Suchergebnisse

ilustraciones, fotografías, mapas, ; Este ejercicio investigativo tiene como objetivo comprender las maneras en que se configuran las masculinidades de varones heterosexuales mayores de treinta y cinco años pertenecientes a sectores medios de Bogotá que conforman familias nucleares biparentales y que cocinan para sus familias de forma cotidiana como parte de sus responsabilidades diarias. Para ello, me acerqué y conocí las trayectorias de vida en relación con la cocina de tres varones: Juan Manuel, Wilson y Alejandro, contemplando sus historias desde la infancia hasta el momento actual, para tomar de esta forma una fotografía detallada de un contexto que se mantiene cambiante y en construcción, y así permitirme aportar un matiz adicional al estudio de las masculinidades y a los estudios feministas y de género, desde la cocina y sus materialidades. Asimismo, presento el texto de este documento acompañado de imágenes que contienen las recetas ofrecidas por los entrevistados a lo largo de sus narraciones a modo de representar gráficamente su experiencia con la cocina. De esta manera, a partir de la comprensión de las relaciones que los varones establecen con la cocina, los objetos, las tecnologías y las personas, y las dinámicas y tensiones a las que se enfrentan los entrevistados, se reflejan tanto las rupturas como las continuidades del orden de género en sus identidades como varones y padres y la reconfiguración de los significados de la cocina y sus materialidades. (Texto tomado de la fuente) ; This research exercise aims to understand the ways in which the masculinities of heterosexual males over thirty-five belonging to middle sectors of Bogota that make up biparental nuclear families and that cook for their families daily as part of their quotidian responsibilities. To do this, I approached and knew about the life trajectories in relation to the kitchen of three men: Juan Manuel, Wilson, and Alejandro, contemplating in these their stories from childhood to the present moment, thus taking a detailed photograph of a context that remains changing and under construction, to allow me to add an additional nuance to the study of masculinities and feminist and gender studies, from the kitchen and its materialities. I also present the text of this document accompanied by images containing the recipes offered by the interviewees throughout their narratives to graphically represent their experience with cooking. In this way, based on the understanding of the relationships that men establish with cooking, objects, technologies and people, and the dynamics and tensions that interviewees face, are reflected both the ruptures and the continuities of the gender order in their identities as men and fathers and the reconfiguration of the meanings of the kitchen and its materialities. ; Maestría ; Magíster en Estudios de Género ; En primera medida, me interesa mencionar que antes de acercarme al trabajo de campo previo al inicio de la cuarentena, la propuesta era organizar el marco teórico que había construido en un principio, pues este era muy general para lo que realmente quería trabajar. Sin embargo, lograr consolidar en el marco teórico la información pertinente para iniciar el desarrollo de la tesis de maestría comenzaba a tornarse sin un horizonte ni un final claro. Ocuparme en la lectura de textos académicos de autorxs que por largos años han trabajado e investigado masculinidades en Colombia y otros países del mundo, me estaba permitiendo entender el amplio universo al que me enfrentaría al realizar el trabajo de campo y su análisis respectivo, pero al mismo tiempo, me estaba saturando y tal vez desviando del propósito real de mi investigación. Si bien, no podemos llegar al trabajo de campo sin tener un acercamiento a la teoría, me daba cuenta de que el marco teórico podría plantearlo no solo como un punto de partida, sino también como parte del proceso de recolección de la información, del análisis de ésta, en la escritura de la tesis y hasta en las correcciones que en algún momento tuve que hacer de este documento. Es decir, la construcción del marco teórico no presenta en realidad una temporalidad específica, es producto del proceso de lectura que se realiza durante el desarrollo de la tesis. Por ello, decidí comenzar a acercarme a los participantes de esta investigación para que en la misma medida en que mantenía una conversación con ellos, pudiera ir afinando algunos detalles de la propuesta metodológica inicial y al mismo tiempo, entender en diálogo con lxs autorxs lo que iba encontrando. Así que para ello, decidí comenzar con la búsqueda de los participantes, los cuales debían cumplir algunos criterios que definí a razón de mi pregunta de investigación: hombres heterosexuales mayores de 35 años, que conformarán familias nucleares biparentales con hijxs y que cocinarán más de tres veces por semana para su hogar previo a la pandemia. Mi interés se centró en la familia de tipo nuclear por considerarse históricamente como la ideal para ajustarse a los intereses económicos y patriarcales, pues sostiene la división sexual del trabajo en el hogar y asigna a la mujer aquellas actividades que suponen no tener algún valor en el mercado. Así que mi propósito inicial fue cuestionar la idea de familia nuclear, no solo porque ha dado continuidad a la subordinación de la mujer, sino también porque hace parte del entramado de instituciones modernas del Estado. Negándome al mismo tiempo a poner el foco en otro tipo de hogares o en varones de edades menores a los 35 años ya que considero puede haber más posibilidad de encontrar cambios en las relaciones de género en familias constituidas con parejas jóvenes y/o parejas homosexuales o no binarias, precisamente por una posible tendencia en estos grupos a cuestionar algunas formas de organización social y de género. Asimismo, busqué hombres que cocinarán la mayoría de las veces en la semana, ya que esto significaba poder analizar más acertadamente la relación entre hombres, masculinidades y cocina, considerando que ésta involucra actividades que requieren ser realizadas a diario para la sobrevivencia y el cuidado propio y de lxs otrxs, demandando el uso de experiencias, aprendizajes, imaginarios y significados basados en contextos específicos. A través de mis redes sociales emprendí la búsqueda de los participantes. Varixs amigxs compartieron la publicación que realicé en Facebook, en la que escribía los criterios que debían cumplir estos hombres y aclarando que el propósito sería investigativo. Obtuve aproximadamente 30 respuestas en las que me referían varías familias donde podía encontrar a mis participantes y 8 personas compartieron la publicación, por lo que pude encontrar más respuestas de recomendaciones en esas publicaciones compartidas. Sin embargo, al indagar a profundidad sobre el cumplimiento de dichos criterios, me encontré con que muchos de ellos vivían en hogares unipersonales o biparentales sin hijos, otros eran homosexuales o no cumplían con la edad que yo buscaba. A través de esta búsqueda logré encontrar a Juan Manuel, un recomendado de la amiga de una amiga que compartió la publicación. Me presenté con ella, le expliqué el propósito de mi investigación y así, me pasó el contacto de mi primer entrevistado. Pese a la mucha ayuda que recibí a partir de esa publicación realizada en Facebook, solo contaba con Juan Manuel, a quien llamé tan pronto me compartieron su número y se mostró bastante interesado en participar. Al continuar con mi búsqueda, un día hablando con una colega y amiga nutricionista sobre nuestra vida laboral, me recordó que en una conversación previa, me había hablado sobre su tío, un hombre que cocina todos los días y tiene dos hijos. Ella prometió hablar con su tío, contarle sobre la investigación y de acuerdo con ello, pasarme su contacto. A los pocos días, tenía su número de celular, me comuniqué con él y efectivamente, logré tener mi segundo entrevistado, a Wilson. Para el tercer y último entrevistado, la situación fue similar, mientras conversaba con una amiga, me contó que conocía a un hombre que cumplía con las características que yo buscaba. Mi amiga era amiga de su hija, así que ella habló con su padre, luego me comuniqué con él y ese mismo día, Alejandro aceptó participar. A continuación, daré una breve descripción de los participantes (Ver Figura 1-1), pues a lo largo de este documento, cuento más detalles de sus vidas: - Juan Manuel: Barranquillero, hace 3 años vive en el norte de Bogotá, tiene 40 años, es ex militar de las Fuerzas Armadas -FA donde duró 6 años, allí se especializó como enfermero y buzo, frecuentaba la cocina de la base militar en la que se encontraba para apoyar a los cocineros. Se retira de las FA debido a que decide casarse con una militar de más alto rango. Por el trabajo de su esposa, se trasladan constantemente de ciudad. Actualmente tienen dos hijas, una de 11 años y otra de 4 años. Él trabaja en una empresa como especialista en Salud y Seguridad en el Trabajo. Debido a la cuarentena se encuentra realizando teletrabajo. Juan Manuel cocina desde que tiene 10 años y hace 5 años cocina todos los días en su casa. - Wilson: Bogotano, vive en el sur de Bogotá, tiene 52 años, trabajó como mecánico desde niño y actualmente es taxista. Vive con su esposa y sus dos hijos, uno de 24 años recién casado y el otro de 21 años. El primero vive aún con sus padres debido a que está ahorrando para comprar un apartamento con su esposa. La pareja de Wilson es ingeniera industrial y administradora de empresas, su experiencia laboral ha sido en empresas fuera de la ciudad y los cargos que ha ocupado la mantienen con una alta carga laboral. Wilson cocina desde que tiene 8 años y en su hogar cocina hace 12 años todos los días de la semana. - Alejandro: Bogotano, vive en el norte de Bogotá, tiene 53 años, trabaja en una editorial de libros donde no tiene horario laboral, pues sale de su casa únicamente cuando lo requiere. Su pareja se dedica a cuidar a la esposa del papá de Alejandro, quien tiene alzhéimer, sin recibir remuneración económica. Viven con sus dos hijxs, la hija tiene 22 años y el hijo 21 años. Nunca cocinó en su infancia ni juventud, pues empezó a cocinar en su casa hace 6 años los fines de semana y dedicándose ahora a cocinar entre 4 a 5 días por semana. Figura 1 1. Ubicación de los participantes y de la autora en la ciudad de Bogotá. Trabajé únicamente con tres hombres debido a que mi interés no fue nunca contar con una muestra significativa para llegar a conclusiones universales ni generalizadas (Bassi, 2014), como suele suceder en las ciencias de la nutrición de donde provengo. En realidad, mi propósito ha sido conocer las trayectorias de vida de los entrevistados en relación con la cocina, desde su infancia hasta el momento actual, tomando de esta forma una fotografía detallada de un contexto que seguirá cambiante y en construcción, para así permitirme aportar un matiz al estudio de las masculinidades en los estudios feministas y de género, desde la cocina y sus particularidades. Con relación a las entrevistas para recoger las historias de vida, utilicé un formato guía en el que estructuré distintas preguntas abiertas que me permitieran orientar o ahondar en los relatos de los varones, basadas en los interrogantes que tenía previo a la entrevista y otras que se iban generando en el proceso de transcripción y análisis de la información, con el fin de darle profundidad a algunos temas que los entrevistados habían mencionado "a vuelo de pájaro" (Schütz, 1991, citado por Muñoz, 2003) y valían la pena ampliar. Sin embargo, la narración de la historia vivida por los participantes se dio de manera espontánea y fluida, me mantuve en atenta escucha, plateando solo algunas de las preguntas abiertas que tenía preparadas que no habían sido respondidas pero que tenían relación con lo que estábamos conversando, para con esto, motivar a los entrevistados a continuar narrándome sus vidas. Al iniciar cada entrevista, solicite a los participantes su autorización para grabar la voz, utilizando mi celular o el computador para ello. En total, realicé tres entrevistas con Juan Manuel que duraron entre una hora y media y dos horas y dos entrevistas de una hora con Wilson y Alejandro. Con Juan Manuel fue frecuente el uso de Zoom, con la cámara encendida todo el tiempo para lograr tomar apuntes etnográficos sobre sus expresiones, gestos, silencios y también para poder observar algo de su cotidianidad, que por supuesto se había modificado a causa de la cuarentena en la que nos encontrábamos. Con Wilson decidimos usar videollamadas por WhatsApp ya que él no conocía otras plataformas, de hecho, su hijo le ayudó a entender el funcionamiento de dicha aplicación y así poder tener una conversación continúa conmigo. Con Alejandro nos vimos tanto por WhatsApp como por Zoom, aunque con él tuve muchos más problemas de conectividad que con los demás entrevistados. A veces lo escuchaba entre cortado o por falta de práctica con estas plataformas, alejaba la cámara y el micrófono de su rostro y lo empezaba a escuchar muy lejos. Esto me implicó estar muy concentrada y más atenta de lo que debía, ya que cada vez que le pedía a Alejandro que se acercará el micrófono, se desviaba del tema que estaba tocando o se le olvidaba qué estaba narrándome. Definitivamente los problemas de conexión y el poco conocimiento de estas plataformas virtuales de comunicación por parte de los participantes y mía, me llevo a reflexionar sobre estas otras formas de hacer trabajo de campo a las que no hemos accedido, pues estamos acostumbradxs al contacto físico y visual con nuestros participantes, a tener interrupciones quizás, pero no del mismo tipo a las que se dan virtualmente, o a plantear metodologías que implican estar, compartir y/o involucrarse espacial y relacionalmente con el contexto que rodea a lxs sujetxs -excluyendo a algunas investigaciones de archivo o cuantitativas que no requieren específicamente del contacto con las personas-. No obstante, al cambiar el modus operandi de las investigaciones cualitativas para buscar otras formas de desarrollarlas y superar al mismo tiempo, las barreras que la pandemia por COVID-19 iba imponiéndonos durante el año 2020, me llevo a ver el uso de la tecnología como la oportunidad de explorar aquellas formas a las que pocas veces volteamos a ver, así como a darle continuidad tanto al trabajo de campo como al de escritura, pues el hecho de estar en casa redujo los tiempos que solemos utilizar en la movilización y el transporte de un lugar a otro, por ejemplo, permitiendo que algunas de las entrevistas las pudiéramos realizar después de las nueve de la noche o durante la jornada laboral. Por otro lado, quiero resaltar otras condiciones que atravesaron el trabajo de campo y que respondían de igual forma a la cuarentena obligatoria. Una de ellas tiene que ver con el traslado de la vida laboral a la vivienda, donde los límites entre lo privado y lo público se desvanecían o se transformaban para ser uno solo pero en conjunto, sumándole la escuela o el trabajo de lxs hijxs y la pareja. Así como la aleación entre el trabajo doméstico, de cuidados y del mercado laboral en términos espaciales y temporales. Otra condición fue la permanente socialización con algunos o todos los miembros del núcleo familiar y el aumento de los cuidados entre ellxs -por prevenir el contagio del coronavirus-, transformando de esta manera, las formas de relacionarse. En este sentido, reitero nuevamente mi idea de que los resultados de esta investigación son una especie de fotografía que capta las reflexiones de los tres varones y mías con respecto a su experiencia, significados, prácticas y representaciones de su masculinidad y la cocina, las cuales cuentan con distintos matices, entre esos, una pandemia por coronavirus que confinó al mundo en sus viviendas por un período de tiempo determinado y bajo unas condiciones diferenciadas según sexo, clase, raza, lugar de origen, etnia, entre otras. En el tercer capítulo retomo y amplío las condiciones anteriormente mencionadas que marcan en definitiva mi trabajo investigativo. Además, estas condiciones imposibilitaron al mismo tiempo mi interés por no solo conocer las historias de vida de los participantes, sino también entrevistar a las parejas de los tres varones, pues reconozco en principio que la construcción del género es relacional y es resultado de su interacción permanente en la vida cotidiana (Viveros, 2002). Por lo que, entrevistarlas me permitiría triangular la información ofrecida por los participantes en sus narrativas, así como contar con una perspectiva adicional sobre la configuración de las masculinidades en estos varones. Sin embargo, debido a la pandemia y en consecuencia a la cuarentena, la carga laboral de las parejas de los entrevistados aumentó, llevándolas a trabajar más de doce horas diarias, con apenas unos cuantos descansos para el almuerzo y la cena. Así que en las varias ocasiones que intenté contactarlas, no pudieron atenderme debido a que estaban ocupadas, estresadas y/o cansadas, llevándome a desistir finalmente de esta posibilidad. Continuando, la transcripción de las entrevistas la fui realizando cada vez que completaba una entrevista con los participantes evitando que se me acumularan, pues transcribir una y dos horas de entrevista fue una tarea bastante ardua y agotadora. Inicialmente evalué la posibilidad de no transcribir todas las entrevistas, sino de utilizar una rejilla en Excel con categorías para así, clasificar los temas de las grabaciones y anotar los minutos y segundos exactos donde se hablaba de ello, pero esto me generó dificultad a la hora de analizar la información. Así que pese al mucho tiempo que me tomó transcribir las entrevistas, esto me permitió poder acercarme nuevamente a cada una para lograr tener una comprensión analítica suficiente de cada relato de manera individual con el fin de reconocer los focos, los personajes, las reflexiones, las causalidades, los significados, etc., que le da cada hombre a su historia de vida (Muñoz, 2003). Al contar con la mayor parte de las entrevistas transcritas y analizadas por separado, comencé a identificar los nodos comunes que advertían un mismo modo de habitar el mundo y de narrar sus experiencias, así como los nodos que evidenciaban una diversidad en las formas de configurar su relación con la cocina. En varias ocasiones releí los relatos transcriptos, tanto para descubrir e interesarme por profundizar en algunas narraciones tal vez inadvertidas para mí al inicio y también para rememorar sus historias de vida que trazadas desde el presente, abarcan el pasado y el futuro, considerando claramente en este punto, que las transcripciones no son el relato en voz en sí mismo, pues se hace imposible transcribir los gestos y las expresiones que median la narración, aunque debo mencionar que intenté plasmar los silencios con puntos suspensivos o escribir las expresiones faciales que evidenciaba en los apuntes de campo que obtuve. Al mismo tiempo que recogía los relatos y los transcribía, aproveché otras formas de recoger información durante las entrevistas y a través del chat de WhatsApp. Por ejemplo la cartografía de la cocina la logramos realizar por este medio virtual con los varones, pues luego de que se levantó la cuarentena obligatoria, los participantes se vieron obligados a volver a sus oficinas o al taxi, en el caso de Wilson, haciendo que nuestra comunicación empezara a ser escasa a raíz de las múltiples ocupaciones de ellos. La importancia de realizar la cartografía de la cocina radicaba en el hecho de poder obtener una valiosa representación visual de lo que cada hombre considera de este espacio y sus objetos, así como sus características más profundas, pues la cartografía no se circunscribía a la delimitación del espacio físico, sino que se anclaba a las diversas tensiones y subjetividades que emergen de las relaciones socioculturales de quienes participan en este (Barragán, 2016). Por tanto, decidí acoger la propuesta metodológica que Andrea Gómez Mora (2017) implementó en su tesis de maestría titulada "¿Mujeres que vivimos solas?: habitando hogares unipersonales desde el género y las relaciones más que humanas", donde con base en unas preguntas, pidió a sus participantes que las respondieran a través de fotografías, para analizar con ellas la relación que estas mujeres mantenían con el espacio y los objetos. Las preguntas que formulé para este ejercicio fueron: - ¿En qué espacio(s) de la cocina suele permanecer cuando está cocinando? - ¿En cuál(es) espacio(s) de la cocina suele socializar con su familia? - ¿Qué parte(s) de la cocina le agrada(n) mucho? - ¿Qué parte(s) de la cocina le gusta(n) menos? - ¿Qué parte(s) de la cocina es (son) la(s) que más disfruta? - ¿Qué parte(s) de la cocina es (son) la(s) que poco disfruta? - ¿Qué parte(s) de su cocina cambiaría? - ¿Qué objeto(s) de la cocina es (son) más significativo para usted? - ¿Qué objeto(s) de la cocina le gusta(n) menos? - ¿Qué objeto(s) le resulta(n) más útiles en la cocina? - ¿Qué objeto(s) le resulta(n) más inútiles en la cocina? - ¿Qué o quién(es) lo suele(n) acompañar mientras cocina? - ¿Cómo se ve su cocina mientras cocina? - ¿Qué reflexiones le suscito contestar las preguntas a través de fotografías? A partir de las fotos enviadas por los entrevistados, forme un collage por cada pregunta respondida por los tres participantes para así poderlas analizar de manera conjunta, consolidando toda esta información en el último capítulo de este trabajo investigativo. Algunas de estas fotografías se encuentran a lo largo de dicho capítulo, acompañando la escritura. Por otro lado, otra de las formas que me permitió recolectar información de los entrevistados y ampliar el análisis, fue el diseño de unas plantillas - Diario de actividades, Diario de comidas y Recetas (Ver Anexo A)- que guiaban el ejercicio de memoria de los varones sobre lo que cocinaban a diario durante una semana, cómo lo cocinaban, cuánto tiempo duraban haciéndolo, las actividades que realizaban adicionalmente al cocinar y un registro de las recetas que para ellos, tenían un significado importante. En este último, la idea fue escribir el nombre de la receta, los ingredientes, la preparación, los utensilios utilizados para su elaboración y hacer algunas anotaciones para conocer quién les enseñó esa receta, cómo y dónde la aprendieron y qué recuerdos tienen con ella. Las plantillas fueron diligenciadas por los participantes y expuestos en una de las entrevistas que tuvimos, en la cual conversamos sobre las recetas y todo lo que esta alrededor de ello, como las formas de cocinar, de relacionarse con los ingredientes y los utensilios, lo que rodea el ejercicio de cocinar para ellos y los significados y representaciones que de ello emana. La medición del tiempo empleado por los varones no solo en la cocina, si no en otras labores, como el trabajo doméstico, de cuidados y laboral a través del diario de actividades que diseñé, me permitió entender la distribución del tiempo que estos varones realizan de las 24 horas del día en una semana. Mi propósito con este diario fue conocer las otras actividades que ellos realizan además de cocinar y trabajar, entre esas las de ocio, los tiempos que utilizan para cada una y en cierta forma, poder verificar la frecuencia con la que cocinan para su familia. Este instrumento así como presenta ventajas, también presenta varias dificultades a la hora de basarse en la información allí consignada por los varones, sobre todo porque es un instrumento que evalúa estos aspectos cuantitativamente, perdiendo de vista lo cualitativo que se encuentra detrás de la realización de distintas labores de mercado, domésticas y de cuidado; por eso la importancia de que sea únicamente una guía que acompañe otras técnicas como la entrevista. Una de las ventajas que encuentro del uso de estos instrumentos es que facilita la recordación de los entrevistados sobre las tareas que desarrollaron cada uno de los días de la semana, así como permitir que la investigadora identifique temas o aspectos en los que no se haya enfocado y sean de utilidad para responder la pregunta de investigación. Sin embargo, las desventajas son muchas más si se trabaja solo con este tipo de instrumentos, es decir si no se amplía la información recolectada a través de entrevistas, como ya lo mencioné. Pese a que las plantillas las plantee de forma abierta para no limitar la información que los entrevistados consideraran relevante anotar, fue frecuente que ellos excluyeran, obviaran o ignoraran algunas actividades que realizan en su cotidianidad, pero que por el mismo hecho de ser cotidianas, no las reconocen o no las consideran como válidas para escribirlas en el instrumento, como las actividades de cuidado que tienen que ver con salir de la cocina mientras se está cocinando para responder una pregunta que sus hijxs expresan con respecto a la clase virtual en la que están participando, o salir del trabajo y parar en una farmacia para comprar un medicamento para su hijx que esta enfermx en casa; por nombrar algunos ejemplos reales. O las tareas que se realizan en un tiempo más subjetivo como lo llama Carrasco (2005), difícil de cuantificar porque no se materializan en una actividad concreta pero si reclaman energía de la persona. Además, las tareas que se realizan en simultaneo son difíciles de evidenciar en este instrumento, pues los entrevistados preferían escribir la actividad principal que se encontraban haciendo en una hora determinada, por ejemplo, cocinar, sin plasmar que al mismo tiempo estaban lavando la loza y además estaban viendo una serie de televisión. En este sentido, el poder articular las plantillas con las entrevistas me permitió conocer en detalle información que no hubiese sido fácil obtener al usar solo una de las dos técnicas de recolección de la información, pues parte de las entrevistas se basaron en las plantillas que los varones lograron responder en una semana continua. Además de estas dos técnicas, también tuve la oportunidad de recibir una serie de fotografías que los entrevistados les tomaban a sus preparaciones. Algunas las tomaron antes de iniciar su participación en la investigación y otras durante el diligenciamiento de las plantillas. Durante las entrevistas también se conversó sobre las fotos enviadas, describiendo ingredientes, recuerdos y anécdotas asociadas a dichas preparaciones captadas en la fotografía. La información que obtuve tanto de las fotografías como de las plantillas las dejé claramente plasmadas en algunas páginas de este documento ya que lo consideré complementario al análisis desarrollado. Para presentar la información recolectada y el análisis que realicé de ésta en cada uno de los capítulos del documento, me pareció de suma importancia citar en mi escritura partes de los relatos a modo de respaldar mi análisis y de evidenciar como éste deriva de las narrativas de los entrevistados (Bassi, 2014). También quiero reconocer que lo que presento en este documento es un proceso creativo y colaborativo, resultado de la relación generada entre los entrevistados y yo, y no un proceso de autoría individual que solo me pertenece por ser la investigadora (Beorlegui, 2019). Una relación que de igual forma me dio mucho para reflexionar y es lo que traté de condensar y desplegar en el anterior apartado. ; Globalización, desigualdades sociales y políticas públicas

ABSTRAKSIKonflik merupakan salah satu fenomena sosial yang lumrah terjadi dalam masyarakat. Begitu juga halnya di provinsi Maluku Utara. Konflik yang muncul adalah berhubungan dengan wilayah perbatasan antara Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat. Konflik batas wilayah inilah mendorong peneliti tertarik untuk meneliti gejala sosial yang terjadi. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mendiskripsikan faktor-faktor penyebab konflik, mendiskripsikan dampak-dampak yang ditimbulkan dari terjadinya konflik, dan mendeskripsikan prospek penyelesaian batas wilayah.Manfaat penelitian adalah untukmemberikan sumbangsi pemikiran bagi Pemerintah Provinsi Maluku Utara dalam upaya penyelesaian konflik wilayah antara kabupaten halmahera Utara dengan kabupaten halmahera Barat, serta menjadi bahan acuan kerjasama antar kedua kabupaten untuk menyelesaikan tapal batas.Dengan melihat masalah ini peneliti menggunakan teori Lewis Coser. Konflik merupakan perselisihan mengenai nilai-nilai atau tuntutan-tuntutan berkenaan dengan status, kuasa, dan sumber-sumber kekayaan yang persediaannya tidak mencukupi, dimana pihak-pihak yang sedang berkonflik bukan hanya berniat untuk memperoleh barang yang dimaksud tetapi juga berniat untuk menghancurkan lawannya. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode kualitatif dengan tipe pendekatan deskriptifserta lokasi penelitian di kantor Gubernur Maluku Utara dan desa-desa penyangga. Pengumpulan data yang dilakukan adalah observasi dan wawancara mendalam terhadap tokoh-tokoh masyarakat enam desa serta pejabat pemerintah sebagai informan.Berdasarkan hasil penelitian ada beberapa faktor penyebab konflik yakni meliputi: faktor Potensi Alam,faktor lahirnya Peraturan Pemerintah No. 42 Tahun 1999tentang Pembentukan dan Penataan Beberapa Kecamatan Di Wilayah Kabupaten Daerah Tingkat II Maluku Utara Dalam Wilayah Provinsi Tingkat I Maluku, dan faktor lahirnya Undang-undang No 1 tahun 2003 tentang Pembentukan Kabupaten Halmahera Utara.Sehingga konflik wilayah berkepanjangan yang selanjutnya berakibat pada timbulnya "dampak konflik" berupa terjadinya dualisme sistem pemerintahan tingkat desa maupun kecamatan, dampak Dalam Bidang Politik. dampak dalam pelaksanaan pelayanan administrasi pendataan kependudukan dan pelayanan KTPdan dampak dalam bidang sosial. Prospek penyelesaian konflik wilayah ini harus ada ketegasan Pemprov Malut dalam menyelesaikan serta merevisi PP No 42 tahun 1999 yang tidak merekrut aspirasi rakyat enam desa.1 Merupakan skripsi penulis2 Mahasiswa jurusan Ilmu Pemerintahan FISIP UNSRATKata kunci: Konflik, batas wilayah, konflik/antagonisme.A. PendahuluanSebelum era otonomi daerah, di Indonesia hanya terdapat 27 provinsi dan 277 kabupaten/kotamadya. Setelah otonomi daerah, jumlah tersebut membengkak menjadi 34 provinsi dan 511 kabupaten/kota bahkan lebih dengan tingkat akselerasi pemekaran yang terhitung luar biasa dan sebagaimana diduga sebelumnya, menciptakan ruang-ruang potensi masalah baru. Pemekaran suatu daerah menjadi beberapa daerah otonom baru berakibat berubahnya batas-batas wilayah daerah baik secara administratif maupun geospasial (keruangan), yang menjadi esensi munculnya permasalahan serius. Permasalahan tersebut adalah Konflik batas wilayah (Harmantyo, 2007).Sekilas tidak ada persoalan terkait batas-batas administratif dan geografi ini karena di setiap Undang-Undang yang memayungi pembentukan daerah otonom baru tersebut selalu dicantumkan batas-batas antara daerah satu dengan daerah lain walaupun batas-batas tersebut sangat makro. Akan tetapi kondisi di lapangan seringkali lebih rumit dari pada yang diperkirakan sebelumnya.Dalam praktiknya, proses Penyelesaian konflik batas wilayah tidak selalu dapat dilaksanakan dengan lancar, bahkan ada kecenderungan jumlah sengketa/konflik batas antar daerah meningkat. Dari melihat kenyataan praktis, teridentifikasi beberapa penyebab konflik terkait batas wilayah ini, antara lain :1. Yuridis, yakni tidak jelasnya batas daerah dalam Undang-Undang Pembentukan Daerah.2. Ekonomi, yakni Perebutan Sumber Daya (SDA, Kawasan Niaga/ Transmigrasi, Perkebunan).3. Kultural, yakni Isu terpisahnya etnis atau sub etnis.4. Politik & Demografi, yakni Perebutan pemilih & perolehan suara bagi anggota Legislatif/Eksekutif.5. Sosial, yakni Munculnya kecemburuan sosial, riwayat konflik masa lalu, isu penduduk asli dan pendatang.6. Pemerintahan, yakni Jarak ke pusat pemerintahan, diskriminasi pelayanan, keinginan bergabung ke daerah tetangga.Provinsi Maluku Utara juga rupanya tidak terhindar dari konflik daerah pemekaran. Paling tidak ada beberapa titik konflik yang hingga saat kenyataan ini belum menunjukkan tanda-tanda akan berakhir. Salah satu Titik konflik yang rawan adalah yang terjadi antara Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat yang melibatkan wilayah enam desa sengketa, yaitu Desa Pasir Putih, Desa Bobane Igo, Desa Tetewang, Desa Akelamo Kao, Desa Akusahu, dan Desa Dum-Dum. Konflik ini sifatnya menahun semenjak terbentuknya Kabupaten Halmahera Utara pada tahun 2003 hingga saat ini, persoalan tidak kunjung usai.Konflik dapat dirasakan dalam proses interaksi antara kedua belah pihak (aksi-reaksi) dalam upaya mencapai kesepakatan yang diperlukan dalam menentukan beberapa titik batas yang selama inisulit dicapai kesepakatannya. Intensitas konflik semakin meningkat dan jelas seiring dengan bergulirnya "era otonomi daerah" ketika Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Utara mulai mengintensifkan kegiatan penataan batas wilayah dan mendapatkan reaksi dari Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Barat berupa disepakatinya titik batas daerah.Sejak berlakunya Undang-Undang (UU) Nomor 22 Tahun 1999, Indonesia sering disebut dalam era otonomi daerah. Daerah otonom diberi kewenangan dengan prinsip luas, nyata dan bertanggung jawab. Demikian juga setelah UU tentang Pemerintahan Daerah tersebut diganti dengan UU No. 32 Tahun 2004, prinsip luas, nyata dan bertanggung jawab tetap menjadi prinsip dalam penyelenggaraan kewenangan daerah otonom. Berbagai implikasi kemudian muncul karena implementasi UU yang baru tersebut, satu diantaranya yaitu bahwa daerah menjadi memandang sangat penting perlunya penegasan batas daerah. Salah satu sebabnya juga seperti disampaikan diatas adalah karena daerah menjadi memiliki kewenangan untuk mengelola sumber daya di wilayahnya. Daerah melaksanakan kewenangan masing-masing dalam lingkup batas daerah yang ditentukan, artinya kewenangan suatu daerah pada dasarnya tidak boleh melampaui batas daerah yang ditetapkan dalam peraturan perundang-undangan. Apabila batas daerah tidak jelas akan menyebabkan dua kemungkinan akibat negatif. Pertama, suatu bagian wilayah dapat diabaikan oleh masing-masing daerah karena merasa itu bukan daerahnya atau dengan kata lain masing-masing daerah saling melempar tanggung jawab dalam menyelenggarakan pemerintahan, pelayanan masyarakat maupun pembangunan di bagian wilayah tersebut. Kedua, daerah yang satu dapat dianggap melampaui batas kewenangan daerah yang lain sehingga berpotensi timbulnya konflik antar daerah.Dalam hal ini persoalan batas daerah menjadi sebuah konflik kelembagaan yang berkepanjangan antara Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat. Sentrum konflik terkait Enam Desa Pasca pemekaran daerah di Provinsi Maluku Utara itulah yang sampai hari ini belum mampu terselesaikan meskipun berbagai pihak telah berupaya memfasilitasi. Konflik selain pemekaran kabupaten juga Konflik yang terjadi diperbatasan ini ketika adanya pembentukan kecamatan malifut. Akibat dari pemekaran kecamatan malifut dengan menggabungkan enam desa wilayah wilayah kecamatan jaiololo maka penolakan di enam desa terjadi. Penolakan masyarakat enam desa tersebut dikarenakan ketidak inginan untuk menjadi wilayah bagian dari kecamatan malifut. Namun penolakan dari enam desa ini tidak mendapat tanggapan apa-apa dari pemerintah. Ada juga menjadi dampak terjadinya konflik sosial akibat lambannya respon pemerintah atas aspirasi masyarakat enam desa, dampak selanjutnya masyarakat enam desa menolak mendapat pelayanan dari kecamatan malifut dan hanya menerima pelayanan dari kecamatan jailolo. Walaupun demekian realitasnya secara administrastif wilayah enam desa menjadi bagian dari wilayah administrasi kecamatan malifut.Penolakan masyarakat enam desa ini didasari bahwa sejak awal mereka telah menolak bergabung dengan kecamatan malifut dan tetap menjadi bagian dari kecamatan jailolo, sehingga masyarakat menganggap bahwa sangat realistis jika enam desa menjadi bagian dari kabupaten Halmahera Barat. Dengan dasar itulah, maka pemerintah kabupaten Halmahera Barat memberikan pelayanan kepada enam desa. Disinilah konflik perebutan wilayah enam desa semakin mencuat baik antar Pemerintah maupun antar masyarakat. Jelas ini memancing banyak pertanyaan untuk bisa dijawab. Ada banyak faktor, aktor dan kepentingan yang bermain sehingga upaya penyelesaian konflik tidak sesederhana yang dibayangkan banyak pihak. Rumusan masalah, yakni faktor-faktor apakah yang menyebabkan terjadinya Konflik Wilayah Antara Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Halmahera Barat ? Dampak-dampak apakah yang timbul dari terjadinya konflik Tersebut ? dan Bagaimanakah prospek penyelesaian batas wilayah ini dari prespektif politik ? Tujuan penelitian untuk Mendiskripsikan faktor-faktor penyebab dari terjadinya konflik Perebutan Wilayah Antara Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Halmahera Barat, Mendiskripsikan dampak-dampak yang ditimbulkan dari terjadinya konflik Tersebut dan mendiskripsikan prospek penyelesaian Konflik wilayah ini dari prespektif politik.Adapun manfaat penelitian secara teoritis, yakni dimanfaatkan bagi pengembangan kajian-kajian Ilmu Politik dan Pemerintahan, khususnya yang terkait dengan Manajemen Konflik, Dinamika Politik Lokal, dan Sosialogi Politik dan Ilmu pengetahuan secara umum, sedangkan secara Praktis, manfaat hasil penelitian ini sebagai sumbangsi pemikiran bagi Pemerintah Provinsi Maluku Utara dalam upaya penyelesaian konflik wilayah antara skabupaten halmahera Utara dengan kabupaten halmahera Barat, serta menjadi bahan acuan kerjasama antar kedua kabupaten untuk menyelesaikan tapal batas yang disengketakan.B. Tinjauan PustakaKonflik berasal dari kata kerja Latin configere yang berarti saling memukul. konflik adalah suatu tindakan salah satu pihak yang berakibat menghalangi, menghambat, atau mengganggu pihak lain dimana hal ini dapat terjadi antar kelompok masyarakat ataupun dalam hubungan antar pribadi. Istilah konflik menurut Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) berarti percekcokan, perselisihan, pertentangan. Menurut asal katanya, istilah 'konflik' berasal dari bahasa Latin 'confligo', yang berarti bertabrakan, bertubrukan, terbentur, bentrokan, bertanding, berjuang, berselisih, atau berperang.Lewis Coser. Konflik merupakan perselisihan mengenai nilai-nilai atau tuntutan-tuntutan berkenaan dengan status, kuasa, dan sumber-sumber kekayaan yang persediaannya tidak mencukupi, dimana pihak-pihak yang sedang berkonflik bukan hanya berniat untuk memperoleh barang yang dimaksud tetapi juga berniat untuk menghancurkan lawannyakan, bertanding, berjuang, berselisih, atau berperang.Hubungan yang konfrontatif antar kelompok sosial maupun Institusi Pemerintahan yang terjadi karena benturan kewenangan, tujuan serta ketidakcocokan dalam kehidupan sosial meliputi nilai budaya, geografi maupun sejarah. Begitu juga konflik yang terjadi di wilayah perbatasan antara kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat. Dilihat dari unsur yang terlibat secara umum, konflik di Perbatasan kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat dapat di kategorikan sebagai berikut. Konflik antara masyarakat dengan pemerintah, konflik antara masyarakat dengan masyarakat serta konflik antara Pemerintah dengan Pemerintah (Zaiyardam dan Efendi, 2009: 11).C. Metodologi PenelitianMetode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah Metode deskriptif, yang mana penelitian ini untuk membuat gambaran mengenai situasi atau kejadian dengan mengadakan akumulasi data yang relevan, menerangkan hubungan serta mendapatkan makna dan implikasi dari suatau masalah yang ingin dipecahkan. pelaksanaan penelitian dengan menggunakan metode penelitian Deskriptif Kualitatif mengacu pada pengumpulan dan penyusunan data, serta meliputi analisis, interpretasi tentang arti data tersebut, selain itu data yang dikumpulkan berkemungkinan menjadi kunci terhadap apa yang diteliti (Moleong, 2007).Pada dasarnya penelitian ini mempergunakan dua jenis data, yaitu data primer dan data sekunder. Data primer, data yang didapatkan langsung dari sumber pertama, seperti data hasil wawancara atau kuesioner. Sementara itu data sekunder yakni dokumen-dokumen dan data-data pelengkap lainnya. Dalam penelitian ini, yang akan menjadi informan kunci adalah Pejabat Pemerintah Daerah Provinsi Maluku Utara dan Kabupaten Halut-Halbar sementara informan biasa adalah Warga Masyarakat di Wilayah Desa Penyangga yaitu Desa Pasir Putih, Desa Bobane Igo, Desa Tetewang, Desa Akelamo Kao, Desa Akusahu, dan Desa Dum-Dum. Instrument yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini yakni dilakukan dengan cara wawancara berdasarkan pedoman wawancara atau daftar wawancara bahkan dilakukan dengan cara proses pengamatan atau observasi. Lokasi dalam penelitian ini adalah Kantor Gubernur Provinsi Maluku Utara. Dalam penelitian ini penulis juga menambahkan lokasi penelitian untuk mencari data pelengkap sesuai dengan masalah yang dibahas yang bertempat di Kantor Bupati Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat dan pada wilayah perbatasan yang menjadi sentral sengketa perebutan antara kedua Kabupaten yang meliputi: Desa Dumdum, Desa Akesahu, Desa Akelamo, Desa Tetewang, Desa Bobane Igo dan Desa Pasir Putih.Teknik analisa data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah analisis model interaktif dari Miles dan Heuberman (2001), yakni analisis data yang dilakukan secaraterus menerus sejak awal sampai selesainya penelitian secara bersamaan, yaitu sebagai berikut :1. Reduksi DataData yang diperoleh dari lapangan dituangkan dalam uraian atau laporan yang lengkap dan rinci. Laporan lapangan oleh peneliti direduksi, dirangkum, dipilih hal-hal yang pokok, difokuskan pada hal-hal yang penting, kemudian dicari tema atau polanya yang terfokus pada masalah yang kaji.2. Display DataLangka ini memudahkan peneliti melihat gambaran secara keseluruhan atau bagian tertentu dari penelitian. Dengan kata lain hal ini merupakan pengorganisasian data kedalam bentuk tertentu, yakni sistematis dan sederhana dengan sosoknya yang lebih mantap dan utuh.3. VerifikasiVerifikasi data dalam penelitian kualitatif dilakukan secara terus-menerus sepanjang proses penelitian berlansung sejak awal dan selama proses pengumpula data, peneliti menganalisis data yang dikumpulkan, yaitu mencari tema, pola, hubungan persamaan, hal-hal yang sering timbul dan berkaitan dengan masalah yang menjadi focus penelitian.D. PembahasanBerdasarkan temuan dari penilitian di lapangan maka faktor penyebab konflik wilayah antara Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat, yakni :1. Faktor Potensi AlamSejak 2003 pemekaran kabupaten Halmahera Utara dan kabupaten Halmahera Barat (pemindahan wilayah administratif dari Kota Ternate Kabupaten Maluku Utara (Dahulu) ke Kecamatan Jailolo Kabupaten Halmahera Barat (sekarang) wilayah enam desa yang disengketakan antara Pemda Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Pemda Kabupaten Halmahera Barat merupakan wilayah yang memiliki kekayaan sumber daya alam (seperti emas dan perak) yang masih belum tereksplorasi dengan maksimal. PT Nusa Halmahera Mineral (NHM) merupakan perusahaan eksploitasi tambang di sekitar Kawasan Gosowong, tepatnya di tiga lokasi, yakni Toguraci (Gosowong Barat), Gosowong Utara, dan Gosowong Selatan.Perusahaan tambang yang bekerja sama dengan pihak asing (Australia) yang diduga merupakan sumber keuangan daerah dan bahkan sumber pendapatan para elit lokalsehingga menjadi menarik dipihak Pemkab. Halut maupun Pemkab Halbar untuk diperebutkan. Sejak dari eksplorasi awal di tahun 1992 dan mengetahui kandungan di sana ada 20 ribu ton deposit biji logam dengan kadar emas dan perak yang tinggi, maka kontra karya antara pemerintah RI dan PT NHM di tandatangani pada tanggal 28 April 1997. persetujuan kontrak karya berdasarkan keputusan Presiden RI Nomor B 143 / Press/ 3/ 1997 tertanggal 17 Maret 1997. luas wilayah kontrak karya pada waktu ditandatangani adalah 1.6772.967 Ha. dan memulai eksploitasi di awal tahun 1999 silam sebelum Maluku Utara berpisah dengan Maluku Ambon. NHM merupakan perusahaan asing yang mengusai saham untuk melakukan eksploitasi tambang mineral di Kawasan sengketa enam desa oleh Pemda Kab. Halut dengan Kab. Halbar, sehingga sebagian besar masyarakat Maluku Utara menganggap bahwa konflik batas wilayah ini karena adanya sumber daya alam yang dikelola PT. NHM. argumentasi ini sebagaimana dinyatakan oleh informan di enam desa sengketa.Menurut, Abyan Sofyan (Biro Pemerintahan Halbar) mengatakan penyebab konflik adalah kepentingan sumber daya alam, namun itu berada pada level pemerintah untuk kepentingan pendapatan daerah, sedangkan penyebab konflik di level masyarakat, yakni munculnya PP No. 42 Tahun 1999 yang sejak awal sudah terjadi penolakan oleh masyarakat enam desa, namun tidak ditanggapi oleh pemerintah.Camat (versi Halut), mengatakan konflik batas wilayah antara Kabupaten Halut dengan Halbar sesunggunya adalah konflik yang berkaitan dengan sumber daya alam yang dikelola oleh salah satu perusahan tambang emas (PT. Nusa Halmahera Mineral), yang eksistensinya sejak tahun 2003 berada dalam wilayah administratif Pemda Halut. Konflik wilayah ini juga terkait dengan perebutan royalty dari pihak PT. NHM untuk meningkatkan pendapatan daerah yang selama ini diperoleh oleh Pemda Halut sebagai pemilik wilayah eksploitasi tambang emas.2. Peraturan PemerintahAturan hukum merupakan arah kompas dan sandaran kehidupan bagi aktivitas manusia yang dibuat berdasarkan kepentingan semua pihak secara bersama. Oleh sebab itu menghasilkan sebuah aturan hukum oleh pemerintah harus mengakomodir seluruh kepentingan masyarakat.Sekian lama aturan hukum selalu dibanggakan yang dianggap sebagai master dasar pacuan untuk melangka ke arah yang lebih baik. Namun terkadang luntur dan tidak semanis arti hukum yang sesungguhnya sebagaimana dinikmati masyarakat enam desa sengketa antara Kab. Halut-Halbar.Sebelum PP No. 42 Tahun 1999 dikeluarkan oleh Pemerintah, di era tahun 1970-an, tepatnya pada tahun 1975 di wilayah Kabupaten Maluku Utara diadakan transmigrasi lokal, yaitu penduduk dari 16 desa dari kecamatan Makian pulau yang dipindahkan ke wilayah kecamatan Kao, sebagai akibat bahaya meletusnya gunung KieBesi di pulau Makian Kabupaten Daerah Tingkat II Maluku Utara sebagaimana termaktub pada permulaan diktum PP. Perpindahan ini dilakukan secara bedol atau mengangkat semua sarana dan prasarana baik perangkat pemerintahan maupun masyarakat untuk dipindahkan ke daratan Halmahera yang merupakan bagian dari tanah adat masyarakat Kao.Sejak mendiami di wilayah baru daratan Halmahera masyarakat Makian pulau telah menjalani hubungan baik dengan warga disekitarnya, termasuk dengan masyarakat Kao, kondisi ini terpelihara dengan baik diantara masyarakat sudah ikatan kekeluargaan akibat perkawinan yang terjalin antar komunitas. Namun kondisi yang sudah terjalin baik ini akhirnya harus sirna ditelan zaman akibat kepentingan elit politik lokal untuk kekuasaan dan penguasaan dengan mendorong sebuah PP No. 42/1999 tentang Pembentukan Kecamatan Malifut dan selanjutnya akan diperjuangkan menjadi Kabupaten Malifut masa depan.Menurut Ichwan Hamza (Biro Pemerintaha Prov. Malut) mengatakan penyeban konflik di enam desa dan sekitarnya adalah munculnya PP No. 42 tahun 1999 tentang pembentukan Kecamatan Malifut yang memasukan enam desa menjadi wilayah administratifnya. Sementara warga masyarakat enam desa menolak masuk ke kecamatan malifut karena alasan factor sejarah dan kedekatan emosional.Munculnya PP No. 42 Tahun 1999 ini dianggap sebagai pemicu kasus yang terjadi pada enam desa sengketa yang diperebutkan oleh Pemkab. Halmahera Utara dengan Pemkab. Halmahera Barat hingga saat ini. Penolakan warga masyarakat enam desa atas gagasan pemekaran dan penggabungan wilayah lebih disebabkan aspirasi masyarakat enam desa yang sejak awal menolak untuk menjadi bagian dari wilayah kecamatan Malifut (yang selanjutnya menjadi wilayah administratif Kab. Halut) dipaksakan oleh pemerintah untuk tetap menjadi bagian dari kecamatan Malifut.3. Undang-Undang Pembentukan DaerahDengan lahirnya Undang-undang ini tahun 2003 konflik kembali mencuat ke permukaan, yakni konflik level pemerintah dalam perebutan wilayah antara Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dengan Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Barat tentang wilayah enam desa yang juga telah dipermasalahkan saat pembentukan Kecamatan Malifut tahun 1999. Demikian juga kasus yang terjadi saat itu hingga kini mengenai penolakan masyarakat untuk bergabung dengan Kecamatan Malifut yang adalah wilayah administratif Pemerintahan Kab. Halmahera Utara menurut Undang-undang No. 1 Tahun 2003 Tentang Pembentukan Kabupaten Halmahera Utara. Pada konteks itu, maka masyarakat enam desa terus menyuarakan protes bahwa mereka tetap menolak bergabung atau digabungkan dengan Kecamatan Malifut Kabupaten Halmahera Utara dan menganggap bahwa sangat realistis jika enam desa menjadibagian dari Kabupaten Halamhera Barat karena faktor historis dan kedekatan emosional. Dengan dasar tersebut maka Pemerintah Kabupaten Halmahera Barat memberikan pelayanan ke enam desa.Dampak konflik yang terjadi meliputi:1. Dampak Dalam Dualisme Sistem PemerintahanHal ini berdasarkan temuan lapangan bahwa Realitas menunjukan wilayah enam desa memiliki dua pusat pemerintahan (ada dualisme kepemimpinan), yakni pemerintah Kecamatan Kao Teluk dengan pusat ibu kota Kecamatan di Desa Dum dum (Versi Halut) dan pemerintah Kecamatan Jailolo Timur dengan pusat ibu kota kecamatan berada di Desa Akelamo Kao (Versi Halbar) yang dilengkapi dengan fasilitas kantor camat. Pada tingkat desa juga terjadi hal yang sama, yakni setiap desa memiliki dua kepala desa yang mewakili masing-masing kabupaten, yakni Kades versi Halut dan Kades versi Halbar. Adanya dualisme kepemimpinan ini, maka system pemerintahan desa di wilayah penyangga Kab. Halut dan Halbar memiliki dua belas kepala desa.Dalam study penelitian yang dilakukan juga bahwa dari jumlah enam desa yang berada di Kecamatan Kao Teluk dan Jailolo Timur, dapat diklasifikasikan 4 desa memiliki kecenderungan lebih besar bergabung ke Kabupaten Halmahera Barat dan hanya 2 desa yang bergabung ke Kabupaten Halmahera Utara. Tabel dibawah ini dapat menjelaskan kondisi dimaksud.2. Dampak Dalam Bidang PolitikDalam hal pemilihan kepala daerah dan Pemilu Legislatif terjadi dua kubu Panitia Pemilu yang dilakukan oleh Komisi Pemilihan Umum tingkat Kabupaten. Warga yang setuju pada Kabupaten Halmahera Utara mengikuti KPU Halmahera Utara dan warga yang setuju dengan Kabupaten Halmahera Barat mengikuti KPU Halmahera Barat. Hal ini nampak hingga pada Pemilukada tahun 2010 yang lalu, sebagaimana pernyataan informan berikut. Demikian juga ribuan warga yang berada dalam enam desa sengketa tidak bisa menyalurkan hak pilihnya alias golput dalam pemilihan presiden 2014, akibat tidak disalurkan sejumlah logistik pemilu ke desa tersebut. angka golongan putih (golput) dalam pilpres di enam desa disebabkan karena warga enam desa tidak mendapat surat suara maupun kotak suara. Hak pilih mereka sudah dialihkan ke kabupaten Halmahera Utara (Halut).Menurut Hamid Londo (Ketua Pemuda Enam Desa) pada wawancara telpon mengatakan, pemerintah Halut sengaja mendramatisi warganya untuk tidak memberikan hak politik melalui TPS yang disalurkan dari pemerintah Halbar. "Untuk surat suara maupun anggota dari Panitia Pemilihan Kecamatan (PPK) maupun Panitia Pemungutan Suara (PPS) di tingkat desa tidak disediakan oleh KPU Halbar dan KPUMalut. KPU ingin kami dari enam desa berikan hak politiknya di kabupaten Halut, sedangkan KTP dan jiwa pilih kami kebanyakan dari kabupaten Halbar.3. Dampak Dalam Pelaksanaan Pelayanan Administrasi Pendataan Kependudukan dan Pelayanan Pengadaan KTPKesulitan pendataan penduduk oleh Kabupaten Halmahera Utara di enam desa menyebabkan mereka tidak memiliki status kependudukan yang jelas. Padahal realitas menunjukan bahwa wilayah enam desa merupakan wilayah administratif Kab. Halut, namun pelayanan baik pelayanan publik maupun pelayanan pemerintahan juga dilakukan oleh pemerintah Kab. Halbar. Fakta tersebut terlihat pada akses masyarakat enam desa dalam pembuatan KTP dan Akte Kelahiran dominan dilayani oleh Pemkab. Halbar. Bahkan dalam akses pembuatan KTP oleh masyarakat di enam desa sebagian besar memiliki KTP domisili Kabupaten Halmahera Barat, walaupun terdapat sebagian masyarakat yang juga memiliki KTP Kab. Halut.4. Dampak Dalam Bidang SosialBerdasarkan temuan lapangan bahwa Pemda Halbar membangun SD, SMP dan SMA di Bone Igo. dan oleh Pemda Halut masyarakat diberikan bantuan melalui dana community development dari PT. NHM berupa, seng rumah, semen dan beras. Sarana kesehatan merupakan salah satu komponen yang sangat vital dalam memberikan pelayanan kesehatan kepada penduduk. Karena didasari begitu pentingnya aspek kesehatan, maka pemerintah di berbagai level selalu memberikan perhatian khusus pada dimensi ini. Tak terkecuali kedua Pemda, yakni Pemda Halut dan Halbar juga turut memberikan pelayanan kesehatan pada masyarakat di enam desa adalah dengan membangun berbagai sarana infrastruktur di wilayah enam desa.berdasarkan temuan lapangan bahwa presentase keberpihakan pelayanan kesehatan lebih tinggi dilaksanakan oleh Pemda Kab. Halbar dengan banyaknya fasilitas 14 yang terbagi dari 1 puskesmas, 1 Pustu dan 12 Posyandu, sementara Kab. Halut dengan jumlah 8 unit yang terbagi 2 Puskesmas pembantu/pustu dan 6 Posyandu.Prospek Penyelesaian konflik wilayahsangatlah dibutuhkan ketegasan Pemprov Malut dalam menetapkan persoalan batas wilayah antar kabupaten di Maluku Utara, karena pendapat informan lebih menyentuh pada perhatian Pemerintah Provinsi bahwa untuk persoalan batas wilayah khususnya 6 desa yang menjadi rebutan Pemda Halut dan Halbar harus diselesaiakan oleh Pemprov sebagaimana diisyaratkan dalam UU No. 32 Tahun 2004 tentang Pemerintahan Daerah yakni apabila ada sengketa antar kabupaten/kota dalam suatu wilayah Provinsi maka menjadi kewenangan Provinsi untuk menetapkan dan bersifat final dan Pemerintah kabupaten/kota wajib hukumnya untuk tunduk dan mentaatinyadan apapun isi keputusan yang ditetapkan oleh pemerintah provinsi yang merupakan wakil pemerintah pusat di daerah.Menurut Obyan Sofyan (Biro Kab. Halbar), mengatakan selain sebagai kepala pemerintah Daerah, Gubernur Malut juga sebagai wakil dari pemerintah pusat yang menerima pelimpahan wewenang pemerintahan sebagai wakil pemerintah di wilayah tertentu sebagai asas dekonsentrasi.Menurut Kades Desa Dum-dum (versi Halbar), mengatakan bahwa Pemkab harus membuat dan menegakan penetapan batas wilayah antar desa serta harus dengan melibatkan pihak kesultanan, karena persoalan batas wilayah ini sudah ditetapkan sejak masa pemerintahan 4 (empat) kesultanan sehingga untuk menyesuaikan dan menetapkan tapal batas harus melibatkan pihak kesultanan serta merevisi PP No 42 tahun 1999E. PenutupA. KesimpulanBerdasarkan uraian pembahasan dan analisis diatas, maka dapat ditarik kesimpulan sebagai berikut:1. Bahwa persoalan batas desa penyangga yang masih menggunakan batas alamiah memang masih relevan sampai saat ini dan digunakan sebagai dasar penataan batas desa sebagaimana isyarat Pemendagri No. 27 Tahun 2006 yang kemudian dituangkan dalam sebuah regulasi daerah untuk dijadikan legitimasi bagi masing-masing pemerintah kabupaten, karena batas desa terutama desa-desa penyangga, sangat berpotensi memunculkan konflik karena menyangkut dengan pengelolaan SDA di areal desa penyangga kecamatan, serta kabupaten tersebut.2. Adanya dualisme pemerintahan dalam satu desa sehingga mengganggu aktifitas pelayanan publik oleh pemerintah desa, dan mengacaukan administrasi kependudukan dan hal-hal administrasi lainnya karena hampir di semua desa penyangga tidak memiliki data tentang peta wilayah.3. Adanya potensi dan pengelolaan SDA di wilayah-wilayah desa penyangga antar kecamatan serta kabupaten sebagai pemicu (sumber) munculnya persoalan batas desa, kecamatan serta kabupaten.4. Persoalan batas wilayah sangat berpengaruh pada efektivitas pemerintahan dan pelayanan publik yang menyangkut dengan perolehan hak-hak masyarakat di bidang pemerintahan, politik, sosial karena merupakan urusan yang sifatnya wajib dijalankan oleh pemerintah daerah.5. Dampak yang dapat diidentifikasi terjadi pada aspek pelayanan administrasi KTP yaitu terjadinya dualisme kewenangan pemberian data yuridis atas identitas kependudukan pada sebagian besar masyarakat enam desa.Disamping itu adanya ketidakpastian kewenangan dalam pelayanan public lainnya karena kekaburan batas wilayah.6. Terdapat dua faktor hukum yang menjadi permasalahan yaitu pertama substansi hukum disebabkan oleh proses pembentukan Undang-undang/PP yang terlalu tergesa, kaburnya pengaturan tentang batas wilayah, dan kedua kurangnya sosialisasi Undang-undang pemekaran wilayah.B. Saran1. Butuh kearifan bersama pemerintah daerah yang wilayahnya berbatasan untuk menata batas-batas wilayahnya dengan mempertimbangkan faktor-faktor non hukum yang diyakini oleh masyarakat desa sejak turun temurun berupa penggunaan tanda alamiah sebagai pembatasan suatu wilayah. Hal ini sebagaimana termaktub dalam Pemendagri No. 27 tahun 2006 tentang Penegasan Batas Desa, Jo. Pemendagri No. 1 tahun 2006 tentang Pedoman Penegasan Batas Daerah.2. Pemda Provinsi harus memfasilitasi pemda kabupaten dalam melakukan penetapan dan penegasan batas wilayah pemerintahan antar kabupaten yang berpedoman pada batas-batas alamiah yang telah digunakan masyarakat untuk menandai batas wilayah desa-desa mereka sebagai dasar penegasan batas wilayah kecamatan dan kabupaten, sebagaimana sebagaimana Pemendagri No. 1 tahun 2006. Jo Pemendagri No. 27 tahun 2006.3. Penetapan dan penegasan batas wilayah ini kemudian harus diperdakan oleh pemerintah Provinsi Malut sebagai bentuk legitimasi terhadap batas-batas wilayah kontinental suatu kabupaten dalam wilayah Provinsi Malut, sebagai formula pencegahan terjadinya sengketa antar kabupaten, karena perseturuan batas wilayah ini sangat berimplikasi pada terganggunya pelayanan publik.4. Pemda Provinsi Malut harus memfasilitasi pembentukan badan dan atau nama lainnya tugas pokoknya mengatur kerjasama dalam pengelolaan wilayah perbatasan yang komposisinya melibatkan unsur masing-masing pemda kabupaten dalam rangka menciptakan interkoneksitas antar wilayah dalam wilayah Provinsi Malut, karena pada tataran akar rumput telah dilaksanakan turn temurun.5. Butuh komitmen dan ketegasan dari Pemerintah Provinsi Maluku Utara untuk secara tegas memutuskan status ke-enam desa tersebut dengan berbagai pendekatan, diantaranya :DAFTAR PUSTAKAAntonius, 2002, Disintegrasi Pasca Orde Baru: Negara, Konflik lokal dan DinamikaInternasional, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, JakartaBest,1982:119.: memahami metode penelitian kualitatif Washington DC, USA Decentralization Support Facility, 2007. Proses dan Implikasi Sosial PolitikPemekaran, Kasus di Sambas dan Buton, Laporan, tidak dipublikasi,Jakarta.Harmantyo, 2007, Pemekaran Daerah dan Konlik Keruangan, Kebijakan Otonomi Daerah dan Implementasinya di Indonesia, Makara, Sains, Vol. 11, No.1,April 2007, Dept. Geografi UI, Jakarta.Kausar dan Eko Subowo, 2008. Kebijakan Penataan Batas Antar Daerah, Modul pelatihan Penegasan Batas Daerah, Jurusan Teknik Geodesi FT UGM, tidak dipublikasi, Yogyakarta.Moleong, Lexy J., 2007, Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif (Cetakan kedua), PT Remaja Rosdakarya, BandungMilles dan Houberman, 2001, metode penelitian kualitatif, PT, Gramedia Pustaka Utama Jakarta.Pruit, Dean G. & Jeffrey Z Rubin, 2004, Teori Konflik Sosial (terjemahan), Pustaka Pelajar, YogyakartaSubowo, E., 2009. Makalah disampaikan pada FGD Permasalahan Konflik BatasTaquiri dalam Newstorm dan Davis (1977), Menangani Konflik Sumber Daya Alam, Pustaka Pelajar, Bandungn Wilyah, 24 Desember 2009 di Jurusan Teknik Geodesi Fakultas Teknik UGM.Zaiyardam dan Efendi, 2009 conflict resolution: Anatomy in Indonesia, LIPI, JakartaSumber-Sumber Lainnya :Undang-Undang Nomor 32 Tahun 2004 tentang Pemerintahan DaerahPeraturan Pemerintah RI Nomor 42 Tahun 1999 Tentang Pembentukan KecamatanPeraturan Menteri Dalam Negeri Nomor 1 Tahun 2006 tentang Pedoman Penegasan Batas Daerah.Peraturan Menteri Dalam Negeri Nomor 27 Tahun 2006 Tentang Penegasan Batas Desa.Pemendagri RI Nomor 66 Tahun 2011 Tentang Kode dan Data Wilayah Administrasi Pemerintahan.http://andrie07.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/faktor-penyebab-konflik-dan-strategipenyelesaian-konflik/http://psychochanholic.blogspot.com/2008/03/teori-teori-konflik.htmlhttp://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/KonflikAnatomi, http://med.unhas.ac.id; 15 September 2013 : 14:23 WITA.Nanang Kristiyono, 2008, Konflik Dalam Penegasan Batas Daerah Antara Kota Magelang Dengan Kabupaten Magelang. SemarangBadan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Daerah (Balitbangda) Malut, 2009, Kajian Batas Wilayah Administratif Pemerintahan Kabupaten/Kota Di Provinsi Maluku Utara.

É inquestionável que nos últimos anos a revolução tecnológica tem gerado profundas alterações nas relações laborais, em especial pela necessidade de atender a um mercado globalizado e com um nível de exigência cada vez mais elevado. Para os juslaboralistas, estes efeitos costumam ser sintetizados na palavra "flexibilização". Vista de uma maneira simples, e dentro da perspectiva desta investigação, pode-se dizer que a flexibilização é responsável por profundas alterações na dinâmica do trabalho. Assim, a razão que leva o empregador à utilização dos meios tecnológicos de produção é a necessidade de competir em um mercado globalizado, que exige respostas mais precisas e principalmente mais rápidas que somente os meios tecnológicos têm capacidade de proporcionar. Sai o sistema estandardizado e entra um novo modelo que se apoia em uma produção diversificada, tomando o principio da eficiência econômica como parâmetro que garante a necessária internacionalização da produção e a busca de outros mercados consumidores. Torna-se imperiosa a adaptação da organização laboral a favor da flexibilidade. Brota, então, a necessidade de renovação infinita de infraestruturas e programas, mudança dos costumes laborais e descentralização produtiva (outsourcing) como premissa necessária para a preservação da competitividade no mercado de trabalho, e que desemboca, esta última, nos sempre questionados processos de terceirização (quarteirização etc.) de parcelas da atividade produtiva. Neste contexto, como um dos principais instrumentos desta nova relação laboral, gerado a partir da revolução tecnológica, pode-se considerar o correio eletrônico como um meio de comunicação de grande relevância, porém gerador de intensa controvérsia. Os dados estatísticos comprovam que há uma utilização recorrente do e-mail nas relações comerciais (por ser uma comunicação barata, rápida, precisa e segura). Por outro lado, não são poucas as queixas sobre seu uso indevido e abusivo por parte dos trabalhadores no contexto de suas relações laborais. A reação natural, por parte dos empresários, a estes abusos foi a adaptação de seus mecanismos de controle e fiscalização. Assim, para combater estes problemas gerados pelas novas tecnologias de informação, em particular o e-mail, os meios de fiscalização terminam por ser, muitas vezes, mais invasivos na esfera íntima do trabalhador. Em geral, à medida que o trabalho ganha complexidade e se torna cada vez mais heterogêneo, a fiscalização da produção necessita revisar seus métodos, passando a se valer o empregador de meios de fiscalização igualmente complexos, heterogêneos, flexíveis e, por consequência, invasivos, como vídeos, inspeções íntimas de trabalhadores, verificação das páginas da web vistas nos postos de trabalho. Nesse contexto em que a produção não responde a padrões facilmente fiscalizáveis, se impõe um maior nível de confiança no trabalhador. Na ausência dessa fidúcia, ela vem sendo suprida por mecanismos de fiscalização, denominados "controles defensivos" pela doutrina laboral italiana, que permitam ao empregador estabelecer um perfil do empregado ou empregada contratada. Neste contexto o correio eletrônico dos empregados se converte em um novo objeto de controle, para cuja adoção se apela, especificamente, à necessidade de garantir a proteção dos sistemas informáticos, a produtividade, a proteção à propriedade intelectual e a qualidade do labor prestado. É precisamente o uso massivo desse meio de comunicação nas relações comerciais e os abusos gerados por ambos os lados da relação laboral, no uso do correio eletrônico por parte do empregado, e no controle de seu uso por parte do empregador, o que suscita a necessidade de investigar até onde chegam as possibilidades de intervenção do empregador no correio eletrônico do empregado. O estudo que se segue consiste em uma análise comparativa dos sistemas jurídicos brasileiro e espanhol neste ponto. Os paralelos entre os ordenamentos, em especial em seu viés constitucional, não constitui novidade, mormente quando se leva em conta a influência que as constituições espanholas nos últimos 180 anos tiveram sobre os seus correlatos textos no Brasil. Não são poucos os estudiosos que assinalam esta influência, ao longo da história, bem como os estudos que apontam discrepâncias e pontos de convergência entre os sistemas constitucionais dos dois países. Bonavides, em artigo em que apresenta 3 (três) momentos de transição constitucional brasileira em que o país se valeu da experiência constitucional e de fatos relevantes ocorridos na Espanha, aborda a matéria com percuciência, enfatizando a semelhança entre os atuais textos constitucionais. A esse respeito, o autor assevera que "há surpreendentes traços de similitude ou analogia e até mesmo identidade dos dois processos institucionais de transição que envolveram o regime político de ambos os países na passagem da ditadura à democracia. A transição brasileira, conforme se observa das datas comemorativas ocorreu dez anos depois da espanhola, mas recebendo um poderoso influxo, como veremos, do modelo estreado na península ibérica e garantido ali em sua execução, segundo nos parece, pelo bom êxito alcançado com a celebração dos pactos de Moncloa." No mesmo diapasão, Da Silva, em ensaio no qual oferta visão histórico-comparativa das constituições da Espanha e do Brasil, enfatiza pontos de convergência e de divergência em ambos os textos. Segundo o autor, abordando os trabalhos realizados na assembleia constituinte brasileira, nunca se manuseou tanto a constituição espanhola como se fez durante o processo de formação da constituição federal de 1988. De fato, ainda que se reconheça a preponderância da Constituição Portuguesa como maior fonte inspiradora da Constituição do Brasil em 1988, a 20 cuidadosa análise comparativa com o texto espanhol, em especial na seara dos direitos fundamentais, dentre os quais a intimidade e o segredo das comunicações são bons exemplos, é possível verificar uma normatividade que, se não é propriamente idêntica, possui enunciados que, de forma nítida, denunciam a fonte de onde proveio, criando uma expectativa de como esses sistemas jurídicos respondem a situações fáticas idênticas. Curial enfatizar, com apoio em Da Silva que "essa aproximação normativa é que possibilita o estudo comparativo de dois ou mais ordenamentos constitucionais. Ora, comparar significa confrontar, aproximar coisas a fim de individuá-las e, individuando-as, distingui-las; e distinguindo-as, agrupá-las e classificá-las (Tripiccione), ou, na forma substantiva de Constantinesco, a comparação é uma operação do espírito pela qual são reunidos num confronto metódico os objetos a serem comparados, a fim de precisar suas relações de semelhança e divergência." E esse estudo comparativo ganha força e interesse diante da atual conjuntura econômica. É fato que, nos atuais tempos de globalização da economia, no plano comercial, os dois países anteriormente mencionados nunca estiveram tão próximos. Desde que em 1995 se produziu a explosão do processo privatizador brasileiro, as grandes companhias espanholas começaram a tomar posições no país e como consequência disto, a Espanha foi o primeiro investidor estrangeiro no Brasil em 1998, com 22% do volume total de investimentos e no ano 2000, com quase 29% do total dos Investimentos Estrangeiros Diretos no Brasil. O aporte do investimento espanhol veio, inicialmente, provocado pelo Plano Nacional de Desestatização brasileiro que atraiu o interesse das grandes empresas espanholas, em especial os grupos multinacionais. Esta primeira onda de investimento produziu um efeito de atração sobre outros setores e empresas de distintos portes e hoje o grande volume de investimento acumulado espanhol resulta heterogêneo e vai desde automação, engenharia e a construção civil até saneamento ambiental, passando pelos serviços de segurança ou seguros. Na outra face da moeda, se há alguns anos atrás, o investimento direto do Brasil na Espanha era praticamente inexistente, dados da pesquisa sobre capitais brasileiros no exterior realizado pelo Banco Central do Brasil indicam que na Espanha há US$ 4 bilhões em investimentos diretos, US$ 1,4 bilhão em títulos públicos de curto prazo e US$ 614 milhões em títulos de longo prazo. Cifras estas que aumentam continuamente. Assim, o total do investimento bruto brasileiro na Espanha tem crescido bastante em relação há anos anteriores, criando um quadro atual em que, excluindo–se os paraísos fiscais, a Espanha figura entre os países que mais recebem investimentos brasileiros no exterior. No terreno jurídico, e na matéria que aqui nos interessa, a aproximação começa pelo fato de que nenhum dos dois países conta com legislação que regule o uso do correio eletrônico pelo trabalhador e seu controle pelo empregador, ainda que haja em ambos os países proposições legislativas que intentam abordar o objeto deste estudo. A despeito de as previsões constitucionais relevantes em ambos os ordenamentos jurídicos sejam muito próximas e similares, todavia, as decisões dos tribunais infraconstitucionais sobre o tema seguem, até este momento, rumos muito distintos, ignorando muitas vezes parâmetros constitucionais. Por seu turno, e até tempos recentes, em concreto até a publicação da STC 241/2012, de 17 de dezembro, não havia em nenhum dos dois países decisões das Cortes Constitucionais sobre o tema objeto desta investigação. O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar uma comparação do tratamento jurídico-constitucional da capacidade do empregador de controlar o correio eletrônico dos trabalhadores no sistema jurídico espanhol e no brasileiro, assinalando diferenças/semelhanças que nos ajudem a compreender como cada um destes dois sistemas jurídicos se aproxima ao tema, assim como o que um sistema poderia aportar ao outro para sua melhor compreensão. Concentrar-nos-emos, especialmente, nos limites da ação do legislador na matéria e as bases de um enfrentamento da questão pelos Tribunais Constitucionais brasileiro e espanhol. Para chegar a estas conclusões, desde um ponto de vista metodológico, fez-se necessário enfrentar algumas questões preliminares ao desenvolvimento do tema. A primeira destas questões consistiu em efetuar um recorte, ao apreciar a questão exclusivamente sobre a base do direito ao segredo das comunicações. De fato, não se tem dúvida que a questão do controle do empregador sobre o correio eletrônico do trabalhador pode ser apreciado sobre outras vertentes, em especial a das liberdades de pensamento e de expressão e do direito à intimidade, sendo esta última a perspectiva em que usualmente a doutrina e a jurisprudência tendem a analisá-la. Todavia, neste estudo o objetivo é analisar o controle que se efetua ao processo comunicativo e seus limites quando confrontado com a liberdade de comunicação entre as pessoas protegida pelo segredo. Assim, a premissa inicial no desenvolvimento do tema, tratada no capítulo 1, é conhecer de maneira profunda o correio eletrônico, suas características enquanto meio de comunicação e importância como instrumento de trabalho e possibilidades de causar lesão aos interesses dos empregadores. E este detalhamento em torno do instrumental se justifica na medida em que, ainda que seja o correio eletrônico um meio de comunicação de mais de 40 anos, seu uso massivo é muito recente. Isso justifica os investimentos em frequentes inovações em sua tecnologia, havendo uma grande quantidade de mecanismos técnicos de defesa dos sistemas informáticos recentemente criados e outros em fase de criação, os quais permitem diferentes níveis de intervenção no processo comunicativo, cuja localização no marco constitucional precisa de análise. Ademais, é necessário conhecer suas características e espécies, indo além da mera e já desgastada distinção entre o correio pessoal e o corporativo, já que, entre outras questões a serem desafiadas, há que se reconhecer uma multiplicidade de distintas formas deste último que, por suas características peculiares, deveriam ensejar um diferenciado enquadramento nas normas e na doutrina preexistente. A resolução da questão que se propõe, ademais de uma análise mais detalhada do instrumental correio eletrônico, passa assim pela apreciação do ambiente e das circunstâncias em que a intervenção na comunicação telemática se dá. Nesse plano, o fato de a intervenção ocorrer no seio de uma relação de trabalho, faz como que esta funcione como uma espécie de catalisador capaz de influenciar a resolução desta "equação", na qual se busca apreciar a licitude/ilicitude das medidas de controle e seus eventuais limites. Nesse contexto, em aspecto apreciado no capítulo 2, fez-se necessário averiguar como a doutrina científica e a jurisprudência constitucional do Brasil e da Espanha tomam em conta a aplicação dos direitos fundamentais dos trabalhadores no âmbito privado das relações de trabalho. Assim, será feita uma análise da Drittwirkung em ambos os sistemas jurídicos. Dessa análise, buscou-se entender porque, a despeito de a eficácia dos direitos fundamentais nas relações entre particulares ingressar no contexto jurídico do Brasil e da Espanha indubitavelmente sob influência germânica, a forma como o TC espanhol conhece da lesão a direitos fundamentais nas relações de trabalho não encontra simetria com aquela pela qual a questão chega à apreciação do STF brasileiro. É certo que ambos não se apoiem para a resolução da questão na lógica dos conflitos de direitos fundamentais e reconheçam a plena efetividade dos direitos fundamentais do trabalhador no marco da relação laboral, e igualmente que o exercício de tais direitos admite limitações ou sacrifícios na medida em que se desenvolvem no seio de uma organização que reflete outros direitos reconhecidos constitucionalmente. Contudo, e como consequência mais visível dessas formas de enfrentamento tão distintas na jurisprudência constitucional do Brasil e da Espanha, é forçoso admitir a existência de um maior grau de maturidade e sistematização no TC espanhol em torno da matéria, cuja jurisprudência evoluiu de maneira indubitável desde o critério da boa fé até o critério de absoluta necessidade das restrições de direitos para o desenvolvimento da relação laboral ou da atividade empresarial, reconhecendo uma importância distinta entre estes direitos, ao perceber que os dois titulares de direitos em conflito não estão em pé de igualdade, havendo uma evidente relação de poder. Assim, pode-se dizer que a jurisprudência do TC espanhol criou para estes casos de controle de direitos fundamentais na relação laboral uma doutrina distinta à dos conflitos entre particulares e àquela do exercício dos direitos fundamentais ante os poderes públicos, porém bem mais próxima da segunda que da primeira. Todavia, ainda que a questão não seja enfrentada dentro da sistemática de conflito de direitos, sobretudo na Espanha, em que se parte de uma aproximação das relações laborais com as relações de poder, não cabe desconhecer, contudo, que nestas relações quem exerce o poder empresarial o faz com base no exercício do direito à liberdade de empresa na Espanha (art. 38 CE) e do direito à livre iniciativa (art. 1º, IV e 170 CRFB), e, segundo alguns, à propriedade no Brasil (art. 5º, XXII). Assim, o capítulo 3 se voltou para um aprofundamento no conteúdo jurídico do poder empresarial, desde sua origem constitucional e da natureza jurídica das faculdades constitucionalmente garantidas que lhe dão suporte. Seriam a liberdade de empresa e a livre iniciativa verdadeiros direitos fundamentais? Igualmente, analisa-se neste capítulo a jurisprudência do Tribunal Constitucional da Espanha e do STF, no Brasil, quando do enfrentamento de situações em que são externadas as múltiplas possibilidades de o poder empresarial atuar como limite aos direitos fundamentais dos trabalhadores. No capítulo 4, por seu turno, é vista a proteção constitucional à comunicação efetuada através de correio eletrônico, com ênfase no seu uso nas relações de trabalho. Desde já, cumpre dizer que não há tratamento constitucional expresso sobre o correio eletrônico, não estando indicado na lista das comunicações previstas no art. 18.3 CE, nem tampouco está enumerado no artigo 5º, XII, da Constituição de Brasil, como se vê da leitura das normas: Art. 18.3. Se garantiza el secreto de las comunicaciones y, en especial, das postales, telegráficas y telefónicas, salvo resolución judicial. Art. 5º, XII. É inviolável o sigilo de correspondência e das comunicações telegráficas, de dados e das comunicações telefônicas, salvo, no último caso, por ordem judicial, nas hipóteses e na forma que a lei estabelecer para fins de investigação criminal ou instrução processual penal. Outrossim, levando em consideração a confusão doutrinária e especialmente jurisprudencial ocorrida em ambos os países, externada na preferência em analisar a intervenção perpetrada pelo empregador à luz do direito à intimidade, igualmente torna-se um imperativo apreciar as zonas de aproximação e distanciamento entre este e o direito ao segredo das comunicações, destacando, quanto ao último, o seu âmbito de cobertura, tutelado nas Constituições do Brasil e da Espanha, com o objetivo de verificar se a comunicação telemática efetuada através de correio eletrônico se encontra alcançada por este direito. E esta questão tem especial transcendência porque a enumeração é exemplificativa tanto no art. 18.3 CE quanto no art. 5º, XII, da CRFB. Efetivamente, o TC espanhol e o STF brasileiro têm mantido a possibilidade de que outros meios de comunicação sejam protegidos pelo segredo das comunicações, em especial aqueles que forem resultantes dos avanços tecnológicos. Uma doutrina que o Tribunal Constitucional espanhol aplicou expressamente ao correio eletrônico em sua STC 241/2012. Há, inclusive, normas de caráter infraconstitucional que refletem a extensão acima mencionada. Temos assim, na Espanha, o art. 197 do Código Penal (Lei Orgânica 10/1995, com o tipo penal de "interceptación o apropiación ilegítima do correo electrónico – delito de descubrimiento y revelación de secretos") e a Lei Geral de Telecomunicações (Lei 32/2003, de 03 de novembro – art. 33, que estende a garantia do segredo das comunicações a todos os serviços de comunicação eletrônica). No Brasil, no mesmo sentido, a Lei 9296/9625, que regulamenta o art. 5 º, XII da CRFB, indica que a proteção do segredo das comunicações abarca a mensagem por correio eletrônico. Sucede, ademais, que tanto o Tribunal Constitucional espanhol como o STF brasileiro têm, em geral, interpretado o direito ao segredo das comunicações como um direito de caráter formal, sobre cuja base se outorga proteção ao processo comunicativo, independentemente de seu conteúdo (por todas a STC 114/1984, na Espanha, e a decisão do STF no caso "Garotinho versus O Globo" - Petição 2.702-7/RJ), tratando-se de um direito que garante a proteção da comunicação contra terceiros. Este é um aspecto que adquire especial relevância no desenvolvimento da questão proposta, mormente por reconhecer, em princípio, a condição de terceiro ao empregador, posto que a proteção do direito compreende, de entrada, a liberdade de comunicação dos comunicantes contra a intervenção de terceiros que não formem parte do processo comunicativo. Desde esta perspectiva, a titularidade dos bens (de quem não integra o processo comunicativo) e a natureza da comunicação (pessoal ou comercial) seriam aspectos que adquirem relevância apenas na hora de analisar a legitimidade das limitações que venham a ser impostas pelo empregador ao segredo das comunicações/sigilo de correspondência eletrônica no que pertine ao uso do correio eletrônico. E não há dúvidas que limitações se justificam pelo choque com outros direitos e interesses igualmente protegidos pelos sistemas constitucionais, o que se reforça no âmbito da relação de trabalho, na qual as possibilidades de controle e fiscalização utilizadas pelo empregador (isto é, a suas possibilidades de limitar o desfrute do direito), a outra face da moeda, possui status constitucional. Assim, destaca-se também o âmbito de proteção abstrato (pela ação legislativa) e concreto do direito, salientando quanto a este último que obrigatoriedade da resolução judicial como único meio de restrição concreta ao direito ao segredo das comunicações, em que pese a recente STC 241/2012, continua a ser um tema não abordado doutrinariamente de forma sistemática por nenhum dos dois Tribunais Constitucionais. Todavia, esta aproximação da jurisprudência constitucional brasileira e espanhola em acertos, erros e omissões no tratamento das comunicações efetuadas através de correio eletrônico, até este momento, não se refletiu na adoção de soluções semelhantes pelos órgãos jurisdicionais infraconstitucionais dos dois países. Nesse sentido, destaca-se o capítulo 5 em que é feita apreciação dos principais aportes jurisprudenciais em torno da questão. De fato, malgrado os contornos deste direito estejam muito bem delineados na doutrina constitucional, ainda são muito escassos os julgados do Social, em ambos os países, que analisam os limites da intervenção do empregador sobre os e-mails do empregado desde esta perspectiva, tendo como elemento central o proceso comunicativo. Em ambos os países, doutrina e jurisprudência têm preferido se aproximar destes casos, como já mencionado, desde a perspectiva do direito à intimidade. E esta é uma confusão que, como veremos, também incorrem as recentes SSTC 241/2012 e 170/2013. Assim, necessário averiguar, ainda que em linhas gerais, como se situam os direitos fundamentais potencialmente lesados no marco das relações de trabalho, especialmente a garantia do segredo das comunicações, analisando a jurisprudência das salas do social no Brasil e na Espanha, assim como a doutrina dos Tribunais Constitucionais em torno deste tema central. No Brasil, ainda que a questão não tenha sido objeto de apreciação pelo STF, há algumas decisões da mais alta Corte Laboral do país (Tribunal Superior do Trabalho). Do conjunto destes pronunciamentos a respeito da matéria, é possível indicar algumas linhas mestras definidoras do seu posicionamento sobre o uso do e-mail nas relações laborais e estas não seguem os parâmetros constitucionais traçados pelo STF derredor do direito ao sigilo de correspondência: 1. O e-mail protegido constitucionalmente é somente aquele de uso pessoal (@ig, @hotmail, @gmail). 2. A empresa pode regulamentar o uso do e-mail pessoal e corporativo no ambiente laboral, de maneira que a norma interna é aplicável aos casos concretos de utilização inadequada pelo obreiro. 3. Não existe violação do segredo das comunicações no e-mail corporativo em relação à própria empresa. 4. A senha pessoal do correio eletrônico corporativo não é uma proteção ao segredo das comunicações do empregado em relação à empresa, porém funciona para a proteção patronal, para que terceiros não possam aceder às informações que tenham conteúdo secreto ou reservado. 5. É legítimo o controle formal e material sobre o envio e recebimento de mensagens de e-mail corporativo, desde que a fiscalização ocorra de forma "moderada, generalizada e impessoal", objetivando evitar prejuízos ao empregador. 6. O e-mail corporativo proporcionado pela empresa (verdadeira propriedade do empregador) tem natureza jurídica equivalente a uma ferramenta de trabalho, destinada ao uso profissional. Por seu turno, na Espanha, a jurisprudência infraconstitucional também segue sendo muito heterogênea, havendo, até bem pouco tempo atrás, uma inexplicável ausência de critérios esclarecedores pelo Tribunal Supremo. É bem verdade que esse quadro na jurisprudência social na Espanha tende a ser alterado, em prol de uma maior uniformização, a partir das recentes decisões do Tribunal Supremo, em especial o caso "Coruñesa de Etiquetas" e duas outras recentes decisões proferidas em 2011 (SSTS 1323/2011, de 08.03.2011 e 8876/2011, de 06.10.2011), que, ainda que não enfrentem a questão nuclear desenvolvida neste estudo, que é o controle do correio eletrônico à luz do direito ao segredo das comunicações, avançam na análise sobre a correta utilização dos meios informáticos colocados à disposição do trabalhador pela empresa (ainda que para alguns de forma antagônica), e as possibilidades de controle que o empregador pode exercer sobre eles, tendendo a causar reflexos bem diretos na jurisprudência das salas do social dos demais tribunais e julgados espanhóis. Entretanto, mirando a atual doutrina proveniente destes órgãos jurisdicionais, é forçoso reconhecer que as normas constitucionais existentes e os parâmetros trilhados pelos dois Tribunais Constitucionais ainda estão longe de proporcionar o ambiente propício para que posições homogêneas sejam adotadas pelos órgãos judiciais infraconstitucionais (mesmo depois de prolatada as SSTC 241/2012 e 170/2013, que confirmou essa jurisprudência). E esse quadro de insegurança jurídica faz com que especialmente as empresas tenham interesse em regulamentar a matéria em seu âmbito interno ou, ao menos vê-la tratada no plano das normas coletivas de trabalho. Assim, no capítulo 6 enfrenta-se um tema em torno do qual quase não há resposta judicial, que consiste na averiguação da possibilidade de o empregado, através de negócio jurídico individual (contratos de trabalho ou regulamentos internos que a ele aderem) ou por meio de convênios coletivos (a autonomia privada coletiva) pactuar outras restrições ao segredo das comunicações e seus efeitos. Para tanto serão analisados critérios para a validade do ato jurídico individual através do qual se consente à limitação no exercício de faculdades dos direitos fundamentais, assim como a verificação desta mesma questão a partir dos instrumentos de negociação coletiva brasileiros e espanhóis. Trata-se de questão muito importante em especial porque os Tribunais Constitucionais reconhecem que a eficácia dos direitos fundamentais é mais intensa nas relações assimétricas, a exemplo da relação laboral, em que o negócio jurídico, na maior parte dos casos, tem um caráter de verdadeira adesão. Ademais, aqui se questiona a utilidade prática da cláusula contratual ou de convênio coletivo para a intervenção do empregador nas comunicações de seus empregados, uma vez que haveria, para alguns estudiosos da matéria, necessidade de renúncia ao exercício do direito por parte de todos os integrantes do processo comunicativo, já que titulares do direito ao segredo das comunicações são tanto o emissor quanto o receptor da mensagem. Em geral, um destes não integraria o corpo de funcionários da empresa, de maneira que as cláusulas em questão interfeririam no interesse de terceiros que do negócio jurídico não teriam participado. Dessa forma, seja pelas mutações jurisprudenciais em torno do tema, seja pelo reconhecimento das múltiplas variáveis que envolvem as soluções que repousam na autonomia privada individual ou coletiva, seja, por fim, em virtude de um reconhecimento de certa maturidade já existente em torno da questão de fato, observa-se que ambos os países já buscaram a solução legislativa para o tema. Essa procura por esta via é mais recorrente no Brasil, onde, todavia, as proposições legislativas, se comparado ao seu paradigma espanhol, mais discrepam da jurisprudência constitucional existente em torno do tema. Nesse sentido, no capítulo 7 é feita uma análise crítica dos projetos de lei já formulados e em tramitação no Brasil e na Espanha, a partir da noção de limites à ação concretizadora dos direitos fundamentais pelo legislador, pautado no respeito ao conteúdo essencial e ao principio de proporcionalidade. À título de conclusão, como medida propositiva, é apresentada uma minuta de norma, voltada para dar resposta às principais questões que envolvem as possibilidades de uso do correio eletrônico no ambiente de trabalho De maneira que, ancorado em algumas informações já sedimentadas na doutrina constitucional e laboral, bem como das conclusões parciais formuladas em cada capítulo deste estudo, objetiva-se descortinar algumas questões. Dentre estas, destaca-se o reconhecimento dos reais motivos que têm levado à interpretação distinta emprestada ao tema pelos órgãos de justiça social do Brasil e da Espanha, bem como a indicação dos parâmetros para atuação do Poder Legislativo e aqueles que poderão ser utilizados pelo Tribunal Constitucional espanhol e pelo STF brasileiro na futura apreciação da licitude dos controles efetuados pelo empregador em relação aos correios eletrônicos recebidos ou enviados pelos empregados. Mas para uma correta conclusão a respeito deste tema central, imperativo será analisar outros temas igualmente pouco tratados na doutrina constitucional: o direito ao segredo das comunicações é afetado pela intervenção do empregador no correio eletrônico de seus empregados? Quais são os limites para a atuação legislativa em ambos os países a respeito do controle do empregador sobre e-mails dos empregados? Existem limites implícitos ao uso das comunicações telemáticas na relação de trabalho? Poderão os contratantes fixar limites ao uso do correio eletrônico através de contratos e da negociação coletiva? Admitida esta hipótese, quais seriam, então, os requisitos que deveriam ser observados para o reconhecimento da licitude dessas regras limitadoras ao exercício do direito ao segredo das comunicações/sigilo de correspondência estabelecidas em normas coletivas e no contrato de trabalho? Estes são alguns dos principais aspectos que se pretende desenvolver neste trabalho de investigação.

El correcto funcionamiento de cualquier gobierno depende en gran medida de su capacidad para administrar, gestionar y abastecer a las gentes de los territorios que lo componen, por lo que, ante una extensión territorial tan vasta como la del Imperio Romano, la comunicación rápida y segura de todas las zonas se convirtió en una necesidad de Estado. La existencia de una red de comunicaciones eficaz, que facilitara el tránsito de informaciones, bienes y personas, se hizo imprescindible. El control de la información siempre ha sido una poderosa herramienta política. Pero este proceso necesitaba de la existencia de un conjunto de elementos fundamentales sobre los que asentarse. Estos puntos de apoyo eran: -la red viaria; -el sistema de la uehiculatio (posteriormente conocido como cursus publicus); -el conjunto de agentes humanos ocupados en las labores de mensajería, transmisión de informaciones, transporte, etc.; -los medios de transporte (que no llegaremos a tratar por haber sido objeto de estudio en otras monografías específicas cuyas conclusiones pueden adaptarse igualmente a la provincia de Hispania citerior); -y la red de estaciones viarias, que constituía el entramado de paradas que permitían llevar a cabo el cambio de monturas y la pernoctación de los viajeros. Queda patente la relevancia del entramado viario, que constituye el esqueleto sobre el que florecen las redes de comunicación y circulación, y que ha sido objeto de estudio por parte de numerosos autores. A lo largo de nuestra disertación pondremos de relieve la intrínseca relación entre estos factores, su dependencia en última instancia de las vías de comunicación y su transcendencia en la política imperial. A pesar de lo cual, no les dedicaremos a todos ellos la misma atención. La problemática de las comunicaciones y la transmisión de informaciones viene siendo uno de los grandes temas de interés de la historiografía actual. Contamos con monografías, coloquios y artículos muy variados que abordan la cuestión en sus múltiples facetas y desde perspectivas diversas. Sin embargo, la mayoría se centran en el funcionamiento de la administración central dentro del territorio itálico, por lo que se echaba en falta un estudio pormenorizado concerniente al marco hispánico. Las pautas generales de las comunicaciones oficiales no experimentarían cambios significativos en las distintas provincias imperiales, aunque las particularidades de cada zona hacían que algunos de los factores arriba señalados variasen de una provincia a otra. Por tomar como ejemplo dos de las obras que más han influido en nuestra metodología, C. Corsi (2000) y E. W. Black (1995) analizaron en su día uno de los aspectos menos conocidos del tema que nos ocupa: las estaciones viarias dentro de Italia y Britannia, respectivamente. En ambos casos se observaban elementos comunes definitorios de estas estructuras de parada donde tenía lugar el cambio de monturas. No obstante, las peculiaridades y condiciones de cada uno de los marcos geográficos en época clásica influyeron de manera decisiva en los rasgos propios de estas infraestructuras. Los trabajos de campo desarrollados en otros ámbitos provinciales, si bien no compilados en monografías similares, evidenciaron la misma circunstancia. Hasta la fecha, son muy pocos los yacimientos arqueológicos interpretados y publicados como estaciones viarias dentro de Hispania citerior. La complejidad intrínseca a los paradigmas arquitectónicos de estas infraestructuras ha llevado a los investigadores de nuestra Península a exhibir una extrema cautela a la hora de otorgar la catalogación de estación viaria a un yacimiento arqueológico. Y no cuestionamos que una cierta cautela es apropiada y necesaria en este caso pero, desde nuestro punto de vista, es la ausencia de un estudio pormenorizado del tema el freno principal al avance de las investigaciones en el campo de las comunicaciones dentro de Hispania. Es por ello que el aporte de nuestra tesis irá dirigido a tratar de solventar dicha situación. Sin embargo, no resultaba práctico tomar la totalidad del territorio hispánico como marco de estudio. Como ya comprobara Black (1995) en su trabajo sobre las estaciones de Britannia, la metodología más coherente dictaba elegir una vía en concreto sobre la que llevar a cabo las observaciones pertinentes, dado que calzada y posta constituyen un tándem inseparable. En consecuencia, la vía Augusta se convertía en el mejor escenario para la labor, puesto que no sólo abarcaba una gran amplitud geográfica (discurría por todo el eje Norte-Sur de la provincia y se adentraba hacia el interior por el Valle Medio del Ebro), sino que además constituía la arteria terrestre principal de comunicación con Roma. Los resultados de nuestra investigación son producto de la compilación de un catálogo que abarca las estaciones viarias dispuestas desde los Pirineos hasta Valentia y aquellas entre Tarraco y Caesaraugusta. Dichos resultados aparecen en el quinto capítulo de la disertación, bajo el título "Análisis conjunto de los resultados de la base de datos: estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta". Tomamos como enclaves delimitadores Summum Pyrenaeum (pues puede considerarse el punto de inicio de la vía en Hispania), Valentia y Caesaraugusta. No creímos oportuno continuar más al Sur de Valentia porque era perder de vista el marco nororiental propuesto para nuestra investigación, ni más al Oeste de Caesaraugusta, pues el seguimiento de la vía Augusta interior es complicado pasado el tramo Ilerda-Celsa. A este respecto, al tratar las comunicaciones entre la costa y Caesaraugusta, nos centramos en recoger las mansiones que aparecen en los itinerarios antiguos y en seguir el trazado de las vías a partir de los miliarios, los vestigios arqueológicos y la topografía. Además, tanto Valentia como Caesaraugusta constituían núcleos urbanos de gran relevancia en época antigua y focos de confluencia con otras vías. Incluyéndolas a ambas, conseguíamos aumentar el muestreo de mansiones con estatuto de colonia. Dentro de aquellas mansiones coincidentes con asentamientos poblacionales (22), aquellas conocidas como municipia superaban en demasía a las colonias y a los núcleos con estatuto jurídico indeterminado, por lo que consideramos suficiente cerrar el muestreo tras incluir a dos de las colonias más destacadas dentro del tramo seleccionado. De esta forma, el catálogo contaba con un número medianamente equilibrado de estaciones viarias de distinta naturaleza. En cualquier caso, cabe incidir, una vez más, sobre el hecho de que, aunque no existen dudas sobre el destacado papel que jugaron estas estructuras en el desarrollo de las comunicaciones imperiales, no sé tienen datos hasta la fecha sobre la situación jurídica de las mismas. Conocemos el estatuto de algunos de los lugares en los que se emplazaba la estación pero no el del propio edificio en sí: ¿Serían privados? ¿Estatales? ¿Públicos? El tramo seleccionado abarca un total de cuarenta y tres enclaves, conocidos con el nombre genérico de mansiones y recogidos en los itinerarios antiguos. Desde un primer momento dejamos establecido que cuando utilizamos el término "mansio" lo hacemos en el sentido latino de la palabra, es decir, con el significado de "parada en el camino" o "infraestructura de parada"; no como definición específica de un tipo concreto de estructura arquitectónica. De hecho, en la actualidad, los términos más utilizados en la clasificación de estas estaciones son mansio, mutatio y statio, pero como ya apuntara Chevallier, el vocabulario al respecto es múltiple y varía en función del momento histórico al que hagamos referencia y de las características o utilidades de estos enclaves. Los múltiples vocablos existentes en época antigua, la mayoría de los cuales fueron tratados en profundidad por Kleberg (1957), los examinamos uno a uno en el tercer capítulo, al hablar de la terminología clásica y moderna con la que se puede identificar a estas infraestructuras. El muestreo, debido al marco geográfico que comprende y a que ofrece la posibilidad de observar las características de mansiones emplazadas en medios físicos muy diferentes, ha resultado adecuado a la hora de establecer conclusiones generales que, consideramos, podrán aplicarse al resto de la vía Augusta y de la provincia. De esta forma, analizamos la disyuntiva uilla ¿ mansio dentro del marco hispánico, la vinculación de las estaciones a puertos, cauces de agua, puentes, cerros o elevaciones del terreno. Observamos la importancia estratégica de los enclaves en los que se ubicaron las postas, tanto en confluencia de vías o cruces de caminos, así como la posible relación con el ejército o el establecimiento de efectivos militares. Resultan muy curiosas también las conclusiones que pueden sacarse sobre el caso de los topónimos empleados en las fuentes antiguas (acusativos o ablativos) y que parecen no estar sujetos a la lógica lingüística de los mismos. Algo similar sucede con el posicionamiento de las mansiones, su relación con la calzada y las cuestiones que nos planteamos cuando nos encontramos ante núcleos urbanos definidos, en vez de ante simples edificaciones ubicadas en un punto concreto de la vía. No obstante, dos de los aspectos más relevantes son los que atañen al análisis de las distancias y a la cronología de los vestigios arqueológicos documentados. Con respecto a las distancias se observará con total claridad, que el terreno y las características del entorno por el que discurre la vía serán de gran importancia. Partíamos de la premisa de que los intervalos de separación se establecerían en función de las necesidades de los viajeros y de las características del terreno, pues lo habitual sería que un correo recorriese unas 5 millas por hora con una media de unas 50 millas por jornada de viaje. Y así veremos como en la zona costera de Cataluña se observan valores similares pero no iguales que en la zona valenciana o en la del interior, hacia Aragón. Por su parte, la cronología nos muestra una clara tendencia al abandono de las estaciones viarias hacia el Bajo Imperio. Esta circunstancia contrasta con el conocimiento que se tiene sobre el cursus publicus, ya que gran parte de la información que aportan las fuentes, especialmente las jurídicas, procede precisamente del Bajo Imperio. A partir de la arqueología, deducimos que es precisamente el siglo I d. e. el de mayor apogeo para estas infraestructuras en la zona hispánica analizada. No obstante, con posterioridad, dieciséis de las cuarenta y tres mansiones evolucionarían hacia edificaciones de carácter religioso, como ermitas y hospitales medievales, aunque también hubo algunas que derivaron en construcciones medievales de vigilancia o en edificaciones modernas y contemporáneas relacionadas con la acogida de huéspedes o identificadas como "hostales". Dada la novedad de nuestra iniciativa dentro de la provincia Citerior, nos hemos visto en la necesidad de centrar nuestros esfuerzos en la vertiente bibliográfica del asunto, con el objeto de calibrar hasta dónde exactamente ha llegado la arqueología y desde dónde debe continuarse la investigación. Es por esta razón que en el presente trabajo podría llegar a echarse en falta la realización de labores de campo inéditas. Sin embargo, no era nuestra prioridad llegar a proporcionar datos arqueológicos originales de un marco geográfico tan amplio como el seleccionado. Nuestra intención ha sido desde un principio recopilar todos los datos existentes, que hasta el momento no habían sido sometidos a un análisis exhaustivo, que permitiera determinar si la interpretación inicial de los mismos era correcta o si, por el contrario, era necesaria una revisión. Obras como las de Corsi (2000) y Black (1995) han puesto de manifiesto la necesidad de cuestionar el papel de algunas infraestructuras cercanas al paso de las vías, que hasta el momento se habían interpretado, en su mayoría, como uillae o estructuras rurales. La cuestión, por tanto, era: ¿no se han documentado apenas estaciones viarias en Hispania o han pasado desapercibidas por la falta de un paradigma definitorio? Como demuestran las fuentes clásicas, dichas infraestructuras se repartían por la provincia hispánica con la misma frecuencia que se observa en Italia y en el resto de las provincias imperiales. Nuestra primera hipótesis de trabajo, por tanto, era que algunas de ellas habrían sido excavadas en España, aunque no identificadas como tal. La segunda hipótesis de la que partimos fue que probablemente las estaciones viarias hispánicas compartirían una serie de rasgos comunes, consecuencia de las características físicas y administrativas del entorno en el que surgieron. A la par, esperábamos encontrar algunos de los factores más significativos documentados en los ejemplos itálicos y provinciales, tales como: -un acceso fácil desde la calzada, -un buen abastecimiento hídrico, -al menos un patio abierto en el que estacionar los vehículos y llevar a cabo labores de reparación, -estancias dormitorio para los huéspedes y el personal de servicio de la propia estación, -establos para las monturas y animales de tiro, -asociación entre infraestructuras de descanso y áreas termales. El análisis de las cuarenta y tres mansiones seleccionadas pondría de manifiesto que la arqueología, en numerosas ocasiones, ciertamente ha dejado de lado la posibilidad de encontrarse ante un complejo estacionario. Esto sucedería en gran parte de los ejemplos, aun cuando los testimonios de las fuentes corroborasen la coincidencia en las distancias o cuando la topografía y las condiciones del entorno fueran las apropiadas para encontrarnos ante una estación. Observaremos cómo la falta de excavaciones específicas y la parcialidad de algunos de los trabajos arqueológicos, por falta de medios económicos o de iniciativas estatales, dificultan terriblemente el avance de las investigaciones en el campo de las comunicaciones antiguas. Asimismo, demostraremos que la situación actual de la arqueología impide establecer un paradigma concreto y evidente con el que definir el esqueleto arquitectónico de estas infraestructuras. A pesar de ello, veremos que existen diversos factores reiterativos dentro de nuestro muestreo de mansiones, los cuales consideramos que deberán tenerse en cuenta en futuras investigaciones sobre el tema. Algunos de los más significativos: -confirmarán la importancia del medio físico y las características estratégicas del entorno en el establecimiento de estaciones viarias; -pondrán de manifiesto la relativa asiduidad con la que encontramos termas o necrópolis asociadas a este tipo de complejos; -evidenciarán la posible relación entre muchas de las uillae documentadas hasta el momento y las funciones de posta; -mostrarán la tendencia hispánica de establecer este tipo de infraestructuras durante el Alto Imperio, con una evidente evolución hacia la decadencia de las mismas en los siglos IV-V; -contribuirán a reafirmar la tendencia evolutiva de estos enclaves hacia poblaciones medievales y modernas y hacia núcleos cultuales cristianos. La escasez de testimonios epigráficos fuera de los núcleos urbanos documentados como lugar de parada invalidará la posibilidad de ofrecer datos certeros sobre la naturaleza civil o militar, oficial o pública de estas postas. No obstante, trataremos esta cuestión, así como la relativa al origen, funcionamiento y papel de las mansiones dentro del sistema de la uehiculatio, con la diversidad de opiniones que ello genera en la actualidad. Analizaremos las fuentes clásicas que dejan constancia del uso de la uehiculatio o de la simple transmisión de informaciones en territorio hispánico. En menor medida y siempre que sea posible, también examinaremos la carrera y los viajes de determinados personajes, documentados epigráficamente y susceptibles de haber hecho uso del sistema oficial de comunicaciones o de haber contribuido a la circulación de noticias y documentos. Dadas las características del presente trabajo y la amplitud de los temas a tratar, consideramos oportuno establecer una división en dos partes, que facilitase la exposición y el posterior análisis de los resultados. La primera de ellas, titulada "Circulación e información: introducción y elementos comparativos", comprende los capítulos I, II y III, y se ocupa de las cuestiones de índole general sobre las comunicaciones oficiales interprovinciales. En ella desarrollamos una síntesis: 1) Sobre el funcionamiento de la uehiculatio y su posterior evolución durante el Bajo Imperio. 2) Sobre el conjunto de personas que se servirían de dicho servicio o trabajarían para el mismo. 3) Y sobre la propia red de establecimientos que harían posible la realización de los grandes desplazamientos terrestres. El objetivo de compilarlos en un primer apartado es perfilar el marco en el que se desarrollaban las comunicaciones y los desplazamientos de carácter oficial en época imperial: sus generalidades y particularidades, la dependencia de los factores mencionados al inicio (red viaria, uehiculatio, mensajeros e informadores, medios de transporte y postas) y la importancia de los mismos. Aquí examinamos cuál era la situación en Italia y las provincias, a través de la historiografía precedente y de las fuentes clásicas, para así disponer de un paradigma comparativo cuando en la segunda parte pasemos a analizar yacimientos concretos de la vía Augusta. Los elementos de comparación son fundamentales para poder desarrollar un estudio sobre el caso hispánico, dado que hasta el momento no se había profundizado en este tema dentro del marco geográfico peninsular. En esta primera parte dedicamos especial atención a las comunicaciones oficiales, aunque tendremos en cuenta a lo largo de toda la investigación que no serán las únicas que influirán sobre la logística de los desplazamientos y de la circulación de informaciones. En el primer capítulo abordamos las características y el funcionamiento de la uehiculatio y el cursus publicus: pilar fundamental de las buenas comunicaciones estatales y, por ende, del gobierno del Imperio. Exploramos los pormenores del transporte de personas y su alojamiento durante los viajes, la velocidad a la que se moverían y las distancias que separarían las etapas de los desplazamientos; la planificación de los viajes imperiales; la utilización de las vías acuáticas, además de las terrestres, en los desplazamientos oficiales; y la evolución del sistema oficial de comunicaciones desde su creación, bajo el gobierno de Augusto, hasta los últimos momentos del Bajo Imperio. También profundizamos en el uso y abuso de los salvoconductos que permitían la realización de los viajes oficiales; en las graves cargas que supondría para las poblaciones provinciales el mantenimiento de un sistema como el de la uehiculatio y la abundante legislación que intentaría paliar los abusos y controlar el servicio oficial de comunicaciones. Vemos, asimismo, cuál era el procedimiento habitual por el que una noticia oficial publicada en Roma alcanzaría todos los rincones del Imperio y los procedimientos por los que solían transmitirse las noticias de carácter más personal. También hablaremos del funcionamiento de una parte de los servicios de inteligencia romanos, ocupados en hacer llegar al emperador información relevante para el control y el gobierno del Estado. En consecuencia, dedicamos el segundo capítulo a estudiar los agentes humanos que podrían hacer uso de los salvoconductos de la uehiculatio: su papel en las comunicaciones, su forma de proceder en sus desplazamientos y su evolución durante el Alto y el Bajo Imperio. Para ello tomamos como referencia tanto cargos de carácter administrativo, como otros de naturaleza militar al servicio del Princeps y del officium provincial. El emperador, el gobernador y algunos procuradores imperiales también formarán parte del elenco, ya que serían los más dados a hacer uso de las facilidades de la uehiculatio en sus numerosos desplazamientos por el Imperio (en el caso del emperador) y por la provincia (en el caso del gobernador y los procuradores). Barajamos, igualmente, la posibilidad de que determinados individuos con cargos importantes, sujetos a la necesidad de viajar por la provincia, se sirvieran de las ventajas de los diplomata. De esta forma, nos serviremos de la epigrafía municipal cuando en el catálogo de estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta busquemos evidencias de individuos que podrían haber utilizado el servicio de la uehiculatio dentro de las vías del Nordeste hispánico. El tercer capítulo lo dedicamos a tratar el tema de las estaciones viarias, punto esencial sobre el que basamos nuestra investigación en territorio hispánico. Son muchas las investigaciones llevadas a cabo sobre estaciones viarias en el resto del Imperio, especialmente dentro de Italia. En otras provincias se las conoce generalmente de manera individual, a través de publicaciones que se centran en algún yacimiento concreto. Pero para el caso de Hispania son muy pocos los ejemplos documentados hasta la fecha. Tampoco existe un paradigma definido que permita una identificación clara y fidedigna de sus infraestructuras. De ahí que fuera imprescindible hacer un repaso por todos los datos conocidos dentro y fuera de España referentes a esta tipología arquitectónica. Gracias a ello, seremos capaces de señalar sus características fundamentales para, más tarde, llevar a cabo una labor de reinterpretación de algunos de los datos arqueológicos existentes en el Nordeste peninsular. La segunda parte de nuestro trabajo engloba los capítulos "IV. Base de datos para el estudio de la uehiculatio y el cursus publicus en el Nordeste hispánico: estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta", "V. Análisis conjunto de los resultados de la base de datos: estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta" y "VI. Conclusiones finales". Tras exponer en la primera parte los elementos de comparación disponibles para nuestro estudio, el objetivo de esta segunda parte radica en centrar nuestra investigación en el marco hispánico seleccionado. Para ello comenzamos con una introducción sobre la vía Augusta, desde su origen en época antigua hasta el resultado de las investigaciones actuales sobre la misma. Recordemos que la elección de esta calzada y no otra fue motivada por razones metodológicas y por la importancia de la propia vía en época imperial. En el capítulo IV introducimos la verdadera novedad de nuestra investigación: el catálogo de estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta. Puesto que hasta la fecha no se había llevado a cabo ninguna iniciativa de similares características para la provincia de Hispania citerior, inevitablemente se hacía necesaria una recopilación de toda la información topográfica y arqueológica existente. Cada una de las cuarenta y tres mansiones seleccionadas cuenta con un dosier propio. En él se recogen y analizan las publicaciones sobre el enclave o su entorno llevadas a cabo hasta el momento presente, la identificación (en caso de haberla) que la historiografía ha establecido para la mansio y nuestra interpretación al respecto, a partir de la topografía, las fuentes clásicas y los vestigios arqueológicos documentados. Las observaciones derivadas de dicha compilación y su consecuente analogía con el resto de las provincias quedan plasmadas dentro del capítulo V, dedicado a las conclusiones resultantes del análisis de conjunto del catálogo. Las conclusiones finales, de carácter más general, se recogen sumariamente en el capítulo VI y se resumen en las siguientes: Al analizar las mansiones de la vía Augusta tuvimos especialmente en cuenta los factores que observamos en las estaciones del resto del Imperio: -el emplazamiento topográfico, -la relación de las estructuras con la calzada, -el abastecimiento hídrico, -la independencia de la estación para su mantenimiento, -y una ciertas coincidencias en las estructuras arquitectónicas, a pesar de la consabida falta de un modelo paradigmático. Ninguno de los ejemplos estudiados en Italia u otras provincias respondía a esquemas arquitectónicos definidos o unánimes. No obstante, casi todos parecían compartir algunos elementos comunes, que, por otro lado, no siempre se daban conjuntamente. Gracias al análisis de las estaciones viarias ya excavadas, pudimos observar que es recurrente la existencia de al menos un patio (generalmente abierto) en torno al cual se distribuían la mayoría de las dependencias restantes y en el que tendrían lugar los trabajos de forja y el estacionamiento de vehículos. Esta disposición del espacio no siempre se repetía, de igual modo que el patio no siempre iba acompañado de un pórtico o tenía un acceso claro desde la vía. Los recintos para dar cobijo y cuidar a los animales se presentaban con la misma relevancia que el mencionado patio. Igual sucedía con las dependencias destinadas al personal de trabajo de la estación. Sin embargo, otros elementos, como las estancias dormitorio para los huéspedes, las termas, los espacios de culto (casi siempre, difíciles de definir) o las zonas de almacenaje u horrea, no se daban siempre, aunque eran partes destacadas de las estaciones viarias. Tampoco la existencia de un segundo piso en madera, cuando el grosor de los muros lo permitía, era una característica incuestionable, aunque parece intuirse en un gran número de complejos estacionarios. En cualquier caso, dos circunstancias que observábamos en el resto del Imperio parecen haberse dado dentro del Nordeste peninsular. Por un lado, el gran abanico de posibilidades en la distribución del espacio de las estaciones, pues existen aquellas en que todas las facilidades de la estación se concentraban en un mismo edificio, como aquellas en las que un conjunto de estructuras separadas conformaban un complejo estacionario de posta. Por otro lado, las diferencias estructurales determinadas por el medio físico y el entorno. Veíamos que existían diferencias entre las estaciones viarias de Italia y aquellas de las provincias, a la vez que se daban similitudes dentro de una misma zona o provincia, aunque no de forma uniforme. Ambas circunstancias pueden aplicarse al conjunto de las mansiones estudiadas en la vía Augusta. Al menos a aquellas que no coincidían con núcleos poblacionales definidos, pues las poblaciones de importancia considerable contarían con mesones, posadas, albergues y termas donde los viajeros de paso pudieran satisfacer sus necesidades. Los restos arqueológicos analizados en la segunda parte de nuestro trabajo no tenían características idénticas a los presentados para la Península Itálica, pero compartían más similitudes con ésta que con algunos de los estudiados en otras provincias. Creemos que ello podría ser consecuencia principalmente del entorno mediterráneo. Por consiguiente, vemos confirmada una de las hipótesis de partida de nuestra tesis: las estaciones viarias, además de exhibir ciertas similitudes en todo el Imperio, compartirían rasgos comunes dentro de una misma zona, como consecuencia de las características físicas y administrativas del entorno en el que surgían. Es, por tanto, evidente la influencia del medio físico y geográfico y de la administración provincial en la creación de estas infraestructuras. La otra hipótesis de partida también se hizo evidente a través de la segunda parte, "Estaciones viarias de la vía Augusta": habría habido estaciones viarias en Hispania con la misma asiduidad que en el resto del Imperio y, aunque hasta el momento no se hayan identificado como tales, se habrían excavado más de las que la historiografía había considerado. La presente disertación pone de manifiesto el gran error que supone dar por hecho la ausencia o excepcionalidad de esta tipología arquitectónica en nuestra Península. Podemos concluir que no existen elementos homogéneos o intrínsecos a las estructuras de las estaciones viarias hispánicas. No obstante, los mismos factores que se tenían en cuenta a la hora de identificar estos complejos en el resto del Imperio pueden ponerse en práctica en Hispania. Falta, sin embargo, ampliar las perspectivas que reducen la mayor parte de las estructuras arquitectónicas rurales a uillae, e incluso aceptar la posibilidad de que algunas uillae pudieran ejercer funciones más complejas, en relación con las vías junto a las que se erigían, que las tradicionalmente aceptadas por la historiografía. No podemos afirmar que las estaciones viarias analizadas formarían parte de la uehiculatio o el cursus publicus, pues ya hemos subrayado en varias ocasiones que no es posible establecer esta relación con la información disponible hasta la fecha. Sin embargo, es evidente que este sistema extraordinario de comunicaciones se habría servido de los complejos viarios existentes siempre que hubiera sido necesario. El presente trabajo es prueba evidente de que todavía queda mucho por investigar, muchas incógnitas que desvelar, sobre el tema tratado dentro de nuestro ámbito geográfico. En cualquier caso, consideramos que el marco territorial seleccionado podrá tomarse como punto de partida para ampliar el análisis al resto de la Península Ibérica con el objeto de contrastar similitudes y divergencias, así como otras opciones y opiniones sobre la red de estaciones viarias que tan importante papel desempeñó en el mundo de las comunicaciones antiguas.

1- Introducción En un breve artículo ciertamente premonitorio, William Schneider (1994) identificaba las características de la nueva cultura política que, condicionada y a su vez potenciada por las nuevas tecnologías de la información, estaba cambiando la relación histórica entre partidos, líderes y electores. Schneider avanzaba tres características principales de este nuevo acontecer político (Schneider, 1994: 779), a saber: el pragmatismo entendido como la dilución de las ideologías; el personalismo con la emergencia de la figura del candidato por sobre la del partido; y por último el populismo como un movimiento claramente anti-elitista y anti-establishment. En el mundo post guerra fría, la demanda acentuada de participación popular y de control del demos sobre los procesos de decisión y las herméticas elites gubernamentales, obligaría al sistema político a rever las estrategias de comunicación, facilitar la inclusión de las masas y mejorar los procesos de rendición de cuentas. Esto conduciría a une mejora del sistema político y del funcionamiento democrático de las instituciones2. Sin embargo, escasos son los cambios que las principales democracias del mundo han introducido en sus instituciones para mejorar el proceso de inclusión democrática, como así lo atestan el mantenimiento de sistemas electorales a menudo arcaicos y la renuencia de las élites políticas a la utilización de mecanismos de democracia directa. Donde sí ha existido una modificación orientada a complacer a la ciudadanía es, como bien menciona Schneider, en el discurso y en la estrategia política. Cortejar a las masas e incluirlas en un proyecto común (del cual excluiremos a las élites) ha progresivamente reemplazado el debate ideológico. El discurso político se transforma entonces en una técnica de movilización del pueblo en contra de una comunidad política desarticulada y debilitada cuyas instituciones flaquean en sus componentes organizativo y representativo (Badie, 1997: 227). Es en este ámbito de quebranto de los valores de la democracia representativa donde la crisis de la representación y "la faillite du politique" cobran amplio sentido y donde el populismo se inscribe entonces como un proceso subversivo de los canales tradicionales de movilización política, creando nuevas lealtades (apolíticas o anti políticas) culturales, nacionales, comunitarias, étnicas, etc., en reemplazo de las anticuadas construcciones sociales (élites, establishment, clase política, etc.). Pero si el populismo se define antes que nada en oposición al sistema político, no es en sí ni una teoría política ni un programa económico alternativo (Touraine, 1997: 242), y es por eso que podemos argumentar que el populismo se inscribe más en la práctica discursiva que en el dominio de lo normativo. Pero, a fin de cuentas, ¿qué es el populismo? Todo y nada se ha escrito sobre este fenómeno que apasiona y confunde tanto por su complejidad (e inconsistencia) teórica, su variabilidad histórica y la ambigüedad moral que este fenómeno histórico, político e ideológico ha generado entre críticos y defensores. El estudio del populismo ha sido objeto de enfoques disciplinarios que, en lugar de integrar el fenómeno en un contexto general, han contribuido a su compartimentación (Holmes, 1990: 27). Así, los historiadores se han focalizado en los aspectos descriptivos del fenómeno, los politólogos han intentado construir definiciones operativas del concepto, los sociólogos se han centrado en aplicar las teorías de la movilización para explicar la construcción de los movimientos populistas, y los enfoques marxistas, por ejemplo, han aportado clarificaciones sobre la relación entre el populismo y el desarrollo del sistema capitalista moderno. Ernesto Laclau, uno de los más fecundos pensadores sobre la cuestión, ha propuesto que el sustento del populismo reside en la oposición semiótica entre una entidad denominada Pueblo y otra denominada Poder (Laclau, 1977: 167) y que es la propia vaguedad de estas construcciones discursivas la que avala la permanencia y resistencia de este fenómeno. El populismo se articularía y construiría a partir de dos premisas centrales. La primera es una dependencia epistemológica de lo negativo, del enemigo; el populismo, como movimiento con un débil componente ideológico y normativo, se construye preferentemente sobre la crítica más que sobre la propuesta. Es en la identificación del enemigo donde el populismo gana la mitad de la batalla. La segundad premisa, igualmente negativa, es la construcción de un sentido y vínculo comunitario a través del "sacrificio colectivo". Es necesario para esto una articulación narrativa que oponga al Pueblo (o sociedad virtuosa) a una élite egotista destinada al sacrificio (Schulte-Sasse, 1993: 96). El populismo, por lo tanto, no sólo debe definir (y construir) un enemigo, sino que la eliminación de ese enemigo pasa a ser el factor aglutinante del discurso y el accionar político. Si el enfoque de Laclau permite efectivamente un amplio espectro de análisis, es la imprecisión conceptual del "fenómeno populista" lo que ha llevado a la manipulación y abuso teóricos de un concepto por demás interesante. En efecto, la política del antagonismo no es privilegio exclusivo de los movimientos populistas, sino que es producto de la banalización y pauperización del discurso político, contribuyendo así a la creación de sociedades binarias donde los matices y la búsqueda de compromisos inclusivos ceden terreno frente a posiciones radicales. Aquellos que anunciaban el amanecer de una "política de consenso" más allá de las tradicionales demarcaciones izquierda/derecha, constatan en la actualidad la emergencia de nuevas fronteras políticas que fragilizan el consenso y de partidos políticos que aprovechan la debilidad del debate democrático para anunciarse como representantes directos investidos de la voz del pueblo (Mouffe, 2005: 51). En este sentido, la práctica discursiva que construye categorías excluyentes como pueblo/poder, amigo/enemigo, sociedad civil/élites, nacional/foráneo etc., no define únicamente al populismo, sino que ha pasado a ser una estrategia recurrente de movilización política en las democracias modernas. Por lo tanto, la fuerza explicativa de este proceso semiótico en referencia al populismo se diluye, ya sea porque se ha "populizado" la política o porque se ha politizado el populismo. 2- El populismo europeo El populismo europeo, vigente desde mediados/fines del siglo XIX, está fuertemente ligado al sentimiento nacionalista y, en algunos casos, a la consolidación del Estado. Desde fines del siglo XVIII, las nociones de nación y pueblo han articulado las construcciones de las diferentes instituciones y regímenes políticos, pero independientemente de cuáles hayan sido los caminos recorridos, todos se han visto inculcar por el Estado un cuerpo de valores destinado a exaltar las particularidades propias de cada pueblo, cimentadas en un sentimiento de solidaridad excluyente (Hermet, 1997: 34). Esta construcción de una solidaridad e identidad nacional siguió dos caminos diferentes. En los países liberales como Gran Bretaña y Francia, donde existía ya una ciudadanía en vías de expansión, la adhesión al proyecto nacionalista se logró bajo el entendido que si las masas hasta ahora sometidas devenían progresivamente actores políticos, el sistema sólo podría sostenerse a través de la solidaridad y pertenencia a una identidad común, a la vez nacionalista y cívica. Es en el ejercicio creciente de sus responsabilidades y derechos cívicos y políticos donde el pueblo (la ciudadanía en este caso) edifica un proyecto único del cual todos son parte. Por el contrario, en estados más autoritarios que liberales y de creación reciente y cuyo proceso de unificación aún no estaba terminado, como en Alemania o Italia, la nacionalización acelerada de esas identidades fragmentadas, tanto a nivel político como religioso, se construyó antes que nada sobre la solidaridad cultural de la población, a fin de paliar el lento (o inexistente) proceso de construcción cívica (Hermet, 1997: 35). El primer tipo de construcción nacional es lo que ha pasado a denominarse nacionalismo cívico liberal, más acotado a los Estados de Europa occidental. El segundo caso es el de un nacional-populismo o un nacionalismo orgánico y autoritario, más propio de Europa central y oriental Estas construcciones arquetípicas reflejan las dos grandes concepciones sobre la nación y la ciudadanía. La idea de nacionalismo occidental u oriental es intercambiable con la noción de nacionalismo político (el caso francés) o cultural (caso alemán). Si bien es sabido que todos los nacionalismos poseen a su vez características políticas o culturales, la distinción entre estas dos vertientes dependerá de la importancia relativa y de la prioridad histórica de los principios de la organización política o de las preocupaciones culturales (lengua, literatura, historia, folklore, etc.). En el caso de la nación política (Francia): el pueblo = Estado = nación. Toda la población residente sobre el territorio controlado por el Estado constituye la nación. Es el Estado quien crea, quien define la nación (creación desde arriba). En este caso, la unidad política precede a la unidad cultural. En este modelo, la ciudadanía puede ser adquirida por todos aquellos nacidos en el territorio (ius solis), y que adhieran a esta concepción (en el caso francés, a los valores republicanos). Típicamente esta forma de nacionalismo no reconoce la diferencia cultural (ej. velo musulmán). En el caso del nacionalismo cultural (Alemania), la unión se logra a través de una identidad común, lingüística, étnica o cultural. La Nación crea el Estado; la unidad cultural precede a la unidad política. En estos casos, la ciudadanía no puede ser adquirida, sino que es innata, reservada a un grupo primigenio definido en términos étnico-culturales (ius sanguinis). Este nacionalismo no reconoce la asimilación cultural (ej: los judíos o los turcos) (Greenfield, 1999: 48-49). El nacionalismo cívico liberal fue en gran medida impulsado por la clase dominante del momento-la burguesía económica-, y reposa sobre principios abstractos de igualdad y libertad propios de individuos desarraigados de los lazos comunitarios y necesarios para la creación de regímenes burgueses liberales (Khon, 1967). La burguesía, que no se reconocía en le "petit peuple", se oponía a la creación de una identidad nacional basada en características culturales populares. El nacional-populismo, por el contrario, más pasional que intelectual, se desarrolló ahí donde los constructores del Estado nación no tenían otro recurso que exaltar los particularismos culturales (o étnicos) de la comunidad en su proceso de construcción política. En los países de Europa Oriental, donde las élites burguesas carecían del empuje necesario (en parte por una débil industrialización y la permanencia de fuertes estructuras rurales, con históricos lazos de solidaridad entre sí y de subordinación a la autoridad), los valores liberales no lograron influenciar la construcción del Estado. El nacional populismo puede ser visto, igualmente, como un fenómeno de resistencia y de rechazo hacia una opresión exterior, como fue el caso de los Balcanes bajo la dominación Austro-Húngara, de Irlanda hacia Inglaterra o del país vasco contra España. Esta forma de solidaridad se cristalizó en gran medida en las minorías oprimidas en el seno de imperios multiétnicos que, ansiosos por imponer una uniformidad liberal o autoritaria, provocaron como reacción la consolidación de identidades nacionales deseosas de garantizar su libertad, autonomía e integridad a través de la edificación de un Estado propio. El nacional populismo, exacerbando en algunos casos el carácter casi mesiánico de pertenencia a una cultura única, producirá emancipaciones ideológicas peligrosas como el fascismo. El populismo europeo ha conocido diferentes corrientes políticas a lo largo del siglo XX que desgraciadamente no podemos tratar aquí. Conviene sin embargo mencionar que en su acepción más reciente, el populismo europeo se ha visto revigorizado por una unión discursiva con la extrema derecha (o lo que se ha denominado como la "nouvelle droite"), que maneja a placer los discursos identitarios, nacionalistas y anti-elites en un peligroso cocktail ideológico a fuerte potencial de movilización. Mazzolenni ha identificado 5 características centrales de este "neo-populismo" europeo (2003: 117). En primer lugar el populismo conduce a una valorización del pueblo, del "hombre de la calle". El llamado al pueblo implica la participación política directa y la desconfianza de la democracia representativa. El "culto al pueblo" se acompaña con la crítica a las élites. En cuarto lugar, un equilibrio precario se instala entre crítica y aceptación del sistema. Como las instituciones son necesarias para aportar la legitimidad política, la crítica no puede abiertamente intentar destruir el sistema político; en algunos países pueden entonces instalarse "simulacros de democracia". Por último, el populismo es acompañado casi siempre de la exaltación del líder carismático en el cual se concentran el proyecto y las aspiraciones del pueblo. Convengamos, sin embargo, que no todos los movimientos populistas europeos son de derecha, reflejando así la "flexibilidad" ideológica (u oportunismo político) de estos partidos así como la heterogeneidad de la base de apoyo a los movimientos populistas. Estos y otros puntos han conducido a ciertos autores a ver en el resurgimiento del populismo de derecha una amenaza al orden democrático (Mouffe, 2005), pero otros, más mesurados, ven en el éxito de estos partidos de "nueva derecha" un realineamiento de los clivajes tradicionales y de las lealtades partidarias (Sciarini et al. 2002, Hug y Treschel, 2002, Lachat y Kriesi, 2008, Oesch, 2008). En este sentido, los partidos populistas se beneficiarían de un posicionamiento ideológico en terreno fértil y de una hábil estrategia política frente al inmovilismo de los partidos más tradicionales, socialistas y de centro derecha, limitados en su accionar por lealtades de clase y concepciones morales anquilosadas. 3- El populismo Latinoamericano El caso latinoamericano no escapa, como sus colegas europeo o norteamericano, a las dificultades de conceptualización producto de diferentes enfoques disciplinarios. Weyland (2001) ha realizado un importante trabajo estudiando los diferentes conceptos que han sido utilizados para abarcar el populismo latinoamericano y demostrar que la confusión conceptual proviene del hecho que los académicos enfatizan diferentes atributos como características decisivas del concepto, sin ponerse de acuerdo si estamos hablando del ámbito político, económico, social, discursivo u otro (Weyland, 2001:2). Tres grandes enfoques han predominado en el estudio del populismo. Entre 1960-80, la utilización de conceptos cumulativos predominó en el estudio del fenómeno3, influenciada por las teorías desarrollistas (modernización y dependencia) que argumentaban la fuerte subordinación de la esfera política a los factores socio económicos. Estos autores resaltaban en el populismo un conjunto central de características políticas y socioeconómicas. Los regímenes populistas serían en parte una respuesta a los fenómenos de urbanización, de industrialización y de participación masiva que fragilizaron las instituciones existentes y permitieron la emergencia de regímenes inestables centrados a menudo en una lógica de acción política personalista y carismática, plebiscitaria y redistributiva, destinada a agrupar y movilizar las masas desorganizadas y amorfas (Germani, 1974). Ciertos autores han querido ver en el populismo un proceso de desarrollo intermedio entre el pasaje de una sociedad tradicional o pre industrial hacia una sociedad moderna industrializada, orientada a la sustitución de importaciones y donde un régimen oligárquico cede terreno frente a la emergencia de la sociedad de masas (Cardoso y Faletto, 1979). Otros autores, como Roberts (1995: 89), han intentando descifrar el populismo utilizando conceptos radiales o de adición4. Así, los populismos latinoamericanos tendrían las siguientes características: Un liderazgo paternalista y personalista; una coalición política heterogénea y multi –clase; un proceso de movilización política top down que cortocircuita las instancias tradicionales de mediación; una ideología amorfa y ecléctica; y un proyecto económico que utiliza importantes políticas redistributivas y clientelares. La existencia de estos 5 aspectos caracterizaría al populismo pleno, mientras que la presencia de una o más características constituiría sub-tipos particulares de populismo. Por último, la tradición más reciente se ha centrado en el estudio del populismo latinoamericano como un concepto clásico en el ámbito político. El populismo no puede ser enfocado como un concepto económico, argumenta Weyland (2001:11) porque su utilización es confusa y problemática y la política económica es, en manos populistas, un instrumento, no un fin. La definición política ve al populismo como una manera particular de competir y ejercer el poder. El populismo se sitúa en la esfera de la dominación, no de la distribución. El populismo intenta antes que nada construir formas de control político, y la distribución de beneficios a través de políticas socio-económicas es una herramienta para facilitar ese control. El líder populista busca ganar y ejercer el poder, y su oportunismo tiene como corolario un débil compromiso en el campo ideológico y programático. Construido a partir de la dicotomía amigo/enemigo que permea toda acción política, el populismo debe ser definido como una estrategia política, entendida como la capacidad de los líderes de perpetuarse en la arena política. Bajo el populismo, el "gobierno" es ejercido por un líder carismático, no por un grupo u organización política (Weyland, 2001: 18). El populismo surge principalmente cuando ese líder logra arrear y agrupar el apoyo masivo de gran parte del pueblo en un movimiento espontaneo y atomizado donde la lealtad de cada individuo se inscribe en una lógica vertical de subordinación entre él y el líder, y no en una lógica horizontal de solidaridad mecánica de pertenencia a un proyecto común. En este sentido, los movimientos populistas y sus adherentes carecen de la cohesión ideológica necesaria para que el movimiento sobreviva a la partida/muerte del líder. 4- Democracia populista Vs. Populismos semi-democráticos A modo de breve conclusión, desearía discutir brevemente uno de los puntos subrayados en la introducción. Si una de las características principales de la nueva cultura política y democrática es el populismo, entendido como un discurso anti élite y anti establishment (y hasta anti intelectual), conviene interrogarse entonces en qué se parecen las democracias populistas modernas (como la Americana o la Francesa) y los regímenes populistas democráticos o semi-democráticos (Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, etc.). Por lo tanto, hay que distinguir entre lo que es una característica secundaria del sistema – el populismo como lenguaje político – de un principio ordenador y legitimador del poder -el populismo en los regímenes latinoamericanos-. La diferencia puede ser entendida con un claro ejemplo. Mientras que el lenguaje populista en las democracias modernas tiene como cometido "igualar" al líder político con el votante común, el populismo latinoamericano presupone todo lo contrario, la excepcionalidad del líder. El populismo americano o francés actual elimina todo privilegio, todo "passe-droit" que la figura del líder político piense poder tener por su pertenencia a un grupo privilegiado; por el contrario, presupone que el contrato de confianza ciudadano entre gobernados y gobernantes demanda una conducta intachable y responsable de estos últimos. En el caso de los populismos semi-democráticos, el líder es por naturaleza excepcional y, ya sea por la escasa instrucción cívica y ciudadana, por la corrupción del sistema político o por lo que es aún peor, la creencia dogmática en el carácter mesiánico del líder, éste se encuentra, de facto, por encima de la ciudadanía (y por ende de la ley). El culto al líder al que se libran los populismos latinoamericanos y la triste complacencia de las ciudadanías amorfas erosionan el accionar democrático, debilitan la separación de poderes y conducen a la utilización irresponsable y clientelista de los recursos nacionales. Si es innegable igualmente que el discurso populista en las democracias modernas puede ser antes que nada una estrategia política en época de crisis y vacas flacas, no obstante éste se construye sobre una premisa incuestionable: la igualdad ciudadana y la necesidad de contralor del poder político. Lo importante aquí no es la incorporación ética por parte de las élites de los principios de igualdad y responsabilidad, sino la sanción, electoral o legal, de todo comportamiento que infrinja ese contrato de confianza. Lejos de mí la idea de asimilar al elector francés o americano a un quijote cívico y moralizador, pero en su estrategia "maximizadora" de bienestar no se encuentra la tolerancia a la corrupción política, al abuso de poder o a la desigualdad manifiesta entre gobernantes y gobernados. Si bien admitimos que el populismo latinoamericano emerge en un contexto histórico de débil institucionalización en las décadas del 20-30 en adelante (en cierta medida heredero de las tradiciones caudillistas), y que el vínculo primordial entre líder y pueblo fue en parte necesario para asegurar derechos sociales y cívicos antes del otorgamiento de plenos derechos políticos, ¿qué argumentos justifican 60 años después de un Perón o un Vargas la ciega obsecuencia ante un "déspota iluminado"?.1- El presente artículo retoma partes de un trabajo más extenso dedicado al estudio del fenómeno populista en los Estados Unidos (en vías de publicación). Lo que se presenta a continuación sirve como introducción teórica en dicho artículo. La conclusión de este artículo sí representa una reflexión original.2- Autores como Schumpeter, sin embargo, han argumentado contra el concepto clásico de democracia popular extendida, avanzando que una parte importante de la ciudadanía carece de los conocimientos necesarios para realizar juicios instruidos y determinar el bien común y que por lo tanto estaría ésta a la merced de élites políticas "manipuladoras". En este sentido, el ciudadano debería limitarse a la elección de líderes y a su sanción periódica vía los procesos electorales. Ver J. SHUMPETER, 1994 (rev. ed), Capitalism. Socialism and Democracy, Routledge.3- Los conceptos cumulativos elaboran definiciones combinando los atributos de diferentes campos a través de la lógica de inclusión "Y". Sólo las características comunes de todos los dominios son adoptadas como determinantes del concepto. Los conceptos cumulativos aportan un alto estándar de inclusión con un pequeño número de casos y excluyen la posibilidad de casos "límite". Un problema recurrente de los conceptos cumulativos es su debilidad empírica si hay escasa superposición entre las diferentes áreas de estudio, generando así pocos casos reales que cumplan con el fuerte contenido teórico.4- Los conceptos radiales utilizan la preposición lógica "O", conectando los atributos propuestos por los autores en diferentes campos. Si un caso posee al menos una de estas características puede ser incorporado al estudio del concepto. Si los conceptos radiales poseen las ventajas de abarcar un amplio universo de casos, la pertinencia de cada caso dependerá del número de características totales que posea, falseando entonces la comparación entre los diferentes casos. 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John Udy ; The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, WeberState University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ; 15p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 video disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program John Udy Interviewed By Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah John Udy Interviewed by Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in the University Archives, which also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: John Udy, an oral history by Steven F. Crane, 12 March 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. John Udy March 12, 2013 1 Abstract: John Udy participated in an oral history interview with Steve Crane of the Ogden Rotary Club on March 12, 2013 to talk about his experiences as a veteran of the Army Air Force. John served in the military from 1942 to 1945 as a colonel and first pilot of the B-17 aircraft. During that time he flew 35 missions over Germany as an aircraft commander and received the Distinguished Flying Cross medal for his service in combat. SC: This is the third session of the 2013 Ogden Rotary Club and Weber State University Veteran's History Project held March 12, 2013 at the George E. Whalen Ogden Veteran's Home. I'm Steve Crane, a member of the Ogden Rotary Club, I'll be conducting this interview. Also present are Stacie Gallagher from Weber State University and my wife, Donna Crane. Our guest at this session is John Udy. This interview will concern John's military service. Once again, I want to thank you for being with us today and especially thank you for your service. We really appreciate what you and your generation did. Can you tell me you date of birth? JU: It's March 20, 1921. SC: You said you were in the Army Air Force? JU: I started out in 1942. I went into the Army Air Force at that time. The Army Air Force, was until after my wartime services and they changed it to the U.S. Air Force. I stayed in the Reserves until I retired. SC: What year did you enter the service? JU: 1942. 2 SC: What year did you leave the service? JU: 1945. SC: What was your rank at the time you left service? JU: Colonel. SC: What would be the definition of your job or your position? JU: It depends on the time. I was a first pilot on a B-17 and I flew 35 missions over Germany from August of 1944 until January 1945. What they called me there was an aircraft commander. SC: Okay. What awards or medals did you receive during your time? JU: I got the Distinguished Flying Cross, the air medal with about six oak leaf clusters, the European-African-Middle East Theater and the World War II Victory Medal. I'd have to look at my records to get them all. SC: The Distinguished Flying Cross. JU: I got that for one hazardous mission over Germany when we barely made it back. SC: How did you come to be in the service? JU: I volunteered. I was working for the government as an aircraft mechanic. I went to a movie in Salt Lake and all these airplanes were flying around. I thought, "That's what I want to be." So, I signed up. SC: What was your age at that time? JU: I was about 20 or 21. 3 SC: After you volunteered, where did you have your training? JU: I went to Santa Ana, California. When you go there they decide if you're going to be a pilot, a navigator, or a bombardier. I got to be a pilot and that's what I wanted. I went from there to Dos Palos, California for primary training. That was the first airplane we flew. It was the Ryan PD-22. SC: What characteristics did you have that made you a pilot? JU: I don't know. I wasn't on the committee, but I had operated farm machinery and stuff like that all my life. I knew a little bit about engines. I had been an aircraft mechanic, so I knew about the airplanes. I don't know whether that helped me or not, but that was the background I had. SC: Where did you go for pilot training? JU: Dos Palos, California for the primary training. The BT-13 was the first airplane we flew. If you could pass that then you went on to basic training. We went to Lemoore, California for training there. At that time you had to decide if you wanted to be a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot. I really intended to make flying my career, so I went for the bomber pilot because I would get time in a four engine airplane. The four engine pilots went to Texas and that's where we took our training in a twin engine airplane. After I graduated from there, they asked us if we wanted to be in B-24's or B-17's. I, like a fool, said, "I want to go to the B-24 because I liked the tricycle landing gear." They sent me to the B-17's and that was the best thing for me because it was a better airplane. SC: So you felt like the B-17 was superior to the B-24? 4 JU: It was a superior airplane, but I didn't know that at the time. SC: Is that the "Flying Fortress?" JU: Yes, the "Flying Fortress." I went from there to Roswell, New Mexico where I took the B-17 transition training. It was where I learned to fly the B-17. SC: When did you go overseas? JU: When I left Roswell, New Mexico, I went to Salt Lake City and down to Plant Park, Florida and Avon Park, Florida where I received my crew. I got my pilot and navigator, etc. We trained there in combat training and left there in about June 1944 for the European theater. We went up to Savannah, Georgia where we were supposed to pick up a new B-17 and fly it across the ocean and in combat, but they ran out of B-17's so we had to ride the ship across. We spent 15 days on a boat going across there. SC: Instead of getting to fly a brand new bomber, you took a boat? JU: Yes, that's right. We were sent to a place where they would send you out to different squadrons. They sent me to the 401st bomb group and that was in Britain and that's where I flew my missions out of. SC: When did you get your airplane? JU: I didn't get a new airplane for a while. I flew other airplanes and I flew one by the name of Packawallop II and I flew that several missions. Marlene Deitrich went over there to entertain. Our group commander, Colonel Bill Sewell, took the airplane to go pick her up at the airport and bring her back for the entertainment. The next day, the crew that flew the Packawallop II was shot down. I don't know 5 if she put a hex on it. She was German, you know. I don't know if she put a hex on it or what, but the airplane did go down. SC: Did you then get a new airplane? JU: Yes, I got a new airplane. SC: So you were flying and bombing Germany? JU: We bombed oil refineries, ball bearing works, and airplane factories. We didn't bomb cities. We bombed the industrial targets and mainly oil refineries. I went to Merseburg Oil Refinery four times straight. When they captured that they found 1000 aircraft guns around it. That's what they were shooting at us. SC: Were you doing those during the daylight hours or the evening hours? JU: Daylight. SC: Okay. That was more risky I'm sure. JU: It was, the British wouldn't fly in the daytime they flew at night. SC: Can you tell us about some of your flights and the dangers and experiences you had? JU: The first mission that I went on, they gave me an experienced co-pilot. My regular co-pilot didn't fly with me, so we flew to Leipzig, Germany. That was a terrible target, it had a lot of aircraft guns and we got the oil system shot out on the B-17 while we were flying. It acted like it was hit in the right side on the wing or something because it went down on that side, but I managed to get it up again and flew it back to our base. I called the base and said, "I've got no brakes, I 6 can't stop. Can I land?" They said, "You stay up there until we get these other airplanes down." That's what they did and they had the ambulance and a lot of other people out at the end of the runway to patch us up if we got hurt. I brought that airplane in and landed it with no brakes. It doesn't stop very easily. I kept my number one and number two engines running so I could control it a little bit. We got to the end of the runway and there were all these people standing out there. I could see over the end of the runway that there was a great big ditch out there that I would hit and it would really wreck that airplane. It had a little patch of grass between me and that ditch. When I got onto that grass, I pushed the number one engine and opened it up and it turned the airplane and it caused it to ground loop. I ground looped a B-17. I don't know if anybody had ever done that before or since. When it turned around and headed for all those people, they scattered. The airplane kept turning around and it just spun around and stopped. It didn't hurt the airplane at all. That was my first combat mission. I had another one on Christmas Eve of 1944. We bombed Koblenz, Germany and we got hit in the number one engine oil system and it caused it to lose all the oil. Normally, it had a stand pipe in there to save enough oil to feather the engine. By feathering the engine I mean turn the prop out so it will stop. This airplane didn't have that in it. When the pressure dropped and we tried to feather the engine it wouldn't feather. It sat out there and wind milled after we turned the ignition, fuel and everything off. It wind milled until it broke the crank shaft on the engine. The prop was just spinning and the sparks were flying. It didn't catch on fire, thankfully. We dropped out of formation and headed back for England and 7 called for fighter support. We didn't get it because no fighter heard us. We went all the way back. This was at the time during the Battle of the Bulge when all that fog moved in and covered our base and we couldn't get back to our base. We got back across the channel. Some pilots would try to pull that prop off the engine and sometimes they'd succeed, but it would come right back through the cockpit. I thought, "I'm not going to do that." So I just left it on. We came over an airfield and I turned on my landing lights. I couldn't contact them with my radio because I didn't know what base they were. I went around and landed. Lucky for us, the prop didn't fall off and get entangled in the airplane and we got out alright. They found later that a lot of the counterweights in the wing were broken loose and were just rattling around in there. They could have jammed that wing or a control anytime, but they didn't. SC: The flight surface on the wing could have been damaged. JU: We called our base and since it was foggy they wouldn't send anybody after us so we had to stay at that base. SC: Was that your new B-17? JU: No, it was another one. I don't remember which one it was. SC: As you flew over and back, did you say you usually had fighter support? JU: In the latter parts of our missions we did. SC: Were they able to follow you clear to the target? JU: No, the fighter pilots are not dumb. They're not going to fly into that flack. 8 SC: Not like bombers had to, right? JU: When you get up there and get ready to go into the flack to bomb the target, the fighters drop back. They stay outside of that flack area. They did help a lot on knocking down the fighters that attacked us. SC: Did you have quite a few German fighters attacking you as you were going and coming? JU: We didn't have too many fighters hit us. It was mainly flack with us. We did get hit with some Focke-Wulf 190's on one mission. I was flying along and this guy on my left wing got a direct hit in the engine and he came up right into me and I had to pull up to keep him from hitting me. It caused my airplane to slow up and the Flockwelt-190's were sitting back there waiting and they started shooting. You could see the 12 millimeter cannons going through the right wing and the others. We managed to get back into the flack away from the fighter and saved us actually. SC: So, the German flack would scare off the German fighters? JU: Oh yeah, they wouldn't go in it either. They knew it was dangerous. SC: What other dangerous experiences did you? JU: Those were my two most hazardous missions. One mission we came back with 250 holes in the airplane. Luckily, the crew didn't get hit. None of us got wounded. They asked our navigator to fly with another crew. They went over to Hagenow and they got shot down. The pilot was killed getting out of the airplane, but my navigator bailed out and he was supposed to make a delayed jump where 9 you don't open your parachute until you get to about 3000 feet above the ground. He pulled it right away and the people were standing around waiting for him with pitchforks and guns and everything. He thought they were going to kill him right then, but they didn't kill him. The military came and took him over and he spent nine months in a prison camp. SC: Did you see him again? JU: Yes, I did. I saw him after he came out. He was very thin. He lived on bread and potatoes he said. He was really skinny. He died fairly young too. He was only 65 when he died. He was a schoolteacher in California. I thought possibly that the time in there shortened his life. I'm no doctor, I don't know. SC: You must have become very close with your crew. Did you become close friends with those that were with you? JU: Yes, they were very close friends. We looked out for each other. SC: Did you stay close to them after you served? JU: That's a funny thing. As soon as we finished our missions, we went our various ways. We went back home and got really split up. I didn't see too much of them after that. My co-pilot I've stayed close with. We have a 401st Bomb Group that the people flew in and they made an association here after the war and a lot of people and their crews went there. My crew wouldn't go for some reason. My engineer and I went to the reunions they had and I tried to get my navigator, my bombardier and my co-pilot to go and they wouldn't go. They had one reunion in Omaha, Nebraska and my bombardier, who I had to make my navigator after 10 Mack got shot down, said he would go to that one, but his ears bothered him and he couldn't fly anymore afterward. Sometimes we'd come down and his ears would bother him so bad that we'd have to go back up and let his ears clear out before we could go back down. He had to have operations on his ears after he got out. He still would not go to that reunion. SC: Can you tell me what the duties of each of your flight crew were? Since you were the flight commander you were obviously in charge of everything. What duties did the co-pilot have? JU: He was there to take over in case something happened to me. He also had duties at takeoff and would monitor the throttles and engines. He'd call it out if the engine started cutting out or something or anything else that he saw wrong. SC: The navigator, is that role pretty self-explanatory? JU: Yes. I never did use mine much because he got shot down and I had to put the bombardier up there to be a navigator and he didn't really know too much about it. He got me lost twice. The navigator that was leading the group had to be really good and get to the target. SC: Mostly you were following the group? JU: We followed the group mostly. Due partially to the fact that I didn't have a navigator; I didn't get to be a lead. I led six airplanes in the formation, but I never got to lead the group. SC: How about the bombardier? 11 JU: The bombardier would sight in on the Norton Bomb Site for the target and all the other airplanes dropped when he dropped. When he saw the lead airplane dropping bombs, the rest of us drop the bombs. SC: So was there only one of those Norton Bomb Sites? JU: No, they had a deputy, a number two man doing the same thing so that if something happened to the first one, he could take over. They might have had more, but I know they had at least one deputy. SC: So your airplane wouldn't necessarily have the Norton bomb site? JU: It had the bomb site in it. We could bomb it. SC: Did you have gunners? JU: I had gunners. SC: How many of those were on the B-17? JU: There were six and they all had other duties too. The radio operator was a gunner, and the engineer was a gunner. All the crew had a gun except the pilot and the co-pilot. The navigators had a gun and they were all gunners. SC: Wasn't there one gunner on the very bottom of the airplane that was separated from everyone else in a little plastic thing? JU: Yes. That was the ball turret gunner. SC: I've heard you had to be kind of a small fellow to fit in those confined spaces. JU: Yes, and he had to have a lot of guts too. I had two guys when we were assembling our crew in Avon Park, Florida, they sent me one guy to be my ball 12 turret gunner. As soon as he found out he was going to be the ball turret, he said, "I'm through flying." All he had to do to get out was say, "I don't want to fly anymore and they put him on a ground job." I had two guys do that. Finally, I got this little guy from West Virginia and he didn't quit, he stayed in there. SC: You must have been very reliant upon those gunners to shoot down and ward off enemy fighters. JU: Well, I didn't rely on them too much because if we got out by ourselves, we wouldn't depend on the fighter support because we didn't have it and then we'd have to rely on those gunners. We never got in that situation except that one time that we didn't get hit. SC: So you were pretty protected as long as you were in formation with the B-17's other than from the flack? JU: That's right. They flew in a particular formation so that the German fighters could come in and many bombers could put their guns on them. That's why they flew with three airplanes up here and three airplanes here and three here and three back here. That was the formation to fight off the fighter. SC: So you wouldn't get in the way of each other's shooting at them. JU: That's right, and we could concentrate all of our fire power on an airplane. SC: How did this military experience affect your life? Did you feel like it was kind of a defining period in your life? JU: Well, I guess it affected me, but I didn't realize it too much. I was going to go on and fly civilian airplanes. So, when I got through with my combat mission, I got 13 into the C-54's which were the best transport the Air Force had. I took training in that and I would have been flying from America to Casablanca, Africa. But, I got married about a year before that when I came back from combat. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought, "Well, I think I better get married or something. So, I had my girlfriend waiting for me and we went and got married. Then we couldn't find a place to live. You could only stay in a room in a private home and you'd have to go out and eat and after about a year of that, before I made any trips in the C-54, I decided to get out. I signed the paper and got out. I'd had all of that living in private bedrooms that I could stand. SC: What have you done with your life? What has been your profession? JU: I've been just drifting here and there. No, I wanted to get a ranch. I grew up on the farm and I wanted to get a big ranch, but the bankers weren't too free with their money. They had the G.I. Bill, but that didn't help so I didn't have enough money to buy a big enough ranch. I ended up back working for the government. I started out as a laborer. I went from a first pilot on a C-54 down to being a laborer. SC: Where were you at this time? JU: I was here in Ogden. I worked my way up and I got to be a clerk, then a manager, and ended up being a supervisor buying spare parts for F-4's and F- 16's and distributing them. SC: Was this at the Defense Depot in Ogden? JU: That's where I started out as a laborer. 14 SC: Do you have children? JU: Yes, I have five children. SC: Are they nearby? JU: Yes, they all live here in the Ogden and Salt Lake area. SC: Is your wife alive? JU: No, she died in 2001. She had a hysterectomy and then she found out two years later that the doctor hadn't taken her ovaries out. We should have took her right back in and had them out, but we didn't do it. The doctor said it might not have helped anyway, but she got ovarian cancer. She actually had to tell the doctors what she had. They assumed that she didn't have these ovaries in there. Anyway, her stomach was swelled out a little bit and she'd been studying some literature from our daughter who is a nurse. My daughter was a teacher at Weber State in nursing for many years. She'd send her literature on. So, my wife told the doctor after they'd check and say, "I can't find out what's the matter with you." She said, "Check for cancer." They did and that's what it was. SC: Do you have grandchildren in the area? JU: Yes. I have fourteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren. They're not all in this area. There are some in California and some in Nevada. SC: Is there anything else that you think you ought to tell us about your service? JU: I don't think so. SC: I want to thank you for your service. 15 JU: Well, you're very welcome. I was glad I was able to do it. It's just what I wanted to do at the time. SC: It's what you wanted to do at the time? JU: Yes, it was. SC: Well, my generation certainly benefited from what you and your generation did. America has a debt of gratitude to pay to you and your associates for what you did. SC: Did you happen to know Lamar Buckner? I think he also flew B-17's. JU: I knew him, but not until later on. SC: You didn't know him during the time you were flying? JU: No, I didn't know him then. SC: Well, thank you for your time today. It's been really wonderful for us to share this with you.

Part one of an interview with Joseph Addante. Topics include: Joseph's family history. His parents were separated during WWI and reunited in Fitchburg, MA. The birth of Joseph's siblings and Joseph (he was the youngest). Catholic education. Americanization classes taught by Margaret Kelty. Speaking English and Italian. His father's experience trying to bring his mother (Joseph's grandmother) to the United States. Visiting relatives in Italy. How his father came to the United States. Family political differences in Italy. The villages in Italy where his parents grew up. The work his father did as a shoemaker in Italy and in Fitchburg. ; 1 SPEAKER 1: The Center for Italian Culture at Fitchburg State College, the [unintelligible - 00:00:06] project. It's Tuesday September 4th 9:30, 9:45 am. Our first interviewee is Joe Addante at his home at 535 South Street Number 22-2. Thanks Joe for taking time again to talk with me. I was hoping that you could give me some biographical information, specifically when you were born. What your birth name is. I was wondering is it Joseph or is it Giuseppe? JOE ADDANTE: I was born on the 25th of August in 1926 at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, by my father's little log that I found. They named me Joseph Bartholomew Addante; Bartholomew because the 24th of August is the big feast day in my father's village. There's a church that was built in 1100 or 1200 and it's a historical site in that area. And that's how I got the name: Joseph from my father, and Bartholomew from the feast day. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. JOE ADDANTE: Uh, I was born in Fitchburg. I was the fourth child that my parents had. They had one in Italy that my father never saw again, that died when he was three or four years old. My mother and father were separated for 10 years because of World War I. My mother rejoined my father in 1920 in Fitchburg, and in 1922 my sister Mary was born, '23 my sister Rose was born. And three years later a son was born, which was a source of joy to my dad. And we grew up together. Uh, also living with us were my two uncles for a number of years, because they had come also from Italy. And I jokingly say I grew up with three fathers, my uncle Rocco and my uncle Dominic. Rocco has a son Rocco Jr., and Uncle Dominic remained a bachelor and was never married. Um, from there we lived on the Water Street lane, which was part of what was called "The Patch" in those days. I attended St. Bernard Grammar school, which was a Catholic parochial school for St. Bernard Parish. However, since my father's brother was a Franciscan priest, he was anxious for us to have a Roman 2 Catholic education. And being acquainted with Monsignor Donnelly, who was pastor of St. Bernard at that time, we were given the privilege of attending the quote unquote Irish parochial school. I graduated grammar school there, then I attended St. Bernard, which then became the Central Catholic High School, graduating in 1944. SPEAKER 1: Okay. I was hoping that you could go back a little bit. Last week when I was here… JOE ADDANTE: Yes. SPEAKER 1: You mentioned something about your mom and dad; your father had to wait nearly 10 years to bring your mother over. Is… did I hear that correctly? JOE ADDANTE: Yes, well, when my mother arrived of course the family started. And as I said, my sisters were born and so was I. My recollection of my early childhood goes back to about 1931 or '30 when I was probably five or six years old. My recollection is going to Americanization classes with my mother. Uh, these were held at what was the Registry of Motor Vehicles building, and the upstairs was sort of a classroom hall kind of arrangement where classes were given in English for immigrants, and also Americanization, which in today's terminology would be called Instructions for Assimilation. Very interesting, because the woman that taught this was Margaret [Kelty]. Margaret [Kelty] was a legend in her own time. Probably one of the most foremost people in adult education in the United States by the time she died. I remember fondly her talking about the 500 Basic English words – which I wonder why they can't be used today – done by some professor from England that came over here. She adopted that technique, and with the use of these 500 words apparently one could communicate and get along. 3 But above and beyond that, Margaret was a genuinely helpful person. She was the daughter of a pharmacist who had a drugstore in the area and in his time had learned to speak Italian to better serve his Italian-American clientele. Margaret has sort of been a legend in the memory of most of us in that particular period of history. She and her sister were always a helpful part of the community and probably helped bridge the differences between the Italian community, if you will, and the Irish community at a time when some saw the Italian movement as a quote unquote Latin invasion. Also at that time there were other people who were quite helpful to the Italian community. Miss [Courtney] and her sister, they were schoolteachers, and of course in those days they were unmarried. And also there was a Mary [Bartley] who was the principal of the Nolan School. These people all had a meaningful role and a large role in helping the Italo-Americans, or the newly arrived Italian immigrants, to get adjusted to the American way of life, learning the language and the expressions, and also sort of acted as a bridge in many cases between them and their Irish neighbors. SPEAKER 1: So how old were you when you remember going to these Americanization classes? JOE ADDANTE: Probably between five years old, six years old. Just prior to the first grade, and then also sometimes even after the first grade because some of them were conducted in the evening. SPEAKER 1: Was that your introduction to English, or did you hear it from friends? JOE ADDANTE: Well, we grew up speaking both languages without actually recognizing there was a difference. We spoke Italian at home; spoke English with our friends without even giving it a thought, frankly. Some of our friends who were attending the Immaculate Conception School had to learn French because the classes were conducted in French in those days. And some of 4 them grew up speaking English, Italian from home, and French from school, which became an advantage to them. SPEAKER 1: But prior to school you were probably living in an Italian neighborhood where there was… JOE ADDANTE: There was English spoken. My father, bear in mind my father had been 10 years before my mother had arrived. He had already become, I believe, a citizen. And he ran a checkbook, ran a business and spoke English in a very passable way, so that he did speak quite a bit of English at home in addition to Italian, hopefully encouraging my mother in her English, which she picked up very readily and read almost all the novels of those days, the classics. I remember her reading to me from Les Misérables in English, which I had forgotten until I saw the play in London and it all came back to me. Yeah. So my father was a very – and mother both, they were very literate people and they loved…they had read many of the classics in Italian and were sort of rediscovering them in English. SPEAKER 1: So tell me more. I tried to ask you this just a few minutes ago but your father, how he tried to get your mother to America and he had some sort of resistance or some… JOE ADDANTE: No. No. That was his mother. My father had no problem in those days getting his wife over here. But at the end of World War II my father had a love for bringing back his mother to this country, because he and both my uncles could have taken care of her very easily. But in going through the immigration papers it became complicated, and it dragged out. And my grandmother died in Italy without ever having seen her son again, and I never got to know her. And my father lost interest and decided never to return to Italy. It was a sad thing, because I had kind of hoped to go with him. In fact the first thing I did, meaningful thing, after his death was to go to Italy and to find out where his sister was, and my uncles, and the village and the home where he, the house where 5 he was born. And I have visited several times since. And I managed to bring my Franciscan uncle to this country for two visits, and so I began to bridge the communications between the cousins and uncles and aunts and that sort of thing. SPEAKER 1: So did Dominic or Rocco ever go back to Italy? JOE ADDANTE: Yes, my uncle Rocco went back in 1937, was married, and he had the same sad experience my father had. He was separated from his wife for 10 years until the end of World War II. When she came here then his son was born, Rocco. My uncle Dominic managed to go back a couple of times because he wanted to visit his sister, who was alive then, and his brother, which he did; then that was his last visit. SPEAKER 1: Okay. Now your father, how may siblings did he have? He had three brothers and… JOE ADDANTE: My father was from a family of 10 children. I think there were seven survivors: my father and his sister and three brothers that I knew, and another sister that I never knew but I met her children, and another sister that I never knew that survived to adulthood, if you will, you know. SPEAKER 1: And their names? JOE ADDANTE: Oh. SPEAKER 1 Do you remember them? JOE ADDANTE: My father's name was Joseph, his sister's name was Agatha, who was an extremely lucky woman in the very early days survived a double mastectomy and lived to be 85 or 86 years of age. SPEAKER 1: In the old country? JOE ADDANTE: In the old country, so it was done back in the days when surgery was primitive by today's standards. Then there was my uncle Rocco, was next. And I think there are a couple of sisters in between. One was [Anina]. To go down the list there was my father, Agatha, I think [Anina], Rocco, and then there was another sister whose name I don't remember, then my uncle 6 Dominic, and then my uncle Francesco who became the Franciscan. That I recall in the names and a couple others. SPEAKER 1: So I read somewhere that in the old days that a lot of marriages were arranged, but your father wished to choose his own wife? JOE ADDANTE: My father was a very independent person. He chose his own wife in a very romantic way and courted her with poetry. My father had a poetic flair. And I think he passed it on to his children, because we all love poetry. But the one problem was that they were of opposite political parties in their families. And my father's main reason for leaving Italy was not so much the opportunity, because he was a craftsman. He made handmade shoes and there was always a lot of work for him. So rather than stay home and get involved in squabbles, he left. He wrote to a friend of his who was in Maine. And the friend never answered but just sent him a ticket. I think it was a $35 steerage ticket in those days. My dad arrived in this country in 1910 and never went back. He landed in Boston, not Ellis Island. And then from there he went to Connecticut and got work with the railroad, because there were some Italian men that would take care of him as far as the language was concerned, while he was trying to learn English. And he stayed there for about three months. And they had an Italian daily newspaper in those days published in Italian for the immigrants. There were many such newspapers just like the Finnish [Raivaaja Press] here. There was an ad in the paper by a shoemaker in Fitchburg by the name of [Sisino], who was looking for a shoemaker. So my dad came to Fitchburg and he was here till he died. He worked for about four months with this man and because he could not arrange to have his evenings off to go to night school to learn English, he quit the job because his primary interest was in learning English. He got another job working at one of the 7 mills; I think the [Beuline] Mill was the name of it. And he worked there for a short period of time, finally saved enough to get a little shop started. And by 1912 he was able to send for his brother to help him in the business. And by 1915 he had bought a building of his own. Tried to send for my mother, World War I broke out and that became an impossibility until the 1920s when my mother and my other Uncle Dominic came together from Italy. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. Now, what about the political party? Can you tell me more about – he didn't want to become involved in any squabbles in Italy and that his wife… JOE ADDANTE: Yeah, my father was not much of a political animal. He saw politics for what it was, in many ways, but not a very… in his mind a very constructive thing anyway. More than that I never heard. I guess he did like my uncle. My mother's brother was a very political person and very active. And I think the… if there was any antagonism it was between my mother's brother and my father's family, if you will, being opposing political persuasions. Whether it was conservative or liberal in those days I don't know. I never really got a handle on it. But my uncle Luigi, my mother's brother, was mayor of three villages at the same time. Because, you know, you had to be a property owner in order to run for political office and you had to be a property owner before you could vote. It was a democracy, but it was a selective democracy in those days. But he was very active, and his wife had died with only one surviving child after having gone through many pregnancies. So it was he and his daughter who actually grew up with my mother as a sister, although she was a niece, because my uncle was the oldest and my mother was the youngest of a large family; but they were the only two survivors. In those day that was not uncommon. And Giovannina, who was my mother's cousin, was almost like her sister and they grew up together 8 and they used to communicate a lot. But then my mother joined my dad here in 1920. But the political thing was not something that my father was interested in and he just got away from it. I think that is the best thing he did because he thoroughly enjoyed this country. SPEAKER 1: Now his wife, your mother, was from the same small village? JOE ADDANTE: Oh yes, they were practically across-the-street neighbors. I mean, the village today has only a population of about 1000. And in those days it was probably a little bigger because they had larger families, and it was mainly an agricultural village to begin with. It is now still slightly agricultural but more on a hobby basis and it has become the weekend place for those that grew up in the village and sought work in the cities nearby. And they go back there on weekends and they fixed up the maternal and paternal homes into the weekend places to rest and enjoy. It's very interesting what they've done with the village, because it has become a very pretty, enjoyable place, because there is very little work being done there except a few tomato plants here and there, and olive trees and that sort of thing. SPEAKER 1: Tell us the name of the village. JOE ADDANTE: The name of the village is [Carpineto Sulla Nora] because it's on the [Nora] River and it's in the province of [Piscada], which is on the Adriatic side of Italy and it is basically central Italy; almost directly East of Rome. SPEAKER 1: Okay. And what region would that be? JOE ADDANTE: That would be [Abruzzi], is the province. The [regione] is province. It is [Piscada]. They refer to their states as regions and then what we call counties they call provinces. SPEAKER 1: Right, so the region is… JOE ADDANTE: And what we call counties they call parishes. [La Paroche de]… SPEAKER 1: Okay.9 JOE ADDANTE: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: So your father, he learned the craft from his father? JOE ADDANTE: From his father, who had learned it from his father. No, but my father was actually apprenticed out, and he had to serve a three-year apprentice in order to be a master craftsman in those days. And he had to live and became almost like an indentured servant when you were an apprentice. You lived away from home, you lived with the master, and after the three years you came back home and you were considered a guild member kind of thing. SPEAKER 1: Where was he sent? Do you know? JOE ADDANTE: Probably 20 miles away. And I never got the name of the town. The only thing I ever heard was he did not enjoy the meals because they weren't like his mothers. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: They never are. Now, why would your father not have learned from his father? JOE ADDANTE: It just wasn't done. It wasn't done in terms of you wouldn't be recognized as a true craftsman if you learned from your father. Although my father did teach his brothers, but that's the way it was done, and it cost money. He had to pay for it, and it was sort of a tuition, if you will. And that was done mainly for shoemakers, tailors, cabinetmakers, bearing in mind in those days you could not go out and buy finished furniture that easily, or even caskets for the dead. You know, these people had the cabinetmakers. My mother would tell me that they would have coffins half finished and they would just finish them for the day of the funeral. SPEAKER 1: Okay. JOE ADDANTE: Shoes had to be made, my father would actually go out to these large estates where they had tenant farmers and that sort of thing and they would make shoes for everybody there. They would stay probably a week. They would make 10 or 15 pairs of shoes and repair their saddles and all leatherwork. It was a whole kind of activity. And they would do that for 50 or 60 10 miles around. Very interesting kind of… they would go, they'd pack their tools, pack a mule, go off and get this work done and come back. SPEAKER 1: Did they work on the leather itself? JOE ADDANTE: Oh yes. They didn't tan it; they bought tanned leather. But then they would start from scratch. They made their own patterns, their own lasts, they did their own measurements. It was incredible. My father could look at a foot and with a piece of tape he would make a last to make a shoe. But that's the way they were trained, you know. SPEAKER 1: Now, did he continue doing that when he came here? Did it change much? JOE ADDANTE: When he came here the polio was a very prevalent problem, and he made a lot of shoes for polio victims, or he modified a lot of shoes. Then he got into the actual shoe repairing. In fact I, much of that influence rubbed off of me and I got interested in being a podiatrist because of that. I could see him put lifts on shoes. I remember I made my first pair of shoes with my dad when I was about nine or 10 years old, helping him out and learning how to do it. I sort of grew up with it. And my uncles worked with him and then we had three shoe repair shops going at one time. My dad also wholesaled leather and heels, and nails, and stitching material for the shoes. He became a finder. So he covered the whole gamut of the shoe thing. SPEAKER 1: Just so we can record this, tell me what the process was that you remember. For example, when someone wanted a pair of shoes they would come and see your father or his brothers and…? JOE ADDANTE: The first thing they would do is have them stand up on a piece of paper and they would outline the foot. And then – and my dad did this without half the education I had in terms of this. But he says, "You know, when you put the weight on the foot that is the real size." And he would measure this out. Then he would measure the girth of the foot, just like the waist of a11 body, around the foot. Then he'd also measure around the ankle and he got these measurements. Then if he had a ready-made last, he could use that. If he didn't he'd have to make one or modify one, because he had certain basic ones that had been pre-made, because manufactured lasts began to come out. They were made in [Lynn], Mass. In fact [Lynn] was apparently the foundation of the shoe trade in the United States. Then he would modify that. Then he would proceed to make a pattern of the leather and the lining. Now this was done in our living room, if you called it that. My father had this sewing machine, and this is where we could cut the patterns out and then assemble the upper of the shoe, and then he'd put it on the last. Now, putting that on the last, you cut off an insole that you put on the bottom of the last which would be the sole, the bottom of the foot. Then the leather was drawn over that. Then it was stitched and a welt was put on, called a Goodyear welt because that was an American process. And it was stitched by hand, and then to that was fastened the sole. And that was the intriguing part, because when you had a polio victim one foot usually was, or one leg would be shorter than the other, or sometimes you had to put a weight because as a shriveled-up limb, as a result of the polio, would not grow unless it was pulled on. So by adding weight to the shoe, as the youngsters would try to run it would pull on that leg and encourage a little extra growth. And I remember weighing those things and they were half a pound, or a pound or three pounds, whatever it was, to try to bring that leg to its fullest capacity, even though it had been affected by the polio.12 So there were a lot of interesting little details involved, but that is basically it. And then though we put the eyelets on, there was a machine that put the eyelets and laces and sometimes we had to cut laces and cut a special tip on, because on some of these patients they had a higher type of shoe: sort of a semi-boot like a trucker boot effect to hold it on a shriveled limb. SPEAKER 1: Were there different styles that people could choose from? JOE ADDANTE: Not as it is today. Far from it. Far from it. In fact, I remember the transitional period when shoes went from being nailed to being stitched. Because they would use little tacks, the old tacking shoemaker. When the machines came in, I think my dad was one of the first ones to have an electric stitching machine in New England. And other people who did shoes in the area would bring them to him. They'd do everything else but stitch them, and he would stitch them on the machine and he got a fee for stitching these shoes for them. SPEAKER 1: Where did he buy that machine? JOE ADDANTE: He couldn't buy it. SPEAKER 1: Oh, he had to… JOE ADDANTE: He couldn't buy it. He had to get it from the Goodyear stitching company and there was a royalty, there was actually a stitch meter. And you paid by the stitch. They would come and read the meter. And in fact his company, the Goodyear stitching company, not the rubber company, they actually were sued after World War II. It went that long before people were allowed to buy them because it was considered a monopoly and they were cracked. But the insidious part of it all, which was very unfair, following World War I they started making these machines. They were on royalty in this country, but they were being sold overseas, so that the overseas shoemakers began to compete with ours in a very unfair way, because the foreign laws did not protect the copyright, the patent laws that we have here. That was an interesting… SPEAKER 1: Must be. So how was it that your father was given this? 13 JOE ADDANTE: Well, he read about it and decided he needed one. He was sort of an avant-garde kind of person anyway. He got it. He had to pay for it. He couldn't own it outright. You had to buy it but then you have to pay the royalty on it, so it was a two-way hook-up, you know [laughter]. SPEAKER 1: So was he…did he follow…did he do each step of the shoe or did he do some of it and then handed it over to his brothers, or…? JOE ADDANTE: Well, they all did. They worked together. SPEAKER 1: They worked together? JOE ADDANTE: They worked independently, and they worked together. And sometimes it would be like a little mass production line on a small scale. One would do one and one would do the other, depending what they were doing that day. And of course to run these machines, you had to heat them up. They were gas fired because rosin was in there and rosin had to be… you had to melt the rosin till it was soft, because when the thread went through there to give it strength, it was dipped in and out of the rosin. So they didn't run that stitcher every day. They would run it like three times a week. So the other days would be in preparation for that. Much like the old tailors did when they had the steam presses. They would get all their work done, and they would press on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I used to see that in the neighboring tailor's shop. That was an interesting experience, too./AT/ca/sg

Interview with Elsie Puputti of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Topics include: Elsie Puputti was born in Finland, June 26, 1932. He father died when she was very young and her mother struggled to raise her and her siblings on their small farm. Memories of how poor the conditions were in Finland and what it was like during the war. Mrs Puputti's mother had been born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and eventually was able to return with three of her daughters January 6, 1949. Arriving in New York harbor and her first memories of the U.S., how things compared to Finland. The help her aunt was to her family when they first arrived. She worked as a maid until she was married in 1951. She went to night school to learn more English. Going to church, social activities, and how she met her husband. Customs she missed from Finland and traditions she kept. How Mrs. Puputti started her store. Her children and their interests. How her life in the U.S. compares to what it would have been like in ; 1 INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Puputti, where were you born? MRS. PUPUTTI: I was born in Finland. INTERVIEWER: In what? MRS. PUPUTTI: [Unintelligible - 00:00:06]. INTERVIEWER: And when was that? MRS. PUPUTTI: 1932. INTERVIEWER: What month? MRS. PUPUTTI: June 26. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you briefly describe what your earlier years were like there, like what was your family like? MRS. PUPUTTI: Uh, well, we had a very small home. We were -- my father died when I was very young. I was only three years old. My mother took care of us, six of us. And everything was quite poor, I think. Very much, we didn't have very much of anything, you know? My mother was born here in Fitchburg. And after my father had died, she tried to struggle on. We had a little piece of land. And, and she wanted to -- she figured when we get a little bit older she wants to come back to Fitchburg, try to see if she can make a little better life for us here. INTERVIEWER: Did she, did you live on a farm, like? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Yeah? So she had to the farm work and all of you helped? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Small farm? MRS. PUPUTTI: Very small, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Uh, what kind of uh education did you or your brothers and sisters have? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, we all went to like a grammar school or like [unintelligible - 00:01:22] that type of a school. INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. MRS. PUPUTTI: Then two years after that, that's how extensive my education.2 INTERVIEWER: Because after that you usually have to pay for your education, and a lot of people couldn't go then. So you can remember times were sort of poor or anything like that? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. We had sometimes very rough times. Most of the time we always had food, except right after my father died. That was the hardest time. But then after that we always managed to have food. And then we had relatives here. My aunts, they used to send us packages. In the wartime we could get clothes and things like that. To me, a lot of times we were almost better off than some of the other families [unintelligible - 00:02:12] they had bigger houses and more land. INTERVIEWER: You were happy as a child, I think? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. I can't remember being really miserable. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any important events that happened? Like you said you were there during the war. Can you remember anything about the occupation and the revolutions? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, where we lived, we weren't really touched that much, except that I remember when we did receive lot of… what do you call [unintelligible - 00:02:43] other people that move to our…? INTERVIEWER: Refugees? MRS. PUPUTTI: Refugees. Yeah. We took care of some of them and tried to get them housing and helping like that. I was… I can't remember. I must have been about -- I don't even know how old I was, maybe 12 years old. Could be that I'm wrong with my… INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Do you remember any bombings or anything like that? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, we didn't have bombings in where we lived. Not even close. We saw the planes go over, but that's all. INTERVIEWER: Why did you decide to come to this country? Or your mother made the decision, right? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. I was young. I was 16, 15, 16 years old. She just wanted to come here. We were young. Three girls, my oldest sister and my 3 younger sister. And she just decided to take us with her because we weren't married or anything. She wanted to, you know, keep us together. INTERVIEWER: So she left some of the children in Finland? MRS. PUPUTTI: She left two of the older girls. My brother died in the war. That was the one of the hardest part for me. He was my only brother. He died. But there was five girls, and two of them were married, so they stayed. INTERVIEWER: So this was something that your mother had planned for quite a while, right? She had always hoped that when she figured you were older to come over here? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: How did the others feel about the choice to come over here? Did your relatives say they thought it was a good idea, or did they tell you not to? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. Those days it was very hard to get here. That was 1949. Very few people got in. And I remember my mother got in the US because she was born here and she got her citizen papers back. And that was the only reason we were able to make it here. And like I said, we had waited for I think it was about two years for our papers to come through. So it is something that she -- remember, see, she was 13 years old when she left, so she remembers what it was like here. Because we were very, very excited. I was. My older sister wasn't. She had boyfriends, so I guess she wanted to stay. But I was very excited, and my younger sister was very excited. INTERVIEWER: When did you leave? Do you know what date it was? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. We came here January 6, 1949. So it took us about 11 days to… INTERVIEWER: Eleven days to -- and did you come over by boat? MRS. PUPUTTI: By boat, yeah. 4 INTERVIEWER: What was that like? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, I was very sick. INTERVIEWER: Were most of the family sick? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: Very sick. But it was very exciting because I had never been in a huge ship. INTERVIEWER: Was it a nice boat? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Were you all crowded, or…? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, we had a nice room. We had… the name of the boat was Stockholm. That's a Swedish line. It's one of those big ocean liners. There isn't too many left like that. INTERVIEWER: So aside from being sick, it was a comfortable, pleasant ride. MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, yes. It was very nice. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember if it cost very much? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, I think my ticket was $120, because I remember my aunt had paid for it and, you know, here. And after I started working, that was the first thing I did was to pay my ticket. INTERVIEWER: So your relatives here in Fitchburg helped pay for all of you to come over [unintelligible - 00:06:26] because that would be difficult for your mother to raise that much money for all of you. Once you were on the way, did you have any second thoughts about coming, or were you just -- like you said, you were excited, really? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, we were very apprehensive. Very, very -- you know, looking forward and thinking about what it's gonna be like. INTERVIEWER: What place did you enter this country? Do you remember? MRS. PUPUTTI: New York. INTERVIEWER: Was it Ellis Island, or… MRS. PUPUTTI: No, not anymore.5 INTERVIEWER: Just New York harbor? MRS. PUPUTTI: Just like any other tourist. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what the first thing was that you saw in this country? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. To me, the most striking thing was when I saw the Black people the first time. Then I see some nuns, and I had never seen that. That to me was -- you know, I keep my eye on them quite a while. Then I had picture of the city much different. I had thought it was so beautiful, but there's nothing that can describe. But then it was quite dirty, and I was disappointed, actually. But then… INTERVIEWER: The buildings were tall though. MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. That was something exciting, but… INTERVIEWER: And the Statue of Liberty, things like that. MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. But still, it was so different that it always stays in my mind. INTERVIEWER: So you felt a little disappointed but still happy? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, still very excited. INTERVIEWER: Was there any type of welcome for you? MRS. PUPUTTI: Nothing big. My aunt came to pick us up. We came from New York to Fitchburg in a bus. INTERVIEWER: Was that the first time you've ever been in a bus? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. INTERVIEWER: No. MRS. PUPUTTI: We had buses in Finland. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Was there any kind of confusion, like did you have a communication problem finding your aunt? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. INTERVIEWER: No, she was right there. MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you speak any English at all? MRS. PUPUTTI: No.6 INTERVIEWER: Or any of your family? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. My mother did, few words. She had… INTERVIEWER: She had spoken… MRS. PUPUTTI: But she had forgotten. INTERVIEWER: Forgotten? Yeah. Did you have to go through any formalities here, or were they in Finland that you had to…? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. Only that they'd check your papers. INTERVIEWER: No physicals? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. INTERVIEWER: At least in Finland you probably had to. MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, we had to go through all the -- we had to get the shots and everything. It was very, very strict. You had to get all kinds of papers. But here they just checked them and… INTERVIEWER: Did you notice any differences when you were traveling from New York to Fitchburg? Did you notice any differences compared to Finland? Like was the land flatter? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. Actually, the roads first, that was something that I had never seen, huge roads. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: Highways. And then the scenery, everything was so much cleaner. The woods are so thick with the underbrush. Things like that. We had clean woods. I mean, you can see. INTERVIEWER: Oh yeah, clear. MRS. PUPUTTI: And then the hills, we had no flat. INTERVIEWER: How about the climate? Did you notice any difference in the temperature? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, it's… INTERVIEWER: Well, you came in January, so it was pretty… MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, it was about the same. It was cold here as well. INTERVIEWER: Did you find any differences between like the winters in Finland and how it is around here? Some people say they're more 7 unpredictable. Like in Finland, you get constant snow, whereas here you can get a blizzard. MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, in Finland you never get two feet at one time. No. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: So that is different, and the air is dryer. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Did you meet any American people along the way, or mostly you were just traveling with your aunt? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. I can't remember. No. INTERVIEWER: Were you pretty much excited still, or were you disappointed at the changes in scenery? Was it still exciting? MRS. PUPUTTI: When we got here, it was very nice. Houses were so big, but not to me, because we're used to it now. But going along the Mechanic Street, and all that Elm Street, High Street apartments, there were these [unintelligible - 00:10:37] and things that look so, so different. I had never pictured nothing like that. INTERVIEWER: Were you disappointed, or you liked it? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, I think it was very unusual. Something about it, I can't put it into words, but it was exciting, somehow so different. INTERVIEWER: Did you and your mother and the other girls, did they stay with your aunt then? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, she had gotten us apartment already. We were our own family right away. INTERVIEWER: And did she get a job somewhere? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. We got jobs, all of us. My youngest sister, Lisa, went to school, but the others, we had to go to work. INTERVIEWER: What did your mother get for a job? MRS. PUPUTTI: We mostly did the housework [unintelligible - 00:11:18] but you have to do [unintelligible - 00:11:21] so did I. INTERVIEWER: Did you do housework for other people? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: And your other sister too?8 MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. I was like a maid for [unintelligible - 00:11:30] different things until I got married and I quit. INTERVIEWER: When did you get married? MRS. PUPUTTI: Two years later, '51. I met my husband here. He had come from Finland too. INTERVIEWER: Did you ever get a chance to go back to school or to learn English in school? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, I did go to night school. That's how we [unintelligible - 00:11:50] learn to speak clearly. INTERVIEWER: Otherwise you picked it up? MRS. PUPUTTI: But then you just picked it up on the way. INTERVIEWER: I'm surprised how well the people do that I interviewed when they say they just had like a short time in night school and they just picked it up. It's hard to believe you can do so well. Did you look for a neighborhood that had mostly people of your own nationality, like Finnish people? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. That's not so much that we looked for it, just that… INTERVIEWER: They were all there. MRS. PUPUTTI: … they were right there. INTERVIEWER: Were they friendly? Were the neighbors friendly? MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, yes. We never had any problems with them. INTERVIEWER: Did it take much time for you to become involved in the church or social activities in this area? MRS. PUPUTTI: Not in the church. We were not immediately, because my mother is very religious and we all are. So we naturally started with the church that -- it was right in the neighborhood, too, the Messiah Lutheran Church. It's just been with us ever since. INTERVIEWER: So you got into church activities and events like that? How about social activities, like dances or picnics?9 MRS. PUPUTTI: A little bit. They used to have like a [unintelligible - 00:12:58] society. They used to have dances those days, but they don't have that much anymore, like [unintelligible - 00:13:02]. INTERVIEWER: Right. Did you use to go? MRS. PUPUTTI: It used to be a little bit [unintelligible - 00:13:08] like they had shows, we used to act and things like that. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. You took part in it? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, a little bit, but nothing too much. That was one thing that I was -- we were very, very lonesome Christian girls. Very lonesome. We missed our old friends and… INTERVIEWER: Boyfriends and things? Is that how you met your husband, through one of these? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. It was quite interesting. I had met one older gentleman here in evening classes in high school, and he used to tell me about this very interesting boy he used to know and he used to live with in Sweden. And he says if he ever gets here, I would very much like you two to meet. So when my husband came here, first time this gentleman introduced us. And actually, he brought him to my home. That's where I met him very first time, in my own home. So somehow I just end up right away. He was so different, so refreshing coming from [unintelligible - 00:14:12]. INTERVIEWER: Must have been nice he could tell you about [unintelligible - 00:14:15]. What were some of the things that you missed most about Finland, like food or any customs? Did your mother still cook Finnish food? MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, yeah. Yes. It's not so much that I -- I don't know if I missed anything like that so much, any of the foods or customs or anything like that, just that there's a certain kind of atmosphere, a certain kind of feeling for everybody where they have been or something long years, but not any particular thing.10 INTERVIEWER: Just miss the whole thing. Yeah. Did you keep up any customs? Did your mother practice customs? MRS. PUPUTTI: I suppose so, if you really start to think about it. Like Christmastime, we always had the kinkkus. INTERVIEWER: What's that? MRS. PUPUTTI: That's pork. Fresh pork we cook, [unintelligible - 00:15:14] fish and things like that. INTERVIEWER: You still kept that? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah, we still keep that up. Easter time we used to have special foods we're used to making. Not so much anymore. INTERVIEWER: How about holidays? Did you still have any? [Unintelligible - 00:15:26] maybe all the Finnish people practiced holidays? Could you ever get hold of anything like Finnish books, things like that? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes, we did. Let's see. Oh, I suppose [unintelligible - 00:15:43] well, I have to think of it. I can't remember. INTERVIEWER: You could still read Finnish books? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. But I can't remember how we got them, but I know there was some. INTERVIEWER: Okay. What were some of things you enjoyed most about your new life? Anything special? Any more conveniences or better pay? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, yeah. The food was so nice. That was one thing that was very good. And then the cars, you know, started coming out that we had never had a chance to drive like we did here. Well, everything was faster and a bigger scale than what I was used to. INTERVIEWER: Did you like that? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. Yes, it's something that we'd pursue. Let me think. What would be some other things that would be nice? INTERVIEWER: Would you have had a chance to have your own shop? How did you get involved in this?11 MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, I know I wouldn't have had the chance to have this own shop like this that I have here. Well, see, one thing though Finland's been always very up to date on fashion, and the quality is superb. My brother-in-law in Finland has a big clothing store, and we used to get these for Christmas and we used to visit them. Like in 1969, the whole family, we went over, and just to see that store. It just inspired me to think that, "Why couldn't we have something like that in Fitchburg with all the Finnish people here?" So it would really be something special for them. So I had dreamed about it, but I didn't really think that I'll ever do it. But then one time a couple years ago, after I was talking with my sister, she got so excited that, "Go ahead, do it," that I go to my brother-in-law and see what he thinks if he could give me the factories and people to send me some things, you know. It's hard for you to get started and then you still have some factories send you some things and they don't know anything about you. But he was good help with me that way that he got them to send me some things, and then that's how it started. It's two years now and they keep sending us. And it's so nice because it's so different. Everything is so well-made. People seem to like -- like I said, steady customers. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: Continual. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I meant to ask you, did you ever have any children after you got married? MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, yeah. I have a daughter and a son. Daughter is 20 and my son is 18. INTERVIEWER: What do they do? MRS. PUPUTTI: She sells right here. She is going to Graham Junior College for this retailing and merchandising, and the boy is going to Worcester Tech. My husband has a small machine shop, so we have two small businesses in Fitchburg.12 INTERVIEWER: Cool. MRS. PUPUTTI: Our son is interested in that life. He wants to be engineer. INTERVIEWER: Keep in the family. MRS. PUPUTTI: It's not that we push him, but it's what he enjoys. INTERVIEWER: No, it's his choice. Were you able to understand the local newspapers and magazines and radio and things like that? MRS. PUPUTTI: First, right away when we came, there was a Finnish program on the air that time. And actually, we were interviewed. INTERVIEWER: Oh, yeah? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. Because it was so unusual for new people to come, immigrants to come from Finland at that time. And there was [unintelligible - 00:19:48] the Finnish newspaper we used to read… INTERVIEWER: So you could keep up with the news? MRS. PUPUTTI: [Unintelligible - 00:19:52] anymore after you get used to the English one. And things like that. And we used to -- like in the church we could hear Finnish language all these years. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: We still have Finnish services. INTERVIEWER: So do you speak at home? MRS. PUPUTTI: Not anymore. INTERVIEWER: Do you speak it with your husband, possibly? MRS. PUPUTTI: No. INTERVIEWER: No. MRS. PUPUTTI: Very seldom anymore. It's not that we don't want to. It's just INTERVIEWER: It's that you're so used to… MRS. PUPUTTI: … that we're so used to. And I remember first we wanted to learn English, so we purposely said that we're not going to speak in Finnish so we could learn it, and then it became a habit. INTERVIEWER: So the children never picked up Finnish? MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, they did.13 INTERVIEWER: Oh, they did? MRS. PUPUTTI: They did. And they still understand almost all of it. And they can even speak quite a bit. INTERVIEWER: That's good. I think it's good to keep it in the family if you can. How about political preference? Do you have any, and how'd you choose? MRS. PUPUTTI: I'm strictly independent. I used to vote when I feel the man deserves it. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Okay. Did you ever take any active parts? Did you ever campaign for anybody? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, not really. INTERVIEWER: After you had lived here for a while, do you ever write back to people in Finland and tell them to come over, encourage them? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. Nine years ago I got my sister's family here. I was responsible for it. It was eight people. That was one of the biggest families that had come from all time. And they were interviewed on the boat, and they was taking pictures and everything because it was unusual. Large families like that doesn't usually get up all and just leave. INTERVIEWER: Did they stay in Fitchburg? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes, they're still here. INTERVIEWER: They enjoyed it? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yeah. The oldest boy went through air course, and he's living in Alaska now. INTERVIEWER: Oh. So they're happy that you gave them that advice? Would you ever consider going back to Finland to live? MRS. PUPUTTI: No, I don't think so. I love to go there, you know, and stay for a while. Unless when I'm really old, I don't know. INTERVIEWER: After you retire or something?14 MRS. PUPUTTI: See, we feel it's home here in Fitchburg. We have a home in Rindge Road, and we've been there for 15 years. The children were born there. It would be too hard now to… INTERVIEWER: This is where your roots are now. Yeah. MRS. PUPUTTI: … cut everything and… INTERVIEWER: You have gone back to Finland though? MRS. PUPUTTI: We have, yes. INTERVIEWER: How many times? MRS. PUPUTTI: Quite a few times. First time we went 1969, then I've gone twice after that. INTERVIEWER: Did you notice the changes that are happening over there? MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh, yes. And we do have to say that Finland goes much faster than we do here in Fitchburg, much faster. INTERVIEWER: They caught up to United States standards and all. MRS. PUPUTTI: Oh yes. And the housing and everything is -- they are building much more than we are here, much more. INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that generally life has worked out better for you here than it would have in Finland? MRS. PUPUTTI: Yes, I really think so. I feel maybe -- like I said, my husband and I, we took the chances on business here. I feel a lot American people, they probably wouldn't have dared to try to do what we do. But because we came here, we didn't have anything… INTERVIEWER: You couldn't lose anything. MRS. PUPUTTI: So we feel that even if we have something little bit now, we came with nothing. That's what my husband says, he came with $20, and if he leaves with $20 that's fine. INTERVIEWER: Wow. Do you feel your children have a better chance in this country than they would've in Finland? Or do you think now it's different, maybe?15 MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, they probably do. But right now over there if you're ambitious you can go almost as far over there as you can here. I feel that in our case it was better here. INTERVIEWER: Of any plans that you made when you came here, is there any you haven't achieved yet that you regret? Or have you really accomplished more than you probably ever expected? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, see, I never thought of going into business while I was at home and taking care of the children when they were smaller. So to me, this is something that I didn't even think of doing until the last minute. I think I've done better than I've really expected. INTERVIEWER: That's good. What is the most important advantage you feel that you have as a citizen of this country? MRS. PUPUTTI: Well, even things are much rougher now here than they were when I first came. I remember how we used to keep the doors open, now we have to lock everything up. All that was much nicer then, but I still think that Americans have more freedom than any other country in the whole world. Even if Finland is free, but there's still some certain logical things about -- well, I suppose from Russia because they're so close. I feel that people don't appreciate that feeling; they abuse it. That makes me awful upset sometimes, you know. They should go someplace to live where, really, you can't speak that clear. Yeah, you cannot blast the president in any place. You can't really do that. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that's true. Many times you hear people say they long for the good old days. When you think back at what the good old days was supposed to be for you, which would you rather have, the good old days or now? MRS. PUPUTTI: I think I'd rather have now. I think it's a saying, "the good old days." I can't say that I have anything in -- my life was anything so terrible that I want to take back. But I still like the present. I still feel that we're going ahead. It doesn't mean that I value the 16 money or want to be something rich or something like that so much. It's just that unless you can pay your bills and be comfortable and happy in your everyday life, that's the [unintelligible - 00:26:02]. INTERVIEWER: So you feel you've lived a good life? MRS. PUPUTTI: I think so. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Thank you./AT/jf/ah/es

Transcript of part one of the interview with Patrick Ryan about his experiences in the Army during World War I. He discusses his early life in Springfield, how he was drafted, his opinion on the war when it started and in the early days of the war in Europe, his training at Fort Devens, and some experiences he had during the fighting on the front in Germany and in France. ; World War I Transcriptions Date of Transcription: 3/21/18 Transcriber: John Pino (Interview Begins) Timothy Tierney (Interviewer): Tierney. Patrick Ryan (Interviewee): Tierney huh? I used to run with a fella by the name of Ed Tierney back in Springfield. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah, but that was quite a while ago though. Tierney: Yeah, distant cousins maybe. Ryan: Yeah, that was back in 1912 to 1914. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah I'm 80 years old. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yep. Tierney: Ah. Well I'm doin' an oral history project and the topic is: World War I. The date is March 23rd, and I'm here with Patrick Francis Ryan here in Fitchburg Mass. And I guess to star with; can you tell me the date and place of your birth? Ryan: Uhh, Springfield. Tierney: Springfield Mass.? Ryan: Mass. December 17th 1894. Tierney: 1894 huh? What kind of family did you come from? Ryan: A regular family, Irish. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Irish-Catholic family? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Ah yeah, (clears throat), were you a working family would you say? Ryan: I had 3 brothers. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: And uhh… I worked for the street railway in Springfield for 47 years. I got retired. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: At 63 (age). Tierney: Uh huh, just been taking it easy since then? Ryan: No I've been workin' down in lawbury house. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: For 10 years, going on 10 years. Tierney: How about your parents? Were they workin' people or…? Ryan: Yes they were. Tierney: yeah… would you classify yourself as maybe…? Ryan: Huh? Tierney: Would you say you were middle class or? Ryan: Middle class. Tierney: Middle class family? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Uhh, you ever have any strong political feelings in your family? Ryan: Just the fact that I've been a Democrat for most of my life. Tierney: So everyone's mostly Democrat? Ryan: So is the family. Tierney: Yeah, how about Springfield; did you live in Springfield proper right in the city? Ryan: All my life. Tierney: Yeah? It must have been a pretty big city back then. Ryan: The city now is about 160 or 70 thousand. Tierney: Yeah, I've been through there a couple times. Ryan: Oh course you got… I think you got 3 colleges down there. You got the Springfield College, the AIC (American International College), uhh… they got the Springfield Community College, there's 4 or 5 colleges down there now! Tierney: Yeah, yeah. How about uh, how about your school? Did you go to public school? Ryan: Public school. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: I went up to the 8th grade. Tierney: 8th grade? You didn't have any high school? Ryan: No, no high school. Tierney: What, did you just go to work? Ryan: Just went to work after I was 14. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yup. Tierney: How much money you make back then? Ryan: You'd be surprised, I worked at ports and (unintelligible) for 2 and half dollars a week! Tierney (bewildered): 2 dollars and a half a week? Ryan: That's right. Tierney: Jeez, you get much more now for only an hour more! Ryan: Welp, ummm, then I went down to (unintelligible) in 1916 (clears throat) and uh, from 1914 to 15 we made 35 dollars a week polishing. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yup, and then in 1916 I went on the trolley car and we got 14 dollars a week for 7 days a week! Tierney: That's somethin'. Ryan: I worked on that until I got drafted in April of 1918. Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: Then I was in the army from April to August. (Clears throat and coughs heavily) April 1918 to August 1919! Tierney: Yeah, yeah. How about now, in June of 1914 that's when the war first broke out. Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: You must have been workin', where were you workin at the time? Ryan: Springfield, (unintelligible). Tierney: What did you think about it? When you first heard the news of uh… well really I guess it was built up for a long time but what finally triggered it was when that Serb patriot (Patriot? Contemporary historians would probably refer to Gavrilo Princip as a nationalist, or a even a terrorist) killed that archduke uhhh… Ryan: Ferdinand. Tierney: Yeah right, but anyway how did you first hear the news? Newspaper maybe? Or…? Ryan: The newspapers. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: There wasn't much radio then. Tierney: No? Ryan: No. Tierney: I almost said T.V. too! Ryan: No, it was newspaper. Tierney: So like, in 1914, just what did you think of it when you first heard the news of the war? Ryan: I thought we'd get involved after a while, and we were. Tierney: You did think we would get involved? Ryan: When they sunk the Lusitania, that's when the United States got into it. Tierney: Yeah that was one of the big reasons. How about when during 1914, did you think most people really thought about the war? Ryan: Their own thoughts about it? Some thought it was going to last for a while, others thought it would be all over. Tierney: Hm. Ryan: People thought that Ferdinand's country would fight against who assassinated him and then Germany comes in, Kaiser Wilhelm or… Tierney: The second. Ryan: Yeah, Kaiser Wilhelm II, he got his big army goin'. And then everything broke open… the United States was into it. Italy, France… we were in supporting action for 42 days after the Chateau-Thierry front, we went right into the Saint-Mihiel into the Argonne… Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: Then from the Argonne into the army of occupation. Tierney: Ok, getting back to the start of the war, like in 1914 and 1915, those years, was you yourself or most people for England and against Germany? Ryan: They were Germany, most of em'. Tierney: How about the Irish-Catholics? Ryan: Irish-Catholics were against England. Tierney: Right. Ryan: It was in 1916 when the Black and Tans went into Ireland (Irish royal soldiers who went to Ireland to reestablish British control during the Easter Rising, infamous reputation for killing civilians and terrorism). Tierney: Hm. Ryan: Do you remember readin' about the Black and Tans? Tierney: I've heard of it, yeah. Ryan: It was the massacre, the 1916 massacre of the Black and Tans in Ireland (Ryan might be getting the Black and Tans confused with the Irish nationalists that staged the Easter Rising in 1916). Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: My old (unintelligible), he was dead set against the English. Tierney: Yeah, there was a lot of- Ryan: He used to call em' "dirty limeys." Tierney: Oh yeah? Hm. You said that for the most part people were against Germany? Ryan: Yes. Tierney: Was there any propaganda? Any movies or anything like that against Germany? Ryan: I don't remember any movies. Tierney: How about the newspapers and stuff? Ryan: Newspapers were on the allied side. Tierney: Yeah, England, France and… yeah. Do you remember the execution of nurse Edith Cavell? Ryan: I've heard of it, the Germans killed her. Tierney: Yeah, she was an English nurse and the Germans executed her. Ryan: They took her and thought she was a spy. Tierney: Yeah, yeah that was the reason they gave. How about during the first couple years of the war, you know, 14' and 15', how about U-boat activities? You mentioned earlier the Lusitania, that was sunk on May 7th, 1915. Ryan: The Germans had a good fleet of U-boats. Tierney: Mhm. Ryan: The United States was caught red-handed! They got caught with their pants down, they didn't have nothin'. Tierney: What do you mean, they weren't- Ryan: They weren't prepared. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Then when the war was declared, they went to work and everyone started to work double time, overtime, big money to get goin'. Tierney: That was another question I was just going to ask about, Wilson was president then. Ryan: Wilson was president then, yes. Tierney: Do you think that he should have- he always tried to until the very last moment say that "America is gonna stay neutral," you know? Ryan: Yeah, he got elected on the slogan "He kept em' out of war." Tierney: Yeah, yeah. Ryan (correcting himself): "He kept us out of war." Tierney: You think Wilson should have worked harder to prepare? Ryan: Yes he did. He got all the appropriations so he could build all the war materials. Tierney: Yeah, yeah. So how about umm, how about getting back again to the Lusitania. What did people think about when that sunk? Ryan: When the Lusitania was sunk, they said "there's other ships that are gonna be sunk too." Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: And there was. Tierney: Do you think that's what really antagonized the Americans? Ryan: Yes and that's what brought the Americans into the war! Tierney: Do you remember the election of 1916? The presidential election? Ryan: That was when Wilson was elected. Tierney: Yeah, Wilson and Charles Evans Hughs for the Republicans. Ryan: Yeah, he was in Massachusetts (Hughs). Tierney: Yeah, Hughes, he won in Massachusetts, he won this state. Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Do you remember who you voted for then? Ryan (coughing): I voted for Wilson. Tierney: You voted for Wilson? He was a Democrat. Ryan: Yep. Tierney: You mentioned a minute ago that one of the slogans he used was "He kept us out of war." Do you think that really aided him in being elected? Ryan: It help. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yes. Tierney: Did you feel at the time that people really voted for him because they thought if he got elected we wouldn't go to war? Ryan (coughing): I think so (coughs) (pounds chest). Tierney: You think that was a big reason? Ryan: Yes, who was his opponent? The Republican? Tierney: Hughes. Ryan: Hughes, Charles Evans Hughes. Tierney: Ok now- Ryan: He was a Massachusetts man, Hughes was, he carried Massachusetts. Tierney: Yeah, he did come from Massachusetts? Oh I didn't know that, I did know he won the state though. Ryan: I believe he was a judge at one time, a magistrate they called em'. Tierney: Ok, well, lets get to where you first entered the war. Uhh, in January, in 1917, Germany said they were going to reopen their submarine campaign. And this time they said they were going to sink merchant ships. They had curtailed it you know, a bit, and then they stopped it for a while mainly because of things like the Lusitania you know and other ships that they sunk. But again, in January of 1917, they said they were going to reopen their submarine campaign. I guess they must have been getting desperate, Germany was, and they said they were going to sink all the ships. No restrictions at all. And then, in mid-March, they had 4 unarmed American ships were sunk and one newspaper at the time noted, "The difference between war and what we have now: is that we aren't fighting back." Do you think that was a typical sentiment at the time? Ryan: Huh? Tierney: Do you think that was a typical sentiment at the time? Ryan: Yes. Tierney: Do you think people were really upset about the U-boat activities? Ryan: Oh yes, they were. They were afraid to sail! Tierney: Oh yeah? Afraid to go overseas? Ryan: Mhm. Tierney: Do you remember the Zimmerman note? (Zimmerman telegram) The note from Germany that was directed to Mexico? Ryan: I don't remember that. Tierney: Oh no? Ryan: No. Tierney: Oh it was just a thing that- Ryan: If Mexico had helped Germany they'd give em' back a part of the United States. Tierney: Yeah, Texas. Ryan: That's right, Texas. Tierney: You remember that happening or…? Ryan: No I don't. Tierney: Ok well, on April 2nd, 1917, Wilson gave his war message to Congress. And ya know, that's when he used "war to end war," he didn't originate that term but he used it a lot. And uhh, on April 6th 1917 the US declared war on Germany. Congress declared war. Do you remember how you felt at the time? Ya know, when the US actually did declare war? Ryan: Well, they all got prepared and after they declared war they put the draft in and everybody was readin' the papers to see who was being drafted. Tierney: Yeah. That was 6 weeks after they declared war, Congress passed a conscription bill or draft bill, how did you feel at the time were people anxious to get into the war you think or…? Ryan: Well, Danny, Manny and myself we all wanted to get into it. When I was examined first fort the draft I was rejected. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: On account of my eyesight. Tierney: Yeah I noticed you have glasses. Ryan: Then, when they got short of draftees, they gave me another examination and passed me into unlimited service! Tierney: Oh yeah. Ryan: But they sent me to Camp Devens and sent me to training down there. We went into Devens on the 27th of April 1918 and then the 4th of July we left Camp Devens to New Jersey and the 18th of July we landed in England. The 1st of August we were up onto the big guns! Tierney: (Chuckles). Yeah (talks to person in background) yeah, yeah it's some good detail. Ryan: Then we landed in the army of occupation, ya know its funny, Mary! (calling presumably his wife or caretaker). Mary: He's tapin' that, you don't want my voice in it! Ryan: Well he- you can put this in here if you want to. Tierney: Yeah it's ok. Ryan: Well we hit Germany first. I had on a 3 and a half blouse. Tierney (confused): I… uhhh. Ryan: It went by size, we went by size and it was 3 and a half. Now we were in Germany 7 months and a half, and when I left Germany at 7 months and a half later, I had on a 7 and a half blouse and it was too tight! Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: See, so that's what got a great big feat, we'd go in any German house there in Germany and get a feed of wild pig and sauerkraut! Tierney: Oh yeah? Good food huh? Ryan: Yeah, we had the life of Riley while we were in Germany! Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah, but as I told you, in France if the cow slept in the barn… we slept in the open. But in Germany we got the best room in the house! In the billets! (Temporary lodging in civilian housing for soldiers during wartime) Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Oh that's funny. Ryan: Now I seen some funny sights over there, and I seen some horrible sights. We got in Germany and we had seen the kids washing their teeth with shoe polish! Tierney: (laughs) Oh yeah? Ryan: In the Argonne Forest, I wouldn't believe this if I didn't see it myself. One of those German shells come over… Tierney: Yeah, yeah. Ryan: And it landed in this shell hole with 8 doughboys in it. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: It killed 6 of em' outright, the 7th fella he died shortly after, and the last guy; both his legs were blown off! Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: And one was hangin' on by the cord here (hanging on by a tendon or bit of flesh) and a fella by the name Ray Callenwood, he was a stretcher-bearer, he carried a straight razor in his pocket. And he put a tourniquet around the stumps, to stop the flow of blood, and he cut the cord. Tierney: Yeah he cut the thing right off. Ryan: Cut it off, and believe it, this fella was going back to the first aid station singin'. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yes. Tierney: Ok, we'll get to that a little further on. Right now I'm kind of interested in-when you first went up you said you had to go twice [was accepted the second time after he got his draft notice] and then the second time you passed. You said you went to Fort Devens, were you in Springfield at the time? Ryan: I was in Springfield. Tierney: And you got shipped to fort- Ryan: Yes, Fort Devens, Camp Devens at the time we called it. It's Fort Devens now. Tierney: Yeah they call it Fort Devens now. How did you yourself and the other guys feel when you did get to Devens? What kind of morale was there? Ryan: Oh yeah we were a hell of a bunch coming from Springfield. We were all young lads, 21, 22 years old. Carefree, we didn't give a rat's ass what happened. Christ, we had plenty of liquor on the train goin' down to Camp Devens. A lot of em's come in there, some of em' had to get carried OFF the train! So we went down there, we took it good naturedly, we knew we were in the army we had to do what they told us! Tierney: How about the time…. At that time there were a few draft evaders, there weren't many during that time but there were a few around right? Ryan: There were a few of them, but not nearly as much as with the Second World War. Tierney: Yeah, yeah especially during Vietnam in the last few years. Ryan: They didn't have anything to do with this Vietnam War. There wasn't any of these draft evaders in the First World War. Tierney: Yeah, you didn't see any of em'. Ryan: No I didn't see ANY of them. Ya know, when we were in France; there was this other fella and myself. We were AWL for a day or two (Absence Without Leave, extended absence can result in Desertion, which is punishable by court martial or in some countries even death during this time). And did you ever hear of the trench bayonet in Verdun? Tierney: Uhhh, Verdun? I don't think I have, no. Ryan: There was what they'd called a "trench bayonet," there were a lot of French soldiers in there with bayonets on their rifles. Tierney: Yeah, yeah. Ryan: And they're trenches caved in, and buried every one of em! Tierney: Really? Ryan: Yup, and they were in the heights of Verdun. Under the heights of Verdun they had like a big reception hall. Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: They could feed a thousand soldiers in there at one time! Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah, we were all through that. Tierney: Ok but now getting back now, I was going to ask, what kind of training did you get at Fort Devens? Ryan: Oh we got trained everyday we worked, from dawn til dusk. Tierney: Oh yeah? Was it hard training? Ryan: Hard training? Oh yeah, we used to do squats from East and West (Ryan trails off and begins coughing). And then we went through actual warfare, we used to get down and crawl on our bellies through the woods. Carry our rifles. Tierney: Oh you mentioned you had a rifle did ya? Did you always have enough equipment? Ryan: We had good equipment; yeah we had Springfield rifles (The M1903 Springfield Rifle was the service rifle of the US military during WWI). Tierney: Springfield? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: How about the clothes you got, the uniforms? Ryan: They were alright. Tierney: Did they fit ok? Ryan: Yup, that surprised me. When we went into Devens we had to take the civvies off (civilian clothing), then we get the clothes. Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: Then there was an officer, a clothing officer, he'd look at the guy, feel his muscles, then he'd look at him, see how tall he was, and he'd call out the size. And look at our feet and call our sizes. Tierney: Oh yeah? Just by looking at you? Ryan: Just by looking at us and he'd call the sizes. Then they'd give us and issue all the clothing and shoes. And some of them would have a coat that was too tight, another one would have a coat that was too loose, we'd swap. Same with the shoes, if fellas had shoes that were too tight or too loose we'd swap. But we all got fitted out pretty good! Tierney: Oh yeah? So it was pretty comfortable clothing? Ryan: Yes, we wore good clothes. Tierney: Oh yeah. Now getting back to the training, you do like a lot of marchin'? Ryan: We did a lot of marchin', we did a lot of uh, rifle range. And uh, we had to do a lot of uhh, sqaujeest(?), right and left and, all that stuff and we had to run, ya know, charge. When you had to fix bayonets and you'd have to have a big bag hangin' from a tree and, as if there's a German there, you run up and stick your bayonet into the bag. Tierney: Yeah, like the dummy (training dummy). How was the morale while you were in training? Ryan: Oh it was good, they had freedom. After retreat we could go to different towns, like I've been up to this place here (Fitchburg) when I was up in Camp Devens. Tierney: What you mean in Fitchburg? Ryan: Yup, and we got through here and other towns like Worcester and we could do that so long as we got back at midnight! Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: Hm, so you got along alright then yeah? Ryan: We had a lot of freedom, but we always got back. Tierney: Yeah, you get in trouble if you didn't I guess? Ryan: Yes. Tierney: Yeah. How about- did anyone ever like, ya know, could some soldiers not make it through training? Did some of them get sick or demoralized or something? Ryan: No I don't remember any of that. Tierney: No? Ryan: No. Tierney: Think more or less everyone got along alright? Ryan: We all got along good. Tierney: Would you say that for the most part, the soldiers were pretty patriotic perhaps? Ryan: Yes they were. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: Yup. Tierney: Ok how about uh, how long did you stay at Fort Devens do you remember? Ryan: We were there from the 27th of April to around the 4th of July. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Then they shipped us to New York. Tierney: How'd ya get down to New York? Ryan: Train. Tierney: By train? Hm. How about, when did you first know about- Ryan: We didn't even know it. Just get ours and "we push out tomorrow." Tierney: Oh wow, just one day ahead of time that was all? Ryan: Yup. Tierney: Ok so you took a train down to New York and what happened then? Ryan: We got onto the ship. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: The Cedric. Tierney: And that was an English ship you mentioned? Ryan: English ship. Then we sailed and we left… I think it was Hoboken (New Jersey) I think we left. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: It took us 12 days to cross, we landed in Liverpool. Tierney: How about the ship itself, how was the conditions there? Ryan: Very good. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: We got 2 meals a day. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: How was the food? Ryan: Good! Tierney: Was it good? Ryan: Yup. Tierney: Do you remember how many men were on the boat with you? Ryan: Oh ho, oh Christ it was an army, a whole army. It was… what the hell do ya call it? Tierney: A regiment? Ryan: A regiment! It was a whole division, about 4 or 5 regiments, all with headquarters, supply and all that stuff. Tierney: How about the sleeping quarters how were they? Ryan: They were like hammocks. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: One above the other. 3 to 4 deep (might mean how high in feet they were apart from each other.) Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. The guy on the top hammock, he had to climb a ladder. Tierney: Did you ever get sick on your way over? Ryan: Nope, like I told ya, 12 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and nobody was sick. But 6 hours crossing the English Channel and was sick! Tierney: (chuckles) that's funny. While on the way over, when you got close to Europe, close to England or whatever, did you run into any U-boats or whatever? Ryan: No we didn't run into anything. Tierney: No, you didn't get bothered at all? Ryan: Never got bothered. They had a gun on the stern of the ship, we went over in a convoy. (interesting note here, convoys were most effective method of deterring submarine attacks. Depth charges, naval mines, and all sorts of other things helped, but it was simply traveling in a convoy that almost guaranteed safety. If the U-boat fired on any of the ships in the convoy, the rest would open fire on the U-boat, meaning it was almost guaranteed death for any U-boat crew.) And this gunner was on the back of the stern of the boat. And one of the ships would throw out a big target. Ya know? Tierney: Yeah. Ryan: And this gunner, on the stern, he let that gun go by Jesus but he didn't the target! It was about 2 or 3 miles away. Tierney: Yeah, yeah? Huh. Ok, how about way over? How was the morale way over? Were you yourself and the other soldiers still in good spirits? Ryan: Oh yeah. They were in good spirits, Christ it was card games and poker games and dice games all the way over. Tierney: Oh yeah? Did you play for money or…? Ryan: We had plenty of money going over. Tierney: You mentioned you had gone to England first, where was it? Ryan: Uh, we went to Liverpool. Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: Yup, at Camp Ramsay. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: In England. That was about 12 miles up from Liverpool and we lived there maybe a week or two. Then they hiked us down to Southampton. Tierney: Southampton huh? Ryan: Yeah. Then we got on the Queen Alexandra, and went across to L'havre. Tierney: How about when you first got to England, in Liverpool, was there a reception there like for you? Ryan: There was no reception. Tierney: No? Ryan: It was the dirtiest goddamn city I ever run into. Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: Yeah. Tierney: How about the English people, did you get in contact with any English people? Ryan: Oh ho ho, the Germans will get ya. I remember we went over on the boat, one of the English cooks he come out, and he had a dirty old chicken. He brought it up and said "This is the way the American eagle will look when the Germans get through with em'." (The English were more than likely very nihilistic by this point in the war, with all the English losses and air raids on London, they had lost any shred of optimism from the start of the war until now). Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: And there was a big Irishman next to me, the name was O'Connor I believe, he says "would you look at that son of a bitch…" You know how they have hobnail shoes? Tierney: Yeah? Ryan: With the big horseshoe in the heel? Well Jesus he let that shoe go. And the heel of that hobnail caught right in the bride of the nose! (Ryan laughs) Tierney: Oh yeah? Ryan: And it knocked him cold! They took him up to the sick bay and we never seen him after that! For the rest of the trip over. Tierney: That was an English guy on the boat? Ryan: Englishman, yeah. Tierney: How about the crew, the crew must have been English then huh? Ryan: There was an English crew yeah. Tierney: How did they get along with the men? Ryan: They didn't mingle with the soldiers at all going across. They stayed in their place. Cept' this one guy that came up with the chicken, and he got knocked cold! (Ryan laughs). (Tierney laughs) (Interview Ends, Continued in Part II)

The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ; This is an oral history interview with Herbert Barnes. Mr. Barnes recalls working in a CC Camp during the Depression, the closure of the Ogden State Bank, and recreation during those years. He also talks about his experiences with peers in the CC camp, and the need to move from one job to another after he left it. ; 18p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Herbert Barnes Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Herbert Barnes Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Copyright © 2016 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The forty-five interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Barnes, Herbert, an oral history by Mack S. Taft, circa 1960s, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Herbert Barnes. Mr. Barnes recalls working in a CC Camp during the Depression, the closure of the Ogden State Bank, and recreation during those years. He also talks about his experiences with peers in the CC camp, and the need to move from one job to another after he left it. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live during the Depression years? HB: Well, I was living in Hooper at that time. The first that I remember of the Depression as being called such was when the Ogden State Bank was closed. That was the first talk that I remember much about. But I do remember this - that at the time it closed, I had a few dollars in there, and I lost the most of it. I think I only got $3 or $4 out of it, but I thought that I had sustained a very great loss. From that time on, I was conscious of the Depression. MT: What type of work did you do during the Depression years? HB: Well, at the beginning of it, I was rather small. As I remember in 1929, I was still in the grade school and just working with my two uncles - one, Leslie Powers, where I lived, and the other, George Powers. I worked for them in the summer months. During the winter I was, of course, in school. I would do chores both morning and night for either a neighbor or a relative or someone else. MT: During the latter part of the Depression, I understand you went into the CC Camp. Is that correct? HB: Well, I got out of school in 1936, and I looked all around for a job and couldn't find anything that would pay any kind of wages at all, or anything that was work, so that you could even say that you were working. So I had a chance to go into 2 the camp as a local man, and the place that I went first was down at Milford, Utah. I was only there for a short time, and then they transferred me back to Bountiful, from which place I could work in Salt Lake. I went to school there and learned drafting and photography and the things that they had us do. The things that we were doing at that time was working in the State Land Office, and the Federal Land Office, and working plats and things like they do in the county office. We learned how to make these plats so that they could be used in court and so that they would be of service to the Land Management Division. They called it at that time the Division of Grazing. MT: That big project that they had on Bountiful Peak, could you tell me anything about that? HB: Well, I really don't know very much about what the camps were doing in general. I went there once, but our work was entirely in the State Land Office and the Federal Land Office in Salt Lake City. Now, the majority of the boys that were in that camp belonged to a different division entirely. Part of them worked out at Woods Cross Bird Refuge, and a number of others did flood control work on the mountain. There was some planting of trees and brush, but I never was out on any of their projects to see what they had done. I know what the boys were doing at the time that I was there, but we were working when they were working, and during off-times, we went other places. MT: What seemed to give you the most difficulty during the Depression years, clothing or food? 3 HB: Well, neither one was a terrific job, although nobody had any money to spend. Most people didn't have money for luxuries during those days, but since your neighbor didn't have them, you didn't worry much about them either. The main mode of travel during that time had changed to the automobile, but kids didn't have the automobile to run with. The older people had the automobile, and the kids were allowed to drive a little in the daytime, but that was before the driver's license was in effect. So we didn't have to worry about being picked up by the local Highway Patrol. If you could sit behind the wheel and steer it down the road and stop it when you needed to, that's all that was asked. When the driver's license first came out, there were only about two or three questions that they asked. One of them was, do you know how to drive a car? The other was, have you got twenty-five cents to pay for the license? They did expect you, I believe, to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, but they weren't very strict with it at all. As far as I know, I never had to show a driver's license until around the year 1939 or 1940. Nobody ever cared. In fact, if you could find a job for $1,100, it was wonderful. Now, as a kid, I worked mostly in the summers for $1 a week, and my board and usually most of the dollar went into .22 shells, and a few luxuries at the store like candy. Money didn't mean a whole lot because the other kids didn't have any. If the other kids would have had money to spend to go to the shows and go places, it would have meant more. But at that time, if we did get any money we could spare, of course it went into groceries and clothes and the places that it had to go. But everybody had a deal worked out so that they could make a living one way or another. 4 Wages were very, very low. But at the same time, the merchandise that you needed to live on didn't cost much either. MT: What do you remember about the celebrations? HB: Oh, they were a big thing as far as the town was concerned. Usually they'd start between four and five in the morning with the brass band being driven around the town in a wagon, and their tones would carry further in the air. As they drove past the houses, they would wake everybody up, and sometimes they would yell from the wagon to get up and get going. "Let's see you at the celebration in a little while." And then things would usually get going at about 8:30 or 9:00. By 9:00 or shortly after, they would have the program starting, and it would go until noon. At the same time that was going, they would have the kids in their games and things out behind the grandstand. Of course they always had these little places where they sold root beer and Cokes and candy bars. Usually about thirty cents a day was what we spent at one of those places in a day. We spent half our money in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon. That would go then about as far as fifty cents does now. Then in the afternoon, they would have a baseball game and horse races, and they just had a real celebration. Then at night, they had a dance, and they had something to do until the last one home at night was just really dragging, I'll tell you. It was a day back then, and the park was loaded. It seemed like sometimes you'd have to hunt for hours for the one you were looking for, because everyone in the country was there. MT: Did they have regular dances there? 5 HB: Yes, they did, usually on Saturday night. That was a big night, and usually the dances were pretty good. I remember that, at the time, I didn't get in on too many of them, but dances were a big thing back in those years. Another thing that was big, was the plays that the town put on. They would have plays two, three, and four times a month, and the casts would all come from the town there, and would put on those plays. You would get into the play on your budget ticket that you got from the ward. Those budget tickets would cost the family anywhere from $3 to $5, and later on it got up to $10. When it got up to $10, people thought that it was pretty high. But during most of those rough years, the budget ticket for the family was only $3 to $5, and that was for the year and would get you into everything. Of course, the need for money wasn't as great then as it is now because the prices were not the same. As I remember, the Depression wasn't really over until the World War broke. From about 1936 on, it began to get just a little brighter, a little more pick-up in the economy, but it never got into swing until World War II came along. With the war calling for help and for merchandise, the economy picked up. But I would say that it was a good ten or eleven years that the old Depression hung on pretty solid. MT: What did you feel were good results of the Depression? HB: Well, a number of things. People had to learn how to economize. In the early 1920s, money was just a little more plentiful than it was later, and people made some pretty good money in a number of things after World War I. They were beginning to enjoy quite a number of little luxuries, and things were beginning to open up pretty good until the squeeze of 1929, and that affected everybody. A 6 number of people lost their homes and everything that they had, and money became so tight that if anybody had any, they would think twice before they let it go. There wasn't much money spent for quite a number of years. There were a lot of homes lost, a number of businesses lost, and the economy just tightened up to a point that if people had any money, well, they kept it. Those that didn't have it, it was sometimes hard to tell them from the ones that did because nobody was spending much or going many places. As I remember, a vacation then didn't mean that you were going far, and you didn't have very many of them. The automobiles of those days wouldn't take them to California and back in three days like they do now. They went more then on the train. But the train fare then was much cheaper than it is now. Of course the air service hadn't come in yet. If an airplane flew over, everybody would fly out the door to see which way it was going and how big it was. I remember when the radios first came to town. One of the first ones I had a chance to see was over at Thomas Lowe's. We went over there one afternoon and sat very quietly for about two hours and listened to the radio. I guess within the next six to eight months, we had one at our house too, but the radio then was only $25 to $30. That's quite different than it is now, and they didn't have the number of stations that they do now either. Along from about six in the morning, there was cowboy music, the Sons of the Pioneers, and a lot of other cowboy music. It was very popular then when the radio first came out. That was one of the main kinds of music there was on there. We hadn't come into all this jive and rock and this kind of stuff. 7 MT: What other programs did you listen to on the radio at that time? HB: Oh, Amos and Andy was a big one. I can't remember anything hardly about the first radio without Amos and Andy. They were the big ones, and the others I don't remember quite as well now. Maybe if someone mentioned the name, I would remember that too. But right at the minute, it seems that Amos and Andy were the big ones. The Hit Parade was also a big thing. As I remember that, it started along about 1934 or 1935, and by the time it got up to 1937 and 1938, that was quite a big thing. The Hit Parade usually went up about 10 songs, and later it went up to about 20 or more. But they had lots of things that are still played today that used to be on the Hit Parade. About everybody listened to that in the evening. MT: What are some of the big bands that you remember back at that time? HB: Well, I really don't remember any. I know them well enough when I hear them, but I've never been musically inclined enough to remember them. Dorsey is one we used to hear a lot. MT: What about the White City Ballroom? Did you ever go over there? HB: Oh yes. That was the main place for the Ogden area. That was a place that was usually always crowded, but anyway, those were some pretty good dances, too. They would dwarf Hooper's dance a long ways, even though Hooper was good dances. But the ballroom covered the whole intermountain area, and it was always loaded. MT: What about shoe repair? Did most of the places have shoe repair of their own? 8 HB: Well, as far as shoe repair is concerned, you could go into places like Kress's and Woolworth's and so on, and you could buy a pair of rubber soles and glue to put them on with for fifteen or twenty-five cents. You could buy the heels, and a lot of us at that time had a shoe last, and we learned to put the heels on them. We'd glue these soles on them, and that would take care of the minor jobs. You could buy these scout shoes for boys for $1, and I wouldn't say they're good by the standards of today. I don't think they had any arches in them, and I guess a lot of people got their feet ruined by them. But I'll tell you, the leather in them would wear like mule hide. They were tough. And there were repair shops all over, but they didn't charge today's prices. You could go in and get a pair of shoes fixed for $1 or $1.50, and I mean they were fixed. Today, you could buy a new pair of shoes for what it costs to get them repaired. MT: What did you learn in the CC Camps that has been beneficial to you and has stayed with you? HB: Well, I was one of three from this state that were in the camp that I was in. Most of the boys were from out of state. They were from Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana, and a few from Ohio and Illinois, in that area. But most of the boys in that camp were the hillbillies of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee. They were downright mean, and they could play the harmonica, banjo, and guitar like I've never heard since, and do all kinds of dancing. I'm talking about the step dances and the stomps, and the kinds where you get up on the stage and entertain. But when I say mean, they would fight with their fists and knives and brass knuckles and clubs, and they didn't mind smuggling in guns and trying 9 them, too. I've seen them get mad and battered and cut, and I've seen boys from that group go into the penitentiary. I wouldn't be surprised if they still might be there. They went in for murder and rape and everything under the sun. Most of those boys were illiterate. They couldn't read, they couldn't write, but you couldn't cheat them on money. They knew everything down to the cent no matter how much you were talking about. They couldn't write their names. They had to put an X and have someone else sign under it. They didn't know anything, and they didn't want to know anything, but they could scrap. And they didn't mind a practical joke. If it got to be past a joke, that was just that much more fun. If they could get your goat, why they'd take that and your hide too. At night they might come in at midnight and give your bed a flip, and you'd land on your face on the floor and the bed on top of you. To them, that was a joke. MT: Are you still profiting from some of the things that you learned there? HB: Well, yes. I had experiences there that I will never forget. I could maybe go into a few of them. I learned a lot about drafting and photography, and the way the government operates as far as the land management is concerned. I learned how to read plats and know what they're talking about when they mention townships and meridians and all of these things, although I have not had much to do with them for years. It was a good basis and a good thing to learn. Even though I was with these boys from out of state, I didn't let that bother me. I had a lot of evenings to spend, and so I decided that since I had time to waste, I might as well profit by it if I could. 10 So about this time, Alida went on a mission. I wanted to go, so I tried to figure out a way to get enough money to go. I couldn't make enough to save. My mother wasn't working at a job that would bring enough money that she could keep me there, and there wasn't a relative with money enough, and the ward claimed that they were too poor. There was just no way that I could go on a mission. So I started work with the boys in the camp down there, and I converted three of the boys from the camp into the [LDS] Church. I know where two of them are today; one of them is a bishop back in Illinois, and the other is on the high council up in Canada. The other one I saw about five years after I brought him into the church, and I've never seen him since. But I was able to work with these boys long enough and often enough that I brought them in, and there were a good many others that I think I softened their hides. I was able to baptize some of them myself. MT: Is there anything else that you can think of that might be of interest? HB: Well, they had to have these camps to keep the young people off the streets, to keep them out of trouble. There was too many young people on the road; they were hitchhiking and were traveling all over, and there was no work at home, whether it was in California or Utah, in Minnesota or New York, or anywhere. There just wasn't any work anywhere. President Roosevelt decided that something had to be done, that crime was on the increase, and that all these people out of work and no money to pay them. They decided they didn't want just the WPA projects out of it. They wanted to teach the boys, to give them some military training - not with a gun, they didn't 11 do that. But they had to get up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning and shave and take a shower and clean up, and they had to get out to roll call and go to breakfast. They had to make their beds and be out in the truck to go to work at 7:30 or 8:00. They came back at noon if they were close enough, and then they came back at 4:30. They would have about an hour to do what they wanted to do or needed to do before supper. Then after supper, if they could get leave to go off the post, they could go wherever they wanted to go. Or if they stayed on the post, there were libraries and all kinds of training sessions. Of course there were a lot of them that had to take turns on KP, and they learned to peel potatoes by the sack. In the group that I was in, there were about 30-40 men, and they had to be fed three times a day. A lot of them learned to be cooks and learned to do other things. A lot of them found their life's work from their camps. Some of them learned to be auto mechanics, truck drivers, and tractor drivers, and they learned to survey and just all kinds of things. And a good many of those boys were not only off the streets for a period of time from one to three years, but they did have a chance to earn from $30 a month to $45 a month, gaining the training, and they had a chance to be moved around the country, sometimes two and three times while they were in these camps. They were put out of the area in which they lived so that they did see a new part of the country. It was a good experience for many of them. It at least got them off the streets and out of their folks' hair, and gave them something to do for a period of time. If they wanted to re-enlist, why, they could stay in for sometimes quite a 12 number of years. I guess quite a number of them were in three, four, five, and six years. Some of them couldn't get out fast enough, and some of them didn't want to leave. The training in there was almost as strict as it was in the military except that we never had to carry a gun. We had to take calisthenics, and they had to jump to the whistle and command of the lieutenants, captains, and majors, and all this kind of thing. On Sunday, they held a Protestant and Mormon service. Now in my camp, they were mostly all Catholics; there were very few Protestants, and no Mormons, only just four or five of us. Of course on weekends, I would take quite a number of the boys, and we would go into Ogden. I would see that they went to church with me. If they were coming to my place to stay for the weekend, they went to church with me. MT: As you look back now, what changes do you think might have been in your life, education-wise, and this kind of thing, if the Depression had not come along? HB: Well, this I don't know. I was really disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go on a mission. Now as I look back on it, that's where my mission was. I probably did much more good in that camp as a missionary than I ever would have done - well, I can't say that. But education-wise, why I don't know if I would have had a chance to go to college or not, or even if I would have wanted to. Jobs were hard to find, and I worked quite a number of good jobs after I got out of the camp. I worked for the Weber Central Dairy. I worked for the Amalgamated Sugar Company, and I worked for little short jobs here and there. But you couldn't get a steady job and stay with it. The institutions were not in a position at that time to hire very many people. All they wanted was to get them 13 over a short rush period. I worked for the California Pack, and just seasonal and short periods, and then the job was done. Then you'd get out and hustle another job. You'd maybe get a few days or weeks or a month, but nothing that you could call a steady job that you could stay with. If you could get a steady job, you were one of the lucky people for quite a few years. The thing that I wanted to do at that time was to be an auto mechanic, but then I'm about as far from that as I can get. I hardly know which end of the car has the motor on it any more.

PRIZE ESSAY NUMBER. i i ~ JUSTE, 1904 IY6L, XIII. HO. i GETTYSBURG COLLEGE GETTYSBURG, PA. i w. V N. C. UARBKMENH, OCTTTOBUflS II n w i HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume. Chartered igoz. Cottrell & Leonrard Albany, N. Y. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WWWWWWWWWWWW Makers of Caps, Gowns, Hoods AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A. B. BLACK, Gettysburg College Representative. Come and Have a Good Shave, E. A. Wright's or HAIR-CUT at Engraving House, Naffy B. SeftOll's 1108 Chestnut St. PHILADELPHIA We have our own photograph gallery for half-tone and photo engraving. Fashionable Engraving and Stationery. Leading house for College, School and Wedding Invitations, Dance Programs, Menus. Fine engraving of all kinds. Before ordering elsewhere com-pare samples and prices. New Tons:)rial Parlor's, 35 Baltimore St. BARKERS' SUPPLIES A SPECIALTY. Also, choice line of fine Cigars. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, *^ A, L, Menbeck, Agent, COLLEGE. IF YOU CALL ON C. A. Bloehef*, JemeleF, Centre Square, He can serve you in anything you may want in REPAIRING or JEWELRY. rffWHipwjPii^jj ifwPBjmHHMP! WE RECOMMEND THESE FIRMS. The Pleased Customer is not a stranger in our estab-lishment— he's right at home, you'll see him when you call. We have the materials to please fastidious men. J. D. LIPPY, lxle;reiaa-rit Tailor, 29 Chambersburg Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. CITY HOTEL, Main Street, - Gettysburg, Pa. Free 'Bus to and from all trains. Thirty seconds' walk from either depot. Dinner with drive over field with four or more, $1.35. Rates, $1.50 to $2.00 per Day. Livery connected. Rubber-tire buggies a specialty. John E. Hughes, Prop. T1PT0H M Now in 1 THE .PHOTOGRAPHER. new Studio 20 and 22 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, Pa. One of the finest modern lights in the country. C. E. Barbehenn THE EACLE HOTEL ZB-A-ISIBIEIK Corner Main and Washington Sts. 1905 SPECTRUM Now in Printer's hands. Order from M. M. METZGEE. BEILLHAKT & PARKEE Students' Supply Rooms! Everything You Want. Fine Stationery a Specialty. NO. 5 AND 7 EAST. i r PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. I WE HI A COMPLETE LI Of Novelties for the Spring Season, including Latest Suiting, Coating, Trousering and Vesting. Our Prices are Right. SPECIAL CARE TAKEN TO MAKE WORK STYLISH AND EXACTLY TO YOUR ORDER. tUill Ol. Seliman, T^, 7 Chambefsfaufg St., Gettysburg, Pa. R. A. WONDERS Corner Cigar Parlors. A full line of Cigars, Tobacco, Pipes, etc. Scott's Corner, opp. Eagle Hotel GETTYSBURG, PA. Pool Parlors in Connection. D. J. Swartz Dealer in Country Produce Groceries Cigars and Tobacco GETTYSBURG. Established 1867 by Allen Walton. Allen K. Walton, Pres. and Treas. Robt. J. Walton, Superintendent. Hummelstown Browq Stone Company and Manufacturers of BUILDING STONE, SAWED FLAGGING, and TILE, WALTOMLLE DAUPHIN COUNTYj: PENNA. Contractors for all kinds of cut stone work. Telegraph and Express Address, BROVVNSTONE, PA. Parties visiting quarries will leave cars at Brownstone Station, on the P. & R. R. R. DO YOU NEED PNEY TO GO TO COLLEGE ? [FROM COPYRIGHTED STEREOGRAFH BY UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD] Happy Land of t :e R* staff Sun where Song Unceasing Flows. Stereoscopes * and * Stereographs K\ can furnish it fo.' you during the Summer Vacation, Many New Subjects for this season: Russian-Japanese War, Panama Canal, Balti-more Fire, President Roosevelt, Gettysburg Battlefield: New Comic Series; Stereo-scopic Tours, accompanied by patent maps and interesting descriptive books- Write for particulars- Underwood & Underwood 3 AND 5 W. NINETEENTH ST., COR. FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK. REPRESENTED AT PENN'A COL. BY E- G- HESS- The CDcFGury. The Literary Journal of Gettyburg College. VOL. XIII. GETTYSBURG, PA., JUNE, 1904. No. 4 CONTENTS "DE SAPIENTIAE PROFESSORIBUS "—POEM, . . 128 ANDROMACHE ET DECIDIANA. RUSSIAN AGGRESSION—Pen and Sword Prize Essay, . 130 PAUL B. DUNBAR, '04. A MODERN FAUST, 136 "X. Y. Z.'' SOCIALISM ,137 JOSEPH E. ROWE, '04. THE SABBATH AS A CIVILIZER, 144 Miss HELEN WAGNER, '06. THE COURSE OF THE U. S. GOVERNMENT IN CONNECTION WITH THE PANAMA REVOLUTION, . 146 CHAS. W. HEATHCOTE, '05. A HUNTER OF MEN—POEM, 148 "BRIDGET." .'THE PATH OF DUTY IS THE WAY TO GLORY," . 151 POEM, 154 EDITORIALS 155 EXCHANGES, . 157 w 128 . THE MERCURY. «DE SAPIENTIAE PROFESSORIBUS." ANDROMACHE ET DECIDIANA. HOW dear to our hearts are those days when at college We studied and wept o'er the classics of yore; The Latin, the Greek, and the terrible German, And brain-splitting ''Math" which we used to deplore. To-night as we sit in the glow of our fire-side, And think of those days and the pleasures of old, Our hearts fain would turn to our former professors, Who gave to us learning, much better than gold. The fire burns low in its smouldering ashes, The faces appear that we once knew so well, Some pleasant and jovial, and others more solemn, But of each, in his turn, we will .now try to tell. Oh Muse ! pray be kind and remain standing by us, And give to us freely and with no restraint, That much sought for gift, the true power of description, So each one may know whom we're trying to paint. The first who appears in the fast dying embers, Is one who made culprits shake clear to their toes ; He'd rap on the desk with a frowning expression, And quell all confusion, just how, no one knows. His eyes were as blue as the azure of Heaven, His hair was inclined to a faint auburn shade, His stature was tall, and this mighty Apollo Was reverenced alike by each man and each maid. And now we behold one so tall and so handsome, Who led our young minds 'round the fair walls of Troy, Who oft would propound his fav'rite assertion That 'there should be guardians for maidens so coy.' And next to him standing, a man of small stature, Whom feline protectors all look on with dread; He bears in his right hand a tight-covered basket, Just lift up the cover ! Out pops a cat's head. Our dear 'Roman Senator' now looms before us, As tall as a dignified 'senex' of old. He too bears a basket, but it's full of good things, And as a 'rear guard' he has 'Waggles,' the bold. The next that appears to our far-seeing vision Is one who seemed stern tho' at heart he was ki-nd. His friends the}' were num'rous, his travels were many, But ever to "Dutchland" his heart was inclined. THE MERCURY. 129 Scarce had his form disappeared in the ashes, When two more professors came into our sight. A halo of gas, (H2S), was around them, Which ever had been their fond joy and delight. How often we shivered when into their class-room We went in dread fear that we might not come out. A "fiss" and a "bang" and a "crash" would oft greet us; And then the stern question, "What are you about?" And now comes a face that so quietly greets us, He led 'little boys' in the way they should go. He taught them politeness as well as sound doctrine, And stirred to high ideals instead of to low. And last but not least comes that jolly, good "Sap'ens" Who once taught us "Math" and a great deal beside, For he used to tell all the jokes of the season, And solved weighty problems discussed far and wide. The fire dies out and we sit there reflecting On those pleasant days and our teachers of old, And we would not sell our fond recollections For all the rich treasures the deep sea could hold. And so let us close while the dark shadows gather, Which hide from our vision each loved noble face. We hope they still walk through those fair halls of learning, And for many years yet each may keep his old place. 130 THE MERCURY. " RUSSIAN AGGRESSION." [Pen and Sword Prize Essay.] PAUL B. DUNBAR, '04. THE discussion of a subject of world-wide importance can-not fail to be influenced by preconceived prejudices. It seems to be natural for Americans as a whole to entertain strongly such a prejudice against Russia. This is probably the result of our instinctive sympathy for the weak in a contest with the strong. The attempt will be made in this paper, how-ever, to set forth as impartially as possible the facts of the Rus-sian Advance. Having studied these carefully, Russia's motives will be discussed, and finally the probable results of these ag-gressive movements will be briefly summed up. A glance at the map of Russia, her possessions and spheres of influence, shows over how vast a region the Empire of the North holds sway. From the Baltic on the west to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Behring Sea on the east, the Russian territory extends in an unbroken stretch—five thousand miles of steppes and mountains, rivers and inland seas, burning deserts and bar-ren tundras. On the broad plains of Siberia are sections of wonderful fertility practically undeveloped and in its mountain ranges are untouched stores of boundless mineral wealth. This entire region is subject to the most diverse climatic conditions, seasons of extreme cold alternating with intervals of almost tor-rid heat. Such is the Empire of the Czar, embracing more than one seventh of the land surface of the globe and support-ing a population of one hundred and thirty millions. Today we see the Great Bear reaching out ready to seize in his powerful clutch territory after territory. The stress of pres-ent events draws our attention especially to the Far East. There we see the Muscovite pressing relentlessly upon the territory of China, and now by the test of battle it must be decided whether Korea also shall be Russian. The Far East is not the only object of Russia's advance. Slowly, silently, by stealth of di-plomacy, plans are being laid, forces set to work to widen Asi-atic Russia to the southward. During the last forty years; THE MERCURY. 131 , •% . — Britain has watched with apprehension the southward advance of the Bear toward her Indian border. Never for an instant dare she relax her vigilance against the encroachment of the Czar. Russian advisers ever ready to advance the interests of their master hold the ears of many of the native border princes. But yesterday came rumors of Russian influence in Tibet, of a treaty of that country with Russia, and the presence of envoys in the Tibetan capital whose purpose is to forward Russian in-terests in opposition to those of England. Turkey and the Balkan States feel this powerful hand and Sweden and Norway look with alarm toward the borders of Finland. What is the history of the growth of this giant among nations ? Three hundred and twenty years ago Russia was a small and semi barbarous state whose advance posts were scarcely eight hundred miles east of St. Petersburg. In the closing years of the sixteenth century, however, there came to the throne a ruler distinguished for severity even in that stern age. Ivan the Ter-rible, by the very cruelty of his rule, inaugurated the eastward movement of that Slavic invasion which now after three cen-turies of alternate advance and retreat is now approaching so terrible a crisis. Rebellious subjects of the Czar fleeing from pursuing troops were forced to take refuge in the unknown, frigid wilderness to the eastward. As they retreated, they easily overcame the scattered nomads who inhabited these regions. Then by turning over the conquered territory to Russia, they obtained the pardon of the Czar Ivan. This was the first step —the entering wedge—in Russia's eastward advance. The tide thus setting toward the Pacific flowed on slowly but resist-lessly, unopposed by rival nations, for the region was to them unknown. A century passed and another mighty figure ascended the Russian throne. Under Peter the Great came further aggres-sive expansion. The northern ocean presented an insurmount-able barrier but in other directions the advance continued. Southward the Muscovite ruler forced his way and to the west-ward Sweden and Poland felt the force of Russian aggression. Thus year after year, under ruler after ruler, the slow policy of 132 THE MERCURY. expansion has gone on. Wherever opportunity offered the Great Bear forced his entering wedge. West and south felt the advance, but it was toward the east that he moved most steadily. As has been said, Russia aims to follow the line of least re-sistance. The vast plains of Siberia, frozen in winter, parched in summer, were a part of the world's surface uncoveted by the earth-hunger of Europe. So while other nations fought and wrangled over other portions of the globe, the Empire of the Czar silently absorbed this mighty region. Thus by slow movements or sudden leaps, by treachery or by diplomacy, by fair means^or foul, Russia at last reached the Pacific—the ocean outlet which she has always desired. Here was encountered an unsurmountable difficulty. Russia, having apparently overcome all obstacles in her march to the sea, was now met and held by the strength of perpetual winter. The ice bound harbors of northern Asia were valueless. Warmer waters must be reached and, having come thus far, Russia was not to be baffled. By a sudden, bold move the Amur was made the southern boundary. Then in i860, subtle diplomacy obtained from China the strip of coast upon which is built the port of Vladivostok. It is significant that the name of this city is the Russian phrase for " Control of the East." As a seaport Vladivostok is a vast improvement over Petropaulovsk, the first Russian port in Kamtchatka, but still there is not en-tire freedom from the disadvantages of winter. Russia still hungered for a warm-water port. The Trans-Siberian Railway was built—five thousand miles of single track reducing the in-terval of transit between Moscow and Vladivostok to only fif-teen days. Events now began to move rapidly in the Far E^ast. In 1894, the close of the Chino-Japanese war left Japan in possession of the valuable harbor of Port Arthur. On the plea that the possession of this port by Japan threatened the in-tegrity of China, Russia forced the retrocession of Port Arthur to its original owner. Two years later, a Russian squadron entered this harbor ostensibly to winter there. Ere many months the world was startled to learn that Russia had leased Port Arthur from China. The integrity of the latter country THE MERCURY. 133 seemed no longer a consideration. Immediately came military occupation of the city and the erection of tremendous defensive works. Russia had obtained her warm-water harbor; but was she satisfied ? Between Port Arthur and the Siberian frontier lies the rich Chinese province of Manchuria. In it have settled many native Russians. What could be more natural than that the Great Bear should covet this prize also to make his possessions com-plete? Asa preliminary step, a Chinese concession was ob-tained for shortening the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok by a line across Manchuria. Russia had at last obtained a foot-hold south of the Amur. The erection of branch lines to the borders of Korea and the very gates of Pe-kin was but a short stride. In every case the right of garri-soning the railroad was included in the concession. In 1900, came the Boxer Rebellion. Its close saw Manchuria held by an immense Russian army of occupation. In concert with the allies, Russia agreed to withdraw from Chinese territory, but months went by and the Manchurian'army lingered., The wily Muscovite concluded a treaty with China providing for the long-promised withdrawal, but it soon became evident that before this would be carried out new concessions were expected. The Russian representative in Pekin even went so far as to demand that all the Manchurian concessions be granted to Russians. This was but one of Russia's diplomatic attempts to gain a controlling voice in Chinese affairs. China, however, was al'ive to the true state of affairs and refused to commit herself to any further agreements. As a consequence, Russia is still in mili-tary possession of Manchuria. Nominally her troops were kept there solely in pursuance of the treaty-right of protecting her railroad interests. In reality, the whole line was turned into an armed camp by the establishment of forts garrisoned by all branches of the Russian army, and today Manchuria is practically a Russian province. • We now reach the final chapter in the history of Russian aggression—final because it brings us to the present time, cer-tainly not because it marks the end of the advance. With hr's 134 THE MERCURY. grip firmly fixed on Manchuria, the Bear now turned a longing eye to the little kingdom of Korea. The possession of this choice bit of the world was now his aim. Even before the Chino-Japanese war Russia was laying her subtle plans to this end. In 1893 or early in 1894, she made a generous present of rifles to the Korean army and even furnished a Russian drill-master to train Korea's seven thousand soldiers in European tactics. At the same time swarms of Russian agents entered the country. The fruit seemed almost ripe for plucking. But now an opponent faced Russia. Japan had long watched this onward march with jealous eye. In this move toward Korea she saw a positive menace to her existence. Nothing remained but to throw down the guage of battle and to begin the contest whose result is being awaited by the entire world. What are Russia's motives and what her ultimate policy ? Her statesmen would have us believe it is a simple one. Says M. Witte, the former chief of Russian finances and now presi-dent of the Committee ot Ministers : " History measures not by years, but by centuries ; and from this point of view, by the building of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Port Arthur and Dalny.a mighty work is completed, a historical problem is solved, and one of the last steps is taken in the advance of Russia to the Far East, in her effort to find an outlet to the open sea, to the ice-free shores of the Pacific ocean." This is indeed Russia's principal object, but its fulfillment means also the control of northern Asia. And since the de-velopment of her railroad policy has done so much already for the advance of Russian territory, there is no reason to believe that it will not be made the occasion of further advance. We have the word of M. Witte that Russia's object is to obtain a warm-water port. This is in the main a legitimate object and has been partly fulfilled by the acquirement of Port Arthur. But it must be remembered that Port Arthur is not wholly a Russian possession. It is, therefore, obvious that the Russian wishes will not be entirely satisfied until that port is Russian beyond a doubt. The same is equally true of the whole pro- THE MERCURV. 135 vince of Manchurfa. Then, too, it is more than probable that the desire is to reserve the acquired territory for Muscovite trade alone. It is true that Dalny is an open port, but Port Arthur is closed and foreign merchants find much difficulty in meeting Russian competition in Manchuria. As a recent writer puts it: The Russian motive may be viewed from two stand-points. Russia herself would have us believe that it is benevo-lent. She is building a railroad through unopened territory, erecting modern cities and valuable mills in the wilderness, and setting up an orderly government in the place of misrule. The outsider acknowledges all this, but what, lie a;ks, will Russia demand in return for these enormous expenditures? The an-swer is apparent. It has already been given. She has the right of protecting her interests and now demands a complete monopoly. Such are Russia's complex motives. What will the outcome be? If Russia be successful in the present contest, will her aggressive plans be concluded without opposition ? Will the world witness the spectacle of Korea and China absorbed or will the Powers step in to fix a limit to further expansion ? If they do so, will their strength be sufficient to restrain the Bear already flushed with victory ? If Russia be vanquished, will the settlement thus arrived at be permanent ? Will little Japan continue to be an efficient barrier, or will returning strength again put in motion the tide setting toward the Orient with overwhelming volume ? Will the gallant Island Kingdom perish or may it look for help to Europe and America? Time alone can bring an answer. Here prophecy has often failed and will fail again, for as has been well said: "Russia's state-craft is not of the months or of the years; it is of the ages. It is not of monarchs, but of a dynasty, and it is less the policy of the dynasty than it is the need of a people and of a land." 136 THE MERCURY. "A MODERN FAUST." (BEING A BIT OF TRUTH MASQUERADING AS NONSENSE.) ONCE upon a time—during the twentieth century—there lived a young man who had been but three years out of college. Having entered the greater University of the World, he had been hailed by his fellow Freshmen as a comrade, had been hazed by Sophomores, patronized by condescending Juniors, and deluged with advice by venerable Seniors, even as he had been in college. But he was a restless and adventure-some youth. The monotony of the office palled upon him, and, for relief, he experimented in Mysticism and Christian Science. One momentous evening he conceived the idea of putting his knowledge to the supreme test, by summoning be-fore him the Prince of Darkness. Thereupon he took down his LeConte and. his Mary Baker Eddy from the shelf and set to work. And in very truth, gentle reader, in less than half the run-ning of an hour glass, Mephistopheles himself stood before him. faultlessly attired in evening clothes—for the red cap and mantle had succumbed to the spirit of progress in Hades even as the simple sins of our forefathers have given place to the more delicately refined and ingenious vices of to-day. But in this one respect was the Devil unchanged. For no sooner had the usual conventionalities been exchanged than lie attempted to purchase the soul of the youth in the most approved man-ner. He showed him visions of fair women, even as he had shown them to the Faust of old. But the youth was unmoved; he smiled and shook his head, for he was a wise youth. And the Devil promised him great riches and power. But the youth, for he was wise, replied, "If these things were worth while, O Lucifer, I could attain at a lesser price, even hard work. It is not enough." T,hen did the Devil promise a most miraculous thing, "For," said he, "if thou wilt give thyself to me, Grover Cleveland and William J. Bryan shall make a truce and be as brothers. Shoulder to shoulder they will fight for thee and nominate thee for the Presidency on the Democratic THE MERCURY. I 37 ticket. Thou wilt be the most talked-of man in the Nation." But the youth, being wise, replied : "Am I not own cousin to the Proprietor of Pennsylvania, and is it not agreed that I shall be the next State Treasurer? And is not this better than to be President, much less a candidate for President mid on the Democratic ticket? Go to, it is not enough." Now the Devil was almost vanquished, but he was also wise and he thought deeply, and he said, "I can then offer thee nothing more than again to make thee a reckless, carefree Sophomore among thy former classmates. Think! Is it not enough?" And the youth meditated within himself; he knew there were no days like those days; he longed again to be carefree and thought-less, recognizing no higher authority than his own sweet will and the majority action of his class; his heart called out for those friends who, too, had dwelt in Arcady. And he replied, "It is enough." For he was a wise youth withal. MORAL—Eat, drink, and be merry, ye Seniors, for to-mor-row ye die. "X. Y. Z." • SOCIALISM. ( Written for the Pen and Sword Prize Essay Contest.) JOSEPH E. ROWE, '04. THE word socialism was first used in 1835 in connection with an organization founded by Robert Owen of Eng-land. This society was given the grandiloquent appellation of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, and its purpose was to secure "Social improvement and reconstruction." Since that time the word socialism has been applied rather incautiously, and,as a consequence, it is an exceedingly difficult word to define with precision. According to some writers there is a growing tendency to regard as socialistic any inter-ference with property undertaken on behalf of the poor, or any measure promoted by society to limit or modify the working of the economic principle of laissez-faire. Roscher defined socialism "as including those tendencies which demand a greater regard for the common-weal than consist with human 138 THE MERCURY. nature." John Raeof our day declares that it is common to describe as socialistic "any proposal that asks the State to do something lor the material well being of the working class, or any group of such proposals, or any theory that favors them." Janet defines it as "every doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the inequality of wealth which ex-ists among men, and to legally establish the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular case—a famine, for instance, or a public calamity." But these definitions and all others describe only phases of the question. For instance, in order for any measure to be socialistic it need not proceed from the State; it may emanate from individuals just as well; in fact the earliest socialistic measures proceeded from individuals. There was socialism in colonial times when they had a common storehouse from which each one received his equal share of goods; the instituting of a wider system of public schools is a highly socialistic measure ; an equal distribution of profits between two partners, or among the many members of a company is also socialistic; and yet it is just as proper and usual to describe as socialistic the so-called "strikes," or the assassination of million-aires by dynamite. It is, therefore, evident that socialism em-braces a great deal; at the same time, we must remember that all these are only different phases of the same great question. All socialists are alike in attempting to secure a more equit-able distribution of wealth, or in endeavoring to equalize op-portunities for acquiring it; but the salient points upon which they differ are the ways and means of accomplishing their ends. Some maintain that the State, by managing industry and controlling land, could best promote the commonweal; others very emphatically declare that there should be no cen-tral government at all. The more radical of the first class try to get control of the government; those of the latter class en-deavor to destroy it. Unfortunately in the present age the most influential forrfl of socialism is of the most radical and revolutionary character— THE MERCURY. 139 that which desires no government at all. Alexandria II. of Russia and our late President McKinley fell victims to this outrageous doctrine. Nihilism and anarchism are its more specific names. Yet we cannot afford to consider as danger-ous all socialistic measures of today. Upon exactly this prob-lem a great amount of useless discussion has taken place. Politicians of late years have made very effective use of the ambiguity in the word socialism. Whenever an opponent could accuse a candidate for public office, of promoting socialistic measures, no matter how benevolent or beneficial they might have been to the people, the mention of that word together with the prevalent misconception of it in its better sense, was generally the most derogatory charge brought against him in the eyes of the ignorant working classes—the very persons whom worthy socialistic principles would benefit. Although every writer has made his own classification of so-cialists, they all directly or indirectly acknowledge the four following classes: (1) large-hearted and thoroughly benevo-lent men whose feelings have been touched by the unjust op-pression of laborers ; (2) those who are revolting against cruel oppression; (3) those who are discontented with their positions in life, principally because they fail to realize their limitations; (4) the lowest class whose adherents are characterized by a covetous, selfish, and utterly lawless spirit. The first of these classes consists principally of nothing more than ardent sympathizers with the socialistic movement in its better meaning. According to good authority more than a half million of such men are found in the United States. Many ministers of the gospel and other benevolent men as well as the members of philanthropic and humanitarian orgini-zations belong to this class. They sympathize deeply with the oppressed laborer and endeavor to alleviate his misery by every peaceable means. Others of this class" become so impressed with the necessity of social and industrial improvements that they have devoted their lives entirely to the cause. These are quite liable to be-come extremists, and notwithstanding the fact that their inten- 140 THE MERCURY. tions are of the most noble character, more harm than benefit results from their efforts, chiefly because the lower moral and mental capacities of those whom they influence are not vigor-ous enough to prevent the latter from becoming radical, desper-rate, and fanatical. Hall Cane has pictured such a man in his "Eternal City" in the person of Dr. Roselli or of David Rossi, especially in the latter; but the futility and evil consequences of their efforts are also portrayed in a striking manner. It is only natural that there should be such men especially in a Christian nation. When one considers the extremely low wages for which laborers had to work at certain periods of our history, the condition of some of their homes even in our day, the company store and the extortion ot overwork from them by overseers, it is not very strange that large hearted men should bestow their symapthy. No doubt, these conditions have been vastly exaggerated by some writers, but that they exist to a reasonable extent cannot be doubted. The oppressed or those who imagine themselves to be in such a condition, constitute the second class of socialists. Only men who work come properly under this divisicjp; those who become discontented and quit work will be considered later. Labor Unions consist almost entirely of such men; if they suspend labor, it is only temporarily, and is for the purpose of bringing about better conditions. Occasionally the labor union-ists content themselves by merely putting a stop to production, but more frequently, almost invariably, they manifest quite "an omnivorous spirit of destruction." The whole cause of the unreasonable demands made by Labor Unions seems to arise out of ignorance. They claim that the whole production of their labor belongs to them, on the ground that wealth belongs to those who make it. In a certain sense this is true, but not according to the interpreta-tion of it given by these laboring men. They understand it to mean that the entrepreneur, landlord and capitalist have no natural right to a portion of the wealth produced, forgetting that in the modern differentiated and specialized form of in-dustry these—especially, the entrepreneur and capitalist—are THE MERCURY. 141 absolutely indispensable. The socialistic idea of the State's ownership of land could probably do away with the landlord, but to attempt the abolition of entrepreneur and capitalist in our present industrial system is absurd. Another very prevalent kind of socialism arises out of the fact that a great many men, failing to realize their limitations, complain of the more advantageous opportunities of other in-dividuals. They claim that the world owes them a living, but as some one has said, "are too lazy to collect the debt." It is this sort of socialism which is the "besetting sin" of our age. Ambitious people now-a days are so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of "sticktoitiveness" that only a few failures leave them practically undaunted. Having been taught, as Dr. Furbae says, such precepts as "There is always room at the top," encouraged by such maxims as "Try, try again," and cautioned to aim high instead of directly at the mark, they continue to strive for positions to which it is impossible for them to attain and for which, if they did reach, they would find themselves wholly unfitted. Many a proud father and fond mother, either because they have wished to encourage a son, or because of the blindness of paternal love, are respon-sible for a young man's superabundance of self-esteem by their having told him that he is not like the average person, and then he goes forth into the world only to consider his efforts unsuccessful because he cannot do as much as some one else who probably has much greater talent. It is this tendency of the individual's failure to realize his true place in life and his proper relation to others that has produced in our age so many dissatisfied, petulant, and cynical socialists. The last and most dangerous sort of socialism is that which manifests itself in murder, vandalism, and other lawless practices. It is exactly synonymous with anarchism. The number of such persons in the United States is as astounding as the awful doctrines which they promulgate. Some years ago President Seelye of Amherst College, declared: "There are probably 100,000 men in the United States to-day whose animosity against all existing social institutions is hardly less than bound- 142 THE MERCURY. less.' In 1881 their press consisted of 19 journals with a cir-culation of about 80,000, and since that time their numbers and the powers of their press have vastly increased. The fol-lowing are statements from some of their papers. "Religion, authority, and state are all carved out of the same piece of wood—to the Devil with them all!" "Dynamite is the power which in our hands, shall make an end of tyranny." "War to the palace, peace to the cottage, death to luxurious idleness." "You might as well suppose the military orginizations of Eu-rope were for play and parade, as to suppose labor orginizations were for mere insurance and pacific helpfulness. They are organ-ized toprotect interests, for which, if the time comes, they would fight." This last, taken from a socialistic paper of Chicago, pro-bably shows, to a great extent, the true relation between Labor Unions and socialistic tendencies of the most awful character. Such socialists probably began their careers as oppressed working men, or as men who failed to realize their true posi-tions in life, and later under the influence of violent socialistic journals or the lectures of an Emma Golden, became fanatical. A great number of them are foreigners who, having become disgusted with the absolutism of Europe, have come to Amer-ica to carry out their nefarious designs. Several great movements of the past two centuries have conspired to inspire socialistic propensities in men. The foun-dation of the American Republic, with the annunciation of her principles—-such as, "all men are equal and possessed of cer-tain inalienable rights such as, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"—paved the way for ideas which, carried to extremes by the ignorant and mischievous, resulted in socialism. In the same way, the French Revolution radiated its evil influences; and the Proclamation of Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln had its baneful as well as its worthy effects. But more influential than any of these has been the greatly increased profits of the rich. How would a poor down-trodden laborer look upon the following statement which occurred in a paper of 1880 ? "The profits of the Wall Street Kings the past year were enormous. It is estimated that Vanderbilt made THE MERCURY. 143 $30,000,000; Jay Gould $15,000,000; Russel Sage $10,000,- 000; Sidney Dillon $10,000,000; and James R. Keene $8,- 000,000. Is it strange if the working man thinks he is not getting his due share of the wonderful increase of national wealth ?" How do men to-day regard a rise in the price of coal-oil and the next week read in all the papers that the larg-est stockholder of the Standard Oil Company has made a be-nevolent gift of several million dollars ? The assassination of rulers and millionaires, the wanton des-truction of property by strikers, and the inconvenience accru-ing from a stoppage of production are not the only bad results of socialism. It tends to ruin the Church as well as the State. Infidelity and skeptacism follow closely in its tracks. In a so-cialistic convention at Pittsburg not many years ago the follow-ing nefarious resolution was unanimously adopted: "The church finally seeks to make complete idiots of the mass, and to make them forego a paradise on earth by promising them a fictitious heaven." "Truth, a socialistic journal of San Fran-cisco says : "When the laboring men understand that the heaven they are promised is but a mirage, they will knock at the door of the wealthy robber, with a musket in hand, and de-mand their share of the goods of this life now ! " What could have a more disasterous effect upon discontented humanity than to read such doctrine ? The socialist of this order denies the existence of God on the ground that if there would be one, wealth, happiness and opportunities would be more equally shared ; they forget to see that the rich are as often unhappy as the poor, and that God sends "his rain upon the just and unjust." Although an attempt to solve a problem of such magnitude may appear absurb, there is, at least one, feasible solution— a more general acceptance and use of the principles ot Chris-tianity. "Socialism attempts to solve the problem of suffering without eliminating the factor of sin." That all suffering caused by our industrial system is the result of sin, either on the part of employer or emplyee, or of both, there can be no doubt. If the spirit of the Golden Rule were put into practice, it "would 144 THE MERCURY. dictate such arrangements between capitalist and laborer as will secure to the latter a fair return for his toil." As Dr. Fisher says, "It will check the accumulation of wealth in a few individ-uals. And the Christian spirit, as in ancient days, will inspire patience and contentment, and a better than earthly hope, in the minds of the class whose lot in life is hard." THE SABBATH AS A CIVILIZER. Miss HELEN WAGNER, '06. WHEN God said, " The seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy man servant—," He surely had more ends in view than the mere refreshing of man and His own glorification. Besides achieving these results the Sabbath has other far-reaching in-fluences. Chief among these influences we see its power as a civilizer, as an educator and a refiner. It has long been an ac-knowledged fact that Christianity pnd education go hand in hand. In the accomplishment of one we necessarily attain the other. The influence of the Sabbath is like the atmosphere—it sur-rounds every one it touches, whether with that one's approval or not. The most violent atheist would be no more likely to scorn the influence of the day set apart chiefly for the worship of the God he ignores than would our staid old deacons. It has been proven that no civilized country can exist without the aid of the soothing influence of the Sabbath on the passions ot men, in the observance of its laws. Because the influence of the Sabbath is so all-prevailing and must be felt everywhere, no man can or does escape it. Christians, of course, are those most directly affected by the Sabbath. They come into immediate contact with some of its most potent influences. A true Christian never misses the Sabbath—he spends . it in the worship of God and for rest as was commanded. And so he reaps not only the physical bene-fit but the intellectual as well. One of his chief duties and THE MERCURY. MS '* pleasures is a regular attendance upon divine worship. Thus while being spiritually fed and elevated he assimilates some of the best literature and art of the world as it radiates from the pulpit and the organ loft and the temple of God itself. But the people who do not come into direct contact with the Sabbath influence, feel it just as surely. They must breathe it with the very air. One cannot go anywhere on the Sabbath Day without being made very conscious that this day differs from all others. In the cities and towns the stillness imparted to the streets, noisy and hustling on other days, by the aspect of the closed stores and shops and the absence of the clattering dray and shouting venders, and the quietly passing inhabitants with their peaceful, serene countenances and their fresher, more artistic raiment, and the sweet music of the church bells—all have a subduing, refining influence on the sensibilities and pas-sions of men, not easily thrown off. And out in the open country away from church bells and changed surroundings one feels an unwonted peace and calm—one breathes with the very air which draws one a little nearer Mother Earth—and thus is made to appreciate her beauties and truth a little more fully. Besides these maternal, physical influences there is another, more subtle, ever advancing influence—the influence of man upon man. Usually the Christian does not need the Sabbath environment for purposes of self-education and refinement, but those with whom he associates or with whom his friends come in contact may and are more helped, as they imperceptibly absorb from him a finer sense of right and wrong and a better general knowledge, than they would be by any numbers of over-zealous instructors and noisy evangelists. I46 THE MERCURY. THE COURSE OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERN-MENT IN CONNECTION WITH THE PANAMA REVOLUTION. ( Written for the Pen and Sword Prise Essay Contest.) CHAS. "VV. HEATHCOTE, '05. PANAMA has an area of about 31,500 square miles and a population of almost 300,000. When Panama revolted a short time ago, it was not the first time she attempted to throw off the yoke of Columbia. In 1885 a similar revolution took place. Columbia promised various reforms which checked the revolution. However, Columbia failed to carry out these reforms. Columbia established a centralized form of govern-ment which caused Panama to lose the privilege of a state. For years the idea of building a canal across the isthmus has been in vogue. The French Company, which attempted it a few years ago, failed miserably. It remains for the United States to carry out the plan. The Panama and Nicaragua routes were suggested. The need of the canal is very evident. If the canal had been built when the Oregon made her long run around Cape Horn the United States government would have been saved much expense. Then, the American interests in Porto Rico, Cuba and the Pacific possessions strongly urge the construc-tion of this canal. For a time the Nicaragua route was favored. A bill was drawn up and unanimously ratified by both Houses of our Na-tional Legislature. The main idea of this bill was that when the canal was completed it was to remain neutral under the protection of the great European powers. However, delay over this part led the people to favor the Panama route. Fi-nally, upon the recommendation of the Walker Commission, the Panama route was chosen providing it could be bought from the old French Company for $40,000,000. However, to keep our word with Nicaragua, the Spooner compromise was passed which instructed the President to select the Panama route pro-viding the necessary arrangements could be made. If, not the Nicaragua route was to be chosen. About this time Columbia became very much interested in THE MERCURY. 147 the canal affairs. They gave the United States every assurance that a treaty favoring the Panama route would be ratified by their Senate. However, after much delay, it was unanimously rejected. Columbia was to receive $10,000,000 for certain con-cessions. Columbia thought the United States was an easy mark and refused to ratify the treaty unless $20,000,000 was given to them. In all these proceedings the Columbian politi-cians refused to consult the wishes of Panama. Panama knew the value of the canal. That the Columbian politicians were working for their own interests was very evident. Conse-quently Panama's hatred for Columbia grew more intense. When the revolution broke out the world was not surprised. The revolution was virtually bloodless. The republic was soon recognized by the United States, France, Germany, Russia and many other powers. In a short time a treaty was drawn up and signed. By this treaty the United States gained complete ownership of the canal and received much more territory than she would have received had Columbia-not acted in such an ugly manner. The course of the United States government has met with general approval by all well-thinking people. All the foreign powers sanctioned the action. Many people tried to condemn the course of the government because the warships were or-dered to prevent any of Columbia's troops being landed to bring Panama to time. How often in the South American rev-olutions the lives of our citizens and likewise their property have been endangered. Many times before this the United States marines and sailors were landed to protect the property of our citizens. American interests are better developed in Panama than in any other South American state. American capital runs the whole railroad system on the isthmus. What good is a government to its people if it fails to protect them ? Then again Panama had been recognized by the United States and for that reason alone her action was justifiable. Some people in criticizing the government forget the action of Presi-dent Polk in the way he started the Mexican War. His action cost the United States' thousands of lives and dollars in order to maintain the national honor. Today all people recognize 148 THE MERCURY. that the addition of Texas to United States territory is a blessing. The idea that the government's course is a stain up-on the history of our country is erroneous. The government has upheld our traditions by being the champion of the weak and helping young republics maintain their standing. "A HUNTER OF MEN." "BRIDGET." WITHIN the forest depths I wandered far, O'er the great battlefield, where bloody war Had made upon our land a loathsome sore, Healed now, but still retaining its deep scar. At last, upon a wooded hill was found, what I had sought, A monument, commemorating strife With victory and loss of life, The boon God-given, A monument for heroes, dearly bought, A witness unto Heaven. Upon a natural rock, like those which on the hillside lay, Was carved the figure of a man; Not as the Knights of old, with upright pose, And fearless eyes, he faced his foes, at bay, But crouched and hid him, midst the trunks of trees, And with a deadly purpose, did the hillside scan. 'Twas here I rested me, A dream I dreamed, Which, to my wand'ring fancy, even seemed A waking dream, a reverie. Within the homestead of an old Virginian farm, A mother sat one sunny summer morn, Holding, within the shelter of her arm, A little babe, her son, her own first born. Oh! what a wondrous grace was in those words,, "her own," What sword could pierce the soul of such a one ? A soul, so full of hopes, before unknown, The deed too cruel, to be planned or done. THE MERCURY. 149 A glorious future lay before her boy, All fashioned with her mother love and care, A future, full of happiness and joy, Devoid of sin, the bait of Death's dread snare. "Her own," but ever since the earth wastrod By her, above all women blest of God, In honor of her wondrous motherhood, The soul of womankind has felt the sword. He grew into a handsome, stalwart youth, Beloved by many, and disliked by few, Then came the blow; her soul was pierced in truth, And he went forth to die, as sons of all brave mothers do. To die, but could he kill his fellow-man? This was the question that had haunted him, Upon the day of march, and in the nightly din Of dreadful dreams, bloody with warfare's ban. A marksman of sure eye, and hand unfaltering, Far-famed was he, And many a woodland voice had cased to sing Through death, from him, its untaught melody. So, when night's dreams were changed to day's reality, Not placed in ranks that fought an open war was he, But called of men, a sharpshooter, lay low, Upon the hillside's brow, to slay the unwary foe. #**#*#***♦* The sun comes flickering through the whispering leaves, Casting their shadows on green moss and fern, A birdling, from a nest above, moves restlessly, and grieves, In dismal chirpings, for its mother's late return. The noonday calm is over hill and glen, Save for the distant sound of battle's roar, There, where a multitude of bravest men, Fight onward for their country's noble fame, for honor more. Then with a rustling sound, the calm is broken, The underbrush is parted by a man in blue, A moment's pause; no warning word is spoken, To tell him "Death is waiting now for you." And he, whom destiny ordained to give to Death her prey, One instant hesitated, in his covert lay Sickened by fear, of his dread deed alone, Then aiming fired and it was done. ISO THE MERCURY. Quickly his weapon casting on the ground, He bounded fearless, down the wooded slope, His boyish eyes, all bright with unshed tears, For in his soul remorse fought hard with hope. And Hope, how soon 'twas vanquished in the fray, A boy, scarce older than himself, his victim lay, Dying in agony upon the sod ; No word he spoke, but with great eyes of pain, Looked up into his face, who had his brother slain, And then, just as the birdling fell to earth, His spirit met his God. 'Twas then a red mist rose before his eyes, a mist of blood ; Concealing the poor body of the slain, from which the soul had fled, He climbed once more the hillside's weary road, Determined to repeat his deed of dread. At sunset, when the wounded mother-bird Returned, to find her nestlings gone, No sound, upon that dark hillside she heard, To tell her of the deeds that there were done. Yet, 'midst the underbrush, there silent lay What had been seven brave men, And he, who watched the little bird's dismay, Red-eyed and haggard, envied each of them. But God is good, his day of darkness o'er, A wandering bullet claimed him for its own, And his sad soul, its struggles knew no more, No more did yearn for murder to atone. As from my dream I woke, my heart was torn With pity, for the " Man of Sorrows " who, Upon another hill, in distant clime, Gave up his life " hunter" for such as you. " Oh, God Omnipotent! " aloud I cried, " For His dear sake forgive the crimes, Committed in the name of Liberty, and dyed With heroes' blood, the curse of warlike times." THE MERCURY. 151 "THE PATH OF DUTY IS THE WAY TO GLORY." NO one will deny me the fact that our present age with all its hurry and hustle, its energy and propelling-force, its competition and its competitors, is an age for the success of in-dividual purpose. Having granted this concession, it follows that individuals must exist with specific purposes, carrying out and fulfilling the obligations which are imposed on them. Be-lieving that no man has ever been created without a purpose, which results in a duty or obligation to his Creator, and when he fulfills this obligation or carries out this duty he has a for-tune worth more in realistic and spiritual value than all the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts or any other gods of gold that ever lived—believing this, I ask you to come with me to the rich meadow-lands of Connecticut, where on Oct. 5, 1703, a man was born who graduated from Yale University at the early age of 16 and set out into the world following the paths of duty and therein was his fortune, a legacy far richer than any earthly inheritance the world could have given him. It was during his boyhood days that a problem of extreme importance began to trouble him, and the solution of this was the determining of his course in after life. From that time he became a man that had an end in view, a something to say and he said it. A bold, fearless, ardent and consistent advocate of his belief; a man with a conscience so clear, so pure, and so unbiased that all the world loved him though he sought not for their favor; a man with iron-clad precepts, not for others, but for himself and he lived them; a man that has come down through two centuries, spotless, to live in the hearts of all man-kind, and who dares to say that his glory shall not live till the sun shall cease to rise and set and until time shall be no more ! This man of purpose or duty has been the father of a very illustrious progeny. Among his descendants more eminent men have been numbered than have been recorded of any other man in American history. They have been most promi-nent in the ministry, in education, in law and a number have sat on the bench. Let me mention some of them: Dr. Jo-nathan Edwards, Aaron Burr, Vice-President, Prof. Park, of Andover, President Woolsey and President Uwight, of Yale, 152 THE MERCURY. not forgetting the elder President Dwight. Three Presidents of Yale are his descendants. Could any man be more signally blessed or have a richer inheritance in the hearts of his child-ren ? He was also a born naturalist, and there is hardly any doubt that had he not become our greatest theologian he would have been our father of Natural Philosophy. As a boy he dis-covered facts which have been handed down to the naturalist of today as most valuable information. Who can set the limit for his discoveries had he devoted himself to this branch of science with his purpose and ambition ? Jonathan Edwards as a man, as a theological and philosophi-cal writer, as a naturalist and as the broadest and grandest man the American pulpit has ever produced, stands out in lines so bold, in verse so tender, and in character so spotless as to thrill with admiration and awe every American youth of today. Who would not love to be what he has been ? Who would not exchange all the wealth he possesses—I care not whether it be millions—for the place Jonathan Edwards holds in the hearts of the people and in the history of his country ? His life is a story that should make any young man enthusiastic and his success has been such as would turn the heads of thousands had it been theirs, but not his for he had a purpose, a convic-tion, a duty to the world and his fellow-man and until that should be accomplished his labor was with him incessantly. Truly he knew the paths of duty and just so surely his glory followed. In two centuries from today how many men's 'names of the present generation, lives and characters do you suppose will have been handed down to posterity ? Where are our Long-fellows, our Emersons, Whittiers, Bryants, Lincolns and Far-raguts of today ? Are we producing any such ? Indications from the past decade and more do not show them and it is believed that unless a change in the ambitions of the young of today is brought about, America will have none to record in her history. The lust for gold is the keynote to this dearth of noble manhood. Men are willing to sacrifice anything—prin-ciple, creed, honor, friends, self, anything—no matter what to obtain the riches of a Carnegie or Morgan. THE MERCURY. 153 Says B. O. Fowler, "if this, our republican form of govern-ment is to stand we must have men" and he means more men like Jonathan Edwards. The U. S. Senate has grown to be a rich man's club, the offices of the government are filled and controlled by political graft with men who are unable to cope with the issues demanded of them. Oh for a few fearless preachers of duty and loveliness, for a few men like Jonathan Edwards; men with purposes, men with a sense of duty and honor, men with the love of a superior being in their hearts ! Our nation must have these men and she is going to get them. Whether they come from Connecticut or from Florida, from California or from Pennsylvania it matters not; they must come. Would you have this, your free form of government turned into a monarchy? Indications point us to the fact that it is gradually being done and there is only one sure method of making the wrong right. This threatening evil can only be averted by finding men who are willing, if need be, to die for a correct principle. Nothing counts so much as principle and nothing tells in a man like purpose. If you would have a for-tune, have a principle, and if you would have the love and esteem of your fellow men live a principle. In all the history of the world there never was a grander period in which to live than the present. Never was there so much to do, so many chances, so bright an outlook, but it is only for the man with a sense of duty. The nation wants men, but she wants them stern, tender and fearless, full of duty and loneliness as was this missionary to the savages, this first of American naturalists, this explorer of philosophy and theology. If for no other vir-tue we should love and revere the memory of Jonathan Edwards today because of his devotion to stern duty and to no other cause can we attribute his success and glory. If asked to write his epitaph I would have inscribed on his monument the sub-stance of his acts done on earth : "The part of duty is the way to glory." "C. E. B. '05." 154 THE MERCURY. POEM. ( Written by a quondam High School pupil.) We come before you this evening, To tell of our High School days, And while our stories we relate, Don't criticize our ways. We started the fourth of September The ladder of knowledge to climb, While the months were rapidly passing, Marking the flight of time. While our work was thus progressing. The holidays drew near, And through all the glad and happy days Were pleasures, unbedimmed by tears. We studied hard to reach the goal, We scholars of Number Ten, And now to the fullest we realize " Laborum Dulce Lenimen." The friendships, sympathies and all That were our life in school, Are meshed with memories of the hall, Which was our working tool. 'Tis sad to part with friends so dear, With whom so long we've been. Try as we will, the briny tears Will come, and sight bedim. School life, so dear, is over now, On life's broad wave we speed, May God 'ere guide our journey through, And we His warnings heed. To one and all we bid farewell, As now are separated The many friends who proved us well, And joys anticipated. Farewell to many undone tasks, To victories not yet won ; May all unfinished work In heaven, if not on earth, be done. * f THE MERCURY Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter VOL. XIII GETTYSBURG, PA., JUNE, 1904 No. 4 Editor-in-ch ief C. EDWIN BUTTER, '05 Exchange Editor CHARI,ES GAUGER, '05 Business Manager A. L. DILLENBECK, '05 Asst. Business Managei E. G. HESS, '06 Associate Editors H. C. BRILLHART, '06 ALBERT BILLHEIMER, '06 H. BRUA CAMPBELL, '06 Advisory Board PROF. J. A. HIMES, LITT.D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M.D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D.D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Busi-ness Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORIALS. LOYALTY TO Probably no force, power or influence among ALMA MATER, the graduates of a college is felt so much as Loyalty. We all believe that a college can be only what her Alumni wills her to be. If she is to spread her influence through-out many states; if she is to wax strong and command a place among the leading universities and colleges of the world; if she is to grow and prosper as she should, and as so many col-leges are doing, she must have your support, Alumni. Loyalty to Alma Mater must be your watch-word day and , night. Be eager, ready and enthusiastic at all times and you will be surprised beyond measure how much you can do for her. The very fact that you are a graduate is proof of your obligation and should be a sufficient incentive to rouse your earnest endeavors on her behalf. I56 THE MERCURY. Every college, no matter where or how situated, has its own reasons for producing loyal Alumni. It is, indeed, a sad day for the old mother when liar son turns his back on her, and it is a sorry day for Gettysburg when an Alumnus forgets her love and devotion. Perhaps a true indication of the success a man will make in the world is the spirit and vehemence with which he accomplishes his college work. If the undergraduate does his very best and is loyal to the core, the college cannot be without loyal Alumni. He who sings most lustily his Alma Mater'a songs, who has again and again made his throat raw with a "heike" for the orange and blue, who fervently loves every spot of this historic ground, he is the fellow who usually counts for something. Tis to the devotion and love and in-terest of such men that Gettysburg pays tribute. Loyalty to Alma Mater means the preaching of her charms to every boy who expects to go to college, and to many more who have never had a thought of a college course. Loyalty to Alma Mater means doing one's best and a keen and lively interest in all her affairs. Loyalty to Alma Mater means your unbounded support, Alumni, to your college publications. Gettysburg wants love and devotion and loyalty from every Alumnus. How much will you do for her in the next year ? Shall we, undergraduates, believe your efforts to be commen-surate with your love ? It is the only criterion we have with which to take your measure. Are you one of the many who are always so busy that when an appeal comes you must beg to be excused ? If you are made of such stuff, Gettysburg has no use for you, and the noise you will make in the world will never cause a disturbance. Our dear old college has many loyal alumni who have fought, bled and died in her interests, and to them, we, her sons, give all the honor and reverence for what she is today and for what she gives promise of in the not far distant future. Sooner or later in the life of many a young person the ques-tion comes, "To what college shall I go after I have prepared myself in the academy or high school?" It is thrusting itself upon a great many young people in this month of June, as the THE MERCURY 157 colleges and universities are sending out their scores and hun-dreds of graduates and the preparatory schools are finishing up the share of- the work that properly belongs to them. It is a serious question, one that will mean much in the life of the in-dividual, one that should not be decided without grave con-sideration. Shall he go to the college having the most successful ath-letic teams ? or to the one having the greatest reputation ? or to the one which makes the greatest promises ? These are some of the questions usually taken into consideration by pro-spective college students. But how many stop to ask them-selves and to consider the vastly more important question, "Which college lays the greatest emphasis upon the training of its students in the duties of good citizenship and the devel-opment of Christian character?" This, after all, is the important consideration. Not how great a reputation do the athletic teams have, not how much does it seem to promise, but how much importance does it attach to the development and training of that which really makes character ? H. C. B. -^> EXCHANGES. " Criticism is essential to good work. True criticism is both appreciative and corrective, but it is not so essential that a writer receive perfect criticism after all. Public judgment, fav-orable, adverse or perverse, is instructive and leads us to correct our errors, improve our style, sharpen our wits and pay more attention to the perfecting of our work, line by line. Have you a thought, the plot of a story, the idea of a poem ? Write it in your best and freshest moments and lay it by until the frost of cool evenings has chilled it, and it has become a thing apart from yourself. Then criticize it, remodel it, with your best impartial judgment. Never doubt that the English lan-guage has the right word ; and the right words rightly and ar-tistically constructed, make famous literature of the thought of men."—The Bowdoin Quill. I58 THE MERCURY. V The Otterbein Argus contains a rather interesting story en-titled " Character Painting." It pictures quite vividly the con-dition of many a poor child in the mining districts of our coun-try and portraying the effect produced by refinement and wealth upon so uncultured a mind as that of the heroine. While this story is good in the main, it is the only article of a literary nature in the journal. We cannot feel that such a meagre amount of literary matter does justice to a school which styles itself an university. The editorial pointing out why students should remain for commencement, whenever it is at all possible, is timely and well worth putting into practice. Commence-ment exercises are the crowning events of the year, and cer-tainly, whenever possible, the student should avail himself of this privilege to enjoy the happy closing of the school-year and also to bid farewell to the graduating class for whom it means so much. Remember that you yourself expect to be in a similar position some day, then perhaps you can better appreci-ate its significance. The best part of the World's Fair number of The Wabash is its "exchange pickings." The exchange editor is to be com-mended^ for his judgment and selection of clippings. We quote a few of them. " Are you Hungary ? Yes; Siam. Well, come along ; I'll Fiji." Again : " It is said some girls are pressed for time ;—others for the fun of it." " If college bred is a four-year loaf (The Smart Set says its so.) Oh tell me where the flour is found For us who need the dough !" —The Acorn. TEACHER—Johnny, repeat after me " Moses was an austere man and made atonement for the sins of his people." JOHNNY—" Moses was an oyster man and made ointment for the shins of his people." MM » "THE MERCURY. 159 "Usefulness is the rent we are asked .-to pay for room on earth. Some of us are heavily in debt." The May number of the Manitou Messenger \s a credit to the new staff. The oration "The Public Service of Church and School" is a well written and logical development of the power exerted upon the state by church and school. " Chaucer's Hu-mor" is a terse estimate of one side of his nature, as seen in "The Canterbury Tales." We are glad to welcome the Bucknell Mirror to its long va-cant place on our table. The only literary article, "The Col-umn to the Right of the Doorway," is an interesting and amusing reminiscence of a college prank fifty years ago. An increase in amount of literary matter would greatly improve the paper. The Buff and Blue contains a number of short articles. Among them "The Assassination," while an interesting recital of an imaginary college joke, it might be much improved by a smoother style, less abrupt and " choppy " sentences. The article on "Fiction" gives a brief history of its beginning, de-velopment, present use and abuse. " Ninety-Seven," an episode of an undergraduate who was determined to win his race in an indoor meet, is well written and worth reading. The Red and Blue is always among the best journals of fic-tion on our table. The June number is no exception. Roses bloom and roses fade, Flowers bloom and die. Life is made of sun and shade, ' Laughter and a sigh. Heigh-o ! sun and shade, Laughter and a sigh. Love is like the roses red, Fading in a day ; Soon 'tis dead, its sweetness fled On the wind away. Heigh-o ! soon 'tis dead— Pluck it while you may.— The Haverfordian. ■ The Susquelianna contains a well written article on Jonathan Swift, setting forth his true character. It calls attention to the fact that the vulgarities in his writings, on account of which he ■ i6o THE MERCURY. is not read, are no index to his real character. The spirit of the age demanded writings of such a nature, hence his contri-bution. "The Midnight of the Revolution" gives us a good resume of the condition of affairs in our own country during its struggle for birth. The writer has well digested the his-torical facts relating to this period and gives them to us in terse and unbiased form. In The Western Maryland College Monthly, "Old Man Knowl-ton's Greenbacks " is quite an interesting narrative of how an old miser was robbed of his greenbacks by rats. We think the story might have been told in a more interesting way. The break in the story, caused by shifting the scene to events in the court room, detracts from the narrative; while, on the other hand, were the style in which the story is begun continued, the produc-tion would be much better. The other articles are good. On the whole, the paper is worthy of commendation. The Pharetra contains a sort of parody on " The Raven " (under the title of " Easter Vacation "), which begins well, but soon loses rythm and at times whole lines are entirely devoid of any claim to poetry. However, considering the production as a whole and its probable intent, it is fairly good. SPRING TIME. The cro- cusses As the bull rushes O'er the grass-blades 'Neath the " bloomin' shades ' Of trees which are short For the cro-cusses frolicking sport. —Ex. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. Weaver Organs Weaver Pianos Used by Gettysburg College Y. M. C. A. 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THE STEWART & STEEN CO. College 'EngTcuueTs ctnd (pTi/nteTs 1034 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa. MAKERS AND PUBLISHERS OF Commencement, Class Day Invitations and Programs, Class Pins and Buttons in Gold and Other Metals, Wedding Invitations and Announcements, At Home Cards, Reception Cards and Visiting Cards, Visiting Cards—Plate and 50 cards, 75 cents. Special Discount to Students. A. G. Spalding «S Bros. Largest Manufacturers in the World of Official Athletic Supplies. * * * * * * ^ Plans'and Blue Prints of Gymnasium Parapherna-lia furnished on request. BASE BALL, LAWN TENNIS, FOOT BALL, GOLF, xs^sa^. FIELD HOCKEY, AST TRADE JSM, BASKET BALL, TOW OFFICIAL ATHLETIC ^ajjjgj^ INPLEMENTS. Spalding's Catalogue of all Athletic Sports Mailed >^» «^V *^V #^ T) TT others of the popular OLD FAMILIAR TUNES; be- Ti sides OLD FAVORITES; and also many NEW SONGS. ifrWJf ff ft SONGS OF ALL THE COLLEGES. fTff £Mt CopjriEhv, Price, ?f .JO, postpaid, «0u. uuu HINDS & NOBLE, Publishers, New York City, ui^, *T ft Schoolbooks of ail publishers at one store, ff^f p^q^t :**= :«=:«: :«= :\*= :**= :«= :**: =*5fc =**: Rig 1^2 ^tr *^ 3A= ^Srt: :**: ;**: :**: :**= :\*= :**: =**: ELJ mm mm m m. w mm m 50 YEARS' EXPERIENCE TRADE MARKS - DESIGNS r , . , - COPYRIGHTS &C. Anyone sending a Fleet oh nnd description may quickly ascertain our opinion free whether an invention is probably patentable. Communica-tions strictly confidential. Handbook on Patents sent free. Oldest ngency for securing patents. Patents taken through Munn & Co. receive gpecialnotice, without charge, in the Scientific American. A handsomely illustrated weekly. Lnrcest cir-culation of any scientific Jrrarnu'. 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Issue 3.6 of the Review for Religious, 1944. ; for Reh NOVEMBER ~! 5, 1944 t '~ (~°uesfions. Answered,' I Ind~=x tOVolumeThree ,~ ":RE, I EW "FOR R G-IOUS ¯ , "VOL0~ I~I - NOVEMBFR I~, 19.44 - No. 6., CONTENTS- ~ PIUS XII ON BIBLE STUDIES Clemen~J. MeNa.sp~, S.J .3.6.1 SCRIPTURE IN,THE CHRISTMAS LITURGY~Robert G. North, S.J. 3~68 '~. BOOKLET NOTICES '. .~. . ~t~OOM FOR THE EBONY CHRIST?John E.! Coogan, S.J. 377 ~ OUR CONTRIBUTORS " A HUNDR'ED YEARS OF' APOSTOLIC PRAYER~ Alban J. Dachauer. S.J .~. 385 . THE DEGREES' O~: PRAYER~Edward J. McNally, S.J .391 BOOKS RECEIVED , . . . . ~ . " ; . 40l RELIGIOUS PROFESSION: A SECOND BAPTI~M?~Ja~es E.RIsk, S,3,,,, ;~.402 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS~ - -._ , Abbreviating'the Postulancy: Obligation~ to go to Ordinary Confessor: " Commut~)ty Doctbr and Secrecy: ~Dispensa~tion from Eucharistic Fast: ~ Obligafion of Novice to make a Will: Converts and Ent~'ance into Reli- , g~on: Use bf Money given for Specified Purpose: PortiuncuJa~ Indulgence i~ Churches of Third Order Regular: Holding Bd'ads, for Cr6zier Indul-gence: Time for Saying. Little O~ce:" Questioning of Boys by So¢ial~" Workers: Novitiate without Isolation or.Novice Mistress: Transfdr from ¯ " Activ~ to Cloistered Instit~ute: Re-admission to Religious Life; Division of Institute into Provinces. ~.- " . . . . 410 BOOK REV, IEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth, S.J.) ° . The Ascetical Life: A World to Re¢gnst~ruct; Paul of Tarsus: The Pas-torabCar( of'Souls: Molders 6f the Medieval Mind: Canonical Procedure in Martimonial Cases: Voll II, Informal Procedure: Abridgment ,of the Interior Spirit of the Religious of the Visitation: Maryknoll~ Missi6n Let-terL Vol. I, 1944": Dea¢onship: Conferencel on the Rite of OrdinatiOn; Our Lady's Praise in Poetr~ . " . ' ~ . 42 INDEX TO VOLUME III. ' . ; ~ . 42'8 "~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. November. 1944. Vol. III. No. 6.: Publish¢d bi-monthly: ~lantlary. March. May. duly. September. and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Stfeet, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary'~s College, St. Marys; " Kansas, with ecclesiastical al~prob;ition. Entered as second class matter danua~y 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas; under the act of March 3, 1879. ~Editoria[_Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.d., G. Aughstine Ellard, 8.J., Gerald Kelly, "~.~I,~ Copyright. 1944. b~ Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby,granted for'quotations of reasonable I~ngth, provided due credit be given this review and the aut-l~r~. SubScription price: 2~dollars a year: Printed in U. S. A. Before writin(J to us. please consult notice ~n inside back cover. Pius XII on'. Bible $ udies Clemer~t J. McN.aspy, S.J. ~.~,IHEN Rome speaks it is always news: when Rome ~W ¯ speaks in the solemn form of an encyclical it ~is l~ead- line ne~s, But whim" the,Holy. Father gives a pro- , nouncement on Scripture, the whole Catholic learned world feels especially, concerned. It is .now-just .over a year since ,o-the Pope sent out his.encyclical on Bible" studies, called by its oPCning words Divino.A~ante Spi.rim (that is, "Under ,th~ Inspiration of theDivine Spirit':'~). Even, before actuhl. copies We.re available in America.interest was so higla~that 'arti~les beg~,n appearing ~n Catholic, publications of: all ,tyises . -: T~ue,. this encyclical;is~.lar~ge!y directed .to pri~sfs, seminarians, arid theology teachers, Whose. profdssion plainly'has to. do with preachi~ng and studying God's ii~Si~ired word. Yet. the H01y Father speaks to the lait~ 'too and invites them to become outstanding in studies d.eal.ing with the Bible. For they too can "render a. con-spicuous service to the Christian cause." ' ¯ ". . Bi'shops are urged fo "effcourage all th,6se initiatives by ivhi~h men . . . laudably strive to excite and foster among ,.Catholics a greater, knowledge of and love for th~ SacrCd Books." They are to favor '.'those pious associations whose aim it is, to spread copies of ~theoSacred Letters, especially of. the Gospels, among the Faithful and to pr6cur~ by every means that in Christian families the same be read daily, with .~piet~r and devotion." All the more would this seem-to apply to religious 7families," particularly th6se whosd regular program of ~ s~tudies-d~es not a11ot,c.ourses in Scr!pture. To. use the Holy_ Father's words again, if the faithful "are to be nourished CLEMEN'I~ ~J. ~ MeNASPY -~ " Review ~ fo~ Religious °with .thiS same food that:they may, draw fro'~ thence~the~¯ khowle~dge and"lov~ ~f-God a~nd."t~he pr?gress~mperfectton and' the happiness of their own souls," evidently h~does not mean to exclude those striving to live the very~of~ulness of the Christian life:~ - The new encyclical'~is now easily available. Tran~l~- tionshave.appeared in rr;any dio(esan newspapers; th, e May oissue.-of The Catholic Mind c6ntains one, which is being* publish_ed in, pamphlet~ form by America Pres r ry n fafe .cat i v e prayer. ~ ;- o Is there .a ~ype of contemplativ'e~ prayer, wl~kh we can - bring about at leasi: partially by. our'own efforts? It is importar~t to grasp the question at issue" here. Since ~all: me~ritorious prayer requires grace for its performance, we _~are2not ihquiring into our :ibility, to contemplate ,~'ithofit gr~ic~, but Whether, by utilizing the graces which are2avail, -~able. ~to all Christians, we can positively, help in building 6ur owns.ability to pra_y contemplativ~ly. The contra.ry sfippositio~n is that all contemplation, is infused and that we are restricted to-remov.igg the obstacles to such pra~ye?~ Then ~t would be given, finally as. a pure gift of God ~"-. 6ut any infallible causal 'connection with 0hr preparator~r acts. The atlthors v~e are following maintain that there °~n acquired contemplation. Father DeGuibert cites, f~r :thi~ ~ ~po~ition such le~di~ig auth6rities asoSt. Thomas Aquinai,i-~. St. Teresa, and St. 3bhn of the Cross. Experience confirms this teaching and reason would-lead. us.to expect it, For just as in " natural sdehce and ,philosophy when one has become thoroughly, familiar with his subject, he c~an find.mental repose in contemplating the ' ~rderliness 6f the system oftruths he hSs learned, so ih th~ ~bnsideration of the truths of faith, one. would be prone.to ,-,_~ @pect~ that a similar stage Would be reached iri due time2 The practical moment of holding this position is tl~at it~ .-founds the~convic~ion . that contemplatige prayer, admit-.~ .tedly a most efficacious means of spiritual progress, ~s ~. wlthin, the grasp of all and will certainly l~e our~,~ provided. w~ make the necess~ary efforts. _ . >. Method in Disdursioe Prag~r ~ ' 0f~ the forms ~of pi:a~rer thus far considered, discursive. EDWARD.:J. MCNALLY . ~ Reoietu for Religious~ ,, prayer is the only 6ne which may properly bE said,t~ be ~ go~rerned~ by method: These methods have been worked " °out in accord wiith~sup~rnatural prudence and so do" not oppose, obht work' alon~g with, the 0.pera.tions 6f ~race," At' all times it is to be borne in mind that they.are intended' as means to subserve God's _sanctifying influence ~upon the. " soul and-are to be adhered to precisely in the degree that they are helpful to this end. Gerierally speaking, the use of ¯ method°is a real need for those beginning to pray mentally. Not infreq,u~ntly also those who have been p.raying-for., some~years are still unabie at times to make~ use of the ~. simpler forms of prayer profitably; in such cases method sh6uld be followed; ' We find that the various methbds of prayer in use~in the Church ,possess certain common elements. Thus, all methods-insist on ~he importance of the remote prepara-ti0n)~-, This is summed up. by Father De Grandmaison as follows. One ought always sinceiely to pu~ the thin'igs~'of' "God in the highest placd. He shohld trust that intimate friendship with God is possible and relatively easy. should practise self-denial. It will make prayer easy if ond seeks God:in all things, practises interiorsilence~ and tries to put. on the sentiments of Christ Himself. " : 0 ~ According to.-the Ignatian methOd, .which is quite. widely practised today,, the proximate preparation iricludes ¯ a choice of material for prayer.- It shows reverence for God 15y~spending 'some time beforehand in fixing on what we .are to consider in prayer. Furthermore, "the pray~er itself is mdre deeply r~cdllected as a result,-since the entire time of °~rayer can be' spent i~n direct relationship with God and not. ~in the extraneous business of deciding what the~prayer is to-be about. For morning prayer, if'khd preparation be made the evening before, this me'thod has the added adv.an.tageof .enlisting the sub~onsci6us activity of the preceding night ih 394 Of humility and re;terence, and a petition for grace to.rn'ake~ -. the prayer weli. The use of a composition off.place is recom- o --* mended if the subject is an event in our Lord's life, in order ~ ihat thus the'one-praying may as it were projedt himself into the scene. Its use in subjects that are not historica!,bi~t ihvisible,, f3r example, a theological truth, is not favored ~by all. Utility to the individual seems to be the final test~'.- 'here. ~ " .THE DEGREES' OF~ PR)gYE~ the cause of'player. Th~ matter :chosen~-should fit the. needs and inclinatibns of~each one:" The start o~f the player .will, include an act of redalling the presence of God, an act~ An important question is" whether a definite~grace~ sl~ould .~" ~- be sought., Here a distinction is ~o ~be made between the time'of making the Spiritual Exdrcisesof St: Ignatius (for "one who.makei t.hem)and, ordinary daily'prayer. Durifig the Exercises, . the petition for the grace appropriate to each~ exercise is clearly essential, since the Exercises are a cohesix;e wtiole wherein each grace prepares for the succeeding . ~n the other hand, in daily prayer such a specific petition is not hlways required. Yet it is well tO make it frequently in -o~der t9 have definite, sp~ritua.1 aims. The dose of the .prayer should be more directly ~concerndd with God and have some bearing on the p~esent day's endeavor. A definite" resolution, however, may not always be needful ~ince th~ prayer is sufficiently prhctical if therd is a general up!.ifting ,of the heart:saffectibns to God or if a clearer grasp of a truth~ of fai~:h be gaine.d. The fbllowing suggestio.n~ g6v- '~rn the" prayer itself: 1) One 'should Stay where one findsdevotton'-' ~and as l~on~ a.~ one does so. ~ .2) Mote value is to be put on ~he affections of the heart and will than on intellectual considerations. - 3) Yet as the will's affections spring from ~hat the mind apprehends, the intellectual acts are not .to.~ be.-, cut 395 ED~CARD" d. ~McNALL¥~ " ~ )- '-~ Reuiew ,f6i- R~liqious "- ~ -short, prematurely:. ~4) The fUil.time'is to. be given to. pra:yer dedpite desola-. "-tibn. ~" 5) Violent efforts to seek devotion should be avoided. In itself, the e~irly morning se~ms the best-time" for-m~ iking mental prayer, sirice at that tim~ the mind is riot ~yet taken up With the responsibilitie~ of thd "day's work. .Yet if fatigue is too noticeable then,.some other tim~ free f.rom ii~ter.ruptions, i~ preferable. -This' latter suggestion. " applies to those for :whom th-~ time of prayer is not fixed' by ': rule. The posture should be the one most suitable to Obtain the fruit.desired and foi.due reverence:" ¯ - Timel~j:Trarldtions to Higher Forms o~ Pr.a~ter ¯ , .It i~-important that.~he transitions, first fr6m discursive to-affective'prayer and then from affective to contemplative :, prayer, occur at the proper times. To dela~; them.too 1,o.ng would be unnecessarily to render prayer tedious.and to fail to take advantage of the grace God intends for the soul. On '~ the other hand, to encourage the affective or contemplative way befor~ the grace for it is offered would be an atte ~mpt" -.c.ertain to fail., Hence it is important for the director to be ¯ able to recognize the Ordinary signs of a call to'these types of .prayer. The .principal test is the one suggested b~r[ St. Teresa, that the prayer rnu.st produce its effect upon the [,whble life of ~he individuaE by making him more humble, mpr¢closely united with God, and more careful to perform-[ well the duties of his state of life. Besides thi~, there~hould be at least equal facility in" the more. advanced-prayer. In addition to these two principal"criteri_a two others will help. -, recognize a call. They are a distaste for' discursiv~ p~aye'r. ~an~. a persistent attraction for affeCtive prayer: These. lat-'. ter t~o.signs may be called supplementary, as they are not ,always present. ~ Sqme personsad'vance early~to affectjveprayer. In such. ~-:~ casesch~e {s ~obe tak4n cha~ 5~ o~her means--for~examPle, - -~:,.6y conferences and re~ding--s~ch p~rsons'attain tothe deep unders[anding and,personal convictions of the great otruths ": ~ " of the-spiritual life and of their obligations that ordinaril~ a~e the result of discursive prayer. ~, -~ Dan~ers to Be A6oided ¯ Even after one is practising affe~tive praCer and shoul~ ~ bd practising it, certain dangers are to be watched fo~: One of these dangerd is a tendency toward too-violent excitgtion 6f affections ~hich usually occurs when one is laying stress on the sensible emotions instead of the will's determination. be ~givefi in order that affective or "contemplative prayer be : ~ ~ ,made with the g~eatest possible fruit. Another danger is that of spiritual gluttony for "sensible. onsolations. This caff le~d to a "neglect.of the duties.of, one's state of life ,in order noYto be deprived of anysensible consolation. There is also daniier Of presumption based on the judgment that one'must.be far ahead of others.spir-~- itually since one is enjoying great intimacy.with God. , Similarly, acquired ,conteinplation is also attended'b~r ~ certain' spiritual darigers. For example, there may be'dejec-. tion. of mind when this contemplation; at first very swe_et,:- o he.crimes arid and tasteless.: Or one may conceive a gr~eat rep~ugnance for making any distinct act.of the mind, such. as reasomng, even though impelled thereto by grace. A~in: dne. m~iy presume to despise 16wet forms o_f. prayer. Fin~ill y, laziness an,do a superficial spiritual life may derive-from a lack of cooperation with the. graces ,of contemplative prayer. ~ Hence. speaking_p~sitive!y, the following advice might 1) Solid and fundamental~ virtues are:to be rather than subjectively, plea~ing experiences. ,2) Greater recollection should be cultivated. :[.3) The examination of.consciefi~e is" to b~ kept up and - gr3ater purity of consci¢.nc.~ sought. " ., 4) No inspirati.on .of g~race should be disobeyed. " Even for those pr.actising these more advanced forms of .,~ : prayer preparation of material is recomm~n~l~d. °This.!may ~be done more simply than formerly. Thus, the subject chosen might merel, y be a' passage from Holy Scripture ~in, event in a saint'slife, or a certain, supernatural affection "of the will[ The Night of the Senses ¯ " -Th, e,final-pre, p~ratiofi of a soui for the gift of habitual rhysti~al" prayer is almost always the first passive nightof" >the soul, known as the nigh.t of the .senses. This is ch~iracte~- ized by a .great ari,dity. There is a simple memory' of God ~hich persists throughou~ prayer. This is the one constant -~ttraction of the mihd and 'it endures more or less inde-~ pehde,ntl~r of the will. S0metlmes .this i"nemory has conso-la'tion in it. '-MUch more commonds a painfu~ and persist-ent need, of a closer union with. GOd. Those who h~re already had some transient experiences w.ith consoling mysticalprayer can define wha't they Want:,,,,it is the return of that prayer flowering in the possession of God. ~,Grace. begins to induce a distasfe for even such sensible:ple~isures as are lawful. The will is free to resist this purifying proc-e~, ss~ and One is tempted to immerse oneself in, excessive indul-~ genceoin sense experience. The proper course tO be.f6.11owed is just,the opposite. Recoll~ktion is to, be presereed, and the "senses mortified.During time of prayer one should be con-tent with the simple, thought of God; this is all. that ongcaff do withOut tooviolent efforts; 0fie should pray for quick "deliverance from this time of trial if it be'God's will. - Distinctive Nature of MqsticalPrager Three qualifies set infused contemplation, apart f~om ¯ " 398 ' Noi~mbec, 19~44 - T~E DI~_aREES OF PRAYeRs-. ~ill ot~er ~rayer. First,'God's 15r~sehce till now l~nbwn dnly b~r:faith seems ~d be expdrienced. It is felt. This conscious-ness of God's presence has beeia e.xpressed analbgously by othqse who have had it as a~fouc14 of God or a Sl:;iritual ta~sting. Only. in.,the more advanced m~stical~ prayer do the analogies~of hearing and sight.0ccur. .Secondly, this ihtui-tion is simple, not bringing any other new knowledge to soul.~ Thirdly, ttie prayer is simply received from ~od, sifice no human efforts can produce it even for a short tinge. Grades of Myst.ical Prayer " Th~e. ar~, according to the authors we are ~fol~lOwing, three principal-stages' of ~mystical prayer:, the "prayer 6f quiet; the prayer of fhll union; and the .tra.n, sfgiming union, also known as the .mystical marriage. The pr~ayer of .quiet may be described as mystical union.in which tlqd ~divine act.ionis not yet strong enough to exclfid~ distrac- =tio~s. -At first,-this prayer will last only for very brief intervals, say for the space of a Hail-Mary. Gradua113~ attains lofiger duration until finally it is Eossessed almost ali the"time that is spent in prayer. . :-~In the, second stage, of mystical~ prayer, known as the prayer of full.union, the experience of God is su~cient!y ~absorbing to preclude all distractions. At first, this prayer tgo is had "only very briefly, though with profound_effedts .upon thb soul. A half an hour is considered rather 1ong.A person gifyed with .this prayer falls back to the. prayer of ~quie~ in the intervals between periods of full union. I~s_ ~rea~tiofi on the body is rfiore or less pronounced, accc~rding ~.~ to, the[temperament of the recipient. I~ can result ii~ ecstasy. Before ,being admitted to.the final stige of mys~tical' praye[: the transforming union, the soul must be further purified: ~. This purgation is effected through~ the.' 399 MCNALL¥ Reoieu~ for ReligiOus passive~i~h(of the soul known~fis tl~e night of the S]~irit. ' This state is not ~without j0y~resultin~ drom the infused 5ontempla~tion of God~ But it is-chiefly characterized-by" very -. great sufferings. Understanding.God's holiness and love in" a~nev~ way, the' soul also perceives the enormity its own ififidelities and conceives "a torturing abhorrence, c~F- ~them. This great sorrow and destestation of its faults~ cleanses the soul from them and so fits it for more exalted union with God. There is at times agreat aridity making ~ prayer seemimpossible. Very_delightful periods of infused contdmplatjon have been experienced, arousing the soul's desire°for more peLfect union with God; now these graces ha,vd:been Withdrawn, leaviffg the. soul without joy and acutely and painfully conscious of its g~eat .need fo p.os-sess God. ~ - - -/~ At-length th~ finai stage of mystical prayer is reached_. ~, This transformingunion or-mystical marriage has ~'th~reeT' distinctive properties. First, it'is almost .permanent; goin~ ,on'practically all the time even amid external activity. Per~ ;~ so/as gifted With this kind of-prayer ~have been impressed witffa Rindof duality within themselves. - The h!gher fac-ulties of the soul are n~early always_ rapt in prayer, while the lower Qnes are capable of engaging in all sorts of work~;" ~I'n~ .some cases this prayer lasts even during sleep. Ecstasy is -rarer than in p@e~eding degrees[ Temptation~and interidr sufferings Occur only infrequ'ently. ~ ~ The second_ property of this _degree of prayer is an, ~xperience of the transformation or divinization of the°~ 16ul. The supernatural divine concurrencegranted to÷soUls, in~ grace becomes the object, of conscious° appreh~nsiom ~. There" is a Sp, ecial percept.ion of union with G0d~ 'an~t all a~t~bns are. consciously performed with Him and through Hiifi. ¯ Thirdl.~, so~e ~ersons gifted With this prayer have an No.tuber, 1~44~ ~ ~ ,~,~ ~THE DI~GREF~ 01~ ~YER :ilmost con--tindous vision ofthe-Blessed Trinity.-St. Teresa: ~---says that~this is always-so. But St. zJohn of the Cross does not merition it and there seem t6 have been cases-of the tr.ansform!n~ union With God as ~ne, without any co_n- ~.~ sciousness df Hiin as Three. ~,The part phyed by the Sacred Humanity of our Lord with regard to this spiritual marriage seems to be that Of !e.ading the soul to if.- The relations,hip.is between the soul ~and the Divinity. In .different recorded instances of this-union,~ the divine r~ature has ~anifested itself more ~learly as identical with the Word or with. the Holy Spirit. ~ _" AI~ very close ufiion of the will with God's Will is ~the~ result of the transforming union. Deliberate'venial sins: are a~most completely excluded. The soul feels that' it' w0uld be imp6ssible to sin serio~usly. Yet there is no cer, o _~aihty that confirmation in graci is granted., St.~3ohn of theCross thinks that it is. ' But~St. Teresa holds that a fall° is possible, since there is no absolute guaranty th;it~ God.wifl continue to hold the $o1~11 so. close to Himself until death. Books Received (From August~O to October ZO) -THE BRUCE PUI~LISHING CO., Milwaukee. A Month o~ Roses. By the Reverend P. H. Fages. O.P. $1:75. Canonical -~Procedure in Matrimonial Cases:, Volume II. Informal Procedure. By .the Reverend William J. Doheny; C.S.C. J.U.D. $8.00.The Man Nearest" io .Christ; By the Reverend F. L. Filas, S.;J. , $L50. B. HERDER BOOK CO., St. Louis. Lent, By-the Reverend Conrad Pepler, O.P. $~.00." P! J.'KENEDY.~ SONS, New York. Three Reliqious Rebels: By the Reverend M~" Raymond, O.C.S.O. ~' Her Silence 8peaks. By the Rey~erend John S.'Middleton0 Ph.D, GROSSET ~,DUNLAP, New York. " $2.7.5. Men o~ Mar~tknol_l. By the Reverend James K~ller and Meyer Berger. Reprint., $1.00. " R li{gi uS pro e Si ~ a ~Seffo~nd Baptism? 3ames:E. Risk, 8.3. .\V! A~ TOLD~in. the liyes', of the early Fathers that . ,~ one of these heroic men behdd in~ vision two persons. . ~' .~receiving the grace of complete remission~ of th~ terdporal phn!s~hm_ e.~.t due to sin. One of these @as a neo- -~" phyte, the'6ther a religious assuming;the habit of .his order. Be it, fact or legend, this represents an opinion'that has held: an honored .place among the traditions, of the .religious life; " .For centuries theologians and spiritual writers have. likened; ' th4 religious profession to baptism or mar~yrdom,both ~which~car, ry with them the immediate and entire remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. 'In an article publishett in a recent issue of this REVIEW i(~Vo!. 3~ p.-28~),, Father McAuliffe explained the notion of _temporal-punishrfient due to'sin and several ways effecting its payment in this life. If the tradition about the" ,expiatory effect of the religiou~s, prqfess~on~s sblidly founded,-theq we hav~;~in the" pronouncing of th~ thr& ,.public vows, still another means Of riddinKour~elves of-o.u'~- ~ debt of temporal punishment. Some commentators on the religious life ~tate that ~the religious, profession hhs the l same expiatqry, effect, as bap- ~ tism or.martyrdom, but th.ey leave us to search for an argu-ment ,in support of this statement,. Som~ ~imply,~est their case on authority,, partic,ularly on St. Thoma~ Aquinas, -~St. Robert Bellarmine, and Suarez. It is the purpose of the pre.sent investigation to test the merits of the 1png-stand, ing tra.dition° by scrutihizing the testimony of these three emi-rient authoriti.es. 402 " REI~IGIOU$ PRO~$IION~A SECOND t~PllSl? ~ The Problem." By the religious profession we understand the pro-nouncement of the~ ,three vows of poverty, chastity,~nd obedience in a religious~institute~approv~ed by the Church. --For the moment we. ate not distinguishing .between the simple and the solemn profession. Our problem .may .stated simply in the form of a question: if a religious, in.th~ state of grac~ and free from attachment to all sin, were to die< immediately after his profession, would, his soul .~be admitted without delay fo the, beatific vision? Let it. be noted from~ the outset that we presci~id-from ~J~e',plenary _indulgence accorded some religious institutes, whereby their ~members enjoy this spiritual favor on the day that they receive the habit or on the day of their profession. Such a grant, for example, was~ made by Pope Paul V in 1606. We are considering the religious l~rofession in itsel~: and inde- ~endently of the_ remission of the~ temporal punishment'- occasioned by the g~:ant of,a plenary indulgence. -. Baptism, or the r~-birtl~ of a person into the life of.- ~ s~nctifying grace, the. sacrament of regeneratiori, remits the entire guilt 9fsin and with it the eternal and tempor.al puff-ishment due~to sin. On the neophyte, no work of satisfac- ~'tion is imposed. The c~ebt i~ cancelled by the grat(Utous applica~ti~n of Christ's own su{Serabundant satisfaction., This complete,liberation from the'bond of sin and its con- _"~equen(penaltie~s follow~ s immediately in virtuedf the per-., formanc~ of the ~baptismal rite, or, in the language of the theologians, ex opere operato. The,remitting effect of bap-~ tism, theiefore, is rather in the nature of a. free gift than one produced by the laborious procedure of personal penitential. acts. , The voluntary act by which the, martyr sheds his blood ~ in testimony bf the faith likewise produces tile entire remis-siofi of the debt oftemporal punishment, even though the 403 _.-' JAMES'E~ RISK . -, - Review for Religio~us martyr should have only 'imp~rfe¢i-¢ont-ritiom This com~ ,,- plete remission; though not the: result of a sacramental rite, ~ iS als6 prodi~ced ex. opere operato, Or as some. would express ~.--it' quasi ex opere .operato. : St~ Robert Bellarniine; in his . treatise on ,Ihdulgenees, explains this, " " ¯ "For it is'clear that martyidom is such a complete.sat-isfaction that it.can make expiation' for the guilt that has been contracted from sins, no;matter how great their num-ber ~and enormity. For, provided~ it i~ certain that .one i~: ' truly a martyr, the Church does not.heSitate to list him . among the saints and blessed, ¯even if before his martyrdom° he hadbeen coveied with many crimes." What, ofthe' religious profession is :it on a level with baptis.m and martyrdom as an e~piatory ag~ht?'" In sol'ring thd problem we gi~e first consideration to the opinion of the Angel Of ,the SchoOls.~ " ~ " ~ -OPinion of St. 7:l~omas o. ,.Commenting, on the relative~merits of the vow to make - a¯ .pilgrimage *and~ that" of entering the religious state, St. Thomas in his Summa Theotogica (2, 2ae, q.~!89, a. 3; ad3) says: ~ "The vow to enter religiom~being perpetual:is greater ~: than thw vow of .pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which is a ," -tempdral 'vow: and as--.Alexander III says, 'He ~wh~ exchanges~a temporary service for the perpetual service of religion is in no way,, guilty of~ breaking his vow.' More, ¯ over it may be reasonhbly staled that alsoby entrance into religion a man obtains remission Of all his sins. F6r if ¯b3i~ giving alms a man ,may forthwith .satisfy for his ~sins, according to Dan. iv, 24, 'Redeem thou thy sins With alms', ~ much more does it suffice to satisfy for all=his sins'that a ~ man ddvote himself wholly to the divine service by entering religion, for this surpasses all manner of satisfaction,- ever~ 404 November, 1944 ~,. REliGIOUS PROF~'S~ION--A SECOND BAP~SM?~ -that ofpublicpenance, acCording to the Decretals,-jus~ as'a holocati~t exceeds a sacrifice, as Gregory declares. Henc~ we read:in the lives of the Fathers that by entering'religion one receives the same grace as by .being baptized. And yet, if- One were not thereby absolved ~from all debt of punish-ment, nevertheless the entrance into religion is more ~profitable than a pilgrimhge to the Holy Land, which, as regards °the advancement in good, is preferable to th~ abso-lution from puriistimen~.''1 In.explo.ring the. probative value of this almost uni~ y;ersally cited passage 6f'the Ange!ic Doctor, i't is well to note carefully thephrases used. Otherwise than some com-mentators ~duld lead ug to believe, Sf. Thomas does not-mention explicitly the religious profession, that is/the .vows taken ~fter the novitiate, or the final profession,. He speaks first of all of the vow to enter religion, a vow there-fore taken before one embraces the religious life. He then ,°mefitionsth4 entering into religion four times, three of which are associated with the .idea of the complete .rem)ssion of ~ins dr of punishment due to sin, namely: l) "'It,may be reasonab, ly stated that also by entrance .into religion a man obtains remission of all his sins.'" 2) '" . . . much more,does it suffice to.sati~fg for all his sins that a man devote himself ,wholl~t to the divine servi'ce bg. entering religion, for this surpasses all manner of satis-faction, even that of public penance. "" , ~ 3 )' "'Hence we read . . . that b~j entering religion one receives the same grace as bq be(n~ baptized.:" ~ " From the° foregoing we may safely say that St. ,Thomas ~held it as highly probable that entrance into religion is ~n act of the hi~hest satisfactory value, capable of deleting the ~Cf.~The_ Summa Theoloqic-a o~ St. Thomas Aquinas, literally translated b~, Fathers of the English Dominican Province. L6ndon: Burns. Oates. and X,Vashbourne. ~V61. 14, pp. 301-302. - ~ o ., 405 JAME~ E: RISK ,a '~" Revie~ for Religious entire: temporal punishment~ due to sihl~ iind this independ-ently' 6f any special indulgences granted by the ~Church. ' Sinie entrai~ce into religion implies tile voluntary~assump-. - tion of a life of perpetual self-restraint from a supernatural motive,, it is more perfect than~a pilgrimage to the Holy. Land, which=implies only temporary hardships; and since ,it implies a complete giving of-self to God, it is more perfedt' ~- than almsgivin.g. Yet both the pilgrimage to theHoly Land and_ almsgiving were considered to have even complete sat-isfactory- value. " [t is true; as w~ noted, that in the text cited St. Thomas speaks only of the vow to enter religion and of entrance into religion; he does not mention the religious profession. -_ itself. Ye~, surely we can ~easonably argue thht if One may .receive complete pardon by entering the religious life, all the more so will he receive such complete condonation by actually pronouncing the vows: Did St. Thomas hold this opinion as certain? From o the text this is not clear. He seems to have made allowance for a contrary opinion when he says: "And yet, even if one were not thereby absolved fr0m~ all debt of punishment, nevertheless the entrance into-religion is more profit-able. " St. Robert Bellarrnine ~ Commenting on the same problem, another Docto~ c;f the Church, St. Robert Bellarmirie, says: ~ '-"Finally we.say, that~ between baptism and the pro~es-sion of religion, there is some similarity. And just_ as in ° baptism the guilt and the punishment of all sins are per-fectly r.emitted, so when the profession.of the religious life is assumed with th~ proper dispositions, it is'piously~ believed that there is remitted the entire temporal punisl~- merit, for which otherwise satisfaction would have to be made, even after the guilt has been forgiven. On-that 406 Novembbr,'1944-~'~ REliGIOUS PROFESSlON~A SECOND B,~PflSM?, acco~un.t, 'however; we _dcf not rate th~ monastic ,~rofession~s~ ahead of baptism, no~ .place, them o~ an.~qual plafie, '. For_ baptism remits hot, only the tJfinishment bur also the guilt, -hrid that we.know for certain. "The monastic profession, however, does not remove the guilt,-but only the punish-ment, and .this we do not. affirm with certainty, but it is our ~pious belief . . . "~ ,From this text emerge the following conclusibns: " )) (~Ve know,/:or certain that one of the effects of the sacrament bf baptism is the perfect remission of all the pun-isl~ ment due to sin. That the asiumlbtion of the obliga;- tions~of the religious life ~effects a, complete condonation of the ~temp0ial punishment is a pious betid and not a certain j 0pinion. - - 2) We do not, therefore, plac~ the religious professio on an equal plane with~ baptism, mudh l~ss do we rank the vows ahead of the sacrament. - .,,. The conclusions of St. Robert here-stated are cor- .roborated-by_an0ther passage of the same treatise in which he-s~ys that the Works properto the religious state; namely~' tO live c_hastely, to retain proprietorship Over nothing~ and to obey_one's superiors are conducive to satisfaction' for one's sins. ' oo . Th6 0pinign of Suarez. . Comme.nting on the,doctrine of St~i Thomas~and o(her great theologians who refer to" the expiatory capacity of the ~rehg~6u.s profession, Suare~ conte'nds: 1 ) It is rash to assert.that the religious professio~ pr~o-du& s'its propitiatory effect in sacramental fashion. (that is, ex o-pete operato), for the tradition of the Churchoand the . ~estimony of the Fathers-~offer. us no ihformation on the "~ subject. 2Controuersiatum de Membris Ecdesiae, lib. II. cap. VI. ~'~ . 407 r ~eO~ew for Religious 2) "The ai~thors inentioned m.er.ely teach-that-this. ~raceds diyinely granted tothe profession, so that,if any~- one haakes~it in.the.state of grace~ the entire debt of tem-poral punishment is remitted him. [This come~] from the divine generosity or from a ~ort of gratitude~, even though. he.would not otherwise make satisfaction proportionate the guilt. This assertion I admit to be pious.and probable, because 0~ the authority 9f the do~tors of such standing, because "it favors the religious state,.and because 'it seems fi_tting ~hat God will show that liberality, towards a friend Who has given his all to Him.' However, I admit that I dd not see a ~ufficiently Cogent proof. For St. Thomas makCs nb~ menti,on of either~h privilege or of.~divine generosity, "bu't endeilvo~rs to base :~thls effect [of "the-profession] on the excellence of that act.''a Suarez, then, ad~nits the. probability of this opinion because 6f th4 number of great theologians who see in the act of ~ssu ,ruing the religious state, or at least in the consum-mate geneio~ity of the profession, a~work of such merit to gain the condonation of the entire debt of temporal pun-ishment: Of the c~rtaint~.t of this opinion~ however, h~ remains unconvinced: The Simple Profession F~llowing the lead of these, and other, 4mi~n~nt tb'eo-logians, we may consider it as highly probable tl~at, in vir-: ttie of the self-surren~der made in the perpetual prc~f~ssion, the religious, like the neophyte or the martyr, obtains tl~e perfect remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, provided he is in the state of grace and free from attach- ~inent to sin. " May this conclusion, which we accept "as reason;ible, apply ti~ the simp!e as well. as to the solemn pr6fession? A~, ~Opera Ornnia, vol. XV. lib. ~rI, cap~ XIII. n. 6. 408 " ;Nooember, f944"< " ~ RELIGIOUS PROFESSION.-~A SECOND BAPTISM~ " the time°of St. Thomas~ whom so many authors cite as' an ,;~thorlty, the solemn p'rofe~ssion was the only°.~form, of profession kn6wn,. The approval of the simRl~ religiou_s profession, occasioned by the founding of the'Society .of -~ 3.esus about three centhries later, marked a decided :depar- " ~ ture from the existing law that the religious vows should be exclusively solemn. Hov~ever, it appears justifiable to at~t, ribute that same expiatory quali~y, to the perpetual; -'simple profession, for according to the present disposition- - of the Church, the juridicaldifferences between the simple ,_ and the solemn profession little affect the actual prosecution ~3f one's-quest for perfection in the cloister." The demerit ot~ self.surrender, the factor that probably effects tl~is remis-sion, ~s going to be qmte the same in both cases. The a~gu . ments eipressed above.should .be as applicable to the one ÷ form of profess!o~ as the other. COMMUNICATIONS? When possible, we like to have a Communications section in the REVIEW. We "think that (his adds interest and practical value. However¯ as we hav~ stated before. w-e prefer to direct the communications towards a definite topic, especi~lly a topic of ge~u~ral interest and value. Our first topic for communications was "Spiritual Direction by the Confessor." This ran "through several issues aiad was. we think, both enlightening and hellbful. \The second topic chosen was "Vocation." The third was on "'Retreats:" Com-munications on these latter subjects were also helpful, but, we believe, not so'useful as the first. ° We should like to have more communications on some definite topic, but we fihd * it hard tb choose a topic. Hence. we throw the question "'open to the hbuse." Can you give us some suggestigns regarding subjects that would provide forinteresting and useful discussions? Any ideas will be~appreciated. ; Address~'our suggestion_s to: Th~ Editors, Review for Religious. St. Mar~"s_ ;College, St. Marys,~ Kansas. 409- ues ons and Answers' Because of a slight illness, a postulant dntered ten days a{~er her class of March 24. May she receive the habit with her class on September Yes, she may. She had fully intended to enter with her class but" was prevenked from doing so by illness¯ Normally the six months should be complete. However, the prescriptions of the Code regarding the time of thd postulancy do notbind under pain of in;calidity. For grave reasons.superiors m~y shbrten this. tirrle by a few days. " In the presentcase the illness which caused the involuntary delay in~ enterin~ would be a sufficient reason to allow the postulant'to recdive the habit _ with her class, even thoughten days are lacking to complete the six -.months. . --37-- ," What ;s the obligation of a religious regarding the ordinary co.nfe.s.sor~t~ When the confessor a Sister prefers is stationed close to thd convent, may sh.e go to him rather than to the one appointed? It is the mind of the Church that religious women should ~en-erally confess to the ordinary confessor. While canon 522 allows a religious woman to go to any priest who has diocesan faculties for Women, it supposes, that this will be done drily occasion~illyoi because of~iome special reason 'of conscience, which,may persist for'a short time. Mere preference does not justify a religious woman in going to confession regularl~ to another priest stationed close to the convent. Please read explanation of this point in REVIEW FOR RELI-GIOUS, Mar~h, 1943, page 81. Our community doctor (the, only doctor we can consult o~dinariiy) reports to the superior on the phys,cal'con&hon and ~eeds~of. the sisters. In addition he sometimes makes known to the superior damaging facts which he ~has learned through consultation with or examineti6n of patient. Has ~ community doctor an obligation to guard even from the superior the professional medical secrets of ir~ferlors? : A doctor.has a strict obligation to guard tlqe secrds of his clients which come to him in the way. of busindss. When, in virtue of his 416 ~Offic~ he bears or d~scovers a'secret damaging to the clientbe is bound to respect i~ as an inviolable confidence. ~He. can ~reveal it only ~n. the most pressing reasons of ~he common good of s~iety demand the re~elation. Even then he must keep in mind the harm that would b~ ~one if the public-lost confidence in the prudence and silence of its p~ofessional advisers. In a religious community the house .doctor occupiesa peculiar position. To some extent he acts for the superior,'~, yho~must care for the health 0f the religious as a parent does for~a child. But.since the community doctor is the only one to whom the members of the'community can go, he must consider that the infe~or_ is h~ client. He cannot consider himself the me~e agent of the-superi6r, a~d hence enmled to reveal to the sup~or,confide~ces or damaging facts which he has learned professionally fro~ a member ~bf the community. On this point Vermeersch (Tbeologia~ Moralia, lEd. 3, q937], II, n. 649, 3) says :,."Note finally that the case ofa-religious community doctor is differentia doctor to whom the reli- ~'gious men and women have. to ~o. For since they have no choice, they ~ave a right that a strict professional secret be observed in their regard, ex o~cio." Then he remarks: '~A superior who knows some-_ ~:thing through the violation of the secret [i.e. the professional medical-secret], cannot on that account dismiss a subject against his will." Of course, since the supe~or must provide for the subject, the d~tor ~s allowed to make k~ow~ the state of the patient's health, but in such a way as to pro~ect his reputation. ~ Whaf~type of dispensation from the Eu~:harisf;c fast do rel;g;ous~and lay nurses have who are obliged to wo;'k on night duty? We have heard, ;~'thaf in some States the .night workers are bound to abstain from. solid food ~f~ur hours Before reception of Holy Communion and two hours frSm liquids. ¯Does Canon Law provide for. such a dispensation? The general Ia~ .of the Church as~ expressed in canon 858, § l, -~requires that all pe.rsons who wish to receive Holy Commdnion must fast from midnight: In paragraph 2 an exception is made for those who have been sick for a-month, as was explained in REVIEW' FOR REI~IGIOUS, May 1944, l~age 171. There are'no other exceptions as~ fa~ ~s the general law of the Church is concerned--except, of course, those .~vho are in danger ~of death and those who communicate to save ~the t~lessed Sacrament~from profanation. ~ ~ ~ The Holy See can and does grant d~ispensations from~, the law bf 411 QUESTIONS~ AND" ~NSWERS i~he Eucharistic fast in special cases. Thus there'are special d~spensa tions'for members of our Armed Forces, includihg nurses who beloqg to these same Armed Forces. 'Again;'P0pe Piiis XII has granted~ to ,the Bishops.of the Uni~ed~States special fadulties in favor of persons engaged in work of National Defense (see REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. .,March, ~1942, page 1431_. We do not believe that these faculti~'s have been extended to religious and .nurses on hightduty in hospitals. The. only way to find out is to get in touch with your Diocesan Chaficery. Religious and nurses on night duty may follow standard time in compu.ting the fast from midnight: henc~ they may eat and drink up to one" o'cl0ck war time, and receiveH61y Communidn ih the m0r;n-ing. 'This was explained in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1944, :- page 213. ¯ A novlco who is amlnor owfis a sum of money which was willed %~hlm," ,and,whlch is bolng held under ~juardianshlp by {.he courts of his ~hls' {.6onty-firs{. birthday. Gonsoquontly he has never boon able any disposal oL{.hls money, which was his before en{.erln9 {'he novifia{.e. In such-a case Would {.he novice be permiffed {.o .make a provision in: his will (which will be made~ before his. twenty-firs{, birthday) {.hat this money be cji~en.% his pa~en{.s as soon as {.he courts release ff 'to him? Since the novice, though owning~ the money in question, did not. have the.free, disposal of it before entering the novitiate, he will si~bj~ct to the regulations of canon law regi~rding it. Before taking his first vows he must appoint/in administrator and determine who is to get,the annual income from the money during his lifetime.~ H~ may give this income to his parents if he Wishes, but as long as he lives he" "m~y not dispose of the capital itself without the permission of ~the: Holy See. As to the woill which he must make before taking his first vows, he is free to name the beneficiary of it, and may will this money tb his parent*s. But the will does not take effect until after the death of [h~ novice in question. Therd is widespread misunderstanding among religiou~s with simplevows regarding ~the nature of the will which they~must mak~ before taking their first vows.¯ This is owing in no small.part tO the. wording of canon 569, § 3 "as found in most texts of con~it.u-tionsoand which is taken from the authorised English translation the canons of. the Code regarding~religious. It reads as follows: "In Nooembei, 1944 . " ~ ~ "QufSTIONS AND ANSWERS " e,~ery religiouscon"grega;ti o"n the nbvice, before maki.ng profession te_mporary vows, .-shall _freely dispose by Will of all" the proper~ty, h~ a~tually, possesses or may subsequent.ly possess." The" Latin. ~ext of '~tbe Code merely states: "'testarnenturn de bonis praesentibds oboenturis ffbere condat,'" and-may b~ translatCd simply: "He shall ,.freely make a will regarding his present possessions.as well as regard-- ing those which may possibly come to hifia in the future." ~Wbile the ~afithorized translation "he shall freely dispose by v~ill" is techni-- callyocorrect, still the word "dislSbSe" misleads many. religious into thinking that they are free tO give away their possessions during t~eir lifetime. This notion is absolutel~/fals~ and is contrary to the ¯ ~meanling of the word¯''will or testament," ~which is defined, as~ "~the_ ~ legal°°declfiration of a.man's intention as to disposition of property,. etc., that he wills to be performed after his death." The will .which ~ the novice mak, es has no effect during his iifetime,.but only after his" death. Hence the term "dispose,by" WiW' means simply ~o determine'~ who is to receive his property after his'death. The novice'in question may, therefo~re, determine that his parents " are to receive the'income of his~money during'his lifetime, and he-may ~ ~ make th~.m th~"beneficiaries of his will so that they'will recei~'e the -. ~0 m_oney after his death. But if he wishes to give them this money whet, ~-~ ~iig domes into l~is full possession, on his twenty-first birthdaw, he wi!l ha,ie t0,obtain~permission to do'so from the Hol~ See, since canon ¯ o- 583;-1° forbids him to give away~his po,ssessi.ons during his lifetime;, Is{there any'i'egulafion ;n canon law regard;ng fhe f;me wh;ch musf 'elapse a~er fhe recepf;on of a converf ;fifo fh~ Church before he or she ma) enfer r~l;g;on?" If nor, please g;ve us some adv;ce on fh;s po;nf. Canon 987, 6° tells us that converts are~impeded from the recep-. "tion of orders until they ha/re been sufficiently tested acc6rding to the~" .judgme_nt of the Ordinary. This is the only prescription of the C0~ ~r,~garding~ neophytes. Hence there is no time limit prescribed, before all~wii~g them to enter religion. The determination of such ~ time~ ~ ~<'" li?~it will, therefore, be lefv to the prudent judgment of the superior ~ Who is to receive the candidate. This will depend uPon the circum-stancesof age, education, and other, conditions. Generally _speaking, it will be well to make the candidate wait at least a year after"con-- version .before receiving him. Further extension of this time w~ll _. 4'13 -~ :-. _~: , ~, ~, / ,, ', The ans~ve'r ,pertaining to the Porfiuncula IndUlgence ;n th~ last ,ssue of t_he Review for Religious (July 1_5 "1944, pp.'280-281) gave me. the ;,~- pression that Sec~,lar Tert;aries of St. Francis cannot gain this ;hdulgence ~n a parish church of the Frim's of the Third Order. Regular of 'Saint Francis ofPenahce. Has this privilecje been revoked or has ;t n6ver ~been g;~ven-for churches of the Friars of the Third Order Regul.ar? This impression is hardly justified by the text of the answer. referred to above. "The answer concerned itself p.rin.cipally with the.~ question of Religious Tertiaries (members of a. Religious Institute ~with simple vows, for example, Franciscan Sisters) gaining the In-dulgence in their own community churches and oratories. Neoer~ho-le~ s, the answer also stated that "the faithful" hence, sure. l~ Secular Tertiaries---can .gain the P'ortiuncula Indulgence in all the churcl~es and public oratories of Franciscan ~'ertiarg Communities with'simple. ~Vod~s---a fortiori, Of the Third OrderRegular, a comr~unitg°with solemn oows. ' ~o answer the question asked above: Pope Urban VIII, hy a 414 19~4~ " ~- ~ .QUESTIONS ~ND B_rief, dated~Janu~ry.13, 1643, gra~nted the privilege wher~by~all the faithful' can gain ~he Portiuncula Indi~l~enc~ in "all"churches- (public oratorles are included in wrtue of subsequent grants by the Holy~See) ~of.' the Third Order-Regular of Saint FranCis bf Penance. A~s statett~ in ~he answer referred to in the question, the ~Sacred Penitentiary on 2uly 10, 19~4, declared: "Perpetual grants of thisIndulgence given ~iia ~ny manner up to the present time remain unchanged for the~ fu-ture." Hence there is no doubt whatever that not only Secular. Ter~. ~ tiaries of St. Francis, but ali the faithful as well, may gain the Por: :~'~ tiunc61a Indulgence in :all_ the churches and public oratories of~ the ~." ~Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Penance. ' When sayln~ Hail Ma~s durln9 the da~ is if necessary to ~a~e a.bead jn one's hand to 9ain the Crozier indulgence affached thereto, or would°ff ~: s~ff;ce fo have.the rosary on one's person? -~ " Generally speaking, one must hold the be~ds in one's hand in, ~order ~o gain a.ny of the various indulgences_, attached_ to th~ recitation o of the rosary. Through a de'red:~issued by the Sacred C6ngregation of Indulgences on January 22, .1858, Pope Plus IX allowed, that when the rosary ~s satd in common by- two or rriore, personL it iuf/ice~ tha~ one.of them hold a phir of beads and lead in ~he recitation pro- ~/ vided tha_t the others abstain froth all external occupation which ~ _ ~vould impede intdrior rec011ec~ion: , In ~an audience granted to the Cardinal Penitentiary on October 20;' 19~3, Pdpe Plus XI deigned to grant that ':when_ever either ma.nu~al labor or some reasonable cause prevents" the faithful from. ".__'~ carrying, in their~hands,: accordifi~ to the prescriptibn, either ~he~ roshry or tl~e crucifix, which, has been.,blessed for the gaining of~ the indulgences dither of thee holy rosary or of the W~ty.of the~ Cro.ssl, the, " faithful may gain those indulgences, provided that, during tl~e reci-~ ration of the prayers in ques~ion,they carry~ with them in any way~ ~the rosary or the crudifix." Will yo~. I;!ea_se inform us,,.whether there is a set time specified "by ~oCanon-law for the recitation of the Liffle Office of th~ Blessed Virg!n~ "" that is, for the J.iHle° Hours, Vespers and Complin, and, the anticipated :-Matins and L~uds. ~ ~R¢l~gious who are ~bound by their constitutions to the r~citation~ 41-5 Rd6iew for Rdigidu~. ~"of t~e Little O~ce'of the Blessed Virgin are not bound by the litur-gical prescriptions' r~gardingthe time of the recitation of the~ single. hours of the Divine O~ce. T~ey may follow these times if .they wish, but they are not obligedto do so. H~re are ~he times allowed for the Divine O~ce: Matins and' Eauds may ~e.said any time after V'espers and Complin have been recited (b~t not before t~o'o'clock in the afternoon of th~ pre~ng day) up'toone hour after s~nrise: Prime may be s~i~ from dawn up" to two. bouts after sunrise, thesmall h6urs u# till boon. Vespers Complin in the afternoon (except during L~nt when ~es~ers should~ be said b~fore noon). I am d~irector of a home for Catholic delinquent boys and a member o~ the Amer,can ~Assgci~tion of Social Workers. In this field Of work, ffofte~ ~becomes necessary in the line of~ duty .to question b~oys recjardincj prob~ lems of a'strictly 'moral-nature; The feeli.ncj~is that one may'be or perhaps. i~ encroachln~ on the ricjhts of the confessor. This fedincj is especi~l!y present in fhe~are,~s.pertainln9 to tSe Sixth Commandment. Is~there any norn~, whereby social, workers ca°n tell when they are cjeHincj into areas ~hat belon~ to the confess~or? , ~ ¯ ~reli'minary to answering the question as stated, we recommend ~i'that so~ia[ glorkers read Father Ford's article, Paternal Government." .dn'cl 'Filial, Con/idence in Superiors (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, II. p. 146), Father Ford expl.ains th~ impoftant distinction between the judicial and the paternal forum. A superior (and the same-may~ be said of the social worker) act~ judiciall~t, when he questions ~ ~,ubject principally for the common good, and seeks to inflict pu'ni~b-' ment as a vindication of violations of discipline. In this case he must "r~member that ~,the boy qudstioned has a natural right to defen&him-self and to avoid "answerihg any question that would incriminate.° himself. The superioror social worker would l~e acting paterna!lV if ~ were questioning the bo.y prindipally for the good of the boy him-self (for example: to help him "avoid an occasion of sin or to correct a bad habit). In this matter the superior or social, worl~r has ~he :right to ask .any questions he deems necessary for his puri3ose, but he -must observe certain cautions. (l) He is not free to punis~ a b~y who" confes'ses guilt, except in so far'as some punishnient of'a purel_y °' 416 *Not~e~b~;, 19~4 ~_ ~ : . -.QL~ESTIONS~ _ _ AND ANSWERS~: ' - . 2. ~private nature might be judge'd a mdans necessary to l~elp the- , (2) He is-bound by a yigid 'professional sec~recy with regard to the answers given by' the boy. '(3) He should prudently¯refrain from ,~iskjng questions that'he foresees will be answered with a lie. (~)~He ~ sh6uld not ask questions concerning problems with Which he kno~s ~s not competer~t to deal. Perhaps it i~ the fourth cafitibn that causes some social workers to feel that they are trespassing on the rights of the confessor, par- ,ticularl# when they ask about things pertaining to the Sixth.Com- ,~mandment: As a matter of fact,-the confessoi has not an ekclusive righ~t to-ask such questions. But in practice it is frequently true that :6nly~priests are competent to deal wi_th conscience problems that such " questions might'reveaL The social worker, therefore hi~ own i:[ualifi~ations. In some things'i no doubt, and even in very delicate matters, he-may be c[-great help to the boys committed to ~his care: and he may put prudent~questions.on these matters without infrii~ging on the right of the cdnfesso_r. ~ ~ ~We add a final word, of .caution for ~all religious who, as ~ocial -workers or i~ ,some other¯capacity, must treat with youth about ~ sexuaF~atters. We'fhink it is important, for the good of the Church: -=th~zt they-should not underake such work without having a clear ~ ~°: unders[anding, with th~eir dwn superiors as to. what they intez~'d tb. ~-~o~: Entire religio~u~ communities, and even the whole Church iri ,a certaih locality, can ~.suffe~ -grievously -from the imprudence of-one ~erson. ~" Our nov;flare has been wffhout a mistress of novices or a subst;- ~ ~,fute fo~:the past" seven,months. ¯ The novices work with fhe professed, Sis-ters ahd wifh the'lay h~lp. "l'hey'are also allowed fo associate freely with ~:'fhe;younger professed Sisters engaged.in their preparafo~ studies. May ~e i:onsider~as valid a novitiate made und~)r such irregular ci~nd;fions? "_ ~.The novitiate is not invalidated by the~ absence 0f~i "mistreSs 6f 2,_~iz6viceS or by tFie failure ~ isblate the novices fiom the oth~'r_ Sis~ers.~ But~certainly conditi6ns like thes constitute a gravd¯abuse thht shbuld b~ quickly remedied:. _ Canon 559, which preicribes that the novitiate be made under the -supervision of a mistress of novices, enumerates her.qualities, and ~'~-demands,~hat she be free ~from all'offices and duties that might inter-fer~ with the "care and training of the n~vices, makes it. qui~e clear that ~QUES'I~IbN~; AND Alq'.SWER.S :.- ; Revieu2 for Religio~s the~'Church' considers this~" an. offi. ce Of the,. highest importance. As-for the isolation of the novic,es,-canon 564 prescribes that., ,"the novitiate shall b~e, as far as pqssible, sept;rated-from that part of the house inhabited b~ ~he professed religious, so that n6 communi--~ cation may be'carried on b~tween the novices anal professed religious except for some spec!al reason and with thepermission of the Supe-. riot 9r Master (Mistress)." . With much greater reason should inter-mingling with the lay help and other externs~ be avoided, s.ince these naturally have an outlook on spiritual matte'rs quite different.from religious novices. The ideals of ~the novices are b6und to stiffer ~,fr~m ~.such regular contact with Lxterns. Does canon Jaw permit a relig;ous Of' an active institute' to transf6r tO a clo;stered cor~munify? "~f ~o, what ;s the procedure? ~° ° By taking vows in a religious institute, a religious becomes a ~erla-ber o~f that institute and, uhder, normal ctrcumstances, should per~e- .vere in tl~at institute until death. The Church does not favor the transfer of a religious~fro~ one institute to another, since it iscon-trary to the common" good of religious societies: However, in indi-vidual cases the Church will allow such a transfer for the private" good " of the~itidividual, but she reserves t9 herself to pass-final judgment 'i.n each case. Canon 632 tells us: "No religious c~n, without authortza-tidn from the Apostolic See, pass to another institute, even(stfic.ter, ~ or from one independent monastery to another." In practice, in order to pgss j.u~dgment, the Sacred Congregation Of :Religious requires that the religious who wishes to tranifer to another institute must first find an ihstitute willing to receive him. This will-ingness'- must b~ expressed in writing by the proper superior~ Th~n .tpo the Sacred Congregation wishes to know what the religiohs supe: riot thinks abbut~the transfer of his Subject. Hence this sup~rio~r, ~also, must write a letter giving his ~incere opinion whether the trans-fer is desirabl~ or, no~. The religious~wfishing to transfer, will then"~o write out a form'al petition~ to the Sacred Congregation of Religious asking' to be transferred to the institute that is willing to receiye him, and send this. petition,~ together with the two letters mentionedabove, to the Sacred Congregation of Religious. o If a favorable reply.is received, the religious may transfer to the -,.new instftute and must make a novitiate,' during ~rhich the vows 418 - -. Nooernbero i 944 "- whicl~ he has .taken in~ the first' institute remain intact., He is bound by his vow of~obedience to obey the superiors of his new irlstifute. "At,the end of the novitiate, if he does not make profession in the new~ institute, he must return to the 01d one unless, of couise, he had taken only temporary vows, and .these have expired. ' QUESTIONS~^ND AN~WEI~S " ~" Some years ago a Sister who had. taken perpetual vows ;n our °concjre-cja~ ion appliedL for and secured the. necessary~ dispensation to leave in order to take care of her aged parents. Now the parents have died and she has-asked to be. re-admiHed, stating her willingness to repeat the ~novltlate and to do whatever,is required. May she take perpetual vows at~the end of th, e canonical year? Or must she spend three years with ~temporary vows before her perpetual profession? What is her.rank in the_~ community? - Since the Sister in question actually left the institute after having- 0brained .a dispe~nsation from her vows, she sevefed all connection with.it. Superiors will.have to-obtain a dispensation fro~no the Holy See before admitting her a second time (canon 542, 1°). This dis-pe, n~sation will be granted for the asking, since the ~Sister had a very~ good reason for leaving in the first instance, SuppOsing that the dispensation has been gr.anted, the former member ~f. the institute will have to make-her novitiate again and take temporary vows for three years before being admitted topyofes~- sion of perpetual vows. In a word she is'in the' same conditi~on as any ~other novice entering for thefirst time. The only exception will .beo that she may omit the period of postulancy, since she made it before and its purpose is satisfied. , ~ As fo her rank in the community, she Will take it in the class in which she enters, just as any other nowce does. . When, and for what reasons, should a rel;glo.u~ institute b6 divided ~;n~o pro~.,inces? For obtaining such a division, what procedure~is fo followed7 The Code of.Canon Law contains no Provision which directly forces an institute to divide into. provinces. Canon 494, the only canon which de~Is with this subject, merely states: "It pertains exclusively to the Apostolic See: to divide into provinces an institute approved 419. QUESTiOnS AI~:ANSWER$ -- fly the Holy ~e," to unite*exisfing .provinces or otherwise r~Odify their boundaries. ~to estal~lish new provinces or to ¯suppress exis_ting" ones, to separate independdnt monasteries from one monastic congre-gation'and to'unite them to ~nother" (§ 1). ¯ The decision-concerning the necessity or utility of ~lividing into provinces is, therefore, lefLto the .prudent and conscientious judg-ment of the proper superiors. The reason~ Commonly. given for' ¯ divi~ing an institute into provinces ar~ the following: (l) the culty~ of government either because of the wide diffusion of houses; or becai~se of the large number-of subj.ects;~(2) the need of a second ~novitiate--~or ~example, ,because of different nationalities, or becahse of the great distances¯ from the novitiate to the other houses, or because . of the di~cuity, even iinpos~ibility~ for one master~ of novices t~o ~ ~roperly train a very large~number~of novices. The 1~rese~t practice of the' Sacred Cdngregation. of Religious is~'to r~quire for the division of an institute into provinces that at least'roger provinces can be established, each of which will have about two'hun-dred subjects and at least four houses in which twelve or mo~e reli- :gious reside. In some institutes the~constitutions approvitd by the H01y See ~ determine explicitly.tha~t the right to petition the Holy See fpr a diyi-sion of the institute into provinces rests with the general chapter. In ~'others the constitutions grant this power to-the superior geneial, with the consent of his council If the constitutions are silent on the sub-ject, it seems reasonable for the superior, general and his council, to make th~ petition tO the.~Holy See, especially if a general chapter ~ill not be held for several ~rears. "The Holy See will then'either grant the petition or provide for a spedif general chapter to pass on the subject. 420- THE ASCETICAL LIFE. By the Reverend Pascal P. Parente, S.T.D., P'h.D-, J;C.B. Pp. viii -~ 271. B. He~:der Book Co., S~'. Louis, 19_44. $2.50. This work, which has grown out of lectures by-the author at thd Catholk University, Washington, may be said to have two distific-tions. First, it is an American treatise on ascetical theology. As the first American systematic, deve, lopment of ascetical the61ogy, itis of course v_ery much to be xcelcomed. ~ .It~ presentation of the subject seems rather brief and sketchy, leaving one with the ~wish that the writer had gone further. To some extent this wish is fulfilled in the third.p_art of 'the book (pages 181-251), in which certain-select questions are discussed more thoroughly. Numerous quotations from the Fathers~of th~ Church add to the literary and inspiratibnal value Of the work. , : o Secondly, ~:~ither Parente sets out resolutely to steer a middle course ¯ between the two.schgols of opmzon that divide ascetical and "mystical theologians. Moreover he strives to reconcile the two opposing views "'~through opportune.distinctions, whenever feasible." ,Though this volume is limited to asceticism and ~nother volume on mysticism is promised, the author could not avoid touching on certain prbblems !nvolving the differences between the two and between acquired and ¯ infused contemplation. He believes "that there is both 'a distinction and ~ a continuity between acquired.and infuse~l contemplation." " "The distinction is not essential or in the very ziatures of the two forms of contemplat!on. Rat.h.er it is to be found in the mode or, manner in Which the twb forms of contemplation are attained. . Such a difference. is l~ss than specific and more than merely a matter of degree. Acquired contemplation can and ought t0~be the aim of all who ctfltivate~spir- ~, ituality, and it is one of the principal links between the ascetical and the mystical life. On~religio_us ;*nd ascetical theology the authoi writes: "It is neces-sary for religi6us to. be well instructed in ascetical theology. Ordi- -~ naril~ they receive a thorough explanation of their vows and rule, bat bften only a superficial and frhgmentary jntroduction in ascetical -and mystical theology. Some of'them do not know any .form of mental prayer besides meditation. The impression prevails that 421 . BOOK REVIEWS Reoiew /:or Religzous_ _ ,myst!cal graces are.dangerous for both the individual and"the cbm- -mumty. The-consequence is that many are retarded or hindered in theirspiritual advancement. The position of. the religious who has been favored with-extraordinary graces becomes very delicate. A well:enlightened community is better disposed toward mystical phenomena and higher forms of mental prayer" (page 215). Father" Parente's book is suffikiently~ clear, brief, and ,free fr6m .technicalities and more recondite investigations to be intelligible religious, generallg,.-~-~.G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD, S.J. A WORLD TO RECONS~'RUCT. Plus XII on Peace and Recons~ruct;om By Guido GoneJla. Translated by the Reverend T. Lincoln Bous-caren, S.J. " Under the auspices of the Bishops' CornmiHee on the Pope's Peac~ Points. .Pp. x~x -I- 335. The Bruce Publlsh!ng'Co., Milwaukee, 1944. $3.50. The Papal Peace Plan, explains "Guido Gonella, proposes as the basis for a future peace a. "f~derated society," of free and independ~ent . peoples. This "Sgciety of Nations" is to be: Constituted by all states. - joined into an organic union , b' being organized into groups of states. wl~ich groups would be regional, continental, international. All states would be equal ~fore the law, bound by the same morality that governs private action, unarmed,. committed to arbitration of all internationai disputes, wit~ all force and sanctions delegated to the authoritativd, and

Issue 62.3 of the Review for Religious, 2003. ; Holiness Religious Life Saintly Mentoring QUARTERLY 62.3 2003 . to God's Universal call tO ,holiness that flow from tbe~cbarisms of Catholic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2003 Review for Religious. Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Adviso~7 Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Adrian Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla sJ Miriam D. Ukeritis csJ QUARTERLY 62.3 2003 contents 230 holiness Be Holy as God Is Holy George A. Maloney SJ reflects on the holiness of God and our own holiness from the evidences of Scripture. 239 Praying with the Body: Not Running Ahead of Grace Rende Nienaber SND describes a number of ways to enter into prayer by involving our bodies. 251 religious life Prophetic Voice in Religious Life Elizabeth A. Dreyer reflects on two aspects of being a prophet--being an agent of change and living a contemplative existence--and issues a challenge to religious life. Review for Religious 269 Charism: Is Marketing Needed? Nihal Abeyasingha CSSR proposes a refinement in a religious congregation's method of research into its charism by examining its own continuing pastoral care and pastoral sensitivity in relation to the founder's. 287 John of the Cross's Message for Today Ernest E. Lark.in OCarm indicates how contemporary forms of contemplative prayer--centering prayer, Christian Meditation, and the Jesus Prayer--fit into John of the Cross's teaching on contemplation. 301 Catherine McAuley's Reliance on Providence Mary Judith O'Brien RSM examines the life of Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, as an example of one who surrenders her whole being in trust to God. epar r en s 228 Prisms 316 Canonical Counsel: Effects of Departure 324 Book Reviews 62.3 2003 prisms A great gift of the four constitu-tions of the Second Vatican Council--on the church (Lumen gentium), on divine revelation (Dei verbum), on the sacred liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium), and on the church in the modern world (Gaudium et spes)--is their readability and their applicability. The matters treated in them can continue to enhance our Catholic life. Whereas the Council of Trent in the 16th cen-tury was needed to put the church's own house in order (the Catholic reformation), Vatican Council II in the 20th century, identified as a pastoral council, looked to revitalizing our faith practice and our mis-sionary effort (Catholic renewal) as we became more fully engaged in the world we live in. We might describe Vatican II as addressing the problem of a distance many Catholics felt from a God in heaven, from Jesus Christ in their awed reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament, from the church in its authority, and from our world itself (b~cause it was "out there"). The church, too, often seemed "out there," embodied in pastors and bishops and encycli-cals that were not exactly us. Vatican II reminded Catholics that they belonged, that baptism made them "the people of God," with rights and responsibilities in the church. God's word in the Bible had sometimes seemed only a Protestant thing, or a Latin thing that priests preached about in English. Catholics were often more touched and uplifted by holy hours honoring the Sacred Heart and evening devotions in honor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help than they were by Mass and the various sacraments. The Mass in Latin had a Revie~ for Religious certain majesty and mystery within our small or large churches, but people attended at a distance, often deliberately towards the rear. Though we in the United States did not generally feel excluded or constrained in our parishes, when we now look back we see ourselves as having lived and learned our faith in a kind of ghetto outside the mainstream of our country. The four constitutions and the decrees of Vatican II changed our ways of thinking and acting. They called on all of us to take responsibility not only for our own adult faith lives, but also for the talent and improvement we can bring to national cultures and values and international ones as well. All our lives long we are being continually formed by the word of God and by God's providence in the events of our lives. In this way we come to know Jesus Christ better, as our Lord and Savior and also as our friend in the joys and difficulties of our lives. Baptized into Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and thus into his priesthood too, we share, with the ordained leadership of our bishops, priests, and deacons, in celebrating the Eucharist and the other sacraments. Our church looks on our world with neither fear nor disdain, but seeks to be involved hopefully and helpfully in its happiness and sorrows. Yes, Vatican II has increased the participation of many in all things Catholic. Now recent Roman documents dealing with liturgy, Eucharist, and devotions like the rosary have been issu-ing a call, recalling for us our human need of reverence in deal-ing with God and the things of God. Family love and friendship, yes, but overfamiliarity has less place in the family of God than in ordinary families. We are being reminded that, as well-loved creatures, we still need awe and reverence towards our Creator, and even towards the people in our lives, nearby and on the other side of the world. We are being called to the Trinitarian roots of our Catholic spirituality--a grand unity in an unfath-omable tension. In our relation to God and one another, we yearn to give and receive loving reverence, reverent love. David L. Fleming SJ 62.3 2003 holiness GEORGE A. MALONEY Be Holy as God Is Holy St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, teaches these new Christians the essence of God's calling in Christ Jesus: Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ to be holy and spotless and to live through love in his pres-ence, determining that we should become his adopted children through Jesus Christ for his own kind pur-poses. (Ep 1:4-5) In all of the Old and New Testaments, we will not find any words to express, as the words holi-ness and holy do, the mystery of the perfection in the Trinitarian community of love and the mys-tery of God's will revealed through Jesus Christ: "to be holy and spodess and to live through love in his presence." It is sad that many Christians have never had a true scriptural meaning of holi-ness and what it means for us to be holy. George A. Ma]oney SJ last wrote for us in May-June 2002. His address is Contemplative Ministries; 13338 Del Monte Drive, #3-K; Seal Beach, California 90740. Revie~ for Religiou~ We need to ask God to show what holiness really means: his holiness first and then our own holiness. God's power can be seen and heard in nature, in lightning and thunder and rushing waters. But in describing God's holi-ness we are, in a way, trying to touch the "insideness" of God, the source of everything good and beautiful that we ever see or hear or feel. God's holiness is God in his per-fection as infinitely loving. Holiness is the totality of God's being moving outward as gift toward the other, toward human beings and angels. We read in the Book of Leviticus: For it is I, Yahweh, who am your God. You have been sanctified and have become holy because I am holy. Yes, it is I, Yahweh, who have brought you out of Egypt to be your God; you, therefore, must be holy because I am holy. (Lv 11:44-45) God Is Holy in Things and Places and Persons Moses fell back before the holiness of Yahweh in the burning bush. That was "holy ground" (Ex 3:4-6). God, who is holy, had chosen to be present to Moses in that place. No human hand was permitted to touch the Ark of the Covenant because God's holy presence was there. The Ark was kept in the Holy of Holies, a special place where God would communicate with his people. Yet, when for their sanctification God's holiness touches angels and human beings, he is present more perfectly to them. He enters upon a self-giving that allows us human beings to be sharers through love in his very own nature. This has always been God's purpose in creating us: "Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you. As ScripUare says: 'Be holy for I am holy'" (1 P 1:15-16). God calls us to receive his holiness and thereby to become holy too, opening ourselves to his outpouring 62.3 2003 Maloney ¯ Be Holy as God Is Holy We have no way of experiencing the fullness of God's holiness except in Jesus Christ. love, to his gift to us of himself and of our neighbor. We are called to be saints--holy people--sanctified by God's holiness (see Rm 1:7; 1 Co 1:2). "We have been called by God to be holy, not to be immoral" (1 Th 4:7). God chose us from the beginning to be holy by the sanctify-ing power of the Holy Spirit (2 Th 2:13) and to "become his adopted children through Jesus Christ" (Ep 1:5). Jesus is holy, and we too are called to be holy. We have no way of experiencing the fullness of God's holi-ness except in Jesus Christ. He teaches us about God's holiness, the actions of a loving Father concerned with all the details of our daily existence. Now we know what God's holiness is like. It is like the holi-ness of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. Jesus' Holiness and His Growing Holiness The holiness of Jesus consisted first in his having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit. He was the gift of the Father through the Spirit. All that he had Jesus received from his Father. He could not act on his own, but only on what he received from his Father (Jn 5:19, 30; Jn 8:28). It is the Father who sent him into the world and consecrated him, making him holy in order to bring the holiness of God to the world (Jn 10:36). Jesus was sinless because he yielded to God's Holy Spirit within him and struggled against any urge toward self-centered independence (Heb 4:1). From the Synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus' temptations, we realize, as essential to their meaning, that he had to struggle in his heart to reach the state of loving, humble submission to his Father that eventually would mean his ignominious Review for Religious death on the cross. Jesus would grow in holiness as he fought the Prince of Darkness for dominance, both in his own life and in the lives of those he healed of demonic possession. His struggle would end only on the cross, when he was lifted up and his adversary definitively thrown down from his throne and stripped of his power. From the New Testament we see that Jesus' increas-ing holiness is in accord with the Father's Spirit in him, giving him strength to unmask and defeat the devil. He seeks and confronts the evil one and conquers him. Jesus' Temptations The three temptations of Jesus in the desert empha-size his complete attachment to his Father. Jesus under-goes temptations--much like Eve's, the feminine side of all human beings--to seize the initiative in an aggres-siveness that would deny God's sovereignty over him. Jesus refused to feed himself with anything but God's word. "You must worship the Lord God, and serve him alone" (Dr 6:13, Lk 8). The Gospels present the peak of Jesus' holiness as an exodus experience. As he grew in holiness, he was tempted to hold on to his own life rather than surrender that life on behalf of sinful mankind. Imaging the Father's holiness in his own human development, Jesus grew in each event as he sought not his own but his Father's will. "Here I am! I am coming.to obey your will" (Heb 10:9). Jesus' holiness prompted him to a joyful response to do all that his human consciousness revealed to him as falling within the area of the Father's wish or even, more sensitively, what would please his Father more (Jn 8:29). Jesus suffers his most severe sense of abandonment on the cross when he cries out loudly to his Father: "My God, my God, why have you deserted me?" (Mk 15:34). In spite of his greatest temptation to doubt, in the seem-ing absence of the Father's loving approval, Jesus pushes 62.3 2003 Maloney ¯ Be Holy as God Is Holy himself to new depths of holiness and loving surrender. In such agony Jesus attains in his human condition the holiness of God. This is the crowning in human form of the Trinity's holiness, ultimate self-giving to mankind (through abandonment and death). Holy through the Holy Spirit Jesus at the Last Supper promised that he would pour out the holy and sanctifying Spirit after his death on the cross (Jn 14:16-21). If Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, is glo-rified by the Father and is able to bestow his sanctifying Spirit upon his believers through his final sufferings, it is no less also the Holy Spirit who effects the holiness of Jesus in the days and years of his earlier human development. We can see from the Gospel narrative of his baptism how Jesus, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was led further toward full holiness by John the Baptist in the Jordan. As Jesus came out of the water, he received a vision of the Spirit as a gentle dove and heard his Father declare from on high: "You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you" (Mk 1:11). Jesus in his humanity is swept up into an ecstatic oneness with the Father. Heaven and earth have been closed by Adam's first sin in the garden. Now God's communicating pres-ence has passed through the barrier of sin, and Jesus, God's holiness, stands within the human family. Brightness and darkness are brought together in Jesus. The presence and sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus begins with Jesus' physical exis-tence. If Paul could appeal to the Corinthians' inner dig-nity because their bodies were holy--"Your body, you know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Co 6:19)- how much more was this a living experience of Jesus in his body! Jesus was the most free human being that ever existed because the Spirit in him linked him with the Review for Religious Father in myriad ways. Seeing his Father in the materi-ality of his body and in the physical world around him, Jesus enjoyed a serenity and contentment in being there with the Father. Sin sets up a physical, psychical, and spiritual "ner-vousness" in us because it hinders our seeing the loving presence of God in these connections. Instead, sin inclines us to exploit them, as is evident in our abuse of our appetites for food, drink, sex, material and intellec-tual possession, honor--in a word, our pride of life. Finding the Father in All of Creation Jesus was free to find the Father's providential presence in all events and circumstances inasmuch as Jesus was continuously the expressed Word of the Father. In his humanity Jesus had spe-cial gratitude and love by rea-son of his Father's gift to him of intimate friends. He praised God in the gentle love he had for his mother, Mary, for Joseph, John, Mary and Martha, Peter and Andrew, and his other apostles and followers. Yet the freedom brought to him by God's Spirit gave Jesus an inner austerity in all of his human relationships. They were not merely gifts for him to use happily in glorifying the Father; they were diaphanous places in which to find the Father's love and then reciprocate that love by serving everyone he encountered. We cannot understand Jesus in his personal poverty and his preference for the physically, psychically, and spiritually poor people to whom he went and brought healing unless we enter into the conscious relationship Jesus knew that his Father's love for all people everywhere included full awareness of their absolute poverty. 62.3 2003 Maloney ¯ Be Holy as God Is Holy that Jesus entered as the Father's Word on earth. Jesus knew that his Father's love for all people everywhere included full awareness of their absolute poverty. We human beings are radical and ontological nonentities except for God's love poured out in unselfish creation. God is absolute love because he is perfectly holy and self-giving. Jesus' Poverty and Service of Others Jesus lived poorly, by the inner richness of his Father's continued gif~ of himself to him. This poverty can be called humility. Jesus was nothing; the Father was all. Jesus was absolutely poor because no thing possessed him. He was possessed only by his Father, and so he saw created things only as external indications of the inner emptiness of human beings before the Allness of his Father. Jesus served others because that is love in action. He was expressing in human ways the love of God the Father for them. The Father's compassion for his children was the source of Jesus' compassion for them. Jesus burned with desire to actualize the Father's presence in the life of everyone he met (Lk 12:49). He went about doing good, especially by healing all types of sickness and dis-ease. He was never more the perfect image of the heav-enly Father than when he saw the multitudes scattering and fainting like sheep without a shepherd and was moved with mercy and compassion (Mt 9:36). Jesus' Prayer Jesus' holiness is shown also in his prayer life. The Gospels give us much teaching by Jesus on how to pray, but they also give us nuanced pictures of Jesus at prayer. He prays to his Father in the company of his disciples, but also alone. The Evangelists have grasped the intrin-sic relation of Jesus' prayer and his holiness. From their descriptions of Jesus in prayerful communion with his Review for Religious Father, we see that his prayer is always linked with the coming of God's kingdom. Jesus usually prays in solitude, away from his disci-ples, deeply immersed for long periods, even all night. He seeks the face of his Father in praise and thanksgiv-ing, in petitions that follow from his desire that God's kingdom come. In such prayer Jesus touches the holi-ness of the Father and is filled with a like holiness that lives to serve the Father, his Abba. The Holy Spirit fills him with this filial trust in the holiness of his Father, and thus, from his constant experience of the Spirit, Jesus teaches others to pray to the Father in the Spirit, con-vinced that they would be granted everything they needed for their total happiness as the Father's children. Living in the Holy of Holies In awe of God's holiness, we are not to strive to be holy by doing "holy" deeds or works of holiness as though God needs us and our sacrifice. Rather, we are to obey the divine Word, enfleshed for love of us to image for us God's holiness, and to let ourselves be directed by his Holy Spirit within us. To enter into God's holiness, the place to go is our heart. By Jesus' incarnate oneness with us, by his death and resurrection and the gift of his Spirit, we now have the right to approach with boldness "into the sanctuary" by the blood of Jesus, our high priest. We have been saved by Jesus' gift of himself on the cross. Humbled by God's holiness revealed in Jesus Christ, we are enabled to be continually and joyously transformed into holiness as we seek to live lives of Christlike holiness. We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus "to live the good life as from the begin-ning he meant us to live it" (Ep 2:10). Now we can more easily, and in greater depth, understand how God's holi-ness makes it possible for God to be merciful towards 237 62.3 2003 Maloney * Be Holy as God Is Holy us. In our relationship with God and with others, holi-ness and mercy can never be separated. Father, Son, and Spirit: Holiness and Love Jesus is holy as his Father is holy because, in his dying on our behalf in obedience to his loving Father, his love for God reaches love's peak. He is holy by being one with God's holiness. He becomes God's holy Word in his obedience unto death (Ph 2:8). As Jesus became holy by learning obedience, so we also must do: "Although he was Son, he learned to obey through suffering; but, having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal sal-vation and was acclaimed by God with the title of high priest of the order ofMelchizedek" (Heb 5:8-10). When affliction comes, we are not to be constantly asking whether we accept the inevitable and submit to a will we cannot resist. Our true, loving question must be: Do we choose the will of God to be our chief good--do we delight in Christ's life principle as ours too? "My delight is to do your will, O God." Jesus sanctified himself and us by doing his Father's will constantly, to his life's end. The will of God is also our sanctification. Be holy, as God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--is holy. Summer Transformation August rays insinuate themselves, burrow under epidermal sheath like God's grace, work their transforming till, ripened and marked as sun votary, you preach wordlessly the gospel of repentance for a pale and chilly life. Patricia Schnapp RSM Review for Religious RENI~E NIENABER Praying with the Body: Not Running Ahead of Grace (/~("~'~ on't run ahead of grace." This truth, learned from one of my greatest teachers of prayer, insists that we can find holiness only as God grants. Even though passive prayer has often been considered the higher path, people who are highly sensate might stay in active prayer much of their lives. St. John of the Cross warns against moving too quickly from active prayer. For many, cooperating with this wisdom can involve using our bodies in prayer. Respect for God's Gifts Rationales for prayer with the body can be found in Scripture, theology, and psychology. Respect for the body. We are not pure spirits. Many heresies would have us look with disdain upon the body as the source of temptation. Within this masterpiece, however, the Spirit of God dwells. According to the creeds we profess, our bodies will, like Jesus Christ's, be raised in glory. Fundamental knowledge of God came Ren~e Nienaber SND wrote about lectio divina in our January-February 2002 issue. Her address is St. Mary of the Assumption Parish; 121 West Main Street; Alexandria, Kentucky 41001. 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Praying with the Body A through our parents' bodies: a mother's gentle breast-feeding and a father's strong cradling. In many ways we already pray with our bodies: genuflecting, bowing, taking holy water, telling our rosary beads, making the sign of the cross, receiving Communion in our hands. Great people in the Hebrew Scriptures used their bodies in prayer: Miriam praising God with the timbrel, Moses praying with arms outstretched, and David dancing before the ark. The psalms especially show a people entering bodily into prayer: seeking God's face (27:8), thirsting for God (63:1), panting with open mouth (119:131). They also show a God who deals with the bodies of people, literally or metaphorically: leading them beside still waters (23:2), setting them high on a rock (27:5), hiding them under solicitous wings (63:8), making divine words sweet to the taste (119:103). No disdain for the human body in this kind of prayer! Hebrew prayer shows great respect for the human body's goodness, not the disdain espoused by Docetism, Gnosticism, Platonism, and Neoplatonism. Respect for the unity of body/soul/spirit. Such respect stands against dualism and moves us towards integration. Each part of this threefold "companionship" affects the others. Eastern religions teach that what we do with our bodies affects our prayer (for example, sitting straight and breathing attentively). We will pray better or worse, depending on the involvement of our bodies. If this is true, then we cannot find God by escaping the body. Respect for the incarnation and resurrection. Both of these doctrines involve Christ's body. His humanity belongs to the essence of our faith. Jesus prayed with his body: lifting his eyes to heaven and blessing little children. We, like him, will not find God by rejecting the body. Respect for the g~'eat commandment. Based on the Shema of the Hebrew Scriptures, our call is to love God with our Review for Religious whole self, with all of who we are, not just from our eyebrows up. In daily life we show love through our bodies: gestures, gifts, smiles, and so forth. God invites us to do the same in prayer. Respect for ourselves as images of a creative God. Praying with the body helps us to be playful like children. Childlikeness can keep the juices of prayer flowing. With the Spirit's gifts of wonder and awe, a child/adult can be ever ready for the surprises of God in prayer, like finding a treasure in a field. Respect for praying "from where we're at." Catholics are sacramental people. In part this means experiencing God as coming to us through the stuff of this earth. Prayer that begins with the body can penetrate into the inner self. Like osmosis, the senses can lead us from the exterior to the interior, from the touchable to the untouchable: the transcendent reality of God. Thus prayer involving the body can be a bridge from active to passive prayer. These two forms walk hand in hand, not against each other. To pray "from where we're at" also involves praying from "God experiences." Created reality invites us to pray with our bodies, as in John Denver's song about Annie filling up his senses. How often have we praised God with our eyes for an orange-red sunset, with our mouth for our favorite chocolate dessert, with our nose for the evergreen freshness,. With our ears for the ocean roar. God is the original "surround sound." We can get lost in ecstasy through such continuing revelations of the divine. Our call is to love God with our whole self, with all of who we are, not just from our eyebrows up. 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Praying with the B~dy Blessings of Body Prayer Besides these six forms of respect, prayer with the body can be an antidote to one of the main complaints about prayer: that it is boring. God wants our prayer to bring us life "to the full" (In 10:10). Prayer helps us dispose ourselves. God is the initiator of prayer and the responder to our desires. We can, however, prepare ourselves for the gift of prayer with our very bodies. For example, with our eyes we can gaze lovingly upon a crucifix, icon, or sunrise. With our hands we can touch bur heart or ears. With our mouth we can smile at God or whisper words of Scripture. Prayer helps us keep attentive. Too ubiquitous is the temptation not to pray because "I'm too distracted" or "Nothing happens." Involving our bodies in prayer can lessen those excuses because the pray-er remains grounded. For example, in praying about Jesus healing the woman with a hemorrhage, we can involve our body in such ways as these: coming before Jesus trembling and hopeful, reaching out to touch his garment, or pleading with our face for the gift of God's healing. Prayer helps us remember blessings. When prayer remains too cerebral, the pray-er can seldom recall the experience of God's grace. Involving the body can help the mind to focus rather than flounder. The experience of prayer is crystallized, thus becoming a memento of God's goodness. Forty Possibilities for Praying with the Body ¯ Hold a rock and remember examples of God's steadfast love. ¯ Hold a rock and consider how God might want to change your heart. ¯ Hold a pearl and feel how precious you are to God. ¯ Hold a pearl and consider how much God is your pearl of great price. ¯ Hold a pearl and be grateful for all the pearls in your life (people, experiences, events). ¯ Hold a pillow to your chest, trying Review for Religious to experience God or Jesus as a nursing mother for yourself, someone in special need, or even an enemy. ¯ Hold two coins tightly, like the widow's mite, representing what you do not want to let go of. When ready, release each coin. ¯ Hold a small seed (like a mustard seed) and ask for growth in faith, confidence, love, etc. ° Hold a seashell and ask to be more aware of God's dwelling in the deepest chamber of your heart. ¯ Hold an apple and know yourself to be the apple of God's eye. ¯ Hold a cactus and flower and ask God to bring life to your dryness. ¯ Hold a "lily of the field" and know how much more valuable you are to God than that. ° Hold a crucifix to feel the gift of Jesus' self-giving love. ¯ Walk slowly, aware that you journey lovingly with God, like Adam in the garden. ¯ Walk, aware that God is at your right hand, so you have nothing to fear. ¯ Walk, aware of the challenge to go the "extra mile" with God or another. ¯ Walk under the stars and moon. Delight in God's greatness and beauty. ¯ Walk slowly, just to restore your inner harmony. ° Sit in a rocking chair or porch swing, and allow yourself to be lulled by God. ¯ Sit with your shoes off, with reverence, like Moses before the burning bush. ¯ Sit near a tree whose roots are partly exposed. Touch the roots and the bark and know your groundedness in God. ¯ Squeeze modeling clay to get in touch with God's desire to fashion you further. ¯ Form modeling clay into some specific image God might be forming you into now. ¯ Form modeling clay into the image you would like to have of God. ° Dance your personal Magnificat or Gloria. ¯ Dance your own DayenuI after writing a list of people and experiences for which you are grateful. ¯ Whistle, skip, or show your delight with God in other ways. ¯ Inhale slowly, realizing that your breath is the very ruah of God flowing through you. ° Inhale what you need from God (peace, forgiveness, etc.). Exhale the opposite (unrest, 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Praying with the Body unforgiveness, etc.). ¯ Inhale, letting God speak a word of love. Exhale, returning that word. ¯ Inhale, simply breathing in the goodness of God. ¯ Sit in the breeze. Let it blow through you as the Spirit wills. ¯ Sit in the breeze. Just let it surround you with God's gende presence. ¯ Sit in the breeze or in front of a fan. Feel Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit into you. ¯ Prostrate yourself to get in touch with your littleness, sinfulness, or need for God. ¯ Lie face up, as if paralyzed, accepting your need for God at every moment. ¯ Smile at God and feel God's smile in return. ¯ Look in a mirror and delight in the person God has created, is creating, and will continue to create. ¯ Tighten your fist in confidence against your enemies or fears. ¯ Cup your hands to your ears to emphasize a willingness to listen to God. Be attentive to a storm, and let the reality of God's power penetrate your being. More Suggestions, Involving the Easter Symbols Water ¯ Drink very slowly, using this mantra or a similar one: "Give me to drink." ¯ Sit by flowing waters or running water, and let the sound bring God's calm. ¯ Splash water on yourself to bring God's refreshment. ¯ Sprinkle water freely on your head to experience that God does not give the Spirit "by measure." ¯ Enter into a soft rain. Experience in it God's gentle, abundant presence. ¯ Let rain remind you that God sends "rain on the just and unjust." ¯ Be attentive to a storm, and let the reality of God's power penetrate your being. ¯ Pour water over your feet as if Jesus were ministering to you. White Garment ¯ Be aware of your clothes next to your skin; sense that God touches you even more intimately. ¯ Wrap your hands in strips of cloth, like Review for Religious Lazarus. Let God unbind you. ¯ Place a sheet or blanket over your head to feel your own overshadowing by the Holy Spirit. ¯ Place a sheet or blanket around your shoulders and body to feel the protection of God's "wings." ¯ Move with a blanket around your shoulders and feel that you, too, can fly on eagle's wings. ¯ Touch a bedspread tassel, like touching Jesus' garment, while praying for healing like the woman with the hemorrhage. Light/Fire ¯ Squint and let the rays of a candle penetrate your heart or mind with healing. ¯ Hold a candle near your body to feel the warmth of God within. ¯ Let a flame represent the Spirit of God. Ask for wisdom in a present confusion. ° Let the candle flame open your eyes to see the good in someone whom you do not like right now. ¯ Sit wordlessly before the sunrise or sunset, and use a mantra such as "Fill me with your light." ¯ Walk in midday. As you see the sun peeking through the trees, think of God as winking at you. ¯ Pray in the dark of night with only a vigil light. ¯ Pray one of the biblical stories of a blind person. Do this in the dark or with your eyes tighdy covered. Hands/Oil ¯ Hold your own hand to get in touch with God's strength, comfort, nearness, etc. ¯ Touch your heart or carotid artery. Let every pulse be a prayer of love to God. ¯ Touch with your hands or Bible the parts of your body that need healing (for example, eyes for being judgmental, mouth for talking about others, ears for listening to gossip, etc.). ¯ "Anoint" yourself with oil in areas that need healing. ° Rub in scented lotion to remind yourself that you are to be the aroma of Christ. ¯ Pour oil on your feet, representing the feet of someone you need to forgive. Bread/Wine ¯ Hold a piece of bread or loaf of bread, asking, "Give me (us) this bread always." ¯ Hold different kinds of bread. Break them and get in touch with your brokenness and that of others. ¯ Hold a loaf of bread and 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Pra~in~ with the Bod~ know that God will not give you a stone if you ask for bread. ¯ Take a clear glass of water and add red food coloring, representing the change at Cana and in yourself. ¯ Sip wine very slowly, letting it rest in your mouth. "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord." ¯ Sit in a grape arbor to pray the passage of the vine and branches. Two Extended Examples of Praying with the Body Psalm 23. Giv~ yourself plenty of time to enter into this beloved psalm. A day could easily be spent on it. If possible, pray Psalm 23 out of doors. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want; I will never be in need; I lack notbing.--Try to feel how God has faithfully cared for you through people, events, and other blessings. I lie in green grass, verdant pastures, lush meadows.--If you can, lie down outside; otherwise, embrace the verdure in some physical way. For example, hug a leaf to your heart. Stand or sit, if possible, beneath the shade of a large tree. The shepherd leads me beside restful waters, peaceful streams, quiet pools.--If possible, go outside where you can be close to living waters. Otherwise, use a fountain or simply the faucet in your room. Spend time listening to the flow of the waters until you begin to feel calm. The shepherd refreshes my soul, revives my soul, restores my souL--To "help" the shepherd revive you, splash different parts of your body. The shepherd guides me in right paths, in paths of righteousness, in paths of virtue.--Walk slowly and mindfully, trying to feel the presence of the shepherd at your right hand. Even though I walk in a gloomy valley, a dark valley, the darkest valley . . . --Get in touch with any darkness in your life right now. Then close or cover your eyes and continue walking. With his rod and staff the shepherd gives me courage, Review for Religious comfort, security.--Use something to represent the "rod and staff" (like a broom handle or a walking stick). Walk, still in the darkness, with the safety of the walking stick. You could also sit with the handle against your back, trying to feel God's presence and comfort. You spread for me a table, a feast, a banquet.--Eat some of your favorite food. Yearn for the Eucharistic feast and the final banquet in God's reign. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows, runs over, brims oven--Use lotion to "anoint" your head, heart, gut, or any part of you that needs God's abundance. If you lack lotion, pour water on yourself, even on your head. Surely goodness and kindness, goodness and mercy, goodness and love, follow me always.--Con-clude as you began, getting in touch with God's abundance. This could involve returning to some significant ex-perience during this prayer, like listening to the water or pouring water on yourself. If you cannot fully accept this goodness that God promises, let God speak this verse to your heart. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, for my whole life long, for as long as I live.--Again get in touch with the presence of the shepherd in your past. Know that the same shepherd has blessed your life with this psalm in the present. Be assured that you can depend on this faithful shepherd throughout your future. Amen! Walk slowly and mindfully, trying to feel the presence of the shepherd at your right hand. The Song of Songs might be the backdrop for an extended date with Jesus--at least a whole day, perhaps a whole week of retreat. The suggestions that follow are 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Praying with the Body geared for an extended length of time. They are intended to give numerous supporting ideas to the text, not specific suggestions on how to pray the Song of Songs itself. The setting. Bring in some favorite flowers and food. Play special love music between prayer times. Burn a fragrant candle or some incense. Anoint yourself with precious lotion. Dress in your favorite clothes. Getting started. Ask that you heart might be ravished. Ask to grow in desire for God; ask to know God's desire for you. Pray while lying on your bed, porch swing, or chaise lounge. Put something under your head to represent the lover's left hand there. During the day. Take a walk "hand in hand" with your Beloved. Sing/dance favorite love songs from your era; let Jesus sing back to you. Draw a mandala2 to express your love. Spend time looking into the eyes of the beloved, while the beloved gazes back at you. Whisper your words of love. Smile to your beloved. Mantra. "You are my Beloved in whom I am well pleased." Experience this mantra in different ways. See it in the beauty of the flowers. Taste it in your special food or drink. Feel it in the warmth of a candle. Smell it in the scent of incense. Touch it in your favorite clothes. Hear it in the music you play or sing. Journaling. Write your favorite names for Jesus and/or his for you. Write your own figures of speech for your beloved; write his for you. Compose a love letter to Jesus. Meal ideas. When you eat, think of being brought into your beloved's banqueting table. Eat slowly and linger after the meal. Eucharistic connection. Ask that your heart may burn within you as Jesus reveals himself in the breaking of the bread. When you receive from the cup, realize that you are drinking the wine of divine love. Fast for an extended period before Eucharist in order to enter more fully into communion, hunger more for God's loving presence, Review for Religious taste the divine goodness, and experience God's abundance. Other Suggestions Some psalms are particularly conducive to body prayer: Psalms 16:5-11; 23; 27; 63:1-8; 91; 131; 139:1-18; 150. Among the best Isaiah readings for prayer with the body are Isaiah 35:1-6; 40:29-31; 43:1-4; 49:14-16; 55:1- 13; 66:10-14a. Other excellent sensate passages from the prophets include Jeremiah 17:7-8; 18:1-6; Ezekiel 36:26- 27; 37:1-14. A sampling of helpful gospel passages: Matthew 5:13- 16; 6:25-34; 7:1-12; 14:22-33; Mark 4:35-41; 5:25-34; 8:22-26; 10:46-52; Luke 1:26-38; 5:3-10; John 2-1-11; 4:7-15; 11:38-44; 13:2-17; 15:1-11; 20:11-18; 20:19-23. The ideas offered here can be useful for running with grace, not ahead of it. They are useful for sensates as well as for intuitives who are developing their sensate function. Depending on the person's disposition, physical condition, and prayer setting, some suggestions will work and others will not. Many ideas listed here, however, have blessed my directees and me for many years. I trust that others who are willing to follow their own creative childlikeness will experience God profoundly in'body prayer. Although the kairos3 of a retreat setting works best, any place or time can be an occasion for the self-revelation of God in our ordinary lives. For centuries St. Paul has called us to use our bodies "for the glory of God" (1 Co 6:20). In our contemporary setting, Tilden Edwards (from the Shalem Institute) says, "Amazing things happen when our bodies join our minds in opening to God." Notes ~ Dayenu is a song from the Jewish Passover service. In it the refrain "that would have been enough" is a response to the abundance of God's 62.3 2003 Nienaber ¯ Praying with the Body blessings (for example, "If you had just fed us with manna from the desert, that would have been enough"). 2 Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning circle or center. It is an ancient symbol of wholeness. Making a mandala (a circular drawing) is a way to come into contact with deeper wisdom from the center within, the unconscious. 3 Kairos is a Greek word meaning the "right time," a time of opportunity. It can suggest fulfillment or the timelessness of eternity, where God's presence abounds. Piet~ Her head is slightly bowed, the gravity of love bending her to him, his death a weight more ponderous than stone. Her hand is stretched out, helpless to account for what the world has come to. What does that open, lifted hand convey? Does it implore the mercy of a hidden God, or beg to know the outcome of a plan incomprehensible to her? Does her hand commend her Son to us and plead for pity, for consideration of his innocence, for justice? I see that hand outstretched for us to take, reminded that her suffering is much like ours: in pain she, too,. is plunged in silence, brokenhearted as she contemplates the loss of all she loves. Kate Martin OSC Review for Religious ELIZABETH A. DREYER Prophetic Voice in Religious Life The desert fathers and mothers had a tradition of going to their abba or amma for a "word" of wisdom. When I was asked to give this 150th-anniversary address, the word prophecy came immediately to mind. Prophecy has been a constant of religious life. Women and men reli-gious, speaking prophetic words, have be-queathed the church and society a legacy of reform and renewal. My interest in prophecy emerged from my reflection on moral courage, which it seemed to me is in rather short supply these days--in society, in business, in education, in politics, and in the church. The road from moral courage to prophecy is not a long one. Who could have predicted even a year or two ago the church's current need of prophetic voices? Numbers of people have seen the prophetic call as central to the charism of Elizabeth A. Dreyer, professor in the Department of Religious Studies of Fairfield University, first presented this paper in September 2002 to inaugurate the 150th year of the Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in Petersham, Massachusetts. Her address is Department of Religious Studies; Fairfield University; Fairfield, Connecticut 06430. 62.3 2003 Dreyer * Prophetic Voice in Religious Life religious life.1 Though everyone in the church is called to a prophetic life, institutes of vowed religious have had a distinctive and notable prophetic role down through the ages. It is a challenge to speak of prophecy, for prophecy means spealdng in the name of God. Being a prophet is akin to falling in love: you cannot decide to be a prophet. Nor can you declare that you are one or even be sure that someone else truly is one. The whole business is rife with the dangers of egotism. But there is also danger in refusing to accept the gift of prophecy, in not praying for the courage to be a prophet, and in neglecting to support those around us who are prophets. Timidity and self-protection stem from the knowledge--whether conscious and unconscious--that prophetic activity is dangerous to one's health. And yet the Christian life calls us to learn about and imitate the prophets who have gone before us and on whose shoulders we stand. Our Jewish heritage includes an impressive list of prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Amos, Micah, and others. For Christians, John the Baptist, preparing the way for Jesus, is the prophetic model par excellence. But above all is Jesus, the Jew who fully embodied his tradition of prophetic compassion and courage, dying for his love of the outcast and the stranger, and confronting the religious status quo when it worked against the good of the people. More recently, interest in women's history has awakened us to the lives of prophetic women in the church. Historian Karen L. King notes that in every century women have exercised leadership in Christian communities and that their leadership has been contested. In the first centuries most of the clear cases of women's leadership "based their legitimacy on claims to prophetic experience," but Jo Ann McNamara suggests that, by the mid 3rd century, prophetic voices were overshadowed by Review for Religious clerical organization and leadership? At the Second Vatican Council, when Cardinal Suenens wanted to include in Lumen gentium a section on the share of every baptized person in Christ's prophetic office, Cardinal Ruffini argued that an emphasis on charism could endanger the institutional church.3 Happily today we look not only to John the Baptist and Paul but also to Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, Priscilla, and Maximilla; martyrs Agatha, Lucy, Theodora, Perpetua and Felicity, and their 20th-century sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel. Each community has its own list of prophetic figures. The Sisters of the Assumption have founding sisters Leocadie Bourgeois, Julie Heon, Mathilde Leduc, and Hedwige Buisson and later figures such as Alice Mignault and Marguerite Gauthier. More recent prophetic voices of women religious include Margaret Traxler (+2002), Theresa Kane, Mary Luke Tobin, Margaret Brennan, Anita Caspary, Mary Daniel Turner, and Joan Chittister. At this historical moment, how are we to think about the prophetic voice? What are its potentials and pitfalls? Endeavoring to be faithful to the gospel and God's reign on earth, how are we to support prophetic thinking and activity in the 21st century--for the health of each religious community, for religious life as a whole, for the church, society, and the world? As a laywoman I have been inspired by the prophetic lives of women religious. I have learned from your example, and I am privileged to stand with you and for you in your commitment to the life of the people of God. How are we to think about the prophetic voice? What are its potentials and pitfalls ? 62.3 2003 Dreyer * Prophetic Voice in Religious Life The Prophetic Vocation In an article on Hildegard of Bingen, Colman O'Dell describes the prophet's role as one of personal encounter.4 The prophet receives a special summons, an unforgettable experience that God has entrusted to her a message that she must reveal, either in words or by her very life. The prophet is one who yields herself to God as handmaid, witness, or sign. The summons can be to something dramatic and large scale or, for most of us, something ordinary and small scale, to be carried out over a long period of time. Thomas Merton describes the prophet as one who lives in direct submission to the Holy Spirit in order that, by her life, actions, and words, she may be a sign of God in the world. Jean Leclercq speaks of the prophet as a person of neither vague ideas nor ready-made solutions. Rather, prophets are the ones who by the vigor of their concepts and the intensity of their contemplation compel others to act, giving them worthy reason for doing so. Abraham Heschel describes the prophet as one who intensifies responsibility, who is impatient of excuse and contemptuous of pretense and self-pity, who is an exegete "of existence from a divine perspective." The prophet is one who is sensitive to evil and who feels fiercely,s In his classic 1978 work, The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann sees prophecy as being concerned with change and how it comes about. The-prophetic task is to get people to have a perceptive consciousness that will stand against the dehumanizing and death-dealing aspects of our culture.6 Brueggemann describes the enemy of prophetic consciousness as Solomon's royal consciousness in which God's freedom is traded for God's accessibility, an economy of equality is traded for an economy of affluence, and a politics of justice is traded for a politics of oppression. The Solomonic regime silenced criticism through prohibition backed by heavy-handed sanction--or simply ignored it. In such a situation Revieva for Religious the gift of freedom is overtaken by a yearning for order and security.7 As Americans living in the aftermath of 9/11, we know well the seduction of royal consciousness. A prophet is one who understands language and its distinctive power to evoke newness--"fresh from the word.''8 Brueggemann speaks in terms of binary pairs of death and new life: numbness/criticism vs. energy/passion (compassion); death/cross vs. life/resurrection; grief/mourning vs. praise/joy. The prophet calls for an alternative consciousness and an alternative community. Forms of coercion and totalitarianism try to curtail fresh new possibilities and end up diminishing us as human beings. As a remedy, Brueggemann calls for a reappropriation of the biblical prophetic tradition to its full power and authenticity. The Hebrew prophets used poetry to present their vision and inspire listeners to respond. "It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one," Brueggemann says. He reminds us that worship and praise are ways to cut through ideology and recover compassion.9 Jo Ann McNamara concludes her massive treatment on the history of religious life with these words: "In the end, religious life is about worship and the positive benefits that worship brings to the world and its maker.''~° God is the creator of the world; we depend on God's loving compassion and power to make all things new. Praise of God is a wellspring of prophetic living. Discontinuity: Becoming Agents of Change In what follows I explore two particular elements of this prophetic way of living: discontinuity and contemplation. The prophetic voice interrupts "business as usual." It calls attention to, and says no to, the powers 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Religious Life The task of prophecy is to encourage people to be involved in the history of their time. of dehumanization wherever they may be. The prophet sees that the present arrangement need not always be so. This vision might apply to the way religious life is lived and structured, ways in which we think about and do ministry, ways that church structures and practice affect the people of God, ways we live as a society and as cifzens of the world. As I have said, the history of religious life reveals a steady stream of visionaries. One thinks of Jane Frances de Chantal, one of the first to question religious enclosure when it inhibited service in the world, and leaders of women's congregations in the mid 20th century who decided that education and worldly awareness would make sisters better teachers and better religious. Richarda Peters, Benedictine prioress in St. Joseph, Minnesota, from 1949 to 1961, encouraged her sisters to create study groups, earn academic degrees, update libraries, and subscribe to the New York Times. Her successor brought in television and encouraged the sisters to read Cardinal Suenens's The Nun in the World2~ The task of prgphecy is to encourage people to be involved in the history of their time. Brueggemann speaks about the visceral experience of waking up to the truth that things are not right. The light bulb goes on, and we wonder why we did not see that before. Pretending that things are fine is no longer an option. This awakening is often followed by feelings of disappointment, grief, and even betrayal. Bringing this hurt to public expression is an important step in dismantling the status quo and permitting a new reality, theological and social, to emerge.~2 Dorothee Soelle says that expressed complaint is the beginning of liberation.13 Review for Religious Prophetic agents of change live as if in a minefield. They may conjure up unwanted feelings of self-doubt: Who am I to demand and expect change? Most of us know that the risks are high. That prophets are not welcome in their own neighborhood is all too true. But, whether we ourselves are prophets or are attuned to those who are, the message can truly be "good news" to people. Even though the price is high, new vision energizes and creates new realities that can be trusted and relied upon. 14 Energy can even come from embracing the inscrutable darkness, trusting that something is on the move, even though I .may not see it.Is Waiting faithfully, with the anticipation of discovering a new way of being church, is prophetic activity. 16 We are also energized by the partisan nature of prophecy. Prophets do not function in the abstract, but always address persons in concrete historical situations. We become aware that God is free and acting for us in this moment, in this very community, in this geographic location. In the last thirty years, the extensive research on specific religious orders of women is gradually correcting past neglect, naming particular people and locations of prophetic activity in the history of religious life. 17 Looking at barriers to prophetic voice, Brueggemann examines the ways that satiation short-circuits passion. He reminds us that satiation--having too much and being full all the time--prevents our noticing that the king has no clothes. It dulls our capacity to be imaginative, caring, and passionate, to suffer, to live and die. We avoid facing up to failure; we shrink from the thought that there is an end to things as they have been. Consumerism tricks us into a false sense that "all is well." "The task of prophetic imagination," Brueggemann says, "is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord." ~8 This is as true of the church as it is of society and the world. 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Religious Life The dehumanizing aspects of our consciousness and practice can be mitigated. They have no final claim on us. The despair created by the king leads to hopelessness, infecting those who are excluded and those who have everything. But prophets like Second Isaiah, attesting God's radical freedom, announce genuine novelty to exiled Israel: God could have a change of mind. Ironically, those who know this kind of prophetic dying most painfully are the very persons who can convey hope most vigorously. And, just as grief undoes numbness, amazement confounds despair. Amazement, says Brueggemann, is the ultimate energizer. With the prophet's help, Israel finds that singing is again possible. Song indicates new life. All of us can recall not being able to sing because of depression or anger, satiety or preoccupation--and then discovering that we could sing again. Thus hope is born, and whenever it happens we are amazed.19 Jesus, coming after John the Baptist, is also a prophet. He lives at the margins and interacts with other marginal people who respond with awe---~om the shepherds at the birth to the crowds pursuing him in Mark's Gospel. Jesus' compassion takes many forms: he is not afraid to criticize the old order, he is ready to heal and forgive, he invites people to freedom from their enslavements. Newness brea~ in because "Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted." Suffering made audible and visible produces hope; articulated grief is the gate of newness. The history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.2° Standing at the decisive end of royal consciousness is the cross. The Way of Contemplation A second hallmark of prophetic voice is living a contemplative existence. Many theologians, including the well-known German Jesuit Karl Rahner, have made the Review for Religious plea that, if Christians are to survive into the future, they will have to become mystics in the world. I think our experience in the post-Vatican II church and in the postmodern world teaches us that mysticism and prophecy are not clashing symbols but interdependent requirements for gospel living. In antiquity, prophecy was considered a natural role for women, and in the early Corinthian community, for example, prophecy and prayer were closely linked.2~ Thus, we are not called to be mystics or activists but mystics and activists. Sandra Schneiders underlines this truth when she describes religious life as a prophetic life-form characterized by two linked realities--contemplative immediacy to God and social marginality. Indeed, she calls prophetic action the public face of mysticism.22 Genuine prophetic speech and action are grounded inholiness. Prophecy requires that one take time to attend to God's word. It demands singleness of purpose, what we used to call "purity of heart." It requires allowing oneself to be penetrated by the Spirit, thus gaining a certain freedom from external authorities. Authentic solitude and silent presence before God allow us to become "tuned in" to the ways of God and, out of this knowledge, to lament and speak a word of vision and hope to the church and to the poor. Genuine prayer helps us avoid making egregiously wrong projections in God's name, and this can be painful. To begin with, it is not easy to identify subde projections by which we make God into our own image, and when we do discover them it is difficult to let them go. Most of us are comfortable with the God we have experienced and imagined, but, unless we become freer to let God be God, we dare not venture into the world of prophetic utterance. God is the source and wellspring of prophetic life and mission, and only contemplation keeps us intimately attuned to God's voice.23 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Religious Life A hallmark of the mystical encounter is a sense of being at one with the world. This is an enjoyable experience and needs to be celebrated when it breaks into our consciousness. But often we do not allow this sense of cosmic unity to lead us to effective community living. How do epiphanies of connectedness lead us to prophetic voice on behalf of human community? The basic answer is that contemplative existence grounds prophetic activity. Generally, one doeg not speak a prophetic word out of the blue, even though prophetic speech has an element of spontaneity, like a "late-breaking news bulletin" from God. But, like a concert pianist's spontaneity and apparent effortlessness, prophecy depends on a life of paying attention to God in prayer. Genuine contemplation does not lead toward withdrawal or removal from the world, but just the opposite. The prophet is one who immerses herself in the joys and especially the sufferings of the world. Prophetic solidarity translates into acknowledging the truth of the present moment, however bleak it may seem. Prophets are "sent to participate humbly and fragilely in the darkness, to experience it as their own, but without losing heart." This faithful perseverance leads one to seek solutions and victory, but not to give up when failure is the outcome. Such a life requires both realism and deep spiritual reserves.24 The prophet identifies and gives voice to the sins of one's culture: consumerism, rampant individualism, fragmentation, and alienation. In her book Woman Strength: Modern Church, Modern Woman, Joan Chittister underlines the need for communal leadership against a rampantly individualistic culture. She calls for a spirituality of contemplative cocreation in which we look at the causes of social brokenness and begin to see the link between the personal and the political. "We need to intervene for one another," she says. "We need a new worldview that puts the old one 'in new light.'''25 Review for Religqous A simple way to enhance contemplation in the service of prophetic solidarity with the poor is to dwell within the words of the Hebrew prophets to see what they mean for us today. We begin by asking: Who were these people? What were the circumstances of their lives? What were their doubts and fears? How did they overcome them? How did they manage to love so much that they risked life and limb to speak the prophetic word? Abraham Heschel asks: "What gave them the strength to 'demythologize' precious certainties, to attack what was holy, to hurl blasphemies at priest and king, to stand up against all in the name of God?" He says they "must have been shattered by some cataclysmic experience in order to be able to shatter others." 26 In a 1997 article Brueggemann describes how the biblical text becomes newly available, how it can erupt into new usage and be seized upon to illuminate the present. This moment can be both personal and communal. He writes: "What has been tradition, hovering in dormancy, becomes available experience . In that utterance, the word does lead reality." In order for the prophetic word to remain ever new, someone has to have imagination and intuition and the courage to assert that texts from the past can and must be "concretely relocated in and specifically readdressed to contemporary contexts." Persons like this "permit the explosion of text whereby the world is transformed.''27 Meditating deeply on the following passages can lead us in such a direction. Listen, I groan under the burden of you, as a wagon creaks under a full load. (Am 2:13) You that turn justice upside down and bring righteousness to the ground, you that hate someone who brings the wrongdoer to court and loathe the one who speaks the whole truth: 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Reh~ious Life for all this, because you levy taxes on the poor. though you have built houses of hewn stone, you shall not live in them. (Am 5:7-11) Spare me the sound of your songs; I cannot endure the music of your lutes. Let justice roll like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (Am 5:23-24) Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord. Though your sins are scarlet, they may become white as snow; though they are dyed crimson, they may yet be like wool. (Is 1:18) The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: Light has dawned upon them, dwellers in a land as dark as death. Thou hast increased their joy and given them great gladness; Hey rejoice in your presence as people rejoice at harvest. (Is 9:2-3) These and other prophets past and present inspire us to become more and more convinced that a "new word" and "new light" are possible in every age. We must be the ones to assume the responsibility to remind the church that no one has a corner on God's word and that we dare not put a period, where there should be a comma, when it comes to God's plan for creation. Prophetic voices are needed in a church that "disputes how women can image Christ; restricts rather than promotes women's preaching; rejects dialogue with feminist theology; refuses to discuss women's leadership roles in liturgical assemblies; takes Review for Religious punitive action against women's public speech on controversial issues; considers qualified women ineligible for administrative offices and prohibits gender-inclusive texts in its public prayer."~s The Madeleva Manifesto, issued in 2000 by a group of Catholic theologians, states: "To women in ministry and theological studies, we say: Reimagine what it means to be the whole body of Christ. The way things are now is not the design of God." Past and Future One aspect of celebrating and being grateful for the past involves cocking an eye toward the future. W'e ask how we can honor the memories, the dedication, the love and accomplishments of those who have gone before us. How do we extend their legacy into a new millennium? This is no easy task. The prophetic voice of women religious may be intended primarily for the church, but it extends to the wider faith and civic communities. There are many challenges in the American church, in religious life, and in our culture. But, amidst the plethora of problems, one thing remains clear: The prophet must be attuned to the cause of the poor and suffering and act on their behalf. This is the rock upon which we stand and which must weather the slings and arrows of both ecclesial and social existence. Words of support and challenge are in order. While all baptized Christians are called to find inspiration and truth in the message of the Bible, women religious are eminently equipped to do so. The Spirit must be allowed to empower and embolden you, to give you confidence to The prophet must be attuned to the cause of the poor and suffering and act on their behalf. 62.3 2003 Dreyer * Prophetic Voice in Religious Life interpret the signs of the times in light of the gospel and speak and act on this knowledge. Your lifestyle, your experience, your prayer, your dedication, your commitment to discernment, all this enables and propels you to live and speak and act in Christ's name. It benefits not only your communities, but also the church and the world. Your prophetic voices are needed. Confronting a sinful church begins in humility, in the awareness that the sin I protest resides firmly in the center of my own heart. The church has an ambiguous record on this front. She has always embraced the principle that reform must be a constant dynamic in the church, but has often shied away from embracing this truth in action. The renowned 20th-century theologian Paul Tillich noted that a major Protestant criticism of the Roman church is the "exclusion of the prophetic self-criticism" by an authoritarian system.29 Awareness of the beam in one's own eye prevents making condescending judgments about others. But we cannot stop there. We must love God and the world and the church enough to be willing to cry out against the arrogance, deceit, and secrecy that burden most heavily the poor, the oppressed, the person in the pew. The danger in a time such as ours is to get distracted and deflected from hearing the call to prophecy. It is appropriate to commission studies and to meet and talk about the alarming statistics on religious life--health, membership, age, finances. But these concerns cannot be allowed to turn you in on yourselves, instead of outward to the reform of the church and the alleviation of suffering in the world. And, while we may need time-outs to step back from the fray and regroup, we must not give in to the temptation to withdraw out of legitimate frustration and anger. We need to act as individuals and as a community, embracing the responsibility and the honor of being agents of new vision. We cannot leave it Review for Religious to clerical leaders or to those with stronger, louder, deeper voices. The church needs women religious to resist being co-opted by the clerical culture of power, privilege, and denial. We need you to protest tactics of intimidation and silencing. And we hope and pray that you will have the courage to withstand the suffering of not being welcome in your own country. The Spirit blows where it will (1 Co 12:8-11), and I find that it often blows in the lives of mature, dedicated women religious. We laypersons, who have so often been empowered by you, are called to join you in this much-needed prophetic ecclesial mission. The prophet speaks also to culture. As we move from despising and fleeing culture to a critical embrace of it, we cast a loving, compassionate, contemplative gaze on it and on all cultures. Because we stand within our culture, not outside it, we are both tainted by its sins and enriched by its creations and discoveries. In simplicity and courage we need to protest against arrogance, individualism, and consumer ways. By living and thinking on the margins, we must speak a word of love to the most desperate, despised, and forgotten among us. Since we cannot fight excessive individualism with more individualism, we are cailed to figure out how to act communally, to marshal our resources to witness to the Spirit's plan to make all things new. We are called to take a prophetic stance toward the rampant individualism of our culture by acknowledging our shared vulnerability, respecting and loving our differences and yet inviting others to dwell in community with us. Mary Grey pleads with us to "take the responsibility of becoming the kinds of communities which challenge society and live by a transforming ethic, communities which 'shine like stars' because they are offering the word of life." 30 She locates hope in the witness of the community as prophet. In the face of dwindling resources and aging, this kind of fidelity 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Religious Life to the mission, this showing up each and every day to do the Lord's work, is in itself a prophetic act of enormous value and goodness. The prophet is many things. To be open to and touched by this gift is to be honored with an invitation from God. It is also to be burdened with heavy responsibility, to be ripped open and rejected, scorned and ridiculed. For the point of the prophet's life is not primarily her own burdens, but those of a suffering world in desperate need of hope. The prophetic voice both disturbs and gives hope, and this requires keeping close touch with God's purifying presence, seeing oneself as lowly and humbly developing the skills of discernment and surrender. We are grateful for those who have gone before us, and we celebrate our membership in the communion of saints. We are linked by the desire arid the promise to be faithful to living a gospel life in each generation. The witness of our ancestors in the faith calls us to recommit ourselves to be Christians who dare to voice a prophetic word in our time, who dare to offer a word of hope from our experience that God is faithful, and who dare to hear and respond to the gospel invitation: "Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light" (Mr 11:28-30). Notes ' See Sandra Schneiders [HM, Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context (New YorlotMahwah: Paulist Press, 2000) and Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic. Religious Life (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2001); Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Nadine Foley, ed., ~ourney in Faith and Fidelity: Women Shaping Religious Life for a Renewed Church (New York: Continuum, 1999); Joan Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes: A Review for Religious Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life (Kansas City: Sheed Ward, 1995) and Woman Strength: Modern Church, Modern Woman (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990); Barbara Fiand, Living the Vision: Religious Vows in an Age of Change (New York: Crossroad, 1990) and Wrestling with God: Religious Life in Search of Its Soul (New York: Crossroad, 1996). 2 Karen L. King, "Prophetic Power and Women's Authority: The Case of the Gospel of Mary [Magdalene]," in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 21 and 35. 3 See Mary Catherine Hilkert OP, Speaking with Authority: Catherine of Siena and the Voices of Women Today (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2000, p. 43. Colman O'Dell, "Elizabeth of Schonau and Hildegard of Bingen; Prophets of the Lord," in Peace Weavers, ed. J.A. Nichols and L.T. Shank (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), pp. 85-102. ~ Cited in Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 12ft. 6 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 13. 7 Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 36-37. 8 Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 9-10. 9 Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 45 and 26-27. 10McNamara, Sisters in Arms, p. 637. ~ See With Hearts Expanded: Transformation in the Lives of Benedictine Women, St. Joseph, Minnesota, 1957-2000 by Evin Rademacher, Emmanuel Renner, Olivia Forster, and Carol Berg (St. Cloud: North Star Press, 2002), cited in History of Women Religious News and Notes 15, no. 1 (February 2002): 4. ,2 Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 20-21. ,3 Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), pp. 70-76. ,4 Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, p. 23. ,s See Constance FitzGerald, "Impasse and the Dark Night," in Women's Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development (2nd ed.), ed. Joann Wolski Conn (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1996), pp. 410- 435. 16 Mary C. Grey, "Prophecy and Mysticism: The Heart of the Postmodern Church," Scot-fish Journal of Theology (1997): 53. 17 Recent examples include Dominicans at Home in a Young Nation: 1786-1865 (Chicago: Project OPUS); Women of the Vale: Perthville Josephites 1872-1972 by Marie Crowley (Melbourne: Spectrum Publications, 2000); Beyond the Adobe Wall: 1852-1894 by Patricia Jean 62.3 2003 Dreyer ¯ Prophetic Voice in Religious Life Manion SL (Independence, Missouri: Two Trails Press, 2002); Barbara Misner, The Living Love of Christ among Us: The History of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross, 3 vols. (privately printed by the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross, 1999). An excellent listing of new books on religious life can be found in History of Women Religious: News and Notes, ed. Karen M. Kennelly (2311 South Lindbergh Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63131). ,8 Brueggeman, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 47 and 49. ,9 Brueggeman, Prophetic Imagination, pp. 69, 70, and 79 20 Brueggeman, Prophetic Imagination, p. 88. 21 See Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). 22 Schneiders, Finding the Treasure, pp. 137 and 150. 23 Schneiders, Finding the Treasure, p. 317. 24 Schneiders, Finding the Treasure, pp. 327 and 334-335. 2s Chittister, Woman Strength, pp. 69-70. z6 Heschel, Prophets, p. 12. 27 Walter Brueggemann, "Texts That Linger, Words That Explode," Theology Today 54, no. 2 (July 1997): 181 and 198. 2~ Hilkert, Speaking with Authority, pp. 2-3. 29 Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper,1957), p. 72. 30 Grey, "Prophecy and Mysticism," pp. 23 and 62. Sadness Today I embrace the air. The embodiment of heart and mind, .flesh and bone are gone. Too soon a (oraithlikefigure replaced reality l~aving only memories. Marcella LaKoske OP Review for Religious NIHAL ABEYASINGHA Charism: Is Marketing Needed? Ubnuti luenvdeer rs eslelsv eitns dfaibffreicr esnotf tneanmer etsh,r oouftgehno uwt iEthu rdoipf-e ferent bottles and different marketing strategies and sometimes even different formulas. Candy maker Mars no longer sells "Mars" bars in the United States; the same product is now called "Snickers Almond," and American "Milky Way" bars (same as ever) are sold in Europe as "Mars" bars. Such is the adaptability of mod-ern marketing. How, then, might one go about market-ing the productmor telling the story--of a religious institute's charismatic accomplishments and endeavors? This article argues that one needs to identify the project the founder launched (pastoral care) by identifying where his heart was (pastoral sensitivity). In particular, it deals with the Redemptorists, a congregation founded in 1732 and approved by the pope in 1749. Today's efforts to rediscover the charism of religious congregations often turn into an intellectual exercise-- doing meticulous historical research and then making the findings available to members through seminars, vis-its to places associated with the founder, and so forth. Nihal Abeyasingha CSSR writes again from the University of Kelaniya; 454/9 Piachaud Gardens; Kandy 20000; Sri Lanka. 1_9.KO~ 62.3 2003 But maybe a question asked by St. Bernard needs to be asked again: "What kind of concept could human beings have of God [in their mind] unless they first had an image of God in their heart?" This implies that people can have almost no idea of God in their mind until they first choose to love God through the image of him they find in their heart. Similarly, today's "bearers of the charism" need to examine whether their hearts are where their founder's heart was. I suggest that this would call for a refinement in the religious congregation's method of research into its charism. A Note on Method The historical method seeks to learn what the founders were thinking when they established their reli-gious institute. One arrives at the origins of that thought and traces its progress and completion. Whatever con-clusions are drawn are shown to have existed in some way in the founder's consciousness. That is a legitimate method of historical research. But, regarding a charism, I suggest that one is deal-ing with where the founder's heart was. The founder first has a commitment in his heart. It is only later that he emphasizes from the Christian memory and tradition what fits in with that commitment. The elements he highlights and puts together are never the total Christian vision. The founder in his insight is an artist, and a cri-terion of good artists is that they highlight some partic-ular thing in such a way that the "universal" shines forth more brightly. The founder did not first create a system of thought (a theory) and then fit his project into it. Rather, he first "fell in love" with the "project" in front of him. How? Why? Because he saw and experienced certain events in the world and their impact on his life as a Christian. He responded and witnessed to them. He invited others to join his project so that the witness could Review for Religious continue. I argue that the priority is the heart. The head follows, making sure that the heart ("Love is blind!") is not chasing after vanity. Rediscovering an historical fact or some perspective of a former era is a valid study in itself and a contribu-tion to knowledge, but, in matters of love and a tradition of love, the issues are different. One needs to keep alive today (in a world that has obviously changed) the story of a particular heartfelt response to events of a former era. Witnessing anew with-out changing the story is what is called for. The successive bearers of the charism do not have a different insight from the founder's. The present bearers of the charism have to love with the same insight. This is not primarily propositional truth or even a crys-tal- clear concept. This love produces a kind of feeling (or instinct or sixth sense) for the insight of the founder. It brings about a virtuous disposition such as "justness" (not justice) and "chasteness" (not chastity) bring to what is just and chaste. Ask any Redemptorist and he will tell you that the aim of the congregation is to preach the gospel to those who are pastorally "most abandoned" or most in need. That is propositional truth. After one or several of such groups are identified, ministry to them is made a prior-ity in each unit of the institute. But the crux of the mat-ter is what "insight" or "virtuous disposition" operates in regard to this target group. Is the agenda for action set by the target group where they actually are, in their iden-tity and reality as Christians, or from the textbooks of theology? In my opinion and that of several close asso- One needs to keep alive today the story of a particular heartfelt response to events of a former era. 62.3 2003 Abeyasingha * Charism ciates, there is something wanting in the textbook approach. It does not seem to have captured the imagi-nation either of the majority in the institute or of the people to whom its ministry is offered. So the question is: How does one identify the original insight, foster a love and feeling for that insight, and then put the "story" into practice in our own day? Alphonsus ahead of and behind His Time Alphonsus in some ways was ahead of his time. He anticipated, for example, the development of doctrine in the church and required the members of the institute to take a vow to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, before it was defined in 1854. But in some ways he was also falling behind, defending positions that do not have theological defend-ers today. Looking at matters in which Alphonsus fell behind may illustrate his "marketing" strategy. It came to me as something of a shock to read his refutation of a work of Dom Leoluca Rolli, a priest of Calabria, titled II Novello Progetto, o sia Dissertazione del buon uso delle Litanie, ed altre preghiere (The New Project, or Dissertation on the Good Use of the Litanies and Other Prayers).~ This was in 1775, and the Redemptorist congregation had been started in 1732. Mphonsus takes up basically three issues against Rolli: (1) the popular belief that house of the Mary was brought by angels to Loretto, (2) some titles used in regard to Mary in the Litany of Loretto, and (3) the singing or recitation of that litany before the Blessed Sacrament exposed. As regards the popular belief about the house of Loretto, Rolli considered it an account that runs like a fable. In his refutation Alphonsus refers to popes who said that the house was taken by the ministry of angels to Loretto. He goes on to say that the denial of this belief Review for Religious is common among Protestant authors, in contrast to Catholic authors. Obviously, in the view of the rational-ists of the time, the argument was weak. Today's theolo-gians would not set much store on Alphonsus's reasoning. Rolli thought the titles Tower of David, Tower of Ivory, and House of Gold used in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin were affectations, using words without adequate meaning. He thought that Mirror of .Justice, Refuge of Sinners, Morning Star, and Gate of Heaven were titles that should refer only to .Jesus. Alphonsus's refutation was simply that people in the church, including priests and religious, saw no problem with using this litany and that popes had approved it. He adds, "They are all [expres-sions] of piety and tenderness towards our holy queen, that we may trust the more in her protection." Rolli considered it an abuse to chant the Litany of the Blessed Virgin before the Blessed Sacrament exposed. Alphonsus admits that prayers should be directed to.Jesus our Savior, for he alone is absolutely necessary as a ~neans of salvation. But he goes on to say that others are nec-essary, not by a necessity of means, but by moral neces-sity, to help our confidence the more. "In this light, when we chant the Litany of the Blessed Virgin before the Blessed Sacrament exposed, Mary is asked to present our prayers to Jesus Christ.''2 The Sense of Alphonsus's Arguments Today the views of Rolli are commonly accepted. Should Alphonsus even at that time have seen some value in Rolli's opinions and conceded some probability to them? Why did he reject them without qualification? My short answer is that Alphonsus realized how impor-tant the Catholic sense of identity was at the time. He knew the importance of consciously "being different." His "pastoral care" was rooted in "pastoral sensitivity" for that sense of identity. 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba ~° Charism Priests, after spending years studying th6ology, tend to apply theological categories to pastoral situations with little sensitivity for the people's felt needs. Pastoral care involves sensitivity to the human situation, the sensitiv-ity of a shepherd leading his flock to pasture. That sen-sitivity raises questions. What instincts and heartfelt feelings of the people should he be careful not to offend, and why? What needs changing, and why? These are delicate questions. In the 18th century, the very things Rolli criticized were popularly held. Even the popes had reflected them in their writings. Rolli wanted to set those beliefs aside in the name of rationality. Alphonsus had a different con-cern. His stand was with the people, the majority. From that standpoint he would consider whether the "logic of reason" was a pastoral basis to eliminate those devotional titles and whether dropping them might leave a gap in the "logic of life." What would take their place? Would people feel at home in their faith without holding on to such devotional patterns? He concluded that eliminat-ing such popular piety would be pastorally harmful. I suggest that questions like these would have arisen as part of the "pastoral sensitivity" of Alphonsus. Such ques-tions are important today as well. In other words, peo-ple, their own perceived identity, and their felt needs--rather than the latest theological opinions-- should influence ministry agendas, especially the min-istries' points of insertion. In Alphonsus's day many people who were devoted to the traditional Litany of Loretto would have been unable to understand the principles of rationalism. Alphonsus probably understood them, or at least had the gifts of mind to understand them. The only ones at that time who rejected the traditional litany and even ridiculed it were Protestants. Alphonsus would have known that for him to reject such devotional formulations would be Review for Religious understood by many as encouraging, at least implicitly, some close rapport with Protestants. Alphonsus's view was that the people (including himself, a highly emo-tional Neapolitan) would not feel at home without the support (emotional and otherwise) of such devotions and prayers. That would confuse ordinary people. He had no adequate substitute to offer. It would have been like advocating email in Asia in the 1980s. Few Asians even knew of email's existence, and the infrastructure for it was not in place. In the 2000s the situation in Asia is dif-ferent. What Alphonsus hoped to achieve by his unquali-fied rejection of Rolli's ideas was a communication of truth (pastoral care) that would be attractive (pastoral sensitivity) to their sense of identity as individual believ-ers and as a community. He wanted to communicate, not pure speculative truth, but existential truth related to them as persons. Alphonsus wanted to touch ordinary people where they happened to be. To be touched in this way could turn out to be a moment of truth for peo-ple. Pastoral sensitivity finds a way to lead people to an encounter with truth. Truth has its way of cutting across the "lie" by which people sometimes try to live. The fol-lowing passage from a novel by Andrew Greeley explains what I mean. "Ellen's worst sin was against Ellen." Ellen is on her knees confessing to a priest named Kevin. Both of them have known each other for many years, and Kevin's family has assisted Ellen financially during a period of need. She says she has been away from the sacraments for ten years, and she lists her many sins. After she finishes, Kevin (who is the novel's narrator) speaks. "I'm still waiting for the real sin, the only sin," I said. 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba ¯ Charism She [Ellen] tilted her head. "I've told every-thing." "You haven't told the one important thing. You were mad at God and mad at the church and pretended for a long time you could get away from both." "I don't want to talk about it," she said. "Then no absolution," I said firmly. She tugged her hand to free it. I wasn't ¯ going to let it go. "Don't you have an ounce of compassion in that ice-cold soul of yours?" "If you want compassion, Ellen, go to your husband or have him recommend a psychia-trist who will listen sympathetically. If you want absolution, don't play games." She stopped tugging. We were quiet for a long time. "That's the only one that does matter, isn't it?" she said. "All right, Kevin, I'll say it, and you'll have to mop up the tears on this hard floor of yours. I blamed the church and God for things that were inside me and my family. I focused on all the ugly things and forgot about Father Conroy and Sister Caroline and first Communion and May crownings and High Club dances and midnight Mass and all those wonderful things that I love so much. I gave them all up because I was angry. I blamed the church for Tim's death. I loved him so much. I couldn't save him, and I thought the church should have saved him. Even when doing it, I knew I was wrong and that someday I'd be kneeling on the floor before you and pleading to be let back in." "And now you have done it," I said . She put her head against my knee and wept. Review for Religious Then she gathered herself together and said, "So Ellen's worst sin was against Ellen.-3 "Ellen's worst sin was against Ellen" is not humanism. A foundational element of Pope John Paul's teaching is that "man is the way of the church." But "man" must be understood in terms of the man, Jesus Christ. Salvation is when the individual lets Jesus Christ judge his life and values ("wanting absolu-tion"). Humanism is when people reformulate Jesus in their own image and like-ness ("playing games"). The former course is an expansion, an openness to the Infinite; the latter is a reduction of Jesus to the measure of one's own finiteness. The former is redemptive; the latter is ratio-nalization and self-justification: narcissism. I suggest that the former is where the charism of a religious institute is centered; the latter is what may be called "pastoral opportunism." Pastoral sensitivity varies according to differences in the charisms of various institutes. ¯ Playing Games or Wanting Absolution? "If you want compassion, go to your husband .I.f. you want absolution, don't play games." How true! How easily the two are confused! "Ellen's worst sin was against Ellen"--that is different. The enumeration of one's sins is an objective matter, but the moment of conversion is existential, the realization that "I have sinned. I will go back to my Father. That is¯ where I am at home; in fact, I have nowhere else to go" (see Lk 15:11-31). Human beings need saving. All creation shares in the salvation of the human. "Creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord, but because of the one who subjected it in hope that creation itself would be set free from slav- 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba ¯ Charism ery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rm 8:19-20). There is nothing wrong with compassion, but, in the perspective of absolution (existential salvation, redemp-tion today), there has to be more than compassion on the part of the pastor. The link between compassion and salvation is naming the game and discovering one's iden-tity in commitment and relationship to oneself, one's fellow human beings, and God. In the scene quoted above, Ellen has known Kevin for years and has experienced the generosity of his fam-ily. But as pastor he brings her to realize the injustice she is doing to herself. In that discovery and realization, she discovers the church community she has abandoned and God, who is present in that community. She sees that she is always welcome to the church and to the peo-ple and things she admits she loves: Father Conroy, Sister Caroline, May crownings, dances, and so forth. It is the entire mixture of ritual, imagery, and flesh-and-blood community that makes her feel at home. And yet we know that none of these are a hundred percent per-fect. Such is the church. What needs to be preserved for the individual in the church and for the church as a community is this feeling of being at home. In that setting people realize their true human and Christian identity. They do not blame the church and God "for things that were inside me and my family." Feeling at home does not mean complacency. To all--believers and unbelievers--the church must preach faith and conversion (see Sacrosanctum concilium, §9). Permitting people to "play games" and evade their call to conversion is not part of its mission. The Clarification of Pastoral Sensitivity Pastoral sensitivity varies according to differences in the charisms of various institutes. Is a given charism Review for Religious meant to function from the top down or from the bot-tom up? The top-down function is a way of exhibiting some transcendental value. Thus does a contemplative order bear witness to God's transcendence in any envi-ronment. In contrast, a charism that functions from the bottom up takes people where they are and leads them higher. Alphonsus's charism is certainly bottom-up. Redemptorist pastoral sensitivity, therefore, must be alert to where people actually are and concerned with them in their situation. The concrete situation determines the charism's "point of insertion" and the subsequent agenda. Does theology have a role in this agenda, and, if so, what is that role? First, it needs to be said that what unites the Christian community is faith, not theology. Pastoral care, first and foremost, contributes to growth in faith. Pastoral care is an art, discerning how faith func-tions in this person and this situation and then doing with skill whatever contributes to the growth of that faith. Theology, of course, does have a role in pastoral care. Years of formation in the science of theology provide principles for the art of pastoral care. Theology states and clarifies the goal of the Christian journey. Newman says: "Theology begins, as its name denotes, not with any sensible facts, phenomena, or results, not with nature at all, but with the Author of nature--with the one invis-ible, unapproachable Cause and Source of all things. It begins at the other end of knowledge, and is occupied, not with the finite, but the Infinite. It unfolds and sys-tematizes what he himself has told us of himself; of his nature, his attributes, his will, and his acts.''4 In this pro-cess of theology, logic is important, but, as Newman says, "logic does not really prove; it enables us to join issue with others; it suggests ideas; it opens views; it maps out for us the lines of thought; it verifies nega-tively; it determines when differences of opinions are 62.3 2003 Abeyasingha ¯ Charism Pastoral care is not a matter of saying and doing what pleases the majority. hopeless; and when and how far conclusions are proba-ble; but for genuine proof in concrete matter we require an organon more delicate, versatile, and elastic than ver-bal argumentation.''s Theology and pastoral care can enrich each other, but how does that work? In pastoral care the starting point is the finite: this individual, this situation. More than strict logic, there needs to be a "clinical sense." What "symptoms" does one perceive? Are there inter-connections? What is the diagnosis, and what treatments are possible? What treatment seems best? How is faith func-tioning here? What prin-ciples operate, however obscured they may be by seeming illogicality? Pas-toral care, in this perspective, is art and poetry. Artists have "insights" and then present them, using the best subject matter and materials and techniques known to them. In their presentations the artists and their glimpses and visions (all finite) that were the starting point rec-ognize themselves as called to grow towards the Infinite. What Rolli glimpsed in the Litany of Loretto were defects--they were indeed defects in the light of a the-ology influenced by rationalism. His solution was to eliminate them. The consequences of doing so were not his concern. I would suggest that Alphonsus's pastoral insight was that he saw how God operated and how pop-ular piety, defective though it was, was indeed express-ing faith in God. His pastoral sensitivity saw the danger of eliminating without substituting. He saw the possi-bility of initiating growth from "within." Pastoral care is not a matter of saying and doing what pleases the majority. That would be pastoral oppor- Review for Religious tunism. Pastoral care leads to an encounter with truth. Hence it is the pastor's function to uncover the truth that exists in what people do and then lead them beyond it. There is truth even in the fables, myths, and legends of popular piety. As Newman says, "fables are economies or accommodations, being truths and principles cast into that form in which they will be most vividly recognized; ¯. Again, mythical representations, at least in their bet-ter form, may be considered facts or narratives, untrue, but like the truth, intended to bring out the action of some principle, point of character, and the like. For instance, the tradition that St. Ignatius [of Antioch] was the child whom our Lord took in his arms, may be unfounded; but it realizes to us his special relation to Christ and his apostles, with a keenness peculiar to itself. The same remark may be made upon certain narratives of martyrdoms, or of the details of such narratives, or of certain alleged miracles, or heroic acts, or speeches, all of which are the spontaneous produce of religious feel-ing under imperfect knowledge. If the alleged facts did not occur, they ought to have occurred (if I may so speak); they are such as might have occurred, and would have occurred, under circumstances . Many a theory or view of things, on which an institution is founded, or a party held together, is of the same kind.''6 Acknowledging Identity in Affirmation of Difference At no point does Alphonsus say that the truth of the fables of popular piety are truths of faith or that they are the core of Christian faith. Alphonsus was clear in his own theological principles. He asserted that Jesus is the only mediator necessary by necessity of means¯ But he also knew that, in actual day-to-day living, people accepted other mediators as well, and so he speaks of them as a moral necessity. In the sphere of religion, Maryi_9.tLl__ 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba ¯ Charism is a secondary mediator. That was the situation--as it stood with its imperfect and accommodated knowledge. As pastor he would present a picture of Mary and the saints as mediators on a different level from Jesus. He would insist that her primary function is to lead us to Jesus. On a secondary level she helps us in our imperfect situation by presenting our prayers to Jesus, increasing our confidence, and so forth. Alphonsus recognized that Catholic identity at that time included being different from Protestants and ratio-nalists. At that time Catholics honored Mary in ways that could be assessed rationally as exaggerated and imperfect--and which brought on ridicule from Protestants and rationalists. To seem to condone their ridicule would lessen their identity (their "being differ-ent") and tantamount to joining them. It was part of Catholic identity, of feeling at home, to retain the devo-tion as it was traditionally practiced. Alphonsus therefore rejects the rational and theologically assimilable posi-tions of Rolli. (Today Rolli's views are part of the Catholic tradition and Catholic identity. It was not so in the 18th century, and could not have been.) Alphonsus had to deal with the theological doctrine that acts of devotion performed by one who was not in the state of grace did not avail for salvation. He could not deny this; it was the common doctrine. So he searched at the human level for the benefits of such devotion. He says (with Thomas Aquinas and Robert Bellarmine) that, although such acts of devotion do not in themselves jus-tify, they at least dispose sinners to obtain justification through the merits of Mary and the saints. He points out at least three possible benefits that could accrue to sinners from such devotion: making them accustomed to good works, obtaining for them temporal favors, and disposing them to receive grace. In other words, sinners who practice devotion to Mary have a better chance of Review for Religious cooperating with grace and being justified than sinners who do not have such devotion. Acknowledging Identity and Moving Forward For Alphonsus, acknowledging identity through dif-ference was the beginning, not the end, of pastoral care. He wished to lead people to deeper understanding of their faith, but always worked first on their hearts, their emotions. His Glories of Mary is a com-mentary on the "Hail Holy Queen," a prayer that ratio-nalists ridiculed. That prayer gave him a framework for his pastoral strategy. He was not merely justifying popular devotion to Mary, but also inserting elements that would help the pray-er grow in faith. As Alphonsus saw it, the prayer combined contrasts (queen/mother; life/banished children). It abounded with words that evoke intense emotion. The climax of the prayer is an accurate theological description of what Christian life is: "After this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus." He makes Jesus the final goal of conversion. Until that goal is reached, even the slightest devotion to Mary, if carried through with perse-verance, gives the sinner hope. She becomes his patron, and exalted patronage was a well-known practice. In The Glories of Mary, Alphonsus takes the "Hail, Holy Queen" as it is and plays on the contrasts that are brought together in addressing Mary. "Queen" evokes power, while "mother" evokes love. Mary nurtures "life," even though our lives are precarious because of the ban-ishment caused by sin. These contrasts do not hold For Alphonsus, acknowledging identity through difference was the beginning, not the end, of pastoral care. 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba * Charism together in ordinary life. As sinners look to Mary as mother, affections of love, tenderness, and confidence are bound to override those of fear, dread, and punishment associated with "queen." Gradually people, especially the sinful and the desperate, would feel themselves more com-fortable and at home with the softer images (mother, life) rather than the harsher ones (power, banishment). His writing style is not pedantic; it is popular. He persuades, he encourages, he appeals. He repeats and exaggerates. He points out the benefits of simple acts (such as reciting a "Hail, Mary" every day) even for peo-ple who have not broken with their life of sin. He knows that the people he is writing for are an emotional peo-ple. He tries to bring reason to bear on their emotions. He does this by channeling their emotions towards two goals, sorrow and love. After reminding readers that God has done much by giving them Mary to be their mother, he asks what they have done. In various ways they have rejected her, and so they are called to sorrow and repen-tance and to expressing grateful love to God and to his mother, God's gift to them. The argument is not spec-ulative. It is an effort to have right reason (in the form of practical repentance and love) control any exagger-ated emotion in Marian devotion. Alphonsus provides a range of imagery drawn from people's ordinary life: Mary as midwife, shepherdess, and advocate. Such imagery is found even more in his poems, songs, and paintings. People could choose whatever image suited them, but, no matter what they chose, each image was mediatory, with Mary between the people and Jesus. Mary was the bridge. The Vatican's "Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy" (2002) treats devotion to Mary much as Alphonsus did.7 Alphonsus's expression is more laden with emotion. He wanted to lead people on a journey on which they would become attached to Christ in love. In "mar- Review for Religious keting" Alphonsus's insight, in bringing his Catholic charism to people of today, pastoral sensitivity needs to start where they are--start with what they consider their identity--and then, in the exercise of pastoral care, move them beyond it. This would be marketing, under a new and different label and brand name, the same product as Alphonsus "marketed" in his day. Is this "marketing" idea likely to convince the bearers of the Alphonsian charism today and to "work" for the people to whom their min-istry extends? A trial run may be worthwhile. I suggest that this approach is not altogether a "dream." A recent biography of Andrei Sakharov shows his journey from being a scientist who supported the Soviet system to being a spokesman for human rights.8 As a scientist he asked questions about physical nature and tested hypotheses, looking for reliable evidence. As a Russian he "believed that the Soviet state represented a breakthrough into the future." When he saw the deaths caused by the radioactive fallout from the tests he directed in 1955, he began to ask questions about politics the same way he had always asked questions about physical nature. This approach quickly made him a dissident. The rest of his life is too well known for repetition here. It was not a head-on attack on his ideology that changed him. The point of change was his own training, in which he was at home. At that point something new inserted itself: the deaths caused by his own experiments. This is a moral parable of change from within, somebne moving from the laboratory into action in the public arena, experiencing a martyrdom (witnessing and suffering), and "rising again." Can the charism of a religious institute function to effect change from within, meeting people where they are and progressing from there? Perhaps it can. That is the hope implied in being pastorally sensitive (to where people's hearts are) before striving to inculcate deeper and truer propositional knowledge. 62.3 2003 Abeyasingba ¯ Charism Notes ' Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Breve rispbsta alla stravagante riforma intentata dall'abbate Rolli contraria alia piet~ dovuta verso la divina Madre (written in 1775). http:// 2 It is interesting that the Congregations for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, "Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines" (9 April 2002), §165, states that, in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the faithful ought to be "encour-aged to use the Scriptures" and "suitable hymns and prayers" and spend some time in "silent prayer and reflection. Thus they will grad-ually get the idea that they ought not use devotional practices in honor of the Virgin Mary and the saints during exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Given Mary's close relationship with Christ, however, the rosary, with its meditation on the mysteries of the incarnation and redemption, could help give the prayer a Christological orientation." Here I seem to detect that, although praying the rosary during ado-ration of the Blessed Sacrament is not rejected, neither is it considered the ideal. It seems to be considered an accommodation ("pastoral sen-sitivity") to where people are, with a view to leading them beyond it (with "pastoral care"). The burden of this article is to set the charism of an apostolically oriented religious institute in this perspective. 3 Andrew M. Greeley, The Cardinal Sins (New York: Warner Books, 1981), pp. 208-210. 4John Henry Newman, "Christianity and Physical Science," in The ldea of a University (Garden City: Doubleday Image, 1959), p. 395. s John Henry Newman, A Grammar of Assent (Garden City: Doubleday Image, 1955), chap. 8, p. 217. 6 John Henry Newman, "The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine" (Sermon XV, Preached on the Purification, 1843), in Newman's University Sermons: FiJ%en Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 1826-43 (London: SPCK, 1970), §35. 7 "Popular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is an important and universal ecclesial phenomenon. Its expressions are multifarious and its motivation is very profound, deriving as it does from the People of God's faith in, and love for, Christ the Redeemer of the human race and from an awareness of the salvific mission that God entrusted to Mary of Nazareth, because of which she is mother not only of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but also of all people in the order of grace" (§183). 8 Richard Lourie, Sakbarov: A Biography (Hanover, New Hampshire: Brandeis University Press, 2002). Review for Religious ERNEST E. LARKIN John of the Cross's Message for Today The focus of St. John of the Cross is the call to contemplation. Vatican Council ~I left no doubt about the universal call to holiness; the clergy, the laity, and religious are all called to the same high degree of union with God. John of the Cross locates that perfection in contemplation. Vatican II emphasized life in this world. It called Christians out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of worldly existence. Lay people particularly were to work for the betterment of humanity through science, politics, education, economics, and the professions. Such work is part of the Christian vocation; moreover, for Christians the motivation and animation for doing the work is the same in the marketplace and the family as it is in the cloister. The source is a loving relationship with the Trinity. This is the holiness at the heart of every vocation. Call it love, call it contemplation--it is the same Ernest E. Larkin OCarm wrote "Desert Spirituality" for our JuDy-August 2002 issue. His address remains Kino Institute; 1224 East Northern; Phoenix, Arizona 85020. 62.3 2003 biblical reality of "knowing .you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ" (Jn 17:3) or, in another formulation, "knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship in his sufferings" (Ph 3:10). It is loving knowledge, for contemplation is knowledge by way of love. It is what St. Th~r~se called her vocation, to be "love at the heart of the church." In the lapidary formula of St. Paul, contemplation is the excellence of "faith expressing itself through love" (Ga 5:6). Contemplative prayer and contemplation are no longer to be seen as the domain of an elitist group. People in all sectors of church life and lay life are claiming their birthright and practicing contemplative prayer every day. John of the Cross can be their guide. In this paper I want to indicate how contemporary forms of contemplative prayer, specifically centering prayer and Christian Meditation, and the Jesus Prayer, fit into John's synthesis. I will first present a sketch of his teaching on the beginnings of contemplation and then relate this doctrine to the contemporary movements. Contemplation, according to John of the Cross Faith as "the only proximate and proportionate means to union with God" runs like a mantra through the works of John of the Cross. Loving faith, shown in word and deed, is the only road to God. Every act of faith, however small, is a ray of light piercing the darkness in one's consciousness. It is the light of Christ shining through. By acts of faith we let Christ in, we allow the Spirit to form Christ in our very being. Of course, he is always there in the depths of our spirit, in "the innermost chamber of our inner castle, the unscathed center of our being, where only the true God dwells.''~ But he is dormant there until we awaken him through activated faith. Our individual, discrete acts of faith are like the dots of light on a television screen. Multiply them, and the Review for Religious screen is fully illuminated. The soul is like the television screen: on it the dots of faith coalesce to form the image of Christ, fulfilling the words of St. Paul: "I live now, no longer I, Christ lives in me." Thus are we configured to Christ. The rest of the quotation is equally important: "I still have my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God" (Ga 2:20). Our faith life brings purity of heart, the condition for this configuration. We are pure of heart to the extent that we live by faith. Purity of heart is not just chastity; it is all the virtues ordered and integrated in our being, giving us an openness to the indwelling God. In early stages God meets us in our rational minds, in our disparate thoughts and image~ and will acts. These are so many actual graces. When purity of heart is more perfect, we enter more deeply into ourselves at the spirit level where God reveals himself in a certain wholeness--in contemplation. "Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God." "Seeing God" occurs in holy thoughts and desires and more fully in contemplation. The metaphor in John of the Cross that corresponds to the television screen is the window pane that lets in the sun. When the window is clean, the sun comes through without any obstruction: the sun and the glass are like one same thing (Ascent 2.5.6). This is a beautiful image of purity of heart, of the entry of God. When all our desires are ordered by faith, we are transparent to God's indwelling. At first God comes to us in images and concepts, facsimiles and metaphors. When the soul is truly pure, that is to say, when it is free and detached and faith-filled, God comes in contemplation as Gracious Mystery, in his inscrutable reality. Our response then is We are pure of heart to the extent that we live by faith. 62.3 2003 Larkin ¯ John of the Cross's Message for Today simply a yes to this gift, resting in the presence, experiencing communion. Communion (koinonia, communio) is being one with God by participation in a unitive, nondualistic experience. Contemplation is the experience of communion. The experience of contemplation is ineffable: it cannot be put into words. We can have feelings about God, and they are sensible consolations or spiritual affections. Feelings are resonances of the experience of God. They are moments of enthusiasm or dis-couragement, joy or sorrow. They are secondary and accidental to the basic contemplative experience of presence and communion, which is incommunicable. The contact with God is the original experience of the theological virtues, whereas the emotional or spiritual resonances are the overflow. Often we have no assurance that we are experiencing the presence of God in contemplation other than blind faith. Feelings are ambiguous and need to be discerned. The act of contemplation is a return to the subject, a turning back on one's self in faith and love. It is moving from the Christ for us, who is objective and out in front of us, so to speak, to the Christ within us, who has become one with us. Thus contemplation is resting in the fruit of one's labor and search; it is the fruition of one's new, transformed self. The whole process is "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ," which begins with one's desires, purifying old ones and developing new ones one by one, and ends in the contemplative act of communion, when two things become one in participatory knowledge and love. This is nondualistic thinking, like the advaita of Eastern religions. God and the soul are united in a oneness that is not pantheistic, but pan-en-theistic. Communion is the common denominator of all the modes of contemplation, whether ordinary or extraordinary, active or passive, acquired or infused. Review for Religious Communion grows gradually as we are transformed in God. The one obstacle to our experiencing our .oneness with God is our unredeemed self, which is our false self or egoic self. Specifically, this bad self is our disordered desires. They are our attachments, an innocuous word better translated in our idiom as addictions and illusions. These are the persons and things and mindsets that control us, distort our thinking, and move us in the wrong direction. We deal with them by the two-pronged attack of getting to know Jesus better (so as to perceive his attractiveness) and letting go of competitive desires. There are two principles here, knowing Jesus and letting go. They are the two directives set down in the strongest language by John of the Cross as the necessary and sufficient program for holiness (Ascent 1.13.3-4). The strategy is to work on habitual, deliberate failings one by one until God negates them all in one sweep by leading a person into the "dark night." At that time one loses the attraction and pleasure in anything other than God. In John of the Cross, the gift of initial infused contemplation is the cause of this state. The budding contemplative is counseled to stop discursive activity, embrace the emptiness, and be present in loving attention to God, who is "infusing" light and love. At first the experience is distressful, because one fears she has lost God and everything else. The infused light and love are too subtle to be recognized. The landmarks of the old spiritual journey are gone: God is no longer available, 6ne cannot pray in the old ways, the excitement of ministry goes dead, and there is a malaise about everything. The only positive quality is an ache for God, which is aggravated by the fear of having lost the Beloved. Eventually one becomes comfortable with this new way of relating to God, and peace and serenity replace the anxiety. 62.3 2003 Larkin ¯ John of the Cross's Message for Today The dark night in general is the whole spiritual journey from beginning to end. Thus in John of the Cross the ascetical efforts that begin the journey to divine union do not complete the task. The dark night is needed for that. Why? Because our devious human nature, one's false self, goes underground into the unconscious and blocks a person's surrender to God in disguised ways. Jungian psychology calls the buried false self the shadow. It is made up of the capital sins, like lust or pride; in pious people these weaknesses take on forms of pseudo-piety that are as destructive as the crass expressions. Centuries before Jung, John was an expert on uncovering the shadow or dark side of human nature. His teaching is that only God can heal the shadow at its roots. God does this, not by "fixing" it, much less removing it, but by helping us confront and accept it and then move on to total surrender to God. One of John's great contributions is this teaching on the dark night. The dark night in general is the whole spiritual journey from beginning to end; the dark night under consideration here is one phase of the purification process, and is called the passive dark night of the senses. The new knowledge and love that are pure gift from God at this point (and called in-fused contemPlation) reconfigure the spiritual life. Inner worldly goods all lose their appeal. One sees them in their truth, and in comparison with God (Ascent 1.4; 3.20.2), and so they recede into irrelevance. At the same time God is no longer available in the cozy relationship of the past. The new knowledge and love of God is camouflaged and not knowledge in the usual Review for Religious sense, since it is apophatic, that is, knowing by unknowing. Nothing is felt by the senses, and the action of God is too subtle to be recognized. The result is ennui and accidie. John of the Cross reassures the beleaguered soul that the new state is an advance. The darkness is from God. John gives signs to authenticate the true grace from counterfeits. They are persistent dryness, the inability to function in the old ways, and the ache for God. Something new is going on. God is present in the scary silence. The person must relax and let God take over. Such is the dark tunnel of beginning infused contemplation. The new way of relating is communion. Instead of 'T' and "Thou" outside one another, the experience is "we" or "us." Mystics revel in this intimacy. It is at-one-ness with God. Such is the experience of this and every other kind of contemplation. It is in contrast to rational thinking about an object out in front. This is the way to just be-ing, participating in one life together, "abiding in Christ and Christ abiding in the person" (see Jn 15:5). Contemplation happens in prayer, in ministry, and in human relationships. It is a fine-tuning of the state of grace. It happens when childish babbling and chatting with God give way to silence. Only silence can handle the new knowledge and love. The silence may disconcert and cause anxiety, because nothing seems to be going on and one fears the emptiness. In fact, a great deal is going on, and the soul is undergoing a deeper purification and illumination. John tells the person to stay quiet, at attention. This blessed state is the proximate objective of the beginner in meditation. In John's view it may take a year or so to reach it.2 In my experience the apprenticeship is longer. It may take several years before one moves beyond discursive meditation into this prayer of silence. 62.3 2003 Larkin * John of the Cross's Message for Today Contemplation Today But something different is happening on the contemplative landscape today. Instead of working for years with discursive meditation and perhaps not entering " the dark night of the senses at all, people in all walks of life are choosing to practice a new kind of contemplative prayer. The contemporary practice is a new category and not the same as the contemplative prayer and contemplation of John of the Cross. For him these two terms are synonymous and always describe the absolutely free gift of infused contemplation. Contemplative prayer today is not discursive meditation, nor is it per se infused contemplation. It is an intermediary between meditation and contemplation. Centering prayer, Christian Meditation, and the Jesus Prayer cultivate silence and presence to God. In John's terminology these forms belong to meditation, since the prayer is active, personally chosen, and self-directed. But they are a kind of contemplation, because they are silent, without words or images or discursive movement from point to point. They are a species of contemplation, because they are communion with the Trinity. Thousands of people are practicing this self-initiated contemplative prayer. They are not forced into this way of relating to God; they choose it. They enter into deliberate and wordless silence. Instead of being busy inquiring, analyzing, and making multiple acts of the affections, they remain present to the divine indwelling in simple awareness and attention to the gift of grace within. This form of prayer is on the growing edge of Christian life. I believe that it is a gift to the church at this point in history. There is a widespread conviction that we do not have to wait until we are forced into the silence. We can choose it and foster it, and a fruitful kind of prayer results. All our other prayer, such as the liturgy and lectio divina, and our apostolic action and for Religious community relationships as well, are affected by this entering within. We come at life from a deeper level. All we need is an "open mind and open heart" to welcome the God hidden in the depths of our souls. This prayer is simply presence, silence, encounter beyond words. The challenge in this kind of prayer is to maintain the silence, to keep focused on the presence of God. The three forms under consideration use a word or a phrase as a way of maintaining attention. Centering prayer uses a holy word like Abba or Jesus to express one's consent to the divine presence and renew one's presence to God; the word is repeated as often as it is needed. Christian Meditation and the Jesus Prayer use the sacred word as a mantra, that is, a phrase repeated throughout the prayer. The usual mantra in Christian Meditation is the Aramaic word "maranatha," which means "Come, Lord." It is a greeting found in the New Testament. The mantra of the Jesus Prayer is the words "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." You will not find these prayer forms in the writings of John of the Cross. The architects of these prayer disciplines do not presume the presence of infused contemplation, though they hope that the practice will lead there. John Main maintained that Christian Meditation was a traditional form of meditation in the medieval church. Actually he was not a stickler about terminology or theological distinctions; he saw meditation, contemplation, and contemplative prayer as synonyms. The method of meditation taught by John of the Cross may well have been along the lines of John Main. Beginners were to "ponder a divine mystery.''3 A common way of doing that in early monasticism was to repeat

Issue 41.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1982. ; The Jesuit's Fourth Vow The Post-Charismatic The Changing Role of Brothers Volume 41 Number 2 March/April, 1982 Rev~t-:w Eor REI.~GIOUS (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:.~601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW For RELIGIOU,':, is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus. St. Louis, MO. © 1982 by REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOIJS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year: $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: Rt:vlt:w v'or Rt:LWaot~s: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor March/April, 1982 Volume 41 Number 2 Manuscripls, books for review and correspondence wilh Ihe editor should be sent to Rl.:VlEW E(m Rl-:i.l(;Iou.~; Rnom 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. I.ouis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be senl to Joseph F. Gallen. S.J.; Jesuit Communily; St. Joseph's University; (Sity Avenue al 541h St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from R~-:v~-:w ~-ox R~-:LI(;~OUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms Internationah 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Principles of Discernment Robert F. Morneau The last article of Bishop Morneau to appear in these pages was "'Dives in Misericordia: Themes and Theses," which appeared in the September issue. Bishop Morneau may be addressed care of the Ministry to Priests Program; 1016 N. Broadway; De Pere, WI 54115. The journey of life is filled with many choices, the consequences of which can be far-reaching. But as we enter into the decision-making process we are not necessar-ily alone. Friends and counselors frequently give helpful advice. Also we have the advantage of both personal and collective experience from which we can extract patterns and principles that provide guidance and wisdom. This essay spells out ten such principles that can help us discern God'svoice and respond to the Lord's call with generosity and courage. A basic belief underlies this endeavor: growth is much more likely to happen when we critically reflect upon our experience and watch for reoccurring patterns than when we simply move from one spontaneous experience to another without~explicitly dealing with any of them. Reflection, done in prayer and with serious ii~tent, provides insight and energy for spiritual development. Growth in the Lord is greatly impeded when reflection and articula-tion are absent. A three-fold method will be used: l) the articulation of ten principles of discernment; 2) a series of quotations from various authors who reflect some dimension of the basic principle; 3) a tripartite commentary which includes a reference to Scripture, an image illustrating the principle and an example from literature providing a case study of our theme. Discernment is a gift to be exercised; principles are abstractions offering mean-ing. Both are significant for human and spiritual growth. This essay presents the principles; the reader brings the gift and the experience. The hope is that the roads intersect rather than run parallel. 1. Discernment is a prayerful process by which ~xperiences are interpreted in faith. 161 162 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 By discernment of spirits is meant the process by which we examine, in the light of faith and in the connaturality of love, the nature of the spiritual states we experience in ourselves and in others. The purpose of such examination is to decide, as far as possible, which of the movements we experience lead to the Lord and to a more perfect service of him and our brothers, and which deflect us from this goal.~ Basically, as I see it, Discernment may be defined as the meeting point of prayer and action. That is, discernment is the art of recognizing what God is asking of us--what he would like us to do with our lives, how he wishes us to respond to the concrete life-situations which we encounter in following our vocation? The Christian who reflects on his own experience and on that of the community, who seeks to discern in these the divine voice, and who wants to respond to it by redirecting his life, is--theologically speaking--engaged in prayer.3 "Then he (Jesus) bent down and wrote on the ground again.TM The adulterous woman stood before him; the scribes and pharisees made their accusation; the people observed with keen curiosity. We do not know exactly what happened in the mind and heart of Jesus as he leaned forward and wrote in the sand with his finger. We do know that this immediate experience needed an interpretation. Jesus was a prayerful person; his bending forward in silence may well have been a deep moment of communion with the Father. The Gospel records the Lord's response to the situation: the accusers could silently withdraw, the accused could depart without condemnation. This is but one example of Jesus' ministry. Many other times he also turned to the Father for guidance: the prayer on the mountain before choosing the disciples, the garden prayer before his passion and death, the prayer in the desert when tempted to infidelity. The n~cessity for discernment is the experience at a crossroads; the standard for discernment is whether or not the decision leads to God and more complete service; the act of discernment requires a posture of contemplative faith. The combine used in harvesting and threshing grain has given tremendous help to the farmer. It separates the grain from the straw, retaining the former for winter feeding and discharging the latter in neat rows. The wheat and the chaff, the good and the evil, the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly--throughout history the human spirit has been challenged to distinguish one from the other. This is no simple process. The grey areas are vast, time is often needed and not available, the multiplicity of experiences tends to clog up the task. Even with these obstacles, the spiritual combine of a discerning heart must perform its duty as well as it can. Grounded in prayer and nourished with learning, the spirits of good and evil can ~Discernment of Spirits, introd, by Edward Malatesta (Collegeville, M N: The Liturgical Press, 1970), p. 9. 2Thomas H. Green, S.J., Darkness in the Marketplace (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Mafia Press, 1982), p. 69. 3Gregory Baum, Man Becoming INew York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 256. *See Jn 8:8. Principles of Discernment be sorted out and properly responded to. Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory is a story about spiritual discern-ment, its successes and its failures. The "whiskey priest" must constantly make decisions concerning his person and his ministry as he is confronted with the Mexican religious persecution. The failures of discernment may well be grounded in the reflection: "a prayer demanded an act and he had no intention of acting." His success would demand courage and sanctity; the vision is given but not its reality: He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness'by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted--to be a saint) Discernment is that prayerful process allowing each individual and the larger community to move in the direction of sanctity. 2. Discernment must deal with many voices seeking to capture our minds, hearts and energies. Since the mysterious voice of the Spirit is not the only voice we hear but comes to us accompanied by the tumultuous sounds of our own conflicting impulses and the clamorings of the entire creation, it is essential for us to be able to discern the presence of the Spirit in order to choose to say "yes" to him.6 So the soul that waits in silence must learn to disentangle the voice of God from the net of other voices--the ghostly whisperings of the subconscious self, the luring voices of the world, the hindering voices of misguided friendship, the clamor of personal ambition and vanity, the murmur of self-will, the song of unbridled imagination, the thrilling note of religious romance. To learn to keep one's ear true to so subtle a labyrinth of spiritual sound is indeed at once a great adventure and a liberal education. One hour of such listening may give us a deeper insight into the mysteries of human nature, and surer instinct for divine values, than a year's hard study or external intercourse with men.7 While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms, and turning in irresolution from such pursuit, he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good Catholic above all things. These voices had 9ow come to hollow sounding in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college, yet another voice had bidden him to be true to his country and help to raise up her language and tradition. in the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labors and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school. And it was the din of all these hollow sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy SGraham Greene, /Tie Power and the Glory (New York: The Viking Press, 1940), p. 284. 6Discernment of Spirits, p. 9. 7Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 43. 164 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.S The parable of the good shepherd stresses the importance of recognizing the voice of the master.9 Eternal life depends on this; only those who hear and respond enter into the fullness of life. But Jesus' voice was one among many. Competition for the sheep was great and, given the gift of freedom, there could be no forcing of individual liberty. Though Jesus called some directly, they refused to listen: the rich young man, Judas, the scribes and pharisees. Others, men like John, Stephen and Paul, heard the loving call and became committed disciples. The voice of the risen Lord continues to compete with the sounds of our times. He can be heard in our sacraments of faith, in the sights and sounds of nature, in the revelation of Scripture, in the community of believers, in the words and deeds of our fellow pilgrims. Life itself is a summons to reach out and fulfill our task of becoming fully human in order that we might glorify our God. Radios have a selective apparatus called a tuner through which we can choose the station that pleases us. Many excellent possibilities are available: beautiful music, intelligent conversation, educational programs. Other options expose us to dissonant sounds, inane banality, devious propaganda. With a twist of the dial we have the power to position ourselves in any one of these environments and thus grant permission to certain ideas and images to enter and shape our perspective. In the spiritual realm, discernment tunes itself to God's message of love and forgive-ness in Jesus and lives this deep mystery in word and deed. A novel by Chaim Potok entitled My Name is Asher Lev presents an artisti-cally gifted young man who has to discern among many voices. Early in life Asher Lev recognizes that his ability to draw had not only the potential for self-fulfillment but also the possibility of a serious rupture with his parents and the Jewish community at large. In anger and confusion he argues with God: You don't want me to use the gift; why did you give it to me? Or did it come to me from the Other Side? it was horrifying to think my gift may have been given to me by the source of evil and ugliness. How can evil and ugliness make a gift of beauty?~0 The pressure from the leaders of the community, the warnings of frie,nds, the intrinsic urgings of the gift, the delicate relationship with his parents were all voices seeking attention and action. Would the gift be heard and exercised regardless of the cost? Discernment calls for radical fidelity to God, self and others. Wisdom and courage are needed to hear the truth and implement it in our personal history. 3. Discernment is cultivated in listening love that allows one to hear the .felt-experience of good and evil movements within oneself, others and society. a James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Colonial Press Inc., 1944), pp. 83-84. 9Jn 10: I-5. ~°Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev (New York: Fawcett Crest Books, 1972), p. 116. Principles of Discernment / 165 For these souls, their hearts tell them what God desires. They have only to listen to the promptings of their hearts to interpret his will in the existing circumstances. God's plans, disguised ,as they are, reveal themselves to us through our intuition rather than through our rea.son. I I Love gives freedom. Love accepts another person as he is, and discerns in the other person hidden strength. Love communicates to the other a new kind of self-possession, and enables the other to act with self-confidence.~2 Only by the supernatural working of grace can a soul pass through its own annihilation to the place where alone it can get the sort of attention which can attend to truth and to affliction. It is the same attention which listens to both of them. The name of this intense, pure, disinter-ested, gratuitous, generous attention is love.~ It is not blind love that is the enduring love, the love that God himself is. It is a seeing love, a knowing love, a love that looks through into the depth of the heart of God, and into the depth of our hearts. There is no strangeness to love; love knows; it is the only power to complete and lasting knowledge?4 Jesus was a listener and a lover. In a powerful exchange with Peter,15 Jesus listens to Peter's profession that his master is indeed Messiah; Jesus also hears Peter's unwillingness to embrace the fact that the Messiah must suffer and die. As he listens with love Jesus discerns the first response of Peter as coming from the Father and the second movement and response as coming from mere human standards. This beautiful example of double discernment resonates with many of our own experiences in which we act out of mixed motives and according to diverse and sometimes contradictory criteria. Authentic discernment is possible only when one has the graced ability to listen in love to the deepest impulses, urges and longings of the human heart with great care and exquisite respect. Jesus models for us the very essence of discernment. The sunflower delights both our eye and our imagination. In the morning it faces the east awaiting the dawn; by evening it gazes to the west as though pursuing its god. Two qualities are evident in this docile plant: the "listening" power ena-bling it to take in the sun's warm rays and its ability to respond to the flight of the sun in loving fidelity. This image highlights the importance of sensitivity in the discernment process. The slightest, impulse, urging and prompting must be absorbed and responded to if we are to faithfully follow the call of the Master. Such listening and responding is grounded in love. Love pulls us out of self-preoccupation and the parochialism of our narrow lives. The sunflower images a type of listening and love characteristic of a discerning heart. Would that the simplicity, spontaneity and flexibility of the sunflower were ours! ~Jean Pierre De Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (New York: Doubleday Image Book, 1975), p. 105. ~2Man Becoming. p. 50. ~The Simone Weil Reader, p. 333. ~'~Paul Tillich. The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948), p. II0. ~SMt. 16:13-23. 166 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 The movie, Ordinary People, presented a scene in which an emotionally dis-turbed young man reached out to a psychiatrist for help: Initially the relationship did not go well. Later, with time and patience, the deep loving concern and listening skills of the doctor won out. The boy revealed his story and partial healing took place. More than simple listening'happened here: a deep discernment of the movements of the heart surfaced, were owned and dealt with. More than superficial concern was demonstrated here: a profound, radical trust resulted in giving life and well-being. In such instances heart speaks to heart (cot ad cot) and even though religious language is not used nor God mentioned explicitly, a person of faith can recognize his presence in such an encounter and appreciate the exercise of the gift of discernment. 4. Discernment relies on two mirrors: Jesus and revelation. The disciple living today.does possess one ultimate criterion for correct discernment: i.e., Jesus himself.~6 With the help of the Holy Spirit, it is the task of the entire People of God, especially pastors and theologians, to hear, distinguish and interpret the many voices of our age, and to judge them in the light of the divine Word. In this way, revealed truth can always be more deeply penetrated, better understood, and set forth to greater advantage,t7 Jesus is our m~.ster to whom we do not pay enough attention. He speaks to every heart and utters the word of life, the essential word for each one of us, but we do not hear it. We would like to know what he has said to other people, yet we do not listen to what he says to us.~ The miracle of the loaves as presented in John's Gospel~9 involves an example of discernment. Many of the disciples who had followed Jesus up to this point now walked away, finding incredible the claim that Jesus himself was the bread of life. The Lord turned to the Twelve and asked if they too would go away. Simon Peter's. response: "Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life.'~0 The specific choice that was made was based on a person and his word. No abstract philosophy here; no esoteric theology; no subtle psychology. Discernment and decision flowed from a relationship of trust and faith. Implicit in such a discernment process is fidelity: decisions are made in terms of personal commit-ment. Such fidelity secures personal identity because in such an exercise of free-dom we protect both the reality of the Creator and the creature. No lies are possible with authentic discernment. The keystone of an arch is in a precarious position. Its presence makes the arch integral, but it is dependent on the two columns which it unites. If either column is missing there simply is no arch and the stone meant to be a key remains just an ~6Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads. trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978), p. 129. ~TThe Documents of Vatican IL Gaudium et Spes New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), p. 246. taAbandonment to Divine Providence. p. 53. ~'~Jn 6:1-71. Principles of Discernment ] 167 ordinary stone. Discernment rests on the personal column of Jesus Christ: his values and affections are the very substance we use in sorting out the many options of life. Discernment also rests on Sacred Scripture which provides a vision of salvation history and the backdrop for measuring what is spiritual and what is not. Blessed are the poor, the peacemakers, the ones who hunger and thirst for justice; ungodly are the self-indulgent, the self-serving, the lukewarm. Revelation clarifies those actions which are life-giving and those which are death-dealing. The person of Jesus leaves unambiguous the path we are to follow. Such lights as Jesus and Scripture are rich and necessary graces for our journey. The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo reveal a man for whom the word of God and the person of Jesus were vital sources of power. It was in St. Paul's letter to the Romans that God's word overwhelmed the struggling Augustine; it was in personal relationship with Christ that he perceived reality from a faith perspective. Augustine's hunger for the truth, nourished for years by the classic philosophers, now found sustenance from Scripture. Augustine's deep affectivity, once franti-cally seeking fulfillment in an unbridled sensuous life, found its home in the Lord. With these two resources it is no wonder that the bishop of Hippo is noted for his keen, incisive decisions. Both as a judge of human affairs and as an exegete of Scripture, he brought much life to many because his process of discernment was rooted in the Lord and in biblical faith. 5. Discernment assumes that God is continually working in the depth of every individual and community. He (God) revealed himself several times reigning, as is said before, but principally in man's soul; he has taken there his resting place and his honorable city. Out of this honorable throne he will never rise or depart without end. Marvelous and splendid is the place where the Lord dwells; and therefore he wants us promptly to attend to the touching of his.grace, rejoicing more in his unbroken love than sorrowing over our frequent failings.2~ But whatever we do, we do it because we are diawn to this particular acti6n without knowing why. All we can say can be reduced to this: ~'1 feel drawn to write, to read, to question and examine. I obey this feeling, and God, who is responsible for it, thus builds up within me a kind of spiritual store which, in the future, will develop into a Sore of usefulness for myself and for others." This is what makes it essential for us to be simple-hearted, gentle, compliant and sensitive to the slightest breath of these almost imperceptible promptings.22 Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead, in this besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness, with its architecture, its business, its politics, its men!2J The realization that God is active in all that happens at every moment is the deepest knowl-edge we can have in this life of the things of God?4 ~°Jn 6:68. 2~Julian of Norwich: Showings. trans. Edmond Colledge, O.S.A., and James Walsh, S.J., Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). p. 337. 2~Abandonment to Divine Providence, p. 81. ~Steppenwolf, p. 35. 24Abandonment to Divine Providence, p. 117. 1611 / Review for Religious, March-Apri!, 1982 Creation is God's presence to us in beauty; the cross is God's presence to us in our brokenness and twistedness.2~ God's creative and redemptive power is at work wherever there is life. Whether or not a given individual responds to that presence is dependent upon the working of grace and freedom. The point is that God is always working. John's Gospel drives this fact home.26 Accepting this in faith, we. are challenged to become increasingly conscious of divine stirrings deep within our individual lives as well as our communities. Focal awareness, a high intensity consciousness, may not be that frequent, but subsidiary awareness, a sense of a background presence, can become a way of life.27 As our faith deepens we become ever more sensitive to the working of God's Spirit in our minds and hearts. The life story of the grape can provide an image of the discernment captured by the vines and their energy transformed into grapes. Upon. beir~g harvested and crushed, the grape enters into a fermentation process. Through the hidden work-ings of bacteria surrounded by proper temperatures, darkness and sugars, the grapes are converted into wine. So, too, in our spiritual journey, the need for ongoing conversion is a constant call and is made possible through the perennial movements of God in our innermost being. The sourness of the unredeemed areas of our inner life are turned into the succulent sweetness of a life of union. In her sensitive allegory Hinds' Feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard has us journey with the main character Much-Afraid through a fermentation process that eventually results in "much-trust." At first our heroine is enslaved by fear, oppressed by human respect, devoid of joy. Gradually she begins to sense the stirrings of grace within her soul. God's promptings lead Much-Afraid into free, dom and then on to acts of courage. Her story is symbolic of all those enslaved by fear. Her liberation in grace is greatly aided by an exercise that could well become the model for many: To this place she was in the habit of going very early every morning to meet Him and learn His wishes and commands for the day, and again in the evening to give her report on the day's work.28 Such conversation and accountability enrich the discerning heart. 2~John Shea, Stories of God: An Unauthorized Biography (Chicago, II1.: Thomas More Association, 1978), p. 152. ~Jn 6. 271n an essay entitled "The study of Man," Michael Polanyi writes: "We may say that when we com-prehend a particular set of items as parts of a whole, the focus of our attention is shifted from the hitherto uncomprehended particulars to the understanding of their joint meaning. This shift of attention does not make us lose sight of the particulars, since one can see a whole only by seeing its parts, but it changes altogether the manner in which we are aware of the particulars. We become aware of them now in terms of the whole on which we have fixed our attention. I shall call this a subsidiary awareness of the particulars, by contrast to a focal awareness which would fix attention on the particulars in themselves, and not as parts of a whole. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 29-30. 28Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet on High Places (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Com-pany, 1973), p. 13. Principles of Discernment / 169 6. Discernment respects the nature of time and is willing to wait freely for a decision that has need of clarification, detachment and magnanimity. Ligfitning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard,z9 Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul,/naking it able to receive what is to be given usP0 The poet contrasts us in our waiting and in our going ahead. For those who take initiative into their own hands, either in the atheism of pride or in the atheism of despair, the words are weary, faint, and exhausted. The inverse comes with waiting: renewed strength, mounting up, running, walking. But that is in waiting. It is in receiving not grasping, in inheriting and not possessing, in praising and not seizing. It is in knowing that initiative has passed from our hands and we are safer for it.3~ Many of the Lord's parables deal with the notions of time and waiting. One of these tells of the necessity of being ready for the master's return from the wedding feast.32 Happy for those who are awake and prepared for the unexpected. Fear, weariness and even impatience are moods that threaten our call to decide to respond to God's call. Milton's "they also serve who. only stand and wait" expresses a situation that only the most courageous can accept. Timing in decision-making is most subtle; in'deed, God's time (kairos) is often not our time (chronos). A basic guideline in the spiritual life is that we "act on our clarities." When things are too muddy we wait, however painful that may be. Without expecting a certi-tude or clarity that is unrealistic, we gradually 'become comfortable with that faith fact that seeking and waiting can be as meritorious and grace-filled as finding. The important thing is that God's will be done.33 Telephone companies provide a service by which a person can find out the correct time by dialing a certain number. Wo~uld that our inner seasons were as clear as our chronological time frame! It is hard to discern in winter when dor-mancy and coldness immobilize our hearts. People are counseled never to make decisions of major import when depressed; it is simply the wrong time. No~" should decisions be made when romanticism sweeps through the heart blinding the indi-vidual to the shadow side of life. We discern on level ground, not on the peaks nor in the valleys. The correct time is known more through intuition than rational deduction--we sense discernment more than figure it out. The phone number locates us and orientates us according to the sun; discernment provides bearings in reference to a much brighter Light. Shakespeare's King Lear provides an excellent example of timing and dis-cernment. The king was aging and decided to distribute his property and wealth among his daughters, each being given a share in proportion to her profession of mPeter Berger, A Rumor of Angels (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), p. I I. 3°Thomas H. Green. S.J., When the Well Runs Dry (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1979), p. 113. 3*Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1978), pp. 78-79. J~Lk 12:35-40. 17t) / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 love for her father. Not only was Lear unwise in his standard of division, he was misguided in his time. The consequence was eventual insanity and death. Dis-cernment demands a standard, one based on knowledge of reality and deep faith. Discernment demands awareness of the Lord's timing. Until that surfaces we wait, trusting that the Lord will show us his plan. Detachment allows us to accept whatever is asked; magnanimity provides room to welcome whatever is given. Discernment needs much grace and graciousness. 7. Discernment is a gift which comes to those who are properly attuned through obedience and surrender. In everything else, this soul will preserve a perfect liberty, always ready to obey the stirrings of grace the moment it becomes aware of them, and to surrender itself to the care of providence.34 When a soul has reached the third stage, the love of friendship and filial love, her love is no longer mercenary. Rather she does as very close friends do when one receives a gift from the other. The receiver does not just look at the gift, but at the heart and the love of the giver, and accepts and treasures the gift only because of the friend's affectionate IoveP~ The hearing of God's Word requires complete self-surrender.36 The Annunciation narrative in Luke's GospeP7 presents Mary in a perplexing situation. Her future with Joseph had been determined; plans were made; impor-tant decisions were set in motion. Suddenly God breaks into the "best-laid schemes o' mice an' men." What is to be done? To whom does one listen? What price the surrender of one's will to the call of God? This biblical account gives us a classic example of discernment. The divine will summons and history hangs in balance. Though struggling with fear and the unknown, Mary discerns the voice of the Lord and in prompt obedience and generous surrender commits her life to the providence of her God. That gift of discernment was rooted in her identity as the handmaid of the Lord. Mary knew who she was and it was from that giftedness of her graced filled life that such an extravagant and total response poured forth from her heart. A hearing aid is a grea't blessing for those individuals for whom deafness is an encroaching reality. This technical device helps restore the precious gift 6f hearing. One can once again listen to a variety of sounds and calls and through surrender render personal obedience. Physical listening has its counterpart in the spiritual realm, as does deafness. Often we do not hear. Sometimes this is a matter of choice, sometimes a matter of circumstance. Regardless, we fail to discern the words and movements of the Lord because the gift of discernment has not been activated. Hearing aids can be adjusted, even turned off. When God asks what is a~Julian of Norwich: Showings. pp. 195-196. ~Abandonment to Divine Providence, p. 88. J~Catherine of Siena, The Dialogues, trans, and introd. Suzanne Noffke, O.P., Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 134. ~6Meister Eckhart, t~ans. Raymond B. Blakney INew York: Harper Torchbooks, 1941), p. 33. ~TLk 1:26-38. Principles of Discernment / 171 demanding or unpleasant we can unconsciously or blatantly turn from his sum-mons and fail to respond. Here we see that the discernment process has'high mutuality: the call and gift from God, thefree response of obedience and surrender from the human person. God respects our freedom too much to force a response. Gradually it becomes evident that discernment isnot just one gift among many: it is a crucial gift determining~destinies. Story of a Soul, the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, is a candid revelation of a deep love relationship. Surrender and obedience were qualities that gave constant direction to the saint's life; these dispositions opened her to the gift of discernment. Therese realized that Christian living demanded not only recogni-tion of what is to be done but also the actual doing: As little birds learn to sing by listening to their parents, so children learn the science of the virtues, the sublime song of Divine Love from souls responsible for forming them.3~ Authentic discernment moves from listening to virtue. God uses many interme-diaries (parents, teachers, friends, "enemies") to both proclaim his message and model a response. In this environment the gift of~ discernment takes root. Therese's being was receptive to the stirrings of grace. The song of divine love was. heard, the r~esponding melody was also one of deep love. 8. Discernment happily blends faith and pragmatism: it searches out God's will in radical trust and does it. The People of God believes that it is led by the Spirit of the Lord. who fills the earth. Motivated by this faith, it labors to decipher authentic signs of God's presence and purpose in the happenings, needs, and desires in which this People has a part along with other men of our age. For faith throws a new light on everything, manifests God's design for man's total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions which are fully human)9 The will certainly seems to me to be united ir~ some way with the will of God; but it is by the effects of this prayer and the actions which follow it that the genuineness of the experience must be tested and there is no better crucible for doing so than this.'~ Every activity is related to good and evil twice over: by its performance and by its principle.4~ While teaching one day,~2 Jesus was interrupted when some men, carrying their paralyzed friend and lowering him through the roof, ingeniously got' ev-eryone's attention. The story is familiar; two things ~hould be noted for ohr pur-pose. These men had a deep faith in Jesus. They truly believed that this teacher had power and concern. Second!y,~their faith was active. They expended much energy JsStor), of a Soul." the Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. trans. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washing-ton, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1975), p. 113. 3gThe Documents of Vatican II, p. 209. 4°The Complete Works of St. Theresa of Jesus. ed. and trans. E. Allison Peers (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), 2:238. 4~ The Simone Well Reader, p. 292. 42Lk 5:17-26. 172 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 and subtle creativity.in allowing t.heir faith,filled hearts to be nourished by divine healing. Both their trust and activity were rewarded in the cure of their friend. Discernment is both relational and functional; it is contemplative and active; it is faith-filled and pragmatic. The contemporary concern for integration is similar to the ever present call to discernment. A person of true discernment is integral. No false dichotomy here: action must be consequent to principle. Grounded in deep faith discernment pushes from below; drawn into active response discernment calls us forth to be agents of change. ¯ H20 is the chemical formula describing our precious gift of water. The blend-ing of these two elements produces a substance necessary for life. Hydrogen without oxygen fails to give us our refreshing liquid and vice versa. So in the spiritual domain: faith without action is dead; action without faith loses its ulti-mate significance. The water of the spiritual life is the grace of discernment; its basic elements are faith and deed. Depending upon the developmental phases of the community or individual, the w~ight will shift more towards faith, more towards action according to the level of maturity and the needs of the people. Here we realize that. spiritual laws are much more subtle than those of nature. In his journal entitled Markings, Dag Hammarskjold records the diverse movements of his inner life. We come to realize that this inter:national figure, busy with multiple responsibilities of the United Nations, had a very well developed and nurtured spiritual life. He speaks often of faith; he notes the importance of action. One passage will suffice: We act in faith--and miracles occur. In consequence, we are tempted to make the miracles the ground for our faith. The cost of such weakness is that we lose the confidence of faith, Faith is. faith creates, faith carries. It is not derived from, nor created, nor carried by anything except it~ own reality.4J The mixture is right; the roots of the tree blossom forth through the branches carrying and bringing much life. Discernment makes this possible. 9. Discernment looks to consequences for its authenticity: decisions are of God if ultimately leading to life and love. I am quite sure that no one will be deceived in this way for long if he has a gift for the discernment of spirits and if the Lord has given him true humility: such a person will judge the~e spirits by their fruits and their resolutions and their love.'~ To estimate the worth of a spiritual decision, we thus have three criteria at our disposal: the authenticity of our union with God, the unity of the different elements of our being, the cohesion which our action assumes in relation to ourselves, .to others and to the world,aS The work of love not only heals the roots of sin, but nurtures practical goodness. When it is authentic you will be sensitive to every need and respond with a generosity unspoiled by 4~Dag Hammarskjold, Markings (N~w York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1966), p. 145. ~The Complete Works of St. Theresa of Jesus, 1:378. 4SFrancois Roustang, S.J., Growth in the Spirit. trans. Kathleen Pond (New York: Sheed & Ward. 1966), p. 122. Principles of Discernment / 173 selfish intent. Anything you attempt to do without this love will certainly be imperfect, for it is sure to be marred by ulterior motives.46 Authentic Christian living results in action and explicit concern. Jesus draws our attention to the fig tree that is rich in foliage but devoid of fruit.47 For a hungry person the fruitless fig tree is worthless, we discern its worth in this case by whether or not it achieves its essential destiny. In our spiritual journey discernment is tested by the effects of our action and the concomitant affectivity. Does our activity give life, i.e., does it foster an increase of love, joy and peace? Or do our actions lead to death, i.e., apathy, sadness and anxiety? Discernment registers at the deepest level of our humanity--in our guts! We come to sequester that which nurtures from that which enervates. As in economic affairs so in spiritual matter we come to the bottom line: the financial world looks to profit/loss and the spiritual world looks to life/death. The stethoscope allows medical personnel to become attuned to the inner physiological movements of the patient. The trained ear can evaluate the proper functionings or pathological stirrings of vital organs. What the naked eye has no way of knowing, the ear with the aid of the stethoscope can easily ascertain, Discernment is a process of listening to the stirrings of the many different spirits constantly at work within the complexity of our lives. A good spiritual director intuitively senses how our life-style and motivational field is impacting on the inner terrain. If congruence is sensed, then God's word is tak~ing root and bearing proper fruit. If there is dissonance, then dialogue is in order to understand where it is coming from. This is no easy task. The movements of the spirit are mixed and often ambiguous. At times God's word will cause dissonance while the work of the evil spirit causes apparent harmony. These uncharted waters make us hesitate and call out for help from a good spiritual navigator! Sophie's Choice, a novel by Willim Styron, narrates the many decisions thata young woman had to make in very dire circumstances. The choice of letting either her son or daughter be sent to the gas chambers is symbolic of the horrendous decisions that confront the human spirit~ Throughout ttiis novel we witness people making choices and dealing with the powerful effects that shape their destinies. These effects basically fall on one or other side of the line: life or death. Sad to say, most of the decisions were not life-affirming~ Any good novel is essentially a study of discernment from an experiential point of view. Situations arise, choices are made, life or death follows. No one is exempt from dealing with the script of his or her own life. The process is universal. Grace is necessary if we are to discern wisely and act with courage. 10. Discernment leads to truth and, through truth, into freedom. The very word "truth" filled my heart with enthusiasm. The beauty of the word shone in my 46The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling. ed. William Johnston (New York: Doubleday Image Book, 1973). p. 64. "1"/4 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 eyes like a spiritual sun dispelling all shadows--those of ignorance, of error, of deceit, even those of iniquity, which is an error of measure and a lie. "Knowing the truth"--a pleonasm. With truth there is already knowing, as there is reality and being. To think the word "truth" is to assume a spiritual faculty, in which alone truth can be found. It is to assume the capacity of such a spiritual faculty to conform itself to being, to reality, in order within itself to produce the truth. It is also to raise the question of knowing whether such a faculty exists,as And ira will of iron represents one aspect of the liberated soul, flexibility and detachment of spirit represent a complementary aspect. To obey the inspirations of grace moment by moment, t9 adjust oneself readily to the promptings of a living Master, is a task which demands the glorious liberty that is the high prerogative of the sons of God.49 But at this moment I came upon myself. Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me. Now I happened to myself~ Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist. Previ~ausly I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed.~° God's w~)rd calls us to truth and freedom. Mary Magdalene wandered in the garden in deep dejection because her master and friend was dead.5~ Death appeared to have had the final say and such news caused enslavement to fear and depression. Then the experience of the Lord! The truth is exposed: sin and death are overcome by the cross and resurrection. God's fidelity and power are everlast-ing. The bond of sin is broken; the sting of death destroyed. With this truth came freedom, a freedom overflowing into joy. Mary sees and is able to act. This narrative helps us to see that the gift of discernment brings vision and responsibil-ity. In recognizing the risen Lord we contact reality; in being graced, we become gracious. Through the word of God we deepen our sense of identity and mission. This process allows us to find meaning which allows for motivation, enabling us to risk the use of time and energy in new and creative ways.'For Mary, Jesus was the truth that leads to freedom; for Mary, his person allowed proper discernment. Scientists use two instruments in their work of discovery and invention that are, by nature, tools of discernment, the microscope and telescope. With awe and wonder, we use the microscope to probe cellular structures revealing the deep patterns of life; with anticipation and excitement; we find the telescope pulling us into galaxies undreamt of by our ancestors. Gifted with such tools we come to know invisible worlds and incredible spaces. The spiritual realm is no less astound-ing. With the tools of subtle interior silence and perceptive wisdom we scan the vast plan of God's creative love. Such dispositions are crucial in coming to know truth and to exercise our freedom. Discernment falters amidst noises; it is blinded and cannot know what is pleasing to God. Discernment is seeing, a seeing that leads to freely doing the truth in love. Lavrans Bjorgulfson, speaking to his wife, says: "I know not. You are so strange--and all you have said tonight. 1 was afraid, Ragnfrid. Like enough 1 47Mk I 1:12-14. ~8Raissa Maritain, We Have Been Friends Together (New York: Green and Co., 1942), p. 80. agE. Herman. Creative Prayer (Cincinnati. Ohio: Forward Movement Publications, n.d.), p. 79. 50C. G. Jung, Memories. Dreams. Reflections. ed. by Aniela Jaffe and trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1965). pp. 32-33. ~Jn 20:11-18. Principles of Discernment / 175 understand not the hearts of women."~2 In Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, we witness the tragedy of ignorance and the paralyzing power of fear that follows. Lavrans, a good man, does not understand the heart of his wife, Ragnfrid, nor that of his daughter, Kristin. Their loves were mysteries to him and, lacking proper discernment of the movements of their hearts, the tortuous pain of misunderstand-ing was bound to follow. The truth of the heart is a special knowledge all its own. Only when the heart is "informed" and well-known do the waters of freedom flow. Principles clash with the particulars of life. Helpful as they might be, life is lived in experience, not reflection. Yet we need to step back ever so ~ften for perspective and meaning. Hopefully this essay has fulfilled that task. My only hope is that these pages have realized the mandate oncegivEn by Emily Dickinson: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind-- ~2Sigrid Undset, Kristin La,;ransdatter, I The Bridal Wreath, trans. Charles Archer and J. C. Scott (New York: Bantam Books; 1976); p. 232. Pope John Paul II to Jesuit Superiors, February 27, 1982i In fact, a special bond binds your Society to the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ oft earth . St. Ignatius and his companions., attached capital importance to this bond of love and service to the Roman Pontiff, so much so that they wished this "special vow" to be a characteristic: element of the Society . It is evident that here we are touching upon the essence of the lgnatian charism and upon that which lies at the very heart of your order. And it is to this that you must always always remain faithful. Prayer and Regression John O'Regan, O.M.I. Father O'Regan's "Unavailability as Poverty" appeared in the issue of July, 1981. His address is: 37 Woniora Road; P.O. Box 70; Hurstville, Australia 2220. i~|he~' wish to return to childhood is, in most instances, a regressive wish--a desire to abrogate adult responsibilities, and to return to a.state of dependence. But this wish may also have another aspect. To seek after the spontaneity and freedom of the secure child is a different matter and may, perhaps, be what is meant by the saying of Christ: 'Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.' This is no regression to childishness, but rather, an advance to such security and freedom with our fellowmen that we can be whatever we are and allow them to be the same."~ Scripture scholars may disagree with psychiatrist Storr's understanding of Matthew 18, but the general drift of his meaning is clear and points to an under-standing of scriptural childness that may assist us in our understanding of prayer~ Of course it is quite possible to have regressive prayer and it shows up in many subtle ways. The prayer of the "good Lord" who is a distant, benign, undemanding and wholly pardoning God is surely a childish way of boxing God into a conve-nient category. The prayer that makes one feel good and somehow seals out the rough and tumble of life is also a childish thing, for it is based on the pleasure principle and we asgume it is good because it makes us feel good, An altogether inistaken notion of spiritual consolation can easily have us thinking that good prayer is always less than painful. There are many variants of regressive prayer that one may use: here we have a general look at the possibility of regression and the proper form of childness that makes prayer authentic. ~The Integrity of Personality. A. Storr (Pelican: Middlesex, 1970), pp, 60-61. Prayer and Regression / 177 Time and Timing Many state that prayer cannot be programmed--that it arises spontaneously and when we feel we need it, we need it. Much can be said in praise of this as long as it is properly understood. Prayer as a habitual state of dependence on God and prayer as the more privileged moments of closeness to God--irrelevant prayer as Father Green calls it2--must be distinguished. The religious whose life is fully given over to God will surely see the need for stated times for formal prayer. Such prayer is often called lower case prayer, while the lifelong attitude of being given over to God gets a capitalized P for Prayer. The reverse may equally be the case, but for the purpose of this article we will stay with this distinction. Thus the religious whose prayer is clear will be bound to find times for prayer and these times will surely manage to have their own rhythm. And we, being creatures ofhabit, will find that such rhythms will be predictable. So that some form of programming will assert itself. Some of us are morning people and like to start the day with a stretch of prolonged prayer. Others are night people and feel more at home with God at that time. Each one to one's own preference here. The point at issue is that the natural rhythm of life itself will surely dictate a style and timing of prayer that will not be left to chance, still less to mood. Thus to pray when one "feels like it" may lead us into strife if that is the only criterion for prayer. Ruysbroeck, the Flemish mystic, has the idea of the indrawing and outpouring of God's grace in us: the same imagery may be applied to prayer. We indraw in prayer and we outpour in prayer. This means the withdrawal-involvement rhythm, while not needing the regularity of a metronome, will have its own inner impera-tive and clock for each of us. The harmony between contemplation and apostolic love (Perfectae caritatis n. 5) is still a task for all of us and we must always work at it. It seems to at least imply that this task (and gift) cannot be left to whim or mood: such a standard would indeed be childish. This of course is not to say that some people may find a long weekend of prayer somehow manages to suit them: all of this is assuredly matter for honest discernment. The well. may run dry rather easily and the land may become parched. For those o~" us whose moods have a sudden~and broad swing, the well and land may easily run dry or parched almost unknown to us. The length of time and the actual time for prayer are important factors when we take our religious commitment seriously. Time Spent At times there may be a veritable fissure in our lives: what we declare we are and what we in fact are, are often light years apart. We may have a fundamental falseness running right through our lives and manage to survive some way or another. Thus we may spend long hours at prayer and not have its influence felt in 2Opening to God. T.H. Green (Ave. Maria Press, IN, 1977). 1711 / Review for Religious, March-ApriL 1982 our lives or at best allow its impact to be unhealthily muffled. Father Maurice Lefebre, killed in Boliva in the service of the poor, said that "because we live a lie, the truths we bring make no headway." This division between prayer and life--between prayer and Prayer--is surely a result of seeing prayer as a regressive retreat from the harsh and dreadful things that living for love of God and others really means. It is a womblike withdrawal that marks the overdone need for security from the cross that life is bound to hew for each of us who claims to be a follower of Christ. We all know of the piously impatient religious who brooks no interruption of his prayer, no matter what the demands may be from those he is serving. Fair enough: we should try to set up a little poustinia for our prayer-time but to see every interruption on this chosen retreat as an encroachment on our time "with God" is not an adult response, but a petulant reaction. Such a prayer has all the marks of childishness. One is here reminded of Jose Ortega y Gasser3 when he ponders on Commander Peary's day's polar trek with his team of dogs. After a hard day's mushing towards the north, he found at evening that he was much further south than when he started off in the morning! He has been working all day northwards on an immense iceberg being taken to the south by a strong ocean current. Hard times and long hours at prayer that are effectively isolated from life may give the impression of much progress. But the context of this kind of prayer must be taken into account lest we have a disconnected life of prayer, removed from the prayer of life. Like Peary's hard day's toil on the iceberg, much movement did not mean any progress at all -- even the reverse! The child is very much his or her own person with a great deal of emphasis on how he sees life. His childish optics give reality meaning that is not always geared to the givenness of reality itself. His childish templet thrown over reality effectively screens out some of its harsher aspects and amplifies its more congenial qualities so that much of his little life is essentially idiosyncratic. Much of his reality lacks consensual validation---effective checking out by way of feedback is too much bother for him. So that a prayer life that is removed too comfortably from the painful course of life is a childish kind of demiolife. As Augustine put it:: we may make many strides, but all outside the course. Dabar This prayer/life dichotomy is always with us. Only in Jesus were word and deed perfectly and positively corelated and all we do is strive to lessen the abyss that exists for us between what we profess we are and we in fact live. Herbert, the English poet, caught the idea beautifully when he wrote Doctrine and life--colors and light in one, When they combine and mingle, bring A strong regard and awe: JMeditations on Quixote, .I. OrtEga y Gasser (Norton: New York. 1961). p. 104. Prayer and Regression But speech alone doth vanish like a flaring thing, And in the ears, not conscience ring. Doctrine--what we believe and say we are, and life--how we actually incarnate this--must be together, like colors and light. Speech alone, outward show and mere protestation, means little and touches no one's conscience. So that while we try to bridge the gap between doctrine and life, we must be ever aware that it is all too easy to allow the gap to widen. Being Christlike, adopting the mind and heart of Christ will always be an imperative for us, and we must ever be ready to "live the truth in love" (Ep 4:15). This living, or "truthing"--- making word and deed more closely aligned in our lives, is an adult task. It is not for children--they must come a long way to be able to shoulder this project. In us adults, this cleavage between word and deed keeps us humbly on our toes and saves us from arrogance. It is only when we become unaware of this split-level living that we have cause for alarm. Filial Posture Prayer's paradigm has been given us once and for all by Jesus when in response to a disciple's request, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples," he said to them, "When you pray, say: Father." (Lk 11:i-4). It need hardly be said that the assumption is that the disciple was inspired when he saw Jesus praying "in a certain place." This anonymous disciple, seeing Jesus praying nowhere in particular, may be seen archetypically: we are that disciple and the nameless place may just as easily be seen in the same light, for we have to pray always and everywhere (see Ep 5:20; 6:18-19). Jesus is a model of prayer for us not just because he prayed regularly or had an unwavering prayer schedule. In Luke's gospel, he prays in practically every third chapter~ but in Mark's gospel, as scholars tell us, his early morning rising for prayer (i:35) is a typical day in the life of Jesus. But such visible expressions of prayer are but the observable expression of the inner disposition of a Man whose whole being is given over to God. He was not just driven to his knees as in the Mount of Olives (Lk 24:41-44) when the pressure was on: he prayed always and prayed formally on regular occasions. It was the inner oblation of his whole being that gave rise to these intense moments of close union with the Father. He was always addressing the Father and he here tells us that we must have the same filial posture when we come to pray. When we come before God for the more privileged moments of closeness to him (despite the apparent absence we may experience in these moments of apparent closeness) we must come with the filial gesture of "Abba," Father. This cordial posture must be the basis and ground of our prayer, giving it its tone, direction and content. In this word of daring intimacy, "Abba," we come to God with all the confidence of a child and the undeviating trust shown by God's Son. "Abba" Some writers have almost drooled over this term of piety and have given it a "11~1~ / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 sentimental flavoring that does no justice to the deep connotation it is meant to have. Terms like "Pappa," "Dad" and the like have been suggested. But the term refuses to bear this lightweight meaning. Apart from familiar uses of the word children use to address their fathers, and beneath it all, there is the deep sense of dependence and trust that gives rise to the closeness of the bond binding child and father. A father may engage in rough and tumble fun with his children, and the little ones delight in it. In the process they may get bumps and even scratches and there is not even a whimper. If these "wounds" were sustained in play with siblings, there would often be a far different reaction--tears and tantrums and the need for succor. But the child's utter trust in the goodness of the father is ,the rubric under which little aches and pains don't matter much, for the little one's unbounded trust makes all safe and sound in the affectionate ambience of a father's loving care. It is interesting to note that the child has been seen in different ways over the centuries. Time was when he was viewed as a miniature adult, and not a growing person in his own right. He was an adult-in-the-making, so what was good for the adult was good for the child. This gave rise to the assumption that the child saw, felt and judged as did the adult, so that education was getting him to sit still while adults instilled adult lore into his little head. Again the child was (and possibly still is) viewed as born in utter innocence and is tainted by contact with adults. This romantic anthropology seems to have a second inning in transactional analysis with its grossly overrated "child" state. This idyllic state seems at the mercy of interfering and imperious "adult" states. The truth of the child, like the truth of adults, is light and shade. Children are far from being only the cuddlesome angels of nappie commercials, and the endless and undiluted joy they appear to give to adoring mothers is plainly fiction. A child with its bundle of impulses with monumental rages can terrify even a hardy mother, who may easily want to vent her frustration on this demanding little tyrant who is so messily incontinent so much of the time. The incessant demands for neverending attention--the price of survival for the little one, makes life for the dedicated mother quite hectic for most of the time. For dependency is the hallmark of the little child, and his attachment to his mother for all his needs is close to being a symbiotic relationship. Apart from the child's survival, the groundwork for its wholesome sense of worth and goodness about himself is laid in this period of utter dependence: Not only the quantity of time and output of nurturing love but the very quality of this loving attention has so much to do with the kind of person the child will grow up to be. Childhood thus at this stage, is a state of absolute and almost one-way dependency, with little or no effective control or management on the child's part. Surely this image of the child has little to do with the childness that is meant to be our basic praying posture. The wish to return to childhood and to alleged lost innocence is surely a regressive wish and a desire to escape adult responsibilities in an effort to reestab-lish utter dependence. Such a desire, while not always on the level of full aware-ness, is fraught with secret urges to get back to a stage when all was well and no Prayer and Regression / 1111 pressm:es were experienced. In a deep symbolic manner, this is a wish to reenter the womb with its safe and secure amniotic protection. It is a yearning for a prepersonal stage where relationships do not need to be worked at and where needs were superabundantly granted in immediate supplies. It may be likened to a wish to become absolutely recipient to all desires and wants--to be the more or less content receiver of a bountiful providence. The kind of struggle that Paul says must attend our prayer, is anathema to this mentality and the perceptive notion of St. Thomas--that we are non solum provisi sed providentes, is rejected out of hand. St. Thomas was saying that God's fatherly care is so good that he invites us to share in his providential care: we are, he states, not just provided for; we are, in fact, coproviders. Father A certain style of diction in spirituality easily lends itself to this kind of regres-sive attitude. The "Good Lord" address-system to God fosters (wittingly or no) this kind of misplaced benevolence: he looks conveniently the other way from our aberrations and closes a grandfatherly eye when we sin. This is a God Who is not supposed to make demands and offers discipleship on the cheap. It is a God whose Son was not wholly in earnest when he laid down the cost of discipleship in totally inconvenient, uncompromising and uncomfortable terms (see Mk 8:31-38; 9:30-32; 10:32-45) and made stern demands of those who answered his call. Following him meant much more than the immediate disciples were ready to pay for they latched on to the "glory" aspect of the Messiah and refused to face the cross: be delivered, condemned, delivered to the Gentiles, mocked, spat upon, scourged, killed. Self-denial, taking up one's cross and follow-ing him are not exertions one expects of a child. They are adult commands and Christianity is for adults. While all of these directives come from a God who is love and who loves us without measure, he does not love us out of, but into suffering or pain or dilemmas. His attitude is a far cry from the "Good Lord" spirituality who gives all but expects nothing in return. Such an undisturbing deity makes for fascinating study of the adult who would want such a convenient Father. Other such possibly misleading ideas come from a notion of a God who holds us in the palm of his hand and whose massive palm cradles a sleeping babe. Such kitsch theology and art may serve a purpose and does have some merit', but it also fosters a kind of childishness that is not helpful in our faithgrowth. Isaiah 49 does speak of being held in his hand, and such an image has powerful evocations. But the infant in the palm goes a little much in the "childish" direction. Paul's "strain-ing forward" (Ph 3:13) and Ephesians' final admonition with its strongly martial tone (Ep 6:10-20) makes unrelenting effort the mark of the true disciple. "To that end keep alert with all perseverance," having on the breastplate, feet shod with the gospel of peace~ the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit. (Ep 4:14-18). This is the opposite direction to regression, in fact an honest progres-sion to a more mature humanity (Ep 4:13) that leaves behind the things of a child (1 Co 13:il). 1~1~ / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 Childhood: Recovery? In what sense then may we see childness as a faithful image or symbol for prayer? Surely the sense of dependency must enter as well as the sense of freedom. Anthony Storr (op. cir.) says that: "To seek after the spontaneity and freedom of the secure child is a different matter (from regression) and may perhaps be what is meant in the saying of Christ: 'Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven' "(Mt 18:3). Storr sees the freedom and spontaneity of childhood as a decided advance rather than a stepping back. But this is hardly enough. The scriptural idea of freedom is, as are many scriptural themes, set in paradox. "Live as free men," we read in I P 2:16, "yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil: but live as servants of God." If freedom is a keynote of Christianity, then we would have to understand it aright. In Christ and in Paul, freedom and bondage are reconciled. Jesus is seen as the self-emptying servant, whose utter abasement was the occasion and condition of his abiding freedom in unique exaltation. Kolb notes that Certain aspects of the personality may be arrested in their maturing process, with the result that a full and harmonious development never occurs. By.an anxiety-evading mechanism known as regression, the personality may suffer loss of some development already retained and reverting to a lower level of integration, adaption and expression. The retreat to a lower level of personality development is characterized by immature patterns of thought, emotion or behavior? It is not an uncommon happening that when a child gets a new baby brother or sister, and sees all attention of parents leave him for the new arrival he may begin to baby talk all over again and even wet the bed. He regresses to these earlier developmental stages so as to endeavor to recover the attention he had before the birth of his sibling. This is not necessarily pathological and in fact we all resort to nightly regres-sion when we sleep and dream. We let go of our hold on reality, bypass the world of logic, cause-and-effect, space and time and drift into a world of unrealistic ~antasy. This nightly spell of regression is a refreshing and even essential pause to enable us to face the morrow with a fair amount of poise.5 Most of the so-called mental illnesses include more or less severe regression but regression in itself is not an illness. When it goes beyond the level of efficiency and hinders effective relations with others, it is presumed to be unusual. The point of all this is to ask ourselves the question on prayer: is it possible to see ourselves in some regressed childish state when we say "Abba" to God? Before ~3od we may at times feel utterly useless and worthless. Our utter helplessness may even create the impression that once again we are back to a stage of childhood that 4Modern Clinical Psychology. Laurence C. Kolb (W.B. Saunders Company: Phil. 1977). p. 110. ~Personality Development and Psychopathology: Norman Cameron (Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston. 1963), passim. Ch. 6. Prayer and Regression can in fact be childishness. God is a loving Father, to be sure, but an omnipotent God as well. Jesus is the Father's love made flesh for us, but he is Jesus just the same and our best efforts to "put him on" fall pitifully short. Faced with this kind of relationship, it is not possible to see a childish posture as somehow appealing. We may somehow cringe into littleness and close to nothingness and this is surely a childish regression. If we are to grow in moral reasoning and faith-living, then regression seems out. It is possible that our religious "life" lags painfully behind our general personality growth and thus makes for a stunted growth all round. Does it not seem better to see our religion as one for adults and only inchoa-tively for children? Is the Father-child paradigm used misleadingly, or is it a fact that we are simply engaged in child-talk when we come to pray? These are serious questions. I wish here to offer an understanding of childness that includes regres-sion but in a wholesome manner. Growing Regression In regression, the bonds with reality are loosened and we are in a world where logic and reason as we know them do not hold sway. Time and space evaporate, so we in fantasy flit from Disneyland to Shangri La and back again in a trice. Logical connections no longer bind and we are in a Walter Mitty world of make-believe. This kind of thinking and fantasying is called "primary process thinking" by Freud. One of his pupils, Ernst Kris6 followed up this idea and noted the intrusion of primary process thinking in art, humor and other creative mental functionings. Kris called this ego-controlled regression, or regression in the service of the ego, Kris noted that such regression has two phases: first, a rather passive phase when "the subjective experience is that of a flow of thought and images driving towards expression" (p. 59). He was careful to state that we must distinguish this from the second phase--creativity, "in which the ego controls the primary process and puts it into its service." This is clearly not the psychotic condition in which the ego is overwhelmed by the primary process. Prayer as Regression Kris says the inspirational and elaborational phases are part of the single process that comprises this adaptive regression. In the first stage the person is rather passive while in the second he takes charge and ideas are deliberately worked out and the secondary process involving logic and reality testing predominates. Applying this theory to the childness attitude in prayer, we may see that the beginning phase is one in which we are purely receivers. Prayer, as we know, is gift and all we do is to receive it. But this "regression" stage is but a preliminary one. It is a necessary but surely not sufficient cause for the posture of prayer. For prayer is never a nirvanic thing and demands effort on our part. Here is where phase two ~Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art. Ernst Kris (International Universities Press, N.Y. 1952). 184 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 emerges: having been passive to the grace of prayer we now respond more actively and strivingly. Paul stresses the earnestness and effortful response one must make in prayer when he states in I Th 3:10 that he "offers his prayer to God as earnestly as possible." The intensity of Paul's supplications are underlined to indicate that his is no mere quietistic slumbering in his prayers for those to whom he ministers. (see also 2 Th 5:!3; Rm 15:30-32; Col 4:12). Kecharitomen~ The posture of Mary as outlined in Luke offers a prime example of this two-fold phase in "regressive" prayer. When Mary has been given some clarifica-tion about her mission from the Angel, she said: "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk l:38)--"let it be to me according to your word." She had been given the title Kecharitornenb ("having-been-favored One") indicating that all she was and is now being done to her is grace or gift. Nothing she has done has merited this special visitation and unique grace. The humble virgin bethrothed to a man named Joseph was content to be quietly anonymous and was addressed by the messenger as one to whom all is done. She is purely receptive. She ratifies all this when she states that she is the handmaid (slave) of the Lord, She, the epitome of the Poor of Yahweh, was indeed a child, a helpless one, but God did mighty things to and through her. For all that mighty uplifting she calls herself a "slave." She is ready to receive the word and will of God. Yet that is not all. The way Luke would have us understand the response of Mary removes forever the almost inert caricature of a passive woman--an image the late Paul VI was at pains to dispel in Marialis Cultus~ From the receptive posture of receiving God's word, she is energetically and deliberately poised to do God's bidding. The "let it be to me according to your word" is an anemic rendition of the mind of Luke, It would be better to say that Mary's mind was that her most ardent desire was to seek and do his word. We often forget that the "with haste" of Lk 1:39 used to describe Mary's immediate departure to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, may also be translated as "with deep pondering." In some way we may see Mary as harmonizing her contemplation and apostolic love (Perfectae Caritatis n. 5). Childness in Prayer This article sought to seek some insights on childhood as a prayer posture that would-,safeguard the maturity of the praying person. Some overenthusiastic preachers in speaking of the "Abba" with which Jewish children address their father, speak of an overdone sentimentalism that does little good for prayer. The notion of childhood evokes many elements in a child that are not in any way appealing. To suggest that we revert to a childhood innocence when we come to pray might seem to .foster an infantilism that inhibits true communion with God and does little to promote our prayer life. The threadbare "where we are shibboleth seems to lose any respectability it ever had as in such a case we have to go back to where we were to pray in this childish manner. The conception of Prayer and Regression / 185 "regression in the service of ego" seems to help here with its two-fold phasing of letting-go and becoming more passive or receptive and then responding in a practical manner by praying earnestly. This kind of "regression" in no way bespeaks immaturity or illness but is the kind of process used by artists in their creative work. Prayer is a work in which we are cocreators with God--we are allowed to share with him in his own inner life and in such a way we are cocreators with him. But this is not an effortless ex nihilo gesture; it is more often than pot hard work. Here is where we work as though it all depended on us. But all the while he is the one who inspired the beginning of the creative effort of prayer and it is due to his prevenient grace that we even dream of praying at all. Today God Spoke to Me Today God spoke to me. He didn't say it was God; I didn't see him; I heard him. It was God. I will never forget what he said-- It was something quietly enormous-- Wait till I tell you. Think of a powerful current on the sea floor. A burst of all-encompassing light shot beyond Jupiter. Music in which I was afloat and wholly dissolved. But that's only what it was like. I want to tell you just what he said. What he said was.was. Oh, the words. I can't remember them, none at all, Except one that swept up all the others in everlasting arms. It said everything. It was Love, Love, Love. Louis Hasley 3128 Wilder Drive South Bend, IN 46615 Currents in Spirituality Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World George Ashenbrenner, S.J. For the third year, Father Aschenbrenner offers a survey of the year in matters spiritual. He continues his apostolate on a national scale, while residing at the University of Scranton; Scranton, PA 18510. This article is the third in a series.1 The first, two years ago, looked at th6 spiritual profile of a decade in a highly summary way, while both last year's article and this present one, less so but still very summarily and selectively, each sketch the landscape of a single year. I owe much to the editor of this journal, for the opportunity of this assignment. The focused effort to observe, to reflect upon and to articulate some of the developing trends and issues in American spirituality has been instructive and rewarding. A word of thanks, too, to some of my readers. 1 have seriously benefited from reactions and suggestions I have received. When you think of it, the year past, even viewed coldly, has been startling. And yet, how fearfully accustomed, and how quickly forgetful, we become. We heard-- and saw--assassination attempts on President Reagan and Pope John Paul 11; the ecstasy, after 444 days of agony, of the freeing of the hostages from Tehran; the ongoing murders in Central America; the endless floods of refugees throughout the world, in Central America, Africa, Thailand; the persistent "small-scale wars," ~See Review for Religious, March, 1980, "Currents in Spirituality: The Past Decade." pp. 196-218; and March, 1981, "Trends of 1980: Some Themes and a Few Specifics," pp. 234-51. 186 Trends and Issues in a Secularizing Worm fully sufficient to keep alive the fear and plausibility of World War 111: the contin-ually escalating number of divorces and abortions across this land of ours; and those few, terrifying nuclear missile mistakes that accompanied the deliberate, quite unmistaken increase of nuclear armaments on the part of the major world powers, and minor powers, too. These events warn both author and reader of an article such as this that life is fragile, and that it may be viewed as very cheap; that evil is very real, and that we may easily get numb to its great, dark mystery; and that faith in God as a search for meaning and as love of the reality of our world is not easy--not easy at all. Obviously this article, following so closely upon two other similar surveys, does a good deal of repeating, presupposing, overlapping because spiritual trends and issues ordinarily do not simply appear and vanish within the narrow purview of a single year. Furthermore, the observing and the commenting remain distinctly the~ perspective and the insight of just one single person's opinion and point of view. And certainly, for this reader of the signs of the times, the four fundamental concerns of last year's article continue to be of paramount importance for all personal and communal spiritual life in the Church today: concern for the possibil-ity of a profound and faithful love, in the face of our culture's penchant for sensational, dramatic, immediate (and short-lived) sensual stimulation; concern for a more refined, a more other-centered, Christian personalism; concern for a shared companionship in faith; and concern for the paschal character and quality of faith, a paschal faith requisite to sustain, for the long haul, realistic, apostolic enthusi-asm.~ Indeed, because the cultural influences at work in these four areas of concern are still very strong, this present article will relate to them in many ways. In coming toward the close of these introductory comments, I would like to relate and distinguish two words of the title: trends and issues. A trend, here, speaks to a pattern of thought or behavior, the evidence for which would be sufficiently widespread to make it more than a local or exceptional occurrence. Whereas, an issue poses alternatives that, ur~less dodged, invite and eventually even demand a choice. And the choice, of course, often incarnates a whole series of values that relate to and reveal the meaning and un.derstanding of the trend. Often, it is through reflection on the trend that issues are discovered. The more valuable work, I feel, is to look as deeply as possible into current trends in American spirituality, with confidence that this exercise will be of assistance to us in facing issues that surface. Many of these issues, it seems to me, do and will continue to need further recognition and clarification before any firm resolution of them is either possible or suitable. Occasionally, however, an issue is so basic, and where one stands on it, where one shouM stand on it, becomes, even early on, so clear and so fundamental to Christian life, that I have not held back from making a clear judgment about the matter in question. And now to some trends and issues at hand. As 1 have traveled about, con- 2See ibid., March, 1981, pp. 235-243. 11111 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 suited, read, given workshops, courses, retreats and spiritual direction this past year, a very dominant, overarching preoccupation and theme, as I reflect on my own experience and listen to the experience of others, is secularity, secularization, secularism. Humfin spiritual life exists only in a world where ongoing pressures come at us, from every side, to secularize all our experience: of ourselves, of one another, and of all aspects of our world. Certainly, there is nothing new about this observation. The matter has been with us for a century, and more. And in very current forms, it has been an overt preoccupation of the religious community in this country at least since Vatican 11. But I believe that its strength as a trend in serious spiritual life continues very much to grow. And so, after looking about me, 1 have chosen to reflect here, at considerable length, on this tendency toward secularization. Following that, I will, more briefly, discuss a number of trends and issues which, whether implicitly or explicitly, whether as cause or consequence or corollary, relate to this central trend of secularization. In general, as I treat these other trends and issues, 1 will leave to the reflection of the reader their precise relationship to the general theme of secularization. Secularization It is not uncommon to divide reality into the sacred and the secular. And though this distinction and its significance can be of immense subtlety and compli-cation, with serious traps for the unwary, we can attempt a simple, hopefully usable description here of these two aspects of reality. John Coleman, using Huston Smith, makes the distinction for us: By the "secular" I mean "regions of life that man understands and controls, not necessarily completely but., for all practical purposes." These are regions toward which humans adopt a basically utilitarian attitude of mastery and control, making judgments on the basis of the technical adequacy of means to achieve stipulated goals) "Secular," then, speaks to a world of human domination, understanding and "control without, at least, any necessary reference to God or appeal to, or nourish-ment from, the experience of faith or of religious affections. Coleman then de-scribes the sacred: By the "sacred" I mean the area of mystery--the incomprehensible, indomitable, and seriously and supremely important; for "the sacred exceeds not only our control but our comprehen-sion." Our characteristic attitudes toward the sacred are all celebration, participatory contem-plation, and gratitude rather than mastery.4 "Sacred," then, points to the reverently mysterious, the awesomely (not problemat-ically) uncontrollable and, for articulated Christian belief, to a living, personal, experienced relationship with God in faith and hope and love. ~John A. Coleman, S.J., Theological Studies, December, 1978, "The Situation for Modern Faith," p. 604, citing Huston Smith, "Secularization and the Sacred,~ in Donald Cutler, ed., The Religious Situation 1969, Boston, 1969, p. 583. 4Coleman, Ioc. cit. citing Huston, art. cit., p. 587. Trends and Issues in a Secularizing Worm / 1119 The tendency toward secularization in a world of human believers is inevitable. It may foster religious faith, or it may corrupt it. The human heart, in this world, however lofty and transcendent its desires may be, is, ought to be, always histori-cal, definite, incarnational. However much travel and communication have mobil-ized us, limitations of space and time still shape our identity. These limits can seem very restrictive and confining. To live in America or Poland or lran as the twen-tieth century closes may seem a paltry destiny, when compared with the space address that may well be among the options of our twenty-third century descen-dants. But these temporal and spatial limits do identify us now and, rather than confining us, can call forth those precise creative responses which will bring about the reality of space living in the future. As human realities, faith and religion must be planted and grow within this world. And so, they, too, are susceptible to time/space limitations. Though faith will always call us beyond the world, its healthy development always lies in vigorous interaction with the world and its daily round of activities. Spirituality is never simply faith; but rather, it is faith's interaction with culture. It therefore grows and incarnates itself precisely through a secularizing process and trend. With its central focus on Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore on incarnation, Christian spirituality not only tolerates but embraces, for the sake of its own existence and development, this secularizing interaction with the culture of a specific people and time. And this secularizing process can positively foster faith, because the kingdom of his Father which Jesus preached and lived, for the people of first century Palestine, was meant to be lived in the world. In his parables, Jesus took illustra-tions from the culture of ordinary people, and he challenged everyone to a whole new way of imagining !ife in this universe. Granted that the fullness of his Father's kingdom beckoned beyond all this here and now, still the kingdom became an illusion if it did not take flesh in the daily circumstances of a specific culture. Over these twenty centuries, the continually limited situation of human faith has succes-sively called for multiple creative responses in the spirit-responses that lead to developments of both dogma and Christian life and that transform aspects of cultures, as each response incarnates, just a bit more, that loving reign of his Father which Jesus so desired for all. Though it is not always easy to interpret what is or is not providential, history is of course also dotted with instances of mistaken, or at least very tardy, responses of the Church to certain cultural challenges. Speaking summarily, then, we must be careful not to interpret the inevitable trend toward secularization as, of itself, destructive or weakening of Christian faith and witness. There is a healthy, permanent, indispensable secularity to Jesus' vision of loving and trusting his Father. However, having spoken to the essential character of its positive meaning and purpose, we must frankly notice that this inevitable secularizing tendency, when not carefully purified and focused, can be dangerously corrupting of the life of faith. And we are speaking here of no mere danger, it seems to me, but of an actual 190 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 trend of significant strength. The secularizing tendency of life in our world can and does easily, both consciously and unconsciously, settle into secularism, as an overall view of reality. John Coleman helps us again, this time quoting Guy Swanson: Secularism is the "denial that sacred order exists, the conviction that the universe is in no meaningful sense an expression or embodiment of purpose, the belief that it is unreasonable, other than anthropomorphically, to have toward the universe or its 'ground" a relationship mediated by communication or by any other interchange of meanings--to have toward it a relationship in any sense interpersonal."~ In this view, the world has become all, has become the ultimate: it has become God. Here we are entirely beyond any secularity, any inevitable and useful ten-dency toward secularization. As a vision of all reality, secularism has no time for faith, no basis for faith, much less for the intimacy of all true religion's interper-sonal relationship with God. In any explicit debate about secularism, of course, this corrupting danger for faith can be clearly percdived, and so the option to reject it is very available. But even at the theoretical, or notional level, rejection is not so easy, When the inroads are far advanced. However, it is at the operative level, the lived level, the level of heart and eyes and hands, where the danger is especially insidious, and much less detectable--in the midst of our busy, unreflecting life. The human heart, 1 believe, is essentially religious, with desires and Iongings for an interpersonal intimacy that far exceed anything and everything that is of this world. And often, by God's grace, a resentful, depressing frustration results when our hearts' settle for less than all that they are made for. But the sensationally sensual immediacy of much of the affective revolution occt~rring in our world can fixate our hearts and distract them from a reverential love of God.6 As the techno-logical explosion more and more shapes our world, and as we, often rightly, professionally train for work that is more secular, there can be less talk and reference to what should also be religious, even overtly religious. Letters, conversa-tions, sometimes, even, participation in religious ceremonies cease to involve any personal religious expression. 1 do not mean to imply here that religious faith is adequately, or even chiefly, measured by overt God-talk. But to keep the basic faith relationship of our hearts alive and growing, we surely need more than academic precision and culturally sophisticated reserve whenexpressing our faith. Faith, as a deep vision of heart, must be regularly expressed with appropriate personal devotion and affection. Otherwise, the vision and personal relationship of faith will, at minimum, lose any serious motivational force for our lives. It may even become something we are actually ashamed of. And when this happens, when our life of faith and devotion becomes entirely privatized, it can escape into a ~Coleman, art. cir. p. 605, citing Guy E. Swanson, "Modern Secularity," in Cutler, op. cir., pp. 803.-04. 6See Review for Religious, March, 1981, my article referred to above (footnote I), pp. 235-238. Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World childish, uncritical pietism, because so rarely shared with anyone. But there is a third, more ominous possibility, Our faith, from lack of expres-sion, from lack of embodiment, may actually die. This is obviously serious, ,and it is often final, when a person's love relationship with God in Jesus loses all power, all effect in furthering a Father's loving justice in our oppressively unjust world. And there is nothing theoretical in this very inadequate thumbnail sketch. Are there readers who have not watched, in themselves or in a friend, as faith weak-ened, the movement from a growing silence regarding faith to an indifference or even an aggressive criticism, until every expression of faith has become uncomfort-able and unwelcome? Then, faith no longer plays a role either in choosing or in evaluating action. In a rapidly secularizing world, the possibility is very real that faith may harden into a cold, polite, sophisticated, professional stance to life, with very little warmly affective religious expression. But we always need to talk about our beloved with others, to keep the love affair alive and growing and to let it influence others. Appropriate personal expressions of our faith will usually serve the Holy Spirit's inspiration of others. And therefore Christian communities of every kind, whether in religious life, or the family, or the parish, become increasingly more valuable as supports of shared religious vision and experience within a world tending more and more to secularism. How can we avoid the ultimate denial of Christian faith that secularism is? One terribly important means is surely that ongoing faith experience which knows, and seeks to experience God as beyond and greater than all the world. We who can so easily shrink God and conveniently fit him into our small universe have Jesus himself, in his experience of his Father, as our example in this matter. As he came to know Yahweh of the Old Testament in his own growing Abba experience, Jesus related most personally to a God whose life and love neither depended on nor were equal to this world, though (and here is the adventure of it) Jesus himself was that Father's inextricable involvement in love with this world. His commitment to a God so far transcending, though intimately involved within, this world is dramati-cally revealed in Jesus' Calvary experience of finding a resurrection of lif~ and love (his Father) in his very worldly, earthly dying. There was Someone worth dying for. And so, a cruelly absurd death is rendered beautiful to us and encouraging for our own life and death in this world, in what it reveals of a fullness and presence of life and love that is, in a sense, beyond any experience here and now, but yet which is finally available to all of us in Jesus, our Father's kept promise of intimate hope. But how do we experience, before death, the Father of Jesus in his transcend-ence beyond this world?For some, it is available in the dramatic, peak experience of crisis, when choice is both forced and offered between the consolation of a God greater than this world's absurdity and--nothing. In the critical moment when all of this world seems absurd and inimical, loving surrender to a God greater than all of this and whose love conquers all averts ultimate despair and destruction. People led through this experience learn to root their faith more deeply in God than ever before. Born again, they learn to see the world very seriously, and as much more 19~ / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 valuable and precious than ever before, because it is the stuff of a beloved Father's kingdom. Not all are called to, or allowed, such a crisis. But this fundamental and essential experience of God is not available only through crisis. It is, at base, a contemplative experience, a conversion experience, of God which is available to every believer. Nevertheless, as Paul describes in Rm 6: I-I I, and whether it occurs in a resounding'crisis or in a quiet, secret, outwardly ordinary transformation, it does involve sharing Jesus' death to this world, in order to live for God. There is a choice. And we do make it, whether suddenly or over time~ Either God, or the world~ In being attracted to the choice of God above the world, one then', of course, can find and live with God, and for God, within the world.7 And then. the apostle is in sight: the one who, having chosen God and not the world, is now available to be called by God, sent by God. to serve the world. God's world, the world God loved so much he sent his only Son. Through this experience, then, whether critically peak or not, but genuinely assimilated, we learn neither to take the world too seriously nor to take it lightly, either. A heart stretched by such an experience of God is simply not susceptible to an involvement in this world such that this world seems to be its own and our ultimate meaning and justification. For this is secularism pure and simple: no God, really: but if acknowledged at all. a God locked into this world. Jesus in all his serious concern for this world was never involved as though it were all he had. His identity center was never in this world, but in his Father: in his dear Father, whose love was greater than life itself/This was what kept Jesus energetically free in his life in this world, for this world. And so, too, for any disciple of Jesus. This experience of God beyond this world, which is meant to identify all of us in baptism, also prevents a seriously unchristian making light of this world. An excessive dichotomy between heaven and earth can lead people to long for the former and tend almost to view this earth as valueless, or, at best, as dangerous distraction. Such a lack of serious concern for this world can never result from an authentic experience of Jesus' Father, but only from a failure to appreciate another aspect of Jesus' Calvary experience--his own embodiment of his Father's love and care for us sinners in this, however sinful, immensely beautiful and precious world. Jesus is not someone irresponsibly unconcerned with this world, but neither is he someone so in love with this world that his freedom and ultimate identity are limited to it. Rather, his centeris always a dear Father who is a source of all his worldly love and life. This special religious experience, of having our identity in a God beyond the world while being actively involved in it, is no once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is 7To speak of God above the world is, of course, not to make a spatial delineation. Rather, it is to speak of a God whose being and love isfar greater than this world. In .In 12:3Z .Iesus's words remind us that ultimately we are attracted ("seduced~ is the Old Testament word) to this experience of God. it is not simply our own, Pelagian choice. 8Ps 63:3. Trends and Issues in a Secularizing Worm / 193 rather a lifetime process renewing, deepening, remembering and repeating our God-in-Christ experience. We must recognize the means God sends into our lives to renew this central, identifying experience. We must also find regular (daily?) habits that assist to renew this central focus of our heart's vision. Together with many service situations each day, liturgy, a healthy practice of mortification, and formal praye'r can be regular reminders of a Father whose love and care for all of us point far beyond'the transitory world to a fullness of Spirit still gifting a dying Son's trust. The final beauty for us and for our world, God himself, not only shatters any narrow secularism, but invests our proper apostolic concern and action in the world with a paschal force which labors joyfully that everything may belong to Christ, who shall hand all things over to the Father, that God may be all in all? Against this background of a strong secularizing tendency in our world today, I will now treat a number of other trends and issues on the American spiritual scene. Some of these concerns are more directly affected than others by our secularizing world; But all of them, in my judgment, are susceptible to its influence. Related Trends and Issues 1. A Sacred-Secular Split A division of our world into sacred and secular is one of the chief tendencies of secularization. Father Philip Murnibn recently told the Catholic Theological Society of America that "we are experiencing (a) disaffection from faith and Church and a separation of private Church life from public social life that is the main feature of secularization."~° Many call for a political theology which would heal this split and bring the gospel more to bear on the persons and institutions of our unjust, sinful world. Such a view rightly understands that to theologize and to practice spirituality without a passionate concern for the specifics of our world only exacerbates the sacred-secular split and that the approach is, in any event, unchristian. But conversely, any merely external activity, however much on behalf of justice, is equally insufficient to heal this split wherever it exists, whether within an individual person or within a community. Any attempt at healing which ne-glects the split at the level of interior experience risks a fragile solution that will quickly slip into an unrooted, social externalism. Evangelization must aim deeply and broadly: it must essay healing the split deep within the individual human heart even as it confronts the systemic injustice in our society. Liberation theology needs to be rooted in a liberation spirituality for the individual believer.~l The silence and solitude, the healing purification and conversion of the encounter with God cannot be bypassed. Segundo Galilea articulates it exactly: '~See I Co 15:22-8. ~01n Origins, August 13, 1981, "The Unmet Challenges of Vatican I1," p. 148. ~Segundo Galilea, ~Liberation as an Encounter with Politics and Contemplation," in Claude Geffr6 and Gustavo Guttii:rez, eds., The Mystical and Political Dimension of the Christian Faith, New York, 1974, p. 20. 194 / Review for Religious, March-ApriL 1982 Authentic Christian contemplation, passing through the desert, transforms contemplatives into prophets and heroes of commitment and militants into mystics. Christianity achieves the synthesis of the politician and the mystic, the militant and the contemplative, and abolishes the false antithesis between the religious-contemplatives and the militantly committed.~-' The ~bility to deal in faith with a wide range of inner affective experiences in our hearts makes possible finding God in every inner experience. In this way all human experience gradually becomes religious experience and culminates some-how in God, thus healing the split between experiences which are either overtly religious or secular. Without this inner integration in faith of a person's ongoing experience, political theology and spirituality are both Unroofed, just as the inner faith integration, if left to itself and without the outer word and action, becomes unreal and, finally impossible. A careful discernment of heart expressed in a passionate concern for individual evangelical issues and in a courageous loving presence to the.serious social issues of our world will avoid any unjust, unfaithful, secularistic dichotomy 2. Global Societal Values As we look to the future, there is an urgent summons to transcend overly personalistic, or, perhaps better, individualistic values. In the midst of a growing, democratic stress on the value of each human person, Vatican 11 took as one of its central foci the value of the person. In last year's survey, while affirming this value as utterly central to the Christian mystery, I nevertheless treated the danger to personalism of a subtle self-centeredness. And 1 suggested we might be ready for a more refined Christian personalism.~3 As we look forward now to the year 2.000, when global and societal problems will be, even more than today, an inescapable reality, our education and religious formation must be founded on global, on societal, values rather than on simply personalistic ones. Learning to cooperate, throughout both national and international society, will become, will have to become, more and more the truest meaning of personal fulfillment. And questions such as these will face us if we take such a global perspective: How do we take account of the millions of poor starving people in our world as we arbitrate labor disputes for excessively high salaries, whether we are talking of air-controllers or of baseball players? How do we overcome the natural tendency to get as much as one can for oneself, rather than to think of sharing with millions upon millions who have much less? We have a long way to go in this shift of value perspective before the year 2000. The heavily personalistic approach (really, it is better to say. individualistic) with its stress on self-fulfillment, will not convert and develop easily~to a global perspec-tive. The conversion involved here will be a new way of thinking. But it must go beyond that, to a change of heart. This global view will finally be shaped in experiences, carefully planned and reflected upon, as a complement to serious ~21bid. p. 28. ~3See art. cit. pp. 238-39. Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World / 195 study. True Christian personalism, of course, which is not narrowly individualistic, has no need to renounce any of itself, but will find a ready ally and field for service in global, societal concerns. Indeed, Christian personalism will become fully itself only in a communal, universal perspective which incarnates that justice, love and peace which mark the kingdom of Jesus' Father. For most of us, the shift we speak of calls for a change of heart that must run deep, get radical and become a revolution in our sensibility. 3. Unity and Diversity On April 8, 1979, at an academic convocation in Cambridge, MA, Karl Rahner, attempting a theological interpretation of Vatican 11, claimed that this Council "is.the Church's first official gelf-actualization as a world Church."~4 And Rahner claims that as the Church takes this revelation of her global nature ever more seriously, there will necessarily develop a pluralism of proclamations of the one Good News for many new cultures in Asia, Africa, and other places. How shall we find a true unity of faith within such a pluralism, and without again reducing it to a Western, Roman, overly centralized uniformity? Philip Murnion, in commenting on the unmet challenges of Vatican 11, feels that: "It is now the basic ecclesiology of Vatican 11 that confronts us as we grow weary and dissatisfied with so many superficial expressions of this ecclesiology."~5 As this basic ecclesiology of a "world Church" begins to be realized in practice, the pluralis~m which we know already can only radically increase. And as we are very well aware, such rapidly growing diversification often brings in its wake confounding disorientation, highstrung tension, and even hostile, angry charges of disloyalty. The problem is, and will be faith: to seek, and to learn to recognize unity of faith within diversity. That said, however, we cannot simply float with an almost infinite variety, as though diversity, in and of itself, were pure value. Finally, both human intelligibility and Christian faith require a unity. But a unity underneath and within diversity is not always easy to perceive, especially when diversification is rapid and recent. In a time of great diversity, before a clear, profound and pervasive unity has been found, we must learn to live both honestly and charitably, and with inevitable tensions. But even as we are patient, we must also continue to search for, we must ambition and work for, that unity which wiil help us understand how diversity is a blessin~ how it enriches and does not enervate. Simply to settle for a tolerance of plurality is not healthy pluralism. Whether it be a matter of the forms of ministry or orders, or of women priests, of religious garb, of doctrinal expression, or of forms of Church membership, we must continue to grow toward a "coherent consensus that can serve as a basis for common and confident Catholic identity."16 t4Karl Rahner, S.J., Theological Studies, December, 1979, "Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II~ (Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J., tr.). p. 717. ~Murnion, Origins, August 13, 1981, loc. cit. ~61bid. p. 147. ~TSee Jn 17:22. 196 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 As we search for a deeper coherence and discerningly reflect on much experimen-tation, we must reverence one another and the intricacies of ecclesial authority and development. And the best way we reverence both one another and the issues is by sharing our beliefs as best we can, from deep within our hearts, in the confident hope that a God who is so joyously one, precisely in terms of his own lovely diversity, will guide us together and will help us to see the extent and limit of diversity so that we may be one even as Father, Son, and Spirit are one.~7 When looked at institutionally, the area of ministry may especially seem to reveal a diversifying revolution that verges on the chaotic.J8 We speak of"ministry" now, where before we would have said "apostolate" or, simply~ "work." Many believers, especially tho~e professionally trained, now speak of having a ministry. This explosion of ministries has unhooked the word, and permanently so, I should think, from a past, unambiguous relationship to ordination. Now, in word also, as always before in fact, it is not only priests who minister. And this great multiplica-tion of ministries through the 1970's is no mere matter of a word. It signals an underlying ideological shift regarding ministry in the Church.J9 Various studies are trying to expose this ideological shift,' so that it can be seen for all that it may mean for the future, then discussed and carefully experimented with~ before any long-term decisions are made. This development in ministry is very complicated and needs to be studied from many perspectives. Perhaps serious consideration of the renewed ecclesiology of Vatican II will help us appreciate the theological source for much of the develol~men~t regarding ministry in the Church. For if the Church is seriously perceived as mystery and not just as institution, as community and not only, or even primarily, as hierarchy, as mission and not just as haven of the saved, then much of the ministerial multiplication becomes not only intelligible, but rich and welcome.20 Hopefully, then, such study will gradually expose the underlying issue here, so that we can choose our future in a diversity expressive of a profound, commonly shared faith-unity, rather than be trapped in a future diversity which is only the bitter sign of the disunity of unconcerned or warring parties. 4. Spiritual Witness of Religious Life Part of the explanation of the great expansion of,ministries is the urgent sense of the countless challenges with which the modern world confronts the Church. There are so many opportunities, and there is so much to be done. And we have not the leisure to wait; time is runnin.g out. This urgent sense of ministerial opportunity and challenge is affecting religious Congregations in at least two different ways. Some groups, over the past few years, ~sSandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M., The Way, October, 1980, "Theological Trends: Ministry and Ordina-tion I." p. 291. ~gSee John A. Coleman, S.J., America. March 28, 1981, "The Future of Ministry,~ pp. 243-49. 20Schneiders, art. cir., pp. 290-299. Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World / "197 have learned the futility of furious and relentless activity and are now involved in a serious, mature, realistic program of spiritual renewal. And they are doing this without any unrealistic or self-centered withdrawal from apostolic activity. But rather than trying to do as much as they "can," members are taking means and time to improve the prayerful quality of their presence and action in the world. Some leisure, to keep personal spirituality and humanity alive, is not seen as time wasted or selfishly spent, but is encouraged to provide the spiritual, faith motiva-tion requisite for a courageously loving and enlightened presence in the critical situations of our world. There are other religious congregations that would almost certainly not explicit-ly deny the necessity of serious spirituality to root serious ministry. But at the operative level, they at least seem so taken up with their difficult ministries that fatigue, often verging on burnout, prevents serious growth in prayer and in the inner resources for that personal love relationship with God which alone can motivate authentic apostolic service. In such Congregations, often there is not much specific encouragement from superiors and other leaders for prayer, for careful spiritual reflection, or for time taken for serious retreats alone with God. Members of these congregations sometimes look in vain for such encouragement, and they wonder at an apparent lack of appreciation for ongoing spiritual renewal. These groups are frequently grappling with the crucial issues of our age, and often with great courage. But they are also doing so, often, with an apparent lack of any realistic, informed and detailed concern for that inner life of the Spirit which keeps apostolic life prayerfully focused on Jesus' revelation of the kingdom of his Father. Within this significant, contemporary trend of religious congregations moving, not theoretically, but operatively, in two different directions, the issue is the subtle integration of the inner and outer, of prayer and ministry. I certainly have no wish or competence to sit in judgment on who attains this integration and who does not. Either of these two directions I have described can be exaggerated. Excessive care of spiritual practices can produce a "hothouse" pietism unconcerned with major issues in our world. And excessively busy activity in our secular world, without sufficient spiritual resources--and taking the time for this---can burn out faith and a prayerful spirit, in a way that does not further the kingdom. As we confront the fact that ministry is not a matter of staying as busy as possible, we can be led to the deeper~ more subtle issue of a careful concern for the quality of our action, a quality determined by the graced availability of our hearts and wills to God in all we do. We will struggle with the fluctuating mixture in our conscious-ness of grace and sinfulness, of consolation and desolation, and see how seriously related it all is to our service. An actively apostolic spirituality, never a matter of simple busy activity, is as much a matter of this inner quality of heart expressed in a special human faith presence as it is a matter of courageous activity and service for God's people. As this is more appreciated, the groups now moving in the two directions I've sketched above will not judge or belittle one another. No, the3/will increasingly cooperate in diverse ministries, through a shared and prayerful faith. A related trend here concerns the role and understanding of formal prayer in 1911 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 serious spiritual growth and in mature ministry. Obviously, mature ministry is impossible without mature prayer. Here, I do not simply equate formal prayer and mature prayer. By no means. The latter term stretches far beyond the practice of formal prayer, into a whole life of prayer, but only so, 1 suspect~ because of an appropriately regular practice of formal contemplation. Without regular, formal contemplation, a mature, prayerful life in ministry does not seem possible. Most serious believers 1 consult and listen to, in the course of many travels and work-shops, would readily agree with this. But many would then squirm a bit, perhaps, as they reflect on their own practice of formal prayer. 1 sense some widely divergent understandings today of"regular formal prayer." Without wanting to suggest any uniformity for all, let me pose some questions that may help us candidly face the issues in this trend. To practice regular formal prayer, does a person need a specific, daily expectation of length and time, rather than leaving it simply to daily spontaneity? Does this daily expectation or ideal then leave one open to days when God "excuses" one for various reasons (his), thus preventing the ideal from becoming ironclad and causing guilt? ls formal prayer always somehow a withdrawal from activity into the intimate solitude of our hearts to be with God there? Is praying formally once or twice a week what is usually meant by "regular" for a mature believer? Is it a different type and quality of prayer that one is capable of when one prays for thirty rather than ten minutes (without letting prayer become too, clock-oriented, like a prayerwheel)? Even in the case of quite advanced spiritual persons, is the disappearance of regular formal prayer, for at least thirty minutes, a bad, or at least very questionable, sign? I think individuals and whole religious communities must give serious thought to ques-tions such as these before they too hastily agree again, even in very beautiful words, how important formal prayer is for busy apostolic lives. I am not entirely sure what reaction these questions may call forth from various people. But 1 do sense a growing desire among religious and others to be more prayerful and to be more honest about the whole question of what it means to pray, and of the necessity of praying if one wishes to be prayerful. Many look for clear, specific guidance and encouragement in this matter. And this desire to grow in the practice of formal prayer, as a means toa life of prayer and service, is no monastic aberration for an active person. I sense we can be carefully more demanding of one i~nother in this area, after a period of vague, rather general guidelines which reacted to some past inflexible, detailed programs of prayer. How these questions about regular formal prayer can be answered by busy parents with small children at home must also be investigated. Though in general their spiritual ideal and program must be different from that of religious and priests, it is still not at all clear that they are incapable of some realistic, regular practice of formal prayer. Without proposing any seminary or convent style of spirituality for busy parents, we must not downplay either their desire for prayer, even at the cost of sacrifice, or the necessary interplay of protracted regular prayer and a developing life of prayer. But much more experimentation and study must be done on the adaptations appropriate to these people, but adaptations which will Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World / 199 not trivialize the often significant spiritual capabilities and desires of these lay men and women. 5. Religious Life: Life in Community Another trend seems also to be moving the understanding of religious life in two quite different directions. Is religious life now, and will it continue to be, life lived in community? Once again, more operatively than theoretically, there seem to be congregations that respond yes to the question, though they may understand "living in community" in various ways. And there are certainly congregations that, at least in the way they act, would clearly seem to be answering no to community life as a necessary element of religious life. Some congregations see the profound unity of the whole group as springing essentially from that shared experience of "being sent" which integrates religious authority, obedience and mission into one life and call.2~ This profound sense of community in mission is then incarnated in each and every person's living some-how as a member of a local community, with exceptions occurring only because of the necessities of geography or the nature of the particular ministry. In this way there is a clear incarnation of the belief that a member's heart is given over completely to God and his people, but it is given to God and it is given apostoli-cally precisely through belonging fully to this specific congregation. In this under-standing, apostolic community is not an end in itself, but it certainly is a continually essential means to ministry and service and thus is an essential aspect both of religious identity and of apostolic action. In other congregations, life in community seems experienced and desired and chosen as much less essential and pervasive in the group. And these groups are often composed of competently trained, talented, generous people. But their apos-tolic service seems more an individual concern. They are often found either living alone or, when they live together, they seem to do so more as a matter of conven-ience and/or compatibility than as anything required to express their identity. They often live the vows seriously and carefully, though where ministry is not an experience of "being sent," there would seem to be difficult questions about genuine religious obedience.22 Operatively, whatever the theoretieal aspects may be, there seems to be a different view of religious life here--something more akin to what we have traditionally understood a secular institute to be. The issue, it seems to me, is whether these two clearly differing developments are also contradictory and therefore unable to be seen as authentic variants of one reality: religious life as understood and lived in the Church. Will we continue to see religious life as life in community, which has seemed to be one of its essentials since :~See my article. "Prayer. Mission and Obedience." The Way Supplement, No. 37. Spring. 1980. pp. 50-57. 221bid., p. 55. 20{I / Review for Religious, March-April, 1982 Pachomius organized eastern monasticism? It is important not to see community here as simply a geographical, local matter. That is an important meaning, but it is not the first nor is it the essential meaning of religious community life. Rather, vowed community life is fundamentally a profound union and communion in mission, a sense of the corporate, which indeed ordinarily is incarnated in a shared local setting of life and faith. Even now there can be tension and friction between groups of these two very diffe~'ent understandings of religious commitment. And I am not sure that the issue would not become serious enough in the future to cause a break and division in our understanding of religious life. A major superior recently told me that she expected, after the relative peace and the low number of departures during the end of the 70's, that the early 80's would bring more upheaval and departures--but all leading to something deep and good, something more gospel-based. So there may be radical purification again! And a sizable part of this upheaval may well concern the precisely com-munal dimension of our lives as religious. People may leave either because of a desire for more shared life and faith than a particular group has to offer, or conversely, they may leave because of a loss of aptitude or affection for celibate religious living after years of individualistic living and working. In congregations committed to a healthy, contemporary sense of communal living, there is another issue developing: a growing need for leadership on the local level. Groups, in and of themselves, still seem to find it very difficult to make decisions. Rather, they often haggle over each side of a question and often cannot move ahead. Beyond the role of a provincial superior and counselor, a local leader seems needed, a leader who listens, who values the communal and the collegial, but one who is able also compassionately to confront and to call individual members to be honest and prayerfully discerning about their lives, ministries and vocations. Leaders, then, are needed who are willing to accept the burden and service of authority. Without the encouragement of such a leader on the scene, honest, prayerful discernment about serious issues frequently does not happen. Provincials know how often they are confronted with the fair accompli in serious vocational decisions that have had very little consultation and prayerful discern-ment behind them. Mature, competent, professional adults, overly involved in our secular world, often need this careful but honest dialogue, if they are to stay in touch with, and live out, their_deepest, truest desires in faith. But as provincials know, it is very difficult to find men and women of this leadership caliber, mefi and women both suited and willing to be facilitators and leaders of local community life. And of course there remain in some members authoritarian hangovers which militate against this move toward better community living. Another angle of this issue concerns younger members' entering religious life. Because of the serious decrease of members in the past decade, there is generally a real age gap developing between members who are about ten years professed and novices or temporary professed, who now face the prospect of joining for life. Can such young persons live and serve with members decidedly older than themselves? Can they live without much peer support? This is an issue which, in its detail and Trends and Issues in a Secularizing World developments and implications, is quite different from anything most of us had to face years ago as we entered religious life. Today, the decision for final profession, for such young religious, will require a strong sense of vocation indeed, a sense of vocation that is rooted in a special inner psychic strength and in a quite different type of trust in God than was asked for in the past. This sense of vocation and commitment must, finally, be rooted deeply in the inner solitude of the individual heart, where God's call continues to resonate deeply and very lovingly. Now the motivation must run palpably deeper than any horizontal peer support. The com-munity dimension of our vocation, important as it is, can never replace the unique-ness of a vocation rooted in the experience of solitude alone with God in one's heart. In many ways, today we are being called back to this rooting of the religious vocation in God--in and through, of course, but also far beyond the personal fulfillment of shared support and affirmation. As Ps 73 says of him: "you are.the future that waits for me.ms All these different aspects of this trend concerning community and religious life finally issue forth with decided impact on the level of felt membership. Today, unless one is a major superior or has been chosen for some other special responsi-bility in the congregation, the felt sense of belonging may grow dim. So many religious today, whether it be their own responsibility or that of others, fe~l dis-connected, left out. In past times, th

Issue 41.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1982. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1982 by REviEw FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in, U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year; $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVtEW FOR RELIGtOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor July/August, 1982 Volume 41 Number 4 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIF:W FOR RV:HG~OUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from RF:VlF:W F'OR RF:IaG~OUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Familiaris Consortio: Themes and Theses Robert F. Morneau Bishop Morneau continues his commentaries on papal documents with this present article which, though not directly concerned with religious life, has much to say about being Christian. Bishop Morneau, Auxiliary Bishop of the Green Bay diocese, continues his work with the Ministry to Priests Program, and may be addressed at that office: 1016 N. Broadway; De Pere, WI 54115. On November 22, 1981, Pope John Paul I1 issued an apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio.~ This document on the family followed the Synod of Bishops n~eeting that dealt at length with issues of family life. A vast range of topics was discussed: I) the role of the family--its identity and mission. The centraliky of love was stressed with great clarity. 2) The meaning of human sexual-ity, meaning which can be found only when sexuality is perceived in relationship to the whole person and to the plan of God. 3) The call to the family to participate in the development of society. This challenge prevents a narrow parochialism and urges a social consciousness that is inclusive. 4) The character of rights for the family. Without justice there will be no peace in the home or among nations. 5) Concern for the hurting. Compassion demands that we reach out to the families that are broken and experiencing loss of any kind. Documents such as this exhortation serve a most important purpose in life, i.e., the sharing of a vision. Parker J. Palmer writes of the need for vision: Finally, we need to seek and find the grounds of Christian hope in the midst of our public crisis. Those grounds are to be found in God's promise of reconciliation and God's faithful-ness to that promise. We will touch that ground and root ourselves in it through prayer and ~'Apostolic Exhortati~, Familiaris Consortio, of His H~liness Pope John Paul II to the Episcopate, to the Clergy and the Faithful of the whole Catholic Church regarding the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Rome: Vatican Polyglot Press, Nov. 22, 1981, pp. 176). 481 till2 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 contemplation--not as an isolated individual act, but as directed and disciplined within the community of faith. Just as private and public life are halves of a larger whole, so private prayer and public worship are meant to be as one. In all these ways the Church can help renew that vision without which the people perish!2 In a society that is pluralistic, in a world ajar with great changes, in a Church undergoing rapid development, the vision of the family is bound to be obscured. Whatever can help clarify the basic elements of family life and its interdependence with the Church and society is invaluable in daily decision making. Familiaris Consortio provides a vision from which to evaluate and plan. Unfortunately, because of its length, this document may well find its way to the shelf unmarked and unread, suffering the same fate as Pacem in Terris, Laborem Exercens, and Redemptor Hominis. If this happens, th~ vision remains at a certain level of leadership but never gets into the minds and the hearts of the people. The problem is one of communication. This article attempts to give a general overview of the central themes of the document; its aim is to attract the reader to the primary source itself. Theme 1: Family T~esis: The Christian Family is a community of persons committed to self-giving and fidelity. The family, which is founded and given life by love, is a community of persons: of husband and wife, of parents and children, of relatives, Its first task is to live with fidelity the reality of communion in a constant effort to develop an authentic community of persons (18). The family is the first and fundamental school of social living: as a community of love, it finds in self-giving the law that guides it and makes it grow. The self-giving that inspires the love of husband and wife for each other is the model and norm for the self-giving that must be practiced in the relationships between brothers and sisters and the different generations living together in the family. And the communion and sharing that are part of everyday life in the home at times of joy and at times of difficulty are the most concrete and effective pedagogy for the active, responsible and fruitful inclusion of the children in the wider horizon of society (37). Loving the family means being able to appreciate its values and capabilities, fostering them always. Loving the family means identifying the dangers and the evils that menace it, in order to overcome them. Loving the family means endeavoring to create for it an environment favorable for its development (86). In his strong and sensitive novel A Death in the Family, James Agee writes of the delicate bonds of family life. Those bonds were ruptured when the father of the family was killed in a car accident. His son Rufus cries out to his mother: "Hide 'n Seek's just a game,just a game. God doesn't fool around playing games, does He, Mama! Does He! Does He!" The story paints the intersecting lines of relatives and friends offering sympathy and advice, raising questions and sharing consolation. A community of persons dealing with life and death, faith and doubt, joy and sorrow. A family at once imbued with love and yet wrenched with selfishness. 2Parker J. Palmer, The Company of Strangers iNew York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 33. Familiaris Consortio 483 Agee masterfully tells of people striving to sustain relationships in adverse orcum-stances, striving to comprehend life in the face of death. This finely tuned story provides an example of family life; the apostolic exhortation addresses itself to such a community and offers a faith perspective for dealing with life's questions. The backbone of family life is community. When a group of people lives out a common value system in which each individual is deeply loved and challenged, a oneness is formed which we call community. It ismore a process than a state of being. Its organic nature means that things never remain the same. This constant flux is not to be understood negatively. Rather, this positive change is called growth, the development which underlies every healthy family. The values are constant, their implementation and application continue to vary. Community happens when people truly care and share. The central act of the family and community is self-giving: the ability to be with and for others in a loving and compassionate way. This act is not without its risks. While it can and often does lead to acceptance, such sharing can also lead to rejection. Relationships demand trust, that invisible elixir, which creates an atmosphere in which dialogue and revelation can happen. Where do we find authentic family life? Where self-giving, trust, sharing and love abide! The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures confronted the people with the sin that destroyed the family of Israel: infidelit!! Hosea would say: "My people are dis-eased through their disloyalty" (Ho 11:7). The haunting motto semperfidelis must not be ignored. Family life and community depend upon depth commitment that is able to withstand the fierce testing of crises and weaknesses. Much grace is needed, especially in a culture that accepts infidelity as being "only human." Humorously, if sadly, we speak about a dog as being man's best friend--yet the fidelity of a dog does at times outrun human commitment. Often the apostolic document draws our attention to the power, necessity and beauty of fidelity. Theme 2: Sacrament of Marriage Thesis: The sacrament of marriage is God's special grace enlightening a couple to see their true vocation and empowering them to five it. The gift of the sacrament is at the same time a vocation and commandment for the Christian spouses, that they may remain faithful to each other forever, beyond every trial and difficulty, in generous obedience to the holy will of the Lord: "What therefore God has joined together. let not man put asunder" (20). A vivid and attentive awareness of the mission that they have received with the sacrament of marriage will help Christian parents to place themselves at the service of their children's education with great serenity and trustfulness, and also with a sense of responsibility before God, who calls them and gives them the mission of building up the Church in their children. Thus in the case of baptized people, the family, called together by word and .sacrament as the Church of the home. is both teacher and mother, the same as the worldwide Church (38). The social role that belongs to every family pertains by a new and original right to the Christian family, which is based on the sacrament of marriage. By taking up the human reality of the love between husband and wife in all its implications, the sacrament gives to Christian couples and parents a power and commitment to live their vocation as lay people and therefore to "seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them 4~ltl / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 according to the plan of God" (47). The sacrament of marriage is the specific source and original means of sanctification for Christian married couples and families. It takes up again and makes specific the sanctifying . grace of baptism (56). God is love! In divine self-giving we receive that love which we call grace. Faith allows us to experience the mystery that God has made his home in our hearts, that we are indeed temples of the Spirit. As blood flows through our systems providing life and energy, so grace flows through life affording participation in the Divine Reality. Freely given, it must be freely accepted and exercised. Such gifted-ness does impose serious demands on the individual and the community. Because of this there is a tendency to resist the reception of God's love and to opt for that "cheap grace" which seemingly makes no demands. Such a choice is fatal because it is a lie. Grace will always remain true to its essence: love calling out to love. Once received it must be shared lest one's very integrity be shattered. Grace comes to married life and love through the sacrament of marriage in a very special way. This visible sign of God's incomprehensible love brings about what it signifies: union and holiness. Such is the vocation for all people. God provides specific help to couples who have special demands in the nurturing and sustaining of unique relationships. The sacrament has two sides: invitation and imperative. By means of the invitation each couple builds up the Church and by fulfilling the imperative they participate in the work of salvation. In order that this be known and deeply sensed, the apostolic exhortation stresses the significance of adequate preparation. An understanding of the meaning of grace, as well as the invitation and imperative that underlie it, is crucial to successful married life. Proper disposition makes possible a full response. Here, as in most situations, ignorance is not bliss. Anwar eI-Sadat, in his autobiography In Search of Identity, reflects on a central question of life, one's vocation: Without a vocation, man's existence would be meaningless. We have been created to bear the responsibility God has entrusted us with. Though different, each man should .fulfill his specific vocation and shoulder his individual responsibility? Marriage is a vocation, one sanctified by a sacrament. God's calling is accompan-ied by the necessary help enabling an adequate response in the light of one's gifts and talents. A sense of identity enriches family life and interpersonal relationships. Without this self-awareness, the inner poverty of relationships results in destructive deprivation. Only a sense of one's vocation allows for the proper ordering of life's many demands. Marriage as a basic vocation claims centrality: work, play and social engagements all take a secondary role. A constant challenge in life is to get in touch with one's vocation and to maintain an abiding awareness of this mystery. Theme 3: Mission/Task of the Family Thesis: Christian families are called to receive and share the divine graces of life and love. Looking at it in such a way as to reach its very roots we must say that the essence and role of Familiaris Consortio / the family are in the final analysis specified by love. Hence the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church his bride (17). Thus. with love as its point of departure and making constant reference to it, the recent Synod emphasized four general tasks for the family: I) forming a community of persons: 2) serving life: 3) participating in the development of society; 4) sharing in the life and mission of the Church (17). Therefore love and life constitute the nucleus of the saving mission of the Christian family in the Church and for the Church (50). A movie, novel, or a walk through Disneyland often offer a moment of escape from the harsher realities of life. In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark impossible missions are pulled off one after another. Sheer enjoyment, totally unreal. After such moments we reenter the real world: the world of work, the world of interna-tional conflict, the world of the family. Missions here seem impossible as well: to bring about justice, to foster peace, to live love. Indeed, without grace and great personal effort, the task is overwhelming, if not impossible: with discipline and divine assistance the ideals of justice, peace and love become historical realities. Authors from various disciplines have constantly commented on the task and mission of the family: love and life. A father did not visit his son, nor the son his father. Charity was dead? I've always been intense about relationships. At times, my love overwhelms people. And it puzzles me. My business is to IoveP ¯. and Alyosha's heart could not endure uncertainty because his love was always of an active character. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved any one. he set to work at once to love him? Thus writes Barbara Tuchman in her excellent study A Distant Mirror; in The Belle of Amherst playwright William Luce puts words into the mouth of Emily Dickinson; Dostoevsky too ponders the movements and the mystery of love in his character Alyosha. There is a certain messiness in the mission. Oftentimes motives are mixed in trying to love. Grace faces blockage and detours at every turn. Infrequent success and daily failures can be discouraging. 'Yet the moments of concern, care, respect and love--the central vocation of the human heart--are breakthroughs of healing redemptive life. The exhortation strikes dead center in urging families to guard love from every danger, to reveal love in trust and openness, to communicate love through honest dialogue. The mission is realized by means of such activity. Four specific tasks are delineated for the family: 1) The mission of forming 3Anwar eI-Sadat, In Search of Identity (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977), p. 82. aBarbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1978), p. 97. 5William l,uce, The Belle of A~nherst (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), p. 30. ~'Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (New York: International Collectors Library, 1941), p. 171. 111~6 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 interpersonal relationships, of building community. Such formation demands time and self-giving; it is endangered by loss of identity and ambiguity about central values. 2) The mission of serving life by protecting the procreative and unitive functions of married love. Education and ongoing training are also tasks of par-ents. 3) The mission of participating in societal and political changes of society. Reaching out to the larger community prevents a destructive individualism. 4) The mission of becoming church. Through love, Christ is made present in our homes and in our world. Theme 4: Love Thesis: The heartbeat and central principle of family life is love. God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being ( I I ). The inner principle of that task (to develop an authentic community of persons), its perma-nent power and its final goal is love: without love the family is not a community of persons and, in the same way, without love the family cannot live. grow and perfect itself as a community of persons (I 8). It cannot be forgotten that the most basic element, so basic that it qualifies the educational role of parents, is parental love. which finds fulfillment in the task of education as it completes and perfects its service of life: as well as being a source, the parent's love is also the animating principle and therefore the norm inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity, enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness, and self-sacrifice that are the most precious fruits of love (36). Vocation is a mystery. Who can explain exactly how a call comes into our lives and what makes it possible to respond? Faith offers some reflections on this matter and the Second Vatican Council clearly states that all people are called to holiness. The present document says the same thing but in a different way: the intrinsic calling of every person is love. How this universal vocation is lived out is deter-mined by the specific path an individual chooses: single life, married life, religious life. In a sense there is both freedom and determination here. We are free to choose our unique path, we are not free not to be loving and still retain our humanity. Romano Guardini understood well the process involved in discerning one's vocation: A vocation is no label marked "chosen" which can be fixed to a hum~in existence once and forever. It is a living intention of God, efficacy of his love in the chosen one. Only through the action taken by that person can it become reality.7 The family is inextricably involved in the vocation question. The pragmatic "how" question arises in the search for love and community within the family circle. Many forces that tend to block love and concern must be dealt with. How 7Roma~ao Guardini, The Lord (Chica~o: Henry Regnery Company, 1954), p. 94. Familiaris Consortio / 4117 can we live simple and fruitful lives in a culture characterized by chaos and violence? The good news of the Gospel draws our attention to the person of Jesus in whom we find love incarnate. The basic command is not merely a verbal communication--it is a lived reality. Before preaching, Jesus so often heals, frees, forgives--only then does he explain in word what has taken place. Such self-giving is the model for the family, the domestic church. Jesus shares with that church his Spirit that enables its members to fulfill the perfect command to be loving, forgiv-ing people. And within all this is a paradox: "Jesus' authentic power is revealed in his frailty and importance.'~ The power of powerlessness lies at the heart of love, at the heart of the family. Roots determine fruits. Where authentic parental love exists as the source of family life, then the possibility of various virtues finding expression in the lives of its members is probable. The apostolic exhortation lists six: I) Kindness: that attitude and action that affirms and strengthens one another: 2) Constancy: that rich fidelity fostering trust; 3) Goodness: love incarnate in a small word, gracious deed; 4) Service: awareness of and response to the needs of others; 5) Disinterested-ness: that unique self-forgetfulness in being for and with others: 6) Self-sacrifice: that realism that all love involves a cross. The vocation to love and to be loved is fulfilled only in grace. Theme 5: Sexuality Thesis: Sexuality finds its full meaning only when seen in the context of the human person, God's plan and love. Consequently, sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally (I I). In the context of a culture which seriously distorts or entirely misinterprets the true meaning of human sexuality, because it separates it from its essential reference to the person, the Church more urgently feels how irreplaceable is her mission of presenting sexuality as a value and task of the whole person, created male and female in the image of God (32). Education in love as self-giving is also the indispensable premise for parents called to give their children a clear and delicate sex education. Faced with a culture that largely reduces human sexuality to the level of something commonplace, since it interprets and lives it in a reductive and impoverished way by linking it solely with the body and with selfish pleasure, the educational service of parents must aim firmly at a training in the area of sex that is truly and fully personal: for sexuality is an enrichment of the whole person--body, emotions and soul--and it manifests its inmost meaning in leading the person to the gift of self in love (37). ~Jon Sobrino, S.J. Christology at the Crossroads. trans, by John Drury (New York: Orbis Books. 1978), p. 281. 41111 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 When things are disconnected, they become distorted. The absolutizing ten-dency to identify a part for the whole is not uncommon. A recent movie/play, The Elephant Man, demonstrates what happens when a single moment of life excludes other factors. Most people were unable to move beyond the elephant man's deformity and penetrate to the rich, inner beauty of his person. Sexuality has suffered over the years from the absolutizing impulse that has fragmented this great and powerful gift. When sexuality is reduced to physicality, emotionality or pleasure, meaning is lost. Familiaris Consortio presents a different vision. Here sexuality is understood as an integral part of the personality. It has meaning only in reference to the person and authentic love. This integral vision provides mean-ing and allows for prudential decision on how the gift will be used. Vision and virtue help to order this radical power in our lives. Though complex, sexuality is not incomprehensible; though innately powerful, sexuality is not uncontrollable. Certain things in history are a matter of life and death. One of these is human sexuality. Abundant life flows when this gift of sexuality is used with proper regard for the individual and is an expression of authentic love. Physical, emotional and spiritual life are all enriched. However, when sexuality is misused and becomes a form of manipulation or exploitation, few things are as destructive. Death is the consistent effect of unprincipled use of human sexuality. Here truth is abandoned, a lie is lived. The fruits are well-known: deception, secretiveness, joylessness, angst, boredom--exit Mrs. Robinson. Thus the paradox: that which can be most life-giving is capable of causing infinite harm. Sex education is an urgent need today. This obligation is frustrated because of confusion in regard to sexual matters, breakdown in communication, sheer ne-glect. Much information regarding sexual matters is transmitted through the mass media and peer groups, often highly distorted and erroneous. Justice is at stake. The child has the right to know; the duty rests primarily on parents. Assistance is often needed and other bodies (church and schools) get involved. One point must be stressed: ¯. the Church is firmly opposed to an often widespread form of imparting sex information dissociated from moral principle (37). The key issue is clear: human sexuality must always be dealt with in context: the context of love, the human person and God's plan. Theme 6: Education Thesis: Education is a primary duty and right of parents; the full growth and development of children depend upon the exercise of this obligation, The task of giving education is rorted in the primary vocation of married couples to partici-pate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life (36). According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning (14). Familiaris Consonio / 489 The mission to educate demands that Christian parents should present to their children all the topics that are necessary for the gradual maturing of their personality from a Christian and ecclesial point of view. They will therefore follow the educational lines mentioned above. taking care to show their children the depths of significance to which the faith and love of Jesus Christ can lead (39). Full growth and development demand education. This process of learning is of special significance in the first decade of a person's life. Here the twig is bent, the fate of the tree deeply influenced. In the confines of the home a type of informal education is always at work. By osmosis children are assimilating the values, thoughts and life-style of their parents. There will be times of more formal educa-tion: planned discussion, structured dialogue, explicit exchange of facts and per-spectives. Whether formal or informal, the learning process nourishes the mind and heart as food does the body. Intellectual needs are as deep as bodily ones. If deprived of proper feeding, strange compensatory behavior sets in, causing serious disorder or relationships. If nourishment is well balanced, the result is a healthy home and society. Given the limitations of time, talent and skills, parents will necessarily reach out to others for help in the fulfillment of this primary obligation to educate their children. This appeal for help should not lead to abdication. Certain things can only be learned in the home: the art of sustaining relationships in close quarters, the ability to deal with moods over long periods of time, the gift of hospitality to strangers. In these and other areas, parents are always teaching, if not in word, certainly by their actions. To succeed in this duty parents must continue their own education. The formation of parents through information and transformation is necessary for the full dex~elopment of the family. In an age of rapid ~:hange and high activism, there is a special lesson that parents can teach their children, the lesson of silence: We have yet to accept and act upon the axiom that the cultivation of a habit of silence is an integral part of all true education; and that children, so far from looking upon a demand for silence as an unnatural and intolerable imposition, have an inborn aptitude for quietness.9 Such silence gives access to the voice of God and the deeper recesses of oneself. Contemplation then becomeg a possibility and this activity is essential to a full, human life. Constant activity and incessant noise destroy the conditions for true humanness: loving attention and presence to others. A quiet period in the day could well be one of the greatest blessings a child might learn from parents and the Theme 7: Society Thesis: The mutual relationship between family and society must be carefully Herman. Creative Prayer (Cincinnati. Ohio: Forward Movement Publications). p. 33. Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 nurtured and lovingly critiqued. The family has vital and organic links with society, since it is its foundation and nourishes it continually through its role of service to life: it is from the family that citizens come to birth and it is within the family that they find the first school of the social virtues that are the animating principle of the existence and development of society itself (42). The social role of families is called upon to find expression also in the form of political intervention: families should be the first to take steps to see that the laws and institutions of the State not only do not offend but support and positively defend the rights and duties of the family. Along these lines, families should grow in awareness of being "protagonists" of what is known as "family politics" and assume responsibility for transforming society: otherwise families will be the first victims of the evils that they have done no more than note with indifference. The Second Vatican Council's appeal to go beyond an individualistic ethic therefore also holds good for the family as such (44), The family and society have complementary functions in defending and fostering the good of each and every human being (45). The privatization of religion is a constant danger. This attitude compartmen-talizes one's relationship with God, separating it from economic, socio-political, cultural issues. Christians must be constantly challenged to assume their proper role in society by fostering a public outlook: A public outlook among Christians asks them to care for the good ordering of people who are not saved and may never be. It means having concern for arts and letters, the quality of life and its cultural dimensions, the institutions of education and the forms of politics--even if there is no direct payoff for the churches.~° This linkage to the larger social whole was a major concern at the Second Vatican Council: the Church is to participate in the amelioration of the world by being socially conscious and politically concerned. Again this vision is shared in Famil-iaris Consortio. Families are to participate in social happenings in dynamic and varied ways. Non-involvement will often threaten human dignity and justice since a vacuum will be created if people abdicate their duty of articulating and living Christian values. The notion of responsibility underlies the mutual relationships between family and society. This responsibility is grounded in power. The individual, the family, the society, the church and the state, all possess this ability to bring about or prevent change. When all these parties exercise responsible power in fostering the common good, then justice and peace result. The common good is served. Yet vested interest tends to direct energies and gifts meant for the growth of the community toward self-serving and self-preserving needs and wants. Injustice is effected and society and the family are greatly harmed. The exercise of power for the common good and the proper assumption of responsibility by each grouping are of vital importance to the Church and the modern world. Rugged individualism will continue to thwart the creation of a healthy society. Narrow parochialism, social myopia, crass apathy, indulgent consumerism, afro- *°Reflection of Martin E. Marty in Parker J. Palmer's The Company of Strangers, p. 13. Familiaris Consortio / 49"1 gant nationalism are cancer sores that mar and rend the human heart and human family. Society will never be rid of these illnesses but they can be minimized by fostering a social consciousness that truly sees others as one's brothers and sisters. This consciousness begins at home or it never begins at all. Parents enrich society by their involvement in societal and political issues and by encouraging their children to participate as fully as they can. Theme 8: Church Thesis: The family as the domestic church gets its true identity and sense of purpose from its ecclesial nature. Christian marriage and the Christian family build up the Church: for in the family the human person is not only brought into being and progressively introduced by means of education into the human community, but by means of the rebirth of baptism and education in the faith, the child is also introduced into God's family, which is the Church (15). Among the fundamental tasks of the Christian family is its ecclesial task: the family is placed at the service of the building up of the kingdom of God in history by participating in the life and mission of the Church (49). The Church, a prophetic, priestly and kingly people, is endowed with the mission of bringing all human beings to accept the word of God in faith, to celebrate and profess it in the sacraments and in prayer, and to give expression to it in the concrete realities of life in accordance with the girl and new commandment of love (63). There is a rich symbiotic relationship between the family and the Church. They need each other; they enrich each other. Through the family new life is raised up, potential members of God's family; through the Church, the grace of baptism gives entrance into the community of disciples. The family is as integral to the Church as cells are to the body. Both the community of the family and the Church are about the same task: acceptance and proclamation .of the Good News, worship in spirit and in truth, service to those in need out of love, the building up of the kingdom. In a special way the Church does this through sacramental, apostolic and educa-tional avenues; the family does it by living faith, hope and love in ordinary and concrete situations. Several times in this apostolic exhortation Pope John Paul 1! stresses the building of the kingdom of God in history. Our liturgy describes some aspects of that kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.~ The Church and family intersect at this junction. Both strive to promote the realities of God's saving mysteries. Both are at the service of Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth. Both find in him truth and life; in him the oneness with the Father; in him the love that makes justice and peace reality. Christ Jesus is the "Preface for the Feast of Christ the King. 4~)2 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 center of the Christian home and the Church. Romano Guardini refreshes our faltering memories: "Faith" in the sense of the New Testament means not only religious trust, reverence, self-surrender, but something specific: man's relationship to Christ and to the God who speaks through him which Christ demanded.~2 Two phenomena characterize the twentieth century: confusion about identity and the subsequent loss of meaning. Who are we? What are we to do? What is our destiny? The Church has a self-understanding that embraces mystery. Yet the task is clear: be a prophetic, kingly and priestly people! With such a vision the Christian family comes to its own self-understanding: the family also is to be a community of persons and the task and mission is the same as the Church's. No small grace here. Amid all the confusion and ambig6ity a sense of direction and purpose emerges. Energies can now be directed in meaningful ways. The Christian family is deeply enriched by seeing and living this relationship with the Church. Theme 9: Values Thesis: Family life is grounded in the knowledge and expression of basic gospel values. Christian families can do this (bear witness to the kingdom and the peace of Christ) through their educational activity--that is to say by presenting to their children a model of life based on the values of truth, freedom, justice and love--both through active and responsible involvement in the authentically human growth of society and its institutions, and by support-ing in various ways the associations specifically devoted to international issues (48). The Christian family also builds up the kingdom of God in history through the everyday realities that concern and distinguish its state of life. It is thus in the love between husband and wife and between the members of the family--a love lived out in all its extraordinary richness of values and demands: totality, oneness, fidelity and fruitfulness--that the Christian family's participation in the prophetic, priestly and kingly mission of Jesus Christ and of his Church finds expression and reali:,ation (50). Many negative phenomena which are today noted with regret in family life derive from the fact that. in the new situations, young people not only lose sight of the correct hierarchy of values but, since they no longer have certain criteria of behavior, they do not know how to face and deal with the new difficulties (66). Freedom, truth, justice, love, totality, oneness, fidelity, fruitfulness! These are the pillars (values) that support the community of persons we call the family, society and church. The importance of these values can readily be seen in contrast to their opposites: enslavement, falsity, injustice, hatred, non-commitment, divi-sion, infidelity, sterility. None of these categories are ultimately abstract; they. are not esoteric philosophical constructs. Rather, they provide the attitudinal base from which life is lived. Values shape decisions which in turn terminate in concrete action. Our actions have consequences that either humanize or destroy people. In evaluating our lives we move beyond specific, individual acts to the root system-- the values from whence they flow. These values truly characterize the essence of ~2Romano Guardini. p. 436. Familiaris Consortio / 493 our personality. Choices in life! To teach in the catechetical program or spend more time with the children; to build a new room onto the house or give more money to the poor: to take in a refugee child or prod the government to promote international justice. These choices are not necessarily exclusive but a theology of limitation restricts how much we can do. The formation of conscience is based not only on values but also the ordering of these values. What is helpful here is a guiding vision: To be an effective member of the Church. one needs a guiding vision. Such a vision should serve to interpret one's experience of life with fellow-believers, to suggest priorities and values, and to indicate ways in which the Church might make itself more effectively present in today's world.13 Value-free homes and societies are dissipated homes and societies, lacking direc-tion and purpose. Values provide a sense of meaning. The constant process of value clarification is urgently needed. The social scien-ces have methods to discern when values are truly authentic and when they are merely nominal. Internalized values have the markings of free choice, strong affective force and patterned activity. Clarifying our values helps to promote civil discourse, a discourse that is essential to keep our planet partially civilized. When values are confused and misunderstood, debate turns into a diatribe. Political, social and religious issues become muddied and constructive communication ceases. Value clarification is not the solution to world problems, but without some clarity there can be no progress. What is true of larger society is also true of the home. Clear values nourish healthy family life. Theme 10: Dangers and Difficulties Thesis: Inner and outer forces present major challenges to the delicate health of family life. On the other hand, however, signs are not lacking of a disturbing degradation of some fundamental values: a mistaken theoretical and practical crncept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other: serious misconceptions regarding the relationship of author-ity between parents and children: the concrete difficulties that the family itself experiences in the transmission of values: the growing number of divorces: the scourge of abortion: the ever more frequent recourse to sterilization: the appearance of a truly contraceptive mentality (6). Consequently. faced with a society that is running the risk of becoming more and more depersonalized and standardized and therefore inhuman and dehumanizing, with the negative results of many forms of escapism--such as alcoholism, drugs and even terrorism--the family possesses and continues still to release formidable energies capable of taking man out of his anonymity, keeping him conscious of his personal dignity, enriching him with deep humanity and actively placing him, in his uniqueness and unrepcatability, within the fabric of society (43). Among the more troubling signs of this phenomenon (obscuring of certain fundamental values), the Synod Fathers stressed the following, in particular: the spread of divorce and of recourse to a new union, even on the part of the faithful" the acceptance of purely civil ~-~Avery Dulles, "Imaging the Church for the 1980"s." Thought. vo!. 56. no. 221 (June, 1981), p. 121. 4~4 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 marriage in contradiction to the vocation of the baptized to "be married in the Lord": the celebration of the marriage sacrament without living faith, but for other motives; the rejection of the moral norms that guide and promote the human and Christian exercise of sexuality in marriage (7). Teilhard de Chardin's work The Divine Milieu shows the deepest reverence for the environment, human-divine-natural, that surrounds and sustains us. When that environment is affected adversely, there is a breakdown in the rich interde-pendence of all life. Family life is no exception to this universal phenomenon. Certain negative attitudes are in the air and certain ways of relating are becoming accepted that are injurious and destructive of communities of persons: divorce that rends and tears the hearts and minds of parents and children; misunderstanding and subsequent misuse of the gift and beauty of sexuality: erroneous attitudes regarding freedom; a striving for a type of independence that makes relationships impossible. The litany is long and off-key: the pain and the hurt are even more far-reaching and dissonant. Realism demands that we share the full portrait. Healthy family life does survive and is the source of much hope and joy. There are homes where children rejoice in the love and care shown by their parents; there are homes in which youth are given a sense of dignity and respect; there are homes that are sites of caring education and gracious growth. God has promised his presence to the family and with that presence comes the grace to fulfill that unique and noble vocation of every home--the sharing of love. Familiaris Consortio offers a blueprint, charting the waterways of family life. The journey of Lewis and Clark was filled with many unnecessary delays and detours because of the lack of maps. Though they do not remove the struggle of the journey, maps do help in marking the way. The papal exhortation continues the apostolic mission: revealing the mystery of God's love and forgiveness which makes possible community, the building of the kingdom in which we hear and respond with love to the voice of the Lord. From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions--I Patricia Spillane, M.S.C. Sister Patricia, a psychotherapist, lectures on initial and on-going formation. She resides at the convent of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart; 428 St. James Place: Chicago, IL 60614. The second part of her presentation will appear in the next issue of REWF.W FOR REI.IGIOUS. During the past few years, we religious have witnessed a ferment of activity in our congregations centering on drafting, writing and debating new constitutions. The Lord's charge to Habakkuk: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablet so that we can read it readily (Hab 2:2) is being taken seriously. Constitutional committees, feedback designs, provincial chapters have been devoted to this task. Some of us are already breathing a sigh of relief before a completed task, some of us are still laboring to clarify the vision or inscribe the tablets. But there is a hidden illusion here, that once the tablet is inscribed, the work is over! The Lord who told Habakkuk to write on the tablet also told Jeremiah that he, himself, would plant his law deep within, "writing it on their hearts" (Jr 31:33) instead of on fragments of stone or clay. So it is today. Whoever finishes "tablet-work" is at a crossroads of a more intense and crucial nature. The real task, the "heart work," is just beginning and the challenge which lies before us is far greater than the challenge we may have already surmounted. A beautiful document will remain just that and nothing more, unless it also becomes an opportunity for personal conversion, for personal adherence to its sources of inspiration: the gospel, and the charism of the individual congregation. New constitutions are indeed "a word that goes forth from my mouth" (Is 55:! i) and so may be likened to the seed in the parable of the sower (Mt 13:1-23). There the seed-word was met by a whole spectrum of attitudes that rendered it 495 4~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 more or less efficacious: from the indifference and defensiveness of those of "coarse heart., dull ears., shut eyes., fear [of] being converted," to the limited disponib~lity of those who "have no roots [since] trials., persecutions., worries ¯. riches choke the word," even after an initial joyful reception. The unconditional acceptance of those who are "good soil" is not found as often as we would like to believe. Human nature has not changed since the time those attitudes were described. The "word," whether of the gospel or of a congregation, will be as effective as each of us can allow it to be, personally and corporately. Our new constitutions are indeed a "two-edged sword," but we can block its passage to our "secret emotions and thoughts"(Heb 4:12). It is indeed a seed, bursting with the potentiality of life, but the finest seed in the world needs a welcoming environment. With all of our good will, each of us may be specializing in certain obstacles that may prevent these constitutions from taking root and producing the fruits of inner conversion, may render subjectively ineffective the objective grace of the moment. These obstacles, rather than our good will, may be at the root of our attitudinal decisions before the constitutions. Whether we realize it or not, we are not just passive recipients of these new documents. Each of us makes active decisions concerning them, with or without our awareness, and often the decision may be made before we even see the document. Neither is this "decision" an isolated factor in our life; rather it springs from the same soil which has fostered every other decision we have made. What Attitudinal Decisions Do New Constitutions Evoke in Us? What are some of the myriad possibilities of responses to this word, of attitudi-nal decisions before our constitutions, that could arise? We must recognize that anything which is both new and demanding naturally represents a threat to our established way of looking at things, to our life-style, to our values. It calls for change, for letting go of the comfortable and familiar, for embarking on untried and risky roads--even if only in small and subtle ways. It is good for us to recognize and admit how easily the gospel, our charism, our documents can threaten us. Our challenge lies in how we handle the stress which this threat brings. On the one hand we can resist in an active, rebellious way, challenging the need for norms, for institutional guidelines, for adherence to the magisterium of the Church. Or we can resist in a more subtle, passive way--remaining indifferent, unaffected; quietly ignoring what rubs us the wrong way. We can comply, go along with what is outwardly expected of us, as long as the community is aware of it or because the consequences of not "going along" would be too unpleasant. Or, at another level, we can accept the constitutions because "that's what good religious do," or because the present community to which we belong values them, and so should we. While this identification does not stop when we are no longer actually being observed by members of the community, the satisfaction due to our relation-ship with others is more important to us than the value itself. Thus, this attitudinal choice still leaves something to be desired. Our motivation remains external to us. From Tablet to Heart / 497 Finally, Luke describes the last category of listeners to the word as: people with a noble and generous heart who have heard the word and take it to themselves and yield a harvest through their perseverance (Lk 8:15). This is an excellent biblical description of what is meant by internalization: a true taking-to-heart of the value for its own sake, whether it is popular or unpopu-lar, whether we are being observed by others or not observed, whether it is gratifying or painful. Internalization of his Father's will was the only way that Jesus remained faithful unto death to his redemptive mission: rewards and friends had all disappeared; there remained only faith that this was what the Father called him to do. Vulnerability of Our Attitudes So we see that the great accomplishment of approved constitutions can falter and come to nothing, unless we are disposed to respond by attitudinal decisions that lead to the increase of internalization and the decrease of either resistance or compliance. We see that our attitudinal choices are vulnerable, with the result that, unknowingly, we may be moving towards an ephemeral and passing satisfaction instead of towards the true life that Jesus intends for each of us through these documents (see Jn 10:10). But what makes our attitudinal choices so vulnerable? What can we do about it? Perhaps we can begin by attempting to understand the source of these vulner-abilities. After all, it is a very ancient problem. The Israelites d~]ring the exodus could be seen to manifest the same spectrum of attitudes towards the covenant. Moses, in the words of the writer of Deuteronomy, finally put it to them clearly: I set before you life or death, blessing or curse: choose life then. (Dr 31:19). Let us begin to look more deeply into how, from the time of the Israelites to the present day, our choices can be torn between life and death, can lead us to our highest happiness or our greatest betrayal. To that end, let us look first at the source of these decisions--our very selves--and then at various aspects of these decisions. A. The Person as Locus of Attitudinal Decisions Attitudinal choices of life or death do not spring from a vacuum. They origi-nate in and are consistent with" that complex of motivations, forces and behaviors which we call "the self." Concentrating on the self, however, is not meant to be an exercise in individu-alism. Vitz~ warns us how the exaltation of the self and concentration on self-fulfillment result in a parody of our true selves. Kernberg2 has devoted many years ~Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: the Cult of Self- Worship (.Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977). 2Otto Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (NY: Jason-Aronson, 1975). __, "Why Some People Can't Love," Psychology Today (June, 1978), pp. 55-59. 1191t / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 to a study of the increasing manifestations of narcissism in American society that result in a pathology of the self. Hendin describes the culture of the Age of Sensation as: marked by a self-interest and ego-centrism that increasingly reduces all relations to the question: What am 1 getting out of it?~ Obviously such caricatures of the self are inimicable to the gospel which says "anyone who wants to save his life will lose it" (Mt 16:25). Nevertheless, it is precisely self-knowledge which can be the greatest aid to making it possible for us to lay down our lives. All the saints testify to this truth, but 1 will restrict myself throughout this article to two great woman saints: Catherine of Siena, the great laywoman and mystic of the fourteenth century, and Frances Xavier Cabrini, the zealous mission-ary of the twentieth century, who founded my own congregation, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. If you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal life, never leave the knowledge of yourself . oh, how delightful to the soul and pleasing to me is holy prayer made in the house of self-knowledge and knowledge of me! (Catherine of Siena, The Dia-logue, no. 4,66). And when we begin to know ourselves, it is a grace so great that we can never thank Jesus enough since it is an illumination from his divine heart. Let us gratefully run along this way. (Frances Cabrini, Letters, no. 96). We have already insisted on the capacity of the self to function as an active sub-ject-- not just to react as the passive object of environmental stimuli. Our behavior may stem in part from external influences, but these influences are internally organized into already existing psychic structures that we normally call motiva-tions. Hence the motivations are as important as the behavior, the inner structures as important as the process of emotionally experiencing the environment. Neither is the self simply an organization of the present moment. We reach back to the past (which we may have forgotten) and forward to goals we have not yet attained. The actual needs of the past and present must be balanced with the ideals of the future, a fact which psychologists are more and more integrating into their self-theory. Wylie4 considers the sub-components of the self as the actual-self and the ideal-self. Kohut, who has devoted himself to the analysis of the self,~ speaks of its developing optimally from the interaction of ambition (needs) and ideals. Rulla6 further subdivides our actual-self with its needs and ambitions into a social, behavioral and latent self, and our ideal-self into a personal self-ideal as well SHerbert Hendin, The Age of Sensation (NY: McGraw-Hill & Co. 1977), p. 13. *R. C. Wylie, "The Present Status of Self Theory" in Handbook of Personality Theory and Research, Borgatta & Lambert, ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), pp. 734-752. ~Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Se/f(NY: International Universities Press, 1977). 6Luigi M. Rulla, S.J., Depth Psychology and I/ocation (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971), pp. 35-37. The theoretical framework of this article is derived from the writings and teachings of Rulla. From Tablet to Heart / 499 as the ideals we believe others expect of us (institutional-ideal). Rulla further distinguishes between the subjective ideals we personally hold as important to us and the extent to which these are consonant with objective ideals---especially the revealed values of the gospei and the following of Christ. Needs and Values Within Our Conscious and Unconscious Selves However, we must admit that the self often remains a mystery to us. Paul laments "I do not understand my own behavior" (Rm 7:!5). Conscious factors interact with unconscious forces within us, unknowingly influencing our decisions and our attitudes despite our good will. Because they are unknown to us (and our defenses may be strong enough to resist coming to know them), this unconscious part of the self can greatly contribute to the vulnerability of our attitudinal deci-sions. Whether we are talking about the "Known/Unknown-to-self" of the Johari Window,7 Freud's unconscious, or Rulla's latent self, we cannot ignore the fact that we unconsciously put obstacles in the way of taking the word to heart. Grace builds on nature--but we may abuse our God-given freedom by hiding from unpleasant truths which may be interfering with the action of grace. It is this unconscious aspect of the self that touches so deeply two primary attributes of the self: our human needs which are innate, universal and strive naturally for psycho-biological or psycho-social satisfaction; and our values and ideals which are developed in the course of a lifetime. We all have needs, e.g., aggressive, dependent, sexual, and so forth, but backgrounds and previous situa-tions may have made these needs so unacceptable to us that we divorce them from ourselves by a defensive barrier that relegates them to our unconscious self. Because they are buried, however, does not mean they are inactive; in fact they may be all the more influential because of our lack of awareness. At the other end of the spectrum of self-attributes are our values which natu-rally begin by being subjective and personal, but which should mature so that the objectivb values of Christ come to coincide with our personal ideals and choices (which is what internalization is all about). However there is a "tension arc" stretched between these two poles which can often result in the weaker values succumbing to stronger unconscious needs. In this case, the values never are internalized because of contradictions in the self between the actual and the ideal. Rulla has introduced the term "inconsistencies" to describe these poorly-integrated tensions between needs and values. While certain human needs may be consistent with the following of Christ, e.g., the need to achieve, to care for others (nurtur-ance), to overcome difficulties (counteraction), certain others such as inferiority (abasement), avoidance of pain (harm-avoidance), or defensiveness interfere with the following of Christ and hence may represent significant inconsistencies in individuals where they predominate. Ideally, we should be able to acknowledge and accept the presence of these inconsistencies which we all have, integrate them 7joseph Lufl. Group Processed (Palo Alto: National Press, 1961). 500 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 in a manner appropriate to a vowed life, and thus be freer to be attracted by and assimilate the values of Christ. However, when the block of unconscious needs cannot be acknowledged, a vicious circle begins of denying what we most need to deal with, of distorting our image of ourselves to match our ideal-self instead of dealing with what is actually present. Self As Holistic, Structural, Purposive Thus far we have seen that our attitudinal choices originate in a self that is both reactive and becoming, both conscious and unconscious, both real and ideal in our efforts to integrate values and needs in a consistent way. Another theorist, Jane Loevinger,8 describes the necessary characteristics that must be incorporated into a healthy self, or into any adequate self-theory. Thus, among other elements, she maintains that the self must be understood as holistic, structural and purposive. When we interpret this in the light of religious life, several implications concerning the self emerge: The holistic self." Self as the locus of growth in Christ and for purposes of internali-zation must be seen as the integration of all its aspects: conscious and unconscious; active and passive; the psycho-biological, psycho-social, and psycho-spiritual: the cognitive, affective and volitional; the real and the ideal. The part that each element has to play in the final ordering of a mature consistent self is not just a result of haphazard whim or fancy. Rather, true integration moves from more primitive, ego-centered positions to more advanced levels that do not exclude the earlier but incorporate them into newer, more mature patterns. The structural self." A great many theorists today stress the self as being in process; problems are envisioned in terms of blocked emotional and experiential pro-cesses. 9 They emphasize those components of ourselves that are or should be in movement, in flux, in change. While this approach contains an undeniable truth, a holistic approach includes other aspects as well. We are not only emotion, flux, becoming. Our inner selves are also organized into stable structured patterns of needs, motivations and ideals; of behavioral tendencies and patterns of relation-ships that are remarkably stable, resistant to change and indeed form the source of our emotional reactions, our manner of experiencing the world and our behavioral tendencies. Thus while our structures or psychic patterns seem to epitomize Our stable and non-changing elements, in reality we can experience no real change unless these very structures are touched and altered. A structural view of the self is sound not only from a psychological point of view but also from a theological. The late Gustave Weigel in his considerations on Theology and Freedom looks first at the self which is capable of reaching freedom. He contrasts an experiencing self in flux as: 8Jane Loevinger, ~Theories of Ego Development" in ClinieabCognitive Psychology: Models and Inte-gration, L. Breger, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N J: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 87-99. 9E.g., most of the humanistic schools--Rogers, Maslow, et al. From Tablet to Heart / 51~1 isolated, unrelated consciousness, floating without orientation or direction on the mysterious sea of existence, itself selfless with the self as presumed by Catholic theology which begins with the supposition that the self is structured and its affirmations must be related to that structure.~0 ¯ Thus a view of the self without structure and only in process cannot help us either spiritually or humanly. If a religious has unknowingly reacted all his or her life so as to comply with the sacrifices invited, by chastity, poverty and obedience and has never really internalized them, he or she has unwittingly formed a pattern and a structure of compliance that will not change only by focusing on his or her emotions and experiences. The roots of our patterns must be dealt with before lasting, significant change can occur. The purposive self." Loevinger sees the self as inherently striving for meaning, purpose, goals--echoing the ideal-self of Wylie, Rulla, Kohut, et al. Frankl speaks of the "will to meaning" as opposed to "the will to pleasure." Indeed happiness, fulfillment, identity are all side effects of the successful search for meaning: It may now have become clear that a concept such as self-actualiTation, or self-realization, is not a sufficient ground for a motivational theory. This is mainly due to the fact that self-actualization, like power and pleasure, also belongs to the class of phenomena which can only be obtained as a side effect and are thwarted precisely to the degree to which they are made a matter of direct intention. Self-actualization is a good thing: however. I maintain that man can only actualize himself to the extent to which he fulfills meaning. Then self-actualization occurs spontaneously: it is contravened when it is made an end in itself.~ Indeed the capacity to commit ourselves marks our highest capacity, our ability to transcend ourselves, to go beyond gratification and pleasure to value and meaning. To the extent that the values and meanings for which we transcend ourselves are objective and true (consistent with our self-as-it-ought-to-be), happi-ness and self-fulfillment will gradually emerge as side effects. Thus, new constitutions ought to prick and challenge us--make us uncom-fortable- not be already within our grasp. Our tendency can be, however, to "cut down to size," reduce the demand quality of something which may annoy and anger us because it disturbs our comfort. We have to be willing to forego, unlike the rich young man (Mk 10:17-22), the gratification of"but I've already been doing all that," to push forward, stretch, go beyond where we are, to transcend our own comfort in the service of values which have originated beyond us. The Subjectivization of Values Both Frankl and Rulla have been very concerned with the relativization and individualization of values which we see so often in modern society. Values which ~0Gustave Weigel, S.J., "Theology and Freedom" in Foundations./'or "a Psychology of Grace (Glen Rock. N J: Paulist Press, 1966), p. 188. ~Victor Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism (NY: Clarion Bks, 1967), p. 8. 502 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 should be objective and clear become subjectively evaluated (for discarding or adaptation); we tend to elevate ourselves and our needs as ends in themselves, thereby actually making ourselves into an object. We become the measure of the value instead of the value calling us forth. Here our ideal-self has become absorbed into our actual-self and has become its puppet, instead of being a liberating, independent force which urges our actual-self further along the road to maturity and freedom. An adaptation of one of Frankl's diagrams can help us envision this tendency more clearly:12 Strong human needs (1) especially unconscious ones that are dissonant with the following of Christ can cause the values (2) to be unconsciously "adjusted" (subjectified) so that the person (3) becomes the norm (objectified). This may lead to temporary self-fulfillment and gratification, but not to lasting happiness because it has diluted the values that encouraged us towards self-transcendence. Frankl calls for changing this situation through re-objectifying the values and re-subjectifying the person by means of a value-oriented theory and practice (4). To the extent that we can realize this, to that same extent can we find a true self-fulfillment in Christ that comes as a result of having transcended ourselves. Unless a grain of wheat fails on the ground and dies, it remains a single grain: but if it dies. it yields a rich harvest (Jri 12:24). Thus far we have considered the self with its intricate weaving of values and needs, structure and function, elements known-to-self and unknown-to-self as the source of our attitudes ranging from acceptance to refusal of God's design. Now let us turn to examine more closely the process and result of our decision-making, so '~Ibid., p. 66. From Tablet to Heart / 503 as to better understand the interactions of nature and grace within us. To do this, we shall look at attitudinal decisions from three aspects: spiritual philosophical and psychological. B. The Spiritual Dimension of Our Attitudinal Decision We can consider the spiritual dimension of decisions and attitudes since, in a holistic and purposive view of the self, over and above the fact that our capacities are God-given in themselves, we can and ought to reach out for transcendent goods. Thus our decisions may be considered spiritual on the basis of their object, i.e., what is being chosen, and on their mode, i.e., how the "what" is being chosen, under the influence of what--grace or inconsistent human needs. God calls, and awaits our human decision. He offers us his grace that makes possible but not obligatory our decision to respond to a transcendent good. Thus our decision may be the meeting ground between nature and grace--an encounter between two liberties. But, as we have already seen, this liberty to ,respond may be conditioned by various factors, notwithstanding our good will and sincere desire to serve God. This is our subjective holiness, the extent to which we actually do respond to grace in spite of our human limits and weaknesses. However, we also have to consider objective holiness--the extent to which we could respond to God if our liberty was less impaired, i.e., if there were less unknown inconsistencies with which we had to struggle.~3 We are responsible within the bounds of subjective holiness because there we know the weaknesses against wfiich we must consciously struggle. Obviously, we are not responsible for what we do not know--our hidden faults and failings--but we are responsible to do what is in our power to become aware of them. This is what the saints tried to do constantly--to become aware of what was formerly hidden from them through reflection, prayer, examen, and so forth. And because they were not defensive, they usually succeeded. Cabrini writes: We shouldn't be surprised at our defects, for such marveling comes from pride, but let us humble ourselves and reflect that they are like windows where the light enters so we can know ourselves better. Only humility is called the beginning of all perfection; why shouldn't our defects help to know ourselves better and become more humble? (Pensieri e PropositL p. 166-167.) Discernment When we consider the object and mode of our choices, we are reminded of St. Ignatius' rules for the discernment of spirits: whether the soul is choosing a real or an apparent good; whether this soul is being drawn by grace or by "evil spirits." How can we discern between these two goods, since nothing is chosen except under the aspect of good? Or, as Lonergan would have it, how can we discern whether we are being drawn by the goods of the "ego-centered self" or the "ego-transcending self"?. It is beyond the scope of this work to comment in detail on the ~-~Luigi M. Rulla, S.J., Joyce Ridick, S.S.C., Franco Imoda, S.J., Entering and Leaving Vocation (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1976), pp. 212-214. 504 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 parallels between Ignatian discernment and modern vocational depth-psychology: the reader is referred to the numerous articles that have appeared recently in this vein)4 Suffice it to say that the real goods of the kingdom are consistent with the revealed objective truths of the gospel and of Church teaching: that they are concerned with discovering and living God's will regardless of the cost, and not our plan for ourselves; and that such goods leave intact or intensify our intimacy with Christ, our acceptance of and living out of his word, even when that entails great sacrifice and hardship. In some cases it is fairly easy to discern the real from the apparent good: at other times we know what God wants even though we feel humanly repulsed by it. Many times, however, the case is not so clear; we can be convinced that God wants something when in reality it is our own inconsistent tendencies that want it. Sometimes we later see and understand our error: sometimes we never discover that truth. St. Ignatius tells us to look for "consolation without cause" following the choice of the real good--and desolation when this is not so. Unfortunately, our emotional weighing of a good to be chosen can be confused by unconscious inconsistencies rendering our emotions unreliable guides. Consolation and desolation do not necessarily identify with pleasure and pain., only when affeetivity is ordered can it in turn become the clue to the direction in which one should go within the myriad good options that surround one's life (Italics mine).~5 Grace or Gratification? We have considered "decision for what?" The issue of "how, under what influence?" is equally important. How do we discern if grace or gratification is what moves us? Certainly, grace moves us in the direction of the real good: our conversion to the will of God and the imitation of Christ. Grace enables us to go beyond our natural desires for natural goods and to take root in a transcendent love of Jesus Christ. Not only does grace make conversion possible (Lonergan's operative grace) but enables us to cooperate with it so as to effect the gradual movement towards a full and complete transformation of the whole of one's living and feeling¯ one's thoughts, words, deeds and omissions.~ But how can we tell if it is really grace at work, or our own needs? There are no litmus tests for the Spirit, no computer analysis which can pin him down. But holy men and women from the dawn of the Christian era have used their spiritual ~'~Luigi M. Rulla, S.J., "The Discernment of Spirits and Christian Anthropology," Gregorianum (Vol. 59, 3: 78), pp. 537-569. Laurence Murphy¯ S.J., "Psychological Problems ~f Christian Choice." The Way, 1~75, pp. 25-28. ¯'Psychological Development," Supplement to 7he Way, n.38 (Summer. 1980), pp. 30-40. Louis Gendron¯ S.J., "The Exercises and Vocational Therapy," Supplement to The Way, n.38 (Summer, 1980), pp. 53-67. ~Michael Buckley¯ S.J., "Rules for the Discernment of Spirits," Supplement to The Way, no.20 (1973), pp. 29-35. ~rBernard J. Lonergan¯ S.J.¯ Method in Theology. 2nd ed. (NY: Herder and Herder. 1973), p. 241. From Tablet to Heart / 505 intuition, the fruits of disponibility to grace, to discern. Rahner, using the most simple and commonplace of means, discerns that only grace can be at work in the following instances: Have we ever kept quiet, even though we wanted to defend ourselves when we had been unfairly treated? Have we ever forgiven someone even though we got no thanks for it and our silent forgiveness was taken for granted? Have we ever obeyed, not because we had to and because otherwise things would have become unpleasant for us, but simply on account of that mysterious, silent incomprehensible being we call God and will?. Have we ever tried to love God when we are no longer being borne on the crest of the wave of enthusiastic feeling, when it is no longer possible to mistake our self. and its vital urges, for God?. Have we ever been good to someone who did not show the slightest sign of gratitude or comprehension and when we also were not rewarded by the feeling of having been "selfless," decent, etc.?~7 It is interesting from a psychological point of view how clearly Rahner sees that an inordinate need for self-esteem can be an obstacle to our growth in grace and holiness: when it is more important for our self-esteem to be boosted up by others' good opinion of us, our own positive evaluation of ourselves, uplifting emotional experiences, and so forth; when it is more important for us to feel good about serving God than simply to serve God for his own sake. Self-esteem is essential; abasement (a helpless sense of inferiority) is a deterrent to growth in holiness. But our self-esteem should be secure enough to withstand at times the lack of external supports and proofs of how good we are. Rahner, in commenting on the latter occasions, goes on to say: If we find such experiences, then we have experienced the spirit., when we let ourselves go in this experience of the spirit, when the tangible and assignable, the relishable element disap-pears, when everything takes on the taste of death and destruction, or when everything disappears as if in an inexpressible white, colorless and intangible beatitude--then in actual fact it is not merely the spirit but the Holy Spirit who is at work in us. Then is the hour of grace . The chalice of the Holy Spirit is identical in this life with the chalice of Christ. This chalice is drunk only by tho~ who have slowly learned in little ways to taste the fullness in emptiness, the ascent in the fall, life in death, the finding in renunciation. Anyone who learns this, experiences the spirit--the pure spirit--and in this experience he is also given the experience of the Holy Spirit of grace.~ Thus we see that evaluating our attitudinal decisions in the light of the spirit has to focus on the object of our choice (real, ego-transcending goods; apparent, ego-centered goods or the whole spectrum inbetween) and on the mode of our choosing (under the influence of grace or of gratification). Our constitutions are a real good, calling for that transcendence which leads to greater assimilation of Christ and consistent living of the gospel. "It is now no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Ga 2:20). Such a transformation can only be possible with the aid of grace, but grace is "God;s action on the psychic structure of man,''~9 and those same psychic structures can also render grace ineffective. ~TKarl Rahner. S.J., "Reflections on the Experience of Grace" in Theological Investigations. Vol. Ill (NY: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 87. ~Slbid. p. 88. ~gRulla, 1971, pp. 167-8. 501~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 C. The Philosophical Dimension of Our Attitudinal Decisions The intellect, memory and will have traditionally been the principal faculties of man which have concerned the great philosophical theorists of the past. Modern thinkers have elaborated on the traditional criteria and begun to determine other intervening variables which must also be considered. Their contributions can be enlightening in our search for greater understanding of our attitudinal decisions. Lonergan20 analyzes the conscious operations of man to see how conscious decisions are reached, as summarized in this chart: Level of Faculty Operation Product Consciousness Senses Registration of empirical sense data Perception Empirical cs. Intellect Understanding (inquiry) Hypothesis Intelligent cs. Judgment (critical reflection) Validated insight Rational cs. Will Will: willing; willingness Decision Responsible cs. Decisions are built upon all the preceding conscious operations. Our intellect not only takes what has been perceived (level of experience) to inquire ("What is it?") and reach a hypothesis ("! think it's X!'), but also judges ("Was that fight?") to validate the original insight ("No, it was a Y!'). Only then do we, according to Lonergan, reach the level of responsibility where we can make a decision (therefore, I'll . . .). In reality, for example, a feeling of unrest (sense data) gets tentatively tagged ("Maybe I'm angry"), then validated ("As a matter of fact, I'm furious!'), before reaching a decision ("1'11 try to get hold of this, see what's causing it and not just attack the first person in sight!'). "An admirable decision!" we might say, but it is not one that occurs automatically. Lonergan's four steps are clear, but they do not explain why the resulting decisions could be so different from person to person. We can fail to come to a correct hypothesis of the same sense data ("They're all against me!"), fail to validate it properly ("As a matter of fact, they're figuring out how to get rid of me!"), and so come tb a completely different decision ("1"11 get even--I'll outsmart them all!'). In this example, it is obvious that emotion acted as intervening factor to distort the appropriateness of our final decision even if the four operations remained the same. To help us resolve this dilemma, Lonergan distinguishes at the level of respon-sibility between will, i.e., the bare capacity to make a decision, exercised or not; willing, i.e., the act of deciding; and willingness, i.e., a readiness to decide that does not need persuasion to bring it about.2~ Obviously, there are some objective goods -'°Lonergan, Method. pp. 6-16. __, Insight: A Study of Human Understandingo(I,ondon: I_ongmans Green, 1958), pp. 271- 278; 608-616. Ibid., pp. 622-23. From Tablet to Heart / 507 that we might be more reluctant to choose than others. This reluctance of ours is our lack of '~antecedent willingness." The whole issue of freedom is concerned here--not just essential freedom which is innately given to our nature, but even more important for our discussion, our effective freedom, i.e., "the broad or narrow., operation range" which this essential freedom can exercise.22 But, according to Lonergan, one of the requirements for effective freedom is precisely that antecedent willingness of which we have been speaking. Furthermore, Loner-gan sees grace as directly affecting this antecedent willingness,23 the grace of sincere effort even without guarantees of successful outcome. Finally, antecedent willing-ness is directly affected in conversion: To religious conversion. I would ascribe as a minimum two notes: First. it is a change in one's antecedent willingness: one becomes antecedently willing to do the good that previously one was unwilling to do . 24 And yet how do we become antecedently willing to do the good? What is there that prevents our passage into that state of mind and heart? What more must be considered? Rulla makes some useful comments when he considers the interrelationship of personal dispositions, affective and effective, on Lonergan's four conscious opera-tions. As in the previous!y quoted example, emotions originating from needs may influence our perception of X, our first hypothesis concerning X, and our judg-ment concerning our first impression. Emotions and human needs can befuddle us enough when they are conscious; the situation is even more serious when our needs and the subsequent emotions are unconscious and, therefore, even more influential on how we judge a situation. Hence, affective dispositions, whether conscious or unconscious, influence effective dispositions (and especially antecedent willingness) that lead to decision-making. With antecedent willingness thus limited, our effec-tive freedom is also limited, with the result that our emotions resulting from our needs (especially when unconscious) can form the single most effective barrier to God's gift of conversion. Our resistance to cooperative grace can render the gift ineffective. D. The Psychological Dimension of Our Attitudinal Decisions We have looked at the process of decision-making from the point of view of grace on the one hand, and our will on the other. What remains is to see in what way psychology can complement and round out what we have already seen. Magda Arnoldz5 has devoted her life to a phenomenological analysis of emo- "-'-Ibid., p. 619. 23Bernard J. Lonergan. S.J. Foundations of Theology: McShane. ed. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan¯ 1971), p. 226. ~'~Lonergan, Method, p. 241. ~Magda Arnold¯ Feelings and F~notions (NY: Academic Press, 1970). ¯ Emotion and Personality. II Vol. (NY: Columbia, 1960). 501~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 tion, especially in its influence on choice, will, and action. Her work is both scientifically sound, value-oriented, and appreciative of our transcendent dimen-sion. Arnold maintains that all choice--even of the most transcendent goods-- usually involves an emotional component which normally is derived from a basic human need on the psycho-biological and/or psycho-social level. Actually, truly human decision-making is a secondary possibility that follows from a more primi-tive instinctual movement. In this earlier phase, something is perceived, and immediately appraised, in a spontaneous, involuntary manner, as "good or bad for me here and now," i.e., as appealing to a basic instinct or need. Usually a spon-taneous emotion of attraction or withdrawal is the result. Emotional Wanting Three additional factors enter into this intuitive appraisal or emotional warn-ing. The first is the physiological reaction which accompanies normal emotion, e.g., changes in cardiac and/or respiratory functions, changes in hormone and enzyme secretions, tensing/relaxing of voluntary and involuntary muscles (from which the whole gamut of psycho-physiological disease can emerge). Often, if we are insensitive to our emotional states, our bodily changes may be the first indica-tions we will have--although we may remain in the dark as to the source of our physical discomfort. The second element in intuitive appraisal has already been indirectly noted, i.e., that we may be unaware of the emotional reaction which is taking place. Two components may become involved here, either the object of the emotion (e.g., at whom I am angry) or the experience of the emotion itself (e.g., the fact that I am angry). In either case, my defenses have arisen so that part of what I am subjec-tively experiencing becomes lost to my awareness even though it continues to influence me. The further pity is that I can no longer do anything about it and will remain enslaved to an unknown factor. In this case, I can no longer exercise my capacity for conscious choice (e.g., what ! am going to do about my anger). The reason behind my lack of awareness (partial or total) of my emotional state may involve the third factor, "affective memory." Memory involves not only the who, what, when. and how of the past (modality-specific memory), but also the specific feelings which that event or person aroused in me, e.g., fear, attraction, hatred, inferiority (affective memory). It is quite possible for the modality-specific dimension to drop from awareness behind the defensive barricade while the affec-tive dimension is being aroused time and time again--explaining why, for exam-ple, I continually have the same angry reaction towards authority figures, since my affective memory is being stirred up in each case. Hence, this emotion-laden deposit may be a hidden factor which predetermines me towards/away from a particular decision/course of action. The connection between Arnold's affective memory and Lonergan's antecedent willingness should be apparent. Furthermore, when mention was made in the previous section of the affective dispositions which influence Lonergan's conscious operations, it was precisely this issue of emotional wanting and affective memory that was meant. From Tablet to Heart / 509 Rational Wanting Are we, then, to remain a slave to our emotional vagaries and to the needs from which they spring? No, for Arnold has determined that a second phase of the decisional process may follow the first. 1 say "may" because I can stop at the level of emotional wanting ("l want it/l don't want it") and mislake that for a real decision. Certainly, animals and small children have no further possibilities, but as we chronologically mature, our capacity for reflective appraisal or rational want-ing should mature also. Here, what is appraised and judged is the emotional reaction and its accompanying tendency: "OK, I feel that way! now what am 1 going to do about it?" Here, the possibility for a real decision, not just an emo-tional reaction, occurs. The emotion and its source is consciously and calmly accepted, but we remain in control to decide whether or not to follow the emo-tional tendency. Here we move beyond our spontaneous reactions to the possibil-ity of free choice: if human needs from our actual-self were the source of the initial emotional movement, we can contrast and weigh them against the values, ideals, and commitments of our ideal-self Here, Lonergan's true level of responsibility has been reached, because we can truly take hold of the movement of our lives and give it responsible shape. Either form of decisions can prevail in a given life, either the pseudo-decisions of emotional wanting, or the true decisions of reflective judgment and rational wanting. In the first case we have the child, the immature adult--the man of James' epistle who looks at himself "and then, after a quick look, goes off and immediately forgets." In the second case, we have the man who looks steadily at the perfect law of freedom and makes that his habit--not listening and then forgetting, but actively putting it into practice (Jm 1:25). This is a portrait of a consistent individual who knows and integrates both needs and values in an increasingly mature and transcendent life-style. Not only must we respond appropriately to our human affectivity, but we must also be open to feel increasingly attracted to transcendent goods as well--intimacy with Jesus and the desire to imitate him, which is the hallmark of the emotional integration and affective maturity of the saints. The understanding., is moved by affection [which] is love's hand. and this hand fills the memory with thoughts of me and of the blessings 1 have given . IT]he soul cannot live without love. She always wants to love something, because love is the stuff she is made of ICatherine of Siena, The Dialogue. 51). What Function Does This Value Have in My Life? Obviously we form habits of reaction or decision-making in both emotional wanting and rational wanting. Pervasive attitudes are being established which form a matrix of"readiness to respond" in the direction of our needs/emotions or of our values and their attractiveness. Hence the phrase "attitudinal decisions," since each decision that we make is based" on the foundation of our previous attitudes, emotional wantings and rational wantings, known and unknown. 5"10 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 Let us focus more closely on this all-important attitudinal factor. We have myriads of attitudes--beliefs about this or that person, the community, the super-ior, the ministry in which I am engaged, the responsibility which 1 might be asked to assume. The basic components which underlie this multitude are more limited since our attitude towards any particular object is shaped largely by our needs or by our values; hence we may speak of emotional attitudes or rational attitudes (with the obvious admixtures). Like emotions, we may be aware or unaware of a particular attitude--or at least of the source behind it. Katz26 has determined that not only is the content of an attitude important (e.g., "working for social justice is the only worthwhile apostolate for me"), but important also is why that attitude is held, i.e., the function, known or unknown, which it plays in my life. Hence Katz demonstrates that attitudes (and values as well) may fulfill, among others, the following functions: an ego-d~fensive.function: I need to work with the poor and down-trodden to lift up my own sense of inferiority and feel good about myself. a utilitarian.function: Social justice is the stated concern of our hierarchy, and identifying with that will help me get a particular appointment I desire. Obviously, few of us can be that direct and honest about our motivations (although, with help, we could come to conclusions concerning our real intentions, and then be in a position to do something about it). Sadly enough, research27 shows that the more needy and conflictual we are a) the more we will act according to one of these aforementioned functions, and b) the more we will unconsciously protect ourselves from that knowledge, leading to a vicious circle which is not easily broken. Finally, we may espouse an attitude because of its value-expressive function: in spite of the discomforts and difficulties involved, ! think Jesus Christ is calling me to work directly with the poor without self-seeking or self-righteousness. Obviously even when struggling to maintain "a pure intention," motives get mixed, The difficulty lies in the situation where we are unaware of the mixture and, therefore, unable to choose otherwise; where we are so convinced that only the value-expressive function moves us that we never honestly look at other possibilities. A Deeper Look Into Compliance, Identification, Internalization To tie up this discussion of attitudes with our earlier considerations of the self from which these attitudes proceed, we must remember that in a structured self these tendencies towards the predominance of emotional over rational wanting (or vice versa) or towards the prevalence of ego-defensive or utilitarian functions of attitudes/values all form stable structures, enduring inner patterns which lead to -'nDaniel Katz. "The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes" in Readings in Attitude Theory and Measurement. Fishbein. ed. (NY: Wiley, 1967), pp. 457-468. aTRulla, Ridick and Imoda. 1976, pp. 77-80. From Tablet to Heart / 511 persistent behaviors that may or may not enhance the vowed following of Christ. Another psychic structure to which we have previously referred was the tendency to adapt new attitudes]values through compliance, identification or internaliza-tion. 2s It would seem advantageous to examine these tendencies more deeply. Kelman theoretically distinguishes them as follows: compliance is the predom-inant mode when we adopt a new attitude]value leading consciously or uncon-sciously to a particular behavior in order to gain a reward or avoid punishment, i.e., a satisfying or disappointing social effect on a significant other or others. We do not behave in that way or proclaim that value unless others are there to witness it. We do not believe in the content of the value or behavior for its own sake. In identification, we do believe in the value/behavior, but only because it is relevant in the context of a satisfying relationship to a person or a group. I identify with my friend Fr. X who believes in]does Y: or, 1 am happy to be a member of Group A which believes in and practices B. "Being a friend of," or "belonging to" is my chief source of satisfaction and self-esteem, not the belief or practice in itself. When X is no longer my friend, or no longer cares about Y: when my role as member of A is no longer attractive, or when A tells me that B ispassb, then 1 have no reason to continue believing in and living that value, and it will quietly be extinguished from my life. Finally, in internalization, we accept and live the value for its own sake, apart from punishment or reward, apart from roles or relationship. We believe in it and manifest it, whether it is popular or unpopular, "welcome or unwelcome" (2 Tm 4:1). I will serve God with all the faithfulness of which I am capable--not for the reward promised nor for the sake of the threats against those who are unfaithful--but for the pure love of him (Frances Cabrini, Pensieri e Propositi, p. 170). How clearly Cabrini rejected any lesser motivation than internalization, acting only for the pure love of God! We are called to do the same. In Katz's terms, the attitude/value is lived in a value-expressive way, and not in a utilitarian or ego-defensive fashion, as would be the case for compliance and identification. Rulta has made some important distinctions and additions to Kelman's theo-retical foundation. First of all, identification is really an ambivalent force, since it may lead us in time to an appreciation of the value in itself, apart from the relationship or role. Most of us began religious life identifying with the group or a particular person: only in time can it be seen if our initial identification leads forward to internalization of values, or remains bound up in non-internalizing identification. Secondly, external social influences are not the only factors at work in these three processes. There are also internal personal factors, especially those hidden in our latent selves, which dispose us to react to the environment in certain structured ways. Thirdly, true internalization for Rulla is not just a matter of any -'SHerbert Kelman. "Processes of Opinion Change," Public Opinion Quarterly (.Vol. 25, 1961). pp. 57-78. 512 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 value, no matter how fervently espoused, but of values which are objective and true. To achieve this, therefore, there must be a double consistency, my actual-self with my ideal-self, and my personal values with the objective values of Christ and the Church. In other words, 1 must have come sufficiently to know and accept my real self, so that I can then be attracted to, and be converted in reality to the values of Christ. Thus does affective maturity in Christ become possible: "knowing and accepting one's objective and free self-ideal and living it."~9 So far, we have proposed a number of problems and pitfalls that can occur when subjective attitudinal decisions meet the objective truth of our new constitu-tions. What can be done about this? In what direction must our attitudes change to effect the true internalization that we all seek? As it can be suspected, whatever tentative answers do exist are neither altogether new, nor will they provide an easy panacea. However. in the second part of this article 1 will try to provide a frame-work that may be useful in clarifying such a task. -"~Rulla, 1971, p. 182. The" Activ e-Co nte m pl a tiv e' Problem in Religious Life by David M. Knight Price: $.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Poverty and Incarnation John J. O'Donnell, S.J. Father O'Donnell is a Lecturer in Christian Doctrine at Heythrop College: 11-13 Cavendish Square: London WIM 0AN. A Jesuit friend once confessed that he could honestly say that he wanted to be chaste and obedient, but he could not honestly desire to be poor. This attitude probably reflects the attitude of many Christians. After the Second Vatican Coun-cil with its affirmation of secular values and its admission that building this world contributes to the growth of God's kingdom, many Christians desired to turn away from an other-worldly spirituality, symbolized dramatically by external practices of asceticism and poverty. Interestingly enough, however, even the few intervening years since Vatican II have revealed that the gospel does not allow such an easy settlement with the issue of poverty. From the opening descriptions of Jesus' humble origins in a tiny, utterly insignificant corner of the Roman empire, to his final moments on the cross, abandoned by his people, his disciples and even the God whom he called Abba, Jesus is indeed poor. No doubt some elements of the gospel story, such as the stable at Bethlehem, have been sentimentalized. But even a non-believer such as Ernst Bloch acknowledges that we cannot demythologize the poverty of the historical Jesus. He writes, "The stable, the carpenter's son, the fanatic among the humble people, the.gallows at the end, all this is the stuff of history, not the gold of fable." Furthermore, if the life of Jesus manifests such a restlessness for the kingdom that he is the man who has nowhere to lay his head, his preaching as well points to the poor man as the one who is in the right situation to grasp the message of God's kingdom. At the heart of the New Testament is the beatitude whose original form according to Scripture scholars is closer to the Lucan version: "Blessed are you poor." It is the literal poor who are in a position to grasp what Jesus is about. The 513 5"1~1 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 woes of Jesus upon the rich are full of pathos. Tragically the wealthy are in the wrong life-situation to grasp the good news of Jesus. The only hope for such people is to sell all that they have and give it to the poor. As St. Luke puts it, "Sell your possessions and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Lk 12:33-34). In pointing to the heart, St. Luke touches upon the ultimate danger of riches. The man who piles up material things becomes a slave to the mentality of having so that he is no longer free to be himself. He so identifies himself with what he has that he is no longer free to be open to receive God's gift. God can only give his kingdom to the man who is poor enough to want to receive. Therefore, St. Luke's attitude to material things is to get rid of them as encumbrances to that openness necessary for accepting the good news. The gospel attitude to poverty operates on two levels. There is no escaping the fact that Jesus recommends real poverty but real poverty is for the sake of spiritual poverty. The latter is the ultimate goal but we deceive ourselves if we think we can achieve the one without the other. Bonhoeffer, in meditating upon the story of the rich young man in the gospels, suggests the kind of rationalization which we are all prone to make: "Jesus may have said: 'Sell thy goods', but he meant 'Do not let it be a matter of consequence to you that you have outward prosperity: rather keep your goods quietly, having them as if you had them not. Let not your heart be in your goods.'" Bonhoeffer rightly comments that such rationalizations prevent us from submitting to that single-mip, ded obedience to the word of the Lord which he demands. If Jesus demands both real and spiritual poverty from his followers, he has himself first embodied both these dimensions of poverty in his own life. The actual poverty of the man who began life in the stable and ended it on the gallows points to the spiritual poverty of the man for others, the one who loses his life to find it, who loves his own to the end. The actual poverty of Jesus thus points to the deeper poverty of his entire being. As Son of the Father he has nothing of his own. It is literally his nature to receive his entire being from his heavenly Father. And all that he receives he passes on in turn to his disciples. "All that 1 have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15:15). The deepest poverty of Jesus then is the poverty which he has at the heart of the Trinity, a poverty which reveals itself in the incarnation. Grasping and possess-ing are so alien to his being that even his equality with God is not something to be clung to. Rather, as Paul says, Jesus emptied himself taking the form of a servant. He divests himself even of the form of his divinity. Paul sees that there is a logic which binds incarnation and poverty together. For what the incarnation means is precisely this: "He who was rich, for our sake became poor" (2 Co 8:9). And as the apostle further perceived, the sharing of our humanity contains already within it the risk of our rejection and the shadow of the cross. What then does this poverty of Christ mean for us, men and women of the Poverty and Incarnation / 515 twentieth century, who desire to be his disciples? Fundamentally it would seem that we are required, as Paul says, to put on the mind of Christ. The heart of his mentality is, as the incarnation attests, the self-emptying love of the servant of others. Matthew no doubt grasped this .point accurately when he modified the first beatitude to read: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." But poverty of spirit without actual poverty would be a rationalization and compromise of the gospel. For there is no way around the stumbling block that the God of Jesus is a God who is a partisan of the poor, the defender of the widow and the orphan, the champion of the oppressed, the seeker of the lost. God has identified himself with the outcast and those on the margins of respectability. The irrevocable event of this identification is the cross of the Jesus who died con-demned as a blasphemer and a rebel. In this event it becomes transparently clear that power-seeking is utterly alien to the being of God. This is the stumbling block which shatters the illusion that we can create an identity by grasping and self-assertion. The gospel proclaims that the weakness of God is stronger than men. If a man is truly grasped by this gospel, he cannot do otherwise than divest himself of possessions, not because he despises material things but because he is as restless as Jesus for the kingdom. And knowing who God is he wants to identify himself where God has identified himself, with the poor and the oppressed. It is not just a question of helping others. It is a question of identification. The man who believes the gospel of Jesus about the kingdom, who believes the gospel about the cross literally finds God hidden under His contrary in the ongoing suffering of the world. And here is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the contemporary disciple. There was a time when the gospel could be preached and understood in more individualistic categories. The neighbor with whom Christ identified was the man next door, the poor and needy of the village, other members of my family. But today it is impossible to identify with my neighbor unless I think in global terms. Our planet has become so small and the network of relationships so intertwined that one inevitably bears a responsibility for the suffering of men and women everywhere in the world. In 1980 the Brandt commission reported such statistics as the following: the northern hemisphere including Eastern Europe has a quarter of the world's population and four-fifths of its income: the southern hemisphere including China has three billion people, three quarters of the world's population but living on one-fifth of the world's income. Eight hundred million people are estimated to be destitute in the Third World today. It is estimated that hundreds of millions die from lack of food or will have their physical development impaired. The consumption of energy per head in industrialized countries compared to middle-income or low-income countries is in proportion of 100:10:1. Total military expenditures are approaching $450 billion a year, of which over half is spent by the Soviet Union and the United States, while annual spending on official develop-ment aid is only $20 billion. One could argue that such statistics reveal an injustice of tragic proportions according to the norms of any humanistic ethics. But for a Christian it is more 516 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 than a question of justice. It is the logic of God's love which impels him. If God's being is self-emptying love, if his preferential love is for the poor and powerless, then the disciple who accepts this transvaluation of all ~?alues cannot help but be in deep pain as he is assaulted by the suffering cries of the millions of the poor of the earth. He cannot help but want to identify with them and their plight, for he sees God's face in them. The more deeply one penetrates the mystery of the God of Christian faith, the more one sees the intrinsic connection of the incarnation and the cross. For incarnation is God's identification with creatureliness, finitude, powerlessness. And the ultimate consequence of this identification is the powerlessness of God in the cross of Jesus. To accept Jesus and his Father implies our taking this same powerlessness upon ourselves and our identification with the powerless of the earth. Paradoxically the more one loves this world, the more one is led in love to divest oneself of this world's goods in order to identify more completely with the dispossessed. In our own time it would seem that an authentic Christian spiritual-ity will call not for less poverty but for more. Meditating upon the massive proportions of human suffering, we cannot help but feel compelled to pray not only for the spiritual poverty of self-emptying love but for the grace to identify with the fate of the actually poor as well. The Contemporary Spirituality Of the Monastic Lectio .by Matthias Neurnan, O.S.B. Price: $.50 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Room 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Parables and Paradigms: Jesus' Journey and the Search for God Anthony Wieczorek, O.Praem. Brother Wieczorek, a seminarian, has taught courses on prayer and mysticism in the Continuing Education Department at Cardinal Stritch College (Milwaukee) and the Ministry and Life Center at his abbey: he lectures at St. Norbert College (De Pete). He resides in St. Norbert Abbey: De Pere. WI 54115. Scripture is the saga of a long and mutual search. God encourages and empow-ers all people to "seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for 'in him we live and move and have our being.'" (Ac 18:27-28: all Scripture verses are from the RSV). At the same time as we search for God, he searches for us. So much the searcher is God, so great is his longing for us, that "though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped, rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Ph 2:6). God gives us an example of how to find him and be found by him in the life of the God-man, Jesus. Nowhere is the search in all its varied hues of meaning, or the spiritual life in all its mysterious rhythms, more clearly seen than in the life of Jesus, the Proto- Searcher. The life of Jesus is itself a parable and paradigm which describes the ebb and flow of the search for God in true fullness and balance. Some insight into the movements of the spiritual life can be gleaned from the following section of Mark's gospel. In those days Jesu~ came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when hc came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opencd and the Spirit dcsccnding upon him like a dove: and a voice came from heaven: "'You are my beloved son: with you I am well pleased." The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days. tempted by Satan: and he was with the wild beasts: and the angels ministered to him. 517 5"11~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee. preaching the gospel of God. and saying: "'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the gospel." That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons: and he would not allow the demons to speak, because they knew him. And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to ~ lonely place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him pursued him, and they found him and said to him: ~'E\'ery one is searching for you." And he said to them: "l,et us go on to the next town. that I may preach there also: for that is why I came out"(Mk 1:9-15, 32-38). At least three movements with regard to the spiritual life are visible from this text: the journey of the Father to the Son (Jesus' baptism): the journey of the Son to the Father (Jesus" flight into the wilderness): and the journey of the Father with the Son (Jesus' return to Galilee). The Journey of the Father to the Son In Jesus' baptism the Father reached out to touch his Son. It is always God who initiates the search. Our search is a response to a search on the part of God. We seek and find because we have first been sought and found. What drew Jesus on to the Jordan'? May it not be the same as what draws us on to search for God? For a few, the spiritual life begins with an overwhelming experience of God's presence, an experience powerful enough to sustain them for years of diligent and serious searching. St. Paul's experience of the Risen Christ may be one such example. Many of us, though, are like Augustine. We search out of a want, a need, a hunger for something we do not possess or perhaps even know. God oftentimes initiates the spiritual life with a gift of hunger and longing, with emptiness rather than fullness. We are led on by the reality of our own emptiness. We may not know what we want but we know what we don't have. God some-times initiates the search with an itch. There is a wisdom in this that is often overlooked. The emptiness in which we find ourselves contributes to a condition of desperateness. No one is more ripe or willing to attempt an unheard-of cure or course of action than one who is truly desperate. Only one who has been readied by emptiness, hunger, and longing can respond to the impossible call of following God. Sometimes that hunger can build for years. Or, it may suddenly poke into consciousness even in lives which, in the eyes of the world, should be quite content and satisfied. For example, more and more people feel drawn to religious life during their middle-years, or at least at an age later than had been the norm. Whether their decision to pursue a religious life was a sudden thing or the result of many years of discernment, their choice to abandon one way of life and follow another is a response to a summons that is as persistent as it is intangible. Perhaps it is no accident that Jesus was well into adulthood when he was Parables and Paradigms / 5"19 .baptized. Maybe Jesus had tried to put off his call? Maybe Jesus was drawn to the Jordan by a hunger he had always had but which the Scribes and Pharisees could not satisfy? Jesus' baptism was itself the result of a search: it was the culmination of a decision to believe. Jesus' baptism was a surrender to the Father which involved the acceptance of a call and the attempt at a response. Therefore, Jesus' baptism was the beginning of another search to understand what the Father wanted of him. For Jesus, as for us, the completion of one search--the decision to believe--led to the commencement of another: what form of response is our belief to take? The Journey of the Son into the Father How strongly it is put in Mark's gospel, "The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness." Yet, it is not hard to imagine being so overwhelmed by an experience. There have been times in each of our lives when we felt swept away by the devotion of a friend, by an act of love, by a singular twist of fate. Overwhelm-ing experiences often leave us puzzled or speechless as well as joyous and grateful. Afterwards, we feel the need to wander off for a bit, to be alone to consider what really happened and ponder the reasons and implications for our lives. Jesus was overwhelmed at his baptism. The Spirit that drove him into the wilderness was bestowed through the power of God's presence, a presence that possessed him and forced him to try to understand more fully what had happened. The flight of Jesus into the desert can be seen as his search to understand the experience of his baptism. Our response to any situation is mediated by our understanding of what took place. To understand something, though, is not primarily to know about it objec-tively. To understand means to enter into another reality. Understanding does not refer to the ability to master the secret of some mystery. Rather, to truly under-stand someone or something, it is necessary to surrender oneself to it. to pass into it, to participate in it from the inside. When Jesus went into the wilderness he sought the time and space to under-stand the reality of what had happened at the Jordan, to enter into it, to submit himself to it. By leaving his former life behind and going out into the wilderness, Jesus was saying "yes" (2 Co I: 19) to the possibility of entering into a new life. His quest for understanding involved his submission to faith, his entrance into faith, and his participation in the presence and activity .of the Father. The understanding Jesus attained was the understandiffg available only to those who know through loving. Through the bond of love people can know not only what others are thinking but also what is in their hearts. It is by loving that we enter into the life of another, that we can acquire "inside" understanding. Such understanding cannot be earned or purchased: it is the free gift of one person's self-revelation to another. The knowing that comes from loving comes from open-ing up and sharing the heart of another. At Jesus' baptism, the Father opened up his heart to the Son. Jesus' wilderness journey was a searching through the Father's heart. Such a journey can only be made if the giving and revealing are mutual. Therefore, Jesus had to open his heart to the Father. However, by doing 520 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 so he opened it to himself as well. We cannot know God and participate in his life if we remain strangers to ourselves. Understanding comes by loving, and loving is a mutual and freely given gift. If we want to know God and search through his heart we must be willing for the same thing to be done to us. But God will not enter where he is not welcomed. We must guide God through our own hearts, even though they are foreign and frightening. In making a commitment to know God, we make a commitment to know ourselves. The search for God will bring us face to face with reality, with the truth about ourselves. When he shows us himself, God also discloses the truth about ourselves. We cannot hide from one without hiding from the other. We cannot know the one without knowing the other. The wild beasts among whom Jesus lived (Mk 1:13) were not all external creatures. Jesus would have also lived with all the urgings and desires of himself. Luke's gospel brings out some of this in his temptation account (4: I- 13). Jesus had to accept even the beasts within him and we are called to do the same. To spend time alone with God means spending time alone with ourselves in the haunts and wilds of our own hearts. There can be no conversion if we do not first know the truth about ourselves, both our strengths and weaknesses. The Journey of the Father with the Son In the third movement of his spiritual life, the tide which drew Jesus into the wilderness now leads him back. It .is important to see Jesus' return to the people of Galilee not as a separate mission but as a continuation of the one search that led him into the wilderness. The spiritual life as lived by Jesus is not an individual venture, not merely a way of achieving personal self-fulfillment. It is, rather, a way of responsible involve-ment in the lives of others, a life of compassion and service. The temptation we face is to view the spiritual life as a "me and Jesus"enterprise which lifts us beyond the troubles of life. To live as Jesus lived, however, is to live in the service of the whole human family. We characterize the spiritual life as one of serene detachment, blissful tran-scendence from the everyday world. This is not Jesus" spirituality. He did not leave the wilderness to complete his search in even greater isolation. He returned to Galilee because only there could he fully live the search. Only by participating in the life of the world could he enter fully into the life of God. Jesus' search drew him into deeper participation in the love of the Father. God is not a God who remains untroubled by the plight of his people. He is not an indifferent God. Throughout the Old Testament, God continually acts within the realm of history to redeem Israel by empowering people to meet the challenges of the times. The God of Jesus is the God who raised up Moses to lead his people out of slavery. God took Moses out of the solitary life of shepherding and thrust him into the very heart of the social and political arena of his day--even though Moses claimed he Parables and Paradigms / 521 was not equal to the task. The same was true for the Judges who led the people out of the threat of military conquest. God also empowered the prophets to speak on his behalf, taking, in the case of Amos, a vine dresser and making of him a missioner who confronted the social and religious injustice of the northern kingdom. We misunderstand the spiritual life if we sit back and wait until our spiritual lives are all in order before we enter the world of human needs. God takes the weak and makes them strong (I Co 1:27). He begins our transformation in the crucible of solitude but, for most of us, completes it in the arena of apostolic involvement. It was after John had been arrested that Jesus returned to Galilee. To be sure, Jesus considered John a prophet. Did Jesus feel called to "take up the torch" carried by John'? The search of Jesus led him into the responsibility of loving, as the Father loves. The return of Jesus to Galilee was response of love, not only toward the Father, but to all those whom the Father loved. Notice that Jesus came to Galilee, to the home of the outcast and oppressed, to empower the little people, to assure them they had not been forgotten by the Father. Jesus preached with both word and deed. He spoke and acted out of the Father's love. He proclaimed the fullness of time, the passing of the old age, the coming of the kingdom. He taught the necessity of conversion, of turning our lives around to face God (Jr 7:24). He proclaimed a kingdom where faith replaces distrust, love replaces the equity of finance, and understanding replaces judgment. To follow in Jesus' way, we are meant to be heralds and healers, echoing the Word with the quality of our lives. The healing Jesus brought answered a need that went much deeper than bodily illness. The town that gathered about his door (Mk 1:33) sought someone to heal them of doubt; he gave them someone to believe in. They needed to be healed of confusion: he gave them understanding. They needed to be healed from prejudice: he gave them love. They needed to be healed of their aimlessness: he gave them a way to follow. He healed them and so made them ready to undertake his own search. He restored their sight that they might see the way. He gave strength to their limbs to ready them for the march. He expelled the demons which bound them in fear to an age out of which they were afraid to pass. It must have been quite a switch from the solitude of the wilderness for Jesus to have found himself surrounded by demanding people. Yet, despite that switch, Jesus' ministry was a continuation of his interior search to follow the Father. He had .journeyed far down the road of faith during that day of preaching and healing. It is no surprise that Mark describes Jesus going out to a lonely place and praying (Mk 1:35). He had come a long way in a short time: from carpenter to hermit to preacher and healer. What went on within his heart? Had Jesus left the wilderness expecting to be a local prophet like John'? Had the need of the crowd spoken to Jesus of a new sense of ministry? God acted upon Jesus no less in his ministry than in the solitude. The scene may have changed but the voice still called. But what did it say? How had the new 522 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1982 forum altered the message? One step leads to another but where does the path lead? Where does the journey end? What is the price we must pay for following a whisper? Did these questions plague Jesus as they do those who follow him? For whatever reason, Jesus sought out the wilderness to again comprehend what had happened. He needed time to pray and reflect and understand where the Spirit had taken him and where he was to go. Blazing a trail is a much different matter than simply following one. We too need to withdraw from time to time to ponder the advents of the Lord in our lives. How has he spoken? What did he say? The voice is rarely so clear as to leave us certain. God speaks through daily events, but what does he say? Moreover, the hectic pace of life can cloud our sense of vision and distort our perception of the call. Living leaves us tired and numb. So many other issues seem more pressing than our private prayer. Amid the myriad tragedies of life, the pointless suffering and rampant injustices, how can we continue to thank and praise God? Life points more to the absence of God than to his presence. All this points to the necessity of continuing the search in the solitude of our hearts. The spiritual life is a relationship and no relationship is maintenance free. We need time for prayer and reflection if our spiritual life is to continue growing. It is no secret what happens in a marriage when the lines of communication falter and break down. Yet the time for prayer and solitude with the Lord is not simply a time to be "recharged," as though the Spirit were but a battery which served as a power source for our personal ministry. Our time alone is more than a time to be recharged; it is a time to grow in relationship with God, to share with him person to person. We withdraw for solitude out of the longing of lover for beloved. Jesus' solitude was interrupted by Simon's statement: "Everyone is searching for you." This was a time of decision for Jesus. He could stay where he was and let the people flock to him. Yet, this was not enough, he could not wait for them to find him. "Let us go out into the next town, that I may preach there also: for that is why ! came out" (Mk 1:38). A moment of insight, perhaps, when Jesus understood why he had left the serenity of his solitude with the Father and undertaken to come out and serve the people? He had left the wilderness not only to be found but to seek out and find a people who had become lost and scattered. Jesus, the Searcher- God, saw his mission as a search for the very people who sought him. He would not remain in one place as though he were the end of the search--he was the Way, the proto-type of searching. Those who followed him would be led by his light and come into the truth. He would tell them the way to go and show them the way to follow. The Son would become the shepherd, leading the Father's flocks back into their own pasture