Review for Religious - Issue 35.6 (November 1976)
Issue 35.6 of the Review for Religious, 1976. ; ,,,,llllili,,,~,iililli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is edited by faculty members of St. Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copyright © 1976 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $7.00 a year; $13.00 for two years; other countries, $8.00 a year, $15.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor November 1976 Volume 35 Number 6 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to REVXEW yon RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to REvmw voa RELICIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boule-yard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, SJ.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at $4th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. Catholic Schools in a Declining Church: A Theological Reflection Donald J. Keefe, S.J. Father Keefe, on the faculty of the Department of Theological Studies; St. Louis University; St. Louis, MO 63103, has been a frequent reviewer in these pages. Presently he is on sabbatical leave and is residing in the Jesuit Community; Fordham Univer-sity; Bronx, NY 10458. Catholic Schools in a Declining Church, co-authored by Andrew Greeley, William McCready and Kathleen McCourt (Sheed and Ward, 1976) has attained a prominence in religious publication ,which is perhaps comparable to that of Hans~ Kiing's In[allible? An Inquiry. Their common success fol-lows a common formula: each purports to present a scholarly basis for a radical criticism of the institutional Church. Each is underwritten by a prominent figure in the Catholic world, Consequently, each has~a political significance which is independent of the intrinsic merits of its critique. Each has been given instant notoriety in th.e popular press and each, in its fashion, is symptomatic of what seems to be a pervasive dissatisfaction within Cath-olic academic circles regarding what are felt to be inappropriate responses of the Church to the contemporary world. Finally, each reflects a similar impatience with the "official" ecclesiology, one which understands the Church as "the sacramental sign of the Kingdom of God: KiJng's rejection of this ecclesiology, long since explicitl does not concern us here. Rather we are coficerned with the ecclesiology implicit in Catholic Schools in a De- ,clining Church, particularly insofar as this bears upon Greeley's judgment that the encyclical,.Humanae Vitae, is simply a disaster. Greeley's salient theological conclusion is that, by reason of a funda-mental failure in communication, the official Church, though, revivified by the reforms of Vatican II, has, in the publication of Humanae Vitae, entered 801 802 / Review ]or Religious,: Volume 35, 1976/6 upon a suicidal rejection of 'its own reality-in-history by rejecting the morality of artificial contraception; and this despite the fact that~ the greater part of the Catholi6 people find no impropriety in such practices. Certain normative presuppositions undergird Greeley's conclusion: .1 ) The Catholic Church is as fit a subject for sociological analysis as any other social .entity. It is quite as permeable to this kind of scrutiny'as, for example, would be the Democratic Party. 2) The actual meaning of events, as these occur in the history of the Church, is that meaning which this kind of investigation reveals. Thus, for example, an event is "disastrous" when its effects, as measured by sociolog-ical criteria, are found to be destructive. These presuppositions are merely expressions of the demand for auton-omy which every intellectual inquiry, regardless of its object, makes as a matter of course. Every science is in search of the unity of truth. The syn-thetic or conclusion-reaching aspect of any science is no more than an expression of confidence in the power of its own method to integrate into a comprehensive understanding all the scattered data which its inquiry un-covers. There.is a kind of arrogance associated with any disciplined attempt to understand, for it supposes an ability to transcend, to dominate, ultimately to comprehend its object. Such intellectual self-sufficiency at a naive level raises no particular theological difficulties. But when it is given sophisticated expression as a method O[ knowledge, it can become an ideology, one which would pretend to offer a comprehensive criterion of truth and reality that would be analogous to, and necessarily competitive with the Christian faith itself. Such methodologies in fact become ideological when they refuse to admit the existence of any truth, of any reality beyond their grasp. They become ideological when they place prior limits upon-what can be "known," upon what can be "true." Over the centuries of the Church's history, such ideological convictions have continually troubled the faith of its community. Such convictions have been woven out of the tangled threads of rabbinical Judaism, of the Medi-terranean mystery religions, of the He~llenistic philogophies which were contemporaneous with the early Church. With the dawn of the Middle Ages, the first introduction of Aristotle)~ logic prbvided a new challenge to the faith. In the late Renaissance, there was a c~omparableenthu~iasm for yet another powerful intellectual resource: "scientific method," with its ac-companying mathematics, began to be exalted as the ~nique mode of .access to certitude. By the end o~ the eighteenth century, this confidence had waned. The Romantic period then found in the humanistic study of history and in nascent sociology a new key to the human enigma. Truth is no longer to be r~garded as something "out there." Rather it is seen as the proper Catholic Schools in a Declining Church: A Reflection / 1~03 achievement of human societies in history--a history which is fundamentally in human hands, open to human analysis and exhaustive comprehension. This, too, fed the formation of ideologies. Common to all such ways of knowing iS the problem of their "conver-sion." The value ofthese works of human intelligence is enormous, in-dispensable. How can they be conformed to the Catholic faith, enter into a Catholic intellectuality? The claim that they cannot be. so conformed is still heard, both from those who too much love and from those who too much fear the new learning. For those who love too much, such a conversion would put an end to the "autonomy of science." For those who "too much fear," such a conVersion would end by relativizing the faith. Perhaps the simplest reply to such claims is to point out their futility. The objection that the "conversion" of an otherwise autonomous method of scientific inquiry would write finis to its independence rests upon an outdated notion of scientific method, the philosophical roots of which were undercut by Kant.~The intrinsic dilemmas of this method were demon-strated half a century ago by Heisenberg's0principle of indetermination. In point of fact, Descartes' dream of a universal science remains a dream, a dream tied to a time now remote. In our day, it survives only as an ideology of a peculiarly old-fashioned sort, kept alive' largely by social engineers' such as B. F. Skinner with his form of determinism. In such hands, this ideology becomes a kind of salvation, scheme by which the unpredictability, the enigmatic character of historical humanity is remedied by the elimina-tion of those human attributes which permit the emergence of historical' novelty: freedom and personal responsibility. The reduction of humanity to fungible integers thus finally makes possible a mathematically accurate calculus and control of the human. Such an ideology is really nothing more than eighteenth-century,Enlight-enment optimism, which wasn't even taken seriously by its own proponents. They wouldn't dream of submitting themselves to this~kind of salvation-scheme. Yet it is precisely in the. proliferation of ~such salvation-schemes that there comes,to be most clearly evident scientific method's need for a radication in a faith which transcends it. On the other hand, the point of view we indicated above as that which fears the relativizing of faith by any application to it of a free inquiry has its exemplars in the long line of rigofists who have always been present in the,Church. First there were the Judaizers of whom Paul complains. There was Marcion in the next century, Tertullian in the third. There have been the ever-present battalions of "hypertraditionalists," those who fear that a free future must :be open to~ sin and corruption, and would, on that account, foreclose the.History of Salvation in the name of salvation itself, 'quite as would their counterparts, the social, engineers. But their historical pessimism is the less excusable because the faith they are zealous to defend 804 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 is precisely a faith in the Lord of History whose creation is good and whose presence in. the world makes its history to be salvific. It is then as illusory for the scientist to fear the conversion of his methodology to the service of the Catholic faith as it is perverse for the committed Cathblic unduly to°fear the scientific inquiry which such a .con-version would unleash. Still, the mutuality of science and. of the Catholic faith is easier to envisage than it is to achieve. While the sunny confidence in a salvation-to- be-wrought-by-reason has waned somewhat since the age of optimism that was' ended in the blo~d,soaked fields at Verdun and. the Somme in World War ~, the practitioners of the social sciences, however mindful they ¯ be of the oft-cited perils of "Helleriization," still tend, to be less than troubled by the demonic potential of~their own saeculum, by the resistance of their own cultural commonplace--scientific method t6 conVersion. Not a little of this resistance is the fruit of the recognition by Vatican II that the world is not alienated from the concerns of the Church. Indeed, the autonomy of the secular in its own realm is there explicitly stated, bring-ing with it the enfranchisement of the scholar to do his work without con-cern for received opinions among churchme.n in regard to matters which are properly within his province. In Vatican II, historical and social re-search were liberated from all pious dishonesty. Catholic confidence in the ultimate goodness of fallen historicity required no less. " Since that time, Catholics have become accustomed, as they were not before the Council, to a view of an historical Church "with warts on." For many, perhaps for most,~ this new outlook was traumatic. Accustomed hitherto to think of the Church in terms of such attributes as militancy, witness, inerrancy, historical unity and the like, they were suddenly con-fronted by the countering of these commonplaces with other assertions of the Church's' documented cowardliness, conformism, error, division and so on. Indeed, these wer, e not seldom presented as conclusive refutations of the traditional faith in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church: More, and worse, these charges had a kind of ecclesial warrant--the "spirit of Vatican II." This spirit more and more often found expression in terms, of an active antagonism to the Catholic past. In particular, the validity of tradition and of the authority of the Church were challenged in the heretofore sacrosanct realm of sexuality. In this realm scarcely any element of the Church's faith or practice was without its learned opposition. In its opposition, argument rested not on historical research--for the.con-stancy of the moral tradition was quite clear--but upon what was con-sidered to be "the religious insignificance" of sexuality. From the vantage point of modern psychology and sociology, Catholic emphasis upon the sacramentality of sex, which found expression in the condemnation of certain sexual practices as being immoral, in the prohibition of clerical marriage, Catholic Schools in a Declining Church." A Reflection / 805 and of the ordination of women, was viewed as simply mistaken. Sociology and psychology were thought to provide a sufficient explanation for the origin of these, rules and 'condemmitions, while at the same time, these same disciplines,seemedzunable to find any present justification for con-tinuing such norms. Underlying such. conclusions was the presupposition that "whatever can be given a secular explanation must be so explained." Of course, this is a denial of the sacramental'significance of historical humanity. It represents a retrogression to thht .primitive mentality which .identifies religion~ with magic. In this' way,~, all holiness, all religious value~in the everyday, non-marvelous, commonplace human life in the world comes to be ignored. In such a circumstance, the Church has nothing to say to this~world; for the Church is seen to exist ,only~to provide :illusion for a dwindling clientele. Whoever would challenge the Churchqn such terms really cannot expect a heating' .The Church must~refuse the postulates of.iany science-become-idei~ logy. (3riticis .ms of the Church based on the validity-of such postulates do not bear upon reality. ,They leave .no common ground fore discussion. The authenticity of the Church's teaching and practice does not--and can~ notqwait upon certification from any secular tribunal. Greeley, oin his critique, like Kting, fo~-gets ,this, ~though not to, the point of the latter's explicit denial of the Church's sacramental and causal' relationship to the fulfilled Kingdom of God., Rather, Greeley~ simply does not advert to it. Still, the net effect'is the same.~When the Church is treated for purposes of the laboratory as' merely*an empirical datum, its sacramental character is ignored. The laboratory is not concerned with the truth and effectiveness of a sacramental sign. Yet the Chur~h,~can be understooddn her reality only insofar as he'r history is aqknowledged to, be the~uniquely effective sacra-mental instrument through which humanity, regardless of its historical di-versity, its contention and sin, is~ ultimately redeemed from its fallenness and raised to fulfillment by the.Lord of History.°tf this sacramental reality is not admitted at the outset, the,~Church becomes something debatable, a matter for dispute,, bringing us back to the format of what is, .after all, an obsolete apologetic: a profitless debate over the Church"s worthiness and/or unworthiness. In Catholic'. Schools in a De'clining Church, the worthiness/ finworthiness preoccupation is' mdni[est: the-Church-as-worthy is~,seen to be the-Church-as-popular. ,: ¯ ~- And yet, if it qs right to be wary of an ecclesiology which w~ould, sub-mit the Church to some .sup'erior academic wisdom, it would be quite an-other thing to conclude that the., Church need not respond .to criticisms which the academy cannot but, offer it. Conversation _between the two, however, can take place only where there is a foreswearing of,funda-mentalism On the one hand_and of doctrinaire scientism on the other. Only thus could there, come" into being a common universe of discourse. Necessarily~,ifivolved in this is a recognition by the Church that its doc- 806 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 trine is given historical utterance for the sake of beginning new discussion quite as much as for the sake of punctuating an antecedent one. Necessarily involved is a recognition by the scientist that, when .all his data are collated, the inferences they support must be_ framed as questions, and as problems, not as doctrine in competition with the faith. It is by no means easy to preserve the conditions for such an exchange. Good will is, only the first of these. Ultimately the demand of such condi-tions is met by the recognition of what is actually taking place in such_a conversatibn. It represents an interchange between the faith of the Church and the questing reason of its members '(,which is called theology). It repre-sents the transformation of an otherwise purely secular scientific interest, a transformation imperated by its application to the Revelation.which is given in Christ.In this application, a given discipline accepts as the object of its inquiry a reality whose truth cannot be utterly controlled by its methodology, which it can only approach in a posture which is fundamentally one of worship. When .this attitude of worship fails, the exaggerated claim bf autonomy is thereby taken up again, and the transcendence~ of the Church's truth, of its faith, is rejected out of hand for the sake of "truly scientific objectivity." When such a rejection is misunderstood by'th~ Catholic faithful, when it is presumed to be normative for the scholarly enterprise, the opposite extreme becomes unavoidable: the sacramental holiness of the world and the historical character of the worship of the Church are equally sup: pressed. And the conversation which was originally ambitioned disintegrates into mutual recrimination. The changes rung on this theme are indefinitely numerous. In sum,. they preface and. finally constitute an aversion for the historical faith of the Catholic community in favor of those alternatives whose name is legion. All of this has been remarked sufficiently over the centuries. In the abstract, it is easy enough to see the need for a mutuality between Church and academy, but the realization of such a mutuality is continually im-peded byo the fallenness which mars us all. We are, all and. always in the sway of the~emptation to revert to a pessimistic status quo ante in terms of which the revealed compatibility of God and man, of the Church and the world; of faith and reason can be shown to be absurd, a fiction that is unworthy of man and derisory of God. Thisois a universal failing: It is no more characteristic of the academy than 'of the cloister, of the chancery than of the market. In either case, reductively we are seeking to denature God's good creation by rationalizing and objectifying its sacramental truth and unity.~By such devices we frag-ment our world: We trivialize and compartmentalize our world into isolated bits. And this becomes prelude for dismissing from our lives~ actual his-torical meaning, its sacramentality, the holiness of its totality. Whether done in the name of an ecclesial or a secular piety, what is Catholic Schools in a Declining Church: A Reflection / 807 achieved is a flight from the threatening mystery of our historical existence, from our need to be sustained in it by the Lord of History, and from our share in the crucifixion by which it is redeemed. Thus is worked out some very bad theolggy--and not only by theologians, but by anyone who pre-scinds, from the sacramental structure of reality for the sake of judging reality. A sociological examination 6f the Church simply cannot avoid at least an implicit theological component. If, .supposing it to have been clearly affirmed, an equation were to be drawn between the Catholic Church and the Aristotelian "perfect society," an explicit ecclesiology--however wrong-headed--- necessarily follows. If, on the other hand, one omits any definition of the Church, but then proceeds to analyze it precisely in the same way as one would analyze the United Mine Workers or ,the Democratic Party or the Marine Corps, in other words as an empirical organization of people, a group adequately understood as responsive to the laws which govern all social organization-- then the ecclesiology involved is. perhaps less explicit, but no less operative. In either case, the Church is measured by categories which are quite extrinsic to the worship which gives it its structure. The result for that older theology was a Church whose "perfection" was in contradiction to its involvement in the fallenness of history resulting in an antiseptic notion of a Church apparently immune to history. Comparable (if inverted) distortions in our own time profess to find the Church's patent~involvement in sin a fact entirely incompatible with its claim to transcendent sacramental stature. The contemporary excesses of this "low" ecclesiology are quite as responsive to the'preoccupations of its own day as had been the earlier baroque triumphalism--and with as little profit. The living Church cannot be understood by the use of devices which would separate its history from its meaning thiough a denial of either part of its reality. It is of course possible to concede these truisms and still resist their corollary: that the Church of .our daily encounter, with its monumental confusion, cowardice, ignorance and complacency--in sum, with all the ills the spirit is heir :to--can be and is the earthly community in which the risen Christ is present and active in the outpouring of his Spirit. Surely one may attend with sympathy Dr. Robinson's "but I can't be-lieve that!" Particularly is.it hard to give to such a.Church a cash value by admitting, even demanding, an infallible Magisterium'. Such notions, it may seem, were perhaps credible before the dawn of historical consciousness. But they can hardly survive our contemporary understanding of the social and historical conditioning of the Church. This~is indeed a very possible conclusion--especially if we forget that it is precisely from this kind of despair of the temporal and human as being the medium bf God's presence that humanity was lifted by the faith, first Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 of the Jews, and then of ourselves who are their heirs, in theJdord of History who is present to hiss, people. He is present to his people not as a timeless and universal principle,, but in his Covenant, by which alone time has unity and significance, and thus is history: sacramental time. The salvific content of the events of which we are a part is quite as hard to accept today as it was at Meribah. It is indeed hard to believe that the concrete deeds and words of the Church across the .ages constitute the unique mediation of the risen Lord, for the Church is so obviously trapped, blinded, sullied and fragmented by its own historicity, by its own involve-ment in Sin. But precisely such a belief is integral with the Catholic faith. It is simply not negotiable. It is no news that there has been a developing reluctance within Catholic academic circles to give full value to the ecclesial-historical character of our redemption in Christ. This hesitation on the part of the acaderhy had focused on the Church's assertion of ,doctrinal unity and authority. But it has since broadened its front to the. extent that tradition itself is held to be discon~ tinuous within its own history, whether we are dealing with the. historical unity of the Church's doctrine or its moral or liturgical tradition. Thus it is deemed to be discontinuous within its own history, intrinsically incoherent, without value or~significance~ for the present time. In,sum, the unity of the Church has no historical expression, according to this view. Consequently the historical record, whether doctrinal, moral 'or liturgical~ is of purely academic interest. It lacks the necessary unity to support its claim to sacra-mental significance. The heart of this argument, of course, is the ancient conviction of the incompatibil.ity of'~God and man, heaven and earth, the present time and the egchatological golden age of fulfillment. Its pseudo-Christian version, Gnostic in its roots, denies that the community Of sinners; which constitutes the Church, can be the effedtive symbol, the sacrament of the fulfilled King-dom of God. This denial relies upon the perceived incongruity between the sacramental sign, whichLis ~the historical Church, .,and the effect claimed for it: the completed and fulfilled redemption of humanity in Christ. It was the mistake of' the Counter-Reformation apologetic to contest this visible incongruity, even though it is simply indisputable. To pretend the contrary leaves the apologete open to all the sacred dishonesty which characterizes a triumphalist reading of Church history. It is .not.because the Church is Worthy that she is "the sacrament of our encounter with God." It is by virtue of the presence of the risen Christ in her historical worship that the Church has her reality and her mission, not by virtue of her own probity, nor by any "works" of her own devising. It is this insight, fundamental to any valid ecclesiology, which demands Of the Catholic scholar a subordination, of his critical method to~the prior truth of his faith together with~ a surrender o of an~y delusory intellectual Catholic Sch~ools in a Declining Church." ,4 Reflection / 809, autonomy. In this 'way, while maintaining as its object, the full sacramental reality of the historical Church, the scholar's inquiry also retains intact its full integrity. The radical consequence of a refusal or of a failure in this subordina~ tion of method is the equivalent methodological reduction of the ev~nt~ of the Church's history to merely empirical significance, and the: dissolu-tion of ~the sacramental value of these events. ,At such a point, any. re, sistance to this dissolution ~must then be accounted unscientific, irrational, unrealistic, benighted. Such resistance fails to justify itself before the court of scientific reason whose writ runs as ,.far as the mind may range. In such a context, when the Church, as the object of this kind of "scien-tific" scrutiny, claims, e.g., for its traditional sexual morality a trans-empirical and sacramental value, it is challenged to make manifest the .worthiness of its doctrine for the salvific role asserted for it~and,.of course, cannot do so. Its claim is then held .to be out of court, and. if it.is a~cepted at all, this is deemed a matter of private idiosyncracy, an affair de gustibus, not "really" true . ° In the criticism ,of Humanae l/itae presented in .:Catholic Schools in a Declining Church there is more thana little of this rationalist obscurantism. ~Instead of attempting to construct the sociological o theology which ,only Catholic.-sociologists 'are equipped to' offers,, this book provides merely a secular object of sociological investigation, a pseudo-church, one with which a secular methodology,~:may be entirely comfortable~ ~i~ This pseudo-church is' fashioned from., atoms oLempirical information gathered according to the canons of .that secular methodology. The struc-ture w~hich emerges from these atrms in their collectivity is entirely em-pirical. The resulting picture of the "church" is found, to no one's amaze-ment, to Square rather badly with the Church of Catholic tradition ~enunci-ated,, for example, in Lumen Gentium or Gaudium et Spes, and particularly with thb tradition repeated affew years later in Humanae Vitae. Among the particularly prominent discrepancies between the official Church of these documents~.and the empirical "c~hurch;' described by Greeley's team is the disrrgard on the part of.the latter of the sexual, moral, ity .~which was recently reatiirmed by Rome,. to which the Catholic hierarchy has subscribed. This, in its turn, must lead to; a dilution of that respect in which the teaching authority of the Church must'be held. ~ Greeley considers this .situation to be the result of a massive failure in communication in the. institutional Church. By reason of this, a badly informed pope came to insist, disastrously, upon a morality long since abandoned by his subjects. ~ . ~ Doubtless experts in the~fieid of his methodology will find reason to contest the adequacy of Greeiey's sampling~and analytical techniques. Per-haps they will reject the evidence of "decline" which this book infers. Review tor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 Whether or not such deficiencies exist is not finally very important. No doubt a further examination of the data will contribute to the clarification of the structure revealed by the study and perhaps even require a recasting of previous inferences, thereby contributing to the accuracy of Greeley's findings. But no refinement of this methodology can bring it to bear upon more than an empirical entity. And when that entity is identified with the visible Church, a fundamental mistake has been made. If this mistake is insisted upon, it must lead to a rejection of the Catholic doctrine that the Church is a sacramental sign, having a significance which entirely transcends the empirical. This sign-visibility is the visibility of worship; ultimately, it is Eucharistic, the concrete historical actuality of the Eucharistic community, the visible structure of which is constituted by the sacraments of its worship. This c~mmunity, the Church, can no more be identified with the "church"~ discovered in Greeley's research than can th6 Eucharistic Lord be identified with the merely surface phenomena of the Eucharistic celebration. Such a refusal of this Catholic dbctrine of Church need be neither ex-plicit nor deliberate. In fact, this kind of rejection most frequently occurs inadvertently, when, for instance, a powerful new intellectual tool permits the achievement of results so impressive that its adepts forget that the faith transcends it, that the faith cannot be contained within it or be controlled by it. In the controversy which is bound to follow, a similar forgetfulness just as frequently afflicts their theological opponents. These, in rejecting the dominion of the new learning, tend also to ignore the possibility of its con-version, and so they, in their turn, underwrite the isolation of the Church from history. For a clear example of this, one need only recall the dispute between, the "old" theology and the "new" logic in the early Middle Ages. Such mistakes find their corrective in the conversion of the new device to the perennial task of theology, a process which, like all conversions, is always incomplete. While the sociological construct which emerges in Catholic Schools in a Declining Church' cannot be identified with the Church, it remains ~true that the people who responded to the questions of the study did so in the con-text of their actual involvement with Catholicism. If their response is to be given the kind of theological value and weight that Greeley suggests, it mtist be because the attitudes and opinions which~this survey reveals are under-stood as entering into the sign-which-is-the-Church, and therefore as an element of the visibility of the Eucharistic community and of its worship. In this c~ntext of Eucharistic worship, the reaction which Catholic Schools in a Declining Church has registered, whether .in regard to the value of°Catholic schools, to the changes introduced by Vatican II, or to Humanae Vitae, cannot be identified simply as the kind of Church consensus that Catholic Schools in a Declining Church: A Reflection constitutes the sensus fidelium, the living faith of the People of God. This is because the sacramental Church is a s.ign which is contradicted. Our living of the faith is not a clear and obvious thing, but rather is rendered obscure and enigmatic by the fallenness of humanity and of the world. We daily refuse the truth of the "good" creation; and that refusal continually finds its historical expression in the community of the Church in a failure of Worship. The Church's worship has its prior antecedent structure in the sacra7 ments. These are the form of authentic human existence in fallen history, and in their unity they constitute the sole criteria of visible membership in the Church. Their truth is that of mystery, i.e., it can be appropriated only through worship. ~But by this worship it is appropriated. And over the centuries, this appropriation emerges historically in the doctrinal, moral and liturgical tradition of the Church. This appropriation is also a continual conversion and enfranchisement of the People of God. That it does not fail is due to no excellence of the Church's members, but only to the promise and presence of Christ among them, by which they continue to be the Body of Christ, one flesh with their risen Lord~ That this union does not fail is therefore a matter of faith: neither its existence, its quality, or its extension can be verified empirically. Its worship is that of a community of sinners. Essential to it is that sacra-ment of repentance and reconciliation by which sin, as a personal concrete failure of worship, is acknowledged in an~act of worship by which 'personal solidarity with the Eucharistic community is given again. ~ The fortunes of this sacrament of reconciliation over the nearly two millennia of its history record the enormous resistance offered the Christian notion of personal moral responsibility. The primitive identification of "sin" and "crime" required centuries to reform.~The subsequent' privatizing of confession and penance began so to obscure the public aspect of sin as to reduce public morality once more to a mere obedience to law. In some Catholic circles, this tendency is now .so far advanced as to include the despotic proposition that "the law to be obeyed" is simply the public law of the civil society. In this view, the Church has nothing to say in re morali beyond a loving endorsement of ~the reigning pluralistic consensus. ~ Yet it is only through an existential familarity with the antecedent, mean-ing of-the holy that sin is recognized and acknowledged to be a violation of the human, of the sacramental existence which is structured by the Church's worship. This holiness, this human integrity is sustained and measured by this worship, and 'not otherwise. Only here does a valid consensus emerge as to the meaning of good and evil. This consensus, this discovery, keeps pace with the slow, reluctant response of the People of God, of the Church in its members, to its Lord and his Gift--which is to live in Christ, in light rather than in an undemanding darkness, in freedom rather than in a comfortable 1112 / R'eview ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 conformity, in history rather than without. significance. And finally, it is to live responsibly, rather than to abdicate that honor and burden in favor of a false transcendence which knows no .crucifixion and offers rio redemption. The pace of this pilgrimage is impeded by our straggling, by our desertion, our defection toward one or other mirage.~ This history of Exodus is our history--together with its' pain. All of us who think ourselves Catholic must hope to be within that his-tory, undergoing that reformation and salvation. But we cannot guarantee ourselves to be so, whether as individualS'or as representatives of the whole. We cannot suppose our personal assessm6nt of moral right and wrong to be definitive and assured. Particularly is this the case when.the mass of Catholic Christians have not yet come to terms with the Christian meaning of free-dom; when they tend still to'suppose that whatever is not forbidden by Church law or tradition is thereby moral, or at least morally indifferent. It is only when adult Catholics recognize, their responsibility for the realization into history of the truth of Christ and consequently acknowledge in prayer the possibility of their own wilfull violation of their own human symbolism, their own sacramental and historical reality, their~own inescapably sexual existence--it is only in this circumstance that they can form a Eucharistic_ consensus on this now excruciating question of' the consistency of the sacra-mental symbolism of marriage with that symbolism which is inseparable from artificial contraception, and upon a complexus of other questions of only lesser urgency which bear upon the sacramental truth~of human sex-uality. This condition is not now met. Only when it is met can the Church speak confidently 'upon these newly disputed points. The obstacle to such utterance .now is not that the twenty years since the discovery of "the pill'-', is insufficient for mature judgment, but that even now the basis for making the judgment is not clear--as Catholic Schools in a Declining Church makes very evident~ The Second Vatican Council indeed introduced changes in the Church. But the greatest of these is the most ignored: the quiet dropping of .the obediential "morality which was typical of Catholic moralists before the Council--and which, unfortunately, remains typical~ for many of them to this day~ Conformi~, rather than responsible personal participation in the worship of the Church, is still proposed as the basis for moral decision. The book under consideration~only joins a chorus long since formed. But it is still from the authentic experience of free Eucharistic worship and its achievement of ~free historical.truth that the Church must teach; the truth of Christ is available, on no other basis. This is the only information system there is. It falters always~ but it does not fail. ~ The Small Group in Religious Life William Barber, Ph.D. Dr. Barber is Professor of. Psychology at Eastern. Washington State College in Cheney, WA 99004. He also is a consulting psychologist with ot~ces in Spokane. Earlier drafts of this article were helpfully reviewed by Paul Fitter, S.J.~ Ellen Monsees, R.S.C.J., Henri Nouwen and Leo Rock, S.J. Introduction This paper analyzes religious community groups from a behavioral science perspective. "Commu.nity" here refers to a face-to-face living group, usually comprised of fewer than a dozen persons, whose members may ormay not include co-workers in one,s ministry: The attempt is to show how a group's psychological developmeiat, as a community relates to and interacts with the work of members in their apostolic ministries. There exists a ~vell-established theological basis for "church as com-munity,".~ much of which has. developed since Vatican 11,1 and a detailed historical and sociologi.cal rationale calling for intensive, committed com-munity group relationships has been presented recently by Fitz and Cada.z Leaders of. religious communities know about and agree attitudinally with the need for establishing strong and deep group relationships. . o It is the experience of the writer in providing consultation to leaders of religious orders and to particular groups of religious, that what is not known is how to integrate into religious life the concepts and skills needed to est~ib-lish strong, dynamic groups of religious. It is hoped that What follows~offers some goidelines, drawn from the be-havioral sciences, for bridging the gap between the theoretical and "the practical aspects of group development in religious life. 1Dulles, A., Models oi the Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974). -"Fitz, R. L., & Cada, L. J., "The Recovery of Religious Life," REVIEW FOR RELI~OUS, 34, September, 1975. 813 814 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 The approach will be to describe ways in which groups differ from col-lections of individual persons, to distinguish religious communities from other kinds of groups, and to show how a religious community becomes an organi-zation for meeting the personal needs and at the same time the apostolic purposes of its members. A psychological rationale for community life is offered along with concrete suggestions for effective religious community life. Assumptions A group becomes more than a collection of individuals when all mem-bers need one another to accomplish a common task or goal. A dozen persons sunbathing near each other on a sunny beach are not a group in this sense; but if together they respond to a cry for help from a sinking swimmer they become a group as they work together on their shared.task of rescue. Once their task is completed, the group ceases to exist as a group, unless the members should decide to form an association to provide beach safety, in which case they would continue to be a group. Thus, being together doesn't define a group, even though all members have the same objective (in° this example to acquire suntans). It is when members need each other for some collective purpose; it is when they become interdependent, that they become a group? A community, such as a religious community is a special kind of: group in that it attempts to provide for more than support for the accomplishment of external tasks. A community~ is a group which attempts to meet the human and personal needs of its members as well: physical needs for food and shelter, social needs for recognition and friendship, and what Maslow calls the "ego needs''~ for meaning, and self-actualization as persons? Thus, a collectivity of individuals may become a group: a group may become a community for meeting physical, social and ego needs of members. At this highest level of motivation--the ego needs for actualization and fulfillment~it seems a religious community as a group attempts to meet another nee.d, the idiosyncratic need to develop its own "identity." And a re-ligious community's identity must be considered in relation to its ministry. Identity and ministry are like horizontal and vertical aspects of a group's religious life. The Vertical Dimension As a person needs to grow in self-knowledge, so a group becoming a community is drawn towards a deeper, more complete sense of identity. This is like a "vertical" dimension of growth--reaching down inside to ex-plore, to observe and to reflect upon the sense of '"~who we .are," and then aBass, B. M., & Nord, W., Leadership, Psychology and Organizational Behavior (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 39. ¯ ~Maslow, A. H., Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954). The, Small Group in Religious LiIe / 815 to come back up to the surface to test and to listen to what is being said in response. What do we mean by the discovery of identity? We mean finding out., real desires and characteristics . . . and being able to live in a way that expresses them. You learn to be authentic, to be honest in the sense of allowing your behavior and your speech to be the true and spontaneous expression of your inner feelings.~ Community identity then becomes established through sharing informa-tio~ n" in response to the question 'Who are we'?" More specifically this means generating information from the senses, the emotions, the intellect, and from the spirit for those who believe in a faith dimension to life. Transactions that provide such information for a community have to do with interper-sonal exchange: Who are we for each other? What do we want from each other? What will we offer to each other? These questions are continually asked and responded to, as persons tyy to moye from being a "group" to becoming a "community." As these questions are asked and responded to, "data"--i.e., information about thoughts, feelings, wishes are made avail-able for sharing, and thereby become integrated into the processes of decision and choice. Research indicates that more data from members produce higher quality decisions and greater member commitment to carrying them out.~ The Horizontal Dimension Identity needs to be expressed in life outside the community group; it needs to be expressed in apostolic ministry. This is like a horizontal dimen-sion of growth reaching out, listening openly and reflectively and respond-ing to what one is called upon to do and be with others. In the words of Maslow: Part of le~arning who you are, part of being able to hear your inner voices, is discovering what it is you want to do with your life. Finding one's identity is almost synonymous with finding one's career, revealing the altar on which one will sacrifice oneself,r As there are points of diminishing return in gains from individual per-sonal growth experiences s.uch as psychotherapy or encounter groups, so too are there limits to the gains to be expected from a religious community's developmental experiences--those aimed at developing a group's identity dimension. Community relationships and activities have as their raison d'6tre the support of tasks that further the work of apostolic ministry. It is analogous " to a couple's love for on'e another, in that their relationship, their "com- ¯ ~Maslow, A. H., The Farther Reaches o] Human Nature (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 183. GKelIy, H. H., & Thibault, J. W., ',Group Problem Solving," in Lindzey, G. & Aron-son, E. (eds.), Handbook o] Social Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969), pp. 61-88. rThe Farther Reaches, p. 185. 816 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 munity" in a sense, requires expression in accomplishing goals-~having and raising children, for example--in addition to developing the affective rela-tionship that draws and keeps them together. Such a relationship needs manifest expression in order to continue to grow. This does not mean each aspect of community life requires direct con-nection to members' ministries. On the contrary, support is often drawn from interludes from "tasks": activities of recreation, distraction and apparent irrele(,ance. It is important to remember the purpose for which the support is given: that is, the rationale and the dyna.mic force for religious community comes from the shared commitment of members to thee values and goals underlying their collective ministries. As such, community identity is incom-plete without outward expression; small group religious life is incomplete without being related to apostolic ministry for purpose and direction. Similarly, ministry needs cbmmunity. Ministry needs community: (1) to provi~le a support system for sharing, helping, caring; i.e., for providing "maintenance" for the work of ministry, and (2) to provide for the personal development of members for their own sake, apart ~'rom apostolic work roles. "For their own sake" must not be taken lightly. The intrinsic dignity and value of each person's humanity calls for emotional connection to sig-nificant others. This need, this expectation, can be responded to by persons who commit themselves to one another in community life In summary, it seems that religious community groups work on two "agendas"---one vertical, the 6ther horizontal--and these become interde-pendent. Work on the vertical (e.g., listening, sharing; and more systematic-ally at times, team building or role clarification interventions)~ allows the group and each member more to offer on the horizofftal, in ministries. ' Work on the horizontal, the ministries, enables the con~munity to insert it-self into the world. It brings the world through members' experience into the community in order (l) to infuse ndw life, (2) to offer new direction, and (3) to provide standards for evaluating effectiveness of effort. The result is a dynamic system in which energy and creative r~sources increase. The sy~stem is dynamic in that it generates energy, and it is self-renewing because of the interdependent, reciprocal', exchanging relationship between vertical "and horizontal dimensions. The Goal of Community: Synergy One cannot explore for very long questions Such as we have asked about the dynamics of community life and ministry without confronting the larger question: What should community experience be like? What is it we are searching for by our attempt to integrate identity needs with apostolic min-istry? Maslow was a student of the anthropologist Ruth Benedict and he draws upon her concept of synergy to describe activities within a group w,hich benefit both individuals and the group as a whole. Quoting Benedict, Maslow writes: The Small Group in Religious Lile / 817 I shall speak,.of cultures with low synergy where the social structure pro- ¯ vides for acts which are mutually opposed and counteractive, and cultures with high synergy where it provides for acts which are mutually reinforcing, ¯ . . I spoke o] societies with high social' synergy where their institution insures mutual advantage ]rom their understandings, and societies with" low social synergy where tile advantage o] one individual becomes a victory over an-other, and the majority who are not victorious must shi]t as tliey call. (Italics by Maslow).8 Note the images that portray sources of energy and strength in Bene-dict's synergistic group and that we strive for in the small community group: " . . . acts which are mutually reinforcing . " " . . . mutual .advantage frrm their understandings"; opposing activities whereby "the advantage of one individual becomes a victory over another. " (italics mine). The goal of small group religious community life from a psychological viewpoint is to tap and direct this energy to provide driving force toward purposeful objectives. And the content of Benedict's message i~ the syner-gistic communities offer understanding, support °and action and oppose win/ lose relationships among members. Criteria for Synergistic Community ~ One way to test the thesis offered: here is to observe and reflect" upon experience with alternate life styles among priests and religious. Certainly no single organizational structure' promises to bypass the struggles required to enable a synei~gistic community to grow. Comprehensive discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, but we wish to poi~nt to certain mechanisms that have been found helpful by some rdligious communities in developing open, prbblem-solving climates. Most of the traits mentioned require organi-zational consultation and experience-based learning methods to become operational.9 The starting point is the vertical dimension--to expand the experience of c~mmunity identity. Desirable characteristics and mechanisms have to do with group size, group norms, communication skills, information about members' ministries, shared prayer' and sacraments, and explicit contracts regarding time, tasks, territory'and role of members. A' small group of from four to twelve members enables differences in re-sources to be present and the opportunity for each person to become well known to the others¯ Norms--implicit rules governing behavior--must be developed to support the expression'of affection a~d warmth, confronta, lion and conflict, and to support bringing-in input and help for the group. Basic communication skills in paraphrasing, describing behavior, describing Sop, cit., p. 202. 'aBarber, W. H., & Nord, W., Healer RoleJ o[ Consultants and Need Orientations o] Clients (Spokane: Eastern Washington State College,~mimeo, 1975). Barber, W. H., and Lurie, H. J., "Designing an Experience Based Continuing Education Program," American .tournal o[ Psychiatry, 130, 10, 1973. 818 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 feelings and giving and receiving personal feedback, facilitate interpersonal communication. Some initial didactic experience is useful, and the develop-ment of norms to support the use of communication skills in day-to-day practice is crucial. Since feelings about s'elf are strongly influenced by feelings about work, members who strive for interdependence need to have direct, first-hand in-formation about each other's apostolates. The group has the benefit of dif-ferent experiences and resources when it is comprised of members from different ministries. As there should be shared expression at an interpersonal level of posi-tive feelings and confrontation, as noted above, so there should be shared expression at a spiritual level through prayer, liturgical celebration.and other faith experiences. This serves the purpose of enabling persons who have a commitment to each other to share this special part of their lives. Keeping spiritual sharing separate from other community activities and allowing for differences in member participation is also important because these are valuable means of legitimizing the individuality of personal experience and expression. To be clear about and in control of boundaries the points of separa-tion- for the community in regard to time--when things happen; tasks-- what occurs; territo.ry--appropriate physical spaces for the separate and shared parts of members' lives; and role,delineation of special roles within the group (e.g., management, coordination, various maintenance roles). Summary: Culture and Open System Two ideas may help to summarize the characteristics of effective com-munity: they are "culture" and "open system." It is the hope of those estab-lishing a small group community to enable a particular culture to emerge, one that is unique and meets special needs for that group. A culture is characterized by its social organization--especially norms, roles and ex-pectations for member behavior--and by its "expressions," i.e., what is shared with the outside world by the group. We have said here that the culture of the religious community needs to develop through Particular norms, patterns and values regarding communication and the organization of tasks and roles and religious expression. An open system like a biological organism, is one characterized by in-take, transformation and export processes.1° Transactions occur with the environment: intake of new members, materials and information; and export of the "products" of members' work, and members who leave the system. It is through evaluating differences between intake and export that the quality of the group's efforts, its internal processes can be judged. To be. effective as an open system, a religious community requires management of its intake, export and internal transformation processes, in the latter case 10Rice, A. K., Learning ]or Leadership (London: Tavistock Publications LTD., 1971). The Small Group in Religious Li]e / 819 procedures for meeting individual and group needs for' control of boundaries of time, task, territory and role. Growth of the v~rtical dimension occurs as the culture develops; this growth can be measured by the quality of interaction among members. Open relationships occur as members share ideas, feelings and perceptions that have to do-with their purposes in being together. Trust develops enabling openness and personal sharing to occur appropriately (in contrast with some coercive group norms toward "confiding" or "revealing"). Norms support-ing individual differences in sharing grow and become explicit. When both openness and personal sharing occur and yet individual differences are en-couraged, a climate of genuine intimacy develops. Conclusions Openness, trust and intimacy are important because as human beings we are drawn toward becoming "the persons who we are" and toward being "in relationship.''~ But as a priest or religious one is committed to apostolic ministry--horizontal dimension. Community exists "in the service of min-istry"-~ and this is primary. But since vertical and horizontal dimensions are interdependent, the work of ministry will suffer unless it is anchored in re-ligious community experience that meets social and psychological needs of member~ along with spiritual and apoStolic objectives. One implication is that persons living in religious community may use-fully explore ways in which they are and are not, like the sunbathers men-tioned above, (1) a number of separate individuals in physical proximity to one another, (2) a group brought together because of an immediate, com-mon task, or (3) a special kind of institution, formed to support the work of members' apostolates and simultaneously to facilitate members' personal development. This paper has tried to distinguish among such groups in order to enable members to better cfioose the type of community to which they wish to be committed. The small group as religious community is a collectivity of persons unified by the overarching mission of faith--to facilitate the experience of Christ among persons. This paper attempts to describe how synergy develops and is maintained in the service of ministry thi'ough integrating, in a dynamic way, community needs and apostolic objectives of inembers.1~ XlBuber, M., I and Thou (New York: Scribners, 1970). tZThe ideas in the paper were presented at an assembly of provincial leaders of the Society of the Sacred Heart from North America, Australia, and New Zealand in September, 1975. Provincial teams of three to five persons worked for ten days at various experiential activities aimed at internalizing, in their own behavior, the char-acteristics which are noted in this paper. Their purposes were to strengthen their team relationships, to increase their own experience of Community and to apply the ideas in this paper to 'their concrete work tasks and roles. The women reported, and assembly observers documented~ significant movement toward integrating the concepts with be-havior and action. A paper summarizing behavioral science aspects of the assembly and follow-up data may be requested from the author. The Contemplative Attitude in Spiritual Direction William A. Barry, S.J. Father Barry, Director of the Center for Religious DevelopmeJat, has written on the subject of spiritual direction for our pages before. His last article for RfR was pub-lished in March, .1973. He continues to reside at 42 Kirkland St.; Cambri~lge, MA 02138. In a number of articles both William J. Connolly, S.J. and I have referred to contemplation and the contemplativ~ attitude as the kind of prayerful attitude which spiritual directors try to encourage in those who seek spiritual direction.1 We have tried to describe what we mean by these words. Suffice it here to say that we use the word contemplation in itsoetymological sense; we mean to refer to the act of looking at or listening to something. Webster's first definition of "contemplate" says some of what we mean: "to view or consider with continued attention." In our earlier articles, I believe, we have not been sufficiently precise in our use of the word co.ntemplation and contemplative attitude. We have spoken of contemplating .the Lord in Scripture and in nature and have not sufficiently distinguished between the contemplation of Scripture and nature 1Barry, W. A., "The Experience of the First and Second Weeks of the Spiritual Exer-cises," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1973), pp. 102-109. Bai'r~;, W. A., "The Necessity of Contemplative Prayer for the Teaching and Stu~ly of Theology in a Ministerial School," Church Society ]or College Work, Vol. XXXIII, No. I (1975), pp. 6-10. Connolly, W. J., "Contemplation and Social Consciousness in the Context of the Directed° Retreat: An Experiential Approach." An address at the 8th National Workshop on the Spiritual Exercises, Cincinnati, August 25-28, 1974, and published by The Program to Adapt the Spiritual Exercises, Jersey° City, New Jersey 07302. Connolly,.W.J., "Contemporary Spiritual Direction: Scope and Principles, An Intro-ductory Essay." Studies in the Spirituality o] Jesuits, VII, (1975), pp. 95-124. 820 The Contemplative Attitude in Direction / 8:21 and the contemplation of the Lord. Perhaps we have also not sufficiently attended to the nuance that one can have a. contemplative attitude and yet noi be contemplating the LordsIt is the purpose of these notes' to attempt some clarification of the meaning of and use of contemplation in spiritual direction. The Contemplative Attitude and Its Relation to "Transcendence" Have you ever been so absorbed in watching a game or reading a book or listening to music that you have been surprised at the end of the passage of time, by how cold or hot you are, by the anger of a friend (who has been asking 'you something for ten minutes)? Then you know the power of paying attention to something, and you have a personal example of the contemplative attitude. The most telling examples come from reports of how parents 'have been so concentrated on their children's safety in a fire or accident that they have only at the end felt the pain of their own wounds. Thus, one effect of the contemplation of something outside ourselves is that it can make us forget ourselves and our other suroundings. Contempla-tion leads to, or rather, is an experience of transcendence, of self-forgetful-ness of everyone and everything else except the contemplated object. '. Conversely, we find that self-absorption makes the contemplation of any-thing or an~yone else very difficult, if not impossible. Thus,. a starving man may well be unable to enjoy a sunset. One of the key elements to ministry in a hospital is the atte~apt to help the sick to become interested in others around them and in the outside world, that is, to help them todo something that will enable them to forget their own pain and suffering or to put it in another perspective. , . : Another aspect of the examples we began with should' catch our atten-tion, namely that the responses of absorption, joy, pain,: sympathy, love, gratitude which are associated with contemplation are not willed acts or willed emotions~ They are elicited from us by what we see and hear and comprehend.,~ (Of course; these responses~, do not arise qrom a blank tablet, but are conttitioned by our own past experiences~) Herewe have an impor-tant element to consider in all spiritual direction. Responses that are elicited by contemplation are not experienced in the first instance as willed acts. The clearest example, perhaps, is the response of love when one looks at the beloved; it seems to be a gift, something that arises because of the other, not because one has decided to love or fall in love. What one can do is to look it and to try to pay attention to the other, but ore cannot will one's response. At most one can hope that one will respond a certain way, This last point leads us to a further consideration. The person who con-templates in the way we are describing has to have an attitude of reverence and wonder before the other, especially if what he/she ~vants to see or hear is within the power of the other to grant 9r~withhold. In this case all one can do is to ask the other to reveal himself or herself and wait for it to Review 1or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 happen. This insight is behind the prayer for what one desires which Ignatius of Loyola puts at the begifining of every one of the exercises of the Spiritual Exercises. For example, in the Exercises I pray that the Lord will reveal to me my sinfulness, that I may have shame and confusion, that the Lord make himself known to me in order that I may love him and follow him. Here we see even more clearly the relation between contemplation and transcendence. When we are dealing with another person, we are not in the same position as we are when we are dealing with an object. Saint Exuprry's Little Prince on his small asteroid only needs to move his chair a bit in order to see another sunset, but he is powerless to see the reality and unique-ness of his flower until she chooses to reveal herself to him.2 But when the free other chooses to reveal him or herself, then the genie is out of the bot-tle, as T. S. Eliot said,~ and the mystery of the other is upon us. Thus we have a further observation on the relation of contemplation to transcendence. We try to control our perceptions. We are threatened by new-hess and strangeness, msa result we often see only what we "want" to see or what our perceptual and cognitive structures let us see. To try to contemplate means to try to let the other be himself or herself or itself, to try to be open to surprise and newness. To begin this process means to open oneself to mystery, ultimately to the Lordship of the Other. It is to let oneself be controlled by the other; paradoxically, one finds oneself free. The upshot most often is that one becomes less incapacitated by fear from accepting the mystery of life/ The experience of transcendence is, I believe, one of a continuum from total self-absorption to total absorption in the other--with the two ends of the continuum being ideal .states not found in nature. In any human experi-ence there is bound to be an.admiXture of both self-consciousness and. aware-ness of the outside world. The boundaries of the continuum might well be circumscribed by referring to the narcissistic person on the one hand and the enraptured mystic on the other. It might also be a help to those who are praying to realize that the contemplation of the Lord is no different from the contemplation of any other person in this regard, namely that one can be in the intimate presenc~e of a very dear friend'and still be'or become aware of the ache in one's feet, of wondering whether one put out the lights in the car, of the work still to be done for school tomorrow, and so forth. ZAntoin"e de Saint-Exuprry, Le Petit Prince, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1943. " :~"But let me tell y~u, that to approach the stranger ls to invite the unexpected, release a new force, Or let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a train of events Beyond your control ." T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party 4See W. J. Connolly, "Freedom and Prayer in Directed Retreats," REVIEW ]FOR REr LIGIOtJS, Vol. 32, No. 6, (1973), pp. 1358-1364. The Contemplative Attitude in Direction "/ 823 "Distractions," in other words, are a part of even the most intimate rela-tionships and should be expected in prayer too. Finally, in an intimate conversation reflection on what is happening or. on how well one is doing, especially with the idea of writing about it in one's journal or using it as an example for an article like this, can disturb the communication and be an instance of self-absorption. It happens, but it is better not to program it this way. Thus, the wisdom of. the tradition in spiritual direction of advising the person praying to do the reflecting after the period of prayer is over. Contemplation ~f the Lord in Nature and in Scripture Perhaps now we can clarify what we mean by contemplation of the Lord in nature and in Scripture. The Lord is invisible, and so hard to look at; he also seems pretty silent, and so hard to listen to~ Often enough, therefore, we try too hard to pray, :try too hard to listen and look. Too often prayer is seen as self-absorbing; our natural reaction when someone says, "Let us pray," is to bow our heads, close our eyes, and get serious--all of which is proper in its place. But we rarely get the impression that prayer can be an enjoyable experience, :that it can be a conversation, a dialogue, a relation- .ship. The spiritual director is confronted with the problem of,helping people to the enjoyment of God when much Of their past experience of prayer is one of labor, seriousness, brooding, and self-absorption. Many of us .who do spiritual direction have hit upon the idea of helping people to forget themselves for a while. We ask them what they like todo, what he!ps them just to forget their problems (besides going to sleep), and we try to help them to see that 0ihey already do contemplate in the way de- Scribed in the first note. We suggest that they spend a certain amount of time-~each.day, if possible-~-, doing whateVer it is that they like doing that is contemplative, and that they :consider this time as time with the Lord (i.e: prayer) in much the same way that they might want to share the same ex-perience with a close friend. We also suggest that they ask the Lord to make his presence known, to reveal himself. Then they look at and/or listen to whatever it is 'they enj'oy. After e~ch period of doing this we ask them to reflect on the experience: What happened?'What did they experience? Did the Lord make himself known? It is surprising what .happens wl~en people begin to do something like this. They often have objections at first: they.f.eel it cannot be prayer. More-over, being so conditioned to think that brooding and insights and resolu-tions are what prayer is all about they often need time and patience to get the hang of it and to find out that the director really means what he says. But then they begin to find such "prayer" times enjoyable and relaxing; they find themselves surprised by feelings of joy and gratitude and a real sense that Someone is present who loves and cares for them. They find that th~ey can 824 / Review ]dr Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 admit things to themselves that they were always afraid or ashamed to look at--and they feel better for it; they feel freed, healed. Agnes Sanford in her book The Healing Gilts ol the Spirit gives very similar advice. To people whosay "I can't find God," she suggests doing some simple things, especially things they like to do, that will put them in the way of God, as she says,0so "that he can find you.''~ That is the point, of course; as we saw in the first.section, ~the only thing we can do when we want to get 'to know another person is to put ourselves near and askthe person to reveal himself or herself. These reflections bring us to the question: Are there any privileged places or privileged events where we can go to put ourselves in the Lord's way? The traditional answer has been that there are, and. that these places and events include the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, the church teaching, the Scriptures, and the works of the Lord, especially nature, I will say something later about additions to this list, but now I would like to take up nature and' the Scriptures, Traditionally people have found peace and refreshment in the beauties of nature: The fact that most retreat houses, houses of prayer and monas-teries have been located in or near scenes of natural beauty testify to the belief that God is found more easily in nature and in solitude than, say, in cities. Traditionally, too, we have spoken of God revealing himself in the things he has made, "in plants and animals and in men, the wonders of Your hand," as the canon written ~by John L'Heureux puts it,~ I do not want to counter this tradition although I do believe that the Lord can be as present in the city; rather, I want to examine how the Lord is met and how we can help people to meet him in natt~re. First of all directors should suggest~ looking ~nd listening, not give ideas about God's continual creation, his indwelling, and so forth. We have to remember that most of us are conditioned by catechism, philosophy and the-ology classes to have beautiful thoughts about how. God is in all things, but that few of us have ever looked long.enough at a flower to let God reveal himself as the maker of that flower for me. Before a tree can become a symbol of God, it must first be seen and touched and smelled as a tree. The first suggestion, then is that people look at and listen to what.is around them. The second suggestion is that looking at natural beauty can in itself be a way of relat!ng to the Lord without any words~being said. Just as I relate to an artist by taking interest in what he has made, by taking time to look at it or listen to it, so too I can relate to God if I take time to contemplate what he has made. Creators lik~ to have people show interest in what they have done. All the better if I like" what I ~see and smile or sigh or express ~Sanford, Agnes~ The Healing Gilts 0! the Spirit (New York: Lippincott, 1966), esp. pp. 25-32. ~In Hoey, R. F. (ed.), The Experimental Liturgy Book (N,Y.: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 97. ' The Contemplative Attitude in Direction delight in the presence of the artist. Such responses are elicited by what I contemplate, not willed by me, and they are communications to'the artist; in the case of God they are then called prayers of praise. Tfiey do not have to be couched in "prayer language." Indeed, the prayer is often made before a word is formed. The spiritual director might then be able to point out that the responses of the directee are similar to the responses that the poet who wrote Psalm 104 must have had and then tried to express in poetry. Not everyone is a poet, but almost everyone can be thrilled by a dazzling sunset or sunrise, the sun's light on fall leaves, and so forth, and feel a. deep sense of wonder. , Thus far we have been stressing the need to look and listen, the con-templative attitude. As I contemplate, I can also have desires, one of which is that the Lord reveal himself to me while I am looking at his works. If I begin my period of contemplation with a prayer that this desire be grant.ed, then.it is liable to happgn. I do not want to rule out high mystical experi-ences--~ because they do happen and more frequently than we tend to think --but here I would rather concentrate on the more ordinary ways the Lord reveals himself in,answer to this prayer. One can be walking along the beach at night and see a touch of silver from the moon on the crest of a wave and besides delighting in it suddenly feel at peace and in someone's presence who .himself delights in such things. Unaccountably one may feel that one is still loved, even though one does drink o'r eat too much or get angry with one's community members too often or even though one has just lost one's best friend or has just been turned down for graduate school or was not elected superior or whatever, and one may feel free to face ~oneself more honestly and with less self-pity. Or a person may sense her insignificance under the stars, and yet feel her own importance in the ~whole scheme of things, Or another may Sense a call deep inside himself to change his life style. In all these instances the person may be hearing or sensing the voice of the Lord revealing himself. When these kinds of experiences are real and exciting.and challenging as well as com-forting, then the Lord has begun to take on a new reality for the person. Perhaps now he or~.she can also pay attention to him and not just to his creatures. And here may lie the dividing line between contemplating the Lord and contemplating his works. The work of the spiritual director now becomes one of helping the per-son praying to discern, that is, to figure out what is going on, what is God's voice, what not. The discernment of spirits, begins when there are inner movements and the question is: Is the Lord revealing himself, and if so, what is he saying? The genie is out of the bottle, and now it is important to follow the genie's movements. We can look at the contemplation of Scripture in a similar way. Scrip-ture is not the Lord, but a privileged place to meet him. However, one must pay attention to the Scripture itself just as one has to pay attention to trees 1126 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 or sunsets or mountains. That is,"it is necessary to have a contemplative at-titude toward Scripture, to let the Scriptures be themselves and to listen to them and to ask that the Lord reveal himself while we are listening to these words. I do not intend ~here to delve into the arguments as to whether any other religious texts might be privileged places for meeting God; they could be and indeed people have met God while paying attention to St. Augustine's Confessions, to the prayer of St. Francis, to many other works of religious .literature, and even to secular literature. I am accepting as a given that Sgripture has primacy of place over all other literature as the Word of God. But we must listen to the Scriptures themselves, and not our projections onto them. One sometimes hears that modern scripture ,.scholarship with its de-mythologizing and its form criticism has been a blow to piety and has made it more difficult to use Scripture for prayer. Scripture scholars, it is some-times charged, have taken the mystery out of the infancy narratives of the gospels and other stories. We are not sure what Jesus actually said, or whether he actually did everything the gospels say he did. "How can we ever know him then?", people wonder. Those of us who take scripture studies and spiritual direction seriously have had to ponder these questions and charges as well as to take seriously our own and others' experiences in praying with the Scriptures. I think that we have not always been careful in our way of speaking, and it is my hope that this note will contribute to the clarification of our thought and ex-pression. , ,I want to focus on. the contemplation of the gospels and hope that the principles enunciated here can be analogously translated to the use of other scripture texts~ The first point is obvious: It does little good for prayer or Christian living to base both on a delusion. Hence, it is important to see the gospels for what they are. They are not biographies of J.esus, but four differ-ent expressions of the faith of the early Church and what it remembered in faith about Jesus. Each gospel has its own point of view, its own theo-logical focus, its own Sitz im Leben. Contemplation of°Mark's gospel, for example, means taking Mark's work on its own terms and trying to listen to his work of art. Secondly, it should be said that one need not be a Scripture scholar in order to be able to use the gospels for prayer. The Lord can still reveal him-self to someone who believes that angels actually did sing "Glory to God in the highest" at Bethlehem as long as one is open to having the living Lord reveal himself. But I do believe that the more one knows about the gospel, the better one can look at and listen to it and not to one's own cultural and personal projections of it. Thus, I believe that scripture study can be a help to contemplation. In other words, it helps, I think, to be able to con-template Mark's Jesus and know that it is Mark's Jesus and not necessarily The Contemplative Attitude in Direction / 827 the "real article" in all his historical reality. For one thing, one is not going to be thrown so much out of kilter by new discoveries of scripture scholars. More importantly, one is more likely to realize that the person one wants to meet' is not the Jesus of the past, but the present living Lord (who, of course,'is continuous with Jesus of Nazareth). Here we are at the heart of the matter. The purpose of contemplating the gospels .is to come to know the living Lord Jesus. Here again we can see the wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola. Before every contemplation of events from the gospels Ignatius has the retreatant pray for what he desires, namely "an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who has become man for me, that I may .love him more and follow him more closely.''~ Then I listen to the gospel text and treat it for what it is, as imaginative literature. I try to take the text ~seriously, and try to let it inspire my imagination, as it was written to do (as well. as to enkindle my faith). But my desire is not to know the scripture text better, but to know the risen Jesus better. I want him to reveal himself to me. And when he takes on reality and shape for me (not neces-sarily in a picture, by the way), then I talk to him, not to the text, and I listen to him, not the text. Those-who have not had this experience will not know what I am talking about, but hopefully they will be open enough to listen to the experience of those who have. The purpose of contemplation of Scripture is not to see Jesus. walking on water or to see him in Galilee or hear him say to Peter "Feed my lambs.~ The purpose is to hear the risen Jesus say to me: "Your sihs are~ forgiven,~you" and to know he means me; to hear him say to me." "Come,,follow~me.and be my friend" and.know that it is the Lord and that he is talking to me. Once again, discernment be-comes a necessity when I begin to feel moved by the Lord himself. I hope that by now it is clear that contemplation of nature or of Scrip~ ture is not in itself contemplation of the Lord, but that the former is a privileged way to the latter. Indeed, one can say that contemplation in the first sense is a technique or method, where contemplation in the second sense is relationship itself and no methods ~are needed. Finally as to the list of privileged places, it may be well to indicate that those mentioned earlier are still privileged places and also that different eras and different people may prefer one of the privileged places to others. It may also be that new privileged places may come into prominence. I am thinking especially of a shift from nature to man-made works of art or technique, a suggestion made by Josef Sudbrack, S.J? In our modern urban culture we may well find that human artifacts as well as human persons themselves may be more privileged than natural beauty. "l~here should be no difficulty here since the works of humans are ultimately God's handiwork. ~Spiritual Exercises (Puhl Translation), No. 104, p. 49. 8Sudbrack, Josef, Beten ist Menschlich: Aus der Er]ahrung Unseres Lebens mit Gott Sprechen (Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder, 1973). 828 / Review jor Religious, Volume 35~ 1976/6 On the Question of the Utility of Contemplation Recently in a discussion of contemplation someone mentioned that many people were advocating the 'techniques I have labelled contemplative for problem solving in management, for conflict resolution and that they worked without reference to God or the transcendent. That is, the contemplative techniques we mentioned in the,.earlier notes, were being used for secular purposes,, and people were feeling better, were more creative, more integral, and so forth. There is no question that the technique of contemplation by itself is very salutary. We need~ not bemoan that fact. But then what is the need to bring in God and prayer? ~ Here the only reply is to ask oneself to what end one uses contempla-tive techniques. If the answer is to solve problems, to feel better, to be more creative, then perhaps there is no need t~ refer to God and prayer. But for those for whom contact with the living Lord and the relationship itself with him are the goals, the question loses significance. It is like asking someone what he gets ,out of time spent with his wife that he could not get from others just as well. For those who seek the Lord, these techniques would be worthless no matter how good they. made them feel if in the process they did not find their Lord. Throughout.~these notes I have stressed that the purpose of contemplating nature, Scripture, or anything else is to meet the living Lord. When he is engaged, or rather when he engages me, there is no need of techniques or even of asking what the utility of prayer is. I want to be with him, and ttiat is enough. Without effort utility comes; one be-comes a better person and Christian. But relationship,is what is sought: In a Rut To get out of a rut a seed digs deeper. Edward A. Gloeggler P.O. Box 486 Far Rockaway, NY 11691 Individual Apostolates and Pluralism Community Identity in John T~I Ford, C.S.C. Fr. Fo~:d is Associate Professor of' Theology and Coordinator of Ministerial Studies in the School of Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, WA 20064. Not too long ago, as our history is measured, the apostolic endeavors of American religious communities almost' invariably took a corporate or insti-tutional form. A typical example is the religious house all of whose members work in an adjacent school. Though there may be considerable variety in the occupations of individual religious (e.g~, ,~administration, teaching, coun-seling, maintenance, etc.), the work of;each is seen as contributing to the overall~ofunctioning of the institution. This corporate pattern is frequently paralleled in hospitals,~parishes, and other works religious communities un-dertake. ~ An.~important.consequence of this familiar pattern is aopervasive identi-fication, of religious community .with its institutions:' For example, this iden-tification is commohly reinforced through° a schedule that melds communal and institutional activities: if religious aren't working~in the institution, then they usua.!ly can be found together at some communal, activity in the near-bmyo rree sciydneinccale .h Tavhee c roemsuplatr iesd p wraitcht iicmapllryis ao n"mtoetnatl; .i nhsotwituetvieorn;.aalsi zwatiillo bne" nthoatet dthe later, a more apt.' comparison is with the communal life of the "family farm" or the "cottage industry" in agrarian societies. In brief, then, an "institutional apostolate" is a particular activity that members= of a religious community undertake as a corporate: effort; it is both a means of livelihood and a means of realizing the goals of the community. The melding of communal and institutional activities also affords a means ~f self-identity for religious. For example, the fact that religious (with 829 a30 / Review Jot Religioux, Volume 35, 1976/6 appropriate humility) speak of"'our school" is but one indication of the in-fluence of merged communal-institutional life on individual religious. Re-cently, when it has become necessary to close "our school," this identifica-tion has sometimes become painfully apparent. In other terms, the American tendency to identify a person with his occupation (e.g., John Smith is a carpenter, Mary Doe is a teacher) reached sort of a zenith in the case of religious; indeed, religious may be so identified with a particular institution that "outsiders" may not even know the proper name of the community whose members work there (e.g., "the sisters who teach at St. Mary's"). The liabilities of institutional apostolates are all too familiar. Perhaps the most burdensome is the tendency to subordinate the personal life of religious to the consuming demands of the institution. Illustrations are legion: fre-quently requests of a personal nature are refused if they are seen as inter-fering with the work of the institution (rather than as being alien to com-munity life). Another burden is an unrealistic subordination of communal life to institutional demands. While the acceptance of an institutional apos- ,tolate necessarily demands coordination with the life of the community, sometimes this is done by an additive process, as in the case of a com-munity that fulfilled its quota of religious exercises, one rapidly following another, after closing school for the day. Occasionally, the reverse happens: the requirements of an institutional apostolate are over-ruled by community procedures. An obvious, instance is the appointment of religious to in-stitutional positions for which their major qualification is membership in the sponsoring community. While post-conciliar renewal has (presumably?)caused the disappear-ance of the more conspicuous malpractices, still an inherent and recurring problem in institutional, apostolates is to maintain an appropriate balance between institutional work, living in community; and personal life. Any notable imbalance in these relationships is likely to occasion friction or dissatisfaction within a community. In addition to this perennial problem, there are other factors that have brought added pressures on institutional apostolates in recent years. For example, as a result of the post-conciliar decrease in the number of active religious, many communities have been. unable to staff their institutions in the same measure as formerly. Maintaining institutional 'commitments is seemingly so burdensome that some religious doubt the wisdom of institu-tional apostolates at all---even if their community would have sufficient personnel in the future. This feeling is frequently shared by those younger religious who are disenchanted with institutions in general and have entered religious life in view of a more personalized type of service. While this anti-institutionalism is~sometimes naively ex.aggerated, the fact remains that some communities have accepted members who simply do not identify with in-stitutional apostolates. Simultaneously new options have become available. For example, ~the Individual Apostolates and Pluralism / 831 closing of some schools has made it possible or necessary for religious to seek positions outside the educational institutions conducted by their own community. Again, recent developments in the °Church, have led to the creation of new positions that ~previously didn't exist--directors of religious education representing a common instance. And in some cases, religious have found employment in government agencies or public interest firms. An interesting relationship has emerged in many institutions of higher education. In order to qualify for governmental assistance, a legal separation has been effected between institution and sponsoring community. While the same religious may continue their apostolate within the institution, legal separation makes it incongruous for a community to continue to consider the institution "ours." The legal status of religious working in the institu-tion is also changed; for example, many religious now have contracts with institutions that were formerly controlled by theircommunities. Apparently, institutional apostolates are being "individualized." Individual Apostolates Such recent developments have led to the emergence of'a variety of "individual apostolates.''1 Here an "individual apostolate" is :taken to mean a particular occupation that a religious undertakes as a personal effort and responsibility; it is to some degree independent of the administration of the community as such; it depends more on the particular personal qualifications of the religious, not on membership in this or that community. The degree of individuality, however, may ~vary considerably: religious who continue to'work in what were formerly their community's institutions may find that legal separation is a more or less nominal change; other religious, however, may find that they have to qualify competitively for their positions. In the latter case, when a particular religious leaves an individual apostolate, the community can not expect and is not expected to furnish a replacement (as is frequently the case in institutional apostolates). An im-portant icharacteristic of individual apostolates is that the religious com-munity as such can not determine whether its members will be able to ob-tain specific positions. Speaking.of an: apostolate as "individual" does not imply that it~is in-dependent of church or community; rather (if it is to be considered an apostolate) it must be conceived in'some way as a service that witnesses to Christ and reflects the spirit of a particularjcommunity. Moreover, there is a sense in which every apostolate is "individual,". insofar as religious are individually responsible for "personifying" the Gospel in their particular occupations. l Just as some may prefer terms such as '!mission" or "ministry" in place of "aposto-late," some may prefer terms such as "special" or "experimental" to "individual." Whatever the merits of one or other term, the concern here is with the implications of the individuality of these occupations in relation to community life. 1132 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 However, one must admits, the arbitrariness of classifying practically any occupation as an "apostolate." For example, practically any occupa-tion- from farming to fine arts, from physical education to theoretical physics--has been placed under the generic umbrella of "apostolate" in various institutions conducted by religious. Given this precedent, it seems rather arbitrary to attempt to restrict "individual apostolates" along rigid lines.: In addition, individual apostolates have long-standing precedents in most active communities: the missionary stationed alone, the student i'e-ligious living outside a community residence, the traveling .retreat-master or fund-raiser, etc. Again on the'basis of precedents, it is hard to disqualify individual apostolates on .'the ground of separation from daily community life. Or is it justifiable to consider these instances "temporary," when in fact they last for years? Or is it realistic to consider these cases .exceptions or experiments, if they involve a relatively large percentage of a com-munity? The point in raising these questions is not to object to the legitimacy of individual° apostolates in active communities? Insofar as religious rules are guidelines~ not~ absolutes,, exceptions are allowable or, at times,.nece~sary; there does not seem to be any.a priori reason why individual apostolates can not be a justifiable exception. Likewise, communities have always had to experiment in their apostolates; accordingly, individual apostolates can be seen as a new type of apostolic venture attempting to respond to con-temporary needs. Still, it is hardly adequate to treat individual apostolates merely as exceptions or experiments~ First of all, a more positive view is necessary. Individual apostolates should be seen as a development that is appropriate, perhaps necessary, if the Church is to witness to Christ in the contemporary world? Indeed', individual apostolates have already proved beneficial in some communities; for example, their existence has occasioned a much needed delineation of lines of community responsibility in relation to all apostolates. Moreover, individu~il apostolates are a means whereby com-munities, instead of being constrained to fill various slots, can utilize their personnel in more creative ways. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of indi-vidual apostolates is their challenge to religious to develop fully their talents in the service of Christ. 2The question of what constitutes app(opriat~e occupations for r.eligious parallels that of appropriate occupatior~s for priests; cf. G. Murray, "The Hyphenated Priest," R]R (~'REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS) 25 (1966), 693-702; D. Hassel, "The Priest-Expert," Chicago Studies 3 (1964), 201-225. .~Whether individual apostolates can be defended in contemplative communities is a different question; the example of Thomas Merton suggests that the possibility should not be peremptorily rejected. :*Cf. M. Rondet, ',Choices of Religious Life in a Secularized Worldi" R]R 34 (1975), 574-579. ~Individual Apostolates and Pluralism / 833 On the other hand, since individual apostolates have seemingly arisen more by indirection than by intention~ it is easy to continue the pattern of temporary expedients ~ or ad hoc experiments"without facing broader issues. For example, it may be tempting to presume that individual apos-tolates are only a passing fad that will eventually go away; yet ~what if they are really introducing a new. and, distinct.form of religious,life?~ Again, it is tempting to assume that ,there is little difference.,~between religious, life for those in individual apostolates and those in institutional, apostolates; accordingly, the ~same mo~lel of religious' 'life should prevail in both. But what if there ,is-need for a new type of balance between occupation, re-ligiouslife, and personal life-style in individual apostolates? " The impl!cations of individual apostolates for religious life have been emerging, ,.like ~the apostolates themselves, only piecemeal. Though only partially apparent, these~implications need to be examined, for they poten- .tially constitute the raw material for either crisis or creativity---~r more ljk61y, a bit,of both. In other words,, a pattern is being established that affects,not only'the individual religious involved,,but the commumty as a whole~ For example, a relatively high proportion'of members in some communities is currently engaged in individual apostolates; even were it desirable to withdraw mem- .bets' from individual apostolates,.,it may no longer be feasible to do so without serious disruption (viz. problems in re-assignment, budget, resi-dence, etc.). Somewhat incongruously~ individual apostolates seem to have reached a point of institutionalization! On .the theoretical level, v~hat is at issue is a community's self-vision and self-identity. On the practical level is a complex of questions relating to the implementation of thi~ vision and the fostering of community identity Theoretical Level: A New Vision? Whatever the imbalances in institutional apostolates, they offer religious a sense of identity: "our community working in our restitution:" Quite commonly this sense of corporate identity ~s reinforced by a vision of religious life as a continual harmony of prfiyer ~nd Work, of w~or.k and prayer. Indeed, the identification of community and° institution, suggests something of an equation of,communal prayei and institutional work. If this'vision of religious~life was on~ convincingly painted in the novi-ti~ ite, such an interlocking matrix of p~ra~,er and work seems' alien 'to many religiohs today. The loss c~f this vision may'6ccasi6n feelings of ~talgia for a vision now blurred and a rhythm of. activity now. disjointed. Yet before ~Cf. R. Faricy, "Change in the Apostolic Religious Life," RIR" 34 (1975), 413-414. for a description of the "demonasticization of,apostolates." Should individual aposto-lates be seen as the cutting edge of this centrifug~al movement away from monasti-cism? o ' 834 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume~ 35, 1976/6 indulging guilt4eelings ab'rut, visions lost, it would be well to ask whether the vision is worth recapturing at all . . The vision of religious life as harmonious integration of prayer and work seems to presuppose a double model: a sociological model of an agrarian society coupled with a theological model of a divinely regulated universe.6 While an agrarian model may seem medieval, perhaps the. proximate in-fluence is the American frontier ideal of the self-sufficient family farm. Questions of historical origin aside, an agrarian model seems more influen~- tial in religious.life than is commonly acknowledged. For example, most religious communities were originally founded within agrarian societies; more importantly, an agrarian ideal of .community seems to survive in the expectations, of many religious. Indeed, one may suspect that efforts to "return to the spirit of the founder" may on occasion be similar to the flight from urban life and its mounting frustrations: a yearning for :a simpler life may be nostalgia for the benefits of an agrarian society. Or again, the once common practice of establishing houses of frrmation in rural settings ("where religious life could be lived at its ideal"), reflects something of the ideal of a self,sufficient family farm. Examples could be multiplied; varia-tions on the agrarian model could be added (e.g., religious~ community as "cottage industry" or "ethnic village," etc.). It seems worth noting the similar melding ~of work and communal life that characterizes both agrarian societies and institutional apostolates. Fitting: neatly with an agrarian model of religious :communityqs a the-ological :model Of a well regulated universe: iu~t as the universe is har-moniously ordered in every detail by an inherent set.of laws enacted by a provident God, so too is the religious community harmoniously regulated in every detail by a set of rules provided by ~a diyinely guided founder and subsequently administered, by omniscient superiors.7 While this is blatant caricature, it should be-remembered that every caricature hits uncomfortably close to life¯ ¯ Both models have become theoretically untenable. The~ agrarian model ~;Many different models have been used to explain the transition from one vision or world-view to another: for example, T. Nuij, "New Forms of Community Life," R]R 32 (1973), 59-64, coniraSts commtlnity in primitive, rural or pre-technological, and technological or industrial cultures. Among the abundant literature on this transition, cf. T. O'Meara, Holiness and Radicalism in Religious Lile (New York~ 1972); G. Moran, The. New Community (New York, 1970); L. Schaller, hnpact o[ the Future and The Change Agent (Nashville-Ne~ Yo.rk, 1969 and 1972, respectively); R. Weg-mann, "The Catholic Clergy and Change," Cross Currents i9 (1969), i78-197. The well-known works of C. Reich, The Greet,ing o! America (New York, 1971) and A. Toffler, Future Shock (New York, 1970) offer additional models and numerous illustrations. rThe influence of another model, the church as institution; is also evident; on the advantages~ and.~ limitations of 'this and. other ecclesiological models, cf. A. Dulles, Models o[ the Church (Garden City, New York, 1974). !t would be helpful to have a similar analysis of models of religious life. ~ Individual A,postolates and Pluralism / 835 is_Ansufficient in view of the complexity of urban, technological soCiety, while the theological model of-a s~,stematically directed universe is inade- - quate in the face of historical consciousness and philosophical pluralism. Accordingly, neither of these models .provides a suitable framework for a vision, of religious life. Nbnetheless, there is one reason ~for their tengcious survival:¢ they undoubtedly furnish a sense of security. It is ~spiritually reassuring to devote one's entire day in a harmonious blend of prayer and work dedicated to God: could a fervent religious want more? For some religious, then, the h'armonious vision is quite satisfying. For others, othe ~vision may~be~ feeble, but they are willing to live with;incon-sistency, because they are unable or unwilling to search for a new vision. If~a few havediscovered a new vision, many others are still searching. Aside from the fact that it is far easier to criticize a vision-become-problematic than to construct a replacement, visions are elusive and difficult to verbal-ize. More than likely, discussions within a community do notdebate visions but center on practical issues: traditional procedures versus new approaches. It is tempting, for example; to treat individual apostolates merely as another practical problem. Yet touch'more is at stake: competing visions of com-munity and apostolate that stand at the heart of personal and corporate self-identity. Not surprisingly, the .response to new visions has been varied. First of all, some would prefer to re-upholster the traditional vision by discard-ing out-dated elements" and .super-imposing sundry modern touches. Change is then cosmetic: the superficial appearance is different, but the funda-mental vision remains the same. Nevertheless, there are definite ad-vantages to this approach: it affords cor~tinuity with the past--a matter of concern to older members; it accommodates itself to new circumstances.--- a mattef of importance for younger members; and it introduces, ch~inges gradually sb that there is sufficient time to become accustomed to one set of changes before more_ are introduced--a matter of expediency in all social changes. Yet such an option Carries with it a'notable liability: it relies on a vision that is basically unattractive and unacceptable to many. ~ ~ ¯ Nonetheless-, the right of a community to take this option must be respected, for it may be the only option that a particular community can really live with.8 To follow an out-dated vision may not be wise, but it need not be wrong.dn fact, the attempt to .jerk away an apparent Linus blanket from those committed to a traditional vision is likely to be disrup-tive of both community and apostolate? .Without arbitrarily precluding the o sit might be well to develop a declaration of rights for religious similar to Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom. '~Th6 hazards of adopti0g a new vision are forcefully, though stridently, indicated by J. Hitchcock, The.Decline and Fall o~ Radical:~Cbtholicism (New York, 1971); with-out accepting his viewpoint, one can still~adna!t the need for facing straightforwardly his criticisms. 83b / Review for Religious, Vrlume 33, 1976/6 possibility of future change, a community may.decide very realistically and very,' honestly that its capacity for renewal can only accomplish so much at~a ~iven moment of its history. Communities that decide to retain a traditional vision of community and'apostolate would be well advised not to"eng~ge any of their members in,individual, apostolates that require a life-styl~ that'is basically incompatible with the community,s traditional, vision and thus 'threaten its ~corporate identity. The predictable resulr~'would be serious dissension that.:the, com~ mfihity .may not be prepared to bear:~Yet this need not imply that such communities need to exclude ever~ type of individual.apostolate; what is implied is that~each proposed individual apostolate must be carefully ex-amined for its concordance.with the community's self-vision and self-identity. ,, The Problem, of Pluralism : If the traditional vision is~unattractiw or untenable, what is the new vision of ~community and apostolate? The ~option would be simple~ if a compelling new vision were~ at hand;'then at least-the choice would be.~ clear-cut: traditional or new. Unfortunately there is no one unifying vision that demands acceptance. If it is quite clear that modern life is techno-logical not agrarian, pluralistic not uniform, it is not clear how such aspr'cts .can be synthesized in a new vision. Instead of one new vision, there are~ any number of competing visions--each with advantages~ all'with their respective liabilities. The way to the future seems tobe: may. the best vision win! It is then quite understandable why many religious prefer to hold on to the~ vision they have, whatever.its deficiencies, rather than risk'the vague uncertainties of some apparently more problematic replacement. It is equally understandable why many other religious tend to hedge their op-tions ,by tentatively exploring new possibilities, while keeping a firm'grasp on,a traditional vision. Still., just as a diversity of liturgical practices and theological viewpoints has emerged in. the post-conciliar Church, so a similar diversity in life-styles and visions of community and apostolate has emerged in post-conciliar religious life. This ~variety is rooted in a greater theological awareness of the diversity in the mystery of Christ, the uniqueness of each person, and the temporal and cultural plurality of mankind.~° Where formerly uniformity was prized,as exemplifying the uhity of the Church, now pliJralism is seen as reflecting the Church's catholicity. Yet if it is easy~to pay lip-service to pluralism, it is much more difficult ~°Cf. E. Carter, "Pluralism in Christian Life," R[R 31 .(1972), 22~26; K. Rahner~ "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Churchs' Professiono o~ Faith," Con~ cilium 46: 103.123; A. Dulles', "Dogma as an Ecumenical Problem,'" 'Theological S~udies 29 (1968),~ 397-416 (reprinted in Dulles! The~'Survival ot Dogma [Garden City, New York, 1971], pp. 152-170). ,Individual Apostolates and Pluralism / 837~ to cope consistently with its implications. For example, some religious have adopted new life-styles, but have not related these to a new vision; and vice versa, new visions 'have been officially adopted in constitutions and rules without subsequent implementation in a community. ~ More importantly, the transition from uniformity to pluralism is both threatening~and enticing. Those who were trained for, or are congenitally inclined to, a life of uniformity and regularity can be severely confused by a,superabundan~e of choices and°the burden of responsibility inherent in a pluralistic situation:~°For example, obedience seems to furnish an excuse for some religious to become over-dependent on their superiors; or vice versa, obedience seems to allow some superiors to pre-empt most decision-making from their subordinates. If some r~ligious pale at pluralism~ it may be the threat of responsibilities that they are unwilling or unable to, bear; similarly, if some ~superiors resent pluralism, it may be through unwilling-ness to share their authority with former subordinates. Another dismaying aspect of pluralism is the potential loss, of com-munity support-systems; when familiar practices vanish, religious ma~' feel themselves ostracized from the group or isolated in their work. Change ih any form is unsettling to creatures of habit, but clinging to a traditional pattern may result in isolation. Since the prospect of losing the respect and understanding of one's companions is~unnervihg, pluralism can prove to be just as formidable to younger religious as to older. In the case of the younger, ,it can be the refusal to adopt the ~vision currently in vogue among their peers. Yet if pluralism ig threatening; it is also attractive. In place of the enervating burden of predictable routine there is the prospect of flexibility and variety in both communal and ~ apostolic life. Religious life is more easily seen as a challenging opportunity for'personal initiative and creativity in the service of Christ. For example, obedience may be seen~ as a commit-ment to Christ that takes the form of submitting one's proposed activities tO the critical encouragement and the charismatic~ evaluation of one's col-leagues; authority is pr!marily that of competent advice; ultimate responsi-bility is one's own before Christ and community. But such a revised view of~ obedience has to be accepted, not ~ofily by the individual but by the community, which may have fo ask whether it can function with a number of different and divergent views of obedience. Another attractive aspect of pluralism is the atmosphere which~ the community provi~tes religious for developing their self-potefitial both in their lives as Christians and in ~their apostolates; this implies a willingness and openness in sharing insights and successes, failures and feelings; in-deed, the diversity of apostolates undertaken by their colleagues can be-c~ me an incentive for religious to Work at~maximum capacity. The preceding contrast exemplifies some of the positive and negative aspects of pluralism. The examples may also help explain why individuals 838 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 react quite differently to the prospect of pluralism: some feel threatened; others are attracted; still others would like to have the advantages of both uniformity and pluralism without the liabilities of either.11 Insofar as pluralism seems to have emerged within religious life more as the result of a series of individual decisions and external trends than through precise planning for pluralism, its implications need attention. Earlier, pluralism in religious life tended to exist more as a collective phe-nomenon: different communities constituted a diversified spectrum of "catholic" religious life, but any one community tended to occupy only a section of this spectrum; each community enjoyed a fairly well specified corporate apostolic identity. The importance attached to this identity-via-apostolate is illustrated by the fact that some communities (even when personnel was available) refused to undertake certain apostolates, as incompatible with their constitutions; as a result, some communities originated as off-shoots of others, when a new apostolate was needed which the parent community felt unable to enter. "Of course, some communities have always allowed greater internal diversity than others. For example, if some communities have restricted their endeavors to one or two specific apostolates, others have undertaken a variety. At first sight, individual apostolates appear to be simply an exten-sion of this variety. And in fact, this seems to be the way most individual apostolates have come about: superiors have allowed individual religious to accept experimental apostolates as exceptions to accustomed practices. In fact, these exceptions have gradually reached the point in some com-munities- where a comparatively high percentage of members is involved; in some instances, proportionately more members are now in individual apostolates than are in some traditional ones. In effect, the exceptions appear to be constituting a new rule, though there is not always a new vision to accompany it. Thus, the introduction of individual .apostolates may precipitate a re-orientation of a community's self-vision and self-identity. In other words, individual apostolates seem to imply the acceptance of a plurality of visions, only some of which are com-patible with traditional vision(s). The basic question then is: to what extent is a community really willing to accept the implications of pluralism? Practical Options A community's Vision of its apostolate(s) is a vital element in its cor-por. ate identity; presumably its apostolic vision is an important factor in attracting, applicants ,and in training younger membersi presumably too, 11The reaction of any person to pluralism seems to involve a number of intertwined factors--personality, intelligence, education, age, occupation, etc.--so that it is im-possible to predict an individual's receptivity.to pluralism. Nor is receptivity~ merely a matter of age; the contrast "traditional-pliJralistic" is not identical with older versus younger~ Also, one may doubt whether it is possibl6 'to foster pluralism simply through instruction~ Individual Apostolates and Pluralism /839 apostolic vision is an essential motivation for the special spirit and dy-nainism of a community. Moreover, apostolic vision is necessary if a community is to avoid being victimized by the needs of the moment and to pla.n its activities on a long range basis. It is crucial, then, for a com- ~iinity to delineate its apostolic vision as clearly as possible, while recog-nizing that every option involves risk.1~ ,~ first option is for a community to continue its institutional aposto-late( s) as~ its primary and (probably) exclusive commitment. Presuming of course that its institutions are really viable, the most-compelling motive for this option can be found in the fact that this is what the membership recognizes as its proper charism and commits itself to do. The evident risk is that this option is not particularly appealing to those who want to work in a more personalized setting; thus, recruitment of new members and dis-satisfaction among present members could well be problems. Moreover, this option may yield to the temptation to abandon the struggle to live a religious life in the modern pluralistic world. The polar-oppbsite' is the option to make individual apostolates the primary and presumably exclusive emphasis in a community.~As a means of responding to challenges facing the Church in the modern world, thisop-tion presupposes considerable flexibility in community structures as well as Considerable self-reliance on the~part of individual religious. These pre-sumed strengths may be dissipated through excessive individualism on the one hand or through lack of traditional support-systems on. the other. While a few commuriities," or at least some segments .of communities, appear to be headed in the direction of this option, what may really be at stake is the creation of new communities (even though the present may not seem a particularly auspicious moment for new found~tiofis). L oA compromise between these two options is the attempt to. juxtapose ¯ institutional and individual apostolates. In greater or less degree, this is theo~present option of many active communities in the United States. In-deeid, it seems to be a typical bit of American pragmatism for a community to allow its members to dream different visions, to work in diffe~rent settings, oani:l, yet to unite, together as members of one family. If such diversity defies theoretical alignment, American religious will presumably be content, as long as their community lives and works harmoniously, however diversely. Compromise will tend to succeed as long .as religious are genuinely tolerant of the inevitable tensions that diversity introduces. The unavoidable risk is that s'uch a compromise will become unglued for example, through a wide-spread failure to fulfill responsibilities both in apostolates and in religious life, through favoritism or factionalism introduced when one group attempts to impose its views on others, or through the difficulty of attracting new members to a pluralistic life. r-'Cf, the interesting interview with a superior,general, C. Buttimer, "Is Religious Life Viable Today?" America 128/4 (February 3, 1973), 86-90. 840 / Review Ior Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 If compromise is to be successful, it is important for the members of a community~ explicitly to recognize the terms of the compromise. In other words, if the tensions arising from diversity in visions and a variety of life-styles are not to. be divisive, a community needs to recognize and to ,accept a spectrum of variant models of apostolic endeavor and of, community life. A community should specify the extent of pluralism that it is capable of tolerating. For example, some communities may be ,open to any type of individual apostolate; others may wish to restrict themselves~ tO select types. Without prior specification or evaluation, .there is potential for arbitrary decision-making, either real or imagined; there is also the likelihood of disillusionment among members if their expectations, ,whether realistic or idealistic, are :not met. (Disillusionment can affect both those who expect the traditional apostolates to be maintained, as well as~ those who, want ind~ividual apostolates to be introduced.) . ~ ~ The acceptance of pluralism should eventually. 'be expressed in bbth the constitutionS, which describe a community's aprstolic vision, and in the rules,~which attempt to concretize this vision in the life.of a community. Such, formulation is .a difficult endeavor, as the revisions undertaken after Vatican II amply confirm.13 Moreover, the emergence of individual aposto-lates adds to the.complexity: first, since the vision is pluralistic and personal, constitutions apparently can do little more than generalize about the limit-points of the pluralism that is acknowledged in principle~ secondly, if rules presumably reflect the lived experience of a community over a period of ¯ time, individual apostolates, in their present form, ar~ both recent and .still .experimental. Accordingly, .different communities may choose .to accept individual apostolates .in rather different ways. Some communities may find it feasible to consider tliem as extensions of existing apostolates; for example, a com-munity., whose apostolate is in education may decide to restrict the ac-ceptance of individual apostolates to educational endeavors. Other com-munities, which have defined their apostolates in terms of specific groups (e.g., poor,~ unevangelized, ethnic, etc.) may allow individual apostolates as a broadening of their ministry to these groups. Still other communities may encourage any~,type of new individual apostolate that displays some relation to witnessing Christ in the modern world.' At least as crucial as express recognitio,n of individual apostolates~ in :constitutions and rules is the way religious regard such formulations. For some, rules are principles that must be uniformly applied in partiCular in-stance. s; others would view rules as determinations that are to be supple-mented and emended according to actual experience. This contrast is given visual form,,in the first case, by those rules that are published in leather-l'~ Cf. J.l_~zano, "Revision of the Constitutions: Meaning, Criteria, and Problems," R]R 34 (1975), 525-534. Individual Apostolates and Pluralism / 841 bound, red-edged volumes resembling miniature Bibles; in the second.case, rtiIes migtit well be mimeographed on loose-leaf sheets and placed in folders to facilitate periodic revision and up-dating. At least this illustration may indicate tha~t attempting to specify'rules for a diversity of individual aposto-lates is a ~tenuous enterprise. In addition, it suggests that traditional rules; however well suited to institutional apostol~ites, should not simply be used as .an umbrella to cover the new situations encountered in individual aposto-lates. Since uniform rules for individual apostolates tend to be anomalous in theory and impractical in"fact, it seems necessary for commuifities whose members are engaged in individual apostolates to develop new approaches: It may well bethat'a community may decide to'formulate guidelines for community or .procedures~for administration or standards .for~professional life for those members in individual apostolates. In so doing, a community will need to face squarely both the advantages and the draffbacks that are encountered in attempting to live and work with quite different 'types of apostolates and life-styles within tile same community. o In any pluralistic situation, it is obviously impossible to lis't all the variables; yet it may be helpful to saml~le a few problem areas: administra-tive procedures, community life, and personal freedom. Administrative Procedures In the halcyon days of institutional apostolates, administration .may have been tedious, but it f~equently had the advantage of following a,stan-dard pattern of applying general norms to particular cases. This '.view. of administration is inadequate for dealing with individual apostolates (and, it should be added, With most institutional apostolates as-well). On the one"hand, individual apostolates tend to elude uniform norms, unless these a~'e~,extremely general; on the other hand, individual apostolates necessarily change the roles of and relationship between superiors and subordinates; This change in, roles" is graphically illustrated by the religious who occa-sionally employed the provincial' superior on a part-time basis. A prime factor in the:reorientation of roles is the fact that in most indi- .vidual apostolates, religious .need a fair amount of latitude to negotiate with prospective employeis and that, ~once employed, their work is not under, the direct supervision of community superiors. As a result; a superior's role tends to be narrowed to antecedent approval (for it is frequently unfeasible, if not counterproductive, for a superior to become involved in negotiations) ¯ and subsequent ratification, which may,be tantamount to rubber-stamping a iait accompli. Some superiors may find this process quite congenial; they have plenty of other problems and are quite relieved if some religious can successfully pursue their individu~ apostolates without supervision. Other superiors may feel more or less frustrated at wanting .to be helpful yet not being needed or at wanting to give daily directives yet being powerless; they may subcon- Review Ior Religious, Volume 35, 1976/6 sciously resent the apparent diminution of their authority. All of these reactions manifest, a lack of appreciation of the change in roles in the superior-subordinate relationship. If it is unrealistic to expect to transfer a set of relationships en masse from institutional to individual apostolates, what then is the role of the superior in relation to religious in this context? First of all, a superior has to take seriously the individuality of each apostolate as well as the personality of each religious; in effect, each apos-tolate must be considered as a separate and somewhat unique case, just as each religious ~is a unique individual. Instead of applying general norms to individual cases, a reverse process is needed: whether and how general principles apply needs to be discovered through an evaluation of each apostolate. The latter task can only be carried out as a joint effort of supe-rior and subordinate, acting as colleagues. . Accordingly, the role of the superior is less a matter of issuing com-mands and more a matter of fostering dialogue, discernment, and discre-tion. 14 Dialogue is necessary if the superior is to understand different apos-tolates from the viewpoint of participant religious; though this does not necessarily imply that a participant's view is always the best, still it should at least be the point of departure for productive discussion. Discernment, in the sense of raising appropriate questions to evaluate the potential, and performance for an individual apostolate, must also be a joint endeavor if the merits and disadvantages of a particular apostolate are to be appreci-ated. Discretion, which aims at deciding on an appropriate course of action among a number of alternatives, should also be shared; it is pointless to impose a decision that one cannot or will not be implemented. Obviously, such an approach to community administration requires a more personal type of communication than may have been customary in the supervision of institutional apostolates. Where a large number of indi-vidual apostolates are involved, such an approach may require that super-visory responsibilities be divided among more than one superior. Effective use of such an approach demands that superiors be skilled in interpersonal communication; in practice, this may mean that other administrative tasks, such as financial management, may have to be delegated to others. If a new administrative approach is required for individual apostolates, no approach is a panacea. While a more personal approach may be more human and hopefully more productive, both superiors and subordinates should realize that there is no advance assurance that their discussion will prove fruitful: if ~dialogue can result in agreement, it also may make any disagreement painfully evident; if discernment can raise crucial questions, l~One of the reasons-that dialogue, discernment, and discretion have become m~ajor concerns in post-conciliar renewal is linked to increased recognition of religious as persons; an added reason for the importance of these means here is the individuality of apostolates. Individual Apostolates and Pluralism / 843 it may also end in self-contented deception; if discretion can aid in deter-mining appropriate action, it is also an arbitrary selection among alterna-tives. There is no method that as such will guarantee success. For example, one question that dispels any roseate vie