioned above. Many of us have been through more or less severe vocational question-ing of some kind in recent years, because the rationale of our way Of life did not seem capable of answering the questions popping up all around us. Maybe it was triggered off by simply seeing one of our now-married novitiate companions do equally good apostolic work and do it well. It may also have been that we grew tired of mobility, or just vaguely short of motivation for the continual questioning of our chosen lifestyle. Many of us have found some new difficulties in prayer, as God seemed to withdraw and leaqe the world to evil pebple. Or maybe the emergence of so many small friendship-groups has left us out in the cold called "com-munity life." The variety of new prayer-forms and so many seminars, have a way of increasing our desire for some stability and wondering if it might not be found elsewhere, In response to'all of this, many felt the growing ambiguities and endless updating led them to personal selectivity in belief and practice. Others moved to the edge~of the storm by choosing some form of fundamentalism or an atheism' which expressed itself in mere social horizontalism while still remaining in the ~3ongregation. Some of us chose to becom~ left-wing unloving critics of the present and others moved to become right-wing uncritical lovers of the past, as the middle ground grew unpopular and became such a solitary exprience. These deeper and more personal phenomena~ are related to modernization and secularization too, as I will try to demonstrate. And so the response to these experiences, might first be to understand the meaning of modernization and the resultihg secularization-experience. Modernization The amount of knowledge in the world continues to increase because of constant research and it is rapidly diffused through very efficient communicatioh systems. Modernization is what happens when the knowledge is~ transferred into technology, which then has ~increasing and unforeseeable effects on economic growth, on social systems and on political decisidns. Inevitably the individual too is affected in his or her The Vowed Life in a Secularized World / 165 values, attitudes, beliefs and behavior. Most of us remember the discovery of plastic 'in the 40s, of the transistor in the 50s, of computers in the 60s, of microcomputers in .the 70s and now we observe technology move forward into genetic engineering in the 80s. All of these have affected people and systems in serious and often irreversibl~e ways. This march of modernization shows no signs of slowing down and often appears to have its own~self-propelled, autonomous momentum. It took one hundred twelve years for photography to go from discovery to commercial product, fifty-six for the telephone, thirty-five for the radio, fifteen for radar, twelve for television and only five for transistors to find their way from the laboratory into the market. Again, as each of these products comes on the market, it touches--and in the case of genetic engineering, tampers with human nature and human systems in often lastingly significant ways, It is with the human effects of modernity that we are concerned and these are sometime.s good, sometimes evil, and often ambiguous. Moder-nity can lead to human community and comfort,-.or to pollution and poverty for millions; it can facilitate or disrupt human values; it can enrich °a poor country or steal its unrenewable sources of energy; it can help in the diffusion of truth or of lies through the media and it can pass on productive information or child,pornography. In each of our .lives it can .make the superfluous become the convenient, ~the convenient become the necessary and the necessary become the indispensable, thus changing human nature itself. ~ Peter Berger's definition summarizes, all this: "Modernization is the transformation of the world, brought about by the technological innova-tions of the last few centuries having economic, social and political dimen-sions all immense in scope." With many otherwriters he goes on to outline the many very,personal effects resulting from the economic, social, political ones in his definition, Secularization is a very significant one of these. Secularization It is important to stress that we are not talking here about secularism which is a theory, an ideology denying the existence of God or at least his action and relevance in the world. Nor is secularization .to be equated with atheism when in fact it might be the very opposite experience for many who are desperately trying to hold on toGod who seems to be withdrawing from them. And certainly it would be simplistic to think that secularization is the same as materialism, Secularization is claimed to.be more a fact than a theory, a reality more than an ideology, a process taking place more than.a point of view. While it "i64/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 can lead to secularism, materialism, or atheism, it is in fact none of these. Some religious people find words like secularism, materialism and atheism convenient labels for what is happening in the Church or in_the vowed life today and it may be a description in some cases, but it is not addressing the deeper and more pervasive reality we call secularization. Secularization manifests itself when explanations of reality previously attributed to mythical or religious sources, are shown to have .rational ones, as when the~scientist takes over from the witch doctor, the. psychologist assumes some previously priestly functions or when a technological discovo ery,disintegrates a theological theory. A group of Animists in Java lost their gods a few years ago when a new seismographic station began to foretell and explain volcanic eruptions more accurately than the local holy man, The Diak people of Borneo lost their fear of and their belief in their forest gods when bulldozers razed the jungle. For some people, the study of a good theology of providence could have a similar effect. These people are experiencing secularization. In a similar way, many modern Christians first felt uncomfortable and then felt their faith questioned by a good church-history book, an accurate TV documentary, a skilled psychiatrist, two men on the moon, an old law proven pointless, a church authority found unworthy, a symbol disappear-ing or a culture collapsing~-all more or less the result of modernization. The resulting discomfort and questioning within the individual person, is close to the secularization-experience. It is an experience of no longer having one overall reference-point--a feeling of increasing disintegration. If you are experiencing that somehow God is withdrawing because religious explanations are increasingly less necessary, that the quantum of the secular is increasing at the expense of the sacred, that maybe~ God is now less necessary as a postulate for human living or that because of modern evidence your longheld experience of God is no longer a comfort-able one, you are probably undergoing the pressure of the secularization-experience. This is not a decisionnor even a desire to become an atheist; even if it could lead to it. Nor is it necessarily the result of "giving in" to materialism or to less-than-moral behavior, admitting, of course, that both of these can easily increase its momentum. If you are not undergoing the experience of secularization, then it is still important to uiaderstand it, because most of the peopl~ you are trying to evangelize, especially in the developed world, are probably experiencing it. It is from this fact that the present great missiological question arises--how announce the Good News of Jesus Christ to a secularized world? Moderni-zation and its result in secularization are now recognized as cultures, new cultures, ever-changing cultures and it is at this point that we recognize the The Vowed l_Jfe in a Secularized World / 165 break between faith and culture today. Thus for the modern person, secularization is a feelin~ of dissonance in .trying to hold together what is happening in the world and what the Bible seems to say about God's providence or what is often said in churches and what is taking place in real life around us. It results in discomfort with one's present experience of God. Any naive belief in the immediacy of God will be challenged .by secularization and modernity. Old fashioned god-words and some ecclesiastical jargon will appear increasingly irrelevant to sincere secularized persons everywhere. Secularization can be defined as the grad-ual disappearance of mythical and religious legitimations or explanations of society. Living with the ambiguities of the secularization-experience leads to a temptation to take refuge in fundamentalism which can be described as believing more and more in less and less in order to feel secure, or in agnosticism which is a lazy neither-nor ~land excusing one from the strug-gles, doubts and decisions which are part of any faith. Let us now try to analyze the challenge and opportunity which secularization offers the vowed life. The Vowed Life For the vowed life, secularization can be a deep call and a deep grace. Lumen Gentium calls us to enrich, challenge, encourage and stimulate the Church by our lives and our action (Par. 44). This is all the more reason why we must study, understand and give a gospel response to seculariza-tion, to a secularized world. Because secularization implies change at so many levels of human existence, we should recall that sociologists stress the vital importance of internal consistency for all groups in time of change. This internal consis-tency- our basic authenticity measured against what we claim to be--is now a matter of survival. Institutions which lack internal consistency are likdy to disappear in tim~s of rapid change, especially if their external image is also unclear. For these reasons, we who profess the vowed life must address the phenomenon and the grace of secularization. May I suggest that there are five areas where God might well be speaking to us in all this? ~ansmitting a New Integrating Presence of God Secularization, as we saw, forces us to find a new presence of God, a presence which permeates, integrates, energizes for action and which brings human and divine values into secular realities. Karl Rahner spoke of the vowed woman as having a profession which has no justification from the "166 / Review for :Religious, March-April, 1986 secular point of view even if she performs many useful secular tasks. What then might her iprofession and that of vowed men be? It is surely--as it always was--to give or rather to share with people their own experience of God. This is a demanding task; it demands that we each have such an experience first of all. We will have to pass on "so.mething which we have seen with our own eyes, that we have watched and touched with our own .hands" (1 Jn l:l'b) and it will be vital that "in Christ we speak as men of sincerity, as envoys of God and in God's presence" (2 Co 2:17), It seems to be a call to discover and lead in a new integrating mysticism as this quote from John Macquarie expresses: ¯ It is interesting to note that Bonhoeffer, though he advocated a 'worldly' Christia°nity, made it 'perfectly explicit that the kind of w0rldline~ss that he had in mind has nothing to do with the immersion in"material pursuits and enjoyments that we commonly associate with the "worldly' man. Bon-hoeffer makes a :statement that ought to be'pondered by those who invoke his support for a thoroughly secularized Christianity. He says: 'In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality'of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other The reality of God discloses itself only by setting me entirely in the reality of the world, and when I encounter the reality of the world, it is always already sus-tained: accepted and reconciled in the reality of God.' There is a dialectic here that takes us beyond any naive world affirmation, just as it rules out any false religiosity. God,is met in the world, but the world is known in its reality only as Grd's world? Back in 1970, Karl Rahner wrote: Maybe we [he was addressing his own Society] ourselves have been super-f! cialized by the consumer society. Maybe we ourselves have not come to any original experience of God. Maybe we have not taken .the .trouble to let others participate in the mystical technique leading.to such an expe-rience. If all that is the case, we have of course, no alternative but to take refuge in a secular horizontalism which tries to interpret and live our own lives on the same level . The coming thing is the spiritual dimension, the experience of God, the taste of eternity no matte~ how valid our social involvement (with ~regard to which we have a terrible'lot to make up). The coming thing is sober peace, in face of all the absurdity of existence, the absurdity which no social involvement will spirit away. That rather bour-geois- chequered spirituality which was found--to outward appearances at least--in the orders before the first world war and which influenced reli-gious life too much~ may belong to the past and the young may say rightly that it is useless.from the start. But a new spirituality in religious life and in the Church will be assured of a real future. Whatever form this new spirituality will have, it must surely~be a very 7he Vowed life in a Secularized Worm personal "faith in the Son of God who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake" (Ga 2:20) and a very integrating one, enabling us to "bring everything together~ under Christ" (Ep 1:10). This--it seemsto me--is the most serious challenge which secularization puts to vowed communities today. Integration Through Reflection As we saw, one of the deepest effects of secularization is disintegration. There is no longer any one overarching human legitimation for the think-ing person today. We, even as vowed people, stand and struggle side by side with the modem person in loneliness, doubts, fears' and feelings of disinte-gration. We too are among the "new poor." The third world is closer to us than we think; it is inside our shirts especially if we have already chosen the still greater poverty of fundamentalism with iis moral, dogmatic and spirit-ual naivet6 and ~elitism. We are, however, expected to .stand with our fellow Christians in seren-ity and in a "peace which the world cannot give" (Jfi 14:27). We stand with them in a spirit of confidence too, as Jesus did with his disciples, when for him and for them everything seemed lost; "I have told you all this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but be brave; I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:23). Only a life of prayer can discover and sustain this peace, this joy in the midst of a secularizing experience. Jesus led a busy life and had constant calls on his service, but we find the source of his power in the actual physical withdrawal, to be with God: "His reputation continued to grow and large crowds would gather to hear him and to have their sickness cured but ~he would always go away to some place to be alone and pray" (Lk 15:16). The form of prayer for today would seem to be what Macquarie calls "prayer as thinking";5 it is a prayer.which reflects on what God is doing in the world more than on what he,has done in scriptural times, without of course neglecting this latter. It is a praye~: which keeps our spiritual faculties alive. All reality, especially fast-changing or disintegrated reality~ is opaque and this is especially true in the m6dern world when ambiguity is part of life everywhere. We need to sharpen our spiritual eyesight to see what Bonhoffer described as the "holy depths" of.things and events. It is not so much a prayer "giving us time to refuel, but a prayer'which gives us increased awareness for better and deeper involvement and which motivates us for the human task of offering the world salvation from '~'everything that oppresses the.human person especially sin and the .evil one" (EN n. 9). Lest we ourselves succumb to the burnout of compulsive activity or the dropout of ceaseless seminars this life of "prayer as thinking" 1611/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 seems essential. . A long time ago, Christopher Dawson observed: "Men today are divided between those who have kept their spiritual roots and lost their contact with the existing order of society, and those who have preserved their social contacts and lost their spiritual roots." Could this be a descrip-tion of vowed persons today? Relativization of All Reality ~ I read somewhere that the Talmud says we will be held accountable to God for all the legitimate pleasures we have not enjoyed. When all this is said and dqne, there still remains the fact that so many of life's legitimate-- or even essential--pleasures are denied millions today, in even our devel-oped world. There also stands the fact that "we have not here a lasting city" (Heb 1:3:14) ahd that we possess only the certaintY of Christian hope: "We have a sure hope and the promise of an inheritance that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away because it is being kept for you in the heavens" (1 P 3:4). One part of our mission is to keep.Christian hope clearly before people and thus relativize reality, both good and evil. Secularization or not, the human person has a tendency to appropriate goods, material and spiritual, to hold them closely and even to be possessed by them. Our lives if they are lived in the simplicity and detachment which we .profess, will relativize the enjoyment or deprivation of material things and remind others that t.hey are to be shared: "Warn those who are rich in this world's goods, that they are not to look down on other people and not to set their hopes on money which is untrustworthy but on God, who out of his riches, gives us all that we need for our happiness. Tell them that they are to do good and be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share"(l Tm 6:17,18). We can do this "telling" by our lifestyle, before we do it in words, the opportunity for which may never come our way. We also speak to the poor enabling them to relativize their desire for justice and to recall that while they struggle for their rights, there isan opportunity for growth in their poverty too. "Listen, my dear brothers, it was those who are poor accord, ing to the world that God chose to be rich in faith and to be heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him" (Jm 2:5). Modernization has created so many who are enduring forced celibacy through broken marriages or infidelity and who are still avalanched by the media's sexual imperative. We can support these people even without speaking, because our lives experience the same yearnings and our minds are exposed to the same urgings and yet we struggle successfully on, with-out the assurance of genital involvement. But all this depends on our Vowed ~'fe in a Secularized World / 169 manifesting balanced and happy personalities, as people who have inte-grated their relationships and their sexuality in a healthy way. For secular-ized persons--many of whom suffer from confused psychosexuality--we can be supportive signs of survival and of fulfilled happiness through our lived celibacy. Individualism is a mark of the secularized person, coming very often as it does from hurt, insecurity and alienation. This can be so in our own communities too. The insecure person lives ambivalently between a desire to be accepted through cooperation and a fear of being dominated by submission. This is part of the disintegrating experience of modern life. If alienation is the pathology of our age, individualism is one of its clearest manifestations. By our vow of obedience lived out and seen not as "doing what one is told" but as discernment of what is best leadership in and through a caring community, we have much to say to the modern person about finding his or her own best expression of self in a confused world. It is even humanly true that "none of us is as wise as all of us." The secularized person, tempted to extreme individualism needs to rediscover this; for the good of ¯ families, local groups and for national and international survival, o Process.and Pilgrimage , It is clear that we vowed people will not be on the edge of the human experience of secularization and its consequential feeling of disintegration much longer. We share with men and women everywhere their search for stability and for lost certainties as the river of secularization tries to move all of us up, down and forward. To an extent, we found ourselves insulated from the human condition until recently, but no longer. Even if it were. not through necessity, we know that if we are to hold conversation with and to evangelize the world, we must pitch our tents within it; as God did. We must be prepared to pilgrimage our way once again and enter into the human process which we'should never have deserted. The fact that we accept this, will help so many others who find it difficult and who drop out into drugs or other forms of anomie and despair. Again, our vows lived authentically prepare us for the pilgrimage, ready us to keep moving, because we have publicly professed not to hold on, not to settle and not to be held. By our lived poverty, we refuse to be possessed by any material consideration and by our vows of chastity we also refuse to be possessed by ahy relationship. Obedience enables us to keep listening and looking at the map of moving events with eyes of faith and lbve. To quote Karl Rahner again from the same article: "The concrete future of Christianity, the Church and religious life remains largely hidden 17{I / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 from us . what historical and social form the Church and ecclesial Christianity will take in the future, remains largely hidden from us., we have to fight for victory without.a prognosis of victory" (p. 136). He was not° referring tothe effects of secularization at that time, but what he wrote is truer than ever now, and it puts us side by side and hopefully hand in hand with the modern man or woman as they endure the sec-ularization- experience. Interdependence and Involvement Our communities are not islands of isolated peace in a troubled uni-verse. No, they are sources from which we. emerge to makea more human and so a more godly world. Our vows enable us to do this; having freed us from, they also free usforLin a liberating way. ~',~ Our vow of poverty truly lived, makes us free for involvement. Because we have nothing to lose, we can carry the struggle for justice .further and when our lives are skilled in dispossession, we are not open to criticism from the rich~whose lives we question for the sake of the poor. Our good news for the poor has to be in some way perceived as bad news for the rich and they will readily point to any beam or bank account in our own lives if these are obvious. Only 'by relinquishing the power of possessions .can we demonstrate our competence to communicate freedom. Our vow of chastity makes us free to keep moving and to freely ask even our close friends: "Do you want to go away too?" (Jn 6:67). Again, we can take risks which married people with concern for their,families and for each other cannot be asked to take. Obedience, as we saw, offers us a freedom to live out a ,radar-like listening to God's word in the world around us. Truth comes only with listening :and discernment and these take. place best among a group of sharing people~ Obedience is .a public statement, that we bind ourselves to listen within and are missioned by a community through its leaders. This offers a model~for others to do the same in the Church. The quality of relationships and of concern for anyone at a distance suffers greatly in this time of disintegrative secularization, as each one looks to his or her own very personal success or survival. Nations do the same. This di-ama is, played out on a smaller scale every day in the average city too. Surely our communities have something important to say to people in this bleak situation. In our public interaction with one another° and for those who visit our communities,.the prayer ot~Jesus for his whole Church must tend towards .fulfillment: "_May they all be one, Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me" (.In 17:21). The Vowed Life in a Secularized Worm / 1.71 In' conclusion, I submit that we are approaching the ideal today, as we find the vowed life standing less at a point of comfortable distance from the world and more at a point of painful dialectic with it. At this point it must be ready to say a confirming yes or a challenging no--and do this by its life and activity--to all the results of secularization. To quote .the Anglican writer, Macquarie again: Here it must be said with regret that the trouble with some of our less responsible contemporary Christian secularizers is that they have taken up the ideal of holy worldliness, but seem to have promptly forgotten the adjective and reduced the ideal to a worldly concern tout court. They tell us that Christianity is a purely secular movement, their ideal of the good life seems scarcely distinguishable from the one that is so assiduously propagated by Madison Avenue, and the more extreme among them, in their horror at any supposed 'withdrawal' from the world, come near to advocating that the time has arrived to replace "poverty, chastity, and obedience with affluence, promiscuity, and autonomy as the highest goals for human life, or even as (he new evangelical counsels! The s!ogan for all this'is that w'e sho.uld 'say yes' to the world. But I do not think thata simple world affirmatioa will either help us to find God in the world or help the world to know his presence.6 - ~ Indeed, if we are to follow the words of Lumen Gentium, Chapter VI, par 44, the vowed life must say yes and no even to the Church itself. NOTES ~Facing Up to Moflernity, New York: Basic Books, 1977, 2John Macquarie, New Directions in Theology Today, Vol. III, p. 67, Philadelphia: 1981. 3"The Future of Religious Life" in Supplement to Doctrine and Life, Dublin: Domini-can l%_blications, May, 1972. 4The Greek' word anakephalasiosastai~is used in secular literature to express the con-ceptof many different ideas being subsumed under one theme. 5John Macquarie, Paths in Spirituality, Chapter 3, SCM Press, 1980, 6Op tit 2, p. 66. Vocation Ministry: Continuing the Invitation of Jesus Thomas E. Clark, ES.C. Brother Clark, Associate Vocation Director for the Chicago Province of the Christian Brothers, sees his work to be very much a ministry. This article is based on a presenta-tion he gave to the faculties of his congregation's schools in the Chicago area. He may be addressed at his .office: 200 De La Salle Drive; Romeoville, lllinois 60441. y ~vork 'as a full'time vocation minister for my community has often given me the opportunity to speak with young people, both individually and in groups, about the experience of being called by the Lord. My message to them is nearly identical to that of hundreds of other vocation ministers: each of us is called by God, each of us has a vocation, and it is up to each of us to discover what that vocation is. Onthe surface, the message seems clear, theologically sound, and understandable. However, what I have become aware of recently is th~at, in the two years I have been deliver-ing the message that each of us is called, the feeling with which I have been delivering that message has sometimes left something to be desired. Rather than offering a challenge to the young people with whbm I speak--a ch~allenge to discover a meaningful and significant way of living the Gospel ¯ in today's world--I've often felt that I am offering instead an apology for the choices I have made. It is as though the challenge of the Gospel might be just a little too naive for today's world, and to invite anyone to take it seriously may seem foolish and unrealistic. And even more foolish might be the invitation of young people to consider religious life and Church ministry as real options for themselves, ways of living out the Gospel challenge. I would certainly be out of touch with reality, I sometimes feel,-if I were to think that these people sitting in front of me--healthy, normal, 172 Vocation Ministry American young adults might consider religious life and Church ministry as serious-options for themselves. Thus when I speak with them, my invitation is sometimes clouded over with justifications ("I'm here today simply to make you aware of some choices I've made"), or sprinkled with "escape clauses" ("Any career you choose can be ministry"). The'underlying message, of course, is "I don't really expect you to consider any of these things for yourself." (In citing the above examples, of justification and "escape clauses," I do not mean to imply that there is no place in vocation ministry for "awareness education" or for a broad understanding of minis-try and community. On the contrary, these two approaches are essential to vocation ministry. They do not, however, constitute the whole of vocation ministry, and are sometimes used to avoid its more challenging aspect: that of invitation.) In speaking with a number of religious who are involved in vocation ministry, I have discovered that they, too, have much the same experience at times. Put simply, there are times when I do not believe there are any people who would be open to considering religious life as an option for themselves. Such an attitude is easily communicated to others, though it may not be directly stated,'and has the effect of turning away anyone who may consider religious life as a personal option. Further, a religious who holds such an attitude could never extend a confident and joyful invitation to an individual to consider religious life. It is my belief that such an attitude will keep religious not just from extending invitations to people to consider religious life, but on a deeper and more fundamental level, will keep us from fulfilling the responsibility we have to call people to build the kingdom of God. It is this invitation to the kingdom which is at the heart of vocation ministry, and which I wish to explore in more detail. In doing so, I shall consider several related topics: the model of invitation which Jesus gives us in the Gospels; vocation ministry as a means of living out that model; the philosophy of vocation ministry which has emerged in recent years; and finally, the challenge which we religious have been given in regard to vocation ministry. Jesus: Model of Invitation A simple perusal of the Gospels will show that Jesus had no hesitation about inviting peopl~ to follow him. His invitations are clear and concise. There is no misunderstanding what he means; the challenge is laid out on the table and nothing is hidden: Come after me and I will make you fishers of men (Mr 5:19). Follow me (Mr 9:9). Come and see (Jn 1:39). 1"/4/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 While such invitations may have been disarming or even~ unne ,rying to his listeners, it is difficult to imagine their being misunderstood. Jesus .has asked someone'to be his follower; it is as simple as that. ~ Neither does Jesus fail to make known to his followers his expe~ctations of them. In fact, his~requirements are so clear that~ sometimes they sound almost harsh. Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny his very self, thke Up his° '~ cross each day, and follow in my steps. Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it (Lk 9:23-24). ~.Let the dead bury their dead; come away and proclaim the kingdom of God (Lk 9:60). The requirements of following Jesus are great. He knows this, and does not hide this frown those whom he invites. At the same time, the invitation is issued with a certain excitement stemming from urgency of the call as well as its promise: Tliis is the tim~ of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Refo~-m ~our lives and believe in the Gospel! (Mk 1":5). Go a~d sell what you have and give to the poor; you will then have treasure in heaven. After that, come and follow me (Mk 10:21). This last invitation of Jesus was issued in response to the question of the rich young man, "What must I do to share in everlasting life?" (Mk 10".17). An.d it is here that we find out why Jesus issues the invitation t[iat he does: He knows everlasting life, and wants to share that with us. Again and again, Jesus promises us the kingdom and all that goes with it: fullness of life (Jn 10:10); complete joy (Jn 17:13); knowledge of th~ true God (Jn 17:3); the freedom of the truth (Jn 8:32); his own peace (Jn 14:27); the hundredfold and ~verlasting life (Mk 10:30). Jesus knows the k.ingdom and the gifts of the kingdom, and wants that experience for those to whom he has been sent. Herein we find the motivation behind his in~vitation, his c~all to take up the cross, [o sell all our possessions, to follow him. It is becaus~ he knows it will lead to the kingdom and everlasting lye,, arid he wants nothing less for us. It is love which has produced the clear, concise and even harsh invitation we find in the Gospel. With what kind of response .did Jesus' invitation meet? The Gospels sl~ow us pictures of every kind of response imaginable: Peter and Andrew "abandoned their nets and became his followers," as did James and John (Mt 4:20-22); Matthew left his post as tax collec~tor (Mt 9:9). The rich young man went away sad because of his many possessions (Mk 10:22). In a particularl~ poignant episode ~ecorded in John's gospel, Jesus' teaching leads many of his disciples to protest and ultimately to break away from his company. On seeing this, Jesus asks the Twelve if they, too, will leave him. Vocation Ministry / 175 Peter responds, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words :of eternal life" (Jn 6:60 ff.). Thus, the responses to Jesus' invitations are many and varied, for Jesus always allowed the individual to respond freely. What is evident, however, is that Jesus never stopped inviting, no matter what kind of response he met with. For Jesus, the important thing is that everyone be invited to follow him and to proclaim the kingdom. Negative responses, while disheartening, must not keep one from continuing to:issue the call, for all people deserve the opportunity to respond to the call. It is a matter of no :smalLsignificance, I believe, that the final words of Jesus in John's gospel are: "Follow me" (Jn 21:22). Continuing the Invitation: Vocation Ministry What does this never-ending invitation mean for us religio.us? What does it tell us, not only about our own response to Jesus' call, but about the mess-age we takb to the ~vorld? We have noted that Jesus' invitation flows from his expe~rience. He knows the Father, and the life that the Father gives~ Be.cause he knows, he Can ~nvite clearly, concisely and with authority. As men and women who have made life choices for the kingdom, and who have shared, at least in part, in the life of the kingdom, we too can invite others to embrace th~ kingdom. As men and women who have clearly chosen community and. ministry in the Church, we can invite others to conside~ community and ministry in the Chhrch as optionsfor.themselves. As men and women who have experieficed joy and. peace and life in these choices, as well as hardship and even pain, we can invite with the same confidence of Jesus, for we, too, know the burden and the gifts of the kingdom. In fact, Oot only can we continue to issue the invitation of Jesus, but in a certain sense, we have a responsibility to issue that invitation. !n a world where nuclear holocaust seems imminent, where starvation is the daily experience of millions, where poverty, unemployment and illiteracy a.re the lifestyle of whole ~egments of the world population.---in such a world, we who have been given the knowledge of the kingdom have a responsibility to call others to build that kingdom. In a world where people, especially young people, are searching for meaning and significance in their lives, where many live in confusion caused by crises of every kind, where whole societies are caught in the race for economic and political superiority--in such a world, we who have been promised the everlasting life of the kingdom have a responsibility to share that gift with this world. It is not that we .are holier o.r wiser than the rest of the world. Rather, we have been given the gift ~of a vision of how things can be. It is not our vision; it is God's vision that we have been given. And because we have 176/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 been given the vision, we must also bear theresponsibility--sometimes the burdgnsome responsibility--of calling others to God's vision. As religious, we have publicly proclaimed with joy and faith our desire to be a part of the kingdom, and that desire has been accepted joyfully by God. Now we must set ourselves to the task of inviting others, with our lives, to the ultimate meaning and significance which God's vision, the vision of the Kingdom, holds for the world. In the course of this lived invitation, we, like Jesus, must invite others clearly, concisely and directly to join us in bringing about God's vision for the world. We have the responsibility to say to people: "Sell all you have, give to the poor, and come away to proclaim the kingdom of God!" We must invite those with whom we work and pray and live to "Come and see" what we have seen. Like Jesus, our invitation will have authority if its motivation is love and its roots are found in our lived experien.ce. Thus, if we have found the meaning and significance of the kingdom in our religious commitment, in our community life, and in our ministry, then we must invlte others to that same experience. If religious life has been the context of God's kingdom for us, then we must invite others to consider that same context for themselves. We cannot deny others the opportunity that is ours, the gift we have been given in religious life. I believe that not to make others aware of this gift, not to speak of God's vision for us, and most importantly, not to invite others to consider this gift for themselves would constitute such a denial. I believe that vocation ministry if you will, the ministry of invitation and discovery--can be a powerful means of carrying on the invitation of Jesus. A Philosophy of ¥ootion Ministry Vocation ministry has emerged in recent years as a valid and accepted ministry in the ~Church. This emergence is due in large part to a new u~nderstanding of vocation ministry, an understanding which has its foun-dation in the model of 'invitation which Jesus provides in the Gospel. Unfortunateiy, this approach to vocation ministry is not' understood by many religious, and consequently keeps them from supporting the voca-tion efforts of their communities, and even more importantly, from involv-ing themselves in these efforts. As we have seen, vocation ministry, when considered as a ministry of invitation, is modeled by Jesus. But such an understanding of vocation ministry is relatively new. There was ~ time in the not too distant past (and which still e~xists today in some circles) when vocation ministry was consi-dered to be "recruitment," and the person who did this work was known as the "recruiter." This designation was appropriate at the time, for the person Vocation Ministry / 177 who served as a recruiter for a religious community attempted to find and enlist people, especially young peol~le, who seemed suitable for her or his particular community. The religious recruiter was searching for people to carry onthe work--the good work---of her or. his congregation. The job of the religious recruiter was similar to that of recruiters for the military, for schools or for corporations: namely, to ensure the continuance of the group's interests. The beneficiary of this process was the group and in 'the case of the religious recruiter, the beneficiary was her or his community and the people the community served. The term "recruitment" and the philosophy ~vhich it designates does not fit what Jesus does in the Gospels when he invites people to follow him. I believe that as the work of "recruitment" becomes more and more pat-terned after the model of invitation which Jesus provides, we need to call it by another name. It is at this point that we can begin to speak of "vocation ministry." The difference in language is reflective of the difference in philos-ophy and practice. It is, in fact, the difference between "recruitment and ministry," and it is shown in a new role for the person who does this work. This role is no longer one of serving primarily the needs of the congrega-tion, but is one of serving the needs of the people with whom the vocation minister works directly, the people whom she or he assists in discovering how and where and with whom the Lord calls them to build the kingdom. The priorities of the vocation minister have changed, from a focus on ensuring that the life of her or his congregation continues by enlisting people into the order, to a focus on ensuring that people discover who it is that God calls them to be. The agenda from which the vocation minister works has changed, from being primarily the order's agenda, to being primarily God's agenda. To some, such differentiation rhay seem too subtle to be of any impor-tance; .it may even seem like hairsplitting or word games. I believe, how-ever, that it is not too subtle, nor is =it hairsplitting, nor is it word games. For when looked at from the perspective of the person attempting to discern God's call, and especially the young person faced with fife-choices to make, there is a world of difference between the recruiter who wants that person to be a sister or brother or priest, and the minister who wants to help that person discover where God calls him or her to build the kingdom, where life will hold the most meaning for him or her, with no preconceived notion of where that might be. I contend further that, when considered from God's perspective, there is an ~ven more profound difference between "recruitment" and "ministry." It is the difference between the recruiter who believes that the continuance of her or his congregation is in the recruiter's hands, and that it is up to the recruiter to supply the needs of the order; and 1711 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 the minister.who trusts that God callg people to build his kingdom as sisters,, brothers, priests, married people and single people, and belieVes that her or his role is to act as Jesus did in inviting people to listen for God's .call and to act on it. Such a stand places the responsibility for supplying the needs of the order in God's hands, and~ recognizes the responsibility of the vocation minister and° the members of the congrega-tion to act as instruments-of his call by issuing the invitation to the kingdom. ~ Vocation ministry, and not recruitment, is the responsibility of every religious. It is a responsibility which stems not from fear for the future of religious life, but rather from the fact that each of us has been given a great and wonderful gift in religious life, a gift which must be shared with others. Our invitation to religious life is given in the context of the kingdom: because we have known the kingdom in our life and ministry with one another, we'invite others to that same experience. It is not recruitment for a particular order that vocation ministry is about; it is an invitation to nothing less than the kingdom of God that we,. as religious, must be about. The Challenge to Re!igious When vocation ministry is seen not as recruitment but as a ministry whose foundation is the model of invitation, which Jesus himself offers, an entirely new challenge is given to .religious. It is a challenge which brings about a n.ew set of questions: --Have I ~experien~ed the kingdom of"God? Where and with. whom was that experience~of the kingdom ? --Is the experience of living in religious community and doing Church ministry an experience of the kingdom for me? --Do I sense both the responsibility and the desire to share the king-dom with others by inviting them to build the kingdom? -~Am I willing to invite others to consider religious community and Church ministry as a way of building the kingdom, a way which has been life-giving and Satisfying for me? I believe that we religious can continue to invite others to join us i~n community and m~nistry. Some Of those whom we invite will join us; others will find another flay of building the. kingdom; still others~will go away sad. But vhatever the response, we can continue to invite, secure in the knowl-keidngged otmha~t,, tion wouhric rhe lwigei oinuvs i~teo mthmosiet mwehnotm, w we eh maveee tb. eOenu rg iinvveinta"ati osnh ai'sr.em iont it-he vated not by fear of the fu(ure, but rather by a sincere desire to share the gift we have been given, With joy ~and confidence we can coniinue to spe~k the invitation of Jesus: "Come away and proclaim the kingdom of God!" Gentle Exile: Reflections on Formation Mary Ellen Dougherty~ S.S.N.D. After a long stint in formation work for her community, Sister Dougherty has returned to the teaching of English. Sh.e may be addressed at The College of Notre Dame of Maryland; 4701 N. Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21210. Shortly.before I finished a long term in formation work, I told myself that eventually I would write an article that might be of use to others in that ministry. I waited. I needed distance. After a year or so, subjectivity settled into uncertainty. I did not know what I wanted to say. Now, more than four years later, I think 1 do. ~ Initially, I would have commented on the characteristics of candidates currently interested in religious life, the inevitable challenges in dealing with them, and the necessity of both structure and latitude in a formation program. I would have talked about the generosity of young people in ministry, their ambivalence about vows. Now, however, I would like to focus on formation, personnel. 1 address my remarks especially to those who are in the work, and to those who .are considering it as ministry. In more than.eight ye~ars in this ministry, I worked, directly, in various team arrangements, with eight different directors. As director of novices, I participated, with the novices, in intercommunity programs in which directors shared on a regular basis. I speak, then, out of my own experience, and out of some ongoing reflections with at least two dozen directors, men and women. And I speak, still, tentatively. These are my insights now. In many ways I was nbt an effective director. In some ways I was. I have learned from both. I do not think there is a standard profile for a successful director~ There are countless variations on virtues that could be 179 1110/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 considered. Certainly a consistent attitude and practice of prayer, along with a keen mind and a clean heart, are essential. Inner freedom issuing from a clear depth of uncluttered spirituality is central. It is not my intention, however, to explore these here. That, perhaps, is another article. I would like, instead, to address three fundamental areas which, in practice, prove t.o be crucial: experience, affectivity, and integrity. Experience Age, I think, is only a factor for the director insofar as it permits experience. What one has done is not necessarily what one has experienced. To receive experiences of poverty, failure, darkness, in the light of grace, balanced with experiences of fulfillment and productivity, requires time; one must have lived long enough and well enough to know the inevitability of the rhythm, to expect the seasons to change. In that sense, age is important. It is not just what one has experienced, but what one has not experienced that should be consid~reff. One who has been given the time to live as well as the time to die, and has learned to receive both with equanimity, has lived long enough. And one who has not, should not be expected to deal with her own discoveries easily in the context of formation work. Events may always surprise us; the curr~nt of life should not. Affectivity I am not professionally equipped in terms of academic background t6 talk about the psychology of affectivity, or stages of affective development. My observations are purely practical: when the affective or relational life of a director is undeveloped or undernourished, there are generall~ relational problems with those she is directing; these are Often lodged in some variation of dependency, usually mutual. The director, from my observa-tions, usually takes the relationship more seriously, in the long run, than the candidate; the director seems to have some expectations of permanence, whereas the candidate, especially if she is young, is more than likely to tr~insfer her emotions rather quickly. There often is, however, some degree of mutual destruction. It is essential, 'then, that formation directors have the capacity for, and the activity of, peer relationships, that over the years they demonstrate an ability to interact in friendship with inutuality and absence of unwarranted dependency. The demands of formation work are constant and draining, especially if the director is living ~vith her directees. Candidates, especially younger ones, often exhibit a love-hate response toward authority. Unless the director has a belief in her own lovableness, created by a deep personal sense of God, and the experience of significant peer relationships over the years, she can be quickly undone. So can those Gentle Exile / 1111 she directs. Oia the other hand, a director who has a variety of relationships, and who is secure in at least a few of them, is not likely to need her directees. She may, over the months or the years, develop some friendships among them, but these will be a matter of choice, not of necessity. Integrity, Given a person who has lived long enough and loved hard enough, we come to the point of integrity, which I use in a limited sense here. I speak only of that dimension of integrity which enables one to experience some independent clarity about the truth, and to be faithful to it in spite of opposition. It is not my intention to suggest moral judgments. Like many people in positions of authority, formation directors must be able, if necessary, to stand alone. They must be capable of making and living out graced decisions which may create great conflict. And they must be as capable of independent thinking as, they are of consultation. A director who is not comfortable thinking for herself, who relies too heavily on approval and too little, on her own graced instincts, is usually transparent to her directees; wittingly or unwittingly, they may use her. While the need for dialogue, for collaboration, for consensus cannot be overstated, neither can the need for slow, clear, independent decisions that begin in the deepest level of self, where, in the face of opposition, integrity, a matter of grace, becomes a manifestation of courage. When all is said and done, it is fidelity (or infidelity) to the graced self with whom one must live. There is nothing new under the sun. The ability to receive experience and to let it become wisdom; the calbacity to love and to be loved without ownership; the self-possession and the faith to risk a gentle (or not so gentle) exile--these are characteristic of any authority who claims Jesus as her source. If formation work is anything, it is daily. If anyone needs Jesus as her source, a formation director does. Working with the Young Adult with Temporary Vows Vito Aresto, EM. S._ Brother Aresto is Vice Provincial and .Director of Formation for,the Poughkeepsie (NY) Province of the Marist Brothers. Heohas been ,working with brothers under temporary profession for more than six years. He may be addressed at his Vice-Pro-vincial Office: 4200 W. l i5th Street; Chicago, Illinois 60655. Much has been written over the last several years about_the conditions and problems of the yoeng adult within formation programs of, religious life. Since many of the young people who come seeking this new lifestyle come after years 9f college or work experience, formation directors are finding that the traditionally tried and true methods, of formation~seem to contain significant gaps when dealing with this new kind of person. The problem becomes even more complicated when the young person is in t~emporary vows. In this paper I would like to delve into some of the significant areas that have emerged in my working with our temporary professed. For the most part they are young men who have achieved rather comfortable recogni-tion professionally. They have taken their first vows in their middle twen-ties and look forward to years of growth and service within religious life. Final profession comes somewhere around age thirty. Developmental psychology has examined this period of growth young adulthood with great earnestness. Clearly, it is being recggnized that as life develops it confronts, struggles, and tackles successive issues in life's fabric and resolves them only to move forward to confront still newer issues towards growth. Such progress is noted as maturation, growing in one's potential, developing into a full human person. ~Vorking with the Young Adult . When the issues of spirituality are overlayed upon this rich process, we begin to see something of the concept of conversion. Obviously, when one begins to probe conversion, there is a point where even the best of the social sciences"pales before the mystery of faith: But nonetheless, we can learn much about growth and developmenL particularly in the struggles of a young adult who is attempting to find his or her place within a religious .family. This unfolding of life's grandeur and mystery is not at all easy. It can never be pain free if it is authentic. For the formation personnel working with young religious a good grasp of this process is obviously needed. Crisis needs to be viewed as part of the human drama, and neither .overstated nor underplayed. Rather the formation director can be a calming influence for~ individuals as they probe the' issues and unravel a course of action. In this light it is also very important to note that the director ~should be very comfortable with assisting the young adult to tap into such helping services as therapy or spiritual direction. It is important to realize that the varying issues which emerge are not all vocational conflicts. Rather some very necessary growing-pain situations may be interpreted as "vocational,' which in actual fact are merely struggles with growth issues. At other times personal,life issues may be confused as stress issues needing therapy, but are deeply vocational. Finally, there may be.a blend of both. It is the task of the formatioh director .as calming influence to help the young person wade through the issues, and recognize where they lie. In naming the dil~.~a, the course.to resolution becomes less threatening. For most young religious the transition from novitiate life to active ministry carries with it some straining adjustments. There is a great differ, ence between accepting the need to integrate the essential elements of reli-gious life and actually attempting to do so. This strain to interpret and realize the ideal can either bring about growth in young persons, or have them develop a selective sense which, ma~y in the long run distort growth. Each person must face honestly that the balance of the essential elements of the religious life structure cannot be merely put aside for some personal notion of the greater good. In the long run true growth for the young religious only takes place in confronting each aspect of vowed life as important, and then developing a proper rhythm for themselves. Fidelity to their vowed commitment must be presented as their primary work, By doing this they will be realistic in discerning this lifestyle within their congregation and how it truly fits into their own needs ~ind response to the Lord and his people. This approach, one that asks young persons not to compromise any aspect of their vowed commitment, even when faced with the tremendous 11t4 / Review for Religi~ous, March.April, 1986 pressures of the varying adjustments of prayer, community and apostolate, is utterly honest in recognizing and treating religious as adults. The fact remains that as they unravel their dreams and expectationsi they must also be totally immersed in what actually is the life they now share in their new religious family. This task can become even more burdensome as the young religious begin to recognize and feel the depth of confusion, and even sinfulness within their chosen religious family. Yet, within this sobering reality one fundamental task for.the temporary professed religious is to come to real-ize whether their dreams can be honestly integrated within this particular congregation. If this cannot be done then an honest and courageous act would be to depart. The Lord is not asking anyone to surrender his or her dreams, nor is he asking the impossible in great and massive adjustments to what a person holds sacred to the purpose and direction in life. It becomes the task of the formation director to help and accompany the young religious in this discerning process. But the director should never water down or compromise in the name of charity what he or she knows are realities incompatible to the values and goals of the congregation. Furthermore, the director must a.lways make the distinction between fidel-ity to a lifestyle and fidelity to the Lord. The young must come to realize that commitment to Jesus as their Lord can be lived in all the genuine forms and calls to holiness within the Church. Hopefully, the novitiate process has solidly grounded these young persons in their commitment to Jesus. Temporary vows must focus on the parameters of this particular religious family and charism as one valid and true means towards holiness for this young religious. Therefore, a truly respectful and, honest relationship must exist between the formation direc-tor and the young religious so that.real growth and integrity can develop. It is of paramount importance then, that the young,~religious' dreams must be found to be possible in the congregation they have chosen to enter. This is not only vitally important for the growth and development of the young religious, it is also vital for the growth and development of the congregation. The life given to this young religious by God is also a gift of life for all the members of the congregation. When such interaction is in process a certain sense of peace and purpose prevail. When it is. not present one readily begins to sense and hear bitterness, sarcasm, and resentment., Understanding the vital need of a dream in a young religious' life must therefore be one of the important areas into which a director must examine and explore. The novitiate will set up ideals that are solidly grounded in spiritual and scriptural foundations, but these ideals will not be realized except in the attempt at the actual riving out of community within, a local Working with the Young Adult / 1115 setting. It must be realized that each local community is itself struggling to unravel the full meaning and purpose of its shared life direction. Although young religious may leave the novitiate in full recognition that life is a process of growth and integration, it will only be in the experience of community that they will begin to understand the journey with their broth-ers or sisters that they have begun. Therefore, understanding the dreams and also knowing deeply the real struggles of this religious family is a task that each formation director must grasp when dealing with temporary professed. Ultimately, the focus must be turned completely on the Lord. He must remain the very purpose and intention of the young religious. Service will only .spring from the well of deep commitment to the Lord who loved all people even, unto death. More times than not, the young religious' grasp of the importance of intimacy is also wrapped up in their understanding of their dream. They do not enter religious life accepting the fact that there will be little or no intimate relationships in their lives. Obviously, religious life does afford the opportunities for a rich relational life; but that can only come through the struggle of integrating the vows in the light of each one's intimate relational needs. For young religious who must deal with this issue through the maze of the various transitional periods of growth, the very issue of intimacy can become pivotal to successful integration, and thus to peace within this chosen lifestyle. The movement towards dealing with one's~relational life also has impli-cations for community and ministerial life. In community this can expand one's depth of compassion, and in ministry it can help focus one's work beyond the notion of career to an expression of the Lord's service con-tinued through his Church. Each step of this awareness will heighten the young religious' recognition that he or she has truly been called by Another. Gradually imprinted upon the life and work of each young reli-gious is the paschal ,mystery, each one's transformation into Christ. The weathering of growth issues can therefore be the seed for a deepening of vocational understanding that is not only personal but intimate with the Lord. As young religious move closer to their thirtieth year there is to be noted a very subtle but careful evaluation taking place. Some significant issues have emerged and been confronted. The young religious also begin to recognize.that all the aspects of their dreams and aspirations may not be completely realized. They begin to feel, and not merely know, the implica-tions of being chaste and obedient. The cultural values of their society, with its push towards success, ambition, and recognition weigh on their poverty. Ultimately, as final commitment approaches, so does the trauma of the 186 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 "second calling." It is at this moment that the formation director must gently accompany~the young religious. The time for mentofing has ended. It becomes important that unconditional acceptance pervade the whole relationship, If the journey through those years of temporary vows has been honest and rich in successful and mature handling of life issues, then the response to this second calling--a permanent commitment to the Lord within this congregation--will~ be made with the totality possible to this young adult. Fundamentally, as one accompanies young adults~through their initial years of religious commitment, one quickly realizes that formation is.lrela-tional growth. The young religious come eager to respond to the Lord~. Their response has been wrapped and colored within their dreams of Ltheir future life and ministry. Novitiate naturally assists in a solid grounding and underpinning, but it°is not until there is full immersion in the daily routine of life in common and in ministry that they begin to confront and grow within their religious commitment. For the formation director the journey of this pilgrimage is one of trust and love. Ultimately, the individual must come to a sense of'personal peace. This peace is only born in the honest relational growth between each individual and the Lord, between the individual and his or her brothers or sisters, and the individual and the people they are sent to work with and serve. This peace should become the full flowering of a love that rests solidly on the motivation and direction of a life-decision made to the Lord and his people, within this special band of disciples that he or she chose for a religious family. '~ Reflectively, we can turn to Jesus as the model for the formation director who works' with young adults. Particularly is this so if we. focus upon his dealings with Peter. Here we note the care and compassion that must be evidenced by the director. For three years Jesus guided, taught and challenged Peter. These lessons werenot ~beyond the scope of correction and prodding, but they were also done in sincere and tender cbncern. And yet when the supreme :momefit for Jesus arrived, his hour of glory, Peter was still unaware of the magnitude of Jesus' mission. Much like the novice who enters first profession, Peter needed to continue to grow and ~be challenged, even in the darkness of near despair. It was not until the depth of his relationship with the Lord was securely grounded that Peter was ready to shepherd. Only then did he fully comprehend the-initial call that was repeated in the marvelous second calling at the end of John's gospel, "Do you love me? . Come, follow me!" Strangely enough in that rich relational bond between Peter and the Lord did his fondest dreams become rei~l. He no longer needed~io hold Working with the Young Adult / 187 tightly to privilege or rank. Now he no longer saw himself as solely the "rock," but rather could he challenge all that he shepherded to be "living stones," part of the "edifice" of the Lord and his Church. He understood clearly all that was needed to continue the process of growth, a journey into wholeness and holiness. For the young religious the journey is similar. The director must guide and accompany them so that the echo of the initial call of the Lord can be profoundly realized and incorporated into the very identity and dreams of these young persons. Permanent commitment becomes a full expression of a relationship that is central to their meaning and purpose. Christ the Center of Our Vowed Life by" ~Boniface Ramsey, O.P. Father Ramsey's three articles on .,the vows of religion are available as a single reprint: i - The Center of Religious Poverty ii - Christocentric Celibacy iii - Cru~ciform Obedience Price: $1.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review ~or Religious Rm 428 ~3601 Lindell Blvd. St: Louis, Missouri 63108 Commitment in a Religious Order: A Sociological View Joseph C. Doyle Dr. Doyle teaches at Seton Hall University (South Orange Ave; South Orange, Neff Jersey 07079), where he may be addressed. There is a special quality about people who are committed to something, whether it be to another person, a group, an organization, a career, or an idea. That quality can be captured by such words as "loyalty," "allegiance," or "steadfastness." For to be committed is to be involved in a relationship which has priority in one's life over alternative relationships or only one-self. This does not mean that a person's other involvements are ignored bu.t only that when push comes to shove this relationship has singular importance. Obviously, this is a key feature of religious life, for the purpose of religious orders is to foster growth in each member's commitment to Christ. In fact, it has often been assumed, both by people within and without such institutions, that this is the sole ~ocus of the members' ~om-mitments-- that they "have the faith." In the past fifteen years or so, how-ever, the large scale exodus of members from the various forms of religious life has raised serious questions in many quarters concerning this one dimensional view of religious commitment. In particular, such authors as ~Marie Augusta Neal,~ Helen Ebaugh,2 Lucinda San Giovanni,3 Richard Schoenhern and Andrew Greeley,4 and Patricia Wittberg5 have all attemp-ted to shed a social scientific light on some of these questions. This paper is meant to be a reflection on some themes developed out of this tradition. It will attempt to present the results of some findings gleaned 188 Commitment in a Religious Order / 1119 from interviews with twenty women involved in a religious order in the eastern United States. Its major interest will be the way commitment in religious life passes through different forms, forms which seem to be affected by the kinds oof structures established by religious orders and by the way their members respond to these structures. It is, of course, danger-ous to generalize from a group 6f this size. Thus, the following remarks should be read as an'effort to explore some pertinent issues in the quality of commitment rhther than to offer a definitive statement on these issues. I. Sociology and Commitment Because this paper relies upon insights developed in sociology, perhaps it would be helpful to first briefly explain some key sociological ideas concerning commitment before delving into the material from the in/er-views. Over the past thirty years or so, sociology has developed a number of concepts for dealing with the experience of commitment. By and large, these ideas are rooted in the perspective that c6mrnitment is the result of certain ,mechanisms operating in groups or organizations that mold indi-viduals into loyal members. Thus; the primary attention is on how these social factors operate to produce a committed person. One of the more prominent efforts in this field can be found in the work of Rosabeth Kanter, particularly in her book Commitment and Community.6 While the analysis that follows utilizes these insights, it also attempts to show how individual members of a religious order responded to these forces and tried to grow beyond them. Kanter views commitment in terms of three interrelated dimensions: instrumental, affe.ctive.and moral. In addition, each of these dimensions is the result of a set of factors bY which a community leads its novices into full membership. By instrumental commitment Kanter means a felt attachment to a social role that is more rewarding or less costly than the roles outside of the community. In this kind of commitment the person wants to live up to the behavioral expectations that others in the community have of him or her. This attachm~ent is achieved, according to Kanter, by having the novice undergo experiences ,whereby the individual has to invest her time and energy in doing the work of the community and to sacrifice her own possessions on behalf of the community. In this way the person finds himself or herself wanting to remain because of all that has been expended ¯ in the effort to achieve full membership. As Kanter puts it: When profits and costs are considered, participants find the cost of leaving the system would be greater than the cost of remaining; "profit," in a net psychic sense, compels continual part;_cipation.7 190/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 By affective commitment Kanter means an attachment to a set of relationships whose ties are more gratifying than the ties with .alternative relationships. To find a particular,~set of relatio, nships more gratifying than others means recognizing that set as the,primary source of. affection and support in one's life. This dimension is realized by having novice members renounc6 all previous ties of affection as being primary for them and by involving them in communal activities with members of th~eir group. In these ways the new participant comes to develop emotional ties with these others and a cohesive bond develops amongst them. Finally, by moral or normative commitment'Kanter means an alle-giance to the values and norms of the community and a willingness to obey the authority structure of the community as the ultimate interpreter of those norms and .values. However, this allegiance doesonot necessarily develop after a careful evaluation of these norms and structures. Instead, Kanter sees this dimension arising from a set of beliefs and values that have been internalized in an often irrational or unc_ritical way. In Some respects, commitment to norms and values resembles the concept of superego, which binds the evaluative components bf the self t6 norms of a system through an internalized authority.8 The moral commitment of members is achieved, Kanter notes, by techniques that encourage novices to'deny significance to their own ideas and desires and to place their trust more in the community than 'in them-selves. Thus, new members come to see the way of life of the coinmunity as more meaningful than that of competing alternatives. This sociological view of commitment may, at first sight, be rather upsetting to people who form a community in order "to ddepen their rela-~ tionship with God. '-I Would suggest that this reaction is a rather well-founded one. For what sociology has uncovered, and what many of the" religious women 1 interviewed realized after being in their order for a few years, is that there can be a very real difference between commitment to God and commitment to a religious organization. For this latter institution attempts to offer its members a way to God, but lhis "way" is embodied in historically realized rules, procedures;practices and customs that can often become ends in themselves in the minds and hearts of these members. The sociological point, of course, is that a religiouscommunity hasto empha-size these aspects if it is going to survive and so it has to foster commitment to them. Naturally, a religious institution hopes that its" members will develop spiritually by such practices, and many have done so. Nevertheless, as the' following analysis will show, the danger can also be that the corn= mitment does not get beyond these dimensions. How that can'happen and what can be done about it are the concerns of the rest of this paper. Commitment in a Religious Order / "191 II. A Sociology of Commitment in Religious Life A. Internalizing a Theme ~ The model of commitment presented by Kanter can be a useful tool for interpreting the experiences of the twenty women I interviewed. While these women all came from the same order, they varied as far as age (32-63), length of time in the order (9 years to over 40 years), and the kind of positions they held at the time of the interview (teaching, pastoral and the central administration of the order). Nevertheless, they all described their early years in religious life in ways that can b~e captured by Kanter's categories. 1: Internalizing the Instrumental Dimension One of the interesting findings of these interviews was that many of the nuns felt that the years taken up by their training were preoccupied with the proper performance of their duties, with what they called "the externals." In Kanter's terminology they were committed to the role of a religious person. She claims that it is possible for a person just to behave in a committed way, i:e., remain in the group but not necessarily care about the ideals or values of that group.9 While she'herself did not think that this was a full commitment, she did seeit as a possibility. When the nrns were asked about significant changes in their lives, one of the events frequently brought up was when they recognized that they had been caught up in the mere activity of being a nun. For example: when I came to religious hfe I switched to the externals because that is what I thought I was supposed to do and that was what was always talked about., how you dressed, how you performed this and how you did your chores, but I wasn't co~mfortable with that. When we first entered, the activities were important as you grow into being a member of the community. I think at some point you get caught up in the reception of the habit., that is a big day in your life., and you try to act like the pdrfect nun and" that sort of thing. ~ In addition to acting out the role of a reli~gious woman, many of the respondents reported recognizing, a period in their lives when their minis-try, or more pr.ecisel3~, their work, was mrre important to them than any other dimension. Years ago, I guess I was work-oriented and it was the thing that people saw. And the thing I could let go of was my prayer life because no one ever saw that and I wasn't accountable for it. I cou.ld go to confession and say I didn't haeditate that week and that wruld t~ike care of the guilt part. But I never made ~ny cofinectionJwith the rest of iny life. 192 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 As these quotes indicate, the focus on minist.ry and on the proper fulfillment of the "externals" of the religious role were the dimensions to which most of these women became initially committed. ,And, for some of these sisters, the ministry remained central for them well beyond the period of their training. However, while this was a key feature of religious life for many of these women, they eventually began to question the validity of this preoccupa-tion, and for some this orientation is no longer dominant in their lives. 2. Internalizing the Affective Dimension Kanter's second type of commitment was also evident at an early stage of the nun's training. For some of these women, this. involvement in community life coincided with their involvement in ministry. What did you think you were committing yourself to at that~time? I thought I was committing myself to ministry and to community life but not to a deep personal prayer life. I was still struggling with thaIt t.r.i.e. d to take time for it but more often than not, that got pushed aside. What was there about ministry and community life that made you want to commit yourself?. I just" saw goo~d in it. I saw myself functioning very well in it, being comfortable in it, not having any kind of desire not to be there. Some of the other nuns, however, found that a focus on community followed, in time, a commitment to ministry, and sometimes the tension between ministry and community would be resolved in favor of community¯ , ¯. I consider myselfa community-minded person; for whatever reason, ~ prefer working within the community., like coming to the infirmary and working right here with our sisters. I was more than happy todo that. I didn't find myself looking to go really outside of the community. (I. Why was that~ Well, I guess in that it's doing for my own sisters, primarily, rather than people on the outside¯ You are doing the same kind of thing but for whatever reason my preference would be my sisters first. Thus, while ministry may be seen as rewarding, by itself it does not suffice. For this woman and for others, it was and still is a matter of the emotional bond one has with the group with whom she rhinisters that is crucial. Where ministry can be judged in terms of rewards and costs, more non-rational considerations have to be used to judge the relationships one has with others. However, ~s was seen in the discussion of instrumental commitment, this affective dimension did not r6main as dominant for all the nuns. As the following quote suggests, this orientation is no longer as crucial as it once was. Commitment in a Religious Order / 1~ ¯ I really don't know how we remained faithful then. I'm sure if it was another type of community, I don't know, maybe it's because we're more of a family, you know, we feel for one another, um, and that was always our sister, and if you didn't hang in there because your superiors were no good, you'd hang in there because your friends were there. Your commitment to them kind of seemed important to you. 3. Internalizing the Normative Dimension Finally, the third of Kanter's types of commitment was also a focus of allegiance for most of the women during their training. This is particularly obvious in the way many of them had accepted the authority of their superiors during that period. ¯. 1 never felt pressured or stepped on or however people fed. I never felt that. I guess as I entered community it was something I wanted to do. or the Lord called me to do, so I did what I was supposed to do . However, while there were nuns who were very compliant, some found themselves questioning the purpose behind some of the orders. For them, willing obedience was built on an obedience motivated by a fear of being dismissed. Were there people in your class who questioned a lot? Yes, they are no longer here. In novitiate I was very docile. I was probably stupid. If they told me tO do it, I did it because if you didn't do it, they were going to send you home. ~. So you did it out of fear more than anything else. Yes. Yet I liked the days of formation and everything else, but if they said do it, I did it; and when we did it and thought it was crazy, we Used to laugh about it, but we still did it.°, there was no heart in it or anything like that, but we did it to shut them up and get them off our backs. Whether this emphasis on atithority and obedience was complied with willingly or out of fear, it had a dual effect in the training period: it seemed to focus attention on role conformity or the "externals," as was seen before, and it created a sense of dependency on the leadership of the community in many of these women. But in the minds of some Of the nuns, this would often translate into valuing obedience to the rules 'over the needs encountered in one's ministry. Let's say the mother of one of the children was pregnant and her husband had just kicked her in the stomach and kicked her downstairs, and she came to me after ~chool, as did happen once, and when I tried to share with her and show her a little sympathy, I got in trouble because I stayed over in school even though it was that type of thing. I didn't mind getting into trouble, but ! just couldn't understand that whole thing. And in those 1~ / Review for Religious, March-ApriL 1986 days, if she came again, I would probably say "I can't see you," thinking that obedience was the greater thing at that time~ While some of the evidence suggests that many of the nuns interpreted this dependency on authority as something they have left'behind, this is not so for all of them. Even with the much publicized changes in convent life, with the "loosening up of the structures," the importance of the normative dimension of commitment still comes through for many of them. As this following quote demonstrates, however, it is internalized dependency: The change that has been significant has been in the individual being responsible for he~'self. We still have in our community superiors in our local convents. However~ the emphasis has been on individuals being responsible for themselves, for the cbmmitment that they have made, for' living according to the rules and the constitution, for keeping the vows . B. l/ariations on a Theme . ~ Hopefully, the preceding exploration has shown that the women I interviewed responded to the demands made upon them in their formation years in the convent .in ways that the order wanted them to respond. In effect, they internalized the theme of religious life espoused by their order. This, of course, is not to pass judgment on the sincerity of intention of any of these women or on the integrity of those tesponsible~for their training. It is instead to recognize what most of these sisters have realized and what Kanter's model of commitment can help us to see: religious commitment is more than simply doing religious things. When attention is concentrated on the activity of being religious without an ~ffort at helpi~ng the novice to discern the place of these activities in an overall lifestyle, then the only result will be religious conformity and a commitment to the means established to realize a life in Christ rather than to that life itself. However, as many of the above quotes intimated, the story of the commitments of these women does not end in mere conformity. Most of the nuns found that by the time of their final vows or in the five years or so after final profession, t.hey had begun the process of perso~nalizing many of the practices they had learned. This effort at personalization took one of two forms: varying the order's style of religious life to meet o~ne's own personality and characteristics, or creating a style of religious life that was in keeping with the core values of that lii~ but no longer was solely modeled on their order's particular historical interpretation of those values. I would now like to explore the first of the~e responses which I will call "variant commitments." In the third pai't of this paper, I will examine the second form.- The term "variant commitment", refers to a more reflective response to 'Commitment in a Religious Order the demands of convent life than the conformist response did. The idea for it comes from another sociologist named Robert Merton.~0 Writing in a different context (but, nevertheless, in one that is still applicable to our purposes), Merton referred to people who were sensitive to the demands of their institutions but were willing to test some of the limits of those demands. He had in mind men of science like Pasteur or Einstein who were committed to the goals of science but who engaged in the kind of research that resulted in new ways of conceiving the world around us. In a similar way, many of the nuns I interviewed were very much committed t9 the goals of their order, but they were also involved in efforts to alter its style of religious living. Where their training had taught them to exhibit routine adaptations to the expectations of the order, they later became more willing to modify these demands while still remaining within the normative character of the community. By briefly looking at some examples of these variant responses in the light of Kanter's model, it will. be possible to show concretely the kind of changes that took place in these women, 1. Variations on the Instrumental Theme It will be recalled that in this dimension of commitment members involved themselves in the performance of those activities that hdped maintain the community as an ongoing entity. In religious life, one of the more important of these role expectations was a faithful participation in the liturgy. For sisters in training the ordinary round of prayer activities became part of the behavior of the "ideal" nun. By the time of final vows, these activities had become second nature to them. Following the Second Vatican Council, however, the order began to loosen its rather rigid structure, and local convents wer9 allowed to establish their own format for commu.nal prayers. This usually involved a group decision concerning the times to be set aside, as well as the particular style the prayer activities would take. In addition, there was also the expectation that individual sisters would develop their own schedul~ and forms for their personal prayer life. Thus, new regulations were made which allowed for more decentralized variation and individual freedom in fulfillment of the order's goal to develop prayerful sisters. The result of these reforms appears to be a more conscious involvement on the part of most of the nuns in this dimension of their lives: The .emphasis, I think, in the younger days was not on my personal religious or spiritual development, as much as it is now., the job is important but the prayer part of it is more important. Ifa decision was to be made that I would have to give up my prayer life to be an 1~ / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 administrator, I think I would give up the administrator part. I'm sure years ago I couldn't have said that. I'm going into my fifth year here, and I was very nervous coming here because I had heard about their prayer life~ But it's really been good. It's more spontaneous than at other places. Like we do the reading of the day, and then we share with each other what they are saying to us or one of us will give a homily. As these quotes indicate, within the overall values of communal and personal prayer, the nuns have sought to fashion attitudes and practices that reflect a more conscious appreciation for these features than was true in their earlier days. This consciousness in some cases was an attitudinal shift, such as the rededication of oneself to a life of prayer;'or in other instances, it was a greater willingness to participate in a variation of public prayer that had not been tried before. In'both examples though, a shift to a more reflective response is evident, and this allows for personal and local variations of a communal expectation. 2. Variations on the Affective Theme The second area of religious life to which most of the nuns can be said to have been reflectively responding is the communal dimension. On both a formal and an informal basis, it is expected that the members will participate in the affairs and functions of the community and that this group will be primary in each person's life. In the period before the Vatican Council, these expectations usually meant a high degree of uniformity among the order's members. In the years following the Council, they frequently have involved rather innovative attempts to develop a greater sense of camaraderie among local community members. This can be seen in the following instances which suggest a changing vision of the meaning of community and a willingness to put into actual practice what some have only been able to dream about. What is your vision of community? I would like it more personal, um, with small groups where there is sharing not only of your work but of your basic spirituality, your vision, and maybe with people that you could work it out with so that your vision could: become a reality. I think the great disillusionment with religious life is that your vision remains a vision and there's not too many to share that vision. We were pioneers. My first year in grad school and after that we lived in a convent and commuted to school. We used to pray together and just try to share our lives. We could do creative things like alternative prayer styles and a lot of sharing about community and about the Lord. Commitment in a Religious Order Of course, not all the women in the group were as originally so enthusiastic about this new style, as the above excerpts may suggest. Nevertheless, those who have tried it have overcome their initial restraint and now see it'as a more beneficial way of living than the older style. Once again, a relaxation of rather rigid structures has allowed for a greater amount of reflective expression and thus for the introduction of alternative approaches to a goal of the order. 3. l/'ariations on the Normative Theme The final dimension that exhibits the effects of a more reflective response to religious life concerns the commitment to the norms and values of the community. According to Kanter this commitment is demonstrated in the supportive attitudes members have toward those in authority and toward the ideology of the group. One of the areas in convent life where an important shift in this dimension has occurred is in the vow of obedience. In the days when the nuns I interviewed first entered and until quite recently, obedience to the "Will of God" meant, in fact, concrete submis-sion to what the s,uperiors interpreted what that "Will" was. Today, this submissiveness, while still expected on a daily practical level, is somewhat tempered by the recognition, in their order's rule, that all the sisters share a genuine responsibility for th6 goals of the community. This basically seems to mean that the individu~il sisters are left alone to freely do what is expected of them rather than have a local superior enforcing each of the rules. Naturally, such a situ~ttion leaves room for individual variation, both attitudinally ahd behaviorally. I guess my attitude is that this is not somebody or something imposing on me, or the constitution saying I have to do it, or I feel that my superior is going to say that you are not doing this or that. There are days, for exahaple, when I don't spend much time in prayer at all for one reason ~or another, because it's ministry, or I'm getting in at midnight and I can't function the next day. But ifI don't do it for a couple of days, I know it and I really.have to say, I have todo it tonight regardless of what else turns up, so that it becomes a priority. I think it puts more responsibility on the individuals for their own lives. Ten years ago the superior was saying no, you may not go. I think it places more responsibility on the individual not to maybe abuse missing prayers or Mass or house meetings or meals . . . there is a little more freedom and people are more relaxed . , . to be more responsible for themselves. As these quotes indicate, members are freer to interpret when a particu-lar rule should be obeyed and when it should not. Of course, this does not i911 ] Review for Religious, March.April, 1986 mean that they can or would do whatever they please with no sense of normative .obligation, Thus, the conscious choice on the part ~of~the member is to decide when there are legitimate exceptions to a given rule and toact on those exceptions. In the long run, however, the orientation of the nuns is to the normative expectations of the order. - ~ C. Creating a Theme Hopefully, the previous section has shown that the story of the com-mitments of the twenty women I interviewed took a new turn in the years after their final vows. Because of the changes in the formal structures of the order, these nuns were able to move from a rather conformist-oriented appioach to religio.us life to an approach that reflected more of each individual's perso~nality and needs. However, while this newer style was more personalistic than before, it still was within the definition of religious life as formulated by the order. Thus, it is still possible for members to be committed to the instrumental, affective, and moral dimensions of their community (albeit, in their contemporary forms) rather than to the com-munity's underlying purpose, i.e., to one's life in Christ. Of course, as I indicated earlier, this is not necessarily in all instances what has happened. Instead, it is to point out a continual danger in community life, a d[inger that some of the nuns themselves have recognized: structured behavior and attitudes, even when they are loosened up, can become a substitute for personal responsibility for the purpose of those structures. This danger and a potential way to avoid it can be captured more clearly by examining the second type of reflective response that the women I interviewed exhibited. Nine of the twenty nuns responded to the ques-tions I raised in a way that was somewhat different from the others. I have called this type of response "creative commitment." By this I mean a commitment to a notion of religious life that reflected the women's struggle with an appropriation of a set of ideals and interpretations that trans-cended the institutionalized approach in which they found themselves. This did not mean an outright rejection of their community. Rather, it was an attempt to combine themes learned from sources outside the order with the basic values learned from the community into a more personal style of sisterhood than the one in which they had been trained. Their involvement in the community, is now no longer predicated on the constraints the institution can bring to bear on them. Instead, since their commitment is to a vision~of what religious life can be, they have relativized the role that the community has in their lives. This rather abstract definition can be made more.concre[e by compar-ing some of the "variant responses" some of the nuns made to the questions Commitment in a Religious Order / 199 I asked with the "creative responses" nine of the women mad~ to the same questions. As before, these responses can be presented in terms of the model developed by Kanter. I. Relativizing Instrumental Commitment The first dimension of concern will be the attitudes of the nuns toward the role of a sister. In order to ascertain the overall quality of a member's role involvement in the order, I asked what perception each one had of herself as a sister. As the following quote exemplifies, many of the~s.e women have adopted the role of a nun as traditionally defined, ~that is, as one who is supposed to represent in a special way the presence of the sacred in human life. To be sure, they do not appear to be caught up with the prestige symbols of the role--the habit, the title, the little signs of respect. But they dowish to see themselves perceived as religious women, as part of a religio, us organization, and in this sense, the institutional role is important to them. How do you see yourself as a sister? That's hard to answer. I guess. I am living out what I think I am called to be, but I am not just living it for me. but for other people~ Do you mean what effect you have on people? ¯. Yes, like when people ask me to pray for them or for members of their families. I'm not just some fixture or some teacher. Do I convey the o message of Christ to people? Do I carry the name of (order's name) well, and what that community is about, or do I downgrade the community? In comparison with this perception, the following nun appears to dis-tinguish herself and her role as. a sister. While being a nun is important to her, it is not her whole self. This type of perception cropped up °quite often in discussions with these nine women. In effect, the role has been redefined from being a place in an overall organization to being a vehicle for allowing a more personal style of religious life to be expressed. What that,style is depends upon the individual and how she understands herself; but in general, it seems to encompass an effort to live out the central values of Christianity as these are being interpreted by contemporary thinkers. This woman's notion that "sisterhood" includes her relationships with whom-ever she meets is an indication of this redefining process. when I first came to the community, I saw a sister as functional, whereas now I see sister as a relationship that is not only to the people that I work with but it is. much more universal in a sense. It is me as I relate to whoever it may be . It's much more a sense of I am who I am and a good part of who I am happens to be a sister and what lproject is all of me, the totality of life. 200/ Review for Religious, March,April, 1986 2. Relativizing Affective Commitment The second area of discussion deals with the emotional ties members develop toward the relationships they have in the order and toward the order as a whole. The quality of these ties can be captured by the reaction of members to questions concerning the possibility of the order disbanding. While this is an admittedly hypothetical situation, the reactions of the sisters revealed their attitudes towards the community as a whole. For example, as the following citation suggests, many of the sisters see their well-being as tied up with the well-being of the order.~ Because they tend to seetheir lives as coextensive With the life of the community, these women can be said to~ have Committed themselves to the institution. What would happen if your community died? I would be very sad. As a person I think it would be devastating. I guess the charisma of the (order's name) community is important to me. I chose to belong to a group, and this group meant something to me. for whatever reason they became important. I chose to make final vows, and I chose to make it something permanent in my life. When this response is compared with the following one, however, a different understanding of this relationship is revealed. According to this woman, the institution exists to serve a need; and if it no longer can do this, then the nuns should disband and find other communities. This willingness to let go of what must be a home for this woman suggests a degree of autonomy that was also present in the other more innovative nuns. But this autonomy should not be interpreted as a cold independence from the order for-it seems to rest, for each of these women, on a distinction they have made between tbeir particular order and their understanding of religious life in general. In their interpretation of the order, it exists as a means to realize their religious ideals. Thus, religious life is always broader than the order's way of approaching it and for them it is their approach to that life that counts. I don't know exactly. I don't know if I would; then I would look and see if another group would like to get together to form something else, or if I would join another group. I don't think I would be upset. I wouldn't feel that my whole life has gone because I think what this community has done UP to this point has been very good and very worthwhile, and if it is not necessary, it's not necessary. I don't feel any urge to prolong somethin~g that is no longer necessary, so that would not bother me. Another indicator of the relativization of the order in the lives of these women is their willingness to look beyond it for sources of emotional support. While they.were in training, the community encouraged them to develop their personal relationships with their fellow members by severely Commitment in a Religious Order limiting outside contacts, even with members of their own families. Although these nine women still have deep personal ties within their order, they have also consciously developed friendships with others outside of that community, including laypeople. A couple of them have also become part ofqocal communities that are made up of nuns from bther orders instead of the more traditional, homogeneous units. Most of my really close friends have left the community., but it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds because I do have a couple of very good friends who have been very supporting, one who is married who has always supported me. Then. one who I'm even closer to who was in the community who has left. She continues to be one of the most supportive people in my life. It's fine with her that I am here; ~nd it's fine with me that she is there. How many friends do you have outside the community? I'd say that it's probably about fifty-fifty between people within the com-munity and people outside that I really consider myself close to. Four of us broke off from that larger grou.p because we are for'a simpler lifestyle, and we are now living in a house., the three of us from our order, one happens to. be the school person, and two of us who are in .other ministries and then the fourth sister who is from (another order) who is also in another ministry. That's working out pretty well now. 3.' Relativizing Normative Commitment ~ The third area deals with the willingness on the part of members to allow the community to control their lives. Over the past fifteen years or so, the order has loosened up its authority structure somewhat so that now the nuns are encouraged to speak their minds more so than they were in ~he past. Nevertheless, the ultimate expectations for many of the women is .that it is their duty to obey the wish of the superior. As this example demon-. strates, the notion that "the voice of the superior is the voice of God" dies hard. My attitude towards religious life, I don't think, has basically changed in the sense that I still fed that my superiors, those who are in charge, whatever they would ask I would accept it in the same wa~y I did years ago. I would question now, not saying that I wouldn't.do what they asked, but I would question it now. While the above quote demonstrates an attitude toward obedience that can be characterized as superior-oriented, the next citation reveals another approach to this subject. Instead of first looking to what the superior wants, this nun believes that one should first be obedient to oneself. The distinction is crucial for it places the sister on a par with her superior.and 902/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 enables her to exercise genuine responsibility for her own life. This is probably the most important characteristic of the innovative nuns because it seems to be that which distinguishes them most clearly from the others. Although these others often spoke about the necessity of being self-respon-sible, their 6rientation very frequently was to the community and their superiors. On the other hand~ the innovative nuns more frequently were willing to look beyond the institution for grappling with the issues of religious life and to examine any ideas in terms of where they might fit into their own lives, I believe in obedience to the Lord in tune with what is going on with my own inner' feelings, as contrasted to what I may believe in terms of the' voice 6f the superior although I don't deny that. I think you have to listen ¯. but I would say I would be more in tune with obedience to God; I would say that it's a little more,obedience to myself than I would say obedience to the vow or to the superior. Interestingly enough, one of the ways in which these women have sought to take responsibility for themselves is precisely in the area of the vows. One of the features that comes across very clearly is their desire to distinguish their understanding of the vows from the institutionalized ver-sion. This does not seem to mean an idiosyncratic interpretation of them that is divorced from what other approaches, even institutionalized ones, may offer. Instead, it seems to involve an effort to formulate a conception of the vows that takes into consideration what others,may say; but at the same time, ~it-attempts to create out of ,them an understanding that responds to the personal needs and goals of the individual herself. It should be pointed out that by the term "other interpretations" is meant sources of meaning outside the order, including the general culture, contemporary sourcbs' within the order, as well as the more traditional interpretations, whether they come from formal or informal sources. What seems to be crucial, .in any event, is the consciousness of these sisters of the difference between saying what others have understood what the vows mean and saying ,what they personally think they mean. I took these vows, but I thought. I'm doing my job, I'm praying, so don't b~ther me about the vows . !~ow looking back, I probably detached the vows from the life, or I said I have to take these vows in order to live this religious community life that I want to live. Now what's it like? ~ Now it's thinking about it and reflecting on it and saying there is some-thing more to this and I don't know what it is yet . I could tell you what ~ so and so says and what the books say, but personally., what do I think, Commitment in a R~ligious Order that's what I'm coming to. When you started to reexamine the vows, did you find yourself coming to a personal interpretation of them, or did you sifnply accept the given interpretation? Oh no! I made my own interpretation, and whether that's right or wrong, it's something l'm going to have to live with. No, I think it's my own personal thing . I have been attempting to distinguish creative responses to institutional demands from variant responses to these same demands. Hopefully, this has clarified the difference between the two. If 1 have been interpreting this material accurately, then a commitment can be said to be creative when the individual personally recognizes the primacy of her relationship with God in her life. That happens, it seems, as the individual assumes greater and greater responsibility for that relationship and the role of the order becomes more secondary as far as that relationship is concerned. In other words, the institution becomes a vehicle whereby a person can live out a way of life that she has created. As the following sistei~ asserted in ~ rather straightforward fashion, the order has become a means to an end hot arl end in itself. I say I commit myself to the Lord through this institution and I never expect that I will break that commitment to t~he Lord. I am not .always saying that 1 make a commitment to an institution: (I. Why no~t~ R. It's just the medium for me. Conclusions I ~began this paper by remarking that religious 9ommitment is often understood in a one dimensional way, as simply a commitment to Christ. Utilizing the insights of sociology, however, it is now possible.to see that religious commitment is a multi-dimensional affair which can often inter-fere with the fuller realization of a Christocentric lifestyle. For instead of a single focus on the proper spiritual characteristics of being a religious woman, this analysis found that members of an order can become more concerned about the instrumental, communal and normative dimensions of sisterhood. The result of this is a preoccupation with the means of religious life rather than its ends. Because this was a sociological analysis, it highlighted the fact that this preoccupation was, in part at least, the result of the order's necessary concern with its self-preservation. This does not mean, however, that such a preoccupation is inevitable. As the information concerning the more creative women has shown, it is also possible to relativize the impact of the " 2011 ] Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 social requirements of communal living and to begin to achieve the under-lying purpose of religious life. But to do this requires an effort on the part of the order to become sensitive to the effects its structures have on the spiritual journey of each of its members and an effort on the part of each member to be radically honest with himself or herself about the real con-cerns which occupy one's life in a religious setting. NOTES ~Marie Augusta Neal, "The Relation Between Religious Belief and Structural Change in Religiiaus Orders: Developing an Effective Measurement," Review of Religious Research 12, 1 (Fall, 1970), pp. 2-16. 2Helen Ebaugh, Out of the Cloister (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1977.). 3Lucinda San Giovanni, Ex-Nuns (Ables, Norwood, New Jersey, 1978). 4Rich~ard Schoenherno and Andrew Greeley, "Role Commitment Processes and the American Catholic Priesthood," American Sociological Review 39 (1974) pp. 417-426. ~Patricia Wittberg, "Transformations in Religious Commitment" REVIEW FOR RELI- ~31OtJS, Vol. 42 No. 2 (1985), pp. 161-170. 6Rosabeth Kanter, Commitment and Community (Harvard University Press, Cam-bridge, 1972). 7Ibid, p. 69: 8lbid, p. 69. 91bid, p. 67. ~ORobert Merton, ~Social Conformity, Deviation, and Opportunity Structures: A Comment on the Contributions of Dubin and Cloward," American Sociological Review 24 (1959), pp. 177-188. Two Forms of Consecrated Life: Religious and Secular Institutes David E O'Connor, S. T. Father O'Connor holds the chair of the Department of Church Law at Washington Theological Union and resides at Holy Trinity Mission Seminary (9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20910). His previous article in these pages was "Lay Associate Programs: Some Canonical and Practical Considerations," which appeared in last year's March/April issue. Th~ 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law in, canons 573-730 designates both religious and secular institutes as Institutes of the Consecrated Life. This is a new classification in church law, In its simplicity, it is open to some misunderstanding as a juridical oversimplification because, in fact, both types of institutes are very different. This may just be another exam-ple of the limitations of all canonical categories which are not capable of fully expressing the charisms and gifts of the Spirit to the Church. While the members of both forms of~the consecrated life do profess the evangeli-cal counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, their lifestyles manifest two rather divergent forms of ecclesial dedication. The intention of this brief article is to explore some of the similarities and real differences between these two types of consecrated lives and to promote a better appreciation of the distinctiveness,~ the identity and the place each one has in the Church. Let it be stated at the outset that neither form of ecclesial dedication is presented as better or superior tO the other. While canonical religious life has been a recognized and important part of Church life for centuries, it has taken a variety of shapes and forms. Secular institutes, canonically and historically, have received ecclesial recognition only within the last fifty years and are still in the process of trying to have their uniqueness under- 205 906 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 .stood and appreciated. The new Code of Canon Law is a welcome and innovative move in this direction. It is a positive step forward in giving secular institutes the canon-ical identity and ecclesial status which they deserve. In canon 710, the new code describes a secular institute as one in which the Christian faithful living in the world strive for perfection in charity and work for the sanctifi-cation of the world, especially from within. Canon 607, §2 describes a religious institute as one in which the members, according to proper law, pronounce public vows, either.perpetual or temporary, which are to be renewed when they have lapsed, and live in common as brothers or sisters. A quick perusal of these canonical descriptions makes apparent some of the. differences between these two types of institutes. The members of secular institutes are to "live in the world" and work for its sanctification "especially from within." On the other hand, religious are to live "in com-mon as brothers or sisters" and profess "public" vows. These and other distinctive features of both forms of ecclesial dedication need to be more closely examined and elaborated upon in order to manifest the special style of consecration lived by the members of the different institutes. In order to facilitate this examination, a comparison of these two types of consecrated life has been organized under the following five headings: Secularity, Community Life, Apostolic Activity, Evangelical Counsels and Canonical Status. There will be, necessarily, some repetition involved because it is impossible to treat the distinctiveness of each institute without there being some overlapping of ideas. For example, it is not possible to consider the evangelical counsels as lived in religious institutes without considering them in the context of common life. Nor is it possible, to con-sider adequately the evangelical counsels as lived by members of secular institutes without examining them in the context of the secularity which is essential to the life of the members. I ask the reader to be patient in this matter as efforts are made to emphasize the genuine distinctiveness and special characteristics of each form of the consecrated life. Se~.ulariff. The primarY and foremost characteristic of secular institutes is that they are secular. This has been repeatedly emphasized in all the ecclesiasti-cal documents which address the nature and role of these institutes, from Provida Mater Ecclesia (February 2, 1947) and the Motu Proprio, Primo Feliciter (March 12, 1947), through the documents of Vatican II (1962-1965), especially ,Perfectae Caritatis,, 11, to the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It is "secularity" which totally colors the way oof life of the members and is the most significant characteristic of their consecrated way of life. Two Forms of Consecrated Ltfe/ 207 The members remain lay people or secular priests. They are not reli-gious ~nor are they expected to live in any manner which approximates or imitates the religious life.~ In every, sense of the term, they are to cultivate their consecrated secularity as ordinary people; living "in-the world and, as it were, from the world. "~ They should be involved in the social milieu and professional life proper to each member in the concrete circumstances of that member's place, time and culture. Indeed, members are to have a secular outlook and acknowledge themselves as "part" of the world and committed to sanctifying it from within) Hehce, the style of life of the lay members of a secular.,institu~te is that~ of a consecrated person living a rather inconspicuous and ordinary life, holding down a job or involved in a profession, while living alone or wi[h family or friends. Externally they will not appear to be different from any other lay person in a similar situation. Indeed, Pope John Paul II has encouraged them to develop their professional life and to be, at the level of Knowledge and experience, really competent in their specific field of endeavor.4 Religious, on the other hand, are required and expected by/heir own consecrated way of life to have a certain "separation from the world prpper to the character and purpose of each institute.'~ Obviously, this is expressed very differently by monastic communities and by apostolic reli-gious. Members of apostolic religious institutes frequent~ly find themselves immers~ed in the world with similar demands made upon them to have the professional competence required in their particular formJ of apostolate or ministry. Yet, at the same time, they may be more likely to think of themselves, while at the service of people and the Church,.as "being in the world, but not of it." Indeed, they are often readily identifiable as "Church-people" even if they are not wearing a habit or clerical garb. Furthermore, they often live in houses or convents associated with their ir~titutional apostolate which helps identify them as Church-workers. Thus their com-munity lifestyle and their corporate apostolate or form of ministry, in one sense, sets them apart and "separates" them from" the ordinary lifestyle of lay people. There are incarnational and eschatological dimensions" to the life of every Christian. However, it appears that the Church considers thai the incarnational should be especially clear in the Christian life of the dedicated laity and that the eschatological or transcendental should be-particularly manifested through the dedicated life of members of religious institutes. One form of the consecrated life the secular institute emphasizes the goodness of the world and of all God's creation (Gn l:3,1); the Other the religious institute emphasizes the radical discipleship of Jesus which involves some separation from or renunciation of the world (Jn 15:19). 901t / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 Community Life Some form of life in common or community life has been a part of religious life from timeqmmemorial. It is a clear requirement of the new Code of Canon Law.6 Members of a religious community are to live in a house-of their own institute with their brothers or sisters and under the autl~ority of a religious superior.7 This is the place where they conduct their day-to-day life and offer their companionship and support to one another. It is the place where they gather about the eucharistic table and pray together. It is from there that apostolic religious reach out to others in a variety of ministries and dedicated ecclesial service. Therefore, some form of commu~nity life has been a perennial dimension of religious~ life and presented as an ecclesial witness of Christian love. The common life of religious does differ somewhat fro~a community to community, and is radically different for: monastic and apostolic religious. However, it is a necessary dimension of religious life and one of its special characteristics. Common life is not a part °of the consecrated life of members of secular institutes. While some institutes may have, as part of their particular tradi-tion, residences which belong to the institute, community life is not an expectation, requirement or characteristic of secular institutes in general. In fact, it has often been positively discouraged as contrary to a truly secular style of life and an unfortunate move toward the imitation of a life approp-riate to a religious institute. ~ The secular quality does not permit of community life on the part of mem-o ~rs, even as an option. It is too easy to slip from the notion of a "group" life to that of a "com.mon" life inconsistent with the personl liberty and the vari-ety of commitments which the ideal of presence in the world entails.8 The new 9od,e does not require the administrators or leaders of a secular institute to have their own residence, nor is it necessary to have a house where formation programs can be conducted.9 Members of secular i~stitutes are expected to live as ordinary lay people, either alone or with their families, or in a group as brothers and sisters.~0 Diocesan priests, who are members of a secular institute, likewise, are expected to live as the other priests in the diocese. That is, they are to live in the rectory to which they haye been assigned by their bishop. There is to be nothing unusual or exter-nally distinctive in their style of life in the world. However, as canon 716 of the code states, the members of a secular institute are urged to share actively in the institute according to their own proper law. They are to maintain a certain "communion" among them-selves arid carefully foster a unity of ~pirit and genuine relationships as brothers and sisters. The constitutions and statutes of each institute should specify how this is to be done, but should not imply that cohabitation or Two Forms of Consecrated Life / 209 any form of common life similar to that of religious is expected. It is the obligation of leaders and moderators in the institute to promo.te this spirit of unity and an active participation of the members)~ Apostolic Activity The new Code of Canon Law succinctly expresses the manner in which apostoli~ activity is to be exercised by the members o

Issue 28.3 of the Review for Religious, 1969. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellavd, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the cditor, the associate cditors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIOIOUS; 6~2 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63to3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallcn, SJ.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 \ffiHings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania t9~o6. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by facuhy members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis Universiw, tbe editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building ; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonttdy and copyright 1~) 1969 by REviEw v(m REt.mlncs at 428 East Preston Street; Baltimore, Mary-land 21202. Printed in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland and at additional mailing offices. Single copies: $1.00, Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $5.00 a year, $9.00 for two years; other countries: $5.50 a year, $10.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and stlould be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to REWEW :-'OR RELt(3IOt:S in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to pcrsons claiming to represent REVIEW YON RELIGIOUS, Change of address requests sbould include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions, where accom-panied by a remittance, should he sent to :-'oa RELmtOL'S; P. O. Box 671; Baltimore, M aryla nd 21203. Changes of add ress, business correspondence, and orders not accompanied by RELIGIOES ; d~213 East Preston Street; Baltimore, MarTland 21202. Manuscripts, editorial cor-respondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIE\V FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 Nortb Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to tile address of the Questions and Answers editor. MAY 1969 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 3 CONGREGATION FOR RELIGIOLIS Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Formation INTRODUCTION In its discussion of the question of renewal to the end that the Church might be enriched with a greater abun-dance of spiritual strength and be the better prepared to proclaim the message of saIvation to conterdporafy man, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council devoted no small measure of attention also to those who pursue the divine gift of a religious vocation; and it set forth in a clearer light the nature, structure, and importance of their way of life.1 Concerning their place in the body of the Chul;ch the Council affirmed: "Although the re-ligious state constituted by the profession of the evangelical counsels does not belong to the hierarchical structure of the Church, nevertheless it belongs in-separably to her life and holiness." 2 Besides, "since it is the function of the hierarchy of the Church to nourish the people of God and lead them to the choicest p~tstures (cf. Ezek. 34, 14), it devolves on the same hierarchy to govern with wise legislation the practice of the evangelical counsels. For by that practice is uniquely fostered the perfection of love for God and neighbor. Submissively following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the hierarchy also endorses rules formt~lated by eminent men and women, and authenticall~ ap-proves later modifications. Moreover, by its watchful and shielding authority, the hierarchy keeps close to com-munities established far and wide for the upbuilding of Christ's body, so that they can grow and flourish in ac-cord with the spirit of their founders." ~ x See the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium, nn. 411 It.; ed. Abbott, pp. 73 lid and the decree Per[ectae caritatis, ed. Abbott, pp.o 4. 6L6umen gentium, n. 44; ed. Abbott, p. 75. " s Ibid., n. 45; ed. Abbott, p. 75. Religious Formation VOLUME;28, 1969. + ÷ ÷ Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS It is no less true that the generous vitality, and es-pecially the renewal of the spiritual, evangelical, and apostolic life which must animate the various institutes in the untiring pursuit of an ever greater charity is the responsibility chiefly of those who have received the mission, in the name of the Church and with the grace of the Lord, to govern these institutes, and at the same time of the generous collaboration of all their mem-bers. It is of the very nature of the religious life, just as it is of the very nature of the Church, to have that structure without which no society, not even a super-natural one, would be able to achieve its end or be in a position to provide the best means to attain it. Wherefore, having learned also from centuries of ex-perience, the Church was led gradually to the formula-tion of a body of canonical norms, which have con-tributed in no small degree to the solidity and vitality of religious life in the past. Everyone recognizes that the renewal and adaptation of different institutes as de-manded by actual circumstances cannot be implemented without a revision of the canonical prescriptions dealing with the structure and the means of a religious life. As "the suitable renewal of religious communities de-pends very largely on the training of their members," 4 several congregations both of men and of women, anx-ious to work out the renewal desired by the Council, have endeavored by serious inquiries and have often taken advantage of the preparation of the special gen-eral chapter prescribed by the motu proprio Ecclesiae sanctae (II, n. 3),5 in order to discover the best conditions for a suitable renewal of the various phases of the formation of their members to the religious life. Thus it was that a certain number of requests were formulated and transmitted to the Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes, especially through the Union of Superiors General. These requests were intended to secure a broadening of the canonical norms actually governing religious formation, in order to permit the various institutes, conformably to the in-structions of the decree Perfectae caritatis, nn. 3 ff.,6 to make a better adaptation of the entire formation cycle to the mentality of younger generations and modern living conditions, as also to the present demands of the apostolate, while remaining faithful to the nature and the special aim of each institute. It is evident that no new clear and definitive legisla-tion can be formulated except on the basis of experi-ments carried out on a sufficiently vast scale and over a ~ Perfectae caritatis, n. 18; ed. Abbott, p. 478. ~ Ecclesiae sanctae, II, part 1, n. 3. 6 Per[ectae caritatis, n. 3; ed. Abbott, p. 469. sufficiently long period of time to make it possible to arrive at an objective judgment based on facts. This is most true since the complexity of; gituations, their varia-tions according to localities and the_ rapidity;,:of ~the changes which affect them make it' impossible for those charged with the formation of the youth of today to an authentic religious life to determine a priori which solu-ti6fi~ Ifii~h~ b~°best." '" ~ T!fi~ is'why~ tlils~.Sacred Congregatioff fOf~Rbligious and for Secular Institutes, after careful examination of the proposals submitted regarding the different phases of religious formation, has deemed it opportune to broaden the canonical rules now in force in order to permit these necessary experiments. Nevertheless, al-though the juridical norms are being eased, it is im-portant that this not b~ to the detriment of those basic values which the prevailing legislation undertook to safe-guard. For "it must be seriously borne in mind that even the most desirable changes made on behalf of con-temporary needs will fail of their purpose unless a re-newal Of spirit gives life to them." ~ In order to be authentic, every revision of the means and the rules of the religious life presupposes at the same time a redefining of the values which are essential to the religious life, since the safeguarding of these values is the aim of these norms. For this reason and in order to permit a clearer understanding of the significance of the new rulings set forth in this present Instruction, the Sacred Congregation has deemed it useful to preface them with certain explanatory remarks. SOME GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES !--Not only the complexity of the situations alluded to previously, but also, especially, the growing diversity of institutes and of their activities makes it increasingly difficult to formulate any useful set of directives equally applicable to all institutes everywhere. Hence the much broader norms set forth in this Instruction give to in-dividual institutes the possibility of prudently choosing the solutions best suited to their needs. It is especially important, particularly with reference to formation and education, to remember that not even the best solutions can be absolutely identical both for institutes of men and those of women. Similarly, the framework and the means of formation must vary ac-cording as an institute is dedicated to contemplation or is committed to apostolic activities. ' Ibid., n. 2, e); ed. Abbott, p. 469. 4" 4" + Religious Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 ÷ Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 2--Questi0ns raised by the faculty granted in this iptr oespepnotr. tIunnsetr, utcot~io_n~.r teop ~theo~speo i~nasrti.ytu~t_es_ ow~h.sic=hw, lmthi-~hlt~ dereem kin,,q.~9_~nt, emphasize the necessity of recalling here the nature iind the proper value of religious profes-sion. Such profession, whereby the members "either by vows or by other sacred bonds which are like vows in their purpose," 8 ~in-'d~"~s ~e~e ~Tzg~ who alone is worthy of.such a sweeping gift on the part of a human person. It is more in keeping with the nature of such a gift to find its culmination and its most eloquent expression in perpetual profession, whether simple or solemn. In fact, "this consecration will be all the more perfect according as through firmer and more solid bonds there will be reflected the image of Christ united with the Church His Spouse through an un-breakable bond." o Thus it is that religious profession is an act of religion and a special consecration whereby a person dedicates himself to God. Not only according to the teaching of the Church but likewise by the very nature of this consecration, the vow of obedience, whereby a religious consummates the com-plete renunciation of himself and, along with the vows of religious chastity and poverty, offers to God as it were a perfect sacrifice, belongs to the essence of religious profession,x0 Thus consecrated to Christ, the religious is at ttie same time bound to the service of the Church and, according to his vocation, is led to the realization of the perfection of that apostolic charity which must animate and impel him, whether in a life entirely given over ~o contempla-tion or in different apostolic activities. This notwith-standing, it is important to note that, even though in institutes dedicated to the apostolate "the very nature of the religious life requires apostolic action and serv-ices," ix this apostolic activity is not the primary aim of religious profession. Besides, the same apostolic works could be carried out quite as well without the consecra-tion deriving from the religious state although, for one who has taken on its obligations, this religious consecra-tion can and must contribute to greater dedication to the apostolate. Hence, although it is in order to renew religious life in its means and its forms of expression, it cannot be asserted that the very nature of religious profession must be changed or that there should be a lessening of the Lumen gentium, n. 44; ed. Abbott,.p. 74. Ibid., n. 44; ed. Abbott, p. 74. lo Perlectae caritatis, n. 14; ed. Abbott, p. 477. ~ Ibid., n. 8; ed. Abbott, p. 477. demands proper to it. The youth of today who are called by God to the religious state are not less desirous than before; rather they ardently desire to live up to this vocation in all its requirements, provided these be cer-tain and authentic. 3--Nevertheless, in addition to the religious vocation strictly and properly so called, the Holy Spirit does not cease to stir up in the Church, especially in these latter times, numerous institutes whose members, whether bound or not by sacred commitments, undertake to live in common and to practice the evangelical counsels in order to devote themselves to various apostolic or chari-table activities. The Church has sanctioned the authentic nature of these different modes of life and has approved them. Still, these modes do not constitute the religious state even though, up to a certain point, they have often been likened to religious life in canonical legislation. Therefore, the norms and directives contained in this present Instruction deal directly with religious institutes in the strict sense. Other institutes, however, if they so wish, are free to follow them in the proper organization of their formation program and in whatever is best suited to the nature of their activities. 4~The faculties granted to religious institutes by this present Instruction have been suggested by a certain number of considerations based on experience which it is in order to explain briefly here. It would appear that in our day and age genuin~ religious formation should proceed more by stages and be extended over a longer period of time since it must embrace both the time of the novitiate and the years following upon the first temporary commitment. In this formation cycle the novitiate must retain its irreplace-able and privileged role as the first initiation into re-ligious life. This goal cannot be attained unless the future novice possesses a minimum of human and spiritual preparation which must not only be tested but,, very often, also completed. In fact, for each candidate the nov_i_t~te_ should come at the moment ,~hen, aware of G'b'td s call, h-~h~ reached that a~gree o'-o'-6~h~man and spiritua! maturity which will allow him to decide to respond to this call with sufficient and proper responsibility and freedom. No one should enter religiou~ life without this choice being freely made and without the separation from men and things which this entails being accepted. Nevertheless, this first decision does not necessarily demand that the candidate be then able to measure up immediately to all the demands of the religious and apostolic life of the institute; but he must be judged capable of reaching this goal by stages. Most of the difficulties encountered ÷ + ÷ Religious Formation VOLUME 28,. 1969 859 ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS today in the formation of novices are usually due to the fact that when they were admitted they did not have th.e required maturity. Thus, preparation for entrance into the novitiate proves to be increasingly necessary as the world becomes less Christian in outlook. In most cases, in fact, a gradual spiritual and psychological adjustment appears to be in-dispensable in order to prepare the way for certain breaks, with one's social milieu and even worldly habits. Young people today who are attracted by the religious life are not looking for an easy life; indeed, their thirst for the. absolute is consuming. But their life of faith is Oftentimes based on merely elementary knowledge of doctrine, in sharp contrast to the development of their knowledge of profane subjects. Hence it follows that all institutes, even those whose formation cycle includes no postulancy, must attach great importance to this preparation for the novitiate. In institutes having minor seminaries, seminaries, or go!leges, candidates for tlie religious life usually go di-rectly to the novitiate. It will be worthwhile to recon-sider if this policy should be maintained, or if it is not more advisable, in order to assure better preparation for a.fully responsible choice of the religious life, to prepare for the novitiate by a fitting period of probation in order to develop the human and emotional maturity of the candidate. Moreover, while it must be recognized t.hat problems vary according to countries, it must be aiTarmed that-the age required for admission to the novitiate should be higher than heretofore. 5--As regards the formation to be imparted in the novitiate in institutes dedicated to the works of the ~postolate, it is evident that greater attention should be paid to preparing the novices, in the very beginning and more directly, for the type of life or the activities which will be theirs in the future, and to teaching them how to realize in their lives in progressive stages that co- .'.hesive unity whereby contemplation and apostolic ac- ~ti;~ity are closely linked together, a unity which is one of th~'"ra~st ftifl'daiiie'n't~l~'and primary values of these same societies. The achievement of this uriity requires proper understanding of the realities of the super-nattiral life and of the paths leading to a deepening of union with God in the unity of one same supernatural love for God and for men, finding expression at times in the solitude of intimate communing with the Lord and at others in the generous giving of self to apostolic activity. Young religious must be taught that this unity so eagerly sought and toward which all life tends in order to find its full development cannot be attained on the level of activity alone, or even be psychologically experienced, for it resides in that divine love which is the bond of perfection and which surpasses all under-standing. The attainment of this unity, which cannot be achieved without long training in self-denial or without persevering efforts toward purity of intention in action, demands in those institutes faithful compliance with the basic law of all spiritual life, which consists in arranging a proper balance of periods set aside for solitude with God and of others devoted to various activities and to the human contacts which these involve. Consequently, in order that novices, while acquiring experience in certain activities proper to their insti-tute, may discover the importance of this law-and make it habitual, it has seemed advisable to grant to those institutes which might regard it as opportune the faculty of introducing into the novitiate formative activity and experimental periods in keeping with their activities and their type of life. It must be emphasized that this formative activity, which complements novitiate teaching, is not intended to provide the novices with the technical or professional training required for certain apostolic activities, train-ing which will be afforded to them later on, but rather to help them, in the very mids~ of these activities, to better discover the exigencies of their vocation as re-ligious and how to remain faithful to them. In fact, confronted with the diversity of apostolic ac-tivities available to them, let religious not forget that, differently from secular institutes, whose specific activity is carried out with the means of the world or in the performance o1~ temporal tasks, religious must, above all, according to the teaching of the Council, be in a special manner witnesses to Christ within the Church: "Re-ligious should carefully consider that, through them, to believers and non-believers alike, the Church truly wishes to give an increasingly clearer revelation of Christ. Through them Christ should be shown con-templating on the mountain, announcing God's king-dom to the multitude, healing the sick and the maimed, turning sinners to wholesome fruit, blessing children, do-ing good to all, and always obeying the will of the Father who sent Him." 12 There is a diversity of gifts. Wherefore, each one must s~ia'd~"~-n in the vocation to which he has been called, since the mission of those called to th~ rdli~iotis~t~te~i~a the Church is one thing; the mission of secular insti-tutes is another thing; the temporal and apostolic mis-sion of the laity not especially consecrated to God in an institute, is quite another. Lumen gentium, n. 46; ed. Abbott, p. 77. ÷ Religious Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 36! Religious For~nation REVIEW FO~ RELI~IOOS 362 It is in line with this perspective on his vocation that whoever is called by God to the religious state must understand the meaning of the in the novitiate. Therefore, the nature and these periods, as well as the them into the novitiate, will formation which is begun the educational value of timeliness of introducing be evaluated differently in. congregations of men or of women, in institutes dedicated to contemplation or to apostolic activities. Indeed, the effectiveness of this formation, while it is imparted in an atmosphere of greater freedom and flexibility, will also depend largely on the firmness and the wisdom of the guidance afforded by the novice master and by all those who share in th~ formation of young religious after the novitiate. It is extremely im-portant also to recall the importance of the role played in such formation by the atmosphere of generosity pro-vided by a fervent and united community, in the midst of which young religious will be enabled to learn by experience the value of mutual fraternal assistance as an element of readier progress and perseverance in their vocation. 6--In order then to respond to this same need of gra'dual formation the question has arisen concerning the"extension of the period prior to perpetual profes-sion in which a candidate is bound by temporary vows or by some other form of commitment. It is proper that when he pronounces his perpetual vows, the religious should have reached the degree of spiritual maturity required in order that the religious state to which he is committing himself in stable and certain fashion may really be for him a means of perfec-tion and greater love rather than a burden (oo heavy to cai'ry. Nevertheless, in certain cases the extension of temporary probation can be an aid to this maturity, while in others it can involve drawbacks which it ~vill not be out bf place to point out. The fact of remaining for too long a time in a state of uncertainty is not always a contribution to maturity, and this situation may in some cases encourage a tendency to instability. It should be added that in the case of non-admission to per-petual profession, the return to lay life will often entail problems of readjustment, which will be all the more serious and trying according as the time spent l~.~-oml:I~ has been longer. Superiors, conse-quently, must be aware of their grave responsibilities in this field and should not put off until the last minute a decision which could and should have been taken earlier. 7--No institute should decide to use the faculty granted by this Instruction to replace temporary vows by some other form of commitment without having clearly considered and weighed the reasons for and the nature of this commitment. For him who has heeded the call of Jesus to leave everything to follow Him there dan be no question of how important it is to respond generously and whole-heartedly to this call from the very outset of his religious life; the making of temporary vows is completely in harmony with this requirement. For, while still retaining its ~y~t~c- t~h a t~it~is~, tem op_~.~y, the profession of first vows make~--the young religious share in the consecration proper to the religious state. Yet, perpet.u~.l vows can be prepared for without making te@orary ~rows. In fact, more frequently now than in the past, a certain number of young candidates come to the end of their novitiate without having ac-quired the religious maturity sufficient to bind them-selves immediately by religious vows, although no pru-dent doubt can be raised regarding their generosity or their authentic vocation to the religious state. This hesi-tancy in pronouncing vows is frequently accompanied by a great awareness of the exigencies and the importance of the perpetual religious profession to which they aspire and wish to prepare themselves. Thus it has seemed desirable in a certain number of institutes that at the end of their novitiate the novices should be able to bind themselves by a ~ different from vows, yet answering their twofold desire to give them-selves to God and the institute and to pledge themselves to a fuller preparation for perpetual profession. Whatever form such a ~tempora .x'~y~fi~ may take, fidelity to a genuine religious vocation demands that it should in some way be based on the require-ments of the three evangelical counsels and should thus be already entirely orientated toward the one per-petual profession, for which it must be, as it were, an apprenticeship and a preparation. 8~He who commits himself to walk in the path of the Savior in the religious life, must bear in mind our Lord's own words that "no one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Lk 9:62). Just the same, the psychological and emotional difficulties encountered by some individuals in their progressive adaptation to the religious life are not always resolved upon the termination of the novi-tiate, and at the same time there is no doubt that their vocation can be authentic. In many cases, the permis-sion for absence provided for by canon law will allow superiors to make it possible for these religious to spend some time outside a house of the institute in order to be the better able to resolve their problems. But in some more difficult cases, this solution will be inadequate. ÷ 4. Religious Formation VOLUME' 28o 1969 ¯ 363 Superiors can then persuade such candidates to return to lay life, using if necessary, the faculty granted in Number 38 of this Instruction. 9--Lastly, a religious formation more based on stages and judiciously extended over the different periods of the life of a young religious should find its culmination in a serious preparation for perpetual vows. It is in fact desirable that this unique and essential act whereby a religious.ds cons_ecrated to~.,.God~forever.,,.s_houl.d~be~pr~e_~;, ceded by a sufficiently long immediate preparation, spent in retreat and prayer, a preparation which could be like a second novitiate. II ÷ ÷ Religious Formatim~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS SPECIAL NORMS The Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes, in its desire to promote necessary and useful experiments in view of the adaptation and renewal of religious formation, having examined these questions in its plenary meetings of June 25-26, 1968, by virtue of a special mandate from the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Paul VI, has seen fit, by this Instruction, to formulate and to publish the following norms: 10--I. Religious formation comprises two essential phases: the novi~t4ate and the~probationary period which follows the novitiate and lasts for a period adapted to the nature of the institute, during which the members are bound by vows or other commitments. II. A.*.ibreliminar.y-~period~,;of varying duration, obliga-tory in certain institutes under the name of postulancy, usually precedes admission to the novitiate. l l--I, This preliminary probation has as its purpose not merely to formulate a tentative judgment on the aptitudes and vocation of the candidate, but also to verify the extent of his knowledge of religious subjects and, where need be, to complete it in the degree judged necessary and, lastly, to permit a gradual transition from lay life to the life proper to the novitiate. II. During this probationary period it is particularly necessary to secure assurance that the candidate for religious life be endowed with such elements of human and emotional maturity as will afford grounds for hope that he is capable of undertaking properly the obliga-tions of the religious state and that, in the religious life and especially in the novitiate, he will be able to pro-gress toward fuller maturity. III. If in certain more difficult cases, the superior feels, with the free agreement of the subject, that he should have recourse to the services of a prudent and qualified psychologist known for his moral principles, it is de- sirable, in order that this examination may be fully ef-fective, that it should take place after an extended period of probation, so as to enable the specialist to formulate a diagnosis based on experience. 12--I. In institutes where a postulancy is obligatory, whether by common law or in virtue of the constitu-tions, the general chapter may follow the norms of this present Instruction for a be'tter adaptation of the period of postulancy to the requirements of a more fruitful preparation for the novitiate. II. In other instututes it belongs to the general chapter to determine the nature and the length of this prelimi-nary probation, which can vary according to candi-dates. Nevertheless, if it is to be genuinely effective, this period should neither be too brief nor, as a general rule, be extended beyond two years. III. It is preferable that this probation should not take place in the novitiate house. It could even be helpful that, either in whole or in part, it be organized outside a house of the institute. IV. During thi~ preliminary probation, even if it takes place outside a house of the institute, the candidates will be placed under the direction of qualified religious and there should be sufficient collaboration between these latter and the novice master, with a view to assuring continuity of formation. 13--I. Religious life begins with the novitiate. What-ever may be the special aim of the institute, the prin-cipal purpose of the novitiate is to initiate the novice into the essential and primary requirements of the reli-gious life anti also, in view of a greater charity, to imple-ment the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience of which he will later make profession, "either through vows or other sacred bonds which are like vows in their purpose." 18 II. In those institutes where "the very nature of the religious life requires apostolic action and services," 14 the novices are to be gradually trained to dedicate them-selves to activities in keeping with the purpose of their institute, while developing that intimate union with Christ whence all their apostolic activity must flow.15 14--Superiors responsible for the admission of can-didates to the novitiate will take care to accept only those giving proof of the aptitudes and elements of ma-turity regarded as necessary for commitment to the re-ligious life as lived in the institute. 15--I. In order to be valid, the novitiate must be made in the house legitimately designated for this purpose. Lumen gentium, n. 44; ed. Abbott, p. 75. Perfectae caritatis, n. 8; ed. Abbott, p. 472. Ibid. ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Formation VOLUME 28~ 1969 865 Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 566 II. It should be made in the community or group of novices, fraternally united under the direction of the novice master. The program as well as the nature of the activities and work of the novitiate must be organized in such a way as to contribute to novice formation. III. This formation, conformably to the teachings of our Lord in the gospel and the demands of the particular aim and spirituality of the institute, consists mainly in initiating the novices gradually into detachment from everything not connected with the kingdom of God, the practice of obedience, poverty, prayer, habitual union with God in availability to the Holy Spirit, in order to help one another spirtually in frank and open charity. IV. The novitiate will also include study and medita-tion on Holy Scripture, the doctrinal and spiritual for-mation indispensable for the development of a super-natural life of union with God and an understanding of the religious state, and, lastly, an initiation to litur-gical life and the spirtuality proper to the institute. 16--I. The erection of a novitiate does not require the authorization of the Holy See. It belongs to the superior general, with the consent of his council and conformably to the norms laid down in the constitutions, to erect or to authorize tbe erection of a novitiate, to determine the special details of the program, and to de-cide on its location in a given house of the institute. II. If necessary, in order to make more effective pro-vision for the formation of the novices, the superior general may authorize the transfer of tbe novitiate com-munity during certain periods to another residence des-ignated by himself. 17--In case of necessity, the superior general, with the consent of his council and after consultation with the interested provincial, may authorize the erection of several novitiates within the same province. 18--In view of the very i~nportant role of community life in the formation of the novices, and when the small number of the novices would prevent the creation of con-ditions favorable to genuine community life, the superior general should, if possible, organize the novitiate in an-other community of the institute able to assist in the for- .mation of this small group of novices. 19--In special cases and by way of exception, the superior general, with the consent of his council, is em-pqwered to allow a candidate to make his novitiate validly in some house of the institute other than the novitiate, under the responsibility of an experienced reli-gious acting as novice master. 20--For a reason which he regards as just, the major superior may allow first profession to be made outside the novitiate house. 21--In order to be valid, the novitiate as described above must last twelve months. 22--I. Absences from the novitiate group and house which, either at intervals or continuously, exceed three months render the novitiate invalid. II. As for absences lasting less than three months, it pertains to the major superiors, after consultation with the novice master, to decide in each individual case, taking into account the reasons for the absence, whether this absence should be made up by demanding an ex-tension of the novitiate, and to determine the length of the eventual prolongation. The constitutions of the insti-tute may also provide directives on this point. 23--I. The general chapter, "by at least a two-thirds majority, may decide, on an experimental basis, to inte-grate into novitiate formation one or several periods in-volving activities in line with the character of the in-stitute and away from the novitiate, in the degree in which, in the judgment of the novice master and with the consent of the major superior, such an experiment would seem to be a useful contribution to formation. II. These formation stages may be used for one or sev-eral novices or for the novitiate community as a whole. Wherever possible, it would be. preferable that the novices take part in these stages in groups of two or more. III. During these stages away from the novitiate com-" munity, the novices remain under the responsibility of the novice master. 24---1. The total length of the periods spent by a novice outside the novitiate will be added to the twelve months of presence required by Article 21 for the validity of the novitiate, but in such a way that the total duration of the novitiate thus expanded does not exceed two years. II. These formative apostolic periods may not begin until after a miniinum of three months in the novitiate and will be distributed in such a way that the novice will spend at least six continuous months in the novitiate and return to the novitiate for at least one month prior to first vows or temporary commitment. III. In cases where superiors would deem it useful for a future novice to have a period of experience before beginning the three months of presence required at the start of the novitiate, this period could be regarded as a probation period and only after its completion would the novitiate begin. 25--I. The nature of experimental periods outside the novitiate can vary according to the aims of various institutes and the nature of their activities. Still, they must always be planned and carried out in view of forming the novice or, in certain cases, te.sting his apti-tude for the life of the institute. Besides gradual prepara-÷ ÷ Religiotts Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 "" " 367 ÷ ÷ Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 368 tion for apostolic activities, they can also have as their purpose to bring the novice into contact with certain concrete aspects of poverty or of labor, to contribute to character formation, a better knowledge of human na-ture, the strengthening of the will, the development of personal responsibility, and, lastly, to provide occasions for effort at union with God in the context of the active life. II. This balancing of periods of activity and periods of retreat consecrated to prayer, meditation, or study, which will characterize the formation of. the novices, should stimulate them to remain faithful to it throughout the whole of their religious life. It would also be well for such periods of retreat to be regularly planned during the years of formation preceding perpetual profession. 26--The major superior may, for a just cause, allow first profession to be anticipated, but not beyond fifteen days. 27--In institutes having different novitiates for dif-ferent categories of religious, and unless the constitutions stipulate otherwise, the novitiate made for one category is valid likewise for the other. It belongs to the con-stitutions to determine eventual conditions regulating this passage from one novitiate to the other. 28--The special nature and aim of the novitiate, as a/so the close bonds which should be found among the novices, really demand a certain separation of the novice g~oup from the other members of the institute. Never-theless the novices may, according to the judgment of the novice master, have contacts with other communities or religious. Hence it will be the task of the general chapter, taking into consideration the spirit of the insti- ¯ tute and the demands of special circumstances, to decide what kind of contacts the novices may have with the other members of the institute. 29--I. The general chapter may permit or even im-pose during the regular novitiate year certain studies which may be useful for the formation of the novices. Doctrinal studies must be put at the service of a loving knowledge of God and a deepening of the life of faith. II. Excluded from the novitiate year described in Number 21 are all formal study programs, even of the-ology or philosophy, as also studies directed toward the obtaining of diplomas or in view of professional training. 30-~All tasks and work entrusted to novices will be tinder the responsibility and direction of the novice mas-ter, who nevertheless may seek the aid of competent persons. The chief aim of these various tasks must be the formation of the novices, not the interests of the congregation. 31~-I. In the direction-of the novices, particularly during the periods of formative activity, the novice master will base his direction on the teaching so clearly enunciated by the Second Vatican Council: "Therefore, in order that members may above all respond to their vocation of following Christ and may serve Christ Himself in His members, their apostolic activity should result from their intimate union with Him." 16 "To this end, let the members of all institutes, seeking above all only God, unite contemplation, whereby they are united with Him in mind and heart, with apostolic love, whereby they strive to associate themselves with the work of redemption and to spread the kingdom of God." 17 II. With this in mind he should teach the novices (1) to seek in all things, as well in apostolic activities or the service of men as in the times consecrated to silent prayer or study, purity of intention and the unity of charity toward God and toward men; (2) when the apostolic activities of their institute lead them to become involved in human affairs, to learn how to use this world "as though not.usingjtl) ,, ~.~ ,~ . (3) to understand the limitati~"iSf ~l~i~'~'~i~,fi::fictivity without being discouraged and to work at the ordering of thei.r,.ow~,life, bearing in mind that no one can give l~ims~i~'ati~){d~ically to God and his brethren without first getting possession of himself in humility; (4) to bring about in their lives, along with a will which is firm and rich in initiative, and conformably to the demands of a vocation to an institute dedicated to the apostolate, the indispensable balance on both the hu-man and the supernatural level between times conse-crated to the apostolate and the service of men and more or less lengthy periods, in solitude or in .community, devoted to prayer and meditative reading of the Word of God; (5) in fidelity to this program which is essential to every consecrated life, to ground their hearts'~'gr~dually.:,.in. union with God and that peace which comes from doing ~li'g i~#ii~fi will, whose demands they will have learned to discover in the duties of their state and in tne~'prompt~- ings of justice and charity. 32--I. Unity of heart and mind must reign between superiors, the novice master, and the novices. This union, which is the fruit of genuine charity, is necessary for religious formation. II. Superiors and the novice master must always show toward the novices evangelical ~simplicity, kindness coupled w~tb~"gentleness, and respect for their person-ality, in order to build up a climate of confidence, docil-ity, and openness in which the novice master will be able Per[ectae caritatis, n. 8; ed. Abbott, p. 472. Ibid., n. 5; ed. Abbott, p. 470 + + 4. ltetiglous Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 369 )Reiigious Formation REVIEW FOR RElIGiOUS to orientate their generosity toward a complete gift of thdmselves to the Lord in faith and gradually lead them by word and example to learn in the mystery of Christ crucified the exigencies of authentic religious obedience. Thus, let the novice master teach his novices "to bring an active and responsible obedience to the offices they shoulder and the activities they under-take." is 33--As for the habit of the novices and other candi-dates to the religious life, the decision rests with the general chapter. 34--I. The general chapter, by a two-thirds majority, may decide to replace temporary vows in the institute with some other kind of commitment as, for example, a promise made to the institute. r II. This commitment will be made at the end of the novitiate and for the duration of the probationary period extending to perpetual profession or to the sacred com-mitments which are its equivalent in certain institutes.19 LThis ~,~.tm~nt may also be made for a briefer period and be renewed at stated intervals, or even be followed by the making of temporary vows. ¯ 35--I. It is altogether proper that this should have reference to the practice of the three evan-gelical couns61s, in order to constitute a genuine prepara-tion for perpetual profession. It is of the utmost impor-tanc~ to safeguard unity of religious formation. Although the practice of this life is realized definitively at per-petu~ l profession, it must begin quite a long time before this profession. II. Since, therefore, the one perpetual profession as-sumes its full significance, it is fitting that it should be preceded by a period of immediate preparation lasting for a certain length of time and serving as a kind of ~. The duration and details will be deter- ~ b~ the general chapter. 36--Whatever may be the nature of this ~, its effect will be to bind whoever makes it to his congregation or his institute and it will entail the obligation of observing the rule, constitutions and other regulations of the institute. The general chapter will determine otiaer aspects and consequences of this com-mitment. 37--I. The general chapter, after careful consideration of all the circumstances, shall decide on the length of the period of ~s or ¢~ which is to extend from the end of the novitiate until the making of perpetual vows. This period shall last for no less than Ibid., n. 14; ed. Abbott, p. 477. See n. 3 of the present Instruction. three years and no more than nine, counting the time continuously. II. The prescription still stands that perpetual profes-sion must be made before the reception o[ holy orders. 88--I. When a member has left his institute legiti-mately, either at the expiration o[ his ~e.s- ~l~latt_~ommi~m,e~at or after dispensation from these ob-ligations, and later requests re-admission, the superior general, with the consent of his council, may grant this re-admission without the obligation of prescribing the repetition of the novitiate. II. The superior general must, nonetheless, impose on him a certain period of probation, upon the completion of which the candidate may be admitted to temporary vows or commitment for a period of no less than one year, or no less than the period of temporary probation which he would have had to complete before per-petual profession at the time he left the institute. The superior may also demand a longe~ period of trial. III APPLICATION OF THE SPECIAL NORMS In the implementation of these present decisions the following directives shall be observed: I. The prescriptions of common law remain in force except in so far as this present Instruction may derogate therefrom. II. The faculties granted by this Instruction may not in any way be delegated. III. The term "superior general" also includes the abbot president of a monastic congregation. IV. In case the superior general is incapacitated or legitimately impeded from acting, these same faculties are granted to the one who is legitimately designated by the constitutions to replace him. V. In the case of nuns dedicated exclusively to con-templative life, special regulations shall be inserted into the constitutions and submitted for approval. Neverthe-less, the norms indicated in Numbers 22, 26, and 27 may be applied to them. VI. 1. If the special general chapter prescribed by the motu proprio Ecclesiae sanctae has already been held, it will belong to the superior general and his council, acting as a body, after due consideration of all the cir-cumstances, to decide if it is advisable to convoke a general chapter to decide the questions reserved to it or to await the next ordinary general chapter. 2. Should the superior general with his council, as above, deem it too difficult or even impossible to con-voke a new general chapter and if, at the same time, the ,Religious Formation VoLOME ~'28, "1969 371 implementation of the faculties reserved to the decision of the chapter is regarded as urgent for the welfare of the institute, the superior general and his council, as before, are hereby authorized to implement some or all of these faculties until the next general chapter, pro-vided that he,previously consult the other major supe-riors wxth their councils and obtain the consent~oL, at least two-thirds of their number. The major superiors m turn should make it a point to first consult their per-petually professed religious. In institutes having no provinces, the superior general must consult the per-petually professed and obtain the consent of two-thirds. VII. These directives, issued on an experimental basis, take effect as of the date of the promulgation of the present Instruction. Rome, January 6, on the Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord, in the year 1969. I. CARD ANTONIUTTI Prefect ~ ANTONIO MAURO Tit. Archbishop of Tagaste Secretary ÷ + + Religious Formation REVIEW FOR RELIGIO0$ EDWARD L. HESTON, C.S.C. Temporary Vows and Promises AS period of temporary vows in preparation for per-petual profession has become so much a part of our for-mation structures in contemporary religious life that the casual observer could easily be led to believe that such temporary vows have always been required and that they constitute one of the really essential elements of re-ligious life. Yet, temporary vows are of comparatively recent origin in canonical legislation. In fact, the first universally binding imposition of temporary vows was formulated in the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917. Almost every religious congregation still has among its members a certain number who went from the novi-tiate directly into perpetual profession. The prescription of temporary vows was dictated by prudence and long experience. Because of the evidently far-reaching consequences of perpetual profession it no longer seemed advisable for a candidate to make such profession without an opportunity to live the religious life in circumstances more realistic than those provided by the background of a strict novitiate program. With this dictate of prudence there could be no quarrel in principle. There was none for many decades. Even when questions arose in the wake of all the discussions opened up in the postconciliar atmosphere, the point at issue was not the probationary period itself but rather the concrete framework around which it would be built. These discussions eventually raised the question whether a period of living under temporary public re-ligious vows was the only or, even tbe best, wayZtoT.f)re- ,pare ~ov~perpetua~ profession. ~ome ot tlaese ~ou~ts have stemmed from psycliolog~cal problems ~n the minds of contemporary candidates for the religious life. Many # This article was originally prepared for La vie des commu-nautds religieuses and is reprinted here in its English form by the kind permission of the editor of La vie. + + ÷ Edward L. Hes-ton, C.S.C., procu-rator general of the Holy Cross Fathers, lives at Via Aure-lia 391; 00165 Rome, Italy. VOLUME 28, 1969 instinctively, and rightly, think of vow as synonymous with commitment, a consecration to God. No such com-mitment or consecration, they, reason, can be anything else than complete and permanent. Hence, the concept of a temporary vow really involves some kind of contra- ~%d.Tihcis tsuvicioeciwnncptolyi.n btyw thaes expressed sister who declared that being restricted to making vows for only one year when she really wanted to give herself to God forever meant that she could neither say what she meant nor mean what she said. It m~ght seem relatively easy to attempt to solve the difficulty by recourse to the traditional theological explanation that, as far as the commitment itself is con-cerned, the profession of temporary vows is as all-em-bracing and as lasting as that involved in perpetual pro-fession. The only difference is in the duration. Tempo-rary profession, one could point out, is so closely con-nected with perpetual profession that no candidate can be admitted to temporary vows without the intention of eventually proceeding to perpetual profession when the proper time comes. One could point out that the only difference between temporary profession and perpetual profession is that the commitment is essentially the same but that, in order to safeguard the best interests of both the candidate and the institute, canon law suspends some of the juridical effects of this profession before allowing it to become perpetually binding. But, well grounded as it is in sound theological and juridical principles, this explanation has not always clarified the matter in the minds of the interested parties. There is the further consideration that, as can be seen in many cases arising out of practical experience, it hap-pens not infrequently that young men and women come to the end of their novitiate formation and still do not feeL.either spiritually or psychologically "up" to the comniitinent involved in making vows, even-tempora~ ~O~as.~ Since, at the same time they gi~ encouraging signs of an authentic religious vocation, the question has been raised whether they cannot be given an opportunity to remain in the religious life without binding them-selves by vows in the strict sense of the term; and this situation has given to the problem a certain concrete actuality. A further consideration is that the increasing facility with which temporary vows can be dispensed has tended almost inevitably to weaken respect for this particular form of commitment, because there seems ,at times to be ahnost a_tr~end not. to take such vows~verylseriously. It was against this background i~f doubts and diffi-culties that suggestions gradually began to come to the fore that the probation which is the aim of temporary E. L. Hes~n, ~.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS vows might possibly be achieved by some other means. It is generally admitted that a candidate can acquire an authentic and practical experience of religious life evvideend t hhoe uhgahs nthoet b~o.p~us~snib_ldil~i_btyty _-p ou~b_!_[ ilci_v_i~r_~negl_:tiignid.?eUr Sso v_o_wmse,_ p 9rot~-h~r form of binding commitment. The possibility of pre-paring for perpetual commitment without some form of temporary commitment is not given serious con-sideration. Could not a young religious make this commitment through a simple promise having the proper juridical sanction? Such questions as these provided the background for the provisions contained in the recent Instruction Renovationis causam on the renewal of religious formation issued by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, January 6, 1969. Among the special experimental faculties requested by the Union of Superiors General and the International Union of Mothers General in December, 1967, was that of substituting a commitment by promise got tem-porary vows. The pertinent passages of the latest Instruc-tion of the Holy See read as follows: 34~I. The general chapter, by a two-thirds majority, may de-cide to replace tem.porary vows in the institute with some other kind of commlunent, as for example, a promise made to the institute. II. This commitment will be made at the end of the novitiate and for the duration of the probationary period extending to perpetual profession or to the sacred commitments which are its equivalent in certain institutes. The tempora_ry-commitmenC. may also be made for a briefer period-and ~ r~new~d at stated intervals, or even be followed by the making of tempo-rary vows. Thus, the general chapter of an institute may decide that, instead of temporary vows, a candidate may2bin~ himself to live.acgordiiag to the constitutions in prep~ira- ~i~)i~--for~the profession of perpetual vows. The question naturally arises: What is the difference between such a promise and a vow? In reply we can state that a vow is a special kind o~ promise. Every vow is a promise, but not every promise is a vow. A vow is defined by moral theologians as "a deliberate and free promise made to God of a possible and better good" (Noldin, Summa theologiae moralis, II, p. 195). A promise, in general, implies binding oneself to do or to omit something, such promise being accepted by the one to whom it is made and thus giving rise to a genuine obligation. The binding force underlying this obligation would be that of the virtue of fidelity. It is of the essence of a vow that it be made to God. A vow is an act of the virtue of religion, because it is an act intended to honor and to worship God. Hence + 4- 4- Vows/Promises VOLUME 28, 1969 + ÷ ÷ E. L. Heston, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 376 "vows" made, as the expression often has it, to the Blessed Mother or to some favorite saint, are not vows at all in the authentic sense of the term, unless the im-mediate term of the promise, for example, the Blessed Mother or some saint, is understood as ultimately having God for its object. Hence, the fulfillment of a vow entails a twofold moral goodness, that of the act itself and that of the vow, just as the violation of a vow implies a two-fold malice, one against the virtue involved and another against the virtue of religion. Under these aspects, the promise which could replace temporary profession is clearly different from a vow. First and foremost, su~h_~aspr~omi_se-~pu~!_d.not~bemade-to God but-~tp.-~tbe.-_.cong~_ega_t~on. Hence the~:m_~king.and _keeping of_~t_h_eTpromise would in no way-involve the virtue of religion. And just as there would not be a twofold moral ~goodness in the act commanded by this promise, so there would be no twofold moral malice in failure to keep it. In these considerations, we find the essential oldifferences between a temporary vow and a temporary promise. What form will such a promise take? Various possi-bilities present themselves. The basic principle would be that this promise should ~pproxi_~mate~S~asTcl6sely~as~ possibl~- the:- commitment of ten~porary_ professi0~;it-self;- It should contMn at its very.heart and core thee 0bli~a- ~ibi~to li~ acc-ording t~-ttie evangelical ~c6unsels in the' ma_~n_e_r _o~uth__ne_d ~y the constitutions of. the: institute~- This would provide an authentic experience of religious life by imposing basically the same kind of life as would result from the making of temporary religious vows. A simple "promise of service," or something similar, unless clearly defined in all its implications, would hardly seem adequate. The main objection would be that.-it-seems__to.shift~the ~mpha__s_i_s__~rom" God t6-6ttfe-~: Love of nexghbor i~-~f~o~rse, love of God, provided it be properly understood and practised, and vice versa. But it is extremely important to establish and maintain a God-centered approach to religious life. This is done by being convinced, first of all, of the special significance of the commitment, the special consecration, which flows from the act of profession either of a Vow or of a promise t o-live~as~ t hough-_~o~ ti a-d~ be-~O~-n rn~a~d~ This is w"--~-fi~ke-~'~vationis chusam, n. 35, I, states clearly: It is altogether proper that this temporary bond should have re[erence to the practice o~ the three evangelical counsels, in order to constitute a genuine preparation ~or perpetual pro-fession. It is o[ the utmost importance to safeguard unity of religious ~ormation. Although~ the-pr~i~i~eZb[ ~this--li~e is realized, definitively at ~r~etual'~i~ofes~i0ni it afih~-~ begin quite'a 16hg time before ~is pr~fes~ion~ - From these observations it should be clear that, as ]~ar as substance is concerned, a probationary period based on a promise is not fundament~ll~ different in effect from ofie based on temporary yows. The difference is more in the psychological than in the real objective order. But since the problems which called for a new solution were in that same order, it is natural that their solution should be found there also. Article 36 of the Instruction Renovationis causam stipulates that the general chapter shall determine the juridical effects and sanctions involved in the making of a promise instead of vows. Thus the chapter will have to decide, among others, such questions as active and passive voice, the mutual obligations of the candidate and the institute and so forth. This determination by the chapter is necessary because, since they will not have made public vows, r.eligious__bound by a temporary pr.omise, will. not be religious-in the canonical sense o~ the term. For the adoption o~ a promise instead of temporary vows, as for the adoption o~ some other faculties made possible by Renovationis causam, the approval of a two-thirds vote of the general chapter is required. One might ask just what is to be done in cases where a special or ordinary general chapter has already been held or in those where such a chapter is yet to be convoked. The Instruction provides that in such cases the superior gen-eral and his council, acting as a body, will decide col-legially if a special chapter is to be summoned for this specific purpose. If it is deemed impractical to convoke the chapter or to anticipate the chapter already scheduled for a later date, and if at the same time it is thought urgent to proceed along the lines mapped out by the Instruction, the superior general will consult all the major superiors and their respective councils. If at least two-thirds of their number are in agreement, he and his council, as before, may proceed to implement the dispensations from canon law outlined in the docu-ment. In institutes having no provinces, the superior general will consult all the perpetually professed re-ligious and if two-thirds of them concur, he may then proceed with his council as before to implement the provisions of the Instruction. The Instruction makes an observation which is of the utmost importance when it reminds all religious that, although the existing juridical norms are being notably eased, this should not be to the ultimate detriment of the fundamental religious values which both the former legislation and the new possibilities have endeavored to safeguard (see the second last paragraph of the Intro-duction of the Instruction). No one should get the er-÷ ÷ ÷ Vows ] Pi'omises VOLUME 28, 1969 377 roneous impression that these new provisions are in-tended in any way to contribute to a wat~ing down of the religious, life. Their purpose, on the contrary, is to make it possible to use new approaches to make reli-gious life more realistic and earnest and thus to enable it to make to the Church at large the contribution which is expected of it. It hardly needs to be pointed out that no one expects this particular experiment or even the others, to solve all the psychological and emotional problems confronting both those in formation and those responsible for adapt-ing formation structures to the mentality and particular needs of contemporary youth. But the door has been left open by the Holy See, and only experience will even-tually show what advantages or disadvantages may ulti-mately accrue to the religious life through the use of a different method of preparing for perpetual profession. 4- 4- 4- E. L. Heston, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS SISTER MARY ROGER, S.B.S. The Christian Aspect of Black Power In August, 1968, nearly two hundred of us black Sisters, representing approximately seventy-two religious orders in the United States and one in Africa, came to-gether for the first time in history at Mount Mercy College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many of us were reluctant and fearful about this conference at the start, but needless indeed was this trepidatibn on our part, for we found it to be a bold and brave happening--a superbly strengthening and stimulating experience. It is in the light of this new-found strength and stimulation that I express my opinion of Black Power, an opinion formed with knowledge of the views of many black people. On a hot Mississippi day in 1966, the term Black Power was uttered from the depths of the soul of a man who really believed in it. The term has always been in our vocabulary, but under different connotations-- meanings, perhaps, not put so boldly and clearly. The Black Power of which we speak today, and which so many of our oppressors fear, is really black people tending to black business. Now we all know that to have or do business one must have a hold and share in the power structure and those elements which comprise af-fairs. For this to be realized, the attitude of the white business man must be opened to grasp every opportunity to inculcate the genius and good will of the black man into his business. The black man, in his turn, must seek out means to make himself an "in" member and move on to greater shares, such as management and owner-ship. The person who truly strives to eradicate educa-tional denial and economic exploitation is a real ad-vocate of Black Power. Black Power is the ability of black people to hold black conventions in order to better equip and strengthen ourselves to bring about more harmonious living be-tween the races. 4. 4. Sister Mary Ro-ger, S.B.S. teaches at Holy Providence School; 1663 Bris-tol Pike; Cornwells Heights, Penrisyl-vania 19020. VOLUME 28, 1969 + ÷ ÷ Sister Mary Roger, S.B.S. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Black Power is black pride, something which has long been overdue. Thank God we are getting it nowl (I can recall how ashamed of our "supercurly" hair, jet black skins, and deep rich voices some of us were. How could we feel otherwise when it was so apparent that straight-haired and white-skinned people could go anywhere and do anything?) It is because of this same black pride that black Americans are demanding black leaders for local affairs. It is the duty of white America to understand this and to move ahead in the direction of not only encouraging black people tending to black business, but of witnessing black people tending to white business. Un-til we reach that latter state we have not arrived at the full meaning of our topic. Standards do not have to be lowered for all of us, any more than they must be lowered for all of any other race. No race is an island of all things bad. We are all capable of being good or bad. Circumstances affect peo-ple. People must, in turn, understand and improve the circumstances. Every single facet of American life must be opened to us. No doors can be closed. That time has passed. We are here. We have been here. We have worked here. We are going to stay and prosper here. Black Power is the business of all of us, and since it is, various discrepancies are intolerable. For example, when a certain black man uttered non-flattering remarks, he was barred from the city; whereas a certain white man publicly de~ed our federal government and openly threatened us--and he ran for president of the United States. In another case, a black man was jailed for "in-flammatory" remarks; while a white man, guilty of similar fiery comments, was never imprisoned and has become the second head of our country. It would almost seem that some are punished and some rewarded for the same utterances, depending only on the color of their skin. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Our country can no longer go on the way it has been going. No man has it in his power to tamper with justice. Because of the fear of Black Power many areas will be closed fast and long to us, but we must persist in our attainment of that which is rightfully ours. On many occasions persistence must become insistence. Few men give gladly and willingly of their riches and power-- especially to an oppressed people who have finally de-cided to be oppressed no longer. It is well for all of us to remember that there is room in the world for fortitude and daringness as well as patience and caution. To just sit and just wait after years and years of waiting should be judged as cow-ardice. Study your history, fellow Americans. Many wars have been fought in the name of justice. Even G9d saw fit to deal violently with Pharaoh and his people for the sake of justice to the Hebrews. Certainly we will not debate the meaning of Patrick Henry's famous words. He meant to fight and die for liberty. He was not con-tented to wait. He was tired. He had "had it." For this valor, .we, today, still admire, him. He is an American hero. If there are multiti~des of similar .cases, then, I ask you, can you expect less of others who are tired and have "had it"? If so, why? Black Power is being just about the proper places in history for all people. It is time that it be made known to the nation that Benjamin Banneker played a major part in the planning of the city of Washington as well as L'Enfant. It should be written that Columbus had a black ship pilot with him in 1492. It should be told that black men helped to find and found territories in the West. In 1512, a group of black people landed in Florida with Ponce de Leon in search for the "Fountain of Youth." Where are the publishers who will risk the news of the great role of Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre? Have they been born yet? Who will write of Nat Turner and Patrick Henry in the same tone and in the same text? Black Power is not a separate book of history--it is one complete and fair history book. It is a book that tells of the lofty as well as the menial tasks of all. We have all contributed to make America great. Though our roles were limited to that which many thought necessary to limit us to, and though we had no control over the violence which the great fathers of this country saw fit to administer in order to be free--we, the black people, have contributed the most to the building and survival of this nation. We have done the hard dull work that had to be done. No one else would have done it--and it had to be done. Black Power is a certain openmindedness concerning us. It is time we did away with the beliefs that we all dance well, sing well, love watermelon and can't live without our blues and jazz. It happens that some of us can't sing, can't dance, and hope we never see water-melon again. People are individuals--we can't set up an attitude and expect our one-track mind to be the answer for all nearly thirteen million of usl It just isn't that simple. To us should not be given the credit for violence--when we were well chained and branded by man, other violent acts were being committed. I am glad to inform many that we are the least contributors to violence in the country. The few of us who commit it really have such a late start and don't know how to really do violence--we are not equipped to do violence. 4. 4. Black P ow~ VOLUME 28, 1969 38! Too good a job of violence was done on us. We are too ¯ noble to be truly violent as a people. It is tragic that Amer-ica so readily answers to violence. Only a violent act seems to bring our government heads to a session called on our behalf. The big poverty programs really started after. Watts. In the mentality of stalwart Christians of old, we, ttxe Catholics of today, must do when something is to be done, must speak when something should be saidl We must make it our duty to right the unpardonable wrong, to fight the unrelenting foe; and when we are weary and our souls tend to waver--bear in mind: Only insofar as the black man has access to America will America have access to Godl Aware of this fact, let us resolve here and now, to be determined, or more de-termined, to right wrongs near us, so that--even though not nationalized nor immortalized--we shall all be able to say: Free at lastl Free at last! Thank God almighty, we're free at last! ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Mary Roger, S.B$. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS JOSEPH J. REIDY, M.D. The New Community and Personal Relationships For a number of years some directors of seminaries and superiors of religious communities have sought help from psychiatrists and persons in related professions. Most of the help has been in the diagnosis and treat-ment of individuals, the screening of candidates, and courses related to the pastoral duties of priests. In the fall of 1966 the superiors of a religious order asked me to take part in the training program of their postulants and novices. The superiors were concerned about the increasing discontent and emotional problems in their communities, particularly affecting the younger and apparently well-adjusted sisters. They thought that if changes were made in the ~training of these persons, some of the maladjustment might be prevented. I do not know if a psychoanalyst had ever worked with a group of religious in this way; but it was a new experience for me, and I was not certain that I knew the best way to do it. Since I believe that the service I performed differed from those offered by other professionals who have worked with such groups, it might be of interest to describe not only the results, but also the procedure.1 We discussed what we thought might be appropriate and finally agreed that I would simply meet regularly with the postulants who had just begun their religious training. I asked that these meetings not be presented 1 Several years ago a community in Mexico worked with several psychoanalysts in what was called "group psychoanalysis." From the accounts that were available to me, I was not able to decide just what was taking place and whether I could agree with all that was done. I feel it is important to have this description so that a fair judgment can be made about this procedure. + + + Dr. Joseph J. Reidy, M.D., writes from 1010 St. Paul Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21202. VOLUME 28, .1969 383 .L ~. Reidy, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~84 as classes or as group psychotherapy and that attendance at the meetings be voluntary. I decided to prepare no material for these meetings, to introduce no topics, and to talk with the sisters on whatever topics they wished. I hoped in this way they would talk about what interested and troubled them, not what their superiors or I thought were their con-cerns. They might have some difficulty in talking, and some important matters might not be mentioned; indeed, a possible outcome was that nothing of importance would be discussed. By this arrangement I hoped to avoid certain diffi-culties. One danger was ,that if the sessions were too much like classes, very little fedling might be expressed. On the other hand, if the participants experienced feelings too intensely, they might become so anxious that they would not wish to continue. This almost certainly would happen if I brought up sensitive topics for discussion without regard to their readiness. I did not make any suggestion about the superiors being present, and after the first two meetings the director of postulants did not come to the rest of the meetings. During the novitiate, the second year we worked together, the director of novices came only to the last meeting. I had asked the superiors not to tell me about the religious rule and practices of their order, nor about any of the candidates. I wished to learn, if possible, how these sisters experi-enced the life of the order. Also, I did not want to eval-uate or diagnose any individual, nor did I wish them to feel I was doing so. During the two years I worked with them I did not report the content of the meetings or information about the individual sisters to the supe-riors; and the sisters knew this. They also knew that at no time would I discuss any person with the superiors, and that when I was ready to make my recommendations to the superiors I would share them with the group. At our final meeting I discussed with the sisters the ideas contained in this paper. There were seventeen young women in the group. All except four had just finished high school, and of the four, three had had one year of college, and one had a graduate degree. Several had gone to high school together, but the others had not known each other before entering the order two months earlier. After a few meetings the large group was divided into two groups of eight and nine persons, and each group met with me for an hour on alternate weeks. The meetings lasted through the pos-tulant year, were interrupted when the sisters went home for the summer, and resumed when they returned as novices. During the two years, the meetings were a matter of lively interest to all, even though some looked on them with disfavor. It did not appear that they tried always to tell me about their "problems," one reason being that they were very enthusiastic about the new life and did not feel there were many problems. They wondered at times why they were meeting with me. Sometimes they agreed beforehand on things to talk about when the group met. But often they did not know what to say, and self-consciously filled the beginning of each meeting with everyday events, with little jokes and teasing of one another, and often asked me what to talk about. Some-times they forgot I was in the group, and found them-selves talking about things in a way which they later said was different than they did at other times and places. They could talk about things in these meetings which they could not talk about in their community recreation, because the meetings with me were not "gripe sessions." Outside the group they might not choose to talk to some sisters about certain things, yet when the group met they could talk about these things to these sisters. At the end of the two years many said that they felt they knew those who had been in their half of the group in a different way then they knew the others. Their feelings changed quite often. Some of the most enthusiastic members were the ones most opposed at times to continuing the meetings. But after some of the meetings they felt the talking had been of great help in understanding. A majority felt they were obliged to attend the meetings. I had said several times that any-one or all were free to come or stay away, and the superi-ors had said the same, but it was not until the middle of the second year they finally became convinced that their presence was not a matter of obligation. During one meeting they vigorously discussed whether it would be wrong if a person missed certain religious functions without a serious reason, and among these religious functions was the hearing of Sunday Mass. After a few persons had said they would not feel guilty of wrong-doing, the question of their obligation to attending these meetings came up. Up to that time attendance had been almost perfect; at once about half of the group stopped coming. I had hoped that if the groups were not given topics to discuss, they would talk about the important things. As I followed the meetings and thought about them at their conclusion, it seemed to me that one theme occurred more frequently than any other. It was a very broad theme; and, as they presented it, included many aspects of their life. I think of it as forming the main topic of this paper. ÷ ÷ ¯ New Community VOLUME 28, 1969 385 4, I. I. P,.i=I~, REVIEW' FOR RELIGIOUS 386 It was their living in community. They spoke of it in general and in theoretical terms, and also in respect to particular events and persons. They did not generally find fault with the community life as practiced in this order; they .accepted it and wished to learn to live it. They asked what it was and how do you live it. What do you do with certain feelings about your fellow religious? How do you handle---or, more often, how do you get rid of--angry, critical, or competitive feelings? They wanted to know how the life as a postulant and novice prepared them for the life they would lead after their training. At times some of them were uncomfortable in the physical closeness of group living, and some had less privacy than they had been accustomed to.~ It is not surprising that they asked these questions and many others; and I do not feel that their having these questions means that there is anything wrong with their adjustment to the life. But I am not sure they found the answers to these questions during their two years of training. Often I felt they were reluctant to go through the labor of trying to understand how and why they felt about certain things. They wanted ready-made solutions, definite answers, and ways to control and put in order their feelings. I knew that I could not in these limited contacts help them to find the answers to these problems and questions, but I did try to help them to see the usefulness of examining their feelings, of tolerating a certain amount of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety, in the interest of acquiring more than a superficial knowledge of themselves. I would like to look at the topic of living in com-munity and then consider how it concerned these sisters. ~During the summer of 1967, when the postulants were at their homes, I met with another group, of about the same number, who were finishing their third year of training. It was a very brief series of meetings and I did not feel that I had an opportunity to know these sisters very well. But they presented many of the same prob-lems and questions about community life, In the summer of 1968, while I was finishing this paper, I began a series of meetings with a third group of sisters who had been in the order since 1961 and who were preparing to make their final vows. Before the meetings began, the sister provincial asked them for suggestions on topics to be considered. There were twenty-one sisters in this group and the seventeen who answered all suggested topics related to community living. Some of the suggestions were: "Working out and allowing others to work out emotional conflicts." "Dynamics of recreational conversation, for example, at the supper table after being involved in school all day." "The psychology involved in the superior/sister relationship in religious life--fears each might have .in her role, and 'help' to establish a wholesome relationship between the sisters and the superior." "Creativity in forms of group livingu conflict in group livingr" "How to deal with insecure individuals in the community, strong individuals, and so forth." "Communication and openness in group living." "Integrity in relationships." The consideration of community life involves on the one hand the stability and healthof "the environment, and on the other, the intrapsychic conflicts and adaptations of the individual. As to the first, we want to know if the community life affords the opportunity for healthy growth and adjustment. Is it an enviromnent in which a sister can given enthusiastic and dedicated service, or is living in a particular community used as an excuse for mediocrity and avoidance of responsibility? Is .the living together an intolerable stress? I knew that the order was seriously examining these issues and had made many changes in recent years. The superiors were aware of the. well-known problems of religious life, for example, those about authority, and were looking for ways to remedy the defects they had found. In the second year of our work the order held a general chapter for the pur-pose of examining the entire philosophy and structure of the order. I was asked to comment on position papers they had prepared for the order's general chapter, so I knew of their concern that the environment be healthy. The trainees were in the midst of the changes taking place in the order. The changes may have taken from some older sisters a security and stability, and made their adjustment difficult. I do not think it affected these sisters in this way; for one thing, they were not "used to" the thing~ that were changed or discarded. They were excited about the changes, pleased that they were informed of the discussions, and that their opinions were sought. They jokingly and, I thought, proudly referred to them-selves as "guinea pigs." Yet at times they said that the uncertainty about future changes made them feel moody and irritable. What troubled them was the task of getting along with one another--"living in community"--as they called it. It is, I think, the problem of any person living in a group. There are certain features of this group which make it different from other groups and which might change the form and intensity of the usual ga'oup problems. Among other things, they are together almost all of the time; at least during the formation years, their life is exclusively with the persons of the same sex, and it is lived for religious motives. Today the Church is thought of as the "People of God" and the "fellowship of believers." The personal rather than the legalistic aspect of religious worship is emphasized and the religious commitment is to one another arid to the world, rather than to rules and observances of com-mon life. Here is a hypothetical situation, pieced together from 'many examples given during the two years. One sister said that she cannot get along with another sister. She ÷ '4. ]. ]. Reidy, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 388 told this to her confessor and he said she should pray for the necessary grace. This still did not solve the problem. In the old days it might have been more easily solved. She could pray for her sister and keep the relationship distant or superficial. Today the spirit of living in com-munity discourages an individualistic, withdrawn piety. There is more emphasis placed on the love for one's neighbor as the manifestation of the love for God. Why a community? They thought of answers to this. They did not feel they came together because it was more efficient and economical, or a better way to serve God than if they had not joined a community. In the first few months I occasionally heard them speak of two groups of people--themselves and those out in the world. But later, and possibly because the training had been modified to have them less shut off from the "world," I no longer heard this distinction. As I listened to them, and unavoidably added my own interpretation to what they said, I felt they were tending to see, or were being instructed to think of, their relationship to one another as the expression and substance of their reli-gious life. Since they were taking seriously the concept of the Church as the "People of God" and the "fellowship of believers," it is not surprising they had the concern about personal relationships. One word I heard very frequently was "openness." This seems to be the desired characteristic of the sister of today. She has to be involved with the world, not iso-lated in her cloister as in the past. To be involved she has to be "open" with her fellow religious and with all others. This openness will lead to what some of today's spiritual writers, using terms oi: the existentialists, call "authentic encounters." This openness will lead to intimacy with one's fellows. Some of the sisters felt un-certain what this openness was, what constituted an "authentic encounter," and were uncertain that their relationships met these conditions. They felt they must be "open," yet hesitated to talk about personal concerns in the group~not just in our group, for they had the same feelings in other situations. They were reluctant to speak of anything that reflected their problems in ad-justment, for fear of hurting some other sister's adjust-ment. They should be charitable and not criticize others. One sister said that any disagreement in the Church should not be publicized, because it would confuse and upset people. What they were expressing is an oversimplified idea of personal relationships. It expects instant empathy and mutuality, not considering that genuine affection is the work of many years. An environment that expected this perfection would be unhealthy and unrealistic. Love of one's neighbor, sincerity and frankness in communica-tion with him, result from many "encounters," not all of them pleasant and exciting. And the relationship is built on respect for the independence of the other person. For each person the concepts of openness and intimacy have reference to important events in his life history. The important events in each person's past refer emotionally, and largely unconsciously, to conflicts over dependence and independence, passivity and activity, love and hate, and to many other conflicts from the earliest days of the child's relationship to its mother, through all of the very important phases of development. This is the intrapsychic aspect of the adjustment to com-munity living and the sister brings to her relationships with others in the community the solutions and adjust-ments, good and bad, she has made at other times and with other people. She is often able to change her ways of relating to people and to increase her capacity for love, but her past is always to be taken into account. We should be sure what we mean when we speak of openness, for some very serious pathology in personal relationships can pass for "openness." There are persons who make quick and easy contact with.almost everyone, but some of them are incapable of any depth, of any giving in the relationship. Others have never been able to see themselves as self-sufficient persons, separate in-dividtzals, and they constantly seek "encounters" for the purpose of attaching themselves to others. Another group of persons has defective control of impulses and con-stantly discharges aggressive and libidinal energies in actions. The activity and "encounters'" may be thought of as doing "God's work," and may be quite useful, but they can also mean that the person finds intolerable any waiting, postponement, uncertainty, or anxiety. This does not include all the ways that "openness" could be pathological. In the past, persons with certain personality disorders were attracted to religious life--dependent persons, obsessive-compulsive persons, withdrawn and schizoid persons. The superiors came to know this and tried to exclude these persons. It would be unfortunate if the changes in religious life .resulted in attracting another group of maladjusted persons, and it would be a mistake to assume that religious training could over-come such serious pathology. Just as the person who trusts no one is thought to ¯ have a problem, so does the person who trusts and is "open" to everyone. While it is at the very basis Of religion, as we understand it today, to love our fellow humans, the normal girl who comes to the convent in the late phases of her adolescence brings with her conflicts about per-sonal relationships and certain defenses against too sudden I. I. Reidy~ M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 390 or too much intimacy. It is a normal part of her develop-ment, and it sometimes makes it difficult for her to know how she is to be "open." I should mention here that the fact that these sisters were involved with the turmoil that is part of all of the phases of adolescence is an im-portant consideratibn in the training program, but one ¯ that requires a separate paper. Certain defenses are necessary to our narcissism and self-esteem. Some we need to help us control our aggres-sive and sexual impulses, to enable us to live in a group. Much of what we call "good manners" serves these func-tions, and our agreeable response to the genuinely polite and considerate person is due to the recognition that he has treated us with respect. Denying or overlooking facts that would lower our self-esteem are other examples of defenses. Other persons must respect our defenses and not intrusively push them aside. These sisters who have chosen to give up certain gratifications of material and sexual pleasure, and who live in circumstances that often require great giving of themselves, deserve rela-tionships that are respecting of their personal integrity. In times past, the conduct of persons living in religious communities was prescribed by many rules and customs which could easily serve as defenses against intimacy. Religious could not enter one another's rooms, were bound by rules of silence, and "particular friendships" were discouraged. They did many things together-- praying, eating, recreating, working--but many of these activities were formalized, and I would imagine that members of a community could do many things together with only superficial communication with one another. I am not sure this was always neurotic, and it was a way of life which could lead to quite healthy personality development. But many of the religious consider that way of life as unsuitable for today's world. The old ways, often too much of a defense against intimacy, are gone or going, and we need to work out adequate replace-ments. One of the things we should look for in the replacements is how they help each person relate to others in the community in the way and at the pace she is capable of. During the middle of the postulant year, the sisters had an experience which illustrates the problems in-volved in personal relationships. In groups of two or three, for a period of six weeks, they worked as teacher helpers in public schools in the slum areas. They were overwhelmed by the intense relationships which these deprived children demanded from them. Some of the sisters were very generous and experienced a good deal of pain when they realized they could not give enough to the children, and at times were frightened when the response to their giving was the demand for an even closer, more exclusive relationship. A few of the sisters sought to control the children's bid for affection by keeping them at a distance and being effective dis-ciplinarians. They demanded of the sisters an intensity o~ relationship, an "openness," if you will, which the sisters were not prepared to give. We might wonder how many people could give in this way, and how realis-tic were the expectations of the children. The defenses against too sudden or too intense inti-macy may explain why some subjects were never men-tioned at our meetings. If the group was open, it did not always show it at these meetings. At the end of the two years, some said that if my purpose had been to help them communicate better, I had not succeeded. There are some things most people hesitate to talk about freely, even to a confessor or a psychiatrist who is not part of their daily life. I do not think that because certain sub-jects were not discussed that these sisters were inhibited in any abnormal way. Sexual topics, feelings about certain spiritual matters such as prayer and vocation, and reli-gious belief itself, came up not at all, or only in very limited ways. After one meeting, one sister asked me if she should mention the subject of homosexuality, since she felt it was important. I agreed that it was im-portant and said that I had no objection to our discussing it, but that it was really up to her and to the group. At the very last meeting she asked: "What do you tell a friend who you know had a homosexual problem?" None of the group seemed inclined to discuss this, so I said only that if she .felt able to talk to her friend about it, she should advise her to see a psychiatrist. Each one has defenses against relationships becoming too intense. During one of our meetings, three of the sisters described the difficult times they had communicat-ing with and feeling close to their mothers, who wanted, so the girls thought, to keep them dependent. They felt they had to be careful what they talked about to their mothers, and there were many personal things they never discussed with them. This astonished some of the others in the group, who said that they were "pals" with their mothers and had no difficulty talking with them. The sisters felt that the spirit of the group was im-portant, and they were right, as they were right about the importance of loving each other. But the trouble again was in the application of the idea. The grand-parents of one sister died within a few days of each other, and this sister was very close to her grandparents. As I heard of the responses of her fellow religious, I thought they helped her mourn her loss in a way that was loving and realistic and dignified. This was one example of the ÷ ÷ New Community VOLUME 28, ~.969 391 4, 4, ]. ]. Reidy, M.D. spirit of the group. But sometimes a sister felt that the way another sister performed her duties, to take another example, put an unfair burden on the others, and so hurt the spirit of the community. Should you be "open" with the person and tell her about her fault and how it was hurting the community? I gather that some tried this and their comments were not always welcome. There was also the idea that group living meant that the group should not be divided on any issue or activity. They would have rejected the term "conformity," and felt they were too liberal or independent .to be conform-ists, but it may be difficult sometimes to tell the dif-ference between consensus and conformity. What I wish to emphasize was that these sisters were taught and believed that their community life was one of the most important manifestations of their religious state, and they wished to be good religious. But they found difficulty in putting into practice the ideals of community living, as expressed in the love of one's neighbor. They needed help in understanding that personal relationships are very complex, and that open-ness and intimacy are not quickly and easily attained. Yet I did feel that the meetings in some way "opened up" things. The sisters regularly told me how, for the day or two after each meeting, they had discussions among themselves of its contents. After one meeting when the group worked hard and with much feeling on some problems of their relationships to each other, they felt that their mood had changed, and their anxiety lessened, and they warmly thanked me. During the course of the two years, four of the group began individual psychotherapy. I found out later that they told the di-rector of novices that the group meetings made them aware they needed help, but they felt they could not talk about their difficulties in the group. Regarding recommendations to the superiors about the training program, I felt that there was little I could say about the environment, because they were making it a healthy one. The impact of the experiments in com-munity life will have effects on the idea and forms of community, and these must continue to be observed. But I felt that in their training, in ways that would differ for different communities and individuals, the sisters could be made more aware of the complexity of human relationships. There is a middle course between the old cautions against close personal relationships and the expectation of instant and universal intimacy. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 392 JOHN R. SHEETS, S.J. The Four Moments of Prayer The religious life today presents many different faces to one who is trying to assess its mood, vitality, and di-rection. Sometimes we wonder how so many different (often contradictory) qualities can come under the same common denominator which we call the religious life. It is like watching the weather report on television. We see varying types of weather throughout the whole country, currents of air moving in different directions, high pressure in one part, low in another, rain in one place, snow in another, and sunshine in another. This suggests the picture of the various trends in the religious life at present, or for that matter in the whole Church. It would be too ambitious a project to try to draw the weather map of the religious life. Like the weather-man we would very likely be wrong in many of our judgments. We would like to single out only one aspect of the religious life, the life of prayer. Even here we find many conflicting currents. In fact the life of prayer is a small scale model of the whole weather map with the various currents running through the religious life. There is, on the one hand, great interest in prayer. This is very often manifest in the careful attention which many congregations are. giving to the subject of prayer in preparation for chapter meetings. On the other hand, we have to confess that very often more time is spent in talking about prayer than in pray-ing. As in the case of so many other religious values, discussion of the value has become a substitute for the value itself. Even in the discussion of prayer there is often the feeling that one needs prayer if he is to be a good religious, while without prayer he is a religious, though perhaps not outstanding for his piety. It is extremely important for us to recapture once again the New Testa-ment mentality concerning prayer. It is simply this: to be J. R. Sheets, s.J., teaches in the De-partment of The-ology; Marquette University; Mil-waukee, Wisconsin 53233. VOLUME 28, 1969 ÷ ÷ ÷ ~. R. Sheets, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS a Christian in the true sense of the term one must pray. Prayer is not simply an accessory to Christian life, some-thing superadded to make a better Christian out of a good one. A Christian is one who prays. This is the lesson which is brought home in every book of the New Testament. It is not something mentioned in passing. It is the milieu of Christian life as we find it described there. We have to question the seriousness with which we live our Christianity .if one of the primary signs of our Onion with the Father in Christ is not present, namely, our response to this new fellowship through prayer. There are basically two signs which manifest the nature of the new fellowship in grace. They are signs which manifest the new orientation which we have to God and to our fellowman. The new orientation to God is shown in our filial attitude, because we are sons with the Son and can say, "Abbal Father." Practically this is Shown in our life of worship and of prayer. The new relationship which we have to others is shown through charity: "By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples" (Jn 13:35). If' these signs are not there, then our Christian life is like that of a retarded child, an unfortunate affliction in any family, but especially in the family of God. There are retarded Christians as there are retarded human beings. We have to realize that prayer flows from the very nature of .the fellowship we have with Christ, the Father, and with one another, through grace. It is not something extra. As we have said, the New Testament leaves no ambiguity on that score. For example, we see Christ praying and teaching his disciples to pray; th~ Christian community is a prayerful community; through-out his Letters Paul speaks of his own prayer and exhorts the Christian communities to persevering prayer; the book of Revelation shows the whole of creation, with the Church at the center, united in praising God and the Lamb. There is a great need to recapture the New Testa-ment notion of prayer and to see how it is integral to the life of the Christian. What was called the "Death of God" was simply the surfacing of the death of faith. In turn the death of faith has its roots in many cases in the neglect of prayer. It should be no surprise if we cannot see when all of the lights are turned out in a city or in a room. Again, it should be no surprise that there is a power failure in our faith and in our love if there is no effort to draw light and strength from God through prayer. Christian prayer draws into conscious focus the whole of our Christian life. In our ordinary day-to-day life it is probably true to say that everything enters into the power we have to speak---our physical, mental, and social life. It we are weak, our words have little strength; it we have no ideas, our words have little meaning; if we are not interested in communicating to another, our words are movements of air. The same is true of our life of prayer. Everything in our lives enters into it. Like the point in the hourglass, everything from our life must pass through it into our prayer. It brings into focus the relationship we have to God and also to our fellowman. I[ God is remote and impersonal, then there will be no prayer. If God is dead, then prayer is dead. Similarly, if our relationship to others is unchristian, then our prayer will be like that described by the king in Hamlet: "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven gg-" The First Moment of Christian Prayer There are ~undamentally four "moments" to Christian prayer: listening, seeing, responding, and translating what one has heard and seen into one's life. We are not using the word "moment" here in its specifically tem-poral sense. Rather it is used to describe the movement of Christian prayer, which like the movements of a symphony make one organic whole. We would like to comment on each o£ these moments o~ prayer, keep-ing in mind that, although there is a certain logical sequence in which one ~ollows from the other, in prac-tice they cannot be separated or schematized in an artificial manner. First and foremost Christian prayer is listening. There is probably no other expression which so aptly describes God's relationship to us and ours to Him. It is based, like other expressions which we use to describe God's relationships to man,.on man's relationships to other men. It will be helpful to comment on this. In human listening there are always three elements forming something of a triangular relationship: the speaker, the word, and the one listening. Where all three aspects are present there is communication through the word. If one or the other is absent, there is no communication. We also know that there are different levels of speaking and listening. They are levels going from communication o~ information about things or about oneself to the deepest level, that of communication o~ oneself through words. Each level of communication corresponds to a level of giving on the part of the speaker and a level of receiving on the part of the one listening. The range of giving on the part of the speaker goes from giving information, all the way to giving himself. The range of receiving for the listener is~ the same. On his ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 28, ~-969 " 395 ÷ ÷ ÷ ]. R. Shee~s, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 396 part there are degrees of openness ranging from an openness to information to an openness for communion with another person. This relationship of speaker to listener very aptly describes God's relationship to man. It is not possible to develop this idea at length. If we did, we would see that it involves the whole mystery of revelation, culmi-nating in the mystery of the Incarnation and redemp-tion. God's words are really actions. They are the form or shape which His actions take when they are addressed to man's heart through his power to hear: "The word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do" (Is 55:11). Concretely Christian prayer is listening to God's word in Scripture. It means opening oneself to God's will to communicate Himself through His word. What we could call the "mental shape" of His will for us is com-municated to us in Scripture. The Scripture is the privileged locus of God's word. It will be helpful if we can understand more fully the mysterious power that the word of God in Scripture has for us. The mystery of the power of the prophetic word is a mystery of how the power and wisdom of God can be articulated in human words in such a way that the words themselves mediate this power and wisdom. There is a power to these words which transcends their material and time-conditioned aspect. This power is not the same that belongs to the artist's creation. His work also transcends to some extent the limitations of time and space and appeals to something perennial in human nature. He evokes hidden reso-nances with the human spirit which are timeless because they belong to the very nature of the human spirit. But the power of the word of God in Scripture is very different. We find there something analogous to what takes place in the Incarnation. In this mystery the Word in His power overspills and overflows His flesh which embodies this mystery. The artistic creation has a certain power for us because we share in a common humanity and common experiences with the artist. But the power of God's word, and in a special way, the power of Christ's word, comes from the fact that it belongs to the mystery of life for which we were made, a sharing in the life of the Son. If we are related to the artist's word and work through a common humanity, we are much more intimately related to the word and work of God because we were made for the purpose of sharing this mystery: "To have what must die taken up into life--this is the purpose for which God made us, and he has given us the pledge of the Spirit" (2 Cor 5:5). We were not made to share a common humanity but to share that for which a common humanity provides the foundation--a sharing in the life of the Son. The word of God in Scripture is, then, closely re-lated to the mystery of our own identity. It is no stranger to us. It is the mental shape which God's will takes because of His intention to share with us His life. The words of Scripture make up our "name." If we re-call, for the Jew the name declares the meaning of the person. The words of Scripture declare the meaning of man in his relationship to God. For this reason the word of God is described as enveloped with a mysterious power which reaches right to our heart: "The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edge sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from him; every-thing is uncovered and open. to the eyes of the one to whom we must give account of ourselves" (Hb 4:12-5). The prayer of the Jew is also a listening to the word of God. It differs from Christian prayer in the same way that listening to a musical note differs from listening to the chord which embodies and fulfills the note. The Jewish attitude is seen in the response of Samuel when the Lord called him: "Yahweh came and stood by, calling as he had done before, 'Samuel, Samuel.' Samuel answered, 'Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening' " (1 S 3:10-1). The Christian response, however, is typi-fied by Paul's words to Christ when He appeared to him on the road to Damascus: "What am I to do, Lord?" (Acts 22:10). Christian prayer is listening to the word of God given to us in Christ. The Christian listens to the words of the Old Testament only insofar as they are avenues directed to their fulfillment in the Word-made-flesh. For this reason, in the vision in which St. John sees Christ clothed as the High Priest, he describes the sword of God's word coming from the mouth of Christ: "In his right hand he was holding seven stars, out of his mouth came a sharp sword, double-edged, and his face was like the sun shining with all its force" (Rv 1 : 16). As we mentioned, there are different levels of speak-ing to which there correspond different levels of listen-ing. At the most profound level there is a communica-tion of self through the word. At this level words become the expression not of knowledge but of love. On the listening side, there must not only be a hea~ing but a true listening whicl~ comes from love. There must be a loving-listening which corresponds to love-speaking. We all l(now that we listen to the degree that we realize what is said is important for us. A student ÷ ÷ ÷ Prayer VOLUME 28, 1969 397 ÷ ÷ 4, ]. ~{. Sheets, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 398 listens at different levels to what the teacher says. If he thinks something is going to be asked on an exami-nation, he will listen more carefully. We listen to those things which involve us personally. If someone is talk-ing about us, we are all ears. If someone is talking to us, our attention can be very superficial. Theoretically we perhaps realize the importance God's words for us. But practically speaking they are like projectiles which hit a hard surface and then ric-ochet off in the distance. While it is true that our very identity, our very purpose for being, is involved in the words of God and that these words are written about me and for me and to me, in practice they simply are not that meaningful. A partial reason for this is that the word of God is not always easy to interpret. But this is not the main rea-son. The main reason lies deeper than this. It lies in the intention of the speaker and in the heart of the listener, not in the quality of the word which is spoken. The speaker's intention is to transform the listener. This means that the listener will have to give up his ways which are self-centered and become open to the ways of God. There is a basic unwillingness in the heart man to listen to a word which asks him to center his life on God and to center all Other things on the kingdom: "Set your hearts on his kingdom first and on his right-eousness, and all these other things will be given you as well" (Mr 6: This means that God's word is imperative, centering, transforming, judging, quickening. It is not easy for man to listen to such a word. His listening has to be obediential. He knows that his own life is a response to the word of God. His own words are not above the word of God. But his whole life, not only his words, lie under the judgment of the word of God. It is His word which interprets us, not our word which interprets Him. With the growing interest in the study of Scrip-ture, there is the danger that under the critics' scissors the two-edged sword of God's word begins to look like Don Quixote's limp and battered lance. Without realiz-ing it, one can develop the attitude that the word God is like any other word, simply grist for the critics' mill. We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are dealing not simply with the inspiring words of men, but the inspired words of God. Let us draw out some further implications involved in listening. In order to listen our whole being must be attuned. This means that asceticism is necessary if there is to be any real listening which is sustained in diffi-cult circumstances over a period of time. This is true in any form of listening. If one wants to listen to a lecture, or music, or poetry, there has to be an asceticism of imagination, in fact of all our faculties. Hearing is not simply a power which belongs to one faculty. The whole body listens. This is especially true where the sounds are delicate and gentle and are competing with the clamor of other sounds. Asceticism is really a refining of our power to hear the word of God, the most delicate of all sonnds, in a world filled with a thousand other sounds, most of them more flattering to our ears than the simple and chaste word of God. In order to hear the sounds of silence there must be a certain inner disposition. There must be silence. We often confuse silence with not speaking. Rather it is the atmosphere for speaking because it is the atmosphere for listening. Every poet, artist, anyone who listens to the whisperings of beauty at the heart of reality needs the atmosphere of silence to listen. Similarly, and much more, there must be the asceticism of silence for the one who is opening himself to listen to God's word. This sounds very uncontemporary to our ears today, even to many religious. Perhaps it is part of the reaction which comes from having things imposed from the out-side. For many silence simply has been an external re-striction on their power to speak, rather than an in-ternal atmosphere to listen. Similarly, many identify speaking with communication. Where there is a great deal of talk, there must be a great deal said. ~Ve know, however, that silence does not mean a lack of com-munication, nor does speaking mean communication. It is a favorite theme of the theater of the absurd that there is a real failure to communicate even though the media of communication are multiplied past all imagination. In fact, communication simply by multipli-cation of words has become a source of alienation, not of union. There is really not enough silence to listen. T. S. Eliot has touched upon this theme in one of his poems: The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not o[ stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word --from The Rock The artist and the poet do not need to learn silence as one learns a lesson. They realize instinctively that silence is the atmosphere for receptivity. That is what Dag Hammarskj61d describes in his diary when he speaks of silence: "To preserve the silence within--amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist hu-mus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens--no matter how many tramp across the VOLUME 28, 1969 399 J. R. Sheets, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS parade ground in whirling dust under the arid sky" (Markings, p. 83). Again, Gerard Manley Hopkins. speaks of silence as singing to him, beating upon his ear, piping to him, evoking from him both surrender and eloquence: Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorled ear, Pipe me to pastuTes still and be The music that I care to hear. Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: It is the shut, the curfew sent From there where all surrenders come Which only makes you eloquent. The first moment, then, of Christian prayer is listen-ing. It requires an atmosphere in which the word of God can be heard. There is a fatal instinct in all of us to reduce the word of God to the words of men, as well as to reduce the presence of God and the presence of Christ to the presence of men. There is the tendency to confuse our own dreaming and fancies with that listen-ing which comes from the Spirit of Son. This kind of listening is not always easy. It has little fiction, but much hope; little sentiment, but much love; little that is flattering, but much that is fulfilling. The Second Moment of Christian Prayer Christian prayer is also seeing. It is necessary not only to listen to the word of God; we must also see the word of God made flesh. The total mystery of God and the manner in which man is enveloped in that mystery is deployed in such a way as to grasp us not only through our power to hear but also through our power to see, while at the same time it works inaudibly and invisibly on our hearts through g~ace. By "seeing" we mean the whole range of knowing activity which can be described as various levels of seeing: the seeing which belongs to the eyes of the mind, that which be-longs to our imagination and memory, and that which belongs to our physical sight. As seeing goes from what is purely physical reflection to mental reflection it be-comes less and less passive and more and more an ac-tivity involving the concentration of all of the powers of the person. For prayer to be meaningful there must be a seeing on every level. The object must impress it-self on our whole being so that our whole world is stamped with its image. We can repeat the words of Teilhard de Chardin here to emphasize the importance o~ seeing: "Seeing. We might say that the whole of life lies in that verb--if not nltimately, at least essentially. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious gift of existence. And this, in superior measure, is man's condition" (Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, p. 31). We are faced with an anomalous situation today. There is much emphasis on personalism and also on sacramentalism. But there is at the same time a real inner sacramental vacuum because the truths of faith do not find a sacramental stronghold in the memory and the imagination. Perhaps there is no greater neces-sity today than to sacramentalize the memory and imagination. This is the world in which men of flesh and blood live and move and have their being. It is the world which is co-natural to him, without which ideas and ideals are in peril of dying for lack of oxy-gen. If a person is to enter into the total mystery of Christ it cannot be done merely intellectually. The mystery has to grasp his image world. This brings out the necessity for good Christian art. Even more it brings out the necessity for those sense expressions of Christian faith which is to the faith what the body is to the soul. Man lives in his body, in his images. Ideas do not move a person unless they are transmitted through and rooted in images. Theoretically man might live his faith only through faith perception. Practically speaking unless his faith vision has its counterpart in the vision that belongs to his senses it will wither and die. It.is not possible to enter into this in great detail be-cause of the limitations of space. It seems that we are at present going through one of those movements which strangely enough emerge at different periods of history. It is basically iconoclastic in the literal sense of the term. The word means "image-breaker." It is applied to a particular movement in the eighth century in the Greek Church which was directed against the veneration of icons. In a wider sense it is applied to those move-ments which tend to spiritualize Christianity to the point where the bodily aspect of Christianity is ne-glected. It shows itself in rejection of images, such as statues or pictures, in the elimination of external gestures such as kneeling, genuflecting, in the abolition of those devotions in which Christian faith has in-carnated itself, or in a false mysticism characterized by a flight from man's real world. All we can do here is point out the danger, a danger which has become for many a fact. The liturgical movement can to some extent in-carnate man's faith in his sense world. This has not as yet happened, however. At present the faith of many Christians is floundering because their image world has become desacramentalized, and as yet nothing has been given to replace his traditional images. Like Adam ÷ ÷ ÷ Prayer VOLUME 28, 1969 401 ÷ ÷ ÷ ]. R. Sheets, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 40~) who, before the creation of Eve, could find no helpmate suitable for him, Christian faith is searching for its help-mate in the world of images. When Christian faith finds its world of images, it can also exclaim, as did Adam: "This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh" (Gn 2:23). Practically speaking it is through our contemplation of Christ in the Gospels that we begin to create the image of Christ in the chaos of our sense world. It is through our prayer that the words "Let there be light" are extended not only to the darkness of our minds but also to the darkness of imagination and memory. The importance of seeing is a central theme in the writings of St. John. He is called the eagle. In ancient belief the eagle was consi~lered to have special power to see. He could soar close to the sun without becoming blinded by the rays of light. St. John did in fact see, both with the eyes of the faith and the eyes of his senses. His seeing is the source of his Gospel: "Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life-- this is our subject. That life was made visible: we saw it and we are giving our testimony, telling you of the eternal life which was with the Father and has been made visible tO us. What we have seen and heard we are telling you so that you too may be in union with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 Jn 1:1-4). These words express the sense of the words spoken to the man whom Jesus cured of his blindness, when the man asked about the mean-ing of faith in the Son of Man. Jesus told him: '~You are looking at him; he is speaking to you" (Jn 9:37). We sometimes hear today that we do not need to pray because our action is our prayer. We do not need to contemplate Christ in Himself because we se~ Him in others. If our action is' our prayer and our contempla-tion of others really is our contemplation of Christ, this can come only because we take the time to pray formally. Unless there is formal prayer there is the danger of hear-ing only the echo of our own voice and seeing only the reflection of our own image in all that we do, while we are under the tragic illusion that it is Christ's voice and His image. The Third Moment of Christian Prayer The third moment of Christian prayer is the response. This takes various forms. It varies according to our many faceted response to the one fundamental truth: the love of the Father shown to us in the gift of His Son. "With thisgift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?" (Rm 8:32). Among the many forms which the response can take are tho~e of gratitude, praise, sorrow, adoration, and petition. There is first of all the response of grati-tude. This is the fundamental disposition of the Christian. It is one of the most common forms of prayer in the Letters of St.Paul. He begins all of his Letters with a prayer of thanks and frequently stresses the necessity of gratitude in prayer (1 Cor 14:17; 2 Cot 1:11; 4:15; 9:11-2). It would not be too much to say that to the extent that one is Christian he is also grateful. To be consciously Christian means that one is aware of the difference that the Incarnation and redemption have made in our lives. When one is conscious of the great deeds of God for our salvation the response will be praise. The Christian, like the Jew, praises God not for His essential char-acteristics (at least not directly), but for what He has done for man in His saving deeds. We only learn what God is through what He has done. We praise God chiefly for what He has done for us in Christ. We find many examples of this prayer of praise for God's wondrous deeds in Scripture: the Psalms, the hymns victory scattered throughout the Old Testament, the Magnificat of Mary, the doxologies of Paul, and the hymns in the Book of Revelation. Where there is consciousness of the failure to respond in the past, then our present response takes the form of sorrow. We have failed to listen to the word. The light of our eye has become darkness. We have become deaf and blind, as Isaiah says: "You have seen many things but not observed them; your ears are open but you do not hear" (Is 42:20). For this reason Christian prayer will always take the form of sorrow. As creature before his Creator the Christian will adore. The prayer of adoration is the prayer of Christian maturity. It comes only when one