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Issue 57.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1998. ; f,o r r eltg ous Christian Heritages and Contempora~ Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER1998. VOLUME57. :NUMBER5 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles .in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, bistorical, or inspirational, written from a tbeological _or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1998 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This per,nission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe TracT Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wktberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents 454 feature Learning Communities: A Spirituality of Work for the Information Age Michael Skelley proposes that a spirituality which focuses on creating learning communities promises to be especially appropriate for work in the info~'mation age. He integrates theological concepts with ideas from organizational development research. 472 484 491 ignatian spirituality The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises John J. Begley SJ offers a contemporary understanding of Jesus' parables that inserts their use within the Ignatian Exercises and so facilitates a retreatant's entering into the experience of Jesus. St. Ignatius and My Piano Anita J. Baly reflects on how her experience of the Ignatian Exercises gave her insight about playing the piano and praying as complementary processes that call on remarkably similar skills. consecrated life The Experience of God in Consecrated Life during the 20th Century Joseph A. Tetlow SJ sums up the differences between the pre-Vatican II and Vatican II approaches to consecrated life in terms of the postmodern understanding of experience as constructed, derivative, intentional, and dialogic. Review for Religious 513 Gathering the Fragments: Associate Leaders Reflect on Their Experience Roberta Archibald SSJ, Joanne Bauer SBS, and Jean Ustasiewski OSF share the experience of a group of associate leaders who meet regularly in the Philadelphia area. 522 529 536 prayer Unceasing Prayer: Romancing the Divine Jerry D. Keeney develops the image of romancing the Divine for shaping our relationship with God. Prayer Joseph McCloskey SJ draws upon his experience as a pray-er to describe some necessary elements in a prayer life. Renewal of Prayer Mary Terese Donze ASC explores ways in which the word of God inspires and nourishes our prayer life beyond and above every book on prayer. departments 452 Prisms 541 Canonical Counsel: The Evangelical Counsel of Obedience: Key Current Legislation 547 Book Reviews September-October 1998 That they may be one, as we are one. prisms Rpe John Paul II wrote the encyclical That They May Be One (Ut Unum Sint) in 1995. This document, dealing with our Christian commitment to ecumenism, took its title from the petition spoken by Jesus in his Last Supper discourse as remembered in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus prayed that all his followers would be blessed with the unity, the oneness which his Abba-Father and he enjoyed: "That all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us" On 17:21). A most pervasive tendency among us is to make a divi-sion of any grouping into "them" and "us." It happens in families, between those "siblings or relatives who are "out" and those who are "in." It occurs in the way male and female differences have become "them" and "us" in the gender movements of our day. It is evident in the struggles caused by racial, ethnic, or religious distinctions. Witness our contemporary history of the United States, Bosnia, Sudan, and Rwanda. It is found in the church whether between hierarchy/clergy and laity or between liberal and conservative/traditionalist. Even an official church action like excommunication pronounced by local bishops or by Vatican congregations seems to divide off members into a "them" against an "us." Historically it has been true that religious congregations vied with each other within the church, for example, the competition between branches of 14th-century Franciscans and between 17th-century Dominicans and Jesuits--something in consecrated life, Review for Religious thank the Spirit, which seems less a problem in our time. It is writ large in the struggles in our economic world between east and west and between north and south--the "have's and the have-not's." The "them" and "us" (or, at its personal ultimate, "the world" and "me") mentality seems to be in the very air we breathe. What does this year dedicated in a special way to the Spirit call forth in us? Our desire could well be that the Spirit gift us with various prisms through which to view life and our relation-. ships with others in more accepting ways. We might pray that the Spirit become for us the pervading atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being. We need to stir ourselves to take the first few steps away from "political maps" that divide everything into a "them" and "us." We could decide to take action by our daily examination of conscience~ We begin our examen by thanking God for the small ways in which we have allowed the Spirit to unite ourselves with others in our thinking about them and in our acting towards them. We then examine ourselves and note the occasions when we have succeeded in avoiding a "them" and "us" attitude and the occasions when we have not. We, moved by the Spirit, beg God's forgiveness for the obtuseness of our minds and the hardness of our hearts in choosing and reinforcing the deadly worldview of division in our behaviors of this day. Finally we ask ever more fervently for the outpouring of the Spirit upon us to strengthen us in our mission. Empowered by the Spirit, we dedicate ourselves anew to struggle at eliminating the "them" and "us" mentality in our family, in our community, in our parish life, in our work life, and in whatever other areas it seems to pre-vail. The Spirit is the Love-Reality, the very communio, of God's life. The Spirit, we might ~ay, is the Love-touch of God's life in us, and so the Spirit's presence in our lives means our communion of life with our Trinitarian God. The Spirit's activity is God's cre-ating the communio among all of us here and now. Christ's prayer, then, becomes more insistently our prayer and moves us so to work to bring about a world that is at once more human and more divine--that all may be one. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1998 feature MICHAEL SKELLEY Learning Communities: A Spirituality of Work for the Information Age Many spiritualities of work have been developed by the world's religious traditions. The differences between these spiritualities come not only-from their various theological presuppositions, but also from the various economic and social realities they address. As the nature of work has changed over the course of human history, so too have the religious interpretations of work. We have entered a new era in the history of work, the information age. The new realities of the workplace pose an immense challenge to workers and to the theologians, pastoral counselors, and ministers who want to help them develop a spirituality of work. How can we articulate, fos-ter, and practice a spirituality of work appropriate to the information age? We may not simply assume that a spir-ituality deduced from past theologies will fit our present situation. If the nature of work truly has changed, then a different kind of spirituality will be required.~Nor can we assume that theologians have the competence by them-selves to develop a new spirituality of work. This task requires ~hat we dialogue with a wide range of scholars who study contemporary work organizations. The potential number of partners and possible agen-das for such a dialogue is immense, and we cannot engage Michael Skelley is a full-time faculty member and the director of the undergraduate program at DePaul University's School for New Learning. His research and publications have focused on spirituality, worship, work, and learning. His address is DePaul University; 243 S. Wabash, #700; Chicago, Illinois 60660. Re~iew for Religious them all. Nor will we survey the historical development of the theology of work; that has been done quite well elsewhere.~ We will integrate some insights from this tradition with a few ideas from scholars of information-age work. The growing consensus in the latter field is that the primary challenges and opportunities of the information-age workplace revolve around learning. In the Christian tradition, coincidentally, learning has long been seen as a path to holiness. This paper, therefore, will explore how a spirituality focused on transforming our workplaces into learn-ing communities might be an apt spirituality of work for the infor-mation age. The Spirituality of Work Throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition, work has been seen as both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we some-times experience work as an opportunity to display our talents, develop our gifts, contribute to the common good, and exercise our creativity. When work is like that, it is joyful, engaging, and fulfilling. Such work experiences return intrinsic rewards that far outweigh their extrinsic compensations: they satisfy some of our deepest needs and highest aspirations. But, on the other hand, we also experience work as overwhelmed by impossible demands, torn by interpersonal conflicts, dehumanized by trivial proce-dures, and oppressed by unjust practices. Such work causes frus-tration, anger, and despair. Whatever compensation we receive, then, cannot repair the damage done to our spirits and bodies. When our work is like this, it poisons us and our family, friends, and communities. Work brings out the best and the worst in us. We need a spirituality of work precisely because work is so ambivalent. As our spiritual predecessors did in their own cir-cumstances, we search for ways of working which might help us taste more of work's blessings and fewer of its curses. We search, in other words, for ways to transform our ambivalent experiences of work into a consistent experience of God. Our positive expe-riences inspire us to believe in the goodness of work. Can we, then, find ways of working which regularly evoke the best in us and our work? Our negative experiences test our character and challenge us to change. Can-wE find ways of working which will liberate us from the destructive aspects of our work and our work-places? This transformation is the task of a spirituality of work. September- October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities A spirituality of work is a way of working that helps cowork-ers to achieve together our fullest development as human beings. Three points are important about this definition. Thefirst is that a spirituality of work is a way of working, not a way of promot-ing religious ideas and practices. Work can be integrated into spirituality without being interpreted in explicitly religious ways. We need to challenge that ancient legacy of dualist thinking which still conditions most people to assume that secular activities can-not, by definition, be sacred. That is why P~re Marie-Dominique Chenu, a pioneer, in the modern effort to develop theologies of work, said that the question of the relationship between nature and grace is fundamental to the spirituality of work.2 When people see grace and nature as separate and opposed realities, they think that the task of a spirituality of work is to make work explicitly religious. Spirituality then becomes the intrusion of something foreign into the work. Unfortunately, most of what is touted today as spirituality of work suffers from vari-ous degrees of this dualistic thinking. Such spiritualities impose religious ideas, language, and practices on work. The vigorous resistance that many working people have to these intrusions is justified, not simply because these spiritualities discourage humane work, but also because they encourage questionable theology. But when grace and nature are seen as inseparable, the task of a spirituality of work is to enhance something that is already pres-ent in the work. Spirituality then becomes a matter of making explicit what is already implicit. If, as Karl Rahner said;, our world is permeated with the divine self-communication, we can experi-ence God and achieve our fullest human potential even in the most ordinary kinds of work.3 Work becomes spiritual, not by becoming religious, but by becoming more truly work, by being true to the spiritual dimensions already part of its character. This does not diminish the important and proper place of religion; rather, it points to religion's roots in daily life. Such a spiritual-ity of work is concerned with fostering human development in ways which are appropriate to the workplace. It supports the potential we already know work possesses to engage our gifts and contribute to the common good. ~ Second, the definition above implies that a way of working is a form 6f spirituality to the extent that it supports our complete human development. Holiness is a matter of wholeness, and so whatever fosters our holistic human development leads us toward Review for Religious spiritual maturity as well.4 Or, as Irenaeus taught, God is glorified when human beings are fully alive. The major religious and spir-itual traditions of the world have proven successful at furthering the kind of human development we seek. They provide us with a wealth of complementary images of the breadth and depth of our potential as human beings. Obviously, each of these traditions has been guilty at times of fostering narrow-minded notions of virtue that highlight only some aspects of what we are capable of becoming. But, when they are seen together, it is clear that they share some fundamental values, attitudes, and standards that lead people toward fulfilling their human poten-tial and help them understand this effort,s The task of a spirituality of work is to root our ways of working in these basic understandings of holistic human development. This second point does not con-tradict the first one, namely, that the spirituality of work is a way of work-ing and not a way of promoting religious ideas. To say that a spir-ituality of work needs to be rooted in the values of the world's religious traditions is simply to propose that we need to be reflec-tive about the assumptions we bring to our work. The ways we work necessarily presuppose certain ideas, frequently muddled and usually unarticulated, about the values that guide our lives. The question is not whether we want to have a spirituality of work or not; everyone already has some sort of spirituality of work, although we are rarely conscious of this fact. Nor is the point to advocate the values of one particular religious tradition, no matter how emi-nent they may be. To do so would be to presume a consensus in the workplace about religion that is unlikely to exist. The goal is to be reflective about our fundamental values and to ensure that they support not only efficient and effective work, but fully humane work as well. We can do so by rooting our work in the most uni-versal possible expressions of basic human values. The third point we need to notice about the definition above is that a spirituality of work is about achieving our full human development together, in common, not just individually. It is a Work becomes spiritual, not by becoming religious, but by becoming more truly work, by being true to the spiritual dimensions already part of its character. Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities way of working together with our coworkers for the transforma-tion of our work and our workplaces so that all of us can develop our full human potential. In other words, we need to challenge another kind of dualism, that between our private, individual selves and our public, communal selves. Popular spiritualities today typically identify the spiritual with an individual's interior experience. People seldom connect work with spirituality, for it is associated with the public and exterior dimensions of our lives.6 Popular attempts .to develop a spirituality of work typically assume that their task is to enhance our individual, interior development. They rarely reflect on how the spirituality of work could and should be something that all workers share. This dualistic think-ing does a disservice both to work and to spirituality. It ultimately reinforces the kind of depersonalized, mechanistic approach to work associated with Frederick Taylor, the inadequacies of which are now widely recognized.7 And it misses the critical insight of liberation and feminist theologies that transformation of the social, political, and communal dimensions of our lives is an essential part of spiritual development. Work in the Information Age: Organizational Learning After this review of the task faced by a spirituality Of work, we now need to explore how the information age has changed the nature of the work we do. This will prepare us to think about how a spirituality of work needs to be different today. At the beginning of this century, most workers in the United States were either farmers or domestic servants. By 1950 the com-position of the workforce had completely changed, and most workers were engaged in some form of industrial labor.8 The the-ologies and spiritualities of work that have appeared in the last fifty years focus on the issues of that industrial age, not recognizing how work has changed.9 At the end of the 20th century, it is clear that we have entered an entirely new age in the history of work. We live in a postindustrial society of "knowledge work," the infor-mation age. A significant but steadily shrinking number of work-ers are still employed in the industrial sector, and many others work in service jobs, but the largest portion of the workforce now consists of knowledge workers. By the year 2000, only ten percent of the workforce in the United States and other postindustrial countries will be directly involved in making things.19 Review for Religious While our parents and grandparents usually worked with their hands, moving and making things, most of us work with our heads. The work we do involves knowing, thinking, and learning. Our jobs do not simply require more educational preparation than the work of previous generations did. They require us to do some-thing fundamentally different: to create, interpret, organize, apply, transfer, and manage knowledge. Knowledge work radically changes the nature of a market economy and redefines the rela-tionship between workers and the means of production. This is a new kind of economy and a new kind of work.1~ As Peter Drucker has said, "The social center of gravity has shifted to the knowledge worker. M1 developed countries are becoming postbusiness, knowledge societies. Access to good jobs and career opportunities in developed countries increasingly requires a university diploma. Looked at one way, this is the !ogical result of a long evolution in which we moved from working by the sweat of our brow and by muscle to industrial work and finally to knowledge work. But the development also represents a sharp break with the past."12 Knowledge work requires new abilities to continually learn from and think with one's coworkers. In the past, tasks that required thinking could typically be carried out by individuals using general knowledge. Much of today's knowledge work, in contrast, is too complex for any generalist to accomplish alone. It requires the coordinated efforts of a variety of specialists. People must be able to share their expertise with one another for the work to get done. The primary agent of knowledge work, there-fore, is an organization, not an individual. This fact need not diminish the importance or dignity of the individual worker. It is a consequence of the highly specialized expertise that individ-ual knowledge workers have. Together they are able to create some-thing that none of them could create alone: Knowledge work is a multifaceted task that requires the collaboration of a variety of experts and specialists. It must be done by an organization con-centrated on a particular task. Effective organization, then, is a necessary condition for knowledge work.13 Consequently, as knowledge workers we must work not just for an organization, but at it. That is to say, we must work con-tinually at growing with our colleagues into a community that can do real knowledge work. The organization is not just where we work; it is an essential outcome of our work itself. The task of cre-ating an effective organization where knowledge work is possible Septe~tber- October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities is an inescapable part of each knowledge worker's creative efforts. The nature of knowledge work requires us to deal continually with organizational change, development, and transformation. The academic or professional discipline which concentrates on organizational change is commonly called organization develop-ment. L4.Organization development systematically applies behav-ioral science knowledge to the planned development of organizational strategies, structures, and processes in order to improve an organization's effectiveness.~s Organization develop-ment is practiced in many different ways. Most recent approaches, however, emphasize increasing the organization's capacity to learn.~6 For example, Peter Senge, director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, focuses on creating learning organizations, "organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where peo-ple are continually learning how to learn together."~7 Organizational change experts focus their efforts on organi-zational learning for many reasons. They hope that learning will simultaneously foster the development of the people in the orga-nization and provide superior economic performance. They see it as an extension of the movement to improve the quality of prod-ucts and services. They see it as a way of managing the increas-ingly rapid pace of social and technological change.~8 But, most basically, they recognize that there cannot be any consistent change for the better in work organizations unless these organi-zations are able to learn. All planned change presumes learning, and so leading change is a matter of facilitating learning. Argyris and Sch6n speak of this "learning imperative": "Now in the mid-1990s, it is conventional wisdom that business firms, governments, nongovernmental organizations, schools, health-care systems, regions, even whole nations and supranational insti-tutions need to adapt to changing environments, draw lessons from past successes and failures, detect and correct the errors of the past, anticipate and respond to impending threats, conduct experiments, engage in continuing innovation, build and realize images of a desirable future. There is a virtual consensus that we are all subject to a 'learning imperative,' and in the academic as well as the practical world, organizational learning has become an idea in good currency.'''9 Review for Religious But it is not proving easy to transform our work organiza-tions into learning communities. Organization-development spe-cialists agree that our work organizations have handicaps that prevent them from learning effectively. Senge thinks that funda-mental difficulties most organizations have in becoming learning communities can be traced in part to traditional Christian spiri-tualityd° He says that our work organizations have been rendered dysfunctional by three problems: reactiveness, fragmentation, and competition. These problems reflect deeper cultural problems that are due in large part to a tradition of dualistic thinking in Western society. From his reading of Thomas Merton, Joseph Campbell, Raine Eisler, and Elaine Pagels, Senge thinks that Christianity insti-tutionalized this dualistic thinking. Obviously, Senge's critique of Christianity would need to be more carefully nuanced and solidly supported, but in its broad outlines it is consistent with the critiques made by lib-eration, feminist, and ecological theologians.21 The problem is not spirituality per se,. but the consequences of dualistic, hierarchical, and patriarchal spiritual-ities. Dorothee Soelle, for example, says: "The tendency to isolate Christian faith from the social order has meant, among other things, that mainstream theology has failed to address work in the context of creation and redemption. It has ignored the worlds of pain created by the structural organization of our work. It has unconsciously or often even cynically obscured our creation as workers in the image of 'the great artist.' Christianity has a long record of complicity in bad, meaningless, or harmful work. This is the result not just of insufficient ethical reflection, but also of the inability to perceive Christ's work in returning the world to its people. Resurrection from sin's power happens in good work. We still wait for good work. Through good work we are revealed, in our creative empowerment, as children of God.''22 Senge is one of many organizational-change experts who see a pressing need for a new, holistic spirituality of information-age work.23 Senge's comments about spirituality and organizational change are particularly striking both because of the wide accep-tance his approach to organizational change has gained and because of the scholarly foundation that supports his work. The "Christianity has a long record of complicity in bad, meaningless, or harmful work." September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities fact that Senge and his colleagues stress spirituality so strongly, albeit clumsily, indicates that this area is being given more and more serious consideration by professionals in the field of orga-nization development. It is clear, therefore, that the only certainty amidst the turmoil in our workplaces today is that we must learn how to learn. A host of inexorable forces such as the explosion of information, the shrinking of the global marketplace, the reordering of social priorities, and the emergence of new technologies is reshaping every sector of the working world. Both the environment and our work requirements are changing, and changing more and more rapidly. In times of such pervasive change, neither individual workers nor work organizations are likely to be effective unless they can learn easily, quickly, and well. An important part of all knowledge work today is the transformation of our work organi-zations into learning communities. The Spirituality of Learning Learning is not only a critical issue for the information age; it is also a fruitful theme for spirituality. Learning has often been seen by the spiritual and religious traditions of the world as a path to holiness. Jean Leclercq's classic work on medieval monas-ticism, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, beautifully cap-tures one manifestation of this intimate relationship between learning and spirituality.24 We do not have space here to sample all the rich and varied ways theologians have interpreted the role of learning in spirituality. We will focus instead on just one the-ologian who has had a widespread effect on contemporary Christian theology, Karl Rahner. Epistemological concerns are at the foundation of Rahner's understanding of Christianity, and in that sense his theology is a theology of learning. His insights can readily be translated into a spirituality of learning which deep-ens the way we see the purpose, process, and products of learning. First, Rahner changes the way we see the process of learning by showing us that learning always involves self-transcendence.2s For Rahner, learning is an activity which is necessarily rooted in our nonconceptual awareness of God. We can know finite things only because we can transcend them and experience God. Learning is possible for us because we are embodied spirits (Geist-irn- Welt) capable of self-transcendence. We are able to learn about Reviezv for Religious our material, temporal world precisely because we can reach beyond it and open ourselves to the infinite horizon of absolute mystery. This preapprehension (Vorgriff) of God is the condition for the possibility of any and every act of learning. Every time we learn anything, we experience our transcendental openness to God. When we explore the spirituality of learning, we are not introducing a transcendent element to the learning process, but rather affirming one that is already there. This means that we can never entirely understand, much less hope to control, the process of learning. We generally think of learning as a skill that we can direct and develop, and it is. Most of us expend energy throughout our lifetimes not only learning but learning how to learn. As teachers, parents, colleagues, or friends, we are also regularly called upon to direct the learning of others. We even assume that some people are such proficient learners that they will inevitably be master teachers. But the fact that our ability to learn depends upon our transcendental open-ness to the horizon of absolute mystery means that the learning process transcends our control. All learning requires that we sur-render ourselves to our capacity for self-transcendence. And, if we want to help others learn, we have to support their self-tran-scendence. We will generate very little new learning if we restrict or manipulate the learning process. Ultimately, learning is not a skill to be mastered but a mystery to be loved. Practicing a spir-ituality of learning, then, means creating space for the experience of self-transcendence to happen. Second, Rahner's theology of freedom changes the way we see the products of learning by showing that learning always involves our free self-creation.26 Learning is an expression of the capacity we have as embodied spirits to act freely. The prod-ucts of our free acts are not simply choices between particular goods. Freedom is also a process through which we create our-selves. Whenever we exercise our freedom, we not only make a choice about a particular good; we also make a choice about our-selves. The decisions we make determine who we are as persons in relationship to God and the world. Some of our free acts so totally engage us that they constitute fiandamental choices about who we are. Other acts engage us less completely and serve to confirm or,deny the fundamental selves we have chosen to become. But every exercise of our freedom in some way is an act of self-creation. Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities Since we exercise our freedom whenever we learn, every act of learning is an act of self-creation. We usually assume that the products of learning are new ways of thinking and acting. But, for Rahner, our own self-creation is also a product of every act of learning. Whenever we learn, we not only learn about something particular; we also help determine who we will become as per-sons. Learning is not just a process through which we adopt new behaviors or ideas; it is a process of creating ourselves. Each choice we make about what, why, or how we will learn contributes in some way to our self-realization. The criteria by which we assess the products .of our learning, therefore, need to include the question of whether we are becoming more fully human, Measured by this criterion, learning which does not support holis-tic human development is fundamentally flawed. People who resist learning risk dehumanizing themselves just as much as those who resist loving. This is not to say that our value as persons is depen-dent upon how bright we are. Learning can no more be reduced to intelligence than love can be reduced to emotion. But learning and loving are critical to our self-realization because both are ways we fulfill our human potential for relationship with the world and the mystery of God. Practicing a spirituality of learning, therefore, means honoring this process of self-creati0n. Third, Rahner's theology of grace changes the way we see the purpose of learning.27 For Rahner, our transcendental orientation to the holy mystery has been universally graced by God's self-communication. Grace is not a gift from God but the gift of God, In our "natural" experience of transcendence, the absolute.mystery of God is present to us as the horizon which we can only approach asymptotically. We believe, however, that God has not remained the distant horizon of human transcendence, but has graciously drawn near to us as free and forgiving love. We never experience our transcendence, therefore, as purely natural and ungraced. The transcendence we actually experience has been radically trans-formed by God's self-gift, which is always present at least as an invitation made to our freedom. Grace is the fulfillment of our deepest human potential as embodied spirits to be filled with the infinite God. Grace makes possible for us the immediate experi-ence of God, which is always mediated by our historicity and mate-riality. But God becomes closer, not less of a mystery, in the experience of grace. Grace is the self-communication of God as the absolute mystery who remains absolute mystery. Review for Religious This theology of grace implies, then, that the ultimate purpose of learning is not to know more, but to be known more.28 When we learn, we do not simply gather new information or master additional skills; rather, we open ourselves to the self-communi-cation of God. The deepest purpose of learning is that it leads us to the point where we surrender to God's knowing of us. Learning is a privileged opportunity to enter more deeply into the abyss of the absolute mystery of God. Learning is at its best not simply when it is rooted in good principles of pedagogy or andragogy, but when it is a form of mystagogy. The process of learning, then, develops our potential to be mystics. Rahner believed that everyone is called to be a mystic.29 Mysticism is not primarily about paranormal experiences, but about attending to hidden experiences of the mystery of God in daily life. It is difficult to be a mystic, not because God is so distant, but because. God is so present. The challenge isto find ways to notice the gracious presence of God in the midst of everything in our lives, This is easier to do in some expe-riences than others. Oddly enough, our experiences of the goodness and beauty of life are not necessarily the best places to look for God. Rahner believed that we perceive the presence of God most clearly in those events in which we struggle with our limitations. Our experiences of lim-itation bring us right to the threshold of the presence of God. To the extent that we can attend to how we transcend the limita-tions we face, we open ourselves to the mystery of God. The pro-cess of learning offers abundant opportunities to struggle with limitations and experience God. Whenever we really attempt to learn, we strain to see beyond the limits of what we currently know. If we have the courage to face the limits of what we know, therefore, we invite God to enter more deeply into our lives. Rahner shows us that the process, products, and purpose of learning have spiritual depths that we normally overlook. Learning is not a neutral process of inquiry that only takes on a spiritual character when we choose to focus it on religious phenomena. Learning is intrinsically spiritual and is one of the most impor-tant ways we have to experience God. It is not surprising that tell- Learning can no more be reduced to intelligence than love can be reduced to emotion. September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities gious traditions throughout the world have revered learning as a path to holiness. Whatever enhances our capacity to learn fosters our spiritual, development, whether we recognize it as such or not. Disciplines for Creating Learning Communities As the 20th century draws to a close, we are beginning to glimpse how our lives will be different in the information age. But, because this new age of work is only now coming into focus, it is impossible to see yet what all of its spiritual opportunities and challenges will be. Nonetheless, we can be certain that learn-ing will become increasingly important to the work we do. The growing significance of learning makes a new way of integrating spirituality and work possible. The most effective spirituality of work for the information age will be one based on helping us transform our workplaces into learning communities. We defined the spirituality.of work above as a way of work-ing which fosters the transformation of our work and our work-places so that together with our coworkers we may achieve our fullest development as human beings. This means that a spiritu-ality of work should be a way of working, not a way of practicing religi6us activities or enjoying esoteric experiences. It should sup-port our complete human development. And it should foster the transformation of our work communities, not just our growth as individuals. A spirituality of work which is based on creating :learn-ing communities meets these three criteria. First, since it focuses on learning, such a spirituality advocates a way of working which is not explicitly religious, and which is appropriate, even vital, to the information-age workplace. Second, since the learning process engages the fundamental basis of our human identity, our capac-ity for self-transcendence, the process of learning is a particu-larly powerful way of supporting holistic human development. Third, such a spirituality of work draws us beyond caring for our individual growth into building learning communities with one another. But, if it is to help us engage in the difficult process of con-version and growth,, this spirituality of work needs to be incarnated in particular disciplines. The major spiritualities of the West have generally encouraged disciplines such as meditation, prayer, fast-ing, reading, and service as concrete means of achieving spiritual growth. There is no qu~sti6n that such disciplines will continue Review for Religious to have an important role in a fully developed spiritual life. But, since the spirituality of work attempts to engage us in a different and more specific kind of transformation than that of traditional spiritualities, it will need to encourage some additional, new dis-ciplines. The disciplines for a spirituality of work in the infor-mation age will be the disciplines for developing organizational learning. Organizational-learning researchers have over the past fifty years advanced our understanding of what those disciplines are. Peter Senge, for example, has organized them into five sets: per-sonal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking. Each of these disci-plines has to do with helping us develop the skills to learn effectively as individ-uals and groups. There are three distinct levels to these disciplines: practices, principles, and essences. The practices are the specific activities which con-cretely express the discipline. They are the primary focus for those beginning to follow the discipline. The underlying principles are the theoretical bases for the practice of the disciplines. Progressing in the disciplines requires following the practices and understand-ing the principles. The essences are the state of being which comes to be experienced by individuals or groups that have mastered the discipline. At this level Senge's learning disciplines are united by a common sensibility: that we are learners in an intrinsically interdependent world.3° Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. It involves learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire and to create an organizational environment that encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goals and purposes they choose. The practices of this discipline include various techniques for clarifying our personal vision and for holding a creative tension between the results we desire and our grasp of current reality. Senge sees the discipline of personal mastery as the spiritual foundation for a learning organization. The disciplines for a spirituality of work in the information age will be the disciplines for developing organizational learning. September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities The discipline of shared vision is the collective version of the discipline of personal mastery. The discipline of shared vision builds a sense of commitment in the groups we work with by developing shared .images of the future we seek to create and the principles and guiding practices by which we hope to get there. The practices of this discipline involve techniques for helping groups both acknowledge their current realities and develop a shared picture of their future that fosters sincere commitment. This discipline assumes that, when there is genuine shared vision, people excel and learn because they want to, not because they are told to. Like the discipline of personal mastery, the discipline of men-tal models is an individually oriented dis.cipline. Senge sees men~ tal models as the deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations that influence how we understand the world and take action. The discipline of mental models helps us reflect upon, clarify, and improve these internal pictures of the world and see how they shape our actions and decisions. The practice of this discipline also helps us learn how to carry on "learningful" conversations that get us to expose our own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others. The discipline of team learning is the collective counterpart of the discipline of mental models. This discipline transforms conversational and collective thinking skills so that a team of coworkers increases its collective intelligence and its ability to take coordinated action. The heart of this discipline is the theory and practice of dialogue. Dialogue challenges team members to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together. Team learning also involves recognizing the patterns of interac-tion in teams that undermine learning. The most critical learning discipline for Senge is the disci-pline of systems thinking. He sees it as the discipline that inte-grates the other disciplines into a coherent body of theory and practice. Systems thinking is a way of thinking about and a lan-guage for describing ~he forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. It makes the full patterns of a system clearer and helps us see how to change them effectively. Systems thinking helps us shift from seeing problems as caused by some-one or something external to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience. Once we discover how we create our reality, we can then change it. Review for Religious When they are used together, the methods of organizational learning represented by these five disciplines have been proven to have great potential for transforming our workplaces into learn-ing communities. They provide us with the concrete theories and strategies we need so that together with our coworkers we can not only learn, but learn how to learn. By virtue of the fact that they expand our capacity to learn, these disciplines also foster our spiritual development. The disciplines of organizational learn-ing help us to learn in new ways and so broaden our opportuni-ties to experience the spiritual depths of learning. The most effective spirituality of work for the information age will focus on transforming our work organizations into learn-ing communities. It will do so by integrating disciplines of orga-nizational learning with insights from the spiritual traditions. This paper has contributed to this integration. New approaches to organizational learning such as the ones we have mentioned here provide the spirituality of work with the concrete disciplines it needs to develop learning communities. At the same time, the insights which our spiritual and religious traditions can provide deepen our understanding of what is at stake in the transforma-tion of work. We will be able to create meaning~l spiritualities of work in this new era only if we continue to engage in this process of integration. Notes ~ William E. May, "Work, Theology of," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, ed. Judith A. Duryer (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994), pp. 991-1002; Karen Ready, "Work," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1987), vol. 15, pp. 441-444; Edward C. Sellner, "Work," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 1044-1051; Francis Schiissler Fiorenza, "Religious Beliefs and Pr'axis: Reflections on Catholic Theological Views of Work," in Work and Religion, ed. Gregory Baum (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 92-102. 2 Marie-Dominique Chenu, "Work," in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), vol. 6. 3 Karl Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," in Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 297-317; "Nature and Grace," in Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 4, pp. 165-188; Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Chr#tianity (New York: Crossroad, 1978). 4Walter Principe, "Toward Defining Spirituality," Studies in Religion Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities 12 (1983): 127-141; Sandra Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 676-697. s Hans Kiing and Karl-Josef Kuschel, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of tbe Parliament of the World's Religions (New York: Continuum, 1993). 6 Joseph Holland. Creative Communion: Toward a Spirituality of Work (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 24-26. 7 Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and Bros., 1911); Marvin R. Weisbord, Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity~ Meaning, and Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), pp. 50-69, 8 Peter Drucker Post-Capitalist Society (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993), p. 5. 9 "John Paul II, On Human Work (Laborem Exercens) (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1981); Dorothee Soelle with Shirley A. Cloyes, 7~ Work and to Love: A Theology of Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Joe Holland, Creative Communion; Lee Hardy, The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into .Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990); Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (New York: Oxford University, 1991); John C. Haughey, Converting 9 to Y: A Spirituality of Daily Work (New York, Crossroad, 1989). l0 Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, p. 5; Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1989), pp. 34-35, 50-51. *~ Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation," Atlantic Monthly (November 1994): 53-80. ~2 Drucker, The New Realities (New York: Harper, 1989), p. 173. ,3 Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, p. 49. 14 A large and important segment of experts in this field prefers to call.the discipline "organizational transformation." See John D. Adams, ed., Transforming Work: A Collection of Organizational Transformation Readings (Alexandria: Miles River Press, 1984). ,s Thomas G. Cummings and Christopher G. Worley, Organization Development and Change (Minneapolis: West Publishing, 1993), p. 2. ~6 Chris Argyris and Donald A. Sch6n, Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1996), ~7 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 3. 18 Peter Senge et al., eds., The Fij~h Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 9-12. 19Argyris and Sch6n, Organizational II, p. xvii. 20 Senge, "Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations," in The Learning Organization in Action: A Special Report from Organizational Dynamics (New 'York: American Management Association, 1994), pp. 9-15. Review for Religious 21 Holland, Creative Communion, pp. 18-42, and Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). 22.Soelle, 7~ Work and to Love, p. 112. 23 Adams, Transforming Work; Peter Hawkins, "The Spiritual Dimension of the Learning Organization," Management Education and Development 22 (1991): 172-187; Peter Block, Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1993); Alan Briskin, The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996); Harrison Owen, Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations (Potomac: Abbot, 1987); and Tony Smith, Parzival's Briefcase: Six Practices and a New Philosophy for Healthy Organizational Change (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993). 24 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961). 2s Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1968), pp. 57-383; Hearer of the Word(New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 1-54; and, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 14-23, 26-35. 26 Karl Rahner, "Theology of Freedom," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 6, pp. 178-196; Foundations of Christian Faith, pp., 35-39; "The Dignity and Freedom of Man," Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 246-263. 27 Karl Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," pp. 297-317; "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 319-346; "Nature and Grace," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 4, pp. 165-188; Foundations of Christian Faith,. pp. 116-133. 28 Parker J. Palmer, 7b Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993). 29 Karl Rahner, "The Experience of God Today," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 11, pp. 149-165; "Experience of the Holy Spirit," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1983), vol. 18, pp. 189-210; "Christian Living Formerly and Today," Theological Investigations (New York: Seabury, 1977), vol. 7, pp. 3- 24. 30 This and other ideas below are developed in Senge, The Fifth Discipline, and in Senge et al., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Septe~nber-October 1998 gnatian spirituality JOHN J. BEGLEY The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises This article~ proposes a contemporary understanding of Jesus' parables, and it shouts their importance for the dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises. Those familiar with St. Ignatius's book are aware that he does not propose the parables for prayer during the Exercises. Several reasons, however, prompt the exploration of this relationship. First, contemporary scripture studies stress the importance of the parables in the Jesus' teaching, and including them within the Exercises can enrich that experience. Second, we take the New Testament seriously as the starting point of our prayer, and we want that prayer grounded in the best understanding of the New Testament that solid con-temporary scholarship can provide; Third, the parables make up a full third of Jesus' teaching, and so any attempt to "put on the mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Ph 2:5) cannot afford to overlook them. Finally, for retreatants who are troubled by doubt concerning what Jesus really said, the parables deserve our close attention. As a pio-neer of modern parable study has said, "We are standing on a particularly firm historical foundation., part of the bedrock of tradition. We are standing right before Jesus when reading his parables" (Jeremias, p. 5). Later we will discuss the dynamic of the Exercises in some detail. For the moment it will be useful to recall John J. Begley SJ teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies; University of Scranton; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. Revie~ for Religious both the purpose of the Exercises and the purpose of the parables. Their similar purposes will readily appear. The purpose of the Exercises is "the conquest of self and the regulation of one's life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment" (§21). Behind the somewhat archaic phras-ing is the understanding that the Exercises have as their purpose to lead "a person to true spiritual freedom, so that we make no choice or decision because we have been influenced by some dis-ordered ,attachment" (Fleming, Spiritual Exercises, §21). Similarly, the. parables' "purpose is to effect a change in the hearer, to lead to decision or action" (Boucher, p. 16-17). We begin with the parables. As Raymond Brown has remarked, "The study of the parables has generated an immense literature and sharp debates" (p. 132). We' will try to make the most of recent scholarship and to avoid controverted issues. Given the literature and the debates, it is difficult to capture the mean-ingof the parables in a single definition. J.R. Donahue in his Gospelin Parable (p. 5) cites approvingly C.H. Dodd's inductively derived definition; it will serve our purpose well. "At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leav-ing the ,mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought." As metaphor, the familiar and better known--a mustard seed, for example--is compared to the less familiar kingdom of God. The kingdom is compared to and illuminated by something bet-ter known and more readily imagined. In the context of a retreat, the astonishing growth of a tiny mustard seed into a large bush illumines the growth of the retreatant's relationship with God, which is God's work in the retreatant. As a metaphor, it moves people, to greater participation in the more obscure retreat mate-rial being described or explained. Metaphor talks of the familiar so that one can participate in the less familiar (Crossan, p. 16 ). We may note that there are parables in the Hebrew Bible: the trees (Jg 9:7-15), for example, and the ewe lamb (2 K 12:1-4). The rabbis used parables for the normal pedagogical purposes of illustrating and illuminating their teaching. The listeners of Jesus were familiar with the genre. Jesus subordinated the familiar uses of the parable to his primary purpose of proclaiming the king-dom, of sounding the call and challenge to embrace the conditions of living in the kingdom. The parables of Jesus transcend any September-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises previous use, for he thereby expresses what cannot be expressed by any other means than symbol and metaphor: the kingdom of God. The parables, like other, symbolic expressions, are polyva-lent. No single meaning exhausts their content. Parables cannot be reduced to a proposition. Modern parable study begins with several commonly accepted suppositions. First, the early church supplied the context of the parables as they appear in the narratives of Jesus' ministry, and we must bracket off that context if we wish to hear the parable as Jesus spoke it. For example, the command "Go and do likewise" (Lk 10:37) presently concludes the parable of the Good Samaritan. The common judgment, however, is that it does not belong to the parable as Jesus taught it, and so we exclude it from consid-eration. As we will see, the bracketing changes the parable's mean-ing dramatically. Second, the tradition has at times changed a parable of Jesus into an allegory. For example, in Mark's Gospel the parable of the sower appears both as Jesus taught it (4:3-9) and as the early church preserved it as an allegory (4:13-20). This is not to say that allegory is improper. However, to recover the para-bles as Jesus taught them, we avoid the allegorical interpretation. Other parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), have in their transmission become example stories. As the message about Jesus was proclaimed in a non-Jewish culture, its second generation non-Jewish listeners were unfamiliar with the mean-ing of Samaritan, priest, and Levite. The parable became an exam-ple story, lessening the challenge of the original parable. We are not suggesting a single interpretation to the exclu-sion of all others, whether that interpretation is traditional or contemporary. The parable of the prodigal, for example, is fre-quently understood as a parable of God's mercy. As the First Week progresses, a retreatant may suggest to her director, as the result of her own understanding and experience, that she would like to spend some time during the First Week praying over The Prodigal as a parable of God's merciful love. The director must respect the retreatant's freedom and the gift of her prayer. In days to come in the retreat, as discretion suggests, the director can pro-pose the parable once again with a different interpretation drawn from modern parable study. Both interpretations are valid. Retreatants find two contributions of J. Dominic Crossan particularly helpful. First is the manner in which he has located the parables in Jesus' own experience. To a previous observation Review for Religious that parables move people to greater participation in the matter a parable illustrates, it is important to add that "Jesus' parables are radically constitutive of his own distinctive historicity, and all else is located in them" (Crossan, p. 33). They proclaim and they establish the historicity of Jesus' response to the kingdom. There is an intrinsic bond between Jesus' experience and his expression of that experience in parables. Parables are cause and not effect of what Jesus said and did (Crossan, p. 32). Retreatants find it very attractive to pray over the parables and thereby to enter into the experience of Jesus. Second, Crossan's classification of the various parables as expressions of the kingdom's temporality (as advent, as reversal, and as action) is most help-ful. As we'will see, the parables of reversal in particular have an important role to play in the Exercises. One final observation is important. For some few commentators, Crossan among them, the urgency of the para-bles is related to the ever present now of the kingdom. While it would be interesting to consider the range of scholarly opinions on the relation of the kingdom to the end time, it seems better to avoid the confusion which could result. One scholar, Donald Senior, has preserved the urgency of the parables without enter-ing into the controverted question of eschatology. He writes, "The kingdom may be future but the choice is now" (Senior, p. 93). The temporality of the kingdom in terms of advent, reversal, and action appears in two paradigmatic parables which model all three modes of the kingdom. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Mr 13:44). "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; onfinding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it" (Mr 13:45-46). The parables are simi-lar in structure, as revealed by the three verbs common to both. To unpack but one, in the parable of the treasure hidden in a field, we hear of a man whose nor.mal past-present-future is rudely but happily shattered. The future, which he has presumably planned and projected for himself, is totally invalidated by the finding (advent) of the treasure, which opens up new worlds and There is an intrinsic bond between Jesus' experience and his expression of that experience in parables. September- October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the I~natian Exercises unforeseen possibilities. In the force of this advent, he willingly reverses his entire past and acts to sell all that he has. From this advent and this reversal, he obtains the treasure that now dictates his future history in a most concrete way. It gives him a new life that he could not have planned for~himself and a new world in which to live this life (Crossan, p. 34). Advent parables are fewer than parables of reversal, ~which in turn are fewer than those of action. The frequency distribution probably reflects later tradition's needs rather than the frequency with which Jesus spoke them. Later generations experienced the advent of God in the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus and so felt less need to preserve the parables of advent. Advent parables stress one or another of three themes: hid-denness and mystery, gift and surprise, discovery and joy. For example, in the sower and mustard-seed parables, there are sharp juxtapositions of two states. In The, Sower, three instances of sow-ing loss are contrasted with three instances of harvest gain. In The Mustard Seed the contrast is between the small seed sown and the ample shade of the fully grown plant. The parables are not concerned with growth but with miracle, "not the organic and biological development but the gift-like nature, the graciousness and surprise of the ordinary, the advent of the bountiful harvest despite the losses of sowing, the large shade despite the small seed. In these ways the kingdom is advent. It is surprise and it is gift" (Crossan, pp. 37-51, emphasis added). To turn now to the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises, con-temporary experience of both directors and retreatants under-scores the advent character of the First Week. It would be impossible to number the retreatants who have summed up their First Week experience by saying, "It is all gift." In whatever man-ner the topics Ignatius proposes for prayer are treated--topics such as sin and punishment in the history of the world and in the self, past and present--the result is not a self broken by sorrow and remorse, but rather a self healed and given new life and freedom. It is an experience of one's own sinfulness, to be sure, but it is much more an experience of God's love embracing me with all of my sinfulness. The darkness of my sinfulness is shattered by the brilliance of God's reconciling, healing love. The modern mind reading the Exercises understands Ignatius's "cry of wonder" (§60) to rise from the felt awareness of God's love as experienced in the wonder of creation, in the wondei" of Review for Religious others who have been sources of life for me, in the wonder of myself as gifted, graced, and loved. The retreatant realizes, in the phrase that has become a familiar experiential reality for those who have made at least the First Week of the Exercises, that she is a "loved sinner." Mthough memories of the past, or feelings of inadequacy, fear, or self-rejection may have gripped the retreatant, now the redemptive love of God has set the exercitant free, desirous of reordering her life more effectively "to the end for which we are created" (§23). At this point the retreatant has experi-enced what in Crossan's language is called advent. To the retreatant have been revealed the hiddenness and the mystery, the gift and surprise, the discovery and joy of the king-dom. One or another of all these parable themes describes the retreatant's experience as she concludes the First Week. What had remained hidden, the mystery of the self as loved by God, has been discovered with joy as the surprising gift of God's love. In the manner of the discovery of a pearl of great price--which cannot be explained by either the skill of the direc-tor, the dispositions of the retreatant, or natural psychological development--the retreatant experiences the sheer joy of one who is loved and affirmed in the depths of the self, not despite who one is but precisely as one is. This is the important meaning of the advent parables of Jesus, and the retreatant can profitably pray over them during the First Week. From the first meditation of the First Week, the retreatant's attention has been focused on the crucified Lord, whose love for-gives and frees. In his presence the retreatant has asked, "What ought I to do for Christ?" (§53). Having experienced advent, the retreatant is now in a position to consider what return she shall make to the Lord whose love has opened for her a new way of life, more abundant than she ever thought possible. The loved sinner desires to be a loving servant. The retreatant is ready for the Second Week, in which parables of reversal and action have an important part to play. These parables have. as their purpose "to effect a change in the hearer, to lead to decision or action" (Boucher, pp. 16-17). More To the retreatant have been revealed the hiddenness and the mystery, the gift and surprise, the discovery and joy of the kingdom. Septentber-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises dramatically but not less surely, the parables of reversal look to the situation where "the last becomes first and the first becomes last, We have a polar reversal, When the north pole becomes the south pole and the south the north,, a world is reversed and overturned" (Crossan, p. 55) The world that is meant here is the inner world of values, priorities, and motives. It is the inner world of atti-tudes, dispositions, habitual judgments, This reversal is very much what Ignatius proposes to the retreatant at this point in the Exercises. The readiness to turn my familiar world upside down is the necessary predisposition for a good election. Ignatius underscores this in his singularly important consid-eration on the Two Standards. In an introduction to this medita-tion (§135). Ignatius reminds us that the following of Christ in loving service admits of various degrees; the sincere following of the commandments, which has been considered in meditating on Jesus' obedience to his parents, and the state of evangelical per-fection, which was considered in the youthful Jesus remaining behind in the temple. Now the retreatant, while continuing to investigate his life, is to begin to consider and to pray for a knowl-edge of the kind of life to which the Lord summons her. In the Two Standards Ignatius asks the retreatant to imagine Christ mak-ing an address "to all his servants and friends whom he sends on this enterprise." In his address he reverses the strategy of his adversary, "the chief of all the enemy," who stands beneath the first standard. As Ignatius sums up what the retreatant is, to con-sider, he says, "Hence there will be three steps: the first, poverty as opposed to riches; the second, insults or contempt ~as opposed to the honor of this world; the third, humility as opposed to pi'ide (§146, emphasis added). The .colloquy that concludes the Two Standards meditation is to be repeated at the end of each of the five periods of prayer every day until the election has been made. This threefold collo-quy addressed first to Mary, then to her 'Son, and finally to the Father is for the grace to be received under his standard, where the disciple of Christ can expect to bear poverty and humiliations in imitation of him. In a note to the subsequent Meditation on Three Classes of Men, Ignatius advises the retreatant: "It should be noted that when we feel an attachment opposed to actual poverty or a repugnance to it. it will be very helpful in order to :overcome the inordinate attachment, even though corrupt nature rebel against it, to beg our Lord in the Colloquies to choose Review for Religqous us to serve him in actual poverty" (§ 157). As Ignatius makes clear, such a disposition does not come easily: "We should insist that we desire it, beg for it, plead for it, provided of course that it be for the service and praise of the DiVine Goodness" (§157). At the critical time of making a decision that will define the self in relation to the Lord, to others, and to the contingencies of experience, the parables of reversal will serve the retreatant's need very well. It is helpful to recall that the parables represent a call which is absolute (the kingdom cannot be subordinated to any other concern) and that this absolute call is not specific (as the command to love is not specified for each particular circumstance of human life). Indeed, it is the absolute but nonspecific nature of the call of Christ to "follow me" (here and now, or later?) that requires discernment in order to come to a properly ordered deci-sion. The absolute but nonspecific call of the parables is empha-sized in the Exercises as well. The call of Christ in the Meditation on the Kingdom is abso-lute: "Whoever wishes to join me in this enterprise must be will-ing to labor with me, that by following me in suffering he may follow me in glory" (§95.). However, the manner in which one "labors with me" is not specified. Ignatius, in the oblation which concludes the Kingdom, speaks of poverty, humiliatiqns, and humility, but ~does not specify the manner in which "those who wish to give greater proof of their love, and to distinguish them-selves in whatever concerns theservice of:~the eternal King" (§97), will incarnate the proof of their love. The specification is the goal of the retreat and requires the prayer and discernment of the retreatant. Second, the change in the "world" of the retreatant, which the First Week begins and the Second Week develops, is precisely the retreatant's world of values and judgments, of desires and priorities, of hopes and dreams. The parables of reversal chal-lenge this world of the retreatant, who, through the reciprocal process of praying the parables and "reflecting on myself," begins to investigate and ask in what kind or state of life God wishes to make use of me (§135). The retreatant enters into "the mind of Christ" (Ph 2:5) and prays to make his mind her own. The parables, which communi-cate the experience of Jesus and not conclusions or admonitions, assist the retreatant to enter into her own experience of the Kingdom and to draw from that experience her own way of life. To accept the parables and the experience they offer is to take on September-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises a new personal perspective, a new way of interpreting and valu-ing, of deciding and acting. In a word, the retreatant develops a different and more refined set of principles, insights, and critical judgments which can be termed a personal hermeneutic. It is to grow in faith. It is worthwhile to note that the theme of reversal is an essen-tial theme of the teaching of Jesus and of the parables. The beloved Good Samaritan parable (Lk 10:25-37) has tradition-ally been heard as an example of neighborliness. In the wake of Jeremias's study, commentators today suggest that the parable has been reconstructed in the course of transmission. The con-text (Jesus' conversation with a lawyer) and his concluding com-mand ("Go and do likewise," §37) have been provided by the early church and have to be removed from consideration if we are to .come closer to the parable as Jesus spoke it. At a distance both geographical and temporal from the world of Samaritans, priests, and Levites, the story lacked the immediacy that it had for the first listeners of Jesus, and this parable of reversal has been changed by the second-generation of Christians into an example story. Once the parable is allowed to stand on its own, it is no longer simply a story of the neighborliness that fulfills the law, but becomes a parable of reversaL Crc;ssan has brilliantly noted that, if the parable is primar-ily to provide an illustration of neighbor love or an indictment of heartless religious leaders, then help offered by a Jewish layperson would have made the proper point. The shock is that it is the Samaritan who stops. At the remove of centuries, it is easy for us to overlook the hatred that existed between Jews and Samaritans. During the period of the Exile, the Samaritans had intermarried with non-Jews, had opposed the restoration of the Jewish temple, and in the 2nd century B.C. had actually helped the Syrians in their wars against the Jews. The Jewish high priest had burned the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, and the Samaritans had scattered the bones of a corpse in. the Jerusalem temple, thereby defiling it and making it impossible to celebrate Passover. The Samaritans did not accept the whole of the canon-ical Jewish Scriptures. They refused hospitality to Jesus and his disciples because they were on their way to Jerusalem (Lk 9:52- 53). The Jews believed they had insulted Jesus by calling him a Samaritan (Jn 4:7-10), and Jesus himself warned his disciples to avoid the Samaritan territory (Mt 10:5). Review for Religious The shock of the parable, calling for a reversal of attitudes on the part of its hearers, is that the one who helps the Jewish victim and fulfills the law is the enemy and religious apostate. The parable reverses our understanding of who God is and whom God approves. It destroys a narrow, legalistic under-standing of the law and reveals the hatred and divisions which had become institutionalized. The world of the lawyer and his fellow listeners is turned upside down. They are to speak the unspeakable; they are to join the apparent contradictories "good" and "Samaritan." Another parable of reversal that can be useful during the Second Week is that of the Prodigal Son. It is lengthy (Luke 15:11-32) and so well .known that we need not retell it here. In Crossan's interpretation the reversal is located in the presence of the prodigal at the banquet while his dutiful older brother is out-side pouting (Crossan, p. 75). Merely to state the reversal in this way is to grip the imagination of the retreatant. It calls for a rever-sal of mind and heart that must be prayed over until it is interi-orized and can then move the retreatant toward her election/decision with gratitude and enthusiasm. Another approach to the Prodigal Son (Donahue, pp. 151- 157) may be even more helpful to the retreatant. Here the rever-sal is in our understanding, of what constitutes a relationship to God. Both sons define sonship in terms of servile obligation: "Treat me as one of your hired servants," says the younger son; "I have slaved for you," says his older brother. Each in his own way destroys the family. "As the younger son felt that the way~ to restore the severed relationship was to become a servant, the older brother maintained it by acting as a servant. Between the dutiful son and the prodigal is a bond much deeper than is visible on the surface . A relationship . . . worked out in terms of servility leads to destruction. The relationship as redefined by the father leads to joy" (Donahue, p. 157). Some women may find it difficult to pray with the images of "father" and "sons." Sandra Schneiders has captured the power of the parable from a feminist perspective: "Jesus' parable about the father actually constitutes a radical challenge to patriarchy. The divine father who has been understood as the ultimate justification of human patriarchy is revealed as the one who refuses to own us, demand our submission, or punish our rebellion. Rather, God is the one who respects our freedom, mourns our alienation, waits Septentber-October 1998 Begley * The Parables of yesus and the Ignatian Exercises patiently for our return, and accepts our love as pure gift" (cited by Donahue, pp. 161-162). The parable conveys the essential mindset for understanding discipleship and for making the decision that leads to more faith-ful discipleship. Crossan has expressed it perfectly in his discus-sion of the primary issue between Jesus and the Pharisees: "Obedience does not lead to God, God leads one to obedience" (Crossan, p. 80). The Two Standards! Ignatius focuses the retreatant's attention upon the activity of the poor and humble Christ, and so the prayerful consideration of the action parables may be somewhat less necessary than those of advent and reversal. The action parables, though, do portray cru-cial or critical situations that demand prompt and energetic deci-sion, firm and resolute action, that are very much in line with retreat purposes. They summon us to commit ourselves in response to the advent of the kingdom regardless of the reversal they demand, and so they, can prove helpful in the later days of the Second Week. They reflect the situation of the retreatant as she moves towards free self-disposition in response to her experience of the advent of the kingdom. Parables of action portray three different responses to the urgency of action (Crossan, pp. 84-85). As examples of one response (see the parable of the friend at mid-night [Lk 11:58] or the unjust judge [Lk 18:2-5]), we meet persons who accept the inevitability of what must be done and take action. In other parables (for example, the rich fool in Lk 13:16-20), the person fails to recognize the urgency of the situation and so fails to act. A third set of action parables (for example, the bridesmaids, Mt 25:1-13) describes those who respond adequately and those who do not. These parables of Jesus can effectively move the retreatant to overcome her natural hesitancy to choose what is beyond the strength of her own resources: to choose, with faith in the advent of the kingdom within her, what "would be more for his praise and glory" (§180). The explanation of the relationship between the parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises has been long. A director may well question the advisability of proposing such an explanation when Ignatius expects the director to "adhere to the points, and add only.a short or summary explanation., for it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate under-standing and relish of the truth" (§2). Despite the length of this article's explanation, experience has shown that it is possible to l~eview for Religio~a give retreatants a "summary explanation." Retreatants easily grasp the primary idea of the different parables, are comfortable with the understanding proposed, and experience an unexpected delight in praying the parables of Jesus. A Selection of Parables Advent parables: The leaven, Mt 13:20-21; the sower, Mk 4:3- 8; the mustard seed, Mt 4:30-32; the lost sheep, Mt 18:12-13; the lost coin, Lk 15:8-9. Reversal parables: The Good Samaritan, Lk 10:30-37; The Prodigal Son, Lk 15:11-32; the rich man and Lazarus, Lk 16:19- 31; the Pharisee and the tax collector, Lk 18:9-14; the wedding guest, Lk 14:1-24; the great supper, Mt 22:1-14; the sheep and the goats, Mt 25:31-46. Action parables: the wicked husbandmen, Mk 12:1-,12); the doorkeeper, Mk 13:33-37; the talents, Mt 25:14-3 O; the unmerciful servant, Mt 18:23-38; the unjust steward, Lk 16:1-7; the workers in the vineyard, Mt 20:1-16. Bibliography Boucher, Madeleine I. The Parables. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1981. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Crossan, John Dominic. In Parables. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. Fleming, David L. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978. Henog, William R. Parables as Subversive Speech. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994. Jeremias, Joachim. Rediscovering the Parables. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. Puhl, Louis J. (trans.). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1951. Senior, Donald. Jesus: A Gospel Portrait, 2nd ed. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1991. September-October 1998 ANITA J. BALY St. Ignatius and My Piano One of the best things I got out of making the thirty-day Spiritual Exercises was learning I could play the piano. That is not all that I experienced in the long retreat, by any means. And Idid not know I was taking away that particular fruit when the retreat ended. At a distance of two years, however, I sense that that.gift of musical empowerment is closely linked with my spiritual journey. What would St. Ignatius think of my response to his Exercises? Would palm slap forehead in pained frustration at my lack of com-prehension? Would he laugh--or cry? Would he sharply insist that I had trivialized the meaning of his work--and knew it? Would he smile ever so slightly and nod approval? I would not presume to read back into the saint's mind. I am even clueless as to how oth-ers who have completed the Exercises would react. In the silent and solitary conduct of the Exercises, it is impos-sible to know for sure what other retreatants derive. One can make some guesses based on body language and apparent changes, but there is no way to check out assumptions orhlly. At the con-clusion of my retreat, half a dozen of us retreatants sat and tried to share with one another what had occurred for us. What impressed me that evening was how different the perceived fruits seemed to be for each participant! It was also pleasing to see how diverse outcomes seemed to comport with the Exercises. Anita J. Baly JD, MDiv, PhD, is interim pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour and an adjunct faculty member in theology at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. Her address is 3001 Libby Terrace; Richmond, Virginia 23223. Review for Religious The Spiritual Exercises are not a map that points in only one direction via a single route. The end desired is surely the same for all Christians: that we grow continually in faithfulness to the Lord's person and work, approaching more and more the fullness of the fruits of the Spirit; that we grow in the capacity to attain, relish, and express the love of God. Or, as St. Paul says so suc-cinctly: the end (telos) the Christian seeks is "eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rm 6:22-23).~ The means to achieving that end, however, clearly differ according to God-given differences in per-sonalities, capacities, and experiences. No means are excluded automatically since "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Rm 8:28). The Exercises affirm, support, and foster individual wrestling with God's individual graces, to attain the end that is at once universal and also particular. The Exercises, that is, attune to the fact that the Spirit blows how, as, and where it wills. Each exercitant's task is to meet that universal Spirit in the exact par-ticularity of who he or she really is. Were this not to occur, the positive effects of the Exercises in fostering "the salvation of souls and their spiritual profit" would likely be severely limited.2 Theologically this makes sense: incarnation is God's presence and manifestation only in what is really there. God does not meet us inthe past, in the future, or in the way we wish things were. Incarnation means that God meets us precisely here, immediately now. It is, I believe, out of respect for God's ways of working dif-ferendy with different individuals that St. Ignatius urges the direc-tor to be brief in explaining the meditations and contemplations (§2). The saint seems to find it acceptable that exercitants work out much of the matter of the Exercises alone, with God's help. In this way, inevitably, exercitants will surely miss some details and fine points. Ignatius's sense of the compensation for this loss is clear. He says: "It is not in knowing much, but realizing and rel-ishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul" (§2). My own journey with the Exercises involved the discovery that I could play the piano. As I see it, that was not just a nice My own journey with the Exercises involved the discovery that I could play the piano. September- October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano thing--though it is wonderful! Studying piano has actually become a major support of my continuing spiritual journey. It was a dis-covery I in no way sought, envisioned, or wanted. It came about in response to the circumstances of my long retreat. I made the Exercises at one of the large houses that groups retreatants together with multiple outside directors for one or a few events each year) Our group of retreatants and directors numbered close to seventy people, with an overall director who is a musician. He wanted music provided for the daily liturgies and asked for vol-unteer music leaders. Although there were one or two profes-sional- quality musicians among the group, they, understandably, wanted to retreat from musical production. That left canvassing the rest of us for volunteers, and five or six of us agreed to "do something" according to our capacities. In my case that was to mean simply leading hymns and responses and functioning as a cantor. I could sing and read music, but I played no instruments. As the retreat went on, the strain of producing coordinated music in an atmosphere of total silence showed on some of the original musical volunteers, who quit. That left fewer of us respon-sible for more liturgies. So I was providing music leadership to liturgies every few days with nothing but voice--and boring myself. Besides that, the various celebrants wanted different set-tihgs of liturgical responses. In order to be able to lead those, I had to try to hear them. In the silence, no one could sing them to me beforehand. There was, however, a brief daily period when all retreatants had access to the lone piano. I managed to find the notes to plunk out the melody lines of responses. I knew where the notes were on the keyboard from years of finding singing melodies with a one-finger, hunt-and-peck .method. It was, however, a sort of desperation for variety and for beauty that prompted me to take the next step. I finally made a few attempts to play a melody line under a hymn or two and once even attempted to play something as postcommunion meditation music. Those attempts resulted in poor music that did not enhance the services, in my opinion, and embarrassed me. I suppose I would have quit trying and that would have been the end of it, were it not for the movements of a few people there. One of the directors saw my embarrassment at the poverty of my tries at accompaniment. He managed to honor that pain by helping me try again in a safer way. And, when the retreat ended and we could speak, I learned that a few of the retreatants actually assumed I was Review for Religious a professional music minister! I suppose it was that small amount of affirmation and the serendipitous discovery of pleasure in a new "skill" that prompted me to continue. Once home, I had access to a piano--through the grace of two other friends. For a year I tinkered with that piano on my own, trying to teach myself, sensing in some vague way that for me the piano was a way of continuing to connect with the graces of the retreat. A year after the retreat, I began taking formal lessons. Those have now con-tinued for over a year. The piano is one among those created things that Ignatius would urge using or discarding according to its effect--for the individual pianist--in fostering or detracting from the praise, rev-erence, and service of God (§23). Music can be perverted in var-ious ways. Of itself, though, it does seem to enjoy divine approbation. The Bible in many places, especially in the Psalms, enjoins us to sing to the Lord, to make a joyful noise, to praise our God with timbrel and trumpet, voice, dance--and strings.4 Why would music be so privileged? Maybe God just likes music. That is, the use of music for religious expressions may be linked to something in God's being. Maybe music is special because it is always a common expression, a community endeavor. Even solitary composers or musicians do not invent their instru-ments. Neither do they create the musical notes and their fun-damental relationships--though composers group in "new" ways and patterns the notes and chords they have .been given. The musical givens are built right into~the world. One who discovers them is in dialogue with God the Creator. Because I only play the piano, and do not compose music for it, I dialogue with the Creator about music at one remove. My communion with the composer provides a way for me to make my musical connection with the Directing Source. When I attend faithfully to playing that music as it is written down, I know something too of God's conducting. That faithful attempt to connect with the composer's aural "vision" helps me understand and even "hear" that my studying and playing piano is connected also with my spiritual journey. For me, both praying and piano playing seem more satisfying and closer to hitting the mark when I approach them with a certain kind of discipline. Ignatius illuminates the fact that successful meditation involves the integration of memory, reason, will, and feelings (§50). And the good progress of the Exercises seems to verify that pro- September-October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano found insight. To me, it proves the saint was truly a spiritual genius, As one who .once scored a hundred percent on the feeling compo-nent of the Myers-Briggs Preference Test, my psyche is perpetually on the edge of drowning in emotion. Besides that, my imagination is so strong that I could almost live in it. Now, imagination and feeling are essential for getting through the Exercises. It is difficult to see how an Application of the Senses meditation, for example, could progress without them (§123). The same is true for music. Without feeling, it is lifeless and powerless. Imaginative hearing certainly helps in the process of learning music. Feeling and imagination are good things in moderation. As an extreme "feeler" and "imaginer," however, I cleave to the Ignatian system because of the constant pressure it exerts on me to think and to perceive what is actually there in the world. Overly enthu-siastic thinkers and sensers probably value the Ignatian system for the opposite reason: the pressure it exerts on them to feel and to imagine. One of the supreme marvels of Ignatius's method is the way it teaches, inculcates, presumes, and honors balance. Such balance and integration are often difficult, to keep up in daily life. They are particularly hard to sustain at times of stress when the temptation is to fall back into the ways of reacting that are most automatic and comfortable for us. Our customary responses may be too lopsided to be effective--or holy. It is aware-ness followed by practice, building habits of mind and heart, that can help us to redirect our responses away from the habitual and into more prudent directions. The practice of Ignatian prayer helps with this. In a very similar way, the study of piano also teaches me to strive for balanced, integrated responses. Playing piano, like praying in the lgnatian.mode, requires using memory to aid the intellect, engaging the will in the endeavor, and aligning feelings with the will. My teacher, thus, emphasizes for me the importance of learning chord relationships and learning and remembering proper fingering. In this way my memory assists my reasoning about how to play a new piece of music. And only when my will controls my~ feelings can I keep my enthusiasm from ruining the dynamics and phrasing of com-positions. For me it is truly useful discipline to have to count continuously, thereby exercising a form of reason. My teacher also patiently reminds me that I must play the piece as it is writ-ten-- not as I may prefer or wish it to be, nor as I would find it easier to play. Those reminders are echoes of incarnation! When Review for Religious I lose the balance and proper relationship of memory, reason, will, and feelings, the pieces do not sound right. They cease to please the ear. In a profound sense they are no longer "good." In turn, that reminds me that, when I lose the balance in my spiri-tual life, it too is swerving from the best direction. One particular place where Ignatius urges balance and indif-ference is in making an election (§179). The single criterion of election is that a given alternative seems to lead more to the glory and praise of God and to the salvation of one's soul. The ideal choice, thus, is very pure and very disciplined. In a similar way, the best choice in playing music will be to put aside any personal inclinations or biases or even technical insufficiencies. The goal is to play the piece as near as possible to the composer's intention. The search for that intention can be like discerning the will of God. Sometimes neither the one nor the other is apparent on the surface. It is in both cases openness, dialogue, respect, fidelity, and persistence that create the atmosphere in which disclosure becomes more likely. Within all the balance and indifference in prayerful elections, however, it does seem that reason takes primacy (§ 182). Ignatius seems almost to anticipate the Kantian ethical principle about acting in ways that would please you if they became universal law. The saint counsels us to imagine advising an unknown person whose sanctification we desire, within the context of our own sense of what best conduces to God's glory. Having determined that advice, we are ourselves to follow it (§185). So too in music, where it is hard to imagine advising anyone to play a work other than as it is written. Once reason has helped us to know the goal for living well or for playing music well, the honorable course is to set about engaging the other parts of the personality to col-laborate in moving to this end, and in practicing and honing needed skills for doing so. Relaxation and trust enhance both instrumental playing and prayer. At a recent lesson, my piano teacher watched and heard me struggle through a work white-knuckled, tight-shouldered, gri-macing, and gritting my teeth. She then inquired, sweedy, whether I found it easier to play tense or relaxed. That reminded me of the priest at my last directed retreat who kept urging me to pray in Imaginative hearing certainly helps in the process of learning music. Septentber-October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano peace and serenity--until I finally did. Tension and trying to retain control do not facilitate progress in either prayer or piano. Humility certainly helps in both spheres. Ignatius specifically counsels cultivating the attitude of humility at those times we contemplate our sins. He says that we are then to "lessen" our-selves via various imaginative comparisons (§58). The whole envi-ronment of the Exercises, moreover, induces humility. Much in the system cooperates to encourage the exercitant to esteem God's control and another's direction over what comes from the self alone. For me the Exercises went best at those times when I was most teachable and directable. The same is true of piano study: I play better by attuning to what is there musically and to the teacher. Playing the piano and praying are complementary processes that call on remarkably similar skills. As I hone technique in one area, I also seem to position myself for advancement in the other activity. A kind of cross-leavening seems to occur. As I attend con-sciously to what happens, it seems as though piano learnings tend to foster px:ayer learnings, not vice versa. I think that is because progress in piano happens in an external realm where any who wish may hear, measure, compare, iudge, criticize, and so forth. The no-less-real results of prayer exist in' an internal sphere fully accessible neither to others nor even to myself. Whatever helps someone to understand more of what occurs in personal prayer and to be able to communicate that has to be a boon to progress in prayer. Piano does those things for me. Piano also intimates to me and gives me the hope that King Hezekiah expressed: "The Lord will save me, and we will sing to my stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the Lord" (Is 38:20). Notes 1 Scriptural citations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. 2 The quoted words are from the Papal Approbation of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises in 1548, as given in David L. Fleming SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978), p. xxiii. Other citations (§) are standard paragraph numberings used in this and other modern trans-lations of the Exercises. 3 Jesuit Retreat House, Los Altos, California. 4 Psalms 33, 68, 81, 92,144, 149, and 150 all direct the use of musi-cal instruments in praising God. Review for Religious JOSEPH A. TETLOW The Experience of God in Consecrated Life during the 20th Century In this article I try to describe the experience of God, not to prescribe for it. I begin, first, with the meanings of the terms spirituality and religion and the content of the term experi-ence. Second, I characterize modern times just before Vatican Council II under three headings: aggressive realism, methodi-cal universalism, and rugged individualism. I do this because modernity has marked consecrated life deeply and in some mea-sure still marks it, and because, when conservatives talk about the past, this is the past they mean. Third, about the council, I note only that the reform of church structures and the renewal of consecrated life brought out deep problems with authority and with our concept of the self. Finally, coming to today, I urge that we can appreciate consecrated life well in terms of the postmodern understanding of experience as constructed, derivative, intentional, and dialogic. I hope these somewhat scattered theoretical points will deepen our reflection on what the experience of God has been in consecrated life during the cen-tury that is now ending. Spirituality. For us spirituality means the experience of God in Christ. For others it means other things. The Communist government of China, for instance, has begun Joseph A. Tetlow SJ makes available here a talk that he pre-sented in Rome at a workshop attended by members of the union of major superiors of men religious; it retains something of that provenance. No newcomer to these pages, he is director of the Secretariat for Ignatian Spirituality; C.P. 6139; 00195 Roma Prati; Italy. consecrated life September-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience o[ God in Consecrated Life promoting what it calls a "spiritual civilization." Alcoholics Anonymous acknowledges only a "Higher Power" but has a spir-ituality. So has the New Age pseudo-philosophy. In this article the word spirituality is used in none of those vague senses. Here it means the experience of God in Christ, always incarnated in a tradition of prayer and interior discipline.~ A spiritual life, consequently,is the ongoing, cherished, fos-tered experience of God in Christ in one of the great consecrated-life traditions.2 Shifting "from the former stress on the rational to the experiential," serious theologians now recount "the in-break-ing God of personal experience.''3 Karl Rahner, certainly a spec-ulative theologian, was deeply stirred by Ignatius's conviction "that he had in fact experienced God directly and that others may do so as well.''4 Rahner wrote many prayers like this one.- "Thanks to your mercy, O infinite God, I know somethingabout you not only through concepts and words, but through experience . Yes, really you yourself, not just a concept of you, not just the name which we ourselves have given you.''5 John of the Cross experienced God, not an idea or a poem, and so did Don Bosco, St. Benedict, the author of the Cloud. Each experienced God in the specific way God chose~ All those who follow each of them adopt the perspectives, perceptions, and values of their masters, desiring and determined to know God as their tradition knows God. This is what we mean by spirituality. It differs from religion. Religion. Religion is the experience of creed, code, cultus, and culture and, in and through these creatures, the experience of God. Hinduism; Buddhism, Islam, even animism yield the expe-rience of God in the experience of creed, code, cultus, and cul-ture. 6 Islam, for instance, holds faith in Allah and in the prophet Mohammed, follows a moralistic code, practices cultus six times a day and a month each year, and has spread into a vast poly-morphous culture. Each Muslim experiences these creatures directly and, in them, God. The "ordinary Christian" who spent three hours worshiping in St. Peter's Square on Palm Sunday felt the presence of God in the liturgy. True, many ordinary Christians may have momentary "mystical experiences"; Andrew Greeley reported in one survey that perhaps eight in ten American Catholics have had such experiences, and we have no reason to think Americans more mystical than any other people. But those "mystical experiences" come as a surprise, for religious people Review for Religious experience God indirectly, through the created creed, code, cul-tus, and culture in their everyday lives. Religious leaders need to note two points connected with this: first, about the apostolate. The people we serve, the "millions in the middle," in Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's phrase, experience God in and through their religion. When the powerful or the super-spiritual despise these people's religion, the people suffer; for their special experience of God seems despised and degraded. Perhaps the church harmed them inadver-tently when it swiftly and almost wordlessly dismantled the liturgi-cal use of Latin and quotidian laws about fasting and communion on the tongue, Yet for centuries the church had called the full, whole-hearted living of religion, just reli-gion, "spirituality." Only a few centuries ago did theologians begin using the word spirituality for the life lived by an active, dedicated, religious elite, and only in the last two centuries did theologians begin separating the experience we call spirituality from the experience we call religion. We who find ourselves in this "elite" run the risk of so raising up spirituality as to depreciate religion. This is wrongheaded. The second thing superiors might note here concerns our own congregational lives. Are there not men in every congrega-tion who live the charism in wholehearted ways and yet cannot say they know God? We all know men who have pictures of the Holy Father, of saints and holy places, all over their rooms and offices. Perhaps they are living religion--creed, code, cultus, and cul-ture- as religion is embodied in a congregation's way of life, with all its pious practices. (Somebne told about a man who was watch-ing television and reading his breviary during the commercial breaks. He explained that Jesus had instructed us to "watch and pray.") Above all, perhaps we should consider whether the strongly conservative among us may live their interior lives in this way of religion. How do they experience God? Experience. Our topic is experience. As everyone does today, I have been talking about experience as though we all mean the same thing. But we do not. Some say experience includes just what Only in the last two centuries did theologians begin separating the experience we call spirituality from the experience we call religion. September-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life happens; some, that experience includes only what I am conscious of happening; some tinsist that human experience always includes language. Every one of. us, also, varies what he includes in the term. What does our topic mean, "The experience of God in con-secrated life"? Obviously, we cannot work out a perfect descrip-tion of experience here and now. Also obviously, we are probably not going to talk about it the way "scientific" philosophers talk about it. We are going to talk about experience, most likely, as Vita consecrata does.7 Perhaps, though, we need to notice, on a slightly theoretica,1 plane, that today people regularly talk about experience by using seven categories. A sort of common philosophy holds that each and every experience unfolds in seven dialogically inter-related elements: context, perspective, perception, value, desire, decision, and habit. We tend to think that any and every experi-ence is adequately described when each of these elements is accounted fo~, both in itself and in its relationship with each of the other elements. So, biographers get the concrete details of their subjects' time and place and recount how their context shaped their perspectives, how their values shaped their perceptions, and so on. Scripture scholars try to recapture the context of Jesus' life and the perspectives, perceptions, and values with which his context would have imbued him. When we look at a man's expe-rience to see whether he has the capacity to govern, we weigh his decisions and hal6its, how he perceives, what he values. Things like these constitute our view of his experience. So, at least for now, let that stand for what experience is. The description is hardly .satisfactory, so why did I raise the question? For two reasons. Fil:st, we whose main task is listening to .others must keep in mind that there is no such thing as a naive appeal to experience. The man who says, "Well, my experience tells me such-and-such" has not ended discussion, but just begun it. As philosophical theologiaJ~ John Smith argues, every appeal "carries with it a theory of experience, some principle indicating what expe-rience is and how much it is supposed to contain.''8 Conflicts between superiors and consecrated men, between individuals and their communities, commonly grow from different appreciations of experience. The second reason we need to be aware of the con-tent of experience is that the teaching church is changing its approach to experience, but is no more consistent than any of us in what content it puts into the word. Review for Religious Now let me turn to the three topics I mean to open: the pre-conciliar and modern, the council, and the postconciliar or post-modern. Preconciliar and Modern Times I begin with a story. In 1947 a young man of sixteen boarded a train on his way to a novitiate. Answering the questions of the novice-master, his back straight and shoulders squared, he explained his call. He felt drawn to a military life (his father had sent him to a military school). But he thumped the oak arm of his chair--absolutely, God wanted him to be a religious and a priest. Fifty years later, he remains both. The year 1947 came in the evening of modern times. What is modernity? How had it affected our experience of God in Christ? Intellectual historians generally concur on certain qualifies. Albert Borgmann, for instance, identifies as marks of modernity an aggressive realism (we experiment to know and we intend to con-trol life and nature with our knowledge); methodical universalism (any empirically established truth is true in every realm and in any culture); and rugged individualism (the person comes to be over against the community). Aggressive Realism. In the 1950s we perceived the modern uni-verse, unlike the medieval Christian cosmos, as impersonal and governed by regular laws that had to be understood mathemati-cally. We felt free to tear out forests, dig up mountains, and blow a hole in the earth's atmosphere. As we grew absorbed in this aggressive realism, in Richard Tarnas's words, "God was now dis-tantly removed from the physical universe, as creator and archi-tect, and was now less a God of love, miracle, redemption, or historical intervention than a supreme intelligence and first cause.''9 1 have the clearest recollection from the early 1950s of being instructed by a spiritual book written by a Frenchman and translated by a North American to turn at the end of a period of prayer and with whole heart and great fervor pray to "my First Cause." 10 This kind of realism seriously trammeled our experience of God, in part because that realism was magnified by a centuries-long failure in the church to develop anything like an adequate theology of creation,~ as John Courtney Murray argued in his book, The Problem of God. In modern times we spoke about God's Septonber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life providence or God's will, both exercised, in some measure, in dis-tans. But we had lost the strong sense of God continually, con-stantly creating us and personally calling us.~2 Most religious are still surprised and delighted to hear that we are in an intimate relationship with God the ongoing Creator. In truth, our God had some of the aspects of the rationalists' Great Watchmaker who created the earth and spun it off to do its own work. Notice that the experience of God in consecrated life in the West has been countercultural and is an important gift to the Western church, as Vita consecrata points OUt.13 It also has to be the source of a renewed theology of creation for the church (one thinks of Teilhard de Chardin). Rugged Individualism. Just a century ago the West gave scien-tific sanction to individualism in social Darwinism's "survival of the fittest." So the powerful grabbed oil, railroad lands, monopolies in finance, and so on; the less than powerful were taught to blame themselves. Between Vatican Councils I and II, between the first automobile and the first manned space vehicle, the socioeconomic program of the West, in Roberto Mangabeira Unger's words, was "to turn all society into a world of patrons and clients.''~4 Furthermore, this was certainly the methodical program of the Communist elites (only six percent of China's population) and arguably the established program of the rest of the world. Princes and rich landowners lavished patronage; their clients begged help. Colonial powers favored a native elite (that now rules seventy-five new nations); the natives depended on them. Bosses ruled "their" workers; bishops had "their" priests; religious superiors had "their" subjects. All these were "clients," including the reli-gious, who leaned on (the Indo-European root of "client" is klei, to incline to or lean on). their superiors. This patron/client relationship flourished in the church, which Catholics were taught to conceive of as a "perfect" society, that.is, a visible society fully equipped for its purposes with autonomous rights and resources, with powers of jurisdiction, legislation, and administration, and, in words of Pius XlI in Mystici Corporis, a society lifted "above the whole natural order [by] the Spirit of the Redeemer, who., penetrates every part of the church's being and is active within it.''~s We religious exhorted one another to dependence on our superiors. I do not speak critically here. We must empathize with this earlier perspective on authority. Authority was felt to be, in itself, profoundly benevolent to the Review for Religious subject, creative, and ultimately successful in making people what God wished them to be, Modern people simply did what they were told by superiors, and if some of them acted immorally-- remember Eichmann--many others flourished under good lead-ership. And tens of thousands of consecrated men lived holy and productive lives by doing what they were told. It was in this con-text that a young man (just like the one who took that train in 1947), when told .by his master of novices to tie his hands to his bedstead to avoid nocturnal pollution, at first obeyed confidently. I say "at first," for there was a shadow side to this embrace of authority. As Donald Gelpi has written, "submission of one's own will to a superior [was] subtly trans-formed from a means into an end in itself." 16 The religious subjects had an. easy way to personal holiness, and, superiors could ask them to be instruments of our congregations, instruments, we confidently believed, in God's hands. Very commonly it is this instrumentalism that conservatives yearn to recapture. One man said as much to me as he was planning a par-ticularly egregious action against some liberal Christians: "I just want to be a hammer in God's hands." What did he think he is? Who had responsibility for his harmful activities? Authority, and its instruments, were experienced as univer-sally valid until the very late stages of modernism. This century's experiences--the Holocaust, the Soviet Union's Gulag, Idi Amin, My Lai, terrorism, governmental lying, the totalitarian habit of "disappearing" people---have changed our appreciation of author-ity. In earlier modernity it was perceived as benevolent; at moder-nity's end, it has come to be perceived as malevolent or at best deeply ambiguous. Even consecrated men may nowadays won-der, at a letter from superiors, What do they want now? At the end of modernity, as Hannah Arendt argued, we have to study what authority once was to come to any realistic appreciation of it. This situation is, in part, the fruit of rugged individualism. Methodical Universalism. If the secular world gladly embraced empiricism as a universal method, the church embraced scholas- We had lost the strong sense of God continually, constantly creating us and persona, lly calling us. Septentber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life ticism as gladly. Before Vatican II, the teaching church was insist-ing on a unique philosopbia perennis, a single intellectual approach to meaning in human life. This insistence expressed a methodical universalism; it belonged more to modernity than to revelation. Scientists rigidly adhered to what they considered induction; Catholics rigidly adhered to deduction. One reviewer in 1949 called a masterwork by Garrigou-Lagrange "an outstanding exam-ple of the ability of a master scientist to draw a whole system of practical conclusions from a single principle.''17 The book was The Three Ages of the Interior Life, and the reviewer resonated with the book's methodical universalism.18 Integral to that methodical universalism was the firm con-viction that nature had an intrinsic order, put there by God and functioning flawlessly. Unaided reason could perceive this order with certitude (one of my philosophy professors liked to cite the Letter to the Romans). This modern trust in reason unrelated to God'.s "ongoing revelation transmuted the church's philosophical commitment to a "natural law." The trust in reason and law affected consecrated life, too: "Keep the rule, and the rule will keep you." As the 20th century progressed, we learned that nature ordered itself by evolution--having been so created by God at the time of the Big Bang. Catholics were quicker than most to accept that scientific theory as fact. Then we learned also that each person evolves, comes to be, grows, from some interior prin-ciple. The combination, grew to an insistence on "authenticity." Hence, as one author summarized the development, "in contrast with the medieval Christian worldview, modern man's indepen-dence- intellectual, psychological, spiritual--was radically affirmed, with increasing depreciation of any religious belief or institutional structure that would inhibit man's natural right and potential for existential autonomy and individual self-expres-sion." 19 He has caught most of the shibboleths of the 1960s, the pseudo-ideas, the decaying core convictions of modernity: inde-pendence, radical, institutional, structures, natural right, auton-omy, self-expression. These are the "plastic words" that many of us used when pushing far in the conciliar reforms.2° Vatican II and the Return to Roots Here is another story. Around 1967 a man from a religious com-munity made a workshop-retreat. He had been busy running a college Review for Religious and raising funds; he had never made a directed retreat or listened to one of the well'known spiritual gums. About a month a#er his expe-rience, he told another man in his community that the retreat had been powerful. He had never known, really known, that God accepts him, that God loves him as he is. He wept as he recounted the experience. In complex and varying ways, modernity had shaped the con-secrated life before Vatican II. Now we were called by the great decree Petfectae caritatis to return to our roots, to leave nature alone for a w, hile and go back to history. We needed to re-create our communities, an immensely conse-quential effort, which meant recovering ¯ our history. Some of us found that our communities were hardly living our full histories. I was astonished, for instance, to find out that St. Ignatius Loyola did not found the Society of Jesus all alone, but led a committee of friends in the Lord. to found the Company. (I have never been sure what that committee tells us about Jesuits.) One of the great consequences was a deep shift in leadership style from hierar-chical power to discerning authority, a genuinely splendid achieve-ment. Superiors decided that they were called, in Ann Ida Gannon's bold phrase, "for the service of [their] fellow religious.''~ They learned to be servant-leaders, adopting a leadership style that rejects power and governs by authority. So we began to reha-bilitate authority, and to reconnect the modern individualist to the community. Authority, which humankind always needs, is the ability so to arrange a lifeworld that those served by authority desire in great freedom to follow its decisions. Fully exercised, leadership by authority elicits and empowers the authority of every individual. For in its roots--note the Latin nounauct0r (originator, doer, author) and verb augere (increase)~authority names a human per-son's self-actualization and growth, which cannot happen to a person except in connection with a community. We need to pur-sue a difficult notion here: the concept of the self. Under the weight of modern individualism, we came to think of the self as isolated, estranged--all those anguishes of existentialism. We came to appreciate the self as having no extension, independent Fully exercised, leadership by authority elicits and empowers the authority of every individual. Septentber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life not only of our bodies but even of our experiences. We have all heard people say that they can "use their experience," as though it were a computer program. We have heard that a woman "has a right over her own body" as though it were something like a suit-case. Charles Taylor summarized all this as "the punctiliar self.''22 The self has become like a little point floating through our life-world, our own life history, our experiences, convictions, body parts. For our topic, the important thing to notice is that, when the conciliar renewal arrived, we were all thinking of the self detached from our own experience and over against the commu-nity. When one of us said "I personally think." he really meant "I individually think"--that is, over against the rest of society. For person had come to mean individual and had been cut off from society. Only during postmodernity, with its search for commu-nity, did we recover the truth that no human person can exist apart from the human community. We are not angels. We might note one final rather abstruse but intensely conse-quential point. The modern concept of self, split off in Catholic life from any adequate theology of ongoing creation, let us conceive of our autonomy as almost divine. That concept entailed both the "denial of death" that philosophers have noted in some cultures and also an attempt at repudiating creaturehood. Thus, many could retract their permanent commitments and their priestly vows: "It was not my true self." At the beginning of this century, theolo-gians wrote of a triad: God, man, and creatures. Listen to the incompleteness of the modernist expression in Canon Four of the Roman Missal: "You have created man and set him over all crea-tures." Not "over all other creatures"; just "over all creatures." After the council we in consecrated life once again began to hear all other creatures "speak to us in 'their own right," and it is not an accident that consecrated men and women have been leading the so-called "ecological spirituality" movement.23 Postmodernism and Expe~ience A thirdstory. In 1987 more thanfifty men from oneprovince made a retreat together. They listened to briefpresentations during the day and prayed in silence. In the evenings they sat around and talked about themselves: How did I get my vocation, what was the hardest obedience I ever faced, where has the cross been in my life? Each said what he wished to say, the young and the 6ld; no one answered another; no one Review for Religious was forced to speak. Ten years later the men still remember that expe-rience. It drew them into communion. They even found out that they liked one another. Describing postmodernity is like describing where you are in a vast desert. There are markers, of course; but they are very hard to discern. I particularly like a triad developed by philosopher Albert Borgmann, whom I have already cited: "For each of the modern principles a counter possibility is emerging: information processing in place of aggressive realism, flexible specialization instead of methodical universalism, and informed cooperation rather than rugged individualism.''24 This is a description of global culture, but perhaps you recognize these emerging experiences: Information processing: Once we worked by the rule; now we read the signs of the times and discern. Flexible specialization: Once we legislated apostolic work; now we inculturate, make the option for the poor, and try to keep faithful to our charism. Informed cooperation: Once our ideal of obedience was the blind man being led; now we dialogue, discern, and even as we are given a mandate we remember that we are, each of us, free men. This is conse-crated life in a postmodern world. We are not likely to comprehend the experience in any seri-ous way unless we accept that postmodernity sees experience as a construct of many elements. This construct is intentional (of and by and for and with other persons and things); derivative (from other experiences and other things); and dialogic (moving in and out, back and forth, between old self and new self). Let me take each of these marks of experience and suggest a thought or two about consecrated life. Constructed. Experience is constructed. It incorporates a past and moves into a future; it combines social, cultural, intellectual, emotive, aesthetic; it entails sensations, memories, desires, and perceptions. Thus, even Descartes's insight Cogito ergo sum--one of the deepest roots of modern individualism--was in a language (Latin) that many past and present spoke. He had the insight with a brain incorporating DNA from two other persons. He felt emo-tions and conviction. Every experience is thus constructed, so that George Schner can correctly claim, "There is a sense in which no experience is strictly 'mine.'''25 The experience of living a consecrated life is also, quite obvi-ously, a construct. Each of us had a unique experience when tak-ing vows, yet we used a formul~ used by thousands before us. And September-October 1998 Tetlow * The Experience of God in Consecrated Life we promised to live these vows accordi

Issue 56.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1997. ; for ,relig i 'ous Christian Heritages and Contemporau Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 5 " Review for R~ligious is a forum for shared refleaibn _on the lived experienc.e of all who find that ttfe church's rich heritages of spi#ituality support their personal and apostolff Christian lives. Tbe articles~ in the journal are meant to bb informativb,,L . practical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point,of vie~. Review for Religious (1SSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religiou~ ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, I\~N 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1997 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of ihe source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Fopp'e Tracy Gramm Jean Read James ain,t Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Jo~l Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia W]ttberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents consecrated life 454 468 Contemporary Religious Leadership Howard Gray SJ focuses on three tasks of a contemporary religious leader: to design strategies that further the kingdom of God, to implement those designs through existing ministries, and to do this in the compassion of Christ's cross. Continuing Formation: Perspectives from I~ta Consecrata Joel C-iallanza csc explains Vita consecrata's treatment of continuing formation in terms of pertinent basic principles, its necessity throughout religious life, and the dimensions through which it engages the whole person. 478 methodology Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Betty Ann McNeil DC sketches out an example of international research on kinship within the Vincentian tradition, thereby providing information for mission and fostering creative collaboration. 491 From Parchment to Cyberspace: New Technologies Can Serve Charisms John Freund CM explores the communication world of the Internet and the World Wide Web, especially in view of their evangelizing potential. Review for Religious 503 heritages Angela Merici: Ursuline Mother and Valiant Woman Frances M. Biscoglio brings us into the wonder of the life and legacy of Angela Merici. 511 "The Beautiful Acarie" 525 Robert P. Maloney CM enters us into the story of Madame Acarie, the central figure in a great spiritual renewal in 17th-century Paris. Ninian's Whithorn: A Time-and-Place Pilgrimage David Douglas shares reflections from a pilgrimage to St. Ninian's first monastic settlement in what is now Scotland. 533 542 spiritual life What Is Spirituality? Carla Mae Streeter OP presents an understanding of spirituality that reveals the Holy already in our midst and calls us to full human response. Being Saved by Beauty Melannie Svoboda SND helps us appreciate the role of beauty in Jesus' life with God and its role in our own life and ministry. departments 452 Prisms 547 Canonical Counsel: Habit and Habitus: Brief History 553 Book Reviews September-October 1997 prisms ~hat centers our life determines 'the kind of balance it has. Sometimes we become aware of that cente? during a quiet prayerful retreat. Perhaps a crisis--the death of someone close to us, a reversal in our own health, a failure in a project, or confusion about future directions--makes us face the question of what centers our lives. True, Jesus Christ is the center of all Christian living. But perhaps we men and women religious should take stock of our experience of Jesus' centrality to consecrated life. We find it in our every celebration of the Eucharist, with Jesus as the center in both Word and Sacrament. We may also find that central Presence in a particular com-munity or an outstanding leader or a special project that helps focus our faith life. Yet such a group or individual or work can also obscure what is central to our faith. Perhaps, through no fault of the community or the person or the project, our attention s.tops at the immediate incarnation of faith in front of us, and these very instruments of grace block out rather than bring us in touch with Jesus Christ. We have heard sad tales of some priest-confessor so antag-onizing a penitent, somehow, that the person leaves the confessional in a huff and refuses to actively practice the faith. The person's focus has become fixated on the lim-ited incarnation that each individual~priest (or Christian or institution) represents. What ChriStians take for granted in theory--that Jesus is the center of their faith--can eas-ily be disrupted in practice, amid the trials of living their faith. With the dearth of vocations to the consecrated life within western Europe and North America today, vocation promoters remind us anew that we limited incarnations of Christ have an important role to play in stirring up and inspiring people to thas kind of special followang. Still the .l Review for Religious ~; call remains Christ's, and the focus of our vocation is not just one of us nor our community nor our work; the focus is Jesus whom we image imperfectly at best. In our own call, we can distinguish various influences, but their collect~e focus is always Jesus. Our individual crises--like all Christian crises--usually include a loss of our central focus. Again it is individual people, particular com-munities, and even pet projects that can sometimes stand in the way of our deepening relationship with Jesus. Yes, it is easy to acknowledge that Jesus is the center of consecrated life--in the-ory! But in our living of this relationship we often find moments of doubt, confusion, and even anger. Not.only do we experience at times an obscuring of the cen-trality of Jesus in our personal vocation stories, but we also obfus-cate the theology of consecrated life by a similar failing. Some contemporary studies about consecrated life have little to say about the future of this lifeform because they take no account of its central focus. Without that focus, consedrated life obviously has elements that will be out of balance. As we read some present-day books about religious life's future or as we get involved in various workshops, we need to ask ourselves: What centers consecrated life in this way of presenting it? The Jesus who is the center of our personal vocation and who is the center of consecrated life calls for a love relationship. We cannot relate to this Jesus as an abstract concept such as Wisdom, biblically authentic as its personification is. We cannot~ identify this Jesus with good actions which we perform in our rehg~ous mission: Jesus is more than some category of virtue enhancing human behavior. True, Jesus identifies with each person we serve or who serves us, but Jesus has his own identity and his own way of lov-ing and of being loved. Jesus in our lives calls forth from us and from our religious congregation the awed response of love he called.forth from Thomas: "My Lord and my God!" The mis-sion of our congregation is not identified with making this world a better place to live; our mission as consecrated people is so related to the Jesus of the Gospels that together we make present the actions of Christ. Because of the goodness of a real relation-ship with Jesus, both as individuals and as congregations, we expe-rience that Jesus is the center of our consecrated life, the center of our life-in-mission. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1997 consecrated life HOWARD GRAY Contemporary Religious Leadership Harry Truman said, "A leader is a man who has the abil-ity to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it," ' If there is any accuracy or wisdom in this reflection, then the most effective leader in our lives is the Holy Spirit. Presumably the members of CMSM believe that for better or for worse God's Spirit had a major role in their selection as a community leader. V~-hether you like being in that position or not, you ought to be asking for consolation, asking for the gift of the Spirit to find some genuine light and, yes, even happiness in the fact that you are someone God has elected to lead. I want to explore this fundamental reality of election and then develop what this call to leadership means for your service in our church and in our contemporary society. First, to be religious is to be called, to be obedient to the initiative that God uses to ask us to do something for the sake of the kingdom? Second, the mastery of God over the enterprise is both a comfort and a challenge. It is a comfort because God bears the ultimate responsibility for the works we do and the people we serve. It is a chal-lenge because we are partners with the divine, co-laborers who shoulder a bit of the divine burden. Third, we are Howard Gray SJ presented this article, here somewhat edited, as a talk on 8 August 1997 to the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) at their annual assembly, titled this year "Called by Jesus: Free to Lead" and held in San Diego, California. His address is Jesuit Institute; Boston College; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02167. Review for Religious. trying to be good stewards in a time of internal community declines, ecclesial tensions, and exploding apostolic possibilities. Charles Morris, in his recent study American Catholics, puts it this way: The problems the church is facing are of exquisite subtlety. ¯. Traditionalists may yearn for the old Catholic docility, but ¯. the young people who are most informed about their reli-gion- recent Catholic college graduates--are also among the most committed to the church and among the least disposed to accept the rote dictates of authority. The problems lie within the institution itself. The root problem is the vision or lack of vision--or superfluity of visions--of what the church is and how it should carry out its mission and who should do it. The awkward revi-sioning of the church that has been taking place over the last thirty years sweeps up questions of authority, of sexuality, of gender, of orthodoxy in matters great and small, and sets bishops and theologians at one another's throats) You and I do not have to buy all of Morris's conclusions or his rhetoric, but the kind of concern he voices is real and hardly idiosyncratic. To be summoned, as you are, to temporary official leadership within the church and within this culture is to accept an anomalous role. You are not bishops nor part of the diocesan curia; but you do have authority, responsibility, and opportunity to effect the mission of the church within a diocese or within many dioceses. You work intimately with members of your com-munity and with the lay colleagues who partner your apostolates, but you also assess the effectiveness of their labor against the obligation you have to foster the overall mission of your larger community. And you have to do all this while being prophetic yet managerial, spiritual yet financially astute, sympathetic towards human weakness yet known for your "tough love." You also have to be theologically literate, informed about justice issues but socially nimble with benefactors, a man of prayer, graceful in pub-lic liturgies, and yet able to offer creative ways for your commu-nity to enter into the new millennium. You have every right to feel defenseless against this army of expectations. And anyone who dares to speak to you about reli-gious leadership has to share your feelings. No one has the final answer except God. This conviction demands a terrible asceti-cism. You and I live "in the meantime," .in tha~ period of waiting for answers along the way, for directions towards the kingdom, for ways to find God but within this world and within these prob- September-October 1997 Gray * Contemporary Religious Leadership lems and opportunities. As partners of the divine, we move with a God we do not always see and cannot always find. The answers we try to form and the directions we try to give come out of our prayer and study, our consultations and our traditions. Consequently, our answers and our directions bear the all-too-human stamp of our limitations and our projections. And yet you and I must return to that radical religious conviction that God has called us to leadership for the good of God's people and the furthering of the kingdom. For all these reasons, then, I.want to emphasize the religious character of your lea~dership and to suggest what religious lead-ership might mean for the church and culture of today. A Metaphor for Our Reflections: Head and Hands and Heart Among other questions, I had to ask where I myself found direction towards understanding religious leadership. Certainly, the example of older, effective leaders helped, as did the rich' store of material on leadership theory in business, education, and health services.41 was drawn, finally, to a moment in my own life that helped me to realize what the essential elements in religious lead-ership are. ,. As a young priest I was assigned to preach a summer retreat to a large assembly of religious women. Their community was involved in a variety of ministries, with commitments in the United States and throughout East Asia. The retreat was held at the motherhouse, which included the community infirmary and retirement center. Early in the retreat I struck up a friendship with a sister in the infirmary who was dying of multiple sclerosis. She had been a giant within the community, one of the first to attend a prestigious secular university and to obtain a doctorate in economics. Although she had great promise as a scholar and teacher, she was put into administration and became the presi-dent of one of the colleges sponsore'd by her m:der. As president she led the school through a series of financial campaigns that added buildings and .stature to the institution. Then she was diag-nosed as having M.S., and the disease moved quickly through her nervous system. When I met her, she was totally confined to bed. She was wonderful to talk with--insightful, witty, without an ounce of Review for Religious self-pity. When on the last day of the retreat I went to say good-bye to her, she said something like this: "Father, yon are a young man and I am an old and dying woman, so we are both in the rigfit position for advice. When I was a young nun, I thought it was important to give God my head, so I studied hard and won my way to the university and to doctoral studies. I saw scholarship as my way to God. But then, after a few years, my community had other needs. I was put into university adminis-tration and became the president of the college. Then I thought that what God really wanted was my hands, my ability to accomplish great things for the college, to build up this institution. Now here I am. I struggle to remember, and I cannot hold a glass of water. Now I realize as never before that what God has wanted all along is my heart. Give God your head and your hands, but bring your heart along with them." Sister died about a month later, but her words have lived within me. The head, hands, and heart symbol.i, ze what we "do" as religious leaders. While ydh have specific works in line with the charisms 9f your community and devel-opments within its ministries, what you oversee as provincials or council members is your com-munity's entire mission. It is this mission that primarily engages your leadership, and it is this mission that determines the char-acteristics your leadership needs. The answers we try to form and the directions we try to give come out of our prayer and study, our consultations and our traditions. Mission of the Intellect In 1990 Robert Bellah delivered an incisive address to the bishops of the United States gathered in special assembly at Santa Clara University. In that address he traced the influence of John Locke in the formation of the North American ethos: "It is remarkable how much of our current understanding of social real-. ity flows from the .original institutionalization at the end of the 18th century (the 'founding') and how much of that was depen-dent on the thought of John Locke. Locke's teaching is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, ideologies ever invented. Indeed, it is proving to .be more enduring and influen-tial, which is not to say truer, than Marxism. It promises an Septentber-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership unheard-of degree of individual freedom, an unlimited opportu-nity to compete for material well-being, and an unprecedented limitation on the arbitrary powers of government to interfere with individual initiative . [The Lockean myth] rejects all lim-its on the freedom and autonomy of individuals other than those they freely consent to in entering the (quite limited) social con-tract . Limited government exists to provide a minimum of order for individuals to accumulate property.''5 This social contract, Bellah points out, is essentially at odds ~ith the biblical notion of covenant, a relationship between God and people, between Creator and creature, founded on loyalty and trust. The covenant relationship transcends self-interest and entails obligations to God and to the neighbor. The social contract is also radically at odds with the Pauline understanding of the Body of Christ; Christian freedom is radically different from Lockean freedom. The Lockean notion of contract, Bellah says, affects not only the economic and political spheres, but also our understanding of all human relations, including the family and church. This exaggerated individualism permeates the culture in which the church proclaims the gospel and the call of the kingdom. "The teaching role of the church," Bellah continues, "is placed under a considerable strain, and tact and prudence are certainly neces-sary. It seems to me the first problem is at the same time theo-logical and sociological: how to communicate the deep social realism of biblical religion to an individualistic culture.''6 Bellah carefully calls the bishops to teach within the Body of Christ, that is, with recognition of the various gifts that are there to be consulted within the church's membership, but also to rep-resent the authority that transcends individual consent, namely, the authority of God. Bellah says, "I hope you have the courage to be what you are as authentically as you understand what that is and are not too intimidated by the confusions of our culture [and] do not fall back too readily on our central cultural stereotypes of leadership--the manager and the therapist. For if we are to demonstrate what the church is as a community based on unlimited loyalty in a covenant and membership in the same body, we must all, with the. grace of God, fulfill the particular gifts with which we have been entrusted to the best of our ability. You have indeed been pas-tors, prophets, and leaders in this society in a way that does Review for Religious demonstrate what the people of God is.''7 I have quoted Bellah extensively because his words to the U.S. bishops seven years ago continue to have relevance for your mis-sion of religious leadership. The challenges Bellah presented to the bishops are also yours, and these challenges shape your mis-sion today. You do not share the power of bishops, but you do share in many of the same areas of apostolic and ministerial responsibility. As leaders within your communities and as mem-bers of the CMSM, you have a voice that offers direction to God's people who are bound by your charisms and united in your mis-sion. The traditions that founded your schools, parishes, social centers, seminaries, and international missions will not be kept alive through some osmotic process. The education of your apos-tolic colleagues into the charisms and traditions of your religious families must be done with the tact and prudence Bellah recom-mended to the U. S. bishops. Indeed, this may be your most important intellectual work in the years ahead. I realize that this process of communicating the charism that founded our works is well underway in many communities and in the institutions and works they sponsor. My emphasis is that this task be seen as one of the most important ministries for you to carry out in your positions of leadership. I add that this min-istry is not simply a matter of exhortation. It calls for a strategy of communication, integration, and leadership training. By communication I mean that faculty and staff, for exam-ple, ought to know as much about the religious tradition of their institutions or apostolates as they do about their health insur-ance. The communication, then, has to be attractive, accurate, and enduring. By integration I mean that there has to be a pro-gram whereby all faculty and staff members able and willing to do so can take the spirituality of your charism and use it to bring greater harmony and meaning into their private and professional lives. By leadership training I mean providing formation for a probably much smaller number of faculty and staff members who are able and willing to take responsibility for the future commu-nication and integration of the tradition. This aspect of your min-istry of leadership involves more than conveying information and a sense of the relevant history and tradition. It involves--I want to emphasize this--planning some processes that help make it all happen. That is why I include it as an aspect of the mission of those in leadership positions. Septetnber-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership As religious leaders you have to see the ways in which evangelization permeates all your works. j Besides the formation of lay apostolic colleagues, I want to underscore two other specifications of your leadership ministry. First, there is the support that you give to scholarship within your communities. Within the church the great heritage of religious communities is that they have both carried traditions forward and illustrated their significance for present ages and cultures. I speak not only about formal theological scholarship, but also about the whole array of scholarly work that sustains a dialogue of faith with a culture of disbelief. There is so much pressure to fill admin-istrative lacunae that we may panic and see studies only as a means to give people the credentials they need to fill those lacunae. Your scholars need to be free to develop as scholars who share actively in con-temporary intellectual dialogue. They need to know that they can count on your support in moments of difficulty and misrepresentation. They need to know that in your eyes fidelity and risk have to go together. Second, as religious leaders you hav~.to see the ways in which evangelization permeates all your works. By evangelization I mean making the gospel and the tradition intelligible and applicable. A wonderful history surrounds reli-gious- life ministry. Our community life locates the reality of the body of Christ within the human family. Our ministries are not restricted to the faithful, but move by design to those who feel that the gospel has no mean-ing for them or who have become convinced that they are outside salvation. Frequently our works are spiritual and corporal works of mercy precisely because they are not tied to conventional reli-gious symbols or rhetoric.8 The mission of the intellect, the planning that creates reli-gious centering within a culture often resolutely antireligious, does not rely on numbers, but on being a presence that under-stands both the mission appropriate to your charism and the cre-ative evolution the mission can take. This aspect of your leadership presumes a formation program that teaches your new members consultation and teamwork. It is a mission that links the king-dom to contemporary culture, that incorporates your lay col-leagues into your charisms, and that gives your scholars the freedom they need to unpack the significance of revelation for Review for Relig~olts our culture so that, finding energy in the gospel thus revisited, they can also translate it into terms our culture can understand. Mission of Implementation Closely allied to the leadership task of designing the work of the kingdom is the oversight you give to implementing that design, to making the projects work. The diminishing number of active religious has occasioned withdrawal from some traditional ministries, the transfer of leadership positions within traditional ministries to lay people, and the creation of new apostolic bonds. Examples of such bonds are the merging of community apostolates at the University of Detroit Mercy, where two communities (the Sisters of Mercy and the Society of Jesus) brought their two insti-tutions of higher education into one, and the efforts in many places to incorporate associate members into the work and life of the established religious community. In other words, things have already been done to meet the immediate demands for the reconfiguration of our works. What I want to focus on, however, is what implementation might mean within the threefold mission of lay formation, support for our scholars, and pervasive evange-lization. As leaders within your communities, you know how crucial it is that the lay personnel who now embody the ethos of your com-munity- sponsored works be somehow engaged by the religious vision and traditions that founded your institutions, apostolates, and centers. You also know that some who join our works will never'incorporate our sense of mission. Frequently those who are involved in retaining and developing a tradition--call them vice presidents for mission effectiveness or mission coordinators or the office of spiritual development--describe their task as creat-ing "a critical mass" of persons who buy into the tradition and mission of the sponsoring religious community. You lead within an apostolic reality that feels the constant pressure of competing philosophies and theologies. Moreover, when we speak of incor-porating capable and willing lay colleagues into our religious vision and traditions, we have to encourage two movements: (1) the ongoing development of lay ministry within the wider church and (2) the participation of lay men and women in our specific apostolates. I have already indicated what lay formation could entail (that is, communication, integration, and training in how to September-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership pass on the community tradition to others). What I want to insist on here is that the task of implementation--your role as a com-munity leader--is to encourage and to authenticate the appro-priation of your charisms by lay people. However, if this implementation is to be effective, then it means support, not imposition; guidance, not censorship; trust, not fear or suspicion. Lay participation in your community charism also implies that it will be adapted and modified and will assume new symbols as your lay apostolic partners make it their own. For, unless there is cultural assimilation of your charism, there will be no appropri-ation of your charism. Granted the need for authenticity in living a charism, there also has to be willingness to let the charism reshape itself through lay experiences. All this calls for a new style of leadership and a creative approach to implementation. One religious community put it this way: The Society of Jesus places itself at the service of the mis-sion of the laity by offering what we are and what we have received: our spiritual and apostolic inheritance, our edu-cational resources, and our friendship. We offer Ignatian spirituality as a specific gift to animate the ministry of the laity. This spirituality respects the unique spirituality of the individual and adapts itself to present needs; it helps persons to discern their call and "in all things to love and serve the Divine Majesty." We offer to the laity the practical wisdom we have learned from more than four centuries of apostolic experience. Through our schools, universities, and other educational programs we make pastoral and theological training available. Perhaps most important, we join with them in companionship: serving together, learning from ¯ and responding to each other's concerns and initiatives, dia-loguing with one another on apostolic objectives? I cite this not as a paradigm, but simply as an instance of what I mean by your role as an implementer of lay formation through your respective charisms. You implement when you articulate your community's mission and charism, designate your priorities, and support the people who can make it happen on the local level. Concerning the support of scholarship within your aposto-lates, let me offer three suggestions. First, incorporate your schol-ars into your community's life and thought. Second, bring your scholars together to help you sort out and approach particular pastoral and ecclesial problems. Third, sponsor opportunities for scholars within your ministries to talk together about how faith and culture intersect today, where there are tensions, and how Review for Religious scholarship could help the church in the United States to respond more effectively to a whole array of cultural and social problems. Your initiative towards the scholarly community is the best imple-mentation. Your public support creates a climate of conversation badly needed in our church and in civil society. Your participation in the concerns and ambitions of the scholarly community gives witness to your community's willingness to learn God's wisdom in a privileged place for doing so and to respond in the light of that wisdom. You accomplish this precisely because you are the leader ofyour community, the bearer of its corporate presence, and the formal representative of its concerns. Finally, in the third overarching, apostolic concern, that of evangelization, I want to specify one major contribution you can make. You can represent your community's willingness to bond with those who most want to share in and to count on the justice promised in God's kingdom. The faith of the gospel means little if it is not accompanied by the justice of the gospel. The eco-nomically poor, the marginal within our civil society and within our church, and the alienated have a particular purchase on the gospel. It was for such as these that Jesus came. To sustain that call before your religious brothers is an important part of imple-menting the call to evangelize. To make sure that this dimension of the gospel is part of every lay formation program is essential to forming people's Christian identity. To acknowledge and reverence the mutual concerns that bind you to the poor, the marginal, and the alienated shows that you know the importance of listening and learning before trying to help. More profoundly, it means that you take the lead in showing that the greatest gift people can give you is their weakness and struggle and pain and anger because these, in turn, shape the reality and sincerity of your willingness to imitate the One who is the reason we have a gospel. In meet-ing those who need Christ, we find Christ. Mission of the Heart When we talk about the religious Significance of the heart, we mean that which "symbolizes the center or core of the human person . . . the locus not only of our affectivity but also of our freedom and consciousness, the place where we accept or reject the mystery of ourselves, human existence, and God. [the per-son's] sacred space."~° As religious leaders you are called preem- September-October 1997 Gray * Contemporary Religious Leadership inently to be men of heart, providing vision for your brothers to follow, extending mercy and care when they have stumbled and fallen, confronting them when they have wandered, encouraging them when they are overwhelmed and fatigued with the journey. You have been called to a rare and lovely ministry that sustains the hospitality of the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus. I want to talk about that aspect of your mission, emphasizing that there is no Emmaus without the cross, that it is important that religious leadership be exerted under the sign of the cross. The Christ of Emmaus could speak to the heart of the two disciples so trapped in their own expectations and so locked in their own disappointments because his heart, too, had been opened, his faith had been tested, his hope had been challenged, his love had been broken. The wisdom of his compassion for the two disciples was not only the revelation of divine wisdom; it was also the expression of the hard-earned solidarity of his human brotherhood with them. Jesus knew that there cguld be no Emmaus without the cross. The ethicist David Hollenbach has linked the Catholic uni-versity's search for meaning to the need to establish the continued possibility of a Christian humanism. In promoting a Christian . humanism, Hollenbach reasons, we must face the harshness of contemporary evil--the wars and violence, the homeless and refugees, the children without parents and the parents who kill their own babies, the poor and the hungry, the illiterate and emo-tionally disturbed, those who suffer AIDS and those who have lost their families and friends to AIDS. Genuine Christian human-ism, then. demands a return to the cross as "the sign through which Christians proclaim that the ultimate mystery that sur-rounds our lives embraces human suffering and shares human misery. The cross uncovers the central meaning of this mystery as compassion and divine mercy."ll Your leadership has to find its way to the cross and from the cross; that is, you lead in the likeness of the One who called you and whose kingdom you represent. The risen Christ of Emmaus brings consolation to the two disciples and later to the rest of that frightened community, not by denying the cross, but by explaining the cross, by linking it to the long-cherished hopes that God would be with God's people. In uniting his passion and death to the glory of those touched by God, Jesus took a symbol that was repulsive and made it a symbol of love, forgiveness, hos, ¯ Review for Religious pitality, hope, and life. The transformation came because Christ embraced, not the wood of the cross, but the people whom the cross represented, those whose sin and sickness, whose insignif-icance and estrangement, made them repulsive to a world that equates humanism with political power, physical beauty, and cul-tivated tastes. Christian humanism flows from the heart of the pierced Christ; it is born in pain and humiliation; it finds its mean-ing in reconciliation and forgiveness. Christian humanism pro-claims that divine wisdom and power can be found only in the folly and the vulnerability of the cross. Religious leadership has to be born from that same heart, a heart willing to bear pain and humiliation, a heart offering reconciliation and forgiveness. You have to help the lay people who share your mission both to learn and to employ the strategies of Jesus if they wish to accomplish the mission of Jesus. You have to call your scholars to a generosity of sac-rifice that moves beyond criticism and competition into a reverence for wis-dom and a fidelity to a mission that includes social responsibility as well as professional competency. In all the apostolates that you oversee, you have to call attention to the Christ who continues to be crucified in the least of his brothers and sisters. You must pro-claim to those who look to you for leadership that you point to the crucified and risen Lord, whose cross represents best what the gospel honors, the compassion that brings us into the presence of God. Religious leadership has to be born from a heart willing to bear pain and humiliation, a heart offering reconciliation and forgiveness. "Called by Jesus: Free to Lead" Under this watchword we have reflected on what inhibits the exercise of religious leadership. We have situated the qualities of leadership within religious experience, the experience of being called to be a companion in the mission that God inaugurated in Christ. I focused on three tasks that describe the essential quali-fies of a contemporary religious leader in today's church: the abil-ity to design strategies that further the kingdom within any and September-October 1997 Gray * Conton~orar~ Reli~ous Leadership every specific ministry, the ability to implement those designs through these existing ministries, and the ability to do this in the compassion of Christ's cross. I designated three crucial areas in which leadership needs to be exercised by the community superior: in the formation of lay apostolic colleagues, in the work of scholars in the church, and in ~tbe work of evangelization, especially among those on the fringe of the church's attention. What, finally, catches what it is to be a religious leader today? Is it to be someone who can envision a mission and articulate it with stunning effect? Is it the man of hard-nosed practicality that gets the jobs done, that absorbs criticism and never looks for thanks? Is it the saint among us who radiates the care and insight of Jesus? I have seen each of these in my brother Jesuits. Sometimes I saw parts of them in myself, not all at one time, but here and there, scattered over the six years of my term as provin-cial. I suspect that you, too, have found the same in your work as major superiors. But, when everything else fades away, what is the one characteristic that a major superior has to have? To answer that, I turn to something I wrote years ago called Letters to a New Rector: "Finally. it is a matter of love., for our brothers. If I had any one piece of advice, I'd say simply pray for the grace to love your brothers. The gift God gives in response does not make problems go away, but it does usher us into the presence of God's love. We stand with our Lord, surveying the world of our com-munity: the fervent and the weak, the quick and the shy, the boast-ful and the withdrawn, the leader and the follower--and God invites us to cherish not what should be but what is. I believe that this is the real 'grace of office,' the gift to become, with all its messiness and risk, a more loving man."12 Back in 1982 I thought that this was the essential quality of a good superior; in 1997 I feel it all the more. --466 Notes t As quoted in Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 22. 2 Donald Senior CP, "Living in the Meantime: Biblical Foundations for Religious Life," in Living in the Meantime: Concerning the Transformation of Religious Life, ed. Paul J. Philibert (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994), pp. 61-62: "If we understand obedience in its most radical form as the faithful listening to God's voice as it comes to us through the community, through our teachers and leaders, and through the events Review for Religious of history, then we tap into a characteristic of faith most blessed by the Bible." 3 Charles R. Morris, American Catholics: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (New York: Times Books, 1997), pp. 320-321. 4 See, e.g., Peter M. Senge, "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations," Sloan Management Review 32, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 7-23; Robert N. Bellah, "Leadership Viewed from the Vantage Point of American Culture," Origins 20, no. 14 (13 September 1990): 217, 219-223; John Coleman sJ, "Dimensions of Leadership," Origins 20, no. 14 (13 September 1990), pp. 223-228; W. Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne, "Parables of Leadership," Harvard Business Review (July- August 1991): 122-127; and Howard Gardner, Leading Minds. Also, the entire February 1982 issue of Studies in Formative Spirituality features the topic "Spiritual Formation and Leadership." s,6,7 Bellah, "Leadership," pp. 219, 220, 221. s See John W. O'Malley SJ, "Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations," Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (1988): 223-257; also his First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) and his essay "One Priesthood: Two Traditions," in A Concert of Charisms: Ordained Ministry in Religious Life, ed. Paul K. Hennessy CFC, (Mahwah: Paulist Press). 9 "From "Cooperation with the Laity in Mission," Decree 13 of Documents of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), §337, pp. 161-162. ~0 Annice Callahan RSCJ, "Heart," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 468-469. n David Hollenbach SJ "The Catholic University under the Sign of the Cross: Christian Humanism in a Broken World," in Finding God in All Things: Essays in Honor of Michael J. Buckley Sy, ed. Michael J. Himes and Stephen J. Pope (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1996), p. 293. 12 Howard J. Gray sJ, "An Experience in Ignatian Government: Letters to a New Rector," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 14, no. 4 (September 1982): 29-30. September-October 1997 JOEL GIALLANZA Continuing Formation: ¯ Perspectives from Vita Consecrata Tecrtaam, OcSont triencueenst ptoa pbael tdhoec uombjeenctt oonf rmeluigciho udsis lcifues,s Vioitna acnond-reflection and analysis among people in the various forms of con-secrated life within the church. While it is generally acknowl-edged that this document does not break new ground in the theology of consecrated life, it does contain some sections which can be helpful reminders of the basic values and priorities for this way of life. One such section contains the three paragraphs on continu-ing formation (§§69-71). In general, the paragraphs concerning vocation promotion and formation (§§63-71) are among the most helpful in the entire document. This stems not so much from anything particularly new in them as from their acknowledgment of and clarity concerning important experiential realities. The three paragraphs on continuing formation address some basic principles, its necessity throughout religious life, and the dimen-sions through which it engages the whole person. These paragraphs on continuing formation are well situated within l~ta consecrata. They appear in chapter 2, "Consecrated Life as a Sign of Communion in the Church," and specifically within part 3 of that chapter, "Looking to the Future." The impli-cation is clear: The quality and integrity of religious life as a sign of unity in the church for the future is directly related to the qual- Joel Giallanza CSC, a frequent contributor, wrote two articles for our 1995 volume. His address is Congregazione di Santa Croce; Via Framura, 85; 00168 Roma, Italy. Review for Religious ity and integrity which religious life embodies today. While this may be a statement of the obvious, it is nevertheless a useful reminder that nothing about our way of life is automatic. Through our daily lives we either fortify or forfeit the quality and integrity of religious life, now and for the 21st century. Principles The principles cited in Vita consecrata are offered as affirmation, encouragement, and guidance for institutes as they try to provide specific means for the continuing formation of their members. Paragraph 69, though brief, mentions three basic principles. First, "continuing formation, whether in institutes of apostolic or contemplative life, is an intrinsic requirement of religious con-secration." As religious we tend to use the past tense when speak-ing of our own formation experiences. Such language is quite understandable since it incorporates and highlights memories of our initial years in religious life. Those years were followed by "final" profession (and ordination) and then involvement in "active ministry." Thus, we came to the "end" of our formation. Given this perspective, it can be easily assumed that some religious (younger and newer members) are "in formation" and some are not. The first principle points to the inaccuracy of this perspec-tive by reminding us that all religious are in formation, regardless of the number of years since initial or perpetual profession. The basis of this principle is a simple reality of human nature. "Due to human limitations, the consecrated person can never claim to have completely brought to life the 'new creature' who in every circumstance of life reflects the very mind of Christ." Our transformation into living likenesses of Jesus never ends. We cannot at any point say, "I am complete, nothing remains to be done," and simultaneously claim to be truly alive. At least we do hot come to that point in this life apart from an arrogance that steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the need for further growth. Unless we maintain our efforts for continual human and spiritual growth in every part of our life, refusing to let our relationship with the Lord become somehow stale, we begin to drift away from that relationship. The implications of such drifting com-promise and contradict the very. witness religious life is meant to give. Second, "initial formation should be closely connected with September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation continuing formation." The separation of these two underlies that tendency to speak and think of formation in the past tense. Revised constitutional texts are eloquent regarding the indis-pensability of continuing formation. However, the challenge in reestablishing a recognizable link between initial and continuing formation is not documentary but structural. Programs of initial formation must communicate clearly and consistently that for-mation in religious life is, of its nature, a progressive thing that persists to the very end of one's life. Then religious institutes, individually or collaboratively, must develop and implement pro-grams of continuing formation to which members are regularly invited and in which their participation is occasionally required. The idea of this principle is to foster right at the beginning "a readiness on everyone's part to let themselves be formed every day of their lives." This is inseparable from the first principle. Without the recognition that continuing formation is important and 'necessary throughout religious life, the "readiness" for such formation will be minimal or nonexistent. If continuing formation is assumed to be for the benefit of "other members," those expe-riencing some "particular difficulty" at this point in their lives, then its effectiveness for and its impact upon the future of religious life will be negligible. Third, "it will be very important for every institute to provide, as part of its ratio institutionis, a precise and systematic description of its plan of continuing formation." In general, religious institutes have not developed continuing-formation programs comparable in quality to those for initial formation. The reasons for that vary from institute to institute; nevertheless, formators and those in authority should identify and explore those reasons with a view to addressing the potential consequences for the future. The plan for which Vita consecrata calls should be designed "to provide all consecrated persons with a program which encompasses their whole life." No doubt such a program will necessitate some allo-cation of personnel and financial resources; that allocation, how-ever, will prove to be a wise investment in the future of the institute and of religious life. The basis of this principle is the truth that "none are exempt from the obligation .to grow humanly and as religious; by the same token, no one can be overconfident and live in self-suffi-cient isolation." To facilitate the members' response to this obli-gation, religious institutes must provide sufficient opportunities Review for Religious through a comprehensive plan and an accompanying program of continuing formation. An effective plan and engaging program will affirm that "at no stage of life can people feel so secure and committed that they do not need to give careful attention to ensuring perseverance in faithfulness." These three, principles assume that religious desire to deepen their commitment to religious life and are willing to do whatever is necessary for nurturing that deeper commitment. Also assumed is the institute's investment of time, energy, and resources in developing and maintaining appropriate means of assisting the members in this desire and willingness of theirs. Necessity Cultivating and sustaining faith-fulness is at the heart of continuing formation. "At every stage of life a person seeks and finds a new task to fulfill, a particular way of being, of serving, and of loving" (§70). That task and way call for a renewed sense of fidelity, a refreshed approach to every dimension of religious life. Thus, continuing formation is necessary throughout life to assist us in exploring and developing ways of living fidelity that are appropriate and .adequate for the changes in our personal requirements and our professional responsibilities. Paragraph 70 of Vita consecrata identifies five stages within religious life, each of which calls for specific means of support, "encouragement, and guidance adapted to the individual's experi-ences in ministry, prayer, community, and living the vows. Those means will be more beneficial to the degree that they incorpo-rate relevant aspects of the institute's distinctive heritage and tra-dition. The document presents these stages in a generic way so that they can be addressed according to the character and charism of the institute. First, "in the consecrated life the first years offull involvement in the apostolate are a critical, stage, marked by the passage from a supervised life to a situation of full responsibility for one's work." Without the recognition that continuing formation is important and necessary throughout religious life, the "readiness" for such formation will be minimal or nonexistent. September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation As newly professed (or ordained) religious move from an envi-ronment of careful guidance and close direction into conditions where their range of activities and use of time are more self-deter-mined, they should be provided with support and accompani-ment. Ideally, these will be offered "by a brother or sister who helps them to live to the full the freshness of their lo-~e and enthu-siasm for Christ." Without such support and accompaniment, the religious may begin to drift, losing their balance and neglecting to give appropriate time and attention to the basic components of everyday religious life. The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is to assure that the experience of transition does not dominate and define people's religious life, but rather that their life as religious gives meaning and direction to the transition. Second, "middle-aged consecrated persons" may experience "the risk of routine and the subsequent temptation to give in to dis-appointment because of meager results." As religious become increasingly competent and fluent in their professional responsi-bilities and as their daily activities become a familiar and contin-uous cycle, the energy and enthusiasm surrounding their commitment can begin to wane. Everything looks and feels rou-tine, including those obligations most essential to religious life. At this point in their life, religious "must therefore be helped, in light of the Gospel and the charism of their institute, to renew their original decision and not confuse the completeness of their dedication with the degree of good results." The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is "to search for what is essen-tial" precisely so that routine and disappointment do not become determining factors in forming strategies for life and ministry in the future. Third, "the stage of maturity, while it brings personal growth, can also bring the danger of a certain individualism, accompa-nied either by a fear of not being in line with the times or by forms of inflexibility, self-centeredness, or diminished enthusi-asm." Of all the stages, this is the most complex. It is a time of reexamining and redesigning personal identity. Religious may observe quite unexpected and unexplained behaviors or state-ments or plans coming from someone they have known and lived with for many years. One task will be to assist the person in redis-covering the value and beauty of self-giving in community and ministry. The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is "not only to bring back a higher level of spiritual and apostolic life, Review for Religious but also [to discover] the special characteristics of this stage of life." It is indeed a time 6f refashioning personal identity. Support can be provided through various forms of assistance and guid-ance so that "the gift of self is made to God more genuinely and with greater generosity [and] extends to others with greater seren-ity and wisdom, as well as with greater simplicity and richness of grace." Fourth, "advanced age poses new problems, which can be pre-pared for by a discerning program of spiritual support." This stage can be a particularly rich period of life when the religious is accompanied in seeing the possibilities for growth and the poten-tials for transformation within it. Without that accompaniment, it can become a time of loneliness and bitterness. The document recognizes that, even though this is "often a time of suffering, advanced age nonetheless offers to elderly consecrated persons the chance to be transformed by the paschal experience." The challenge, then, for continuing formation at this stage is to sup-port religious in "a new way of living one's consecration, which is not tied to effectiveness in carrying out administrative responsi-bilities or apostolic work." This new way of life becomes the foun-dation for the transforming work of God's grace. Fifth, "when the moment finally comes for uniting oneself to the suprerfie hour of the Lord's Passion, the consecrated person knows that the Father is now bringing to completion the mysterious process of formation which began many years before." Death is the consummation of the formation process. For religious it is "the supreme act of love and self-offering," even as was Jesus' own. Death thereby confirms and celebrates lifelong faithfulness. The goal of continuing formation in each of these stages is to facilitate fidelity. The document makes no assumption that fidelity will be effortless; quite the contrary, it acknowledges that "any period can present critical situations due to external factors., or resulting from more directly personal factors." Beyond whatever programs may be designed and made available, "when fidelity becomes more difficult, the individual must be offered the support of greater trust and deeper love, at both the personal and com-munity levels." Such trust and love are the greatest gifts any reli-gious can receive through the process of continuing formation. They are also the most powerful gifts the community can pro-vide. These gifts constitute the strong and lasting supports of fidelity and of religious life itself. Septentber-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ ContinuingFormation Dimensions "If the subject of formation is the individual at every stage, the object of formation is the whole person" (§71). Any process of continuing formation must incorporate those dimensions which reflect the full extent to which consecrated life engages the per-son. Paragraph 71 of Vita consecrata identifies four such dimen-sions. First, "the human and fraternal dimensions of the consecrated life call for self-knowledge and the awareness of personal limita-tions." These dimensions are the most extensive for they include the full range of human qualities and capabilities. "In present-day circumstances, special importance must be given to the inte-rior freedom of consecrated persons, their affective maturity, their ability to communicate with others, especially in their own com-munity, their serenity of spirit, their compassion for those who are suffering, their love for the truth, and a correspondence between their actions and their words." Sexual integration and the devel-opment of healthy relationships as significant means of nurturing and sustaining a celibate commitment could be added to this list. Even if an individual has established a solid base for all these aspects of life during initial formation, there is no guarantee that the base will remain stable and sufficient as the person matures and encounters new experiences. More than likely the opposite will be true: the initial base will become inadequate and will need rebuilding in light of personal growth and development. Attentiveness to these human and relational dimensions of life must be a priority for all religious, regardless of culture, age, or ministry. Second, "the apostolic dimension opens the hearts and minds of consecrated persons and prepares them for constant effort in the apostolate . In practice, this will involve updating the methods and objectives of apostolic works in fidelity to the spirit and aims of the founder or foundress and to subsequently emerging tradi-tions." There are two important realities within this dimension: maintaining efforts and updating ministries. Ministry demands and consumes energy and enthusiasm. We must have adequate provisions for supporting and strengthening our efforts in ministry lest we communicate a lack of motivation and meaning to those with and for whom we work. Closely related to this is the need to evaluate our corporate ministries to determine the level of their continuing responsiveness and relevance to current and develop- Review for Religious ing needs. A similar evaluation must be applied to our individual ministerial skills to determine the extent of our personal need for updating. If we neglect to monitor and evaluate the quality of ministry we provide, then the apostolic dimension of our life can turn inward. When individual and corporate works are maintained for the sake of the religious involved, their significance gradually diminishes as needs change and are replaced by more pressing ones. Eventually those works continue to exist in response to nothing contem-porary except for providing the peo-ple currently involved in them with jobs. The apostolic dimension of reli-gious life challenges us to examine periodically the actual needs being met through our individual and corporate works. Third, "the cultural and professional dimensions, based upon a solid theo-logical training which provides the means for wise discernment, involve continual updating and special interest in the different areas to which each charism is directed." The document urges consecrated persons to "keep themselves as intellectually open and adaptable as possible, so that the apostolate will be envisaged and carried out according to the needs of their own time, making use of the means provided by cultural progress." The perspective adopted here reflects and expands the main points already mentioned under the apostolic dimension. However, the openness and adaptability emphasized in these dimensions have important implications for at least two other areas. First, these qualities are truly necessary for welcoming and listening to those presently entering the institute. New members will bring perspectives and ideas which can make a contribution to our way of life. Openness and adaptability confirm our desire to receive vocations, to listen and to learn. Second, these same qualities are important in light of the growing internationality within many religious institutes. Openness and adaptability enable us to benefit from the wisdom and experience of those entering religious life from parts of the world which do not represent the The apostolic dimension of religious life challenges us to examine periodically the actual needs being met through our individual and corporate works. September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation historically or traditionally dominant culture of the institute. This development is and will continue to be a major challenge to some institutes, given their rapidly changing demographics. Fourth, "all these elements are united in the dimension of the charism proper to each institute, as it were in a synthesis which calls for a constant deepening of one's own special consecration in all its aspects, not only apostolic but also ascetical and mystical." Learning about and reflecting upon the institute's history and the contemporary significance and applicability of its heritage must be included in any continuing-formation program. Inadequate is the assumption that what was learned in initial formation about the founder or foundress and the heritage will be sufficient through-out life. Experiences in ministry, prayer, community, living the vows, as well as the natural process of human development and maturation, will influence our perspective and interpretation of whatever was learned earlier. The charism must be explored and integrated anew with all the richness of those experiences and that process. The purpose of this renewed exploration and integration is "to advance the personal and communal assimilation of [the insti-tute's] charism." Without this assimilation the charism gradually degenerates into an ancient and fragile artifact: interesting, but of little practical use today. One consequence is that the institute can become a generic humanitarian organization, doing good works but lacking a distinctively attractive character that invites others to share its way of life. A continuing-formation program is no magic formula for ensuring that members will regularly study and reflect upon the institute's charism, but it can emphasize the importance and value oir such study and reflection while provid-ing resources that encourage and facilitate them. These four dimensions can be expanded further and enriched by the particular ways they are adapted and applied within each institute's plan for continuing formation. Whatever that expansion and enrichment may entail, these dimensions form a solid foun-dation upon which to develop the curriculum for a sound con-tinuing- formation program. Living in the Spirit "Formation is a dynamic process by means of which individ-uals are converted to the Word of God in the depths of their being and at the same time learn how to discover the signs of God in earthly realities" (§68). This process begins with initial formation and never ends. We always need further conversion to God's Word and clearer recognition of God's presence and activ-ity in our world. Accepting that.need and responding to it lead us ever more surely along the "path of gradual identification with the attitude of Christ towards the Father" (§65). This path con-stitutes the very nature and purpose of all formation. Precisely because this identification is gradual, "the commitment to formation never ends" (§65). Formation remains therefore but a single real-ity. Admittedly, different emphases and tasks characterize each stage along the way; nevertheless, formation remains an unbroken and unending journey toward transformation into the living like-ness of Jesus. Fidelity to this journey is a grace of the Spirit at work within us. "Living in the Spirit, consecrated persons discover their own identity and find profound peace; they grow more attentive to the daily challenges of the word of God, and they allow them-selves to be guided by the original inspiration of their institute" (§71). This life in the Spirit characterizes the journey and guides us to the fullness of our religious life--union with the Lord. Continuing formation can provide us with some compelling insights and incentives for exploring and assimilating the many and varied blessings along the pathways of this graced journey, now and for the future. can-~now be°ordered~or renewed byFAX . and!paid f0t' ~byfMast~rCard'or Visa. ~,X the~brder form inside the back~over, ~:CALL~-oug office vci~' your,credi~ .FAX: '~ 1~!,977-7362 ~ ":o. PI~OtgE~'~31~-9_77~7363 ~ -. L4~-7-- September-October 1997 BETTY ANN McNEIL Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree methodology Is our faith strong enough to risk tapping latent potential in the signs of our times at the brink of the third millen-nium? Some individuals and religious institutes that share the charism of one and the same founder or patron may have charismatic energy that goes unnoticed and unused, waiting only to be recognized and then made use of. Attentiveness to our world and prayerful reflection on its situation call us to envision the synergy of future ministry. by looking back to our origins. Delving into our historic roots enables us to appreciate our spiritual heritage more and understand our mission and spiritual identity better. The great missionary or religious person is not so much one whose words are beautiful as one whose life is striking.1 Such an individual was St. Vincent de Paul (1581- 1660), whose mission and spiritual legacy continue to inspire his followers and challenge today's church. The urgency of St. Vincent's mission compels women and men to come together and seek the common ground of their Vincentian identity. St. Vincent's vision can spark fires of charity and zeal for the 21 st century. The real needs of the world's poor summon the men and women who profess a preferential option for the poor according to the tradition of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Betty Ann McNeil DC, a member of the'Vincentian Studies Institute, is currently involved in research and presentations on the Vincentian mission and community heritage of the Daughters of Charity. Her address is St. Joseph's Provincial House; 333 South Seton Avenue; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727. Review for Religious Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) to go beyond rhetoric to concrete action. Our ability to escape into cyberspace must not lull us into ignoring the realities of the poor, but must impel us to harness new energy to accomplish our mission in innovative ways just as Vincent de Paul did for his generation. Charism of Charity and Evangelization Recent international research on religious institutes has traced the ties of kinship within the Vincentian tradition in a way that could provide useful information for carrying out an institute's mission. Its application could foster creative collaboration (regionally, nationally, and internationally) on behalf of the least of our brothers and sisters--the poor whom St. Vincent considered his lords and masters.2 St. Vincent's vision of service was collaborative--requiring relationships, teamwork, linkages, and networking to accomplish the mission. Confronted with urgency and driven by necessity, he shaped his charity and evangelization in innovative ways. He simply but clearly shared with the first members his vision for the Company of Charity: "We should assist the poor in every way and do it both by ourselves and by enlisting the help of others . To do this is to preach the gospel by words and by works."3 Over the years the extended Vincentian family has preached the gospel by words and by works throughout the world and in so doing has grown to include more than two hundred diverse groups of women and men, lay people and religious, Catholics and Anglicans. The mission, spirit, and rule of Vincent de Paul have been adapted to many cultures since emerging in 17th-century France. That has resulted in a majestic family tree. The Vincentian Family Tree The largest branches of the Vincentian family tree bear communities with which Vincent de Paul himself was personally involved, those under his patronage, or those begun by members of institutes that he himself founded: the Confraternity of Charity, the Ladies of Charity, the Congregation of the Mission, and the Daughters of Charity. Another large limb supports the numerous congregations that follow the foundational Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity and of the Congregation of the Mission, which Septentber-October 1997 McNeil Q Tracing tbe Vincentian Family Tree evolved through St. Vincent's collaboration with St. Louise de Marillac for more than thirty years.4 Other large limbs on the family tree bear communities that share Vincent's mission of serving Jesus Christ in the poor in a spirit of humility, simplicity, and charity. Goal The Vincentian Studies Institute (VSI), cosponsored by the, provinces of the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission in the United States and dedicated to promoting a living interest in the Vincentian heritage, conducted a project to gather information about the extended Vincentian family from a genealogical perspective. Called the Family Tree Project, it was to research the historical development of the extended Vincentian family around the globe since 1617.s Initially it located, organized, and recorded existing information from the few national listings of Vincentian communities that had been published in Europe, most notably France, Spain, and Italy.6 No comprehensive international list had ever been compiled until the institute published The Vincentian Family Tree.7 This documentation of the family's growth raised the consciousness of historic links and relationships within the tradition and provides material for collective reflection, discernment, and action. The Vincentian Family Tree provokes timely questions for personal and corporate self-examination:6 What types of mission-oriented forums could institutes rooted in the charism of Vincent de Paul create for reflection and action? How could collaboration among related institutes help realize the ageless vision of St. Vincent in new ways for today's society? What goals could national federations establish for addressing the root causes of poverty? What joint projects could regional associations sponsor for serving the poor more effectively in this era of welfare reform? Project Criteria The Family Tree Proiect traced the genealogical development of Catholic and other Christian religious congregations, societies of apostolic life, and lay associations for men and women. This project developed numerous criteria to distinguish groups within the extended Vincentian family and then designed a multilevel Review for Religious approach involving fourteen criteria. The research was designed to illustrate the degree of relationship to the historical Vincent de Paul and his own foundations. From a genealogical perspective, affiliation with establishments made by St. Vincent himself and using his Common Rules represents the closest relationship, whereas foundations made by members of his communities are related to a lesser degree. Primarily using an international survey and consultations based on referrals, the research simply proceeded from the known to the unknown. A survey instrument collected basic identifying data and historical details according to specific criteria. Respondents were invited to provide reference information about other communities that should be contacted also. From. extant institutes with the closest degree of affinity to St. Vincent, pictures of the founder were requested with a view to their being published. To avoid errors in identification, The Vincentian Family Tree provokes timely questions for personal and corporate self-examination. immediately upon receipt each picture was logged, labeled, and cross-referenced by the identification code for the related institute. A tiered approach was used for data collection. Both historical and collateral research in various publications identified prospective entities by congregational tides (for example, inclusion of the words Vincent de Paul or Charity), place of origin, and similarity of mission or spirit,s Conferences of major superiors throughout the world were contacted for assistance in identifying diocesan communities. Much helpful information and additional leads were obtained from consultation with community archivists, community historians, foreign missionaries, and past or present congregational leaders. The survey instrument contained a cover letter, a two-page questionnaire, a self-addressed return envelope, and a referral form for identifying additional prospective communities. It would have been helpful if respondents had been asked to append a one-page documented summary of their foundation. Findings The Family Tree Project identified 268 societies of apostolic life and institutes of consecrated life (239 religious institutes, 21 layL4SI Septonber-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tradn~ the Vincentian Family Tree associationsl and eight Anglican congregations) that met at least one criterion of the Family Tree Project. Its report, The Vincentian Family Tree, summarizes all available information about each group and classifies it only once according to the degree of affinity closest to St. Vincent. Some institutes met more than one criterion and could have been listed in several categories. Besides the institutes whose primary claim to St. Vincent is their adaptation of his Common Rules tt-their purposes, thirty~ other institutes adopted those rules and follow them. Service of the poor was the founding charism for another seventy institutes, of which thirteen make specific reference to serving the sick poor and eight have a fourth vow of service to the poor. Numerous others claim the same community virtues as the Daughters of Charity: humility, simplicity, and charity. The following are some of the Family Tree Project's findings: St. Vincent de Paul himself founded two institutes and two lay associations. Fifty Catholic religious institutes, seven Anglican con-gregations, and one Catholic secular institute adopted the Common Rules of Vincent de Paul or substantially incorpo-rated their major principles into their rule. St. Vincent served as mentor or advisor or in some other way for nine institutes. Thirty-nine institutes and five lay associations were established by members, or former members, of the Congregation of the Mission. Nineteen institutes and two lay associations were estab-lished by members, or former members, of the Company of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Three institutes were established by lay members of the Vincentian family. Ninety-nine institutes and one lay association have Vincent de Paul as one of their patrons. Rule of St. Vincent Among the many influences that fostered the charism of charity within the extended Vincentian family intoday's world, the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity are the most prominent. Many of the communities which use or adapted what is poPularly known as the rule of St. Vincent have Vincent de Paul as their patron and also may have been founded by a member of the Congregation of the Mission or the Daughters of Charity. On the Review for Religious basis of available information, a total of eighty Roman Catholic institutes throughout the world substantially follow the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity. Many factors influenced the early growth and rapid expansion of Vincent de Paul's foundations. Primarily, the originality of the rule he gave his Daughters of Charity had appeal to others. In 1646 St. Vincent first submitted it for approval to Jean Franqois de Gondi, archbishop of Paris. This primitive document resulted from thirteen years of the early sisters' lived experience under the direction of Louise de Marillac. The rule of St. Vincent, without further specification, refers to the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity for women's institutes and .to the Common Rules of the Congregation of the Mission for men's institutes. For women's communities established after 1672, references to the rule of St. Vincent refer to the document promulgated on 5 August 1672 by St. Vincent's successor, Very Reverend Ren6 Alm6ras CM (1613~1672). Alm~ras had organized Vincent's original rule into chapters and included oral teachings of the founder. It is this text that passed from generation to generation as (popularly) "the rule of Vincent de Paul," although it is in fact a revision of'the text of Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, The Company accepted it as its Act of Establishment on 8 August 1655.9 The Company of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul evolved from the first sisters working in the Confraternities of Charity of. the Servants of the Sick Poor in a number of parishes in France and from the Ladies of Charity at the H6tel-Dieu in Paris. Today the Ladies of Charity have more than 250,000 members worldwide. There are 27,000 Daughters of'Charity and 3,600 priests anti'brothers in the Congregation of the Mission. Over~ the years, some institutes have become affiliated to the Daughters of Charity or to the Congregation of the Mission through nonjuridical ties of a spiritual nature. The 1994 affliafion of eleven communities of Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul (in Germany, Austria, and India) to the Vincentian Federation of Germany is the most recent example. Earlier examples include the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, founded in France in 1816; the Institute of the Nazarene, founded in Italy in 1865; and the Sisters of the Eucharist, founded in Greece in 1889. The geographic spread of the institutes studied was as follows: 75 percent in Europe, primarily Western Europe (193), 13.5 September-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree percent in America; primarily North America (22) and Central America ~10); 9.3 percent in Asia; 1.8 percent in Africa, and .4 percent in Australasia. "I~he Charism.of Charity and Evangelization As a prototype for apostolic women, St. Vincent and St. Louise's servants of the poor (whom the people they served called daughters of charity) not only represented a revolutionary change from the status quo, but were inspired by the Spirit to a mission driven by gospel values. Although not the first to take such an initiative, Vincent and Louise were the first to succeed on a large scale.1° Many bishops both in and beyond France soon adopted the rules and model that St. Vincent and St. Louise developed and adapted them to meet pastoral needs within their dioceses, frequently to assure continuance of new schools that were then emerging, especially for little girls. This was another step forward for the mission, vision, and ministry of apostolic women. The Vincentian Mission over the Centuries Sons and daughters of Vincent de Paul's own foundations established approximately sixty distinct communities in at least nine countries throughout the globe, with one-third of these located in China. Since 1660, the year both Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul died, approximately forty founders either adopted or adapted the Common Rules of Vincent de Paul for their institute. The face of human poverty began to change in the 17th century, requiring new models of response. Urban misery escalated while rural poverty generally continued. Capitalism developed during this time of cultural renaissance, religious reformation, and the growth of Protestantism. Much of Europe looked across the seas to new opportunities. In the 18th century, factors such as higher birth rates, internal migration, and urbanization contributed to massive immigration to new lands on foreign shores and made social needs more urgent, Many bishops throughout Europe sought to reproduce the Vincentian model in their dioceses. The spiritual descendants of the Sisters of Charity of Strasbourg, founded in France in 1734 but dispersed during the French Revolution, now' constitute the Vincentian Federation in Germany and provide the best example Review for Religious of the circuitous ways of the Spirit in bringing new communities to birth in unplanned circumstances. Confronted with the challenges of evangelization in foreign cultures, missionaries frequently gathered indigenous young women to assist them in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. Urban poverty in Europe increased as land transportation improved and many Europeans sought to explore, colonize, and gain wealth in Africa, Asia, and America. These developments widened the horizon of the Vincentian mission on all continents. As early as 1727 in Palermo, Sicily, the Daughters of Charity, under the patronage of Reverend Nicholas Placid Filippone, may have been the first outside France to claim St. V~ncent as patron of their institute, which was dedicated to caring for the sick, orphans, and widows. Lesg than ten years after his canonization, the St. Vincent de Paul Church in Laval, Canada, became in 1743 the first parish in the world named after the great apostle of charity. As early as 1750, the Chinese Daughters of Charity of Tonkin (Chungqing) became the first Vincentian community founded outside Europe.l~ The French Revolution, which began in 1789, ultimately caused the dispersal and migration of community membership; Many continued the Vincenfian tradition and embodied it 'in new institutes and lay groups. Examples include the Sisters of Charity of St. Joan Anfida, founded at Besangon in 1799, and numerous diocesan communities in Austria and Germany also known as Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The sphere of Vincentian influence widened and a ripple effect occurred. The success of Vincent de Paul's parochial charities and the viability of his noncloistered apostolic communities provided timely models for responding to pressing social 'needs among the poor and the emerging middle class. Sister Rosalie Rendu DC (1786-1856) introduced Blessed Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853) to practical charity and became his mentor. This relationship played an important role in the international Society of St. Vincent de Sons and daughters of Vincent de Paul's own foundations established approximately sixty ,distinct communities in at least nine countries throughout the globe. Septonber-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Paul, which Ozanam founded in France in 1833 and which involved lay people in effective parish outreach to the poor. That society now comprises,875,000 members in 130 countries on all five continents . European immigration brought an appreciation of the Vincentian mission to the United States. This, with the impact of exploration and colonization in the Americas, was a factor influencing Bishop Louis William DuBourg SS (1766-1833) to invite Reverend Felix de Andreis CM (1778-1820) and Reverend Joseph Rosati CM. (1789-1843) to initiate the Vincentian mission (1816) in North America.12 In 1827 Rosati became the first bishop bf St. Louis. DuBourg had previously invited the widow Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821) to Baltimore to establish a Catholic school for~ girls and subsequendy a sisterhood. The :minutes of 14 March 1809 for the Sulpician assembly in Baltimore read: "It is a matter of buying a 'plantation near Emmitsburg to found there a community of daughters, b peu pros sur be meme plan que les filles de la CharitY, de St Vincent de Paul; who join to the care of the sick the instruction of young girls in all branches of Christian education.''13 The French Sulpicians, who befriended Elizabeth Ann Seton, were instrumental in obtaining the rule of Vincent de Paul and forming Mother Seton's Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's in the Vincentian spirit. Her 1809 foundation at Emmitsburg, Maryland, was the first indigenous religious institute of apostolic women founded in the United States. Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native-born United States citizen to be declared a saint. . From the Emmitsburg foundation several, other communities, also called Sisters of Charity, developed in North America. These became independent institutes .in New York City (1846), Cincinnati (1852), Convent Station, New Jersey (1859), Greensburg, Pennsylvania (1870), and Halifax, Nova Scotia (1856). In Canada the Religious of Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur (1924) evolved from the Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception (1854). These institutes and others now constitute,.the Sisters of Charity Federation, which began in 1947 as a collaborative effort to promote the Seton cause for canonization. In the 20the, century, two world wars, economic crises~" Communism, Nazism, and Fascism have brought the global village to a new level of complexity. The cries of today's poor peoples beg for initiatives and innovation to improve their situation. Review for Religious Since Vatican Council II seventeen new branches of Vincentian charity have emerged throughout the world. The church's thrust of mission ad genres has given additional emphasis to evangelization, and thereby new seeds of religious life have budded in different lands, including Nigeria, El Salvador, and the church of silence. Family Groups~ Vincent de Paul himself had an influential working relationship with several founders. Among these were Jean Jacques Olier of the Sulpicians, Pierre de Bdrulle of the Oratorians, Pierre Lambert de La Motte of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, and St. John Eudes, who began the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge. St. Vincent also became a consultant~to religious orders such as the Daughters of the Cross, the Daughters of Providence,. and the Daughters of the Holy Family. He was director of the nuns of the first Visitation monasteries in Paris.lq In the United States the Sisters of Charity Federation now includes thirteen institutes that represent 7,000 religious women plus lay associates. Its membership has made significant contributions to the North American church during°its first fifty years of collaboration. In addition, several otheL family groups are especially noteworthy within the interuational extended Vincentian family. ,~ Founded in the United States to preserve the faith among Catholic peoples by engendering a missionary spirit among the faithful, the family of Trinitarians .established by Reverend Thomas A,:~Judge CM (1868-1933) includes the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate (1909), the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity (1912), the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity (1929), and a recent lay branch, the Blessed Trinity Missionary Institute (1964~. Worldwide Web of Charity ,, The Family Tree Project findings provide a point of reference and a model for anyone interested in further study of a group's founding charism and documenting the development of its institutional expression over time. This project any congregation can replicate to examine its own root system and growt.h. The September-October 1997 McNeil * Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Tracing the Vincentian family tree has helped identify new partners for collaboration that could stimulate innovation in ministry and launch St. Vincent's mission into the third millennium. mission and vision of Vincent de Paul, the great aposde of charity, challenge his spiritual progeny to look into new ways to continue the mission of evangelization and charity. Tracing the Vincentian family tree has helped identify new partners for collaboration that could stimulate innovation in ministry and launch St. Vincent's mission into the third millennium. The Vincentian Family Tree is the only international compilation of all communities known to belong to the extended Vincentian family of St. Vincent de Paul. Thi'~ unique resource contains illustrations and a concise summary describing each community's establishment (date, place, and founder), its primary mission, and the addresses of all extant generalates. Bibliographic data is provided for each entry, and there is a comprehensive index, This Family Tree traces the historical record and paves the way for additional study of the mission, ministries, and membership~ for extant institutes. Appendices include listings of communities .chronologically by category, the addresses of international resource groups dedicated to Vincentian studies, and copies of the survey instruments. The Family Tree is a research tool that can enhance mission. It offers information that 'could bring institutes together to nurture deeper appreciation of the timeless vision of Vincent de Paul as he followed Jesus Christ, the evangelizer of the poor and source and model of all charity2s The Family Tree Project has identified common elements of the Vincentian charism of evangelization and charity in hundreds of institutes worldwide. Inspired by the innovation of Vincent de Paul--"Love is inventive to infinity"~6--how will his present-day followers claim and own these commonalities and move trwards more collaboration in the corporal and spiritual service of the poor? How inventive can hearts given to God for the service of the poor become in a common search to improve both today and tomorrow for the poor? Review for Religious Notes .1 Robert E Maloney CM, He Hears the Cry of the Poor (New York: New City Press, 1995), p. 125. 2 Conference no. 85, to the Daughters of Charity, 11 November 1657, in Saint Vincent de Pauk Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents (here-after CED), ed. Pierre Coste CM, 14 vols. (Paris: Gabalda, 1920-1925), vol. 10, p. 332. 3 Conference no. 195, to the Priests of the Mission, 6 December 1658, in CED 12:87. 4 John Rybolt CM, "From Life to the Rules: The Genesis of the Rules of the Daughters of Charity," Vincentian Heritage 12, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 173-199). s The Vincentian Studies Institute may be contacted through Reverend Edward Udovic CM; DePaul University; 2233 North Kenmore Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60614 (tel. 773-325-7348, fax 773-325-7279, E-mail eudovic@wppost.depaul.edu). 6 See, e.g., Nicolfis Mas, Fundac16n de las Hijas de la Caridad en Espafia," Anales de la Congregaci6n de la Misi6n 85, nos. 6-8 (1977): 107-148. 7 6 Betty Ann McNeil DC, Monograph 1, The Vincentian Family Tree (Chicago: Vincentian Studies Institute, 1996) is available from DePaul University Bookstore; Vincentian Heritage Department; 2419 North Sheffield Avenue; Chicago, Illinois, 60614 (tel. 800-700-8086, fax 773- 325-7701), US$20. 8 These resources include: National Catholic Directory (Chicago: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1993); New Catholic Encyclopedia; Annuario Pontificio (Vatican City, 1993), and Dizionario degli istituti di Perfeccione (Rome: Edizioni Pauline, 1973). 9 See Rybolt, "From Life to Rules," pp. 173-199; also see Conference no. 169, to the Daughters of Charity, 8 August 1655, in CED 10:97. 10 For a complete discussion of women in the church of France dur-ing this period and their response to social needs, see Elizabeth Rapley, The Dgvotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Magill-Queen's University Press, 1993). 11 For a full discussion of indigenous communities in China, see Fernand Combaluzier CM, "Congregations chinoises indig~nes dans les vicariats lasaristes," in Le clergg indigkne dans les missions de Chine configes aus congr~gationsfran~ais (Paris: Oeuvre de Saint-Pierre-Apotre, 1945), pp. 15-25. ,2 Rybolt, "Three Pioneer Vincentians," Vincentian Heritage, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 153-168). 13 Annabelle Melville, Louis William DuBourg, 2 vols. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986). p 177. The text reads, in translation: "It is a matter of buying a plantation near Emmitsburg to found there a com-munity of daughters, similar to those of the Daughters of Charity of St. September-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Vincent de Paul, who join to the care of the sick the instruction of young girls in all branches of Christian education." 14 McNeil, Vincentian Family Tree, p. xix. ~s See Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity, chap. 1, art. 1, and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Mission, C.I. 16 Conference no: 102, Exhortation to a Dying Brother, 1645, CED 11:146. by the well lord, even in our close family friendship is a mysterious gift, your presence healing in us the wound of loneliness; when we lug back our fatigue at sunset to rest, the bread we will break, the cup We will share, the stories we will tell,' these will wield the power to open the graves where our daily dyings have held our souls and spirit them on love ° s wing to our union by the family well. by holding others in such tenderness evening dances out to embrace us: inay my flames play on your faces, may my breez~e rub your backs, may my moon stroke your heads; so, lord, if thou will bless us, give us good and caring friends and we~will water your creation with this love that brings us home; as our elders learned, we return to old watering holes for more than water--friends and dreams are there to meet us. Uwem-Celestine Akpan SJ Review for Religious JOHN FREUND From Parchment to Cyberspace: New Technologies Can Serve Charisms "We have been making pages for 1500 years . " --a Benedictine monk ~frhonOt- wpaoguel dc ohvaevrea gtheo iung thhte a N reelwig Yiooursk o Trdimere ws aonudld t,h'reenc ebieve featured a few months, later in a New York Times Book Review article? And the stories had nothing to do with scandal. In fact, the tone of the articles reflected uncommon respect and even admi-ration for the electronic publishing endeavors of the Benedictines at Christ in the Desert Monastery. These religious have found a new way to embody their charism of working with the written word. The world looks on, fascinated by the blend of devotion, artistry, and technological expertise. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery host a Web site on the Internet, where they "continue the heritage of creativity, the arts, and handicrafts as exemplified by our prede-cessors in monastic life. We write on electrons creating cyber-books: pages for the World Wide Web . We have been making pages for 1500 years. It is part of our tradition, our heritage as monks." (See Web sites in the Note at the end of this article.) It is a new monastery industry, an industry that goes beyond jams and breads. By using technology to update their approaches to ministry, the Benedictines offer food to hungry souls in the vast community that the Internet comprises, and they have also John Freund CM may be addressed at St. John's University; 8000 Utopia Parkway; Jamaica, New York 11'439 (or: freundjb@stjohns.edu). September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace found a source of income to support their ministry. Institutions seeking to establish a presence on the Internet prize the skills of the Benedictines. As these religious assist already developed print media to migrate to a new form of library on the Internet, they have developed a new face for their ministry to the world. Updating a Community Charism Religious coffgregations in the 20th century have wrestled with the challenge of expressing charisms anew in the modern or postmodern world. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery have peered thoughtfully through the lens of tech-nology to examine their charism again. Other congregations might engage in such a process, too, especially taking into account the evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Some individual members or pockets of "early adopters" of new technology haveventured into cyberspace as modern-day Gutenbergs, adapting developing technologies in service of the gospel. But the Benedictine community of Christ of the Desert offers a hint of what might happen if other communities, too, began to look at their charisms through the special lens of tech-nology. This is by no means the only way to revitalize a charism. I suggest merely that the Internet and its associated technologies might provide us with great new opportunities, opportunities that may well deserve much more attention than they. have thus far received. As a Vincentian, an example that occurs readily to me is that the poor are being shut out of the newly emerging world of information. The sad prospect is that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will .only increase. Communities that work to reduce poverty and to provide a way out of poverty must look at issues raised by a new form of deprivation--"information poverty." What the Benedictines have accomplished belongs to a broad landscape. Here we explore some of its horizons and look at ways to move forward boldly and prudently. Information Age ~ There is a revolution going on in communication, a sea change. It has various names: cyberspace, the Internet, the Web,° computer-mediated communication. Some describe it as more Review for Religious than a revolution, as a paradigm shift possibly more significant than that brought about by the printing press. Reactions vary. Some hail the changes; others ridicule, revile, or fear them. Religious leaders in Iran have labeled it a plot of the Western. world to subvert religious and cultural values and impose Western materialism in every home. (A decline in cultural and religious values and a rise in materialism may to a certain extent be an effect of all media everywhere, even if unintended.) Regardless of whether opti-mistic or pessimistic views of modern com-munication media prove closer to the truth, regardless of how intimidating, oversold, or underestimated these media are, it seems the revolution cannot be ignored. Microsoft computer titan Bill Gates learned the lesson the hard way. Initially he miscalculated the impact of the Internet. Now he has seen the light and scrambles to revise his multibillion dollar company's plan. He knows Microsoft needs to catch the wave he at least implicitly admits he did not see coming. The revolution brings tremendous implications for the church and for religious communities in our postmodern world. It should not be ignored. Put another way, it can only be ignored at tremen-dous cost to evangelization. We need to evaluate the new medium of the Internet without allowing ourselves to be driven by the "hype." Information and information technology are, of themselves, neutral. We need to use them in the service of gospel values. Gospel-centered vision must lead us, rather than trends and fads. We need to evaluate the new medium of the Internet without allowing ourselves to be driven by the "hype." What Is the Internet? In some ways the Internet is akin to, but even more powerful than, the largest multinational corporation. It cuts across inter-national and ideological boundaries, all without incurring long-distance charges, because computers connect to a local network. Metaphors abound. The Internet has a Barnes and Noble megabookstore-like aspect, but with many more rows of shelves, not to mention the comfort of your own chair, coffee, and slippers Septentber-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to CFberspace --- 494 if you connect from home. It differs from a bookstore in that, when a publication catches your attention, you can frequently establish e-mail contact with the authors, send notice of it to a friend on the other side of town or the world, or join an interna-tional discussion of the work. It evokes the memory of our parents' or grandparents' excite-ment about getting a television set or a radio--but with this sig-nificant difference: the 'Net puts in homes and offices not only a receiver, but also a transmitter. At another level the 'Net resem-bles a gigantic party-line conversation. Freedom and chaos abound as people share their worlds, eavesdrop, advise strangers, and always look for more information. Virtual communities of sin-ners and saints, .of health practitioners and disease sufferers, of workers and game players spring up in the free-flowing world of the Internet. The Internet sends mail moi'd efficiently than any postal ser-vice ever imagined. How fiercely people on the Internet grumble if electronic mail delivery requires more than a few seconds! Hence the derogatory appellation of ordinary postal service: "snail mail." All this has its shadow side. Point-and-click ease of sending multiple copies is a mass-marketer's delight, and the possibility of "spamming" (flooding another's electronic mailbox with so much mail that important communication gets buried) or "flaming" (send-ing inflammatory or just plain rude messages) delights the venge-ful and the mischievous. But e-mail opens up new possibilities of networking which many have already seized upon. The Internet makes strange bed-fellows-- the anarchist cozies up to the traditionalist. Pro-life and pro-choice activists proclaim their positions in this free-speech medium. Traditionalists and Call to Action groups clamor for attention. An exiled Catholic bishop and Mother Angelica hold forth from the same podium. The World Wide Web, the "www" increasingly cited on busi-ness cards, billboards, and print advertisements, may provide the most apt metaphor. The Web entangles us, whether we realize it or not. As bandwidth and baud (net jargon for speed of transmission) increase, the Internet is becoming increasingly visual and inter-active. Television, other communication media, books, newspapers, magazines, and more represent themselves. Become enthralled Review for Religious with Mona Lisa's smile live from the Louvre and, with a simple "download" and the right software, make her frown. Hang out on a street corner a world away, where a video camera vigilantly records the ebb and the flow of human traffic. Children in Alaska teach their language to children in the Philippines; grown-up children hook into endless Dungeon and Dragon games, now in shockingly real three-dimension (3-D). Electronic fan clubs of your favorite movie or TV show elevate time-honored institu-tions to a new level of sophistication. Pray with monks of Taiz4, search through the entire text of the Summa Tbeologiae, or down-load the latest statement of Pope John Paul II. A CEO may be able to view a competi-tor's tax returns, or an activist can query who contributed to political-action groups in a specific ziP code, and in what amounts. The very concept of a library as a phys-ical place in town or on campus is challenged by this exponentially increasing repository of information. Yet the Internet is not owned by anyone and therefore is controlled by no one. In a sense, everyone owns it. It is not a large ster-ile machine with whirring reels of tape in the sealed room so often portrayed in movies. The reality of the Internet is far messier and far less organized. At its most basic, it is a network of computers of all sizes and types. These range from very basic computers found in many a child's bedroom to the super com-puters of research institutions and governments. The Internet is the sum total of computers and computer networks voluntarily connected to various telephonic umbilical cords. Information is shared voluntarily. No one has to open one's own computer or every part of ivto the penetrating eyes of others. However, the fact that so many have done so has created, in the incredible space of about five years, so great an archive of information that the phrase "information overload" loses meaning. The Internet blurs traditional distinctions between telephone, movies, books, radio, and more. Traditionally packaged media must scramble and merge. The president of Sony Corporation forecasts integration of the electronics and entertainment indus-tries. And already cable and telephone giants compete fiercely The Internet is the sum total of computers and computer networks voluntarily connected to various telephonic umbilical cords. September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cybers~ace for who can direct, if not produce and control, the ongoing devel-opment of the Internet. Above all, industry leaders must figure out how to avoid the fate of the Swiss watchmaking industry. Swiss watchmakers, com-fortable with their superior handcrafting, turned their backs on quartz technology for watches. They believed that the new tech-nology would barely ripple their pond. Instead, they found them-selves swept away by a tsunami. Inside five years their market share plummeted, and they became, in business and paradigm-shift literature, a classical example of an industry that refused to read signs of the times. Hooking Up to the Internet The information superhighway has its tolls, and the first is the equipment required to travel on it. One image of being "on line" suggests that only high-powered, state-of-the-art equipment cruises the Internet. In truth, the equivalent expense ranges from the cost of a "rent-a-wreck" to that of a Cadillac, Mercedes, or Ferrari. In addition to the basic hardware of a computer, a monitor, a keyboard, and a modem, one needs access to telephone service. Massive on-line service providers such as America Online, telecommunication, giants such as AT&T, and Internet service providers (ISPs) provide connections to telephone lines for trans-mission of the electronic data that is the life blood of the Internet. One part of the Internet is primarily text based, without "golly gee whiz bang" graphics. Even a relatively ancient computer (three or more years old), which can occasionally be found abandoned at curbside, is enough equipment to take advantage of sometimes free e-mail accounts. (These accounts are supported by advertis-ing revenue much in the manner of commercial TV.) For other applications, newer but still relatively simple equipment suffices. New Technologies in the Service of Our Charisms Once alerLto this technological phenomenon, we need only a little imagination to envision some of the enormous implica-tions and possibilities for ministry. Potential exists for ministries of the church and for individual religious communities. Review for Religious Social Ministry to the Least of Our Brothers and Sisters The information age brings with it a new formof poverty potentially more significant as a social problem than has yet been realized. "Information poverty" imposes a new kind of power-lessness. The needs of the poor have changed. A new measure of wealth is access to information and skills required for survival in an infor-mation age. The poor need more than food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Alongside these matters that continue to need addressing, new needs not envisioned in earlier times have arisen. More than ever there is need for employable skills, which for the most part can be acquired only through training and hands-on, on-line experience. The shift from an industrial economy to a service and information economy dramatically widens the gap between the "digerati" and the poor. To attend to this new form of poverty, we must heed the repeated calls of Pope John Paul II "to search out more than ever, with boldness, humility, and.skill, the causes of poverty and encourage short and long-term solutions." If the poor are to sit at the table with others, then they have very specific needs. Chief among these would be word-processing skills and access to computers. Some individuals and groups have already begun this form of empowering ministry. Recendy a hous-ing development in Rhode Island became the first in the country to act on this insight: it made computer access and computer-skills training available to all residents. In Philadelphia local activists have arranged for a mobile van to provide access and training in poor neighborhoods. The voice of the poor may be initially through people like us, but ultimately the poor themselves must be empowered to speak with their own voices and take their places at the table that offers a wealth of new information. There will always be a need for bringing food and bandaging wounds. But even Vincent de Paul, the paragon of direct service to the poor, saw in his age the need to do more--to network, organize, and get at root causes. Otherwise the poor are condemned forever to eating the scraps from Dives' table. The Ministry of Evangelization Historical precedents abound for adapting new technologies in the service of ministry. We see the genius of Gutenberg in adapting the bible to the new paradigm, of others using ships as [-//0-7--- September-October 1997 Freund * From Parchment to Cyberspace means of transporting missionaries across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (although Paul crossed the sea 'much earlier), of bishops fly-ing airplanes in Alaska to visit far-flung parishes. Few TV view-ers of the 1950s have forgotten Bishop Sheen's flourishes and ;his anticipation of the current interest in angels. Without pressing the point, perhaps Father ~Eoughlin might be seen as one of the forerunners of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio. Other Implications and Possibilities for Religious Congregations The Internet brings with it new ways of embodying a reli-gious charism for those who .have eyes to see. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert have found a new way to live out their charism of working with the written word. The general Benedictine site on the~Web includes the Rule of St. Benedict (the Latin text as well as translations into other languages), with extensive bibliography. General Information includes a world-wide Benedictine e-mail directory, information on internal elec-tions, material on monastic topics, and links to corporate and personal Benedictine sites throughout the world. Developed religious outposts in cyberspace include the Dominicans, the Claretians, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and ,my own Vincentian family. But, as with all things on the Internet and the Web, the presence of other communities is growing by leaps and bounds. The Dominicans seem to have been among the first to plunge deeply into cyberspace. Perhaps that is why some of them seem on the cutting edge of the latest interactive possibilities of the medium, such as the sound and video very effectively integrated into their pages. The Claretian presence includes a wide range: addresses and telephone numbers of their houses throughout the world, a gallery of pictures of Claretian priests and brothers, descriptions of var-ious apostolates, and a section that educates even novices on the Internet in the details of composing their own Web page. Their best-known magazine, U.S. Catholic, has a Web site. Of course, the Jesuits have turned out in force. One of the keys to their presence resides at LeMoyne College. The site includes links to information about their spirituality, history, and official documents; Jesuit events around the world; the aposto-lates of retreat centers, parishes, and colleges and universities; and faith and justice, art and artists, science and technology. Review for Religious My own Vincentian family is using the Internet and the World Wide Web as a way to connect the more than one million Vincentians in the world. These followers of Vincent, Louise de Marillac, Frederic Ozanam, and Elizabeth Ann Seton can now visit, for history and announcements of common interest, the site of the Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John's University and can contact each other directly through an e-mail list that spans the globe with its membership. The Internet has great potential for facili-tating communications, internally and externally. ¯ The recently developed SisterSite promises to be for religious women a major networking resource. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Maior Superiors of Men are both in the process of developing Web sites. It is not at all inconceivable that Internet usage will become more ubiquitous and utili-tarian than current uses of fax machines. Administrative correspondence could speed instantaneously from provincial offices to houses, and individual members. Apostolates can hold on-line meetings, 'maintain think tanks, and so forth. Imagine the saving in time and money when meetings or at least parts of meetings can be done through videoconferencing, which is already economically feasible even if not of the quality that large corporations can command/Certainly there will always need to be face-to-face meetings. But on-line preparation offers the tantalizing possibility of improving productivity. A frequently heard criticism of cybercommunication is that it devalues human presence. But think of members of congrega-tions who find themselves in isolated assignments far from mean-ingful direct contact with their fellow members. Through the Internet many achieve a new level of connectedness with their brothers and sisters. Similarly, the valuable services ham radio operators perform during times of crisis and in maintaining mis-sionaries' connections to their home bases can now be supple-mented over the Internet without the costs of long-distance telephoning. There are many other reasons to explore ministerial possi-bilities of computer-mediated technology. While the documents The Internet brings with it new ways of embodying a religious charism for those who have eyes to see. September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace do not explicitly reference computer-mediated technologies, such advances seem to fall within the call to the church as .expressed by the invitation of Vatican II to read and adapt to the "signs of the times." There are also some very practical reasons. A technologically mediated apostolate can be available and appealing to the old and the young, the healthy and frail. Certainly it engages the young. Increasingly, youth will not only be computer literate but will speak the Internet's language with all the ease of their native tongue. Also, this new technology offers the possibility of people remaining active longer. It can empower the frail and may be the source of second-career energy for those in burnout. As Vincent de Paul faced his increasing infirmities, he would write: "When I can no longer ride a horse, I will take a carriage to continue my work. And when I can no longer do that, then I can write." For a final reason, we need to compete in the marketplace of information. That it is "better to light a candle than curse.the darkness" applies to establishing a positive presence on the Internet rather than merely condemning it or sitting idle as X-rated chat rooms proliferate. As a state lottery ad proclaims, "You've got to be in it to win it." Put differently and more com-pellingly, the sinful, .sad state of our world did not stop God from sending Jesus. Concerns about the state of morality on the Internet should drive us to provide more helpful, interesting, and even entertainifig sites. As one e-mail correspondent of mine expresses it, "The more good places we put on the Internet, the more likely it is that people will find good places to go." Initially I was surprised at how the Internet has given me a much richer sense of the immediacy of the body of Christ in the world. In a matter of minutes I can "converse" with people from all continents whose concerns I share. As we move to a new millennium, we are called to be as visionary and as practical as Vincent and the other giants whose spirit we enflesh in the new millennium. If we are to be effective servants of the poor in the new century, we must explore the new frontier called cyberspace, and we must take advantage of its immense opportunities for networking in service of the poor. Catching the Wave The skills required are rapidly becoming no more complex, Review for Religious arcane, or mystical than those needed to drive a car. Few drivers can design, build, or repair a car; few Internet users these days are the technical whiz kids portrayed in popular media. Investing a few hours in simple computer training is not at all beyond the mechan-ical prowess of the average religious. Witness the rapid develop-ment of Internet use among senior citizens ranging into their nineties. Getting started does not require a long technical explanation. The single most important suggestion, is that you find someone to show you firsthand what all the shouting is about. The Web is not something you read about but experience. The second sug-gestion is like the first: Fearlessly mount the Internet surfboard yourself. Explore any topic that interests you, and prepare to be amazed at what you find. It remains a dry, intellectual concept until you jump in the river and get baptized. The Internet will not solve all ministerial problems. Indeed, it may create some. But it will become an increasingly valuable and indispensable tool. The Internet is another way to gather the folks and tell the story. Only?a few hours of surfing the 'Net dis-closes that there are many seekers hungry for information, for truth. Who will feed them? Likewise, the Internet is another way to serve the poor. A few hours of surfing uncovers valuable sources of information and networks for people who join in common cause for the poor. Some say this paradigm shift is nothing short of a tidal wave sweeping us into the 21st century. Is this hyperbole? Time will tell. Pray let us not find ourselves among the Swiss watchmakers in the world of the gospel! Note Some Web sites, in alphabetical order: Benedictine site (general): http://www.osb.org/osb/welcome.html/ Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery: http://www.christdesert.org/ Claretian site: http://www.claret.org/ Dominican site: http://www.op.org/domcentral/ Jesuit site: http://www.Jesuit.org/ LyO!-- September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace Jesuit resources: http://maple.lemoyne.edu/~bucko/jesuit.html/ SisterSite: ¯ http://www.geocities.com/wellesley/1114/index.html/ Vincentian site: http://www.stjohns.edu/vincentianctr/ Icons In her eighties she walked in a recurring drea~m. She saw icons everywhere, sacred figures peering ~at her with holiness shining in their eyes. Their bodies were of angels or saintly figures long dead,. but their faces were young: students she taught in inner city schools, smilin~ back at her with holy content written all over their faces, raising hands of gratitude from their gilded clothed bodies. Thank you, their still lips murmured. Thank you for seeing the divinity written in our small lives. Patricia G. Rourke 502 Review for Religious o FRANCES M. BISCOGLIO Angela Merici: Ursuline Mother and Valiant Woman The scenic route south from Ponte Arche in the Trent]no to ,Desenzano. follows the western shore of Lake Garda and then bends around the corner of the lake. The road winds through olive and lembn trees, tall dark cypresses outlining pastel-colored villas,° and majestic palm trees that arch over the turquoise waters of Italy's largest lake. For.me this trip at the end of a summer vacation was a pilgrimage, one that had its roots in my childhood. How often the Ursuline nuns, who educated me from grade school through college, had told the story of Angela Merici of Desenzano! She ~was the foundress of the first teaching brder of women* in the church, although ironi-cally she herself never attended school. Today the port resort of Desenzano del Garda is a thriving town where old and new converge. Chic bou-tiques and modern shops line narrow ancient streets. In the summertime, tourists relax along shaded benches that face the lake, or gather in the piazza to sip cappuccino .at a caff~ all'aperto in view of the old cathedraL, But even now, more than five. centuries after her birth, the spirit of Angela Merici can be felt here. A street bearing her name leads into the town; a stone plaque marks the place Frances M. Biscoglio wrote about Julian of Norwich for our issue of May-June 1988. Her address is Department of Literature, Language, and Communication; Mercy College; 555 Broadway; Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522. heritages September- October 1997 of her birth. The most dramatic reminder of her presence is a life-size stone statue that dominates the center of the piazza. Mounted high on a pedestal, Angela stands with her head turned toward heaven, right hand over her heart, left hand grasping a tall pilgrim's staff. On the front of the pedestal is written: "S. Angela Merici, Patrona della Cittg." Who was this remarkable woman of the Renaissance whose innovative work in the education of girls spread from northern Italy through the Italian peninsula and into Europe and the Americas and eventually the rest of th'b world? She was born in 1474 to Giovanni Merici and Biancosa Biancosi. Her early days were happy ones, spent on the farm tl~at her father owned and operated. Within several years, however, she suffered the loss of her sister and of both her parents, so that "between the ages of twelve and fifteen she was certainly left an orphan" (Caraman, p. 10). At that time she went to live with her maternal uncle at Salb, returning to the family farm at Desenzano when she was twenty. She was to remain there for the next twenty years. During the obscure years at Salb and Desenzano, two events gready affected her life. At Salb she became a lay tertiary, a mem-ber of the Third Order of St. Francis: Later at Desenzano she had a mystical experience in which she saw~ a company of angels and virgins in procession; among them was her deceased sister, who told her that she would one day found a religious company of women. Angela's commitment to the Franciscan observance continued; she followed a life of prayer, fasting, penance, and works of charity among the families of Desenzano and the neigh-boring towns. In 1516, at the suggestion of her Franciscan supe-riors, Angela went to Brescia to console a friend who had lost her two sons in the war with France. It was here that her apostolate began to take shape, since Brescia at this time had been plunged into the political, moral, and spiritual turmoil that marked the beginnings of the Reformation. Irene Mahoney OSU sketches.the history of this northern Italian city before Angela arrived there: The city to which Angela wa's sent had once beeffa model of vitality and. prosperity, but by 1516 it had suffered the ravages of war and of spiritual decay. Less than four years earlier, the citizens, rising in rebellion against the French forces which occupied the city, 'went down in defeat a~ainst the superior strength of their invaders. Totally out of hand, the soldiers killed and raped and looted . . . and innumer-~ able churches and public buildings were sacked. By the end Review for Religious of the uprising the material resources of the city were in shambles. The spiritual resources of Brescia had long been dissi-pated. Brescia was perhaps no worse than many other Italian cities where the bishop rarely visited his diocese,, where clergy were either absent or living dissolutely, where sem-inaries and monasteries were places of license and igno-rance, (p. 7) In this milieu Angela alleviated the suffering and misery of the poor, the destitute, the orphaned, and particularly the incur-abili of Brescia--those who had contracted the dreaded syphilis, and whom many hospitals would not accept. Her reputation for holiness spread throughout the city, and she was called Suor'Angela (Sister Angela). At this time she began her association with the Oratory of Divine Love, a lay organiza-tion newly established in Brescia by Bartolomeo Stella. With its emphasis on persona! Christian perfection and works of charity, the Oratory was a powerful and "inconspicuous. method of reform" within the church (Waters, p. 17); it also had great influence on Angela. It is note-worthy that the small group of women who worked with her .in the Oratory were those who would later form the nucleus of her company. Angela remained in Brescia for four-teen years, leaving the c.ity only to go on various pilgrimages to Mantua, Varallo, the Holy Land, and in 1'525 .to Rome. Pope Clement VII was so impressed with her work at the Ospedale de'Incurabili in Brescia that he pleaded with her to stay in Rome and work for the luoghi pii (religious institutions) there. Angela declined. By this time her eyes were set toward Brescia, for she knew that the foundations of her company would be rooted there. By 1530 Angela had gathered around her the beginning of the commu-nity: twelve women--some widows, some girls--all of whom wished to spend their lives providing for the people's physical, moral, and spiritual needs. Angela chose to place her group under By 1530 Angela had gathered around her the beginning of the community, twelve women wishing to spend their lives providing for the people's physical, moral, and spiritual needs. September-October 1997 Biscoglio * Angela Merici the patronage of St. Ursula, a legendary third-century British princess martyred at Cologne along with a retinue of young women.

Issue 56.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1997. ; for Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living MAY-JUNE 1997 ¯ VOLUME56 . NUMBER3 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that. the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practica~L or inspirational written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (I~SN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University. by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Linde]l Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314--977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1997 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to cop), any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Her]rages and Contemporary Living MAY-JUNE 1997 ¯ VOLUME56 ¯ NUMBER3 contents 230 feature The Examen of Particulars Joseph A. Tetlow SJ proposes.an understanding of the examen of conscience which supplies to ordinary people a means and a method for ongoing conversion and growth. 251 268 perspectives Justice-and-Peace Ministry: Three Decades Plus Kenneth R. Himes OFM presents a perspective on the centrality ofj.ustice-and-peace ministry to the mission of the church today. Milestones in Interreligious Dialogue James H. Krbeger MM presents a synopsis of recent thought within the Roman Catholic tradition on interreligious dialogue and its relationship to evangelization. 277~ charism Providence: Charism and Contemporary Spirituality Suzanne Mayer IHM explores how providence figures in the life of Theresa Maxis and in thelives of us all at the threshold of a new millennium. Review for Religious 285 295 Cross-cultural Formation from a Pacific Perspective Kevin Dobbyn FMS presents his own experience, research, and reflection about the inculturation of a congregation's charism. Associate Relationship: An Emerging Sense of Identity Roberta Archibald SSJ, Joanne Bauer SBS, and Jean Ustasiewski OSF share the fruits of an intercongregational gathering of associates and vowed members whose focfls Was the issue of associate and religious identity in the context of the associate relationship. 3O2 311 insights Seventy and Counting Marie Beha OSC reflects on the interior and exterior changes involved in growing old and in relating to others and to God. APerspective on poverty Donald Macdonald SMM identifies the Sermon on the Mount as the classic source for p~oviding personal motivation in living a life of evangelical poverty. departments 228 Prisms 320 Canonical Counsel: Lay Religious as Pastoral Ministers in Parishes- 325 Book Reviews May-3~une 1997 22-7--- prisr s ~e know well the account of the first Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles. The rush of wind all through the house and the tongues as of fire lighting on each one present recall the thunder and lightning and the fire and clouds as God's presence was made manifest to Moses and the Israelite people at the time of the Sinai covenant. Now the covenant fulfilled in the passion, death, and resurreEtion of Jesus is confirmed by this new out-pouring of God's Spirit. In the perspective of this year 1997 dedicated to Jesus Christ in our millennium preparations, we find that famil-iar stories can take on fresh meaning. For example, "tongues as of fire" traditionally signify the presence of the Holy Spirit and the gift of preaching the good news, perhaps miraculously even in the many different languages of the crowds addressed on that Pentecost day. Might we also understand by the symbolism of. tongue the word of God that each one of us becomes through the gifting of the Spirit? Jesus as the Word made flesh now joining us together in his risen self brings a new reality to all the baptized as "wo~'ds of God." Every Christian is a precious and unre-peatable expression of the presence of Christ. All the rich-ness of the Hebrew word dabar, translated as both word and deed, underlies the great hymn which forms the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John. The Word both being God and being in the presence of God, the Word through whom all things came to be and the Word that is the source of life for whatever is, the Word that is a light shin-ing on in the darkness (a darkness that can never over-come the Word)--this Word became flesh "and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with endur-ing love" On 1:14). Jesus as risen Word of God is uniquely the embodied expression of God, acting with all the power and dynamism Revie~v for Religious and love of God. Yet all of us Christians in our own way are not only to be seen as contemporary expressions (presences) of Jesus, but we as word (dabar) are also to be active and dynamic (doing deeds)--"love following upon love." The Pentecost tongues as of fire symbolize the action of God speaking us out as images of his son Jesus. As the pope focuses us upon the person of Jesus in 1997, we Christians are called to realize anew our responsibility of being expressions of Christ and actions of Christ enfleshed for our world. But the symbol of the (plural) tongues as of fire also suggests the kind of speaking we des~cribe as dialogue. This meaning of the symbol needs strong emphasis in our actions as Christians prepar-ing for the new millennium. Dialogue as conversation does not come easy. In our own day broken marriages, fractured commu-nities, worldwide ethnic and religious violence all attest to the fact. We note from the Pentecost experience that our under- . standing of dialogue requires a special gifting of the Holy Spirit. Dialogue as a true and necessary, element of Christian evange-lization requires more than human technique, expertise, and patience. From Paul VI's first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam, written in 1964, we become aware of some of the Spirit-filled conditions of dialogue: An esteem for the position of the other side is present, something good in the positions of everyone is preserved, and the possibility not only to enrich others but to be enriched our-selves is retained. That is the Christian attitude undergirding our evangelizing dialogue. Dialogue needs to be a part of our Christian action if we are to be word expressions of Christ. Dialogue starts in our families often torn over values and religious practices; dialogue begins in our religious community, where divisions of traditional and pro-gressive seem to serve two Christs. Dialogue also belongs to an ecumenical-movement effort in our daily dealings with friends and coworkers who worship differently from us or perhaps wor-ship not at all. We find the kind of dialogue symbolized by the Pentecost tongues only if we are people who are fired by love. The dialogue of evangelization must be modeled after the example ~ofJesus, the Word of God, the primary Evangelizer. The joy of the risen Jesus as he continues to share his Spirit with his followers needs to make its presence felt in our own desire to dialogue. Then truly tongues as of flame are upon us. David L. Fleming sJ Mlay-J~me 1997 JOSEPH A. TETLOW feature The Examen of Particulars The examen of conscience belongs to many traditions. It has been a cherished exercise of desert fathers and moth-ers, Stoic philosophers, Zen masters, and mys.tic and monastic ascetics. Over the centuries Jesuits have kept recalling, as a dictum of St. Ignatius, that even if one is too sick to meditate one does not omit the daily examen of conscience. The early Jesuits expected, and so wrote in the Official Directory.of the Spiritual Exercises in 1599, that all who made the Exercises would continue making the examen.of conscience for the rest of their lives. Down through the ages the examen has been prac-ticed in many different ways, from the meticulously methodical to special kinds of self-awareness. It has been practiced for various purposes, too, from self-.regarding to self-emptying and from sin-centered to a focus on self-transcendence. In the Ignatian tradition it has been thought of as the five-point General Examen proposed in the Spii'itual Exercises (§43). That precise exercise shaped .the prayer of Jesuits and others who have followed Ignatian spirituality over the years an'd right on into the 20th century. But, by the middle of this century, the five-point examen had, taken on the aspect of behaviorism or voluntarism, and one writer after another complained that it no longer helped prayer. Joseph A. Tedow SJ is director of the Secretariat for Ignatian Spirituality in Rome. His address is Curia Generalizia, Compagnia di Ges6; C.P. 6139; 00195 Roma PRATI; Italy. Review for Religious During the past few decades, the practice of the examen has become more current~ It became the "examination of conscious-ness" when George Aschenbrenner, in his landmark 1972 article, introduced insights from depth psychology into the exercise and indicated 'how tightly the Ignatian examen related to the move-ment of spirits. Aschenbrenner acted on a principle enunciated by Dominic Maruca. The five-point examen given in the Spiritual Exercises is meant for beginners, that is, for those going through the ejercicios leves, the brief simple exercises of Annotation 18. The examen of those who are more practiced, Aschenbrenner proposed, reached into the discernment of spirits. After that devel-opment the examen as an exercise continued to expand: Anthony DeMello designed some Gestalt practices to help self-examination. John English, in the "awareness examen," accommodated the exa-men to the way people currently perceive the self. Recent Developments Two developments during the past twenty-five years encour-age continued attention to the examen.and have motivated this article. The first is the swift spread of the individually directed Spiritual Exercises. In both eight-day retreats and retreats in daily life (also called 19th-annotation retreats), the Exercises are now offered to people who have no intention of making an election or even a serious decision, but who want only deeper peace and better order in their lives .and who look for it in deeper relation-ship with God in prayer. Historically, such exercises are what Ifiigo called ejercicios leves, simpler exercises, He described them in the first part of Annotation 18 and in the lengthy material on the General and Particular Examen. Ifiigo used these simpler exercises to help souls to a method (five points) of self-examination and a system (approach for gen-eral and particular examen) for doing it continually~ But, as far as my information goes, few directors of the Exercises today-really urge the importance of the examen of conscience. Some do, indeed, promote some similar practices such as journaling, one of the favorite ways of self-examination (or, better, of self-appre-ciation) in the New Age. And yet those who direct the Exercises in daily life and those who pyeach the Exercises to m'en and women are giving help to Christians in much the same spiritual condition as those Ifiigo helped. In Oregon, Dublin, Seoul, St. May-3~une 1997 Tetlo~ ¯ The Examen of Particulars Louis, and Naples, Jesuits and their colleagues are helping peo-ple who have no great decision to make, but who want a deeper interiorized faith-life, to have a more vibrant relationship with God and find more meaning in their lives. People like this once found everything they needed in Divine Providence and the church's vibrant practices of sacrament and sacramental. They no longer find there what. they need, and their loss must be carefully appraised by spiritual, directors. For the loss and the consequent spiritual search does not mean that they have been invited by the Holy Spirit to the kind of interior life practiced by privileged religious and the theologically educated. They remain ordinary faithful in the core of the church. For every four women who go to Central America and face martyrdom, four hundred thousand stay home. For every man given by God the privilege of an hour of quiet every single day, there are a hun-dred thousand who have to fight to find ten minutes of quiet in an ordinary day. We know that these women are politically invis-ible; are they, perhaps, also invisible spiritually? And what about their husbands? As we have moved the Spiritual Exercises fur-ther into feeling and concreteness, have we left the males without masculine formats? These people form the vast majority of Catholic Christians. They are not called to centering prayer or contemplation in any particular form, or to make retreats annually. Rather, they relate to God our Lord mainly by meeting obligation and keeping the commandments (one way Ifiigo described them). When they pray, they usually seek to know the law that the Spirit has written on their own hearts. But they need adult catechesis, b~i which I mean instruction in the interior life. We teach children the faith; we teach adults how they do interiorize or might interiorize the faith they know. For most Christians, religion--creed, code, cult--is their way of experiencing God, and directors are mistaken to take it upon themselves to force them away from that into the direct experience of God called spirituality. For them God is not dead and never has been. They still do pray for rain (unless the more advanced have taught them not to) and for help in rearing their children and sanctifying their marriages. They will never suffer a Dark Night except in the most tenuous analogous sense, and that framework will not help them to deeper meaning and relationship with God. They need other kinds of frameworks and other kinds of direction. Review for Religious These are the people Cardinal Bernardin was referring to when he said that millions do not want to be drawn into a hostile stance toward their church. They do not and cannot live on any brink, and they are not able to join joyfully in prophesying structural change in priesthood o~ marriage or medical care or social secu-rity. For :them, directors exercise the ministry of reconciliation. These are the people that Ifiigo and his first companions, and a great number of the founders of other congregations, reached out to when they helped souls. Vatican Council II, it is important to recall at this juncture, called them to ongoing metanoia. They are not the church semper reformanda--a mandate to papacy, episcopacy, and parish priests. They are the church semper renovanda. Hence, for them the exa-men of conscience ought to supply ~ means and a method for ongoing metanoia, that is, of continually growing in their graced self-awareness and steadily purifying their sinfulness. This article addresses the issue of how they might do that. This brings me to the second reason to attend to the examen at this time: developments in psychology that offer help in self-examination. I refer here particularly to recent focuses on the positive development of the ego and of the self. In particular I draw from the cognitive behavioral theories and practices of authorities such as Dr. Aaron Beck and Dr. David Burns. These psychological processes allow one to connect bne's actual every- . day thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors with deep character traits and conscious commitments. Obviously, these theories and practices promise to be helpful in spiritual self-examination. I am sure that the cognitive behavioral materials can be applied in more than one way. I have been using them for some time, and I will propose one possible way that,has proven helpful to exerci-rants and directees. Before turning to what might be called an "examen of par-ticulars," we need to explore three of the things entailed by the examen in the Ignatian tradition. First of all, this examen shares several important characteristics with all prayer in the Ignatian tra-dition, even with such set frames of prayer as the Contemplation We teach children the faith; we teach adults how they do interiorize or might interiorize the faith they know. May-Jm~e 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars for Love. Second, since the examen deals directly with sin and sinfulness, the Ignatian examen implies a characteristic Ignatian understanding of sin that includes shame as well as guilt and focuses on sin as failure. However, third, Ignatius connects sin with ingratitude in various ways throughout the Spiritual Exercises. He once stated explicitly that all sin is at root ingrati-tude, the failure or refusal to give thanks to God for his gifts. Hence, the Ignatian examen shares with all Ignatian prayer an emphasis on the concrete existential gifts and graces of God. Each of these points about the Ignatian examen of con-science-- characteristics of Ignatian prayer, sin as failure, and an emphasis on divine gifts--calls for careful reflection. So I will take the three in turn. Taken together, these three points of reflec-tion suggest why a particular variation on the five points given in the Spiritual Exercises is proving useful at the dawn of the 21st century. I might usefully point out here that the connection between the Particular Examen and the General Examen is not clear in the Spiritual Exercises. Does one make them both together? ls the more general examen to prepare for the sacrament of reconcilia-tion, and the particular exam to help in daily life? Not even later Jesuit legislation by general congregations clarified that. I tend to believe that people practiced in the interior life ordinarily use a general examen for the sacrament of reconciliation and that the form suggested at the end might serve them for the particular examen. I can testify that it has been serving some of us very well. Some Characteristics of Ignatian Prayer To begin with, Ignatian prayer grows from and flourishes in story, a point not irrelevant to the examen. After explaining in the first annotation all the things he means by "spiritual exer-cises," Ignatius promptly points out in the second that all prayer on Scripture must be rooted in the unadorned narrative of the Gospels. Additionally he directs that retreatants begin each con-templation by locating each mystery in the course~ of Jesus' life. When Ignatius suggests materials not found in Scripture, he reg-ularly suggests history or life-story material: regarding sin he tells not only about the angels and Adam and Eve, but also about one person who committed one sin and Went to hell for it. He tells the surprisingly successful story of Three Couples which helps reflec- Review for Religious tion on genuine indifference. He introduces the incarnation with a story about the Holy Trinity hovering over the whole globe; the Two Standards, with the scene-painting narrative of Jesus gathering people around him on the sweet green fields of the promised land; and so on. Some story is commonly a presuppo-sition to entry into Ignatian prayer. You could make a successful case, I think, that those of us who were trying to practice it year after year found the five-point examen problematic precisely here. After thanksgiving and a prayer for light, we moved through a quick survey of the story of the last few hours. We found that helpful as long as we felt that the deed done was vastly more important than how we felt about it or what motivated it. But, once we grew keenly aware of the layers of motive, desire, emotion, perspective,, and habit that interweave in any single experiences, we could no longer find much good in skimming along over the deeds done in the last hours. As a consequence of this and of other changes, only a very few of us now find this quick survey helpful. Yet in the Ignatian tradition we still feel the need for story, for moving along in a narrative. Without intending in the least to denigrate the practice, I find nothing in the Ignatian tradition about sitting still for a while and letting Jesus call .attention to the day's graces and fail-ures. Ignatian practice has been a litde more active, and it focuses on story. Story here means incident (like a screeching near-accident in a car) or experience (like a. diffused feeling of anxiety in traffic). The conjunction of all of these developments drew the more mature and practiced in the interior life prompdy to adopt George Aschenbrenner's consciousness examen, which called our attention to the story of the spirits moving us during the day. All of these developments affect the beginner as well, and also those whom God calls to a life according to the commandments. In my limited experience, these also need a way of connecting their stories with their human gifts, qualities, and achievements.,The method which will suit them is unlikely to require serious discernment of spir-its and probably ought to give them a little more focus and explic-itness than the consciousness examen offers. .A second pertinent characteristic of prayer in the Ignatian tradition is this: Prayer is not an end in itself, nor even a kind of end-means, in the sense that this is where we go to find God and finding God in this prayer is what we intend. Prayer is, indeed, a kind of end in itself in some other contemplative traditions: it is May-ffune 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen o~Particular~ that to which everything else in the day and in life is ordered. Not in Ignatian spirituality. The first intention here is to find out what God hopes in me and in my lifeworld, what Ignatius called "God's will," and everything in the day is ordered to that discov-ery and enactment. The whole intention in Ignatian prayer, including the examination of conscience, is to find what God is hoping for and wishes and wants at this time and this place. This is one way to explain the expression "contemplative in action." Hence, in the Ignatian tradition, to find devotion does not mean to find sweetness in prayer. Richard Rolle wrote, "From my study of Scripture, I have found that to love Christ Jesus above all else will require three things: warmth, and song, and sweet-ness." Ignatius could not have written that. For him, to love Christ Jesus above all else will require these different things: to reach some sureness about what God hopes~and wants in this time in my self and in my world, to be prompt to do what I discover is God's will, and to find God in the enactment of it. I have just stated a thirdcharacteristic of Ignatian prayer in all its modes. Ignatian prayer grows along with an understanding of God's action in the world: God always creating my gifts and self, the Spirit raising my desires out of the divine love, God giving the gift of enactment. Hence, in all its modes Ignatian prayer hovers between the felt sense that God has hopes in me and the enact-ment of my own authentic desires. This dynamic tension appears in the very first colloquy in the Spiritual Exercises. At the end of the contemplation on the Triple Sin, as I stand next to Jesus fixed to his cross, I ask myself: "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What might I do for Christ?" I am asked, in the presence of the Crucified--who symbolizes all of God's pas-sionate, loving hopes for me and for all humankind--to elicit my own authentic desires to collaborate with Christ in his enterprise. The full meaning of this colloquy surely reveals a good deal about the examen of conscience. How I am to imitate Christ hanging on a cross? What is this imitation about? Perhaps others remember struggling with the question: Am I supposed to want crucifixion? If not, then what? In other great spiritual traditions, the person doing the imitat-ing concentrates wholeheartedly on Jesus of Nazareth, who became the Christ. In the initial tradition it is this: Christ is there on his cross, offering all of his human gifts to the Father in praise and obedience because of his love for each single human; I stand Review for Religious next to him, full of gifts from the Father, wondering what I am to do. The metaphysics of the love Ignatius describes pithily in the Contemplation for Attaining Love must illuminate this scene if we are to comprehend the examen. Love, the little prenote states (§230), is done, not talked about. And love is the mutual sharing of gifts, the lover and the beloved giving and receiving, both doing both. This is the imitation of Christ in the Ignatian tradition. Notably, it demands of us an awareness of our specific gifts at this moment so that we may share them in building the reign of God. This surely is going to make a differ-ence in the kind of self-examination called for here. Among those who have been serving God longer, this imitation requires discernment because human love as we experience it reaches not only our thoughts and feelings and behav-iors, but most emphatically also our desiring. But the church has always known, and postmodern Christians most emphatically know, that even beginners in the interior life have to examine their desiring. It is useful to recall, therefore, that discreta caritas marks any well-made examen, so that mature Christians living the life of the commandments will live good lives without Ignatian discernment. Directors who urge it on those who do not need it or cannot use it are doing them no favor; they may be projecting onto the interior lives of ordinary. Christians a need that only the more advanced feel. To do so is to break a good general principle in working with ordinary Christians (and with annotation 18). Few of us managed to explore our desires when we were using the five-point examen (except perhaps that we harped on fleshy desires we considered reprehensible). Yet examining our desires is important for several reasons: the other "standard," to begin with-- advertising, conformity, consumerism. And, to continue, at the end of this century desiring is the dynamic heart of what our post-modern culture calls "freedom": "I gotta be me; I gotta do my own thing; you asked for it, you got it." Such desiring needs care-ful assessment. But desire was of consummate importance in Ignatian prayer before this century even began. The most com-mon phrase in the Spiritual Exercises is "what I want." The whole purpose of the thirty-day retreat is to discover What I want (§1). Desiring is the dynamic heart of what our postmodern culture calls "freedom." Ma),-a~une 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars Behind this is the church's conviction that God our Creator and Lord shapes our freedom by shaping our desiring. Were we all to exact our most authentic desiring--that desiring in us that rises pure and clear from the passionate creative love of God at the core of our selves--we would in an instant inaugurate the reign of God. More modestly, if each of us kept a steady, well-ordered connection between our authentic desiring and our examen, we would have no problem with the church's leading--say, in the matter of the faith that does justice, If God our Creator and Lord wants faith and justice, then God is raising desires in each of us for faith and justice, including the middle class of the U.S.A. The problem is that we have not learned a method for listening to our authentic desires. In the Ignatian tradition that is sin; so now we talk about sin. The Focus on Sin as Failure Far from being limited to the estimation of sin apparent in the General and Particular Examens in the Spiritual Exercises, which are meant for people just beginning an interior life, the Ignatian realization of sin develops in several complex ways. From the con-sideration of the triple sin, through the noble response to the call of the King, to the "Take, Lord, receive" prayer in the Contemplation for Love--I believe it can be argued--sin unfolds both as guilt and as shame. As this unfolding occurs within Ignatian prayer, there arises, at least in people today, an under-standing of sin as failure. In the church's immediate past, we were vaguely convinced that we thwarted God, kept God from doing what God intended. With our postmodern sensibilities we now come up against more than one serious confusion in that way of thinking about sin: How can a ,puny,: limited creature contravene the divine will of God, all-powerful, all-wise, and eternal? And about this puny creature: After absorbing depth-psychological insights, we tend to feel that by our sin we thwart ourselves rather than God. Again, aware of our utter brokenness, we hold that God is forgiving us--poor creatures that we are--even as we sin. The upshot of all this is that we now tend to feel that we are letting God down, disappointing God, holding back from God what Father, Son, and Spirt. gra-ciously hope for in us and our lifeworld. This is to think of sin not so much in terms of contradicting God's will, but rather--and Review for Religious more fruitfully--in terms of failure. In my own mind (and in the hearts of many others when they speak of their grave failures) an extraordinarily powerful metaphor for sin is a fetus failing and withering in a woman's womb, bitterly disappointing the mother. We are such a failure in God when we sin. Why failure? Well, Christian iconography, for one thing: the prophet telling'David, "You are that man"; the Magdalen's seven devils; the seated figure in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," staring stark through dirty fingers. Failure as a metaphor for sin is not new; the church has always thought that going against our consciences, the com-mandments, legitimate laws, is moral failure. Ascetics and mystics have gone further, seeing themselves as fail-ing by not reaching ideals they had set for ourselves, though all too often they name ideals of moral behavior ("I will not judge others harshly, I will not tell fibs, I will not., and so on"). At the end of this century, however, failure covers a much broader area than morality: physical, aesthetic, political, and economic failures, career failures, medical, grammatical, mechanical, even computer failures. Many prophets about the green earth.make .lists of these failures: the air we breathe brings death from Chernobyl; the pleasures of love carry AIDS, cars suffer mechanical failure, magazines suffer cir-culation failure, and (may God avert the evil) computers are sub-ject to hard-disk failure. Every human person knows failure: a friendship fades, a position does not materialize, a debt does not get paid, siblings or children misbehave gravely. We overeat, escape into drugs, grow addicted to harmful substances like tobacco or harmful activities like gambling. We suffer physical failures like diabetes, psychic failures like acrophobia, aesthetic failures like ugliness or awkward manners. And, of course, in the end we fail to live forever as we would like, but die instead. Humankind is intimately, incessantly, incurably acquainted with failure. Some matters regarding these failures have a crucial bearing on the examen of conscience and deserve our notice. At times the failures are not willful, but are sin handed down to us from our forebears. At other times we seem to fail by error or through tiredness, but on closer examination we find the failure hiding some habit or quality or personality trait that needs our atten- Humankind is intimately, incessantly, incurably acquainted with failure. IWlay-~tnne 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars tion. And at other times, of course, we suffer one or another of myriad failures because of our own sin. Humankind even tends to believe that certain specific failures are accounted for by sin: lep-rosy and blindness among the Jews of Jesus' day, AIDS among the Christians of our day. "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is blind?" We are not likely to shake that belief because it is partially true. But how is it true? We have to face that question if we take failure as the metaphor for sin. We have not had to answer that question as long as we have taken sickness as the basic metaphor. And the matter is impor-tant because we have not been connecting all kinds of evils with sin. Think of a serial killer. Instinctively, postmodern humankind feel that a serial killer is very sick, inhumanly driven by uncon-scious motives to madness. "Oh, that's sick.t" cuts off any further inquiry into the morality of the murders and really implies that they are not sin. But, when we take failure as a metaphor for sin, we have to inquire further. Finally we get to the heart of the matter of sin: the original sin. We all know the larger theological truth, of course, that we are deeply affected by the original sin. But, as long as we consider sin as a sickness, we who work in theology immediately cede the explanation to the psychologists. We never get to the spiritual significance of the original sin in our own actual lives, and its truth means little more to us than the truth about Pluto's orbit. This is a crux matter in the lives of many ordinary Catholics. In the American tradition believing a truth means accepting its consequences in real life. Well, are the consequences of the orig-inal sin in my life the ones I suspect--negative self-image, neu-roticisms, childhood abuses of all kinds, compulsions, addictions, ¯ schizophrenia? How can I accept any of these, harsh as they are and even harmful? How do I put together self-acceptance and my own acceptance of God's acceptance of me with the fact that I am from a dysfunctional family, work in a dysfunctional job, am surrounded by neurotics, with whom I fit perfectly? None of us will continue the examen of conscience for long or go any deeper than, yes or no, I did or did not sin unless and until we find a way ~o give an account to ourselves of these live urgent issues. And ordinary Christians living the law written in their hearts-- much vexed with compulsions, prejudices, inveterate habits, reflex responses to advertising--inevitably face these issues. In sum, these issues are their "dark night of the soulT' and ordinary Review for Religious Christians need serious adult catechesis about handling these inte-rior faith issues (and hope issues), and they need a way of self-examination that allows them to apply it. The examen must be able to help me make this distinction: Is an experience my sin, a sin, or sin in me? The question begs for long study in a church plagued by narcissistic individualism. Perhaps, even more, it begs for some method of prayer that will allow each of us to probe the Christian self, a method available to the merest beginners as well as to someone who falls in love with God again on every starry night. In the Ignatian context, we sin when we fail to enact powers and virtues and holy desires that God is creating in us, when we are carelessly unaware of them or enact them neglectfully or refuse to be aware of them for lack of love. Considering sin as failure offers the great advantage of emphasizing simultaneously the interior and the external, an impor-tant consideration when we come to the examen of conscience. When a spring fails to bring out sweet water, the spring must be clogged or fouled in itself and the fields around it are deprived of water. When the fig tree fails to bring forth good fruit, the tree is suffering some internal disease or defect and the world around it is deprived of figs. When we sin-- it.;is extraordinarily useful to notice at this juncture in Christian history--we simultaneously suffer some internal fault or defect and our lifeworld suffers some lack or positive injury. Were I to make a false claim against a neighbor in a grave matter, I would suffer internal falseness and dishonor and my neighbor would suffer some concrete injury. That case is obvious; some cases are less so. For instance, when I do not pray according to the spe-cific gifts God is giving to me (time, desire, opportunity for min-istry), I fail to enact many of my gifts and my lifeworld is deprived in some way. When spouses fail to nourish regard for each other and starve their married love, their children suffer in ways we can now name. Clearly, ordinary people living ordinary lives need ways to connect their interior failings with their relationships and their lifeworld. Ordinary people living ordinary lives need ways to connect their interior failings with their relationships and their lifeworld. 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars The Recovery of Shame Another great advantage of thinking of sin in terms of failure is the recovery of shame. A hundred years ago Freud concluded that shame is subsumed into guilt, and depth psychology has not had much to say.about shame ever since. More recently, popu-larizers have urged that all shame is "toxic" and insisted that we should s~pew it out as we would a gulp of hemlock. Both of these stances seem extreme and seem to be connected with modern and postmodern individualism. For guilt can be entirely secret and internal, but shame always reaches both individuals and society. .'The Oxford English Dictionary finds that for centuries shame has meant "a painful emotion arising from the consciousness of something dishonoring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or situation"; the "fear of .offense against propriety or decency"; and the threat of "disgrace, 'ignominy, loss of esteem or reputation." (Notice that this language brings forcibly to mind the language of the Kingdom and the Contemplation.) In all of these senses, shame hovers between individuals' self-appreciation and what their society considers honorable, proper, decent, and gracious. Shame has been repudiated as an outmoded burden of a "shame culture," in which what we pejoratively called "confor-mity" is maintained through the fear of being shamed. But we are mistaken to repudiate shame, for it is that repudiation (along with much else) that has given scope in our culture to narcissis-tic individualism. Guilt is connected with transgression, with breaking law or violating conscience; shame is connected with failure, with falling short of an ideal. That ideal is a ~:eality which transcends the indi-vidual self and which individuals have chosen to make their own. Hence, shame belongs in the Ignatian examen of conscience. For the examen, like all prayer in the Ignatian tradition, is connected with the magis, and the magis refers to an ideal. Even if I am exam-ining whether I broke a commandment, in the Ignatian tradition I am holding up a higher ideal than mere conformity--some kind of magis that calls me, considering the gifts I am given, at least to keep the commandments all the more perfectly. Hence, failure in the Ignatian tradition commonly means falling short of an ideal. The result of that is not guilt; it is shame, which connects me to those in my life and to my lifeworld. Understanding sin as failure, then, supports the examen of conscience in the Ignatian tradition. It does so for one final tea- Review for Religious son: I cannot know my failures unless and until I have known my gifts. This is surely why Ignatius begins the five-point examen with an act of thanks to God. I cannot know specifically and con-cretely how I failed unless and until I know my gifts in all their specificity and concreteness. In the Ignatian context, a failure of any kind (fiscal, physical, aesthetic) transmutes into sin when we have failed at what we have all the gifts to succeed at because we either refuse to use those gifts or actually reject them. Failure transmutes into sin when we fail to use gifts that we have when and as our experience and our lifeworld call on us to use them. We sin when we fail to enact powers and virtues and holy desires that God is creating in us, gifts we are aware of and yet neglect or gifts we refuse to be aware of for lack of love. This brings me to the third thing that the Ignatian examen entails. I can cover it briefly. The Stress on Gift and Giftedness I have suggested that the Ignatian examen, like all the prayer in that tradition, is an ongoing search of our life story for what God hopes in us. It entails knowing our authentic desires. It results in a felt sense that a given act or experience is holy or sin-ful and, if sinful, whether the sense is of guilt or shame or the sorrowful playing out of sin in ourselves. Above all, this examen grows from a graced union with an active God. Nowhere in the Ignatian tradition is God so transparently active as in the Contemplation for Love. There the focus on what God wishes me to do, and on how God's wishes come to be expressed in my self ontologically, emerges in an almost fiery con-centration on the gifts that God continually shares with us in the created world. The one praying recounts the gifts, then God's presence in the gifts, and then God's present action in them and finally embraces the gifts and their enactments as a share in God's Self. The prayer verges into being a quasi-ontological invitation to enact the gift I am aware of in order to collaborate with God in creating not only my own self but also my lifeworld. "Moral action" transmutes into a particular in the divine action--utterly holy in itself. After such a prayer, particularly if this way of pray-ing should become habitual (as it surely does among Ignatian practitioners), an authentically Ignatian kind of examen of con-science will focus on giftedness and the enactment of gifts. ~Vlay-June 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars [ I The. Ignatian examen, in fact, presupposes a sense of collab-orating with God in bringing myself and my lifeworld into exis-tence and giving them definition. This sense results from the Principle and Foundation properly explained and adequately grasped. Though this spiritual sense is not unrelated to Ifiigo's profoundly mystical illumination at the Cardoner, many ordinary Catholics are able to appreciate it. We can surely come to this understanding: God has hopes and desires for me regarding my life and my lifeworld overall and even in the smallest details. Within that awareness is the faith conviction that God my Creator and Lord is creating me moment by moment. Of course, the col-laboration of creature with Creator God is totally asymmetrical, the finite with the infinite, the failed sinner with the Holy One. But it is truly a collaboration. How does God conduct this col-laboration if not by creating in each one gifts to enact, the free-dom to choose among those gifts, and the very enactment of those gifts ? The precise failure of modernity, from which we all still suf-fer, has been people's dim or even nonexistent awareness that every concrete existential reality in my life and lifeworld is God's giving at that and this very moment. Within this modernity the church has seemed commonly to believe in the rationalists' "watchmaker" God, infinitely transcendent, the first cause in a vast long line of secondary causes ending in each one of us. That belief had permeated so many. people that the First Vatican Council felt impelled to define as a doctrine of the faith that God directly, personally, as First Cause, created each human soul. The definition left problems behind it, the first of which was, What about the body? The reasons for the failure of modern Christians to keep mindful that God is always Creator are dense and many, but we ought to note several of the more obvious because they are per-tinent to the examen of conscience. We have become aware, to begin with, how human behavior is defined by genetic precondi-tioning, childhood neglect, and various abuses. We wonder--to visit this same issue in another place---how compulsions and addic-tions can be gifts. We have grown so used to noting our uncon-scious motivations that we use them as excuses. Who has not heard such remarks as ".I can't help it, I'm an ENTJ" and "Well, I'm a two on the enneagram"? More positively, we think of the self as the product of our own choices; we feel responsible for mak- Review for Religious ing ourselves. We know that we must be authentic and express our true self. Well, in what sense are the me and my own se/fgifts if I achieve them? If these grounds for our failure to walk humbly as creatures before our Creator and Lord are even partially true, we well need an examen of conscience that facilitates the connection of our gifts with our actions both graced and failed. I do not mean "in a general way"; I mean a method of connecting our concrete gifts with concrete enactments. How does my gift of intelligence connect with my failure to get a job I applied for? What responsibility have I, son of alcoholic parents, for yet another enactment of dependency? What was the Spirit of Jesus Christ trying to tell me in a con-solation I suddenly received and dis-trusted during a conversation with someone I do not like? We have so much knowledge about the inner workings of the human psy-che that we are being irresponsible not to ask, What is going on here? We once demanded of ourselves the motivation behind our behaviors: What made me say no? What am I doing graduate studies for? Why did I not tell the whole truth? We must now recognize that in every so-called motive there converge contexts, perspectives, perceptions, val-ues, desires, prior decisions, and habits. We cannot give an account of this complexity by asking ourselves, even very earnestly, What was my motive? To know failure for what it is requires that one know one's skills, gifts, capacities, abilities, habits, and so on.After all, what fails? Hence, the most helpful examen of conscience will require that I examine in detail my gifts. Not in general, not unconnected to my current experience, as though I were makinga catalogue of all my gifts and all my achievements. Rather, the exercise will demand that I inquire, with precision and thoroughness, which of my gifts, skills, achievements, habits, and so on are involved in what I am examining, for this is the way God draws me into coop-eration in creating my own self and my lifeworld. And this is how we can reach for fervent ongoing conversion that really addresses ourselves and our situations. In the Christian We need an examen of conscience that facilitates the connection of our gifts with our actions both graced and failed. Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars tradition the examen has been integral to ongoing conversion; in fact, it could almost be called the expression of ongoing conver-sion. It is integral as well to growing deeper in holiness by accept-ing more and more into every part of myself my redemption in Christ. For conversion, contrary to popular image, does not mean an action done once and forever. Conversion is perhaps best thought of as accepting responsibility for my self---my thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even my desiring--at this time and in some particular realm of human experience. Thus, a recovering alcoholic accepts responsibility in the realm of moral experience by acknowledging his own drives and needs and responding to them in Christian freedom, All of us have to accept responsibil-ity for ourselves in the realms of intellectual development, moral judgment and action, affective and emotional functioning, appre-ciation of beauty and development of taste, and active civil engage-ment for the sake of good order and justice. Obviously, we each go through many, many experiences in every one of these realms, and at each step we all are called on to take greater and greater responsibility for ourselves. That is what conversion means, and obviously it is an ongoing process. In the Ignatian tradition, conversion does not deal with the minimum. As I have said before, we who follow this tradition feel that the Spirit of Christ calls steadily to the magis. This magis, however, will never be an abstraction; the Spirt of Christ does not invite us to "holiness" or to "heroism." Rather, the Spirit calls in concrete matters one after another, which grow out of and actualize a fundamental option to follow, and perhaps even to imitate, Jesus Christ. The magis will continually involve further insight into my own thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and desiring and into how these are or are not realizing God's hopes in me. That is the point of the incarnation. The Examen of Particulars Let me recall what gives Ignatian shape to an examen of con- . science. First, any method of self-examination in the Ignatian tra-dition, like all prayer in that tradition, stays close to story. It~is about finding God's wishes in me and in my lifeworld. Or to put that another way, it is about finding my most authentic desiring, which is God's way of shaping both my self and my lifeworld. Then, insofar as it deals with sin, this examen works well when the Review for Relig4ous metaphor for sin is failure. The original sin is the failure of my humanness, bred into me by dysfunctional family, friends, society, and schools, not to mention air, food, and technologies. The fail-ure is both in me and in my lifeworld, so that when I feel it with any clarity I feel shamed as much as guilty, or even more. The typical Ignatian image is of the knight who has failed his Lord or the handmaid who has failed her mistress. Now, what kind of examen of conscience might respond to these three points about Ignatian prayer and spirituality at the beginning of the 21st century? This examen will proceed in an intimate relationship with God creating me moment by moment. It will help find what God is hoping for me to do. It will focus on experiences as totalities (their contexts, perspectives, perceptions, values, desires, decisions, habits), on things done and undergone both in their externals and in my own thoughts, feelings, and inner behaviors. It will connect external and internal events with actual gifts being created in me by God. The ~xamen will keep me mindful of what I have chosen to do for Christ, or what I believe I might do for Christ. Rather than retail a series of events, this examen will help me unpack both my successes and my failures, bringing me to feel accurately and generously any guilt I have incurred and to assess shame, the failure to reach my own ideals. Throughout, the examen will work on the basis of gratitude to God for gifts, hours, life, everything. This means that, though I may feel sharp shame because in some concrete way I have failed, I still will not allow the tempting thought to seize me that I am a failure. Here is what might prove to be a useful scheme: Always begin by recalling that God is creating you moment by moment. Each time you decide something that shapes you a~ a person, God, too, is deciding to shape you. Each time you relate to another or oth-ers, the Spirit of Christ is relating you to your entire lifeworld and creating it in you and through you. And, while you .are look-ing at the past, over which you have no further control, God is always acting in the now, the Master of history to whom past and future are present. Be mindful that you are now in God and that God loves who you are--not who you might be or could be or even should be. Let the Father's gaze rest on you in all of its com-plaisance. The examen of particulars has five moments. First, recall an incident or an experience. Second, remember your response. May-)~tne 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars Third, recall which of your gifts were or mighthave been involved in this concrete experience. Fourth, examine the particulars: What was really going on? And, fifth, ponder in Christ, What comes " next? 1. Recalling an incident or an experience. What happened? Recall some incident or experience during your day. For a moment, just remember what happened. Recall an incident (an encounter, for instance, or a friendly gesture): what was done and said, by whom, where, and when? Or recall an experience (an achievement, for instance, or a feeling of fear): what happened? You can finish this in just a minute even if you jot down a bit of description. This moment is parallel to entering an Ignatian contempla-tion: you notice who was there, what was done, and what was said. At first you might take any experience that' stands out, whether holy, harsh, or hollow (by which I mean ambiguous). Often enough some incident or some habitual or characteristic action stands out as holy or unholy. You might, however, ask about how Christ is redeeming you, or what the experience of a conso-lation signifies, or what a failure signifies. After a while you may well find yourself concentrating on one kind of incident or expe-rience: on getting angry rather often, on almost always being late or not finishing things, on feeling restless or touchily anxious, on handling a new kind of success. When you note that, be aware that the Ignatian tradition has valued the examen of a particular virtue or failing as a signpost of how the Spirit of Christ is invit- ¯ ing you to spiritual growth. ~ 2. Remembering your response. How did you, yourself, act and react? Remember your thoughts and feelings and behaviors, what you did and said. Remember also what you wanted to ~do and say, and then how you felt about what happened. Take enough time to recall these interior phenomena. If you are like the rest of us, you too often let thoughts, feelings, and desires go unnoted. Yet they are important connectors to your lifeworld and to your God, and you would do well to write down what you find. After finishing these two phases, let the incident or experience, itself, rest while you turn to your own self. 3. Recall your gi)%. In every single action and reaction, you act as a whole person, interrelated in concrete ways to other.per-sons. Yet you are complex, with five senses and certain physical qualities; with gifts of intelligence, education, and rearing; and endowed with a certain limited number of abilities and talents. Review for Religious You are graced with certain qualities and characteristics, and you have realized certain achievements and developed certain skills. God your Creator and Lord has been and continues creating all of these complexities in you--or, rather, creating you in all these complexities--and they are all gifts, even your skills and achieve-ments. In any given action or reaction, certain of your gifts con-tribute or are called on. As you listen to a friend, your empathy, skill in discernment, availability, freedom to spend the time as you choose, and fidelity as a friend all come into play. Your accom-plishment with a guitar, while remaining present, probably would not come actively into play, nor your computer proficiency either. But, if you are looking into an incident of getting angry at a com-puter, that proficiency would be relevant, and your gift of empa-thy perhaps less so. In one way or another, though, you do bring every one of your gifts into every incident or experience. If you have gifts of intelligence and articulateness, you may, at the moment of noticing a fellow worker's error, consciously keep your mouth shut so as not to offend. That is to say, in any experience you will have acted out some of your gifts and not others. In the incident or experience that comes to the fore during your examen, which of your gifts were involved or could have been involved? Among your gifts, note abilities, talents, charac-teristics, qualities, skills, achievements, strengths. Take plenty of time to do this part of the exercise, and insist with yourself that you be complete in cataloguing the gifts. You may well find this part of the examen somewhat difficult; many do. Part of the rea-son is that through and in those gifts God connects you to the peop!e in your life and lifeworld and raises in you those desires which, enacted, will bring justice, peace, and love to you and your lifeworld. A plea to the Spirit of Jesus Christ for light will help. 4. Examining particulars. What was really going on? Having looked into your concrete gifts and characteristics and achieve-ments, you are in a position to see more fully (and perhaps more accurately) what was going on in your whole self. Go back over the first and the second points and examine them in all their partic-ulars. Take your time doing ~his, especially if you started it while you were listing your gifts. For what seemed a mere burst of tem-per may prove to be sinful self-reliance and lack of trust in God. What appeared a simple consolation may, on closer examination, signalize a major invitation by the Spirit to growth. You thought ~/lay-June 1997 Tetlow ¯ The Examen of Particulars at first that you were being humble, and you turn out to have been cowardly. You feared that you had failed in courage, and turn out to have exercised a maturer and deeper prudence than you had been exercising before. An action that you justified may in truth have been a failure; you acted tough when your gifts and the circumstances called on you to show greater compassion. All depends on the particulars. Realize that you are asking: What is God telling me in this incident or experience? What is God hoping in these gifts that I enacted or failed to enact? Where is the Holy Spirit leading me? How was I interacting in it with Jesus Christ, my redeemer? Done correctly, this exercise is the opposite of narcissistic self-regard. 5. What comes next? As you discover more clearly what was going on in the incident, you will come to see clearly what you might do next. So you may have to repent and have sorrow and beg God's forgiveness, or you may need to rejoice and give God praise and thanks. You may be called on to do something or to wait upon the Lord. No matter what you discover in truth, God is hoping in you, for love of you and of your lifeworld. This examen puts me into contact with my real thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors, allowing me to decide whether I consider them Christhke or not. Better: this is a wonderful way to open to the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit can teach anxious people to trust God the Father much more readily if they have become aware of their anxiety and of how it permeates all their feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and desiring and begs for healing. The Spirit can more readily teach slothful people who have not spoken out against injustice if now they are growing aware of their gifts of clear thinking and articulateness and also aware that they are not using those gifts. These are spiritual tasks that ordinary Christians feel attracted to and can keep at. This form is surely only one of many possible ones, and imperfect at that. Perhaps it will move forward the quest of finding God in all things, even in self-examination. Review for Religious KENNETH R. HIMES Justice-and-Peace Ministry: Three Decades Plus Few developments in religious life since Vatican Council II have been more hopeful than the dramatic rise in jus-tice- and-peace activity, a commitment to the social mission of the church. Today this ministry is more diverse in style, more widespread in locale,, and more intimately connected to the ideals of religious life than would have been pre-dicted thirty years ago. Without doubt it is a movement of grace, committed people responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. In this article I will review the recent past, discuss the centrality of justice-and-peace ministry to the mission of the church today, and look toward the future of religious in this ministry. Regarding the response, during the past thirty years, of United States religious (particularly'men, for I know more about them) to the church's urgent calls to social ministry, I offer not a care-ful chronological reconstruction of issues and develop-ments, but rather a personal reflection that is intended to provoke further reflection and also discussion. Kenneth R. Himes OFM, professor of moral theology at the Washington Theological Union, has held, as visiting professor during this school year, the McKeever Chair of Moral Theology at St. John's University in Jamaica, New York. Originally the keynote speech at CMSM's justice-and-peace conference in August 1996, this article--here modified and shortened--appeared in the fall 1996 issue of CMSM Forum. The author may be addressed at 6896.Laurel Street; Washington, D.C. 20012. " perspectives May-3~une 1997 Himes ¯ Justice-and-Peace Ministry Foreign Missions and the Social Mission of the Church The foreign missionary work of religious underwent great rethinking as a result of the theologies of revelation, grace, and church that scholars produced in the 1950s and 1960s. After Vatican Council II there was a need to rearticulate the nature and purpose of foreign missionary activity. Not everyone was able to do that as adequately as had been hoped, and the result was that younger religious felt a diminishing interest in the missions. Moreover, many foreign missionaries returned to the States, some-times with a sense of what came to be called "reverse mission," that is, the intent of communicating to people in the United States how Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans saw us. I think that those who took up the task of "reverse mission" were mostly religious who had worked in Central and South America. This was partly because the United States has great influence there and partly because the Latin American church was quicker to develop and give voice to a local theology that did not merely adopt the basic themes of Vatican II, but adapted the conciliar vision to the Latin American reality. Thus missionaries returning from Latin America came back to the United States with a perspective and orientation that was self-consciously dif-ferent from the North American outlook. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, some of the most prominent religious dedicated to justice-and-peace activities in the States had previously spent time abroad in the missions. Frequently they were more critical of the United States than their fellow religious and were quicker to devote themselves to the social mission of the churcli. Their influence has been enormous and has brought both strengths and weaknesses to the development of justice-and-peace work in the U.S. church. The "reverse mission" people were prophetic, able to distance themselves from the conventional wis-dom of U.S. society, and they were able to expose the dark side of a Catholicism that had become comfortably suburban and middle-class. The judgments made about the United States sometimes seemed harsh, even radical, but they were an important counter-weight in a church that was less and les~' a blue-collar, urban, eth-nic population and more and more a white-collar, assimilated, suburban middle class. A major benefit provided by foreign missionaries to religious communities in particular and the U.S. church in general was an Review fim Religious awareness of the international nature of Catholic justice-and-peace~ activity. Questions of economic development in poor nations, economic colonialism, the behavior of multinational cor-porations, Central American politics, apartheid, the plight of refugees--these and many other issues came into the rec-room and dining-room conversations of religious communities because of foreign missionaries' experience of a world much larger than the local parish, retreat house, school campus, or shrine church. A more ambiguous aspect of the global awareness of foreign missionaries was their inclination to adopt the philosophical and theological categories of liberation theology. By helping to intro-duce this vitally important theological and pastoral movement to the U.S. church, the returning missionaries expanded the theo-logical conversation within our nation. In the 1960s and 1970s, many North American Catholic theologians were still far more engaged with the European theologies of Rahner, Congar, Schillebeeckx, K~ing, Fransen, Fuchs, and others than with the voices of Guti~rrez, Segundo, Boff, Sobrino, and their colleagues. Bringing back not only knowledge of new authors but sensitivity to the life situation of the Latin American church was a wonder-ful service provided by those who performed "reverse mission." At the same time an unfortunate aspect of this influence was that many in the justice-and-peace community simply adopted liberation theology without sufficient reflection upon how the Latin American experience should be integrated with North American realities. As a result, justice-and-peace ministry employed a vocabulary, a rhetorical style, and a social analysis which could not speak adequately to the U.S. Catholic experi-ence of democracy, free markets, and liberal culture that had shaped an outlook very different from the reality presumed by liberation theologians. Of course, the ministry of justice and peace in this country must be shaped by a wide-ranging conversation with the church throughout the world, but the conversation must also be rooted in an understanding of life in the United States-- our traditions, our institutions, our virtues and vices. Another aspect of the influence of foreign missionaries on justice-and-peace ministry is its prophetic edge. In many ways Catholic social action throughout this country's history has tended toward reform liberalism. Now and then during the 19th cen-tury, the immigrant communities, particularly the non-English-speaking immigrants, took~a more separatist attitude toward Ma),-Jttne 1997 Himes ¯ .~ustice-and-Peace Ministry For many Catholics, American society, with all its problems, was not simply lacking in structures of grace. United States culture, but Catholics in this country usually worked for incremental reform from within the dominant ethos of the nation. (The most significant exception to this has been the 20th-century Catholic Worker movement.) Assimilation, not with-drawal, was the goal for most immigrant Catholics, and the church promoted such an ambition, Much was accomplished as a result. Catholic intellectuals and church leaders, although often critical, also found much that was worthy of accep-tance in the way of life found in the United States. One need only think of John Carroll, John Ireland, Isaac Hecker, James Gibbons, Peter Dietz, John Ryan, and John Courtney Murray to remember that the trend in Catholic social activism was to see the possibility of putting the two words American and Catholic together, rather than stressing some incompatibility. Returning missionaries, however, looked at their homeland somewhat from the perspective of outsiders. Influenced by their foreign mission experience and by the theology of liberation, such missionaries offered a harsher and more radical analysis than many U.S. Catholics had previously considered. Aligning themselves with the voices of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and others who had become alienated by the Vietnam War, an important segment of the justice-and-peace communRT strongly opposed the United States policy. But most American Catholics never embraced the more radical critics of society such as James Groppi, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and Merton. This was so, I believe, not because of shallow faith or lack of virtue on the part of the majority, but because of its different experience. For many Catholics, American society, with all its problems, was not simply lacking in structures of grace. Justice-and-peace ministries that assumed an emphasis on countercultural strategies did not capture the full experience of those Catholics, who found in this society elements of God's gracious presence as well as human sinfulness. The upshot, though not intended, was a certain elitism in justice-and-peace ministry, a belittling of middle-class Catholics and their alleged vices of consumerism, racism, nationalism, and parochialism. No doubt the prophetic or countercultural element of jus-tice- and-peace ministry did shake the taken-for-granted world of Review for Religious many Catholics in this country. Although they had not been indif-ferent to the situation of other nations or peoples, U.S. Catholics were challenged by those in reverse mission and by other harsh critics of our society to consider the ways in which the United States was complicitous in the suffering felt by many on our planet. The call to conscience provoked some anger, but also much salutary soul-searching among faithful people, and helped prevent American Catholics from becoming too uncritical in their assimilation. In addition, many missionaries returning from poor coun-tries came home with a renewed appreciation for simple living. Living in countries where material conditions were harsher than in the United States gave foreign missionaries the opportunity to rethink the distinction between being and having, between what is necessary and what is luxury. Their example of simple liv-ing inspired many fellow religious and many lay people to link lifestyle issues with political commitments and to rediscover the social implications of asceticism so as to connect self-discipline with social solidarity. Spirituality and Justice-and-Peace Ministry Not only in asceticism but in the entire range of spirituality topics, an important connection has been made between justice-and- peace ministry and spirituality. One of the early problems in social ministry was the frustration that accompanied the work: small victories and large setbacks, the complexity of the existing problems along with the appearance of new ones, time passing and social conditions worsening. Many religious discovered that justice-and-peace ministry brought high risk of fatigue, anger, alienation, and marginalization. Classmates might rejoice in being made pastors of successful parishes, others in the community were achieving success in teaching or administering schools, preachers and counselors were drawing loyal followers among the Catholic laity, but often the religious working in justice-and-peace min-istry were on the margins of a congregation's ministerial life. Out of necessity as much as desire, those religious engaged in the social mission of the church began a search for a spirituality that would support their ministry. This has led to marvelous advances in the spiritual journeys of countless religious, but it has not been easy to move from a spirituality that stressed renun- ~¥lay-~une 1997 Himes ¯ ~stice-and-Peace Ministry ciation of the world to a spirituality that is more at home in the world. Some were-not able to make the transition, and justice-and- peace ministry has had its share of religious who were unable to persevere in that taxing and unrewarding ministry or were unable to continue in their vows. Given the tumultuousness of these last thirty years, a socially conscious spirituality was cru-cial for maintaining the faith, hope, and charity that support jus-tice- and-peace ministry. Developing such a spirituality, however, often required moving beyond established paradigms of the spir-itual life and rediscovering the richness of the biblical tradition. Today more and more of our confreres have found the God revealed in the Bible to be more passionate, more engaged in human history, than the God of the philosophers, whose omni-science and omnipotence do not readily suggest lovableness. Coming to understand how the covenant with Yahweh and the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus were inextricably tied to .build-ing communities of justice, mercy, peace, and love has fostered a biblical spirituality that is vastly different from that which many religious received in their novitiates during the 1940s and 1950s. From John XXIII's optimism about the world and from the docu-ments of the council, an outline of a spirituality emerged which was more incarnational and more personal. No'longer was the image of the holy religious one who fled the world and strove to be angelic, for now holiness was to be found in the world: the spiri-tualities we embraced encouraged us to be more human, not less so. In many communities it seems that those engaged in social ministry are also the ones who have taken the call to holiness most seriously. Frequently the social activists in the congrega-tion are keenly interested in living in intentional communities with regular times of communal prayer. Retreats, directed and preached, have in recent years concentrated on topics like faith and justice, a spirituality of peacemaking, living the gospel in an affluent culture, and seeking God in everyday activities. More and more religious are interested in preaching on justice and peace. Since the late 1980s, interest in the environment has iadded another rich strain to spirituality: appreciation of the beauty of creation becomes a revelation of God, and reverence for creation a way of showing reverence for God. Over the last thirty years, relating the social mission of the church to one's personal search for God has occasioned significant writing, and any number of books and articles take as an axiom that the journey inward and outward Review for Religious are not at cross purposes, but are thoroughly intertwined. Religious today are much better able to integrate their desire for God with their quest for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. The Role of Religious and the Role of the Laity When religious took up the challenge of renewal following Vatican II, there was an energy and an air of excitement. People began to see the possibilities of new ministries and new ways of serving in old ministries. The call to read the signs ofthe times led religious to seek out new forms of social work, political activism, and community organizing. Encouraged by documents like the 1971 Synod's statement Justice in the World and Paul VI's Call to Action, religious involved in justice-and-peace ministry saw themselves as being faithful to the council's vision of the rela-tionship of church and world. Among the positive consequences of such a development was the public witness of many religious to the church's commitment to building a more just and peaceful world. As vowed religious gave themselves generously to the social mission of the Catholic community, they constituted a living rebuttal to those who looked upon religion as a retreat from the world and a shirking of the responsibility caring for the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of human existence. The presence of religious in many roles previously viewed as "worldly" occasioned a reevaluation of ways of distinguishing between sacred and secular and elicited new appreciation for the religious depth of activity that heretofore had been seen as simply secular. In addition, a great benefit of this outward thrust in mission beyond the institutional boundaries of the church to the wider society was that it led relig!ous into much greater collaboration with the laity. The pre-Vatican II church, of course, also con-sisted of clergy, religious, and laity working together. Even in the heyday of vocations to consecrated life, the large Catholic network of social-welfare programs, schools, and hospitals involved, work-ing partnerships between religious and the laity. Yet it is true that, during the last three decades, there has been increased contact between religious and lay people, more egalitarian styles of shared ministry, and a sharpening of skills f~r collaborative ministry. At the same time, however, religious have been subtly tempted to assume leadership in places where lay people might be expected May-June 1997 Himes ¯ .~tice-and-Peace Ministry to come to the fore, as encouraged by the council document Apostolicam actuositatem, with its desire that lay people carry the gospel into public life. By reason of their large numbers and var-ied experience, lay people are best suited to be the leaven in busi-ness, politics, the arts, education, social service, and other such endeavors. But in recent years it is still religious communities that have sponsored many justice-and-peace centers, newsletters, programs, and activities through which the church strives to engage the wider world, That many religious took the lead in such activity reflects well upon their dedication and creativity, but perhaps it was time to leave ways open for many more lay. people to do such creating and leading. The high profile of religious in the church's justice-and-peace work is related to the more radical and elitist aspects of the min-istry that I pointed out above. As outsiders to much of the work-ings of secular society and as people expected to have less concern about career and salary, religious could afford to be. more harsh in their judgments about secular institutions. Lay people, in con-trast, were generally more attuned to the ambiguity of the busi-ness world and less prone to make broad prophetic denunciations of the profit motive, economic competition, and material success; There is surely truth in the claim that, during the last thirty years, religious in justice-and-peace ministry were considerably more critical of United States society than their parents, siblings, nephews, and nieces among the Catholic laity. Thus the formu-lations of problems and the suggested solutions did not engage lay people the way they did religious. As justice-and-peace ministry draws more upon the talent and experience of lay people, we may witness in it a different tone and style. Parochial Ministry and the Charism of Religious Perhaps no development in contemporary.religious life has been more important than the response to the council's affirma, tion that "institutes have their own proper characters and func-tions. Therefore the spirit and aims of each founder should be faithfully accepted and retained" in the renewal efforts of reli-gious (Perfectae caritatis, §2). The past thirty years have seen an onslaught of historical research, publication, and discussion by and for religious trying to ascertain their charism as manifested in their founders' lives and writings. Revlew for Religious Is there any religious institute today that does not work more self-consciously than a few decades ago at understanding and pass-ing on its charism? Less and less is it valid to talk about religious generically, for the distinctive charisms of monastic, mendicant, and ~apostolic communities (to name just three ways of describing religious) cannot be lumped together. And diversity is the case even within these categories~ as Carmelites, Dominicans and Franciscans--mendicants all--would attest. The rediscovery of the various communities' specific charisms occasioned a rethinking of the religious priesthood. The Jesuit historian John W. O'Malley has suggested that the theology of priesthood widely held after the council was inadequate to the complexity of the tradition of religious life within the church (Tradition and Transition, chap. 6). Many commentators on Vatican II have noted that it talked about Christ in the classical threefold schema of priest, prophet, and king. These last two images expand priestly identity beyond a narrow cultic understanding, retrieving the ministry of the word and pastoral leadership as elements of the ordained minister's identity. So far so good, but, as O'Malley sug-gests, this is still too narrow a view. The teaching of Vatican II rests on an assumption about the unity of the priesthood that is not historically accurate. In speak-ing of priestly ministry, Presbyterorum ordinis images (1) a stable community of faith and practice, (2) a parish setting, and (3) a specific hierarchical union with the local bishop. In other words, the document presents the diocesan priesthood as the norm or the theme, and other modes of priestly ministry as variations on it. Inasmuch as, at the time of the council, one-third of all the ordained ministers in the church were religious, this was a large assumption. One of its consequences is that Perfectae caritatis treats religious profession as an issue of lifestyle--discussing spiritual-ity, vows, and discipline, but ignoring ministry. Religious men have experienced lately a growing disen-chantment with the relegation of their religious vocation to a lifestyle question. They have begun discussing what formative influence their particular charism has on ministry. It has become apparent that the Vatican II approach is insufficient to account for the experience of thousands of ordained religious. The founders of religious communities were charismatic fellows whose ministry flowed, not from their official position, but from their reading of'the pastoral need and a sense of personal inspiration. Himes ¯ ffustice-and-Peace Ministot Pi'iestly ministry for religious is broad; it takes forms of pastoral care that are devised to meet the spiritual needs of people. Often such ministry was exempt from direct episcopal super-vision and beyond diocesan structures and boundaries. For exam-ple, in many religious institutes it was the various ministries of the word--preaching, teaching, lecturing, spiritual direction, direct-ing retreats, publishing books, and ministering to non-Cfitholics as well as to the faithful--that were the normal ministries for reli-gious priests. In many cases, this took ordained religious beyond the walls of the church and even of Christian soci-ety. Priestly ministry for religious is broad; it takes forms of pastoral care that are devised to meet the spiritual needs of people, needs that can appear marginal to the ordinary pastoral tasks in a parochial community. For that very reason, a variety of religious communi-ties have never seen caring for parishes as central to their work. Many ordained religious carry out their ministry, not in a parochial setting, but in a classroom, a retreat house, or an out~each center in some domestic or foreign mission area. In short, the model is not that of preaching to a largely stable community of believers, but of spreading the gospel by means of occupations and tasks that make contact with people in ways that are beyond the ordinary parochial structures of a diocese. Although we all know that there is a shortage of ordained min-isters for parishes throughout the nation, this does not mean that religious should become stopgaps. They should continue to offer their own pastoral assessment of how to serve the people of God consistent with their charism. This may require less, not more, parochial involvement. The social mission of the church may be the most important ministry to which religious ,should attend--and one which may receive less and less attention from the secular clergy as they find themselves stretched thin to meet the needs of American Catholicism's extensive parochial structures. As religious have sought to clarify their identity ,during these last thirty years, they have gradually realized that the charisms of religious life may lead them in directions quite different from those of the local diocesan presbyterate. Am I a religious first or a priest first? is a bad question. The proper question is how rain- Review for Religious istry and religious life permeate and shape one another. How does a man's religious vocation color or inflect his ministry as an ordained person, and vice versa? If what has been said is true for ordained religious, it should clearly be the case for lay religious. Reconsidering institutional commitments has often been painful and even divisive. Just as ordained religious have at times taken their cue more from the local diodese than from their community's tradition and charism, so too have lay religious. In some instances, the staffing of dioce-san schools has been analogous to the staffing of diocesan parishes. The issues of a community's corporate institutional commitments vis-a-vis its charism can seem to be a minefield, and the movement of religious out of other ministries into justice~and-peace endeaw ors has often been the occasion for a minor explosion. Yet the process of renewal continues, and the interest that religious have taken in the church's social mission has been strengthened by renewed appreciation of the charisms of various religious com-munities. The Centrali~ of the Social Mission A striking feature of the history of the church's social mis-sion is that it was seen as the generosity of its heart, but not always as a requirement of its nature. The theological reflection in Vatican II's Gaudium et spes and in later documents such as Justitia in mundo and Evangelii nuntiandi have shown how justice-and-peace ministry and the religious mission of the church are con-nected. This essential religious mission has been expressed in our time as evangelization: "Evangelizing is in fact the grace and voca-tion proper to the church, her deepest identity" (Evangelii nun-tiandi, §14). As Paul VI explains, evangelization is a process, a vital part of which is entrance into the community. People cannot simply be preached at or lectured to on Catholic doctrine; they must be brought into a community of faith. Such a community has a distinct pattern of behavior, a way of life. In its earliest years Christianity was known as "The Way" because it was seen to be about living a certain way of life, becom-ing part of a particular community. The gospel must be a word that transforms. As evangelizers, we must bring people into an active Christian community. In other words, faith entails not only attitudes and ideas but also commitments. The community that is May-J~ne 1997 Himes ¯ Justice-and-Peace Ministry Christian must be a community of witnesses. Without witnesses, evangelization fails. We are to witness to the very thing that Jesus was committed to: the reign of God. The Lord's proclamation of the reign of God was the good news. However, it is not enough simply to know and speak the gospel message. Ministry cannot be a matter of "Here's your answer and, by the way, what was your question?" If the community of witnesses, namely the church, is to minister effectively, we must attend to people's immediate concerns and show how faith in Jesus speaks to those concerns. Years ago the old Critic magazine had a pertinent cartoon. A handsome, sharply dressed cleric is speaking to a woman in her liv-ing room. Standing there in a tattered housedress, hair curlers tumbling over her forehead and ears, she is ob'~iously pregnant. Two little children tug at the hem of her dress; her husband in a T-shirt lies belly-up on the sofa, surrounded by beer cans. Laundry is piled in the corner, and in the background pots boil over on the stove. The dog is chasing the cat. The smiling priest looks down at her weary face and says, "Now remember, Agnes, the Christian is an Alleluia from head to toe!" None of us will deny that faith is a reason for genuine joy. But Father's way of conveying the good news is, well, not good. We laugh or smile at the incongruities. But we realize that the reality of it hurts, that the perennial danger of religious language is using it cheaply, without having our human heart in it. Gustavo Guti6rrez puts the challenge graphically: "How are we to preach the gospel with any credibility to that two-thirds of humanity which goes to bed each night hungry, ill-housed, chron~ ically ill, and without hope for the political and material improve-ment of their lives? What can the phrases 'God is love' or 'redemption from the yoke of sin' possibly mean to them?" It is not enough to tell the good news while people are enveloped in conditions that deny the very dignity we tell them is theirs. We know that there is a here-and-now dimension to the reign of God--for present-day Christians, just as there was for the One who went about doing good in Galilee and Judea. Yet we also know that the reign of God is not here in. all its fullness. Woody Allen once said: "The lion may lie down with the lamb, but the lamb isn't going to get much sleep!" We find ourselves in a state of tension; we live in the between times. The reign of God is here ¯ . . not yet. If God's reign is here as well as not yet, then it is Review for Religious linked to history. Like Jesus himself, the reign must be incarnated and enter into the human drama. Moreover, Jesus invites us to have the same relationship with God that he has--to be sons and daughters of the Father. This implies being brothers and sisters to one. another, not only in our interior attitudes, but also in our conduct--or else it is a pious nonreality. In order to be faithful to Christ, the church must witness to both the here-and-now and the not-yet dimensions of the reign of God, but my concern in these remarks is the here and .now. For the church to be like its Lord, the community of Christians must be the agent on earth of the reign of God, incarnating in his-tory a state of life characterized by relationships of justice, peace, forgiveness, love. In a word, the task of the church is to bring about liberation. Liberation, as properly understood in Catholic the-ology, is similar to the classical word salvation, but has a less otherworldly connotation. It under-scores the here-and-now aspect of God's reign. It calls attention to the present processes whereby people begin to be extricated from sin and its effects: oppression, violence, sexism, marginalization, racism. Liberation does not presume an uncritical commitment to a spe-cific economic or political option. What it implies is the work of overcoming obstacles to human well-being. It recalls the free-dom Christ has won for all. But this freedom, this liberation, must not be thought of as simply a spiritual event. As embodied spirits we need to understand it as belonging also to temporal life. Liberation-v-or salvation, if you prefer--must mean some-thing for our lives here and now, If the church is to proclaim the ~reign of God, if we religious are ~to invite people into a relationship with God, we should help foster a way of life in which people get some foretaste, some here-and- now experience, of the fruits of God's reign. We should as a church be able to point to how their relationship with God can-- and does--transform their life. Otherwise we are reduced to promising a reign of God that is only "not yet," without any "here and now." As the 1971 Synod said, "Unless the Christian mes-sage of love and justice shows its effectiveness through action in the cause of justice in the world, it will only with great difficulty gain credibility" (chap. 2). If we are committed to the great reli- We are to witness to the very thing that Jesus was committed to: the reign of God. May-Jt~ne 1997 Himes ¯ Justice-and-Peace Ministry gious mission of the church, to evangelizing our world by procla-mation of the good news of Jesus Christ, then we must also wit-ness by our actions that this good news touches people's actual experience of economic, political, and social realities. During these past thirty years, the social mission of the church has moved from the periphery of church life to the .center. In most religious communities it is no longer necessary to make the intel-lectual case that justice-and-peace ministry is valid and important. No longer do religious who are social activists regularly encounter opposition or skepticism from within their community. In fact, they are now esteemed for their ministry. But the number of reli-gious who wish to follow in the steps of earlier justice,and-peace ministers is small. Within congregations, even though the mood has shifted from disagreement to approval, the percentage of reli-gious who work full-time in social ministries remains small. As David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis report in their study of American religious life, many religious do not find themselves personally engaged in., or particularly interested in doing, justice-and- peace ministry ("Future of Religious Orders in the United States," Origins 22, no. 15 [24 September 1992]: 264; also Review for Religious 52, no. 1 [January-February 1993]: 23). The great need, then, is to provide opportunities to acquire social-ministry information and skills. Religious generally see the point of contact between faith and justice, but not their own point of entry: Where and how to start? How to organize direct-service programs and move from there to advocacy? How to integrate global issues of poverty, refugees, war, and ethnic strife into a local ministry? How to do a social analysis of one's ministry and use it in pastoral planning? What strategies to adopt in trying to reshape major institutions of a society? How to exercise leadership in a pluralistic and secular society? There are no neat and clear answers. For successful social ministry, much knowledge, and many skills" remain to be acquired, and continuing education in this area is very much needed. Looking to the Future I propose for the sake of discussion a way to think about our situation as American male religious concerned for the ongoing vitality of the church's social mission in our times. This time in which we live--we seem unable to name it, People call it post- Review for Religious modernity, which of course is only to say that, with the passing of one era called "modernity," another is taking its place. In politi-cal life we see something similar: a post-Cold War world that includes postcommunist nations in central and eastern Europe. We in the United States appear headed for a postwelfare state with a postindustrial economy. With so many merely chronolog-ical names around, it should not surprise us that we religious lack certain clarities aboht the future of our postconciliar church. .We need to remind ourselves that the Spirit of God does not work by our clock or even our cal-endar. Other generations, too, have been confused and have had to stumble around in history before finding a pathway. Recall the Jewish people after the Exodus or during the Exile. Consider the early Jewish Christians trying to get used to Gentiles as equal partners. We can only imagine the turmoil of the fall of Rome or the rise of Islam in North Africa, once vigorous Christian regions. Compared with these things, the uncertainties of religious life in the 1990s appear less than overwhelming. In times of turmoil there is always a temptation to rush to a solution, to find some quick answer. But--of this I am convinced-- in the future few things will be more necessary for the church's social mission than the quiet determination and perseverance of religious who keep working for justice, peace, and a better envi-ronment even if no grand vision or strategy is readily forthcoming. Others may reap the benefit of the seeds planted during this time. In Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, the ambitious Richard Rich is disappointed that Sir Thomas More has suggested that he be a teacher. Rich somewhat bitterly asks, "And if I was, who would know it?" More replies, "You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a .bad public, that." Precisely such a viewpoint is what religious today need as they work for justice and peace. To my mind one of the great problems today is that people forget the importance of caring for what is near at hand, those local and people-sized institutions that provide the wider society No longer do religious who are social activists regularly encounter opposition or skepticism from within their community. 1997 Himes ¯ ~s~ice-and-Peace Ministry with its sense of community. The fate of these--families, neigh-borhoodS, labor unions, small businesses, religious comunities, and innumerable other voluntary associations--will determine the future of American life. Government can reinforce and strengthen these smaller elements of society,, but cannot substitute for them. According to Catholic social teaching, society needs a healthy, robust civic sector, a public space where smaller human communities can flourish. Today the ecology of our social envi-ronment is as threatened as our natural environment; people's sense of community is strained. But is it not true that religious, with their wealth of experience, knowledge, and skill in building and sustaining community life, have something to offer the wider society in this regard? Cannot religious men and women be among those who help repair the frayed fabric of our families, our neigh-borhoods, our civic groups, our voluntary associations? Such an approach may be dismissed as sentimental by the national elites, for it cin seem small-time. But that is one more aspect of the problem. The worlds of big business and national politics have de-legitimated local life. The world of voluntary asso-ciations and community organiz~ttions seems peripheral to the market and the government, where the talk is of billions of dollars and millions of people and, moreover, comes into people's homes via television. The megastructures of politics and business are no substitute for the spiritual, the social, and the cultural at the local level. Not that people should ignore the world of national gov-ernment and business; but, rather, they should take care that these realms support the local scene and not undermine it. Nothing that goes on at the national levels of politics and economics will improve our social life if at the local level people continue to withdraw from public space, avoid contact with neigh-bors, and refuse to participate in the social groupings that con-stitute civil society. Is it unrealistic to ask of ourselves as religious that we counter such distancing and participate in local group activities and join local community organizations? Can we not model for others the fact that life together is much richer than a life lived apart? Is not the witness of our community commit-ment a needed corrective to the present state of American life? As vowed religious we need resist a tendency to look inward and look after ourselves first as we age, shrink in numbers, and experience worries about our collective future; Precisely because such a tendency is natural, what we require is a clear outward Review for Religious thrust in our ministry. During the last three decades, many issues have prompted us to look beyond ourselves: the Vietnam War, civil rights for African Americans, troubles in Central America, nuclear disarmament, environmental consciousness, economic inequality in our nation and our world, the call for a consistent life-ethic, and the plight of children amid poverty and broken family structures. The recalling of such justice-and-peace causes of the past and present may help us religious avoid the pitfall of letting our world become too small, of letting the intraecclesial problems of renewal be the only thing that defines us. The movement for justice and peace among religious these past thirty years has kept before our eyes a sense of the gospel, a yearning for the reign of God, a not always gentle reminder that a wide world awaits whatever humble service we can render it. The social mission of the church helps religious men to be cred-ible when we proclaim, in the words of Gaudium et spes (~1), that "the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the fol-lowers of Christ." Mother (Matthew 23:9-11, 37-39) Call no one on earth your mother. You have only one mother, the Christ: a mother hen longing to shelter all who come running in under the outstretched rainproof feather-roof of his warm and welcoming wing. Bernadette McCarrick RSM May-June 1997 JAMES H. KROEGER Milestones in Interreligious Dialogue Pcaope John XXIII in his call for aggiornamento and his convo-tion of the Second Vatican Council envisioned a wide and encompassing renewal of the whole church. Today, after three decades of experience since the council's close in 1965, a keen observer can now evaluate those areas in church life where authen-tic renewal has been received, taken root, effected growth and change, and borne fruit. How has interreligious dialogue fared within the panorama of an entire church renewed for its task of mission and evangelization? Modest progress has been achieved both in mutual under-standing and in the-ongoing dialogue that is a central element of the church's evangelizing mission. Bold and creative initiatives have been taken; yet, for both church leadership and ordinary Christians, dialogue remains on the periphery of Christian life and ministry. A twelve-stop journey on the church's dialogue road will reveal milestones where growth and understanding have been achieved. At each stopping place in this essay, there is a brief description of a document or event, of the progress which it took note of or contributed to, and of the paths it pointed out for future dia- James H. Kroeger MM worked for more than two decades as a field missionary in the Philippines and Bangladesh. He holds a doctorate in missiology from the Gregorian University, and his most recent book is Living Mission (Orbis Books). This article of his appeared in Omnis Terra, March 1997. Currently serving as the Asia-Pacific area assistant on the Maryknoll general council, he may be addressed at P.O. Box 303; Maryknoll, New York 10545. Review for ReligiouJ logue. On the one hand, the church's signposts have been clear and encouraging; on the other hand, however, much of church mem-bership has been a pilgrim walking the dialogue road reluctantly. The present overview of significant milestones is intended to encourage church members to make more room for interreligious dialogue in the church's mission and ministry. Secretariat for Non-Christians On Pentecost (17 May) 1964, in the climate of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI instituted the Secretariat for Non- Christians as an entity distinct from the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 1988, it was to serve as a sign and struc-ture of the church's desire to meet and relate to the followers of other religious traditions of the world. Its task, as noted by Pope Paul, was "to search for methods and ways of opening a suitable dialogue with non-Christians . . . in 'order that non-Christians come to be known honestly and esteemed justly by Christians, and that in their turn non-Christians can adequately know and esteem Christian doctrine and life." Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam Pope Paul published his programmatic encyclical letter Ecclesiam suam on 6 August 1964 (between the second and third sessions of Vatican II). This magna carta for dialogue is the first time that the term "dialogue" is found in an encyclical, and more than half of the document is devoted to a discussion of the need, sources, characteristics, modes, partners, challenges, and goals of dialogue: "The church should enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives and labors" (§65). "The dialogueof salvation was opened spontaneously on the initiative of God: he loved us first" (§72). We "need to wait for the hour when God may make our dialogue effective" (§79). "Dialogue is, then, a method of accomplishing the apostolic ¯ mission" (§81). "The church is not unaware of the formidable dimensions of such a mission" (§95). It is also directed towards "the followers of the great Afro-Asiatic religions" (§110). We "recognize and respect the moral and spiritual values of various non'Christian religions, and we desire to join with them in pro- May-June 1997 Kroeger * Milestones in Interreligious Dialogue moting and defending common ideals of religious liberty, human brotherhood, good culture, social welfare, and civil order" (§108). Second 'Vatican Council Five documents of Vatican II contain important elements for understanding the church's role vis-?a-vis world religions (Nostra aerate, Lumen gentium, Ad genres, Gaudium et spes, and Dignitatis humanae). Some general themes are: the need to recognize within religions "elements of truth and grace" (AG §9), "treasures which the bountiful God has distributed among the nations of the earth" (AG §11), "a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men" (NA §2), recognition of the work ofthe Holy Spirit (GS §11, AG §4), the presence of treasures of the ascetical and contemplative life (AG §§15, 18), and the presence of"seeds ofthe Word" (AG §11, LG §17). The council promotes an attitude of profound respect toward all world religions (AG § 10), specifically primitive and traditional religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism (NA §2); Islam (NA §3, LG §16); and Judaism (NA §4, LG §16). It encourages dialogue and collaboration (NA §2); it is through dialogue that Christians can "receive the inspirations of the Spirit faithfully and measure up to them energetically" (GS §92). The council challenges all' Christians: "We must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery" (GS §22). j FABC First Plenary Assembly The Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) met in Taipei, Taiwan, from 22 to 27 April 1974 to prepare for the Synod on Evangelization. Their landmark document Evangelization in Modern Day Asia spoke of "the integral preaching of the gospel" (§23), "the building up of a truly local church" (§9), and the triple dialogue with people, cultures, and religions (§12). The church in Asia especially needs to engage in "a dialogue with the great reli-gious traditions of our peoples" (§ 13), which are "significant and positive elements in the economy of God's design of salvation" (§ 14); "they.have been the treasury of the religious experience of our ancestors" (§14); ?and how can we not acknowledge that God has ,drawn our peoples to himself through them?" (§15). FABC Review for Religious recommended the need to "evolve a working concept of evange-lization that embraces, as integral to that concept, genuine dia-logue with the great living religions of Asia" (§3a). Synod on Evangelization of the Modern World The short declaration at the end of the 1974 synod pro-claimed: "Confident in the action of the Holy Spirit which over-flows the bounds of the Christian community, we wish to foster dialogue with non-Christian religions, so that we may reach a better understanding of the gospel's newness and of the fullness of revelation, and thus may be in a better position to show to others how the salvific truth of God's love is fulfilled in Christ" (§11). Apostolfiz Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi One year after the synod Pope Paul VI published Evangelii nuntiandi (8 December 1975). Evangelization is seen as the "voca-tion proper to the church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize" (§ 14). The understanding of evangelization in EN is a broad one: "Evangelizing means bringing the good news into all the strata of humanity" (§18). "No . . defective and incomplete definition can be accepted for that complex, rich, and dynamic reality which is called evangelization without the risk of weakening or even distorting its real meaning: It cannot be fully understood unless all the necessary elements are taken into account" (§ 17). EN speaks of the church's esteem and respect for non- Christian religions because "they are the living expression of the soul of vast groups of people . They have taught generations of people how to pray. They are all inipregnated with innu-merable 'seeds of the Word' and can constitute a true 'preparation for the gospelTM (§53). The church needs "to offer to the mis-sionaries of today and of tomorrow new horizons in their con-tacts with non-Christian religions" (§53). Dialogue and Mission On Pentecost (10 June) 1984, the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, the church published "The Attitude of the Church towards the Followers of May-June 1997 Kroeger ¯ Milestones in Interreligious Dialogue Other Religions: Reflections and Orientations on Dialogue and Mission." Approved by the pope, the document expressly places interreligious dialogue within the purview of the church's evan-gelizing mission: "Dialogue finds its place within the church's salvific mission; for this reason it is a dialogue of salvation" (John Paul II, Introduction, §5; see Ecdesiam suam §74). The document gives interreligious dialogue a broad defini-tion: "It means not only discussion, but also includes all positive and constructive interreligious relations with individuals and com-munities of other faiths which are directed at mutual under-standing and enrichment" (§3). Its main concern is "the relationship which exists between dialogue and mission" (§5). The document presents the five dimensions of integral mission and evangelization and notes how they are understood "in the consciousness of the church as a single but complex and articulated reality" (§ 13). Both local churches and missionaries are "respon-sible for the totality of mission" (§14) because "Christian mis-sion embraces all these elements" (§13). Four forms of dialogue are presented in detail (§§25-35). World D~y of Prayer for Peace at Assisi On 27 October 1986, in the context of the International Year of Peace, Pope John Paul invited representatives of other Christian churches and ecclesial communities and of the major world reli-gions to come on pilgrimage to Assisi to pray and fast for world peace. Explaining the event, John Paul noted: "The event of Assisi can be considered as a visible illustration, a concrete example, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed .and signi7 fied .by the commitment to ecumenism and to interreligious dia-logue which was recommended and promoted by the Second Vatican Council" (§7). He added: "Either we learn to walk together in peace and harmony, or we drift apart and ruin our-selves and others" (§5). Seven FABC Theses on Interreligious Dialogue In April 1987, after two years of study and consultation by the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) Theological Advisory Commission, the document Theses on Interreligious Dialogue: An Essay in Pastoral Theological Reflection was released, Review for Religious The aim of the document was to "facilitate a new insight into the identity of the church in a religiously pluralistic world and a renewal of its mission" (§0.9). The document presents a com-prehensive vision of interfaith dialogue in seven closely reasoned theses with extensive commentary. They address important the-ological. missiological questions, consistently asserting that dia-logue "is an integral dimension of the mission of the church, which is the sacrament of the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus" (Thesis 2). Encyclical Redemptoris Missio John Paul's mission encyclical, dated 7 December 1990, addresses the "permanent validity of the church's missionary man-date." In chapter 5, "The Paths of Mission," a specific section addresses "Dialogue with Our Brothers and Sisters of Other Religions" (§§55-57). It is an exceedingly rich section: "Interreligious dialogue is a part of the church's evangelizing mis-sion . Dialogue is not in opposition to mission ad gentes; indeed, .it has special links with that mission and is one of its expressions. . The church sees no conflict,between proclaiming Christ and engaging in interreligious dialogue" (§55). "Each member of the faithful and all Christian communities are called to practice dia-logue . I [Pope John Paul] am well aware that many mission-aries and Christian communities find in the difficult and often misunderstood path of dialogue their only way of bearing sincere witness to Christ and offering generous service to others. I wish to encourage.them ." (§57). Dialogue a~d Proclamation On Pentecost (19 May) 1991, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples jointly issued "Dialogue and Proclamation: Reflections and Orientations on Interreligious Dialogue and the Proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." The document explicitly affirms the holistic and integral nature of the evangelization process and mentions the five principal ele-ments of mission (§2). Discussing "the relationship between dia-logue and proclamation" (§4), the document quotes John Paul II: "Just as interreligious dialogue is one element in the mission of the May-3~tne 1997 Kroeger * Milestones in Interrelig~ous Dialogue church, the proclamation of God's saving work in our Lord Jesus Christ is another . There can be no question of choosing one and ignoring or rejecting the other" (§6). "Both are legitimate and necessary" (§77). There are many "signs of the times" (social, cultural, reli-gious, and political) and a religious sensitivity and attentiveness are important for hearing "the Spirit of God. speaking, teach-ing, and guiding" (§78). "All Christians are called to be person-ally involved in these two ways of carrying out the one mission of the church, namely, proclamation and dialogue" (§82). "Yet, more than tasks to be accomplished, .dialogue and proclamation are graces to be sought in prayer" (§89). Continental Synods As the Jubilee Year 2000 approaches, Pope John Paul has made known his intention to convoke and complete a series of continental synods. In those areas of the world where a variety of religious traditions are integral to people's indigenous culture and faith,.~interreligious dialogue will necessarily be important for the.church's presence and ministry. Onthe Feas~ of the Triumph of the Holy Cross (14 September) in 1995, John Paul released the postsynodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. In reference to dialogue (§§65-67), the document notesi "Commitment to dialogue must also embrace all Muslims of goodwill" (§66). "With regard to African tradi-tional religion, a serene and prudent dialogue will be able., to foster the assimilation of positive values . They can be seen as a preparation for the gospel . The adherents of African tradi-tional religion should therefore be treated with great respect and esteem, and all inaccurate and disrespectful language should be avoided" (§67). This is a task given to the church in Africa in ful-fillment of "her evangelizing mission towards the year 2000" (§8). The church in Asia (home to more than 85 percent of the world's non-Christians) will necessarily devote attention to inter-faith relations and dialogue as it prepares for its continental synod. The Preparatory Document (Lineamenta) notes: "God's offer of salvation to humankind is always a question of dialogue . The entire mission of Jesus was constant dialogue with humanity. The whole mission of the church is, therefore, one of dialogue. Dialogue is a part of the work of evangelization . In the Asian Review for Religious context, dialogue is of primary importance for the future of Christian mission . The church in Asia, therefore, must enter into ever deeper dialogue with the great religions." (§33). John Paul II The pope has given much emphasis in person to the role of dialogue within the evangelizing mission of the church; in his missionary journeys he constantly seeks opportunities to interact respectfully with the followers of various religions and faith tra-ditions. From his voluminous state-ments on interreligious themes, some short representative quotations are pre-sented here: "Christians will, moreover, join hands with all men and women of good will [and] work together in order to bring about a more just and peaceful society in which the poor will be the first to be served" (Manila, 21 February 1981). "Christians and Muslims, in gen-eral, have badly understood each other, and sometimes in the past we have opposed and even exhausted each other in polemics and in wars. I believe that today God invites us to change our old practices, We must respect ~each other, and also we must stimulate each other in good works on the. path of God" (Casablanca, 19 August 1985). "By dialogue we let God be present in our midst, for as we open ourselves to one another, we open ourselves to God" (Madras, 5 February 1986). Interreligious dialogue is "a Christian work desired by God" and "one element in the mission of the church"; "the commitment of the Catholic Church to dialogue with the followers of other religions remains firm and unchanged" (Rome, 28 April 1987). "Throughout my pontificate it has been my constant concern to fulfill the apostolic and pastoral task of both dialogue and proclamation. On my last visit to Africa, I met leaders of African traditional religions and witnessed their awareness of God's near-ness and their appreciation of the ethical values of a godly person" (Rome, 28 April 1987). "By dialogue we let God be present in our midst, for as we open ourselves to one another, we open ourselves to God." May-~ote 1997 Kroeger ¯ Milestone~ in Interreh~ious Dialogue "Respectful dialogue with others also enables us to be enriched by their insights, challenged by their questions, and impelled to deepen our knowledge of the truth. Far from stifling dialogue or rendering it superfluous, a commitment to the truth of one's reli-gious tradition by its very nature makes dialogue with others both necessary andfrui~Cul'' (Jakarta, 10 October 1989). "Interreligious dialogue at its deepest level is always a dia-logue of salvation, because it seeks to discover, clarify, and under-stand better the signs of the age-long dialogue which God maintains with humanity" (Vatican City, 13 November 1992). Summary ~ This essay has presented a synopsis of recent thought within the Roman Catholic tradition on interreligious dialogue. It has been purposely succinct, highlighting only twelve moments within the Vatican II era, supplemented with some pertinent citations from Pope John Paul II. The material available in this presenta-tion clearly indicates the church's current thought and direction vis-h-vis dialogue and evangelization. At the heart of recent Catholic literature on dialogue is an operative vision of evangelization that is broad, comprehensive, and holistic; it is often termed "integral evangelization." Several elements--including dialogue--are seen as constitutive~dimen-sions of it. The church ~consistently affirms her commitment to "integral evangelization," realizing that evangelization culminates in the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ--whenever, wherever, and however this is practically and respectfully possible. Again, in fulfilling her mission of evangelization, the church engages the followers of various faith traditions, because it believes that in this encounter all dialogue partners will experience a mutual evangelization under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Dialogue remains an important bridge for the church to cross into the third millennium of Christianity. Review for Religious SUZANNE MAYER Providence: Charism and Contemporary Spirituality Several years ago, one sister within a group of Sisters, Servants ,of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, making a retreat together asked a Redemptorist theologian about the source of our IHM reliance on Divine Providence, something we considepa core spiritual charism of our congregation. We had,been looking at 'slides on our shared heritage featuring~ along with other treasures, the Marian paintings that hung in various places of St. Alphonsus Liguori's early life. These canvases portrayed Mary as Mother of Perpetual Help, the well-known Redemptorist devotion and the source of many shrines and many parish tides. The slides evoked Sister's curiosity about the deriva-tion of Mary as Mother of Providence and about the reliance on Divine Providence fostered by the Sisters for more than a hundr4d fifty years. These words are part of the answer she received from the theologian: "Your tra-dition of reliance on Divine Providence does not trace its origin to St. Alphonsus or anything in the devotional his-tory of the Redemptorists. You need to credit the feminine~ side of your founding and trace it to Mother Theresa Maxis and her total dependence on God throughout her life." For the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the sisters gathered during August 1995 in Monroe, Michigan, Suzann~ Mayer IHM writes to us from the IHM Spirituality Center; King Road/P.O. Box 200; Immaculata, Pennsylvania 19345. charism May-~me 1997 Mayer * Providence the place of foundation. It was natural to explore here this charism of Providence and its place in the evolution of this group of almost two thousand women religious. In an informal preconvention sur-vey conducted among some members of all three branches of the sisters assembling there, various nuances seemed to have emerged between and among them with regard to the meaning and rele-vanc~ of Providence; but, since the questionnaire was far from scientific and its sampling far from representative, litde was done except to remark on. the subtle variations. Some speakers from the three assembled branches, however, developed the topic of Divine Providence," and some conversations took place on the subject. Both the retreat director's response and the ideas raised at the meeting in Monroe stirred some curiosity in me. As a mem-ber of a congregation that traces its origin a century and a half back to the "banks of the Raisin River in Michigan" during the time of westward expansion and the coming of many immigrants to this nation, I considered trust in God's providence and benef-icent care of each person to be a logical spiritual necessity. But I wondered: How did this reliance on Divine Providence figure in the life of our founder, and, even more, how does it speak to us now, women religious standing at the threshold of a new mil-lennium? ~ To understand the meaning of Providence, I turned to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§302-314). My reading reminded me of questions I hear frequently when I sit in my counselor's chair and share the struggles of good people trying to make mean-ing of evil, darkness, pain, and loss in their lives. The Catechism states that in God's .providential plan. the universe exists in statu viae, "in a state of journeying toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained," a sort of immaturity or incompleteness here and now. In this state of journeying, human experience ranges from loss to gain, chaos to order, exile to homecoming, terrifying evil to great goodness. What I heard in the scholarly words and philo-sophical phrases were echoes of my own experience and that of other journeyers. God does not create or will evil, pain, or loss, but, in honoring the integrity of human freedom, walks with peo-ple as they move through the world as it is, good and evil. Scripture shows us shekinah, cloud by day, fire by nigh~ (see Ex 40:34-38), and gives us the farewell promise of Christ to be ."with you always" (Mt 28:20). Review for. Religious The heart of holiness is the heart of maturing in Christ, the Pauline meaning of perfection (1 Co 13:11 and 14:20; Heb 5:11- 14). The spiritual child needs and wants the plan, finds security in order, yearns for control, but the spirit of providence enables the adult man and woman to understand becoming whole in bro-kenness and perceiving the plan threading its way even through chaos. Such a providence calls for abandonment, not as some test of human endurance, but as a falling into the arms of a loving, caring presence. Again the scholarship translates for me into.a remembered experience. Having worked with young adults in retreats and workshops, I recall an icebreaker that was designed to instill or test trust. In the acti;city the young people would have to fall backwards into, hopefully, the arms of their waiting friends. Providence viewed from this per-spective allows today's believer to expe-rience divine care in both the positive and the negative. What if the arms are not in place to catch the falling body? What if their strength proves inadequate? The trusting soul lands on the floor. Does this - mean that the friends have failed the test? Perhaps. Or maybe it is a result of mistiming, an unpreventable distraction, misjudg-ment on. the part of the faller whatever. A providence spiritual-ity demands inclusion of negatives as well as positives. Otherwise, the believer would be living in a Pollyanna world where God gives only home runs, top grades, and sunshine days in answer to prayers. What happens in such a world when the inevitable strikeouts, ,failures, or clouds come? Where does providence spirituality fitinto the life of Theresa Maxis, the "feminine side" of the founding of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary? And, more relevantly, where does it fit into the life of IHM

This essay continues with a discussion concerning the intersection between indigenous technological adoption/adaptation and the range of perspectives with respect to local communities' use of technology in general. Analytical instruments will be presented at the end of this article. First, however, the reader will have the opportunity to examine the 'views' of outsiders with respect to the debate surrounding sustainability, environmental management and territorial ordering. Responses to an on-line survey concerning the above issues together with my own comments, will add to the discussion. ; Gestión ambiental; Ordenamiento Territorial; Sostenibilidad; TIC; Usos ; 1 TECHNOLOGY IN NORTHWEST AMAZONIA (NWA) VIEWS OF VIEWS: SUSTAINABILITY, ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND TERRITORIAL ORDERING A contribution to a Political Ecology for Northwest Amazonia1 This essay continues with a discussion concerning the intersection between indigenous technological adoption/adaptation and the range of perspectives with respect to local communities' use of technology in general2. Analytical instruments will be presented at the end of this article. First, however, the reader will have the opportunity to examine the 'views' of outsiders with respect to the debate surrounding sustainability, environmental management and territorial ordering. Responses to an on-line survey concerning the above issues together with my own comments, will add to the discussion. Aims Initially there were two aims behind the construction of a website. One of was to overcome impediments to my personal mobility and direct access3. ICT facilitated communications with other interested people and helped solicit their views on indigenous management of the forest and their opinions with respect to the process of territorial ordering in Amazonia. The other aim was to serve the process of opening up political opportunities for NWA's inhabitants. Grassroots organisations all around the globe were (and are) establishing links through ICT. The indigenous peoples of Amazonia may attempt the same and this experience could, in the future, be an instrument of education for NWA. The introduction of such technology among indigenous peoples, if possible, will have impacts, which will to be judged as positive or negative, depending of the political interests of the observer and the moment of observation. It is argued here, that despite there being no indisputable positive or negative effects of technological transfer, it would be contrary to indigenous people's rights to self-determination to prevent the promotion of ICT among them. We wish to question conservative forces: if governments, corporations, NGOs and even international drug dealers and terrorist groups are using ICT to fortify their political positions, why should indigenous peoples be denied access to it? The access (or lack of it) of grassroots organisations to ICT facilitates (or impedes) the 1 The author wishes to thank: Jim Connor and Mark Bennett of Imperial College, the former for his advice on the use of Arcview-GIS and the latter for helping to write the cgi-script form for the website. Thanks are also due to: Stuart Peters from the University of Surrey for training in Web- Page design; Adriana Rico from Páginas.Net for valuable advice during the design process and Alvaro Ocampo for a detailed critique of Kumoro.com before it went live. I also wish to thank the Board of Puerto Rastrojo Foundation, which gave me permission to use their vegetation map as a base for the Yaigojé vegetation map that appears on the web-site. Finally thanks to all the people that took the time to fill out the on-line survey. Their contributions made this chapter possible. 2 This discussion was introduced in "Technology in Northwest Amazonia: Sketches from Inside" (Forero 2002b). 3 A restriction of one of the scholarships the author was granted as well as guerrilla incursions at the time, prevented the author from going back to NWA. 2 development of their rights to be informed (and educated) in accordance with the actual historical context of a globalising corporate economy and cultural hybridisation. For indigenous peoples, as well as for other ethnic minorities, financial resources to set up ICT are extremely limited compared to those of corporations, governments and even NGOs. The establishment of an ICT network for indigenous peoples' organisations in NWA remains a Utopia. But without a Utopian vision there is no aim for social mobilisation; this is something that was underlined by responses to the on-line survey. Fieldwork in NWA involved the author in the territorial ordering process, helping with the formation of indigenous people's organisations, and getting involved in communities' economic and educational projects. My work in NWA can thus be characterised as participatory action research (PAR) and one way of continuing to engage in PAR without going back to the field was to set up a website, wait for an opportunity to share my experience with the people of NWA and promote projects that would allow them to take over the website and use it for their own projects4. Deconstruction of an Internet generated discourse Elsewhere the author has dealt with descriptions and deconstructions of discourses of indigenous and institutional organisations, be they NGOs, churches, governmental or international. This process of deconstruction has included the author's own work among indigenous organisations and NGOs, which was one of the aims of "Indigenous knowledge and the scientific mind: activism or colonialism?" (Forero 2002a). I wish to explain the inclusion of governmental and non-governmental organisations within the category 'institutional'. There are great differences as well as important coincidences in governmental actions and the work of NGOs in developing countries due to the limited nature and poor quality of State-driven action in such nations. E.g. in Colombia, COAMA, the largest NGO network in NWA, has been involved in the political administrative reforms, and served as a consultant in matters of education, health and sustainable production. Furthermore, COAMA staff accompanied indigenous peoples in all these processes and without their intervention it is doubtful that many of the indigenous political organisations of Amazonia would ever have succeeded in their quest for legal recognition5. NGOs and governmental institutions may pursue similar political aims and share administrative structures. Inasmuch as small organisations are successful, (and usually this success is a result of strong personal commitment to a cause and personal knowledge of all members of the organisation), they tend to obtain more funds, which in turn forces them to become increasingly bureaucratic. As 4 At the time of writing (May 2002) the author was preparing to visit NWA at the invitation of indigenous leaders, including the Co-ordinator of an education committee who wanted to discuss the roll of ICT in education. 5 See Forero, Laborde et al. 1998 and the interview with the director of COAMA Martín von Hildebrand, in The Ecologist 2002 (Vol. 32 No.1-February). 3 organisations grow, individual members have fewer opportunities to get to know each other personally and maintain an accordance of principles, aims and political means. This is not to say that NGOs are condemned to be inefficient bureaucratic institutions, (which is not uncommon among developing countries' governmental institutions). But it is important to draw attention to the risk that when resources are pumping in and recruitment is growing there is more chance of becoming detached from grassroots sensibilities with respect to issues and less chance of correctly interpreting local developmental idioms. Views of Indigenous Environmental Management The design, production and publishing of a website on the development of a political ecology for NWA, taking the Yaigojé Resguardo as a study case, may seem a very simple task with little impact. But it proved to be a very delicate matter that involved exhausting work. The production of a map of the Yaigojé Resguardo, (which was to be included on the website) has been explained elsewhere, although it is worth mentioning something about the methodology involved. The author accompanied shamans (who were selected by indigenous leaders from the Apaporis) on several trips in which all the recognised sacred places of the Apaporis River and some of its tributaries where identified. The shamans learn the names of the places during their training. These names are recited in myths, chants and spells. The shamans carry, as they say, the map within themselves. It is impressive to see these men point to a place and give its name without hesitation. It is like this even when they have never been in that place before. It is impressive that this orally transmitted geography corresponds so precisely to the physical aspects that start to become relevant for people who, like the author, have different epistemological instruments for their interpretations of the world. While visiting the sacred places shamans spoke of trips they had made previously. In the case of shamanistic trips, visits did not actually involve physical journeys, but what were referred to as trips en pensamiento, en espíritu (in thought, in spirit). While accompanying them I recorded the geographical co-ordinates using a satellite guided geographical positioning system (GPS). The geographical co-ordinates thus generated were converted to plane co-ordinates and a map was generated using AUTOCAD software. Translations, drawings and reflections about this map-making process are included in a MSc thesis of the University of Warwick (Forero 1999). The work I will describe now, although partially derived from my work with the shamans is distinct in character and intention from that reported in Forero (1999). The use of technological gadgetry allowed me partially to reflect the Tukano world in a way that non-indigenous people could understand. And although this was a significant and, I believe, useful undertaking the real knowledge of the territory lies within the shamans with whom I worked. The fact that the 'indigenous territorial' aspects of the website are illustrated with maps is a by-product of the technology. A more significant value of the work (and the reason behind the shamans' wish to become involved in mapping) is that the maps were going to provide evidence for the legal process through which the ACIYA 4 indigenous organisation would claim rights over lands outside the recognised Resguardo Indigenous Reserve (Forero, Laborde et al. 1998). This work was successful and an extension to the Resguardo was indeed granted. Work on the website began by making a provisional outline of the desired end product. The original plan included six pages: Introduction (Home), vegetation map, traditional territorial map, discussion (an introduction to the political ecology of the Yaigojé Resguardo), bibliography (for those looking for references to NWA and the Yaigojé in particular), and a questionnaire that would generate the information from which this chapter has been developed6. The contrasting discourses obtained from the questionnaires Although I shall refer to percentages in this section, there is no intention of making any predictions based on statistical analyses. Neither is it suggested that the analysis of questionnaires can provide an objective account of outsiders' opinions with respect to the politics of the environment and people of NWA. The following notes are not representative in that sense and such was never the intention of the exercise. What is intended is that the reader gets an insight into the perceptions of survey respondents. What is important in a qualitative data analysis, like this, is to present differential tendencies. If discourses are constituents of reality then the confusing scenario of political confrontation in NWA should be linked to the visions and perspectives of all of us, including the views of people that have never been in Amazonia but nonetheless hold an opinion. And, if there is a marked difference between indigenous and exogenous perspectives with respect to sustainability and environmental management in Amazonia, which relates to whether people have visited NWA or not, this should be reflected in the answers to the surveys. The information generated from the on-line survey was collected between May and December of 2001. Eight hundred invitations were sent through e-mail. They were sent mainly to academics and organisations working on indigenous issues, conservation or sustainable development in NWA. One of these invitations reached COLNODO7 and the ICT network asked if we wished to submit the website in a weekly contest for the best new website, which we did and subsequently won! This meant that COLNODO subscribers were notified and invited to visit the site. But we have no idea how many hits were derived from COLNODO invitation. What we know is that during these 8 months we received 51 completed survey forms. This is a 6.4% response rate to the original 800 invitations8. 6 The survey form is in Appendix 1and, a summary of the technical work involved in the construction of the web-site is in Appendix 2. 7 "COLNODO is a Colombian communications network serving organizations dedicated to community development. It is operated by the non-profit organization called Colombian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations for Email Communication" (http://www.colnodo.org.co/summary_english.html). For a critical review of COLNODO work the interested reader could consult Gómez, R. 1998. 8 This response rate is rather low relative to postal questionnaire surveys, but we are unable to assess it relative other on-line surveys. 5 For the purposes of the analysis respondents (R) were divided into two groups: those claiming to have visited NWA (VA – 29% of R) and those claiming not to have visited the region (NVA – 71% of R). With respect to occupation, 68% of R come from the academic sector, including five anthropologists (almost 10% of R) all of whom had visited NWA. In contrast, although there were the same number of environmental managers as anthropologists answering the questionnaire, none had visited NWA. With respect to gender, the percentage of male (53%) and female (47%) respondents is similar across both VA and NVA groups. In terms of age, there were four groups: 1) 18 to 24, 2) 25 to 34, 3) 35 to 50, and 4) over 50. For R the percentages were: 8%, 47%, 35% and 10% respectively. The majority of respondents belong to the second group, between 25 to 34 years of age. However with respect to age groups the composition of VA and NVA groups differs: 56% of the NVA group belong to this second age cohort (25-34), while the majority of the VA group (47%) is between 35 and 50. Additionally, 13% of the VA group are over 50. 61% of the NVA group are between 18 and 34 years of age, while 60% of those that have visited Amazonia are over 35. A comparison of age among the survey respondents thus shows that those that have visited Amazonia (VA) tend to be older than those that have not (NVA). To distinguish among the views held by survey respondents we have to present the responses to each of the questions of the survey. We have made some associations of responses with the intention of outlining the different tendencies that we identify, but the reader might identify others. Before we do so a word about the view of respondents with respect to the website itself should be said. Website evaluation An evaluation of the web-site made by users was included in the questionnaire. Respondents were asked to rate the site between four categories: poor, fair, good and excellent. These categories were chosen as follows: 0, 2, 32 and 15 respectively. Two of the respondents did not offer a rating for the site. Additionally, respondents had the opportunity to suggest improvements. Some respondents suggested changes in design: modification of fonts and colours (some changes had already taken place). There were those who asked for more pictures, a photo album, more links and the construction of a chat room. With respect to the content, some wanted more ethnographic data, another more on political ecology, others asked for better visibility of the maps, while others called for additional links to related sites, and/or more information in general. One suggestion was to make the website less personalised, while another expressed interest in knowing more about the author's research project. Others asked for an enhanced bibliography. Some changes had already taken place by the time these comments were analysed but further changes are still being undertaken at the time of writing. With respect to the questionnaire, two people suggested larger windows to facilitate vision and to be able to comment largely, in contrast, another suggested encouraging more 'yes/no' responses. An important suggestion was: "Perhaps it is now appropriate to include some questions on communication 6 and information flows" (S52). Although not sought explicitly, information was gathered with respect to the use of ICT in the territorial ordering process of Amazonia. One of the respondents suggested that in future the website should be used by indigenous peoples of the Yaigojé. This has been the intention of the author, which has made a visit to Yaigojé (summer 2002) with intention to advance in that direction. Access to ICT for the indigenous peoples of the Yaigojé Resguardo is very limited but present. Future modification of the site will respond to indigenous peoples' feedback. During the visit few indigenous people gave their opinions on the website but several discussions on the roll of ICT in developmental processes took place9. Q1 - Are development and sustainability compatible? A clear response to Question 1 was that this depends on the definition of both terms: "It is impossible to answer this question as it is, as both terms are open to interpretation… " (S26). The question could have been and was read as: Is sustainable development attainable? Respondent S26 continued: "I think sustainable development is possible but hard to achieve in an environment of often conflicting interests and values (economic vs. environmental vs. cultural.)… " One respondent (S22) did not answer this particular question, and two others seemed to be confused (S38 and S41). Forty respondents (78% of R) answered that they were or could be compatible, although there are differences in the way they perceived this compatibility. Development first There were few respondents that failed to question the meaning of 'development' as concept or practice: the developmental project. These responses somehow postulated that certain environmental concerns should be acknowledged and dealt with in order for the development processes to continue: "Yes… . Development as the integration of western technologies or increase of income per capita, can be carefully done by implementing appropriate technologies into the productive activities of the communities. Sustainability defined as a continuous productivity level over the long term." (S2); "Yes. It is only a question of integration of environmental considerations in all we do and adjustment of behaviours accordingly." (S12); "Yes, because there can never be sustainability without development. People have, first to develop for them to have a sense of sustainability." (S13); "Yes, I do. The point is how you can reach a determinate "state" of development without undermining financial, ecological and human capacities in a determinate site (or taking into account their characteristics)." (S40) SD: human - environmental security There were others that perceived the compatibility or the possibility of sustainable development as the chance to diminish human/environmental security risks: "Yes of course in the long run - otherwise life is not possible." (S18); 9 The author is currently preparing a report that will summarise some of these discussions. 7 "Yes. Both are necessary for the survival of the area." (S21); "Si. Solo las acciones en el hoy nos pueden garantizar acciones en el mañana. (Yes. Only by taking action now we can guarantee we could act tomorrow)." (S23); "Yes, development should always be sustainable otherwise there are costs that are not taken into account. i.e. cost of pollution" (S39); "We don't have any choice. We have to make development and sustainability compatible as it's the only way we can survive and at the same time preserve the earth for future generations." (S42) Pessimism, in the sense that without SD life will no longer be possible, was to be repeated in the responses to all of the survey questions. Sustainability is an aim The majority of the respondents that believed development and sustainability to be compatible or capable of becoming compatible, were also of the opinion that the goal of sustainable development had not yet been achieved. Some of them discussed requisite conditions for achieving sustainability. They either underlined the importance of accepting sustainability as a guiding principle for development policy and interventions or/(and) exemplified ways in which sustainable practices might be instituted: "They have to be. I think they are because they have to be. I am optimistic that eventually it will be seen as natural to have sustainable development, but the problem is when this attitude kicks in." (S3) "Depends on how you define the two terms. If you mean that human quality of life can improve while maintaining the natural resource base, I think this is possible but very difficult to achieve." (S5) "Yes, but development in qualitative and not in quantitative terms." (S8) "Yes… there can be sustainable development in an ecological sense of the word - which means installing 'best ecological practice' in planning development." (S24) "No solo lo creo sino que estoy seguro que ambos pueden ser compatibles. Un desarrollo sin considerar ciertos indicadores de sustentabilidad/ sotenibilidad no es posible o viceversa. Uno y otro deberan de ir al parejo tratando de limar los conflictos que a menudo surgen cuando se pretende no un desarrollo pero un crecimiento economico sin considerar la parte social/cultural o ecologica. (Not only I believe that the two can be compatible, I am certain. Development without considering certain indicators of sustainability is impossible or vice versa. Both should go hand in hand, trying to solve the social, cultural and ecological problems that often arise when economic growth rather than sustainable development is the goal)." (S 25) "Sim, no alto rio Negro onde trabalho a ideia e essa: implementar um programa regional de desenvolvimento indedgena sustentado. (Yes, in the Upper Black River, where I work, the idea is precisely to implement a regional programme for sustainable indigenous development)" (S29) "Yes they are. The problem is with the material and energy growth and its compatibility with some environmental standards, like critical thresholds and so on." (S35) "Yes. The only way is by avoiding rapid over-development and having good planning."(S37) ".El concepto de desarrollo sostenible lo veo mucho mas como algo a lo que se quiere llegar, es una nocion implementada por parte de las politicas gubernamentales y ong's donde lo que se 8 procura con estos es el aprovechamiento al maximo de los recursos con un minimo impacto ambiental y social. (I see the concept of sustainable development as goal towards which we heading. It is an idea implemented through governmental and non-governmental policies which aim at maximum exploitation of resources with a minimum of environmental and social impacts)." (S48) "Yes, because they represent the best option to keep for human life." (S51) The need for local definitions Among the respondents that considered sustainability and development compatible if certain conditions were met, there is group of responses that emphasised the need for local definitions of 'sustainability' and 'development', or 'sustainable development': "They can be compatible providing that development is targeted at the right level i.e. small scale and in-keeping with the natural resources and environment." (S5) "Depende de las condiciones y del desarrollo para quién? Por lo tanto el desarrollo es sostenible si es buscado y logrado por la misma comunidad local (It depends on the conditions and on the question 'Development for whom'? Development can only be sustainable if it is sought and implemented by the local community itself)" (S20) "Yes but mainly if made through indigenous methodologies in their territories in Amazonia" (S27) "Yes. There is work done in northern Scandinavia where the "sammi" (lapps) have been given economical support and encouraged to create their own parliament. They have programs protecting their way of life, language and customs. The Norwegian broadcasting company NRK sends news in the language and coastal dialects. All this, at least for Norwegian sammi (lapps) has been key factors in late developments where communities have developed economically achieving great sustainability, contributing, not only to their well being, but to the sustainability of the inhospitable sub-artic regions." (S31) "Yes - but only if there is an 'appropriate' deployment of tools, techniques and processes of development in line with local community needs." (S52) Semantics and the economic imperative Interestingly, one respondent was very pessimistic about the possibilities for sustainable development even when it was sought and pursued at the local level. This respondent brought into the equation the idea that people are driven by monetary benefits to deplete their environment, even though they know that such practices are unsustainable: "To a certain degree, yes. I think that monetary considerations will always outweigh humanitarian concerns and it is very hard to convince people who are seeking a living from sometimes-meagre resources that it is in their own good to give consideration to long-term sustainable use of their resources. It is usually easier and cheaper to move on to the next area when one area has been depleted." (S17) This last argument derives from a rationality that considers poor people to be collaborators in their own misery. In this particular response there was no questioning of the developmental project or the social structures within which people are stimulated to act regardless of the future; but it did address 'monetary considerations' as the driving force. 9 Those responses that argued that the concepts are incompatible claimed an intrinsic contradiction in "sustainable development": "Development of any kind cannot sustain anything." (S4). Instead of blaming the people (needy or not), the proponents of incompatibility pointed their fingers at 'the system'; contemporary capitalist structures, the current developmental project and the prevailing economic model are seen as unavoidably contrary to sustainable practices: "No because development is premised upon economic gain, and capitalism is inherently unsustainable" (S10); "The problem with sustainability is that the economic model is not compatible with social, economic and ecological aspects at the same time and proportion. The neo-liberal model promotes the economic aspect leaving as secondary the social and ecological." (S19); "No, because development does not imply a recognition of limits or the necessity to preserve the natural and human resources used to achieve it. It is an economic concept, which has bases in the apparently unlimited uses of resources… " (S47); "… Si lo entemos [desarrollo] como crecimiento economico, por supuesto que no son compatibles. Ya que el crecimiento economico, tal y como lo plantean los economistas, excluye de raiz criterios sociales, culturales y ambientales requeridos para la sustentabilidad." (If we understand development as economic growth, of course they [sustainability and development] are not compatible. This is because economic growth, as economist have brought it up, excludes from its bases the environmental, cultural and social requirements of sustainability)" (S34) S.D. inconsistent with the present There are less radical rejections of the compatibility, which do not portray sustainable development as a contradiction itself but rather as inconsistent with current economic and ecological trends. The point such respondents make is that the necessary conditions for sustainable development are currently, rather than inherently unattainable: "… The current model of industrial development, where 'development' means material economic growth, is unlikely to be sustainable on a long term basis for the majority of the world population." (S1) "Present development of our world is clearly not sustainable" (S33) "Yes, they are compatible. But in a different social and economic order, not in the one the world is living now… " (S36) "Yes, if we change the way development is understood, for instance, development is associated to living styles resembling to those Europe and USA have, which are a lot related to consumption. But we could live in a healthier and more compatible way with our environment if we change our pattern of consumption and the generalised idea of development nowadays, it would be turning it into "only use what I need and get from nature, exclusively this, not until I just can't get anymore from it", 'cause I over pressed the place, to obtain more benefits. So, at last, this could be possible but in the long term, I hope not when there's nothing left to do." (S45) 10 Greening politics Some responses expressed doubts about the compatibility of sustainability and development. These doubts arise from the apparent use of "sustainability" as a green rhetoric, the aim of which is the continuation of projects that degrade the environment or human rights: ". usually development translates into cutting down natural habitats without regard to "sustaining" cultures" (S32); "In theory 'yes' but much depends on the definition of the terms and societies' acceptance of equal human rights and obligations to others." (S7) "Los conceptos de desarrollo y de sostenibilidad resultan ser bastantes amplios y ambiguos. En la mayoria de los casos cuando se plantean proyectos de desarrollo se trata de relacionarlos directamente con proyectos que resulten ser favorables para el medio ambiente. Como si un concepto llevara implicito otro, sin embargo creo que lo que se esta haciendo desde hace algunos años es precisamente disfrazar los proyectos de desarrollo para que sean aprobados bajo el nombre de mantenimiento del medio ambiente." (The concepts of sustainability and development are very ambiguous. In the majority of cases, there is an attempt to portray development projects as environmentally friendly[, a]s if one concept implied the other. However, I believe that what has been happening for the last few years is a camouflaging of development projects, in order to get them approved under the heading of environmental management) (S48). Reflections on responses to Q110: If "all development is not 'absolute' but will have a beginning and an end" (S24) then, "[d]evelopment of any kind cannot sustain anything." (S4). The impossibility of re-establishing high quality energy after it has been transform into low quality energy (or entropy) is a characteristic feature of closed systems, this would leave us with a world in decline where there is no possibility of sustaining anything. It could be argued that this is the case, as we cannot even guarantee perpetual solar energy flow. But this is perhaps taking the concept of sustainability too far, leaving us with no possibility for discussion. The central political discussion arising from the different responses revolves around the contradiction between those arguments of compatibility that leave the development project unquestioned and those that reject any possibility of compatibility because of a profound questioning of development. Between the two, the picture is blurred, undefined, open and elusive. There does not appear to be any significant correspondence between the two opposite groups of respondents in relation to whether they have been in Amazonia or not. Three out of five of the respondents claiming that there is absolutely no compatibility between development and sustainability have been in Amazonia; but so have two out of four of the respondents that left the development project unquestioned. However, it may be of some significance that none of those that accepted 'sustainable development' are related to social sciences. Those respondents with academic backgrounds in the social sciences all fit into groups 10 A schematic summary can be found in Table 1, Appendix 3. 11 that see sustainable development as a principle, something to be defined locally or as a reformist greening of politics. None of them were found in the group arguing for absolute incompatibility. The middle ground, where the picture is most blurred, came from the majority of respondents by whom it was argued that sustainable development may be possible but that they were unsure about how it might be achieved. Although these responses varied from those expressing suspiciousness (those pointing out the rhetoric of sustainability) to hope: "They have to be. I think they are because they have to be". This acceptance of a possibility of sustainable development, despite the semantic contradiction and current political rhetorical manipulation of the term, reflects a process of thinking and acting that is deeply rooted in Utopian beliefs. This 'sustainability' will happen in the future, in another time, when local communities take control of their lives and their resources, when environmental protection is taken seriously, when today's actions reflect our responsibility toward the future, etc. According to one of the respondents even continuous increases in productivity will be possible, when the proper technology has been developed. Q2 - Is there a relationship between indigenous reserves (IR) and protected areas (PA)? In Colombia IR are called "Resguardos Indígenas" or "Resguardos de Tierras". The term resguardo, literally means protection. Its meaning is not too different from that given to natural conservation areas of different grades: áreas protegidas, protected areas (PA). Both, IR and PA, emphasise the need for an area to be specially protected. Some of the respondents of this question pointed out an implicit relationship between IR and PA perhaps departing of this meaning: "… In a general sense, indigenous reserves are protected areas; they are protected from outside influence for the benefit of the indigenous people… " (S1); "Yes there are relationships. Both have natural systems and environmental quality that requires some level of conservation and protection" (S9); "Yes , for obvious reason. Because the protected reserves are a birth child of indigenous reserves and because we do not want to lose the nature environment the relationship should be maintained." (S13); "Yes, indigenous reserves are protected areas" (S28) As in the case of Q1 (Do you think that development and sustainability are compatible?) some respondents pointed out that it would depend on what we understand by the two terms: "Depends on the sort of protected area or what we mean with protected area… " (S25). "There could be" (S38); "It could be, but I am not sure" (S46); "… this has to be context specific" (S1). Five respondents simply said "yes" (S37, S18, S22, S43, S50) and one simply said "no" (S15). However many of the respondents did go on to qualify the relationship in some way. 12 Harmony or the need for it Some of the affirmative responses portrayed indigenous peoples as the guardians of the environment while others offered concrete examples of this viewpoint: "Si. Las culturas indigenas han demostrado que sus culturas han vivido armonicamente con su entorno durante miles de años" (Yes. Indigenous peoples have demonstrated that their cultures have lived in harmony with their environment during millennia). (S23); "Empirical evidence through statistical analysis has shown (particularly in Colombia in the north west region of the Sierra Nevada) that there is a direct relation between conservation and indigenous reserves. So, the answer is "yes, I do think so". (S40) There were those that referred to the need for a harmonic relationship because: 1) the environment should be protected for the benefit of indigenous peoples: "… indigenous reserves are related with spaces or areas that the government leaves for indigenous people and protected areas are where the local authorities or government provide the ($) resources in order to protect them" (S19); "Existe una relación, historica y cultural, respecto a su territorio, esto debe ser respetado y protegido para las mismas comunidades indigenas" (There is an historic and cultural relationship with respect to their territories. This should be respected and protected by indigenous communities for their own sake (S20). 2) the protection is fundamental for biodiversity conservation: "… Podria ser que se proteja un area porque existe cierta flora o fauna que esta en peligro de extincion. Por ejemplo, muchos animales que viven en la selva solo se aparean una vez al año en cierta temporada y si estos son interrumpidos por presencia humana su decendencia podria verse aun mas en peligro de extincion… " (It may be that an area is protected because there are endangered flora or fauna. For example, there are many rainforest animals that mate once a year or seasonally; if they are interrupted by human activities their progeny could be further endangered) (S25); "… development there should be restricted for the sake of conservation" (S33) 3) sustainable practices could be developed based on indigenous peoples' experiences: "Yes. By protecting areas where almost all indigenous people are more and more confined, there will be a way to preserve indigenous experiences in order for these experiences to contribute to a sustainable development." (S11). Utopia There were also those sorts of answers that reflected a feeling of hope or a sense of Utopia, in which a harmonic, positive relationship was acknowledged as desirable but not yet achieved: "I imagine IR to equate with PA in some way. Perhaps naively. IR is implicitly protected from external development forces, but not necessarily internal." (S3); "There can be. If people are continuing a way of life that has been sustainable in the past and are able to develop sustainably (… ) there is no reason why both should not coexist." (S6); "Most indigenous reserves must be also protected areas. How to effectively do it? I don't know." (S36); "In countries with mindless and irresponsible politicians and business people, it should be mandatory that 'indigenous reserves' must be synonymous with 'protected areas'. (S42) 13 Contamination and cultural imposition Some respondents signalled the risk of contamination, this is of indigenous peoples being influenced by a mestizo culture and therefore driven to break the presumed harmonic relationship with the natural environment. This may be seen as a lost opportunity, that of the rest of humanity to learn from indigenous experiences or, that of given indigenous people to assert managerial control: "Yes, as indigenous populations tend to live in harmony with nature these areas tend to require protection from the outside world. (S12); "… I also think it is difficult to put it into practice since indigenous people want to be part of the economic system and therefore there is a risk of depletion. Anyway who is better to protect certain areas than the people who have lived there for hundred of years!!!" (S39); "Yes, in fact, so far as I know, many of our indigenous people live in these protected areas, where most of them have been able to live in a sustainable way, I say most of them, because others are affected by the mestizo men that live nearby or want to get something from that place due to its economic importance, affecting these natural areas." (S45) It was pointed out that both types of jurisdiction, IR and PA, derived from a cultural-historical process, in which self-determination was not accounted for: "Yes, a very imperialistic one - especially in the Americas (including Canada). It is an old regressive link between the two, in the 60s and 70s this paternalistic viewpoint saw indigenous culture as static --which is wrong!" (S24); "Yes, they both seem to be defined by the ruling 'white' government." (S26) A respondent that had visited Amazonia (VA) added that there is resistance to this imposition, at least as far as indigenous peoples of Colombia are concerned: "yes-especially when indigenous management systems are practised in spite of the models of dominant society in Colombia" (S27). Similarly, another VA respondent suggested that in Colombia there are no friendly relationships between IR and PA: "It depends from country to country, but in Colombia no" (S10)! Analytical responses The analysis provided by some of the respondents tended to localise the relationship: to put it into the historical process. The analysis underlined the main problem for a "non-confrontational" relationship between IR and PA regimes. As they are designations that came about without public participation and from a rationality that is especially alien to indigenous peoples, when IRs and PAs overlap, competition for management arises. These type of answers either acknowledged that the relationship happens through overlap, or mentioned the difficulties of hitting indigenous rights and conservation target simultaneously: "Freedom of choice for all people, in terms of lifestyle, cultural heritage can translate into giving management control to indigenous people in protected areas. However the balance between sustainable economic development for indigenous people and at the same time protecting the environment is a difficult topic to discuss at a macro level. Individual environmental and socio-cultural circumstances need to be fully accounted for and explicitly articulated." (S7) "Yo creo que existe una relacion estrecha entre reservas indigenas y areas protegidas alrededor del mundo. Ya que estas dos figuras juridicas en muchos casos (p.e. Colombia) se encuentran translapadas." (I believe there is a close relationship between indigenous reserves and protected areas around the world. It derives from the fact that in many cases these two jurisdictions overlap) (S34). 14 "There is a relationship when they overlap, which I think happens often." (S44) "Los resguardos y las reservas indigenas han tenido la tendencia a considerarse y definirse como areas protegidas, sin embargo me parece importante tener en cuenta que al establecer los limites territoriales entre los resguardos quedan zonas intermedias que no pertenecen necesariamente a algun resguardo, y esto hace de un modo u otro que tambien se presenten roces con diferentes actores. Por la misma razon que al no estar circunscrito en un resguardo aparentemente se consideraría como un area no protegida… " (It has been the tendency to consider the resguardos and indigenous reserves as protected areas. However, I think it is worth considering that when the resguardo boundaries are established, there are zones in-between not ascribed to any resguardo. And this makes it somehow possible for different [political] actors to get confrontational. This happens as a consequence of the non-ascription of the in-between zone, which is not considered as protected area… ) (S48) However it came about and assuming that both jurisdictions are somehow competing, some respondents argued that IR should be more effective, as it gives responsibility to the people for their own lives: "Yes, although I think indigenous reserves serve to protect the environment/area better. This is because they are protected by local people who value the resources and use them in a traditional and more sustainable way. Protected areas can be designated/run by Governments and this can remove the responsibility from the indigenous peoples." (S5); "Yes. I think that indigenous reserves do offer more protection than protected areas because it gives local people more incentive to use sustainable practices. They can see it being in their own interests" (S17) In contrast, one respondent argued: "Maybe there is, but I don't believe in reserves" (S35). And a second respondent (VA) added that poverty have driven indigenous peoples to behave unsustainably: "I think it is possible. However, some indigenous areas are completely degraded because they are selling their natural resources to survive." (S53). This response (S53) is related to one of those made to Q1: "To a certain degree, yes. I think that monetary considerations will always outweigh humanitarian concerns and it is very hard to convince people who are seeking a living from sometimes meagre resources that it is in their own good to give consideration to long-term sustainable use of their resources. It is usually easier and cheaper to move on to the next area when one area has been depleted." (S17) Both answers (Q1-S17, Q2-S53) echo a neo-Malthusian argument. It implies that a 'tragedy of the commons' is happening in Amazonia and elsewhere as result of overpopulation. The politics involved "No. Indigenous reserves and protected areas (for nature conservation) are two different political land use strategies. If the government is assigning an Indian reserve then they should respect the use the indigenous people are making of the terrain according to traditional use or to improved technologies. Areas for Nature conservation must be treated separately and with a different priority. We cannot make the indians responsible for the disappearing of the diversity. The government has to be responsible by applying appropriate conservation and management regimes" (S2) This response makes an argument for the need to differentiate between IR and PA as diverse political strategies that pursue different aims. The first would aim to 15 comply with Indigenous Peoples Rights, particularly that of self-determination. The second political strategy would aim at biodiversity conservation. The respondent acknowledges indigenous social change as indigenous management depends on both, tradition and technological improvement. Interestingly, the analysis provided does not try to conceal the confrontational nature of the relationship; nor does it neither place much hope in conciliation. On the contrary, it advocates for a distinction. If there is some hope or sense of utopia in the response it comes from solutions provided by technological improvement. Which is something this particular respondent had already stressed in Q1: "… . Development as the integration of western technologies or increase of income per capita, can be carefully done by implementing appropriate technologies into the productive activities of the communities. Sustainability defined as a continuous productivity level in the long term." (S2) Non-conclusive comment-Q211 Nowadays, the establishment or enlargement of IRs (Resguardos in Colombia) and PAs requires the interested proponents to follow long protocols, the fulfilment of precise administrative procedures and of legal conditions. One aim of the process is to allow different stakeholders to participate and to assure the fulfilment of fundamental rights to all citizens in equal conditions. In Colombia, like in many other parts of the developing world, when the "juridical figures" were established these procedures were not necessary, therefore, many IRs and PAs were established without participation of all interested parties. It is not surprising that some of the respondents refer to the confrontation or competition of regimes that began with their imposition. It could be of some significance that none of the respondents that claimed the need to harmonise IR and PA have been in Amazonia. In contrast, the two respondents that pointed out that these two regimes are conflicting in Colombia have been there. The analytical response that called for clear differentiation between the two also came from the group of people that had visited Amazonia (VA). From the set of answers given to Q2 it is clear that different and contrasting narratives ascribed to with respect to environmental management. For some of the respondents indigenous peoples are guardians of the environment, victims of colonialism or in risk of a cultural contamination that will force them to adopt maladaptive strategies that would threaten conservation strategies. For others, indigenous reserves are untrustworthy designations: the environment should be preserved against development and human intervention, be it indigenous or otherwise. Therefore indigenous peoples should not be in charge of environmental management. Yet, another political perspective is derived from hopes of compatibility between the two regimes, which although pursuing different aims are seen as relevant for environmental and human security at the same time. Thus, the third perspective could be characterised as dialectic or iterative. From this (last) perspective indigenous experience could help the development of conservation strategies; and, 11 Schematic summary: Table 2, Appendix 3. 16 at the same time, the revision of environmental and conservation management strategies could be vital for the survival of indigenous peoples. Hope or Utopian visions also have a place here: the development of technology is seen as a key component for adequate environmental management. Technological improvement would allow both compliance with indigenous peoples' rights and biodiversity conservation. We are sketching a continuum from our comment on Q1, suggesting that the narrative of conciliation 'reflects a process of thinking and acting that is deeply rooted in utopia'. Q3 - Do you think that the concepts of protected areas (PA), indigenous reserves (IR) and sustainable development (SD) are useful for environmental management today? Two respondents say that the concepts should be context specific: "Yes, but which of them is useful depends on context… " (S1). "As I said before, all these terms have to be defined properly in the first place before they can be applied." (S2). There were two respondents that simply said 'yes' (S14, S22), while one answered: "yes, if it works" (S4). S4's response suggests that concepts are instruments, and not surprisingly many answers referred to the "applicability" of these three concepts. Environmental indians and contamination risk Some respondents reiterated the idea, already expressed in Q1 and Q2, that indigenous peoples are practitioners of SD or conservation managers: "… Indigenous reserves are important because they allow the preservation of a way of living in sympathy with the environment long gone in most areas… " (S12); "Claro que si. Las culturas indigenas son un ejemplo de convivencia y explotacion sostenible del entorno en que viven" (Yes of course. Indigenous cultures are an example of coexistence with the environment they live in and of sustainable exploitation.) (S23); "Yes because indigenous people are the 'shepherds' of the landscape and they have a first-hand understanding and experience (handed down from previous generations) of ecosystem processes. Sometimes indigenous customs and habits reflect an understanding of nature's processes that can be exemplary in the planning of management plans… "(S41) One response re-enforced an idea presented in Q2, that indigenous sustainable practices are in risk as the younger generations begin to adopt western lifestyles: "… , but this knowledge is also in danger [endangered],… , shamanism is related in many cases to the management of the natural resources, but I have listened to the indigenous people from the community that I'm working in, that they're not interested in receiving this knowledge from their parents, and day by they they're a lot like us in their agricultural practices." (S45) Principles as instruments Various responses made reference to certain conditions that would have to be fulfilled in order for the concepts to be useful. This perspective, where the concepts are understood as political instruments, could be useful if a 'real' or 'truth-value' definition of them were accomplished. This truth-value would come from using the political instrumentality of a concept only if it were to reflect a set of principles such as intergenerational equity, empowerment, and participation. 17 And, in the case of participation, special emphasis were given to the incorporation of indigenous people, their knowledge and ways of dealing with the environment: "The concept of protected areas will only be successful if indigenous peoples are involved, therefore this would seem to indicate that indigenous reserves would be the best way forward of the two" (S5) "… indigenous reserves need to be redefined according to the wishes of the people who will be living in them,… (S6); "… If sustainable development means development with the means which exist and with the participation of the people concerned… " (S11); Yes. Exercising indigenous knowledge should not be limited to reserves but integrated into the management plans along with scientific knowledge more widely. (S26); "Yes… Any protected area, etc. must actively incorporate the participation of indigenous people" (S41) The idea of intergenerational equity is attached to that of resource reserve for the developmental process: "Yes… The sustainable development concept relating to the obligation of the present generation to leave enough natural assets and capital for future generations to enjoy at least the same quality of life we enjoy today must be at the heart of environmental management activities." (S12) "Yes, because the natural environment that we believe is endangered should be protected as a reference in future years to come and because of this a sense of environmental management is very important as the same environment becomes a resource for development" (S13) "Yes. We need to protect the area and its people and provide for sustainable development. (S21) "… pero estoy cierto que las areas protegidas independentemente del interes en prervarlas desempeñan un papel importante en el manejo de ambientes naturales para la captura de CO2, conservación de recursos biogenéticos/biodiversidad/ y como elementos de estudio para futuras generaciones… " (… but I am certain that, independently of the interest in preserving them, protected areas play a roll in the management of natural environment for CO2 sequestration, conservation of biodiversity/genetic resources and as study subjects for future generations (S25) "yes, otherwise development will go against our own endurance. I think we have to consider the possibility that we are not the most powerful force in this world." (S38) Risk and Protection Following this idea is that of concepts (as political instruments) being useful if they could provide and enforce protection (S13, S21 above). In this case either the environment is seen at risk (endangered species or ecosystems) or both indigenous peoples and their environments: "Yes. Protected areas are important as pools of natural resources not affected by human activity. Indigenous reserves are important because they allow the preservation of a way of living in sympathy [tune] with the environment long gone in most areas." (S12); "I think they are vital. Until everyone has a responsible attitude to environmental control certain protections have to be enforced." (S17) Some of the responses expressing a need for environmental protection have a sense of impending catastrophe: "Yes, but they are loaded concepts so we have to be careful in using them… sustainable development is the only way we will survive, but is usually glibly applied." (S6); "in a limited sense perhaps.but what we need to accomplish is protection of all that there is left, without cutting and taking land around the so called protected area. stop the modernisation process wherever it has not already reached into" (S32); "Yes, because they are the only source to preserve life on earth." (S51) 18 Protection but of cultural diversity: "… They may contribute to 'capturing' and saving fragile cultures and 'unknown' languages." (S31) Although acknowledging the need for protection, some respondents made it explicit that IRs were not effective, as the policies derived from such concepts (regimes) would increase risk instead of attenuating it: "… in terms of indigenous groups if they become circumscribed to a specific protected area then this will prevent persistence of nomadic lifestyles etc. and as a result the protected area may become 'unsustainable' as people are becoming circumscribed to a specific reserve. I guess this also answers the question on indigenous reserves, however, the indigenous reserves of N. America should be used as an example of the problems of tying people to such reserves,… " (S10) "… 'indigenous reserves' are not so useful - most of indigenous social problems have been caused by the colonisers, and are being reproduced through generations. Keeping indigenous people enclosed in such areas, and introducing paternalistic rules and laws is not healthy for any society. It instils racism in a society, and will not ensure that indigenous practices of environmental management will be maintained - that depends on the indigenous group and how they choose to manage their environment… " (S24) The need for integration and its impediments Some emphasis was put on the idea that there is or should be a link between the concepts (political instruments): "Yes all concepts are useful as they each permit different aspects of the economic/ecology debate to enter into the wider public arena. Ultimately for there to be sustainable solutions to environmental problems there needs to be a holistic approach adopted… " (S7) "… environmental development will not be meaningful without taking into account the interrelation between 'indigenous reserves' and 'sustainable development'" (S11) "Yes, because all areas are linked with each other very closely" (S18). "Yes. Exercising indigenous knowledge should not be limited to reserves but integrated into the management plans along with scientific knowledge more widely." (S26) "… Lo que creo es que tanto las reservas indigenas, como las areas protegidas deberian orientarse hacia un desarrollo sostenible. Bien sea que estas dos figuras se translapen o no. Si entendemos el desarrollo sostenible como un proceso que involucra criterios sociales, culturales, economicos, y ambientales." (… What I do believe is that indigenous reserves as well as protected areas should direct their attention towards sustainable development, whether or not the entities [juridical regimes] overlap. If we understand sustainable development as a process that involves social, cultural, economic and environmental criteria.) (S34) However, quiet a few responses pointed out the problems that prevent this integration from taking place: 1) Incompatibility of interests between IR and PA: "… Protected areas are useful, but they raise the debate as to whether one should protect an area and exclude people from it so that a certain species/ archaeological site/community can survive or whether people should have access… " (S10); "It is quite difficult to harmonies those concepts, specifically among indigenous people. They are convinced that 'sustainable development' is an imperialist concept, and the first idea they have -as far as they hear the concept- is that they are going to be exploited by others… " (S40) 2) The prevalence of economic efficiency and profit at the expense of anything else: 19 "… El desarrollo sustentable que ha sido cada vez mas un objetivo importante en varios paises del mundo. Pero encontrar los balances correctos ha sido y es dificil, particulrmente cuando las sociedades y gobiernos estan sometidos a un proceso de globalizacion y de efeicientizacion economica. He ahi los conflictos permanentes de lograr un desarrollo verdaderamente sustentable que considere no solo los aspectos economicos, pero politicos, cultrales, sociales y ecologicos o ambientales. (Sustainable development has become an increasingly important objective in several countries around the world. But to find the correct balances has been and continues to be difficult; in particular as a result of societies and governments being subjected to economic efficiency within the globalisation process. There are permanent conflicts in the way of obtaining a real sustainable development that involve not only the economic aspects, but also the social, cultural, ecological and environmental criteria " (S25). "… too many people think of 'sustainable' as meaning economic sustainability and not environmental sustainability." (S30). "… While protected areas and indigenous reserves serve to maintain environmental quality, the concept of sustainable development is often disregarded for the sake of profits and globalisation." (S33) 3) Political manipulation: "I think there have been problems with these concepts for two reasons: First, they mean different thing for different people, second, they have been used and to serve particular interests. There are several and opposite definitions of 'sustainable development' and it's a difficult concept. 'Indigenous reserve', used as a general concept does not describe usefully the complex realities and 'protected areas' have been used to serve particular interests over time so I think it is seen suspiciously by a lot of people." (S44) "I think so, but these concepts are used a lot by politicians, and then the meaning can be manipulated". (S46) "… The big problem is not related to the concepts alone, it is related to the way in which these are applied according with particular interests and purposes. Many times the terms are used by different groups or organisations in order to pretend to be environmental friendly or responsible, when the real purposes reveal an opposite target or interest." (S47) "… Muy seguaramente estos términos se manejan como deben ser en el plano académico teórico, mas no ocurre lo mismo en el ambito práctico donde lo que prevalece son los interese de los diferentes actores que trabajan en este campo, lo que lleva inevitablemente a que se presenten situaciones de tension entre estos y se deje de lado el objetivo primordial en cuanto a la conservación y le manejo ambiental" (For sure, theoretically and within the academic circles these concepts are managed as they should be. Although, in the practical scenario privilege is given to the particular interests of those different [political] actors who work in this field. Thus, it is unavoidable that tensions will arise between these [political actors], which leave aside the fundamental aim of environmental management and conservation) (S48) 4) Semantics, the concepts mean too many things to too many different political actors (S44 above): "… 'Sustainable development' is not so useful for environmental management, as the concept is too contested - it means too many different things to different people." (S24); "As I said, the problem is that there are many definitions of those terms and it makes it difficult to determine if they are useful in one place compared to other places" (S50) Dynamism The perspective of 'dynamism' reflects a perception of mutating meanings as an advantage. Under this perspective 'contested' means 'in change', which is seen as part of a learning process, which is in tune with the idea of local definition of concepts (emphasised above): "Ultimately for there to be sustainable solutions to environmental problems there needs to be a holistic approach adopted, where people can better appreciate that their lifestyle has much in 20 common with others - even if they are in an OECD country and cannot appreciate the day to day lifestyle of someone in a less developed country. … . Therefore the concepts listed can provide an opportunity to raise the awareness of the majority of the world's people." "Yes, there is plenty that can be learned from these three concepts and also applied" (S37) "A lot, I believe there are a lot of things we can learn from them, specially in this field of study,." (S45) "If these concepts are [understood or interpreted] under a dynamic and changing world (attached to contexts), which mean that there is not a unique definition or way to apply them, I think they are still useful for environmental management." [original: understanding or interpreting… ] (S47) The need for new concepts-Q3 Contradicting narratives can be appreciated through the reading of these responses. There is a group of respondents that are uncritical of the concepts or the policies derived from them (like S37, S45 above and): "Yes, they are important to efficient environmental management" (S28); "Yes. An understanding of the mechanism of these terminologies is essential for effective environmental management … " (S9). Another group could be made out of those responses that reflect suspicion or are definitely critical of the concepts (S10, S24, S25, S30, S33, S40, S44, S46, S47, S48, S50 above). And, besides the group of respondents that express conditionality or hope (see above), there is a group of responses that, while critical of the concepts, acknowledge that at present they are all we have: "… which of them is useful depends on context… If an ethnic group is to be allowed to determine the course of events within its own territory, then the territory must be reserved for them until such time as they develop complete autonomy or decide to integrate more closely with wider society. Sustainable development may seem a rather broad, unspecific term, but it does at least draw attention to the unsustainability of conventional development… " (S1) "… The concept of sustainable development is gradually getting better developed and, even if it is not strictly attainable, gives decision-makers something to work towards… (S5) "I don't agree with the concept of SD as it is a contradiction in terms, but at present there are few better alternatives… " (S10) One respondent actually moved forward in the critique, pointing out that the concepts were built on preconceptions and identifying the need to generate new concepts that would integrate the useless categorical divide of nature and society: "I think they are old fashioned, and generated by the Anglo-Saxon culture. We should move towards an increased compatibility between human activities and nature, making it therefore not necessary to talk about reserves, or natural areas." (S35) Non-conclusive comment-Q312: The majority if not the totality of respondents took 'concepts' as 'politics'. They discussed the history of these politics, their adequacy and sufficiency. It is very interesting that while the conduct through which political ideas become policies is supposed to be complex, it is obvious for the respondents that there is more than theoretical debate going on in the process of policy making. There is a prevailing, sometimes automatic or non-reflexive awareness that narratives pursue the aims that drive the policies and politics that are transforming the environment. 12 Schematic summary: table 3, Appendix 3. 21 In continuity with the results of Q2, only 1 out of five respondents of those who argued for the need to integrate the concepts had been in Amazon; while the two respondents that argued the case of 'incompatibility of interests' had been there. Of those which suggested that these concepts –political strategies- are useful for environmental protection or that this is the last chance –catastrophism- for life, none had visited Amazonia. It may be of some significance that none of the five respondents that suggested that IR might be a better strategy than PA have been in Amazonia, while one person of the two that argued that IRs are ineffective had been there. The responses correspond to several narratives that can be identified. One of them is that of 'confidence in science and trust in political instrumentality' derived from the (traditional definitions of) concepts outlined. Another narrative is that of 'natives as heroes and outsiders as villains', which is reflected in the suspiciousness of concepts based in untested assumptions and in mistrust of the governmental policies derived from them. In summary there is a status-quo narrative and a counter narrative. Yet a third type of narrative could be identified, that of 'critical understanding'. Q4 – Should environmental managers (EM) get involved in the territorial ordering process (TOP) of the Amazon? One of the respondents simply answered yes (S4). One was unsure (S52), perhaps suspicious? One considered the question was tricky (S32), and three of them put the question into question. Two of these responses asked for the term 'environmental manager' to be defined: "Difficult to answer. Define the roles, mandate and empowerment of the environmental manager… " (S31); "What do you mean by environmental managers?." (S6). The third one was more critical: "this sentence is colonialist as if indigenous peoples of Amazonia were not in fact environmental managers" (S27). With a similar intent, one respondent argued that indigenous people were better-qualified environmental mangers: "Las comunidades indigenas han sido las mejores administradoras del territorio ancestral, eso debe ser respetado y replicado en zonas donde la intervención humana 'civilizada' ha afectado las condiciones ambientales. (Indigenous communities have been the best managers of ancestral territories, this should be respected and should be replicated in areas where 'civilised' human intervention has affected environmental conditions) (S20)" The response of Indigenous peoples as better managers had been expressed in Q1, Q2 and Q3. Another three responses reinforced the ideas of catastrophism, the need for urgent environmental protection and to stop development (S32, S33, S42). Perspectives EMs are the ones: "Definitely" (S12); " … They have in many cases a better view for the long-run." (S18); 22 Yes. Who else is better suited to do so?" (S21); "Environmental Managers should get involved. They are best able to ensure protection of ecosystem" (S28); "Por supuesto que si. Ya que el ordenamiento territorial de un territorio (en este caso de la Amazonia) debe tener como objetivos el desarrollo sostenible." (Definitely. Territorial ordering (of the Amazon in this case) should have sustainable development as an objective) (S34); "Because they are the ones that can understand the balance that must exist between economic development, traditional culture and environment." (S36); " They should, how can they do whithout?" (S46) "Yes, because they can contribute to better territorial ordering in the region" (S53) EMs and scientists figure out the solutions and take the decisions: "Deben estar involucradas todas las personas del planeta, pero con mas razon los 'decision makers', que a fin de cuentas, toman las acciones concretas sobre nuestro futuro medioambiental. (All people from the planet should get involved, but the 'decision makers' have more reason to be there, after all they are the ones that take the concrete actions in respect to our environmental future) (S23); "Yes, but along with some other scientists, not only because of the importance of the Amazon from a global point of view, but specially for the importance for the people living there." (S35); "Yes, always considering multiple disciplines result in a better understanding and so better solutions." (S38) But taking into account the other opinions: "Yes, although indigenous peoples will also play a major part and without them any agreements between Governments and environmental managers will not work… " (S5); "Not always, because it is necessary to take into consideration lay people's opinions too." (53) Indigenous peoples direct EMs: "If they are asked to do so by indigenous peoples, I see no problem with this." (S1); "Territorial ordering should be primarily decided upon by the indigenous groups that inhabit them, … ultimately decisions need to come from the bottom upwards" (S10); "… The indigenous people should be in charge of the program at the ultimate level" (S14). " They should but they should make sure they respect the opinion of indigenous people and they should be very discreet in their approach and aim for cooperation." (S41) EMs have equal rights to participate as other stakeholders: " Of course. All actors should be involved in the process… It doesn't mean that they have to take decisions but they can evaluate the circumstances under different and also important perspectives." (S2); "What do you mean by environmental managers? But yes, I think they also have a stake in the fate of the Amazon, and have a right to make their voices heard. (S6); " Involvement - yes but only in collaboration and co-operation with the Amazonian people and those in the higher levels of bureaucracy and policy making … Environmental managers can make significant contributions in this area, given their depth of understanding of the issues (relative to the general public)" (S7); "Deveriam estar envolvidos no processo de re-ordenamento territorial, junto com edndios, ribeirinhos etc" (they should be involved in the territorial ordering process together with indigenous peoples, riverine inhabitants, etc." (S29); " I think they should be involved as advisors and technical support but I support the idea of a non-technical management, where decisions are taken by the different stakeholders based on the technical advice and the social, cultural and economic factors." (S44) 23 But this intervention should be avoided within indigenous territories: "Not in indigenous reserves or territories which historically have been managed by indigenous communities. In other areas, should be taking part in dialogue of knowledge between cultures, people, communities, scientists and decision makers from private and government sectors, to order process on the amazon area." [Original text:… historically has been management by… ](S47) The apolitical EM: "Yes, but not for political reasons. It should be for the cause of sustainable use of our natural environment which is our heritage." (S9); " … Generally though I think that environmentalists like missionaries before them should not get involved in political processes as this can have a very negative reaction within the local community." (S17) "Yes, their knowledge will hopefully be of use in the ordering process" (S37) The political participation of EMs: "Yes, to counteract the interference of other external actors but hopefully to work with the indigenous people respecting their values and practices, not independently." (S26) EMs as facilitators of the dialog between IK and WS: "… without them [indigenous peoples] any agreements between Governments and environmental managers will not work. Environmental Managers should facilitate discussion… " (S5); "Territorial ordering should be primarily decided upon by the indigenous groups that inhabit them, environmental managers roles here should be as referees to help in the co-ordination of the process, but ultimately decisions need to come from the bottom upwards." (S10); "It's necessary for people involved in this field of study, that had already gained a conscience, and that are able to understand that we have to work with indigenous, not from our usual management vision, but theirs, trying to see the world like they do. In this way could be easier, perhaps to understand and give convincing and why not scientific arguments to the authorities (or people in charge of handling these affairs) about the different way they have already distributed their territory, which [in] most of the case (if not all) doesn't have our political distribution. (I.E, those groups that live between Colombia and Brazil boundaries) they don't have the same division of territories, because of this, they must be managed in a way more in concordance to their political organisation." (S45) Capacity, ability and quality of EMs: "Depends who the environmental managers are - if they are from the area and have a passion for the area, then why not. If they are drafted in from outside, and seen as the 'outside experts' then probably not - it usually causes friction within the area."(S24) "Define the roles, mandate and empowerment of the environmental manager. They may fall into different categories, of which I may name at least 4: 1. The conflictive manager. Created by a lobbying body. A good example is the body (forget the name) that is in charge of the Everglades in Florida. Their work is tainted by conflict of interest: the provision of water to cities and sugar cane farmers, at the same time maintaining the 'wet lands' as an ecosystem and controlling flooding! 2. The romantic. Exemplified by rich Europeans or North-Americans. Wanting to keep habitats, they may buy some land and resort to eco-tourism in order to keep their sustainability. I believe there are some German managed 'eco' destinations in Ecuador. Driven by an alternative way of life, they may not 'manage' the environment as they should. 3. The bureaucrat. A member of a government agency or NGO that may not be aware of local needs, responding always to policies made from a distance. Current legislation may be a hinder. "Los paisas", developed and colonised what is today Risaralda, Quindio, Caldas and 24 parts of Choco in Colombia, by using legislation that enabled them to cut and clear big forest areas to be claimed afterwards, creating the concept of the "colono". A colonisation process I witnessed in Caquetá some years ago. 4. The "grass roots" manager. Perhaps, the type who knows best the ecosystem and the power relationships that develop around it by the people involved with it. Usually their voice is not heard, mainly because of the threat they represent to some landowners or 'colonos'. If the law regarding claiming land that has been cleared is still existing, managing the environment is going to be a great task. One shall not forget that the 'colono' phenomenon represents one of the many socio-economical problems a nation like Colombia faces. … Management work usually develops around a policy. Trust among all participants is primordial. There ought to be some kind of legal-economical framework that will ease management work. If this is in place and all conflicts of interest reduced, then the territorial ordering process of Amazonia may become real." (S 31) Political risks, EMs tough job: "Yes, however the pressures on the person might be extreme. It would be preferable to have both on-site environmental managers and use some respected external managers as reference." (S15); "Yes, but bearing in mind that you should work with politicians and many kinds of 'parasitic' people which are thinking every day in the short term. It means that environmental managers are not enough for sustainable management and use of natural resource: their analytical models as well as their technical capacity is necessary, but they cannot work isolated, they require to work with others, despite the fact that 'the others' could (and should) think in a different way." (S40) Summarising-Q413 Like in the responses to Q1, Q2 and Q3, we can identify different and often contradictory perspectives. There were those that argued that environmental managers14 are the best qualified for the task and appeared somewhat perplexed by the question. Within that group there were those responses that assumed that decisions were taken by environmental managers or should be taken by them, although two expressed that others' opinion should be considered to a lesser extent. In the other direction were the responses that questioned intervention by EMs and considered it useful only when the decision-making process was led by indigenous peoples themselves. Yet, a third group was of the opinion that EMs should get involve in the same conditions that other stakeholders, such as indigenous peoples but, one respondent suggested they should not intervene in the management of indigenous peoples' territories at all. 13 See also Table 4, Appendix 3. 14 Called EMs in the survey to differentiate them from other experts and indigenous peoples. As it has been explained elsewhere (See "The march of the Manikins: Agroforestry practices and Spiritual dancing in Northwest Amazonia) indigenous peoples management of the environment departs from a different rationality and uses different instruments. What indigenous people from Northwest Amazonia call "management of the world" is not only a set of shamanistic practices but a way of living that combines social aims, aesthetic values, religious believes, and economic practices in a distinctive manner. Although acknowledging indigenous peoples from Northwest Amazonia are in fact environmental managers, the author has stressed that their "management of the world" incorporates many things, some of them of tremendous importance for environmental management more generally. 25 The other contrasting perspectives concerned the character of the intervention. While one group of responses were of the opinion that EMs should not get involved in politics, but have a technical approach, others thought that they should get involved to contrast and balance the political interests of other groups. A third group emerged, which advocated the intervention of environmental managers as conciliators and facilitators. Related to this roll of managers as advisers there was a group of responses showing concern with the capacity, ability and quality of environmental managers and, the possible risks that they have to face. Non-conclusive comment-Q4: As in responses to questions one, two and three, we can trace arguments and contra-arguments. One set of respondents portrays EMs as heroes. In this scenario they face a tough job, they are well trained, better able and indispensable for the process of territorial ordering; their politically risky job in which they have to make the decisions would be fundamental for diminishing environmental risk and even saving life on earth. (As in Q2 and Q3 none of those arguing conservation/catastrophism had been in Amazonia). A counter narrative is that provided by respondents arguing that EMs' participation should be directed by indigenous peoples (IP) or that the projects should be led mainly by natives, and that EMs should not intervene in the management of indigenous territories: in this case the heroes are indigenous peoples. A second counter narrative seems to be reflected by some of the respondents. In this scenario, EMs like IP should have equal rights to participate as different stakeholders, in this case decisions would come from a rational process in which dialog between cultures would take place. The participation of EMs would not be limited by their status/power but by their capacity, ability and their roll as facilitators or conciliators. Discussion European colonisation of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australasia from the late fifteenth century onwards, gave a tremendous boost to the volume of global transactions involving natural resources. Over the long run, trade in these resources, and in an increasingly diverse array of environmental services, has been expanding ever since. However, much of what is called globalisation in the twenty first century has more to do with developments in information technology since the late 1900s. The increasing speed of communications media and information transfer have proved fundamental in economic restructuring and the transformation of the world into a largely urban space (Castells 1996). In the globalised, twenty first century, local political decisions have little chance of being autarchic; international policy advisors inform local stakeholders about what is considered adequate or legal in accordance with international treaties, foreign protocols and political compromises. The local politics of environmental management is the concern of everybody: corporations, governments, international, regional and national NGOs, all of which compete for access to information and expansion of their scope of power in the political arena (Ambrose-Oji, Allmark et al. 2002). During the 1990s, and especially after the Río Earth Summit in 1992, one of the main topics of discussion was management of the global environment (Sachs 26 1993). Global targets for sustainable development were established at Río and similar processes were set in train at regional, national and local scales all over the world, following the guidelines set out in one of the policy documents agreed at Río: "Agenda 21". The official discourse that emerged from the Río process was replicated and many of the assumptions that informed the original discourse have been accorded a quasi-factual status by many people all over the globe (Sevilla_Guzmán and Woodgate 1997). The official discourse on globalisation emphasised the need for environmental management at supranational levels. At the same time, counter-discourse or anti-globalisation narratives have emerged. These emphasise the rights of indigenous people and local political actors to manage natural resources independently, in ways that allow them to make their own livelihood decisions and establish resource-use regimes that can provide the environmental goods and services that people need15. The management of the environment has always motivated debate and often led to confrontation. One of the main arguments of conservative conservationists concerns the 'vulnerability' of rainforest environments, and thus the need for their protection. Since the 1980s the problem of deforestation of tropical rainforests has been a global issue with special emphasis in South East Asia, the Congo basin and Amazonia (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001). In a 1998 analysis of 'rainforest' web-sites, Stott revealed four metawords within the conservation rhetoric: orientalism (the exotic other), climax (harmony), old age (ancient, undisturbed) and vulnerability (Stott 1999). Metawords such as these become key rhetorical devices so that even research and development project proposals tend to employ them, thus replicating assumptions that are no longer questioned. How is this metalanguage produced? What are the bases of its principal cannons? And why is it that semantic analysis tends to remain the preserve of scientists – or is it something that is also dealt with at a local level? Narratives can be traced back in time. Equilibrium disturbance (climax rupture) and environmental fragility (vulnerability) both played parts in Hardin's 1968 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin 1998). The neo-Malthusian discourse of environmental catastrophe as a result of an increasing population (of 'poor people') lies at the heart of Hardin's tragedy. The conservative conservationist perspective on the management of the rainforest is based on mistrust of systems of environmental management in which property rights (over life and resources) are not yet marketable. From a conservative political perspective responsible environmental action can only be achieved through the clarification of property rights to allow the unfettered action of free markets for the negotiation of such rights. It is assumed that the tragedy of the commons is happening or will happen in rainforest contexts where private property rights are not yet the rule and where societies still practise communal environmental management regimes based on indigenous knowledge rationalities in which nature and society form an ontological continuum. For conservatives only free markets for environmental rights, good and services can guarantee sustainable development. Neo-Malthusian 15 The discourses that emphasise on the need of eco-efficiency, economic transnationalization and planetary ecological management, were named by Sachs as contest and astronauts' perspectives. And the counter-discourse arising from the desempowered communities of the South as the home perspective (Sachs 1977). 27 and neo-liberal assumptions are fundamental to this perspective on sustainable development. With the aim of promoting Agenda 21 at local, national and regional levels, a complex and sophisticated process of institutionalisation was embarked upon. Amazonia did not escape this process; governmental officials or conservationist NGOs replicated the dominant conservationist discourse at the local level in NWA16. This official discourse of deforestation with its main initiative of protection of the environment from people has been labelled 'hegemonic' (Stott and Dullivan 2000) or 'neo-Malthusian' and 'managerial' (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001). It should come as no surprise then that counter narratives have developed in Amazonia (and elsewhere), for many of which the principal intention is to contradict the conservative policies derived from this hegemonic discourse. The rights of indigenous people to define the course of their lives: their rights to manage natural resources and the environmental services used or supplied by the Amazonian environment have been key issues in these significant counter-claims against the official Amazonian territorial ordering politics and policies, which have involved environmental management that has been designed elsewhere. This counter-narrative pursues the principle and right of self-determination against the interests of political initiatives for global environmental management. The counter-narrative was not just a reaction to neo-liberal, neo-Malthisian conservative politics and conservation policies during the 1980s and '90s, however. In Latin America, all indigenous peoples' rebellions against the European empires were motivated by a call to reconstruct pre-colonial socio-cultural orders returning to territorial orders where the management of 'agroforestry' was undifferentiated from the sacred (Varese 1996:124-25). In modern, post-colonial states, indigenous peoples continued to struggle for the recognition of their territories. In today's NWA this struggle is related to governmental and conservationists policies of environmental management and the presence of armed groups opposed to political resolution of territorial ordering. Many of the Protected Areas (PAs) of NWA were created at a time when no legal procedure was established for public intervention in the designation of such areas. The official titles of the PA or IR (Resguardos in Colombia) have not prevented non-native invasion of lands or the expansion of illegal crop production inside either PAs or IRs. Conservationists and indigenous peoples alike have vacillated between alliances with, and the rejection of, the armed groups in charge of illegal crop production, depending on the political gains to be made and the risks involved in rejecting the proposals or achieving an alliance. The armed groups, on their part, have sought political alliances when such co-operation could benefit their military capacity or improve the managerial efficiency of their enterprises.17 16 With respect to the territorial ordering process, the Colombian Amazon controversy is discussed in Forero 1999, 2000; Forero, Laborde et al. 1998. 17 See Forero 2000, "Territoriality and Governance in the Colombian Amazon". 28 As far as local inhabitants were concerned, rainforest conservation policies arrived in NWA from another space and time. The legal establishment of protected areas took no account of the opinions or desires of the peoples already inhabiting NWA. Indigenous agro-ecosystems and the livelihood strategies of more recent colonisers were both ignored. The ideology expressed through legal frameworks was that of protection of the environment from people. The villains were local inhabitants and the regulations to be enforced were those of expelling people from the 'conservation' areas and maintaining their exclusion. The dominant discourse made no distinction between complex indigenous agro-ecosystems and the less sophisticated livelihood strategies being developed by recent immigrants. All of them were labelled as "slash and burn" agriculture (Myers 1980). Yet it has become increasingly apparent over the last thirty years that slash and burn is just an aspect of indigenous environmental management in Amazonia, which combines agricultural production, fish and game management, ritual prescriptions, and aesthetic developments18. It has even been suggested that movement towards "short cropping/long-fallow" cultivation patterns within indigenous Amazonian agro-ecosystems was an strategic response to alien invasion of territories and the introduction of metal axes (Denevan 2001: 115-31). Today, most ethnoscientists find it self-evident that the concepts of "chagras" (gardens) and "rastrojos" (abandoned gardens) are far too simplified to reflect the structure of cultivations over the short-, medium- and long-terms, in accordance with local knowledge of agro-ecological variation. It is obvious that indigenous environmental management has transformed Amazonian ecosystems for millennia; this was already evident to many of the nineteenth century European explorers19. Even the most knowledgeable people in the industrialised world have no precise idea of how 'vulnerable' rainforest is and few have accurate knowledge about the political conditions facing indigenous peoples or other human inhabitants of the Amazonian rainforest. With respect to NWA, even the most determined researcher would have problems accessing this information. It is often said that the rainforests of Amazonia are the 'lungs of the planet' (S.33), a metaphor used to emphasise the region's role in the carbon cycle, especially the absorption of CO2. This is somewhat ironic given that our own lungs actually consume oxygen and release CO2 during respiration. Indigenous people have been portrayed as villains or victims depending on the observer and the moment of observation. When portrayed as victims the picture is something like this: the wise guardians of the rainforest are obliged by violence to sell their natural resources or abandon their noble environmental practices. The role of violence in the functioning of extractive economies has been well documented. Violent coercion has been the dominant system in NWA for more than a century. Although indigenous people are no longer sold, 'debt-peonage' systems still dominate and exploit poor indigenous and immigrant inhabitants of 18 See Forero 2001, " The march of the Manikins: Agroforestry Practices and Spiritual Dancing in Northwest Amazonia". 19 See Forero 2002a, " Indigenous Knowledge and the Scientific Mind: Activism or Colonialism". 29 NWA. These people are employed for the harvesting, transport and commercialisation of coca base, cocaine and, the functioning of 'extractive economies' in general (Gómez, A. 1999). But there has been an indigenous response. This has sometimes taken the form of open rebellion and sometimes that of making strategic and tactical alliances in an attempt to obtain or preserve political power, to secure the acquisition of merchandise or simply to survive20. The counter-hegemonic narratives that we mentioned above have been labelled 'populist discourse': making it explicit that the victims are the indians and the villains the international organisations, sometimes allied to transnational corporations (like oil drilling companies) and the dependent and often corrupted governments that collaborate with these international organisations (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001: 687). For NWA there are reports that seem to corroborate these arguments; e.g. indigenous peoples and environmental campaigners have protested jointly in Ecuador and Brazil against the construction of massive pipelines planned to cross through both IRs and PAs in both countries. The pipeline construction projects in both countries have arisen following collaboration between national governments and international oil exploration companies and have provoked public feelings of outrage (Weinberg 2001)21 . " [In NWA] Governments, multilateral lenders, multinational corporations, private banks and other institutions may not be counting on the convenient disappearance of indigenous peoples who get in the way of their ambitious development plans, but they often act as if they are." (Rabben 1998:122) "We who live in indigenous communities are surviving in the midst of a war imposed upon us by different factions and by the very same Colombian state that historically abandoned the countryside and permitted our lands to be invaded by waves of colonizers. Today we are caught in the crossfire, menaced by killings and displacement, while the State manifests its presence in the air with planes that slowly kill our plants and animals, our subsistence crops, and our people." (Organizacion Zonal Indigena del Putumayo_ OZIP 2002) However, is it possible to claim that there is a policy of 'ethnic cleansing' for NWA? From one side the whole issue of national sovereignty has been put into question; the expansion of Plan Andino (formerly Plan Colombia), the USA's anti-drug strategy for Latin America, exemplifies the delicate situation in which some of the Latin American countries have entered the twenty first century. The military component Plan Andino is aimed to support economic measures, the famous and indeed infamous structural adjustment plans that have provoked strikes and rebellions22. Additionally, even if there were an official policy of ethnic cleansing, South American States, given their size and power, would find it difficult to implement 20 See "Indigenous Knowledge and the Scientific Mind: Activism or Colonialism" (Forero 2002a), and "Technology in Northwest Amazonia: Sketches from Inside" (Forero 2002b). 21 For recent (March 2002) press releases on this issue see www.amazonwatch.org and www.americas.org 22 See Forero and Woodgate 2002, "The semantics of 'Human Security' in Northwest Amazonia: between indigenous peoples''Management of the World' and the USA's State Security Policy for Latin America". 30 it. The poor, be they indigenous peoples or colonisers are in the middle of a territorial war linked to international networks of criminality; they have been displaced, kidnapped or killed regardless of their claims of neutrality. In the case of Colombia, although some military authorities have been linked to some of the worst of the paramilitaries' atrocities, it has not been proved that the State itself has a policy of ethnic cleansing. In the case of Brazil, in 1996 the national executive proclaimed Decree 1775, instructing a right to contravene which, contrary to 169 WTO international agreement on Indigenous Peoples' rights, gave other stakeholders the opportunity to challenge Indigenous property rights. Paramilitary groups associated with illegal evictions of indigenous peoples in Brazilian Amazonia have long sought such a 'charter'. At the same time, the decree left the definition of indigenous land rights to the will of the executive power itself (Ministry of Justice). But, as in the case of Colombia, it cannot be proved that there is a policy of ethnic cleansing. It has been suggested in the non-conclusive comments on the survey results, that many people's responses echoed hegemonic and populist narratives. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as heroes or victims, as well as scientists and environmental managers. However, quiet a few of responses cannot be associated with either populist or hegemonic narratives. There is a group of responses that reflect critical thinking and are willing to challenge such simplistic dichotomies. Thus, the concept of sustainable development has been questioned, suspiciousness of western, scientific and technological solutions was expressed, and there was little willingness to give environmental managers carte blanche to prescribe whatever measures they might see fit. Interestingly, this last group, while acknowledging the need for: new concepts and adequate guidelines for environmental management, and the difficulty of achieving conservation targets while complying with indigenous peoples rights, still consider the concepts of SD, PA and IR as useful or the politics derived from them as desirable. What is interesting is that the responses to this survey, which were made by outsiders (respondents were not inhabitants of Amazonia), reflect a tendency to picture the conflict over territory in ways that do not correspond to either of the two main narratives. We can say that inasmuch as outsiders see possibilities for political action outside hegemonic or populist approaches, so Amazonian insiders are organising and negotiating regardless of whether their political discourse echoes either conservative or counter-hegemonic politics of territorial ordering. As no significant statistical analysis could be derived from the survey it would be difficult to speak of tendencies. At first sight it seems that adherence to hegemonic, counter-hegemonic, utopic or conciliatory narratives reflects each respondent's intellectual background more than his or her witnessing of the situation of peoples and forests in Amazonia. However, certain coincidences among the responses to each question might be representative: - For Q1-SD, two out of four of the respondents that accepted the imperative of SD without question have been in Amazon, none of them is a social scientist (SS) though and the other two were environmental managers. None of the SSs 31 that had visited the region argued for complete incompatibility between sustainability and development. Instead, SSs were part of a third group acknowledging that the concept of SD might be of some use, given certain conditions. - For Q2 – the relationship between IRs and PAs, not one of those who argued for the need to harmonise the two concepts (5), or those that emphasised SD as a desirable aim that has not yet been reached (4), or those or that argued that IRs are better than PAs (2) had been to the Amazon (in total 21 % of respondents). Respondents that had visited Amazonia (VA) were among those that acknowledged a relationship between IRs and PAs and that the relationship can be both complementary and competitive. Two respondents from the VA group argued that a complementary relationship was not possible in Colombia and one of them pointed out that being political strategies with different aims they should be kept differentiated in order to avoid conflict. This result might indicate that people that have been in Amazonia are more aware of the problems of territorial ordering caused by the imposition of regimes based in alien concepts. - For Q3 – on the usefulness of the concepts, none the five respondents arguing that IRs might be better that PAs had been in Amazonia, while one of the two that argued that IRs are ineffective had visited. Only one out of five respondents that argued for the need to integrate the concepts had been in Amazonia, while both those that argued for an incompatibility of interests have. This result seems to confirm that people who have visited the area are more conscious of the problems caused when policies formulated elsewhere are imported to Amazonia. Conclusions All technological adoption/adaptation has diverse effects in the life and development of society. People living within the society that is adopting them, and the outsiders that are analysing cultural change perceive these effects in different ways. The assessments of 'usefulness' or 'risk' a society makes when adapting/adopting technologies are linked to the conscious and subconscious present and future scenarios into which the society places itself alongside other societies. If the rest of the world wishes to respect Amazonian indigenous peoples' rights of self-determination, they should not intervene in ordering processes of indigenous territories. The problem is that indigenous ways of dealing with the world might not be compatible with the ideas that foreigners have with respect to Amazonia, its peoples and its future. And, for good or bad, fairly or unfairly, each group has a way of intervening and exercising a certain amount of power to modify the global political agenda for the governance of Amazonia in function of their own particular interests. Replication of narratives is a common strategy used by all groups aiming to make alliances and enhance their power. However, the responses analysed here seem to indicate that a large group of people (at least from the academic sector) is 32 unhappy with the assumptions behind either populists or hegemonic discourses with respect to rainforest management, and seeking new ways of environmental policy making. This group of people acknowledged that political conflict has derived from policy formulated elsewhere, and derived from an epistemology alien to local inhabitants. There are varied political groups competing for the governance of Amazonia. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilitates analysis and political action. It is expected that better-informed indigenous peoples would be in a better position to make decisions with respect to the governance of Amazonia. At the present time, the indigenous peoples of Amazonia have very limited and precarious access to ICT. Thus, their perspectives on territorial ordering are less likely to be represented than those such as conservation agencies, multinational developers, insurgent and mafiosi groups, all of which have far superior access to ICT. 33 Appendix 1 PRIVACY POLICY: Email addresses will be used only to send out materials related to this survey. Aggregate survey results may be distributed, but all personal data will be kept strictly confidential. No information about individual users will be disclosed to third parties. 34 Appendix 2 Summary of Web-site technical work The most demanding work was designing the pages that would contain indigenous territorial maps. CAD versions of the map would have to be transformed into image files suitable for Web use. In order to do this ArcView- GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software was needed. A picture of the map could be easily generated in ArcView-GIS and to certain extent, editing and colouring could enhance some features. But such a map or, more precisely, such a picture of the bi-dimensional representation of the Tukano territory remained inadequate for publication in WebPages. "The pics were to heavy" (I would learn the ICT design jargon), meaning that the memory used to storage, loading and unloading of these pictures was vast. Besides dividing the map and generating pictures of several areas, these pictures needed transforming to make them 'lighter'. This meant that the pictures had to be edited and the storage format had to be changed in terms of the colour pallet and resolution (a maximum of 72 dpi). Most importantly, the pictures should look better! An early version of PhotoImpactTM was used to change the colours and other features as well as to design the icons that would be used to identify the hypertext links between pages. However, the software was not appropriate for the task and the 'pics' were still too heavy. The design was poor, too rigid, with inappropriate colours and, worst of all the 'weight' of the maps would not allow for easy loading of the images by potential users. To change the maps (pics) again, PhotoshopTM was used, while major design transformations were achieved using FireworksTM software. For the actual montage and edition of the whole web-site Dreamweaver3TM was used. A similar process was followed to generate the vegetation map, which was adapted from one of the Amazonian Vegetation maps generated by Puerto Rastrojo. The introduction to a political ecology taking as a case study the Yaigojé Resguardo, was originally a single text (like in the preliminary version) but following the advice of critical reviewers, this page was divided into six parts. 35 Appendix 3 Table 1 Q1- Do you think that 'development' and 'sustainability' are compatible? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Unquestioning the developmental project 2 1 PhD Student Biology 12 1 Environmental Engineer 13 1 Environmental Engineer 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) Yes, to diminish environmental risk 18 1 Student 21 1 Taxation 23 1 Designer 39 1 Postgraduate Student 42 1 Biologist Sustainable Development is an aim to be 3 1 Epidemiologist reached 5 1 Civil Servant 8 1 Accountant 24 1 Student 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 29 1 Anthropologist 35 1 Lecturer 37 1 Postgraduate Student 48 1 Anthropologist 51 1 Postgraduate Student Compatible if defined locally 5 1 Civil Servant 20 1 Lecturer: Ecotourism 27 1 Anthropologist 31 1 Postgraduate Student 52 1 Lecturer: IT & Development Possible but risk of economic imperative 17 1 Unemployed Incompatible a) Contradiction in terms 24 1 Student 4 1 PhD St. Environmental genetics b) Financial economic imperative 10 1 Student 19 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 34 1 PhD Student: Environmental Manager 47 1 PhD Student SD inconsistent at present time 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 33 1 PhD Student 36 1 Research Engineer 45 1 EM SD is green rhetoric 7 1 Student 32 1 Teacher 48 1 Anthropologist 36 Table 2 Q2 - Do you think there is any relation between 'indigenous reserves' (IR) and 'protected areas' (PA)? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Yes 37 1 Postgraduate Student 18 1 Student 22 1 Anthropologist 43 1 Anthropologist 50 1 PhD Student No 15 1 Consultant: Health & Safety Need to harmonise IR and PA to protect a) For (IP) Indigenous Peoples' benefit 19 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 20 1 Lecturer: Ecoturism b) Protection of Biodiversity 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 33 1 PhD Student c) SD based on IP experiences 11 1 Consultant: Rural Development. SD as Utopia 3 1 Epidemiologist 6 1 Lecturer Ecology Env. Management 36 1 Research Engineer 42 1 Biologist IR and PA are different political strategies 2 1 PhD Student - Biologist IR and PA are colonisation strategies 10 1 Student 24 1 Student 26 1 Student Indigenous resistance to IR/PA strategies 48 1 Anthropologist IR and PA overlapped 7 1 Student 34 1 PhD St. Environmental Management 44 1 Postgraduate Student Environmental Indian 23 1 Designer 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) Environmental Indians contaminated 12 1 Environmental Engineer by mestizo culture 39 1 Postgraduate Student 45 1 Environmental Manager IR are Inefficient 35 1 Lecturer 53 1 Journalist IR more effective that PA 5 1 Civil Servant 17 1 Unemployed 37 Table 3 Q3 - Do you think that the concepts of 'protected areas' (PA), 'indigenous reserves' (IR) and SD are useful for environmental management today? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Depends on the context 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 2 1 PhD St. Biologist Yes 4 1 PhD St. Env. Genetics 14 1 Economist 22 1 Anthropologist Indigenous Environmental 12 1 Environmental Engineer 23 1 Designer 41 1 PhD Student Indigenous Environmental in contamination risk 45 1 EM Concepts: Principles and instruments a) Participation: IR better than PA 5 1 Civil Servant 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 11 1 Consultant: Rural Development RD 26 1 Student 41 1 PhD Student b) Intergenerational Equity: resource reserve 12 1 Environmental Engineer for Development 13 1 Agriculturist 21 1 Taxation 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Dvnt. 38 1 Gardener (MSc) Risk and Protection a)Environmental Protection (EP) 12 1 Environmental Engineer 17 1 Unemployed EP and catastrophism 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 32 1 Teacher 51 1 Postgraduate Student b) Of cultural diversity 31 1 Postgraduate Student IR as ineffective 10 1 Student 24 1 Student Integration of concepts or the need for it 7 1 Student 11 1 Consultant RD 18 1 Student 26 1 Student 34 1 PhD Student Env. Mgment. Difficulties for integration a) Incompatibility of interests 10 1 Student 40 1 Project co-ordinator (SD) b) Financial economic effectiveness' imperative 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture Devent. 30 1 Postgraduate Student 33 1 PhD Student c) Political manipulation 44 1 Post. St. Environment 46 1 Lecturer 38 47 1 PhD Student 48 1 Anthropologist d) Semiotic blur 24 1 Student 50 1 PhD Student Education: Dynamism of the concepts 37 1 Postgraduate Student 45 1 Environmental Manager 47 1 PhD Student 39 Table 4 Q4 - Should or should not environmental managers (EM) get involved in territorial ordering process in Amazon? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Yes 4 1 PhD St. Evolutionary Genetics In fact they are 22 1 Anthropologist Unsure 52 1 Lecturer: IT & Development 32 1 Teacher Question into Question 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 31 1 Postgraduate St Indigenous Peoples as EM 27 1 Anthropologist Yes, for Env. protection (catastrophism) 32 1 Teacher 33 1 PhD Student 42 1 Biologist Yes, EM are the ones (better able that IP) 12 1 Environmental Engineer 18 1 Student 21 1 Taxation 28 1 Lecturer 34 1 PhD student 36 1 Research Engineer 46 1 Lecturer 53 1 Journalist EM provide solutions/ take decisions 23 1 Designer 35 1 Lecturer 38 1 Gardener Yes but listening to others 5 1 Civil Servant 53 1 Journalist If Indigenous Peoples direct EM or projects 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 10 1 Student 14 1 Economist 41 1 PhD Student EM have equal rights to other stakeholders 2 1 PhD St. Biology 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 7 1 Student 29 1 Anthropologist 44 1 Post. Student Not inside IP territories 47 1 PhD Student Yes, if apolitical EM 9 1 Environmental Manager 17 1 Unemployed 37 1 Postgraduate Student Yes for political counteract 26 1 Student EM as facilitators 5 1 Civil Servant 10 1 Student 45 1 Environmental Manager Depends of capacity, ability & quality of EM 24 1 Student 31 1 Postgraduate Student EM tough job: political risk 15 1 Consultant: Health 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) 40 References Adger, W. N., T. A. Benjaminsen, et al. (2001). "Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental Discourses". Development and Change 32: 681-715. Ambrose-Oji, B., T. Allmark, et al. (2002). "The Environmental State and the Forest; of Lookouts, Leopards, and Losers". In The environmental state under pressurence. A. P. J. Mol and F. H. Buttel. Oxford, Elsevier. 10: 149-69. Castells, M. (1996). "The rise of the network society". Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishers. Denevan, W. M. (2001). "Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes". 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(1993). "Global Ecology. A new arena of political conflict". London, Zed Books. Sevilla_Guzmán, E. and G. Woodgate (1997). "'Sustainable rural development': from industrial agriculture to agroecology". In The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology. M. Redclift and G. Woodgate. Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA, Edward Elgar: 83-100. Stott, P. (1999). Tropical rain forest: a political ecology of hegemonic mythmaking. IEA Studies on the Environment, No 15. London. 41 Stott, P. and S. Dullivan, Eds. (2000). "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power". London and N.Y., Arnold. Varese, S. (1996). "The new Environmentalist Movement of Latin American Indigenous Movement pp." In Valuing Local Knowledge. S. Brush and D. Stabinsky. Washington D.C.: 122-144. Weinberg, B. (2001). "Amazonia: Planning the Final Destruction. Mega-Development Threatens Devastation of Indian Ecologies". Native Americas: Hemisphere Journal of Indigenous Issues 450: Fall/Winter.

Issue 55.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1996. ; for religi ous Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 199-~ * VOLUME 55 ¯ NUMBER 5 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their ~ersonal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, prhctical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point If view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) i! published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits o,'f the Missouri Province¯ Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St.!Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯Fax~: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU~ZCI.SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonoug.~ OP 1150 Cedar Cove R~oad ¯ Hendelson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER ¯ Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.( Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, See inside back cover for information ¯ Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. hnd additional mailing offices. 3n subscription rates. ©1996 Review for Rel ious Permission is herewith granted to copv any material (article]s, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Rehglous for personal or ~nternal use, or for the personal or ~nternal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 anl:l/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear n~tice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1996 ¯ VOLUME55 ¯ NUMBER5 contents consecrated life 454 462 Vita Consecrata: A Vocation for the Third Millennium Rose McDermott SSJ summarizes the content of John Paul's apostolic exhortation on consecrated life and highlights a few of its provisions. The Holy Spirit in Church Documents on the Consecrated Life Sally Ann Brickner OSF examines the increasing recognition by church documents of the role of the Holy Spirit in consecrated-life renewal. seeking God 474 Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life 485 Terrance Wayne Klein identifies three areas of concern for vocational recruitment: contact with ministerial mentors, a growing spiritual freedom in those seeking ministry, and a sense of enhancing community life. Reflections of a Fin de SiOcle Novice Michael Tidd FSC reviews his novitiate experience to clarify elements of formation central to apostolic life. --450 Review for Religious 494 5O6 breaking boundaries Racism and Religious Life Clemente Barr6n CP gives gentle and honest witness to an experience of racism that infects good people in the church and in religious life. Movement from Monocultural to Multicultural Congregations Gary Riebe-Estrella SVD suggests that what racially distinct groups offer is the opportunity to incarnate for our church and world the gospel's "Good Samaritan" model of persons letting their physical proximity turn them into neighbors. 521 527 living spiritually Perseverance: Letting the Goodness Out Melannie Svoboda SND explores factors that facilitate our practice of the virtue of perseverance. Friends through Prayer Eugene M. Rooney SJ reemphasizes the importance of prayer as a way of communication and support in a world of e-mail and fax. departments 452 Prisms 533 Canonical Counsel: The Role of Councils in Religious Governance 540 Book Reviews Septe~nber-October 1996 prisms ~ita consecrata, the papal exhortation which completed the work of the synod of bishops deal-ing with consecrated life in the church, has only just begun to be studied. First public reactions to the document seem to have been quite favorable. Of course, there will be critique--inevitable, and abso-lutely necessary if there is to be continuing development and growth. One observation made immediately upon publication was about the daunting length of the docu-ment. Although there are only three chapters, along with an introduction and a conclusion, the text is substantial and typical of the dense style of writing associated with Pope John Paul. Perhaps a saving factor in a long text is that there seems to be "something in it for everyone." Of course, there is likely something to disconcert everyone too. Some have already expressed dissatisfaction with the English translation "objective superiority" (§18 and §32) applied to consecrated life. Some are disappointed with the inconclusiveness of the equal stance of brothers in relation to priests in what is called a "mixed" institute; further work by a study commission is promised for a deci-sion. While new forms of consecrated life are acknowl-edged and praised, a proposed commission to determine criteria of authenticity and of approval suggests a stance of caution. Although there is a strong positive stance towards the specific contribution of women religious, what is referred to as "new possibilities of presence and action on the part of consecrated women" may need more to be Revlew for Religious acknowledged as already a fact in many parts of the church than a future yet to be realized. But important as the resolution of these practical matters will be for the proper development of consecrated lifeforms, I believe that the approach taken by the pope in the first chapter is hugely significant for a theological understanding and a spiritual appre-ciation of consecrated life. The pope does not take up the tools of philosophy, theology, anthropology, sociology, or behaviorial sci-ences for his primary approach to consecrated life. Instead he proposes the gospel passage of Jesus' transfiguration and suggests that we approach it as if it ycere an icon. This transfiguration icon involves a gazing on the face of Jesus both in a "going up the mountain" and a "coming down the mountain." The pope refers to an ancient spiritual tradition which links the contemplative life to the prayer of Jesus on the moun-tain. But then he adds that the active dimension of consecrated life can be included because the transfiguration event serves as prepa-ration to share with Jesus in the "toil of God's plan" and to be with him "courageously on the way of the cross." In using the sacramentality of the icon, we Christians enter sacred time and space. Through a communion with the mystery signified by an icon, tradition holds that the believer is being made-holy. An icon can be studied for the meanings of its sym-bolism, and so there is an intellectual component. Through reflec-tions on various themes stimulated by the gospel passage, John Paul develops a contemporary understanding of consecrated life. But always the focus remains the icon giving us an experience of a divine world. For our understanding and appreciation of conse-crated life, then, Vita consecrata presents us with a gospel text to suggest cognitive content and an iconic vision of the divine: by gazing upon the face of Jesus, we enter into the mystery of con-secrated life in the church and its centering world of holiness. Review for Religious takes pride in making available the text of Vita consecrata, along with a wealth of other contextual arti-cles, in The Church and Consecrated Life. The book costs $18.95 plus postage; it can be ordered from our St. Louis office. See the order form at the end of this issue. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1996 consecrated life ROSE McDERMOTT Vita Consecrata: A Vocation for the Third Millennium When Pope Paul VI inaugurated the Synod of Bishops on 15 September 1965, he desired that it examine a selected topic in the light of church teachings and the experience of the particular churches. The synod, repre-senting the universal church, would provide the pope and world's bishops with effective collaboration and helpful insights in their shared concern for the Christian faithful throughout the world. Under date of 25 March 1996, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, Pope John Paul II promulgated Vita consecrata, the apostolic exhortation for the ninth ordinary session of the Synod of Bishops, held 2 through 29 October 1994. This document marks the completion of the study of the three principal vocations in the church. The priesthood was discussed in the second (1971) and eighth (1990) general sessions and the vocation to the lay state in the seventh (1987) session. Those who have studied the preparatory documents and followed the synod interventions and discussions will find no great surprises in the apostolic exhortation. Rather, it is a fine synthesis of the church's teaching on conse-crated life and its lived reality in the various parts of the world. The document shows the fruits of the consultative process encouraged by the synod's lineamenta document Rose McDermott SSJ, of the Department of Canon Law at Catholic University, last wrote for us in March-April 1995. Her address is Visitation Convent; 1524 35th Street, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20007. Review for Religions and the contributions of the bishops and other participants gath-ered from around the world for the actual synod assembly. The present article reviews the church's teaching on conse-crated life as reflected in the apostolic exhortation and points to potential developments mentioned in the same document. Since PTta consecrata is hortatory and not legislative, the developments indicated in the document will be the subjects of further theo-logical and canonical study and authoritative deliberations. The Church's Teaching on Consecrated Life The introduction to the apostolic exhortation (§§1-13) describes consecrated life in its gospel beginnings, offers gratitude to God for this gift to the church, and expresses the apostolic exhortation's purpose: to put forth the fruits of this synod session, which has studied this vocation and its contribution to the church's mission. Six forms of consecrated life are presented, with a final paragraph noting the new expressions of the vocation present in the vari-ous churches today. Pope John Paul recognizes that the exhorta-tion is far from the final word on consecrated life. He offers the document to encourage those consecrated by the profession of the counsels to meet the challenges of today's world. Chapter I of the exhortation, Confessio Trinitatis (§§14-40), con-templates the vocation to consecrated life within the gospel icon of the Transfiguration. Persons responding to this vocation have caught a glimpse of the glory of God; he becomes the driving force of their life and activity. Configured to Christ chaste, poor, and obedient, they enjoy an intimacy with the community of the Trinity in their willingness to leave all and follow Christ in an ever deeper response to their baptismal commitment. Consecrated persons are beloved of the Father, who sends them forth--as he did Christ and the Spirit--in dedicated service to the world. This vocation cannot be lived without willing entry into the paschal mystery of suffering. The moment of glory on the mount strengthened the faith of the apostles and prepared them for their own suffering and martyrdom. So, too, the consecrated person embraces a life of labor, suffering, and abandonment to the Father's will. Yet Peter's remark is on the lips of those configured to Christ through this vocation: "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Consecrated life cannot be lived apart from the church; it belongs inextricably to its life and holiness. Through the profes- September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Consecrata sion of the counsels, consecrated persons offer a vibrant witness to the life and teachings of Christ. They are nourished through liturgical and personal prayer and traditional ascetic practices in the church. Meeting the spiritual combat in their own lives enables consecrated persons to transform the world in humility, detach-ment, and reliance on God. Chapter 2, Signum Fraternitatis (§§41-71). All forms of con-secrated life manifest communion in imitation of Christ's life within the Trinitarian community and in the company of the Twelve. This communion is particularly lived out in religious institutes and societies of apostolic life where the members live in common, supporting one another in the spiritual life and in the apostolate. Members of secular institutes are joined in community with one another through their charism and their embrace of the community in which they live and labor. The church, a mystery of communion (Ac 2:42-47), depends on consecrated persons to give witness to community in an often fragmented and broken world. Within the ecclesial community the bishop looks after the charisms for the good of all the faith-ful. While institutes of consecrated life enjoy a rightful auton-omy of life and governance, they should cooperate with the respective bishops, sharing their goals and apostolates with them. Lay persons recognize the value of communities of conse-crated persons. They seek to attach themselves to them, sharing their spirituality and assisting in their apostolates. These associ-ates and volunteers should be fostered and formed so that they appreciate their lay vocation more deeply and readily lend them-selves to apostolic endeavor in their particular churches. Likewise, formation programs for candidates should reflect human, com-munal, apostolic, cultural, and professional dimensions adapted to the whole person. Chapter 3, Servitium Caritatis (~'§72-103). The mission of those consecrated by profession of the evangelical counsels is one of communicating God's love to the world. One is consecrated and sent (Jn 10:36). The challenges of today's world demand a strong interior life of consecrated persons, a life deeply in tune with the Spirit of God. Through their charisms, members of institutes of consecrated life witness a particu!al~ aspect of the gospel message to those they serve. The universal character of their institutes permits them to join with other ecclesial ministers in carrying out the church's Review for Religious . mission through evangelization, ecumenical and interreligious dialogues, inculturation, the preferential option for the poor, and the promotion of justice. Through their profession of chastity, poverty, and obedience, consecrated persons offer a prophetic witness to the world and address the challenges of a hedonistic culture, materialism, and a distorted use of freedom. The community dimension of conse-crated life teaches the universal call to holiness regardless of differences and human limitations. This prophetic wit-ness is the fruit of a deep spiritual life and an openness to God's word in litur-gical and personal prayer. The apostolic exhortation's Conclusion. The document ends as it began, in grat-itude to God and to those who "waste" their lives in what seems at times an irrelevant commitment, a life poured out in selfless love and service. This vocation as an essential part ofthe church's life and holiness. Consecrated persons contribute with unbounded generosity to the various aspects of the mission of the church. The pope exhorts consecrated persons to live fully the life they have embraced, a life of The document ends as it began, in gratitude to God and to those who "waste" their lives in what seems at times an irrelevant commitment, a life poured out in selfless love and service. continual conversion and dedication to Christ, challenged by the new millennium, but focused on the world to come. A prayer addressed to the Trinity and an invocation to the Virgin of the Visitation for consecrated women and men bring the document to an end. Potential Developments in Consecrated Life New institutes, new forms, new ecclesial movements (§§12 and 62). The Holy Spirit revitalizes the ecclesial community through a variety of new gifts. These charisms can be seen in the embry-onic beginnings of new institutes of consecrated life that meet the present theological and canonical criteria. Other develop-ments seem to be new forms of consecrated life and must await approval from the Apostolic See. Still other "evangelical lifestyles" September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Gonsecrata that possess some of the characteristics of consecrated life and various other forms of Christian witness would seem to be more accurately categorized as associations of the faithful. Pope John Paul has encouraged these developments in his weekly general audiences during the synod and in the apostolic exhortation. He recognizes them as a true sign of the charismatic nature of the church. This wealth of new gifts is received by the church with grat-itude. These charisms do not substitute fox~ the traditional ones approved by the church throughout its history. Rather, they should complement the older forms and continue in their rich tradition. Bishops have requested more exact criteria in order to discern and distinguish these new developments. A commission has been set up (1) to deal with questions relating to these new forms, (2) to determine criteria to assist church authorities in their dis-cernment and decision making regarding them, and (3) to pre-sent those officially approved as new forms of consecrated life to the faithful. Legislation for cloister (§Yg). The church has always held the contemplative life in highest esteem and has provided norms on cloister to preserve the values inherent in this vocation. While men religious dedicated totally to the contemplative life regulate their cloister (canon 667, §2), women religious totally given to the contemplative life observe cloister in accord with the norms issued by the Apostolic See (c. 667, §3). This difference in the provisions for the cloister of men and women contemplative religious seems contradictory to canon 606, which provides equality in the common law for men and women religious. The cloistral norms seem contrary also to canon 586, which assures all religious institutes a true autonomy to direct their own life and governance in accord with the patrimony of the institute. Women religious institutes dedicated totally to the contemplative life represent a rich variety of monastic and men-dicant traditions. Yet all are obliged to papal cloister without due regard for their varied charisms. Pope John Paul assures us in §59 that careful consideration will be given the concerns addressed by the participants of the synod with regard to this issue. It should be noted that many of the diocesan bishops participating in the synod assembly asked contemplative men and women', to share their prayer life and extend their hospitality to clerics, la~ people, and other religious Review for Religious who seek spiritual renewal. The exhortation assures that more authority will be given major superiors ofsui iuris monasteries to grant dispensations from enclosure for just and sufficient reasons in keeping with conciliar renewal. This provision would be in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity and enable institutes of contemplative life to express their charisms better in their clois-ter regulations. Associates and volunteers joined to institutes of consecrated life (§ Y 6). Before the Second Vatican Council, only religious orders with an apostolic indult were permitted to have third orders secular attached to them. Conciliar teaching placed great emphasis on an ecclesiology of communion that had noteworthy implications for the rela-tionship of the laity With institutes of con-secrated life. Today all religious institutes without distinction can have members of the laity associated with them, sharing their spirituality and joining in their apos-tolic works. This phenomenon was rec-ognized in the preparatory documents of the synod and lauded by the participants in the assembly. Paragraph 56 of the apostolic exhor-tation notes the increasing number of associates and lay volunteers joined to institutes of consecrated life. Vv'hile the exhortation cautions the protection of the identity of these same institutes, it encourages a proper preparation of the lay people joined to them in order that they approach their apostolic com-mitments with supernatural intentions anda strong sense of com-munity. Lay persons in decision-making positions in the apostolates of these institutes should promote the ends of the institute and carry out their labors under its competent superiors. Directives approved by proper authorities need to be provided in such cases. Mixed institutes (§61). Some institutes of men religious, par-ticularly those sharing the Franciscan charism, are neither lay nor clerical from their foundation. In keeping with the intention of their founder, they admit both clerics and laymen to the insti-tute. All are friars or brothers with equal rights and obligations in Today all religious institutes without distinction can have members of the laity associated with them, sharing their spirituality and joining in their apostolic works. September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Consecrata the institute, prescinding from their lay or clerical status. Conciliar and postconciliar teachings support this fundamental equality of all members and their participation in the life and governance of the institute. The universal law of the church, however, makes no provision for these mixed institutes. It provides only for cler-ical or lay institutes in accord with their foundation, traditions, and end. Likewise, in many of these mixed institutes, some offices require daat the members be ordained. The synod assembly proposed that, when the general chapter of such an institute reque.sted, all offices of governance within these institutes be open to members without distinction. This proposal would be in conformity with the intention of the founders that all members be equal in the life and governance of the institute. Paragraph 61 of the apostolic exhortation recom-mends that such institutes study the original inspiration of their founder. In the meantime a special commission has been estab-lished to examine and resolve the problems concerning this issue. Mutual relations of bishops and consecrated persons (~§48-50). The ecclesiology of communion has led to an intense reflection on the role of consecrated life within the life and apostolate of the particular churches. While institutes of consecrated life are uni-versal by nature, the vocation of their individual members is lived out in a particular church. In 1978 the congregations for bish-ops and for institutes of consecrated life published the document Mutuae relationes, a compilation of directives for effective mutual relations between bishops and religious. These directives exhort bishops and major superiors to collaborate more effectively at the national level through their respective conferences and at the local level through meetings of the diocesan bishops with the major superiors whose members serve the particular church. The synod assembly recommended a revision of this docu-ment which would reflect the developments in this area, particu-larly as reflected in the legislation of the Latin and Eastern churches. In keeping with the synod proposal, the exhortation recommends that delegates from the conferences of bishops par-ticipate in the conferences of major superiors of their nations and that delegates from these latter conferences participate in the meetings of the episcopal conferences. It further proposes that the theology and spirituality of consecrated life be an integral part of the preparation of diocesan priests. Likewise, the study of ecclesiology should be included in the formation program for Review for Religious members of institutes of consecrated life. Pope John Paul con-curs with the members of the synod in hoping that this spirit of communion and cooperation be extended to the entire church. Perhaps a revision and expansion ofMutuae relationes will be pre-sented in the near future. Conclusion As the apostolic exhortation concludes with a reference to Mary, Virgin of the Visitation, it is appropriate that this article end in like manner. Mary, her heart filled with Christ, went forth to serve Elizabeth. Consecrated persons configured to Christ stand ready to meet the needs of people in the third millennium. And with Peter in his ecstasy they cry, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Abba At the shore where sea and sky and land meet and waves pound the rocks with constant rhythm, I find myself caught up by the stout winds, drawn by the salt air and combative gulls. Here is where I face God in his might yet also encounter him in beauty . Sunsets beckon like fringes of heaven while shorebirds encompass the lilt of hope. I am a mere grain of eternity yet I'm always within God's providence and like the back and forth surge of the tide am drawn into the core of a loving heart. Neil C. Fitzgerald September-October 1996 SALLY ANN BRICKNER The Holy Spirit in Church Documents on the Consecrated Life Twhheen Stheceo cnhdu Vrcaht irceafnl eCcoteudn coinl witsa so twhen encactluersei oalnodg imcails msioonm. eInnt convoking the council Pope John XXIII requested that it be pas-toral in tone and call the entire church to renewal so that its mis-sion, which is none other than Christ's mission of establishing the reign of God, be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit. Pope John Paul II, in his recent apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata, says of consecrated life: "Its universal presence and the evangelical nature of its witness are clear evidence., that the consecrated life is not something isolated and marginal, but a reality which affects the whole church. In effect, the consecrated life is at the very heart of the church as a decisive element for her mission since it 'manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling' and the striving of the whole church as bride toward union with her one Spouse" (§3). The appropriate renewal of the con-secrated life, therefore, is essential to renewal in the church.1 Since the close of the council in December 1965, develop-ments in ecclesiology, in the church's thinking about its nature as mystery and as the universal sacrament of salvation, have fre-quently focused on the Holy Spirit. Vita consecrata reflects this: "Like the whole of Christian life, the call to the consecrated life is closely linked to the working of the Holy Spirit" (§ 19). Through Sally Ann Brickner OSF is a faculty member at St. Norbert College. Her address is Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross; 2413 South Webster Avenue; Green Bay, Wisconsin 54301. Review for Religious a study of this and other recent church documents, this essay demonstrates that pneumatology has become important in the ecclesiological understanding of the consecrated life and that this emphasis has implications for its continuing renewal. This study proceeds chronologically through the two concil-iar documents and the eight postconciliar documents that explic-itly treat the consecrated life. A brief explanation of pneumatology provides a backdrop for the analysis. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of this ecclesiological doctrine for the continuing appropriate renewal of the consecrated life. What Is Pneumatology? The Greek word pneuma means breath, air, wind, soul, spirit. Pneumatology, then, is the branch of systematic theology that studies the Person and work of the I-Ioly Spirit.2 The t-Ioly Spirit has been virtually lost from much of Christian consciousness, some theologians claim. The Spirit of God manifests herself through various actions: vivifying, renewing and empowering, gracing. The Holy Spirit is the mutual rela-tionship of love within the community (koinonia) of the Godhead, freely going forth to renew, to liberate.3 It is the Spirit who makes it possible for us to know and experience Christ. Christ's life in us and our life in Christ is ecclesial in the sense that Christ's Spirit is the principle of communication and communion.4 "The church is the body of Christ, because Christ is a pneumatological being, born and exist-ing in the koinonia of the Spirit.''5 Christ is the head of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the heart of the church. Word and Spirit are the two hands of God at work building God's reign.6 The church has come to understand the Holy Spirit also through the Spirit's free gifts, charisms, "to perform distinct and mutually complementary functions in building up the body of Christ." Charisma must be understood in relation to charis, "grace" that God gives for the common good and the renewal of the church in all eras.7 Charisms are not extraordinary, ecstatic gifts reserved to a few persons. Rather, they are the obvious ways "through which the Spirit structures the church by rousing from Christ is the head of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the heart of the church. September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Hol~ Spirit in Church Documents within the services and functions of the community according to the diversity and qualities of each member. In this perspective there is no opposition between charism and institution. A ministry is normally the expression of a charism, and a permanent charism takes the form of a ministry or a service." Charism also refers to the gifts which inspire the choice of a particular state of life such as marriage or celibacy. But in the end neither charism nor insti-tution will exist. Charity alone endures and is the true measure and strength of any charism,s Against this backdrop about pneumatology and its relationship to ecclesiology, we can now examine pneumatology in documents pertaining to the consecrated life. What pneumatology is evi-dent? Does development occur in pneumatology? Conciliar Documents Before examining the two conciliar texts, it will be beneficial to consider briefly whether and how pneumatology was approached by the council fathers. It has been said that the eccle-siology of Vatican Council II is pneumatological as well as Christocentric, and ultimately theocentric.9 Yves Congar, the renowned theologian of this century and peritus of the council, claims that its ecclesiology is pneumatological though not pneu-matocentric. 1° It stresses, first and foremost, that the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, building up the Body of Christ. The documents depict both a visible and a spiritual manifestation of the Spirit who animates the church here and now. The council fathers rec-ognize multiple charisms, the infinite variety of gifts which the -Holy Spirit gives for the common good and the renewal of the church. The council also affirms that the Holy Spirit calls and gathers the people of God into communion, both within partic-ular churches as well as within the universal church.11 Whether these pneumatological perspectives appear in the two council texts specifically dealing with the consecrated life is the issue to which we now turn. Lumen Gentium (1964) In this primordial document, chapters 5, "Call of the Whole Church to Holiness," and 6, "Religious," speak of the Holy Spirit several times. The holiness of the church is unceasingly mani-fested through the fruits of the Holy Spirit in all the faithful. The Review for Relig4ous Holy Spirit also influences the practice of the evangelical coun-sels as a shining witness and model of holiness (§39). Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, church authority has the duty of interpreting the evangelical counsels, regulating their practice, and establishing stable forms of living in accordance with them (§43). The council fathers affirm that the religious state, though not belonging to the hierarchical structure of the church, belongs inseparably to her life and holiness. It manifests the surpassing greatness of Christ the King and the boundless power of the Holy Spirit (§44) in .the church. Perfectae Caritatis (1965) Few direct references to the Holy Spirit appear in Perfectae caritatis.12 Through God's love which is poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit, some Christians are impelled to practice the evangelical counsels in a true family gathered together in the Lord's name. Their "brotherly" unity shows that Christ has come and results in great apostolic effectiveness (§§ 1 and 15). The pro-cesses of appropriate renewal of religious life include (1) a return to the sources of Christian life and to the original inspiration of the founder and (2) adjustment of the community to the changed conditions of the times. These processes are to go forward under the influence of the Holy Spirit and with the guidance of the church (§2). Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the church is enriched with a variety of communities having a diver-sity of apostolic works (§8). Postconciliar Documents Evangelica Testificatio (1971) In this apostolic exhortation "On the Renewal of Religious Life," written six years after the close of the council, Pope Paul VI emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gifts the church with martyrs and with various forms of religious life (§3). Pope Paul speaks of the "charisms of the founders" and the "charism of religious life," which are the fruit of the Holy Spirit always at work within the church (§11). The Spirit guides the church in its interpretation and regulation of the evangelical coun-sels (§7). The Spirit inspires communities of consecrated life not only in their origins but also in their renewal, which requires dis-cernment (§§6 and 51). By placing greater emphasis on the ¯ September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents charismatic nature of the consecrated life, church teaching becomes less iuridic and more pneumatic.13 Mutuae Relationes (1978) This document, based on a consultation of bishops and reli-gious in 1975, portrays vividly the pneumatic ecclesiological insights of Vatican Council II, continues to use the term "charism," and provides criteria for evaluating the authenticity of charisms. Profound reflections on the pneumatic origin and sacramental nature of the church permeate the first chapter. "The soul of the ecclesial body is the Holy Spirit" (§9). Ever since the day of Pentecost there has existed in the world a new people which draws its life from the Holy Spirit and is united in Christ so as to have access to the Father. ¯ . This unique nature of the church is due to the presence of the Holy Spirit himself. He is the life and strength of the people of God, the cohesive power in its communion, the energy for its mission, the source of its various gifts, the bond of its marvelous unity, the light and beauty in its creative power, the fire of its love . The life-giving pres-ence of the Holy Spirit creates an organic cohesion in Christ,. for the Spirit "makes [the church] one in its com-munion and ministry, provides it with various hierarchical and charismatic gifts, directing it through them, and adorns it with his fruits." (§§1 and 2) Both founders of consecrated life and bishops are "enriched with suitable charisms" such as the "special charism of organizing" pastoral ministries and of discerning local cultural values (§§6 and 9). Remaining faithful to the charism of their founders, reli-gious institutes should make use of the charism for inventiveness, for bold and ingenious new ecclesial experiments under the impulse of the Holy Spirit (§§14 and 19). Bishops have the respon-sibility of discerning whether a charism is authentic: it must (1) take its origin from the Spirit as something distinct though not separate from innate or acquired gifts, (2) show a desire to become like Christ in order to witness to some aspect.of his mystery, and (3) show a fruitful love for the church that avoids discord (§51). The document acknowledges tensions between the hierarchic structure and consecrated life, encouraging collaboration between bishops and religious for the good of the church. Religious Life and Human Promotion (1980) Because of its focus on human promotion as the mission of the Review for Religious church and therefore of religious as well, one would think that the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes would emphasize pneumatology. However, only a few references to the work of the Holy Spirit appear. Religious are encouraged to be enterprising in undertakings and initiatives in keeping with the charismatic and prophetic nature of their life (§2 7). Renewal in the consecrated life is important for the church and for ~he world because the works of religious, marked by a diversity of charisms, are one of the most important means by which the church carries out its evangelization (§5). The Holy Spirit constantly inspires new forms of consecrated life and animates existing communi-ties, which are called to remain faithful to the purposes for which they were founded (§§6 and 8). Contemplative Dimension of Religious Life (1981) This document results from a plenary meeting of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in 1980 and stresses the absolute primacy of life in the Holy Spirit (§17). Contemplation is an infused gift of the Holy Spirit by which the believer opens up to the revelation and communication of the liv-ing God. As the highest and fullest activity of the spirit, contem-plation is the real secret of renewal for religious life (§1). Action and contemplation must be fused. Only apostolic and charitable activity which is inspired and motivated by the Holy Spirit is of the very nature of refigious life (§4). The Sacred Congregation urges "renewed attention tolife in the Holy Spirit" through daily meditation on Sacred Scripture (§8), celebration of the Eucharist (§9) and the sacrament of reconciliation (§ 10), spiritual direction (§11), the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours (§12), the prac-tice of asceticism (§14), and devotion to the Virgin May (§13). Redemption# Donum (1983) The few pneumatological references in this apostolic exhor-tation of Pope John Paul (on religious consecration in the light of the mystery of redemption) parallel those of other documents on the consecrated life. Religious profession is described as a fuller expression of baptismal "consecration to God in Jesus Christ" in a covenant of spousal love (§§7 and 8). The Holy Spirit calls peo-ple to follow Christ and recalls to mind all that Christ has said. The entire economy of redemption is realized precisely through the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit, who is the author of all September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents holiness (§§6 and 9). The vow of celibacy is a charismatic choice which brings the eschatological kingdom of God close to the life of all people, while the vow of obedience engenders total avail-ability to the Holy.Spirit (§§11 and 13). The particular gift of the founder, from which the apostolate must come, endures as a charism for the whole community (§15). Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life (1983) The document summarizes the church's traditional teachings and norms pertaining to the consecrated life. Its few references to the Holy Spirit offer no new insights. The church has approved and encourages renewal in its numerous religious families, whose distinctiveness derives from the founding charism (§§11, 41, and 42). The witness of religious can be a clear echo of the gospel "to the extent that it manifests publicly the transforming power of Christ in the church and the vitality of the institute's charism to the people of our time" (§§11 and 37). Hence, renewal must focus on fidelity to the founding gift.14 Fraternal Life in Community (1994) In this document the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) lucidly and directly expresses the pneumatic character of the church and of the consecrated life. Like the mystery of the church itself, the consecrated life expresses the great Trinitarian com-munion in which the Father has willed that women and men have part in the Holy Spirit (§§2, 9, and 71). Religious community is an expression of ecclesial communion. "Before being a human construction, religious community is a gift of the Spirit. It is the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, from which religious community takes its origin and is formed as a true fam-ily gathered together in the Lord's name" (§8). The fruit of this communion is the gift of fraternal life. Religious community is not simply a collection of Christians seek-ing personal perfection. Rather, it is to be a living organism of intense fraternal communion animated by the foundational charism (§2). United in the Holy Spirit, religious are to become brothers and sisters in their daily experience of communion of life, prayer and apostolate (§§44, 10, 11). Communion originates precisely in sharing the Spirit's gifts. The more religious share ¯ the things that are central and vital, the more the fraternal bond Review for Religious grows in strength (§32). Thus, religious should live alone only in exceptional cases and should value diversity within the com-munity (§65). "Optional homogeneity, besides weakening apostolic mobility, weakens the Pneumatic strength of a community and robs the spiritual reality which rules the community of its power as witness" (§41). "Just as the Holy Spirit anointed the church in the upper room to send her out to evangelize the world, so every reli-gious community, as an authentic pneumatic community of the Risen One, is also, and according to its own nature, apostolic" (§58). Fraternal communities become missionaries of that love "taught and lived by Christ and communicated to us through his Spirit" (§56). This missionary activ-ity is lived out in a particular church to which the religious community brings the richness of its consecration, its fraternal life, and its charism (§60). Religious must seek a just balance between per-sonal charisms and the community's apostolate without the dis-integrating forms of individualism or the leveling aspects of communitarianism (§39). Fraternal communion is already an apos-tolate, and contributes directly to the work of evangelization (§54). "The effectiveness of religious life depends on the quality of the fraternal life in common," which serves as a sign and stim-ulus for all the baptized (§§54 and 2). Fraternal communion is already an apostolate, and contributes directly to the work of evangelization. Vita Consecrata (1996) While the conciliar documents laid the firm foundation for future developments in pneumatology in church documents on the consecrated life, this apostolic exhortation gives shape to its mag-nificent mansion. Dare it be said that in thid document pneuma-tology moves to the front and center?~s Pneumatology as depicted in the document manifests deeper ecclesiological understandings of the consecrated life in three areas: consecration, communion, and mission. After providing brief citations of pneumatology from the document for each of these areas, we reflect on the Holy Father's repeated emphasis on founding charisms. Considered a deepening of baptismal consecration, religious profession includes a special call and gift of the Holy Spirit to September-October 1996 Brickner * The Holy Spirit in Church Documents live the evangelical councils in religious community (§30). "Consecrated persons, who embrace the evangelical counsels, receive a new and special consecration which, without being sacra-mental, commits them to making their own--in chastity, poverty and obedience--the way of life practiced personally by Jesus and proposed by him to his disciples" (§31). The consecrated life is a way of showing forth the church's holiness, an especially rich man-ifestation of gospel values and a more complete expression of the church's purpose, which is the sanctification of humanity (§32). The consecrated life is also a sign of communion in the church. "The church is essentially a mystery of communion, 'a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'" (§41). "It is the Spirit himself who leads the soul to the experience of communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, a communion which is the source of fraternal life" and of the inte-rior call to share everything in common (§42). "In community life, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in one individual passes at the same time to all" (§42). Filled with joy and the Holy Spirit, consecrated persons are to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion (§~45 and 46). Communion leads to mission and becomes mission. "By their charisms, consecrated persons become signs of the Spirit point-ing to a new future enlightened by faith and by Christian hope. Eschatological expectation becomes mission, so that the kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now" (§27). "If the church is to reveal her true face to today's world, she urgently needs such fraternal communities, which by their very existence contribute to the new evangelization inasmuch as they disclose in a concrete way the fruitfulness of the 'new commandment'" (§45). Through a special gift of the Holy Spirit, some persons in the consecrated life have carried out a genuinely prophetic min-istry, speaking the name of God to all, even to the pastors of the church (§84). Pope John Paul emphasizes pneumatology also through his focus on the charismatic aspect of the consecrated life. "The Spirit, who at different times has inspired numerous forms of consecrated life, does not cease to assist the church, whether by fostering in already existing institutes a commitment to renewed faithfulness to the founding charism or by giving new charisms to men and women of our own day so that they can start institu-tions responding to the challeng&s of our times" (§62). Review for Religqous Appropriate renewal of the consecrated life includes a return to the sources (as noted in Perfectae caritatis), one of which is fidelity to the founding charism. The founding charism orients consecrated persons to a special relationship with the Trinity (§36). The church assists in discernment regarding the founding charisms, which contribute to building up charity in the particu-lar churches and in the universal church (§§62 and 48). Contemporary Pneumatology's Significance for the Consecrated Life Church documents on the consecrated life are generally rich in pneumatological references, as we have seen. This shift from the juridic to the pneumatic enriches and expands the ecclesio-logical understanding of the consecrated life in the areas of con-secration, communion, and mission. What implications does this finding have for the continuous renewal of the consecrated life? At least two suggestions come to mind: (1) coming to know and love the Holy Spirit, who is the source of unity with God and with others, and (2) both individually and communally respond-ing with greater alacrity to the Spirit's impulses. A common human experience is the longing for communion, for unity which respects a plurality of differences, for love freely given. Within the Holy Trinity there exists this mutuality of rela-tionships in a community of equals. Through the Holy Spirit, God's love is poured into our hearts (Rm 5:5). It is the Spirit who teaches those in the consecrated life how to relate, to respect the diversity of God's gifts, to love. The Holy Spirit must no longer be "shadowy," "vague," "half-known," or "forgotten" by the peo-ple of God, including those in the consecrated life.16 Without a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the Holy Spirit, conse-crated women and men will be unable to understand their charisms and respond to the Spirit who renews and revitalizes the consecrated life. Virtually every one of the documents on the consecrated life urges communities to have strong initial and continuing forma-tion programs, especially in theology. Intellectual development, however, though necessary, is not sufficient. Consecrated persons must also become more responsive to the impulses of the Holy Spirit. Their life is a "kind of shock therapy instituted by the Holy Spirit for the church as a whole.''17 They are called to be the Septent her- October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents presence of God's Spirit in the world: prophets, who speak and boldly exemplify the possibility of real communion; truth tellers, who proclaim what is liberating in feminism; empty vessels that willingly receive the richness of diversity through inculturation; and builders of the reign of God through ecumenical activity.18 The Holy Spirit will not allow the church to domesticate its insti-tutes of consecrated life. Salt must retain its savor! Leaven must retain its power! Renewal, not only of consecrated life but also of the church, depends upon it. Notes ' See Perfectae caritatis §1 and Vim consecrata §§13 and 35. On the relationship between renewal in religious congregations and renewal in the church, see Gerald A. Arbuclde, Refounding the Church (New York: Orbis Books, 1993). 2 HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 1995, s.v. "Pneumatology." These brief remarks about pneumatology can only skim the surface of what many authors have eloquently written about the Holy Spirit. See, for example, Yves Congar's three-volume work I Believe in the Holy Spirit. 3 See Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1994), pp. 128-131 and 133-145. In her study of the Holy Trinity, Johnson begins with Spirit-Sophia, to whom feminine characteristics are often attributed. 4 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 37 and 31-32. s John Zizioulas, "The Church as Communion," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1994): 6. 6 Yves Congar, The I, Vord and the Spirit (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1986), pp. 61-62. St. Bonaventure speaks of Christ as the head of the church, and St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Holy Spirit as the heart of the church. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Word; the Word is also of the Spirit. St. Thomas's Christology is pneumatological, accord-ing to Congar. 7 Avery Dulles, A Church to Believe In (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 20; Congar, 1 Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 2, pp. 161-162. 8 Ren~ Laurentin, "Charisms: Terminological Precision," in Cbarisms in the Church, ed. Christian Duquoc and Casiano Floristan (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 10. Thomas O'Meara writes that charism and institution must not be set in false opposition; he speaks--in his Theology of Ministry (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 68--of the relationship between charism and ministry: "Far from charism being opposed to min-istry, ministry is mediated from the Spirit to personality by charism: dia-conal charisms." When Paul VI refers to religious life as a charism, he uses charism as "a particular state of life." Review for Religious 9 Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican H (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), vol. 1, p. 142. Some critics per-ceive pneumatology to be underdeveloped in conciliar texts. See, for example, Jean-Marie Tillard, "A Point of Departure," Review for Religious 26, no. 3 (March-April 1967): 435-437. Catherine Lacugna, speaking at the University of Notre Dame during the recent conference on the "Reception of Vatican II," suggested that pneumatology was lim-ited if not lackingin conciliar texts. In private conversation she com-mented that the Holy Spirit is too often subordinated to the other Persons of the Trinity. ,0 Congar, IBelieve in the Holy Spirit, vol. 1, pp. 167-172. I I Jean-Marie Tillard, Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992). 12 See Vorgrimler, pp. 301-332. The "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life" went through five redactions and required much compromise among the council fathers. It is short (25 articles) and focuses mainly on principles of appropriate renewal. Its brevity neces-sarily restricted the breadth of theological foundations it could provide regarding the consecrated life. 13 Patricia Walter, "Religious Life in Church Documents," Review for Religious 51, no. 4 0uly-August 1992): 555. 14 This document approaches religious life in a juridical manner and had a mixed reception among religious congregations. is In Vita consecrata sixteen of the 112 articles refer to the Trinity in various ways: as source, as model, in prayer. Half of the articles include a reference to the Holy Spirit, often without subordinating the Spirit's action to that of the Creator and the Redeemer. In addition, the charis-matic element of the consecrated life, attributed to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, appears in 44 percent of the articles. Indeed, recalling Congar's reflections about the pneumatology of Vatican II, one might consider the document notably pneumatocentric compared with concil-iar texts. ,6 See Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is, p. 130. ,7 Johannes B. Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 12. 18 Authors who exemplify these perspectives include Joan Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1995); Diarmuid O'Murchu, Religious Life: A Prophetic Vision (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1991); Paul J. Philibert, ed., Living in the Meantime (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994); Gerald A. Arbuckle, Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988). September-October 1996 seeking God TERRANCE WAYNE KLEIN Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis: On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day, Pope John Paul raises an issue I consider essential to vocational recruitment, namely, the formation of can-didates ready to be recruited. Making reference to Andrew bringing his brother Peter to Christ, the Holy Father writes: "He brought him to Jesus." In a way, this is the heart of all the church's pastoral work on behalf of vocations, in which she cares for the birth and growth of vocations, making use of the gifts and responsibilities, of the charisms and ministry she has received from Christ and his Spirit. The church, as a priestly, prophetic, and kingly people, is committed to foster and to serve the birth and maturing of priestly vocations through her prayer and sacramental life, by her proclamation of the word and by education in th~ faith, by her example and witness of ~harity. (PDV§38) I think a significant insight of this text is that finding men and women ready and willing to respond to calls to special ministry in the church should not be left to mer-curial chance: "The church., is committed to foster and serve the birth and maturing of priestly vocations." I also think the text.dispels the theological assertion that this is Terrance Wayne Klein is a former director of vocations and was director of spiritual formation in two seminaries. He is now an associate pastor at St. Brigid of Kildare Church; P.O. Box 1131; Dublin, Ohio 43017. Review for Religious a work of the Holy Spirit alone, and not of human effort. To sup-pose that the Holy Spirit creates the candidates and all the church need do is find them would be to slight the role of human coop-eration in the divine plan of salvation. The church has always realized that religious and priestly vocations are not simply from out of the blue. They arise out of her stock of maturing, committed Christians who, when presented with an actual invitation to a ministry in the church, find them-selves able and willing to respond freely and generously. The cul-tivation of that stock has always been the task of every catechetical and Christian-formation movement in the church's history. Catholic schools, CCD programs, retreat experiences, and youth movements exist to form what can only be called, most basically, disciples of Christ. The cultivation of such a stock has previously not been the task of those charged with vocational recruitment. Yet the flour-ishing of vocations may very well depend upon vocation direc-tors taking up the work of actually forming communities of discipleship. In this article I present three matters that I think need attention if vocational recruitment is to flourish. They are the necessity of bringing youth into contact with ministerial fig-ures; the need of progressive liberation, greater spiritual free-dom, in the lives of those seeking ministry in the church; and a fundamental characteristic desirable in all who work to promote vocations. Letting Sparks Fly According to data presented in the United States Catholic Conference study Research on Men's Vocations to the Priesthood and the Religious Life, most young people decide the basic direction of their lives between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. They do not necessarily choose a career path at this time; given the pro-traction of American adolescence, this would be unlikely. During these years, however, young people choose the values that chart the course their life will take. During these years they decide how important to them are values such as altruism, service, intimacy, material goods, public esteem, and education. That developmental fact belongs with other data presented in the same source (and subsequently confirmed in other stud-ies) and showing that most vocations to special consecration come September-Oaober 1996 Most vocations to special consecration come from direct contact with an inspiring person actually doing ministerial work in the church. from direct contact with an inspiring person actually doing min-isterial work in the church. This statistical evidence is borne out by my own experien, ce in working as a spiritual director to sem-inarians. They all have a story to tell, and it usually involves some ministerial figure who inspired them. Vocations are not cajoled; they are caught by contact. They do not come from media resources; they come out of personal interaction. When I put these two sets of data .together and consider that young people today are no less generous and no less motivated than previous generations, I come to the conclusion that, in the Catholic Church and among Christians in general, there is a sociological gap between youth and the institutional church's ministerial structures. Many young people growing up today have never personally encountered vibrant Christian ministry. Put simply, they do not view the ministry, in any of its forms, as having significance for the world in which they live. It has nei-ther formed nor informed their lives. The Holy Spirit is going to continue to create and nourish souls that are generous, but the church must present its ministe-rial life as an opportunity for that generosity to be expressed. This implies living contact between youth and committed minis-ters of the gospel. To the extent that religious communities and diocesan personnel move away from youth, they move away from the future and sever the lines of support that the institutions are there to provide. It is not enough for a vocation director to enter a high school or a college for the purpose of giving yet another career-day presentation. One must enter a college or high school to stay and to witness. As St. Francis of Assisi once told his fol-lowers, "Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary." I served the Dodge City diocese for two years as director of vocations, a short tenure that corresponds to the national average. There are no Catholic high schools in this very rural diocese. Many young people growing up there have never met a religious sister. Parish communities tend to be solid and wholesome, but pastoring tends to be short in tenure. As in many places in the Review for Religious country, beleaguered pastors are only too happy to turn over youth work to lay volunteers. Is it any surprise that young people choose to remain among the laity when they have been led and inspired by lay leaders? I am in no way indicting the collaboration of the laity in this and other ministerial venues. The question is one of collaboration and presence. Ordained priests and deacons and religious women and men bring with them a symbol-laden presence of Christ. When they disappear from the scene, much more is lost than another set of hands. After almost a year of consultation with the religious con-gregations of women at work in the diocese, we began a project that was seen as preliminary discipleship formation. We brought young men and women together to live for a weekend with priests -and religious. The students prayed with them and received from them basic instruction in prayer techniques and discernment. The key, as we saw it, was simply that they encountered priests and religious. We tried to create opportunities for sparks to fly. I am currently involved in a similar project with the diocese of Columbus. Essential to the success of such a program, however, is the ability to identify those who are already leaders and who dis-play the requisite vocational qualities as well. (I have written about this in "Discerning Vocations," in the 1 May 1993 issue of America.) Liberating Youth There is yet another theol.ogical supposition behind the methodology of these weekend experiences. For anyone to respond to the call of God in vocation, freedom is required. Sin, in all its varieties and ramifications, keeps us from being free and thus impedes our response to God's initiative. The Holy Father again offers a worthy perspective: Freedom. is essential to vocation, a freedom which when it gives a positive response appears as a deep personal adher-ence, as a loving gift or rather as a gift given back to the giver who is God who calls, an oblation: "The call," Paul VI once said, "is as extensive as the response. There cannot be vocations unless they be free, that is, unless they be spon-taneous offerings of oneself, Conscious, generous, total . Oblations, we call them: here lies in practice the heart of the matter . It is the humble and penetrating voice of Christ, who says, today, as yesterday, and even more than Septentber-October 1996 Klein ¯ Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life yesterday: Come. Freedom reaches its supreme foundation: precisely that of oblation, of generosity, of sacrifice." (PDV §36) The methodological presupposition of those working with potential candidates for vocations of special consecration should be that they are not yet free. They are restrained by forces per-sonal, spiritual, sociological, cultural, and even biological. All of these taken together are what St. Paul refers to as the flesh which is at war with the spirit. The categories are worth some explana-. tion, even though space admits of only a few examples. On the level of the personal, candidates may present them-selves for ministry because their poor self-image demands a role in life which creates a seemingly instant image of respect. Or, conversely, potential candidates may be unable even to consider a ministerial vocation because their self-image is entirely too neg-ative. They may want to consider priesthood or religious life, but only after they have put themselves together spiritually. Their idea would be, "When I have overcome sin, I will consider such a life." What is lacking here is the comprehension that a life of apostolic charity may be the very instrument that the Holy Spirit desires to use for the person's redemption. All programs of formation have as their agenda the progres-sive liberation of candidates from all of the forces that would keep their choice for or against vocation from being truly free. I now work part-time in a college seminary, and I would say that our raison d'etre is exactly this, to free young men and make them ready to respond. Hence, the necessity for directors of vocations to create or support structures that teach young people the fun-damentals of Christian life and at least a basic knowledge of how to discern the work of the Holy Spirit in their life. Of course, any adequate Christian anthropology would insist that, ultimately, humanity is freed, or healed, only by the inter-venient action of God. Wholeness was an attribute of God long before it became a goal of the recovery movement. That being true, only prayer, which represents an actual encounter with God, can effect freedom, or healing, or wholeness. Only the intimacy bf prayer creates disciples, and only disciples, even if they be merely nascent ones, can respond to God's call to a lifetime of. consecrated service. So the discipleship programs sponsored by recruiters must have three elements: direct personal contact with hero-mentors, pedagogical formation in the fundamentals of Review for Religious Christian belief and practice, and an opportunity for growth in prayer. My past experience as the director of spiritual formation in a college seminary program reinforces this triad. I am personally convinced that many people move towards and away from voca-tions to the priesthood and religious life without developing even a modicum of spiritual intimacy. I doubt that this phe-nomenon is new. I suspect it has been a continual struggle and task in every house where formation occurs. I am certainly not presenting my own limited experience as the answer to the vocation crisis. What I am arguing is that success in the future willprobably demand that vocation personnel actually do some of the work of initial formation in disci-pleship. I think it would be fair to say that what I am really suggesting is that those charged with the recruitment and guid-ance of ministerial vocations see them-selves as being, after the family, among the first of young people's mentors of forma-tion. A certain amount of formation, or growth in Christian discipleship, is needed before potential candidates are ready for entry into formalized preparatory pro- What I am really suggesting is that those charged with the recruitment and guidance of ministerial vocations see themselves as being, after the family, among the first of young people's mentors of formation. grams. Previously this formation was the work of other Catholic institutions, but the presumption that others have already pre-pared such candidates is no longer tenable, and ignoring the shift that has occurred will leave recruiters wondering what happened to all the vocations. The Formation of the Formers In January 1994 the Roman Congregation for Catholic Education (of Seminaries and Institutes of Study), under the lead-ership of Cardinal Pio Laghi, released Directives Concerning the Preparation of Seminary Educators. The work considers the for-mation of those charged with formation. It notes that a unique combination of talent, charism, experience, and education must Septentber-October 1996 Klein ¯ Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life exist if a person doing formation work is to find the experience productive and personally rewarding: The vocation of the educator.implies, on the one hand, a certain "charism," which is expressed in gifts of nature and of grace, and, on the other, certain capacities and attitudes that must be acquired. In every consideration regarding the personality of the educator, this double aspect must be kept in mind; each of the characteristics desirable in a seminary educator presents elements which are, in a manner of speak-ing, innate, and others which must be progressively devel-oped by means of study and experience. (Directives §25) The formati'on of vocation directors can be considered along these same lines of thought. To begin with, though, readers may be wondering whether any such formation actually exists. It does. To their credit, national organizations have done much to provide neophytes in the field with at least that quintessential American pedagogical experience called the workshop conference. Actually a great deal of formal information is imparted at such gatherings, and the opportunity for informal guidance by those more expe-rienced in the work is incalculable. Also, it seems safe to assume that the formation which voca-tion directors receive for their own religious life or priesthood is itself a real and efficacious, albeit remote, preparation for the specific ministries of vocational recruitment, discernment, and guidance. By means of a broad education, formation programs are supposed to equip their students to enter diverse ministries without particular, prolonged preparation. The liberal arts should prepare us for a future that will always be ambiguous. The Directives do the church a real service in publicly dis-cussing the'criteria for evaluating persons being considered for seminary formation work. Rectors and bishops have, of course, always used some sort of criteria, but the document makes it pos-sible for those unnamed and perhaps unexamined criteria to be discussed and evaluated in an open forum. This is good: open collaboration tends to expose the weaknesses any individual's approach may have. It also reinforces and propagates strengths. I would like to conclude my observations by offering a crite-rion for identifying which candidates, among the many doing ministry in the church, are likely to do best at the ministry of vocational recruitment. The evaluative question I would pose is this: Are they community builders? Review for Relig%us Ecclesia: Community of the Summoned Consider what vocations to the priesthood or religious life really are. They are calls from God the Father to serve Christ by serving the community which is the church. Vocations have their ¯genesis and scope in community life. They are instruments of God in bringing together the "community of the summoned": the ecclesia (in New Testament Greek), the "church." They exist to Order to nourish, to enliven, and to augment the church. "In the church's very name, ecclesia, we find its deep vocational aspect, for the church is a 'convocation,' an assembly of those who have been called" (PDV §34). Referring to priestly vocations, the Holy.Father has noted, "In this context the ecclesi-ology of communion becomes decisive for understanding the identity of the priest, his essential dignity and his voca-tion and mission among the people of. God and in the world" (PDV§12). Certainly the many theological, pas-toral, and liturgical changes that occurred with the Second Vatican Council have had, among their effects, a disturbing of the relative tranquillity that should normally characterize a healthy institution. Most Catholics are willing to admit, however, that the disturbance has been outweighed by the renewal of evan-gelical life that the council has inaugurated in the church. I do not think vocations dropped because of the conciliar reforms (although their implementation may have occasioned a number of new problems). Rather, I believe that communal val-ues and communities themselves are being undermined by con-temporary life. The disintegration of vibrant communities into increasingly isolated individuals and solipsistic agendas is a prob-lem not only for the church, but also for modern technological society as a whole. Consider the changes that have occurred in the latter half of this century. The superhighways that now connect huge metropolises across vast stretches of land have rendered superfluous many small communities that once prospered between those cities. They have The disintegration of vibrant communities into increasingly isolated individuals and solipsistic agendas is a problem not only for the church, but also for modern technological society as a whole. Septe~nber-October 1996 Klein * Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life. also restructured urban life itself. Distinct intra-urban neighbor-hoods once flourished because it took time to move from one side of the city to another. Today mass merchandising has sup-pressed small, community-enhancing workshops and businesses. With the disappearance of the family farm went the collapse Of the small town and the small rural parish. The knowledge explosion made possible by the computer age has created a world of spe-cialization that renders small hospitals, small colleges, and other small institutions seemingly superfluous. Endangered by the collapse of these communities are the communal values upon which cultural life depends. Increasingly undifferentiated national media now serve a country such as the United States, but, instead of promoting communal values, they seem only to be forums where increasingly strident and diverse views make themselves heard. One can now ask at the end of the 20th century: Who are we? Is there any we left among us? The collapse of a communal identity is certainly a formative influence on those presenting themselves as candidates for min-istry. Many of the candidates with whom I have worked came to the seminary out of a faith experience which is highly individu-alistic, often with little or no contact with the institutional church. This can be viewed as a sign of the Holy Spirit raising up leaders even beyond the reaches of contemporary church ministry--it is, after all, how the church received the gift of St. Paul's vocation. But it also raises the challenge of how to link the individual's own experience with that of the larger Christian community. Remember that Paul spent three years undergoing a process of communal immersion before beginning his ministerial life (see Ga 1:18). If the basic presuppositions of New Age spirituality were to be catalogued, certainly a useful project given their pervasive influ-ence, a foundational tenet would undoubtedly be the absolute, almost solipsistic, supremacy of the individual. Spirituality itself is seen not as a relational mystery which envelopes and possesses the human person, but as yet another object to be acquired by an individual whose weltanschauung is essentially that of the con-sumer. Pastores dabo vobis is trenchant in this regard: In the present context there is also a certain tendency to view the bond between human beings and God in an indi-vidualistic and self-centered way, as if God's call reached the individual by a direct route without in any way passing Review for Religious through the community. Its purpose is held to be the ben-efit, or the very salvation, of the individual called and not a total dedication to God in the service of the community. We thus find another very deep and at the same time sub-de threat which makes it impossible to recognize and accept joyfully the ecclesial dimension which naturally marks every Christian vocation, and the priestly vocation in particular: as the council reminds us, priestly ministry acquires its gen-uine meaning and attains to its fullest truth in serving and in fostering the growth of the Christian community and the common priesthood of the faithful. (PDV§37) Community Belonging Vocations are needed for communities, and they come out of communities. Their entire genesis and purpose are involved in communal life. Vocations are on the decline in the church today because communal life is waning. One simply does not offer one-self for ministry to a community if one has never felt oneself to be a part of a community. I suspect that, if Catholicism persists in declining as a communal way of life, vocations will continue to evaporate. Lives are to be offered to other people and to the God whom we encounter in others. If postghetto Catholicism is not a place of meaningful and life-giving encounter with others, if it becomes iust another competing intellectual system or a political agenda, then it will cease being a living organism that inspires men and women to sacrifice their futures for its continuance. One does not bring oneself to Pope Paul VI's notion of personal obla-tion without being able to envision the faces of real men and women for whom. the offering is made. How can anyone expect vocations to be fostered unless it be through community building and sustenance? Other sociological structures once existed to create the communities upon which vocational recruiters could depend. Those structures have either disappeared or found themselves transformed into priestless and sisterless entities. I suspect, however, that community building still will show itself to be the single most important quality that postghetto Catholic education offers the American church. How poignant, then, is this quality of community building which the Directives insist should characterize formational ministry: It can be said that the educator is authentic in his service and responds to the demands of his priestly ideal only in the measure to which he knows how to commit himself and Septe~nber-October 1996 Klein * Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life sacrifice himself for the unity of the community and when in his thoughts, in his attitudes, and in his prayer he reflects concern for the union and the cohesion of the community entrusted to him. (Directives §29) Who needs to be in vocation work today? Who has the apti-tude? Those who can build communities. People who have shown an ability to unite other people around them. Those who can effectively enunciate the common values and longings of a human-ity destined for Trinitarian communion. If recruiting were the only task facing vocation personnel today, a good-looking face, a fast car, and call-forwarding would suffice. Recruiters today need to examine their venues and identify vibrant Christian communities. This is where they need to be. Sadly enough, in many situations they will need to help create such communities from scratch. I do not think that I am offering merely another theological or pastoral perspective. On the con-trary, I am begging recognition of a sociological certainty that creates both a pastoral imperative and an ecclesial opportunity. JUST PUBLISHED-- The Best of the Review - 5 The Church and Consecrated Life (see insert at back of book for ordering) "At a time when hope for religious life and its future is once again on the rise, the articles in this book offer an exceptional and much needed panorama of the critical issues of renewal faced by contemporary men and women religious. Elizabeth McDonough and David Fleming have done us an enormous favor in bringing together the Best of the Review in this area. I recommend this book enthusiastically; its authors take us another step along the journey to that future for religious life for which we all long." --Se~nSammon FMS Vicar General Marist Brothers, Rome ¯ Review for Religious MICHAEL TIDD Reflections of a Fin de Si cle Novice During their novitiate experiences, all religious, in one way or another, examine the identity and purpose of their respective congregations. In this era of religious life--in the wake of Vatican Council II and at the end of the 20th century--this essay is a personal reflection on the mysterious and profound experience of the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the United States today. Two questions frame this reflection: How am I being formed? and what am I being formed for? I hope that my responses bring a helpful perspective to pres-ent- day views of American religious life. Five years of community experience have vividly demonstrated that words like formation and novitiate carry many meanings. Often brothers' memories of formation are bittersweet. For readers of this article, the words probably conjure up all sorts of images. Most of these readers are likely to be religious whose formation occurred before or during Vatican Council II. For me Vatican II is as immediate as Trent and even Nicea, for I was not born until 1970. I am wholly a product of the post-Nicene, post-Tridentine, post-Vatican church. My formation is radically different from that of my brothers of the pre-Vatican era, both in theory and external practice. My novitiate time comes after five years of experience in community and the apostolate. Thus, it is less an initiation than a time for analysis and integration of my experiences as a Christian Brother. Michael Tidd FSC lives at Christian Brothers' Novitiate; Roosevelt Hall; One Tallcot Lane; Skaneateles, New York 13152. September-October 1996 Tidd * Reflections of a Fin de Si~cle Novice This integration occurs in the context of prayer and study: of the gospel, the church, the charism of our founder (John Baptist de La Salle), our Rule, our vows, our efforts at renewal since Vatican II, and issues of personal development and self-awareness. Compared with the intense schedule of yore, ours is decep-tively simple. Large blocks of time are discretionary. The indi-vidual is responsible for developing his life of prayer and study without the framework of an all-embracing fixed schedule of reli-gious exercises and study times. Our schedule for common prayer (morning and evening prayer, daily Mass both at home and in the local parish) is scant compared with the novitiate timetable of our former Rule.l Indeed, the Rule itself, revised after thirty years of experi-mentation beginning in 1956, is no longer oriented toward ful-fillment of obligations. It is couched largely in inspirational language, more exhortative than legal. Evaluation of the novice's suitability for the brother's vocation is based less on observance of the Rule's prescriptions than on his total aptitude (spiritual, intel-lectual, emotional, psychosexual) for our way of life. The devel-opment of the individual as a human being is weighed equally with his spiritual and intellectual progress. The crux of the difference between the modern novitiate and the earlier one lies in the time to oneself in the novitiate. This involves both theoretical and practical discontinuities. Formerly, the theoretical aim was to be "formed," shaped according to an abstract model of the ideal Christian Brother. The dual instru-ments of the Rule and the director of novices molded the novice into a brother. The novice was exhorted, and ideally strove, to let himself be recast in this form, leaving his past (and self) behind. The practical discontinuities were many. Life was lived by the schedule, with few if any choices about how time was spent. Influences on one's development were carefully regulated by Rule and director. Exact observance of the Rule was the primary virtue: inasmuch as one did so, one incarnated the community's charism and was making progress in this way of life. In the present novitiate, formation might not be the appro-priate term anymore. Present-day novices "form themselves" rather than "are formed by external agents." They do this by eval-uating prior and present choices in the light of the gospel and of the community's charism and life. Daily I confront issues such as personal prayer, interpersonal relationships, study, participation in Review for Religious the-lectures and conferences, the common labor needed to main-tain the house. I learn about religious life, the community's charism, and human development from religious, secular, lay, and clerical sources. The director of novices still plays a crucial role: he is the agent of accountability, calling me to reconcile my lived choices with the norms of our life. He is the one who helps the novice avoid the trap of self-delusion and evaluates the quality of one's self-formation. The modern novice, then, is like a sculptor who, in his choices of daily living, chips away at his raw material to shape something new: himself. The novice sculpts in the light of guidance from the Holy Spirit, the gospel, the charism and life of De La Salle, and the insti-tute's tradition being lived by his brothers and himself. Without a normal job and in relative separation from one's familiars, one lacks all the usual props. Daily I encounter three basic realities: God, my brothers, and myself. All of this can be harrowing, as questions of identity and ontology emerge. Two options appear: growth, however painful, or escape and denial. Even here it is possible to fill the. day with trivialities, ducking the hard questions. I could "make the novitiate" without any real change, but that would be a colossal waste of time. Ultimately, the choice is in my hands. There will be nothing to hide behind down the line if real conversion does not happen here, a conversion for which I must take responsibili.ty before God. The vows are less the end of the novitiate, then, than a beginning. They are the public beginning of a life already being defined by the consequences of my present choices, choices made in response to the call of God as perceived in the daily events of existence: "For this command which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you . No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths, and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out" (Deuteronomy 30:11 and 14, NAB). In her book The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life, Joan Chittister OSB aptly describes the dilemma of modern religious: "They want to know if there is anything going on now [emphasis mine] to prove that religious life remains worth the sacrifice of their own lives. Is there anything The crux of the difference between the modern novitiate and the earlier one lies in the time to oneself in the novitiate. Septonber-October 1996 Tidd¯ Reflections of a Fin de Si~cle Novice still life-giving here? Is there anything yet valuable enough to go on doing here? New members want to know if there is anything here that merits their coming to do, their coming to be.''2 In the novitiate I have understood her questions thus: For what am I being formed? In 1996 in the United States~ what is the life of the Brother of the Christian Schools for which I am preparing? The question is very specific because I am convinced that this process is not designed to create an abstract "religious," but a member of a specific community guided by a unique charism. Much contemporary literature on religious life leaves me vaguely disappointed. I do not see much written by those who will be around when the future of religious life will have become the present. More fundamentally, the discussion is so future oriented and spec-ulative that it leaves me wondering what we are to do here and now. I am not left rudderless, fortunately. God's command is not far away; it is close at hand. Since I see the novitiate's meaning as preparation for living as a Brother of the Christian Schools in 1996 and in 2006 and 2016 as well, I look to the community's intellectual and spiritual patrimony for a definition of that broth-erhood right now. The inspired work of many brothers has pro-duced two texts that address the threefold challenge of Perfectae caritatis: recommitment to the gospel, recovery of the founder's charism, and adapted renewal in the light of the signs of the times (see §2). These documents are The Brother of the Christian Schools in the World Today: A Declaration and our Rule of 1986. In thefin de si~cle, these texts provide clear, powerful, and dynamic state-ments of our identity and purpose. They are lights amidst the darkness of the waning millennium. The Declaration is a charismatic statement issued by our 39th General Chapter in 1967. It was prompted in part by its response to the question of introducing the priesthood into the community. The chapter rejected that innovation, saying what we are not and then issuing a positive proclamation of what we are. The modern Brother of the Christian Schools is a layman who, in response to a call from God, totally consecrates himself to the glory of the Trinity by public profession of vows. His total consecration of himself has its roots in his baptismal consecration.3 In an entirely lay institute, the brother places himself at the service of others in the context of a community "totally dedicated to the kingdom of God." Consecrated in community, he specifies his life of ser- Review for Religious vice to others in an educational mission "with special preference for the poor." Regardless of the social class of those he immedi-ately deals with, the brother totally orients his work towards the promotion of justice and those "whose poverty hinders their devel-opment as persons or their aptitude to receive the message of sal-vation revealed in Jesus Christ." The brother integrates his proclamation of the gospel with the total human development of his students and sees the school as "the pre-ferred but not the only means" of achieving the institute's mission.4 The Declaration stresses the fundamental aspects of our vocation as Brothers of the Christian Schools (neatly summarized twenty years later in the Rule): "consecration to God as a lay religious, apostolic ministry of edu-cation, especially of the poor, and community life.''5 The Declaration was for us the great clarion call to conversion in the wake of Vatican II. Indeed, in 1967 Brother Charles Henry Buttimer, then superior general, wrote: "It is. in light of the Declaration that we must read and under-stand the other texts of our General Chapter, including the [pro-visional] Rule and Constitutions. It is the basis of the doctrine you will find in each of them.''6 Making the bold ideals of the Declaration reality was the task of the institute in the years fol-lowing 1967, as the great revision of the Rule began. The Declaration's synthetic idea of our vocation is rooted deeply in the charism of John Baptist de La Salle. In response to a double contemplation of the needs of the poor and God's plan of salvation for all, he founded a community of brothers on the following basis. "The spirit of this Institute is a spirit of faith, which should induce those .who compose it not to look upon any-thing but with the eyes of faith, not to ~1o anything but in view of God, and to attribute all to God, [with the result that there is] an ardent zeal for the instruction of children [and] to procure the salvation of the children confided to their care." Internalizing this spirit is "of the utmost importance . The novices [should] apply themselves to acquire it; and those that are already members [should] make it their first care to preserve and increase it in themselves . "Those who failed to do so were to be considered "dead members.''7 These texts of the recent and distant past speak Much contemporary literature on religious life leaves me vaguely disappointed. Septentber-October 1996 Tidd ¯ Reflections o[a Fin de Si~cle Novice to the present as much as to the times which occasioned them. They address the essence of questions of identity and sustaining vision, questions which seem to bedevil many religious commu-nities today. The Rule coexists with the Declaration as a statement of iden-tity and purpose inasmuch as it is the fruit of over thirty years of experimentation and of applying the visionary statements of the Declaration. In addition (moreso than the Declaration) it bene-fits from the recovery of the real person of De La Salle through modern critical scholarship, a man long obscured by a profile more hagiographical than historical. The Rule, then, makes the call of the council real: it renews and adapts our understanding of our vocation as Brothers of the Christian Schools by pointing out a dynamic relationship between the challenges of modernity and our founding charism. As in the first 'rules of the community, pro-duced by De La Salle in collaboration with the brothers them-selves, the Rule is the work of the entire congregation, through successive general chapters and consultation with thousands of brothers around the world. It is a coherent and convincing description of this way of life and its raison d'etre. Both documents elaborate a fundamental principle: The brother's vocation is an all-encompassing way of life in unhesi-tatin~ response to the call of God in the depths of the brother's heart. Seeing in the life of the brother far more than the aposto-late or the vows alone is the key to the coherence and intelligibility of our identity, today and in the future. For several decades the brothers' mission of education has been shared with other religious, priests, and lay people. This reality. has been examined and embraced bysuccessive general chapters as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in its life today. We have much to share with those who seek to define their profession as an apos-tolic mission in the spirit and tradition of John Baptist de La Salle. Such sharing and dialogue is ongoing all over the world.8 This recognition, however, forces the brothers to refine their identity even more sharply. The common apostolate alone simply will no longer suffice as an answer to the question of identity, given the signs of the times. Our identity as Brothers of the Christian Schools must transcend mission and reach to the very depths of our being. The chapter of 1966-67 articulated an initial, charismatic vision of the Brother of the Christian Schools today, and the Rule Review for Religious of 1986 specifies and refines that identity even further, in the light of ongoing renewal and lived experience since 1967. What makes us brothers is not solely our work, but the living integra-tion of the constitutive elements: consecration, community, mis-sion. Each must be related in dynamic harmony to the others. No single element should obscure the others. The importance of consecration as witness, lived in commu-nity and expressed by public vows, is evidenced by the Rule's claim that it is our "first apostolate." This mode of living indicates the transcendent action of God in our world, and points towards the covenant between God and human beings. The common life is essential to our identity for two reasons. First, the brothers need the mutuality and sharing of community life for their spiritual and human develop-ment. Second, our brotherhood in com-munity and our "selfless presence among those [the brothers] serve" is to "witness to the possibility of creating true broth-erhood among nations.''9 Our mission of teaching is rooted in our very foundation as a community. De La Salle brought his first schoolmasters into community and gave them a profound spirituality--the Christian teacher as an ambassador of Jesus Christ--in order to make the mission of Christian education possible and fruitful. We do the same today, for the same reason. "The Brothers, in fidelity to the call of the Spirit and the charism of their Founder, consecrate themselves to God in order to exercise, by association, their apostolic ministry of education" (emphasis mine).~° What does all this mean in terms of the purpose of the novi-tiate? Our statements of identity tell me that it is my consecrated life in community which I bring to the mission and which sus-tain me in it. Since this integrated totality is what makes a brother's life different from that of other persons who share in the apostolate of Christian education, the interiorization of con-secrated life in community and for the mission is what I must be about this year. What must concern me this year and during my entire life as a brother is not simply what I am to do, but how I am to live. I should be about the living of a life of ongoing con- The brother's vocation is an all-encompassing way of life in unhesitating response to the call of God in the depths of the brother's heart. Septentber-October 1996 Tidd¯ R~flections o~a Fin de Si~cle Novice version--to the Jesus of the Gospels and to the poor--the same evangelical journey that inspired John Baptist de La Salle to leave behind his former vocation as a canon of Reims and begin anew.n The very elements that seem so out of proportion here in the novitiate (prayer/consecration and community life) are precisely those habits of the mind and heart I must take with me back into the apostolate. Those realities are the soil from which the brother can hope to draw nourishment for the demands of the aposto-late. If he fails to. attend to the soil, the flower of his apostolic work will soon wither and die. If consecration and community become mere slogans or, even worse, contradictions to my daily life, my life as a brother will be in vain. Insofar as I embody the spirit of faith and zeal and express it in a community life that is lived fully, then my work will be Lasallian and my novitiate and my brotherhood will have meaning, both in the fin de si~cle and beyond. "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 3 0:19). Notes ~ Thirty-seventh General Chapter, Rule of Government of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Rome, 1947), pp. 192-193. This document was abrogated by the 39th General Chapter of 1966-1967;.all subsequent references to the Rule are to the text promulgated in 1987 after the 41st General Chapter of 1986. 2 Joan Chittister OSB, The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1995), p. viii. 3 Thirty-ninth General Chapter, The Brothers of the Christian Schools in the World Today: A Declaration (Winona: St. Mary's College Press, 1968), article 13:1,2, p. 12. The author is indebted and grateful to Brothers Gerard Rummery FSC, Michael McKenery FSC, and Luke Salm FSC, whose novitiate lectures and informally shared insights were invaluable in this essay's preparation. The Declaration's genesis and enduring signifi-cance is well presented in Brother Luke's Religious Institute in Transition: The Story of Three General Chapters (Romeoville, Illinois: Christian Brothers Publications, 1992). 4 Declaration, articles 13:3, 4, 5, and 6. s Forty-first General Chapter, The Rule of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Rome: Tipografia S.G.S., 1987), p. 27. 6 Foreword to the Declaration, p. iv. 7. John Baptist de La Salle. "De l'esprit de cet Institut," ROgles Communes (1718 ed.), in Rule, pp. 15-17; Rule, p. 15. s Rule, articles 17-17d and 146. Review for Religious 9 Rule, articles 24 and 9. lO Rule, art. 2. ~ This concept of De La Salle's life as an evangelical journey is superbly treated in St. John Baptist de La Salle: Announcing the Gospel to the Poor, by Brothers Michel Sauvage FSC and Miguel Campos FSC (Romeoville: Christian Brothers Conference, 1981). Presence Silence and stillness of night. How so? My eyes, my ears cry: False! Clouds scud cross a moon face; branches stretch and bend, flip, whip, and bow; leaves shiver, quiver, quake; whispers, trills, chirps, and whistles perforate the air. Stillness and silence? Not true. Yet there is a sense that knows it is so. But what? A minus of mortal motion ? A vacuum of virile voice? Perhaps, yet, more, I think. The airs of skin tingle and respond to it; an inward ear is pricked; a sacred presence permeates the space; a sacred voicelessness resounds within my soul around my self where I am held all stilled to wait to thirst to hunger a-lone. all one. Doris Bissonnette RJM September-October 1996 breaking boundaries 494 CLEMENTE BARRON Racism and Religious Life I did not learn about racism by taking sociological courses in school. I learned about racism by being born a Mexican- American in Texas in these United States. In the 1940s and 1950s, the decades in which I was born and raised, racism was an acceptable way of life. It was woven into the very fabric of our social and political life, our educa-tional and economic systems, and even into the way we practiced our Catholic faith. I did not have a choice in this matter, nor did my family or any of the other people who made up my world at that time. The existence of racism does not depend upon an indi-vidual's say-so, or even upon many people saying that it does or does not exist. I am sure that many of the public-opinion polls taken during the '50s and '60s were saying that racism existed only in isolated sections of the United States. Yet we now look back at that era of American his-tory and find many examples of racism in every segment of our society. Racism exists because it has been with us from the very beginning of our history. It continues to assert itself everywhere until someone or some movement challenges it. It will not disappear on its own. The gains the United States has made in regard to racism are mea-sured by wars, lives, and the heroic witness of courageous people, regardless of their position in society. Most of the Clemente Barr6n CP has worked with Hispanics during the twenty-five years of his priestly ministry. He lives at Casa Pasionista Guadalupe; 700 Waverly; San Antonio, Texas 78201. Review for Religious time these people had no special awareness of making any sig-nificant contributions to the eradication of racism. They just wanted a more just society for themselves and their children. It is not easy to write about racism. It is especially not easy when one is writing for a readership that shares the same faith or even the same vows and way of life or the same commitment to a social-justice agenda. It becomes still more difficult when all three of these factors are present. Yet it is the same sense of God, the same shared values, and the same commitment to justice that give me confidence to express these experiences and considerations of racism. There are many misunderstandings when it comes to racism. People do not know how to converse about racism as brothers and sisters in an open and free exchange of thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Many other issues get in the way of a good conversation on this subject. People of color tend to get angry and vitriolic and people of the dominant society tend to feel hurt or guilty when they talk about the subject. People of color often assume a victim's stance. People of the dominant society often separate themselves personally from racism: "Why are we making a fuss about this now since we are not racists?" Frequently people of color offer cosmetic solutions to this deeply complex, multilayered issue, while people of the dominant society offer solutions that address their own needs but not those of the people of color. The result is that we talk at each other, preach to each other, and instruct each other, but rarely have a good conversation with each other. Complexities of Racism This whole issue becomes even more complicated when we place this conversation within the context of religion and reli-gious life. Church teaching looks upon racism as evil and has rightly condemned it. In this context, racism is talked about in terms of sin, even as one of the most serious sins of our time. When we enter into a conversation about racism at this level, we highly personalize the issue. No one wants to begin a discussion with the feeling that she or he is being iudged a public sinner. Yet many religious feel that way when ~he discussion is about racism. Such a starting point makes for a poor conversation. On the other hand, many of us may not be aware of our racism just because we do not think of ourselves as racist; in fact, Septentber-October 1996 Barr6n * Racism and Religious Life we can identify many instances that demonstrate to us that we .are not racist. We do not want to be racist, and we believe that we are not, just on the basis of sheer willpower. Yet those of us who have tried to overcome addictive habits by sheer Willpower know that it takes more than goodwill to overpower a deeply ingrained habit or way of life. Defining Racism Racism is not easy to define. People of color tend to have a different definition and understanding of it than those of the dominant culture. People of color usually define racism as insti-tutionalized prejudice; since they do not control our society's insti-tutions, they do not consider themselves racists in the strict sense. People of the dominant culture have a difficulty with this concept because to them it says that people of color cannot be prejudiced--which is not true at all. People of color are just as prejudiced as other people. When it comes to racism, the issue is not prejudice; it is institutionalized prejudice. This is a classic case of one group wanting to focus on what is common (prejudice) and the other wanting to focus on what is not (control of insti-tutions). Progress is made when both sides accept each other's insights. Learning Racism I was not aware that I was living in a racist society when I was growing up in rural Texas. Life in the late '40s and '50s was hard, and in many ways society was pretty well defined. I was aware of the dos and don'ts of such a society. I knew that we lived in a part of town where most of the "mesicans" lived and that another part of town was "nigger town." I knew that our city offi-cials would always be "anglos" and the other leaders of our county and state would be, too. I could not conceive of a pastor or bishop being other than anglo. I knew that mesicans and niggers were not allowed to use the public facilities and fountains that anglos used. I also knew that we could not go into certain stores, like the bar-ber shop. It all seemed so normal. As time went by, other things became clearer. You just knew that you were not to do much socializing with those who were not of your ethnic grouping or race. At school the teachers were Review for Religious always careful to line us up so that we would be paired with our own kind. This was especially true in the lower grades, when we had to hold hands while standing in line. Somewhere along the weeks and years, you began to realize that socially it was not acceptable for you to date, much less think of marrying, anyone outside your ethnic or racial group. There were some exceptions, but the people involved in them were usually not socially acceptable in the first place. That was the way things were, and that was it. I do not remember my parents taking me aside to teach me the socialization rules of rural Texas. The time came when you just knew. You could have casual relationships with persons of another eth-nic or racial group. You could work for them and even beside them, but you just did not socialize with them on an equal basis. You just knew that, if push came to shove, you could not count on them. That is the way life was lived. Moreover, if you were a person of color, you felt you must project a friendly attitude at all times if you were going to be accepted by the dominant society. Someone who did not do that was seen as "not fitting in." Those who dared to demand rights and equality were considered troublemakers. This was brought home to us time and time again. In the early '60s, for example, when the civil-rights movement was begin-ning to peak, some of my friends went off to a Catholic college in San Antonio to continue their education. Home for the summer, a couple of them went to get a haircut at a barbershop owned by a member of the Knights of Columbus. They were refused service. They refused to leave. This caused a big scene. Eventually they left, but the incident produced a lot of ill feelings. These nice "Mexican" youths, accepted byall as hardworking and ambitious young men, had now become troublemakers. After a couple of years that barbershop was integrated, but I am sure that, in the eyes of many, these young men were marked for life as trouble-makers. We do not want to be racist, and we believe that we are not, just on the basis of sheer willpower. New Place, Old Ways I grew up in the era when the high-school seminary was a normal first step toward the priesthood and religious life. When L49 Septentber-Oaober 1996 Barrdn ¯ Racirm and Religious Life I expressed a desire to become a priest and religious, I was not sur-prised at all to be given the chance to attend a seminary prepara-tory high school. The school was in St. Louis, Missouri. Finding out if I had a vocation took me outside Texas for the first time, far away from my family and all familiar surroundings. It was only later on that I realized that the seminary prep school that I attended and the province I entered as a religious were, for me, extensions of the social realities of my youth in rural Texas. For me nothing had changed. The vast major.ity of my schoolmates were still anglos. All my superiors were anglos, too. I continued to see life around me through the same lenses I had used in rural Texas. I continued to use the same social categories and constructs that I had developed for myself in Texas. I was unable to realize that I had in fact been "liberated" from my Texas social environment and that I could really have new kinds of rela-tionships with others. Some experiences from my prep-school days come to mind and illustrate this point for me. In themselves these experiences are insignificant, yet like all experiences they shed light on what our life is about when seen within a wider context. For the first couple of years that I was at the prep school, we did not go home for the Christmas holidays. The big Christmas social event was the carnival. The seniors and college students would fix up the gym so that we could enjoy an evening of fun and games. It was a lot of hard work for them, but a lot of fun for us younger ones. At one of these events, a couple of guys wanted to take my picture and also wanted our picture to be taken together. I ran away from that all night long. I now believe they wanted me as a friend, and not just as a schoolmate, but I remember thinking at that time: "Why do they want a picture of me?" I remember, on another occasion, a classmate starting to play the piano on the spur of the moment in one of the music rooms. I started singing, and we had such a good time. When I was com-plimented on my singing, I remember being embarrassed. I said to myself: "I really do not know how to sing. He is just saying that!" I really did not recognize this as an affirmation and act of friendship until much later in my life. Another experience was a negative one. One day in my junior or senior year, I was put in charge of a work detail that involved getting the dry laundry sorted out into the individual laundry boxes. This was something new for me, being placed in charge of Review for ReliKious a work detail, and I was feeling good. As I made my way to the basement laundry room, I overheard a boy say to another in a normal voice: "I'm going back to the director and ask to work somewhere else. I'm not going to let a Mexican tell me what to do." I do not remember feeling much of anything. For me it was the exception for "Mexicans" to tell anglos what to do, regardless of education, expertise, or experience. That is the way life was then, and I accepted it. Upon reflection these experiences say something to me because I now see them within a social structure that hampered my power as an individual. I am not saying complete powerlessness, but certainly enough that my efforts to make it in life included special inhibitions about making any waves. While I recognize that there are some definite equalities in life and that all persons encounter some unjust situations that they must learn how to deal with boldly, I also know that some specific societal norms and customs made prisoners of me and others sharing my minority status. Racism and the'effects of racism were alive and well within my social environment, even in the prep school. The fact that I was not aware of all that was going on in terms of racism did not prevent my negative experience of racism. Awareness My first assignment after ordination in 1970 was to a retreat center in Houston, Texas. In the previous year a new association of Mexican-American priests had been formed: Padres Asociados para Derecbos Religiosos, Educativos, y Sociales (PADRES). Two rep-resentatives of PADRES came to visit me shortly after my arrival; we had a long talk. They were recruiting me for the organiza-tion. They talked to me about racism and discrimination in the church against Hispanics. I kept telling them that I did not feel discriminated against, and I did not think that our community was racist. While I could accept the fact that we lived in a racist society and that some people we lived with were racist, I had not yet come to an acceptance that my church was racist, much less my province. I thought I had really escaped racism. Only later did I discover that I had not escaped it; I had merely (and conveniendy) denied its existence within mylife experience. One reason why I began to reevaluate my position on this issue was my involvement with Hispanics at all levels of my life. L499-- September-October 1996 Barrdn ¯ Raci.rm and Religious Life We generally do not think about how social constructs such as words and language, policies and directives, and administrative and organizational structures welcome certain peopie or groups of people and exclude others. -- oo I began to listen to the stories of the Hispanic peoples who were becoming part of my ministerial life. I also began to appreciate the life stories of my own family as I heard them being repeated at family celebrations and gatherings. Every time I visited my aunts and uncles, I heard how difficult it was to be Hispanic and work for the church. It would be a mistake to assume that these people, my relatives and those I accompa-nied in ministry, were bitter and dis-illusioned people. There came a point at which I realized that these accounts were testimonies of peo-ple who loved the church even though they had suffered much at its hands. The most common theme woven through these stories was exclusion on the basis of ethnicity. Some were told in anger, some in resignation, and others just as com-mentaries to life. A fe.w of them may illustrate what I mean. When my parents would talk about their wed-ding day in 1935, they would tell us how they had to drive to the "Mexican" Church for their cere-mony. This church was, in reality, a mission of the parish church, a good ten miles away. We did not need much explanation, for we knew that Mexicans were not wel-comed in the main parish church. My mother also talked about how they had to stop for an hour or so in town on their way back home. They were very hun-gry and thirsty by the time they got there, since they had fasted from midnight to receive Holy Communion. They had to eat in the park.like area in front of the courthouse, because no restaurant would be open to them. In 1973 I began working in Los Angeles at a parish that had been forced into having a Sunday Mass in Spanish because the pastor did not think that there were enough Spanish-speaking parishioners within th~ parish boundaries. The parish finally put in a Spanish Mass after being pressured by a few vocal people. This change had taken place a year before I started working there Revie-w for Religious on weekends. By the time I left that parish to move on to another assignment in October 1975, a good deal of growth had taken place. We had standing room only at the Spanish Mass, a choir, eight Movimiento Familiar Cristiano (CFM) reflection groups that met every two weeks, a catechetical program in Spanish for more than 120 children, two Hispanic men who had applied to become (and eventually did become) deacons, and other signs of life and growth. What this said to me was that Hispanics who had been liv-ing in the area for years did not become involved in church life until there were pastoral leaders ready to welcome and support them. In more recent times, in a Los Angeles rectory, about a dozen of us who had gathered for a penance service were engaged in a lot of shoptalk around the dinner table. The talk came around to the different ethnic groups in the archdiocese, particularly the Spanish-speaking. One of the more recently ordained priests-- from a parish that had had a poor turnout for the Lenten penance service--wondered out loud why "these people" needed to have services in Spanish. A couple of nights later, for a penance service in a parish that does its best to serve various language groups, the church was packed. I heard confessions in English and Spanish for more than two hours. Over a dozen priests heard confessions in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. A Deeper Analysis I cite these comparative incidents to illustrate institutional racism, even in the Catholic Church, and also to show that racism is not always intentional, malicious, or premeditated. In fact, I believe that in the majority of cases we are unaware that racism is operative in our lives. I believe that most people of good heart and goodwill have not reflected sufficiently on how social structures affect their ~lay-to-day lives. Our society's mores and laws have to a great extent come to exist, not in order to promote the reign 6f God, but to protect what the more wealthy and powerful incline to hoard for themselves. We generally do not think about how social constructs such as words and language, policies and direc-tives, and administrative and organizational structures welcome certain people or groups of people and exclude others. Racism is much more ingrained than we believe it is. Furthermore, even when there is recognition and formal repu- September-October 1996 Barr6n ¯ Racism and Religious Life diation of institutional racism, it becomes a major struggle to do something about it. It is not easy to change societal constructs, whether they be words, policies, or organizational structures. Along with our sense of guilt, we also experience a sense of help-lessness. We want to do something, we want to make a statement, we want to do the right thing; but, faced with the immense real-ity of it all, we do not know what to do. My Dealing with Racism I am aware of some evolution that has taken place within myself as I have struggled to understand the reality of racism. One of my earliest reactions to racism was the belief that making people alert to racism, aware of it, and acquainted with it would be enough to make them change their ways of thinking and act-ing. My task became one of revealing and unmasking the evil of racism so that racists would convict themselves and change, or feel the guilt of not changing. I really believed that people of good heart and goodwill would change, be converted, once they saw their own racism. So I became involved (and I still am) in programs and projects to raise the people's level of awareness regarding racism. I think that one reason why great numbers of people have been turned off by consciousness-raising is the way many "social-justice types" presented their case. Their rhetoric is often inflam-matory and confrontational. Sometimes these modern-day prophets use questionable data and much hyperbole to get across their points. I could admire their bravado, but I thought that, if they presented their points with calmness and serenity, then peo-ple would listen and would admit their racism. That is how I thought I would go about it. Sometimes this approach worked; more often it did not. I did not understand the power of denial, to use a psych.ological term, or the condition of blindness, to use a scriptural notion. You can say, "twenty million Hispanics," "eighty percent Hispanic," "one of the highest levels of poverty," "the highest dropout rate at school," and still get responses like "So what?" and "Prove it" and "Don't you think that it's their own personal fault they are the way they are?" Where racism is concerned, comprehension, understanding, reason, logic, facts, and all the other things that go into "knowing" can bring one only so far. Then you are going to Review for Religious have to say yes or no to that reality; you either embrace the truth or you walk away from it. I believe that the other approach, emotional and vitriolic, can at times be much more effective because it pulls us out of the ordinary rhythm of life and challenges us to affirm or deny our position with passion. Often it is in that passionate response that we come to know whether we are confronting truth or living a lie. It screams at us, and we cannot be deaf to it any longer. Living with Racism Once I owned up to the realization that it takes more than just awareness and acknowledgment of racism before some posi-tive response can take place, I was faced with a dilemma. What is an appropriate response to racism? If letting people know about racism, telling them facts or even leading them to some insight, is not enough, then what should I be doing? ' To do nothing is not an option. To be involved in educating people about the evil of racism is good, but it has not been very successful. So what is it that I can do? I have had to learn how to live with the reality of racism without allowing it to con-sume me or compromise me. Racism is both strong and insidious. If you are constantly fighting it, it will wear you down. If you never confront it, however, it will corrupt you and you will conform to it. I have had to learn how to live with it and still be sensitive to it. I have had to learn how to live within its grasp and still be able to name its evil. I have had to learn how to live with people who have no desire whatsoever for critical reflection on the subject and still not dis-count them as brothers and sisters. I also have had to learn that I could not fight racism alone and in isolation. I include in this understanding of aloneness or isolation the clique or inner circle that one forms when engaged in this kind of struggle. When you associate only with men and women of like mind and heart in regard to racism, you run the risk of having them become an extension of your own self. You then have two kinds of people, those who are enlightened by the truth and cleansed by the conversion experience (the inner circle) and What is an appropriate response to racism? To do nothing is not an option. September-October 1996 Barrdn * Racism an'd Religious Life those who are the great unwashed (the rest of humanity), who need to be purified before they can truly be a brother or a sister. And those of the inner circle know in their heart of hearts that hardly anyone from the great unwashed will ever make it to their level of purification and commitment. I believe that, in order to fight racism effectively, one needs to be allied with men and women who are at all stages of a~are-ness and commitment. There is no one of us who has always been right in each and every thought, word, deed, or omission. No one has a complete and correct theory of how life is to be lived. So we need to network with others who agree with us and with those who do not. We need to be in relationship with those who share our insights and with those who do not. We need to be a gen-uine brother or a sister to those who are racists and those who are not. Otherwise I do not see how we can bring about structural conversion. Some Strfita of Memory and Hope Looking at my parents today, I see an elderly couple who knew racism and its effects firsthand. They knew what it meant to live in segregated neighborhoods and in housing that was once chicken coops. My parents knew what it meant to be laid off work, to send their children to a broken-down building that served as the school for "Mexican" children, to be in the hospital without any insurance, to be excluded from stores and services, to be "Mexican" Catholics in a predominantly anglo community. I saw people come to our door and ask for advice or a helping hand or to have official letters read to them. We received many a Catholic missionary into our home, to eat with us and sometimes stay with us during the time they were evangelizing and catechizing. One day, as I shared this history with a group of people at a workshop, I found myself understanding the meaning of "being evangelized by the poor." My parents knew only one way to live in a racist society, and that was to love God with all they had and to love everyone else the best they could. Today I see a couple respected in their hometown and throughout the diocese for their perseverance, their faithfulness, their constancy in the faith and in the way they treat people. No matter how evil the structures were and how evil the people who strove to keep those structures in place may have been, my par- Review for Religious ents' faith has allowed them to overcome that evil. I do not see a bitter, broken-down couple blaming others for what they do not have, but a faith-filled couple continuing, by their example, to call others to a better way of life. Yes, society continues to be racist. The church continues to be racist. And, yes, there is racism even within my province. How should we respond, however, to our racism as a society, as a church and as a religious congregation, well, that is a conversation that we still need to have. Jesus Willing He could have multiplied currency as easy as loaves reasoned down other paths. he gave freely to everyone left the poor still poor rich with more than before. could have died another way unnoticed in desert sand lived as paralytic beggar with none coming to succor when angels stirred waters with a great serving spoon. for though he chose manger and tree, Peter and

Issue 50.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1991. ; Review Religious Volume 50 Number 5 September / October 1991 50 TM ANNIVERSARY VOLUME REVIEW FOR RI:.LIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Telcphonc: 314-535-3048. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to R~:\'~EW Foa R~:I,I(;IOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Subscription rates: Single copy $3.50 plus mailing costs. One-year subscription $15.00 plus mailing costs; two-year subscription $28.00 plus mailing costs¯ See inside back cover for subscription informa-tion and mailing costs. © 1991 REVIEW I.'Oa R~:t,tc, IOUS. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Michael G. Harter, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. 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This order is for [] a new subscription [] a renewal [] a restart of a lapsed subscription MAIL TO: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ¯ 3601 LINDELL BOULEVARD ° ST.LouIs, MO 63108 IIII III IIII II IIII III I PRISMS. What did you go out to the desert to see? A prophet? The question which Jesus asked his own people takes on a special poignancy for us toda~y in the Church. Our biblical tradition indicates that God raises up prophetic people in dark and difficult days. Because many see the time of renewal called for by Vatican II as a period of continuing strug-gle and tension--sometimes sadly with positions defended or fixed rather than with dialogue explored--affecting people and priests in parishes, bish-ops in national hierarchies, and religious in the same congregation, there is a greater tendency today to go running out, searching for a prophet. As usual there is also the temptation for some to play the prophet. But the prophetic tradition strongly emphasizes that tree prophets do not identify the role for themselves. God plucks people out of ordinary circum-stances, evokes some kind of personal conversion, and then speaks and works through them, even in their own reluctance for the role, and in their fear and trembling. Although we tend to apply the word prophet glibly to some modem-day leaders, educators, and writers, we perhaps are not far off the mark when we search for those movements and calls of God that come in incremental ways through ordinary-looking people and events. It is to acknowledge that prophets, like saints, have a range from "capital P" prophets (like our canonized "capital S" saints) with a major message of modeling and influence ~o the almost hidden (because of everydayness) small-letter prophets who in limited and confined ways raise questions, sug-gest new directions, make us uncomfortable, and at the same time give us hope. Prophets of lasting influence are s~arce at any time in our world's his-tory. Yet we may find it all too easy, even now, to mute the "smail p" prophet either ir~ our fixated search for major prophetic voices or in our disdain for less-than-radical calls. The even greater loss, however, happens when we may intentionally or unintentionally downplay our own lived (small p) prophetic witness to Christ's values--an integral part of our own chosen way of life. Review for Religious has been p~rivileged through the years to present voices of personal witness and articles of challenge and critique which repre-sent this common spectrum of our e ~eryday prophets. In this issue, "Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion" by Susan Rakoczy is a personal witness to 641 642 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 God's continuing call to go beyond a familiar homeland and to pay its enlivening costs---costs borne more within oneself than without. Jean Steffes considers directly in her article the theme of the prophetic-witness aspect of contemporary religious life. The articles by Giallanza, Levey, Arbuckle, and Mueller give further reflections on various aspects of religious life that affect its present and future witness. From the area of contemplation, the ground of all prophetic activity, Joseph Tetlow uses a very simple image from the changing seasons of the year to present an understanding of God's calls and our responses for a com-monplace continuity of spiritual growth. In a similar way Gerard Luttenberger sees through the contemplative Fourth Mansion of St. Ter6sa a way of praying apostolically. A prophetic relationship of faith with our United States culture grounds Hoffman's treatment of creative leisure and, in a very different fashion, Hinojosa's suggestions for formation, as he espe-cially has the Hispanic candidate in mind. Rywalt shares his experience of the sometimes dark journeying required of religious trying to follow God's lead in the transfer process in this consecrated lifeform. The prophetic and priestly people which we are will find fresh insight into the manna-food for our joumeying in Billy's "The Bread Kernel," clari-ty in Meyer's restating of the ministerial priesthood foundation through a deeper appreciation of an ambassador's role, and consolation in the gentle wisdom of living reflected in McDonald's "Faithful Servant." Perhaps, in our effort to identify prophets, McDonald's theme goes right to the heart of the matter. No truer discernment or greater tribute can be given to any prophet, spelled with large or small p, than to be identified, like Moses, as a faithful servant of God. David L. Fleming, S.J. Four Seasons of the Soul Joseph .4. Tetlow, SJ Father Tetlow wrote "The Mirror in the Field" for our November/December 1988 issue. His current address is Jesuit Hall; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. I~uring the experience of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, you have a sense of movement and of progress. Particularly during a nineteenth-annotation experience of them, you have the sense of getting along with things and of genuine growth in God. When you have finished the Exercises, if you are like many exercitants, you miss that sense of movement and progress. Even though you continue to pray as long and as seriously as you did during the Exercises, you may well come to wonder where "growth" has gone, and a sense of your life in Christ unfolding for you. You know how times of consolation and times of desola-tion mark spiritual growth or its absence, but this is the microeconomy of the spirit, a topological map of a mountain that does not tell you which range it is in or even which hemisphere. You might find some sense of getting along by applying the traditional phases or stages of spiritual growth. You would recognize, to start with, the stages of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. You have heard of the Dark Nights, of the Senses and of the Soul. But reading these stages requires great expertness and an intense concentration on the interior life. You may find them of limited help in reading your growth in the Lord while you live an ordinary life in the world. Furthermore, these traditional stages of spiritual growth have focused tightly on the individual spirit. They do not comprehend a lot of the "your life world." They do not illuminate the interplay of others' needs and inter-ests with your own, or the tension between remaining faithful to your self and growing more faithful to those whom God gives you to love and be 643 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 loved by. Each of these traditional ways of gauging where you are in your interior life instructs you how to pray at a given time and what to pray about. They do not much tell you what to pray for. Now that you know the Spiritual Exercises, you might find it useful to think of phases or stages of the interior life in terms of the Four Weeks. You can take the Weeks as seasons distinct from one another. They really do match the phases or stages of growth that we go through as we live contem-platives in the active world. If you interpret your experience in these terms, you will not find a lot of instruction on what to pray about (that instruction will rise out of your current experience), but you will find sound instruction on what to pray for. The Seasons of the Four Weeks Think of the seasons not as four parts of one whole life, but as a cycle that we all go through in our life world. Consider life as a whole at this given moment, and picture how it is colored seasonally. The first season would be like this: You go along working hard and praying easily. You feel like springtime, and your whole self sprouts new life. Your life world seems filled with promise. Life is given to you, rising up from within your self and teeming all around you. In such a time, you are in the season of the Fourth Week. The truth is that Jesus came to "give you joy, and to the full," and he was transcendently powerful to achieve what he set out to achieve. As you know, we are created to live in consolation, which means that we share the sureness of the risen Christ that the reign of God comes, for each one of us and for all of humankind together. So we live in the joy of Christ, as we have a fight to do, and this is the Fourth Week. You enter Christ's joy, in work and in prayer. Ask yourself: During this springtime, what do you ask for? You go through times, as all of us do, of confusion and darkness, your inner world and life world matching. Your life world itself may be in tur-moil, and perhaps threatens your family, career, or health. All of us have experienced these times as wars succeed one another and one national crisis after another: toxic waste, the Savings and Loans debacle, the awesome national deficit. In a very real sense, when we suffer these times we are bear-ing the sins of all peoples--the sins of unjust rulers, of greedy people with economic power, of self-centered people who feed on us. In these times you feel powerless and perhaps even helpless. You live in depression or doubt or perhaps even jeopardy. In such a time you are walk-ing with Jesus Christ in his Passion. This is not merely metaphor: our Master warned us that we would feel persecuted and hunted, for if his life world Four Seasons of the Soul / 645 treated him as it did, then we are to anticipate faring no better. St. Paul said that we are to fill up the sufferings that Christ Jesus has still to undergo for the sake of his body, the Church. Sometimes we live in the Passion of Jesus, feeling the terrible weight of taking up our cross daily. In this wintry time of the Third Week, what grace gives you a sense of growth and movement? Again, at times you seem merely to be working along from day to day. You do not feel any great consolation or any notable desolation. You trust God by enacting your own desires and conscience and by doing the next good thing. You do not feel any great pressure to have life all figured out, or the vexing pressure of strong temptation to this or that sin you are prone to. You pray to the Father and listen to the Spirit. You live out your discipleship faithfully and enduringly. This is the Second Week, as you walk with Jesus of Nazareth, either in the long decades of his hidden life or in the brief exertions of his public life. It is full summertime, and you are growing in God. You take summertime concerns to prayer and stay with Jesus proclaiming his Good News. But summertime can seem lazy and unmoving. What grace will help you sense progress? Finally, there come times when you feel the weight of your own sin. You do again something that you thought you had truly put behind you. You fail to do something that you had set yourself most resolutely to do. You are in the First Week again. You find out that your ideal has little of the noble in it, or that your self-image includes falsehood, or that you have been acting as though you loathe your self and despise your life. Then you feel the deep burning of shame. Or you realize that you have been violating your own conscience, deliberately deceiving your own self and spreading your poison around you. Then you feel the icy sting of guilt. Yet all of this time you already know how God loves you, even how God keeps on being your Creator and Lord. This is the season of fall, when you join the cycle of life and death that belongs to this earth of ours. You flirt with spiritual death, but you know that you will not die, but live. You cannot doubt that God forgives again and again, and you take into your prayer that utter confidence in God's forgiving love. This is the season of the First Week. Once you have asked God's forgiveness, what else are we to ask for in order to have the experience of movement and growth? It is to find the answer to this question that you think in terms of the sea-sons of the Four Weeks. Other stages and phases instruct us in the kind of prayer we might give ourselves to. The "unitive way," for instance, suggests a prayer of deep quiet. Other stages help us hold onto the kind of faith and 646 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 hope we need to exercise. The Dark Night of the Senses helps us know that it is, indeed, faith we are exercising, and not doubt. Other stages or phases name kinds of temptation and grades of consolation and desolation. A pray-ing person who has been drawn to apophatic prayer will readily recognize daydreams of food as a desolation. But the stages and phases give little instruction on the very humble question of what, specifically, we are to ask for. Or perhaps more accurately, what instruction they do give is not readily accessible to the majority of praying Christians. "I Ask for What I Want" Matching the Four Weeks with the seasons of discipleship suggests immediately and accurately what you ought to ask God for. Each of the Weeks has a specific grace. These specific graces are precisely what we need in each of the four seasons of discipleship. When we feel the burning of shame or the icy sting of guilt, obviously, we ask forgiveness. Equally obviously, we receive this forgiveness even before we ask it. Then what? You would immediately reject dwelling on the shame or the guilt. You would repudiate self-lacerating examination. What you need is a sense of your complicity in humankind's sin, and a sense of how the disorder manifest in your life world lies waiting to manifest itself in yourself. You can ask for that plainly, and you will have a sense of getting on with God's project. You can also ask another gift of the First Week: the answer to the three questions in the colloquy of the first exercise. The deepest grace of the First Week is to be given eyes to see Jesus Christ. While you stand under the cross of Jesus Christ, you ask yourself, "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What might I do for Christ?" The growth and movement in answer to this prayer have to do with understanding the past and looking to the future. If you have been sinning, then start with how God succeeded in you, with what you have done for Christ. If you are acting sinfully, you need to attend to what else you are now doing: What are you doing for Christ? And as you repent yet again, you stand with Christ and ask what you might do for him and for his body the Church. This is the growth in the season of fall. A second season: of busyness. Your attention runs in a hundred direc-tions. You face concrete decisions hour by hour. You have to deal with oth-ers day after day. You have to remain authentic to your own self and grow more and more fully a member. Here, in this heated season of summer, you might ask most appropriately for the gift of the Second Week: to know Jesus Four Seasons of the Soul / 647 better, to love him more, and to go the way he goes. He has been through this summer and through the desert of busyness. For some the life of the Lord will be an inspiration (as Carl Gustav Jung said it ought to be). They will learn from Jesus of Nazareth how to relate in the dusty marketplace to the God who chooses to be father and mother to us. For others the life of the Lord will be an example for imitation (as the Church has taught since Jesus proclaimed himself Way, Truth, and Life). For all of us, growth in God means growth in loving Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ. That is the grace you ask for in the summer, the Second Week. When winter comes upon your self and your life world, you cannot escape suffering. Well, in the Third Week, you have watched with Jesus through his Passion. Remember this accompaniment and what you asked for then. Perhaps you will ask to accept your suffering in compassion with Jesus suffering and to know shame "because the Lord is going to his suffering for my sins," while you have acted in complicity with all humankind in sinning. This is the grace of the first contemplation at midnight. In any pain or suffer-ing, growth will lie in and through compassion. You might be drawn, again, to ask that your own suffering somehow be "with Christ in sorrow, [your] anguish with Christ in anguish, [your] tears and deep grief because of the great affliction" Christ endured for you. This is a great gift, and those who embrace their own suffering in the world know what Jesus knew. This pain will end nothing, but will end; ifI can discern no movement toward life, I know my growth is where I am; God is faithful. This prayer to God transmutes a wintry time from merely a depression or recession or grave aggravation to a time of growth in Christ. Finally, when you live in happiness and your life world hums along in springtime, you can most reasonably beg God that you enter into the joy of Jesus Christ. There lies the way of movement and growth, first of all because you will not be immobilized by anxiety. We hold the happiness of earth tightly because it is given and taken away, apparently randomly. Unlike the joy of the earth, Jesus' joy is not given and taken away; it is given and to the full. Growth does not mean having things permanently or living secure or figuring everything out. All of these are illusory, and depending on any of them is writing on water. Growth for Christ's disciples entails precisely shaking off dependence on possessions and all defense against risks of personal encounter. You grow a more complete self with every deeper realization that God's is the initia-tive, the victory, which is Jesus' joy and glory. You grow more secure as you accept more and more fully that you did not earn life or joy and that, if you can make no demands, the One who gives constantly turns out more willing 648 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 to lavish gifts than you are to accept them. This is Jesus' joy and his glory. So in these springtimes we find our growth in begging "to be glad and rejoice intensely" not because of the great go6ds God is bestowing on us, but "because of the great joy and the glory of Christ our Lord." A Simple Matter of Moving Along Understand, the Four Weeks are not epigenetic stages that build one on another in succession, with the latest stage transmuting the earlier ones. This is the model used by Erik Erikson and the growth psychologists, and it is not appropriate here. The "seasons" mean something much simpler here. Nor does the word refer to an account of the adult life cycle, the "seasons. of a person's life" devised by Daniel Levinson and his colleagues. The "seasons" here are briefer and include not only internal dynamics but also the actuali-ties of your life world. As phases or stages, they would hardly be long-term and do not name permanent changes in the self. Think of it this way: Many skilled retreat directors begin an eight-day retreat by asking the retreatant what Week they are living. The retreat guide does not imply that the retreatant is going through a life cycle or.a phase with permanent effects--nothing so essential and long-range. The implica-tion is that we all go through certain seasoris and that we can usefully think of those seasons in terms of the Four Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. Many who have made the Spiritual Exercises yearn to keep the sense of progress and of forward motion that sustained them through the long days or months of prayer. They can help themselves do that by continuing one exer-cise that promoted that sense of progress during the Exercises: the preparato-ry prayer. Even those who turn to the Church's lectionary for the material of daily meditation or contemplation can ask for the special grace of the season they are in. They feel no unease or contradiction. On the contrary, they have a sense of familiarity and consonance, and a sense of getting on with life and with prayer. Few of us feel inclined to go back through the prayer texts and cycles of the Four Weeks, particularly over and over again. But you might find it useful to keep mindful of the special graces of the Weeks, and of the preparatory prayer. Re-creating Religious Life Joel Giallanza, C S. C Brother Joel recently completed his service in the ministry of provincial administra-tion and is currently Adjunct Retreat Director at Maryhill Renewal Center. His address is Maryhill Renewal Center; 600 Maryhill Road; Pineville, Louisiana 71360. /'~mong the principal tasks confronting religious life as the twenty-first cen-tury approaches is refoundation or, more descriptively, re-creation. While religious may not be completely comfortable with the demographics of increasing ages and decreasing numbers, they do not appear discouraged or despairing about the future: In fact, some communities have been reporting a modest and consistent increase in vocations and new apostolic ventures. Chapters, assemblies, and other gatherings of religious continue to search for the most effective means of responding to the needs of the Church and the culture in which they live. Among those means they assign high priority to ~'efounding or re-creating religious life itself. To that end, religious have explored the !ives and teachings of their founders and foundresses as well as the experiences and events which shaped the darly years of their communi-ties. The work now is to interpret those lives, teachings, experiences, and events for further practical application to contemporary religious life. The work now is to prepare for the future. Any creation, by its very nature, does not follow a predetermined blueprint. Nevertheless, there is one primordial model we can consider: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." These reflections will focus on the first three days of creation as a metaphor for the re-creation which religious need to undertake as they move toward and into the twenty-first century. In the Beginning During the first three days of creation, as Genesis relates the story, God 649 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 separates creation, giving each part a distinct identity. Only after this funda-mental work of separation and identification does God begin the cultivation of creation, filling it with a rich variety of living things, culminating in the appearance of humanity. Day 1 ~ Observation In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, covered in darkness; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day (Gn 1:1-5). It is intriguing that, after the heavens and the earth, light is God's first creation. Light enables us to observe and to distinguish; light enables us to see what needs to be done. God was present and active, though creation was covered in darkness. The creation of light makes observation and identifica-tion possible. Thus, light is distinguished from darkness; the former is iden-tified as day, the latter as night. Re-creating religious life involves observation. Religious must look courageously and see clearly the quality of every aspect of their lives and then distinguish between what will enhance that quality and what will not. To some degree this self-observation has been going on as religious respond-ed to the Church's call to read the signs of the times. However, with chang-ing demographics and subsequent adjustments to communal life and institutional commitments, religious need to refresh their response to this call and examine their lives yet more closely. In recent years apostolic religious life has known what it is to be "with-out form and void, covered in darkness." Some of this experience stems from the demographics and economics which have signaled the significant change--if not the death--of the religious life of twenty-five years ago. Some stems from the communal, ministerial, and structural implications of those demographics and economics. Some stems from modifications which religious themselves initiated through the process of'revising their constitu-tions and the traditional practices of their personal and communal lives. The ways in which religious live and minister and organize their congregations have changed and no doubt will continue to do so. Clearly, religious life has responsed to the Church and the cultures in which it witnesses. That religious life has undergone change is by itself no indication that nothing further need be done. Could the formlessness, emptiness, and dark- Re-creating Religious Life / 65'1 ness which religious sometimes feel about their way of life be the result of not observing areas needing yet further clarification and identification? These observations of mine focus on one area central to the lives of apostolic religious: celibate community. There is an asceticism inherent in any way of life in which two or more individuals have committed themselves to one another. Principally, that asceti-cism involves maintaining the common good over personal preferences. The acceptance of such an asceticism is essential to a healthy marriage and family life and to a healthy celibate community. Without that asceticism, the basic mutuality of the commitment begins to erode, and eventually the passion and dynamism within the relationships dissipate, then disappear altogether. If we observe the quality of our celibate community life over recent years, we have to ask whether there are times when consecrated commitment degenerates into corporate complacency. This is not to imply that religious have lost the ability to live community. Rather, it asks whether we have suf-ficiently explored other models of living a celibate communal lifestyle with-in the heritage and tradition of our congregations. Frequently in the past, community "happened" in a relatively large resi-dence associated with a congregational ministry. The daily schedules and general patterns of life within the community were much influenced by the needs of the ministry. Generally, those schedules and patterns reflected and were consistent with individuals' expectations. As ministry diversified (and individualized) during the last twenty-five years, expectations also diversi-fied. Common schedules and patterns became less possible and less realistic, given the broad spectrum of responsibilities and time commitments of local community members. Unless those expectations are observed, articulated, and modified as necessary, particularly in residences originally associated with a single ministry, those members unable to be present at certain times and events can be branded as having lost their sensitivity to or even their appreciation of the value of community. The ways in which expectations are lived are not solely internal; others observe how we live together, for better or for worse. Coworkers and other associates shape their perception and understanding of religious life by the pattern and quality of life they observe among us. Though we cannot live our lives in slavery to the multiple, diverse, and often inconsistent expecta-tions and assumptions with which others characterize us, we should not for-get that religious life is a form of witness to the Church and the culture. It bears a responsibility to be a living example of the Gospel and a working model of Jesus' mission. We need to observe our life as celibate community with a probing and 652 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 questioning eye. Are our communities prayerful, hospitable, and happy? Do we take individual and collective responsibility for the house in which we reside? In our communities, can we comfortably and frequently discuss the Gospel, faith, and religious life? Do we invite and welcomethose consider-ing religious life? Do we enjoy one another? Do we know one another? Do we live our life together with passion? Day 2 -- Separation God said, "Let there be a space between the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." God made the space and separated the waters which were under the space from the waters which were above it. And it was so.And God,called the space Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day (Gn 1:6-8). With the dawn of the second day, God begins to put order into creation. Specifically, he makes some working room, so to speak, space in which to continue and complete the work of creation. If the first day emphasized observation and identification, then this second day emphasizes separation and distinction. Re-creating religious life involves separation. In recent years religious have spoken and written much about the need for continuing renewal. Chapters and other gatherings have focused extensively, and sometimes exclusively, on the renewal and refoundation necessary for religious life to be a continuing evangelical and apostolic force. Chapter documentation often remains disembodied as the demands of ministry and the routines of daily life reassert themselves after the chapter closes. Patterns of life change neither quickly nor easily. Regardless of how sublime and profound chapter proceedings may be, we will never effectively legislate renewal and refoun-dation. We must provide space for patterns of individual and communal life to be re-created. For celibate community, the observation and articulation of differing and conflicting expectations may suggest creating some new space. Can quality of life be sustained and intensified if those expectations are left to coexist without enough space for coordination? But, on the other hand, if coordina-tion becomes synonymous with the lowest common denominator, is the effort to provide such space worthwhile at all? Sometimes, no doubt, coordi-nation will bring about re-creation, but this does not seem to be the normal pattern; more often than not, re-creation by separation should be considered. Separation will involve establishing new local communities. Alternative housing could be provided for members who are committed to exploring and implementing a communal lifestyle that will meet their expectations and Re-creating Religious Life / 653 maintain a consistency and an integrity which reflect clearly their commit-ment as religious. The assumption here is that such alternative communities would be established with the highest common denominator as the standard. Prayer and relationships and the practice of the vows would be regularly reviewed to assure that standard. Separation is not schism, it is not a condemnation of other communal lifestyles within a congregation. Twenty-five years ago it was possible to find striking, and even exact, parallels throughout the local communities of a sin-gle congregation. Often those parallels were evident among many congrega-tions, also. Today, even between large local communities of the same congregation, we can find striking differences. Separation has to do with dis-tinction, not division. It seeks to express the rich diversity of ways in which a congregational heritage can be embodied among those committed to it. Major superiors have a significant role in this, a multifaceted role. First, they can take the initiative of identifying people and providing resources for new ventures even if the original initiativecame from community members themselves. The major superiors' involvement could signal the validity of the venture for those whose first reaction is critical. Second, major superiors can offer their support, encouragement, and assistance as new communities get underway. When some "red tape" needs cutting or some bureaucratic procedure needs streamlining, they are usually in a privileged position for expediting whatever needs to be done. Third, they can serve as initial observers and objective consultants for new local communities, Their role is not to mold groups into their own image and likeness, but to see that the members remain faithful to the principles and practices they have agreed upon for their life together. Finally, major superiors can be a buffer between nascent local communities and the established community. Not everyone in the latter group will agree with new ventures and the direction they repre-sent. Major superiors should avoid any defensive posture which would make the new communities look like aberrations in the eyes of the established community. They should focus their explanations about these ventures on their continuity with the congregational heritage. Separation is a means of re-creating celibate community; it is an invest-ment in the future. No doubt there are risks involved, but the prophetic nature of religious life has always placed religious in precarious situations. The risks are a challenge to acknowledge God's providential presence and activity. As religious we must reaffirm our faith in providence and move boldly into the future. Without faith, we undermine the very foundation of our religious life; without movement, we betray any assurance we profess to have about the future. 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 The future will come, but not in a vacuum. The choices we make now will determine the quality of that future. In making those choices, we need to create a fresh space, to provide a place for the future. Day 3 -- Cultivation God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. God said, "Let the earth produce growing things, plants bearing seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit containing their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. The earth produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit containing their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day (Gn 1:9-13). The third day brings cultivation to what has been created. With the emergence of land, "growing things" can appear; each of these growing things contains individuality and generativity. Life--and all of creation-- will continue; there will be another day. "And God saw that it was good." With this third day, God has completed the foundation for what will appear on the succeeding days of creation. And the foundation was good. Re-creating religious life involves cultivation. The future quality of celi-bate community will not appear by spontaneous generation, nor will it be manufactured according to elaborate specifications. It must be cultivated. Establishing new local communities does not signal the dawn of the seventh day; it is not the time to rest and lay aside further efforts. Quite the contrary, it is the time to move forward enthusiastically and confidently with every-thing that has been initiated thus far. This is the time for "growing things?' The root of the word cultivate is a term which can be translated "to move around" and "to dwell," depending upon the context. This dual ety-mology is quite appropriate for these present reflections. Cultivating celibate community requires some moving around. Community compromises vitality if it stops moving according to its own informed choices; that is, if it begins to operate on automatic pilot. Vitality springs from the continuing observa-tion and articulation of expectations. Patterns of personal and communal life must be mutually monitored with integrity and without fear of reprisal. Relationships must be nurtured naturally With quality time and refreshed regularly through reconciliation. Cultivation assumes that expectations and patterns and relationships will evolve. Cultivation flourishes in an environ-ment of exchange, interest, care, and concern. Cultivation moves around Re-creating Religious Life / 655 within and among community members to prevent that stagnation which taxes commitment and tempts to convenience. Cultivating celibate community requires some dwelling. Cohabitation is not celibate community; it merely means that two or more people inhabit the same residential space and need not involve any interpersonal commitment. Dwelling goes beyond living together to include entrusting our lives to one another. If we do not have mutual trust with those with whom we live, then what grounds do we have for claiming we entrust our lives to the Lord? It is a basic tenet of faith that the quality of our relationships with one another verifies or falsifies the quality of our relationship with the Lord. Truly dwelling with one another, recognizing that our life together makes a home of the house, is a certification of our love relationship with one another and with the Lord, and a witness of integrity to others. There is no flawless formula for assuring cultivation; it involves all the effort, discipline, and asceticism requisite for any healthy relationship. There are, however, some principles which can support that effort, discipline, and asceticism. First, clarity of vision: Members must have a sense of the direction in which they hope the community to move. More than an in-house conve-nience, that vision is part of the apostolic character of celibate community. Second, communication of values: A common vision is built upon shared values. Without this sharing, there is little common ground to cultivate; com-munity quickly becomes an arid land. Third, cooperation for vitality: This is a discipline and an asceticism which positions the common good as the high-est priority. The vitality of vision and values can be cultivated only coopera-tively; it cannot be assumed. Fourth, concern for vocation: This is the foundational principle. Vision and values have no vital and substantive pur-pose and meaning unless community members share a sincere concern for the integrity of their commitment to the vocation of religious life. In practice, these principles are skrategies which must characterize the re-creation of celibate community. Cultivation is a daily enterprise which will mark the presence and activity of community members with one anoth-er. Thus, cultivation never comes to a point of sufficiency, beyond which no further efforts are necessary. There will always be both peaks and plateaus in the quality of life within any community. The principles of clarity, communi-cation, cooperation, and concern are reminders that neither the peaks nor the plateaus are places of permanence. We must cultivate celibate community if it is to have a prophetic place in the future and even if it is to have a future at all. We must cultivate it since the culture will not support it. We live in a culture whose materialistic, indi- 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 vidualistic, and sensualistic preferences and practices have compromised its capability for fostering the personal commitment which lies at the heart of both celibacy and community. The decline of marriage and the family is but one testimony to that compromise. Celibate community can stand as a prophetic sign that such a commitment is humanly possible. For the future, that sign may be the small seed which is cultivated into the means of trans-formation for the entire culture. In the Days to Come "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." As the story is presented, nothing existed before God began his creative work. Everything could be made as an original, without the pressing and pressuring influence of a long-standing tradition. God could, so to speak, work from scratch. Re-creating religious life, and celibate 'community in particular, cannot assume the absence of any influence. There are values and traditions and practices by which communal religious life has endured and prospe,red over the cen-turies. The observation, separation, and cultivation which will position reli-gious life for re-creation cannot dismiss that influence as unnecessary, nor distance it as untouchable. The influence of those realities which have shaped religious life can be incorporated and assimilated into the re-creation; thus will be their creative transformation. Admittedly, some refinement may be necessary to preserve the spirit of those values, traditions, and practices. Nevertheless, such refinement is not a ruling of inadequacy, but a rendering unto new life. In the days to come we must observe closely the ways and means of our religious life together. We need to articulate clearly and forcefully the values by which we will actually live.Prophetic statements from individuals or chapters or other gatherings that remain forever disembodied phrases will never be true characterizations of religious life. Indeed, they can become pharisaical, lofty ideals without living intent. Observation, as I have used the term, has more to do with enacting motivation than with simply gathering information. In the days to come we must separate ourselves from whatever patterns of life have compromised or constricted our desire and ability to live our religious commitment with intensity and integrity. We must re-create the spirit of being called, of being set apart for the Gospel. Without that spirit, the prophetic prowess of religious life is neither affectively experienced nor effectively expressed. Within that spirit, religious life claims the power and proclamation which are the inheritance of Gospel witnesses. In the days to come we must cultivate our life together. We need to re- Re-creat.ing Religious Life / 657 create the commitment we have made to God and to one another. We have at our disposal a power for and a promise of common life that can bring hope to a world broken by betrayal, gouged by greed, and disheartened by deceit. The passion with which we live our celibacy, poverty, and obedience will counteract the standards set by that betrayal, greed, and deceit. The convic-tion with which we re-create and realize our communal life will cultivate and confirm the presence and activity of the kingdom within and around us. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is an old story, but one that may be enacted once again as religious life approaches the twenty-first century. Observation, separation, and cultivation are strategies which can support the work of re-creation; and yet we should never displace the fundamental truth that this is God's work, all is grace. The alliance between those strategies and that grace will enable us to speak of religious life and of celibate community with the same bold confidence which marked Yahweh's promise for the temple. "The Lord Almighty speaks: 'Is there any-one among you who can still remember how splendid the temple used to be? How does it look to you now? It must seem like nothing at all. But now do not be discouraged, any of you. Do the work that is needed, for I am with you, so do not be afraid . In the_days to come the new temple will be more splendid than the old one, and there I will give you prosperity and peace' " (Hg 2:3-4, 9). To the Bird of My Prayer Songster, your hymn of praise Never ceases in a melody all your own; Chanting a song--pleading, thanking-- With the sheer joy of having voice to sing. From highest pole to roof, you find your perch, No earth-bound bush can stifle flight to God. Anna Louise Staub, S.S.J. 217 W. Commercial St. East Rochester, NY 14445 Prophetic Witness in Contemporary Religious Life Jean Steffes, CSA: Sister Jean Steffes has been general superior for the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Agnes. Her address is: 427 Gillett Street; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin 54935-4598. The notion of being prophetic in today's society can conjure up many images in us, depending upon our perspective. For some of us being prophetic might seem a quality to be admired in Dorothy Day, Archbishop Romero, the martyred Jesuits of El Salvador, and the Agnesians Maureen and Teresa of Nicaragua, but one to which we could never aspire. It wo~ld mean speaking, acting, or giving witness in larger-than-life situations that may never be the platform for most of us. Another perspective might give rise to images of angry demonstrations directed at society and culture or at our Church. The call for greater inclusion of women in roles in Church and society, for the right to life of the unborn, the unwanted, and the elderly, and for the preservation of our environment can result in tactics that seem or are angry. For those who shrink from such approaches, even the very valid and necessary content can be lost. A third image of the prophet (which we may enjoy) is of one who foretells the future. In our society there are those who use past patterns to predict our economy's collapse or other dire conse-quences. For those of us who live a Gospel faith, such prophets do not give the hope so necessary to engage in present realities and so make the world a better place here and now. The images I have shared are overdrawn stereotypes, but they show the difficulty in speaking on the topic of prophetic wit]aess. In this reflection I will explore three broad areas: (1) What does it mean to be prophetic? (2) prophetic witness and the current experience of religious life: (3) an agenda for the future. 658 Prophetic Witness / 659 What Does It Mean to be Prophetic? Walter Brueggemann says in The Prophetic Imagination, "The time may be ripe in the church for a serious consideration of prophecy as a crucial ele-ment in ministry."~ Prophets understood how change is effected. They knew the power of language, how to "evoke newness, 'fresh from the word.' ,,2 Let us develop at some length Brueggemann's ideas of prophecy. He states, "The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the domi-nant culture around us . ,,3 I believe his approach can help us understand prophetic witness as it applies to the goals and meaning of religious life. Beginning with the story of Moses, we can learn what it means to form an alternative community. The story of the Exodus shows us how Moses and the Israelite people were brought out from their domination by an imperial religion and the politics of oppression and exploitation. The religion and pol-itics of Pharaoh worked hand in hand to keep him in power and control. Through the interaction of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh and his regime, the Israelites began to see the difference between the freedom of God and the lack of freedom of the Egyptian gods. Belief in the Egyptian gods served to maintain a social order that allowed for oppression and exploitation. The God revealed to the Israelites is tied to no social order. God is a God of free-dom who calls for an alternative community built on the politics of justice and compassion. The alternative consciousness that Moses fostered in the Israelites was both critical and energizing. His critique, validated when the Egyptians were struck by plagues which their gods were powerless to counter, showed up false claims to power and authority which could not keep promises in the face of the free God. Prophetic criticism has an element of grieving in it as the prophet mourns the oppressions encountered. The Israelites were afflict-ed, oppressed, and ground down by the dominant Egyptian culture, and so they risked the freedom of the free God against the regime. The energizing happened not through what the Israelites already possessed but through what was promised. God went before them in pillars of fire and cloud and trans-figured this fear into energy. The people were energized to follow the free God to establish an alternative community built on justice and compassion. Though the Israelites left Egypt to live more freely, they, too, eventually developed a dominant culture. It was characterized by the reign of Solomon, whose whole achievement appears to have had the self-serving purpose of securing the place of the king and king's dynasty. Solomon did not welcome the ideas of a free God and an alternative community any more than did Pharaoh, for they threatened the established order. There were three bases 660 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 for Solomon's rule that generally mark any dominant culture. First, there was incredible well-being and affluence, though it was not equitably shared. Some went without enough so that others might have too much. Second, an oppressive social policy sustained the standard of living. There was a system of forced labor in which laborers met the needs of the state although unable to meet their own needs. The politics of justice and compassion disappeared, and the order of the state became the overriding agenda. Third, there was the establishment of a controlled and static religion. God and God's temple became part of the royal landscape. How could God, seen as living in a house provided by the king, say anything critical or abrasive? Solomon was countering the counterculture of Moses: the economics of equality was countered with the economics of affluence, the politics of justice with the politics of oppression, and the religion of God's freedom with the religion of God's accessibility. The dominant culture of Solomon managed to brush aside Moses' vision. The gift of freedom was taken over by the yearning for order, and the human agenda of justice was used for security. Against reali-ties like these, people are called to utter prophetic words. Moses both criticized and energized. Like him, Jeremiah is shown as proclaiming the critique while Second Isaiah offers the energy for the new vision. The prophets offer symbols that contradict a situation of hopelessness and give public expression to long-unspoken fears and hopes. They show us that the dominant culture leads people to despair of new life. They present an alternative consciousness, grounded in the unwavering faithfulness of God, that can energize the community to new forms of faithfulness and vital-ity. Jesus, too, is shown as a prophet who criticized the dominant culture of his day. "Jesus is remembered and presented by the early Church as the faithful embodiment of an alternative consciousness.''4 Jesus' ministry and death oppose the politics of oppression with the politics of justice and com-passion. The counterpart to the crucifixion is the birth of a new reality that finds full expression in the resurrection. What does this very challenging reflection on prophets and prophetic consciousness have to say to us in religious life? What is apostolic religious life's prophetic role in church and society today? It is important to reflect on this, recognizing that we have generous portions of both dominant culture and alternative consciousness within us. We recognize our conflicted nature, yet we aspire to a prophetic role in church and society. We must ask, then, whether apostolic women religious have been co-opted by our dominant consumer culture or whether we manifest an alterna-tive consciousness based on the freedom of a free God. Do we show a belief in community and interdependence as inherent in our way of life, or are we Prophetic Witness / 66'1 fragmented and self-centered? Are we motivated by a desire for justice and compassion, or do we prefer stability even at the price of the exploitation and oppression of "invisible" others? The questions are hard but necessary as we examine the religious way of life for evidence of prophetic witness. Prophetic Witness and the Current Experience of Religious Life Our challenge as women religious is to position ourselves to recognize the revelation of the future. One current writer, Mary Jo Leddy, N.D.S., speaks of the need to develop a postliberal model of religious life. Her thesis is that the basis for our contemporary religious life in North America is a declining culture that depends on the liberal thought fed by industrial capi-talism. While liberalism has made many contributions to modern society, it cannot deal with the reality of limits. If there can be no limits, ultimately there can be no meaning or values. Liberals tend to see themselves as contemporary or progressive and in conflict with the conservative or traditionalist ideas of Church and religious life. In Leddy's view, the more serious obstacle to the transformation and renewal of religious life results from the tension between the liberal and the prophetic approaches. The prophetic leads us to a more radical response in spirituality, mission, ministry, and community. The prophetic is risky, for it calls us to response to an unknown future rather than reaction to a no-longer-valid past. Leddy says, "We who live in a disintegrating empire today are summoned at prophetic moments to criticize the patterns of decline within our culture and within ourselves, to contemplate the holiness of God in the midst of these dark times, and to evoke the creative desire in one another for a meaningful alternative for the future.''5 These words are very similar to those Brueggemann uses to describe the prophetic imagination. The prophetic intersects with our apostolic religious life. Contemporary writers call religious to the same challenge the prophets faced in biblical times. Religious congregatiohs represent an alternative to the values of the dominant culture but do not stand apart from the people. Rather, apostolic religious recognize clearly the need for reflection, discernment, and a ground-ing in the holy as they criticize, yet energize, themselves and their peers to bring the values of the Gospel into contemporary society and culture. We have reflected on what it means to be a prophet. We have also recog-nized the challenge it presents to apostolic religious. Let us now look at cur-rent beliefs and responses regarding apostolic religious life in light of prophetic witness. I will consider mission direction, the meaning of member-ship, and some current realities. These areas provide us with the material to critique and energize our own prophetic potential. 662 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 Mission Direction Although expressed differently in each congregation, mission direction today involves in some way a commitment to transformation of the world, the Church, and ourselves through promoting systemic change for the quali-ty of life; justice for the economically poor; furtherance of the role of women in church and society; and mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration in all relationships. Such mission direction clearly reminds us of our partici-pation in the mission of Jesus. When we call ourselves to systemic change for the quality of life, what do we mean? We are asking for two things, systemic change and quality of life. When we say the system is not working well, how do we want to change it so it will work better? For whom do we want it to work better? If we take a global view, we see that entirely too much of the world's popula-tion is forced to live at a level that does not meet its basic needs of food, shelter, health care, and education while a minority has more than its share. We see that, in order to feed the wants and needs of a market economy, rain forests are irrevocably destroyed, topsoil is depleted, deserts are expanded mercilessly, and the world's fresh-water supply is tainted and diminished. On local and national levels we 'must ask ourselves how the needs of the poor are being met. After all, Jesus was clear in showing us that whatever we do to the least of his people we are doing to him. The poor are receiving poorer education, less nourishing food, substandard or no housing, and inad-equate health care in this country so rich in resources and technology. We must use our ingenuity, gifts, and talents to change a system that has canonized greed and competition in order to satisfy wants. How can we in our own daily living point the way to change that would benefit those with least access to the system without denying the legitimate gains and goods of our society and culture? Such responses as simplifying our lifestyle by avoiding use of Styrofoam, recycling our disposables, and making thought-ful choices regarding food and other consumer goods can raise our con-sciousness and lead us to getting others involved and to networking with those already involved. Indeed, most changes begin as ordinary people change their thinking and the patterns that go with their thinking. We must know our values so that they, rather than the manipulative marketing of an over- consumptive dominant culture, will shape our choices and responses. We claim that we want justice for the economically poor. This value links with the goal of systemic change for the quality of life. Jesus' life and ministry showed us his love of preference for the poor. This is not to say that Jesus does not love all, but that his ministry was not directed in the main to those who were the power brokers of his day. These, of course, he invited to Prophetic Witness / 663 join him in loving God and neighbor, but the cost was generosity, sharing their possessions. Jesus was good news for the poor. Are we who are called to continue Jesus' mission also good news for the poor? Whether in direct service So the poor or in ministry with middle- and upper-middle-class peo-ple, are we focused on a more just distribution of and access to necessary goods and resources? Do we in our teaching and in our healing, pastoral, and social works always have in mind those who are less fortunate than we are? Are we willing ~o call others to this consciousness even when we see and know that the poor are not to be idealized? They, like us, have faults and failings and may not reflect Christ as we might want them to. A reverence for the poor calls us to a view of Christ very different from that of popular piety. While comforting, it is challenging; while open and inviting, it is demanding; and while satisfying, it never ceases to call out for more--more love, more generosity, more hospitality. Not all of us are called to direct ser-vice with the poor, but all of us are called to seek justice for the poor. In this quest we continually recognize that we, too, are among the needy and are enriched by those we serve. Another commitment common to religious is to the furtherance of the role of women in church and society. Worldwide, the conditions of women vary from those in countries where women have legal equality to those where brides are still considered property. Women the world over have the primary responsibility to feed and care for the children even though means and resources are not equitably at their disposal. In the United States a vio-lent crime is committed against a woman every three minutes, and a woman is raped every six minutes. Households headed by women are increasing while the rate of their income is dropping. Children are our most precious resource, but those who care for them are denied the necessary means. Our Church struggles with the role women are to play in its pastoral, liturgical, and philosophical reflections.In the U.S. the most recent draft document on women's role in the Church and society calls for equality for women in theory but holds back in p.ractice. As John XXIII said in Pacem in Terris in 1963, "Since women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate being treated as inanimate objects or mere instruments, but claim, both in domestic and in public life, the rights and duties that befit a human person.''6 The women's issue is more than an issue, it is a perspective that demands attention and response. Once unleashed, the forces of confusion and dissension drive towards resolution. In our lives we will use inclusive language, advocate for women, and net-work to help make society a friendlier place for women to develop and share their gifts and talents. Despite such a commitment on the part of congrega- 664 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 tions, there is dissension among women religious in language usage and other matters. Our heads and hearts find themselves in conflict here, leading to results that could be less than satisfying. Can we avoid being our own worst enemy in the search for inclusivity? Let us not deny the richness of our past, the demands of the present, or the call of the future as we work for justice and right for women in contemporary society and church. Another area of commitment of apostolic religious today has to do with mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration in all our relationships. The values implied here are very positive, and yet to achieve them one must give in order to receive. The mystery of sacrifice is contained in these words in a way that is not apparent at first glance. For mutuality to occur, I must not only believe in myself, I must also learn to believe and trust in the other. With whom do we allow ourselves to be mutual? Do we let power, position, language, style of dress, or education prevent us from speaking our truth or hearing that of others? In terms of inclusivity, do we go to the extremes either of having no boundaries or expectations or of expecting everyone to fulfill every role or function in an organization? Inclusivity involves includ-ing others in the concerns affecting their own lives. Not all will do every-thing, but there must be input from those affected. In terms of discernment, though all are included, not all perspectives can be responded to or chosen. We often try to make inclusivity mean pleasing everyone all of the time even though this may be impossible. Finally, let us look at c.ollaboration. If we pull the word apart, we can see the meaning as co-labor or working with. At one time we may have considered ourselves collaborative if we hired lay teachers and nurses and more so if we hired lay administrators. Collaboration at its most radical, however, calls us not just to bring others into our projects and have them do things our way, but to work with others and to respond to the signs and needs of the times together. Unhe.althy com-petition or too rigid control in ministry or community strikes at the heart of the love which binds us together so that the 'risen Christ may be discovered among us and in our world. The Meaning of Membership The consideration of mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration leads us into the meaning of membership. Community life is a topic, issue, and reali-ty that continues to generate much attention. As apostolic religious we have such different experiences, expectations, and definitions regarding commu-nity life and the meaning of local community. Sometimes when the phrase "local community" is used, the assumptions and expectations already in place cause us to "shut down," to become unable to continue a dialogu~ Prophetic Witness because we are really unable to h~ar one another. (I personally have felt anger, despair, defensiveness, longing, fear--and also hope--around this topic.) What has led religious women to this state and what can we do to move beyond shutdown and breakdown to a breakthrough? It is clear that, in this matter, apostolic women religious are striving, striving to understand meaningful bonding and to express it through authentic participation in community. Someone recently said that we may have so emphasized mission and ministry in the years of renewal following Vatican II that c6mmunity has become the shadow side of our way of life. If that is the case, the difficulties surrounding our efforts to deal with community life are deep and profound. We must face and deal with this central area of our way of life so that we are nok torn apart by unclear expectations and assumptions. I offer three perspectives for consideration in the area of community: human-growth issues, the importance of faith community and faith sharing, and l~ousin~ in community. We sometimes get bogged down by human-growth issues in our lives with one another on the local or on the broader community level even though our lived experience points to the need for human growth and development among ourselveg. Each of us knows how difficult it is to change herself and how truly futile it is to expect to change another. Each of us must deal with herself and her own issues in as healthy a fashion as 16ossible. Only when my behaviors and patterng are healthy may I be able to imiarove the dynamics between myself and those with whom I interact on a r~gular basis. The challenge here is to deal with my own behav-iors, realizing that I have no real or lasting power over the behaviors another may choose. My role is to try not to feed into unhealthy behaviors that may be pre.sent around me. Although unatteiaded human-growth issues can wreak havoc on healthy relating within community, still apostolic religious must recognize that we will never overcome all of these problems either individually or corpbrately. Gra~e biailds on nature; it will not replace or deny our humanness. We must realize how eadh sister's desire and motivation influence her choices regard-ing her behavior and interaction. We cannot choose for each other, only for ourselves. Each ~'eligious needs to be challenged to a self-knowledge and self-awareness leading to growth. Practices such as spiritual direction, the annual retreat, and the daily consciousness examen can keep us grounded in reality yet open to ongoing conversion. We must deal with human-growth-and-development issues, but not remain there. We must be committed to the making of or participating in faith community as a means of nurturing shared life, shared love, and shared vision. We must find ways to relate regularly and meaningfully with our sis- 666 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 ters in community in order to reflect on, renew, and recommit ourselves to the mission, charism, and spirit of our congregation in our daily lives. Depending upon our miriistry and the proximity of other congregational members, how we do this will differ; that we must do it if membership is to mean more than an annual touchdown or the reading of congregational mate-rials is the reality we face. Some Current Realities I. recogniz9 that each congregational member will have other communi-ties thai will lay claim to her time, energy, and affection. That is good and healthy. My point is that we must have quality time for our own congrega-tion as well, as part of the ordering rhythm of our lives. Sometimes one's commitment to ministry or to parish can become so all-encompassing that ther~ is. little or no time or energy left for her to express her membership in her religious congregation. For me, the making of faith community involves reverence for one another, presence to one another for celebration as well ag dialogue and reflection, honesty so that we can affirm one another or call each other to growth, and a commitment to the goals and developing agenda of our congregation. This topic of makirig and participating in faith community leads to another important topic: the difference between housing and local communi-ty: We often equaie the two and this ~quation may not reflect that community life is broader than housing. The recent lived reality of women religious shows that faith community on the "local" level is not necessarily synony-mous with where a sister lives. In some locales th~ sisters have committed themselves to hei,ng a faith community without walls; regular meetings, cele-brations, and gatherings among them challenge and deepen their member-ship in the cbngi'egation, in other locales the sisters in a particular house function well as a faith community. We must recognize such differing com-munity realities and encourage them on the local level as well as on the con-gregational level. A commitment to community in our current society of intenge individualism and consumer gratification keeps us involved in a prophetic role. An Agenda for the Future The prophetic nature of this life to which we are called leads us to cob-sider an agenda for~the future. Any living organization must be open to change or it will die. In a sense change is an ordered type of death, not death as final but rather death leading to new life. One of the greatest strengths of apostolic women religious is the serise that the agenda or common goals Prophetic Witness / 667 belong to all of us. This strength we will build on as we look at change and new life for us religious. Central to understanding ourselves as women religious is understanding our spirituality. I believe that the biggest challenge for each of us with regard to spirituality is to lead more integrated lives. Integration does not just hap-pen in a person's life. It must be worked at daily through a continuous blend of action and reflection leading to further action. Somehow the aspects of one's life must be part of a whole rather than segments that do not overlap. In an integrated life my religious commitment is not separate from who I am when I am at leisure. My response in mission and ministry is not limited to my paid professional work but may overlap into volunteer involvements in food pantries, visiting the sick or elderly, letter writing, and other activities. Community life is not an end in itself in an apostolic religious institute, nor is it merely a refuge that ought to be there when I want and need it. Community is a place or space where I share faith and vision, humanness, and the quest for the divine. My ministry is not all-consuming; I do allow myself necessary time for recreation and reflection. And my prayer life is more than specified exercises or spiritual reading. All these somehow fit together and reflect my spirituality, my integration of life. An integrated life has powerful witness value in a society that wants everything and does not want to be reminded of the need for balance. Integration is not synonymous with transformation, but it can surely open us to being transforming elements in the institutions and structures of society and culture. In our desire to be prophetic witnesses, we commit our-selves to transformation of the Church, the world, and ourselves~ I recently read that one way of understanding transformation is to look at the life cycle of the butterfly. First there is a caterpillar; next there is the chrysalis stage, in which the organic matter is quite shapeless and formless; finally, there is the butterfly. Transformation is what happens in the chrysalis stage. The process is not very appealing; it suggests a profound letting go as well as an openness to a different future. While transformation has global ramifications, it will not begin at the global level but rather at the local level, where we can encourage one anoth-er to let go of attitudes or practices that may have been more helpful to a known and comfortable past than to the needs of the present or the concerns of the future. The desire for transformation of the world, the Church and our-selves flows directly from our relationship to God, self, others, and creation. It is expressed in a commitment to justice, peace, and the integrity of cre-ation. Transformation is not something anyone can directly make happen by willing it. No one person caused the recent freedom movement in Eastern 668 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 Europe, nor can one individual move our economy from a military focus to a domestic and global focus responding to human and planetary needs in a humane fashion. Likewise, no ond person's recycling of materials will reverse our problem with excessive waste. Yet all of these and many other alternative responses can indeed lead to transformation. When such respons-es begin, networking or replicating starts to happen and systems begin to change. At the May 1990 meeting of the council of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) in Rome, the following global challenges to evan-gelization were identified: the widening gap between the rich and poor; indi-vidualism characterized by greed, violence, terrorism, abandonment, indifference, and irresponsibility; loss of human dignity through political oppression, social discrimination, and economic injustice; the breakdown of family life; the destruction of the environment; inability to trust the human community, coupled with a preoccupation with survival. These challenges help us to formulate an agenda for transformation that is larger than ourselves, and they clearly link with the transformative ele-ments for religious life in the future developed by the major superiors of U.S. women's and men's communities (LCWR/CMSM) in August 1989: prophetic witness; contemplative attitude toward life; poor and marginalized persons as the focus for ministry; spirituality of wholeness and global inter-connectedness; charism and mission as sources of identity; change of the locus of power; living with less; broad-based inclusive communities; under-standing ourselves as Church; and developing interdependence among peo-ple of diverse cultures. These challenges and transformative elements reflect in broad strokes the goals and concerns ofapostolic religious. Though the future depends in part upon us and our efforts, it depends even more on the grace of God our Creator, the inspiration of the Spirit, and our cooperation with each other as members of the body of Christ, joined in a common humanity and gifted with a common creation. Our communion with and in Christ calls all humanity "to reclaim relationships with family, clan, and tribe, to choose the common good, to seek solidarity with one another and with the earth.''7 For transformation to occur, we must believe and act in such a way that we give the message that life has meaning and that, assisted by God's grace, our responses make a difference. The prophetic imagination described by Brueggemann remains viable as we respond in our own times with an alter-native consciousness, as we critique our dominant culture and yet energize one another for a more just and compassionate future. Our faith gives us the vision and the mission, our hope gives us spirit and energy, and our love Prophetic Witness / 669 grounds us in the mysterious blend of transcendence and immanence that is life. I close this reflection on prophetic witness and apostolic religious life with Isaiah's words: "Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Is 43:18-19). NOTES I Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 9. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p. 13. 4 Ibid, p. 88. 5 Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990), p. 164. 6 John XXIII, Pacem In Terris, in Seven Great Encyclicals (Glen Rock, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1963), p. 297. 7 Helen Maher Garvey, B.V.M., excerpt from notes on the Meeting of the General Council, UISG, Rome, Italy, May 7-11, 1990, p. 2. Storms Tornado watch, the weatherman said, to last until ten o'clock. Four hours to wait for what may be or not. Storms of spirit come suddenly; swirl through the heart's towns and wash its skies to morning clean-- with no hours to wait for what so swiftly is. Sister Elizabeth deSales Dee, S.S.J. St. Joseph Convent 7300 Torresdale Avenue Philadelphia, Pa. 19136 Mission or Consecrated Religious Person: Which Comes First in Apostolic Institutes? Marie Therese Levey, R.S.~. Sister Marie Therese has taught school in country areas of Australia. Later she spe-cialized in teaching instrumental music: piano and violin. More recently she has done research in liturgical music and earned a Ph.D. Her address is St. Joseph's Convent; P.O. Box 472; North Sydney, N.S.W. 2059; Australia. In May/June 1988 this joumal published Sister Georgine Scarpino's article "The Unemployed Sister: Challenge and Opportunity." It defines the unem-ployed sister as a woman religious physically and emotionally capable of active ministry who, despite seeking work, currently has no formal position. It gives two causes for this modem phenomenon: the location of the work and the way ministry decisions are made. In summary, Sister Georgine points out the need for congregations of women religious to develop programs within religious institutes to address both employment and unemployment. Surprisingly, no published response has followed her article until now. Since women religious have sacrificed potential material wealth, marriage, and motherhood in order to serve the Church in institutes devoted to apos-tolic works, it seems unjtist that the situations described occur. However, occur they do, and the first step toward rectifying the problems is to admit them. One then asks why they exist and seeks an appropriate cure. Sister Georgine presents causes of these problems in the United States. Although here in Australia there are general parallels to what she describes, yet the causes and thus the cures seem somewhat different here. The present writer has, in religious life, personally experienced "job search" and the special type of demoralization which occurs in close-knit communities when one is the "odd man out." I thus feel equipped to write on this subject. Regardless of the differences between countries in reasons for the phe-nomenon of the unemployed sister, I believe that the two elements most 670 Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 671 needed in addressing the problem of appropriate placement in apostolic works of religious personnel in institutes of consecrated life are: (l) a correct balance in religious leaders between their attitudes towards responsibility for the institute's authentic mission and their attitudes towards the rights of the individual members; (2) adequate use of written media, particularly those which are internal to the religious institutes and which include forums for peer review and the opportunity for subjects to respectfully challenge those directives or oversights of superiors which seem to threaten the authentic mission of the institute or the rights of its members. Mission and Person The religious state belongs to the life and holiness of the Church (canon 574), and the primary mission of the Church is the care of souls. Ecclesiastical law insists that apostolic action for institutes of consecrated life should confirm and foster union with God (c. 675, §2). The Church has Msb a social mission, namely, to support and protect people's material well-being and to inspire and promote true civilization through Christian philoso-phy. 1 In the social category of mission can be placed the apostolic pati'imony of many institutes, and the Church insists that such patrimony, or intentions of the founder, should be.preserved by the institute (c. 578). Thus, leaders of institutes of consecrated life f6unded for apostolic works, in order to justify their ongoing existence and their acceptance of candidates, need to ensure that both the corporate entity and the individual members have a correct con-cept of this patrimony as well as machinery to implement it. Bearing in mind that the Church places the person at the center of the social order, religious leaders have a r~sponsibility to see that members of the institute are placed in apostolic works which are appropriate to the tal-ents and needs of each (see Perfectae Caritatis 18). The pastoral commit-ment of a leader in an apostolic institute does not remove--but, rather, ¯ increases--her obligation towards seeing to appropriate placement of per-sonnel. Although religious leaders nowadays delegate administrators for works for which members of their institute are the trustees, a large part of the responsibility of preventing serious damage to the person through long-term lack of appropriate apostolic work must lie, by the nature of their role, with the religious leaders. Moreover, the responsibilities leaders have to individtial persons within the institute vary according to how long and in what manner they have contributed to the institute (see REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 1989, p. 460). Since it is often claimed that consecrated religious are in short supply, the application of the above principles might seem straightforward. In reality 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 there are circumstances in the modem world in general, and here in Australia in particular, which cause it to be very difficult for congregational leaders. As in the United States, the location of the work in Australia affects the opportunity to do it, and the way ministry decisions are made in America has parallels h~re. Some details may clarify the differences between practices in the two countries. Conditions in Australia Prior to Vatican II, the missioning procedures in Australian apostolic religious congregations were relatively simple. Obedience, or the will of God, was equa~ed with doing what a superior told one to do and living where the superior told one to live. In larger Australian congregations, (over 1,000 members) often more than half were primary school teachers, and a large proportion of the remainder were either secondary teachers or nurses. Changes of residence for those "in the ranks" usually involved interchange between personnel engaged in similar works. This principle of interchange was fundamental to the smooth application of the third vow. When a difficult posting was required--for example, to isolated rural areas--younger reli-gious under perpetual vows were usually sent. Postings to apostolic works almost invariably came directly from a major superior, whether or not that superior's apostoli~c background was in the relevant work. Recruitment of staff for a school or a hospital by an administrator, or board, was foreign to most Australian apostolic religious congregations of women prior to about 1960, whether the mission was in the city or in the country. In the early 1960s a radical change occurred in the overall secondary education system in the most populous state of Australia, New South Wales. That change to what was called the Wyndham System, emphasizing science and the arts, was much more revolutionary in Catholic education for girls than it was either in state education or in Catholic education for boys. In the typical local Catholic school run by consecrated religioi~s women in Australia before that time, the girls remained in the same school, almost entirely staffed by r(ligious, from kindergarten through secondary school years. In state education and in Catholic education for boys, secondary schools were already separated at least from lower primary schools. Thus, state-school teachers and men religious in secondary education had been required to have university degrees before some larger institutes of w~men religious recognized such a need. When the more farsighted Catholic educa-tors pointed out that it would now be a problem to provide adequate sec-ondary education for the girls of less well-off families in local pa~:ish schools, some congregations saw in their higher grades a source of more Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 673 thoroughly trained religious personnel. That vain hope made difficulties in long-term planning for the transition from religious to lay staff. A further dramatic change in Australian education, which was to affect all ministries, occurred in the early 1970s. After a break of twenty years, the Australian Labor Party, headed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, was elected to govern the country. One of its earliest reforms was to make uni-versity education free. Although some criticized the extraordinary cost this was to the nation, the move brought the opportunity for tertiary education to the masses. Before that time, university education had been for the fortunate and the chosen. Now the initiative for tertiary education was up to the indi-vidual. The suc.c~'ss achieved by some "late starters," many in their forties and fifties, revealed how much talent had previously been unused. From about 1975, attitudes within religious congregations changed for both superi-ors and subjects. Superiors began to listen more attentively to those who did well in their tertiary studies, and subjects found their personal confidence and self-esteem strengthened by their academic achievement. With the advances made in the study of theology and the social sciences, it is now rarel~ pretended that apostolic religious life is simple, or that doing the will of God is always as clear-cut as that decided by another human being alone, whether or not that person h.appens to be a religious superior. Because of the broader scope of ministries open to women religious, modem specialization, and improved administrative techniques, the principle of interchange among personnel--which for many years had been integral to the practice of the third vow--is now becoming more and more difficult. In addition, although the median age of religious congregations is rising faster than that of the general population, many religious feel they have the right, and indeed the duty, to request proximity to aging parents. Religious congre-gations in serious decline have virtually no young sisters under perpetual vows who might be sent to isolated schools in rural areas. Since the majority of Australian sisters have reached the "winding down" stage of their lives, many now look to the cities from whence they originally came. In addition to these developments within the Church, the governments of Australia and New Zealand have acknowledged, in the form of funding, the benefits to the country as a whole of certain works of the private sector, including Catholic, and have thus made it necessary to rethink the ecclesias-tical structures for some ministries in which religious are involved. The equitable processing of government funding necessitated merging many local works, including parish schools within dioceses, into larger systems, most of whose personnel are now lay. These mergings required the develop-ment of policies acceptable to the relevant bishops, major religious superi- 674 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 ors, and state and union representatives for the management of the works, particularly those of healthcare and education. Making the policies work in practice required the establishment of sophisticated structures, which in turn required religious or lay personnel with the proper management skills. As a result, the power of the leaders of religious institutes with regard to the placement of personnel in traditional works in Australia and New Zealand has been lessened. Unlike lay staff, religious in Australia are not permitted employment status; this is not the case in New Zealand.2 Because of all of these circumstances, religious superiors have had to rethink how to preserve their true patrimony oi" authentic mission and what human cost would be involved. Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? The whole issue of the employment, or active involvement, of religious personnel leads to the question: Which is of greater importance to an insti-tute claiming to be dedicated to apostolic works, the works for which it was founded or the persons who will serve in those works? For leaders of insti-tutes whose acceptance of candidates demands that they offer them appropri-ate apostolic work, the answer is neither obvious nor simple. However, the Church has offered some very sound advice in the general area of human work. Of the documents which have come from the Vatican since the council, few could be more relevant to our times than the encyclical letter Laborem Exercens (LE) of the present pope. Pope John Paul II presents human work as "one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of the crea-tures." It is "from work [that man's life] derives its specific dignity" (LE Introduction). Pope John Paul describes the "conflict between labor and cap-ital in the present phase of history" (LE 1 l f f). The Church, he points out, has always taught "the principle of labor over capital." Both are causes of pro-duction, but while capital is the mere "instrumental cause," labor is the "pri-mary efficient cause" (LE 12). In the labor-over-capital issue, Pope John Paul equates labor with per-sons and capital with the material returns from their labor. Consecrated reli-gious, even those who have employment, individually receive no capital }'or their labor. They have sacrificed this right for a stable form of living by which they can follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit (c. 573). In Australia and New Zealand, more than half of the person-nel in apostolic institutes made their commitment in the years when religious superiors had supreme control over placement into works, and they are now beyond the stage at which they might have arranged for alternative security Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 675 in old age upon seeing that the original system in which they sacrificed pos-sible wealth, marriage, and motherhood was beginning to break down. So the competent authorities obviously have a serious question of obligation towards them now. Many of the religious have perhaps forty years of life which they could still offer in apostolic works within the Church. Pope John Paul also writes concerning the roles of the "direct and indi-rect employer" (LE 17). By the "indirect employer" he refers to many differ-ent elements in society which make up the human environment of the worker. He says: "The role of the agents included under the title of indirect employer is to act against unemployment, which in all cases is an evil, and which, when it reaches a certain level, can become a real social disaster" (LE 18). These are strong words from the pen of the vicar of Christ. The principal agent in the concept of indirect employer for religious personnel would be the wider Church in that country. Should not, then, sections of the local Church accept part of the responsibility to address any problems of unem-ployment for religious? As well, the question should be raised within reli-gious institutes: Is it justifiable for religious superiors to accept candidates to poverty and obedience within a particular institute when those superiors do not have the power to place them in suitable work soon after profession? Perhaps declining numbers in a congregation increase the temptation for superiors to do so, and perhaps they excuse their actions with the reminder that all should "trust in God." I believe that succumbing to such a temptation would constitute power abuse of a particularly destructive kind. The abuse would surely be more damaging if others within the institute were already searching for similar employment, and were exposed to the same market forces. Power and Recruitment for Apostolic Works The power of recruitment brings us to the heart of the present discus-sion, namely, the opportunity for or deprivation of suitable apostolic work for religious personnel. It is neither possible nor desirable to completely sep-arate apostolic persons from the society in which they live. Professed mem-bers of Australian religious institutes are exposed to the forces which are part of the sophisticated living of the decade leading up to the twenty-first century. In this society ~nd age, control of recruitment for works represents power. For religious personnel, recruitment can be translated into mission-ing. Procedures for the missioning of religious should be such that they lead to the spiritual strengthening of the members and the corporate growth of the institute. The immediate practical problem to be faced by governing bodies of religious institutes is to develop policies for missioning procedures that 676 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 are within their power to implement, that support evangelization, that are just and equitable and adapted to the personhood of each sister, and that accord with both canon and civil law. Nowadays apostolic work for religious may be broadly placed into four categories: (1) viable institutions of which the con-gregation is the trustee, (2) charitable works of the congregation or of other ecclesiastical bodies, (3) viable institutions of other ecclesiastical bodies which pay stipends or salaries for the work of the sister, and (4) viable and nonviable works found in profane structures at the initiative of the religious. (1) Viable institutions owned by a religious institute are, in a distinctive manner, part of its patrimony. They are, as well, material assets of the insti-tute, which its leaders should, in. poverty, care for "with the diligence of a good householder" (canon 1284). Viable works of religious congregations are businesses, and for businesses to survive and attract personnel today, they must be competitive. Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes 64) teaches that eco-nomic development through technical progress "must be fostered, along with a spirit of initiative, an eagerness to create and expand enterprises," and that the purpose of productivity "must be th.e service of. the whole human per-son, viewed in terms of his or her material needs and the demands of his or her intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious life." Pope John Paul points out that "capital cannot be separated fr6m labor" (LE 13) though, of course, in the case of religious persons, the capital is, through poverty, directed elsewhere than themselves. Religious persons, knowing that they are materially contributing towards the whole, find in the capital "confirma-tion and support" (LE 13) for the work done. Sound economics and evangel-ical poverty should go hand in hand. In order to maintain the correct balance between responsibility to the institute's mission and respect for the rights of the individual members of the institute, congregational leaders (trustees of the works) must regard the work and those involved in it as separate entities: the work itself is important regardless of who does it. Individual members must have the same percep-tion so that they may practice the spirit of poverty, or detachment. There should, accordingly, be protective structures for the ministry, including sometimes the combining of similar works under one administration so that they will continue even in cases of illness or of anyone's taking longservice leave. It is particularly important that this principle of continuation be respected when works require only one person in the local area, for example, instrumental music practices.3 Setting up protective structures for ministries in order to maintain the institute's patrimony will include policies for recruitment of staff. In those works in which a number of religious and lay people, are engaged, religious superiors have the direct power to influence Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 677 administrators in the recruitment of personnel. It stands to reason, then, that---other things, like professional qualifications, being equal--in recruit-ment for works of which the religious institute is the trustee, preference should be given to its own members. (2) The category of charitable works might include refuges for the needy which are supported by the congregation and by external donations. Without viable works there can be no charitable works. The Church's teaching on a "preferential option for the poor," by which the poor should have a preferen-tial claim on the Church's resources, cannot be initially applied without the resources. Once competent authorities decide that a charitable work is authentic to the charism of the institute, then the congregation should set up, as it should for its viable institutions, protective structures to preserve the work, whether or not there are religious personnel to staff it. Indeed, true missionaries strive to make themselves ultimately dispensable--teaching the disadvantaged how to be self-reliant and how to recover the dignity which is their right (see LE 9). Protective structures would include finance arrange-ments which can be monitored, and the work should be the source of support for the individual religious workers; that is, their salaries or stipends should be fed back into the general system. Again, for a religious institute's own charitable works, other things being equal, one would expect that members of the institute who are under civil retirement age should be considered first when positions are vacant. In Australia, women over sixty years of age (men over sixty-five) who have limited assets (a category which includes religious) are eligible to apply for the Social Security payments from the government. With the pres-ent societal structures, it seems that religious who receive Social Security should not deprive others (perhaps more deserving) of needed employment positions. In some dioceses it is established policy not to accept into stipend-ed positions religious women who are over sixty. If protective structures for an institute's works do not include allocationof salaries, or stipends which are independent of Social Security payments, then receipt of the latter would generate for the ministry an artificial security which could destabilize long-term plans for it. (3) In the third category above, which here in Australia refers principally to Catholic education, lie the greatest current problems of placement of reli-gious personnel. In most of Australia, the recruitment of staffs for nonpro-motional positions in Catholic schools is in the hands of local principals. This power evolved with the gradual acceptance of lay staffs into the parish schools previously staffed by religious. Perhaps to our discredit, it is only recently (since about 1975) that there has been widespread acceptance of lay 678 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 teachers into promotional positions. In general, the power of religious supe-riors to place personnel in diocesan works is limited to those positions which were previously held by other religious of their own congregations. Declining numbers, and thus declining positions, led to some religious being exposed to market forces for ministries. School principals, whether religious or lay, still have the power and responsibility of staffing. This has now become an excessive burden for principals of Catholic schools in the coun-try, and an excessive power for those in the city. One solution would be to have staff recruitment moved to the systemic level so that consistent staffing policies might be applied across dioceses. This might lessen the number of religious who today feel forced into the fourth category above. The exposure of some religious to market forces in the area of ministry is quite a different method of missioning than the appropriate placement of a person by a religious superior. The question should be asked: Is it just for the two types of missioning to coexist ~within the same religious institute? The answer to this important question will require great honesty and humility on the part of religious leaders. Religious exposed to market forces are some-times refused employment in diocesan works or, when school enrollments drop, dismissed by school principals of their own congregation who have the power of recruitment. Such practices are effectively structuring out of Catholic education the few teaching religious who are left, and are a serious cause of unemployment amongst religious. Some religious teachers even turn to the state school system for employment rather than lose touch with the classroom and "real life." Considering the authentic commitment which the religious have made, this alternative seems to the present writer an anomaly. On the other hand, relatively little investment has been made by the wider Australian Church over the last twenty years for the education in theology of lay teachers for Catholic schools. The above problems can now be solved only by negotiations between diocesan and religious leaders who have in mind the well-being of both the mission and the persons. As well, past oversight in planning could perhaps be avoided in the future if religious are encouraged to contribute ideas through appropriate media. Adequate Use of Media There are two levels of written communication which are particularly important in preserving a correct balance between responsibility for authen-tic mission and respect for the rights of individuals. These levels are media within the wider Church and media within religious institutes. Media within the Wider Church. Recruitment of personnel for Catholic works is effected via both the Catholic journals and the metropolitan dailies. Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 679 Like most other countries, Australia has its regular Catholic state and dioce-san papers. Because these are virtually all the Catholic community has for information on what is happening in the Church, they warrant better support and readership than they receive~ In general, editorial staffs in this country strive to maintain an adequate standard of journalism. Despite these vehicles of communication, religious leaders sometimes offer only private invitations to coveted positions which become available. They would avoid much criti-cism if they were to justify, via the Catholic media, such private invitations, especially those to academic posts in Catholic theological institutes, which remain predominantly male. Media within Religious Institutes. If any group of people ever needed to be skilled in transmitting information to each other, it would surely be the members of a religious community. Today there is frequent reference to the "role of the prophet" within religious institutes. Prophets must have vehicles in which they can deliver the message, and the printed word offers the par-ticular benefit of time for considered expression and response. I believe that religious institutes need especially these two kinds of print media: directo-ries and forums for challenge. Directories. In order for general leaders to affirm a work as part of the institute's authentic mission, they must understand clearly what the work is about and be sufficiently convinced of its value to defend it, if necessary, at the general chapter. On the other hand, if chapter delegates believe that the congregation has more ministries than they can validly affirm, they should seriously and courageously argue that systematic steps be taken towards reducing the number.4 Chapter delegates, in order to make valid contribu-tions to discussions and debates regarding works, must have information about their nature and value. Since this is so, it stands to reason that those who elected them--namely, all members of the institute--should have it too. Therefore, each apostolic institute in today's world needs its own official directOry, revised and published annually and containing information on the residence and mission of each member. The directory, which would be an implicit demographic study of the institute, should contain, as well, an annu-al financial statement of the institute and its provinces, with statistics on works which had some elements in common. I believe this would assist greatly in the appropriate placement of personnel and act as a deterrent to increasing fragmentation in ministries. Forum for Challenge. If members of religious institutes with at least parallel qualifications to lay teachers are to have the same work opportuni-ties in the institutes' traditional ministries, then positions that are open should be advertised first within "the system." Trade unions insist on this 680 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 right for their civilly employed members, so it should not be too much to expect within the religious institutes themselves. As well, religious subjects often have insights and ideas for better management which are unknown to superiors. They should have the opportunity to share them. Their ideas may be of benefit to all so that problems like unemployment may be addressed before they gain a hold. Since religious women were, for over a hundred years, to an extent indoctrinated not to express an opinion, they will need to be encouraged to contribute. Therefore, internal journals which contain forums for challenge must have a mandate from a competent authority and must be frequent and regular. When what is written in them is not uncharita-ble- that is, criticizes a policy or a structure and does not attack a particular person--and is limited in audience to professed members of the institute, then it is not a threat to loyalty. Indeed, such a forum could become a c.orpo-rate examination of conscience and could preserve or restore the balance between responsibility for authentic mission and the rights of the person. It could also act as a specific prevention or cure of the evil of unemployment within the religious institute. In educating religious to the use of an internal journal, it should be pointed out that the institute, being made up of human beings, is quite subject to error and that it could be harmful to their beioved congregation to write only of its virtues and to overlook its faults, including possibly incorrect policies with regard to the placement of personnel. Conclusion More than twenty years have passed now since religious congregations first experienced declining numbers and lay teachers became an ac.cepted part of Catholic education here in Australia, so there has be~n adequate time to face up to problems which have occurred regarding recruitment for specif-ic works. Sister Georgine recommends that a program "address all the dimensions of employment and unemployment." However, "job clubs" and "comprehensive programs" are unlikely to take shape until religious leaders acknowledge that the problem is there. I believe that leaders also have the duty to provide those engaged in the works with information and reflection based on surveys or particular works so that they will know what the scope of that work will be in the future, how long the work itself is likely to sur-vive, and what the superiors are planning in that regard. There is no guarantee that any of the above proposals are a complete cure for the evil of unemployment within religious life. However, endeavor-ing to maintain a correct balance between responsibility f~r the mission and respect for the persons of the members of the institute goes to the causes of the evil and is more likely to effect a long-term cure. The use of appropriate Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 681 media is a method of achieving the "maximum feasible participation" in effecting a cure. We are living in a world at the brink of the third Christian millennium. It is a world which needs the commitment of consecrated reli-gious life as much as ever and perhaps more than ever. A life wholly dedi-cated to contemplation is a rare gift. However, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that apostolic institutes of consecrated life have an important place in contemporary society. The chief characteristic of Christian moral doctrine besides its Christocentric orientation is the integration of love and justice, the latter being "the strong and firm will to give to each his due.''5 For a reli-gious woman who has sacrificed potential marriage, motherhood, and career in order to serve the Church in an institute devoted to apostolic ministry, unemployment is a serious injustice. The Church and religious institutes should work together for both prevention and cure. NOTES I See R. Hoffman, "Mission," in The New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2 For the purpose of the present article, the word employment will sometimes refer to apostolic work, whether or not the religious has employment status in the civil law. 3 The present writer admits to a certain bias towards instrumental music teaching. I believe that this work is of great importance to the liturgy of the Church. One of the long-term effects of the mergings of parish schools and the employment of lay teach-ers in Australian Catholic education was the death of much traditional music prac-tice, which was not absorbed into the diocesan systems and had few protective structures. It seems to me that the most important strategy for preserving the practice of music is to remove revenue management from the hands of the individual teacher. Otherwise the work tends to become like that of a self-employed person--a situation which is not compatible with either poverty or obedience. Skilled musicians in parishes attract worshipers. I believe that budgeting towards producing musicians for the Church should be part of its primary mission. 4 The idea of permitting novices to have unlimited scope in "working out" their future ministry is, I believe, a recipe for disaster; apostolic congregations already have difficulty in staffing missions recognized as authentic to their charism. 5 New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, p. 70. Quotation from St. Thomas Aquinas (ST 2 a2ae, 58.1). Inner Africa: A ,Journey of Conversion Susan Rakoczy, 1.H.M. Sister Susan Rakoczy, I.H.M., began ministry in South Africa in October 1989 and currently lectures in systematic theology and spirituality at St. Joseph's Theological Institute in Cedara. Her address is 21 Buchanan Street; 3290 Howick; South Africa. It was about 2:30 in the morning as the door of the plane was opened. The humid and steaming air of West Africa enveloped me as I was pushed down the stairs by the crowd onto the tarmac of Ougadougou airport. Swept along with women carrying immense bondles on their heads, children looking for their parents, and determined men striding forward, 1 suddenly thought, "I am on holy ground--I am in Africa." But if I had bent down to kiss the ground I would have been trampled--better to let myself be borne by the flow of humanity to the small airport terminal and the arrival procedures. In the rush and confusion of all the formalities I could sense that I had now entered something deeper than my own self for 1 was touching "mother Africa." Later, as we stowed our luggage in a friend's car for the drive to the hostel to spend what was left of the night I wondered, "What have I done with my life?" What indeed. ? The experiences of my years in Ghana (1982 to 1988) provided many different answers to that question. Most essentially they led me into the depths of conversion Which I can describe now as "inner Africa" for I soon learned that "mother Africa" would ask everything of me. The Call Some people dream all their lives of serving outside their own country, but that was not my experience. Not until I was finishing my doctoral studies in religion at Catholic University in 1980 did I sense a call to serve beyond North America. Through the months of preparation, prayer, and discussion 682 Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 683 which preceded my journey to Ghana, people often asked, "Why are you going?" Slowly I clarified my own sense of call, speaking of my desire to share something of my gifts and education with the "young Church" of Africa. As I read about Africa and its needs, struggles, and promise I became aware of a continent and Church reaching towards maturity of faith and vision. Somehow I sensed very deeply that I wanted to be part of that. But it is not enough just to desire to serve in Africa. It is an immense continent, large enough to contain the continental United States two-and-a-half times. I received an invitation to teach in the major seminary in northern Ghana (our congregation had come to that section of the country in 1976) and so the plan was to come and spend a year getting acquainted with the culture and life of the people and then to begin teaching in 1983. As with many people who come to Africa, things did not turn out quite as I had planned. While I did work in Navrongo, a small town in Ghana for a year, the seminary door never opened wide enough to admit a woman theologian. But life at the Centre for Spiritual Renewal, a retreat center in the city of Kumasi, gave me a much wider scope for ministry with opportunities in retreats and spiritual direction, intensive leadership formation with prayer group leaders, and writing and editing, all of which enabled me to enter more deeply into Ghanaian life and culture. All the preparation I tried to do, while helpful in some ways, was still inadequate to the challenge of Africa. After I arrived I realized that what I needed was a radical openness, a sense of adventure, a desire to meet the continent and its people on their own terms. As the day of departure neared my own sense of expectancy of what was ahead increased. Shortly before I left I spent a few days on retreat at our com-munity hermitage. The entries in my journal for those days speak of praying for courage and joy and experiencing great wonder at this call I had received. The night before I left I wrote: Tomorrow~departure. I feel more than ready. Mostly I feel a deep free-dom and joy which has placed fear on the sidelines. Somehow 1 know I will meet the Lord--in and of his people--in ways never before imag-ined and experienced. And that is enough--more than enough--to move me across oceans and cultures. 1 go in utter joy and freedom. As the plane left United States soil the next day, ! remember how my whole spirit moved forward towards Africa. Soon I descended the steps of that plane that hot morning in Ougadougou. Inner and outer Africa now began. Call To Conversion As I reflect on my years in Ghana, I experience them in the images of 684 / Review for Religious; September-October 1991 "outer" and "inner" Africa. The first was the living of African reality in terms of my ministry; it describes what I did, with whom I lived, the rich-ness of my experience in those years. But "inner Africa" was the core of it all. My years in Ghana were fore-most an experience of conversion--a turning from, in order to turn to some-thing else, something which challenged everything I thought I was, knew, and had within me. Paul Robb, S.J., describes well the essence of conversion as a journey into the unknown: It is difficult to endure conversion because it seems to put into jeopardy our very lifestyle and ministry, but even more so because we sense that it touches the very roots of our life. It reaches deep into our being---our personality, our choices, our very self. It touches in places that are unknown, places where we are strangers. To begin a journey into an unfamiliar, haunting land is frightening, but not to know whether we will find life or death, blessing or curse, at the end can be terrifying. To enter the journey with all its uncertainties proves the possibility of finding life and life in abundance. Not to begin the journey, but to harden and steel oneself against it, is already death.2 The images are true and strong and evocative of my own African experi-ence. In my first weeks, as I entered "outer Africa" in its immensity with all the challenges of a new culture, 1 also experienced a sense of inner chaos. Some days I felt as if I were drowning, the waters of Africa enveloping me, About two months after I arrived I realized that I had to truly "walk through the door of Africa" ifI were to survive. In my journal I wrote: I have straddled first- and third-world existence in great disharmony. Today I felt that part of this is ended--it is within Africa now--that (God's) grace will work, from the inside out. It is as though 1 have now truly entered Africa. Once I had walked onto the solid ground of Africa never again did I feel this inner chaos. The work of conversion could now begin. These conver-sions were multiple and touched every dimension of my life as a North American woman of faith in a radically different culture: My first-world perspective was turned upside down; I was called from idealism to realism; I moved from giving to receiving; 1 experienced strength becoming weakness; I passed from death to life--from myself to God alone. Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 685 First-World Perspective Turned Up-Side Down We come to a new culture as we are. If we are even halfway faithful to the challenges of cross-cultural experience, our own self-understanding of our home culture will change dramatically. This I experienced very pro-foundly. I discovered that I had brought a very large amount of cultural bag-gage with me. It was disconcerting to be criticized as "too American" at times--that is, too self-assured, too curious, too organized, too conscious of time; too ready with my questions and opinions. What was salutary, if painful, was the opportunity to allow my world-view to shift into new patterns. I first learned that the United States is not the center of the universe, even if it often acts that way and its military and eco-nomic policies impact the rest of the planet in such dramatic ways. It is one country among many, with its own strengths and weaknesses. I learned also how diverse and beautiful are the gifts of the people of other countries. 1 especially experienced this gift in the opportunities 1 had to meet people from so many different parts of the world and to enter into something of the richness of the world's cultural heritage, to see how differently people can feel, think, and organize human life. There were two central ways in which my world began to be "turned upside down": my experience of poverty and my attempts to learn new dimensions of the common life and hospitality. Poverty is a hard and often a "loaded" word. We fight it and yet some-how sense that in being poor we will find the key to new life in solidarity with others. The Gospel's call to detachment from riches and from every-thing that would hinder our response to the invitation from Jesus to disciple-ship has always challenged Christians profoundly. To come to Ghana was certainly to see poverty and share in it in some small ways. It was indeed a shock for me to see the extent of poverty and marginality: lack of clean and safe water for so many, schools with few books, hospitals and clinics without supplies, limited transportation, rudi-mentary communication, erratic electricity. Some of the practical details of my new lifestyle were a challenge. It was "farewell" to dependable electrici-ty, unlimited water, telephone service, easily available fuel, and to book-shops, movies, and regular postal service. It was, on the other hand, "hello" to a sense of living on the "edge of things" at times--lanterns and attempts to get kerosene for them, recycling every possible drop of water, limited food supplies, simple amusements, and difficulties in communication. All these changes were hard in different ways. I wrote: I am struck again by the gap between theory and practice in my life, for 686 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 example, to talk about poverty, being with the poor--and then not to embrace poverty wholeheartedly, as indeed Jesus did. The:conversion to acceptance of and a certain ease with my new simple lifestyle took time. I never did get used to the erratic postal system and its consequences for poor communication with family and friends. On the other hand, as the years went by I gradually experienced in myself a certain ability to live with much less and to find in that a real freedom. To have to do things simply and patiently experience inconvenience gradually became a way for me to share some sense of solidarity with the poor who have no options and no outside resources. I was becoming comfortable with the simplicity of Ghanaian life and my heart was slowly becoming centered on what was most essential. I was not poor in the way the ordinary Ghanaian is poor but I did come to experience in small ways the shocks and diminishments of poverty. 1 also learned new meanings of community life and hospitality because African life is lived in common. The extended family of several generations living together in one compound has been the normal pattern in rural areas. Daily activities take place outside, and people are inside only when it is rain-ing, or at night, or if they are sick. The atmosphere in both urban and rural areas is one of physical and psychological openness to friend and stranger. Entering into such a different cultural atmosphere of hospitality and availability also challenged my Western habits. In the West we live inside; people come into our lives generally at our convenience thanks to the cultur-al presuppositions that one lives by calendars and schedules. But in a situa-tion where the culture says "welcome" all that changes. People walk into one's life often unannounced, and the person at the door could bring the unexpected pleasure of a friend coming to visit or someone arriving for a retreat without any previous communication or someone coming to ask for prayer---or the bishop with overseas visitors. 1 learned to be always ready to adapt to people's needs and to realize that my life and my time were really no longer my own, Prayer time was often interrupted; reading and study had to be immediately abandoned to answer someone's need. Privacy became very relative since, although I had my own room and office, my own space and time were now the resources of the people I tried to serve. These demands taught me much about my own selfishness, the need to have my own way, my own schedule, my own plans. I never did become totally comfortable with being physically and psychologically available at all times. Yet gradually I learned to absorb something of the spirit of welcome and hospitality which are so important in Ghanaian culture and to live them in my halting way. Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 687 The first dimension of conversion in my life then was a shift in con-sciousness from being a woman of the first world to one living in the third world and trying to enter fully into life there. My American perspective and cultural habits were turned upside down and inside out. The result was a double-consciousness for I saw, and felt, and experienced first- and third-world realities at the same time. Nothing could or would be the same again. From Idealism to Realism Soon after I came to Ghana I realized what a "good press" the African Church has in the West. The reading I had done before I arrived had given me the overwhelming impression of a "young Church" on its way to real inculturation as a true African expression of the Christian faith, with signifi-cant achievements already made in liturgy and catechesis. It is true that inculturation is happening, theological development and reflection are proceeding, liturgy is more authentically African in some places--but the pace of everything is slow and that is the pace of Africa. Idealism about the Church was gradually replaced by a realism about the Church as it is. To be a "young" Church is exactly that. In the southern part of Ghana modern Catholic

Issue 60.1 of the Review for Religious, 2001. ; Renewal Vocation Spiritual Legacy Empowerment JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 Review for Religious'helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call to holiness' ' ° by making available to them the spiritual legacies tbat flow-from the cbarisms of Catbolic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ° V~reb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2001 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. MI copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. view for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizfibeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm James and Joan Felling Adriafi Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bish6p Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Patricia Wittberg SC JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 contents 6 renewal Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees A. Paul Dominic SJ relates the biblical notion of jubilee to the teaching of Jesus and the practice of the early church in order to point to ways that we might live the spirit of jubilee in our Christian life today. 20 A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia'~ James H. Kroeger MM shares the optimism and gratitude that pervade the apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia as he summarizes and evaluates its various chapters. 30 40 vocation Who Is a Brother? Philip Armstrong CSC traces the church reality of brothers through history to the present-day challenges. Vocational Being Donald Macdonald SMM stresses that, if we Christians need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then Scripture provides the practical means to make our own this perspective of faith. 2j Review for Religious 48 spiritual legacy Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Ignatian Tradition Mary Ann Foley CND traces the originality of the missionary spirituality of Marguerite Bourgeoys, drawing upon a varity of sources including the Ignatian tradition. 62 The 350th Anniversary of the Sisters of St. Joseph Joan L. Roccasalvo CSJ gives evidence that Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises are the inspiration and source of Jean-Pierre Mddaille's Maxims of Perfection, which contain the entire spirit of the foundational documents of the Sisters of St. Joseph. 76 empowerment Till the End of My Days Agnes Cunningham SSCM identifies five factors that have proved helpful in her actively pursuing retirement. 80 Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved Laurel M. O'Neal offers a correction to our common misconceptions of death, its relation to sin, and especially the relation of God to death. departments 4 Prisms 99 Canonical Counsel: Conclusion of the Novitiate 105 Book Reviews January-February 2001 prisms Review for Religious cele-brates its sixtieth year of publication. Sixty years is not the milestone of the younger fifty or the more dra-matic one hundred. Of course, it is not in the same league as a millennium. But a sixty-year anniversary does present the occasion for a pause--a time for assess-ment, for evaluation, for celebration, for gratitude. We have so many of these "pauses" built into our ordinary life that we can forget how important their place is for the healthy living of life, including the spir-itual. The changing seasons of the year, with their cycles of growth and dormancy, present one rhythmic pattern observed in religious practices of people through the centuries. As we quantify the rhythm of a day into our minutes and hours and then measure fur-ther into days of a week and weeks of a month and months of a year, we are struck at how we humanly have built in so many pauses into ordinary living. As a matter of fact, we humans are not meant to be "energ-erizer bunnies" (as in a famous TV ad about a brand of battery) that just keep going and going, always doing more of the same. No, we are people who have waking and sleeping patterns, who enjoy times of work and of recreation, who seek out periods of solitude and of social interaction, who are marked by successes and failures and those many "gray-area" projects whose value remains unclear. We are meant to pause, to be a Review for Religious reflective people, because we are formed by the Bible--that very reflectively written account of God's dealings with his people. We have just been celebrating the biblical jubilee year as a divinely inspired pause. We Christians are a people who appre-ciate the flow of a liturgical year, with its celebratory pauses that bring home in ever new ways the key moments of our faith-life with God. Though there are these many natural and ecclesial pauses in our life, we seem to be unwilling to choose such a rhythm in our personal daily living. Both in our personal life and in our parish or community projects, we often do not take time to set and identify some intermediate goals. We rush on, instead of reflecting on what we have done up to this point, on what changes might be desirable, on how much gratitude we should have and express for all the cooperation we have received, and perhaps on what mistakes we have made and whose feelings we may have bruised. We Christians need to make time to reflect, to assess and celebrate and apologize, as our way of working with God. We need to choose to build this kind of pause into our day (like the Ignatian daily awareness examen) and into the works and projects we are busy on in concert with others. In commu-nity we need to choose to build in these pauses so that commu-nity life and community projects can make wise choices and avoid sad crises. If we choose to make "anniversary-like pauses" ordinary and so build them into our daily life, we will discover a power source that makes for a physically, psychologically, and spiritually healthy life. We have had our new year's celebration, pausing to ring out the millennium year of 2000 and to welcome the year of 2001. As we enter into this new year, perhaps we all need to look for timely occasions when we .can pause--to celebrate, to assess, to correct, to revitalize for the continuing effort. By such choices, we grow into being the reflective Christians God's word calls us to be. We meet God, in his gift of time to us, by pausing to appreciate it and use it well. David L. Fleming SJ Janualsv-February 2001 renewa A. PAUL DOMINIC Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees The celebration of any jubilee is necessarily public. It cannot be thought of except in social terms. Even in per-sonal jubilees, which are different from institutional jubilees, individual jubilarians do not make their jubilee a private affair; they invite their relations and friends to a celebration. In so doing almost all follow the unwrit-ten bourgeois rule of making their celebration an exclu-sive affair of their particular class and so upholding the social scale. When such segregated festivities are arranged by the rich (and not the poor, who anyway have nothing to celebrate because they have nothing to cele-brate with), they hurt even the rich, not just some other people, because they bring the burden of keeping up with the Joneses. The same thing happens, mutatis mutandis, in institutions and nations, with subtle but real harm to humanity. This is not a modern phenomenon but an old, unfortunate human one. Jesus saw it rampant among his people and ~ought to save them from bringing harm in this way to themselves and others. And so he did not think it unbecoming to tell his host during the meal to imagine another pattern of invitations, one that would break the tradition of inviting select persons or rich ones A. Paul Dominic SJ writes again from Satyodayam; 12-5-33 S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. Review for Religious or relatives and instead invite particularly the poor and the hand-icapped (Lk 14:12-14). When he was thus breaking new ground in the matter of celebration, was he not inspired by the good news of jubilee that he had learned as a Jew from the Hebrew Scriptures in the bosom of his Hebrew family? Going Back to the Source of Jubilee The very word jubilee is biblical, with a specific religious con-notation of joy. Though it has come into secular parlance, all those who celebrate "jubilees," personal or institutional, would do well to be aware of the term's centuries-old wealth of meaning. The joy that is now associated with jubilees in the secular or religious worlds looks back on achievements of excellence, but the jubilee joy in biblical times looked forward to achievements still to come; also, it involved the whole of Hebrew society, without excluding any class. While all celebrated the jubilee, both the haves and the have-nots, they participated in it differently. The former were behind the whole celebration, promoting it, while the latter benefited from it. The promoters were concerned with building a promising future, not so much for themselves as for others, who unlike them had had a harrowing past of financial reverses. Who on earth could have had this joyful interest in others rather than themselves except God and God's faithful people? Hearing the cry of people who, perhaps even through their own fault, had lost their ancestral holdings and consequently their own rights of freedom and dignity, God would have the losers gain back their lost land and their very persons. As all land and all peo-ple belonged primarily to God, God would ordain a time of grace once every fifty years, when good, law-abiding persons would come forward and voluntarily restore to the unfortunates whatever the latter had lost to them even by way of fair deals. The very idea of people responding to God's call to selfless joy on behalf of the deprived will be effective only to the extent that it is appreciated for its inspire~t and sensible holiness. People will be most joyful in their jubilee only when they thoroughly accept that it is a holy thing for them and declare so (Lv 25:10 and 12). The biblical jubilee is all joy only when it is all holy. It is first and foremost holy and, as such, it cannot but be joyful. It is the holi-ness of the God of joy that makes for the joy of all his people, who are to be holy like him. January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond yubilee and Jublilees This causal link of holiness to joy in the celebration of jubilees cannot be emphasized too much. The joyous celebra-tion of jubilee enjoined in Leviticus 25:8-17 and 23-55 forms part of the Law of Holiness in Leviticus 17-27. The dynamics of jubilee should be understood in the light of the most important piece in the Law of Holiness: "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lv 19:2b). How is this orthodoxy of holiness to become, the orthopraxis of joy? This is a highly practical question even though there remains the theoretical question of how it is possible that our human nature can share in the nature of God, namely, holiness. Leviticus and the rest of the Bible have no use for such questions, but hand down in God's name ways of living that are pleasing to the very God of holiness and joy. With the stunning command to human beings to be holy, there came from God clear directions about how they were to deal with one another. He wanted his people to associate with each other in ways that included practi-cal concern for the poor and the weak and the handicapped so that they would not feel left out: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Lv 19:9-10, emphasis added) This was a practical minimum test of the maximum law he enjoined on them of cultivating a loving disposition towards one another, abjuring grudges and hate (Lv 19:18-19). If people had lived in this original spirit of divinely ordained love, shown in personal dealings and shaped in concrete societal action, there would have been no urgency for such an institution as the jubilee. From the beginning, people did not abide by, but slid from, this ideal. To stem this slide and to set a minimum for the people to reach, God brought about the program of the sabbatical year (Lv 25:2-7). Its enactment, going back to the wake of the Exodus reads thus: For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat . (Ex 23:10-11, emphasis added) . Though no definite information is found in the Bible's his- Review for Religious torical books about how and how long the sabbatical law was observed,~ there is no denying that it was (see Ne 10:32 and 1 M 6:49-53), though not always (see 2 Ch 36:21). And that is why one may dare say--in this field there are as many opinions as scholars-- that the law was further developed to include remission of debts in favor of the poor and, what is more, to be generous to them. Aiming at abolishing poverty, the new law unambiguously said: If there is among you anyone in need . . do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is near," and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing . Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so. (Dt 15:7-10, emphasis added) Who could better this law? For all its beauty (if law can be said to be beautiful), who would want this kind of beauty for them-selves? Who would observe this beautiful law? Indeed, there may be people now who would question its very place in a legal corpus. Though this was presumably not the case then, still, given human nature, it would not be surprising if it was practiced in its violation rather than observance. For this reason, and with a view to getting people to observe the high ideal of the law, it was drastically changed with regard to the time of its enforcement. The new law, unlike the old, would come into force not every seven years as before, but every fifty years, heralding what came to be known as the jubilee year, called so after the instrument used for the announcement, namely, yobe! (Hebrew for trumpet). Though the sabbatical law was thus made less burdensome (one would not have had to observe it more than once in one's lifetime, given the biblical lifespan of eighty even for the. strong), still the jubilee law retained the essential burden of the previous laws, namely, reversing the trend of the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer. Its complete formulation specified four things. (1) People must allow all land to lie fallow, must live on what it pro-duces by itself and has been stored, and must share with others. (2) In selling and buying, the rich should not cheat and oppress the poor, taking advantage of their plight. (3) Those who have grown richer by buying other~' properties should freely restore them to their former owners. (4) Those who own Israelites as slaves January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond g~ubilee and j~ublilees (because in their poverty they sold themselves) have to honorably release them and their families. Was the mitigated law observed? While some scholars say that it does not seem it was ever observed,z others opine cautiously that the possibility of its having been observed in the beginning of the settlement in the Holy Land cannot be ruled OUt.3 Relying on the two applications of the jubilee law to specific situations (Lv 27:16-25 and Nm 36:1-12), we may presume that there indeed was a time when the law was in force and not a dead letter. Also, ¯ from the fact that the Greek Alexander and the Roman Julius Caesar exempted their Jewish domain of Judaea from the annual tribute during the sabbatical year,4 may we not infer that the jubilee directives were at that time not out of vogue in the life of the peo-ple? It would be interesting, then, to know how they could have been carried out generation after generation. But unfortunately no historical observance of the jubilee was recorded in either the Old Testament or the New. Anyway, from the kind of juridical Judaism found in the New Testament, we have no compelling rea-son to believe that the jubilee still prevailed in practice, leaving us to wonder what ever happened to Judaism that God founded as a contrast communitys with its liberative laws, such as jubilee. Retrieving the Jubilee after Jesus Where does this le~d us? An answer may spring up from sens-ing how Jesus responded to the moribund custom of jubilee in his time. Though the word jubilee does not occur in the Gospels, the way he looked at some issues may point to his thinking on jubilee. He was surely positive in his attitude to the Law, and so we hear the puzzling logion: "Do not think that I have come to abol-ish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to ful-fill" (Mt 5:17). In so taking his stand, he was calling for right obedience to the Law: hearing the voice of God in the word of the Law, understanding God's genuine purpose, and acting on it. If he often invited attacks by those who were on the side of reli-gion, it was to challenge them to read the L~w aright according to the mind of the Lawgiver. He pointed out, too, that in the course of history the Law was sometimes mitigated or even distorted, as in the case of divorce, because of human hardness of heart. In order to accomplish the Law, he would advocate first and fore-most a return to its origin in the heart of God and a discernment Revie~v for Religious of its true relevance for the day, guided by the signs of the times, the ongoing surprise revelations of God's ways. Inspired by such a vision of the Law, Jesus would have insisted that jubilees were not occasions to be observed merely twice in a century, whether by omission or halfheartedly or even whole-heartedly. In this spirit he would have spoken searchingly: "If it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should return to the owner the land he had sold to you in his penury, I ask you, 'Why buy at all in the first place from a needy person?' Again, if it was said of old that you should not, during the jubilee, claim your money lent to the poor, I ask you, 'Why lend at all to the poor with a view to getting it back? Rather, give to anyone who asks you and, if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.' Again, if it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should free your slaves, I ask you, 'How dare you .ever buy out your brothers or sisters and enslave them even if they sold themselves to you in their dire need? For you are all slaves of God, and among yourselves you are brothers and sisters.'" Further, he would have told any challengers to search the Scriptures and realize how God had freed their forebears from slavery and settled them in a new land, a land that was not theirs but his, so that they might know the holy joy of living together in rich fellowship and surrounded by the blessings of Providence. Finally, in Ezekiel's fashion (Ezk 20:4-24), he would even have made them face their Roman subjugation and answer whether it was not due to their forsaking the jubilee of God and ceasing to be truly subject to the God of jubilee. It would have been with such silent thoughts that he went beyond the old jubilee and initiated a new era, calling it the year of the Lord's favor (Lk 4:19) and heralding the longed-for liberty, fulfilling Ezekiel's prophecy6 and climaxing John's preaching.7 God's own aspiration was ever to create a people witnessing to his blessing. Going Forth in the Spirit of Jubilee In picking up such possible thoughts of Jesus, what is our own jubilee aspiration and how are we to realize it? We do so by becom-ing the community of God's people and striving to do away with poverty. God's own aspi.ration was ever to create a people wit- January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees nessing to his blessing. When Jesus came on the scene, he pro-claimed that constant purpose of God. When he announced God's kingdom emerging in the world, he heralded equivalendy the com-munity of God's people. Further, in imitation of his Father, he was re-creating it visibly out of the remnant that was left of the old community.8 The new community, though very much in the world, was not of it. It was fashioned to be an alternative society in the spirit of jubilee. It had its own charter, promising and promoting the fulfillment of individuals and groups in society and thus the whole society (Mt 5:3-10). Its foremost beneficiaries were the poor of all sorts, that is, those who had been all along without name, voice, or standing, like children and women, the ritually and socially outcast, and, of course, the economically awkward. Though made up of different classes, the new community would not have the distinction and segregation of the high and the low; rather, the so-called high would serve the so-called low. If such terms as highest and lowest were to be used at all, then the highest in the community would be those who, bending over for the sake of others, made themsel+es little and served them-- even washing their feet. Their insignia would not be the tradi-tional one of selfish power, privilege, and possession, but the downward mobility of service and healthy promotion of others, avoiding all competition. Their royal rule would be: "In every-thing do to others as you would have thdm do to you" (Mt 7:12). Perhaps the one incident in which almost all the above distinctive qualities of the new community came into play was Jesus' feeding the multitude and satisfying them all with the little supply of bread and fish made available by a little boy. Living in this spirit of permanent jubilee, apart from which there is no jubilee worth talking about, we dare dream of becom-ing a contrast .community of Christians, renovating the structures of the age-old world in many details and so creating places where individual and social well-being can exist. Jubilee Praxis at the Start of the First Millennium How on earth can this become part of the realm of reality? Though we may find ourselves overwhelmed by forces against true community, did Jesus not envisage such a community of the future right at the start of his ministry when he declared that the era of universal liberation was beginning there and then with him- Review for Religious self (Lk 4:21)? Did he not confirm it as he went about forming one flock On 10:16)? And, at the very end, was he not intent on drawing all to himself and forming one community (Jn 12:32)? Did he fail in all that? The pristine community of the church witnessed that he certainly did not. Indeed, it acquired early an identity of its own, distinguishing it from the surrounding com-munity and marking its way of living together. Their identity was not so much their theoretical acceptance of the gospel, but prac-tical allegiance to it with consequences in social behavior. Luke named it koinonia, meaning fellowship or communion, which "con-notes the bond of responsibility to one another enjoined on believ-ers by their assent to the gospel."9 His firsthand report of this unique phenomenon reads thus: All who believed were together and had all things in com-mon; they would sell their possessions and goods and dis-tribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of the people. (Ac 2:44-47) Perhaps to emphasize the veracity of his report, he drew another such picture: Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apos-tles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Ac 4:32-35, emphasis added) The kernel of koinonia was thus communism in its best sense, namely, the community of goods which expressed, proved, and strengthened the community of spirit.1° The trial of koinonia even brought about the institution of diaconia or service (Ac 6:1-6) to oversee the practicalities of koinonia. Nothing like it had happened before in the Mosaic period, but it did not come out of the blue. It had its clear precedents as the law~ of the sabbatical and jubilee year show. The sharing of the rich with the poor envisaged by such laws did not merely look to the temporary or intermittent allevia-tion of the hardship of the.poor. Rather, it aimed at the divine ideal of annihilating poverty altogether according to the hopeful com-mand: "There shall be no poor among you" (Dt 15:4).~ January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond j-~ubilee and 3~ublilees Inspired by Jesus, the early church learned well, translating the above command into action and initiating jubilee living. The later church, as far as the 3rd century or so, followed suit in such a striking manner that the historian Pliny thought of Christians as tertia gens, a third group of people besides Romans and barbarians. Still the ideal had to be nurtured from the beginning against natural human hesitations, weaknesses, and failures. So Paul bade the Corinthians regarding help for the famine-stricken commu-nity in Jerusalem: Strive for equality; at present give from your abundance what they are short of, and some day they will repay in abundance what you lack. Then you will be equal and what Scripture says shall come true: "To him who had much, nothing was in excess; to him who had little, nothing was lacking." (2 Co 8:13-15, Christian Community Bible) The equality of everyone in the community, whether rich or poor, will remain no more than an illusion as long as .economic inequality remains. That is a warning implicitly given by James, when he confronted Christian assemblies with their old unequal dealings with the rich and poor: For, if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say "Have a seat here, please" while to the one who is poor you say "Stand there" or "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves? (Jm 2:2-4) On the contrary, where the rich willingly forgo some of their riches in order to raise the condition of the poor, there is equal joy for both; and so James could say, "Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low" (Jm 1:9-10). Jubilee Praxis as the Third Millennium Starts With such precedents, are we going to achieve community of equals? Yes, if we enter upon unambiguous, if taxing, praxis. The first practice would seem to be self-awareness of our "chronic" failure in shaping human communities. If even now we let the societal laws considered above provoke not offense (pace Paul, Rm 3:20) but repentance, convicting us of our share of humanity's sin in this matter, we would be on the right track. Review for Religious Part of this initial practice is to realize how we, like the rest of humanity, have cultivated the pleasing or even cozy practice of good intention rather than a.ction, of fine words rather than deeds. James had reason to ask bluntly: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them "Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? (]m 2:15-16) Is this challenge any less relevant now for the church community, and in particular the talking (even if not pontificating) theological fraternity, despite two millennia of Christianity? This is, however, no time for despair, but a time for immediate, earnest, and con-sistent praxis based on the twin nature of human beings as spiri-tual and economic. The second practice could well be conscientization for both the rich and the poor. The former may not even realize what being poor actually means. I, for one, was surprised to hear a city dweller say not very long ago that he missed Sunday Mass because he had no clean clothes to wear. Situations like this must be brought to the notice 6f the well-dressed community at Sunday Mass, among whom might be found some, like a Chicago priest I heard about, for whom a shirt worn once is too soiled to be worn again on the same day. In a school run by a group of sisters, a poor child went to class in slippers instead of shoes; for punishment her teacher, a former nun, made her wear them round her neck with her belt. Such unbe-lievable things occur and need to be made known, through chan-nels such as pastoral councils, to the rest of the community. For their part, the poor must be transformed by becoming conscious of what they deserve but are denied by society, includ-ing the church. St. Vincent de Paul Societies may serve this crit-ical cause, first learning themselves and then teaching poor people their rights enshrined in Canon Law. What a revelation to hear: There are canons that can be said to promote the ~velfare of the poor and speak fibout the defense of their rights. There are canons that promote the participation of the poor in church life, facilitate their access to the sacraments, uphold the right to receive help from the temporal goods of the church, require norms on legal aid for the poor, and so forth?~ If such conscientization is to become reality, much depends on a third practice, ecclesial leadership, which at least in India rests Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees largely with the bishops and then the clergy. Who is to tell them what their praxis should or could be? That, though, is what the Servant Leadership school in Washington, D.C., has dared, train-ing leaders in community living that is intimately associated with the life of the poor.13 It is heartening to hear of a bold Indian bishop who would not oblige his priests' clamor for his support of projects for the poor unless they committed themselves to conscientiously spend-ing for the target group all the money received. Not many, how-ever, are like him, intent on being levelers, mindful of benefiting the poor wholly and so bringing all people to a level of equality. So we hear stories of bishop~ who are not loath to receive a purse on the occasion of their jubilees celebrations, in clear violation of the spirit of the biblical jubilee. Vv'hat are we to think when a bishop, to please his family, tries to dissuade a young man from becoming a brother to serve the poor and even offers to make him a priest in his diocese? Does he have a ghost of an idea, let alone a chance, to build a true community where the poor will find their due, equal place of honor and feel blessed? Would that the unworthy bishops acted on the proposal, made by themselves or their confreres at the Synod of Bishops on Justice, to "under-take an examination of the modes of acting and of the posses-sions and lifestyle found within the church itself'U4--even though they seem not to take seriously the anticlerical strictures of Christ himself. Whatever the praxis of the leadership may be, the rest of the community may aid it indirectly by their own related praxis. And this may express itself in at least three ways. The first one is com-ing to know the likes of the locally famous Indian Jesuit Bishop Saupin (who, reportedly, would, in the style of the populace, travel in a rickshaw, clad in kurta and pajamas and smoking his beedi) or the globally famous Archbishop Romero. The second is pray-ing conscientiously and hopefully, while mentioning the ordinary's name at Mass, for the metanoia and metamorphosis of bishops so that they may know the importance of serving their community ¯ (which itself exists for serving one another in charity) by witness-ing to the incompatibility of chronic poverty with the visible king-dom of God. And the third (which is difficult but must be done) is humbly calling ecclesiastical high-ups to account, even against their resistance, in forums such as the parish and diocesan coun-cils enjoined by Vatican Council II. Review for Religious The fourth practice concerns the religious who have their own sphere of leadership for good and bad. While those in the limelight engage righdy or wrongly in discussion on the religious life of the future, there are a small number, like the Little Sisters and Brothers of Jesus, whose life itself is mostly.their practice of naturally and not optionally'5 accompanying the poor by their.presence among them in their living place, by their solidarity with them in the workplace, by their adoption of the lifestyle of their poor peers, and by their hospitality to the poor and rich which makes both groups feel equal and at ease. In the economy of communion practiced b~" Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sharing and, of course, socializing with those expe-riencing poverty, misery, and humiliation. Their way has attracted the attention even of gov-ernments. A year ago, for example, a Brazilian parlia-mentary commission made an official visit to their cen-ter in order to learn prac-tices that could help solve poverty problems in their country. Hearing the expe-riences of the Focolare entrepreneurs, they marveled at the con-crete achievements of the economy of communion, achievements that seemed impossible in the current economic context. One of them said: "The economy of communion is an already proven and revolu-tionary alternative. It is a new concept of economy, a new con-cept of wealth."16 The two groups mentioned above do not have any "apostolate" whatever as other congrggations understand the term. While other groups may benefit from the innovative experience of the these two groups, still, to develop their own praxis of involving them-selves in the lives of the poor, there would be no better way than going back to their original sources.~7 For, as a~le, religious con-gregation have always been founded with real bonds with the poor. Another thing that may help various religious congregations is the zealous search for ways to adapt present missions "for the ben- In the economy of communion practiced by Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sha~ing and, of course, socializing with those experiencing poverty,, misery, and humiliation. January-February 2001 Dominic * " Beyond J'ubilee and Jublilees efit of the poor and for a more just and fraternal world."~s A sure test of this will be making sure that, whatever work they begin, it benefits the poor most, as was surprisingly advocated by Gandhi to the members of his congress party striving for India's freedom. Another thing that may promote right praxis among them is to go back, in the spirit of what Paul and James advocate (1 Co 2:26 and Jm 2:5), to their own personal origins and find how poor indeed they were. For one may wager that most of us hail from families that are middle class, but commonly are lower than mid-dle class or indeed poor, even very poor, not unlike the apostles. There is no better way of concluding all this than what Jesus said to his disciples so poignandy at the Last Supper: "If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them!" (Jn 13:17). Notes t See Rui de Menezes, "The Biblical Jubilee Year," Vidyajyoti Journal 61 (1997): 653. [See also Robert G. North, Biblical Jubilee, after Fifty Years (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Biblico, 2000), a revised edition of his Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee, 1954.--ED.] 2 See The New Jerusalem Bible (NyB) (New York: Doubleday, 1985), note Lv 25a, p. 167. 3 See The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (N'JBC), ed. R.E. Brown et al. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1991), n. 4:53, p. 78. 4 See Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 667, for the reference in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. s See T. Malipurathu, "Contrast Community: Its Meaning and Relevance for our Times," Vidyajyoti Journal 62 (1.998): 606-623, esp. 610-613. 6 It is striking that Ezk 46:7 uses the expression the Year of Liberty to refer to the Year of Jubilee. 7 See the relevant notes on Lk 3:3-14 in Christian Community Bible (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1990), p. 123. s See the note Mt 16g in NJB, p.1637, and the note on Ac 2:46 in NyBC, n. 44:28, pp. 734-735. 9 NyBC, n. 44:28, p. 734. ,0 See note Ac 2ffin NyB, p. 1803. n For the translation in the style of the Decalogue, see Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 654. 12 Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest in the Code of Canon Law, I," Vidyajyoti Journal 63 (1999): 924. ~3 See Henri J.M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1989), p. xii. Review for Religious 14 AS in Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 930. t5 Fausto Gomez suggests that the preferential option for the poor is not simply optional but obligatory. See Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 927. 16 Mariapolis (Focolare newsletter), December 1999, p. 14. ~7 See, for example, Decrees of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1995, and St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), §288. ,s Decrees, §289. The Sun The sun rose At 7:02 a.m.', standard time, the paper told me. The changing silhouettes of peaked boxes transformed into houses sided in pale pink and grays and browns proved it. But no explosion of color ¯ announced the moment, no silent fireworks to wake the sky. Only the quiet finger of God'~ tracing day-gold across the horizon. Suzanne Mayer IHM January-Februaly 2001 JAMES H. KROEGER A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia" "T he church in Asia sings the praises of the 'God of salvation' (Ps 68:20).-" These opening words set the tone of Ecclesia in Asia (hereafter EA), the postsynodal apostolic exhortation promulgated in November 1999: Clearly, themes of gratitude, celebration, and optimism characterize this document. The church sings God's praises for "choosing to initiate his saving plan on Asian soil," for sending "his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Savior, who took flesh as an Asian!" The church sees the "marvel of God's plan in Asia" and exults "in the goodness of the continent's peoples, cultures, and religious vitality" (§1). Pope John Paul II signed the document during his Asian pastoral visit to India (5-8.November 1999). The issuance of EA was the concluding moment of the special assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops, popularly known as the Asian Synod. This four-year project of church reflection and renewal began with the publicafon of the Lineamenta (1996), continued with discussion on the Instrumentum Laboris (1998), reached its apex with the month-long synod sessions in Rome (19 April-14 May 1998), and culminated with the proclamation of the postsynodal Ecclesia in Asia James H. Kroeger MM, a Maryknoll Missioner who has served in Asia since 1970 (Philippines and Bangladesh), is currently professor of systematic theology, missiology, and Islamics at Loyola School of Theology in Manila. His article was first published in Landas 13, no. 3 (journal of Loyola School of Theology). His address is Marvknoll; P.O. Box 285, Greenhills Post Office; Metro Manila, Philippine~ 1502. Review for Religqous (6 November 1999). Yes, "Asia-Church" rejoices and unceasingly proclaims God's enduring love! The Asian Synod was a multifaceted event on many levels. As EA notes, "it was indeed a moment of special grace" (§3). It was also "a celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). The synod event became "an ardent affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ the Savior" (§4), and, as the local churches of Asia gathered in Rome, "the synod fathers sought to discern the principal areas of mission for the church in Asia as she crosses the threshold of the new millennium" (§ 18). The synod's theme was much debated and carefully chosen: "Jesus Christ the Savior and his mission of love and service in A~ia: 'That they may have Life and have it abundantly' On 10:10)." AS the pope writes, this particular formulation of the theme was to "illustrate and explain more fully that Christ is the one mediator between God and man and the sole redeemer of the world, to be clearly distinguished from the founders of other great religions" (§2). The theme manifests the chu[ch's faith in Jesus and his mission; he is Savior who serves and bestows abundant life; he is to be.joyfi4.11y proclaimed in Asia. Ecclesia in Asia, a rich, lengthy document, now becomes an important signpost of evangelization for the local churches in Asia in the new millennium. An analysis of EA reveals three major sections or underlying thematics: (I) Asian realities relevant to the church and her mission of evangelization (§§5-9); (2) theological-doctrinal aspects of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (§§10-23); (3) The church's mission of love and service in Asia (§§24-49). The main body of EA is framed by an introduction which captures the highlights of the synod process (§§1-4) and a conclusion that expyesse~, the pope's gratitude and encouragement along with a final prayer to Mary, "Mother of Asia" (§§50-51).The entire document is focused on "seeking to discern the Spirit's word to the churches in Asia" (§51). Asian Context Ecclesia in Asia devotes its chapter 1 to the concrete situation of .contemporary ~sia--her r.eligious, cultural, economic, social, political, and historical realities (§§5-9). This inductive approach, characteristic ~)f current Asian theological reflection, mirrors the method and experience of the Federation of Asian Bishops' January-February 2001 Kroeger . A Continuing Pentecost Conferences (FABC). The Asian church accepts that "a critical awareness of the diverse and complex realities of Asia is essential if the people of God on the continent are to respond to God's will for them in the new evangelization" (§5). As EA notes, "Asia is the earth's largest continent and is home to nearly two-thirds of the world's population"; its various peoples are "heirs to ancient cultures, religions, and traditions." One is amazed "at the sheer size of Asia's population and at the intricate mosaic of its many cultures, languages, beliefs, and traditions." Asia is "the cradle of the world's major religions" and "the birthplace of many other spiritual traditions" (§6). Economically, socially, and politically, "situations on the Asian continent are very diverse, defying any simple classification" (§7). EA highlights various concrete pastoral concerns: rapid change, migration, nuclear power, tourism, population growth, poverty, women, and a host of additional challenges. In this complex situation the church's one ambition is to continue Christ's mission of service and love (see §50). Her approach is that of mutual exchange and enrichment; thus, EA confirms "the importance of dialogue as a characteristic mode of the church's life in Asia" (§3). Mother Teresa of Calcutta is proposed as "an icon of the service to life which the church is offering in Asia" because of "her loving and selfless care of the poorest of the poor" (§7). This "chosen" continent of Asia, with all its immensity, diversity, and complexity, holds special meaning for the church. God's only-begotten Son "took flesh as an Asian" (§I); "Behold, the Savior of the world is born to us, born in Asia" (§2). Yes, Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church" (§5). This church thanks God "for choosing Asia as the earthly dwelling place of his incarnate Son" (§50; see §§2, 9, 20). This unique gift implies a task; the church commits her energies to making Jesus, his gospel of life, and his community the church truly "at home" (inculturated) in Asia and her peoples (§§9, 20). Theological Foundations Three chapters of.EA, focusing on Jesus and the Spirit, describe a type of doctrinal orientation to the church's Asian mission. Yet the manner of presentation is decidedly pastoral; it blends theologies "from below" and "from above." It reads easily, the flow is smooth, and inclusive language is partially employed. Some insights even Review for Religious " enjoy poetic expression: "Contemplating Jesus in his human nature, the peoples of Asia find their deepest questions answered, their hopes fulfilled, their dignity uplifted, and their despair conquered" (§14). The thematic of girl is frequently found in these "theological" chapters. Jesus the Savior is a gift to Asia; this faith-gift is to be both appropriated and proclaimed. "The church's faith in Jesus is a gift received and a gift to be shared; it is the greatest gift which the church can offer to Asia" (§10). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs ~n Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (§31; see §20). The church in Asia must ask itself a probing question: How do we "share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (§19)? Proclaiming the Christian faith-gift meets unique challenges, particularly in the "multiethnic, multireligious and multicultural situation of Asia" (§21). Asia has its indigenous religions, soteriologies, and savior figures (see §§14, 19, 20). This reality demands a humble, dialogical stance on the part of the church; "proclamation is prompted not by sectarian impulse nor the spirit of proselytism nor any sense of superiority" (§20; see §§4, 31, 46). And yet this genuine respect and reverence for the church's dialogue partners "does not eliminate the need for the explicit proclamation of the gospel in its fullness" (§20; see §31). By her very identity the church is "a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed" (§ 19). Affirming the relevance of Jesus for Asia (§§1, 9, 10, 18, 50) demands a particular approach to proclamation. The church "needs to follow a pedagogy which will introduce people step by step to the full appreciation of the mystery." She should employ "narrative methods akin to Asian cultural forms" and follow "an evocative pedagogy, using stories, parables, and symbols so characteristic of Asian methodology in teaching." In a word, the church must "evangelize in a way that appeals to the sensibilities of Asian peoples" (§20). Engaging Asian peoples, their cultures, and their religions (FABC's triple dialogue) demands genuine commitment to inculturation (§§20-23) and interreligious dialogue (§§29-31). Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church." January-February 2001 Kroeger * ,4 Continuing Pentecost EA asserts that Christology is necessarily integrated with pneumatology as well as Trinitarian faith. It is the "uniqueness of Christ which gives him an absolute and universal significance" (§14); one cannot "separate the activity of the Holy Spirit from that of Jesus the Savior" (§.16). The Holy Spirit, "the prime agent of evangelization" (§17), is "an absolutely vital part of the mystery of Jesus and the salvation which he brings" (§15). Jesus and his Spirit are only adequately comprehended within,the "Trinity's plan of salvation" (§15); there are no two parallel economies of salvation. There are real, complex missiological questions, and the Asian Synod and Ecclesia in Asia attempted to face them. A Missionary Community The longest section of F~ (§§24-49) focuses on the church and her mission in the vast Asian continent. Four discernible themes emerge: church as communion for mission (§§24-28), dialogue (§§29-31), human promotion (§§32-41), and agents of evangelization (§§42-49). EA presents a vision as well as concrete approaches for mission; these emerge from a particular faith stance: "The question is not whether the church has something essential to say to the men and women of our time, but how she can say it clearly and convincingly" (§29). EA recognizes "the pressing need of the local churches in Asia to present the mystery of Christ to their peoples according to their cultural patterns and ways of thinking" (§20). "Communion ecclesiology" finds strong expression in EA. The church is a "privileged place of encounter" between God and people; her first purpose is "to be the sacrament of the inner union of the human person with God." She is also "the sacrament of the unity of the human race." This means that "communion and mission are inseparably connected [and] they interpenetrate and mutually imply each other." Communion is "both the source and fruit of mission." In short, "communion give~ rise to mission and mission is accomplished in communion" (§24). The church in Asia promotes internal communion and participation on many levels: with the successor of Peter, among various sister local churches, dioceses, basic ecclesial communities ("a positive feature Of the church's evangelizing.activity"), renewal movements, the Catholic Eastern churches,, and other. Christian churches (see §§25~2:7). Internal communion emanates outward Review for Religious ¯ toward other groups throughout Asia: the variety of peoples, cultures, and religions with whom the church shares life (§25), churches and peoples in mainland China, North Korea, and the ex- Soviet territories of Asia (§28). Regional and continental associations of bishops that foster communion (for example, FABC) are recognized and praised (§26), but their profound insights are never directly quoted. ¯ .An inherent demand of "communion ecclesiology" is dialogue. This "desire for dialogue . . . is not simply a strategy for peaceful coexistence among peoples; it is an essential part of the church's mission, ¯ . . a veritable vocation for the church" (§29). A particularly helpful section is devoted to interreligious dialogue (§31), seen as % part of the church's evangelizing mission, an expression of the mission adgentes." The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." Following the lead of Nostra aerate, "the Magna Carta of interreligious dialogue for our times," the church in Asia is called to a double fidelity: to affirm her "belief that the fullness of salvation comes from Christ alone" and to gladly acknowledge "whatever is true and holy in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam as a reflection of that Truth which enlightens all people." Interreligious dialogu~ seeks "mutual advancement [and] the elimination of prejudice, intolerance, and misunderstandings" (§31). Dialogue demands will only increase with passing years. Persons must be formed to have "a mature and convinced Christian faith" that qualifies them "to engage in genuine interreligious dialogue." They need to be "deeply immersed in the mystery of Christ [and] happy in their faith community." The call to dialogue requires the church in Asia "to provide suitable models of interreligious dialogue." In the dialogue endeavor it is imperative "to revitalize prayer and contemplation" and to give witness to "the great Christian traditions of asceticism and mysticism" (§31). The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." January-Febr~ary 2001 Kroeger ¯ A Continuing Pentecost Chapter 6 treats human promotion and church social teaching. S~iving to build a "civilization of love," the church views all human development not only as a "technical or economic question; it is fundamentally a human and moral question" (§32). An integral, holistic approach to evangelization is employed, encompassing the areas of human dignity (§33), preferential love for the poor (§34), healthcare (§36), education (§37), peacemaking (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). In these diverse fields the church resists "the culture of death" in accord with her vision of"the gospel of life" (§35). Agents of Evangelization Chapter 7, titled "Witnesses to the Gospel," focuses on the church's missionary identity in Asia. The church strives to be a credible witness because "people today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories"; in the Asian context "people are more persuaded by holiness of life than by intellectual argument" (§42). EA asserts that it is "a genuinely religious person [who] readily wins respect and a following in Asia" (§23). Gospel witness in Asia needs holy men and women who themselves are "on fire with the love of Christ and burning with zeal to make him known more widely, loved more deeply, and followed more closely." Why? "A fire can only be lit by something that is itself on fire"; Christian witnessing demands "a true missionary spirituality of prayer and contemplation" (§23). Asian peoples, especially the youth, manifest this "deep thirst for spiritual values" (§6). In a word, living Christian mission in Asia incorporates and, in fact, demands "contemplative action and active contemplation" (§23). EA addresses a v.ariety of gospel witnesses: pastors (§43), religious and missionaries (§44), theologians (§22), laypers6ns (§45), families (§46), young people (§47), and those whose apostolate is social communications, "the areopagus of the modern age" (§48). Striking insights are often presented: "People in Asia need to see the clergy not just as charity workers and institutional administrators, but as men whose minds and hearts are set on the deep things of the Spirit" (§43). "The synod fathers were most concerned that the church should be a participatory church in which no one feels excluded, and they judged the wider Review for Religious participation of women in the life and mission of the church in Asia to be an especially pressing need" (§45). The pope encourages and thanks missionaries (§§20, 42, 44, 50), urging "the church in Asia to send forth missionaries, even though she herself needs laborers in the vineyard" (§44). Mission is to be central to each local church; local "missionary societies of apostolic life, characterized by their special commitment to the mission ad genres, ad exteros, and ad vitam" are strongly encouraged (§44). EA calls upon "the great host of Asian martyrs, old and new,. ¯. to teach the church in Asia what it means to bear witness." (§49). Additional Emphases The Asian Synod surfaced crucial questions facing local churches in Asia; EA reflects several of these pastoral and missionary concerns. The question of Jesus' Asianness surfaces in various discussions¯ "Jesus is often perceived as foreign to Asia. It is paradoxical that most Asians tend to regard Jesus--born on Asian soil--as a Western rather than an Asian figure" (§20). "It is indeed a mystery why the Savior of the world, born in Asia, has until now remained largely unknown to the people of the continent" (§2). To address and overcome this reality, the church must open herself to "new and surprising ways in which the face of Jesus might be presented in Asia" (§20). How can Jesus be effectively proclaimed-- bearing an "Asian face"? The subject of religious freedom arises because in various places in Asia "Christians are not allowed to practice their faith freely" (§8); "explicit proclamation is forbidden, and religious freedom is denied or systematically restricted" (§23). Christians are forced "to live their faith in the midst of restrictions or even the total denial of freedom" (§28). Governments are enjoined to "guarantee religious freedom for all their citizens" (§28), assure "immunity from coercion" (§23) in religious matters, and recognize "the right to freedom of conscience and religion and the other basic human rights" (§34). Analysis and comparison between the content of EA and the decades of pastoral reflection by Asian bishops (FABC) reveals many similarities. 'Since 1974, in its document "Evangelization in Modern-Day Asia," the FABC has promoted the local church's triple dialogue with Asia's peoples, cultures, and religions; this vision is January-Februat.~ 2001 Kroeger * A Continuing Pentecost Inculturation received much attention during the synod. repeatedly found in F~ (see §§1, 15, 18,.20, 21, 24). Again, the FABC pastoral priorities enunciated over the years, particularly the focus on the family, women and the girl-child, youth, ecology, and the displaced (see FABC VI:lS) are also highlighted by ~ (§~34, 37, 41, 46, 47). FABC itself is mentioned (§§2, 3, 26, 31), though none of its fine work is directly quoted or even noted in the copious endnotes. The theme of inculturation received much attention during the synod, and certain particular areas were identified as requiring concentrated focus: "theological reflection, liturgy, the formation of priests and religious, eatechesis, and spirituality" (§21). Central to inculturating the faith is the biblical word, the message of salvation, the sacred text; Sacred Scripture is proposed as ."the basis for all missionary proclamation, catechesis, preaching, and styles of spirituality" (§22). One may inquire about criteria for authentic inculturation; ,EA notes: "The test of true inculturation is whether people become more committed to their Christian faith because they perceive it more clearly with the eyes of their own culture" (§22). The Christian virtue of compassion repeatedly surfaces in Ed (for example, §§11, 12, 14, 20, 45, 51). The apostolic exhortation is correct in expressing the church's mission.in terms of this appealing focus. Presenting Jesus as "the compassionate friend of the poor" (§20) will find a resonance and reception among Asians. In the ' church's mission of love and service, women evangelizers contribute greatly "to bringing the compassionate Jesus, the healer and reconciler, to Asian people, especially the poor and marginalized" (§45). Jesus, the God-man, was "close to the poor, the forgotten, and the lowly"; "he wept for a dead friend [and] welcomed children"; "divine compassion had never been so immediately accessible" (§11). As the church in Asia enters the new millennium, she faces some demanding challenges. EA highlights some importfint apostolates: women (§§7, 34, 45), you.th (§§6, 47.), nuclear power (§§7, 38), peace~naking and reconciliation (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). The authenticity of the church's "mission of service and love" (§50) will indeed be Review for Religious tested; will it produce "a great harvest of faith . in this vast and vital continent" (§1) of Asia? Gratitude and Optimism Ecclesia in Asia concludes as it began on a clear note of optimism and gratitude. "Blessed be God for the peoples of Asia, so rich in their diversity yet one in their yearning for peace and fullness of life" (§50). With committed faith, "the church in Asia joyfully makes her pilgrim way into the third millennium" (§50). "Mary, model of all disciples and I~right star of evangelization, . . . look tenderly upon the church of your Son planted on Asian soil. ¯ O Mary, mother of the New Creation and mother of Asia, pray for us, your children, now and always!" (§51). In this m6od of gratitude and optimism, the local churches of Asia accept the Holy Father's gift: Ecclesia in ~sia. Its contents are a mixture of the old and the new (see Mt 13:52), a summation of Asian.reflection and insights in the Vatican II era, a presentation of the missionoagenda for Asia's faith communities, a program for evangelization iri the new millennium. All in all, EA is a much-appreciated gift. Its treasures need opening in the coming years and decades; its dream for the church--God's holy people--beckons implementation; its theme--abundant life in Jesus the Savior-- requires contemplative action. Yes, Jesus' Asian disciples affirm that the Holy 'Spirit, who moved upon Asia in times past, "moves now among Asian Christians, strengthening the witness of their faith among the peoples, cultures, and religions of the continent" (§ 18). Contemplating God's salvific deeds and wonders during the Easter Vigil liturgy, the universal chh~ch proclaims in the Exsultet: "Rejoice, O Mother Church!" In similar fashion, th~ local churches in Asia' acclaim 'God's marvels in theirmidst; they joyfully affirm the Asian Synod event as a "celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). They pray that the proclarriation and subsequent internalization of Ecclesia in Asia will confirm the church in her servant mission to bring Christ's love and abundant life On 10:10) to Asia and her peoples. Rejoice, O Asia-Church! .~anua~y-February 2001 vocation PHILIP ARMSTRONG Who Is a Brother? I am not sure the title should ask who. Maybe it should ask: What is a brother? People have been trying to frame an unambiguous answer for ages, and in the meantime new applications of the word brother have compounded the issue. My interest is to define, as best I can, that rare creature in the Roman Catholic Church known as a religious brother. What does the ordinary word brother usually mean today? Looking at that may help us comprehend ,similarities and differences of the term as applied to men who, by the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, commit themselves to what is commonly called religious life. What Is a Brother? Male siblings of the same parents are called brothers. People's close friends who are male are' sometimes compared to a brother: "He's like a brother to me." Sometimes males call one another brother when they do not know the other's name but feel some affinity toward him. The Great Depression is characterized by one of its slogans, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" In some seminary programs a man is addressed as Philip Armstrong CSC, of the Brothers of Holy Cross, wrote on mission and the vows for our September 2000 issue. His address remains P.O. Box 460; Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Review for Religious Brother, or its Latin form Frater, when he has achieved a certain level of preparation for the ordained priesthood. This use of the term creates confusion over lay/clerical identity. Volunteer organizations may use the term brother in identifying a mentoring relationship between a man and a boy, as in "Big Brothers." African Americans use the term brother to identify males of their race, using the word to indicate the relationship existing by reason of their common African origin and the consequent bonds that solidify them in matters of importance: "One of the brothers sold his house and moved." Some small religious denominations, particularly the more evangelical or those built on sociocultural ties, refer to any male fellow believer as Brother. "Next Sunday Brother Anderson will pass the plate at our service." In the Bible, Jesus uses brother to signify equality among people: "If you are bringing a gift to the altar and remember that your brother has anything against you . " Peter asks, "How often must I forgive my brother?" The terms brother and sister are used generically by church-related personnel in addressing members of the congregation: "My brothers and sisters in Christ." The common thread through all these uses may help us understand, too, why some dedicated men within the Catholic Church are called brothers. There is interpersonal relationship and open trust not based on kinship. The others have the same values, have similar goals, and use the same general methods to achieve their goals. This intangible affinity among brothers (or sisters) does not rely on blood ties yet depends on that relationship to provide a name for this closeness. The substance of such a relationship is: "That man accepts me, confronts me, counsels me, helps me as if I were his own brother." The image of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. Jesus' way of relating with men and women, whether they were righteous or sinful, offers many examples of what it means to be a brother to someone. Simply put, a brother is a man who at all times acts ds a blood brother would act. The Brother in the Church How did the term brother for a vowed religious in the Roman Catholic Church originally surface? Quite likely it arose from relationships in blood families: father, mother, brother, sister. The picture.would include the fact that few were educated as we define education, with those who possessed some "book knowledge" being Janltary-Februaly 2001 Armstron~ ¯ Who Is a Brother? considered natural counselors and mediators. Those representing the people before God and using their knowledge to help them understand and practice their faith could reasonably be called Father, because providing for his family and counseling them are importan~ tasks of the father of a family. Those exercising positions of leadership in communities of vowed women could be called Mother. Those who followed the lead of these fathers or mothers, who assisted; who undertook to fulfill the tasks related to the group's ministries, were called sisters or brothers. Over the years men religious who did not feel called to priesthood, but who assisted clerics in their ministry of preaching, teaching, or sacramental service, were called brothers--like male siblings helping their father do the work of a family farm or business. Help.ers somewhat behind the scenes, they were generally less-educated men doing the more hidden or more mundane and practical tasks connected with the priests' mission of sacred mediation and of education. In time brothers became in people's minds the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water" whose silent and nearly invisible presence was invaluable, essential, though largely taken for granted by the clergy and laity alike. By rule these men remained politically sequestered within their congregations, ha~ing no voice in choosing their leaders and not eligible to become leaders themselves. They prayed much, often apart from their clerical confreres, who in cloister or corridor would pass them by like supportive, exemplary specters. After the social and cultural disruption of the French Revolution, many groups of nonordained but vowed men religious sprang up through the initiative of bishops and parish priests who were in a position to support the development: These apostolic religious were to educate the untutored youth being lost to the church. In contrast to earlier brothers, these men were at least minimally educated and were dedicated to a professional life similar to that of the ordained. For more than a century such groups were formed, and their members went wherever there was a cry for Catholic education, even beyond the borders of their native lands. These became more known to stciety" at large, if not muct~ more visible, by their focus on schools . A concurrent reality that did no favors to many groups of brothers was their unwitting and unplanned gravitation toward ~an identity more clerical than lay. Many brothers, whether as members of laycongregations or as an arm of a clerical community, dressed Review for Religious like clerics and carried out ministries supportive of clerical min-istries. These brothers, nearly indistinguishable from priests, were extended the rights and privileges that a Christian society accorded the priesthood. As a result, a mindset developed among the brothers out of which they identified themselves more with their clerical associate~ than with the laity. It was the laity, though, from a strictly ecclesial perspective, (o whom brothers in fact related more closely. True, they were indeed set apart from the laity by their vowed commitment within a particular congregation approved by Rome. But their external, visible ministries did nothing to project a specific image of brother as distinct from the clerical, patriarchal image they had lived With for so long. "The Terrible Twos" of a Century After World War II and Vatican Council II, both productive of cultural and social upheaval (in a way, the century's "terrible twos"), all vowed religious were challenged to reassess how faithfully their founding purpose and their ministries responded to the newly emerging needs of both church and society and to renew and adapt accordingly. As communities they were to open themselves to the "signs of the times" that hinted at potentially diverging directions in life and mission for vowed religious. Congregations of brothers and mixed congregations (clerics and significant numbers of brothers) found themselves affected by the momentous challenges put before them by the church. Many members departed, fewer young men joined the community, and those who remained grew older, began retiring, and soon were dying unreplaced. These realities were running parallel to the clear and urgent call issued by the Vatican Council to the laity to exert by right a more prominent and active role in the church. Education was one of the first areas affected. As the numbers of brothers declined at a pace impossible to retard, lay people began to fill their places in schools. Along with their declining numbers and increasing age, brothers were suddenly challenged on the level of their profession as teachers and administrators even while they and others were waking to the fact they are not clerics. For brothers the question of the day became: Well, then, who are we, and what is our proper role now in the church and the world? Answers have not come quickly or easily, and some would argue they have not yet come at all. [---3~3-~- January-Februa~. 2001 Armstrong * WlTo Is a Brother? Immense energy has been expended reflecting on, discussing, and determining the identity of the brother for the church today. Some of that energy may have seeped over into trying to determine the brother's role in church and society. In neither case, however, does there appear to be widespread satisfaction with the results, and many retain a confused and hazy notion of the brotherhood as a way of life in the church. It does not help that some of the least informed and articulate on the matter are found among bishops and priests. Worse yet, many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. The foundations have crumbled on which some based their sense of self-definition. What will it take to pour new and indestructible footings? A Beginning Perhaps a judicious mix of the old and the new is the best place to begin forming a relevant and appropriate definition of a brother in today's church and world. Retaining acknowledged and presumably nonnegotiable hallmarks of the brother's state of life, but blending and refining them in the crucible of postmodern experience, intuition, and prayerful discernment, one might descriptively define a brother somethii~g like this: A brother is a lay religious ¯ committed to living a common life ¯ and consecrated, by public profession of the vows of religion, ¯ to witnessing to the presence of God in his life and in the world. ¯ He reveals his identity more by example than explanation, ¯ more by doing than defining. ¯ In short, he relates and acts like a brother, ¯ to the exclusion of no one.¯ As an equal, ¯ and as supported by like-minded associates in community, ¯ he is free to respond in a variety of practical ways, ¯ living and working fraternally with others ¯ in promoting and preserving human dignity and justice ¯ through his prophetic stance ¯ and professional expertise. The nonnegotiables of this definition consist in identification more with the laity than w~th the clergy;living in community; publicly professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; standing as prophetic witnesses to gospel vaiues; and reaching out in service to others. The postmodern experiential components are: more emphasis on a bold and perceptible expression of what being a brother means from the inside; a clear sense of reaching out to others in need as "brothering" them as a blood brother would; serving others out of a conviction of universal human equality under God; openness to the Review for Religious many forms of ministry to which brothers are free to respond by reason of being unrestrained by the ecclesiastical and cultural expectations imposed on ordained ministers; and, within community parameters, rightly seeking and achieving professional expertise in fields of interest and competence. Postmodern? Experiential? Is this more verbal gimmickry, or do these concepts add something substantial to the recipe for today's brother in the church and the world? I believe that both terms are appropriate and relevant. Postmodern is a term used by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists to refer generally to the period following the lengthy modern era that began in the 1500s and ended in the 1960s with the cultural revolution we in the United States tend to associate with events such as the Vietnam war and anti-establishment protests and also with Vatican II and its aftermath. There is no question that the events and the changed moods and understandings of the final four decades of the 20th century have had an immense impact on religious life, some of it distressingly disruptive, some creatively challenging. Experiential surely applies by reason of the mandate of Vatican II's document Perfectae caritatis and the Norms addressed to religious communities asking them to adapt and update their constitutions and rules as necessary, almost literally "refounding" their congregations. Experimentation through changing or discarding certain anomalous or anachronistic disciplinary elements in religious life was to be permitted for a reasonable time, normally eight to twelve years. The religious garb fell under this category, as did the daily schedule, areas and modes of accountability, the exercise of authority, forms and styles of prayer, and so forth. This experimentation was meant to contribute to a newly framed definition of each congregation's giftedness for today's church. Brothers who persevered in the religious life during these years had to respond creatively to the challenges of the day just to remain faithful to themselves as persons, let alone as religious in community. They were challenged to become more observant of evolving needs in the church and society and to search for w. ays to place their congregation's talents and resoui'ces at the disposal of Many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? the church. And they, some for the first time, had to go about this discernment out of a conscious acknowledgment that they were definitely not clerics. Still, if the brothers were not clerics, then who were they? Somewhat as the Christian adolescent needs at some point to confront the faith infused through infant baptism, the postmodern religious brother has had to deal with whatever motivated his entering religious life years ago. It has been a true moment of conversion for him, a fresh confirmation of the validity of his choice of a way of life. Without this process a new sense of identity leading to broader availability would have been impossible for him. Most religious have found this exercise challenging and regenerating, reminding them that they had in fact committed themselves first and foremost not to a structure, not to a profession, not to any particular members within the organization, but to God. Whatever permutations were introduced into the externals over the years, the substantial reality has remained immutably in place, and that is enough. But simply defining one's identity is not enough. Unless conviction and a comfortable acceptance of what it means to be a brother are internalized, there is little hope of either acquiring or cultivating the openness necessary for finding new and challenging directions in mission and ministry, for living community, or for attracting others to embrace the same way of life. What Will It Take? Let me personalize this conversion experience even further, because for each individual brother identity is a matter of deep concern. Unless I can perceive myself as a valid, needed, and effective player of a unique role among many roles in the church, I cannot muster and sustain the conviction that will provide the energy I require both to pursue my way of life and to face the exigencies it inevitably entails. As essential as this perception is, it alone cannot support my efforts. Unless the church, both in its hierarchy and in its wider membership, can be convinced that the brothers' way of life is important for the church and the world, I by myself will be able to do little except go about my daily ministry and life in community in the vague hope that the witness I give to the world is somehow being diffused like a healthy mist settling on persons, places, and Review for Religious events near or far. I could not do this alone. I need help from within the church. Yet, if appropriate authority at even the highest levels is struggling to understand the identity and role of the brother in the church today, from what source will the definition come? Who is the "credible authority" that will provide it? The answer is simple: the brother himself. Why not? We brothers may for the most part not be trained theologians or men steeped in the history and development of the church, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline, but we have a lifetime of experience being brothers that should count for something. We have evolved together with our vocational call, responding to challenges along the way that have forced us to question our identity, or purpose, and our reason for remaining brothers. Our prayer life, presumably "alive and active over the years, has kept us in touch with the One to whose call we have responded daily, and the resulting relationship has, we would hope, matured to the point where we can be at ease with our interpretation not only of who we are as brothers, but of how each of us is personally a witness to the reign of God. why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift? We should--and until we do we will continue to mill about, lost, confused, an.d impotent, within vague definitions of prophetic witness and ministerial service in the church. Until we are perceived by others as relevant and competent and are accepted as equal players on the field of evangelization, we will constitute a "loose cannon" threat to the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and receive little support or affirmation, nor will young men be encouraged who may be considering the lay religious life as a desirable option for their own futures. Why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift ? A Corporate Effort Beyond the effort each brother must exert to clari~ for himself what it means today to be a brother and to fashion a revived sense of January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? mission based on renewed identity, there remains, I suggest, a need for a corporate endeavor among all brothers to invite, support, and help implement a new era, a "second coming," for men in the lay religious life. Even then it is not brothers alone who must feel responsible for resurrecting both awareness of and interest in the brotherhood. In the Vatican, in the hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, and in the lay membership of the church, a fresh attempt must be made to bring about a renewed understanding of the vital role brothers play in the church as an institution and as the community known as the people of God. Because the truly authentic essence of brotherhood in religious life has to be articulated by brothers, it is they who must be the primary educators, as historically they have been in their numbers since the foundation of their congregations. Ready teachers, of course, must encounter willing students or the lesson will go unlearned and unappreciated, leaving the church and the world the poorer for it. And so brothers must seek and gain the confidence of church authority through their expertise in theologizing about and articulating the experiential essence of the lay religious life. This aim can be achieved through two practical steps. First, the theological reflection, even if informally undertaken, must unfold in a deliberate and orderly manner. Second, a path must be opened, a clear and smooth thoroughfare of effective communication between brothers and the rest of the church. To accomplish .this, good public relations will be required, for brothers have such a history of invisibility and silence that any change, if it attracts attention at all, will tend to create or exacerbate confusion in people, if not suspicion. Brothers must learn how to harness modern communication technologies and get assistance from the media, because the teachers will be implementing the most important lesson plan they have ever devised. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, brothers must continue preparing for their vocational parousia through personal effort at educating themselves to the point of absolute confidence and conviction. Nothing less will succeed in reeducating the church, let alone the world, as to the gift the lay religious life for men is now and can be to the whole of humankind. Out of what definition ought brothers to operate in the Review for Religion, s meantime? I suggest, once again, that the italic passage above on page 34 constitutes a solid working definition, one that incorporates both nonnegotiable expectations of male lay religious and elements that seem essential in a postmodern world. O~r own experience as brothers has confirmed the validity of the definition. Let us at the very least seize its substance and begin the task of refining and developing it. The task is immense and will require every bit of our faith and hope--and our perseverance. Were it not for the One who is author of our faith and our hope and who inspires us to persevere, we would find ourselves in the nearly untenable position of expecting to increase understanding of and enthusiasm for a kind of religious witness and ministry that relates directly to neither the clergy nor the laity. Happily, the God who created the world itself and made life increase and multiply can create new little worlds within it that can grow in understanding and age and grace. It is that possibility in which we place our greatest hope, and it is that God to whom we look for its realization. Postseason Christmas is dismantled again, syncopated lights from shaggy tree transported to basement. It's time to mine the darkness of these shrunken days for fire-feeding coal , and to scan the night skies, each quadrant strung with twinkling lights stretching Christmas hope across the long winter coming. Patricia Schaapp ~M .~anuary-February 2001 DONALD MACDONALD Vocational Being d note about the cleaning and restoration of Sandro Botticelli's Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child gives an account of the artist, his painting, and its restoration. "[Now we can see] Botticelli's purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject. It is this perfect union of means and meaning that makes the painting so powerful."' To speak of "this perfect union of means and meaning" is superlative praise. In most human endeavor there is a gap between means and. meaning. Achievement hardly ever matches the intention. Brush strokes on canvas, notes from a cello, lines on a page, the lie of a golf ball--rarely do means and meaning synchronize to a person's satisfacfon. Environment and Faith From the perspective of art appreciation, Botticelli is said to have done justice to his subject and himself to an incomparable degree. The power of his painting confirms this, If the union of means and meaning reached such perfection from the artist's view-point, what might be said of his achievement from the perspec-tive of a viewer's faith? What if I, the viewer, adore Christ now in our Lady's company, aware that to paint Christ and the kneeling Virgin does not just capture an abstract ideal, but real people, liv-ing still, to whom I can relate? With dynamic faith I the viewer can be drawn into (not just to) the scene as an integral part of a present Donald Macdonald SMM continues writing about aspects of the reli-gious vocation. His address is Montfort House; Darnley Road; Barrhead, Glasgow; G78 1TA Scodand, U.IC Revie~ for Religious reality. By faith I am at one with the meaning in a way I could never hope to be with just the painter's means. "The purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject" invites and challenges my faith to express itself in reflective ado-ration. The painting directs me to consider what is within me from the viewpoint of faith. The gap between means and meaning is then evident, but so is the inspiration to adore from the center of my being. The beauty of the picture has aesthetic appeal and more, showing what might be if I were fully alert to the wonder of an incarnational faith. I, too, can do what Mary does now, for I am one with her in Christ through baptism. A growing symmetry between means and meaning results in an integrated life. "The beauty of wonder caught in Botticelli's Adoration of the Virgin, reflects what is really there. It may have spectacular appeal to the imagination, but it is not imaginary. Glimpsing this wonder and trying to answer its challenge may suggest consecrated reli-gious life. Do I need to give myself radically, as did Mary, before its wonder compels adoration? Before I adore I must first see and be taken out of myself. This means that I should take note of the environment and any clutter which inhibits insight. Only then can I see what means I have at hand by which I can pursue meaning expressed in adoration. It is neither negative nor defeatist to see in the environment much that is harmful to a life of disciplined faith. The concern for God and neighbor through which authentic faith finds mean-ing lags behind other priorities. Where the current media do not ridicule or dismiss faith, they may actively oppose it whenever they feel threatened by a lived and living faith. There are then no Marquis of Queensberry Rules to govern the fight, and writers, editors, and producers know it. In its many forms--radio, film, TV, internet, print--the media cross continents. Cherished, prac-tical values are often trivialized, and the absence of reticence often coarsens what should be held in great respect. Skillful contempo-rary presentations and inveterate noise may deaden an individual's capacity to respond in wonder to the worldview seen in the Gospels and in Botticelli. Many media movers and shakers "dirty the flower with muddy hands" whenever spiritual or religious values appear on their horizons. A contemporary illustration of this is in a national newspaper correspondent's account of the presentation in London of the Sony Gold Awards for radio broadcasting. "IX] won the music presen- January-February 2001 Macdonald ¯ Vocational Being tation award . By the time he had finished his acceptance speech, he had made half the Great Room of the Grosvenor House long, if not for the grave, then at least for the cool embrace of silence. It wasn't just that he swore. Many people who stepped up that night to receive their awards displayed scan( knowledge of any noun or verb longer than four letters. The effing and blinding was ferocious, the badinage it embellished was desperate . I have sel-dom sat so long and celebrated so little."2 This is not from some drinking den after hours or some adolescent playground, but from a prestigious hotel in a capital city, sponsored by an international company. These are the winners, not the losers, evidendy cocooned in their pei'sonal world, free to pursue their own agendas regard-less of others' feelings. Obviously they succeed, with prizes to prove it. Such behavior coarsens whatever it gets near. The name Jesus Christ in that company is invariably an expletive or a joke. Many feed on that diet and develop a taste for it, and so lack the nour-ishment to grow in Christ. This is a major reason for lack of reli-gious practice generally and for the small number of persons willing to commit themselves to a life of religious consecration. Also, it is something I need to consider if I am to find the means to give myself in adoration through the perspective of faith. How much of this has a claim on me? The evidence of hearing, if I am blessed with it, is that contemporary care to be "politically correct" in speech goes hand in hand with a massive rise in offensive lan-guage, not least among the educated. The coarsening of sensibil-ity by elements of the media makes it harder to find and faithfully use the means to achieve mature meaning as the gospel would have us do. Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. I am not made.of stone--how much have I succumbed to this environment? Necessary Means Living in such an environment, I need something practical that can help me maintain a Christian perspective, both encour-aging me and challenging me. IfI have that "something," I have a means for pursuing meaning, the fullness of which, for religious liv-ing, is adoration that engages my whole being. Several practical suggestions could be made, but assimilating Scripture is one that can help, both in judging society and guiding Review for Religious me through it. Scripture, after all, is the accumulated experience of people trying to relate their society to God. More particularly, it was largely the original inspiration behind monastic and reli-gious life. Monastic life began as a statement about contemporary society and the primacy of God. It has been said that God is either 6f sole concern or of no concern. After hearing Scripture speak and then seeing that many contemporary values either opposed or limited the freedom of faith, many persons became aware that they had to cut the cable between themselves and society. Writing of the origin of monastic life in the 4th century, a commentator notes that "what is utterly clear., is the pulsing life the sacred texts give to the daily existence of the early monks. ¯ They serve as a basic frame of reference . In. memorization, rumination, and medita-tion of Scripture, words penetrated the deepest recesses of the soul and created ne~v possibilities and challenges.''3 The Spirit who so energized the word that it came ablaze with meaning and inspiration for those pioneers can do as much for me now if I do some "humble loving listening to him who speaks. It is in fact by the light and with the strength of the word of God that my own vocation can be discovered and understood, loved, and followed and my own mis-sion carried out. So true is this that the person's entire existence finds its unifying and radical meaning in being the terminus of God's word.''4 This is a colossal claim for Scripture, namely, that all strands of life can be brought together, and meaning can be recognized at the depth of my being, if only I am attuned to Scripture. The claim is for ontological meaning in my being's depths. This guar-antees a fusion of means and meaning. Scripture is a superb coun-terweight to much in current society which could keep me from God. As the light of the word slowly dawns, adoration may well be my being's basic response. Perhaps never before in the history of the church has Scripture been available to so many. The means of communication undoubt-edly facilitate this, but this does not mean that, with the media present everywhere, the Christian message is too. In my wide experience of monastic and religious life, home and abroad, for thirty years, I have yet to be convinced that this is so. To what Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. .~anuary-February 2001 MacdonhM ¯ Vocational Being 442 degree can we speak of "the pulsing life of the sacred texts" influ-encing consecrated.life generally? How many understand what it is to be "a terminus of the word of God"? I have never forgotten Protestant scholar Frederick C. Grant's comment in 1966 on Dei Verbum, the Vatican Council's Constitution on Divine Revelation: "Why not tell people what joyful discoveries lie before them in the Scriptures, what feasts of learning, what inspiration and encouragement, what sound teach-ing, what help in facing the problems and frustrations of life? As the prophet shouted, 'Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price'" (Is 55:1).s How many individually or collectively "shout" or reflect such enthusi-asm from personal conviction? Here is a superb means to assimi-late meaning, but how many habitually make it their own? Grant's approach may yet be rather new to us. It may take generations before Scripture is sufficiently bedded down among us to produce such results. Scholarship, excellent at the highest level, has perhaps not found a way of enlightening us. Source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, reader-response, structural lin-guistics, and so forth make an ever lengthening list; and so people nibble among the commentators and do not get round to assimi-lating the text. In a sad comment on his university studies, a priest spoke of "the acid rain of biblical criticism" and its effect on him vis-a-vis our Lord. If I am hooked already on Scripture and well know what Grant experienced, then current biblical commentaries and journals can help me. Regrettably, though, many of these scholarly materials seem to lack the warmth that could come from a community's fervently.shared faith; they seem not to reflect the wondrous joy that our risen Lord brought to the early church. Has any English writer, for example, during the past twenty years or so, been so fascinated withSt. Paul (man and writer) as to claim failure to do him justice if Paul does not leap from his pages and invade the reader's imagination? This is Richard Holmes's purpose in a superb biography of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wants Coleridge's voice to be heard and to domi-nate the book. (His own edition of Coleridge's poetry functioned as ~a controlling influence on the biography.) Holmes serves the poet far better than any Christian writer has served--unless I missed it--St. Paul. In the seminary, not uncommonly, Paul is approached as an Review for Religqous intellectual problem, and the student is made to jump hurdles, to no very clear purpose. Scholars give the impression of seeing Paul as a maverick, like an unconventional student the disapproving examiner never knows how to place: "He is here to be examined, and clearly is not quite one of us!" This is a pity. (Bonhoeffer believed, incidentally, that the Sermon on the Mount could never be lived in a university context.) Paul is, of course, larger than any one pen can capture, but, rooted in Christ and in people and in his own evident humanity, his experi-ence is a genuine way of fusing both means and meaning in an authentically consecrated life. No one seeking inspiration in Scripture need read a line of St. Paul. The Law, the Prophets, and the rest of the Old Testament spread a lavish table. In the Synoptics, the sharp observation to be found in a saying of Christ or in a parable can open up much to me, as can pondering the weight of wonder of a phrase of Christ in John's Gospel. One needs only to experience them to feel their power, to bring means and meaning together. Whatever the form of prayer, wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Adoration There can be no one way or best way 'of being a religious. There are presumably as many ways to God as there are human beings called to him. But, as I have suggested, if we need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then we have found meaning. Taken out of myself by what I glimpse in faith, I respond in adoration as well as I can with all that is in me. Much in contemporary society obscures this glimpse, but Scripture can be a countervailing practical means to realize meaning. The church and monastic and religious life have for centuries found their deep-est reality through the Gospels. To adore, I need only to see in faith; then, following the rhythm of my breathing, I give myself to God giving himself to me. This is true, whatever the situation or however I feel. I always return to, though actually I never leave, that center. My being is engaged. The insight is increasingly more simple. Whatever the form of prayer (sacramental, liturgical, community, or individual), ~anuary-Februa~. 2001 Macdonald * Vocational Being wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Whatever is said, sung, or signed expresses this. Far from making me a maverick on the edge of a group, adoration invites me to be at one with the church in the worship of Christ. If habitual adoration underlies all I do, I can give myself faith-fully to whatever the present moment asks of me, yet not be taken over by it, since my identity does not depend on what I do or where I am. There is always, in faith, another dimension to real-ity not limited to the frame of circumstance. I function at a sim-ple level, trying t6 be at one with God's will, which, of course, is the purpose of monastic or religious life. In attempting this, I approximate the purity of line and color by which the painter real-izes his meaning. Whatever I am engaged in and whoever is with me, insofar as I adore I can recognize the gift of God and who it is speaking to me. Then, as John's Gospel promises, I can tap into a rich stream. On the other hand, pastoral plans, catechetical pro-grams, and personal apostolates are channels that may be awash by turns with limpid idealism or murky disillusion. If I invest in them, my "salvation" depends on,their success or failure; but, if I give myself to them in the light of adoration, I will receive both pru-dence and courage to persevere faithfully far from the criterion of "what's in it for me." Risen Lord I can summarize these reflections, perhaps, with a comment from M.R. Vincent's preface to his Commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. More than one hundred years ago he indicated what might be found in a letter written from prison nineteen hun-dred years earlier. His words are relevant today: "While the char-acter of the epistle is ethical . . . it gives no countenance to resolving the gospel into a mere code of morals. The moral inspi-ration which it represents has its impelling center in a person and a life, not in a code. The personal Christ is its very heart. It exhibits Christ in Paul rather than before him. Christ is not a subject of controversy; he is not simply a pattern of conduct. He is the sum of Paul's life. Th~ view of the resurrection which this letter pre-sents is a standing rebuke to the superficial conception and loose grasp which the church too often brings to that truth. The resur-rection of the.Lord is to Paul a present informing energy and not only a recovery anda hope. He would know the power of the res- Review for Religious urrection now and here as well as hereafter. He not only lives according to Christ's life; he lives it I.n. Christ he is in the sphere of infinite possibilities.''6 Here surely is the fusion of means and meaning. As Paul keeps growing, by Christ's life, into Christ, he breaks out of prison in a letter of encouragement, alive with the light of his risen Lord. Not death itself, the ultimate in defeat and separation, can come between him and his risen Lord, who is for him "a present inform-ing energy and not only a recovery and a hope." The stance of adoration is not that of the self-made individual over against the universe, with a supporting cast of witless nobodies lost on the plains below. Life has "its impelling center in a person and a life" and therefore takes meaning from our once crucified and now risen Lord. In Christ I am lost in the wonder of it all, a new creation in view of whom I see and what I am given moment by moment from before time began. Literally, it beggars description. The silence of adoration, as it deepens, is eloquent though inadequate response. Held by the prese~nce of my risen Lord in every situation not excluding death, I too believe that in Christ I am in the sphere of infinite possibilities. He it is who gives meaning to life. Insofar as I allow him to make me his, I live to some purpose and try to express this in what I do. Assimilating Scripture is a superb means toward such maturity. Speechless adoration from the core of my being may become habitual, in view of the wondrousness of the One I am graced to see. I have not the means to ~:eplicate Botticelli's Adoring Virgin and Child on canvas, but from the per-spective of faith I am awash in that same wonder. Notes ~ National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2000. 2 Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph, London, 9 May 2000. 3 Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 298-299. 4 John Paul II, Pastores dabo ~obis (On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day), 25 March 1992, §47. s Walter M. Abbott SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican H (Chapman, 1966), pp. 130-131. 6 M.R. Vincent, Critical and Exegetical CommentaTy on the Ep#tles to the Pbilippians and to Philemon (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1897). January-February 2001 MARY ANNE FOLEY Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and ¯the Ignatian Tradition spiritual legacy In the 16th century the Society of Jesus represented an innovation in consecrated life for men, differing in struc-ture and aim from both monastic and mendicant forms and supported by Ignatius's approach to contemplation and action. Ignatian spirituality appealed also to women seeking a life of service outside the cloister, and Jesuit influence is apparent in the formation of women's com-munities as varied as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Sisters of St. Joseph in the 17th century and the Religious of the Sacred Heart in the 19th. By contrast, when Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620- 1700) was founding the Congregation de Notre-Dame de Montreal in the latter part of the 17th century, her closest collaborators were not Jesuits; they were Sulpicians, other diocesan priests, and women like Madame de Miramion who were forming similar com'- munities. As a result the congregation is usually seen as a product of the so-called French school of spirituality? Mary Anne Foley CND, who discussed women's commu-nities in our July-August 2000 issue, wrote this article.for the 300th anniversary of the death of Marguerite Bourgeoys. After translation by E Richer, it first appeared as "Spiritualitfi pour la mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys et la tradition ignatienne" in Cahiers de spiritualit~ ignatienne (April-June 2000, pp. 79-91). Her address is University of Scranton; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. Review for Religious The congregation's spirituality, however, as seen in the writings of its foundress, reveals considerable affinity with Ignatian spiri-tuality. We shall ~xplore those parallels, but first a word about the congregation's origins is in order. From Marguerite Bourgeoys's perspective, the congregation began in her own experience of transformation at the age of twenty, occasioned by her gazing at a statue of Mary. As a result of this "conversion," as she calls it, she joined a group of laywomen asso-ciated with the cloistered Congregation de Notre-Dame in her native Troyes and chose Antoine Jendret, the local pastor, as her spiritual advisor. From Jendret she learned to see the "vie voyagkre" (missionary life) of the Blessed Virgin as a model for uncloistered religious life for women. At the same time, the congregation sis-ters trained her to teach children who could not attend their monastery school and shared with her their enthusiasm for estab-lishing a monastery in New France. Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, brother of the congregation's superior and governor of the new settlement ofVille-Marie (Montreal), recognized the impossibility of establishing a monastery there at that time. Instead, he requested a single lays. oman to serve as teacher, and Marguerite agreed to go in that capacity. When she arrived in 1653, Ville-Marie was a small settlement, precarious both geographically and financially. It had been estab-lished eleven years earlier by an association of pious men and women in France who hoped to incorporate French and native people into a Christian society, thus creating a spirited church in the New World. Among the associates was Jean-Jacques Olier, founder and first superior of the Sulpicians. Unable to go him-self, he sent four members of his society to Ville-Marie in 1657 to establish its first parish. As "filles de paroisse" (women of the parish) Marguerite and the women who would soon join her were thus greatly influenced by the Sulpicians of Ville-Marie. Moreover, from Paris the third superior of the Society, Louis Tronson, was actively involved in decisions concerning the congregation and proved one of their staunchest advocates) In 1659 four recruits came from France to share Marguerite's simple, mobile way of life and her educational commitment in imi-tation of Mary's vie voyag~re. Over the course of the century, more than fifty women--native, French, and native-born French--joined this new Congregation de Notre-Dame, extending its reach from Ville-Marie to Quebec and beyond. Marguerite served as supe- January-Febr~ary 2001 rior until 1693, providing spiritual as well as practical leadership. Among her relatively few extant writings are several prayers and numerous reflections on the nature of the congregation, most of which appear to be conference notes of varying lengths. Brief and fragmentary though these texts are, they provide interesting glimpses of the spirituality that informed the congregation she founded.3 Gathering Up the Drops of Christ's Blood A brief, isolated passage in Marguerite Bourgeoys's writings presents a forceful description of the source, characteristics, and aim of the sisters' missionary activity: Consider, dear, that when you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost. How happy a sister who is sent on mission will be if she considers that she goes there at God's command and in his company, if she considers that in this work she can and ought to show her gratitude to him from whom she has received all things. Oh, she will find nothing difficult or burdensome at all! She will, on the contrary, wish to be in want of every-thing, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in disgrace. (W'W!B, 78) This passage may well represent the words with which Marguerite Bourgeoys invited the sisters to go forth from the central house in Ville-Marie to missions all over New France. Her description of the congregation's aim as "gathering up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost" is strongly reminiscent of a phrase employed by Paul Le Jeune sJ, superior of the Jesuit mission in Canada. In a letter written to his superior in France in 1633 and later published and widely disseminated, he attempted to persuade wealthy women in France to support the creation of a school for native women in New France: If they applied part [of their income] to gather the drops of blood of the Son of God shed for so many souls that are lost every day for la~k of help, they would not blush with shame on the day they appear before God to render an account of the goods for which he has made them responsible.4 Two years later he renewed the request, exclaiming, "What glory in the sight of the angels, to have gathered the blood of the Son of God to apply it to these poor unbelievers! "s Review for Religious What is particularly striking is that for Le Jeune the "gather-ing" was to be accomplished by women who worked for the edu-cation of other women. Initially he suggested that the school be run by "some good courageous widow assisted by two brave young women."6 By 1635, however, numerous women in French monas-teries, "overcoming the fear natural to their sex," had offered to come to educate native women and girls. This led Le Jeune to alter his original plan and to ask that a French benefactor endow a monastery whose members would carry out the work of educa-tion: "Will not some brave lady be found to give these Amazons of the great God a passport, endow-ing them with a house in which to praise and serve His Divine Majesty in this other world?"7 Madame de la Peltrie responded to that request, and the Ursuline monastery was soon founded in Quebec as a result. Marguerite Bourgeoys's writ-ings never indicate that she read Paul Le Jeune's letters, but, given the sisters' interest in the Canadian missions, she very likely did so during her association with the Congregation de Notre-Dame in Troyes. Thus, his use of the image of gathering Christ's blood probably influenced her directly. Furthermore, although there were no Jesuits in Ville-Marie from 1657 until the end of the century, she may also have been influenced indirecdy by their approach to missionary activity through her continued con-tact with Jesuits in Quebec. Although Marguerite Bourgeoys may consciously or uncon-sciously have adopted Le Jeun~'s metaphor for mission, she mod-ified it in several ways. In the first place, she used the word ramasser, instead of recueillir, with respect to what was to be done with the drops of blood. There is a difference of nuance here. The former term suggests picking up scattered bits and pieces, and the latter suggests taking in a unified quantity (such as a harvest),s This difference in vocabulary may not be particularly significant in itself,9 but another passage from the Writings makes it clear that for her the mission of education did indeed involve gathering up the individual drops of Christ's blood: "When you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost." January-Febr~ary 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali.ty_for Mission It is work suited to draw down the graces of God if it is done with purity of intention, without distinction between the poor and the rich, between relatives and friends and strangers, between the pretty and the plain, the easy-going and the grumblers, looking upon them all as drops of our Lord's blood. (W'MB, 201) Where Le Jeune had used the imagery of gathering the blood to describe specifically the education of the native women and chil-dren, here it seems to refer to all the individuals taught by the sis-ters. (By the time these lines were written, in the 1590s, they were probably teaching few native children.) If all these individuals are the drops of Christ's blood, they must be treated as sacred objects. Teaching, then, becomes a holy activity, since it brings the sisters in close contact with those sacred objects. Second, Marguerite underlined the urgency of the sisters' mis-sion by the way she extended the metaphor of the drops of blood. Le Jeune remarks that the souls of "these poor unbelievers" for whom Christ's blood has been shed are being lost; Marguerite Bourgeoys suggests that the drops of Christ's blood themselves are being lost. So important is this to her understanding that we may interpret her as going beyond mere metaphor in her reference to the drops of blood. Since the writing of the first Letter to the Corinthians, Christian theologians have often spoken of the bap-tized as constituting the body of Christ in a real, though mystical sense. For Marguerite Bourgeoys, those who needed to learn of Christ's teachings were his blood in that same mystical sense,l° Rather than allow even one drop of that blood to be wasted, a sis-ter would travel anyw.here she was sent and endure whatever was necessary for the mission. Indeed, the act of teaching was both sacred and urgent. A prayer for the congregation written on 4July 1693, at the end of her extended service as the community superior, reveals the con-nection she saw between the sisters' mission and the passion of Christ. Declaring that her trust was not in her own powers, she tells God: "I base my trust on the merits of the precious blood given for my ransom, and with your grace I would rather give up life itself than fail to uphold the truth of your words" (W-M!~, 163). Her willingness to lose her life in order to make Christ's teachings known recalls the desire "to endure all sorts of suffering and even to die in disgrace," which she claimed was characteristic of the sis-ter who traveled on mission in God's company. Her belief that the Review for Religious missionary congregation sisters would desire to suffer in the course of their mission echoes a passage from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola describing "the most perfect kind of humility" pos-sible for one who has decided to follow Christ: Whenever the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty would be equally served, in order to imitate and be in real-ity more like Christ our Lord, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches; insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors; I desire to be accounted as worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world. So Christ was treated before me.~ As was true for Ignatius, Marguerite Bourgeoys believed the source of missionary activity for the congregation sister to be a call from the God "from whom she has received all things." Her missionary work is thus a grateful response to God's initiative: "She goes there at God's command." If the sister's mission comes from a divine invitation, then her going will be "in his company." The implication is that going on mission is a way for her to be present to God, a way of participating in God's activity, and hence a way of becoming holy. This is why she should be able to view any deprivation that she suffers in the course of her mission as a pos-itive advantage. "To be in want of everything, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in dis-grace" is to enter more profoundly into the way of Christ, whose mission was characterized by the shedding of his blood. Imitating Mary's Vie Voyag~re While the desire to gather up the drops of Christ's blood pro-vided motivation for the sisters' mission of education, Marguerite turned elsewhere for a way to depict their way of exercising that mission: the life Mary led on earth. The 17th century was remarkable for widespread and intense devotion to Mary, notably among the members of what has been called the French school of spirituality. In order to emphasize the greatness of God's working in her, they tended to focus on Mary's humility, dwelling on both the poverty of her origins and her hum-ble willingness to serve as the future mother of God. Furthermore, their insistence on the paradoxical juxtaposition of the "grandeurs" of Jesus in the midst of his humiliations led Cardinal de B~rulle and January-February 2001 Foley ¯ SpiritnalityforMission For Marguerite Bourgeoys the primary form of devotion to Mary was to honor her vie voyag re, her missionary life. his followers to reflect at length on the life of Jesus in Mary's womb. This is apparent in Olier's prayer "O Jesu vivens in Maria" and in their reflections on the Word's action in Mary's visitafon to Elizabeth. The visitation became central to Marguerite Bourgeoys's spirituality, as shall be seen; she shared as well the French school's emphasis on Mary's "littleness" which enabled her to become the instrument of God's power. While her version of the life of Mary reflects many of the the-ological concerns of her day, some of her contemporaries might have been puzzled by its omissions and even more by its focus. She refers very briefly to what most consider the two central moments in Mary's life, Jesus' nativity and his cru-cifixion. She merely notes that the circumstances of Christ's birth reveal Mary's love of poverty and the poor and that her presence at Calvary reveals her faithfulness, her accep-tance of God's plan of redempfon. In writings no longer available to us, she may have said more, but, given the detail she provides about other events in Mary's life, Marguerite's lack of attention to the nativity and crucifixion is at least suggestive. In contrast to B4rulle, for example, the brevity of her comments and the absence of sentimentality are quite striking. Even more striking is her focus on Mary's activity, rather than her passivity. Certainly she portrays Mary as the recipient of divine favor: God chose her, preserved her from sin, and made her Mother Of God and then Queen of heaven. But Marguerite pays far more attention to what Mary did. She shows her teaching and serving the other girls in the temple and making a vow of virginity. At the time of the annunciation, we see Mary imploring, preparing her-self, consenting, and offering herself to God. After that event she visits Elizabeth, gives birth to Jesus, receives shepherds and kings, and loses and. finds her child. Having witnessed Christ's teachings and keeping them in her heart, she teaches and encourages people during his public life, and afterwards she forms and reforms the members of the Christian community, even after her death, up to the present time. Review for Religious This focus on Mary's activity is in keeping with the advice Marguerite Bourgeoys gave her sisters: "To imitate our dear Foundress, we ought to go through her life and stop at what our Lord inspires us to do" (WMB, 52). In this emphasis she differed somewhat from the French school, for whom devotion took the form of reflecting on the eternal--and internal--"states" of Christ's and Mary's lives in order to enter those states oneself. Thus, even though he considered Mary a model of priestly and apostolic activ-ity, Jean-Jacques Olier still advocated above all a devotion to the "interior life" of Mary. The French school has in this respect been contrasted with Ignatius Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises involve meditating on the words and particularly the actions of God, Christ, and the saints in order to imitate them.~2 While Marguerite Bourgeoys's random reflections are far different from the highly structured meditations of the Exercises, her focus on Mary's activity is more Ignatian than Berullian. Her approach to the life of Mary, however, was not that of many early-17th-century Jesuit writers, who cul-tivated a highly imaginative form of popular devotion that focused on the details of Mary's life. They were accused, not always unfairly, of promoting an exaggerated devotion to Mary that at times superseded the need for fidelity to the commandments.'3 For Marguerite Bourgeoys and for the congregation sisters, the primary form of devotion to Mary was honoring her vie voyag~re, her missionary life: M. Jendret told me one day that our Lord had left three call-ings for women to follow him and serve the church: that of St. [Mary] Magdalen was taken up by the Carmelites and other recluses and that of Saint Martha, by cloistered reli-gious who serve their neighbor; but the calling to the jour-neying life of the Virgin Mary, which needed to be honored, had not yet been taken up." (WMB, 142) Elsewhere she explains that because Mary was a teacher she incorporated the lives of both Martha and Mary Magdalen into her own: "The blessed Virgin, who was a teacher, included every-thing in her own person to an eminent degree" (WMB, 77). This depiction of Mary's "mixed" active and contemplative life was not original to Jendret,14 but he may have been the first to apply that analogy to women's communities. Nor was it common to speak of her vie voyag?re. Ordinarily the phrase refers to Christians who are still living on earth, as opposed to those who ffanuary-Februa~y 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali~forMission have passed on to glory or purification--and sometimes to the public life of Jesus.~s For many 17th-century spiritual writers, this earthly, transitory, active aspect of Christ's or Mary's life was less inspiring and worthy of attention than their enduring states. By their attention to Mary's vie voyag~re, then, Antoine Jendret and Marguerite Bourgeoys presented an alternative approach to one of the central symbols of holiness in the Christian tradition. That approach had very concrete implications for the little congregation in Ville-Marie. In order to fulfill their educative mis-sion throughout New France, the sisters had to remain free to move wherever there was need. However, because holiness was most often identified with separation from "the world," and because of women's supposed fragility, ecclesiastical legislation during much of Christian history sought to protect consecrated women by insisting that they remain behind cloister walls. Indeed, the two first bishops of New France attempted to impose cloister on the congregation by urging their union with the Ursulines of Quebec. Marguerite Bourgeoys's response was to point to Mary: "The Blessed Virgin was never cloistered. She did indeed retire into an interior solitude, but she never excused herself from any journey on which there was some good to be done or some work of charity to be performed. We wish to follow her in some way" (WMB, 50). Without calling into question the value of life within a clois-ter, this .passage suggests that for Mary, and for those who wish to live her missionary way of life, love of neighbor can constitute a higher value. Clearly Marguerite shared the traditional view that this sort of uncloistered vie voyagkre could be dangerous, but she believed that those who imitated Mary's way of life would be pro-tected by an "interior solitude" and by their union with God in prayer. Dangerous or not, if Mary's work of building up the church by educating its women was to continue, then it was not only pos-sible but necessary for some women to follow her way of life. The Visitation Traditionally the sisters of the congregation renew their vows on the Feast of the Visitation. This suggests that for them Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-52) is paradigmatic of their desire to become holy by going forth as missionaries. During the 17th century, however, the visitation was not nec-essarily associated with women who remained free to move out in Review for Religious order to serve their neighbor. In a reflection first published in 1679, the Capuchin Louis-Francois d'Argentan interpreted Mary's going up into the hill country as a reference to her ascent to God through contemplation and her willingness to share in God's redemptive plan. In this presentation, Mary is essentially passive in the encounter with Elizabeth, simply allowing the Word within her to speak in her.voice. D'Argentan suggests that during the visit Mary manifests humility by helping with household tasks, ardent charity (which he does not discuss further), and the way to engage in holy conversation with the neighbor. For him the ulti-mate fruit of reflection on the visitation is making "powerful resolutions to love seclusion, silence, and solitude, scorning all the rest so as to be attentive only to what is necessary, that is to say, to God alone and to the great matter of our eternity.''6 Such an interpretation of the visitation was not foreign to Marguerite Bourgeoys's thought. She too was convinced that Mary loved and was a model of soli-tude- but also was a model of conversation with others--and that the most important aspect of her encounter with Elizabeth was God's action in sanctifying the unborn John the Baptist. Nonetheless, here as always, Marguerite Bourgeoys's attention remained focused on Mary's activity and its effects. Moreover, her interpretation of that activ-ity contrasts with that of d'Argentan and even Francis de Sales, cofou

Issue 60.5 of the Review for Religious, 2001. ; A Discerning Way Personal Wi~tne,ss Consecrated Life Religious Vows SEPTEMBER' OCTOBER 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 5 Review for Religious helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call-to ,holiness , by making available to them 'the spiritual legacies that flow from the charism~ of catholic consecratea life~ Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ° Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ° V~reb site: "~wcw.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2001 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. 0 religious LIVING OUR CATHOUC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp James and Joan Felling Adrian Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Henseli OSB Bishop CaHos A. Sevilla SJ Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 5 contents 454 466 474 a discerning way Exercising Power and Discerning Spirits Janet K. Ruffing RSM alerts us to the ways we are called to be attentive to both subtle and profound movements of the Spirit of God in our midst and attentive to our need for ongoing conversion in our use of power personally and communally. Personal and Social: Shared Experience Can Renew Us Dennis J. Billy CSSR examines the interplay between the individual and the community which releases creative energies to help the community remain faithful to its tradition while adapting to the challenges and needs of the present. Examining My Conscience: Do I Have an Attitude? Brendan Kneale FSC proposes a refinement of our examination of conscience that deals with acquired attitudes or mindsets or preconceptions over which we have some supervision. personal witness 479 Mother Teresa's Charism 494 J. Neuner SJ, using some of Mother Teresa's writings, sketches the charism of the Missionaries of Charity, the loving appropriation of the crucified Jesus' "I thirst." Mother Teresa: Joy in the Night Albert Huart SJ shows--from letters which are part of the beatification process for Mother Teresa--that spiritual darkness was a constant companion of this joy-giving woman of our day. Review for Religious 503 507 Multicultural at Our Very Heart: The Little Sisters of Jesus Cathy Wright LSJ shares some of the story of the Little Sisters of Jesus, founded by Magdeleine Hutin, as an example of multicultural religious living. Millennial Stirrings in Religious A. Paul Dominic SJ reads the signs of the times to picture the healthy stirrings of growth in religious life. 52O 536 re~Ogious vows Poverty as Charity: The Search for a Lifestyle Norm Garth Hallett SJ presents a resolution to the confused practice of religious poverty by a more definite norm, one more surely grounded in the New Testament. Untying the Nots: Vowed Commitment Today Philip Armstrong CSC traces his own transition in understanding the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity with the three key identifying words of onptiness, openness, and ftTziq%lness. departments 452 Prisms 543 Canonical Counsel: Exclusion from Profession at the Expiration of Temporary Profession 548 Book Reviews September-October 2001 prisms Hospitality has become a popular theme recently in the commentaries of scrip-ture scholars and in the books of current spiritual writers. Perhaps the popularity is a reactive response to the individualism prevalent in contemporary cul-ture, to the isolating security measures in the face of crime, and to the anonymity of suburbia or apart-ment living. But stressing hospitality is not a con-temporary creation. Hospitality as a theme runs through both Old and New Testament writings. Hospitality describes succinctly the double com-mandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Hospitality has two aspects: being at home one-self and making another feel at home. There is an old saying: Home is were the heart is. Home may be connected with certain physical surroundings, but location is not the focus of being "at home." Any place can become home for us when our heart finds its rest there. When we make others feel at home, we have welcomed them in such a way that, by being with us, they find rest at their heart's center. Welcoming the other, welcoming the stranger, may often seem to put the focus only on the object of hos-pitality. But welcoming involves relationship. It takes two--the one being hospitable and the one receiv-ing hospitality--and it is for both to experience that "home" is being shared because the hearts of both parties are involved. Review.for Religious The incident of Jesus' enjoying the hospitality of Mart_ha and Mary in Luke's Gospel (10:38-42) has traditionally led to an interpretation of personality types labeled as Marthas or Marys or to an interpretation of the alternative religious ori-entations of active and contemplative life. Perhaps greater insight into our Christian and Catholic living will be gained if we view both Martha and Mary under the lens of hospitality. Martha is certainly esteemed by biblical tradition for being busy about the efforts of making another feel at home. Mary, for her part, is praised by Jesus in the provocative expression of "choosing the better part" for making him feel so much at home. Together Martha and Mary represent the essentials of hospitality. Mary, listening to Jesus and sitting at his feet, symbolizes the stance of every disciple. She finds her home in God, and her heart is at rest. She has the more essential quality (the "better part"), because she is at home in the deepest part of herself with God. Knowing her true home, she is empowered to offer hospitality to others. Martha represents the other essential quality of hospitality--the work of seeking out and actively inviting others to find a home. Hospitality is the prac-tice which images our living the one commandment of love of God and neighbor. The exercise of hospitality in our personal interaction with friends and strangers, in our religious community, and in our parish life provides us today in our times and cultures with the sign similar to the one distinguishing the first Christians: "See how they love one another." In the midst of the contentious-ness that we often find in our dealings with people who differ with us or who are different from us, we are called to live a hospitality that remains true to our biblical tradition and to the best that is in human hearts. Hospitality becomes the expression on the faces of people seeing Christ in one another. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 2001 JANET K. RUFFING .Exercising Power and Discerning Spirits a discerning way A critical relationship to our exercise of power is a spiritual task for all Christians. This is true, then, for all the sisters who participate in congregational assem-blies or chapters, and not just for those elected to lead-ership. There are many sources of power: wealth, education, ethnic origin, family status, professional role, elective and appointive offices, reputation, organiza-tional skill, control of information, and personal gifts. In a number of situations, we fail to take into consider-ation the presence of these various powers among us. As Christians we are responsible for our exercise of power on behalf of the human community and of indi-vidual persons within our spheres of power. We are called to live our lives in the service of the kingdom of God and the values of the gospel regardless of our par-ticular settings and regardless of how others may exer-cise power around us. Choices about our exercise of power may be difficult if we have not had helpful role models. Nevertheless, it is through the critical exercise of power that we inhabit more fully our humanity, empower others, respond to the power of Jesus' spirit Janet K. Ruffing RSM, professor of spirituality in Fordham's Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, last wrote for us in July-August 1997. Her address remains GSRRE, Fordham University; 441 East Fordham Road; Bronx, New York 10458. Review for Religious within the community, and effect change in the world. Our response to God's Spirit in us is such an exercise of power. The New Testament speaks about a kind of power that is based neither on domination nor position. It is the power that comes from on high over Mary: the Holy Spirit, who effects her con-ception of Jesus and who comes upon the community gathered in his name after the resurrection. Jesus' ministry is characterized by a release of God's power as he expels demons and heals those who believe. The woman with the issue of blood touches Jesus, and power goes out from him. In Luke, all try to touch Jesus in order to be healed because power emanates from him. When Jesus sends out his disci-ples to preach, he confers power on them, not to rule but to heal and to cast out demons. Jesus brings into our midst freedom from all that binds us. He heals and forgives sin, and through the Spirit he shares this power for good with us. We share in this healing and reconciling power. The Spirit is poured forth on the entire gathered community after the resurrection, and our gathered communities continue to share in that outpouring. We, as apostolic women, are empowered by that same Spirit. We are called to develop ways of making decisions, organizing our lives, and harmonizing our gifts so that this holy power is released in each of us and in the group as a whole for mission. The disci-ples had trouble understanding this, too, for they kept mixing up these two kinds of power--wanting to rule and lord it over others rather than releasing the God life to its own ends. Religious communities are meant to be places where this power of God's Spirit is manifest in concrete and particular ways. It is part of our witness to the world. Many of us have worked long and hard to change the way we relate to one another through our shared exercise of power so that the life of God filling us with desire might be released in God's people. In She Who Is, Elizabeth Johnson describes what the experience of the Spirit is like at the level of institutions: Religious communities are meant to be places where this power of God's Spirit is manifest in concrete and particular ways. September-October 2001 Ruffing ¯ Exercising Power and Discernin~ Spirits On the le,bel of the macro systems that structure human beings as groups, profoundly affecting consciousness and patterns of relationship, experience of the Spirit is also medi-ated. Whenever a human community resists its own destruc-tion or works for its own renewal; when structural change serves the liberation of oppressed peoples; when law sub-verts sexism, racism, poverty, and militarism; when swords are beaten into ploughshares or bombs into food for the starving; when the sores of old injustices are healed; when enemies are reconciled once violence and domination have ceased; whenever the lies and the raping and the killing stop; wherever diversity is sustained in koinonia; wherever justice and peace and freedom gain a transformative foothold-- there the living presence of powerful, blessing mystery amid the brokenness of the world is mediated. And it is known not in the open, so to speak, but as the ground of the praxis of freedom that survives and sometimes even prevails against massive violence; as the ground, in Peter Hodgson's telling words, of those partial, fragmentary, disconnected, transient, tiny, yet transforming rebirths that enable history to go on at all in the midst of vast discontinuities and meaninglessness. So universal in scope is the compassionate, liberating power of Spirit, so broad the outreach of what Scripture calls the finger of God and early Christian theologians call the hand of God, that there is virtually no nook or cranny of reality potentially untouched. The Spirit's presence through the praxis of freedom is mediated amid profound ambigu-ity, often apprehended more in darkness than in light. It is thwarted and violated by human antagonism and systems of collective evil. Still, "Everywhere that life breaks forth and comes into being, everywhere that new life as it were seethes and bubbles, and even, in the form of hope, everywhere that life is violently devastated, throttled, gagged, and slain-- wherever true life exists, there the Spirit of God is at work." This is not to say that every person who reflects on the world would arrive at this same conclusion. But, within the Jewish and Christian faith, the Spirit's saving presence in the con-flietual world is recognized to be everywhere, somehow, always drawing near and passing by, shaping fresh starts of vitality and freedom.' We are often privileged to witness the vitality of freedom in these fresh starts and often fragmentary rebirths around us. Yet, I believe, all of us still have much to learn about our exercise of power. This task requires us to be attentive to both subtle and profound movements of the Spirit of God in our midst and atten-tive to our need for ongoing conversion in our use of power per- Review for Religious sonally and communally. Where God's Spirit is authentically at work, individuals experience an increase in energy, creativity, and humanization. Challenge and Conflict Because we live in times of unprecedented cultural change, leadership in women's communities i~ increasingly charged with tasks of"nonroutine" or adaptive work, to use the vocabulary of Ron Heifetz. Leadership in such times is charged not only with routine administration, but also with guiding a community through adaptive challenges. We have commonly used the vocabu-lary of transformational leadership for this function. Adaptive or transformational change requires changes in values, beliefs, and behaviors. It requires much more of both leaders and members than simple modification; it will not occur unless leaders identify con-flict and work with it rather than avoid it. Groups themselves rarely, if ever, correctly identify the deep-level challenges to which they need to respond. The work is simply too hard, and the ordinary members are frequently lacking the "big picture" or the specific informa-tion that would impel them ko initiate change. Members are usually so thoroughly immersed in their own ministries that these eclipse the bigger picture even if they have access to it. Leaders often work with this bigger picture every day. This is one reason why leaders have a responsibility to share infor-mation and to articulate their perceptions to the group engaged in deep change. For communities to flourish at the present time, they need skillful administrators who effectively direct the tech-nical or routine details of the group's life and mission, and they need leaders who can distinguish among these tasks while attend-ing to the transformational change process and orchestrating it. Change at this level can result only from a collective and con-templative process. Religious communities are now at risk of stow extinction if their leaders think their only task is to implement the consensual decisions of the group. Septentber-October 2001 Ruffing ¯ Exercising Power and Discerning Spirits Religious communities are now at risk of slow extinction if their leaders think their only task is to implement the consen-sual decisions of the group. Although this function is necessary, the process is slow 'and cannot keep up with the pace of change. Leaders need to anticipate and help the group keep moving toward the next change. Yes, women leaders do tend to use their collaborative skills to achieve consensus instead of imposing their solutions on the group, but a group can come to consensus on only so many issues, values, decisions. The energy and skill used in developing consensus, if not focused on really important choices, may drain energy from hard adaptive work that remains to be done. In religious life today, leaders often need to initiate change by correctly identifying unavoidable challenges and helping the group see that some of these challenges must be resolved by a deep level of change, and not merely by technical solutions or skill. For this task, leaders need all of their motiva-tional skills to keep the group engaged in the process, and they need to create a safe enough space for fearful and distressed members to do what they would just as soon avoid doing. Tranformational change is the occasion for a considerable amount of distress. Leaders need to anticipate this distress, which often manifests itself as resistance, and endeavor to alle-viate enough of it so the group can do the work required. From leaders this requires all of the qualities the FORUS study in the early 1990s identified in authentically spiritual leaders. Leaders must demonstrate, on the bne hand, a radical and genuine trust in God and in the future into which God invites us and, on the other hand, must not minimize the distress in the group. Leaders need to hbsorb a great deal of the distress and not pass it on, but also to get the group to confront the change. This graced abil-ity to remain unflappable under pressure is difficult. Leaders need to have acquired considerable spiritual, psychological, and emotional resources to do this without damage to themselves. Leaders need not convince members to resolve challenges exactly as they would prefer. What they must do is continue giving the task of finding creative solutions back to the group-- or to one or more committees if that seems more practical. Effective responses can and do emerge out of careful handling of conflicting points of view. Frequently the resolution is not going to be what the leaders envisioned. This is why nominees, when asked what they would do in a particular situation, can Review for Religious rarely answer convincingly. They simply do not know what the emerging issues are or will be. Only as new issues arise can lead-ership identify them and focus attention on them. To ignore these late-rising issues would be to ignore the rest of the work to be done. Leadership serves the group by continually trying to think ahead of it and be ready to help the group respond to emerging issues. For the prophetic or dissenting voices to have any impact in the group at all, leaders will need to make room for both the novel and the differing until they get enough hearing to enable the group to shift. Whenever the novel emerges, the group needs time to welcome the possibilities it offers and to negotiate the many subtle interior shifts that such a change might require. It is difficult for people to receive the novel if its herald is not one of the more acceptable and respected members of the group. Yet the proposed newness may be exacdy what is needed. This deeper level of change can never happen in a group unless the positional leaders, the women elected to leadership and bearing the right to exercise authority in the name of the group, use that power skill-fully until the tensions can be resolved.2 Some of the studies on women in leadership show that women leaders tend to rely more on their personal power than on their official authority. If those of you who are leaders in a specific situation are wondering if you have authority or not, it may be because you are not making enough use of it as you invite, cajole, encourage, inspire, and entice the group to do what it needs to do. Some of you may avoid using your posi-tional authority in order not to evoke old transferences to authority. Women leaders and their communities need to see authority as a resource to be used for the sake of the group. Most members want to be challenged to be their best selves, even though everyone is aware that conversion and growth cannot be coerced. In facing the particular challenges of transformational change, we as women let our historical wounds regarding authority heal. We develop the skills of being leaders and mem-bers in partnership, in mutuality. We focus our energies in harmony with the divine energies for the sake of mission. I want now to reflect more at length on the exercise of power in a discernment mode--in the context of choosing leaders and gath-ering together in assembly or chapter. Septentber-October 2001 Ru~n~ ¯ Exerdsin~ Power and Discernin~ S~irits Discernment of Spirits My reflections draw on some themes from Catherine of Siena's teaching on discernment of spirits and also on the skills and wisdom of the Quaker tradition of communal discernment. Although Catherine of Siena does reflect incidentally on various interior movements in the course of her Dialogue, she emphasizes discernment. For her, discernment has more to do with right relationships and living in harmony with God, whom she often calls Truth. Because discernment is rooted in supreme Truth, "it rightly sets conditions and priorities of love where other people .are concerned. The light of discernment, which is born of charity, gives order to your love for your neighbors . The pri-orities set by holy discernment direct all the soul's powers to serving Me courageously and conscientiously.''3 Discernment is born of charity. This implies that an open, unselfish, loving heart fosters discernment by the ordering activity of love. Discernment is a virtue that puts everything in perspective and shows us what we owe to each person and situation. Catherine insists it grows and develops as we do in the life of God; it enlarges our capacity for love expressed in ministry. As we grow in our love for God, so do we grow in our discernment. Catherine has three stages to the spiritual life, to growth in charity, and to discernment which she calls the first, second, and third lights. Discernment is the light which" dissolves all darkness, dissi-pates ignorance, and seasons every virtue and virtuous deed. It has a prudence that cannot be deceived, a strength that is invincible, a constancy right up to the end, reaching as it does from heaven to earth, that is, from the knowledge of Me to the knowledge of oneself, from love of Me to love of one's neighbors. By this glorious light the soul sees and rightly despite her own weakness.4 There are, I believe, several implications that we might draw from this teaching. As a community gathers for decision making in a discernment mode, no two people in the group are able to participate in" exactly the same way. As we assemble, we are all in different places. The more each of us knows and loves God, the more we understand ourselves. The more we know and love our neighbors, the more we love God. Catherine recognizes that dis-cernment as a virtue grows and develops over the course of our graced history and in proportion to the intensity of our love for God and for others. This growth reveals to us our particular weak- Review for Religious nesses, blind spots, cowardice, and resistances and our reactions under stress--all of which, sowing confusion and doubt, may keep us from making costly decisions. This self-knowledge is extremely important. If we do not know our characteristic ways of responding to stress or distress, our blindness may increase the confusion and doubt of the gathered community. Some members may be skilled in this discernment, and others, for various reasons, may not have the same clear perception of a situation or the same capacity to accept God's invitation to move forward. This incapacity may come from current cir-cumstances: a recent bereavement, phys-ical illness, or recent ministry challenges that have left them benumbed. The best preparation before we gather for communal discernment is to increase our prayer, to seek self-knowl-edge in the present moment, and to heal and reconcile anything we can with other members. Intensifying our connection to God, gaining self-knowledge, and recon-ciliation efforts can remove potential blocks within the group. If any member speaks the truth about an issue, situation, or challenge that the group needs to face, every other member must receive it and "test" its possibilities for herself and for the group. If this truth is spoken by a member whose opinions people frequently perceive to be "off the mark" or whom they tend to dismiss because of past performance, the others may fail to respond with openness to conversion, that is, with willingness to change their minds. Individuals and the group need to allow enough time for such a potential shift to occur among themselves. This is a quite different process from the response those readily receive who--by reason of their education, their election, or their previous performance--are customarily taken seriously. In Catherine of Siena's system, those who practice discern-ment according to the third "light" are those who have "clothed" themselves in God's will. They are attuned to God and God's desire. This harmony with God's will is not necessarily about specific issues; it is a matter of practical insight into the Mystery If we do not know our characteristic ways of responding to stress or distress, our blindness may increase the confusion and doubt of the gathered community. Septentber-October 2001 Ruffing * Exercising Power and Discerning Spirits of Jesus' total self-giving love for us in the paschal mystery. The touchstone is not seeing a single issue clearly, but living constantly within the Christ mystery. Such "seeing" elicits desire to imitate Jesus' self-giving love without counting the cost to self. In Catherine's words, such a person "loves me sincerely without any other concern than the glory and praise of my name. She does not serve me for her own pleasure, or her neighbors for her own profit, but only for love." Such persons are alive with the charism of their community. Full of apostolic zeal, they basically love in un-self-serving ways. Such persons are not prevented from choosing God's will because of their own selfishness, nor does suffering or antic-ipated difficulty prevent them from choosing what is best for God, others, and self. What is sought is God's will, which Catherine assumes leads us to what is best for everyone. Communities today face many pressing issues. What is best for one community may not be best for another. What God may be calling one community to at a particular juncture is not the same as another. With who we are, where we are geographically, and where we are in our communal and personal histories, what is best for our mission, our selves, and those with whom we minister? From the rich Quaker tradition of discernment, I will discuss only three themes: unity, peace, and clarity. Quakers, like other Christians, draw on the "fruits of the spirit" as sketched by Paul in Galatians 5:23 as a touchstone for discernment. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, trust, gentleness, and self-control." This cluster of outcomes or fruits resulting from behaviors, attitudes, spiritual practices, and interactions with others reveals lives authentically lived in the Spirit. These fruits are all interrelated. For the Society of Friends, privileged unity in God's love was an important result in commu-nity life of various impulses or "leadings" of the Spirit in individuals. At certain times of corporate "waiting on the Lord," they experienced their unity, their being gathered in God, as a palpable mystical experience. This unity bore fruit in love of neigh-bor. For them kindness and gentleness were dimensions of the fruit of love. Traditionally they came to ask whether a particular course of "action would produce more or less love, greater or less unity, more or less joy.''s They valued Truth as well, assuming that, once the community Review for Religious was deeply "gathered in unity," an individual under divine guidance would be consistent with the perceptions of others who were also attuned to divine guidance. So the quality of love which could gather the community in unity also led to discerning the truth. As Patricia Loring describes it, the unity sought is not simple agreement, not consensus, compromise, or an irreducible minimum of views. What is sought is a sense of deep interior unity which would be a sign that the members are consciously gathered together in God and may therefore trust their corporate guidance: The felt gathering in God tends to illuminate and clarify motives, to dissolve or harmonize differences-or allow them to stand side by side in the tenderness accompanying gath-ering in the spirit of God. Unity may enable a way forward to be found even if members continue to hold differing views. Divisiveness, disruption, or simple lack of unity indicate that one, all, or some members of the group are not fully under guidance.6 Peace is yet another important touchstone of the gathered community. The unity of the gathered community brings about peace by harmonizing disparate elements within the community and within the self. Quakers discovered that "the reconciliation of disparate parts of one's self or of one's experience in a new, sometimes unexpected direction or action can issue in a deep interior sense of peace . Living close to the Spirit has the effect of such harmonizing and reconciling both within and between persons." For Quakers, peace as a touchstone in communal discernment is "the feeling of being at peace with a decision or an outcome, even if it is not what one sought or hoped for, even if it calls for considerable hardship or change.''7 Often a new burden or task disturbs one's peace initially. Peace or ease is restored only when one accepts the burden or fulfills the task. In leadership selection processes, frequently those being considered experience considerable lack of peace. Sometimes, when a nominee is graced to accept a potential call to leadership, a flood of peace results. When or if this deep peace makes itself felt, a leader may confidently trust the election and will often return to this initial grace of leadership in difficult times. Lack of peace is as important as peace. When peace is disturbed, some action is called for. Sometimes the action or resolution is neither simple nor obvious. At times individuals and groups suffer a prolonged period of living with disquiet before the fitting response becomes clear. September-October 2001 Ruffing ¯ Exercising Power and Discerning Spirits Quakers often used the word "clear" as in "getting clear" to describe an outcome of discernment. Sometimes it had the con-notation of being released from a burden. At other times it involved acting on a "leading" (that is, a matter discerned) and faithfully carrying it out. In this early form, getting clear was closer to how we might describe feeling free. Quakers now use the term clarity or clearness in the sense of coming to intellectual clarity about what they are to do or what a "leading" might be about, and much of their individual discernment is aided by convoking a clearness committee. The membdrs of such a group are invited on the basis of their spiritual sensitivity and typically only ask questions which might help the individual discerners clarify their inner truth. They help them clarify their situation, motives, and "leadings": they do not offer advice. As Patricia Loring describes such a gathering, it first of all opens itself to divine guidance. For Quakers this is not a per-functory moment of silence, but a much deeper recollection: "for an intentional return to the Center, to give over one's own firm views, to place the outcome in the hands of God, to ask for a mind and heart as truly sensitive to accepting of nuanced intimations of God's will as of overwhelming evidences of it.''s This is an attitude of receptivity to subtle hints of God's will as well as to unmistakable clarity. Discernment is, then, a habit of the heart. From my perspec-tive it is intimately linked with our spiritual development. When we exercise power in any context, but especially when it is time for major decision making in community or when we are in offi-cial positions of authority, we need discernment to ensure that we are exercising our power in service of the reign of God and not for self-serving benefits of any kind. When we or our communities are thus "gathered" in God, an incredible amount of energy is released for the sake of others and of ourselves. When we enter into this discernment in partnership with God, whose Spirit impels us toward goodnes{, toward love, toward peace, and toward patience, the results are energy, enthusiasm, gentleness, and joy. Notes l Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 126-127. 2 Katherine Clarke, "Leadership When It's Time for Adaptation," Human Development 18 (Fall 1997): 5-11. Review for Religious 3 Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, ed. and trans. Suzanne Noffke (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1980), §11, p. 44. 4 Dialogue, § 11, p. 44. s Patricia Loring, Spiritual Discernment: The Context and Goal of Clearness Committees, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 305 (Wallingford, Penn.: Pendle Hill Publications, 1992), p. 7. 6 Loring, p. 8. 7 Loring, p. 9. s Loring, p. 24. The Woman Arusha, Tanzania So short the bridge on the main road in the city few notice the deep stream, nor see, among the bustling feet, a woman, in rags, on the dusty pavement, leaning against the stone parapet, clutching a begging cup. One sprawling leg wears a tattered shoe, the other a soiled bandage lying loosely where a foot should be. I walk grimly on, and on, and on. Troubled, I turn, walk back two blocks and share my conscience with a leper. Hugh Sharpe CFC September-October 2001 DENNIS J. BILLY Personal and Social: Shared Experience Can Renew Us Religious live in community and profess the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience. These common features make religious into countercultural and eschatological signs of radical discipleship. Living together under a rule dedicated to the spread of gospel values, they remind others and themselves of the presence of the kingdom of God within them, in their midst, and still to come. Religious do this through the individual and communal expression they give to the vows. In this essay I will look at the reciprocal relationship between the personal and social, giving special attention to discrepancies between vision and practice and to the value of interpersonal sharing of experience for the community's renewal. A Circular Relationship I begin with a hypothesis: A relationship of circularity exists between people's personal expression of the vows and the gospel culture promoted by their community. This link between the personal and the communal comes from the vows themselves. They embrace all of human existence: the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the social. ~ Human existence is constituted by individual consciousness, which itself is shaped, at least in part, by social ties (parents, family, schools, churches, social clubs, charitable organizations, athletic Dennis J. Billy CSSR continues to write from Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma, Italy. Revie~v fbr Religious teams, and so forth). From birth, infants interact with this social environment; gradually maturing, they have a greater impact on it. This creative interplay contributes to the values people adopt and affects the choices they make in life. The formation of religious in discipleship roughly parallels this human growth and development. By their very nature the evangelical counsels are derived from, fostered by, and oriented toward life in community. This social dimension of the vows has its origin in the reality Paul found in the body of Christ, and it appears on various levels within the religious community itself, in the community of the church, and in the world at large.2 In this circular relationship, the individual and the communal presuppose and cannot do without each other. Every religious community comprises a variety of members who bring their unique potentials, gifts, and perspectives to the living out of their congregation's charism. Each individual has an impact on the evangelical life of the community. Although this impact may be greater for some than for others, no contribution may be regarded as insignificant. Each individual, moreover, is supported by and lives out his or her vows through life in community. Although group will vary from group in external expression, the purpose of each community is a life of discipleship within a common evangelical witness. A community helps to shape individuals' understanding of the evangelical life in many and varied ways (initial and ongoing formation, community structures, common devotional practices). That understanding, that vision, gives meaning and relevance to their individual lives and, in turn, has an effect on the community's self-understanding. This, again, further refines the individuals' experience of religious life. This circular interplay between the individual and the community releases creative energies to help the community remain faithful to its tradition while adapting to the challenges and exigencies of the present. When this adaptation occurs, the community has struck a healthy balance between the individual and the communal expression of the vows. When it does not, something has gone awry that, if not checked, can do serious harm to all involved. " Finding Discrepancies The question arises: What happens when this circular relationship Septentber-October 2001 Billy s Personal and Social is interfered with or in. some way broken up? A number of things can happen. Individual religious may distance themselves psychologically from the community and gradually lose touch with its motivating gospel principles. The community, moreover, may be too rigid (or too flexible) in the way it adapts to the cultural milieu of the day. The lack of vocations and a steady flow of people leaving the community may seriously affect its morale and self-confidence. Secularizing trends in society may also tear away at the fabric of community life and eventually leave little or nothing for members to share. Any of these factors could affect the reciprocal relationship between the individual and communal expression of the VOWS. Added to these possibilities is the gap that can grow between the community's officially stated vision of itself and its actual lifestyle. If the inconsistencies become too numerous, the community may be unable to attract new members and those already within it may become disillusioned or, worse yet, numb to their need for change. To some extent, every community experiences a discrepancy between its ideals and the way it practices them. Any attempt by sinful human beings to embrace the high ideals of radical discipleship falls short in some respect. If the discrepancy is too large, however, community members need to reexamine its structures and processes. The question to ask is whether the gap between their stated ideals and their lifestyle is decreasing or increasing. If decreasing, they need strategies to continue the trend and, if possible, even accelerate it. If the gap is increasing, they need to find ways of reversing the process so that the community can once again "live with itself." If they fail to do so, the circular relationship between the personal and communal expression of the vows will continue to break down, and the community will in time become a loose collection of individuals united only by externals (such as name, shelter, and finances). If this occurs~ it will be difficult, if not impossible, to decrease the gap between their ideals and their lived experience. One way of estimating the discrepancy between vision and practice in a religious community is to keep in mind the various levels of spirituality commonly accepted by scholars: the experiential (level one), the doctrinal (level two), and the academic (level three).3 Since the Second Vatican Council, religious communities have spent much time and effort rewriting their rules and statutes (level two) and studying the history of their founders Re~ie~ for Religious and the nature of their founding charism (level three). At this time they need to put equal effort into level one, the actual living of the vows in the context of community and their founding charism. Since religious communities need a strong, positive continuity between all three levels of spirituality, now is the time to raise level one, the experiential dimension, up to the other two. An Experiential Turn For this shift in emphasis to occur, a retrieval process is needed: Communities need to get back in touch with the circular relationship between the personal and the communal in their expression of the vows and the common life. They could begin by forming small dialogue groups to share their experience of religious life with one another. From there, they could comb their tradition for hints of bold initiatives they might undertake in the life of discipleship. They could ask communities with a similar charism what they have been doing to make their vision of religious life relevant to people's needs. Most importantly, they could rediscover the value of certain forms of prayer in common and choose to make practical daily use of the best of them for uniting the personal and the communal. The question is whether they have the courage to do so and are willing to pay the price that such a decision might entail. To speak of an "experiential turn" in religious life today means that community members need to step back from the swirl of their activities and take stock of their lives on every level: the anthropological, the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the social. Once they have done so, they will more easily ponder the ideals they profess and discover if they are living up to them. This means taking steps individually and together and naming what they are 'going through, evaluating their experience against specific criteria, and responding to the evaluation in a responsible, practical way. Another way of making this experiential turn is for religious to seek a proper balance between action and contemplation. Such a balance requires time and effort. Once achieved, however, it helps Every community experiences a discrepancy between its ideals and the way it practices them. September-October 2001 Billy ¯ Personal and Social religious to put petty differences aside and to unite around matters of common concern. Such balance helps community members to recognize the discrepancy between their ideals and their lifestyle, to be disturbed by it, and to do something about it. They become motivated to overcome their past indifference, and they take steps toward personal conversion and the renewal of their institutes. By concentrating on both the personal and the communal aspects of their experience, community members are well on their way toward reintegrating the two and bringing steady incremental change for the better into their individual lives and their communal life. Observations At this point, a number of remarks are in order concerning the effect of this "experiential turn" on religious life and on a community's wimess. 1. Living the vowed life in common contains experiential components that affect religious both as individuals and as a group. Religious should be aware of these components. In this light, chastity is not a mere solitary concern, but a gift to be nourished in a vibrant, caring community. Poverty, in turn, takes both personal and communal forms in the daily life of a religious community, and obedience makes little sense except in terms of an individual's free and loving response to the needs of the common good. Even community life itself must take into account both an individual's and the group's experience of its general regimen. In their response to the call to radical discipleship, religious must keep in touch with their personal and communal experience for their reciprocal interaction to be helpful and creative. 2. When a community gives adequate attention to the personal and communal dimensions of its lived experience, a noticeable change takes place in the quality of its witness to the life of discipleship. This change normally occurs in a gradual, incremental manner. It comes about because members of the community are no longer relating to each other as isolated individuals, but as members of a family with stories to tell, experiences to share, and suggestions to offer. Once individuals have been given the opportunity to share the wide range of their life experiences as religious, there occurs a growing tendency within the community to treat each other with gentleness and respect. The sharing of these experiences gives community .members the impetus to make appropriate changes in Review for Religious the structures of community life so that the gap between their ideals and lifestyle may be reduced. When this happens, community members begin to feel that they have more say in the day-to-day activities of the community. They begin to take ownership of their community and are willing to invest more of their time and energy in its success. 3. To say that the quality of a community's witness to the life of discipleship will rise as a result of its paying close attention to the personal and communal components of its members' lived experience does not mean that the road to renewal will be without problems. On the contrary, buried memories and pent-up frustrations may give way to heated displays of anger. These outbursts should be expected and even wel-comed. When they occur, those venting their anger should be carefully listened to so that the issues behind their raw emotions can be understood. When anger is expressed, the com-munity should not run away from it or feel threatened or intimidated by it, but should confront it, letting the under-lying needs come to the surface and seeking appropriate ways of dealing with them. Some may be so angry at the community that they can see no other alternative than to leave. Others will stay, but may have strong issues to deal with in their personal relationship with the community, even as that community tries hard to change. Still others may wish that the community had never begun to make changes in the first place. Focusing on lived experience elicits different responses from community members. They should all be listened to with care and dealt with sensibly. The community should be aware that its numbers may have to decrease before the quality of its witness begins to rise. 4. After giving its attention to the members' personal and communal experiences, the community needs to weigh matters carefully in the light of its charism and the church's teaching on religious life. As for the charism, the community should examine its The sharing of experiences gives community members the impetus to make appropriate changes in the structures of community life so that the gap between their ideals and lifestyle may be reduced. Septentber-October 2001 Billy ¯ Personal and Social constitutions and statutes to see where the experiences that have surfaced fit into its stated self-understanding. As for the church's teaching, the community should give its attention to the Vatican II documents, the Code of Canon Law, and Pope John Paul's recent apostolic letter Vita consecrata (1996). The goal here would be to strengthen the continuity between the experiential and the doctrinal levels in Christian spirituality, that is, the community's lived experience and official teaching about itself. By comparing the personal and communal experiences of the community (level one) with the pertinent ecclesial (level two) and congregational (level three) documents, the community can gauge which experiences are part of the call to radical discipleship and which are not. Then the members can discuss what elements of their constitutions and statutes need to be adjusted or perhaps even changed. The very rereading of these documents in the light of their experience can be inspiriting. 5. Diminishing the gap between a community's vision and its lived experience is a thorough process. A single attempt, however intensive or prolonged, will do little. Practical arrangements are needed whereby members can examine their personal and communal experiences and then make reasonable proposals for change. These arrangements should not be imposed, but should evolve from within the community. Whatever they may be (weekly or monthly reviews of life, common retreat days, group spiritual direction, dialogue groups with a facilitator, and so forth), they need to be evaluated regularly to ensure that they continue to be perceived as vital to the community. Their purpose is not to turn the community in upon itself in an unhealthy, introverted way, but to enable it to see its shortcomings and take steps to get beyond them. These arrangements should provide continuing support for members' personal lives and their communal life. A Final Observation Healthy communities are always seeking practical ways of narrowing the gap between ideal and practice, in the hope that the gap will one day disappear entirely. An awareness of the circular relationship between the individual and the communal experience can do much toward this goal. Such awareness may include wading through powerful streams of emotion to get to where unmet needs can be understood, acknowledged, and addressed. Review for Religious Religious are called to be signs of hope to the hopeless. To do this, they must be aware of what they themselves are called to become and take positive steps to attain it. Only by confronting first the discrepancy between vision and lifestyle in their own lives will they be able to help others to do the same. Religious cannot remove this discrepancy through their own efforts. They must cooperate with the Spirit in their following of Christ. They need to put complete trust in the Lord's love and concern for them. His Spirit alone will shape them and sustain them. His Spirit alone will carry them into intimate fi'iendship with God. His Spirit alone will reveal to them, and to those whose lives they touch, the kingdom that is within them, in their midst, and still to come. Notes ~ See Dennis J. Billy, "~'ta Consecrata and the Anthropology of the Vows," Review for Religious 58, no. 4 (July-August 1999): 384-392. 2 See ~ta consecrata, §51. 3 See Walter H. Principe CSB, "Toward Defining Spirituality," Studies in Religion / Sciences religieuses 12 (1983): 135-136. There is something made known each autumn in the voices of leaves, red, orange, yellow clear choral anthems conducted by the wind which sends me into the chilled morning my breath a white wraith staring back, touching my face. I open my eyes to thankfulness singing and waving, carelessly brushing away my own apparition too briefly present before I could ask, dear child, who are you. ? C.J. Renz September-October 2001 BRENDAN KNEALE Examining My Conscience: Do I Have an Attitude? ~wehen we first were trained to examine our conscience, probably confined ourselves to matters of stealing, lying, swearing, disobedience, bad thoughts, and fighting. As we grew older and had new responsibilities, we enlarged our scope beyond the commandments of God to the "the commandments of the church"--attendance at Mass and similar requirements. Later, perhaps, we looked beyond action to habit, that is, to. the virtues and the vices--our faith, our humility, our temperance, as well as our anger, gluttony, sloth, and so forth. If we became members of the consecrated life, we added concern about the vows connected to the evangelical counsels. What may lead us to refine our examination of conscience even further is the experience of recidivism, our repeated lapses into the same sins and failings. We suspect a root cause, some factor or factors below the surface that lead us to fall again and again into the same culpable behavior. Another occasion for deeper search might be a friend's calling our attention to some failing of which we were unaware. And we may occasionally sur-prise ourselves by an act of sudden anger or other fault and then wonder, "Where did that come from?" As Isaiah says, "The heart is more devious than any other thing, perverse too." A tendency at this juncture is to claim that we are victims. We may feel that we fall repeatedly or unexpectedly into certain faults Brendan Kneale FSC, a previous contributor (1988), writes from 4403 Redwood Road; Napa, California 94558. Review for Religious because of forces beyond our control. For example, traumas early in life may later induce us to behave neurotically and compul-sively. However, as one prominent non-Catholic psychologist has written, a great value of the Catholic practice of confession (and its attendant examination of conscience) is that it gets us to take personal responsibility for our bad conduct, and not to claim victimhood when it is not justified. Notice that the implication here is that we are dealing with "conscience," not the subconscious. We are not urging personal psychoanalysis, however valuable that may be. Rather, the ques-tion here is about morality, a domain that deals only with actions and omis-sions in which there is at least some degree of improper behavior (or omission), sufficient awareness, and some consent of the will. For exam-ple, it does not take a person addicted to swearing (and currently more or less unmindful of his habitual behavior) much effort to realize that he has set up the habit himself by per- Without a correction of attitude, recidivism and recurring "surprise" behaviors can be expected. sonal choices made long before. He was not, and is not, an unblamable victim. It is only right that he be responsible for the consequences of those choices, that he examine himself on the personal sources and the moral responsibility involved. Our Attitudes The kind of probing advocated here, and requiring a refine-ment of examination, has to do with ~cquired attitudes or mind-sets or preconceptions over which we have supervision. Do we approach situations with an "attitude"? For example, persons brought up in an atmosphere of racial prejudice may need to examine more than their overt actions or even their more or less conscious behavior patterns, and take a close look at their basic attitudes. Repeated lapses into offensive words or deeds may require not only regret but also examination of deep-seated causes, basic attitudes that perhaps were acquired nonsinfully. Otherwise, without a correction of attitude, recidivism and recur-ring "surprise" behaviors can be expected. Of course, there may be other causes for our repeated sins--the three concupiscences-- Septentber-October 2001 Kneale ¯ Examining My Conscience What are our preconceptions about the homeless, the panhandler, the handicapped, the addict, the "great unwashed"? but here we are looking at an .operative cause that may precede (or follow) such passions and that we can bring into examination when we try to analyze our moral behavior. Are we rightly accused of being "judgmental"? Are we saddled with attitudes that damage our relations with God, our neighbor, and our own self?. Is it a false estimate of our present stance--whether we are in youth, maturity, old age--that is the source of our sassiness, bossiness, crotcheti-ness? Does our ironic view of things lead to hurtful sarcasm? Does our cynicism lead to real contempt? Insofar as our culture shapes our attitudes or outlooks on such matters as promiscuity, illness, consumerism, status, race, authority, work, time, privilege, food, fun, humor, recreation, comfort, entitle-ments, adventure, celebrity, revenge, violence, death, and so forth, we should search to see if these attitudes need revision as part of our effort to turn away from gen-uinely culpable thoughts or actions that we notice in ourselves. Typical questions for ourselves might be: Has my culturally induced attitude toward illness led to hypochondria or to an objectionable fussiness? Does an attitude toward entitlements make me an unpleasant person or a seeker of unjust privilege? Do people find my attitude threatening? To be sure, our culture induces many good attitudes--about democracy, equality, service, private property, education, nonex-ploitation, rewarding merit, conservation, and so forth. We should look at these good attitudes, too, in order to check whether we have blocked some of the good ones along with the bad. A recommended test of our attitudes is to ask what our out-look is on cultural icons, TV heroes, and popular fictional char-acters. Do we find ourselves adopting the mentality of, say, the headline-hunting celebrity, the compromised politician, the self-indulgent artist, the know-it-all intellectual, the snobbish sophisticate, the ruthless tycoon, the swaggering athlete, the gos-sipy columnist,~ the rash liberal, the entrenched traditionalist? If we are quick to praise one of these, why 'is that? Do we almost unconsciously try to shape our self-image to be like them? On the Review for Religious other hand, of course, we need to look at our inner view of those whom our culture tends to despise. What are our preconceptions about (and our resultant behaviors toward) the homeless, the panhandler, the handicapped, the addict, the "great unwashed"? Motivating Ourselves It is probably not easy to refine our examination of conscience to these levels--and surely not to levels beyond them. Why make the effort? Such an examination is one way to get closer to a state of "justice beyond that of the scribes and phar-isees," that is, to grow in the justification talked about by St. Paul. When I think of "justification," I think of what carpenters and mechanics mean by the word, namely, a fitting together and good lining up of items in their handiwork. If these items are all squared away, then they are fully "justified." The Pauline usage seems analogous. He sees God giving us the grace to be squared away, to be right with God, to be righteous, in perfect relation with Him. This justification or righteousness is initially and rad-ically conferred in baptism and is capable of growing and being perfected. In the process, the basic need is for us to adjust our attitudes to those of Christ, to "put on the mind of Christ" (to accomplish literally a metanoia, a change of mind for the better) and thereby get closer to a final justification or righteousness. In the case of Mary Immaculate, of course, such perfection was unimpeded. Since she was conceived without darkness of intellect, weakness of will, or disorder among her passions, it fol-lowed that her attitudes needed no further rectification, and so her growth in holiness and her ability to overcome temptation were rapid. In our case, we need the special help of fasting, prayers, and sacraments. The sacraments help us to pursue a perfection like hers. And a penetrating examination of conscience helps us profit more from those sacraments. The purpose here is not to induce scrupulosity (which is gen-erally a sign of pride), but to get at factors behind or beyond the routine examination lists of commandments, virtues, and vices-- important and revealing though they are. Surely the capital sins of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth deserve scrutiny vis-~l-vis ourselves. But, if we fail often in their regard, we may need to look further into our unexamined lives, into those attitudes that we adopt as normative and that stoke September-October 2001 Kneale ¯ Examining ~Iy Conscience the fires of our behavior. The basic question: Is my attitude that of Christ? Attitudes lead to priorities in our values, values lead to our choices, choices to our actions, actions to habits, habits to deeds of consequence. Each element of this sequence can be conducive to something Christian or to something not Christian; each deserves inspection. Confession to Sumac Anonymous before the frost, the sumac, frozen, blooms resplendent on the freeway grade, innocent of motives, yet sensuous, seductive. Red, orange, or scarlet - blood, a Rothko, Rauschenberg. What it is and must be one, with no apologies. Review for Religqous The beauty of the trees accuses me. My greater gifts I squander by my sins; in dying autumn color they proclaim obedience unto death. Rebellious, though, I languish in the dark. Ed Block J. NEUNER Mother Teresa's Charism On 26 July 1999 the cause for the beatification of Mother Teresa was officially opened in Calcutta. Pope John Paul II had granted an exception to the general regulation that such proceedings can be taken up only five years after the death of the Servant of God. Mother Teresa had died only on 5 September 1997. The early inauguration of the proceedings was granted on account of the worldwide request to have her officially recognized by the church as a model of compassionate love reaching out to all strata of society, especially to the rejected and exploited. For the proceedings in Calcutta, all the documents connected with her life and work had to be collected.1 They opened insights not only into the incredible complexity of her work spread over all continents during a short time but also into her personal life, which had remained hidden from the public and, to a great extent, even from her own community. They reveal many details of the development of the Missionaries of Charity (MC), but also the hidden sources of Mother Teresa's untiring work and inspiring personality, which fascinated people of all strata of society and of all religions. These few pages are an attempt to present this inner sphere, God's work in her heart, which bore so much fruit in her life and work. J. Neuner SJ, who knew Mother Teresa, writes from Sanjeevan Ashram; 38 Sassoon Road; Pune 411 001; India. September~ October 2001 Neuner ¯ Mother Teresa's Charism "I Thirst" Among the Missionaries 10 September 1946 is celebrated as the birthday of the congregation. Mother Teresa had come to India as a novice of the Loreto Sisters. She was very happy in her community and as a teacher in Loreto, Entally (Calcutta). A totally unexpected experience came to her on that day in the litde train climbing up from Siliguri to Darjeeling: the thirst of Jesus and a call to give her life in service to the poor and rejected in the slums. She was deeply disturbed: it might have been a temptation of the devil. But her confessor was convinced of the divine inspiration and told her to communicate it to Archbishop E Perrier of Calcutta. The archbishop hesitated more than a year and kept her waiting--a painful time--but finally supported her application to Rome to leave the Loreto Sisters and start her own congregation. According to her constitutions, it is the aim of the congregation "to quench the infinite thirst of Jesus on the cross for love of souls by the profession of the evangelical counsels and the wholehearted and free service of the poorest of the poor" (Const 3).z This twofold aim is the ever recurring topic of her instructions. But only towards the end of her life does she speak more explicitly about her transforming experience. On 25 March 1993 she writes to all the sisters, brothers, and priests of the Missionaries a letter that is "very personal" and "comes from Mother's heart." She is deeply concerned for her society not to lose our early love, especially in the future after Mother leaves you . The time has come for me to speak openly on the gift God gave me on Sept. 10th, to explain as fully as I can what means to me the thirst of Jesus. For me the thirst of Jesus is something so intimate, so I have felt shy until now to speak to you about September 10th . Everything in MC exists only to satiate Jesus. His words on the wall of every MC chapel are not from the past only, but alive here and now, spoken to you . Jesus Himself must be the one to say to you "I thirst." Hear your own name, not just once, every day. ¯. "I thirst" is something much deeper than Jesus just saying "I love you." Unless you know deeply inside that Jesus thirsts for you, you cannot begin to know what He wants to be for you and what He wants you to be for Him. This personal union with Jesus must become fruitful in the service of the poor--the Missionaries' fourth vow: The heart and soul of MC is only this: the thirst of Jesus' " heart hidden in the poor. This is the source of every part of Review for Religious MC life. : satiating the living Jesus in our midst is our Society's only purpose. The two dimensions of M. Teresa's charism, the intimate union with Jesus and the' work for the poor, can never be separated: "I thirst" and "you did it to me," remember always to connect the two . Do not underestimate our practical means, the work for the poor, no matter how small and humble; they make our life something beautiful for God. The poor are the medium through which we touch Jesus: They are God's most precious gift to our Society--Jesus' hidden presence so near, so able to touch. (Srs 25.3.93) Mother Teresa sees her vocation, the life and work of her sisters, as part of the mission of the church, to participate in the saving passion of Jesus. The Epistle to the Colossians understands the trials of the Apostle as the continuation of Jesus' saving passion: "I am rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's affliction for the sake of his body which is the church" (Col 1:24). This participation in Christ's redemptive passion is realized in the mission of her sisters: Try to increase your knowledge of the mystery of redemption. This knowledge will lead you to love, and love will make you share through your sacrifice in the passion of Christ. My dear children, without suffering our work would just be social work very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption. Jesus wanted to help us by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony and death. All that He has taken upon Himself and has carried it in the darkest night. Only by being one with us has He redeemed us. We are able to do the same. All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed, and we must have our share in it. Pray thus when you find it hard: I wish to live in this world which is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them--to take upon myself something.of their suffering. Yes, my dear children, let us share the sufferings of the poor, for only by being one with them can we redeem them; that is bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God. (Srs Ist Friday, July 61) She herself had to experience the pain of poverty in a very personal manner. We have a diary of the early months of her new life when she was struggling to find a place for her small group and had to experience the trials of helplessness. Mostly the notes of the September~ October 2001 Neuner ¯ Mother Teresa's Charism booklet are factual, the daily happenings. Once they have a very personal ring: Today I learned a good lesson: the poverty of the poor must often be very hard for them. When I went rounding, looking for a home, I walked and walked till my legs and my arms ached. I thought how they must also ache in body and soul looking for home, food, help. Then the temptation grew strong: the buildings of Loreto came rushing into my mind, all the beautiful things and comforts, the people they mix with, in a word, everything. "You have only to say one word and all this will be yours again," the tempter kept on saying. Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy Will in my regard. I did not allow a single tear to come. Even if I suffer more than now, I still want to do your Holy Will. This is the dark night of the birth of the Society. My God, give me courage now, this moment, to persevere in following your call. (Notebook 16.2.49) It was her charism not only to work for the poor, but to share in their pain and so to have her part in Jesus' redemptive work. But, even more, she was also called to share in the pain of his thirst. How Mother Teresa Lived Her Charism Thirst is painful longing. Mother Teresa saw it in Jesus on the cross, and her life was devoted to satiate it. It became her most personal vocation to share in it through the lasting darkness that enwrapped her life. Some experience of darkness is part of every spiritual life. She knew it also in her earlier years. At the time of preparing for her final vows, she wrote to her spiritual guide that her life was "not strewed with roses . Rather I have more the darkness as my fellow friend . I simply offer myself to Jesus" (Early letters 8.2.3 7). These were passing experiences. But, with the beginning of her new life in the service of the poor, darkness came on her with oppressive power. In the diary of those early months mentioned above, we have another very personal entry: Today, my God, what torture of loneliness. I wonder how long my heart can suffer this . Tears rolled and rolled. Everyone sees my weakness. My God, give me courage to fight self and the tempter. (Notebook 28.2.49) Father C. Van Exem was her spiritual guide at the time. She had told him to destroy all letters--so we have no letters to him Review for Religious from that time. However, he had asked her to turn to the archbishop, who in the early years--before her own constitutions were approved and she could take vows in her new congregation-- was actually the superior of the young community. She turned to him in growing confidence: I want to say to you something that I do not know to express. I am longing--with painful longing--to be all for God, to be holy in such a way that Jesus can live His life to the full in me. The more I want Him, the less I am wanted. I want to love Him as He has not been loved--and yet there is that separation, that terrible emptiness, that feeling of absence of God. For more than four years I find no help . I am not writing you as His Grace--but as the Father of my soul, for to you and from you I have not hidden anything. Tell me what I should do~I want to obey at any cost. (AP 8.2.56) And again: There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so deep that it is painful, a suffering continual--yet not wanted by God, repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal . Heaven means nothing to me, it looks like an empty Place. yet the torturing longing for God. (AP 28.2.57) One day, wfien the archbishop celebrated the requiem Mass for Pope Pius XII in the cathedral, she asked for a sign: There and then disappeared that long darkness, that pain of loss, of loneliness, of that strange suffering of ten years. Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an unbroken union of love. (AP 17.10.58) Still, soon she has to write: Our Lord thought it better for me to be in the tunnel--so He is gone again, leaving me alone. I am grateful to Him for the month of love He gaye me. (AP 16.11.58) She received new life through Father T. Picachy, at the time rector of St Xavier's College, later archbishop of Calcutta and cardinal. Besides personal letters to him, we have also two documents written at his request (undated, but probably written in 1959 or 1960), in which she presents her state of mind in a coherent manner) In prayer form she writes of her closeness to Jesus in earlier years, yet now, Jesus, I go the wrong way. They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God . In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of. loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. Jesus, please September-October 2001 Neuner ¯ Mother Teresa's Charism forgive the blasphemy--I have been told to write everything--that darkness that surrounds me on all sides¯ I can't lift my soul to God: No light, no inspiration enters my souk And yet, though there is no faith, no love, no trust, there is so much pain, the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted. I want God with all the powers of my soul, and yet there is that terrible separation . I no longer pray, my soul is not with you, and yet, when alone in the streets--I talk to you for hours of my longing for you. This darkness, however, does not hinder her work: [Though] the dark holds no joys, no attention, no zeal . . . I do my best, I spend myself. I am more convinced that the work is not mine. I do not doubt that it was you who called me with such great love and force. It was you . . . it is you even now--but I have no faith. In spite of the lasting pain, she is ready to accept the darkness as her special way to satiate Jesus' thirst: If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation give you a drop of consolation, my own Jesus, do with me as you wish. ¯. I am your own. Imprint on my soul and life the suffering of your heart . If my separation from you brings others to you and in their love and company you find joy, my Jesus, I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer . Your happiness is all that I want . I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me . Please do not take the trouble to return soon. I am ready to wait for you for all eternity. (Pi, undated) Experiences of darkness are found in the lives of many mystics, but it may be difficult to find a parallel to the lifelong night that enwrapped Mother Teresa. It must be seen in the context of her particular mission. It came to her at the time when she embarked on her new life in the service of the abandoned. From the beginning she had to experience not only their material poverty and helplessness, but also their abandonment. This same darkness, however, was for her also the special way in which she shared in Jesus' saving passion. It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special share she had in Jesus' passion: I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very small part, of Jesus' darkness and pain on earth. Review for Religious It is the spiritual side of her work: Today I really feel a deep joy that Jesus can't go any more through the agony but that He wants to go through it in me. More than ever I surrender myself to Him, more than ever I will be at His disposal. (undated) Thus we see that the darkness was actually the mysterious link that united her to Jesus. It is the contact of intimate longing for God. Nothing else can fill her mind. Such longing is possible only through God's own hidden presence. We cannot long for something that is not intimately close to us. Thirst is more than absence of water. It is not experienced by stones, but only by living beings that depend on water. Who knows more about living water, the person who opens the water tap daily without much thinking, or the thirst-tortured traveler in the desert in search for a spring? The darkness and the painful longing for the Jove of God became also her safeguard in a danger that could have harmed her mission: her ever growing popularity, the admiration she received all over the world, the numerous rewards bestowed on her. They could not touch her heart, which was absorbed in an unfulfilled longing for God. When she had to go to Manila to receive the Magsaysay award, she wrote: "I had to go to Manila . It was one big sacrifice. Why does He give me all these but not Himself?. I want Him, not His gift or creatures" (10.9.62). The eyes of the whole world were focused on her when she received the Nobel prize. She thinks only of the poor: "Hundreds of letters still keep coming. The reward has helped many people to find the way to the poor" (9.1.80). And later: "The year offered many opportunities to satisfy the thirst of Jesus for love of souls. It has been a year filled with the passion of Christ. I do not know which thirst is greater, His, or mine for Him" (15.12.80). Mother Teresa's charism comprises both the contemplative and active dimensions of Christian life. Contemplative and Active Mother Teresa's charism comprises both the contemplative and active dimensions of Christian life. The congregation aims at September-October 2001 Neuner *Motber Teresa's Charism quenching Jesus' thirst by the union with him in "the profession of the evangelical counsels and wholehearted and free service of the poorest of the poor" (Const 3). From the beginning she insisted on their inseparable complementarity. Both dimensions must be realized by every member of the congregation. Though in later years she established contemplative branches for sisters (1976) and brothers (1979), she insisted on the oneness of the society: ONE Society, bound by ONE Constitution, with the SAME vows and spirit, with ONE Superior General" (Const i1). "We are consecrated to Him. Jesus has chosen us for Himself. What joy is ours that we can at all times be in close contact with Christ in His distressing disguise" (Srs 1 st Friday, June 61). This mutual penetration of personal union with Christ and actual service of the poor is rooted in the gospel. Jesus himself was united with the Father in a unique manner and made this union fruitful in his daily care for the people. In his message the love of God, whom we cannot see, is tested in the love of neighbor, whom we see. Also the council has emphasized that the union of the self-gift of God and of apostolic concern for the neighbor are part of all religious life: it includes listening to God's word and engaging in his work. "The members of each community should combine contemplation with apostolic love. By the former they adhere to God in mind and heart, by the latter they strive to associate themselves with the work of redemption and to spread the Kingdom of God" (PC 5). Thus Mother Teresa does not accept the frequent division of religious communities as active or contemplative. Of the contemplative sisters she demands, along with their duties of "eucharistic adoration, contemplation, silence, solitude, fasting, penance," also "going out to the spiritually poorest of the poor for two or three hours a day and proclaiming the word of God by our presence and spiritual works of mercy" (Const 5). For the contemplative sisters, "going out" is not meant as a relaxation of the severe seclusion: "Never miss it--for you it is a temptation, for this is our fourth vow" (ContS 20.10.82). Contemplation does not consist in seclusion from the world but closeness to God in every sphere of life. According to the "Spiritual Directory," which contains the guidelines of her spirituality, "a contemplative is a person who lives twenty-four hours with Jesus. and all she does is to Jesus through Mary and Joseph" (Intro. to Section B). Review for Religious She also considers her active sisters contemplatives because their entire life and work consist in beirlg close to Jesus, whom they meet in the poor: "you did it for me." She wanted her whole work to be understood in this perspective even by outsiders. When she received the Nobel prize she said it before the whole world: We are not really social workers--we may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world, for we are touching the body of Christ 24 hours. We live 24 hours in His presence. All are invited to do the same by truly loving each other, beginning at home: How much we do does not matter., but how much love we put in that action, how much we do to Him in the person we are serving. (Oslo 11.12.79) This is the spirituality she tries to communicate to her sisters in countless instructions. She never proposes a systematic method--in her own dark night it would have been of no help. She tries to lead them to total surrender to Jesus. Four features seem particularly prominent in this spirituality. It begins with a firm decision to free ourselves from all clinging to our own needs, our ambitions: The first step is to will it . My progress in holiness depends on God and myself--on God's grace and my will . Into this "I will" I must put all my energy. A saint is "a resolute soul . The resolution to be a saint costs much. I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart and empty it of all created things." (Srs 1st Friday, Oct. 60) The readiness to renounce self opens the heart to a life of loving service. Mother Teresa finds the inspiring example of loving, humble service in Mary, who holds a central place in her spirituality. Her life overflows with God's generous gifts, yet it is totally empty of any form of conceit. She conceives Jesus, who is her child, but she knows that he belongs to the world. Her entire life is drawn into the mystery of God's love giving Jesus, his Son, to the world. Her closeness to Jesus "engenders in her zeal and charity, zeal to give Jesus through works of charity. . The fruit of this union was service of love for the neighbor . She only thought how to serve." So she becomes the model for the Missionaries of Charity: "This life of Mary is so much like ours."' The sisters, too, are united to Jesus: Septentber-October 2001 Neuner ¯ Mother Teresa's Charism Now that Jesus and I are one, has Jesus in me given me that zeal and charity as the fruitof this union? . . . Do I really go to the poor as the handmaid of the Lord, filled with Jesus, to give only Jesus to the poor I serve? Is my service to the poor devoted, tender, intimate? Do I [do] to them what Mary did to Elisabeth? (31 Oct. 66) We may still ask how she could teach her sisters to pray, for she confesses frequently that in her darkness she was unable to pray. She never taught a method, but wishes her sisters to learn the simplicity of personal union with Jesus: "A Missionary This cleaving of Charity who is not united heart and soul with Christ will not be able to live the spirit of total to each other, surrender, loving trust, and cheerfulness." The mere recital of prayers has no meaning: "To pray the prayer Jesus and I, means to be completely united to Jesus in such a way is prayer, as to allow Him to pray in us, with us, for us. This cleaving to each other, Jesus and I, is prayer." This union with Jesus is realized equally in the silence of the chapel and in daily work: "Learn to pray the work as Jesus did in Nazareth for 30 years . Learn from Jesus to pray and allow Him to pray in you, and put the fruit of prayer into living action of love in loving one another as Jesus loved each one of you" (Srs 27.7.83). We only need a humble and pure heart: "We could see God in our Sisters and the poor we serve. Is it not wonderful that we could be real contemplatives 24 hours if only our hearts were humble and pure?" (Srs Aug. 84). Finally the life and work of a Missionary of Charity must be filled with joy. Such was Jesus' desire: "He wants to share His joy with the Apostles: that my joy may be in you." Joy is not a matter of temperament, it does not consist in comfort: "The service of God and of souls is always hard." But true love brings joy: "A joyful heart is the result of a heart burning with love." Joy not only enriches our life but is "a net of love by which you can catch many souls." It is vital in the life of the sisters: "A cheerful disposition is one of the main virtues required in a Missionary of Charity" (Srs Easter, Apr. 64). The Four Vows The concrete form in which Missionaries of Charity live their union with Jesus are the four vows. In their profession they "bind themselves by the four vows to Jesus Christ Review for Religious with undivided love in chastity through freedom in poverty in total surrender in obedience in wholehearted and free service to Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. (Const 36) In the early constitutions of 1954, Mother Teresa still followed the traditional order of the three evangelical counsels beginning with poverty. But the core of her charism is the total union with Christ expressed in the vow of chastity. She explains the coherence of the four vows: The vow of chastity makes us cleave to Christ, and the fruit of our union with Christ is the vow of charity (4th vow). We must love to be pure, we must use every means to keep ourselves pure, body and soul; Jesus must be able to use us fully. To enable the vow of charity to grow we make the vows of poverty and obedience; just as a lamp cannot burn without oil, so the vow of charity cannot live without the vows of poverty and obedience; and all three vows are because of chastity. So live the vow of chastity. (Srs 27.6.65) Poverty is needed in the total self-gift to Jesus: "To be able to be all for Jesus, to love Him with undivided love, we need a pure heart purified by the freedom of poverty." Poverty is not primarily economic want but an attitude of sharing, self-giving. Mother Teresa liked the paradox: "The less we have [for ourselves] the more we can give [of ourselves]. In possessing Jesus we possess everything. That is why we can give more, because we can give Jesus" (Srs 23.1.82). "Jesus saved us through His poverty: He made Himself poor for your sake so that through His poverty you may become rich (2 Co 8:9): We too must become poor for love of Jesus and the poor we serve. For to be able to.understand the poor, to be able to proclaim the Good News to the poor, you must know what poverty is." After enumerating the legal implications of poverty, she continues: "Our poverty should be true Gospel poverty--gentle, tender, glad, open-hearted, always ready to give an expression of love. Poverty is love before it is renunciation" (Srs 23.1.82). Similarly obedience is part of our self-gift to Jesus: "We have to belong to Jesus fully, in total surrender without any reservation, for He alone is worthy of our love. If we really fully belong to Him we must be at His disposal that He may be free to use us and to do with us whenever and whatever He wants--through our Superiors, whoever they may be" (Srs 8.7.76). Obedience is the most beautiful September-October 2001 Neuner ¯ Mother Teresa's Charism --490- offering to God because our will is the only gift of God which is our own and which God will never take by force. He will accept it only when we surrender it" (Srs 2.1.87). This is a sublime vision of religious life. We are, however, not surprised that Mother Teresa had to experience disappointments. The life of the sisters is hard, the work in the slums is dangerous. Day after day the sisters have to work together with people of all strata of society. Each time she received the news that a sister left the community, she felt deep pain. Poverty also caused many problems. Most sisters came from simple surroundings and had never handled large amounts of money. Most disturbing were reports about the disunity among sisters, about young superiors who were not sensitive to the feelings of the sisters, about jealousies, offensive language, hurting, humiliating. In a letter from the hospital she wrote: "You do not know what terrible pain these words cause to my heart . I have to take five different medicines for my physical heart, but I long for the best medicine, your love for one another" (Srs 27.10.67). All such texts in her letters must be read against the background of Mother Teresa's joy and appreciation of her sisters, of their spiritual growth and their faithful work, of which her letters are full. Still, they point at some limitations in the development of her Society. There is first her own traditional background. She received her own religious formation in the firm disciplinary frame to which young religious had to conform, under the authority of the superiors. It became a great help for her: discipline and firm authority were absolutely necessary for the fast-spreading communities. But community life and the work for the slum people also demanded initiative, creativity, and much personal responsibility. More training in community relations and in dealing with difficult situations was needed. Mother Teresa was very much concerned with the formation of the young sisters. But with the growing number of novices--there were over a hundred in the crowded house in Calcutta--it became ever more difficult. In the chapter of 1997, in which she laid down her responsibility as superior general, it was admitted that more ongoing formation was needed for the sisters, mostly for superiors. Connected with the training is also the almost exclusive spiritual motivation of her sisters for their personal and community life and for their work. The love of Jesus Christ surely remains the firm basis of the entire life of the Missionaries of Charity. But God's Review for Religious grace becomes operative within the frame of human life, personal and social. Formation must include the entire person and the concrete social conditions. The emphasis on authority resulted also in a centralization that created difficulties in the growing complexity of administration and work. This obviously is not the place to discuss these tensions in detail. They lead us, however, to the underlying problem: How can a charismatic vision be realized in a concrete organization? The problem became even more acute with regard to the co-workers. The Co-Workers The work of the sisters in the slums naturally demanded much collaboration with many people, men and women of different strata of society, including Hindus and Muslims. It gradually developed into the organized group of Co-Workers. In the introduction to the constitutions we read: From the early days of the Society, the Missionaries of Charity attracted lay people in every part of the world who wished to have some part in the work of loving service to God in the person of the needy. Out of this group grew the international association of the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, whose Constitutions were blessed by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI, on 29th March 1969. Mother Teresa never considered the Co-Workers as an organized extension of her work. She saw in them the spreading of her community into all strata of society. The important thing was not merely their work but that they shared in the spirit. In one of her letters to them she wrote: I can give you "no better message than copy of one of the rules which applies to each one of us." Then she quotes from the (old) constitution, no. 92: As each one of this Society is to become a Co-Worker with Christ in the slums, each ought to understand what God and the Society expects of her. Let Christ radiate and live His life in her and through her in the slums. Let the poor, seeing her, be drawn to Christ and invite Him to enter their homes and their lives. Let the sick and suffering find in her a real angel of comfort and consolation. Let the little ones in the streets cling to her because she reminds them of Him, the friend of the little ones. (CoW 20 Apr. 66) From Co-Workers she expects the same attitude as from sisters: September-October 2001 Neuner ¯ Motber Teresa's Charism to know the poor, to love the poor, to serve the poor (see CoW 4.10.74). With the growth of the Society, the association of the Co- Workers also spread. It was inevitable that it developed into a full-fledged organization on the pattern of modern enterprises¯ Was this the spirit of her congregation? She felt the need to take a firm step: As we depend on Divine Providence for our needs and those of the poor, I feel that fund-raising and regular monthly contributions are against our spirit. Therefore we do not give any person or organization permission to have fund-raising or collection of contributions for our work. (CoW 27.9.81) An even more radical decision seemed necessary: "We do not need the Co-Workers to function as an organization" with governing body and officers, links and bank accounts. I do not want money to be spent for Newsletters and travel of Co-Workers . If you see anyone raising money in my name, please stop them . Let us remain united in the heart of Jesus through Mary as one spiritual family. My gift to you is to allow you to share with us in God's work, to be carriers of God's love in a spirit of prayer and sacrifice. (CoW 30.8¯93) Shordy before her death, after she handed over the government of the Society to her successor, she was once more disturbed. Was her drastic decision right? ,Once more she writes to the Co- Workers: "Do you feel the need to have an international link through a Newsletter? Do you like to have a national link as well? . ¯ . I would like to hear from you" (CoW Easter 97). Again the problem: How can a charism be organized? Charism and Institution We have tried to trace the main features of Mother Teresa's charism. She had to make it live in her Society. Can a charismatic vision be institutionalized? We know of the phenomenal development of the Missionaries of Charity during fifty and more years, spreading over the world, established in more than a hundred countries, animated by the same spirit. We have seen also, very briefly, the problems of living this life personally, in communities, in daily work and monotony, in the complexity of modern society. The charism must always remain a deeply personal commitment to Jesus Christ, but it must unfold in personal growth and in Review for Religious community and must be lived in the modern world, to bear fruit in our society. It needs planning and organization. Is this possible? The problem is common to all religious communities. One thinks of the ideas of poverty so deeply understood and radically lived by St. Francis--how difficult it was for these ideas to be institutionalized in different forms in the church of the Middle Ages! We may ask even more radically: How did Jesus himself succeed in institutionalizing his vision of a redeemed humanity in God's kingdom, of a new society comprising all people in solidarity and love, with God as the center and supporting power? Vatican Council II tells us that the church "received the mission of proclaiming and establishing the kingdom of Christ and of God among all nations." It could, however, not identify the church with the kingdom, but had to add the humble statement that "she is the seed and beginning of this kingdom on earth" (LG §5). The growth of God's kingdom on earth remains the task of Jesus' followers in all new generations, in ever new situations. This is also the legacy of Mother Teresa to her congregation: persistently to strive for the realization of her charism and make it fruitful for our society. Notes 1 Most of the documents, and the copyright ©, belong to the Missionaries of Charity; some documents belong to the archbishop of Calcutta and to St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. 2 Abbreviations: AP-Letters to Archbishop Perrier. Const-Consdtutions of the Missionaries of Charity. ContS-Letters to the Contemplative Sisters. CoW-Letters to the Co-Workers. LG-Lumen gentium, Constitution on the Church. PC-Perfeaae caritatis, Decree on the Renewal of the Religious Life. H-Letters to Father T. Picachy SJ. Srs-Letters to the Sisters. 3 Some of the texts in which Mother Teresa reveals her darkness to Father T. Picachy, at the time rector of St. Xavier's College, have been presented by A. Huart SJ in Vidyajyofi: Journal of Theological Reflection (VJTR) 64 (September 2000): 654-659, and also below in this issue of Review for Religious. September-Oaober 2001 ALBERT HUART Mother Teresa: Joy in the Night The lasting impression that Mother Teresa, Missionary of arity, left with those who met her was one of radiant joy-fulness. Who has not observed, at least in photos, her homely face all wrinkled up in smiles as she fondles a baby orphan, greets a girl in rags, or comforts a dying beggar? How, people wondered, can a person daily immersed in the depths of human misery keep going with such unflagging joy-giving vitality? Yet very few, even among her close associates, knew that for many years Mother radi-ated this joy from a heart plunged in excruciating darkness. The priests who were her close spiritual confidants have almost all departed from this world. I cannot claim to have been one of them. Yet, during a retreat that I directed for her sisters and for herself, she confided to me the pain and bewilderment that enveloped her. I was at the time a young priest with little experience. During my theological studies, I had gone through the writings of John of the Cross. Persuaded as I was that she was a true woman of God, I surmised that I was in the presence of the Dark Night of the Spirit that this great doctor of the mystical life so powerfully describes. I was confirmed in this impression when Mother added (I quote from memory): "The strange thing is: when I speak to my sisters and other people about God, Jesus, the presence of Jesus Albert Huart SJ published a different version of thisarticle in Vidyajyoti, New Delhi. He is assistant to the provincial of his Calcutta province, and his address is Xavier Sadan; 9/3 Middleton Row; Calcutta 700 071; India. Review for Religious in the poor, I cannot fail to realize that the message passes and evokes a deep response in them. But, within my own heart, it is all darkness." As I listened to her, the image that emerged in my mind was that of a chalet basking in warm bright sunshine, surrounded by lush vegetation and flowers, yet, within, all dark and cold. What I surmised in this brief encounter was confirmed many years later, after her death. I then had the opportunity of going though the letters addressed by Mother to Father Lawrence Trevor Picachy, a Jesuit priest then residing in St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, subsequently bishop of Jamshedpur, archbishop of Calcutta, and a cardinal. A folder containing these letters was found among the cardinal's papers after his death. It remained unopened until the beginning of Mother's beatification process. These letters are the one written source on which this article is based. All the signposts mentioned by John of the Cross for ascer-taining the Night are strikingly in evidence. As he describes it, when a person generously responds to grace in her spiritual pilgrimage, a time comes when she is led by the Spirit through a desert--often in two stages (which may be consecutive or overlapping). The first one--the Night of the Senses--generally follows an initial period of easy and joyful prayer. It is felt mostly at the level of the emotions and feelings. These gradually go dry and numb, at times becoming distressingly painful. The second--the Night of the Spirit--goes deeper, even to the deepest point of the human spirit. Not many are led through this (though perhaps more than we might think). The persons suffer greatly, mostly from an acute sense that God is absent or has actually abandoned them even though they have an ever growing painful longing for God. Initially they may be tempted to give in to discouragement, attributing their condition to their own sinfulness and unfaithfulness. God may send a soul friend to give them courage and hope and to help them recognize God at work within this darkness--as for some years Father Picachy did in Mother Teresa's case. According to John of the Cross, the chief signs for distin-guishing this Night of the Spirit from psychological depression or spiritual sluggishness are: (1) Most importantly: the person is unremitting in her commitment to duty and to her mission, even if she encounters trials and failures in these. (2) Although the per- Septentber-October 2001 Huart * Mother Teresa son experiences prayer as dark, painful, and fruitless, she yet feels drawn to prayer¯ (3) Gradually, underneath the darkness that weighs on her, she discovers a quiet and growing spring of peace¯ (4) Later, when she ultimately emerges from this dark trial (which may take years), she looks back on it as a most blessed and life-giving period of her life. John of the Cross sings: "Oh Night that was my guide, / fairer by far than dawn when stars grow dim! / Night that has unified / the Lover and the Bride, / transforming the beloved into Him." The extracts from Mother's letters quoted below may give the impression of a litany of gloom¯ In fact, such cries of distress only come up in flashes among a great deal of no-nonsense disposal of business at hand and joyful accounts of God's grace and help in the work for the poor. .~.:.:. ¯ "In the darkness . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The child of your love - and now become as the most hated one. The one - You have thrown away as unwanted - unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer. ¯ Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such con-victing emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love - the word - it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me - and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul . "The whole time smiling - Sisters and people pass such remarks - they think my faith, trust, and love are filling my very being & that the intimacy with God and union to His will must be absorbing my heart - Could they but know - and how my cheer-fulness is the cloak by which I cover the emptiness and misery. In spite of all, this darkness and emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God . "When You asked to imprint Your Passion on my heart, is this the answer? If this brings You glory, if You get a drop of joy from this, if souls are brought to You, - if my suffering satiates Your thirst - there I am, Lord. With joy I accept all to the end of life. I will smile at your Hidden Face always" (undated). ¯ "If you knew.what I am going through - He is destroying everything in me - but I hold no claim in myself- He is free to do anything. Pray that I keep smiling at Him" (26 January 1957). ¯ "You must have prayed much for me - I have found real Review for Religious happiness in suffering - but the pain is sometimes unbearable - You don't know how miserable and nothing I am. Pray that I may love God with a love - with which he has never been loved before. What a foolish desire" (28 June 1958). ¯ "I did not know that love could make one suffer so much - that was suffering of loss - this is of longing - of pain human but caused by the divine. Pray for me" (6 November 1958). ¯ "I want God with all the power of my soul - and yet between us there is terrible separation. I don't pray any longer. I utter words of Community prayers . . . and yet when alone in the streets - I talk to You for hours - How intimate are those words - and yet so empty for they leave me far from You" (3 September 1959). ¯ "Pray for me - that 1 may not refuse God - It comes to the breaking point - then it does not break - I wish I could tell or write what I long to tell - but I find no words" (25 October 1959). ¯ "Pray for me, Father. Inside of me there is so much of suffering - pray for me that I may not refuse God in this hour - I don't want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it. Pray for me" (13 December 1959). ¯ "Keep my soul with all its darkness & loneliness, its longing and its torturing pain close to the altar - Pray for me - much and often - for now it seems He has cut off one more human help and left me alone - to walk alone in darkness. Pray for me - that I may keep up the smile, of giving without reserve - pray that I may find courage to walk bravely and with a smile. Ask Jesus not to allow me to refuse Him anything however small - I rather die. To ask you to come - I think that I will not do but if Jesus asks you to come - Please come I will be grateful" (4 April 1960). ¯ "I have been on the verge of saying - No. It has been so very hard - that terrible longing keeps growing - & I feel as if something will break in me one day - and then that darkness, that loneliness, that feeling of terrible aloneness. Heaven from every side is closed. Even the souls that drew me from Home from Loreto as if they don't exist - gone is the love for anything and any-body - and yet - I long for God. I long to love Him with every drop of life in me. I want to love Him with a deep personal love - I can't say I am distracted - my mind and heart is habitually with This darkness and emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God. Septentber-October 2001 Huart ¯ Mother Teresa God - How this thing must sound foolish to you because of its contradiction. "For my meditation I am using the Passion of Jesus - I am afraid I make no meditation - but only look at Jesus suffer - and keep repeating - 'Let me share with you this pain!' "When you go to Jesus - make one fervent act of love for me - since I can't make it myself" (20 October 1960). ¯ "He want to make sure to drain out of me every drop of self - Those weekly helps He has taken also so that darkness is so dark and the pain so great but in spite of it all - my retreat resolution was the same a hearty 'Yes' to God, a big 'Smile' to all. and it seems that these two words are the only thing that keeps me going" (15 June 1961). ¯ "As for me - thank God we have been told to follow Christ - as I have not to go ahead of Him even in the darkness the path is sure. "When some daysare above the average - I just stand like a very small child and await patiently for the storm to subside" (1 September 1961). ¯ "Often I wonder what does really God get from me in this state - no faith, no love - not even in feelings. The other day I can't tell you how bad I felt - there was a moment when I nearly refused to accept - deliberately I took the Rosary and very slowly without even meditating or thinking - I said it slowly and calmly - the moment passed - but the darkness is so dark, and the pain is so painful - but I accept whatever he gives and I give whatever He takes - People say they are drawn close to God - seeing my strong faith. Is this not deceiving people? Every time I have wanted to tell the truth - 'that I have no faith' - the words just do not come - my mouth remains closed - and yet I still keep on smiling at God and all" (21 September 1962). ¯ "I must have been so very full of self all this year - Since God is taking so long to empty me - I hope one day when I am fully empty He comes. Pray for me" (13 February 1963). ¯ "In my soul - I can't tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible. I feel like 'refusing God' and yet the biggest and the hardest to bear is the terrible longing for God - Pray for me that I may not turn a Judas to Jesus in this painful darkness. I was looking forward to speaking to you v I just long to speak - and this too He seems to have taken the power from me. I will not complain - I accept His Holy Will as it comes to me. If you have Review for Religious the time please write & do not mind my inability to speak to you - for I wanted to speak - but I could not" (9 January 1964). ¯ "I want to want it as He wants it. Only pray that I may keep up joy exteriorly. I deceive people with this weapon - even my Sisters" (undated). Even in her darkest moments, one thing always remained with Mother: the unshakable conviction that the mission entrusted to her and to her sisters among the poorest of the poor was God's, his entirely: ¯ "I know that I want with my whole heart what He wants, as He wants, as long as He wants. Yes Father - this 'aloneness' is hard. The only thing that remains is the deep and strong conviction that the work is His" (18 May 1962). It is no doubt from her own experience of the night that she could reach out to those who were journeying along a similar road. In a page of breathtaking beauty she wrote to a priest: ¯ "You have said 'yes' to Jesus and He has taken you at your word. The Word of God became Jesus the poor one. And so this terrible emptiness you experience. God cannot fill what is full. He can only fill emptiness - deep poverty - and your 'yes' is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really 'have' to give - but how empty we are - so that we can receive fully in our life and let Him live His life in us. In you today - He wants to relive His complete submission to His Father - allow Him to do so. It does not matter what you feel but what He feels in you. Take away your eyes from yourself and rejoice that you have nothing - that you are nothing - that you can do nothing. Give Jesus a big smile each time your nothingness frightens you. This is the poverty of Jesus. You and I must let Him live in us and through us in the world [.] Cling to Our Lady for she too - before she could become full of grace - full of Jesus - had to go through that darkness" (7 February 1974). At times God provided an oasis of peace: ¯ "You must have prayed very fervently for me because it is now about a month that there is in my heart a very deep union with the Will of God. I accept not in my feelings - but with my will, the Will of God. I accept this Will - not only for time but for eternity" (9 January 1964). Yet, in 1970, she still could write: ¯ "I can't tell you how bad I feel - but this too I have to accept. The devil must be mad September-October 2001 Huart * Mother Teresa with the good the Sisters are doing- & so the revenge" (16 September 1970). Most of these letters are from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. In later years, in her letters to Bishop and then Cardinal Picachy, she seldom comes back to this protracted trial. Does this mean that the darkness has by this time been lifted and that she now dwells in light and peace? When Father Picachy was appointed bishop of Jamshedpur and left Calcutta in 1962, she wrote to congratulate him and told him that, as he would be busy with weightier affairs, she felt she should not burden him any more with her own troubles. Is this why her spiritual confidences to him became gradually much less frequent? Or had she come to recognize that this darkness was God's way for her, along which she could be one with the poor and abandoned, and with the Sitio (the "I thirst") of Jesus on the cross? In the chapels of the Missionaries of Charity, next to a large crucifix, you will always find the words "I thirst" prominently displayed. Whatever happened afterwards, I hold it from reli-able witnesses that, in the period immediately before her death, she was in great and agonizing spiritual darkness. Further docu-ments and witnesses are likely to throw light on this, but per-haps fewer than we might hope. Mother always enjoyed speaking about God, Jesus, and the poor, but she was very reserved about her own inner life, except in those moments of night when she could not suppress a cry of pain. To Cardinal Picachy she confided how painful it was for her to open about it even to him. After meeting him she more than once wrote: ¯ "I wanted so much to speak to you, but something kept me back." In fact Mother tried persistently to get at confiding letters to destroy them. Many got lost in this way: ¯ "Please. destroy my letters or anything I have written - God wants me to open my heart to you - I have not refused. I am not trying to find the reason - only I beg you destroy everything" (26 April 1959). Cardinal Picachy did not comply, but kept all these letters-- presumably because he foresaw what would happen after her death. Her fear was that, if divulged, the letters might draw attention to her. She was convinced that the work she had been entrusted with was entirely God's, not hers. She was--as she repeatedly said-- only the small pencil stub that God used in writing his poem. She would add: ¯ "If God could have found a person smaller and more worthless than me, He would have chosen her instead." Review for Religious :" Would Mother, now that she is no longer with us on earth, still object to these letters having been preserved by Cardinal Picachy and now, after her and his death, brought into the open? By now she no doubt has understood that she belongs to the church. It is traditional teaching that the mystical charism of God's close friends is meant not primarily for themselves but for the good of the whole church. Many people who go through similar trials may gain courage and hope from these letters. There are probably many more such persons than we think---though in various degrees of intensity. About the Nights anyone can read in the writings of great mystics. Yet is it not encouraging to real-ize that darkness has been daily bread for a most joy-giving little woman of our days? At first sight Mother Teresa might stand in sharp contrast to little TMr~se of Lisieux. The latter lived within the routine of a contemplative convent, the for-mer was fully immersed in the world of the poor and later trav-eled incessantly around the world to visit her sisters. There may, however, have been a great closeness of spirit between the two. When Mother was asked whether she took her name from the great Teresa of Jesus, she answered: "Oh no, nothing so grand for me! For me it is the little one." She often fondly spoke of her. Just before dying she wrote a letter to her sisters, making special mention of her little life-friend. We mentioned above Mother's small parable comparing herself to the useless little pencil stub in the hand of God, Does this image not remind us of Thtr~se of Lisieux's Little Way? Would their similai'ities not come in large measure from their pilgrim-age through the same Night? It is well known that Th~r~se of Lisieux, for years before her death--and increasingly as she approached death--lived in a deep darkness of the spirit. This she bore heroically in union with the many in her age who were over-whelmed by the spirit of unbelief. Mother lived it in union with the vast world of those who live in misery, loneliness, and rejection. This article does not attempt to give a balanced account of Mother Teresa's spirituality. It is very one-sided, emphasizing In the period immediately before her death, she was in great and agonizing spiritual darkness. September-October 2001 Huart * Mother Teresa Mother's Night pilgrimage, a dimension of her life that is little known. There is any amount of documentation focusing on her immense compassion for the poor, her organizing dynamism, her spirit of faith and joy-giving. It seems good now to bring out the dark mystical dimension, which might place her along with the great contemplative apostles of the world. Some trends nowadays would claim that a Christian is called to be carried on an ever flowing stream of spiritual joy. Here there would be no darkness of spirit that a good mix of psychotherapy and spirituality could not do away with. I remember Cardinal Picachy, the recipient of the letters we have been quoting above, asking in gentle bewilderment after listening to a talk on such lines: "What on earth has become of the Night?" He may have been thinking of what his friend had gone through, and of the joy-giving fruit it has borne for many. Leaves Dried, dead leaves, brown, brittle, broken, scraping the concrete, whisked by the wind. Fodder for fire, fun for squirrels and birds, who walk, scamper, and squawk in the midst of them. Pounded by nature, they melt, mushy, into the ground, giving nourishment, substance, peat to a new generation. I am not unlike the leaf. Michael J. Lydon Review for Religious CATHY WRIGHT Multicultural at Our Very Heart: The Little Sisters of Jesus There is a lot of research and talk today about multi-culturalism in religious life. My reading about it has been limited, but I think that my community, the Little Sisters of Jesus, has a certain experience of it that might be interesting to simply share. We were founded in 1939 by Magdeleine Hutin, who started in Algeria among nomadic tribes of the Sahara, intending to be a simple presence of friendship and God's love. By that very presence in love and respect, she sought to break down barriers of prejudice. While not monastic, we are called to be contemplatives, to seek the face of God in a life that is lived amid ordi-nary people who have suffered from poverty or exclusion of one kind or another. Magdeleine never expected her community to be more than a small group fitting into the desert's nomadic Muslim population. But a strange thing happened. After World War II many women, especially in her native France, became captivated by this way of "presence." As the numbers increased, some began asking to go to other countries, and in 1947 Magdaleine understood that this "vocation of Bethlehem and Nazareth" could be lived Cathy Wright LSJ lives in Chicago. More information and resources about the Little Sisters are available on their Website: www.rc.net/org/littlesisters. September- October 2001 Wright ¯ Multicultural at Our Very Heart anywhere. With the audacity of all our founders, she got herself a ticket to travel around the world. Wherever she found a willing bishop--and there were many who refused her--she would leave a few young sisters behind to "do it." With many adventures they did. Some of those places were the industrialized urban centers, where the sisters worked in fac-tories. Some of those places were deep in the Amazon or in remote villages of Alaska or Australia. And some were in areas torn by the violence of hatred and war. She would go almost anywhere, but particularly where the church was not present or where people suffered from discrimination, violence, division, or poverty. Foundations on every continent resulted in women from those countries asking to join. Magdeleine saw in this a wonderful way of being a living sign of unity. She was not a woman of theories, but one of dreams, seemingly undaunted by the inconveniences of what she was undertaking. She was not naive about the demands of the lifestyle, but was convinced that the power of love could continue working miracles in our day. If anything, Magdeleine erred on the side of multicultural-ism. As soon as women from a country were professed (and some-times even before), she gave them leadership roles in the congregation. She encouraged sisters from different countries, races, and cultures to live together as visible witnesses and signs that love can overcome the divisions created by prejudices. She quickly had sisters from different countries and races taking their place on the general council. Ag a way of further encouraging this intermingling, forma-tion sessions and theology studies were organized first in Algeria and later in Rome so that all could have the experience of living together for a significant length of time. When people from around the world spend a year or two together deepening their faith and their common vocation, friendships are created that sustain us when we return to our own little corners of the world. As I said, Magdeleine was not a woman of theory. She just went on and dreamed wonders into being. She knew how to celebrate and rejoice in the diversity of cultures. Besides the personal letters exchanged by friends now living all over the world, we have a system of circular letters, very con-crete sharings gathered from those faraway places. We know about land-reform issues in the Amazon through our sisters who have lived among the Tapirape people for fifty years, and the genocide Review for Religious in Rwanda had a personal face to it--sisters and their families and friends. I have lived with sisters from many countries and partic-ipated in their celebrations. We have eaten each other's food, sometimes with delight and sometimes just trying to get it down. We learn to laugh and cry together, both by sharing about what goes on back home and by the inevitable joys and pains of learn-ing to live together. Being part of such a community has its challenges. It is not always simple to bring such diversity together, especially from peoples that may have a long his-tory of conflict and misunderstand-ing. These can be painful situations, and trying to find a way together can only be done through the heart of the Crucified One. But finding a way is a gospel imperative. In my own experience, the cul-tural differences are not the hard-est. We expect them to be there even if sometimes we are surprised by them and trip. The differences of personality and temperament-- realities that are present in each cul-ture- are much harder to deal with on a daily basis. On one occasion I spent the better part of a year in a group of eighteen of us. Within that group there were two sisters each from Nigeria, Japan, Germany, India, and Ethiopia. In each instance the personalities and temperaments of the two from the same country were so different as to wonderfully break down any national stereotypes that we might have had of each other. And, rather than trying simplistically to think that all national cultures are much the same, is it not better to notice the many variations on a theme? It seems to me that the most important element of any cross-cultural community project is the attitude with which we approach it. Do I believe that each culture is good even if I will always be more at home within my own? Am I comfortable enough within my own culture so as not to be threatened by another's? As obvi-ous as it may seem, I found myself realizing one day that each cul- When people from around the world spend a year or two together deepening their faith and their common vocation, friendships are created that sustain us when we return to our own little corners of the world. ¯ September-October 2001 Wright ¯ Multicultural at Our Very Heart ture, including my own, is in need of evangelization in the deep-est and best sense. There is no need to idealize away our sins and shortcomings. We are all in need of redemption. In crossing our cultural boundaries, it is important to be not only willing, but eager, to learn from each other--and to be convinced that others have something to reveal to me not only about themselves but also about myself and God. I have learned much by simply being part of a diverse com-munity. I have especially learned that my way of seeing the world is very relative. I have been privileged to visit or live in other countries and cultures, and this has fashioned the way I see the world. At present my community numbers about 1300 women from 67 nationalities living in 72 countries. There are only 25 of us in the United States. Of that number about half have been born in the U.S. 9f European or Mexican ancestry. The rest come from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and Sri Lanka. Little sis-ter Magdeleine dreamed us into existence through the grace of God and her audacity to believe that what was deemed folly in the eyes of many was really the wisdom of God. She just went on and did it, believing that "Jesus is the Master of the Impossible." None of us will ever do it perfectly. We have made plenty of mis-takes, and will find new mistakes down the road. In a global world, I am grateful for Magdeleine's vision. For her the differences of culture, race, religion, temperament, and age were cause for celebration and mutual enrichment. She believed that embracing these differences is a sign of the reign of God. It is a response to Jesus' call to be one, to build a world where we are all sisters and brothers to one another. Review for Religious A. PAUL DOMINIC Millennial Stirrings in Religious Life ~/ n~w spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture, an awakening brought about by a critical mass of indi-viduals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding, a jour-ney in which we are led by mysterious coincidences.'" No matter who wrote those words--though in fact they are by James Redfield, author of the bestselling Celestine Prophecy--they are likely to evoke a pleasant, hopeful response in many a reader around the world. I asked myself whether such an awakening is occurring in religious life. I answered yes at once. But, as I wanted to share my convic-tion with others, I began wondering how to express it in a way that would be both familiar and striking. No ideas came, and, without a library at hand, I laid aside my little project and devoted some time to prayer. Afterwards I was about to do something else when I felt urged to pick up at random one of a little collec

Issue 51.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1992. ; for religi.ous Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1992 ¯-VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER 4 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ FAX: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ 5001 Eastern Avenue ¯ P.O. Box 29260 Washington~ D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1992 Review for Religious for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Se~in Sammon FMS Wendy Wright PhD Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1992 ¯ VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER 4 contents evangelizing and witnessing ° 486 Church of the Poor Juan Ram6n Moreno sJ reflects on the implications of seeing the poor as central for the identity of the church and religious life. 496 Women Missioners amidst Violence Annmarie Sanders IHM reflects the questions, fears, and chal-lenges facing foreign women missionaries in Peru. 504 School of Terror Roy Bourgeois MM speaks on behalf of the poor as he voices his concern about a particular military training camp called the School of the Americas. inculturating 508 Women Religious and the African Synod M. Gerard Nwagwu offers her thoughts on the evangelization of Africa in an article originally presented as the keynote address at the National Day of Celebration of the Nigerian Conference of Women Religious in January 1992. 519 Rerooting Religious Life in South Africa Jennifer Mary Alt OP reflects on how native African spiritual values might become better integrated into the religious-life vocation. 527 54O 545 living religiously Religious Life and Religion Albert DiIanni SM calls attention to the religious core of a belief in God and of our relationship with God which cannot be reduced to a personal~ social, or ecological morality. Detachment in Our Psychological Age Eileen P. O'Hea CSJ explains detachment as a way of freeing ourselves from our compulsive behaviors and opening ourselves to God's healing. An Ache in My Heart Bernard Seif SMC witnesses to the continuing call and direction of God in bringing forth new forms of dedicated life in the " church. 482 Review Jbr Religious focusing religious life 550 Religious Life in Church Documents Patricia F. Walter OP presents some aspects identifying religious life in conciliar and postconciliar documents of the magisterium. 562 The Ignatian Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph Joan L. Roccasalvo CSJ shows how the Spiritual Exercises per-meate Jean-Pierre M~daille's Maxims of Perfection and so fire an Ignatian spirit for the Sisters of St. Joseph. 575 Envisioning Associate Identity Rose Marie Jasinski CBS reflects on the status of the associate movement in the light of the second national conference held 5-7 May 1991. 581 Musings about Vocations James E. Claffey CM finds vocation ministry a stimulant to a broader understanding of how God breaks into our history. 585 595 600 614 484 625 632 ministering Pastoral Leadership beyond the Managerial (XL*~ Matthias Neuman OSB stresses the role of spiritual leadership in the midst of ministry challenges. Scarcity and Abundance in Parishes Thomas P. Sweetser SJ compares the parish to a desert of scarci-ties, but at the same time a desert beautiful with hidden wells of life. Marian Community and Ministry Patrick Primeaux SM combines data from both the theological and businessomanage.ment disciplines to distinguish a Petrine and a Marian way of ministering and of living community. Three Images of Priesthood Henry J. Charles proposes the images of priest as collaborator, mystagogue, and holy man for a renewed understanding of priesthood. departments Prisms /~ Canonical Counsel: Involuntary Ex~laustration Book Reviews .l~uly-Augu.ct 1992 483 prisms History happens. We human beings can write our history books and, by emphasis and omission and sometimes by romanticizing, make as if we are mas-ters of our history. It may take only some seventy years for the rewriting of the Communist history of Russia or it may take five hundred years for the European discovery of the Americas to be reevaluated. But it happens. We say that Pope John XXIII made history when he called the Second Vatican Council. We are well aware that the church experienced, through the actions of the bishops present at the council, something that has been likened to a second Pentecost. For our own availability to the God of history, we need to return again and again to the happening of that first Pentecost and the subsequent events as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. God's Spirit makes things happen, even when the very persons involved seem so little capable of being the crafters of history. Most recently Pope John Paul II has expressed his own desire to make history by his call for a new evangelization, partic-ularly occasioned by our entering into the third millen-nium. This call to a new evangelization holds the promise of another moment of this second Pentecost that came with Vatican II. It is history happening, in which none of us is the master or control-artist, but every one of us plays an important role--with the Spirit's direction. Evangelization--new evangelization--demands much of us all. A paradigm of evangelization and inculturation captures our attention anew as we reflect upon the events in the Acts of the Apostles. It means that no one can hold himself or herself exempt from the call of this second moment of the second Pentecostqthe call to a new hear- 484 Review for Religious ing of good news. This is not the time for new rules or the impo-sition of old ones--the Judaizers tried that two thousand years ago. It is the time for Cornelius, his wife, and household to invite Peter once again to proclaim the gospel so that new conversion on everyone's part can take place. It is the time for Peter to dream new dreams and hear God telling him that old restrictions do not apply in a new creation moment. One of the deepest meanings of Pentecost lies in the fact that all peoples heard the good news in a way that they could under-stand and respond to. It goes beyond the language barrier to breakthroughs involving customs, heritages, and rituals. In the Pentecost beginnings, Jesus Christ and the gospel message needed no inculturation. In the new evangelization as in the original one recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, it is not Jesus Christ who needs to be inculturated; he is already a confidant of people's hearts. It is his church that must be inculturated by being evan-gelized anew as well as by evangelizing others. The Acts of the Apostles--the story of the first evangelizing time--portrays the exhilarating and somber picture that inculturating a church does not come without cost--a cost which everyone must bear in lis-tening to ~hocking good news, in experiencing a certain amount of turmoil, in suffering the pain of differences expressed vigorously by people who serve or are served. John Paul II has said that "we need an evangelization that is new in its ardor, new in its method, new in its expressions." That ' is what we--always the disciples--must allow to happen to our-selves first: to be evangelized anew in order to be the new evan-gelizers. We need to rethink how to inculturate a church, not a gospel. If the original Jewish and pagan converts to the new Christian faith seemed to share little common religious heritage and ritual and yet, with struggle, came to form the Body of Christ, can we today not recognize the imperative of a new evangelization demanding the same kind of breakthrough for traditionalists, lib-erals, feminists, or whatever modern-day version an appeal to the party of Apollos or Paul takes? A new evangelization brings the excitement of discovery into our own lives and so into our church. Let the Spirit lead. It has happened; it will happen again. David L. Fleming SJ ~uly-Augu~t 1992 485 JUAN RAMON MORENO Church of the Poor evangelizing and witnessing Juan Ram6n Moreno SJ was one of six Jesuits mur-dered along with an employee and her daughter by Salvadoran military forces at the Jesuit residence of the Central American University, San Salvador, on 16 November 1989. He was widely known as a spiritual director, teacher, preacher, and giver of retreats and conferences and was the founder and editor of the spirituality journal Diakonfa. Besides holding other responsibilities, at various times he was novice director for the Jesuits of Central America, local superior, university professor, and president of the Panamanian and Nicaraguan con-ferences of religious. This article was first published in Diakonfa 7 (1978): 17-28 and republished in a collection of Father Moreno's writings, Evangelio y misidn (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1990). The translation is by James R. Brockman SJ with the permission of UCA Editores. The footnotes are the translator's. The term "church of the poor" is meant to express a new awareness of what it is to be church, an awareness that is growing in force among Christians in Latin America. The following thoughts are proposed as a help toward under-standing the foundation and principal traits of this way of viewing the church. Church of the Poor and Vatican II The schema on the church elaborated by the precon-ciliar doctrinal commission brought together the ecclesi-ology traditionally taught in recent centuries, and the 486 Review for Religious that allow one to recognize in Jesus the hoped-for Messiah are that "the blind see and the lame walk., and the good news is proclaimed to the poor" (Mt 11:5), what should be the traits that make recognizable Jesus' church? Church Born from Below Vatican II has allowed us to pass from a church that becomes conscious of itself and is organized and structured fr0m within, from itself, to a church that seeks to understand and structure itselffr0m without, from the world that it has been sent to in order to make God's kingdom grow in that world. Nevertheless, the reality that the world is a divided world had not yet made its full impact on the council. Consequently, the challenges to which it more directly proposes to respond are those of a world seen too much from above, from the angle of the learned and the skilled, from the culture and the perspective of the dominant classes. But at Medellfn2 the Latin American bishops began to express in an inspired and probing manner the conflictive reality of our world. The cry of the impoverished majority of the continent found an echo. The church began to become aware of itself and to organize and structure its life and pastoral action not from an abstract world or from just any part of the real, concrete world, but from below, from the world of the poor, and from there to fashion itself as the true church of Christ. Church of the Poor One must not confuse church of the poor with church3'br the poor. A church for the poo~r would be a church that is constituted in a first step that is logically prior to its encounter with the poor and then, in a second step, seeks out the poor to serve and help them. But the church of the poor is a church that in its very con-stitution has the poor as its center. There is no doubt that the church, as the historical body of Christ, must place itself in the world to transform it and to make present in it the reign of God. It must be incarnated, that is, take a body, become a visible and acting institution. But the problem is, what are the criteria that are to determine its institutional shape? What body will it take? Faithful to the incarnational logic of Jesus, the church must take the body of the poor, incorporat-j~ uly-.4ugust 1992 489 Moreno ¯ Church of the Poor ing the poor, making the poor to be those who make up what is characteristic and determinant of its body, which is structured and takes visible form from the cause and the interests of the poor. Let us take a Gospel passage that graphically illustrates this, which is the particular way of acting of Jesus. I choose the short scene with which Mark begins his third chapter. He describes a Jesus situated within a determined sociocultural-religious con-text. But Jesus is situated in it concretely, and he is situated in a way which is perceived by one of the parties as threatening to its interests--"they wer~ watching him closely" (3:2)--and which provokes a conflict so sharp that "they plotted together to see how to eliminate him" (3:6). What is indicative is the place where Jesus is situated and from which he faces the situation: solidarity with the actual man, the man in his poverty, the man oppressed by his paralyzed hand and forsaken by the institution. He has him step into the middle of the synagogue. And he obliges the others, the representatives of the grand institution, to face up to their own presuppositions: Is it licit or not? What is more important, the institution or the person, maintaining the institution or free-ing a man from what concretely oppresses him? What is the cri-terion to act on? "But they were silent" (3:4). Jesus' reaction is, "Then looking at them with anger . . ." (3:5). Countless times the Gospels speak of Jesus' look--always a loving and compas-sionate look. Now he looks "with anger." At whom? At that group of wise, prudent men who are respectful of the institution. Why? Because they refuse to commit themselves to the man, they refuse to make a decision in regard to a poor person, they refuse to take a stand in a situation that questions their rigid institutional schemes. Jesus says, "Hold out your hand" (3:5). Jesus chooses the poor person, the man in a situation of concrete need. The institution is either at the service of human beings orit does not reflect the true God. The Gospels contain many even more radical expressions about the poor as the fundamental criterion for discerning whether we are following the path to God's kingdom. Perhaps the most awesome and disquieting is the words contained in Matthew 25:31-46: "Come, blessed ones of my Father, inherit the kingdom . . . for I was hungry and you gave me to eat. depart from me, accursed ones., for I was naked and you did no~' clothe me . " There is not much room here for sociological or 490 Review for Religious theological lucubrations about who are the poor that are spoken of and what is the determinant criterion for measuring God's nearness. Crucified Church As we can see in the example of Jesus, taking the side of the poor supposes having the courage to get involved in conflict. The history of the Latin American church since Medellfn confirms what has been true all through its existence: insofar as it empties itself of power and prestige so as to enter the world of the poor and be identified with them and their cause, it has also had to suffer their lot--crucifixion and death--and it has come to under-stand why it cannot follow Jesus without denying itself and car-rying the cross. It is because the immense majority of the poor are not poor simply because of nature, but because of other persons. In reality, the poor are the impoverished. Hence, their mere pres-ence is an accusation, a questioning; it creates conflict. The poor are a cause of division, a division whose theological meaning is apocalyptically described in the eschatological discourse I have mentioned: "He will separate one from the other, as the shep-herd separates the sheep from the goats" (Mt 25:32). Jesus him-self, poor and in solidarity with the poor, appears as "a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34); and when he takes his place actually at the side of the poor, he provokes conflict and repression, and he suffers death. For this reason the church of the poor is the crucified church, the church of the martyrs. It is so insofar as it is a church of the poor. As long as it preaches universal but abstract love, as long as it is a church from above, the world's powerful praise and respect it; they consider it their church. But when it begins to translate love into historical terms, when it begins to take the side of the poor and it plans and organizes its pastoral work with them in mind, then it begins also to be the church that is slandered and persecuted. If we look at this fact in the light of the Beatitudes (see Lk 6:22-23, 26) there is no doubt which one is the church of Jesus. Church in which the Poor are Evangelized The poor are the privileged consignees of the good news of .~ly-Aug'ust 1992 491 Moreno ¯ Church of the Poor salvation. That does not mean they are the exclusive consignees. Partiality is not the same as exclusiveness. Jesus comes to bring sal-vation for all. But he comes to bring it from the poor, and fi'om them he confronts the changes that must come about in the world; he makes specific what it means to be converted, what it means to become brothers and sisters. This is not a matter of mystifying the poor, as if they were the good and the rich were the bad. It is that objectively God's identi-fication with the poor, the defense of their cause, is precisely where it is revealed what God is, a God who is love that saves, love that creates a brotherhood and sisterhood of sons and daughters, love that makes all things new. And so it is from there that salva-tion is offered to all. The Beatitudes proclaim, not the goodness of human beings, but the goodness of the God who identifies with the little ones of the earth. The Acts of the Apostles describes for us a church that under, stood this very well and where for that reason the poor find their place in such a way that they cease to be poor: Among them no one was needy, because all those who pos-sessed land or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale., and distribution was made to all according to their needs (Ac 4:34-35). It is the very gesture of him who "being rich became poor for you in order to enrich you with his poverty (2 Co 8:9). Church in which the Poor Evangelize Us This is another of the traits that characterize the church of the poor. St. John declares: Everyone who loves . . . knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love (1 Jn 4:7-8). But those who from their objective condition teach the church what true love of God, Christian love, consists in are the poor: If someone has material possessions and sees a brother in need and yet closes his heart to him, how can love of God dwell in him? My children, let us love not just with words, with our lips, but with actions and in truth (1 Jn 3:17-18). The poor reveal to us what the demands are of that love which, because it is Christian, seeks efficacy and a real change in the conditions of suffering and injustice of the poor. They makd us discover who God is: the one who takes the part of the orphan, 492 Review for Religious the widow, the stranger, the one who becomes their goeL They make us understand the Jesus who has compassion, who casts out demons, who looks with anger. They reveal to us the demons that must be cast out today, what the sin is that today stirs up the Lord's anger, what it is that today negates brotherhood, that kills our brother or sister. It is from the poor we must learn what grace means, grace that is manifested in powerlessness, that makes possible the impossible, that bursts in as pure gift. In short, they keep on making us discover the Gospel in a new dimension. On the other hand, if the poor are the privileged consignees of the good news of the kingdom, that means they must also be privileged in understanding and interpreting what that good news signi-fies. The Gospel is understood through the lens of the poor and from their per-spective. Therefore, it is in them before all else that the Spirit becomes present, From the poor we must learn what grace means, grace that is manifested in powerlessness, that makes possible the impossible, that bursts in as pure gift. and from there the Spirit speaks today to the church. There is a hierarchical magisterium in the church, but it only makes sense if it is rooted in the reality of those poor who make up the church's rank and file. The good shepherd's sheep follow him because "they know his voice" and "he knows his own sheep" (Jn 10:4, 14). The hierarchy of the church of the poor is a hierarchy of service, not of domination. It is a hierarchy that knows its sheep in dia-logue and solidarity, that is ai~tuned to their concrete needs, their sufferings, their longings. Precisely for this reason, because it can hear and understand the people's silent cry, it is able to speak with a language that is recognizable, and in the hierarchy's voice the poor find their life, their cause, their hope, their own voice. The theological reflection of the church of the poor is done from below also, tuning in to 'the awareness and the feelings of the poor. Those poor have had their voice taken away--within the church as well--for so long that they have forgotten how to speak and must learn, to express themselves; but they must increasingly acquire a voice within the church. And that voice must be heard, because in it is revealed the Spirit of Jesus that guides the church. Thus will arise a church where things are considered, struc-at~ dy-./lugust 1992 493 Moreno ¯ Church of tbe Poor tured, and carried out from the perspective of the poor. It is they who say how the institution should function, what new ministries are required for a better service, what ministries and functions they need so that they themselves may be active participants within the church's life. Church on Its Way We must not forget that this church of the poor is also a pil-grim church, a church that must keep forming itself through hard-ship and conflict. I am not referring now to conflict with the powers of the world; I am talking about the world and the sin that are still found within the church itself, about conflict that arises from the church's limitations and from different models of church. The church's unity--that unity for which Jesus died--is eschatological unity, a unity that will come about beyond the church itself as fundamental gift of the kingdom that will burst forth into fullness. The church has a mission to go on building that unity--which is universal brotherhood and sisterhood--by attacking at the root what keeps that unity from being realized. That is not achieved by denying the reality of the conflict, but by facing up to the lack of love and Folidarity that produces it. The mere existence of the poor exposes that lack of love and sol-idarity- which is why there will be protest, conflict, and division as long as there are poor--and it reminds us that salvation, the fullness of God's reign, has not yet arrived. The Religious Life in the Church of the Poor What place do we religious have within this church of the poor that I have just described? The religious life arises as protest against the values and struc-tures of the world. It arises as a search for what is radical in the Gospel, for the "one thing necessary" (Lk 10:42), which tends to be obscured in a church tempted to become worldly, to stop being the distinct event that it ought to be within the world. With its special form of Christian existence, religious life ought to be prophecy that points continually towards the church's true mean-ing and calls on it, not to settle down, but to seek ever to go for-ward. That is the eschatological meaning of the vows, as they show us a beyond that urgesus to transform the present. 494 Review for Religious But what is the natural place for religious life to flourish? Where is the root that makes our life radically evangelical? If what I have said about the church of the poor is true, then there is no doubt that the poor are the place par excellence where the reli-gious life should be located in order to carry out its charism of prophecy. In point of fact, the Spirit is stirring up a notable move-ment among religious towards a real and concrete insertion among the poor. From there the Spirit provides light for a reinterpreta-tion of religious life itself. The religious vows are seen before all else as ,consecration to the Christ who is poor and identified with the poor, as vows that consecrate by freeing us from fixity and exclusiveness so as to form Christians who are available for all and approachable by all, but with an availability and approacha-bility whose universalness is shown precisely in being dedicated by preference to the poor and effectively committed to their cause. It means being detached in order to go where the institution can scarcely reach because of the difficulty and poverty of the condi-tions. Jon Sobrino expresses it very well as a going to the desert, the periphery, the frontier: to the desert, where no one is, where no one wants to go; to the periphery, where everything is seen through the lens of the powerless (not to the center, where the powerful are, where things are seen from above); to the frontier, where risks are greater and the task is harder, where there are no trodden paths because no one has trod them and the walkways are made by walking. What better way to fulfill religious life's prophetic function within the church than to help it read the signs of the times from that insertion into the world and struggle of the poor? What bet-ter way than to point out the new paths that the Spirit of Jesus is having us discover through the poor, in whom that Spirit becomes so specially present? The challenge offered us is, how to bring this about? To what conversion does the Lord call us as religious within the church so that we may help it become increasingly a church of the poor? Notes 1 The Documents of Vatican H (New York: The America Press, 1966), pp. 23-24. 2 The 1968 Latin American bishops' assembly at Medell~n, Colombia. July-August 1992 495 ANNMARIE SANDERS Women Missioners amidst Violence efforts of two insurgency groups, drug lords, and a military that violates more human rights than the groups it seeks to suppress. Through the country more than sixty percent of the people are living in emergency zones, and a great deal of these areas have been placed under military control. Many of the towns have lost their leaders, doctors, teachers, and development workers and even their police. Often only Catholic church workers remain, the great majority of whom are women religious. The situation has called us who serve here to a new way of liv-ing and ministering among the people and to a new spirituality. Following Christ and living Christian values can no longer be done as in the past. The reality in which our spirituality is lived out is now radically different. In speaking with various foreign women missionaries through-out Peru, I see that we struggle with many of the same new chal-lenges, are asking ourselves the same questions, and are recognizing similar patterns in our lives of prayer and relation with God. Our situation is unique because of the state of the country in which we work. The complexity of problems plaguing Annmarie Sanders IHM, a member of her congregation's vocation and formation team, has been in Peru since March 1989, She also works as associate editor of Latinamerica Press/Noticias Aliadas. Her address is Apartado 18-0101 ; Lima, Peru. 496 Review for Religious Peru does not follow any pattern in the history of other nations, and thus we have no precedent to follow. To understand our questions, fears, and challenges, one must better understand the context of the violence we face. Peru's two terrorist groups, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Move-ment, hold as their primary goals the takeover of the country. So far their efforts since 1980 ¯ have resulted in 23,000 deaths, 5,000 disap-pearances and US$18 billion in economic damage. Sendero has declared its willingness to wade through a "river of blood" to expunge foreign influence in Peru and establish a peas-ant society. It rejects competition from the church, the state, and the private sector. The methods of the two groups include bombings, intimidations, blackmail, torture, and ruth-less murder. The terrorist groups are known to be linked with narco-traffic rings, and in return for the security which the terrorists provide coca traffickers, they receive an esti-mated $40 million a year. Although the current government of Although the terrorist problem has been present in the country for over a decade, only recently has the church been directly affected. President Albert Fujimori attempts to control the drug trafficking and terrorist situations, it also battles cholera, endemic corruption, frequent drought, eighty-percent underemployment, and a deep economic depression leaving 13 million of Peru's 22 million inhabitants in extreme poverty, a figure which has doubled in three years. The government must also contend with the Peruvian military and police forces, which, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, are among the worst violators of human rights in the hemisphere. The U.S. State Department's 1990 human-rights report notes "widespread credible reports of summary executions, arbitrary arrests, and torture and rape by the military, as well as less frequent reports of such abuses by the police." The United Nations Commission on Human Rights noted that in 1991, for the fourth consecutive year, Peru had the highest number of disap-pearances of all the countries in the world. Although the terrorist problem has been present in the coun-try for over a decade, only recently has the church been directly affected. Between the church and the terrorists there had existed .~dy-August 1992 497 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence an "understanding." Generally, when terrorists entered to take over a village, if church workers complied with terrorist expecta-tions they were left unharmed. The church work often had to be significantly curtailed,.'but the religious could remain as a presence to the people. The recent direct destruction of church projects and prop-erty; the deaths of Irene McCormack, an Australian Sister of St. Joseph, in Junin in May 1991 and of Zbigniew Strzalkowski and Michael Tomaszek, Polish Franciscan priests, and Alessandro Dordi Negroni, an Italian priest, in Chimbote in August 1991; and the attempted assassination in July 1991 in Chimbote of Miguel Company, a priest from Spain, changed the scene signif-icantly. More religious encountered terrorist demands that their works--especially food aid and development projects--be stopped, and many received direct threats on their lives. Rather suddenly priests and religious became direct terrorist targets. Sendero Luminoso proclaimed that the church was the enemy of the peo-ple and an obstacle to revolutionary triumph. As the Rev. Robert Gloisten, a U.S. missioner and a staff member of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference for Social Action, stated, "We have become a church under fire with no idea of what will happen day to day." For several years, denial of the serious-ness of the situation was possible. Life was carried on with a vague knowledge that terrorists were active in a few isolated areas; as long as their activity did not directly touch us, we could continue peacefully. Those days are past. ~ The level of awareness and acceptance of the reality of this sit-uation naturally differs for each person. Much depends on one's personal experiences. For example, Pittsburgh Sister of Mercy Rita Harasiuk, who works in the diocese of Chimbote, was jolted by the death of her three colleagues into a new view of the situation: Although I began seeing things differently with the attempted assassination of Miguel Company, it was really the deaths of the two Franciscans that affected me the most. The two, along with two mayors from nearby towns who were also killed, were laid out together in coffins--all open-- and one worse than the other. For some of us, it was the first time we had seen what a human body looked like after having been shot in the head with weapons designed to destroy and mutilate . When Sandro [Alessandro Dordi] was killed two weeks later, we could see that more killing might go on. That's when we really began to strug-gle with what our response to this situation should be. 498 Review for Religious For California native Teresa Avalos of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, an incident directly involving her community played a significant role in making the situation more real for her and her sisters. In July 1991 a group of Sendero Luminoso ter-rorists entered Moho, where five of her community members lived and worked. They dynamited several buildings, executed six people, and ordered the townspeople to break into and ransack the convent. "This brought the fear of violence that is directed toward us much more into the open," Avalos said. Others of us have grown in our acceptance of the seriousness of the situation from our hearing such accounts by our colleagues. We stand in solidarity with them, aware that the problem is no longer isolated. An important task most of us have faced has been the admission of our feelings in the midst of such turmoil. Fear, nat-urally, is among the most common emotions, and, unfortunately, sometimes very difficult to accept and share with others. "We are all at different stages of being able to accept the real-ity, and some are still in a stage of denial," said California native Liane Delsuc of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. "This leaves me often feeling alone and sometimes I don't want to share my fears because others don't feel them. I start to think--is it only me that feels this way? Does that mean I should leave? That I am not able to handle it? But I do not feel that is the case. So I look for people with whom I can more freely share because in sharing it I feel stronger and as if I can continue living this." The sharing has helped us understand the wide range of emo-tions we feel. "Reflecting with others enables me to sift through real fears and imaginary ones," said Pauline Maheux, an Edmonton, Canada, native of the Ursuline Sisters of the Chatham Union; "in sharing we help one another admit to our fears and face them." The emotions one feels get mixed up when one watches the sense-less killing and destruction of years of work. Feelings include shock and anger. Often what is hardest for us to accept is the distrust we now feel towards others since we know that we must be aware of terrorist infiltration into our parishes and workplaces. An important task most of us have faced has been the admission of our feelings in the midst of such turmoil. July-August 1992 499 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence Harasiuk received a shocking revelation of this after the funeral for the slain Franciscans. At the offertory two gifts were quietly brought in procession to the altar: the rope used to tie the hands of those killed and the blood-covered cardboard left on their bodies with messages from the assassins. "We later dis-covered that among the young people bringing the gifts to the altar were persons who belonged to Sendero." Our situation naturally causes us to reflect on death--that which we see around us as well as our own. "I think much more about the possibility of my own death," said French native Anna Ingett of the Sisters of Christian Education; "not that I think death will come in the next few days,,but I am more conscious of its nearness." Given this stark reality, we are constantly asking ourselves on personal, communal, local, diocesan, and national levels: How do we deal with this personally and how are we to respond as church workers? One of the greatest challenges we face is receiving accu-rate information about what is happening in the country. The media in Peru are severely restricted and often rely on third-party sources; great doubts remain. Although organizations such as the Religious Conference of Peru work hard to gather facts, the dis-semination of information is very difficult, given the lack many religious have of telephones and reliable mail service. Many reli-gious, however, felt aided by the Religious Conference's meet-ings and workshops on violence and also by programs dealing with situations and problems in the various dioceses. What seems most useful to us are open, honest dialogues with our community members and other religious working in our areas. Many of us have listened to the facts, tried to process our feelings, and then asked ourselves some hard questions: How much more of this can I take? Will I leave if one more religious or priest is killed? Can I live with this tension? Can I remain a sign of hope in what looks like an apparently hopeless situation? Once some sense of peace was reached about our presence here, we began reexamining why we are staying. Many of us, espe-cially those working the emergency zones, began looking at our work with very different eyes. "After the deaths here, most of us slowed down and started thinking, evaluating, praying, and talk-ing together about why we are here and what we should be doing," said Harasiuk, who has been working for ten years as a pastoral team member in Chimbote. She recalls a meeting of priests and 500 Revlew for Religious sisters where someone asked, "Do you think you should continue working as you have been?" Not one person said yes. Many pastoral workers have reduced their work to simple presence in their parishes. They no longer lead groups, distribute food and aid, or attempt to organize the people. They maintain a low profile and lead quiet lives of simple accompaniment. For Delsuc, who is principal in a Lima barrio of a Fe and Alegrfa School, one of forty-three institutes set up by the Jesuits to educate young people in Lima's shantytowns and in the provinces, the questions about work are many: "I wonder if we are presenting relevant, peaceful alterna-tives that will allow the people to respond with Christian values to the violence around them? I wonder if it would'be better not to be involved in a certain work and just live alongside the people? I wonder if our commit-ment to the people is valuable even if it brings death?" Many of our ques-tions must be left unanswered. But we recognize that simply by asking them we have allowed our lives to be changed. For many of us, before we could accept the change the situ-ation calls us to, we had to let go of the past. Harasiuk says that this was a common experience for the religious in Chimbote after the deaths. "Our grieving process was not just for persons, but for a whole way of life that is passing. This situation has taken away from us a freedo~n to move day and night without fear, to speak openly without worrying about what we say or to who~n we are talking." For Harasiuk this experience also helped her to evaluate her life and her activity and to decide what really matters. "So many of the things I had been involved in suddenly did not seem so important." Maheux, who has served as a pastoral worker for eight years in Chiclayo, had a similar experience. "The situation has enabled me to sift through what is of essence and what is truly insignifi-cant. Relationships have taken on profound meaning . . . to be nourished and cherished." The change in relationships extends for most of us also to I wonder if we are presenting relevant, peaceful alternatives that will allow the people to respond with Christian values to the violence around them ? j~t~-Aug'u~ 1992 501 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence our relation with God. Many have noted that prayer is more dif-ficult, little ecstasy is experienced, much more anger is expressed, fewer words are used, and often God becomes the scapegoat for all of Peru's problems. Christ, for many of us, reveals himself in new ways in Scripture. "I experience Christ more in his passion, where he ends up in the midst of violence, mistreatment, and ridicule but stands strong to his values and commitments," said Delsuc. Many seek a sense of consolation in their relation with God--an assurance that they are loved and that God is still in control. Many, feeling lost in the confusion of these times, turn to God as a source of wisdom. For Lia Finnerty, a Canadian Holy Cross sister working in Juli, prayer is now more integrally connected with what is hap-pening in the news and in her village. "My prayer is the time when I can try to integrate our reality with God's word and see how our community is touched by all that." That need to connect our prayer with the wider community and to pray with others is co,ninon among us. Many note that the desire for communal peti-tionary prayer is much stronger and that it is a helpful experi-ence to bring to God each day all that we see and experience each day. Ingett, who serves on a pastoral team in Sicuani, notes that her community's time of petitionary prayer is also a time for asking pardon for all that these women experience in their daily inter-action with the people. Living in the midst of so much violence and structural injustice has clearly revealed to many of us the anger and violence present within ourselves. "Sometimes it's so hard to hear that the police have attacked innocent victims or tortured young people," admitted Finnerty. "My first reaction is often a violent one, even though I want to be nonviolent." We all seem to struggle with the anger we feel and our desire to be compassionate, and we ask ourselves many questions about how we can be more nonviolent people. We are trying different approaches. Massachusetts native Carmen Foley, a Halifax Sister of Charity serving as a spiritual director in Lima, is looking at her interactions with others and her judgments and is trying to be more merciful in her attitudes. Avalos, a pastoral worker in a Lima barrio and formhr.vice-provincial of her congregation, is look-ing at violence in her speech and her reactions. Finnerty, a pastoral worker among the Aymara people, is returning to the Aymaran value of solidarity and community as a block to violence. Delsuc 502 Review for Religious is practicing communication techniques to become more skilled in conflict resolution. Probably most important for all of us, however, is an openness to learn from the Peruvian people, who seem to know better than any of us just what hope in the midst of crisis is all about. As Maheux concluded, "My greatest source of hope for the future is the women, men, and children with whom I live. Their faith-fulness to the daily struggle to just live--to being able to eat, to the one-day-at-a-time facing of tremendous obstacles--teaches me that justice, peace, and life will endure and win out." Coming Out one shall know as dawn disentangles morning from night if one's desert spell was purgation or vacation was awakening or escape when one emerges anointed in power or scorched and spent Andrea Wild OSF July-August 1992 503 ROY BOURGEOIS School of Terror write from the Federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where am serving a sixteen-month sentence for an act of civil dis-obedience to protest the training of Salvadoran soldiers on United States soil. As I look back, I feel my being here is no accident, but rather the result of God's grace at work in my life. Growing up in rural Louisiana, I was a Sunday Christian and gave little thought to issues of peace and justice. I studied geology in college with the hope of getting rich in the oil fields of South America. After college I became a naval officer and volunteered for duty in Vietnam, feeling it was. my patriotic duty to fight communism. There I met a missionary who, amid the war, gave me a vision of Jesus as a healer and peacemaker. I left Vietnam wanting to be a missionary and entered Maryknoll, whose work is in twenty-eight countries overseas and in the United States. I was ordained in 1972 and went to serve the poor of Bolivia. A slum on the outskirts of La Paz became my home for six years. In Bolivia, as in Vietnam, the poor became my teachers and challenged me to grow in my faith. I then returned to do educational work in the United States. My involvement with E1 Salvador began in 1980, after Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down at the altar and after four church women from the United States were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Two of the women, Maryknoll sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, were friends of mine. Their death forced me to confront what was happening in this small Central American country. Roy Bourgeois MM writes that prison can be a good place to read Scripture, pray, and do ministry. His address is Register No. 01579-017; PMB 1000; Tallahassee, Florida 32301. 504 Review for Religious After several trips to E1 Salvador, it became clear that the problem was not "communism" or "subversion" but hunger. As is the case almost everywhere in Latin America, the wealth, power, and land of E1 Salvador are in the hands of an elite few. While these live in huge mansions where they are waited on by servants and enjoy frequent vacations and shopping sprees in the United States and Europe, most Salvadorans live in dehumanizing pover.ty and die before their time. The poor, once told that their suffering was the will of God, now know better as they gather in small groups to read and reflect on the word of God. They now real-ize that their poverty and suffering are the result of exploitation, greed, and irresponsible stew-ardship of God's creation. In May 1983, five hundred Salvadoran sol-diers arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia, to undergo U.S. Army training. At the time, I was speaking at churches and colleges in New Orleans about the injustice of U.S. military aid to E1 Salvador. I felt it was no time for business as usual, so I went to Columbus, Georgia, the home of Fort Benning, and began meeting with local residents. After two months of meet-ings, talks, and prayer vigils, three of us decided to enter Fort Benning at night, dressed as U.S. Army officers. Armed with a.high-powered cassette player, we climbed a tall pine tree near the barracks that housed the Salvadoran soldiers. At lights out, we tuned the cassette player to its highest volume and played Archbishop Romero's last homily, given in the cathedral the day before he was assassinated; in it he called on the military to stop the killing and lay down their arms. We were arrested, tried for criminal trespass ~and impersonating military officers, and sen-tenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. After serving my term I sought a few months of silence and solitude at. a Trappist monastery, then returned to the pulpit and classroom. On 16 November 1989 six Jesuit priests, their coworker, and her fifteen-year-old daughter were brutally murdered in E1 Salvador. According to a U.S. Congressional task force sent to El Salvador to investigate the massacre, five of the nine soldiers arrested for the slayings had been trained at Fort Benning. Today, hundreds of Salvadoran and other Latin American soldiers are being trained at Fort Benning's School of the Americas. The The problem was not "communism" or "subversion" bu t hunger. .y~dy-August 1992 505 Bourgeois ¯ Scbool of Terror School of the Americas (SOA) was located in Panama before mov-ing to Benning in 1984. Since 1946 this training ground for Latin American soldiers has quietly readied some 45,000 officers and enlisted men for right-wing Latin American governments. Manuel Noriega is a distinguished alumnus, as is General Hugo Banzer of Bolivia. In 1984, when the SOA was forced out of Panama, then Panamanian president Jorge Illueja described the school as "the biggest base of destabilization in Latin America." The foundation of the course work at the School of the Americas is low-intensity conflict (LIC), which, by military ana-lyst Michael Klare's definition, is "that amount of murder, muti-lation, torture, rape, and savagery that is sustainable without triggering widespread public disapproval at home." Students of LIC learn that the enemy is not just an opposing armed force; rather, the enemy can include anyone, armed or unarmed, who threatens the stability of the existing order. Hence, priests, teach-ers, health-care workers, union leaders, cooperative members, and human-rights advocates are among the victims of the School of the Americas. On 3 September 1990, ten of us--Vietnam veterans, Salva-dorans, a teacher, and members of the clergy--began a water-only fast at the entrance of Fort Benning to protest the training of' Salvadoran soldiers. When our fast ended after thirty-five days, our bodies were weak but our spirits remained strong. Miguel Cruz, a Salvadoran in our group who had been forced to leave his country because of a death threat, said, "We have the option to end our fast. However, the poor in my country do not. For them hunger is an everyday occurrence." On November 16, when we had recovered from the fast, three of us--Charles Liteky, a former army chaplain who had received the Medal of Honor for heroism in Vietnam; his brother Patrick, who had trained at Fort Benning's Infantry School, and I-- returned to Fort Benning to observe the first anniversary of the killing of the six Jesuits and the two women. After a prayer service, we entered the post, placed a white cross with photos of the eight martyrs at the entrance to the School of the Americas, and poured blood in one of the school's main halls. We wanted to impress on our country that we cannot wash our hands of the blood of inno-cent people killed in E1 Salvador by soldiers trained in the United States. We were arrested and tried. A jury found us guilty of dam- '506 Review for Religious aging government property. The Liteky brothers received six-month sentences, and I received sixteen months because of my previous conviction at Fort Benning in 1983. "Was it worth it?" I am often asked by friends and critics alike. Prison is hard and very lonely at times, even with the support of family and friends, who also suffer. My dad cried when I called home to tell him of my sentenc-ing. Yet I feel I did what my faith and the poor called me to do in the face of such violence, death, and suffering. As a Christian I feel I must try to relieve the suffering of the poor and integrate my faith in a loving God with action. It is indeed tragic what our silence did to the people of E1 Salvador over the past twelve years as our po!iticians fun-neled billions of dollars (hard-earned tax money) to a military regime that killed thousands of innocent people. ~ The recent peace accords in E1 Salvador now bring new hope, and it is a time for rebuilding after all the death and destruction. It is also a time for the hundreds of Salvadoran soldiers who continue their training at Fort Benning to go home--along with the troops from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries. I am convinced that we can relieve some of the suffering of the poor in Latin America by closing down the School of the Americas. It is a school of terror and should be shut down. While I am in prison, friends in Georgi~ are carrying on the peace-and-justice work. To learn more about our efforts, write to School of the Americas Watch; P.O. Box 3330; Columbus, Georgia 31903. Archbishop Romero said, "We who have a voice must speak for the voiceless." I pray and hope that we will speak clearly and boldly. As a Christian I feel I must try to relieve the suffering of the poor and integrate my faith in a loving God with action. j~dy-August 1992 507 M. GERARD NWAGWU Women Religious and the African Synod inculturating Following the initial enthusiasm with which our people welcomed Pope John Paul II's announcement of a special assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops,l an accom-modating attitude of tolerance for whatever might result from the event seems to have settled in. In such a frame of mind, any document coming from the synod will proba-bly be treated like any other Vatican document---it will be gratefully accepted and respectfully mentioned, but lit-tle else will follow. If, however, the document were to grow out of our experiences and be developed from our contributions, then its contents would have a better chance of being well received and more fully observed. The introductory chapter to the Lineamenta2 speaks of the period of preparation and celebration of the synod as the "tempus acceptabile," the favorable hour, the hour of Africa. This is the hour we have all waited for. It offers us a unique opportunity to bring about some of the changes and modifications religious life in Africa needs. It is a time for religious women in Africa to state our vision of commitment and involvement. This favorable hour con-tinues until the synod is actually celebrated and concluded, As part of this process it is important for us to raise issues and speak out about the problems that women religious encounter as they try to contribute to the work of evan-gelization in Africa. Indeed, for Africans this synod truly M. Gerard Nwagwu does much of her teaching at the Catholic Institute of West Africa; P.O. Box 499; Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 508 Review for Religious promises to be a "third Vatican Council" in what it could accom-plish for us. Consequently the initial period of intense preparation needs to be followed by a continued interest in the synod that fosters a receptive disposition of willingness to adopt its directives. The next generation of religious is likely to question how we made use of this opportunity, criticizing chances wasted and applauding those utilized. The older generation in their turn will be less critical insofar as they have never experienced such an event during their active days and therefore cannot be blamed for not effecting changes. Our contemporaries themselves could point accusing fingers at us if, for all our ideals and foresight, we achie~ced nothing when the circumstances were most opportune. Accepting facts as they are can be a mark of virtue on occa-sion. However, if we were to do that in the present situation, it would indicate complacency and inertia exactly when the action of working toward objectives that will benefit our people is demanded of us. Accepting the status quo just when the church calls us to make a move could indicate a cowardice and portray a fear of "launching out into the deep waters and laying out the nets for a catch," as Christ challenged the Apostles to do at a point when all hope seemed lost.3 We need an openness among ourselves to help us discover our weaknesses, our duties, and our obligations of evangelization--duties that the Code of Canon Law itself demands of religious in canons 211 and 758. Aware of these challenges, we can begin searching for an effective strategy. The Lineamenta presents a good number and variety of themes for our consideration. In any of these themes, the African reli-gious woman-has a role to play, not simply because she is an African or works in Africa, but because her religious life is directly intertwined with the life of the church. Vatican II witnessed to the fact that at no time in history has the church lacked some form of religious life.4 Religious life, in other words, is a con-stant and inseparable feature of the church. This universally his-toric fact is no different on African soil. However, it would take us too far afield to dwell on all of'the proposed themes as they relate to women religious in general. Rather let us consider those that focus strictly on the life of women religious in Africa, their apostolates, and their relationship with the world around them. Presently, most of the countries in Africa have celebrated the centenary of the arrival of the early Catholic missionaries. The few July-August 1992 509 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod who have not will do so in the near future. Mmost everywhere the native indigenous clergy have assumed the direction of the particular churches, on both the diocesan and parish levels. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for all congregations of religious women in Africa.5 These factors and others highlight the growth of the church in Africa. Specifically, religious institutes are not left behind in the development. The momentous rise in the number of vocations to the religious life, especially in women's congregations, attests to this growth. Indeed the problem for many religious commu-nities is not so much trying to attract candidates but finding ways of adequately training and forming them in the spiritual and apos-tolic life. It is no wonder that foreign religious institutes endeavor to recruit girls from Africa to fill up their depleted ranks. Such recruiting, however, has been limited and conditioned by the authorities since it has often left a trail of disillusioned women who believed they were sent abroad for further studies, only to find that they were meant to supply domestic services. Though the road remains open for taking candidates abroad, yet some condi-tions must be fulfilled.6 The obvious growth of the church in Africa is one of the "signs of the times" that determine the form evangelization should assume in our midst. The evangelization that starts first with inte-rior conversion of hearts, matures to a personal witness of life, and finally develops into external commitments and service is the type that best suits the vocation of religious women. Before evan-gelizing others we must evangelize ourselves, for only after we have been converted can we support those around us.7 We shall be witnesses, yes, but only after an interior transformation of heart. Through such an authentic witness of the life of the evan-gelical counsels, we can make our own contribution to the new stage of evangelization required in Africa. With regard to reli-gious life, this first stage of evangelization involVes modeling to our people the values of total dedication and consecration to God with a hope of evoking a corresponding response from young women and men to embrace religious life. The second stage of renewed evangelization which suits our time is that of deepen-ing the faith of those who already believe and are baptized, We are already experiencing an influx of vocations, but how deep is their faith, how reliable is their commitment? Religious women, particularly, must ask probing questions, 510 Review for Religious admit the facts, and make worthwhile proposals. The point at issue is whether we realize that the effective contribution of women religious in the evangelization of Africa depends first on the genuine and generous commitments of our communities and second on the spiritual and apostolic formation we give our younger members. The vitality of religious life in Africa depends on these elements and on its being a true witness of the presence and love of God among our people. Such an objective compels us to examine some of the negative currents that undermine our abil-ity to evangelize our people in the manner referred to above. Primary among the negative currents is the wind of secularism that has blown through the world from the 1980s to the present day and has begun to register its presence in Africa. Some see it as materialism, others as atheistic humanism. Secularism, as Pope Paul VI has pointed out, views the world as entirely self-explanatory without any reference to God, who thus becomes unnecessary and is, as it were, an embarrassment. Secularism of this kind seeks to assert the power of humankind and leads to a situation in which God is ignored and denied.8 An allied expression is secularization. Where secularism is a theory and an ideology leading to denial of God, secularization is, instead, the fact and reality of experiencing life with a secular-ized mentality and attitude--that is, evaluating life from a worldly point of view. This, then, is the new form of atheism by which God is perceived to be less present, less necessary, less capable of providing a valid explanation of personal or social life experi-ences. In its undiluted form, secularization should not find a stronghold in Africa, given the characteristic spiritual vision of life within an African society wherein the divine permeates all aspects of life. However, what has invaded this sense of the sacred is the aftermath of secularization, revealed in such characteristics as superficiality, the desire for power and domination over others, autonomy and individualism, and a pleasure-loving orientation. Within our religious circles, when we lack an original experience of God and consequently fail to lead others to a similar experience, the evangelical counsels are confused or glossed over in various attempts to describe, them. We shall be witnesses only after an interior transformation of heart. j-~uly-August 1992 511 Nwag~u ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Poverty is explained away in the tendency to acquire and accu-mulate in the name of the congregation; chastity in the necessity of having the comfort, convenience, and satisfaction of personal fulfillment; obedience in the assertion of autonomy and individ-uality as marks of our uniqueness and originality. In the maze of such ambiguity, the question for religious women to answer is whether at the present stage of their religious experience they can lay claim to preserving in full the religious sense and charac-ter of their consecration. Where secularization has made its mark, it is difficult to be a witness of the Gospel message. Secularism holds out to us the values of the world and urges us to conform; the Gospel offers us the mind and values of Christ. If we examine our situation and find out that our choices are secular in character, it is important for us to admit it, and so be able to discover what strategy to adopt con-cerning it. The type of choices we make and the attitudes we have clearly show whether we are evangelized at heart or not. On a secondary level the way we treat each other and the interpersonal regard we nurture in our communities would truly show if the Gospel values were operating among us. For when we continue to make discriminatory preferences between persons or congregations, then our witnessing cannot be anything but counterproductive to the task of evangelization. When we are carrying out a common objective, what should matter is the appre-ciation of a sister as a religious and the virtues she possesses for her to be entrusted with an undertaking which she will accomplish in the name of all, not whether she is a member of one congre-gation rather than another, or whether she has occupied a position of importance in her institute, or whether she has important con-nections, and so forth. Evangelizing witness on the community level is likely to be rendered nugatory as ~vell if, instead of the communion and unity which religious life signifies, we have the division and disunity of uncoordinated activity. The difficulties occasioned by lack of cooperation and coordination are most often seen between dif-ferent congregations rather than between members of the same institute. How often have we witnessed the complaints and dis-enchantment of institutes whose services are unceremoniously terminated in a place in favor of another institute--especially when the institute that takes up the apostolate in question may be completely ignorant of how the first institute left the scene! Such 512 Review for Religious a practice is exploitive and appears to be based on the availability of women religious. Apart from the circumstance related above in which two con-gregations of religious women are made to be victims at the same time, division of opinion among institutes is certainly a question that needs to be considered if the challenges of our times are to be adequately addressed. The church regards women religious as experts in communion both because of the communitarian quality of our consecration and because of our natural tendency to bond ourselves closely to oth-ers. Our best field of operation, therefore, is to work for unity and communion within our African church in all its various components. Women have a great capacity for personal adaptation in the face of the varied and often unexpected needs of the real life of societies and churches. We are thus often in a better position to ensure not merely the survival but even the development of evangelization.9 A determination to form deeper and stronger bonds of solidarity and sharing between our various institutes is the best way to confront the changing political, economic, and social conditions of our times. Such operative and meaningful solidarity will happen if various congregations are able to evolve while each institute retains its unique identity and character. As Pope Paul VI told us,'° we are missionaries to ourselves at this stage of the evangelization of Africa. We Africans are cat-echizing and witnessing t6 our own people in our home missions. We are also undertaking the evangelization of other African coun-tries outside our homeland--not overlooking, of course, the invaluable assistance offered by our foreign missionaries. Taking into account the greater number of women .religious, these foreign missions are mostly operated by religious sisters. We must ask ourselves, therefore, whether there exists a corresponding mis-sionary cooperation between the various religious congregations whose members labor on these foreign missions, or whether mis-sionaries carry along with them to the missions the lack of coop-eration and perhaps rivalry which possibly exists at home. We need to remember the call of John Paul II as he spoke about the problems facing evangelization in Africa: secularization has made its mark, it is difficult to be a witness of the Gospel message. July-August 1992 513 Nwagcvu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Let all form one unity. Let everything be done to smooth and multiply the ways of mutual esteem, of fraternity, of collaboration. May anything that might be the cause of suf-ferings or casting aside, for one group or another, be ban-ished! May all be penetrated with sentiments of humility and of mutual service! For Christ! For the witness of the church! For the progress of evangelization!'~ With a unified front, we religious could more easily discover new approaches to problems that arise in the apostolate. These problems include the challenge of Islam and the determination of Muslims to spread the Koran from coast to coast by whatever means available. Carrying arms and matching violence with vio-lence is definitely not what the church expects religious women to accomplish in this regard. Neither is it possible to close our eyes and imagine that the friction and conflict with Muslims will even-tually ease off while we do nothing. We must, however, evaluate our strength and discover unobtrusive ways to reduce the threat of Islam for our people. In the face of such an offensive, the church has in the past usually adopted the practice of intensified prayer and a rigorous asceticism lived with generous hearts. Some apostolic religious institutes were founded to labor in countries of Islamic faith. But there are relatively few, if any, contemplative orders founded exclusively for the propagation of faith among Muslims. Such contemplative orders, which by their i~rayers, works of penance, and sacrifices labor to effect the conversion of souls, are crucial for the growth of Christian faith amidst the increased onslaught of Islamic hostility. It would be a welcome endeavor if the tendency our religious folk have to found new religious institutes is allowed to mature into communities that will pitch their tents among the Muslims of our country despite foreseeable opposition and even death. If such an inspiration of the Spirit were to happen, it would cer-tainly respond to the needs of the times. The challenge of Islam requires a radical religious decision. It calls for active institutes to reawaken their consciousness of the value and practice of the con-templative dimension of religious life. The Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes exhorts: The contemplative dimension is the real secret of renewal for every religious life. Being a reality of grace, it preserves in the religious the commitment to bear witness before the world to the primacy of a personal relationship with God. They can thus avoid the constant danger for apostolic work- 514 Review for Religious ers who often become so much involved in their work for the Lord as to forget the Lord ofalI work,~z Another area of concern is the proliferation of sects and evan-gelical movements. The increase in their adherents means that some other churches--the traditional Christian churches includ-ing the Catholic Church--are losing members. The sects usually direct their proselytizing toward those who are already Christians and offer them what they apparently cannot get from their mother churches. Again Paul VI sounded the alarm when he noted: It is well known that in some places the church in Africa runs the risk of the fidelity of its sons and daughters being subjected to dangers and struggles, and to being tempted by false teaching. Indeed, Christian faith must become some-thing interior like a personal possession of each individ-ual.' 3 In the face of such phenomena, congregations of women reli-gious can be of immense help to the church if they include this ground among their fields of apostolate for the second stage of evangelizing Africa. By identifying the reasons Christians are attracted to these sects and the group of Catholics that are easily influenced by them, they can develop a strategy for deepening the faith of those most affected. Often a shallow faith, which offers no reply to the vital questions of suffering and pain, poverty and misery, doubts and fears, insecurity and emptiness, sickness and death and so forth, is quickly abandoned for what seems a better way out of problems. Such defections occur where people seek a church that'proffers some human warmth and mutual con-cern, an experience the larger churches cannot easily provide.'4 Even if religious themselves do not minister directly to the sects and their adherents, they can train the Christian laity to assume their role of searching out and reevangelizing their brethren. Similarly, it is important to examine the variety of means of social communications available in order to determine the ones best suited for evangelization in Africa today. Every institute is able to evaluate the effect of each of the means on individual members and on the community. For while it is necessary to know what the world around us is saying through the media, we must not allow it to monopolize our attention and dictate our conver-sational exchanges. Growth in religious commitment does not follow from an indiscriminate and sometimes imprudent use of the mass media, or with the exaggerated and extroverted activism the 3~uly-August 1992 515 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod media can generate, or with an atmosphere of dissipation which contradicts the deepest expectations of religious life. The search for intimacy with God needs silence, never involving noise and confusion.~s Presently, however, our discussion on the media is not how much we adopt them in our communities, but how well we use them for evangelization. Since the various means are each an effi-cacious tool for communication, the message of faith can be divulged to millions of our people at the same time with their aid. What prevents us, for example, from publishing a magazine that focuses on African religious life? Other Christian groups take the lead in the use of media while Catholics lag behind. Sacred songs and music on the thousands of audiocassettes that flood the market are ahnost always produced by Protestant evangelical groups. In the past there used to be a festival of the arts for Catholic schools. Now the competitions organized for parish choirs do not seem to generate the same interest. When an institute chooses to engage some of its members in apostolates using more contemporary methodologies, the initial difficulty will be lack of trained personnel. Requisite educational competence is important; however, some religious superiors are reluctant to send sisters for further studies that take time to com-plete and cause financial constraint, especially in the face of past disappointments. All the same, such reservation should give way before the conditions of our times and the needs of the church, which demand specialized training in some fields of study. No field of study can be superfluous if it furthers the mission of the institute. And since evangelization is a common mission for all, then adequate preparation is necessary for its realization. We cannot meet our contemporaries handicapped. For priests and religious to grow in requisite skills and maturity, it is essen-tial for them to receive the type of formation usually done in cen-ters of study at the university level or in institutes of higher studies. Specialized studies undertaken by religious should be prompted not by a misdirected desire for self-fulfillment with a view to achieving personal ends, but with the sole intention of meeting the apostolic commitments of the religious family itself in the context of the needs of the church.16 In view of the renewed call to evangelize, some significant changes may have to be made in the initial stages of formation. This sensitive area touches the autonomy and identity of insti- 516 Review for Religious tutes. Nevertheless, some general criteria may be adopted on the intercongregational level while the exact details can be left to the creativity of each institute. A rereading of the conciliar guide-lines for renewal shows that there is no question of simple adap-tations of certain external forms such as the habit. There is question, rather, of a deep edu-cation in attitude and in lifestyle that makes it possible to remain true to oneself even in the new forms of being present--a presence as con-secrated persons who seek the full conversion of people and of society to the ways of the Gospel through personal witness and service.~7 The challenges presented to religious women by the forthcoming synod will demand prayer, discipline, and sacrifice. It will not be easy to effect changes because part of the pattern of life and action we have grown used to will have to be renounced. Though renun-ciation may be spiritually rewarding, it is never gratifying to the ego. All the same, the changes need be made. The "signs of the times" are ripe and they offer us incentives to renew and revise our pattern of life and to give a preferential treatment to the duty of evangelization. The traditional ministries carried out in hospi-tals, schools, and social centers remain important, but their rel-evance in meeting the people of our times and engaging them in faith encounters has diminished. Women religious who are solidly founded in faith and suffi-ciently prepared and who can use their feminine qualities of devo-tion, refinement, faithfulness, and patience and their great capacity to adapt to the unexpected demands of real life can transform sit-uations which would intimidate others who lacked the weapons of faith and culture. In conclusion, let us remember the call of John Paul II and our obligation to respond to his invitation: We cannot meet our contemporaries handicapped. You have lived a first great stage, an irreversible stage. A new stage is open to you. It is no less an exalted one, even if it necessarily involves new trials, and perhaps the temp-tation of discouragement. It is the stage of perseverance, in which it is necessary to pursue the strengthening of the faith, the conversion in depth of souls and ways of life, so that they will correspond better and better to your sublime Christian vocation.18 July-August 1992 517 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Notes i The exact date for the synod has not been set, but observers do not expect it to take place before 1994 or 1993 at the earliest. ~" Lineamenta, General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Vatican City, 1990. 3 Luke 5:4. 4 Lumen Gentium §44. s Some congregations of women religious still have nonindigenous administrative personnel. 6 This includes the establishment of a local community in the area, which in turn requires.that a diocesan bishop invite the institute in ques-tion to his diocese. 7 Luke 22:32. 8 Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §55. 9 Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Dans le Cadre, The Role of Women in Evangelization, in Vatican Council H Postconciliar Documents, vol. 2, p. 322. l0 Paul VI, Inaugural Session of SECAM, Kampala, 1969. llJohn Paul II, Address to Zairean Bishops 3 May 1980, in Origins 10, no. 1, p. 6. 12 SCRIS, La Plenaria, The Contemplative Dimension of Religious Life, January 1980, §§ 2, 4, and 30. 13 Paul VI, Address at the 4th Plenary Assembly of SECAM, September 1975. 14 Paul V-I, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §58. is SCRIS, La Plenaria, §14. 16 SCRIS, Mutuae Relationes, §31 and §26. ~7 SCRIS, La Scelte Evangeliche, On Religious and Human Development, January 1981, §32. is John Paul II, Address to Priests and Religious, Zaire, 1980. 518 Review for Religious JENNIFER MARY ALT Rerooting Religi ous Life in South Africa the dialogue has been to develop a religious-life spirituality that would be less foreign and more of a special flowering and inter-pretation of African human and spiritual values. These values encompass all of human life. The spiritual is never seen as apart from the material, and people are seen as depending on other people, and therefore on the Divine, for life and meaning. Outside of their social relationships, individuals are less than nothing. If religious life became better integrated with native African spiri-tual values, it would witness more clearly and bring greater hope to South Africa's strife-torn people. Religious life is not foreign to Africa. In fact, its cradle is to be found in North Africa in the early centuries of Christianity. Organized religious life took its conception from the life and work of the Desert Fathers and was rooted in the form of Christianity found among the rural tribal people of North Africa. This rural tribal Christian expression was eventually declared heretical and has since been known as the Donatist heresy.- St. Augustine, the well-known urban African, a man cut off from his Jennifer Mary Alt OP, a member of the Cabra Dominican Sisters, is director of the Catholic Centre for Spiritual Growth sponsored by the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference. With her doctoral research in cross-cultural personality studies, she has worked with religious in developing an African religious spirituality. She may be addressed at the Catholic Centre for Human and Spiritual Growth; P.O. Box 53 505; Troyeville (JHB); 2139 South Africa. ~uly-August 1992 519 Alt . .Re~roo~ng Religious Life cultural roots, was chiefly responsible for the suppression of the Donatists. Early North African Christianity was predominantly rural. These rural Christians had been formed by their own primal reli-gion. This religion revolved around being in harmony with the spiritual in life. The Ancestors--important good people who had died and who then lived on in spirit in the living--were seen as important mediators of the spiritual. Life among humans was seen as essentially social, and people got their meaning and pur-pose from living and working in harmony with other people. To be in a group was part of life. Over fifteen hundred years separate us from these earlier times, and Africa south of the Sahara is in a different position today. Yet it too moves from a very strong primal religious back-ground. In parts of Africa, for instance South Africa, much of the primal past has disappeared, but the beauty of its spirit remains. Unless one pays attention to it, one will find it difficult to under-stand the modern movements in religious life in Africa. A primal outlook on life in terms of human values is'a profound way of looking at it. The work of the Divine is easily seen in it. The connectedness between this outlook and the teachings of Jesus is easy to recognize. Unfortunately, modern religious life has been presented in Africa south of the Sahara as something foreign and Western, as something that has nothing to do with African values. In fact, African values had to be somehow discarded as one entered a reli-gious order. Westerners find the intricacies of life in Africa very difficult to understand and, without ill will, have misjudged much of what they saw, dismissing it as primitive and pagan. It is exceedingly important for people entering religious life to realize the continuity between the values they were given in their families and the values outlined in their religious rule. African religious largely see religious life as divorced from their past, as something quite other. They see the rules and regula-tions of religious living as something totally new which has to be learned. Because of this the rules of religious life remain largely outside of them. The rules have little effect on their feelings and attitudes. The result is that religious life tends to lose its mean-ing and become more a drudgery than a life-giving program. There is a saying which is practically ubiquitous in Africa. It runs in South Africa: "People are made people through other 520 Review for Religious people." In Swahili a similar saying is: "I am, you are, and because you are, I am." This circular statement sums up the insight which Africans have about people depending on one another and the insight that without people the individual is nothing. This aware-ness of dependence and interdependence is a far cry from the individualism of the modern. Western outlook. Dependence on God is the source of all spir-ituality and is clearly discernible in the African outlook. Africa has a strong belief in the spiri-tual life. Death is seen not so much as an ending, but as a passing into a spiritual way of being. In Africa everything material has its spiritual equiv-alent. In fact, nothing exists without its spirit. It follows that religious life is seen as essentially for the purpose of bringing people into contact with the Divine in a special way. If this does not happen, then religious life for the individual tends to remain on a material and self-centered level. The religious vocation is a call to a special relationship with the spiritual realm. Religious with their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience are marked as essentially different from others, for they are in a sense outside the primal group of family, clan, and nation. They live in an area of liminality in life and in this area make contact with the Divine. Everywhere in Africa the call to the spiritual is treated with great respect and reverence. The call is seen as mysterious and very important. It is not questioned. Take, for example, persons who discern that they are called to be a sangorna, to be one who understands the relationship between the material and the Divine and who is specially equipped to interpret rifts that occur between the human and the Divine, rifts that are seen as the cause of all mental and physical illness. Such calls will not be dismissed lightly, and people will undergo rigorous training to equip themselves for their special task as a sangoma. The religious call is seen in this context. It also comes from the Ancestors of the family, and therefore no one should interfere with it. The Ancestors will protect the person so called. Africans believe that when outstanding members of the family or the nation die, they join the living dead. They live on in spirit in another member of the family. As a human being casts a shadow, so each human in the flesh represents the spirit of an Ancestor. A parent 'People are made people through other people.' 3n-uly-Augus~ 1992 521 who first refused to allow a daughter to enter a convent remarked on her behavior: "I was fighting with the Ancestors." In Africa the spiritual revolves around the Ancestors, who mediate the Divine in life. The blessing of the Ancestors needs to be invoked in all circumstances. This ancient method of prayer might seem fundamentalist to a Western person, but it suits many people in the indigenous churches. They invoke God in all cir-cumstances: when getting up in the morning, at the beginning of all jobs--nothing, in fact, is done without prayer to the Ancestors. MI church services center on asking the Ancestors for blessing and healing of any rifts between the living dead and the humans in the flesh. Prayer then centers on the spirit of reverence and respect: through prayer, healing and forgiveness are brought to ordinary human relationships, and rifts with the Ancestors are healed. In this way the negative effects in our lives are resolved, and we become healthy again. Religious in this context are people who are especially moved by the spirit, in a charismatic sense. Prayer then is warm, spon-taneous, and real. But if religious life is seen by Africans as a bureaucratic organization in which material advantages follow the keeping of the rules, even though many of the rules may cen-ter on saying prayers; then it remains outside the person and will not lead to a true conversion of heart. Young people who enter often see a religious house as a house protected by God. They see religious as being protected by God, and the convent as a place of shelter from the storms of life; God will protect the people whom he has called. Many young people enter to be protected from the violence in the streets. Young girls come to escape being raped. Parents send children to convents in order to prevent .them from joining gangs. As people turn to sangomas (the spiritual healers) to protect themselves from the chaos around them, so they send their young girls to convents for the same protection. They feel that no evil can enter a reli-gious house. They also feel that God protects his religious from economic disaster. Young people and their parents see religious houses as places where people will be educated, fed, and housed; as places where the chaos of grinding poverty and ignorance will be kept at bay. Religious will be protected from thes~ material disasters. It is essential in these circumstances to help young people, through self-reflection, to an acceptance of their African values in 522 Review for Religious the light of the Gospel values. This helps to bring about a con-version of heart in which the person is moved to choose Jesus and break out into the wider world of other people and their needs. Young persons, in answering their call, answer it on behalf of their entire family and the Ancestors whom they embody in their life. Therefore, when young people join a religious order, they do not come as mere individuals with little significance. They come as deserving of great respect. They are not alienated people of no back-ground. They are not nobodies. God calls people through an entire network of relationships. Young religious who respond are responsible, therefore, for answering the call of the entire network. This gives the religious a great sense of sup-port and responsibility. To know that one bears the spirit of a beloved grandmother or grandfa-ther in one's life makes the path less precarious, less lonely, and more meaningful. Second, it gives the religious a great sense of dignity and worth. Religious need to respect their own call, and others must respect it too. Without this sense of reverence and respect, the young reli-gious fails to have any sense of liminality. Religious life then becomes more a question of obeying external laws which do not touch the heart and of obtaining an education. Instead of reli-gious life being a development or an exploration of the spiritual, it can become monotonous and meaningless. When the crises come, as come they must, the religious will not choose Jesus, but will make an easier, more selfish choice. A common saying in Africa expresses this lack of conviction and choice: "That person is a Christian by day and an African by night!" A difficulty inherent in the above outlook arises when a reli-gious wishes to leave the convent. Leaving is looked upon as a disaster: the religious loses her ties with God. Her relationship with him is broken. It is in the light of this broken relationship that all future troubles will be judged. The following example is typical: A young'sister left a religious congregation and then failed to pass her nursing examination. She moved to teaching and was equally unsuccessful. This was seen to be the result of leaving the convent, not the result of lack of sufficient talent. It is important to stress, therefore, that the divine call arises out of our baptismal God calls people through an entire network of relationships. j~ly-August 1992 523 Alt . Rerootin Reli "ous Life call. It is this call that must be answered, whether it is lived out in the context of religious life or not. In Africa, to be in a group is part of life. The richness of the human exchange in a community enriches the individual. The individual who is not included in this exchange is drained of life, so to speak. Group living is full of all that is human. Contentment, excitement, joy, happiness, and security are part of that living as are tensions, fears, suspicions, and disharmony. But the underly-ing attitudes of loyalty and respect can keep a group together through major emotional upheavals. In Africa, people truly live community. In the West, people tend to theorize and talk about community, but find it difficult to live it. Both lifestyles have their problems. In Africa, people are meant to live in harmony with one another and with the Ancestors. The individual is meant to enrich the lives of others and to be enriched in return. A religious group thatis not living a life filled With the Spirit will tend to exhibit the spirits of discord and chaos. In such close-knit and complex living together, the individual can feel very vul-nerable. Fear of one another, fear of authority figures, is a natural component of such living. Unless the group is living in the Spirit, fear instead of acceptance and warmth can dominate the group. Community life is held back by fear. Individuals will keep quiet at community meetings, for example. Many opinions which could build up a community are not stated. This can lead to seri-ous mistakes being made. Superiors can go unchallenged and do irresponsible things. Individuals who choose to live a life which is not in accordance with their vows are also left unchallenged because others are afraid to say anything. Those who have this fear feel humiliated and inferior; they grow depressed; in the end, tension shows itself as an illness. Such fear of disharmony, of expressing conflicting opinions, can cause great problems to social and group life in Africa. If disharmony and conflicts arise, the group tends to split and quickly polarize. This process is very evident in the histories of many of the African Independent Churches. African political leaders have generally chosen a one-party style of government in order to avoid disharmony. In so doing they have introduced a totalitarian system which in practice is marked by tribalism and greed. Modern urban societies demand that we learn to live with some disharmony and difference of opinion. In fact, differences of opin- 524 Review.for Religious ion can lead to positive growth, for without differences adaptation to changing times and circumstances cannot take place. In Africa the method of handling differences is for the entire group to°come together and to discuss fully the pros and cons of the different opinions. In these long conversations each person is listened to, and the conversation does not end until consensus is reached. This is like methods of conflict management in the West. The Gospel message of Jesus enhances and brings to fruition the message which Africa can give our world in terms of the interdependence of humans and their dependence on the Divine. The message of Jesus is close to the heart of the African experience of human living together. The message of the great religious founders like St. Benedict finds spontaneous resonance in Africa. The message of religious life, which strives to express the values of the Gospel of Jesus, is not much different from African value systems. The message of Jesus helps people choose less selfish values. In Africa, choices are made according to how a person feels. They tend to be made in terms of present time. A person might, there-fore, at one time choose some abstract Christian value and at another time choose against the same value. But people who are moved by the Spirit choose more responsibly. For instance, peo-ple might not feel like helping when help is needed, but if they are filled with the Spirit, they will go against that feeling and help nevertheless. Or, again, people may feel like getting revenge by not sharing, but if they are filled with the Spirit, they will share. The transcendent message of Jesus helps people to consider beyond this present moment. Christians need to think about the consequences of present actions: Would the future be better, more Christian, as a result of choices we might make now? Often enough, thoughtless pragmatic choices can bring immediate sat-isfaction in terms of money, goods, or pleasant feelings, but the long-term effects of these choices can be extremly destructive. Africa is full of examples of people who pragmatically and selfishly participated in their own destruction. Africans took part in the slave trade. African leaders have greedily plotted the economic ruin of the countries they govern. Tribal rural people have taken The message of Jesus is close to the heart of the African experience of human living together. AI~ o R~'ng Reli ~ou~ monetary handouts from the West, which have led to the destruc-tion of their way of life and to a dependency on further hand-outs. Other cultures can be less utilitarian and selfish by taking their heritage very seriously and protecting it. The Chinese, .Japanese, and Indians have not allowed Western materialism and individualism free access into their cultures, and they have been less enthusiastic in terms of cooperating with the West. Africa can be rather like Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pot-tage, because Africa does not appreciate the richness of its social and spiritual heritage for itself and for the world. The message of.jesus builds deeper trust. Christ has through his death and resurrection conquered death and despair. He is above all spirits. He is above all ancestors. There is no need for Christians to fear curses or sangomas or their neighbor. Life for Christians is secure because .jesus has already overcome the spirit of death and chaos. .Jesus speaks a message of love of one's neighbor and of one's enemy. Christians have to consider people who do not belong to their group or clan as nevertheless belonging to the family of .Jesus. Such "outsiders" are not objects, and they must be treated with love and respect. In this way the Christian message brings peace to the troubled area of ethnic and tribal violence--some-thing which has brought misery and death to many millions in Africa and has impoverished whole nations of people. If Christ's message is allowed to bring to fruition the values which the African people received from-God through the Ancestors, much that is unauthentic can be removed from African life even as its contact with the West increases. 526 Review for Religious ALBERT DI IANNI Religious Life and Religion Some recent discussions on "refounding" religious life in which I participated were passionate and at times ended in discord. Admittedly the groups involved were tired and overworked, but this was not the whole explanation. The heat manifested in exchanges about potential cures for the ills of contemporary religious life springs from a deeper source, from a basic disagreement about the nature of Christianity and of religion. When I first encountered the notion of"refounding" currently in vogue, I welcomed it as an improvement over "renewal" because it seemed to demand a deeper conver-sion and a more radical rebuilding. It brought to mind the Carmelite reform at the hands of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross through an inventive retrieval of the spirit and discipline of the founders. Refounding seemed to invite us to set out once again upon a religious adven-ture demanding both great sacrifice and an engagement with the world that remained in some way separate from the world. Resistance to the notion mounted, however, with the repeated calls to identify "change agents" in the group who might encourage creativity in ministry and develop alternative community lifestyles. The more speakers lim-ited their discussions to talk about "delivery systems" for Albert DiIanni SM serves as vicar general of the Society of Mary (Marist). His address is Via Messandro Poerio 63; 00152 Rome; Italy. living religiously ~-uly-dug~_st 1992 527 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion change, namely, leadership models derived from anthropology and from corporate-reflection techniques borrowed from busi-ness psychology--the more they discussed only means--the more I felt I was being bundled down some primrose path. Before I discuss means, I want to discuss goals; before I accept help to move forward, I want to determine where I, where we, should want to go. This is possibly because I suspect that I do not want to go where some speakers want to lead me or that their advice about means carries some hidden freight about goals with which I do not concur. In a recent conversation about refounding, I found myself suddenly compelled to ask some strange, basic questions, not about religious life but about religion: What, for you, constitutes the heart of the Christian religion? What is its basic meaning or purpose? What engenders religion in the first place? Such ques-tions came to mind because I suddenly realized that our dis-agreement lay at a deep level, that we could not simply assume we would all answer such fundamental questions in the same way. This was not because anyone had expressly denied any belief which I held, but becaus{ they seemed to deflect or sidestep cer-tain ideas as old-fashioned or not in line with the particular action steps being recommended. The urge to ask fundamental questions comes upon me espe-cially when I sense that religion is being reduced to sociology, psychology, or even to morality, be it personal, social, or ecolog-ical morality. In fact, any tendency to reduce religion to morality fires me up more than sociological or psychological reductions because it is more subtle and plausible and thus more seductive. But let me put my own cards on the table. What do I believe is at the heart of the Christian religion? (I will ignore the eso-teric distinction drawn by some between faith and religion and the theory that Christianity is not a religion but.a faith.) Though Christianity like other religions is an amalgam of many compo-nents, I believe that its strictly religious aspect lies in its being an answer to the experience of human contingency and the con-tingency of the world. Most people at some time in their lives have felt wonder that the world exists at all and have faced into the void of their own death. They moved beyond the taken-for-grant-edness of the world and became frightened by the thought that nothing at all might have existed and no possibility of anything. They wondered if there were an ultimate meaning to life or if 528 Review for Religious humans were but a sport of nature. Christianity's central doctrine is that the world need not have existed and that it was the object of creation by a good God. A Christian believer is convinced that at the center of the universe is not a surd but a personal Love. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was not a believer. Norman Malcolm, his former student and biographer, says that he could not be called a religious person, but that he was passionately interested in religion and always seemed close to the possibility of religion. Wittgenstein once produced two examples of what he consid-ered bona fide religious experiences as opposed to moral or aesthetic ones. He respected them even if he thought that in entertaining them he was running up against the limits of language. One was the experi-ence of uncanniness that the world exists at all. The second was the conviction he some-times had that, whatever might happen, he would be safe. Neither of these experiences points of necessity to the existence of some transcen- The urge to ask fundamental questions comes upon me when I sense that religion is being reduced to sociology, psychology, or even to morality. dent reality, but they provide, the experiential ground from which many people move to affirm the existence of God. In such feelings and experiences, the affirmation that God exists is existentially grounded, becomes more than an intellectual proposition, takes root, finds a home. The first experience is the sense that a fleet-ing world must be rooted in a stable fundamental Reality. The second bespeaks a trust that cannot be explained without the pres-ence of a loving center of the universe. My own thoughts about religion center on experiences of this type. Admittedly my idea of religion has strong mystical over-tones; it is our response to radical contingency and, in its most primitive and deepest meaning, has little to do with morality. Religion refers primarily to a "holy" space out of which we and the world spring and gives rise to the imperative that each of us become holy, living our life in and for God. Beyond this I know that religion and morality are intimately intertwined and that a religious or holy person must also be morally good. One can hardly be holy and evil. Holiness means in part being extraordinarily kind, socially just, honest, temperate, a ~dy-Augvmt 1992 529 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion peacemaker. Yet it cannot be reduced to the practice of these moral virtues. For it is conceivable that someone could be morally good, could follow punctiliously the rules of a moral system, fos-ter social justice, be chaste and kind, and yet not be a religious per-son. He or she could be moral out of personal taste, by temperament, for aesthetic reasons, or out of natural sympathy toward others, and not because of his or her relationship to God. Philippa.Foot, an Oxford moral philosopher and avowed atheist, once told a seminar group that she was such a moral person and that she refused to be patronized by being called an "anonymous Christian." A Christian religious person not only acts morally, but also sees the world in a new way--that it is dependent for its very existence on a transcendent reality and that this makes all the dif-ference. Because it is focused upon the transcendent, the Christian vision has specific ethical implications different from Enlighteflment theories which place the human person or freedom at the center of the moral endeavor. For the Christian the pri-mary response to the world is not that of owner and Promethean creator, but of humble and obedient creature; not an entrepreneurial relishing of power and freedom, but a Marian gratitude before God for all that God has wrought. From this Christian gratitude is born the imperative to love God and God's creation, to allow God to express the divine mercy through us, especially toward the weak and the abandoned. This Christian gratitude and its ethical implications are nourished and deepened through a close union with God in prayer. It is this vision, it seems to me, which should be at the heart of the life of consecrated religious. If they are to be prophetic, it is in this: that in their lives they point constantly to the tran-scendent moment of the universe and try to develop what it means. It is up to each group to decide how it will express this. Christian meaning exists in--and is to be found in--religious sis-ters, brothers, and priests when they are rapt in contemplation of God as well as when they are picking up dying persons from the streets. When people see one of them unremittingly engaged in both, they believe they are in the presence of a saint. Some contemporary Catholic lay people and members of reli-gious congregations seem to have lost sight of the transcendent pole of Christianity. Their model of Christianity has become what Charles Davis labels "pragmatic." The pragmatic version of 530 Review for Religious Christianity arose, he says, when "the Christian religion ceased to function mythically as an overarching totality . The emphasis therefore shifted to Christianity as a practical way of life or eth-ical system. This is still conceived in religious terms, such as the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of God's children, the kingdom of righteousness . But all these expressions are different ways of formulating the moral imperatives gov-erning human existence." ~ Both conservatives and liberals have made this pragmatic shift in Christianity. Conservatives stress per-sonal and family morality and such questions as abortion and euthanasia, and progressives stress social justice, ecology, and women's rights. Future historians may judge that the Vatican itself, but to a lesser degree, has been drawn into what I am characterizing as an overemphasis of morality. They may well remember Pope John Paul II as the "morality pope" because of his repeated statements about both per-sonal and social morality. In practice if not in theory, love of neighbor and enemy seem to have taken precedence over con-cern about union with God. Today's heresies all seem to be moral heresies. Not many Catholics seem concerned about dogmas, about trinitarian, soteriological, or Christological errors. And yet the history of the early church reveals that this was not always so. (I am at times tempted to fashion a brand-new trinitarian heresy to spur people to think more about God and less about themselves!) In this excessive emphasis on morality, the modern church reflects our secularized times, the age that mistook the world for God. In the late sixties, a time noted for its air of revolution, our seminary faculty once gathered the seminarians for a discussion on the question: W'hat are the most important qualities for being a priest and religious today? Some suggested approachability, oth-ers learning and competence, still others kindness or some other human virtue. I was surprised that no one spoke of holiness--a sure candidate just ten years before--and I pointed this out to Someone could be morally good, could follow punctiliously the rules of a moral system, foster social justice, be chaste and kind, and yet not be a religious person. ~dy-August 1992 531 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion the group. One of the seminarians fixed me with a stare and said with an air of disdain: "Just be human, Father!" Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Kiko ArgOello, the Spanish layman and artist who founded the Neo- Catechumenate movement, which offers a series of steps, a way, for modern Catholics to rediscover their baptism and be com-mitted to evangelization. I played the devil's advocate and asked whether his way (camino) of training lay people over a period of years did not produce an arrogant elite and end up creating more division than unity in parishes. His answer was in strict contrast to the seminarian's. He insisted that becoming a Christian today was not easy, regardless of what many priests trained since Vatican II seemed to believe. It did not suffice to simply shout the love slo-gan. Belief that God exists and that Jesus is in some way the son of God was difficult in a secularized culture. Besides, our world of drugs and violence, suburban adultery and abortion, euthana-sia and consumerism, was full of snares. It would not be suffi-cient simply to limit our preaching to a form of positive reinforcement. People had to be called to a public confession of their belief in God and Jesus, be brought to a felt need for con-version, be tested in their resolve, b~ supported by a tightly knit community, and be nourished by an adequate participative' liturgy. Needed, in his view, was a method, a way, a structure, a catechu-menate, 'to bring people squarely before their baptism and its implications for their lives. In so many words he was saying that it was simplistic for the 1968 seminarian to have said: "Just be human, Father." Yes, Christ is at work in the world wherever human good is being done, and we have to recognize and foster such work wher-ever we find it; but we must be aware, too, that fostering human-istic values and being a Christian are not in every way identical. Besides demanding that we be thoroughly moral, Christianity demands belief in many strange things, like the incarnation, the need for redemption, the resurrection, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and the role of Mary. For a time in my adolescence, I wished I had been brought up neutral vis-~a-vis religion so that at the age of twenty-one I might consider all the major religions and choose among them without the prejudice of early Catholic training or brainwashing. But I know now that this is naive, for I have recognized that young people who have not been brought up in any religion end up by 532 Review for Religious having no religious sentiment or religiosity. They tend to remain religion-neutral, unable to make a choice in favor of any religion. George Lindbeck, a Protestant theologian, believes that, unless some religion is taught to us when we are young, unless we are brought up in some religious prac-tices, we might not even be capable of religious experience. This may be exaggerated, but I am sure it contains a grain of truth. One thing is certain: People are never brought up in a vac-uum of vision and values. If they do not absorb religious vision and val-ues, they absorb the secular vision and religion-neutral values of the movies and television. Especially in Europe several new lay Christian movements and reli-gious orders have been born in full awareness of this: the Focolarini, the Sant' Egidio community, the Neo- Catechumenate, the Lion of Juda, the Legionaries of Christ, and so forth. They all believe that becoming Christian in a secularized world is especially difficult and demands a way, a method, an entry through a kind of Christian subculture. It means leaving behind a lot of things that can seem very important from the world's point of view, but really are not. It demands kenosis, emptying oneself, in preparation for a radical decision in favor of Christ and God. Karl Rahner once declared: "A Christian in today's world will be a mys-tic or else he will not exist." And he went on to speak of mystagogy, the need of a method to lead people to see everything in God. I believe that one reason why religious congregations are in a mere survival situation today is that, in their admirable effort to take a positive view of the world, they have identified religion too strongly with a humanistic morality that tends to be secular-istic, individualistic, and overly egalitarian. History shows that almost all religious congregations enjoyed strong growth at their beginnings. They were exciting and attractive in part because they were new, but part of their attraction lay elsewhere. The early members had a sense of a religious adventure and cause larger than themselves which rendered them willing to forgo many personal rights and privileges.~They were members of what Besides demanding that we be thoroughly moral, Christianity demands belief in many strange things, like the incarnation, the need for redemption, the resurrection. July-August 1992 533 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion have been called "intentional" communities as opposed to various "associational" and "bureaucratic" ones that have come into exis-tence since Vatican II.2 They were quite unconcerned with self-expression and equality, not because they were naive and subservient (today's caricature), but because they were caught up in a higher religious vision that enhanced and focused their ener-gies for God and the church. Most religious congregations were founded for three main purposes, the salvation of the members, the salvation of others, and dedication to a devotion or a way of the apostolate. Their charism did not lie only in the third element but in all three. Their purposes were decidedly religious and eschatological as well as incarnational. Today the eschatological has been pushed aside by an incarnational theology interpreted too secularistically and humanistically. Transcendent themes have been toned down in favor of an emphasis on egalitarian rights, on a type of justice interpreted not only as equity but as evenness, a kind of unifor-mity without differences. Everyone knows that only in unity is strength. But egalitarianism, by its very definition, effects an atomism and separateness within a group inasmuch as it deems individual rights and desires more important than the group's religious cause and adventure. Such stress upon egalitarian and humanistic ideals is an ide-ology. It is one way--and only one way--of interpreting democ-racy and justice in society and in religious groups. To oppose that ideology is not to give up democracy but to give it another inter-pretation. This was brought home to me recently as I overheard a conversation between an Mnerican priest--a born-again egali-tarian- and a young female member of the lay Sant' Egidio com-munity in Rome.3 Describing how the community functioned, she mentioned that in her particular community, because of its makeup and history, only certain men and no women were asked to speak at the prayer services. The American priest objected that this was a grave error, that it was supremely important--as a sym-bol and sign to others if not for her personally--that women be allowed to preach in every community. She answered that the Sant' Egidio community did not approach questions ideologi-cally, but pragmatically. Some of the other communities did have women preachers, but because of its particular history and tal-ents, her group preferred not to have them and she was happy with things as they were. She explained that for the Sant' Egidio 534 Review for Religious group three things were of paramount importance: (1) prayer together over the word of God, (2) friendship or mutual support, and (3) work for and with the poor. All else must cede before the achievement of these goals. The American priest's voice rose as he insisted that she was wrong and that the American interpretation of women's rights was correct. But she stood her ground and deftly changed the sub-ject. We have come full circle. In the 1960s, after many years of repression and an exaggerated supernaturalism, we needed to stress personal free-dom and responsibility and a true equality among the races and sexes. We had to recognize our duty before God to take responsibility to build up a world of justice and peace. But this did.not mean that such concerns should come to prevail in reli-gious congregations and sweep all else away in their wake. Now that we have seen the shadow side of such emphases in religious life, we can bet-ter take stock and rediscover that our involvement with the world must begin beyond the world. While the psychological and political agendas were very important for religious life, neither of them was the "one thing necessary." Religious life should center upon that in Christianity which relates our lives to the transcendent. It is here that we must seek its prophecy. It is in reminding people of the divine enchant-ment of the world that it must be countercultural. It is upon this that reflection on refounding religious life must insist. In her arti-cle "Religious Life and the Need for Salt,''4 Joan Chittister asks the right questions regarding contemporary religious life. She wisely concludes that the project of encouraging self-expression in traditionally repressed religious has now been achieved. She says we must now move to questions about the group and how it can be prophetic in today's world. But her answers, giving her interpretation of prophecy, are still too much centered on ecology, social assistance, and human rights and thus, by remaining within a pragmatic model of Christianity, seem but another reiteration of the program of liberal politics. These liberal concerns are impor-tant and must be addressed by the church: the laity, the clergy, and the religious. But addressing such issues, in my opinion, is not going to be the salvation of religious life. Its problems do not 'A Christian in today's world will be a mystic or else he will not exist.' .July-August 1992 535 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Relig4on arise from a neglect of them. Religious lack, not moral outreach, but religious centering. They fail to realize what the poor them-selves realize and express in their popular religions, that our union with God through Jesus is central, that we must work at it, and that it is primarily in this that we will be countercultural. Which is more countercultural--to say we must strive to save planet earth or to say we truly believe that the dead are with God because Jesus rose from the dead and that this makes all the difference? I have made some hard remarks and asked some hard ques-tions, and I would welcome a dialogue about them. I am sure I have not expressed them adequately, but I am convinced that they contain at least a grain of truth. I am encouraged in uttering them by the swing of young people in both Europe and North America toward an interest in the mystical sense of religion. In the 1960s the young were caught up in the humanistic values of psychol-ogy and sociology, but today's youth exhibit a great interest in mysticism, religious cults and movements, apparitions and heal-ings, the afterlife; and even reincarnation and the satanic. Does this not indicate that they are experiencing a deep void of mean-ing in an anorexic and bulimic world where money, notoriety, power, individualism, and equality have become the primary val-ues? Does not this cultural change signal that secular humanism for all its ethical achievements has also been an impoverishment by reason of a dearth of religious imagination? Is it not a sign of the times when people living in sophisticated technological cul-tures begin to be attracted to religious beliefs interpreted in a most .simplistic fashion? I know the good responses to the distinction I draw within Christianity between morality and religion. Most will describe it as dualistic--for contemporary pundits the most damning of epi-thets. They will say, "You are separating things that are essen-tially linked." Love of God and love of neighbor are two aspects of the same thing. If you do not care for the person you see, how can you say you love the God you do not see? Those who love God should find their love's primary expression in their dedica-tion to caring for their neighbor, whether friend or enemy. Prayer is missionary and missionary activity is prayer--and on and on. Others will say that I give a false description of the present sit-uation of religious life; they will deny that those engaged in social justice and ecology tend to pray less and to be less interested in the transcendent, in sacraments, and in the eschatological. 536 Reviezv for Religious I know these rejoinders are partly true, but also that they are partly false. I know that the two aspects of Christianity, religion and morality, love of God and love of neighbor, are very closely intertwined, and I am aware of Karl Rahner's brilliant attempt to conjoin them.5 But I know too that they are conceptually distinct because I have seen them separated in the history of the church. At times the church has experienced the extreme of quietism, an overem-phasis on faith without good works, and other times the heresy of action, a hectic involvement in important works of justice and charity to the detriment of prayer and interiority, the soul of the apostolate. It is up to each of us to examine our life to determine where we are. But I am convinced that the problems of religious life stem only partly from a lack of adequate delivery systems and from ignorance about psychol-ogy, social systemics, and anthropo-logical models in an age of rapid change. I am convinced that their deeper source lies in the confusion between religion and morality and in an insistence upon moral-ity because of a loss of faith and interest in religion. If Christian religion is centered almost exclusively upon doing the moral good, upon promoting social justice and ecology, or upon fighting pornography and abortion, then what is the mean-ing of doctrines and dogmas? Are they but religious, accouter-ments? If so, why not be honest and simply drop them? What is the meaning of the redemption through Christ for a religion reduced to morality? What is the meaning of the Eucharist? Are these dogmas and sacraments only stimuli for action, stories and symbols subtly swaying us to do what is truly important: foster-ing the construction of a socially just and ecologically sound world, creating the. kingdom of morality? Is the resurrection just a story whose real cash value is all those smaller resurrections which can occur in a society, in history, or in each human life? How is a religious congregation which centers so strongly on morality to be differentiated from such groups as UNICEF or the Which is more countercultural - to say we must strive ~ to save planet earth or to say we truly believe that the dead are with God because Jesus rose from the dead and that this makes all the difference ? ~dy-Augzlst 1992 537 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion A life steeped in prayer will produce something we may have lost: a solid number of holy men and women whose life clearly is centered on God. FAO wherein men and women devote themselves to humanitarian causes at times for wages far lower than they could obtain else-where? I know that, since Vatican II, theologians including Rahner and Schillebeeckx have highlighted the thesis that Christ is at work in the world wherever good is. being done and humane causes are fostered. I am acquainted with the theories that the work of building up the kingdom of God is primarily a matter of our present life in the world, that salvation is not only after death but begins here, that the glory of God is man and woman fully alive. I am in sympathy with such emphases, but must also admit that they do not set me on fire; and judging from the vocation statistics of "progressive" congregations, I know that they have not stirred the young. For in my heart I suspect that such emphases are quite incomplete and were (in part) born of a loss of faith in the transcendent. For me Christianity centers not on us but on God. It demands a different vision of the world and reality, which generates a humble gratitude to the God who is responsible for all that is. One of Christianity's concerns is our inborn tendency to distort our freedom, arising from what Luther called the "in-curvedness" of our will. Christianity is about God and sin and the need for God's grace-ful hand to help us make proper use of our freedom. Christian religion must be about God and our relationship with God not only implicitly but also explicitly. It is from a union with God in prayer that light will emanate on how we are to relate to God, the world, and each other. And if a life is to be devoted to religion in a special way, if it is to be a consecrated religious life, it must be lived primarily in view of this relationship to God, not only in ideal but also in structure. It must be structured in such a way that the life of,the group abets in its members this concern about each one's relationship to God and gives witness of it to others. Such a life steeped in prayer will produce something we may have lost: a solid number of holy men and women whose life clearly is centered on God. If this proves true, young people will surely again be attracted to this kind of life, not so much because 538 Review for Religious it is relevant or more interesting than the world, but simply because religious life so construed and so lived is what it purports to be--religious. Notes ~ What is Living, What is Dead in Christianity Today? (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 39. -' See Patricia Wittberg SC, Creating a Future for Religious Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1991

Issue 49.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1990. ; R~\'u!w ~:~R Rt~u~aot!s ( ISSN OO34-639X ) is published bi-monlhly ai St. La~uis University by the Mis-souri Provinc¢ Edu~.'ational Inslilulc of the Soci,.Zly of.lcsus: Editorial Office; 36OI Lind¢ll Blvd. Rm. 4214: St. Louis. MO 63 IOg-3393. S¢cond-class postage2 paid at St. U~uis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United Stal¢.~ $15.00 I'or one .,,'ear: $2g.00 for two years. Olher countries: US $20.00 for on~ .vear~ if airmail. US $35.00 per )'car. For subscription orders or chan~¢ of address. write: Rl~\'ll~\V i:tm R~il.l(i~vs; F'.O. Box riO'70; Duluth. MN 55gO6. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to R~:\'l~:w vor R~:l.~{:l~nls; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. I)avid L. Fleming, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.,J. ,Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Contrib.ting Editor Advisor\" Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. Jan.ar\'lFebrttarv 1990 Volume 49 N.mber I Manuscripts, Imoks fiw review and correspondence with the editor sho(dd be sent to w~a R~:u~;~o~s: 361)1 I,indell Blvd.: St. I,ouis. MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the deparlmenl "Canonical Connsel'" should he addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.°I:B.: 1735 I,eRoy Ave.: Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from RF:\'u~w voa RF:L~;~US; 3601 I,indell Blvd.; St. I,ouis, MO 63108-3393. "'O1.11 of prinl" issues are availahle from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.: Ann Arbor. MI 481116, A major portion of each issne is also availahle on cassette recordings as a service for Ihe visually impaired. \\'rile Io the Xavier Sociely hw Ihe Blind; 154 Easl 23rd Street: New York, NY I0010. Review for Religious Volume 49, 1990 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis. Missouri 63108-3393 David L. Fleming, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors " REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Septem-ber, and November on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Mi-crofilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright© 1990 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion of each issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is also regu-larly available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually im-paired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS. As we begin our forty-ninth volume, there are some additional names found on our inside cover editorial masthead. Although our readers may be familiar with the members of our Advisory Board from their writings or from conferences or workshops, I want to take this opportunity to intro-duce each one of them. Father David Hassel, S.J., with his doctorate in philosophy from St. Louis University, has taught university courses in the philosophy of hu-man nature, God, Augustine, and secularization for twenty-seven years. He has written four books on prayer (Paulist Press) and two on Chris-tian philosophy of education and of love (Loyola University Press), along with some nine articles for REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. He currently is a writer-in- residence at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois. Sister Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D., is presently chancellor of the Jefferson City, Missouri diocese. From 1977 to 1987, she served in Rome as general superior of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and from 1971 to 1977 as provincial councilor of the St. Louis province. With her doctorate in theology from Marquette University, she has lec-tured on topics of theology and spirituality, and has been involved in giv-ing retreats and spiritual direction. Brother Sean D. Sammon, F.M.S., is provincial of the Poughkeep-sie Province of the Marist Brothers and also serves as president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. He worked for nine years at the House of Affirmation, serving most recently as Clinical Director. With three books and a number of articles published, his most recent contri-bution is Alcoholism's Children: ACoAs in Priesthood and Religious Life (Alba House). With his doctorate in psychology from Fordham Univer-sity, he lectures on topics of adult development among religious and priests, sexuality and intimacy, and addictive behavior. Wendy M. Wright, with her doctorate in theology from the Gradu-ate Theological Union in Berkeley, currently teaches theology at Creighton University. She has taught at University of California at Santa Barbara, Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, and Univeisity of Nebraska at Omaha in the fields of history of Christian spirituality, his-tory of religions, and family spirituality. Among her publications are Sa-cred Dwelling: A Spirituality of Family Life; Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantah Letters of Spiritual Direction (with Joseph F. Power); and 3 4 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 Bond of Perfection: Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales. She and her husband, Roger Bergman, who is director of New Covenant Justice and Peace Center, have three children and live in Omaha, Nebraska. Sister Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B., holds a master's degree in clini-cal psychology from Loyola University of Chicago and is a licensed psy-chologist in the state of Illinois. She has worked as a school psycholo-gist, university campus minister, and for twelve years as staff member and co-director of the Institute of Spiritual Leadership of Loyola Univer-sity, an international program training men and women for spiritual lead-ership as companions for those on the spiritual journey. She has offered workshops throughout the United States and Canada as well as in Japan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. As a member of the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Priory, Chicago, she has served as first councilor and is presently community secretary and formation directress, a position she also held for six years in the 1970s. As editor, I am delighted to welcome these members of our Advi-sory Board. With their broad experience, learning, and publishing skills, they give promise of providing Rzvmw FOR Rzt.~c~ot~s with future direc-tion and creative imagination as we look toward the Church of the third millennium. David L. Fleming, S.J. Challenges Facing Active Religious Today Sally A. Kenel, D.W. Sister Sally Kenel, D.W., can be addressed at St. John's University; 300 Howard Avenue; Staten Island, New York 10301. Iduring the summer of 1988 I participated in the General Chapter of the congregation to which I belong, the Daughters of Wisdom. Since we are an international group with our generalate in Rome, the meeting was held at a large house specially equipped for chapters in the lake district out-side of Rome. There were many adjustments to make: some as basic as climate, language, and food. However, it was only after we had been meeting for about a week that I realized that even more significant than these was the overall adjustment in lifestyle. We followed a strict schedule which centered around our Eucharis-tic celebration and our Marian prayer in common. The casa at which we met was quite far from the nearest town. Moreover, the doors of the house as well as the gates of the property were locked at 9:30 P.M. and reopened at 8:00 A.M. On the several occasions I absented myself from the common meals, questions about the state of my health indicated that I had been "missed." In my initial processing of this experience, I com-pared being at the general chapter to being in the novitiate. However, as our discussions at the chapter centered on the mission of the congregation and the lifestyle of a religious today, I realized that even as we talked about community life in an active religious congrega-tion, we were living a monastic lifestyle. This insight served as the cata-lyst for this article in that it stimulated my reflections on the active as opposed to monastic lifestyle, and the challenges facing post-Vatican II active religious. Review for Religious, January-February 1990 The Active Religious Life Almost twenty five years ago, the Second Vatican Council in its "De-cree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life," stated that such a renewal involved two simultaneous processes: "(1) a continuous return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original inspiration behind a given community and (2) an adjustment of the community to the changed conditions of the times."~ In the years which followed, our con-gregation, like so many others, took these words of Vatican II to heart and with much prayer, soul searching, discussion, and, at times, painful confrontation, engaged in the renewal of our congregation. The result of our efforts was the declaration that for us mission is primary. In other words, on the continuum which runs from contemplative to active relig-ious lifel we clearly situated ourselves near the latter. In so placing ourselves, we joined with other congregations in liv-ing religious life in a way that George Aschenbrenner has distinguished from contemplative life in six main ways. (!) Ministry is the primary de-termining influence for the community. This being the case, then (2) a certain flexibility is necessary in order to be able to deal with the de-mands' of ministerial activities. However, such a life may become scat-tered; therefore, (3) discernment is needed if religious are to find, be with, and serve God through their works. Since the purpose of the con-gregation is to be sent in mission, (4) mobility and availability are key elements of an active spirituality, and correspondingly (5) an apostolic form of prayer should characterize active religious. Finally, (6) the com-munity must be marked by a unity which goes beyond physical presence to a unity of mind and heart.2 Although active congregations have done much to make these char-acteristics vital dimensions of their lives, certain of these areas continue to challenge. Frequently the challenge they offer is a subtle one. While religious are engaged in evaluating their ministries and strategizing to in-culturate the gospel message and values, other aspects of active religious life may be neglected. It is these areas which continue to challenge re-ligious, and at times provide the fodder for those who endorse a return to a more traditional lifestyle. Assuming that participation in the mission of the Church is primary for active religious, and that our efforts at renewal in this area are con-stant, a whole variety of questions arise. For example, when we focus our efforts on mission what happens to community? Does it remain one of the marks of religious life, or do we abandon it and become secular institutes? As our communities become smaller and our works less insti- Challenges Facing Religious Life / 7 tutionalized what happens to "local superiors"? If they are no longer needed as administrators, who fills the mentoring roles which they tra-ditionally held? What is an apostolic prayer life? Can unity of heart and mind extend beyond the borders of a particular country or culture to form an international bond? The fact that these questions are spin-offs from the primary question of ministry in no way diminishes our responsibility to respond. As ac-tive religious we need to grapple with these issues to see where the Spirit is leading us today. It is to reflection on these questions that we now turn. The Challenge of Community Living The Vatican document, "Essential Elements in the Church's Teach-ing. on Religious Life," states that: The style of community life itself will relate to the form of apostolate for which the members have responsibility and to the culture and soci-ety in which this responsibility is accepted. The form of apostolate may well decide the size and location of a community, its particular needs, its standards of living.3 This statement clearly indicates that a community lifestyle is the norm for religious, and recognizes that local communities can and must take a form appropriate to the needs of the apostolate. As simple as this may seem, any one who tries to live in community with people who engage in a variety of ministries knows that the reality is quite complex. People come to community with a variety of expectations. Some use the family as the model for community life. Although the sharing of re-sources that community life demands may well be similar to that of a fam-ily, there are also differences. Some people expect to find in community the security of a parent-child relationship where they may relax in de-pendence or dominance depending on their personalities. Others ap-proach community as a sorority or fraternity and expect that community will provide them with a group of congenial companions with whom they may spend their free time. Others look on community as a shelter, a place to come home to after a hard day's work. Sitting quietly in front of the TV is their idea of a pleasant evening together. For still others, a "bed and breakfast" model of community is the ideal. Ministerial ob-ligations, dinners with friends, shopping, visits to a health club, and so forth, indiscriminately keep a person busy every evening. By so limit-ing the time spent with the group, a person is able to avoid the give-and-take which life in community ordinarily demands. At least in part, all these expectations show a response to the com~ Review for Religious, January-February 1990 mon life that was the norm for religious communities prior to Vatican II. At that point in time, a good community was one whose main attrib-utes were regularity, order, and discipline. Vestiges of this ideal remain and constitute the basis for the expectations of some religious today. On the other hand, there are religious whose expectations of community have their roots in reactions against a common life. The result is a ten-sion which is expressed by clusters of people around the pole of group orientation in opposition to clusters of people around the pole of indi-vidual orientation. Attempts to address such tension on the practical level has led to such practices as interviewing prospective members of a local community in order to examine mutual compatibility. Although such testing may lead to a more peaceful life together, it fails to address the basic issue of the value of community itself. Why do active religious live in community? One way to respond to this question is rooted in Johannes Metz's understanding of religious congregations as "the institutionalized form of a dangerous memory within the Church."4 The community life of an active religious congregation, then, recalls the enthusiastic union of the early Christians described in the Acts of the Apostles: "The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common" (Ac 3:32). These early Christians had grasped the notion that God is community, the Trinity, and gave witness to this belief through their life together. Thus, the community life of active re-ligious today serves as a protest against the excessive individualism in today's society and bears witness to the fact that to be is to be in rela-tionship. Reflection on the value of community does not immediately solve all the problems connected with the living of community today. However, it does provide the context in which religious can explore the particulars of community life. By locating the value of community in witness, the notion of community for the mission of the Church is reaffirmed. Thus, the challenge for active religious is to find ways of being together in com-munity which facilitate the ministries of each member, and at the same time proclaim the interdependence of all people. The Challenge o1' Mentoring Several years ago when I was a member of our community's forma-tion team we spent a great deal of time reflecting on where to send our ne~,ly professed sisters. Although ministerial opportunity was our pri-mary consideration, we quickly became involved in the question of vi-able community situations. Where were there sisters who would be open Challenges Facing Religious Life to sharing their lives with the temporary professed whose experiences were so different? Where were there sisters who could and would serve as mentors for these women? In general, we found a reluctance on the part of older sisters to become involved in a mentoring relationship. In pre-Vatican II days this problem did not exist. The local superior was responsible for all the sisters in her house, and she was expected to pay particular attention to the integration of the temporary professed into the community. Thus, the formation begun in the postulate, novitiate, and juniorate was continued by the superior in the house to which a sis-ter was assigned. In addition, regular personal meetings with the supe-rior often served as spiritual direction. Today active communities are smaller and less structured. Often, the group is not uniformly involved in a particular ministry. Joined to the emphasis on the personal respon-sibi! ity of each member, these factors have contributed to the demise of the role of local superior. In their place we find the "communicator" or "contact person," that is, someone within the group who accepts re-sponsibility for communication with the provincial leadership, and so forth. However successful such communication may be, this redefinition of task may leave the mentoring role which the superior formerly filled empty. Such a lack not only deprives new members of receiving the tra-ditions of the community, but also raises the question of whether the adult crisis which Erikson describes as Generativity vs. Stagnation is be-ing successfully negotiated. Although some may claim that their minis-try outside the congregation commits them to involvement in establish-ing and guiding the next generation of Christians, the responsibility of passing on the charism of their particular group cannot be ignored. However, some will argue that the religious life of today bears little resemblance to the life to which they committed themselves. They con-tend that they cannot be expected to pass on the tradition because they themselves do not know what has happened to it. Take daily Eucharist, for example. They consider it a must, and yet newer members of the com-munity do not share the depth of their commitment in this area. How can they be expected to pass on the tradition to those whose values are judged not only different but inferior? What these people fail to realize is that generativity demands the pass-ing on of the tradition, in this case the charism, and not one particular time bound expression of it. Their nostalgic reminiscences of the "good old days" when community members did everything together are but signs of their own stagnation. The challenge for active religious is to re- Review for Religious, January-February 1990 alize that the process of renewal set in motion by Vatican II is an ongo-ing one. It demands the frequent return to the charism, and the contin-ual search for appropriate expressions of the charism. The refusal of men-toring roles in a congregation may indicate that it is time to examine the charism again with the hope of identifying its core values so that these values in turn may be passed on. It may also be time to view the charism as a gift to the whole Church, not merely to a particular congregation. This opens ihe way to redefining membership to include associate mem-bership and other forms of affiliation with a congregation. These new forms of membership in turn raise anew the challenge of mentorship. The Challenge of an Apostolic Prayer Life The need for prayer in the life of a religious is often likened to a car's need for gasoline. Unless one gets the tank filled periodically, the car will not continue to run. One immediately makes the connection with the need for religious to take time to become filled with God. Today's re-ligious seem very much aware of the need for periodic retreats and pro-longed periods of prayer. However, another automobile analogy can be made. It is not only gasoline in the engine that keeps a car running. While the car is going the battery must be constantly recharged by the ¯ alternator or else the car cannot continue to run. Thus, besides setting aside more extended periods for prayer, an apostolic prayer life calls for continual prayer in the midst of activity. But, how does one "pray always?" (Lk 18: I). The temptation is to claim that one's work is prayer. However, in such a simple equation, both work and prayer lose something. A brief reflection on Eucharist may help to bring the relationship between prayer and work into sharper focus for the active religious. Eucharist involves three basic movements: thanksgiving, memorial, and invocation. At Eucharist we give thanks to God in Jesus' name for all the good things--be they as general as creation, and redemption, or as particular as specific moments of grace. We remember the death and resurrection of Jesus, the "dangerous memory" par excellence, a mem-ory which promises freedom for all. We implore the Holy Spirit to make our gifts holy and to transform ourselves as well. Notice, however, that this is not the prayer of an individual, but rather we thank; we remem-ber; we invoke. The Eucharist teaches us that prayer is not merely a dia-logue between a person and God, but rather that Christian prayer is com-munal. Moreover, Eucharist does not end when one leaves the church. As the poe~n by R. Voight makes clear, in our work we do Eucharist. Con- Challenges Facing Religious Life sider, one verse: He was old, tired, and sweaty, pushing his homemade cart down the alley, stopping now and then to poke around in somebody's garbage. I wanted to tell him about Eucharist But the look in his eyes the despair on his face, the hopelessness of somebody else's life in his cart, Told me to forget it. So I smiled, said "Hi"--and gave him Eucharist.5 This brief reflection on Eucharist points to the dynamic relation be-tween prayer and work in the life of the active religious. Prayer as en-gagement in contemplation is not an individual activity, but rather, no matter how personal, is also communal. Our communion with Christ is a communion with the Body of Christ as well. This sense of communion finds expression in prayer not only as the context out of which one prays but also in the form of prayers of petition, and through such expression communion is enhanced. In turn, this sense of unity with others demands expression in our ministry. Our union with Christ urges us to a life of service. Thus, an apostolic prayer life does not exist alone, but only in conjunction with a prayerful apostolate. The challenge of an apostolic prayer life is to develop a prayerful approach to ministry so that prayer and work are viewed as different forms which our efforts towards true communion take. The Challenge of Internationality We live in a time when distances between places have been reduced drastically by improved means of communication and transportation. We live in a time when the condition of the very planet on which we live challenges us to recognize our interdepeiadence. Simultaneously, how-ever, today's religious are encouraged to adapt their style of life to the demands of their specific apostolates and to the culture in which they live. In trying to make such adaptations, religious tend to emphasize the needs and demands of the local church and the local community. Al-though such a focus is important, at times it can be isolating, and can raise the question of what it means to belong to a larger group, be it prov-ince or international congregation. In other words, if we have more in common with other religiou~ living and working in similar situations than we have with other members of our own congregation, why belong to Review for Religious, January-February 1990 an international congregation? Responses to questions such as these hang on the value which one places on the charism of a congregation. Is the charism an adequate ground on which bonds strong enough to extend across continents yet flex-ible enough to allow for cultural diversity can be built? Or to put it an-other way, does sharing the past, being a community of memory, so ori-ent us that we engage in the here and now not only with enthusiasm, but with the realization that our here and now is but a part of the total pres-ent reality? Moreover, does being a community of memory so orient us towards the future that we face it with hope not only for ourselves, but for all people, for the world? The potential of the charism of a congregation to enable bonding needs to be developed and made concrete. In recent years such develop-ment of the charism in active congregations often has taken the form of a mission statement. However, the mission statement itself can remain purely theoretical unless we begin to share the stories of how this state-ment is enfleshed in the specific ministries of religious in different cul-tures. Without such interpersonal and self-disclosing communication, true bonding within the congregation will not occur~ and the potential for challenge and affirmation on an international level will remain unde-veloped. International bonding built on the principles of interpersonal and self-disclosing communication stands in stark contrast to a hierarchical model of bonding. In the former, the general administration is charged with fa-cilitating such communication as opposed to serving as the bond of unity in the congregation. Each member shares the responsibility of preserv-ing and strengthening the bonds of congregational unity. Furthermore, each member shares the responsibility for creating new bonds through her sharing of the concrete form the charism takes in her life and minis-try. In other words, the local community and the local church need not become less important to the individual religious, but each one must come to the recognition that there are other local communities and other local churches where needs and attempts to meet these needs are quite different from one's own. Moreover, the full meaning of one's local church and local community can be found only in relationship to the uni-versal Church and the congregation. A religious congregation as a visible, identifiable group of people within the Church serves as a model of the Church. A non-hierarchical understanding of the internationality of a congregation can function as a symbol of grace for the larger community. As such it refuses to allow Challenges Facing Religious Life the universal Church to be understood as the Vatican, but recalls the Pauline understanding of universal Church as the communion of local churches. At the same time, the internationality of a congregation refuses to allow a local church to consider itself an autonomous subdivision of the universal Church. The internationality of a religious congregation calls the Church to recognize that it is at once local and universal. However, a religious congregation can function as a symbol of grace for the Church in this way only if it itself is truly international. In other words, the challenge of internationality for a religious congregation is much the same as it is for the Church--to realize that it is at once local and universal. On the practical level, this becomes the challenge of es-tablishing, maintaining, and enhancing personal, self-disclosing commu-nications. Conclusions If the chosen priority of a religious congregation is the mission of the Church, then this priority will have ramifications on all of life. The challenges facing active religious today flow from this primary commit-ment to ministry. Moreover, the challenges which we examined in this article all seem to have a common thread--that of recognizing oneself as living in relationship. Whether one examines the quality of local com-munity life, the continuation of a congregation and its values through men-toring, apostolic prayer, or internationality, the central challenge is to a life of interdependence. In other words, the ideal of the "rugged indi-vidual" has no place in active religious life. Since many of us have cul-tivated this ideal in order to survive the past two decades in religious life, the challenge to live interdependently is one that strikes at the heart of our hard won "freedom." On the other hand, interdependent living and dependent living are not synonymous. Interdependency demands that we take responsibility for our own lives and at the same time realize that we are part of an intricate web of relationships. Insofar as religious are able to meet the challenges of interdepend-ent living, they in turn will become challenges to others--to the Church, to the nationalistic spirit of governments, to a consumerism which has no regard for non-human life, or the environment. In this way, active religious will serve as symbols of grace, reflecting to all the community of God. NOTES "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life," in The Documents of Vati- Review for Religious, January-February 1990 can H, ed. Walter M, Abbott, S.J., p. 468, no. 2. 2 See "Active and Monastic: Two Apostolic Lifestyles," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Wol. 45 (1986): pp. 653-668. 3 Origins 13 (1983) p. 136, no. 21. 4 Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 12. 5 As quoted in Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence (Paulist Press, 1976), pp. 276-278. The Challenge God, can you wrap your arms around me, hold me tight and tell me that you love me? Jesus, as my lover, can you really do that? Spirit, can you fulfill the need I feel . . . to be touched, squeezed, loved? Make love to me, God, can you do that? Whisper in my ear, Jesus, can you? Tell me You want me as well, Spirit, is that possible? Am I not to be human anymore? Am I not to feel desire? Am I not to remember or imagine? I imagine his pain as the nail broke through his flesh. I remember the words he screamed at his death. My heart is full of desire for him. I am human--so was he. He came to gather us for his Father. He wants me. He whispers to me everyday and makes love to me with every breath I take. He touches me, squeezes me, loves me. Yes, Lord. My God. I believe. I feel your arms engulf me-- Hold me tighter, Lord. I love you, too. Elaine Laws A.S.C. Affiliate Lay Volunteer Liberia, W. Africa Enlarging Perspectives for the Future of Religious Life Shaun McCarty, S.T. Father Shaun McCarty, S.T., teaches in the Washington Theological Union and is a staff member of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. His address is Holy Trinity Mission Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. ~l~s we approach the last decade of this century, religious find themselves deeply concerned with and uncertain about the future. The crisis facing religious (mainly in the United States and in western Europe) is marked by a decrease in vocations, an increase in median age, and a growing com-plexity of ministerial needs. Many are experiencing either sadness, fear, anger, helplessness, hopelessness, or some combination of the above! The causality (which I would not pursue at length here) is complex. In addition to a history of change that has marked the evolution of reli-gious life, there are theological reasons for the present crisis such as Vati-can II's accent on the universal call to holiness; pastoral ones such as ex-panding possibilities for dedicated service for laity; and cultural ones such as delayed maturation leading to difficulties for young people in mak-ing lasting commitments. People have different ways of dealing with crisis. One can choose (a) to deny or ignore it with a cockeyed optimism; (b) to blame it on the wrong causes or people; (c) to hanker after "the good old days" (that are yet to come!); (d) to become immobilized and depressed by a fatalis-tic cynicism; (e) to engage in narcissistic introspection and breast-beating; (f) myopically to limit one's perspective or to focus on the wrong issues. None of these alternatives is constructive. My contention is that religious life is in transition and that we need 15 Review for Religious, January-February 1990 a strategy for living in a transitional period. As a first step in developing such a strategy, I would suggest enlarging one's perspectives so as to face the future with hope. By "perspective" I mean the scope or hori-zon of a person's or a group's vision whereby one is enabled to perceive context, allowing for a sense of proportion and within which one can fo-cus attention and energy. Context enables one to see something in its re-lationship rather than in isolation. This, in turn, allows it to be seen in proportion to its real significance. Within proper context, one can then choose to focus on the right issues. It is also my contention that, though painful, crisis bears potential for growth. "Crisis" literally means being presented with a situation de-manding decision. The word for discernment in Greek is diakrisis, that is, "a sorting out." It is that "sorting out" that I would like to address. As all Christians, religious have a responsibility to discern the signs of the times in the process of making decisions for the future in a spirit of hope for the coming of the kingdom. So the question is: What help is available in reading the signs of the times that are pertinent to what has always been a changing shape of religious life? My task is to try to provide some perspectives that might enable a hopeful reflection on what we can expect and prudent decisions about what we can do to help shape the future. I will attempt neither to predict nor will I presume to play the prophet. Rather, I will explore some mean-ings and pose some questions that might hopefully expand and deepen perspectives in sharing responsibility for the future. Some Meaning to Broaden Perspectives I would suggest five key areas where broader and deeper perspec-tives might be profitably pursued. They include: (I) the primacy of the kingdom (or reign) of God; (2) a mature grasp of and love for the Church as "Catholic"; (3) membership in interdependent religious community; (4) different approaches to and notions of the future; (5) the cultivation of a mature sense of Christian hope and trust. The Primacy of the Kingdom (or Reign) of God Kingdom (or reign~ of God is a symbol used to convey the mystery of the corporate vision or dream for the future that energizes Christians for involvement in the present. It is the large perspective that embraces all the others. It summarizes the mission of Christ now shared by all. God's reign is already breaking through and manifest by those liv-ing the beatitudes which results in fruits of the Spirit such as peace, jus-tice, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, unity, and love. Obviously these Enlarging Perspectives values of the kingdom are not the exclusive property of any group within the Church or even of the Church itself. A Mature Grasp of and Love for the Church as "Catholic" The Church, though not co-terminus with the kingdom, is a commu-nity of disciples called together in Christ to be a visible body united in belief, discipline and worship in service of the kingdom. It is important to remember that the beginnings of the Church (which we continue to remember) were marked by "upper room experiences" where Jesus washed feet as a prelude to Eucharist and where the Holy Spirit descended upon disciples who had gathered in fear and confusion to be empowered for the mission of proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom. "Catholic" is a designation that indicates the universality of the Church's scope; its quest for unity, yet respect for differences; its inclu-siveness of peoples and cultures; and its ability to recognize and to re-spect kingdom values wherever they are found. The term "Catholic" is opposed to insular, parochial, provincial, or sectarian attitudes. A mature love for the Church means accepting her in both her graced and flawed condition; being faithful to her in attempting to personalize the institution as others experience Church in our ministry to them; and working prophetically from within the perennial tasks of renewal (begin-ning with ourselves!). Membership in Interdependent Religious Community Religious life is an ecclesial way of living a vowed Christian life in community for the sake of the kingdom. It is both charism and institu-tion. As charism, it is a gift of the Spirit to the Church through the in-spiration of a founder. As institution, it is structured according to a rule of life or constitution approved by the Church. Though both charism and institution are important elements to be kept in poised tension, I would suggest that sharing in the charism is morevital to membership than par-ticipation in its institutional structures. It is even a deeper bond than af-fective ties with other members. By membership I mean how, where, and when one experiences a sense of bel6nging to or connectedness within a group. I would also suggest that today, more than ever before, members and communities are called to greater interdependence both within the com-munity and with other groups. By "interdependence," I mean mutual dependency in co-responsible fashion as opposed to an unhealthy inde-pendence or dependence. Review for Religious, January-February 1990 Different Approaches to and Attitudes towards the Future "Future" refers to that aspect of human history not yet fully here except in seed and about which little can be known with certainty, but for which there is responsibility for human choices in the present. There are different attitudes about the future. Some hold that history continues to repeat itself and that managing the future means knowing the past. Others think changes are going to be so radically different in the future that it is senseless to look at the past. There are others still who feel that, as the present has emerged in continuity with the past, so the future will be both creative and new, but will emerge in continuity with the past and present. I believe the latter is more in keeping with the notion of Divine Provi-dence. As a matter of fact, the Latin root of "providence" is "pro vid-ere" which means literally "to see with" or "to see for"--implying the use of dynamic memory in looking at the past, creative imagination in looking at the future, and collaborative action in the pres.ent. Thus Di-vine Providence may be viewed, as God calling creatures to be co-responsible for and to collaborate with the Spirit in shaping the future. There are different kinds of futures including: (a) possible, that is, what could happen limited only by the scope of imagination; (b) prob-able, that is, given current trends, what is likely to happen; (c) prefer-able, that is, what should happen determined by a value system; and (d) plausible, that is, what can happen by attending carefully to the other kinds of futures. I would suggest that, in helping to shape the future, we need to explore the possible, assess the probable, assert the preferable, and attempt the plausible. The Cultivation of a Mature Sense of Hope and Trust By hope I mean trustful expectation for the future, born of faith in promises of the more to come. Just as with faith, I believe there is a first and second naivete of hope. In faith development, what begins initially as an unquestioning and naive faith, after a period of doubt and questioning, can grow into a more critical and mature faith marked by a second naivete. A similar develop-ment can happen in regard to a naix, e hope. An Eden-like expectation of absolute assurance can be shattered by an act of betrayal (real or sup-posed, conscious or unconscious). If the person thus "betrayed" can for-give and effect reconciliation with the event of betrayal, then that per-son can grow to a more mature trust (second naivete) which includes the possibility and risk of further betrayal. I would submit that people can experience corporate as well as individual betrayals, that is, betrayal by Enlarging Perspectives a renewed Church or changed religious community. Some Questions to Enlarge Perspectives (1) Perspectives of kingdom and Church Are we "catholic" enough in our notion of Church? How much do we perceive Church in the first person plural? Do we view both institu-tional and charismatic elements in the Church as interdependent, minis-tering in mutual dependency rather than as competitors or adversaries? As different (and often differing!) individuals and groups in the Church, can we transcend personal and intramural agenda by focusing on king-dom priorities? Does our grasp of Church embrace a missionary dimen-sion as necessary to its fullness? In carrying forth the mission, do we see evangelization as a two-way street, a dialogue in which we need to lis-ten to learn as well as to proclaim to teach kingdom values? Do we value quality of personal evangelization (especially our own !) over quantity of religious practices? In evangelizing, are we able to distinguish Gospel from cultural values? Are we developing a mature love for that Church? Does such love imply placing a priority on our personal relationship with Jesus and com-mitment to the Gospel proclaiming his kingdom as realities that relativ-ize Church membership? In realizing that discipleship is prior to apostleship? In seeing code, creed, and cult as important, but secondary to our experience of God in Christ? Does a mature love for the Church call for recognizing and embracing the flawed as well as the the graced condition not only of ourselves and other individuals, but of the Church itself? Does it mean reverencing the person and opinions of others who disagree with us? Being able to forgive those who wound us? Does ma-ture love prefer invitation to control by refusing to resort to power poli-tics to win the day, even for a worthy cause? Does it include making pref-erential, yet not exclusive options for the poor? Does it call for building bridges between those who have and those who have not? Do we foster mature love of Church by exercising a truly servant leadership that is ready to wash feet? To share Eucharist in life as well as sacrament? To discern the Spirit of God in experiences of life? To recognize, affirm, and enable the use of different gifts for ministry in the Church? Does ma-ture love lead us to avoid elitism and to shun seeking privilege? Are we comfortable enough in our Catholic identity so as to engage in genuine dialogue (in which we listen as well as speak) with other Christians and non-Christians energized by a passion for unity in love as well as truth? Do we acknowledge goodness wherever or in whomever we find it, in-side or outside the Church? Do we acknowledge kingdom values wher- Review for Religious, January-February 1990 ever we find them? (2) Perspectives of religious life: So as to establish a proper context, rather than asking in isolation "What is happening to religious life?", should we be asking, "What is happening in the Church?" And what is happening in the global Church--in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere? Not just in the local Church in a given diocese, nation, or culture. Within respective religious communities, do we need to shift focus and to widen horizons? To shift the focus of membership in community from local living to the larger religious community sharing a charism within a context of Church and kingdom? As religious, is there any higher obedience we owe the Church than fidelity to the charism of our community? And, in fact, is that charism the exclusive possession of any given canonical group? Can that same charism be shared by men as well as women? By laity as well as by religious? by non-Catholics as well as by Catholics? If the charism is susceptible of wider appropriation, then is there a responsibility for religious to share and foster it with others out-side their own canonical groups? Could it be that the charism will out-live present structures that embody it? What can we do to discover or to create the conditions for"upper room experiences" so that community gatherings might become energiz-ing and enabling rather than enervating and obstructive? What would they look like in terms of participation? Prayerful mode? Respect for dif-ferent gifts for ministry? Though responsibly planned, with a readiness for kairos moments in which we can be surprised by the Spirit? Agenda with priority on the needs of those we serve over internal concern? Lis-tening with open hearts? How are we dealing with the fear and confu-sion of crisis? How and in what areas can we work in mutual dependence with oth-ers who share our concerns? Where is there redundancy, competition, or unhealthy independence or dependence? Between religious communities? Between men and women? Between religious and laity? Between parish priests and religious or lay associates? Between Catholic and non- Catholic sponsored programs? What kind of support do we need from and can we give to one another? (3) Perspectives of the future and hope for it: Can we resist being victimized by "prophets of doom" proclaim-ing the probable? Are we ready to share responsibility for shaping the future by reading the signs of the times and by making discerned choices for the preferable and plausible futures? Have we grown in a mature Enlarging Perspectives sense of hope and trust? Have we survived real or supposed "betrayal" within communities and/or the Church? How have we reacted or re-sponded? With bitterness? Anger? Resentment? Cynicism? or with for-giveness and reconciliation? With the readiness to enter a more real world? With greater awareness and acceptance of human limitation? With a more mature love of Church? With the willingness to risk in trust-ing again? With the firm belief that, though Jesus has ceased to be vis-ible, he has never ceased to be present? Conclusion Perhaps a fitting paradigm for this time of transition would be the Exodus event? Many, lured by promises, never reached the Promised Land themselyes, but lived and worked that others might? As Sam Goldwyn used to remark at meetings. "For your informa-tion, I have come to ask a few questions!" Perhaps this is a time for hav-ing more disturbing questions than comforting answers. It was Rilke who said the important thing was to love the questions and perhaps someday we would live ourselves into the answers! There might be the germ in that for a strategy of survival for religious during an era of transition: to love and live the questions to~e'ther in hope! Towards A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life John J. Markey, O.P. Father John Markey, O.P., is a member of the Southern Dominican Province. His address is De Porres House; 495 Merritt Avenue; Oakland, California 94610. The authors of the landmark book, Habits of the Heart, present a clear challenge to traditional religious communities which claim to want to "transform" the dominant cultural ethos. ~ It is ultimately up to the vari-ous churches to provide a morally coherent alternative to the radically myopic individualism that has come to so characterize and inform Ameri-can culture. But religion itself has often been both systematically co-opted by this culture, and has reinforced it by providing a rationale for its most insipid implications. It is, therefore, increasingly evident that the churches must begin any wider prophetic role by questioning and re-imagining their own communal life, and the place of the valid insights of individualism within this context. Within the Roman Catholic tradi-tion it is clear that those in religious life have a particularly urgent man-date and rich resources in this regard. There is a growing awareness that any genuine Christian community must be both inculturated and prophetic. This means that the community must define itself within a certain cultural context; it must take seriously and even incarnate the valid insights and thought-forms of the culture. But the community will also necessarily have a countercuitural dimen-sion to it. It will be characterized by a lifestyle that explicitly contradicts some cultural themes and attitudes that are seen to be irreconcilable with gos-pel values. A thorough analysis of American culture would reveal many myths 22 A Trinitarian Model. of Religious Life / 23 and values that need to be challenged and transvalued by the gospel, but no single aspect of American life is as pervasive and dominant as radi-cal individualism. It is fair to say that Western liberal thought revolves around this theme, and that it informs every strain of American cultural life. The deifica~tion of this cultural value has had a destructive impact on American life by creating an ethos where commitment is often unin-telligible, fragmentation and disintegration of family life is unavoidable, and personal isolation is the norm. This is not to say that individualism in itself is the problem. On the contrary, there are many positive and valuable insights attached to this thought-form. Some of the fundamental values derived from individual-ism that religious communities should incarnate are: the emphasis on the value and dignity of each person and the role of the community in en-hancing this dignity; the primacy of the personal, relational, and experi-ential dimension of the community life over against the institutional and structural dimension; and the absolute need for personal manifestation and self-appropriation of community identity, decisions, and goals. Any North American religious community must take the valuable insights of individualism seriously if it truly wants to be both inculturated and pro-phetic. But the community must, at the same time, develop a lifestyle that puts this phenomenon in the fuller perspective of the gospel. Proposal for an lnculturated North American Model of Religious Life Given both the major cultural themes and the major cultural needs and problems, I propose that community should be the rubric around which we redefine our understanding and praxis of religious life at this time. I think that it is this element of religious life which, if properly un-derstood, best encompasses and incorporates the relational, personal, and experiential values that we learn from our culture. It is also community which most clearly responds to the desperate need in our time for a sig-nificant countercultural alternative to radical individualism. It is clear, however, that we must come to a new and meaningful understanding of community, particularly in a Christian and Catholic context, if we are going to develop the coherent alternative we seek. We must rethink tra-ditional understandings of community and communal life in terms that can both express the new insights of the culture while at the same time remaining faithful to the spirit of both the gospel and the broader tradi-tion in regard to community. Along these lines, then, I propose that we consider the Trinity to be the model of authentic Christian community, and therefore the context Review for Religious, January-February 1990 in which we redefine community and community life. I hope to make it clear that a trinitarian model and trinitarian terminology are ultimately more helpful for the task previously laid out than the Christological model on which much of religious life is currently based. Furthermore, I propose that we adopt a modern (though traditionally informed) social understanding of the Trinity that explains the Trinity in experiential terms. Here I am essentially assuming that there are two traditional theo-logical interpretations of the Trinity, that while related are finally dis-tinct. 2 I will try to explain the two lines of development below and then show some of the implications of taking one as our model of commu-nity. It is important to see that the fundamental advantage of this option is that it provides a model of community based on the very life of God as we understand it. In this sense the religious community is defined as an icon of the Trinity, which means that its self-understanding must ul-timately be shaped by its most deeply held theological assertions. Two Approaches to Understanding the Trinity I) Substantial Identity In the West after Augustine, the primary approach to Trinity was to begin with the divine "substantia," the single and simple essence or sub-stance of the Godhead, and then try to explain (generally using a very schematic psychological model) how this single substance could be triper-sonal. So the main focus of this line of development was the attempt to show how the three persons could relate to one common divine sub-stance, which necessarily precluded any multiplicity, while at the same time maintaining a real distinction of persons. This approach was suc-cessful in describing the unity of the Godhead, but ultimately found it difficult to give an adequate account of the relation of persons within this unity. For this reason articulations of this approach often ended in either modalism or quaternity. H)Vital Identity and Mutual Inexistence In the East, following the lead of the Cappadocian Fathers, there was a tendency to begin with the reality of the three persons and then to ar-gue to the unity of the Godhead. In essence, the task of this approach was to show how three persons could be one (rather than how one could be three). Along these lines there were two critical developments. First, Victorinus proposed that the unity of God be described as a "vital iden-tity" of life and action rather than as a "substantia."3 God then was not to be understood as some static essence, but as vitally and dynamically A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life / 95 alive. The three persons, therefore, do not share a common substance so much as a common identity of life. Secondly, John of Damascus proposed the concept of mutual inex-istence (perichoresis) as the best way to describe the unity of the three persons.4 This meant that the three indwell in one another and compene-trate with one another, as the flame of three wicks can burn as one. This mutual indwelling or inexistence of the divine persons is not a conse-quence of their unity, but the equivalent of it. It is in fact the mutual and complete compenetration of the three divine persons that comprises their essential unity. So here the divine persons literally exist in one another in a vibrant and ecstatic way. The three persons, as incorporeal and fully self-donating, experience an interpenetration and intense empathy that is ultimately a single identity of life. It is then the self-donation of the three persons that makes their unity possible. This mutual self-donation, however, does not compromise the autonomy of each divine person, but is only possible because of it. With-out autonomy no action would be possible, let alone self-donation. This perfect self-donation makes relationships unitive rather than divisive. This means that mutual self-donating relationships constitute the very re-ality of God. By beginning with the persons we come to a radically social under-standing of the Godhead that can in turn lead to a social understanding of created reality as well. God is the supreme communion of three di-vine persons, which humans are called to reflect imperfectly, but sacra-mentally, in relationships and community. If we choose community, then, as the rubric under which to rede-fine religious life, it would seem that the second approach to Trinity is the best model for human and particularly Christian community. I would contend however, that most models of religious life, and particularly the models of community within these, coming out of past paradigms in the West, are based on the "substantial identity" approach. I would like to make a short critique of the understanding of community under this model, and then begin to reinterpret some aspects of community and re-ligious life under this new model. Short Analysis of the Old Model of Community In many ways the old paradigm of religious life and particularly of community is analogous to the substantial identity approach to the Trin-ity. Traditional understandings of religious life tended to begin with the one substance, usually the institutional structure of the community, or-der or congregation, and then tried to fit individuals into this substance. Review for Religious, January-February 1990 So they began with the unity, which in this case tends to be a formal and impersonal unity, to which individual persons must relate. In this model the persons do not relate directly to one another, but instead relate to a certain "thing" called community. Personal relationships within this type of community are then either mediated or accidental. Individuality in this model means that I have my own personal and spiritual life (that should stay within certain boundaries and follow certain rubrics) and that I relate to the group in a certain structured way along the lines of func-tion. In other words, the work that I do is regulated by and somehow re-flects the group. The theological focus and justification for this understanding of com-munity tends to be narrowly Christological. As an individual I follow Christ by joining with a group of Christians who want to follow Christ along a similar pattern. In the West this pattern has often been basically informed by a military model (although it is a caricature to say that one became a "soldier for Christ," and that one joined the "Christian army," these images did seem to be present in the popular imagination of recent generations of religious). This narrowly Christological focus in turn often led to a linear and patriarchal institutional structure within which the individual must fit him-self or herself. This model also left no real room for the Holy Spirit and pneumatology because these tend to disrupt the structures (rules, consti-tutions,. traditions, and so forth) which are the source and focus of unity. In this scheme, then, unity was often equated with conformity to a set and impersonal pattern of common life. The main problem with this model is that it generally leads to one of two understandings of community and communal life, both of which are based on the assumption that there is some "thing" out there called a community that exists apart from the people that make it up. There is, for instance, a Dominican Order out there that somehow exists apart from Dominicans. This ultimately leads to understanding the community as be-ing fundamentally impersonal (which seems self-contradictory). This un-derstanding of community manifests itself in two basic forms, both of which I believe can be described in trinitarian terms. On the one hand, there is a kind of Modalism where each member of the community is just a projection of the whole group. Here each member is really interchange-able with any other member. Personal identity is subsumed in the whole so that my individual personality needs to be altered and re-formed so as to project the image of the whole. Secondly, the term Quaternity can be used to describe an understanding of community where each person A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life is seen to be a distinct member of the community, but there is always something more behind these called "the community." The community is some thing out there which each member, and all of the members as a whole, only represent but never fully embody. Religious Community Based on the Social Trinity Model Like its trinitarian paradigm, this understanding of religious commu-nity begins with the persons, and comes to understand their unity as that of persons sharing a vital identity of life based on mutual self-donation and shared vision. So the source of unity is love and its manifestation is the interpersonal bonding of the members. Although common struc-tures and institutions will arise from this unity to support it, they are not identical to this unity nor are they its source, starting point, or founda-tion. The actual starting point of this model is an understanding of per-sons as ecstatic beings who are most fully persons when they donate them-selves fully to the other in interpersonal relationships. In this sense per-sons can and do exist in one another~dwell in one another--in a way analogous to the way in which the persons of the Trinity mutually inex-ist. So this new model demands that community be understood in radi-cally personal and social terms. This approach effectively means that there is no "thing" out there called community that is essential and un-changeable and is unaffected by the persons who make it up. So there is, for instance, no Dominican order or community out there that exists apart from Dominicans. A consequence of this is that what a community is, or what the Dominican order is, is always changing and developing to some extent. The community is always dependent on the persons that make it up. So the community is always identified with the personal ex-perience of it. Although the community is always changing and developing with the people involved, it should always grow and develop along certain lines or patterns. This is because an essential part of the vital identity of the community will be an apprehension of and a resonance with the identity of the founder and the habitual tendency to live this out concretely over time. Those in community must interiorize this identity, and come to share it in common, as well as be familiar with how this identity has been lived out concretely in its shared history. Nevertheless, the present com-munity must never blindly follow one single concretization, or absolu-tize any past communal manifestation of this identity. The difference between this. and the older Christological model is that this model is profoundly pneumatological. Here to follow Christ Review for Religious, January-February 1990 means, first of all, to take on the mind of Christ, and this in turn means to be radically open to the Holy Spirit and the newness of mind that this entails. Taking on this mind leads to a radical personalization because it calls one to complete trust in the Father--which frees each person to be truly open and vulnerable to others. This mind also causes one to re-alize that mutual inexistence is not something one chooses, but is the very pattern and foundation of life (which one can choose to ignore). Be-cause the Holy Spirit is the ultimate personalizing principle, even within the Godhead, we see that the Spirit is the foundation of community.5 All of the above implies that the fundamental starting point for re-ligious community is conversion. The absolute need for the type of con-version process that allows us to take on the mind of Christ is obvious. Community is not possible without the orientation, transvaluation, and radical personalization of both initial and ongoing religious conversion. Any model of community that is not premised on both the initial and on-going need for conversion and repentance is inadequate. Community is not then finally some thing we can do; it is a gift we are given and can only receive. It is also not something we ever have as a finished product or achievement; its fulfillment always lies in the future, though the seeds of this future are already present. So these pneuma-based communities are inherently eschatological communities in that they point to and an-ticipate the fullness of communion in the future. Differences between the Old and New Models in Four Key Areas I) Formation Formation in the Old Model often meant re-formation. It often in-volved taking a person and changing him or her into a certain type of person who acted in a particular way and had a particular mind-set. For-mation in practice was usually indoctrination and incorporation into an institution. So there was a process set up that should end at a certain point with a certain type of predetermined character who could function within a defined system of life. The model of formation was most often seen to be military "boot camp," and the primary method of formation was sensory deprivation and incarceration. Under the New Model, formation would refer more-to the whole group than to the individual person. This is because with each new per-son that enters.the group, the group must re-form, as it were, and estab-lish a new unity. The model for individuals would actually be incorpo-ration, but not incorporation into a preexisting and unchangeable struc-ture. Rather, the process would be one of being drawn into a conscious A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life / 99 union of persons that entails individual and group conversion. It is a proc-ess of growth in desire and ability to donate oneself to a certain group of people, and for the group to accept and relate personally to the new person, hence redefining itself in terms of that person. The model for for-mation here would be more like the RCIA. It is a dynamic process of conversion and incorporation that challenges both the individual and the community to come to a new understanding of and commitment to oth-ers. Initial formation in a strict sense would include a process of coming to know the vital identity of the preexisting group by coming to know the identity and vision of the founder and interiorizing this vision in a way that causes the person to make decisions that in turn forms his or her character. In other words, there is a sense of taking on a new iden-tity, but this identity is always personal, and builds on the character, per-sonality, and experience of the person. It is neither a process of becom-ing someone wholly different from oneself, nor the same as others; it is coming to a fullness of autonomy and unique identity. It is a process of becoming who the person truly is. It is only this process that can facili-tate Christian community, because self-donation is ultimately based on the fullness of autonomy, not the lack of it. lrI) Vows In the Old Model the vows were generally understood to be explicit commitments to live out a certain pattern of life: This pattern was often based on the narrow, military sense of following Christ that I have al-ready mentioned. The vows were then defined as being those elements that were necessary to maintain a cohesive and successful group identity and purpose. Obedience, therefore, was often the primary vow (for Dominicans it was the only vow), and was understood in the military sense of accept-ing a certain authority structure and chain of command. How one related to the community as a whole. The authority structure tended to take the place of interpersonal responsibility to the community---following orders from legitimate authority, no matter how half-heartedly and passively, was seen to be obedience. Poverty was the commitment to be materially dependent on the whole group, and to accept the priority of the corporate needs over one's own. So one could not own anything personally (that is, neither personal bank accounts nor independent financial resources), although one might have the use of things based on need. Furthermore, this vow was gener-ally regarded as applying only to the individual's obligation in regard to Review for Religious, January-February 1990 material goods, although it was occasionally seen to impinge on the ma-terial wealth of the community as a whole. Celibacy had both a moral and an institutional basis. It was, there-fore, seen as the obligation to abstain from all sexual activity, and to avoid all exclusive relationships so as to avoid scandal to the group's repu-tation and to insure cohesive institutional structures. In the New Model there will always be two aspects to any vow: how it affects and is part of the life of the community as a whole; and how it affects and directs the life of the individual. It is important to see that the vows are primarily commitments to a certain style of life and to cer-tain values and priorities made by the whole community. The individ-ual's vows, then, are the taking on of these group commitments, and mak-ing personal decisions to facilitate these. So when the individual makes vows, she or he is vowing to enter fully into the vows of the whole com-munity, and making a commitment to come to see one's own identity in terms of the others. In one sense there is only one vow, namely the community's vow to enter into an obediential relationship to the Father after the example of Jesus, based on an unconditional trust in the providential care of the Father. This vow then will be most clearly manifest in the community's commitment to poverty. Obedience in this model is first and foremost trust in God. But be-cause of this it is experienced as a trust in and openness to the whole com-munity. In this sense, obedience means essentially "to listen" (from the Latin root), and is most fully expressed by the term integrity. For the in-dividual this means that one make the community the priority in one's life, and, therefore, the person should grow, develop, and make deci-sions in true dialogue with the whole community. It means that each per-son forms and informs his or her life by the interpersonal relationships that are experienced as community. As a group, obedience is the commitment to never let institutional structures pass for common life or take the place of true listening, dis-cernment, and consensus building. In other words, it is the commitment to an ongoing and interpersonal dialogue, which is a group commitment, out of love, to live with a certain amount of ambiguity and tension in their lives, even at the expense of efficiency and cohesiveness. The com-munity and the individual fundamentally commit themselves to be open to the Spirit, and to be fully charismatic in the truest sense. Rigid con-formity, mediocre efforts, institutional paralysis, unimaginative and un-creative problem solving, and impersonal decision-making would all be Seen as violations of this vow. Poverty is seen by the whole community as the test and sign of its A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life unconditional trust in God. This vow is based on the assumption that the radical sharing of worldly goods is the fundamental and practical test of both the individual's and community's faith. So this vow on the part of the individual is the commitment to a complete sharing of wealth and re-sources with the others in the community and with those outside of it. It is a vow to hold nothing back. Furthermore, it is the commitment to work, not so that one may accumulate wealth or find personal gratifica-tion, but so that through work one may share with others, and produce fruits to share with others. On the part of the group, poverty is likewise a commitment to a radi-cal form of hospitality that excludes no one in principle, and where pri-ority for sharing is based on need. It also means that the whole commu-nity will work as a way of sharing, and so that it will have something to share. Group "navel-gazing" that does not end in service, wasting money and service on those who do not need it, over-planning for the future security of the group, spending money for services that the group could perform for themselves, and an inability to let go of past successes are all violations of this vow. Celibacy is the vow that facilitates the radical self-donation of one-self to a number of other people, so it is first of all the vow to give one-self fully and personally to the others in the community. As such, it nec-essarily requires that the person forego any fundamentally exclusive re-lationships and the types of physical intimacy that are proper to these. This does not mean a denial of intimacy, affection, and personal rela-tionship-- one is actually committed to these in self-donation--but one chooses to find these and enter into these within the context of commu-nity. This then is the central predisposition of the trinitarian model of com-munity: the choice to seek interpersonal fulfillment in a non-exclusive but fully intense way through community with others. As a community this vow is the commitment of the whole to each person, and to the extension of hospitality to include a personal open-ness to all. So it is a commitment to be inclusive communities that offer human relationship unconditionally to all. Simply living together with a "boarding-house" mentality, refusing to reach out to and even chal-lenge the alcoholic or any dysfunctional member, passive-aggressive be-havior, and remaining separate and distant from people outside of the com-munity would all be violations of this vow. III) Common Life and Institutional Structures As alluded to earlier, in the New Model common aspects of the com-munity life (prayer, study, various practices, and so forth) and the un-derlying institutional structures which support these (constitutions, rules, 39 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 authority structures, government apparatus) are not equivalent to the com-munity, but arise out of it and are meant to serve it. So no elements of the common life are absolute and unchangeable in principle. It is impor-tant to point out, however, that although the institutional structures in the New Model are fluid and open to change, there are some things that they must necessarily exclude. Leadership in this model of community is always a service to the whole that is exercised cautiously and humbly. Any authority structure within the community, therefore, must begin with an unequivocal rejection of a worldly view of power, particularly those models that arise out of a militaristic worldview. Furthermore, there can be no caste systems in community life--seniority, clericalism, and elitism are all worldly views of power. Everyone who has made an explicit commitment to the community has an equal share in and respon-sibility to the common life. So authority structures must always reflect this reality, and must always be open to revision and challenge. In both models the greatest threat to unity is dissent. In the Old Model, dissent was usually seen in impersonal terms, as in dissent from some aspect of common life. To disagree with a superior, to not observe a certain practice, or to disregard a certain law were all acts that were understood to be disunifying. The key in this model then was to mini-mize dissent by insisting on complete, even mindless, conformity on a very practical level to a certain core of ideas and practices. In the New Model dissent is seen in more personal terms as a break-down of the interpersonal bonding and as dysfunctionality. The main source of dissent is the attitudes of persons within the group towards one another. This type of dissent will often hide behind superficial agreement or conformity, but operates at a deeper level to poison relationships and undermine unity. The approach here though is to confront dissent as part of the ongoing need for conversion and repentance for the whole com-munity. This highlights then the absolute need for consent in this model, and particularly for an ongoing process of building consent or consen-sus. So the main emphasis is not minimizing dissent, it is maximizing consensus, which in turn requires that the community be willing to con-front and challenge dissent in a personal and constructive way. IV) Mission and Ministry In the Old Model mission and ministry were the primary focus of re-ligious life in general, and of one's individual vocation in particular. Com-munity, then, had a secondary role and was seen essentially as a means of facilitating mission. The dominant understanding of vocation was that one was called to a certain mission (namely to follow Jesus), and so one A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life / 33 was called to do certain things. One then was to choose a lifestyle that best accommodated and supported what it was that one wanted to do. One chose a community because it best enabled the work that one wanted to do. So community was formed for a certain reason or purpose, namely, because it was the most efficient and practical means to share resources, pool talents, and consolidate authority in order to get a cer-tain mission accomplished. The vows of celibacy and poverty, for in-stance, were often seen in this light: community made possible the kind of work one wanted to do. So this model generally understood mission in an individualistic sense, and mainly valued community for its func-tional role. In the New Model one does not live in community to facilitate work or mission; one lives in community and, therefore, can work and be sent on mission. Community is always primary and chosen for its own sake. Community is chosen because of the people involved; it is the decision to share one's life in a particular way with others. Here the trinitarian emphasis of this model is most helpful. The Trin-ity does not come together in order to create and go on mission. It is in-stead just because of the radical unity and self-donation of the persons to one another that they can create and be sent. The missions of Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the models here. Missions always reveal some-thing about the senders, and what the Son and Holy Spirit communicate simply is their shared life with the Father. It is precisely their shared life that they invite us into. In other words, the senders are essential; there is no mission without being sent. So it is because one lives in community, and because of the graced transformation of experience that this entails, that one feels empowered to go out. And what is shared when one is "out" is precisely the fruits of the common life. Because the Christian community is by nature a char-ismatic community, there are a variety of gifts to be shared. Furthermore, each community, because of its shared vital identity with a particular foun-der, will have a particular charism which both grows out of and shapes the development of the community life. It is then the radical self-donation conversion that sends a person out. So through conversion each person is always moving into wider circles of community. The religious community is in turn sent by the wider Christian community, and so it has a message and a mission also. Under this model, community is experientially prior to mission, and is in fact its source. In the actual life of the community, however, both will be mutually dependent and interrelated. In this sense though, very 34 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 individualistic types of spirituality, even those that allow for some form of community, are called into question. In regard to vocation, this means that one's vocation is primarily understood as taking on the mind of Christ and thereby coming into contact with the life of God within one, and of being called by this realization into relationship with others in a new way. In the context of this new relationship one is sent out to oth-ers. The point is that for those who choose to live in religious commu-nity it is community itself which is the vocation--it is the call. The spe-cific mission or function that one takes on within this context is really the call of or from the community. This call is the claim that members of the community have on one another by virtue of their mutual self-donation. This raises the question of the place of ordination within the reli-gious community. In the Old Model a specific type of work was often seen as the primary vocation, and, therefore, the community was there to support and enhance ordination. The levels of participation within the community were generally based upon the work one did, and so the or-dained occupied a higher level in the communal structure. So ordination tended to be divisive and obscured the priority of the communal life. In the New Model interpersonal relationships are primary. The vo-cation of the religious is to community, and it is primarily the commu-nity as a whole that is sacramental. It is the community which sends the person to do a particular type of work or to function in a particular ca-pacity. Ordination, then, comes from the community and is based both on the needs which the community perceives and on the gifts of the in-dividuals within the community. Ordination, however, is not the indi-vidual's sole possession; it is proper to the whole community and is dele-gated to one or another member as circumstances require. Furthermore, ordination can never be divisive; it can never change one's status within the community; it can only change one's function. Conclusion Those who look upon God as a metaphysical monad flee society to dwell alone with the Alone. [but] those who look upon the reality of God as the perfection of interpersonal communion will discover the divine in community.6 Our vision and image of God is ultimately the matrix around which we shape our lives. Who we are and how others experience us says more about the God we believe in than all the theological discourse we can of-fer. When confronting the challenge, therefore, of redefining our lives A Trinitarian Model of Religious Life so as to be prophetic witnesses to the gospel, the most fundamental ques-tion we must ask ourselves is, "Who is our God?" Likewise, when we truly come to know this God the primary question we must ask is not "What ought I do?" It is instead "Who ought we be?" NOTES J Robert Bellah et al, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in Ameri-can Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985). 2 For a more detailed discussion of the development of trinitarian doctrine see par-ticularly Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1981); Robert Jenson, The Triune Identity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); and Donald Gelpi, S.J., The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit (Lanham: University of America Press, 1984). 3 Gelpi, op. cit., pp. 13 ! - 132. 4 Moltmann, op. cit., pp. 174-176; Gelpi, op. cit., p. 132. 5 For a further discussion on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead see Gelpi, op. cit., particularly chapter 3. 6 lbid, p. 140. In-Depth Wisdom A tree climbs to the heights because of roots concealed; Waves break in beauty on the shores for there are depths unseen; Mountains rise in loveliness on rock, set fold on fold; Lest we forget as we grow old. Philomena Mary, S.N.J.M. 1420 Mount Royal Blvd. Outremont, Quebec, Canada H2V 2J2 Community--- A Multi-Dimensional Reality Jeanne Knoerle, S.P. Sister Jeanne Knoerle, S.P., is identified with Woods Associates, consultants to non-profit organizations in strategic planning, management, and marketing. Her address is Saint Mary-of-the-Woods; Indiana 47876. Several bits and pieces of experience have coalesced recently to tempo-rarily part some of the mists shrouding my understanding of the word and the reality of community within a religious congregation. They have con-tributed for me what our old Rational Psychology professor, Father McGinnis, would call an "intellectual aha," and I would like to share them. The first piece of experience contributing to this "aha" has grown from my confusion and unclarity about what it means to be a woman re-ligious, committed to a life lived in community. This is not a recent con-fusion. It has been with me (and I know with many others) for some years and is an ambiguity and tension that has been alternately energiz-ing and creative as well as enervating and destructive. So much so that I have come to see the word "community" as representing a reality with so many possible understandings and so many modalities of expression that it has become almost useless as a representation of a concept. Often a group of religious tries to get at its meaning by eliminating all the things it apparently is not--physical things like sharing a com-mon dwelling, sharing common work, doing things together--hoping that in identifying what it is not, they will more easily be able to move to a definition of what it is. When the group does move to trying to define what it is, they often identify it as an invisible bond which ties a group of people together 36 Community---A Multi-Dimensional Reality around shared values, seeing it as expressed not so much in physical to-getherness but in commonness of purpose, in a shared history, in a be-lief in a common tradition. In reality, however, what I find myself doing most of the time is vac-illating between those two extremes, momentarily satisfied but never fully at peace with either. One seems too dependent on a narrow con-ception which can be counted and measured and made explicit. The other seems too vague and unclear, susceptible of such a wide range of inter-pretation as to offer no possibility of an objective, shared reality. I come away with a sense that each of those extremes offers a piece of the truth, an insight into the constantly shifting dynamics of community, but that ultimately there must be some other, fuller definition that incorporates some aspects of each of them. A second bit of experience which led to these reflections has come from my further study of the Enneagram, a personality theory which iden-tifies three interior centers from which individuals draw their energy to cope with the realities of their life. These centers--the head or percep-tual center, the heart or relational center, and the gut or instinctual cen-ter- are each operative within every individual, and are each important to the development of the total human person.Yet each of us comes to favor using one of them over the other two, drawing from it the primary energy for our response to life. Dealing more deeply with this system and how it operates within the life of individuals has enabled me to more effectively step aside and ob-serve the patterns of my own and others' attitude toward life. It has given me a sense of understanding, tolerance, and acceptance of behavior that earlier I had been confused about and often judgmental of. And it has enabled me to see more clearly patterns in the motivations of individu-als and groups where before I had focused primarily on disparate actions. A major spin-off has been to provide me with a more coherent un-derstanding of the wide variations in the ways in which members of a religious community see and respond to the same stimuli. That people responded very differently was surely evident in the past. There were those who thoroughly enjoyed and anticipated the challenge of study in the summer, and those who dreaded the vei'y thought of summertime be-cause it meant they had to study. There were those who loved to volun-teer for infirmary duties and those who hated to. Those who loved most to party, and those who loved most to pray. Why they did so and why I personally responded in the way I did was not so clear. Because the Enneagram is a system built on trying to Review for Religious, January-February 1990 understand the constantly shifting dynamics of the human personality, the answers it provides to "why" we act the way we do are neither sim-ple nor clear-cut, but they do at least provide an overall pattern against which to make some judgment. The third piece of experience I bring to this moment comes from the variety of reading in theology, ecclesiology, and ethics that I have re-cently undertaken, but especially from Avery Dulles' recent book The Reshaping of Catholicism. Father Dulles' book helped to put some, though by no means all, of my frustrations into perspective. It helped sort out and clarify the mean-ing of many of the concepts and experiences which have been so much a part of Catholicism since Vatican II. But the particular insight he presented which connects to the chal-lenge I described earlier, that of defining community, I found in his chap-ter on the Extraordinary Synod of i 985. There, in explaining the themes which emerged from that synod and which were incorporated into its pub-lished Report, Dulles described three schools of thought which existed among the delegates: the neo-Augustinian school which tended to depict the Church as an island of grace in a world given over to sin; the com-munitarian school which tended to depict the Church as the human face of God on earth, in trouble now because of the failure of conservative prelates to carry out the reforms of Vatican II; and the liberation school which depicted the Church as in possession of the wisdom of God and which, therefore, must be politically involved if it is to carry out the work of the kingdom. The neo-Augustinians, putting their accent on worship and holiness, wanted a Church more committed to the cultivation of spiritual union with God. The communitarians, putting their accent on more humanis-tic issues, wanted a Church more involved in the promotion of peace and reconciliation. The liberationists, sharing neither the sacralism of the Augustinians nor the secular optimism of the communitarians, wanted a Church that was confrontational and militant. The Synod dealt with these three points of view, but the commitment of the drafters of the document was not to a presentation of varying points of view and to a clear identification of their points of disagree-ment. Rather the emphasis was on integration, on interrelationship, on allowing the variety of colors to be mixed together on the canvas like a Monet painting, rather than to be identified separately like a rainbow. Therefore, the final Report incorporated concerns of all of these groups, but with none clearly in the ascendance. Community--A Multi-Dimensional Reality/39 Dulles quotes the following marvelous sentence, artfully crafted to incorporate the ultimate wholeness which grew from the conflicting worldviews of all of those schools: "The Church as communion is the sacrament for the salvation of the world." It was that discussion about the schools of thought that existed in the Synod, and especially that sentence which seemed so beautifully to cre-ate a whole out of three disparate expressions of the truth, which began to push a pattern more insistently into the forefront of my mind. While the community of a gathering of bishops and the community of a religious congregation are certainly very different entities, and in many ways are not analagous, they do share the reality of being a group of people in relationship to one another, who share a common purpose, a common mission, and a common tradition. Theirs is a more ephem-eral relationship--they are not together often, nor with regularity, nor as a group do they have a specific, ongoing common task beyond the one they are presently fulfilling, though they do share the general task of mak-ing the word of God present in the world through their work as bishops. Nonetheless, it seems to me we can see the conflictual issues of com-munity mirrored fairly clearly in the three schools of thought which ex-isted at the Synod and which were so clearly delineated by Father Dul-les. And those schools fit with a fair amount of cohesion into the three types of centers which are basic to the theory of the Enneagram. The neo-Augustinians, like those approaching life from the head cen-ter, tend to approach things perceptually, more frequently using their in-tellect and their powers of observation to solve the problems of life, be-ing less intensely involved than those in the other centers. Hence they more clearly see the other-worldly aspects of religious life and feel less pressure to commit the community to becoming involved in the concerns of the world, and more pressure to see that it retains its sense of being an effective instrument of salvation. The communitarians, like those approaching life from the heart cen-ter, tend to approach things from the point of view of relationships, con-cerned always with how they relate to others and how others relate to one another. Without a sense of relationship they have difficulty feeling the life in them, and are, therefore, much more concerned with the world outside them than with the world within them. Hence they focus most comfortably on the human aspects of the work of the community. The liberationists, on the other hand, like those approaching life from the gut center, have an instinctual feeling about the World; they have a kind of built-in sense of knowing, the source of which is not al- 40 / Review for Religious, January-Februao, 1990 ways clear, but the force of which is powerful. Hence they have a strong belief in the responsibility of the community to bring justice into the world, to use its resources and its life to make the world more right. Let me use myself as an example. As a person whose energy comes from the heart or relational center, I am most comfortable in the com-munitarian school, concerned with how we as members of a community can better relate to one another and how our religious community can best help other human beings be better, holier, happier, more complete persons. During the last few years I have begun gradually to integrate some of the rico-Augustinian or perceptual worldview more fully into my own, however. Becoming concerned that I had put too much emphasis on the outer world of action, I have consciously attempted to develop the inner, more spiritual aspects of my person. And now I sense in-creased energy emanating from the head center as well. Where I feel least comfortable, however, is in the liberation school. I know intellectually that to become fully integrated I must learn to trust (perhaps even more fundamentally to get in touch with) my instincts. I know I must learn that to touch and release my anger will not interfere with my relationships. I know I must be better able to integrate and act out of my instinctual center, as I have begun to integrate and act out of my perceptual center. Yet I find this center most out of my range of ex-perience and significantly harder to reach. I think each of us--whatever our approach to life--has the same strug-gle. If we want to become more personally integrated, if we want ulti-mately to create a more mature community, we must perceive, then tol-erate, then understand, then fully accept the differing approaches to life which result from using the energy of each of these centers. We must attempt to identify what worldview is ours and, without imposing it as the best and only one, contribute that piece of truth to the Monet canvas of community. But we must also acknowledge what piece of truth we find hardest to accept and struggle to incorporate it more fully into our view of reality. We must acknowledge, if we operate as neo-Augustinians from the head of perceptual center, our discomfort level when the community seems to over-stress a commitmeni to human development, leaving the spiritual aspect of our lives unstressed. We must acknowledge, if we operate as communitarians from the heart or relational center, our discomfort level when we are asked to ap-prove the taking of a community stand, thereby moving to publicly sepa-rate us from others rather than to positively underscore the bonds which Community--A Multi-Dimensional Reality draw human beings together. We must acknowledge, if we operate as iiberationists from the gut or instinctual center, our discomfort level when the community stresses the eschatological, the importance of the kingdom of heaven and the life of the other world, rather than the impor!ance of confronting the evil in this world and the need to see that justice is accomplished in the present. In each case, however, if community is to mirror the full dimensions of our humanness, we must acknowledge that each approach to life does have a piece of the truth. And we must be willing to contribute our own piece of the truth, holding on to it and placing it on the canvas. Then stand back to see the full picture which we have helped to create, accept-ing the contribution of the other truths as well as our own to that full-ness. Developing the fullness of that picture is what community is all about. And since, perhaps more than at any other time in history, com-munity is a concept that is ambiguous, even anomalous, we must be will-ing, as the drafters of the synod document were of the concept of Church, to seek among us a creative and dynamic peace about how we perceive and live it. As we now live in religious communities, however,, it seems to me that we too often speak the words of power than of peace. We fail to en-ter the world of those with whom we share the reality of community, talk-ing too often instead from the protection of our own shell, not really hear-ing, not really understanding the words of those who speak from another worldview. Our primary goal is too often the imposition of our own. Let me return to the initial insight which prompted these reflections-- that the word community has come to mean so many things that it has become almost useless as the representation of a concept. I would like now to modify that insight somewhat to say rather that community is a such multifaceted concept that it can only be captured by allowing its defi-nition to be pluriform. It is perhaps most analagous, not to a Monet paint-ing, but to a hologram---offering only one specific facet to the eyes of the viewer at a given time, yet only complete When seen in its full three dimensions. Perhaps if we can come 'to see our third of the truth reflected in that hologram, together with the other dimensions of the truth we less clearly identify with, we can better allow ourselves to say yes to the varying ex-pressions of community. And at the same time we can come to agree-ment that no one expression is sufficient for the whole. To begin this process, we need to name and claim our own 49 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 worldview, so that it becomes objectified and clear. Then we need to hear others name theirs, and accept the authenticity of their vision as well as ours. Only then can we proceed. For example, from my relational center, from my communitarian worldview, some physical togetherness, some living or working or be-ing together, seems to me to be clearly implicit in the very word com-munity. I have difficulty understanding the more ethereal co.ncept of com-munity which is sometimes outlined in the perceptual or neo-Augus~inian view--that community is a form of bondedness which need not be ex-pressed in our being i.ogether, but rather in our somehow feeling that we are together. And I have even greater difficulty with the instinctual or liberationist concept of community as being strengthened by being against something or someone else. That simply is how I perceive community. It does not mean that I believe I hold the only truth about it. It does not negate other concepts or understandings of community. It simply means that if we ultimately define community without including some aspect ofphysical together-ness I will have little ability to relate to that definition, nowhere to hang on to it. It will not fit within my worldview. I need to correct the narrowness of my vision, not by letting go of it, not by some grand gesture of surrender or denial which will ultimately lead to my feeling at the margins of community or, even worse, alien-ated from it. I need to proffer my piece of truth and then seek to broaden my vision and deepen my understanding of community by seriously study-ing the truths offered by others, ultimately respecting their view of real-ity as much as I respect my own. If we were all to do that in mutual respect for each other's view of what community is, while the resulting hologram of community might not be totally satisfying to any one of us, it could instead offer us a rich and full opportunity to explore and live out its multifaceted reality dur-ing the rest of our lives. Dyads and Triads: The Sociological Implications of Small-Group Living Arrangements Patricia Wittberg, S.C. Sister Patricia Wittberg, S.C., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Soci-ology and Anthropolgy at Fordham University. Her address is Department of Soci-ology and Anthropology; Fordham University; Bronx, New York 10458. As the number of active members in religious congregations becomes smaller, and as these members become involved in more varied and dis-persed ministries, it is increasingly common to find religious living sin-gly or in groups of two or three. While the personal.and communal im-plications of individuals living alone have been examined to some ex-tent,~ the special social dynamics of pairs and other very small groups have been less frequently considered. Usually, groups of religious larger than one but smaller then eight or ten are treated together under the head-ing "small group living," with little consideration for the special char-acteristics which groups of two or three might have. It would, however, be a valuable exercise to examine these special characteristics, since the recent experience of many congregations has uncovered regular patterns in them. Some "pair" living arrangements--or dyads, as they are also called--have remained stable for years or even decades within a congre-gation, resisting the efforts of community leaders or of the dyadic pair themselves to add a third person. Conversely, groups of three religious (triads) are often unstable, repeatedly splitting into pair and a singleton. The stability of pair members or the frequent group-switching of thirds have sometimes been attributed by others to unhealthy tendencies in the individuals involved--immaturity, perhaps, or excessive dependency. So- 43 44/Review for Religious, January-February 1990 ciologists, however, have found that it is often the mere fact of belong-ing to a group of a given size that elicits certain behaviors from an indi-vidual, independently of his or her personal psychological character-istics. This article will summarize the writings of the German sociolo-gist Georg Simmel on the characteristics of dyads and triads, and will draw some tentative implications of these studies for religious who live in small groups. It is important to emphasize that Simmel viewed his work on the nu-merical composition of groups to be a sort of "geometry of human rela-tions." Just as the properties of a circle or a triangle remain constant whether the actual figure is made of paper or of wood, so the social dy-namics of dyads and triads are inherent in themselves, Simmel thought, regardless of the individuals involved. It is, of course, possible that the members of a particular dyad or triad can disregard the tendencies at-tached to number, especially if they are aware of them. It is also possi-ble that a common ideological commitment, such as the vows in relig-ious life, may override the effects of a given number, to some extent. But the underlying dynamics will still exist, and will result in certain com-mon patterns when many groups are examined. The Dyad A dyad, Simmel stated, is different from all other groups, in that, while outsiders may see it as a unit, from the inside each member sees only the other person, and not a supra-individual collectivity.2 If either individual should leave, the dyad would cease to exist. Each member thus feels herself and her partner to be indispensable, since "for its life the dyad needs both; for its death only one.''3 The dyad is, therefore, more conscious of the possibility of group dissolution, and feels "both endangered and irreplaceable." Dyadic relations are also characterized by greater intimacy than larger groups--it is the uniqueness of these two particular individuals that gives the dyad its special flavor and which can often become "the core value and chief matter of its existence."4 Since only one other.individual besides oneself composes a dyad, the group "does not attain that super-personal life" which the individual feels to be independent of his presence and participation.5 Dyad mem-bers are unable to delegate responsibility to "the group," to expect things from "the group," or to let "the group" get away with some-thing. In a larger group, by contrast, an individual may fail to develop ownership of group decisions, or may passively benefit from her mem-bership with a minimum of personal contributions. Dyads and Triads Dyadic Living Relationships in Religious Life There are both positive and negative implications of the dynamics of dyadic relationships in religious life. On the positive side, dyadic liv-ing encourages the personal assumption of responsibility for the quality of group living. If the house i~ dirty or if common prayer is neglected, there is no one to blame but oneself and one other individual. Dyadic living has also been a fruitful way for religious to develop their ability to achieve intimacy and individual growth,6 psychological capacities that were often stunted in the large institutional living arrangements of for-mer decades. Other aspects of dyadic interactions, however, have at least the potential for negative effects--both for the congregation as well as for the individuals involved. Since the departure of either member de-stroys a dyad, an individual religious living in such an arrangement may have to do a sort of "dual discernment" when considering a ministerial change: taking into consideration both whether it is time for himself to move on as well as whether it is a good time for his dyadic partner to have to find a new living arrangement. For this reason, dyads tend to be the most stable of small groups. Since stability, uniqueness, and intimacy are inherent in the dyadic form, the individuals living in dyads may not necessarily have psycho-logically unhealthy traits, even if they remain together longer than out-siders would deem wise. For those who do have such traits, however, dyadic living will exacerbate them. Furthermore, a mutual dependency may develop within the dyad over time, even if none existed initially. For dyad members who are or have become excessively dependent on each other, dissolution of the dyad (by death or serious illness, for ex-ample) will cause intense psychological distress. There is also evidence that dyadic living can be detrimental to the larger congregation. This is true whether the congregation is following the traditional "intentional community" model or one of the newer as-sociational forms. In an intentional community, members are bound to-gether by a common religious ideology which encourages the subordi-nation, at least in some key instances, of the individual to the larger group.7 Previous research on intentional communities has shown that dy-adic attachments often erode this group loyalty, which is the essential foundation of the communal lifestyle.8 For this reason, successful inten-tional communities have always included some mechanism either to elimi-nate dyads or to subordinate them. Sometimes the suppression of dyads has been heavy-handed and psychologically destructive, as in the at-tempts to eliminate "particular friendships" in pre-Vatican II religious 46 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 life, and at times it has led to unusual patterns such as the forced adop-tion of "group marriage" in the Oneida community. By whatever means, however, no intentional community has ever survived that has allowed dyadic attachment to develop unhindered.9 Many religious congregations, of course, have discarded the inten-tional community model and have adopted a looser form of association. One such model which has been recently advanced is that of "mission" as the uniting principle behind a community. Religious may live and work in widely scattered situations and yet still consider themselves bound together by the shared missionary vision of their founder: Community is not the living situation. It is not all going to Great Amer-ica together, it is not dressing alike, and it is not working in the same facility. Community is the result of our bondedness around a common mission, Christ's mission, the kingdom, according to the spirit and charism of our founder or foundress as experienced in this particular group. ~0 But the very intimacy and uniqueness inherent in the dyad can often eclipse this dedication to mission and attenuate any mission-based bonds to the larger group. If this happens, the dyad will stagnate at the self-absorbed stage which Wombacher says is a danger to those individuals and groups which fail to go outside of themselves in true generative and creative service of others. ~ A dyad that has been extremely stable for a long period of time may make it very difficult for its members to sum-mon the courage to move on. There may be instances where both mem-bers attempt to move together; such endeavors are subject to the same difficulties that married professionals often face in locating two suitable jobs in the same area. This would detract from the mission-bonded con-gregation's ideal of following the leading of the Spirit into the works most needed by the People of God. To the extent that stable dyads form in religious life, therefore, the community--whether a close-knit intentional community or a mission-based association--may be less able to count on the loyalty of its mem-bers. This is especially true since other social mechanisms are simulta-neously conspiring to keep the dyad an exclusive "twosome." The fol-lowing section will consider the addition of third members to a dyad, and the reasons for the instability of this new living arrangement. The Triad There is a qualitative difference between a dyad and a triad; adding a fourth or fifth member to a group does not change it nearly as much Dyads and Triads as adding the third. ~2 For the first time, it becomes possible in a triad for each group member to have two kinds of relationships with the oth-ers: a direct (A~)C) and an indirect (A~)BtbC) one. In a triad, a majority can out vote an individual member, and it becomes possible for the indi-vidual to envision the group existing after her departure. Division be-comes possible among the members: A and B may share some experi-ence, idea, or interest that C does not, while B and C may have some-thing in common that A does not have. This may lead to shifting alli-ances or interest groups, a situation that was impossible in a dyad. Se-crets, too, become possible in triads, and one member may be excluded, to a greater or lesser extent, from group activities. Also, if the original dyadic partners were unequal in some way, adding a third disrupts the subordinate/superordinate relationship---either by increasing the distance between the superordinate and the two subordinates, or by making it pos-sible for the subordinates to combine against the superordinate. Special group roles are also possible in a triad, which could not ex-ist before. Since "there is no triad in which dissent among two of the elements does not occur from time to time," ~3 the third member may be-come a mediator, who can be impartial because she is not involved with either or also is equally involved with both. Another new role is the Ter-tius Gaudens (Rejoicing Third), who profits by maintaining a division between the other two. There are two ways of benefiting from strife among one's fellow members: one can actively pursue some otherwise forbidden interest while the others are preoccupied, or one can passively allow oneself to be showered with gifts as the contending parties com-pete for one's support. To the extent that the tertius has less personally involved in the dispute, he is in a stronger position than the other two, and it may be to his advantage to perpetuate this situation. Finally, the third member may actually employ the tactic of "divide and conquer"-- producing conflict in order to break up an incipient coalition. The dis-ruptive effects of secrets, ~he exclusion of one or another member, re-joicing thirds and divide and conquer tactics mean that, if the dyad is an especially stable group form, the triad is an especially unstable one. Dyads and Triads in Religious Life Because of the inherent dynamics of dyads and triads, two religious living together (and perhaps also working together in a common minis-try) often find it difficult to attract a third person to join them or to re-tain a newcomer who has come, even if they sincerely desire to do so. Initially, this difficulty may not depend on the personalities of the indi-viduals involved, but simply on the disruptive effects of adding a third 411 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 to any dyad. Over time, however, the members of stable dyads also de-velop habits and customs which make it even harder for an outsider to gain entrance, or to feel comfortable once she has. This situation has ob-vious ministerial--and communal--implications. A given school or par-ish may wish to attract new religious workers, yet otherwise interested applicants may be put off by the prospect of joining a preexisting duo. Congregations whose formation programs involve sending prospective members to live on mission with other religious may have difficulty find-ing a place where the new affiliate is not liable to be excluded (however inadvertently) by a dyad or scandalized by the divisions in a triad. Fi-nally, some individuals may gain an undeserved reputation for being hard to live or work with: if a religious tries and fails to break into several successive dyads, or if two dyad members are repeatedly joined by third persons who move out after one year, others in the congregation may as-cribe their difficulties to personal defects on their part. If the failed at-tempts also involve repeated ministerial changes on the part of the per-son joining the dyad, his professional resum6 may suffer. Rapid turn-over may also be a source of scandal to outsiders--lay parishioners, for example, or parents at a school--if the new religious lives apart from the preceding two. Conclusions As religious congregations enter the last decade of the twentieth cen-tury, they will be increasingly faced by the issues which dyadic and tri-adic living arrangements raise. Some communities may wish to avoid the ministerial inflexibility that excessively stable dyads tend to create. For-mation directors may need actively to work for the preservation of larger living arrangements in order to avoid the necessity of placing a novice in a triad. After the novitiate, temporarily professed may find their tran-sition to full community membership and ministry even more stressful if they have to adjust to life with a preexisting pair. On the other hand, joining a single religious (and thus creating a dyad) may result in the young religious beginning this extremely stable living arrangement at the outset of her community life. If dyadic living tends to attenuate the group loyalty even of long-term members, it is all the more likely to do so in new arrivals. Finally, as the members of a dyad age, congregations may find it necessary to provide counseling services when death or serious illness causes the breakup of a pair that has been together for several dec-ades. The obvious solution to difficulties raised by dyad and triad living is to expand the local community to four or five members. This is not Dyads and Triads always possible, however. For one thing, the decreasing number of ac-tive members makes it likely that most ministerial situations will con-tain only a very few religious. This would be especially true in areas out-side of the large cities in the traditionally Catholic Northeast and Mid-west. The trend toward apartment living also fosters dyads and triads, since four- or five-bedroom apartments are rare. In some congregations, a substantial proportion of the members are already in dyadic living ar-rangements, and the community government may lack the tradition of authority to request or require that these grbupings be dissolved. This being the case, dyad and triad living will probably be unavoid-able in religious communities, at least to some extent. There are, how-ever, positive steps which the members of a congregation can take to ad-dress the issues which such arrangements raise. First of all, the records of a community should be investigated, in order to determine whether the abstract predictions of sociological theory about dyads and triads are, in fact, reflected in this particular congregation. Are the living arrange-ments and ministerial placements more stable thaff they were twenty years ago? What is the average size of living groups within the congre-gation? How long, on the average, have dyads been together? How long have triads? The members of larger groups? Which type of living arrange-ment appears to be increasing in frequency? Which types are decreas-ing?~ 4 Once trends have been identified, a congregation may wish to initi-ate a communal discernment process to determine what the effects of dy-ads and triads have been for its members, and whether these effects are desirable or not. The members of dyads and triads, or members who have once tried to join such a living arrangement, could be surveyed for their opinions and insights. Two- or three-person living arrangements could become a topic for chapter or pre-chapter discussion and debate among all the members, since whatever policies a congregation adopts in this regard would have to be owned by the members affected. Some of the possible follow-up actions to this community discern-ment could include the establishment or enlargement of a specific coun-seling or facilitation program to work with the members involved in dy-ads and triads. Triads may choose to make regular and frequent use of a facilitator--perhaps on a biweekly or monthly basis--to alert them-selves to and to deal with instances of divide and conquer, rejoicing thirds, or exclusive factions that may arise. Newly-formed triads-- especially those formed of a previous dyad and a singleton--would be in particular need of this service. Job counseling and placement services 50 / Review for Religious, January-February 1990 may help the members of dyads decide when to move on, and, of course, extensive counseling services would be needed for long-standing dyad members when, as will inevitably happen, illness, retirement or death dissolves their pair. The members of a congregations may decide to place a limit on the number of years that can be spent in a given dyad. Since most congregations no longer intervene so actively in the lives of their members, however, special commur~ity-wide discernment and input would be necessary before such a step would be accepted and owned, especially by the dyads involved. The congregation's leadership would also have to provide information about alternatives--both in living and in ministry--for any pair of its members who did agree to separate and move on. The physical resources available to a congregation should also be ex-amined in the light of what is learned about dyads and triads in the com-munity. In the past decade or so, for example, many parish convents have been closed and either demolished or converted to other uses. Some of these may have been of an ideal size to house a group of five or six. Congregations may wish to identify the houses of the "right size" which are still available, and make arrangements to purchase them, if they do not already own them. Any new living space which is created-- apartment buildings that may be purchased or built, large-scale quarters attached to hospitals or retirement centers that may be modified-- should be created with the effects of dyads and triads in mind. Finally, creative social arrangements may be devised to maintain ties to the larger community in the members of dyads and triads. If a con-gregation has small discussion groups as part of its government process, dyad members may be assigned to different groups. For those orders still involved largely in teaching, summer ministry or vacation opportunities can be advertised, and dyad members urged to avail themselves of dif-ferent opportunities. Dyads and triads living in the same area may be in-terfaced, and perhaps exchange members for a week or even longer. As congregations begin to explore the implications of living in groups of two and three, other practices will doubtless be devised. These should be shared with other communities. Number is not destiny. No inevitable social laws require that a dyad be excessively stable, or that a triad dissolve in acrimony and misunder-standing. As the members of small groups become aware of the tenden-cies involved in their living arrangements, they may be able, with some help from the larger congregation, to deal with the problems that arise. It is hoped that this article will be a first step in the process by which Dyads and Triads religious communities harness the dynamics of dyads and triads and con-vert them to truly life-giving forces for the religious life of the future. NOTES ~ See Sandra Schneider, New Wineskins:Re-imagining Religious Life Today (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), pp. 252-255. 2 Georg Simmel, The Sociology ofGeorg Simmel, trans. Kurt H. Wolff, (New York: Free Press, 1950), p. 123. 3 lbid, p. 124. '~ lbid, p. 126. 5 Ibid, p. 123. 6 Ibid, p. 137. 7 Patricia Wittberg, "Transformation in Religious Commitment," REVIEW FOR RELm~OUS 1985, Vol. 44, pp. 161-167. 8 Benjamin Zablocki, The Joyful Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 116-120. 9 Benjamin Zablocki, Alienation and Charisma (New York: Free Press, 1980), p. 289. ~0 Kristin Wombacher O.P., (n.d.) "American Religious Life Since Vatican II: Change and Continuity." Unpublished paper, p. 245. ~ lbid, p. 235. ~2 Simmel, op cit, p. 139. ~3 lbid, p. 148. 14 Please note that this article does not predict that there will be no stable triads in a congregation, merely that these will be relatively few compared to the number of stable dyads. Large, institutional groups of religious may also remain essentially un-changed over the years. This large group stability would be due, however, not to the abstract effects of number, but to the personal inability of the individual mem-bers to move on, whether because of age, psychological inflexibility, or the simple belief that a given congregational work would not survive were they to leave it. Evaluating Religious Community Costs David E. Meier, S.J. Fr. David Meier, S.J., serves as a financial consultor for the Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus. He is also the treasurer of the Jesuit Community at the University of Detroit. His address is Jesuit Community; Lansing-Reilly Hall; University of De-troit; 4001 W. McNichols; Detroit, Michigan 48221-9987. Point of view is a factor in literary evaluation, an element of artistic per-spective, and a determinant of political affiliation. Point of view is equally an essential criterion for determining what is meaningful in any financial assessment. A number of conditions can be identified which affect the financial data being analyzed. Some of these conditions merely color the data, so that a simple new cast of mind, like the addition of a filter on a camera lens, will provide an improved impression. Another condition may be rather like a fun-house mirror, which distorts the data, often so beyond one's normal frame of mind that the data loses all cogency. 1. Point of View--a Perspective When religious superiors are mystified because they do not find mean-ingful comparisons between per member costs of living in their local com-munities, their point of view is frequently at the heart of their mystery. Failure to advert to their perspective is what leads them to ask, "Why can't we get reliable comparisons between the per member costs at St. Agatha and St. Theresa?" Concern for lifestyle quickly introduces estimates for the amounts of money needed for community support under varied assumptions about a standard of living. Often enough the "common sense" expectations 52 Evaluating Religious Community Costs about a reduction in per diems are contradicted in the reality. Later in this article a number of conditions which merely color data will be examined. These should not be allowed to distract religious su-periors from a key condition which actually distorts the data which enter into their decisions. 2. Full CostDMarginai Cost Distinction Religious superiors should be conversant with the economic distinc-tion between full cost and marginal cost. This is the key condition for avoiding distortion in comparing per member costs for various commu-nity sizes. The effect of this distinction is especially significant when deal-ing with small numbers, say three to forty, which is representative of the size of most local religious communities. This distinction brings eco-nomic discernment down from the clouds to the refectory and the com-mon room. Consider, for example, an education community of thirty members which devotes hours of discussion trying to decide whether it is economi-cally preferable to have ten retired members rive apart in a separate com-munity from the twenty active teachers. Another study tries to make economic sense out of establishing a new community for a few retired members in a parish facility which has more room than is needed by the parish personnel. .The approach to these economic determinations will most often be reduced to measuring the per member cost. And here is where the dis-tortion can arise! Are the per member costs to be measured as full cost or marginal cost units? The difference can be of surprising magnitude. 3. Marginal Cost Marginal cost begins at the very edge of full cost. Whatever is the total cost of providing for the housing, food, personal, institutional, and automobile expenses of a 30 member community constitutes the commu