Suchergebnisse

(This post continues part 1 which just looked at the data. Part 3 on theory is here) When the Fed raises interest rates, how does inflation respond? Are there "long and variable lags" to inflation and output?  There is a standard story: The Fed raises interest rates; inflation is sticky so real interest rates (interest rate - inflation) rise; higher real interest rates lower output and employment; the softer economy pushes inflation down. Each of these is a lagged effect. But despite 40 years of effort, theory struggles to substantiate that story (next post), it's had to see in the data (last post), and the empirical work is ephemeral -- this post.  The vector autoregression and related local projection are today the standard empirical tools to address how monetary policy affects the economy, and have been since Chris Sims' great work in the 1970s. (See Larry Christiano's review.) I am losing faith in the method and results. We need to find new ways to learn about the effects of monetary policy. This post expands on some thoughts on this topic in "Expectations and the Neutrality of Interest Rates," several of my papers from the 1990s* and excellent recent reviews from Valerie Ramey and  Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson, who  eloquently summarize the hard identification and computation troubles of contemporary empirical work.Maybe popular wisdom is right, and economics just has to catch up. Perhaps we will. But a popular belief that does not have solid scientific theory and empirical backing, despite a 40 year effort for models and data that will provide the desired answer, must be a bit less trustworthy than one that does have such foundations. Practical people should consider that the Fed may be less powerful than traditionally thought, and that its interest rate policy has different effects than commonly thought. Whether and under what conditions high interest rates lower inflation, whether they do so with long and variable but nonetheless predictable and exploitable lags, is much less certain than you think. Here is a replication of one of the most famous monetary VARs, Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans 1999, from Valerie Ramey's 2016 review: Fig. 1 Christiano et al. (1999) identification. 1965m1–1995m6 full specification: solid black lines; 1983m1–2007m12 full specification: short dashed blue (dark gray in the print version) lines; 1983m1–2007m12, omits money and reserves: long-dashed red (gray in the print version) lines. Light gray bands are 90% confidence bands. Source: Ramey 2016.  Months on x axis. The black lines plot the original specification. The top left panel plots the path of the Federal Funds rate after the Fed unexpectedly raises the interest rate. The funds rate goes up, but only for 6 months or so. Industrial production goes down and unemployment goes up, peaking at month 20. The figure plots the level of the CPI, so inflation is the slope of the lower right hand panel. You see inflation goes the "wrong" way, up, for about 6 months, and then gently declines. Interest rates indeed seem to affect the economy with long lags. This was the broad outline of consensus empirical estimates for many years. It is common to many other studies, and it is consistent with the beliefs of policy makers and analysts. It's pretty much what Friedman (1968) told us to expect. Getting contemporary models to produce something like this is much harder, but that's the next blog post. What's a VAR?I try to keep this blog accessible to nonspecialists, so I'll step back momentarily to explain how we produce graphs like these. Economists who know what a VAR is should skip to the next section heading. How do we measure the effect of monetary policy on other variables? Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz kicked it off in the Monetary History by pointing to the historical correlation of money growth with inflation and output. They knew as we do that correlation is not causation, so they pointed to the fact that money growth preceeded inflation and output growth.  But as James Tobin pointed out, the cock's crow comes before, but does not cause, the sun to rise. So too people may go get out some money ahead of time when they see more future business activity on the horizon.  Even correlation with a lead is not causation. What to do? Clive Granger's causality and Chris Sims' VAR, especially "Macroeconomics and Reality" gave today's answer. (And there is a reason that everybody mentioned so far has a Nobel prize.) First, we find a monetary policy "shock," a movement in the interest rate (these days; money, then) that is plausibly not a response to economic events and especially to expected future economic events. We think of the Fed setting interest rates by a response to economic data plus deviations from that response, such as interest rate = (#) output + (#) inflation + (#) other variables + disturbance. We want to isolate the "disturbance," movements in the interest rate not taken in response to economic events. (I use "shock" to mean an unpredictable variable, and "disturbance" to mean deviation from an equation like the above, but one that can persist for a while. A monetary policy "shock" is an unexpected movement in the disturbance.)  The "rule" part here can be but need not be the Taylor rule, and can include other variables than output and inflation. It is what the Fed usually does given other variables, and therefore (hopefully) controls for reverse causality from expected future economic events to interest rates. Now, in any individual episode, output and inflation and inflation following a shock will be influenced by subsequent shocks to the economy, monetary and other. But those average out. So, the average value of inflation, output, employment, etc. following a monetary policy shock is a measure of how the shock affects the economy all on its own. That is what has been plotted above. VARs were one of the first big advances in the modern empirical quest to find "exogenous" variation and (somewhat) credibly find causal relationships. Mostly the huge literature varies on how one finds the "shocks." Traditional VARs use regressions of the above equations and the residual is the shock, with a big question just how many and which contemporaneous variables one adds in the regression. Romer and Romer pioneered the "narrative approach," reading the Fed minutes to isolate shocks.  Some technical details at the bottom and much more discussion below. The key is finding shocks. One can just regress output and inflation on the shocks to produce the response function, which is a "local projection" not a "VAR," but I'll use "VAR" for both techniques for lack of a better encompassing word. Losing faithShocks, what shocks?What's a "shock" anyway? The concept is that the Fed considers its forecast of inflation, output and other variables it is trying to control, gauges the usual and appropriate response, and then adds 25 or 50 basis points, at random, just for the heck of it. The question VARS try to answer is the same: What happens to the economy if the Fed raises interest rates unexpectedly, for no particular reason at all? But the Fed never does this. Ask them. Read the minutes. The Fed does not roll dice. They always raise or lower interest rates for a reason, that reason is always a response to something going on in the economy, and most of the time how it affects forecasts of inflation and employment. There are no shocks as defined.I speculated here that we might get around this problem: If we knew the Fed was responding to something that had no correlation with future output, then even though that is an endogenous response, then it is a valid movement for estimating the effect of interest rates on output. My example was, what if the Fed "responds" to the weather. Well, though endogenous, it's still valid for estimating the effect on output. The Fed does respond to lots of things, including foreign exchange, financial stability issues, equity, terrorist attacks, and so forth. But I can't think of any of these in which the Fed is not thinking of these events for their effect on output and inflation, which is why I never took the idea far. Maybe you can. Shock isolation also depends on complete controls for the Fed's information. If the Fed uses any information about future output and inflation that is not captured in our regression, then information about future output and inflation remains in the "shock" series. The famous "price puzzle" is a good example. For the first few decades of VARs, interest rate shocks seemed to lead to higher inflation. It took a long specification search to get rid of this undesired result. The story was, that the Fed saw inflation coming in ways not completely controlled for by the regression. The Fed raised interest rates to try to forestall the inflation, but was a bit hesitant about it so did not cure the inflation that was coming. We see higher interest rates followed by higher inflation, though the true causal effect of interest rates goes the other way. This problem was "cured" by adding commodity prices to the interest rate rule, on the idea that fast-moving commodity prices would capture the information the Fed was using to forecast inflation. (Interestingly these days we seem to see core inflation as the best forecaster, and throw out commodity prices!) With those and some careful orthogonalization choices, the "price puzzle" was tamped down to the one year or so delay you see above. (Neo-Fisherians might object that maybe the price puzzle was trying to tell us something all these years!) Nakamura and Steinsson write of this problem: "What is being assumed is that controlling for a few lags of a few variables captures all endogenous variation in policy... This seems highly unlikely to be true in practice. The Fed bases its policy decisions on a huge amount of data. Different considerations (in some cases highly idiosyncratic) affect policy at different times. These include stress in the banking system, sharp changes in commodity prices, a recent stock market crash, a financial crisis in emerging markets, terrorist attacks, temporary investment tax credits, and the Y2K computer glitch. The list goes on and on. Each of these considerations may only affect policy in a meaningful way on a small number of dates, and the number of such influences is so large that it is not feasible to include them all in a regression. But leaving any one of them out will result in a monetary policy "shock" that the researcher views as exogenous but is in fact endogenous." Nakamura and Steinsson offer 9/11 as another example summarizing my "high frequency identification" paper with Monika Piazzesi: The Fed lowered interest rates after the terrorist attack, likely reacting to its consequences for output and inflation. But VARs register the event as an exogenous shock.Romer and Romer suggested that we use Fed Greenbook forecasts of inflation and output as controls, as those should represent the Fed's complete information set. They provide narrative evidence that Fed members trust Greenback forecasts more than you might suspect. This issue is a general Achilles heel of empirical macro and finance: Does your procedure assume agents see no more information than you have included in the model or estimate? If yes, you have a problem. Similarly, "Granger causality" answers the cock's crow-sunrise problem by saying that if unexpected x leads unexpected y then x causes y. But it's only real causality if the "expected" includes all information, as the price puzzle counterexample shows. Just what properties do we need of a shock in order to measure the response to the question, "what if the Fed raised rates for no reason?" This strikes me as a bit of an unsolved question -- or rather, one that everyone thinks is so obvious that we don't really look at it. My suggestion that the shock only need be orthogonal to the variable whose response we're estimating is informal, and I don't know of formal literature that's picked it up. Must "shocks" be unexpected, i.e. not forecastable from anything in the previous time information set? Must they surprise people? I don't think so -- it is neither necessary nor sufficient for  shock to be unforecastable for it to identify the inflation and output responses. Not responding to expected values of the variable whose response you want to measure should be enough.  If bond markets found out about a random funds rate rise one day ahead, it would then be an "expected" shock, but clearly just as good for macro. Romer and Romer have been criticized that their shocks are predictable, but this may not matter. The above Nakamura and Steinsson quote says leaving out any information leads to a shock that is not strictly exogenous. But strictly exogenous may not be necessary for estimating, say, the effect of interest rates on inflation. It is enough to rule out reverse causality and third effects. Either I'm missing a well known econometric literature, as is everyone else writing the VARs I've read who don't cite it, or there is a good theory paper to be written.Romer and Romer, thinking deeply about how to read "shocks" from the Fed minutes, define shocks thus to circumvent the "there are no shocks" problem:we look for times when monetary policymakers felt the economy was roughly at potential (or normal) output, but decided that the prevailing rate of inflation was too high. Policymakers then chose to cut money growth and raise interest rates, realizing that there would be (or at least could be) substantial negative consequences for aggregate output and unemployment. These criteria are designed to pick out times when policymakers essentially changed their tastes about the acceptable level of inflation. They weren't just responding to anticipated movements in the real economy and inflation. [My emphasis.]  You can see the issue. This is not an "exogenous" movement in the funds rate. It is a response to inflation, and to expected inflation, with a clear eye on expected output as well. It really is a nonlinear rule, ignore inflation for a while until it gets really bad then finally get serious about it. Or, as they say, it is a change in rule, an increase in the sensitivity of the short run interest rate response to inflation, taken in response to inflation seeming to get out of control in a longer run sense. Does this identify the response to an "exogenous" interest rate increase? Not really.  But maybe it doesn't matter. Are we even asking an interesting question? The whole question, what would happen if the Fed raised interest rates for no reason, is arguably besides the point. At a minimum, we should be clearer about what question we are asking, and whether the policies we analyze are implementations of that question. The question presumes a stable "rule," (e.g. \(i_t = \rho i_{t-1} + \phi_\pi \pi_t + \phi_x x_t + u_t\)) and asks what happens in response to a deviation \( +u_t \) from the rule. Is that an interesting question? The standard story for 1980-1982 is exactly not such an event. Inflation was not conquered by a big "shock," a big deviation from 1970s practice, while keeping that practice intact. Inflation was conquered (so the story goes) by a change in the rule, by a big increase in $\phi_\pi$. That change raised interest rates,  but arguably without any deviation from the new rule \(u_t\) at all. Thinking in terms of the Phillips curve \( \pi_t = E_t \pi_{t+1} + \kappa x_t\), it was not a big negative \(x_t\) that brought down inflation, but the credibility of the new rule that brought down \(E_t \pi_{t+1}\). If the art of reducing inflation is to convince people that a new regime has arrived, then the response to any monetary policy "shock" orthogonal to a stable "rule" completely misses that policy. Romer and Romer are almost talking about a rule-change event. For 2022, they might be looking at the Fed's abandonment of flexible average inflation targeting and its return to a Taylor rule. However, they don't recognize the importance of the distinction, treating changes in rule as equivalent to a residual. Changing the rule changes expectations in quite different ways from a residual of a stable rule. Changes with a bigger commitment should have bigger effects, and one should standardize somehow by the size and permanence of the rule change, not necessarily the size of the interest rate rise. And, having asked "what if the Fed changes rule to be more serious about inflation," we really cannot use the analysis to estimate what happens if the Fed shocks interest rates and does not change the rule. It takes some mighty invariance result from an economic theory that a change in rule has the same effect as a shock to a given rule. There is no right and wrong, really. We just need to be more careful about what question the empirical procedure asks, if we want to ask that question, and if our policy analysis actually asks the same question. Estimating rules, Clarida Galí and Gertler. Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (2000) is a justly famous paper, and in this context for doing something totally different to evaluate monetary policy. They estimate rules, fancy versions of \(i_t = \rho i_{t-1} +\phi_\pi \pi_t + \phi_x x_t + u_t\), and they estimate how the \(\phi\) parameters change over time. They attribute the end of 1970s inflation to a change in the rule, a rise in \(\phi_\pi\) from the 1970s to the 1980s. In their model, a higher \( \phi_\pi\) results in less volatile inflation. They do not estimate any response functions. The rest of us were watching the wrong thing all along. Responses to shocks weren't the interesting quantity. Changes in the rule were the interesting quantity. Yes, I criticized the paper, but for issues that are irrelevant here. (In the new Keynesian model, the parameter that reduces inflation isn't the one they estimate.) The important point here is that they are doing something completely different, and offer us a roadmap for how else we might evaluate monetary policy if not by impulse-response functions to monetary policy shocks. Fiscal theoryThe interesting question for fiscal theory is, "What is the effect of an interest rate rise not accompanied by a change in fiscal policy?" What can the Fed do by itself? By contrast, standard models (both new and old Keynesian) include concurrent fiscal policy changes when interest rates rise. Governments tighten in present value terms, at least to pay higher interest costs on the debt and the windfall to bondholders that flows from unexpected disinflation. Experience and estimates surely include fiscal changes along with monetary tightening. Both fiscal and monetary authorities react to inflation with policy actions and reforms. Growth-oriented microeconomic reforms with fiscal consequences often follow as well -- rampant inflation may have had something to do with Carter era trucking, airline, and telecommunications reform. Yet no current estimate tries to look for a monetary shock orthogonal to fiscal policy change. The estimates we have are at best the effects of monetary policy together with whatever induced or coincident fiscal and microeconomic policy tends to happen at the same time as central banks get serious about fighting inflation. Identifying the component of a monetary policy shock orthogonal to fiscal policy, and measuring its effects is  a first order question for fiscal theory of monetary policy. That's why I wrote this blog post. I set out to do it, and then started to confront how VARs are already falling apart in our hands. Just what "no change in fiscal policy" means is an important question that varies by application. (Lots more in "fiscal roots" here, fiscal theory of monetary policy here and in FTPL.) For simple calculations, I just ask what happens if interest rates change with no change in primary surplus. One might also define "no change" as no change in tax rates, automatic stabilizers, or even habitual discretionary stimulus and bailout, no disturbance \(u_t\) in a fiscal rule \(s_t = a + \theta_\pi \pi_t + \theta_x x_t + ... + u_t\). There is no right and wrong here either, there is just making sure you ask an interesting question. Long and variable lags, and persistent interest rate movementsThe first plot shows a mighty long lag between the monitor policy shock and its effect on inflation and output. That does not mean that the economy has long and variable lags. This plot is actually not representative, because in the black lines the interest rate itself quickly reverts to zero. It is common to find a more protracted interest rate response to the shock, as shown in the red and blue lines. That mirrors common sense: When the Fed starts tightening, it sets off a year or so of stair-step further increases, and then a plateau, before similar stair-step reversion. That raises the question, does the long-delayed response of output and inflation represent a delayed response to the initial monetary policy shock, or does it represent a nearly instantaneous response to the higher subsequent interest rates that the shock sets off? Another way of putting the question, is the response of inflation and output invariant to changes in the response of the funds rate itself? Do persistent and transitory funds rate changes have the same responses? If you think of the inflation and output responses as economic responses to the initial shock only, then it does not matter if interest rates revert immediately to zero, or go on a 10 year binge following the initial shock. That seems like a pretty strong assumption. If you think that a more persistent interest rate response would lead to a larger or more persistent output and inflation response, then you think some of what we see in the VARs is a quick structural response to the later higher interest rates, when they come. Back in 1988, I posed this question in "what do the VARs mean?" and showed you can read it either way. The persistent output and inflation response can represent either long economic lags to the initial shock, or much less laggy responses to interest rates when they come. I showed how to deconvolute the response function to the structural effect of interest rates on inflation and output and how persistently interest rates rise.  The inflation and output responses might be the same with shorter funds rate responses, or they might be much different. Obviously (though often forgotten), whether the inflation and output responses are invariant to changes in the funds rate response needs a model. If in the economic model only unexpected interest rate movements affect output and inflation, though with lags, then the responses are as conventionally read structural responses and invariant to the interest rate path. There is no such economic model. Lucas (1972) says only unexpected money affects output, but with no lags, and expected money affects inflation. New Keynesian models have very different responses to permanent vs. transitory interest rate shocks. Interestingly, Romer and Romer do not see it this way, and regard their responses as structural long and variable lags, invariant to the interest rate response. They opine that given their reading of a positive shock in 2022, a long and variable lag to inflation reduction is baked in, no matter what the Fed does next. They argue that the Fed should stop raising interest rates. (In fairness, it doesn't look like they thought about the issue much, so this is an implicit rather than explicit assumption.) The alternative view is that effects of a shock on inflation are really effects of the subsequent rate rises on inflation, that the impulse response function to inflation is not invariant to the funds rate response, so stopping the standard tightening cycle would undo the inflation response. Argue either way, but at least recognize the important assumption behind the conclusions. Was the success of inflation reduction in the early 1980s just a long delayed response to the first few shocks? Or was the early 1980s the result of persistent large real interest rates following the initial shock? (Or, something else entirely, a coordinated fiscal-monetary reform... But I'm staying away from that and just discussing conventional narratives, not necessarily the right answer.) If the latter, which is the conventional narrative, then you think it does matter if the funds rate shock is followed by more funds rate rises (or positive deviations from a rule), that the output and inflation response functions do not directly measure long lags from the initial shock. De-convoluting the structural funds rate to inflation response and the persistent funds rate response, you would estimate much shorter structural lags. Nakamura and Steinsson are of this view: While the Volcker episode is consistent with a large amount of monetary nonneutrality, it seems less consistent with the commonly held view that monetary policy affects output with "long and variable lags." To the contrary, what makes the Volcker episode potentially compelling is that output fell and rose largely in sync with the actions [interest rates, not shocks] of the Fed. And that's a good thing too. We've done a lot of dynamic economics since Friedman's 1968 address. There is really nothing in dynamic economic theory that produces a structural long-delayed response to shocks, without the continued pressure of high interest rates. (A correspondent objects to "largely in sync" pointing out several clear months long lags between policy actions and results in 1980. It's here for the methodological point, not the historical one.) However, if the output and inflation responses are not invariant to the interest rate response, then the VAR directly measures an incredibly narrow experiment: What happens in response to a surprise interest rate rise, followed by the plotted path of interest rates? And that plotted path is usually pretty temporary, as in the above graph. What would happen if the Fed raised rates and kept them up, a la 1980? The VAR is silent on that question. You need to calibrate some model to the responses we have to infer that answer. VARs and shock responses are often misread as generic theory-free estimates of "the effects of monetary policy." They are not. At best, they tell you the effect of one specific experiment: A random increase in funds rate, on top of a stable rule, followed by the usual following path of funds rate. Any other implication requires a model, explicit or implicit. More specifically, without that clearly false invariance assumption, VARs cannot directly answer a host of important questions. Two on my mind: 1) What happens if the Fed raises interest rates permanently? Does inflation eventually rise? Does it rise in the short run? This is the "Fisherian" and "neo-Fisherian" questions, and the answer "yes" pops unexpectedly out of the standard new-Keynesian model. 2) Is the short-run negative response of inflation to interest rates stronger for more persistent rate rises? The long-term debt fiscal theory mechanism for a short-term inflation decline is tied to the persistence of the shock and the maturity structure of the debt. The responses to short-lived interest rate movements (top left panel) are silent on these questions. Directly is an important qualifier. It is not impossible to answer these questions, but you have to work harder to identify persistent interest rate shocks. For example, Martín Uribe identifies permanent vs. transitory interest rate shocks, and finds a positive response of inflation to permanent interest rate rises. How? You can't just pick out the interest rate rises that turned out to be permanent. You have to find shocks or components of the shock that are ex-ante predictably going to be permanent, based on other forecasting variables and the correlation of the shock with other shocks. For example, a short-term rate shock that also moves long-term rates might be more permanent than one which does not do so. (That requires the expectations hypothesis, which doesn't work, and long term interest rates move too much anyway in response to transitory funds rate shocks. So, this is not directly a suggestion, just an example of the kind of thing one must do. Uribe's model is more complex than I can summarize in a blog.)  Given how small and ephemeral the shocks are already, subdividing them into those that are expected to have permanent vs. transitory effects on the federal funds rate is obviously a challenge. But it's not impossible. Monetary policy shocks account for small fractions of inflation, output and funds rate variation. Friedman thought that most recessions and inflations were due to monetary mistakes. The VARs pretty uniformly deny that result. The effects of monetary policy shocks on output and inflation add up to less than 10 percent of the variation of output and inflation. In part the shocks are small, and in part the responses to the shocks are small. Most recessions come from other shocks, not monetary mistakes.  Worse, both in data and in models, most inflation variation comes from inflation shocks, most output variation comes from output shocks, etc. The cross-effects of one variable on another are small. And "inflation shock" (or "marginal cost shock"),  "output shock" and so forth are just labels for our ignorance -- error terms in regressions, unforecasted movements -- not independently measured quantities. (This and old point, for example in my 1994 paper with the great title "Shocks." Technically, the variance of output is the sum of the squares of the impulse-response functions -- the plots -- times the variance of the shocks. Thus small shocks and small responses mean not much variance explained.)This is a deep point. The exquisite attention put to the effects of monetary policy in new-Keynesian models, while interesting to the Fed, are then largely beside the point if your question is what causes recessions. Comprehensive models work hard to match all of the responses, not just to monetary policy shocks. But it's not clear that the nominal rigidities that are important for the effects of monetary policy are deeply important to other (supply) shocks, and vice versa. This is not a criticism. Economics always works better if we can use small models that focus on one thing -- growth, recessions, distorting effect of taxes, effect of monetary policy -- without having to have a model of everything in which all effects interact. But, be clear we no longer have a model of everything.  "Explaining recessions" and "understanding the effects of monetary policy" are somewhat separate questions. Monetary policy shocks also account for small fractions of the movement in the federal funds rate itself. Most of the funds rate movement is in the rule, the reaction to the economy term. Like much empirical economics, the quest for causal identification leads us to look at a tiny causes with tiny effects, that do little to explain much variation in the variable of interest (inflation). Well, cause is cause, and the needle is the sharpest item in the haystack. But one worries about the robustness of such tiny effects, and to what extent they summarize historical experience.  To be concrete, here is a typical shock regression, 1960:1-2023:6 monthly data, standard errors in parentheses: ff(t) = a + b ff(t-1) + c[ff(t-1)-ff(t-2)] + d CPI(t) + e unemployment(t) + monetary policy shock, Where "CPI" is the percent change in the CPI (CPIAUCSL) from a year earlier. ff(t-1)ff(t-1)-ff(t-2)CPIUnempR20.970.390.032-0.0170.985(0.009)(0.07)(0.013)(0.009)The funds rate is persistent -- the lag term (0.97) is large. Recent changes matter too: Once the Fed starts a tightening cycle, it's likely to keep raising rates. And the Fed responds to CPI and unemployment. The plot shows the actual federal funds rate (blue), the model or predicted federal funds rate (red), the shock which is the difference between the two (orange) and the Romer and Romer dates (vertical lines). You can't see the difference between actual and predicted funds rate, which is the point. They are very similar and the shocks are small. They are closer horizontally than vertically, so the vertical difference plotted as shock is still visible. The shocks are much smaller than the funds rate, and smaller than the rise and fall in the funds rate in a typical tightening or loosening cycle. The shocks are bunched, with by far the biggest ones in the early 1980s. The shocks have been tiny since the 1980s. (Romer and Romer don't find any shocks!) Now, our estimates of the effect of monetary policy look at the average values of inflation, output, and employment in the 4-5 years after a shock. Really, you say, looking at the graph? That's going to be dominated by the experience of the early 1980s. And with so many positive and negative shocks close together, the average value 4 years later is going to be driven by subtle timing of when the positive or negative shocks line up with later events. Put another way, here is a plot of inflation 30 months after a shock regressed on the shock. Shock on the x axis, subsequent inflation on the y axis. The slope of the line  is our estimate of the effect of the shock on inflation 30 months out (source, with details). Hmm. One more graph (I'm having fun here):This is a plot of inflation for the 4 years after each shock, times that shock. The right hand side is the same graph with an expanded y scale. The average of these histories is our impulse response function.  (The big lines are the episodes which multiply the big shocks of the early 1980s. They mostly converge because, either multiplied by positive or negative shocks, inflation wend down in the 1980s.) Impulse response functions are just quantitative summaries of the lessons of history. You may be  underwhelmed that history is sending a clear story.  Again, welcome to causal economics -- tiny average responses to tiny but identified movements is what we estimate, not broad lessons of history. We do not estimate "what is the effect of the sustained high real interest rates of the early 1980s," for example, or "what accounts for the sharp decline of inflation in the early 1980s?" Perhaps we should, though confronting endogeneity of the interest rate responses some other way. That's my main point today. Estimates disappear after 1982Ramey's first variation in the first plot is to use data from 1983 to 2007. Her second variation is to also omit the monetary variables. Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans were still thinking in terms of money supply control, but our Fed does not control money supply. The evidence that higher interest rates lower inflation disappears after 1983, with or without money. This too is a common finding. It might be because there simply aren't any monetary policy shocks. Still, we're driving a car with a yellowed AAA road map dated 1982 on it.  Monetary policy shocks still seem to affect output and employment, just not inflation. That poses a deeper problem. If there just aren't any monetary policy shocks, we would just get big standard errors on everything. That only inflation disappears points to the vanishing Phillips curve, which will be the weak point in the theory to come. It is the Phillips curve by which lower output and employment push down inflation. But without the Phillips curve, the whole standard story for interest rates to affect inflation goes away. Computing long-run responsesThe long lags of the above plot are already pretty long horizons, with interesting economics still going on at 48 months. As we get interested in long run neutrality, identification via long run sign restrictions (monetary policy should not permanently affect output), and the effect of persistent interest rate shocks, we are interested in even longer run responses. The "long run risks" literature in asset pricing is similarly crucially interested in long run properties. Intuitively, we should know this will be troublesome. There aren't all that many nonoverlapping 4 year periods after interest rate shocks to measure effects, let alone 10 year periods.VARs estimate long run responses with a parametric structure. Organize the data (output, inflation, interest rate, etc) into a vector \(x_t = [y_t \; \pi_t \; i_t \; ...]'\), then the VAR can be written \(x_{t+1} = Ax_t + u_t\). We start from zero, move \(x_1 = u_1\) in an interesting way, and then the response function just simulates forward, with \(x_j = A^j x_1\).  But here an oft-forgotten lesson of 1980s econometrics pops up: It is dangerous to estimate long-run dynamics by fitting a short run model and then finding its long-run implications. Raising matrices to the 48th power \(A^{48}\) can do weird things, the 120th power (10 years) weirder things. OLS and maximum likelihood prize one step ahead \(R^2\), and will happily accept small one step ahead mis specifications that add up to big misspecification 10 years out. (I learned this lesson in the "Random walk in GNP.") Long run implications are driven by the maximum eigenvalue of the \(A\) transition matrix, and its associated eigenvector. \(A^j = Q \Lambda^j Q^{-1}\).  This is a benefit and a danger. Specify and estimate the dynamics of the combination of variables with the largest eigenvector  right, and lots of details can be wrong. But standard estimates aren't trying hard to get these right. The "local projection" alternative directly estimates long run responses: Run regressions of inflation in 10 years on the shock today. You can see the tradeoff: there aren't many non-overlapping 10 year intervals, so this will be imprecisely estimated. The VAR makes a strong parametric assumption about long-run dynamics. When it's right, you get better estimates. When it's wrong, you get misspecification. My experience running lots of VARs is that monthly VARs raised to large powers often give unreliable responses. Run at least a one-year VAR before you start looking at long run responses. Cointegrating vectors are the most reliable variables to include. They are typically the state variable that most reliably carries long - run responses. But pay attention to getting them right. Imposing integrating and cointegrating structure by just looking at units is a good idea. The regression of long-run returns on dividend yields is a good example. The dividend yield is a cointegrating vector, and is the slow-moving state variable. A one period VAR \[\left[ \begin{array}{c} r_{t+1} \\ dp_{t+1} \end{array} \right] = \left[ \begin{array}{cc} 0 & b_r  \\ 0 & \rho \end{array}\right]    \left[ \begin{array}{c} r_{t} \\ dp_{t} \end{array}\right]+ \varepsilon_{t+1}\] implies a long horizon regression \(r_{t+j} = b_r \rho^j dp_{t} +\) error. Direct regressions ("local projections") \(r_{t+j} = b_{r,j} dp_t + \) error give about the same answers, though the downward bias in \(\rho\) estimates is a bit of an issue, but with much larger standard errors. The constraint \(b_{r,j} = b_r \rho^j\) isn't bad. But it can easily go wrong. If you don't impose that dividends and price are cointegrated, or with vector other than 1 -1, if you  allow a small sample to estimate \(\rho>1\), if you don't put in dividend yields at all and just a lot of short-run forecasters, it can all go badly. Forecasting bond returns was for me a good counterexample. A VAR forecasting one-year bond returns  from today's yields gives very different results from taking a monthly VAR, even with several lags, and using \(A^{12}\) to infer the one-year return forecast. Small pricing errors or microstructure dominate the monthly data, which produces junk when raised to the twelfth power. (Climate regressions are having fun with the same issue. Small estimated effects of temperature on growth, raised to the 100th power, can produce nicely calamitous results. But use basic theory to think about units.)  Nakamura and Steinsson (appendix) show how sensitive some standard estimates of impulse response functions are to these questions. Weak evidenceFor the current policy question, I hope you get a sense of how weak the evidence is for the "standard view" that higher interest rates reliably lower inflation, though with a long and variable lag, and the Fed has a good deal of control over inflation. Yes, many estimates look the same, but there is a pretty strong prior going in to that. Most people don't publish papers that don't conform to something like the standard view. Look how long it took from Sims (1980) to Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans (1999) to produce a response function that does conform to the standard view, what Friedman told us to expect in (1968). That took a lot of playing with different orthogonalization, variable inclusion, and other specification assumptions. This is not criticism: when you have a strong prior, it makes sense to see if the data can be squeezed in to the prior. Once authors like Ramey and Nakamura and Steinsson started to look with a critical eye, it became clearer just how weak the evidence is. Standard errors are also wide, but the variability in results due to changes in sample and specification are much larger than formal standard errors. That's why I don't stress that statistical aspect. You play with 100 models, try one variable after another to tamp down the price puzzle, and then compute standard errors as if the 100th model were written in stone. This post is already too long, but showing how results change with different specifications would have been a good addition. For example, here are a few more Ramey plots of inflation responses, replicating various previous estimatesTake your pick. What should we do instead? Well, how else should we measure the effects of monetary policy? One natural approach turns to the analysis of historical episodes and changes in regime, with specific models in mind. Romer and Romer pass on thoughts on this approach: ...some macroeconomic behavior may be fundamentally episodic in nature. Financial crises, recessions, disinflations, are all events that seem to play out in an identifiable pattern. There may be long periods where things are basically fine, that are then interrupted by short periods when they are not. If this is true, the best way to understand them may be to focus on episodes—not a cross-section proxy or a tiny sub-period. In addition, it is valuable to know when the episodes were and what happened during them. And, the identification and understanding of episodes may require using sources other than conventional data.A lot of my and others'  fiscal theory writing has taken a similar view. The long quiet zero bound is a test of theories: old-Keynesian models predict a delation spiral, new-Keynesian models predicts sunspot volatility, fiscal theory is consistent with stable quiet inflation.  The emergence of inflation in 2021 and its easing despite interest rates below inflation likewise validates fiscal vs. standard theories.  The fiscal implications of abandoning the gold standard in 1933 plus Roosevelt's "emergency" budget make sense of that episode. The new-Keynesian reaction parameter \(\phi_\pi\) in \(i_t - \phi_\pi \pi_t\), which leads to unstable dynamics for ](\phi_\pi>1\) is not identified by time series data. So use "other sources," like plain statements on the Fed website about how they react to inflation. I already cited Clarida Galí and Gertler, for measuring the rule not the response to the shock, and explaining the implications of that rule for their model. Nakamura and Steinsson likewise summarize Mussa's (1986) classic study of what happens when countries switch from fixed to floating exchange rates: "The switch from a fixed to a flexible exchange rate is a purely monetary action. In a world where monetary policy has no real effects, such a policy change would not affect real variables like the real exchange rate. Figure 3 demonstrates dramatically that the world we live in is not such a world."Also, analysis of particular historical episodes is enlightening. But each episode has other things going on and so invites alternative explanations. 90 years later, we're still fighting about what caused the Great Depression. 1980 is the poster child for monetary disinflation, yet as Nakamura and Steinsson write, Many economists find the narrative account above and the accompanying evidence about output to be compelling evidence of large monetary nonneutrality. However, there are other possible explanations for these movements in output. There were oil shocks both in September 1979 and in February 1981.... Credit controls were instituted between March and July of 1980. Anticipation effects associated with the phased-in tax cuts of the Reagan administration may also have played a role in the 1981–1982 recession ....Studying changes in regime, such as fixed to floating or the zero bound era, help somewhat relative to studying a particular episode, in that they have some of the averaging of other shocks. But the attraction of VARs will remain. None of these produces what VARs seemed to produce, a theory-free qualitative estimate of the effects of monetary policy. Many tell you that prices are sticky, but not how prices are sticky. Are they old-Keynesian backward looking sticky or new-Keynesian rational expectations sticky? What is the dynamic response of relative inflation to a change in a pegged exchange rate? What is the dynamic response of real relative prices to productivity shocks? Observations such as Mussa's graph can help to calibrate models, but does not answer those questions directly.  My observations about the zero bound or the recent inflation similarly seem (to me) decisive about one class of model vs. another, at least subject to Occam's razor about epicycles, but likewise do not provide a theory-free  impulse response function.  Nakamura and Steinsson write at length about other approaches; model-based moment matching and use of micro data in particular. This post is going on too long; read their paper. Of course, as we have seen, VARs only seem to offer a model-free quantitative measurement of "the effects of monetary policy," but it's hard to give up on the appearance of such an answer. VARs and impulse responses also  remain very useful ways of summarizing the correlations and cross correlations of data, even without cause and effect interpretation. In the end, many ideas are successful in economics when they tell researchers what to do, when they offer a relatively clear recipe for writing papers. "Look at episodes and think hard is not such  recipe." "Run a VAR is." So, as you think about how we can evaluate monetary policy, think about a better recipe as well as a good answer.  (Stay tuned. This post is likely to be updated a few times!) VAR technical appendixTechnically, running VARs is very easy, at least until you start trying to smooth out responses with Bayesian  and other techniques. Line up the data in a vector, i.e. \(x_t = [i_t \; \pi_t\; y_t]'\). Then run a regression of each variable on lags of the others, \[x_t = Ax_{t-1} + u_t.\] If you want more than one lag of the right hand variables, just make a bigger \(x\) vector,  \(x_t = [i_t\; \pi_t \; y_t \; i_{t-1}\; \pi_{t-1} \;y_{t-1}]'.\) The residuals of such regressions \(u_t\) will be correlated, so you have to decide whether, say, the correlation between interest rate and inflation shocks means the Fed responds in the period to inflation, or inflation responds within the period to interest rates, or some combination of the two. That's the  "identification" assumption issue. You can write it as a matrix \(C\) so that \(u_t = C \varepsilon_t\) and cov\((\varepsilon_t \varepsilon_t')=I\) or you can include some contemporaneous values into the right hand sides. Now, with \(x_t = Ax_{t-1} + C\varepsilon_t\), you start with \(x_0=0\), choose one series to shock, e.g. \(\varepsilon_{i,1}=1\) leaving the others alone, and just simulate forward. The resulting path of the other variables is the above plot, the "impulse response function." Alternatively you can run a regression \(x_t = \sum_{j=0}^\infty \theta_j \varepsilon_{t-j}\) and the \(\theta_j\) are (different, in sample) estimates of the same thing. That's "local projection". Since the right hand variables are all orthogonal, you can run single or multiple regressions. (See here for equations.) Either way, you have found the moving average representation, \(x_t = \theta(L)\varepsilon_t\), in the first case with \(\theta(L)=(I-AL)^{-1}C\) in the second case directly. Since the right hand variables are all orthogonal, the variance of the series is the sum of its loading on all of the shocks, \(cov(x_t) = \sum_{j=0}^\infty \theta_j \theta_j'\). This "forecast error variance decomposition" is behind my statement that small amounts of inflation variance are due to monetary policy shocks rather than shocks to other variables, and mostly inflation shocks.   Update:Luis Garicano has a great tweet thread explaining the ideas with a medical analogy. Kamil Kovar has a nice follow up blog post, with emphasis on Europe. He makes a good point that I should have thought of: A monetary policy "shock" is a deviation from a "rule." So, the Fed's and ECB's failure to respond to inflation as they "usually" do in 2021-2022 counts exactly the same as a 3-5% deliberate lowering of the interest rate. Lowering interest rates for no reason, and leaving interest rates alone when the regression rule says raise rates are the same in this methodology.  That "loosening" of policy was quickly followed by inflation easing, so an updated VAR should exhibit a strong "price puzzle" -- a negative shock is followed by less, not more inflation. Of course historians and practical people might object that failure to act as usual has exactly the same effects as acting. * Some Papers: Comment on Romer and Romer What ends recessions? Some "what's a shock?"Comment on Romer and Romer A new measure of monetary policy. The greenbook forecasts, and beginning thoughts that strict exogeneity is not necessary. Shocks monetary shocks explain small fractions of output variance.Comments on Hamilton, more thoughts on what a shock is.What do the VARs mean? cited above, is the response to the shock or to persistent interest rates?The Fed and Interest Rates, with Monika Piazzesi. Daily data and interest rates to identify shocks. Decomposing the yield curve with Monika Piazzesi. Starts with a  great example of how small changes in specification lead to big differences in long run forecasts. Time seriesA critique of the application of unit root tests pretesting for unit roots and cointegration is a bad ideaHow big is the random walk in GNP? lessons in not using short run dynamics to infer long run properties. Permanent and transitory components of GNP and stock prices a favorite of cointegration really helps on long run propertiesTime series for macroeconomics and finance notes that never quite became a book. Explains VARs and responses. 

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

Issue 65.1 of the Review for Religious, 2006. ; Inspiration The Spirit QUARTERLY ~ 2006 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about tb~ holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul vl said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis Universit3£ by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Mail: review@slu.edu .° \¥eh site: *~,w.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 ° Pontifical College Josephinuln 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 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. ©2006 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 lihrarv 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. view for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff VVebmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Clare Boehmer ASC Stephen Erspamer OSB Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and A~. gela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ QUARTERLY 65.1 2006 contents prisms 4 Prisms context American Catholicism's Chaos-- and Its Future Richard Gribble CSC reviews the present situation of the post-Vatican II era of American Catholicism through an analysis of contemporary authors while providing hope for the future. 21 23 3O challenges 0 Religious Life in the Third World-- a Shangri-La? Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR paints a rather sobering picture of the difficulties involved in discerning a vocation for third-world candidates and in superiors' exercise of leadership. Personal Reflection Questions and Group Discussion Propositions Challenges for Communities' New Members Guire Cleary SSF sets out some of the challenges experi-enced by new members of religious communities, drawing on his own experiences and observations and on personal histories from other new religious. Review for Religious inspiration 43 A Spirituality of Surrender--A Jesuit's Story Rosemary Stets OSF shares with us the making of a prayer of surrender from her conversation with and the living example of the Jesuit Walter J. Ciszek. 48 57 Two Mysteries in One: Implications for Ministry Giovanni Zevola OMI delves into the meaning of the Annunciation and the Visitation to find there the richness of theology and pastoral care, encountering each other in pastoral experience. Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited Robert P. Maloney CM focuses on Vincent de Paul's choice of simplicity as "being in the truth" with God, with oneself, with others, and with the created universe; He then discusses some of the dilemmas involved in combining the simplicity of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Prayer Reflection and Group Discussion 7O Sharing God the Ignatian Way David L. Fleming SJ indicates how Ignatian spirituality affects the ways we understand and relate to God. Personal Reflection and Group Discussion 76 the spirit Led by the Spirit: St. Patrick Andrew Ryder SCJ views the working of the Holy Spirit in the life and missionary activity of St. Patrick from his own witness given in his Confession. departments 92 Scripture Scope: The suffering of Jesus ~ 96 Canonical Counsel: Chapters and Other Meetings 102 Book Reviews 65.1 2006 4 ~hen was the last time that we felt that we were making a flesh start? Maybe it was a flesh start in our getting regular exercise. Perhaps it was a fresh start that we needed in establishing a better relationship with a co-worker or a relative. Or it might be the flesh start we need in working on our spiritual or church life. We hear and are well aware of the bromides like "That's the way it has always been done" or "We always do it that way." It seems that there is nothing more deadening than a routine life, a life of frozen patterns. Yet it is normal, even necessary, that we estab-lish patterns in our everyday living. For exam-ple, for good health we are encouraged to keep to a pattern of sleeping hours. It is usually helpful for us to establish patterns for our personal prayer, or else we begin to find ourselves too busy to take time to pray. We as a church are always calling ourselves to start afresh. That is a purpose of church sea-sons. We have recently finished the Christmas season. We are entering Ordinary Time, which we will shortly interrupt for the Lenten and Easter seasons. Each time the liturgy, through these seasonal emphases, calls us to a fresh assess-ment of how we are relating to God and how we are living our Christian life. What does it mean for us "to start afresh"? It does not mean that we reject everything that we have been doing. It does not call for us to break totally with our past and act as if we have Review for Religious no personal history. Each one of us is only one person, from birth to death and into resurrection. We are the ones that God loves into creation and identifies with, as sons and daughters in the redemptive action of Jesus. We must always work with our God-given gifts and limitations. But, accepting and living with the mystery of our own person, we receive God's call to start afresh, always to be growing, which means change and development. The foods that we liked as children should not keep us from foods we could well like as adults. When was the last time we tried something new to eat? Maybe we are very comfortable attending Eucharistic holy hours, but have we ever taken time to visit people in a nursing home or in a hospital? Perhaps we keep our weekends to our-selves, but are we open to volunteering for our parish's special pantry preparation and delivery for poor people in our neighborhood? Every Eucharist we celebrate invites us to start afresh with Christ. The risen Jesus, in his everlasting stance of offering himself anew totally to God and totally to us, extends his arms to embrace us in his offering as we enter into Eucharist. And so each Mass, with its own ritual pat-tern, is God's invitation to us to start anew. In the simple practice of the daily examination of conscience--once again a helpful pattern in our Christian lives--we find ourselves always being alerted to the surprising ways that God has entered into our lives this day and perhaps, to our sorrow, we have not responded. In a paradoxical way, by our looking back over our day in the examen, we find ourselves starting afresh in our relationship with God. "Starting afresh with Christ"--is this the "routine call" we hear every day? We may find that this call freshens the whole of our everyday way of living. David L. Fleming SJ 6Y.I 2006 RICHARD GRIBBLE American Catholicism's Chaos--and Its Future context In his recent book The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council, the priest sociologist Andrew Greeley uses new wine in old wineskins to describe con-temporary American Catholicism's chaotic state. He contends that, while appearing strong, Roman Catholicism's structures were fragile, for they had not been adequately adapted to chang-ing times. Thus, when the progressive teach-ings of Vatican II came all at once, the structures were not ready for them and chaos ensued.l Can this chaotic situation be a turning point to a stronger church in the future? Using the work of several prominent American Catholic intellectuals, this essay continues the discussion and seeks to increase hopes for the contempo-rary church. Richard Gribble CSC is an associate professor of religious studies at Stonehill College; 480 Washington Street; North Easton, Massachusetts 02356. His current email address is rgribble@stonehill.edu Review for Religious The American Church Today American Catholics today can be divided into two groups. The "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics, the majority of American Catholics, view John xxIII's aggiornamento as a move toward solidarity with the present age. Following the opening words of Sacrosanctum concilium, "The sacred council has set out., to adapt more closely to the needs of our age those institutions which are sub-ject to change," these more liberal Catholics see Vatican II as a starting point for adaptation. Greeley says, "Catholics [today] believe that the church can change and that they can disregard the pope when it comes to making decisions, especially about sex and gender.''2 Some refer to those in this category as "cafeteria Catholics," who feel free to pick and choose what teach-ings they accept and reject. George Weigel, senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., calls such an understanding of the faith "Catholic lite," perceiving this "watered down" Catholicism as the root of the recent sexual-abuse crisis and, by extension, the general malaise in American Catholicism.3 Greeley characterizes the lassitude in the church as "beige Catholicism," with the Catholic imagination, once a source of unity, now replaced by a colorless Catholic life that has little enthusiasm.4 The other group, those labeled "conservatives" in the literature, accepts Vatican II at face value, but goes no further. These Catholics accept and promote what the council taught, but, unlike the more progressive element, do not believe that the council licensed the generation of multiple theologies. They reject the idea that the "spirit of Vatican II" should govern the church. In the eyes of this group, an overemphasis on aggiornamento created the disunities of "Catholic lite" and "beige Catholicism." James Hitchcock, professor of history at St. Louis 6Y. 1 2006 Gribble ¯ dmerican Catbolicism's Cbaos Despite Vatican II's emphasis on the active role of the laity, the hierarchical church is slow to relinquish power and authority. University, is a standard bearer for this position. He writes, "Liberal religion treats secular culture as pos-sessing a superior wisdom and restricts religious beliefs to what the culture allows, including endorsing every movement deemed to be progressive." He suggests fur-ther that liberals have no sense "that modernity itself, in the full sense oi: the term, is simply antireligious, that rejection of belief is essential to its self-understanding." s Given these divisions in American Catholicism, what are the dominant issues? The Catholic editor and writer Peter Steinfels, in his popular book A People Adrift, says the church must nego-tiate (1) the passage from one generation to the next and (2) the pas-sage of power from the clergy to the laity.6 The first passage is compli-cated: those formed religiously after Vatican II ask questions without sufficient background. v_ _ As for the second pas-sage, despite Vatican II's emphasis on the active role of the laity, the hierarchical church is slow to relinquish power and authority. Steinfels concludes: "Today the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is on the verge of either an irreversible decline or a thoroughgo-ing transformation." 7 For Catholicism worldwide and here in the United States, the ideas Catholics had about Pope John Paul II had a strong influence. Almost universally he was well respected for his worldwide crusade for social justice and his influence in the fall of Communism. More conser-vative critics such as George Weigel saw the pope's lead- Review for Religious ership in church affairs, one based on past traditions, to be precisely what was needed to curb uncertainty and dissent. Clearly John Paul saw Vatican II as a point of arrival, not one of departure for church development. Strong authority is needed, Weigel suggests, "to ensure Christians do not settle for mediocrity." 8 In similar sup-port, James Hitchcock claims that John Paul made "a broad and ambitious attempt to relate the Catholic faith to everything positive in modern culture.''9 On the other hand, the columnist David Gibson has written, "For all of John Paul's unparalleled accomplishments, his popu-larity came with a hidden cost to the church.''1° Similarly, the French journalist Alain Woodrow well summarizes how many American Catholics viewed John Paul: "John Paul is self-assured, convinced of his 'divine mission,' and determined to drag the church--kicking and scream-ing if need be--into his own vision of the 21st century, a vision shaped by his Polish ecclesiology and sustained by his theological certainties. No soul searching or admission of doubt here, but a ringing cry: 'Be not afraid'; I am the pope and I know best!''1~ The Church Today: Specific Ideas Vatican II's emphasis on the church as the people of God brought attention to the important role of the laity. In their outstanding study of the Catholic laity today, William D'Antonio and his colleagues have compared the theology and tendencies of three groups of Catholics: (1) those formed before Vatican II, (2) those who matured during Vatican II, and (3) those raised in a post-Vatican II church. All three generations studied seem to want a more democratic church. A positive view of lay partici-pation in the church increases with a generation's prox-imity to Vatican II. Yet participation as measured by Mass attendance and knowledge of church teaching declines 65.1 2006 Gribble * American Catholicism's Chaos 1_ol from the pre- to post-Vatican II church. 12 While lacking an accurate gauge, the study suggested that, because of less religious formation, post-Vatican II Catholics are less committed than their predecessors.~3 The rapid and significant growth of lay ministry, while a blessing ~o the church, has also caused a few problems. The 1999 "Study of Lay Parish Ministry" found that the theology and church policies necessary to govern this explosion of lay involvement have not kept pace with the advance. Additionally, some have raised concerns that the laity's movement into more tradition-ally priestly or religious roles may eclipse the primary role of the laity in the church and/or lead to a clerical-izing of the laity. Some also fear that careerism rather than a desire to serve, a problem called clericalism when noted in the clergy, may invade the ranks of the laity.14 Another concern raised with the post-Vatican II rise of the laity is an evolving mutual distrust and conflict between the clergy and the laity. David Gibson suggests that the rise in lay ministry has created a backlash and retrenchment on the part of priests. The clergy is flex-ing its muscle and standing aloof from the laity.~s Priests find themselves caught between two forces, the laity, with whom they generally agree theologically but dis-trust, and the institutional church, which they trust but do not agree with. Priests generally support the laity's more positive view of sexuality, have a greater sensitiv-ity to women, and possess respect for the laity's freedom to make decisions, especially on moral matters. 16 Yet cler-icalism and poor homilies, among other things, have cre-ated a gap between priests and their flocks. Rather than assigning any blame to themselves for this situation, the clergy generally point to family breakdown, divorce, and apathy as reasons for the divide.~7 In addition to the gap between the laity and the lower Review for Religious clergy, a division exists between the laity and the hier-archy. During the last several years, accentuated greatly by the 2002 sex-abuse crisis, bishops have lost much credibility with priests and the laity. At the June 2002 meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops in Dallas, Scott Appleby, the church historian and former director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, summarized the problem while proffering a solution: The crisis confronting the church today cannot be understood and thus not adequately addressed apart from its setting in a wider range of problems that have been growing over the last 34 years. At the heart of these problems is the alienation of the hierarchy and, to a lesser degree, many of the clergy, from ordinary laywomen and laymen . To be faithful to the church envisioned by the council fathers of Vatican II, bishops and priests must trust the laity, appropriately share authority with them, and open their financial, legal, [and] administrative practices and decisions to full visibility. 18 Unfortunately, Appleby's call for transparency has not been heeded sufficiently. In many ways the separation between the hierarchy and the laity has widened on account of the bishops' poor reception of the Voice of the Faithful, the laity's effort to seek accountability while supporting the institutional church. The laity's status in the church and its conflicts with the clergy are highlighted by the ongoing struggle for women to gain proper recognition and equality. How paradoxical that, while women are more active in church ministries, they are mostly relegated to the fringes in authority and privilege. The moral theologian Christine Gudorf has stated that, despite church social teaching on the equality of women, papal teaching on the nature and role of women still accentuates the theme of motherhood. Not only does the pope view motherhood as an element 6Y. 1 2006 Gribble ¯ American Catholicism's Chaos 12 of being female; he views it as a definition of woman-hood. 9 The Benedictine nun, lecturer, and writer Joan Chittister, believes that to design doctrines on marriage, family, and sexuality--all of which deeply and directly impinge on women--without their input is to adopt "posi-tions that are incomplete as well as arrogant." 20 Views opposed ~0 the rise of feminism are also pre-sent. In a strong statement James Hitchcock has written: The rise of militant feminism has been one of the most serious crises in the history of orthodox religion, because women have always tended to be more pious than men and the churches are thus alienated from some of their hitherto most faithful communicants, and because militant feminism logically rejects not only a male savior but the very idea of monotheism.21 The crisis experienced by the laity in today's church is present as well in the priesthood, although manifested differently. Before Vatican II the priesthood in general sustained a vertical.rather than a horizontal faith. The priest was symbolic and functional and was character-ized by the concept of alter Christus (another Christ). The popular 1950s television show "Father Knows Best" could have been easily applied to the priest, who stood as a symbol of the institutional church and functioned to serve God's people in every way. Life for the priest and his people was centered in the parish. While some clergy became prominent as social activists or in other specific roles, the operative model was the all-purpose priest-hood. With rectories and seminaries full and the gener-ally high respect afforded priests, as typified by Father O'Malley in the box-office favorites "Going My Way" and "The Bells of Saint Mary's," priesthood in the American church was .strong. Vatican II's emphasis on the priesthood of the laity and on the church as the people of God "demanded a Review for Religious formal and full reconsideration of the role and identity of the priest in the new church.''22 The tumultuous 1960s, the increased pressure on priests to serve as the-ological and spiritual leaders, and the increasing numbers of men leaving the priesthood transformed the remain-ing priests from "all-purpose" to "orchestra leaders." The priest was now called to identify and foster the unique gifts in each parishioner for service to the church. Empowerment of the laity to fulfill its man-date from Vatican II became an integral part of the priesthood. Yet this demand was not negotiated well by many, leading some to suffer an identity crisis and loss of purpose . With many of the faithful serving as ministers of the Eucharist, ministers of the word, ministers to the sick, and similar functions, what was distinctive about the ordained ministry?z3 Father Donald Cozzens, in his Changing Face of the Priesthood, has described 1980 to 2000 as the "priest-hood's dark night." He writes, "The postconciliar years have tested the mettle of priests--crisis after crisis 'shak-ing the foundations' and turning their lives inside out and upside down." 24 He says that the fallout from Vatican II, most notably the rise in dissent, has eaten away at the priest's moral authority and curtailed the cleric's ability to offer pastoral guidance. Yet, despite these conditions, Cozzens believes the priesthood's present dark night has led to a deepening of spirit and a purification of soul and thus a grace and blessing. The dark night was necessary to bring about the conversion of mind and heart that the Empowerment of the laity to fulf!lt its mandate from Vatican Il became an integral part of the priesthood. 6Y.1 2006 Gribble ¯ American Catholicism's Chaos priesthood needed to serve the people of God in a post-conciliar world.2s The priesthood faces additional challenges that must be addressed in the 2 lst-century church. Some more progressive commentators, like Andrew Greeley, suggest that clericalism allows the clergy to hide behind a veil of secrecy and keeps priests from accepting responsibil-ity for their actions. The natural and important cama-raderie that exists in the clergy has too often been used as an excuse to cover up information and actions that might be seen as prejudicial against the institutional church. One need look no further than the recent sex-abuse controversy to find clear evidence of this. Members of a fraternity will not speak ill of each other. In the same light the priesthood's traditional hierarchical posi-tion above the laity gives license for some to dominate God's people or disregard their opinions.26 More con-servative writers lay much of the blame for lassitude in the church at the feet of the clergy. James Hitchcock has written: The spread of secular attitudes in Catholic cultures has not been primarily the work of professors and journalists, but of priests. Laymen who would be disposed to resist secularization, especially as they see it emanating from hostile sources outside the churches, abandon their resistance at the parent bidding of their spiritual leaders.27 Polarization of theology is another contemporary phenomenon in the priesthood. The researcher Dean Hoge in his First Five Years of the .Priesthood provides a convincing argument that younger priests are more con-servative in their theology and align themselves more strictly along the views of Pope John Paul II.28 Andrew Greeley agrees with Hoge's analysis, especially noting the views of young clergy toward optional celibacy and Review for Religious women priests. He suggests three reasons for their views: (1) These priests do not understand Vatican II, (2) they want the security of a clerical state, and (3) they reject uncertainty.29 More positively, Greeley debunks the myth that priests are unhappy men, especially as a result of the celibacy requirement. Greeley's analysis shows that, while priests may not be paragons of maturity and personal well-being, they are similar to married men with com-mensurate educational backgrounds. His data demon-strates that only two percent of active priests see celibacy as a problem and only sixteen percent of clerics who resign do so because of celibacy. Rather, priests leave because they do not like the work. Celibacy becomes a problem only when ministry is not satisfying.3° What is needed for the American Catholic priest of the 2 1st century? Peter Steinfels presents three signifi-cant qualities of future priests. First, they must possess the theological capacity to celebrate the sacraments, preach the word of God, and make contemporary life meaningful. Second, they must have the ability to ani-mate and guide others. Third, they must be account-able. 3~ John Boissonneau, auxiliary bishop of Toronto, provides a different but consistent list of attributes. Successful priests must view their role as countercultural and not be afraid to take risks. Future clergy must place a premium on authenticity in their personal lives and ministry. And, lastly, successful future priests must avoid isolation, drawing their life from the people they serve.32 The Church Tomorrow To speak intelligently about the needs of the future church, one should know what has proved successful in the past. Andrew Greeley's call for a return to what he terms "the Catholic imagination" deserves some review. 65.1 2006 Gribble * ~qmerican Catbolicis~z's Chaos Catholicism must recover the things of beauty that were summarily swept aside in the wake of the spirit of Vatican II, For Greeley the glue that held worldwide Catholicism was the many metaphors that stressed the immanence of God. Rather than perceiving God as transcendent (the general theological perspective of Protestants), Catholics have always been attracted by multiple sense images of God's presence. The smell of incense, the sight of Eucharistic adoration, processions, and statues, and the words of novenas, parish missions, and the rosary have long served as a glue for Catholics. These were practices to which all could relate; all Catholics were on the same page. Scratch one Catholic and the whole church bled. Greeley does not suggest a return to the 1940s or 1950s, but the "beige Catholicism" that predominates today is not the answer either. He believes that Catholicism must recover the things of beauty that were summarily swept aside in the wake of the spirit of Vatican II. Greeley says the church needs chant, statues, and patron saints; we need metaphors for God.3.3 David Gibson agrees, but goes further. He believes that subsidiarity, a principle of Catholic social teaching, must become operative in the church universal. For Gibson, loyalty to Catholicism is rooted in the local parish. Rather than from the top down, he suggests that governing be from the bottom up, giving voice and authority to the laity. He says that what is important for the church is unity, not uniformity.34 Where must the church move in the 21st century in order to be the viable and healthy institution that will Review for Religious well serve the people of God? Peter Steinfels laments that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's dynamic Common Ground initiative was summarily cast aside and a reasser-tion of papal authority put in its place. He suggests that the Catholic leadership of the future must break out from trench warfare that has constricted discussion in the American Church since Vatican II. He believes that a balance must be struck between theology and pastoral reality and that the lack of dialogue has been harmful, and so he sees Bernardin's plan as the optimum.35 On a similar track the journalist David Gibson sees the future church in the hands of the hierarchy. There are two routes to follow. Of the two, the more conser-vative one would want Rome to reassert its power and its claim on Catholics' loyalty. The other one would admit problems and seek systemic change. Gibson opts for the second, with the belief that bishops must become more vocal politically and seek avenues whereby those ele-ments of the faith that can be adapted to the uniqueness of the American environment are changed.36 The present crisis in .the church must be a point of renewal that affords growth and a brighter future.36a Clearly it is impossible to return to the pre-Vatican II Church, even if one should desire such a move. The ben-efits that Vatican II brought must be fostered, yet the initial postconciliar "throwing the baby out with the bath" must be avoided. The council called for greater inclusivity as manifest in opportunities for laity and open-ness to other people of faith. Recent developments, as expressed in church documents on various levels, have been seen by many as a regression from Vatican II. In August 2000 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith proclaimed concerning Protestants: "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking [emphasis in the 65.1 2006 Gribble ¯ American Catholicism's Chaos document] they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who; in the church, have the full-ness of the means of salvation.''37 This regression of Vatican II's more open position toward Protestants does not bode well for the future. The church must reinvig-orate the spirit expressed in Nostra aetate: "Ever aware of her duty to foster unity and charity among individuals, and even among nations, she [the church] reflects at the outset on what men have in common and what tends to promote fellowship among them.''38 Additionally, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has alien-ated many of the faithful laity by stating: "If extraordi-nary ministers of Holy Communion are required by pastoral need, they should not approach the altar before the priest has received communion.''39 In an effort to return to more reverence for the Eucharist, the bishops have effectively placed on ice the council's call for active lay participation on all levels. The council called for a pastoral approach to the lived faith and for a greater sense of dialogue with the world in order to harness the advancement of human knowledge for the betterment of God's people. While the church must continue to oppose secularism and be a countercultural light to the contemporary fascinations of power, wealth, and prestige, she cannot do so effec-tively through a dogmatic and defensive stance. John Paul II reannounced this unyielding position, casting aside dialogue on key issues when he proclaimed in 1994: "I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judg-ment is to be definitely held by all the church's faith-ful.'' 4° The church must be open to dialogue, within its own ranks and with other people of faith. The sensz~s fidelium must be addressed by listening to God's people and having the courage to admit error and to effect Review for Religious change. The church cannot stand aloof from the world, but must engage society on all levels. American Catholicism today is at a moment of crisis, even in chaos, but the church need not panic nor be downcast or without hope. Even a cursory review of church history, both universally and in the United States, demonstrates that there have been many crises in the past, but all were negotiated as moments of change, not despair. Such is the case with the contemporary situa-tion. The fate of the church is in our hands; we are, as Lumen gentium states, the people of God. We must not wring our hands or lament with loud cries; rather, as individuals and community, we must use the present cri-sis as a springboard for action. We might not produce systemic change tomorrow, but we need to think globally and act locally. Margaret O'Brien Steinfels has aptly placed the challenge before us: "We can no longer indulge the slothful habit of postponing the church that we need until the next papacy, until the seminaries are full, until the controversies are resolved, until some faith-ful remnant rules the church. We need to bring the new life into the project of church renewal that we have neglected too long.''4~ Are we listening to the church's contemporary voice and willing to act? Only we can answer. Notes ~ Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 1-4. z Greeley, Catholic Revolution, p. 58. 3 George Weigel, The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Refor~n, and the Future of the Church (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 219-232. 4 Greeley, Catholic Revolution, pp. 81-89. Drawing from David Tracy's Analogical Imagination, Greeley suggests that the glue to Catholic life has always been its "Catholic Imagination," e.g., a metaphor for ritual, 6Y.I 2006 Gribble ¯ American Catholicism's Chaos devotion, and music. While Catholics today find themselves across the board on many issues, religious and secular, the Catholic imagination has kept unity. Today's understanding and practice of Catholicism threat-ens this cohesion. See Andrew Greeley, Catholic Imagination. s James Hitchcock, "Interpreting Vatican II: Version One, A Continuum in the Great Tradition," Commonweal 128, no. 5 (9 March 2001): 19, 18. 6 Peter Steinfels, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), pp. 1-14. 7 p. Steinfels, People Adrift, p. 1. s George Weigel, "Liberal Church? Conservative Church?" Crisis 19, no. 10 (November 2001): 32. 9 Hitchcock, "Interpreting Vatican II," 19. 10 David Gibson, The Coming Church: How the Faitbful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism (San Francisco: Harper, 2003), p. 327. 1, Alain Woodrow, "Superstar or Servant?" in The Papacy and the People of God, ed. Gary MacEoin (Maryknoll: Orbis Press), p. 83. lz William V. D'Antonio et al., Laity American and Catholic: Transforming the Church (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1996), pp. 65-66, 73-79. Interesting statistical figures compare the three generations of American Catholics. For pre-Vatican I! Catholics, Vatican II Catholics, and post-Vatican Catholics respectively, the figures were 63 percent, 45 percent, and 23 percent as regards "active perticipation" (Mass atten-dance etc.). For daily prayer the figures were 90 percent, 67 percent, and 56 percent. When asked if Mass attendance is necessary to "be a good Catholic," 60 percent, 74 percent, and 80 percent said no. This lat-ter statistic, while consistent with the decline in participation over the generations, shows pre-Vatican Catholics not feeling as strong an obli-gation to attend Sunday Mass as they formerly did. 's D'Antonio, Laity, pp. 84-99. 14 "A Study of Parish Lay Ministry," Origins 29, no. 7 (1 July 1999): 103-104, 107. is Gibson, Coming Church, pp. 35-62. ~6 Greeley, Catholic Revolution, pp. 120-127. 17 Andrew Greeley, Priests: A Calling in Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 86-99. 18 R. Scott Appleby, "What Is at Stake in the Present Crisis?" Origins 32, no. 7 (27 June 2002): 116. 19 Christine E. Gudorf, "Encountering the Other: The Modern Papacy on Women," in Change in Official Catholic Moral Teachings, ed. Charles Curran (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), p. 273. Review for Religious ~o Joan Chittister OSB, "Women in the Church: A New Pentecost in Process," in MacEoin, Papacy and the People 0fGod, pp. 11, 6. Chittister has said, "We need a papacy that can see the oppression of women by the church itself and is willing to model their inclusion at the highest levels of Vatican planning." See "Women in the Church," p. 10. 2~ James Hitchcock, "The Guilty Secret of Liberal Christianity," New Oxford Review 63 (October 1996): 12-13. 22 R. Scott Appleby, "Historical Overview Priests in America, 1930- 2002," Origins 33, no. 4 (5 June 2003): 55. 23 Weigel, Courage, pp. 9-34. 24 Donald Cozzens, The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priests' Crisis 0fSoul (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 130. 2s Cozzens, Changing, p. 137. See also Cozzens, "Priesthood Emerges from a Dark Night," America 180, no. 9 (20 March 1999): 24. 26 Greeley, Priests, pp. 100-113. :7 Hitchcock, "Guilty Secret," p. 15. z8 Dean Hoge, The First Five Years of the Priesthood: A Study of Newly Ordained Catholic Priests (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 3-4. 29 Greeley, Priests, pp. 73-85. 3o Greeley, Priests, pp. 33-35, 48-72; Greeley, Catholic Revolution, pp. 120-127. 3t Steinfels, People Adrift, pp. 307-351. ~2 Bishop John Boissonneau, "Future Effective Priests," Origins 32, no. I0 (1 August 2002): 174. 3~ This is the theme of Greeley's Catholic hnagination. See also Greeley, Catholic Revolution, pp. 131-149. 34 Gibson, Coming Church, pp. 82-108. ~s Steinfels, People Adrift, pp. 352-360. In April 1996 Bernardin sug-gested that the dissension in American Catholicism could be transformed by seeking common ground amongst the various viewpoints. Bernardin's idea was severely criticized by Cardinals Bernard Law of Boston and John O'Connor of New York. ~6 Gibson, Coming Church, pp. 293-317,336. ~6~ Editorial note. Along with some brief quo.tations, these conclud-ing paragraphs contain some ideas that are current in the church in the United States and are often assumed to express Vatican II's spirit and to be its crystallized mandates. They have not always been argued care-fully. They deserve our careful consideration. The hopes we all have call all of us to this care. 37 Dominns Jesus (On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus 65.1 2006 Gribble * American Catholicism's Chaos Christ and the Church), August 2000, §22. 38 Nostra aetate, §1. 39 "Norms for the Distribution and Reception of Holy Communion under Both Kinds in the Dioceses of the United States of America," 14 June 2001, §38. ~o Ordinatio sacerdotalis, §4. See Origins 24, no. 4 (9 June 1994): 51. 41 Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, "The Crisis through the Laity's Lens," Origins 32, no. 7 (27 June 2002): 112-113. Rope Bridge At Ava, once, I crossed the ravine on a lattice of slats knotted into rope; undulant, it bucked at every step. That bridge rode its own law at war with gravity and my bulk. I never breathed as my feet swayed above the pines. I'd pry loose one hand from the guide rope thinned to spider silk to cling an inch farther along. And once on solid land, the terror rose: there was no other way to return. But midway back, I learned the sway, could look down at leaves, guess at bird names, not Jear the hawk's arc. I took a breath, and another, and held less tightly. M. Doretta Cornell RDC Review for Religious ANTHONY MALAVIARATCHI Religious Life in the Third Worldma Shangri-La? The attraction to get into the first world is irre-sistible to many of the people in the third world. As everyone knows, thousands knock on the doors of the first world's embassies. Arrangements and rearrangements are made to accommodate them, and of course many more find their way into their chosen Shangri-Las illegally. Throughout its history, religious life and the church itself have often been microcosms of their own social milieu. Religious life has felt the currents and undercurrents of the world around it. However much religious life .chooses to insert itself into its milieu, in no way is it called to succumb to the social trends of its place and time. This, however, is all too likely to happen, even when we think we are relying deeply on Jesus' words "Do not be afraid, I have overcome the world." Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR is at present involved in mis-sion and retreat work. His address is Santa Maria; George Silva Mawatha; Kandy, Sri Lanka. challenges 65.1 2006 Malaviaratchi * Religious Life in the Third 14form The founding fathers of the church in the third world were members of religious orders who came in the com-pany of world-conquering colonial powers. Religious life did not sprout in the soil of the third world. Rather, like Western democracy, it was brought there and planted there by zealous missionaries. It is natural, then, that it bears the features of the first world's status and security. Religious life and priesthood in the third world offer to those who join its ranks the status and security that third-world people seek in the first world, and so it is no sur-prise that young people in poor countries join religious life by the hundreds. Two factors are at work in this phenomenon. The first is the poverty of the third world. Since the arrival of television, the "attraction of the eye" has motivated peo-ple to go after the goodies of the developed world. What they see with their eyes literally empowers them to go after those material goods. Second, the competition in the job market frightens many. They sense that, if they have neither great talent nor academic qualifications, they will end up as dropouts in the race. A "vocation" is an attractive alternative, a way of escaping such social pressure and yet attaining a position of prestige. Historically, many have embraced religious life and the priesthood for a variety of such ulterior motives. Vocational Discernment In this situation, vocational discernment has become next to impossible. Whether they are aware of all their motives or not, those seeking religious formation from mixed motives know how to play the game, what to say and do and whom they need to impress, bishops, provin-cials, councilors, formators, and so forth. Even honest per-sons' motivations may come to the surface only after final vows or ordination. Then they may be seen in the lifestyle Review for Religious adopted, which may include having a vehicle of one's own, a personal computer, and a cell phone and being head of an institute that provides plenty of money and freedom for foreign trips, for higher studies in the first world, and so forth. Even those who develop crises soon after ordina-tion are offered the opportunity of settling down in the first world in or outside of religious life. Some congrega-tions do not mind offering these perquisites, these "perks," as a cost of their institutional survival even though it is a blatant compromise of the meaning of religious life. For how long? History will answer this interesting question in the not so distant future. Given these circumstances, then, vocation discern-ment is possible only after final vows or ordination! Discernment can take place only over what is humanly discernible and not over motivations that remain largely hidden from all concerned. Some formation programs have begun to take the first steps in countering this situation by insisting that those in formation live and be employed like any other young person for a considerable period of time. This is probably the vocation discernment exercise best suited for the situation. But many congregations and superiors still seem to prefer numbers. As long as there is poverty and unemployment, they will surely have "vocations." The money poured in by the congregations' first-world units positively encourages this situation. In non-Christian monasteries and hermitages, voca-tion discernment is a lifelong process. When a monk or hermit does not live the life that he embraced, he is asked to leave. So it is in any human organization. When mem-bers of a football club want to play ice hockey, they leave. It is not so in religious life. Members remain in the foot-ball club playing not only ice hockey but polo as well. This situation attracts more "vocations." Not only are 65.1 2006 Malaviaratchi ¯ Religious Life in the Third Worm prestige, status, and security offered but permissiveness as well. Remarkably, the situation we are looking at is found largely in the Latin (Western) form of religious life. Eastern and non-Christian "religious" have protected themselves with the help of authority, laws, traditions, and, in some instances, fundamentalism. Religious life of the Western tradition is flooded with evils that sur-round it: secularism, horizontalism, individualism, and permissiveness. Religious life is thus being suffocated by the very evils from which it is supposed to save not only itself but the world as well. 26 Present Leadership Style In the face of these forces, leadership in religious life has largely failed to fulfill its prophetic and pastoral roles by making only innocuous statements, after which it is "business as usual" in the ranks. Absolutely nothing fol-lows till the next innocuous pronouncement. Thus, many third-world religious, who are culturally much more authority-dependent than their Western counterparts, now have to try to be faithful in an authority vacuum. Leadership paralysis is aggravated by the fact that the modern superior is often an elected one. The ballot directly or indirectly produces leadership according to the voters and their expectations. As seen above, too many voters joined religious life for status and security. Today there are as many private agendas as there are voters. These voters will ensure that the superiors will be past masters at compromise, who will accommodate every private interest. The superiors elected thus will on no account insist on group fidelity to the spirit of the con-gregation nor demand the self-forgetfulness that the nature of religious life requires. Superiors who do will not be reelected. Hence superiors avoid this public Review for Religious humiliation by putting up buildings and expanding apos-tolic commitments. They are glad to be blissfully unaware of what is happening at the roots. It is known today that many third-world nations are culturally unable to handle Western democracy. In spite of that, religious in the third world are expected to rise above cultural barriers and vote for their superior. Western democracy is not the only way in which humans involve themselves and make group decisions for their common good. Superiors now belong to a generation which follows the path of least resistance, namely, the path of conve-nience, the first step of which is the avoidance of all that is unpleasant. Confrontation and correction of individ-ual members is unpleasant, ~ . embarrassing, and painful and is therefore carefully avoided. Also superiors are aware that frequently their correction will be ignored and erring individuals will refuse to change. The~e, however, are situations foreseen in the Gospels ~. and church law, and mea-sures to be taken are prescribed. In the situation we are looking at, the superiors may not themselves believe in those measures. People all around choose "the broad highway to hell" rather than "the narrow path" of growth in fidelity. L~adership paralysis is aggravated by the fact that the modern superior is often an elected one. A Trend and Subsidiarity Aiding and abetting today's leadership style is the widespread trend of looking and speaking only about what is positive. Thus, all negatives (such as, in religious 65.1 2006 Malaviaratcbi ¯ Religious Life in the Third World 28 life, unfaithfulness) are evaded at various evaluations. For any human group that wishes to survive, what ulti-mately matters is not what is positive or negative, but rather what accomplishes or prevents the attainment of its goals. Superiors who take precautions to avoid what is negative seem to imitate monkeys who "see no nega-tives, hear no negatives, and speak no negatives." Thus they fail to keep before them the Leader whose repre-sentatives they are and who did not hesitate to speak of "this evil and adulterous generation." Leaders who reli-giously avoid facing what is negative among their members are likely to be the first to attend to the negatives when their laptop fails, their cell phone needs recharging, or their dog needs worming. In this situation the valuable principle of subsidiarity is much abused in our day. The principle means that the lower levels of authority are encouraged and facilitated to perform to the maximum within their ambit. The principle itself, however, demands that higher levels of authority readily step in when lower levels fail in their one and only duty, namely, ensuring faithfulness to the way of life of the particular congregation. Usually only the first half of the principle is followed today, which amounts to passing the buck. Even when it comes to items vital to religious life, the general chap-ter leaves it to the superior general and his council, the superior general to the provincial, the provincial to the local superior, and the local superior to the individual. The result usually is that the matter is thrown over-board--" leaving it to the individual" being a euphemism today for "forget about it." No structure of religious life--nor religious life itself will survive if it does not learn to evaluate all things with the measure given by the Lord: "By their fruits you will know them." Despite all the above, religious life is not without Review for Religious hope. As a radical way of faith, religious life is called at this juncture to be also a community of radical hope, with its only hope in God and in what he will do. Personal Reflection Questions 1. Have I found that my motivations for my religius voca-tion have changed or been purified over the years since entrance? 2. How do I try to be a help in clarifying another's vocation decision? Group Discussion Propositions 1. In an affluent country, we expect that vocations to reli-gious life will be small in number. 2. In developing countries, vocations to priesthool and reli-gious life have a prestige and security factor that clouds the motivation of candidates and makes discernment more diffi-cult. 65.1 2006 GUIRE CLEARY Challenges for Communities' New Members TRAnglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand held eligious Life Conference for religious commu-nities in New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji. Some fifty religious from more than twelve communities gathered at the Tainui Endowed College in H0puhopu 17-21 February 2005. Principal speakers included a Roman Catholic Cistercian and a Sister of Mercy. The location itself was significant. Hopuhopu is the center for the Tainui people, the Aotearoan tribe from which the Maori sovereign is selected. Most of the meetings were held in the tribal debating chamber as a show of solidarity with a people recovering their dignity and strength. One of the workshops was titled Issues of Anger in Religious Communities, presented by an experienced priest and spiritual director, the Rev. Pamela Warnes. Her workshop was a brilliant combination of articulating Guire Cleary SSF, an Anglican Franciscan friar whose "novitiate was a trial for everybody," has worked in New Zealand for social justice and currently is stationed in Hawaii: 2463 Kuhio Avenue, apt. 905; Honolulu, Hawaii 96815. He would welcome comments or questions at guirejohncleary@aol.com. Review for Religious issues and discussing solutions, all conducted in a context of prayer and concluded With a healing ceremony. One paper was my own, setting out some of my experiences as a new religious and my observations of the experi-ences of other new religious. Participants said they had experienced almost everything I mentioned and added a few of their own. At the conclusion of the workshop, one asked me, "Have you been a fly on our wall?" I said I was probably more of a mosquito. The challenges set out below are challenges to most communities, not just religious communities. The largest challenge is getting past the frustration and anger of these experiences to the heart space that allows healing and mature development in the community. To be a new member in any organization or group is always a challenge. The process of incorporation and mutual learning is not easy, and only the experience of service, community, and love make it worthwhile or even tolerable. Incorporation can run the gamut from hazing and emotional abuse to a joyous mutual discovery. Often new members experience anger and shock when the real costs of community life become apparent, and religious communities are in difficult transitions to new models of life. Different types of persons are entering and try-ing their vocation. Having left the novitiate eighteen years earlier, I was just a few days short of my forty-sixth birthday when I was re-received as a postulant in my community in the United States. The age restriction was waived because of my prior connection with the com-munity. Since I joined in 1997, four more men have tried their vocation. All but one were even older than I was. Some of these challenges are peculiar to the mindset of liberal Americans or unique to my own emotional makeup and quirks. New members in conservative com-munities or communities of the third world might expe- 65.1 2006 Clearg/ ¯ Challenges for Communities' New Members 32, rience only a few of these, or not in the same way. Interestingly, communities following a conservative rule and communities of the third world are attracting the most new members. ¯ Age Disparities: Although today's novices may be older than the novices of earlier generations, they are still entering communities where most members are at least twenty-five years older than the new members. ¯ Work Experience: New members have generally had one or more careers and generally outside the religious world. A community may have members who have never had paid employment or have never paid into any pen-sion plans, private or public. This may result in con-flicting valuations of the new members' worth and contribution. ¯ Nationality/Culture: A religious house may consist of members from many nations and cultures. New mem-bers may find that they are minorities in houses within their own native country and may encounter members who lack understanding of the language and culture of the very nation where they are living. In other words, new members may find themselves aliens inside the com-munity and natives only when they are on the other side of the front door. ¯ Relationship Experience: New members generally have had emotional relationships or been married or in partnership before joining the community. Older mem-bers have seldom had such experiences and so may approach communication and relationships differently. Members who have not had mature adult relationships before entering the community may have a tendency to adolescent humor and may be unable to "fight fairly and cleanly." ¯ Big Fish in Little Ponds: Some new members may have had executive careers or may have exercised signif- Review for Religious icant power in education, health, law, politics, or com-merce. Such people may not understand how a long-term member of a religious community can be so incensed over someone putting dishes in the "wrong" place and why that would matter so much. A sister who before joining the community has been responsible for millions of dollars may find it difficult to sit through a lecture on conserving toilet paper. Sometimes the failure of new religious to respond to concerns that seem insignificant leads to a misunderstanding of their motives. One reli-gious told of having said nothing because of hav-ing no opinion about a small matter and then being accused of "holding out for the main chance" by a senior member. In reality the younger religious was unlikely ever to hold an opinion on "the use of antiphons." You may hear in this an echo of Winston Churchill's observation that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low. ¯ Multiculturalism and Multifaitb Experience: Newer members generally have a broader experience of other cultures and faiths and often incorporate elements from them into their own spirituality. Older members usually have begun and continued on a path of traditional Euro- American Christianity. They may disparage or discount the religious experiences or practices of new members, who often have exercised great discipline in their spiri-tual lives for years before joining the community. ¯ Neocolonialism: Much of the growth of religious Somet!mes the failure qf new retigious to respond ,to concerns t~at seem insignificant leads: ~io a misunderstanding of their ,mot, ives. 6Y. 1 2006 Clear)/ ¯ Challenges for Communities' New Members communities with which I am familiar has taken place in countries of the third world. As often as not, how-ever, leadership and finances are in the hands of members of the first world. One of the most peculiar anecdotes of neocolonialism occurred in America. English mem-bers who had been transferred to the United States sub-jected a new religious of American citizenship and Irish descent to ethnic slurs and disrespect. Ironically, when this religious spent time in another country, he received abuse from a fellow religious in his host country for being an American. You do not have to live in the third world to experience tribalism. ¯ Diminisbment of Citizenship: One religious observed that, when on assignment out of her native country, she had to ask permission to return to her home country. The irony is that the decision making was shared by for-eign residents who had never acquired citizenship in the country to which they were not permitting the native-born citizen to return. ¯ Disempowerment: No matter how communities pre-sent and sugarcoat the need for the probation and test-ing of new members, the fact is that new members are disempowered for a number of years. Voting rights might not be earned or granted until years after entrance into the community. Conversely, some communities allow full voting rights tO life-members for their lifetime, no matter their debility or their being out of touch. ¯ Prior Debts: Some new members enter communities with unpaid education debts that have to be paid even-tually. How doe~ the community approach this issue? One community allowed new members to live in'a com-munity house rent-free before being received as postu-lants so that they could continue in employment and thereby manage to pay their debts. Other communities have simply told their aspirants to postpone their voca- Review for Religious tions until all debts were paid. These communities rarely saw those aspirants again. ¯ Preexisting Families: The spirit of the times no longer holds that religious are dead to family and friends. Some new members may still have obligations to aging parents or to children or grandchildren. I chuckle at the recollection of a mother superior exclaiming after a string of widows applied for entrance into her community, "Aren't there any virgins left in America?" One com-munity in the United States had a creative approach to assisting new members who still had some family obli-gations. All new members were given educational loans that did not have to be repaid if the member were life-professed for a certain number of years. In one situation a new member was allowed to use the loan for court-ordered child support. ¯ Financial Identity: Most vocations do not survive into life profession. New members would be severely handicapped if they were to reenter the world with an impaired credit rating. Can the community tolerate the new member's keeping a credit card? The vow of poverty might have to be applied differently among community members. Perhaps differing applications of poverty within the same community are not such a new idea at all. ¯ Decay of Professional Qualifications: Some new mem-bers enter community with outstanding professional qualifications that require continuing education. Recent new members of one community have included a physi-cian, chiropractor, attorney, andparalegal. Failure to maintain those professional qualifications means that new members might lose that qualification o.r, if they leave community, find it difficult to return to their prior career or to their prior salary level. ¯ Health: Newer members are not only younger than the majority of the community, but are generally in much 65.1 2006 Cleary ¯ Challenges for Communities' New Menzbers 36 better health. Frequently that better health is due to memberships in gyms or health clubs. What is the com-munity's commitment to the new members' health reg-imen, especially if they are going to be looked to for doing a large share of physical work? ¯ Secret Customaries: Often it appears that there is a "secret customary" that is not available to new members. Sometimes it is merely poor communication. Other times it is simply a way of older members' maintaining power by asserting that a certain way of doing things is house or community custom. This is a form of manipulation by esoteric knowledge. ¯ The Rule: One novice guardian opined to me that older members usually oppressed the new members on those sections of the Rule of which the older members were least observant. On the other hand, older members have felt harried by new members who took on the role of Brother "Living Rule." As the old saying goes in reli-gious communities, "Wherever you have saints you will have martyrs." ¯ Survivors: Many of the older members of commu-nities are survivors of religious and cultural wars. New members, too, have fought the battles of inclusivity, litur-gical reform, gender, sexual orientation, hierarchy, and so forth, but not in the same way as the older members, and so the new members might not bear the same scars or have the same invested positions. The new members might not be aware of the cost the community has paid for a position. The older members may not realize that the struggle has moved to new fronts or past previously adopted positions. ¯ Loss of Disposable Time and Personal Space: New members frequently have to give up the freedom of dis-posable time and larger accommodations. Often new members have lived alone in housing that they did not Review for Religious share with anyone. Living in close quarters is a major adjustment for new members. I had to get used to using headphones with my CD player. ¯ Peers: New members, with few peers in the novi-tiate, lack the mutual support which they and their lay friends once had and which older religious had as novices. My noviceship was a particularly lonesome time. ¯ Wages and Support: With more of the community entering retirement, there is greater pressure for the new members to support the older members financially. New members are sometimes annoyed at being pressured to find full-time employment and encouraged to find sec-ular employment if the pay is better while some older members are working part-time or only started to con-tribute much money to the community when they began receiving pensions. There is further annoyance that members may bring in a vital salary but have no vote on how the money is used. It has happened that a current bad financial situation was caused by the incompetence or negligence of a prior generation, and then new mem-bers bringing in salaries were expected to assist in the bailout. ¯ Full-time Employment: Many religious, especially younger religious, now have to hold full-time jobs. The community still expects them to participate in commu-nity functions, retreats, and chapters. The only time available might be their vacation time. Physical and spir-itual exhaustion are common results. Sometimes the only compensated employment open to new members is sec-ular employment. They might wonder why they sacri-ficed so much only to find that religious ministry is not available or will not fill the .community's income needs or expectations. ¯ Lost Vocation and Still in Community: Perhaps the saddest members of religious communities are those 65.1 2006 Cleary ¯ Challenges for Comntunities' New Members The religious life is a voluntary choice, but still there is a loss of family, friends, status, and autonomy. 38 members who have essentially lost their vocation. They would like to leave their community, but economic con-venience, advancing age, and fears of adapting to a changed world while losing their vocational self-esteem make them choose to stay. Their bitter or sullen presence disheartens everyone. These members are often a terror to new members arriving with belief, motivation, and fresh ideas. The new members represent what the sullen members have lost and thus become objects of spite. ¯ Pecking Order: New members have the least power. For senior members who process their anger or frustra-tion by petty acts of spite, the new members are the nat-ural prey. Then there is enough pain to go around for everybody. ¯ Isolating the Complainers: It is destructive when severely damaged members of the community are allowed to create environ-ments that are emotionally and sometimes physically unsafe. This behavior may go on for years without challenge because the other members are paralyzed with fear. Newer members who challenge the behavior are sometimes told that they are the ones with emotional problems and need to be "more community minded and charitable." I have seen three communities where former superiors were severely oppressed by dam-aged members. In one case, a former superior simply left the local community rather than raise the issue. What caused them to collude in their own oppression? ¯ Grief, Loss, and Anger: All new members are going through a period of grief and loss and possibly anger at Review for Religious their changed situations. The religious life is a voluntary choice, but still there is a loss of family, friends, status, and autonomy. What are the tools to process the transi-tion? How can new members communicate the extent of their loss to members who may never have had the same degree of freedom or experience in their lay life? * Legal Rights: Religious communities are expected to adhere to the civil and criminal statutes of the nations in which they live and work. Often this means certain expectations regarding privacy and protection that were not present in an earlier era. Violations could result in civil penalties or even in lawsuits from disgruntled for-mer members. Some courts in the United States are look-ing at the relationship between members and their communities in the light of employment law with all the obligations that entails. ¯ Conflicting Ethics: Before entering my community, I had been employed as a paralegal with a specialization in tax law. I was sometimes astonished by financial shenanigans I witnessed in churches and religious com-munities. It seemed that some religious or church author-ities believed they were not subject to the same ethical and legal obligations of other nonprofit corporations. If anything, the secular world showed a higher standard of ethics. Communities or institutions that were finally caught by government or church authorities have some-times received an expensive lesson in the ethics from which they thought themselves exempt. No number, however, can be put on people's loss of trust in religious bodies to which they had looked for a higher level of ethics and honor than they expect from the secular world. ¯ Minefields: New members cannot be aware of exist-ing interpersonal dynamics of the community. Some have reported stumbling into personality conflicts that had been going on for decades. Others have reported that 65.1 2006 Clear)/ ¯ Cballenges for Communities' New Members 4O differences of opinion among older members about for-mation methods resulted in new members' bearing the animosity of the losing side. ¯ Infantilization: When you are put in the position of having to ask for permission, of having your future decided by others, of having to please others at some level in order to be accepted, and of giving up much of your personal power, you have to a degree been infan-tilized. A formation director told me he believes that some infantilization of new members helps to surface immature elements of their personalities that can then be worked on. I was left with the impression that this was wishful thinking. A topic came up in the workshop that was not part of my original paper. People agreed that they had all expe-rienced instances of anger and depression due to the sit-uations described above. Many said they were conflicted because they felt their anger was somehow wrong, even though probably justified on a number of levels. Guilt haunted and paralyzed them. What could they do about these feelings of guilt? Unfortunately, this could not be dealt with in a ninety-minute workshop that was already rich in content. One Of my teachers, a Buddhist, once told me that he frequently contrasted the views of anger held by two religious leaders of great experience and deep insight. Pope John Paul II is said to have written, "I try not to get angry." The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, "I try not to stay angry." These two approaches are perhaps valuable in tandem. On a personal note, a friend of mine once observed that, when it comes to anger, I may be unlucky in being of Irish and German descent. He said, "Irish and German: burn fast and burn long!" I try to bring that thought to mind when humor seems a remedy. Communities can be hard on their new members. The reverse is also true. A life-professed member of my Review for Religious community once said of a newly arrived postulant, "Ah! Another brother sent by God to test my vocation!" While serving as the curator of one of California's historic mis-sions, I was shown a document describing brothers not speaking to each other, undermining each other's min-istry, taking sides, complaining to religious and secular authorities, and showing every sign of advanced dys-functionality. Recent situation in one's own house? But this description pertained to the Franciscan mission in San Francisco in the 1790s. The more things change, the more they remain the same. One of my more insight-ful Jesuit teachers once asked a brother what gospel med-itation came to mind when he thought about community. He responded with apparent pain, "The agony in the garden of Gethsemane." Thomas Merton had his own difficult experiences with his abbot. St. John of the Cross was imprisoned by his community. We have all been there--usually the imprisonment is emotional. Where and what is the key to freedom? What miracle will bring healing and resurrection? We have a duty to speak the truth to our communities and work for the maturing of us all in Christ, even though we might not see any change in the behaviors that sadden, oppress, or anger us. A wise priest was counseling a young religious who was having a frightening time with his community and was trying to make the community see things from his perspective. After listening patiently and acknowledging the brother's wounds, he said, "Brother, you have assumed that the brothers you are struggling with are suddenly going to smack their foreheads and say, 'Oh my goodness! I never realized that! You are sooo right, and we are going to change our wicked ways.' Brother, you have assumed a level of health that is not in them. What are you doing to grow your own spiritual and emo-tional maturity?" Sometimes a person just has to outlive 65.1 2006 Cleary ¯ Challenges for Communities' New Members a situation. My bishop once told me that there is a say-ing in New Zealand among the Maori people: "Question: How do you get even with your komatua [tribal elder] ? Answer: Outlive him!" It reminds me of a Southern proverb in the United States, "Change comes by funer-als." I wanted to conclude this essay with some pithy wis-dom that would have universal application and solve all ills. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we Anglicans are bet-ter at the questions than the answers. As I was thinking out this section, I was on a long walk on a late summer day in New Zealand. The Maori name for this country is Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud. Our sky was true to its namesake with billowing white clouds in a flawless blue sky. My ears were full of the soaring con-clusion to Rachmaninov's Second Symphony coming from my CD player. My problems with my community, my community's problems, and my problems are still in place. But there is something greater at work that is soar-ing and unfolding within me. I pray that it is my faith, my hope, and hopefully my love that are growing and mak-ing community possible and actual both for me and those who have agreed to let me join my life to theirs. Review for Religious ROSEMARY STETS A Spirituality of Surrender A Jesuit's Story In 1964 Walter J. Ciszek, a Jesuit priest who had been ordained almost thirty years earlier to be a missionary in Russia, returned to the United States with an unbelievable story of faith and deliverance. In 1939 World War II began in Eastern Europe, and in 1941 Father Ciszek's mis-sion was cut short when Russian police arrested him and kept him in Lubianka Prison for five years, mostly in solitary confinement. Accused of being a Vatican spy, he was interrogated, beaten, forced to sign a false confession, and sen-tenced to fifteen years at hard labor. Sent to labor camps in Siberia, he secretly began a priestly ministry to fellow prisoners, men and women near despair in the inhumane conditions. During these years he lost all contaEt with his family and the Society of Jesus, but he never lost hope or faith in God's providence and protection. In a Rosemary Stets OSF is vice president for mission and ~nin-istry at Alvernia College; 400 Saint Bernardine Street; Reading, Pennsylvania 19607. inspiration 6Y.I 2006 Stets ¯ A Spirituality of Surrender A Jesuit's Story Father Walter could see all life's ~circumstances not just at eye level, but from a higher plane-- a position ofgrace and surrender. kind of miracle, through the efforts of his family and fel-low Jesuits working with the U.S. government, he was finally released from Russia and arrived in New York as a free man, a hero, beginning a mission in his homeland. When Father Ciszek returned to the United States, he was in relatively good health, considering all the hard-ship and suffering he had endured during his long years of captivity in Siberia. He was almost sixty years old, but still an active and fit man, writing books, giving retreats, travel-ing to parishes across the country, and meet-ing groups who invited him to speak about his life and his spirituality. He had always been a strong man, and he embraced his new life with energy and excite-ment. His correspon-dence was voluminous, and the phone calls were endless. Since Father Ciszek had two sisters in my congregation, he often visited our convents, sharing his personal spiritual journey with us and inviting many of us to continue the conversations. That was the beginning of my personal friendship with him, which lasted until his death in 1984. Shortly after his return, along with the ever increas-ing demands on his time for talks and retreats, Father Walter began writing his autobiography With God in Russia. A few years later he wrote another book, He Leadetb Me, this one emphasizing the spiritual struggles of his journey, In just a few years he had more commit-ments than he could manage, but kept working. A decade Review for Religious later he suffered two major heart attacks and his health began to fail. . During the last decade of his life he had to modify his schedule and pace at a time when, because of his books and his media appearances, he was probably in greater demand than ever. These restrictions frustrated him because of his deep compassion for others and his gen-erosity toward all who sought his advice and spiritual counsel. But ultimately the changes required by his declining health led him to the spirituality of surrender. Change, it seems, is something most of us greet with reluctance, especially if we are comfortable or content with the way things are in the present. We like to feel that we are "in control" and that things are going well, or going the way we want them to go. And so we are jarred and unnerved when our world turns upside down, overwhelms us, makes us feel helpless. One day, as his health became worse and his sched-ule was accordingly being reduced, Father Walter shared with me during a telephone conversation some of his spiritual response at this difficult time. This was not unusual, for Father Walter moved easily from the natu-ral to the supernatural, and he could see all life's cir-cumstances not just at eye level, but from a higher plane--a position of grace and surrender. As he spoke, I was suddenly inspired to make some notes on the conversation, writing down his words and phrases, listening intently and trying to capture the essence of what he was saying. Afterwards I took the lit-tle scrap of paper with the words I had written and put it in my daily prayer book. As I read the words over and over, I realized they were like prayers themselves, but something more. Whenever I felt overcome by the frus-trations of life, by anger, by annoyance with others, or by sudden dark moods like a summer storm on a lake, I 6Y.I 2006 Stets ¯ A Spirituality of Surrender--A Jesuit's Story ,46] would turn to those words for.comfort and strength. A profound peace would return after I entered fully into the spirit of what I was reading. It seemed that chains fell away from my heart. It was as if a door opened, a prison door that had kept me confined and helpless. I felt joy return. My heart felt light again. It was not just a mental understanding, not just a letting go in my mind, but a sense of surrender which lifted my spirit out of the darkness and into a place of spiritual light. As I surren-dered to God in this prayer, I would sense that I was united with Jesus in his abandonment in the garden. I believe I was united.with God's will in those nanosec-onds. A "yes" to the Father was a leap of faith to a new place. It would give me strength to begin a new task, a natural and spontaneous freedom to let go and move on. It would amaze me: the peace was palpable. Many years ago I shared this story with a friend who was going through a difficult struggle, and she was so moved by the simplicity and peace of the words I had jot-ted down that she asked for a copy. I typed it on a small card, calling it the Prayer of Surrender. We soon were mak-ing more copies and giving them to other friends, who also grew to love and value this prayer, Several years later, after the cause for Father Walter Ciszek's canonization had been opened, I sent my notes, letters, and writings about Father Walter to the Prayer League charged with organizing the materials for his cause. The postulator found the Prayer of Surrender in my notes and decided to distribute it through the Prayer League. This is the prayer that has become my daily bread, the prayer I offer to everyone who is desperate for God's help, going under, barely hanging on. It is a prayer filled with wisdom. It does not remove our suffering, but rather it gives us the courage to accept it without anger or fear. Saying the prayer .during times of intense suffering can Review for Religious be difficult, almost heroic, but each time it enables me to emerge whole, strong, and at peace. Father Walter expe-rienced great suffering in his life, in his long sojourn in Russia and in many trying moments that circled his life like a crown of thorns--and like the pains, humiliations, loneliness, and losses that afflict us all. But suffering was also his banner of glory, uniting him to Jesus, who endured everything for us out of love, the love that saved the world. The Prayer of Surrender is Father Waiter's gift to all of us, a moment of grace remembered and passed on to those who love him, cherish his memory, and seek to understand with him that surrender to God's provi-dence is the way to sublime joy, the grand freedom of finding God in all things. Prayer of Surrender Lord, Jesus Christ, I ask the grace to accept the sad-ness in my heart as your will for me, in this moment. I offer it up, in union with your sufferings, for those who are in deepest need of your redeeming grace. I surrender myself to your Father's will, and I ask you to help me to move on to the next task that you have set for me. Spirit of Christ, help me to enter into a deeper union with you. Lead me away from dwelling on the hurt I feel, to thoughts of charity for those who need my love, to thoughts of compassion for those who need my care, and to thoughts of giving yo those who need my help. As I give myself to you, help me to provide for the salvation of those who come to me in need. May I find my healing in this giving. May I always accept God's will. May I find my true self by living for others in a spirit of sacrifice and suffering. May I die more fully to myself, and live more fully in you. As I seek to surrender to the Father's will, may I come to trust that he will do everything for me. Amen. 6Y.1 2006 GIOVANNI ZEVOLA Two Mysteries in One: Implications for Ministry 48 All who are involved in ministry would say that the Bible is a source of strength for their own spirituality and for their pastoral ministry. Biblical themes support our dedication, our zeal, our commitment to people and situations demanding attention and care. In this article I will show that the Bible is not only a source of texts to use in particular circumstances of the ministry,~ but also a pure and continuous fount of spiritual life especially for the those in pastoral ministry. Biblical themes and figures of the Old and New Testament are familiar to pastoral caregivers, and we all may have heartfelt favorites in our own spiritual life. For the various situations that may occur in pastoral care, some biblical figures and themes have special pertinence. For example, the Exodus experience, Samuel's vocation, the social concerns in the prophetic literature, Zacchaeus's desire to see Jesus, and the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary can be signs "of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim people of God" (Lumen gentium, §68). Giovanni Zevola OMI continues doing apostolic work in South Korea. His address is 196-51 Yuhyun Dong; Kang Nam Ku; Seoul 135-210; South Korea. Review for Religious Mary can be considered from different points of view, and the few passages of the New Testament where she is mentioned can be sources for understanding our role as disciples and cooperators in the economy of salvation. One meaningful passage is the Visitation recorded in Luke 1:39-56. The verse "During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah" motivated my vocation many years ago. I joined a missionary congregation to dedicate myself to a life of service, and that verse still inspires my life and commitment to the poor. Through the years Mary's attitude of service has informed my spirit, and new insights have helped me grow spiritually and as a human being. The words "she went as quickly as she could" caught my attention and fostered my desire to share with others my sense of the presence of God in my life. I was convinced that, like Mary, we should not keep our own Annunciation for ourselves, but should share it with others through what we do--and doing what we do without delay, "in haste." Mary is the perfect disciple who shares her Master's concerns, values, and attitudes. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus is presented on the scene right away, being baptized by John and proclaiming "The time (kairos) has come," there has to be no delay. Jesus is shown to be in a constant hurry, particularly in chapter one, where it is interesting to note the Greek word euthus. Immediately the Spirit descends on him (1:10) at the baptism. Immediately the Spirit drives him out into the desert (1:12). Simon and Andrew leave their nets at once and follow him (1:18). Immediately he calls James and John (1:20). As soon as the Sabbath comes, he goes to the synagogue to teach, and just then performs a miracle (1:23). His reputation rapidly spreads everywhere (1:28), and he goes straight to cure Peter's mother-in-law (1:29). 6Y.1 2006 Zevola ¯ Two Mysteries in One the force of God's grace : brought to: her in the Annuncia ion,,qnd she becomes a messenger " ff good new.s. In the Visitation, Mary shares Christ's attitude. There is an urgency in proclaiming the good news she has just received through the angel. In Luke 1:26-38 she is presented as the recipient of God's grace, and she becomes the active subject who cannot contain what she has received. She goes to ' -~'~ share it. (Recall here Paul is surfing by . saying "The love of ~. Christ impels us," 2 Co 5:14.) In Mary we see how a disciple is called to announce that "the time has come": the divine project that God has prepared is coming to its maturation and is being made known, and so there is no more delay. Paul expresses the same idea in Galatians 4:4-5: "Vv'hen the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption." Perhaps I can express all of this in an image. Think of a surfer waiting for a big wave to come in. When the right time comes, he rides it and enjoys the surfing--a combination of ability (human effort) and force of the wave (grace). In Luke 1:39 Mary is surfing by the force of God's grace brought to her in the Annunciation, and she becomes a messenger of good news. "During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah." The wave made by the wind of God's Spirit is for everyone. Every disciple of every age has to surf that wave; in doing so we are blessed. See Romans 10:15: "How beautiful are the feet of those who announce good news," how welcome the Review for Religious sound! The personal relationship we have with God is not something we can keep for ourselves; it is a gift to be shared. God invites us to the communion (koinonia) of those called by his grace. The personal relationships in the life of the Trinity should be reflected in our human relationships. For a pastoral caregiver, contemplation and action go together. The vertical relationship of us with God is connected with our horizontal relationships with one another. We are called to do "contempl-action." At the very beginning of the church, in the upper room where Mary and the other disciples are gathered, this doubleness is already present. They receive the Spirit and share the mission of Jesus to proclaim the Good News. Perhaps we can imagine Mary showing the eleven how to ride this new wave of the Spirit and thereby fulfill Jesus' promise: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judea and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth,' (Ac 1:9). Mary belongs indissolubly to the mystery of Christ, and she belongs also to the mystery of the church from the beginning, from the day of the church's birth. At the basis of what the church has been from the beginning, and of what she must continually become from generation to generation, in the midst of all the nations of the earth, we find the one "who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Lk 1:45).~It is precisely Mary's faith which marks the beginning of the new and eternal covenant of God with man in Jesus Christ; this heroic faith of hers "precedes" the apostolic witness of the church, and ever remains in the church's heart hidden like a special heritage of God's revelation. All those who from generation to generation accept the apostolic witness of the church share in that mysterious inheritance, and in a sense share in Mary's faith. (Redemptoris Mater, §27) 65.1 2006 Zevola ¯ Two Mysteries in One With the inner conviction that Annunciation (experience of God) precedes any Visitation (our apostolate or any form of pastoral care), some years ago I was sent to the Philippines for a missionary experience. What I had received (experience of God through the years of seminary formation) I was ready to share with people in my ministry, and there, through a crisis, God's grace brought a deeper understanding. I could not expect my past experience of God to provide me with enough of what people needed from me. I had to be always open to new Annunciations because we can share only what we have at the moment. My personal contact with the poor (Visitation) was a deeper way for me to experience God. The poor were giving me occasions to take notice of God's Annunciations to me and to receive deeper understandings of them. It was like Mary visiting Elizabeth and, during her time with her, coming to further understanding of the meaning of the Annuciation. She was, in the words of her older cousin, blessed for being mother of the Lord and particularly for her faith in the promise. At this moment the Spirit evokes Mary's Magnificat. Everything was already present at the Annunciation, but comes to light at the Visitation like a seed expressing its vitality gradually. Through my experiences in the Philippines, I came to understand that Annunciation and Visitation are not two separate moments, but only one mystery: the Spirit introducing us into the mystery of Christ. In pastoral care we do not go to others with something already cooked. We might already have the necessary ingredients, but it is the interaction that makes it complete. William Barry says something similar when he considers Jesus interacting with his disciples at Caesarea Philippi (Mt 16:13-20), where Jesus seems to come to a better understanding of his identity: "Could it not be that Jesus needs the disciples' response in order to clarify his Review for Religious own sense of his identity and destiny? . . . Jesus, like any human being, could not establish his identity without the help of others. Looked at in this way, this scene shows that Jesus needs Peter's response to 'confirm' his own sense of mission.''2 Elizabeth does this for Mary, and it is similar for any disciple following in Jesus' footsteps. The Annunciation and Visitation considered as but one mystery show that faith is a journey on which we increasingly come to understand and live the fullness of our vocation. Particularly in Luke, Mary is presented as a woman of reflection upon her life experiences (see Lk 1:29, 2:19, 2:33, and 2:51). In so doing she progresses in faith, like Abraham: Mary's faith can also be compared to that of Abraham, whom St. Paul calls "our father in faith" (see Rm 4:12). In the salvific economy of God's revelation, Abraham's faith constitutes the beginning of the Old Covenant; Mary's faith at the Annunciation inaugurates the New Covenant . Certainly the Annunciation is the culminating moment of Mary's faith in her awaiting of Christ, but it is also the point of departure from which her whole "journey towards God" begins, her whole pilgrimage of faith. (Redemptoris Mater, § 14) This insight invites me to review my tmderstanding of pastoral care and particularly the relationship I establish with the people whom I am called to serve. They are not only the recipients of my attention and commitment, but also my companions on the journey. It is this dimension of faith that gives and renews the strength necessary to be witnesses in caregiving situations and ultimately frees us of the idea that we are the ones fixing problems, that we are the saviors. In fact, our caregiving becomes a kind of school, a place where we learn more about ourselves, other people, and God, who in this school fosters a more intimate relationship with us. The caregiver is also a visitor and guest. The whole history of salvation reads 65.1 2006 Zevola * Two Mysteries in One like a series of moments when God visits his people. Jesus himself was always on the go: "Let us go elsewhere to the neighboring towns." Without any fixed abode, he lives a life of continual visiting. And no sooner is Mary visited from on high than she makes all possible haste to .visit her cousin Elizabeth. She, the visited one, becomes the visitor. There is a missionary dynamic here, for us as well as for Mary. As visitors and guests among those we minister to, we listen differendy, more attentively; we dialogue and tell our stories differently; we become present to others in new ways, ways that make dialogue, shared existence, and even revelation possible. In short, we come empty-handed like Jesus, the vulnerable visitor from heaven, and this can perhaps serve as the reason for our hope. Recently, while working in South Korea (another Visitation), I recognized anew that people are agents of the Spirit inviting me to understand more deeply the message that I would Announce to them. Late in the evening we were driving back to the office after a day visiting the company where Mohamed had had an accident while operating a pressing machine. After a long discussion with the manager, the possibility for this Bangladeshi worker to get insurance was now more concrete. Mohamed and one of his friends invited me to supper in a small restaurant. Suddenly he asked me something that surprised me: "Father, why are you doing this for us?" At first I did not know what to say, because my motivation for the ministry with the foreign workers was something I had not talked about. Finally I said, "My experience of God is at the core of this or any other ministry." I was surprised when Mohamed seemed to agree and reinforce my answer. Mohamed's question had forced me to reconnect theology and ministry as the source and goal of any Review for Religious apostolate. Through reflecting upon our pastoral experience, we learn anew that God's call is the source of our commitment within the church. This led me (Mk 8:14-21) to Jesus, in the boat with his disciples, subtly referring them to his recent feeding of two large crowds and then asking, "Do you still not see or comprehend?. Do you still not understand?" It is theology and ministry together that enable people's faith to recognize God's presence right before their eyes. If ministers focus only on their ministerial activities, they are likely to end up implementing nothing but their own plans and projects. The theological reflection has a double movement, namely, (1) our going to the experience for reflection and (2) coming back for a serene and more objective evaluation. A particular pastoral experience be-comes the stuff for reflecting upon the min-istry that we are involved in. We make a point of noticing that God was present in the experience and how God was present. !t is !heology and ministry together that enable people's faith to recognize, God's presence fright before their eyes. It is in this movement, in the connecting of theology with the experience, that we can "interpret" and "name" the experience lived in faith. The experience thus interpreted and clarified tells more than we originally expected: our experience enriches our theology. Theology and pastoral care, encountering each other in the pastoral experience, are reciprocally enriched.3 Theology enables us to understand God's presence as continuing through time, like the continuing mystery of the incarnation. Pastoral care gives us the here and now in which we can readily find the divine presence revealing itself. 6Y. 1 2006 Zevola ¯ Two Mysteries in One The theological reflection adds depth to the richness of the experience, which otherwise might be quickly forgotten. On the other hand, pastoral care gives theological reflection something very real and concrete from which to get a lively idea of God working, working along with us in the human experience. Mary has been for me a model and now is more of a companion in my pilgrimage of faith, reminding me that Annunciation and Visitation are parts of one wonderful mystery. In everything, like Mary, we can give only what we have received. On this truth Henri Nouwen is very explicit: "To help, to serve, to care, to guide, to heal, these words . . . express a reaching out toward our neighbor whereby we perceive life as a gift not to possess but to share." 4 Notes ~ See D. Capps, Pastoral Use and Interpretations of the Bible, in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, ed. R. Hunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), pp. 82-85. 2 See W. Barry, God's Passionate Desire and Our Response (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1993), p. 101. 3 See R. Kinast, Pastoral Theology, Roman Catholic, in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, pp. 873-874. 4 H. Nouwen, Reaching Out (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1986), p. 109. Review for Religious ROBERT P. MALONEY Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited E veryone needs a guiding star, but the stars in the ky are countless. Saints have chosen different ones. Jerome focused on the Scriptures: "Love the Holy Scriptures, and wisdom will love you." Francis of Assisi fixed on God's love in the gifts of creation and the cru-cified Lord, praising God in Brother Sun and Sister Moon and uniting himself with suffering humanity. Vincent de Paul, especially as he grew older, chose sim-plicity, or truthfulness, as the star to guide him to know what to say and do. "It is the virtue I love most," he wrote to a priest-friend, Franqois de Coudray. "It is my gospel," he told the Daughters of Charity, the commu-nity he founded with Louise de Marillac. There are many conte~nporary ways of describing simplicity: authenticity, integrity, genuineness, realness, passion for the truth. In the two sections that follow, I Robert P. Maloney CM, having served for-two terms as superior gen-eral of the Congregation of the Mission, works as project administra-tor for D.R.E.A.M., a joint project of the Community of Sant'Egidio and the Daughters of Charity for combating aids in Africa. His address is Theological College; 401 Michigan Avenue N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017. 6~. 1 2006 Maloney * Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited will focus first on simplicity as "being in the truth" with God, with oneself; with others, and with the created uni-verse surrounding us. Then I will discuss combining the simplicity of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Simplicity as "Being in the Truth" There is a wonderful freedom in those who live sim-ply. They project joy and peaceful confidence. One of the most popular hymns in the English-speaking world, Joseph Brackett's "Simple Gifts," began proclaiming in 1848: "'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free." Simplicity involves making God our ultimate concern, identifying our will with what God is asking. Vincent de Paul remarked rather wryly to Louise de Marillac: "How easy it is to become a saint. The only thing necessary is to do the will of God in everything." For simple persons the kingdom of God becomes the focal point of their life, the ideal that integrates all that they are and do. Of course, growth in single-minded-ness before God, in purity of intention, is a lifelong pro-cess. Our sinfulness continually interrupts our unity with God's purposes. Limited objectives like self-promotion easily distract us from our single-minded pursuit of God's kingdom; even worse, they may substitute for it. In our sinful condition, we are never able to pull our lives together into a perfect opus, finished once and for all. Even those who seem to have done so fall often, some-times badly. Our final integrity comes only from God's forgiving, healing love. It is a gift. In commenting on the simplicity and purity of inten-tion that he had witnessed in the Shaker tradition, Thomas Merton once wrote, "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by some-one capable of believing that an ~ngel might come and sit on it." That sentence is surely worth meditating on. In Review for Religious religious life, many helps have been offered for being in the truth with God: the daily Eucharist, daily mental prayer, and daily examination of conscience are among the most prominent. Human beings are social beings. Human relation-ships are not just an add-on. They make us who we are, forming us gradually. Having friends, falling in love, building a family, joining a community, being part of a nation, an institution, a movement--all these forms of union with others are possible only if there is truth-filled communication. In fact, the English word truth is related etymologi-cally to trust, faithfulness, covenant. Older English-speaking readers may recall the now archaic marriage o tr thfut-reiationships ' with others; implicity - ;:, :haS,its:most: obvious meaning: hoheStg: promise: "I plight unto thee my troth,", which we might translate today as: "I pledge to you my truth (my word, my trust, my commitment)." In fact, we still speak of a promise to marry as "betrothal." In truthful relationships with others, simplicity has its most obvioias meaning: honesty. Trust in the word of another is the condition for life together, for friendship, marriage, community, business ventures, and all sorts of other relationships. Lies bring about the disintegration of communities, the fracture of marriages, the downfall of governments. Lies are not just verbal; they may be present in actions. Marriages collapse through infidelity. Families break down through covert, competing interests. Friendships unravel through secret betrayal. Being in the truth keeps people together; falsehood tears us apart. To put it tersely, simplicity unites; duplicity divides. 6Y.I 2006 Maloney ¯ Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited 6O Necessary as it is, speaking the truth with consis-tency in religious life is difficult. We are tempted to blur the truth for our own convenience or to avoid being embarrassed. It is difficult to be enduringly true to our word when circumstances change. In the present our statements are true or false right then and there, but, when we make a commitment for the future, it is true only if we keep it true. Truth is fidelity. It is especially in this sense that Jesus is true to us. He promises to be, and is, with us always, even to the end. We too are called to be true in this way--to vows, to friendships, and to our commitments to serve. Thomas Merton once wrote: "We make ourselves real by telling the truth." The truth at the core of each human person strives to emerge. When we express the truth, we construct and reveal our true self. When we distort the truth, we damage not just our relationship with others, but the center of our own being too. Being in the truth with our own self is, of course, vitally related to being in the truth with God and being in the truth with others. BUt our own truth is nevertheless distinctive. There is a distinctive giftedness, a personal vocation from God, that we may not renounce, but must treasure. Simplicity calls us to integrity, authenticity. But, as we journey in quest of personal wholeness, most of us expe-rience our own fracturedness. We sense inner contra-dictions, a broken center, cracks in our personality; sometimes we fall apart. Philosophy, psychology, and sociology have described polarities that people sense within themselves: body/mind, feeling/thinking, heart/ head, unconscious/conscious. Being true to oneself is not as easy as it might seem. Accurate self-knowledge is rare, as Robert Burns elo-quently noted: "O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! / It wad frae mony a blun- Review for Religious der free us, / An' foolish notion: / What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, / An' ev'n devotion!" Knowing oneself accurately is essential in life. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed: "You cannot write anything about yourself that is more truthful than you yourself are. That is the difference between writing about yourself and writing about external objects. You write about yourself from your own height. You don't stand on stilts or on a ladder but on your bare feet." Regular confession and the relationship we call "spir-itual direction" are very important means toward self-knowledge. A perceptive confessor or spiritual guide can be a mirror, reflecting back to us what we are not able to see on our own. Speaking the truth is especially impor-tant in such relationships. We choose a "soul friend" so that, with his or her help, we may grow in the Lord's life and in discerning those things which promote God's kingdom. It is imperative, therefore, that this relationship be characterized by free self-disclosure and by the avoid-ance of "hidden corners" in our lives. We need others to echo back to us what is happening or not happening on our journey toward the Lord. The quality of spiri-tual guidance will depend largely upon the simplicity with which we disclose ourselves. Philosophers and theologians have recognized from the earliest times that human existence is inseparable from matter. We are not pure spirit, but have bodies. The philosopher Merleau-Ponty reminds us: "I am my body." We are also related to and dependent on the earth. In a certain sense, as Genesis suggests in the creation story, we come from the earth. Food, water, air, sunshine, and other elements are nutrients of our human existence. Consequendy, if we are to be in truth with God as the Creator, with ourselves as incomplete beings, and with others, we must also be in truth with the created uni- 65.1 2006 Maloney * Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited verse that is our home. In other words, being fully human involves caring for the earth. In broader terms it means caring for the surrounding universe, whose proportions are staggering and even incomprehensible to us. We do not yet have a comprehensive ecological the-ology, but some of its foundation stones are quite visible and have been set for centuries in Christian tradition: ¯ the presence of God in all creation; ¯ the goodness of all that God has made; ¯ God's providence in accompa-nying history and ongoing creation; ¯ the gratitude, won-der, contemplation, and care for God's gifts that people have as a response to God's gifts. Those who live close to the land often see its impor-tance more vividly than others. When in 1851 the pres-ident of the United States, Franklin Pierce, proposed to buy two million acres of land from the Indian tribes around Puget Sound in the present state of Washington, Chief Seattle (after whom the state's principal city is named) reacted. His famous reflections from the 1850s, about which some historians raise doubts, are neverthe-less a most eloquent environmental statement: Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist on the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experiences of my people . We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony and man--all belong to the same family. We will consider your offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us. This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you the land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is ~acred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my peo-l~ eview for Religious pie. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father . You must teach your children that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. These words were prophetic. Polluted rivers, con-taminated air, and depleted forests rank high among the problems of modern society. In this matter, as in many others, immediate gratification often wins out over long-range goals. But when the environment is neglected, society pays a heavy price, with the poor suffering most. In many places where religious missionaries serve, eco-logical deterioration adds to the crushing burdens of the neediest of the needy. The Simplicity of the Dove and the Prudence of the Serpent Even for those with a bright guiding star, Christian living is filled with paradoxes: initiative/obedience, flex-ibility/ stability, listening/advising, animating/directing, creativity/humility, trusting/planning, serving/govern-ing, simplicity/prtidence. Matthew's Gospel recognizes that the simplicity of the dove must cohabit, in the same person, with the prudence of the serpent. And in life people's common sense and prudence quickly teach them that they cannot simply speak the unabashed truth at all times. Experience teaches us that virtues like truthful-ness, charity, and respect for the privacy and good name of others at times "compete" with one another. In moments of apparent conflict, prudence enables us to balance and blend such competing virtues. Over the centuries moral theologians have written volumes on the dilemmas that arise in the context of truth-telling. Below I simply offer a few reflections on three of the most common moral dilemmas that reli-gious and all those committed to truth-telling face. 6L 1 2006 Maloney * Truth: Religioux Simplicity Revisited Growing in love involves penetrating to the ddep truth of the beloved, Truth derives from God. It is related to beauty. But the expression of "truths" can sometimes be ugly, cold, arro-gant, and angry. Declarations like "I'm just telling you the truth!" can be a facile excuse for harsh words or an escape valve for pent-up rage. In the Christian tradition truth and love are inseparable. Growing in love involves penetrating to the deep truth of the beloved, coming to understand others not just on the surface but deep down. Likewise, growing in truth involves moving toward deeper communion, overcoming dif-ferences, "looking for the larger truth that embraces my little truth and that of the other," as Timothy Radcliffe reminds us. There is a delicate interplay between mind and heart in the search for truth. For those with a highly intellectual formation, Pascal's corrective can be helpful: "The heart has its rea-sons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things." Antoine de Saint-Exup~ry in The Little Prince expresses the same conviction: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The problem is that we sometimes use "the truth" to massacre others. Under the pretext of being sincere, we destroy truth with "the truth." In a striking essay, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was himself a martyr for the truth, wrote as follows: If it is detached from life and from its reference to the concrete other person, if "the truth is told" with-out taking into account to whom it is addressed, then this truth has only the appearance of truth, but it lacks its essential character. Review for Religious It is only the cynic who claims "to speak the truth" at all times and in all places to all people in the same way, but who, in fact, displays nothing but a lifeless image of the truth. He dons the halo of the fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowance for human weaknesses; but, in fact, he is destroying the living truth between persons. He wounds shame, des-ecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the com-munity in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which "cannot bear the truth." We must learn to speak the truth while taking other truths into account: the dignity of other persons, their human weakness and ours as well, the love that must characterize all Christian relationships. Our statement of a truth must blend with these other truths. Speaking the truth is therefore.a delicate art rather than a blunt instrument. Very early in life we learn that it is sometimes harm-ful to tell the truth. Our parents teach us as children that some personal and family matters are private; others have no right to know about them. As we grow up, friends begin to entrust secrets to us. As problems arise in our own lives, we ourselves sense the need to talk with some-one, but only on the condition that what we say is kept utterly confidential. These universal human experiences have given rise to a whole body of ethical and legal liter-ature concerning truth-telling, secrecy, and confidential-ity. Confessors and spiritual directors, doctors and nurses, psychiatrists and counselors, lawyers, secretaries, jour-nalists, and many others are bound, in varying circum-stances and within various limits, to professional secrecy. Paradoxically, we have a moral obligation to tell the truth, but we sometimes have a moral obligation not to tell the truth. This is often the case in religious life, where others frequently entrust us with matters of con- 6Y.1 2006 MMoney ¯ Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited ,66 science and where there are also many "family matters" that are private and should remain within the community. So how does one protect private, even "sacred" truths? Silence, of course, is often the most effective method. In some cases, in the face of inappropriate inquiries, we may be able to communicate, with a combination of gen-tleness and firmness, the delicacy of our situation: "I am sorry, I am not really free to talk about that. I hope you understand." Sometimes, too, with a little bit of inge-nuity, we may say something that some or all recognize as good.humoredly evasive. But for centuries philosophers and theologians have pointed out that there are situations where silence or evasion simply make matters worse and where the right course seems to be to dissemble the truth. To resolve such moral dilemmas, Thomists, defining moral truth as correspondence between what we think and what we say, used the "broad mental reservation." Others, defining truth in relational terms (communication of what is in one's mind to someone who has a right to know), per-mitted "false speech" when utterly necessary to put off those who have no right to know. Neither theory is ideal. Each, in fact, has notable weaknesses. But both recognize that at times there is a moral obligation to "protect" the truth and to put off importunate, inappropriate inquiries, even by misleading the inquirer. In the end, strange though it may seem, one must "learn" to tell the truth. Each word has its own place, its own time, its own audience. Much depends on who is calling me to speak and what entitles me to speak. One of the most poignant, and wise, lines in American liter-ature is what Hester Prynne says to her daughter, Pearl, in The Scarlet Letter (chapter 22): "Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl. We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest." Review for Religious Statements involve a relationship with the person being addressed and at times also with third parties. The truth-teller respects those relationships and maintains them. The nosey inquirer seeks to violate truth and intrude on relationships that truth fosters carefully. It is important to learn how to put such inquirers off, and to put them off well. Truths not only have their time, their place, and their proper audience; they have their own particular peda-gogy. Certain truths have their "moment" in history. Victor Hugo once pointed out that, when an idea's time has come, not even armies can resist it. But, until that time, "new" truths enter most minds and hearts slowly. As mothers and fathers instinctively know, the wise teacher must often wait for the right moment and the right place. I once gave a rather pacifist-sounding con-ference to a group of college students, who loved it. A few days later I gave the same conference to a parish group, which hated it. The time and place were almost the same, but I learned rather painfully that a new audi-ence often requires a new pedagogy. How to present the truth is the key question. This question becomes all the more important as we grow in consciousness that our goal in speaking is not merely the transmission of data but communication and commu-nion in the truth. From that perspective pedagogy is not just a clever means of packaging a "truth" well; rather, it is an integral part of communicating a truth to the other. Emily Dickinson puts it this way: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant. The Truth must dazzle gradually." This lesson is especially important for teachers who think they have done their job when they have lectured for an hour, citing all the facts and uttering all the "truths." But they must ask themselves whether they have communicated truth or simply uttered it in front 65.1 2006 Malone)/ ¯ Truth: Religious Simplicity Revisited of an inattentive audience. Method is important. Teachers must often reflect not only on the content they wish to communicate, but also on the m~ans for communicat-ing it. The same is true of parents, friends, counselors, and others who must sometimes communicate truths which they know hearers will find it hard to accept. The Greek ~ord for truth, al~theia, means "uncov-ering." Speaking the truth opens us out. What lies within us comes forth. In speaking truthfully we disclose what otherwise remains hidden in our depths. In Greek mythology the goddess of truth puts two pathways before Parmenides: one of uncovering and one of hiding. It is only by "uncovering" that one's true self emerges. The New Testament states this very clearly: "Put on a new self, created in God's image, whose justice and holiness is born of truth" (Ep 4:21). Prayer Reflection Ponder the words of the hymn (perhaps sing it to yourself): Simple Gifts Shaker Hymn Written by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr., in 1848 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, "Twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gain'd, To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd. Review for Religious To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come round right. Group Discussion Share situations where you have found that you are com-promised in telling the truth. What kind qf principles did you use in the situation for your way of acting? The Not-So-Holy Grail The commonest cup may serve. As chalice for the King. Even now he pours the wine Until the heart can hold no more. See the crimson And taste the death That is our life. Teresa Burleson 65.1 2006 DAVID L. FLEMING Sharing God the Ignatian Way I n speaking about God, we each have our own way of rying to express our experience. Christian, non- Christian, Eastern, Western approaches differ and yet often point in directions that move in similar ways towards the same goal--a union or an identifying with God. In this reflection, we are trying to share among our-selves the richness of our experience of God as we have received help from Ignatius Loyola, particularly guided by the experiences of the Spiritual Exercises. There is no doubt that Ignatius has been able to enter us into an experience of God that has some specific characteristics that mark what is now identified as Ignatian spirituality. We need to remember that no Christian spirituality is so unique in its characteristics that we do not find it rooted in the Gospels. But characteristics special to a particular spirituality such as Ignatian include the kind of emphasis given to certain aspects or areas, the intercon-nections of elements, and the vision and imagery that David L. Fleming sJ is editor of this journal. He may be addressed at 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Religious become the vehicle moving this particular spirituality. Let us review some of these characteristics of Ignatian spirituality from our experience. We experience a God of gifts. The Ignatian Principle and Foundation is not presenting just a picturing of a creator God. Ignatius provides a fuller picture. In creat-ing, God has chosen us and gifts us that we might choose God through the means of the gifts that are meant to help us to know and to love God. This God has created a human world of gifts-- all provided for us that we might come to know and love God the better. Of course, with so many gifts provided, we find it necessary to make choices, even in terms of developing and using the personal gifts of talents and abilities that God has given to each one of us. Ignatius brings home to us that life is choice, and our choosing is always directed towards God. What does it mean for us to choose God in return? Do we share the God that gifts us with this responsibility? We experience that God is always trying to speak, to communicate with us, through his gifts. As a lover, God does not just speak words to us, even in Scripture. God acts, and his deeds are his expressions of love for us. Ignatius helps us to make the world transparent so that God and God's love shines through the whole of cre-ation. God is not a silent God. For Ignatius, God is always a God in conversation. Are we people who are attentive to God's communicating with us? Do we share with others our experience of this kind of an intimate God? "For'Ignat the. seven days of creation are all vart of God's .,:presence to,us. .71 65.1 2006 Fleming ¯ Sharing God the Ignatian Way 72] We experience God as One who is active and involved with his world--a busy God. Ignatius does not literally understand the six days of creation with God being very active on each of six days and then on the seventh day resting. So that, for many people, God stayed that way--restingmever since! No, for Ignatius, the seven days of creation are all part of God's presence to us. It is all part of God's Now. When Jesus says, ."My Father works, and I work," Ignatius believes him. The dynamic of creation continues and God works. This God, ever active and working with us and with his world--is this the God we share? We experience God in Jesus inviting us to be with him in his work identified as the coming of the kingdom or the reign of God~ In the Pauline mysterious image of the pleroma we know that God intends a certain fullness or completion to his creation, and we human beings---~e ones he loves--are called to play our part within this movement. Does our praying "Thy kingdom come" inspire us in our response to God's invitation to work with God so that the kingdom shines out through our dealings and activities in our ordinary world? Is our working with God in the vineyard of the kingdom the God we share? We experience a God who waits upon our response to this invitation. Just as God waits upon Mary for her response to God's invitation to allow herself to be his mother, so God waits upon each one of us in a similar way to allow ourselves to bring God's life to the world in which we live. Like Mary, we are to have a growing inti-macy with Jesus, and because of his risen life Jesus desires an intimacy that knows no boundaries. Do we share a God who is patient, long-suffering, who waits, for our hesitant and often waffling response? Do we share a God who delights in intimacy with us? Review for Reli~ous We experience our living and working with God. Working does not take us away from our God since God is a busy God, and, being busy, we are right alongside him. Praying, too, flows naturally in a relationship with .a God who converses in so many ways, if we but learn to listen--as when we take time to pray. And so Ignatius shares with us a union with God in the contemplative action of praying and working. There is a wholeness--a unity--in our life that does not take us away from God. Do we live, like Jesus, as contemplatives in action? Is this the God we share? If, in Ignatian spirituality, these are some of the ways we experience God and are moved to share God with others, we need to observe next how this experience flows into how we act. For Ignatian spirituality is above all caught up in a "way of proceeding." Some spiritual-ities identify themselves with a certain horarium--a daily order of set prayers at certain time, such as the Liturgy of the .Hours, one practice that marks a monastic approach to life. Some spiritualities revolve around cer-tain devotional practices, whether so many rosaries prayed within a day, so many set prayers read or recited, perhaps so many hours spent before the Blessed Sacrament. A "way of proceeding" in Ignatian spirituality does not demand any of these devotional obligations, but it does leave a person free to observe any one of them or any combination of them. Just as the text of the Spiritual Exercises remains free of particular devo-tional practices, so Ignatian spirituality imposes no arti-ficial boundaries: prayer times, prayer styles, amount of prayer, particular devotional practices, certain life styles, or specific jobs or responsibilities. Ignatian spirituality is an adaptable "way of proceeding" in our developing a relationship with God, with others, and with our world. From his experience of God, Ignatius wrote the texts 6Y.I 2006 Fleming ¯ Sharing God the Ignatian Way of both the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. We find that both these texts are "to be used"; they provide us with a way of proceeding. They are written for the purpose of the practice they generate. Both are written, not just as a rule of life or just a description of a good life, but as an invitation to experi-ence what Ignatius calls in the Two Standards prayer exercise "the true life." Jesus re

Issue 58.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1999. ; f 0 r relig i ous Christian Heritages and ,Contemporary Living MAY-JUNE 1999 * VOLUME 58 ¯ NUMBER 3 Review for Religioug is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who J~nd 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, historical, 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 P.O. Box 29260; ~,rashington, D.C. 20017 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN ~5806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1999 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Riehards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Heritages and Contemporary Lfiv~ng MAY-JUNE 1999 * VOLUME58 * NUMBER3 contents 230 251 women religious Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Better the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregations Margaret Susan Thompson suggests that emphasis on "charism" may not be helpful in explaining the ,founding experiences of many women's communities in 19th-century America, and identifies some of the reasons why "deep stow" may be a more usable concept. The Need for Self-Criticism: Affirmative Comments Elizabeth McDonough OP suggests that the time has come for United States religious women to initiate some possibly difficult but genuinely constructive self-criticism and some corrective change of course in various aspects of postconciliar renewal. 261 266 women and the church The Annuario Pontificio: The Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook" and a Recent Editorial Decision Larry N. Lorenzoni SDB updates a bit of history about who are included in the Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook." Women and Canon Law Joan A. Range ASC investigates the extraordinary recent history of women entering the field of canon law. Review for Religious 286 295 mary Five Faces of Mary Robert P. Maloney CM offers five Marian faces as a way of meditating on the rich, varied tradition surrounding the Virgin Mary. The Temple and the Journeying: Mary of Sorrows Joel Giallanza CSC draws directions for our spiritual life's journey from reflecting on the traditional seven sorrows of Mary. 3O5 314 witnessing Blessed Maria Droste: A Good Shepherd Motif in Sacred Heart Spirituality Juliana Devoy RGS tells the story of Blessed Maria Droste, which gives witness to her vision of God's merciful love reflected in Sacred Heart spirituality. Echoes from My Fifty-sixth Annual Retreat Robert F. Drinan sJ shares reflections on God!s grace stirring thoughts and feelings in a retreat. 228 32O 325 departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: Visitation by External Authorities Book Reviews May-.~une 1999 227- Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. --John 14:9 Wean talk about God in some very un-Christian ways. As we "dress up" God in the various cultural and time-bound categories of our human world, we are inevitably limited, in both our reasoning and our imagining. When we get swept up into a highly intellectualized philosophical approach, we find our-selves projecting a vague abstract and sometimes fright-ening power and a childishly understood world. God without a face. Although Jesus lived within human limitations of time and culture, he dared to speak "with authority" about the reign of God in images and parables that tore down the temple curtain of separation to let people catch some glimpses of God that are new. The synoptic Gospels--Mark, Matthew, and Luke--talk of a celebra-tory invitation to a banquet, of a shepherd doggedly searching out a lost sheep, so that we come to know and relate to God with fresh affective response. But the Gospel of St. John stands out as the Gospel of the God revealed to us by Jesus as "Father." Few are the chapters in John's Gospel that do not have explicit reference to God as Father. The qualities of this Father-God tumble out. This God is the God of life: "Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father." Jn 6:44. This is a God who works: "My Father is at work until now, and I am Review for Religious' at work as well" Jn 5:17. This is a God who teaches: "My doctrine is not my own; it comes from him who sent me" Jn 7:16; "I say only what the Father has taught me" Jn 8:28. This is a God who cultivates growth: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower" Jn 15:1. Above all, this God is the one who loves: "The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him" Jn 3:35; "the one who loves me will be loved by my Father"Jn 14:21. In retreat notes published as a book, The Ignatian Exercises in the Light of St. John, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini SJ reflects that a way of considering the Fourth Gospel is to see it as a gospel of prayer, It is prayer not just from people responding to Jesus as we do so often in our prayer lives, but prayer also from Jesus to the one he lovingly calls Abba-Father. From Jesus We learn how we are meant to grow in our relationship with God. And so this Gospel, in teaching a way of relating to God for the mature Christian, is paradoxically the Gospel most insistent in remind-ing us that we are still "children" who have--and who need for our very existence--a Father. We are called, in imitation of Jesus, to relate to a God from whom we have everything--all that we are and all that we would call "our own." This is the God that Jesus describes as the One apart from whose words he himself has nothing to say, the God apart from whose works he has no work to do. As Christian evan-gelizers, then, we need to follow the example of Jesus so that what we say flows from our union with this God. As Christian ministers we need to strive that all our deeds and good works flow from the baptismal grace given by God that makes us all very special children, God's sons and daughters. It is from this God we have come--a Source we call by Jesus' word Father-- and it is to this God we direct our whole life as the One we, with John, identify as Love. If we let the words of St. John enter more deeply into our very being, we will find ourselves being shaped and molded by the reality behind our personally limited understandings of God as Father and God as Love. This is the revealed God of Scripture we seek to know and make known ever better in this year dedi-cated to God the Father. David L. Fleming SJ '229 May-June 1999 MARGARET SUSAN THOMPSON Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Bett@r the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregatigns Since the Second Vatican Council, the term charism increasingly has become associated with the identity, and .even the integrity, of religious congregations.1 Literally dozens of published essays explore the term's meaning and significance~ A substantial number of the community websites created in recent years contain a page about-- or at least an allusion to--the group's "charism," as do postconciliar constitutions, mission statements, and voca-tion paraphernalia. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has not been silent either, particularly during the current papacy. For example, in its 1983 document "Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life 'as Applied to Institutes Dedicated to Works of the Apostolate," the Sacred ~Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes used ~the term ten times, and it shows up a whopping eighty-six times in//Tta con-secrata, John Paul II's apostolic letter in response to the 1994 Synod on Religious Life. . Ironically, the word itself is not: to be found in Perfectae caritatis, the council document which treats the Margaret Susan Thompson PhD has written and lectured extensively on the history of women religious in the United States. She is associate professor of history and political sci-ence at Syracuse University; Department of History; 145 Eggers Hall; Syracuse, New York 13244. Review for Religious "Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life." In fact, its first appearance in a magisterial treatise seems to be in 1971's Evangelica testificatio. Addressing religious themselves, Paul vI speaks of the "charisms of your founders" and the "charisms of the various insti-tutes" (§§11, 32), assuming, probably with justification, that the terminology would be familiar to his intended audience. But, for those in doubt about this nomenclature, Paul cites Perfectae cari-tatis §2b, which calls upon members of religious institutes to respect their "particular characteristics and work" and "their founders' spirit and special aims" as they proceed with their groups' renewal. Paul extends the discussion in Mutuae relationes (1978), using the term nineteen times and declaring, among other things, that "the very charism of the founders (Evangelii nuntiandi, §I 1) appears as an 'experience of the Spirit'" and that "every authentic charism implies a certain element of genuine originality and of special initiative for the spiritual life of the church" (§12). By now, therefore, one would assume that the meaning of a term so widely and authoritatively used would be clear, and one might also assume that the reality of the thing known as "charism" would be easily identifiable and inherent to religious life. Indeed, this seems to be implicit in various references from the two doc-uments of the current pontificate mentioned above. The first para-graph of "Essential Elements" refers to "the founding charism of a particular institute" and later even says that, through its appro-bation of a community's canonical status, the "God-given ministry of the hierarchy" has ratified the "authentic discernment of its founding charism" (§41):2 The references in Vita consecrata are too numerous even to summarize, but here are a few of them: "charisms proper to the various institutes," "fidelity to the found-ing charism," "[an institute's] Rule and constitutions [are approved] in accordance with a specific charism confirmed by the church," and "the uniqueness of their different ~harisms' (§§19, 36, 37, 53). Surely, then, "charigm" is intrinsic to religious life. Every con-gregation must have one, unique to that particular institute and traceable directly to its individual founder., But the rationale for this essay is precisely that none of the assumptions above seems necessarily to be the case. It is my con-tention that, in much of its current usage, charism is a term of such vagueness and ambiguity as to be almost meaningless. More impor-tantly, even if we can accept the connotations that John Paul II apparently regards as definitive (and he is hardly alone in this atti- May-~tune 1999 -231 . Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? tude), I would argue that a good many of the women's apostolic congregations that ministered in the 19th and early 20th century in the United States have no such thing as a "charism" according to this understanding. Thus, if, as John Paul II suggests, "charism" is an "essential element" of religious life, the very legitimacy of these congregations seems to be east into question--surely a seri-ous, perhaps even disastrous, consequence for the groups involved. What is needed, therefore, is some alternative to charism, some concept that is more in accord with the historical reality of many institutes and legitimates their experience and continued existence. It is unlikely that my consideration here will arrive at any defini-tive conclusions, but I hope to suggest some alternative ways of thinking that may prove useful in framing the historical and cur-rent context of sisters' experiences and perhaps assist in the pro-cess of religious revitalization and renewal. At the very least, from my ongoing research into women's religious life in the 19th-cen-tury United States, I think I can explain why the emphasis on "charism" in contemporary thinking about religious life is prob-lematic and historically unjustified, at least as a universal norm. Before we proceed, a few assumptions need to be made explicit. First, I believe that some congregations do have a charism and that in some cases it is traceable, at least in some degree, to an individual "founder." In other instances, its origin may lie with a founding group of individuals (a "founding generation"), while in still others a charism may have emerged later in a community's history--or a buried, neglected, or even repudiated charism may be discerned or refurbished by subsequent generations. Second-- and in this I am confirmed by the usages of several scholars as well as by both Paul vI and John Paul II--I believe there is also some-thing generic that can be called "a charism of apostolic religious life." Third, the lack of a particular charism does not render an institute (or its members or ministries) less significant, "spiritual," or legitimate than those which do have such a "gift":--just as the existence of one does not indicate superiority or greater validity. Indeed, given that the use of the term charism in connection with religious life is of such recent provenance, its application to past experience--particularly if it is considered to be some sort of uni-versal norm--actually may be ahistorically anachronistic. The word charism, of course, is Greek and means "gift." In contemporary Christian usage, it refers specifically to a spiritual gift, that is, "a free gift of grace." Moreover, virtually all Catholic Review for Religious scholars agree that a charism is not solely for the benefit of its direct recipient; rather, "it is a supernatural gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit for building up the body of Christ" or, in simpler terms, a "divine spiritual gift to individuals or groups for the build-ing up of the community." Within the context of religious life, the charism presumably is received initially by an institute's founder, who transmits it on to her followers. It is this "gift of grace" which is to imbue the community with its unique character or identity; as Richard McBrien puts it, "the unique gift of the founder., is given to every member from one generation to the next."3 Between 1727 and 1917, at least 422 Catholic apostolic con-gregations of women religious were active within the United States.4 Some were short-lived, but four hundred of them contin-ued to exist in 1917, and the overwhelming majority are extant today. Of the 422, a total of 273 belonged to one of ten large reli-gious "families," each of which could trace its birth to a particu-lar founder or pair of founders (see Table 1). Thus, each of these could be presumed to be a beneficiary of the. "charism" of the per-son or persons with whom that family began. Moreover, many of these groups also regard themselves as having their own particular founders, who "re-visioned" the familial identity in some way that imparted a special or distinct character to it.s Table 1 U.S. Al~ostolic Women's Communities andTheir Religious "Families" . FAMILY FOUNDER(S) NO. OF COMMUNITIES Benedictine Benedict, Scholastica 32 Carmelite (reform) Teresa of Avila 3 Dominican Dominic 30 Franciscan Francis 54 St. Joseph Jean Pierre Medaille 27 Mercy Catherine McAuley 65 Presentation Nano Nagle 7 Ursuline Angela Merici 30 Vincentian Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marfllac 10 Visitation Francis de Sales and Jane Frances de Chantal 15 May-June 1999 233 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? No one can or will deny that these communities have---since their founding, in most cases--been known by one of these "fam-ily names." Still, this begs some important questions. How many of even these congregations can be said to have been "birthed" into the charism of their family forebears? How many incorpo-rated themselves into a particular family with explicit awareness of the spiritual and ecclesial consequences? How many can assert with confidence that their history is one of explicit and consistent acknowledgment of and fidelity to that charism? In other words, to what extent did "charism" traditionally play a part in shaping the identities of at least some of these institutes? Alternatively, how many of them became, in fact, "generic" apostolic entities doing good work, composed of good (even holy) people, but ~undistin-guished by any familial or "particular" spiritual identity that would differentiate them clearly from others of theoburgeoning number of women's religious orders that came increasingly to "do their thing" in the United States in, the 19th and 20th centuries? Finally, most of the nearly one hundred fifty other women's congregations I have studied also assert that they have particular "founders' charisms." Are all of them justified in their claims? It naturally is impossible to provide in one article definitive answers to any of these questions. Instead, I intend to offer some representative examples from the histories of the communities I have studied, examples that I believe will demonstrate some of the major problems with the assumptions about charism that charac-terize so much of what has been said about religious life in the past quarter century. Let me emphasize thavnone of these exam-ples is unique; rather, each is suggestive of all-too-typical congre-gational experiences. Each indicates some aspect of why I believe that the notion of a "founder's?' or "founding" charism is so prob-lematic and why the notion may, in fact, do more to obscure the realities of women's religious history than to illumine it. The Most Common Scenario: Instrumentalism Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Catholic population of the United States exploded. As early as 1850, Catholics constituted the largest single body of believers in the nation, a ranking they have maintained ever since. But, hardly monolithic, they consisted of an ecer growing number of proudly distinct (and sometimes mutually antagonistic) ethnic groups, many Review for Religious of which came to the New World specifically to escape religious persecution or to preserve their cultural identities. Most were poor when they arrived in their new nation; few except the Irish spoke English. Their secular and Protestant neighbors greeted them with suspicion and often with overt hostility. Clearly, these were peo-ple with numerous and diverse needs to be met, and church lead-ers, beleaguered and fearful of "leakage" from the faith, sought ways to respond effectively. It is not surprising, therefore, that dozens of institutes were started in or brought to the United States to provide practical ser-vices, often to specific subgroups of Catl~olics. Both individual community histories by the score and various more com-prehensive works attest con-vincipgly-- and, before 1965, unapologetically--to what I call the instrumental motivation for so many foundations: to teach the ever growing number of school-age children,6 to provide healthcareand relief (primarily, of course, but not only to Catholics), and, increasingly, to work with persons from partic-ular immigrant groups who needed ministers who understood both their languages and their traditions and could both foster cultural survival and ease the pro-cess of Americanization. Others were started for equally functional purposes: to do housework for priests or to offer catechetical instruction to children outside the parochial schools. Consider, for instance, the following accounts of foundings, taken almost randomly from the 1964 edition of Thomas McCarthy's Guide to the Catholic Sisterhoods of the United States-- perhaps the most successful comprehensive "vocation book" ever published in this country:7 [Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin:] A school, but no teachers, and none to be had from any religious commu-nity in spite of numerous requests by Father Jean Harper. ¯. He decided to act upon his curate's suggestion: "We can-not obtain nuns? Then, let us make some!" And so the con-gregation came into existence . . (p. 192). Dozens of institutes were started in or brought to the United States to provide practical services, often to specific subgroups of Catholics. 235--- May-~une 1999 Thompson * Charism or Deep Story? [Franciscans of Tiffin, Ohio:] Father Joseph L. Bihn . . . founded this Franciscan community to help him care for the many children orphaned as a result of the Civil War. Three of his parishioners, Elizabeth Schaeffer, a widow, and her two daughters, formed the nucleus of this congregation. (p. 271). [Sisters of Sts. Cyril ahd Methodius:] The early 1900s was a critical period for the many immigrants from Slovakia who setded in the United States. Father Matthew Jankola of the Scranton diocese was keenly aware that this adjustment required not only the building of schools but also of secur-ing sisters to staff them. As a result of his efforts, this dioce-san congregation was established in 1900 (p. 189). [Sisters of the Holy Family, San Francisco, California:] "I have another work for you to do," Archbishop Joseph S. Alemany OP said to young Elizabeth Armer when she came to consult him about entering a contemplative order. The archbishop unfolded to the future Mother Dolores his plans for an insti-tute to give religious instruction to children who could not attend Catholic schools. (p. 295). [Little Daughters of St. Joseph:] Father Antoine Mercier, a Sulpician priest., who desired to establish a congregation of nuns who would consecrate themselves to the spiritual and material welfare of the clergy and seminarians, founded this community with the assistance of Miss de Lima Dauth, the co-foundress. On April 26, 1857, both began this eminently apostolic work of helping priests and seminarians by means of a life of prayer, self-denial, and manual labor (p. 36). [Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston, Texas:] "A multitude of sick and infirm seeks relief at your hands" was the irresistible plea of Rt. Rev. C.M. Dubuis when he went to France to seek volunteers to help him in his missionary labors in Galveston, Texas. Three young women answered his appeal and with these he founded the congregation in 1866. The community, which built the first Catholic hospital in the state, has papal approval and conducts twenty-six insti-tutions. (p. 120). 236 Where, in any of these stories, can one discern a charism? Ministry, yes; inspiring service to needy people, certainly. But two obstacles to discerning a "charism of the founder" recur in each instance. First, the reason each community came into being was functional, not charismatic. And, second, at least as these accounts would have it, the initiating impulse came not from the women who would offer to respond, but from clerics--men who, by def- Review for Religious inition, were persons outside of the community itself and thus hard to recognize as part of the group's intrinsic "lived tradition.''s Random Rule Selection and the Problem of Charism Every autonomous congregation has its own constitution, but, properly speaking, only four Rules (St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, and St. Francis) were approved by Rome, and every com-munity had to select one of these as the basis for its organization and gov-ernance. 9 This helps to explain, for example, why so many women's con-gregations belonged to the Franciscan "family"--generally speaking, it was considered the most "flexible" of the four and therefore the easiest to adapt to a variety of instrumental purposes. To assume, then, that every commu-nity designated as "Franciscan" also and intentionally embodied a Franciscan charism requires an enor-mous leap of faith; in fact, even some founders who wanted to be "Franciscan" sometimes began by organizing themselves by another Rule. Two contrasting examples will illustrate the problem. First, there is that of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, originally founded in Olpe, Westphalia, in 1859 (and eventually established in the U.S. in 1875). The founder, Mother Mary Theresia (Aline) Bonzel, had great devotion to St. Francis and wanted to be Franciscan, but one of her co-founders, Clara Pfaender, had previously belonged to a con-gregation which followed the Augustinian Rule. We may let the community's first historian, an unusually forthright individual, take the story from there: Aline Bonzel wanted the Franciscan Rule by all means. But seemingly she was not well acquainted with the basic Rule of religious orders . Clara Pfaender knew the Augustinian Rule from her convent days with the Sisters of Christian Charity. She felt she could write a constitution based on that Rule. Since she was the superior and responsible for admit-ting candidates into the community, it s~emed advisable, in this very beginning, that she have the liberty to employ her To assume that every community designated as "Franciscan" also and intentionally embodied a Franciscan charism requires an enormous leap of faith. 237 May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? full experience in religious life. Only on this basis can one explain how a community which uniformly desired to live according to the Franciscan Rule began with the Augustinian Rule, but with the intention of later converting to the Franciscan Rule. In this procedure the character of the times can readily be detec(ed. Many most likely saw basically lit-de difference whether one lived according to the Augustinian or the Franciscan Rule. The development of a specialized spirituality came later and in many instances vqry much later. As this author put it elsewhere: So many religious congregations came into being in the 19th century, and many chose their Rule by chance. Charitable activity called, and congregations were founded to fill the need to serve God and man. With some it seemingly made no difference what religious Rule was followed, for all were good and sanctifying~ . . . Foundations flourished which at first simpl); set up the aciivities and objectives of the apos-tolate and later wrote the rule and constitutions. Often enough at the very beginning it was purely accidental rather than a conscious effort that one or the other rule took hold.l° Contrast this with the experienqe of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis (SSJ-TOSF). Their history has been recounted superbly in two volumes by Josephine Marie Peplinski; basically, the group owed its origins to ethnic conflict within the School Sisters of St. Francis. The School Sisters were predominantly German, and the founding SSJ-TOSFs were Polish members who, after many incidents distressing to them, decided in 1901 to break off and found their own congregation. They took the Rule and name of "Franciscan" with them, but their self-claimed identity was fundamentally Polish. Indeed, as Peplinski has docu-mented, part of the problem was that, for its first few decades of existence, the community's leadership was passed back and forth between two very different individuals, one of whom (Mother Mary F~licia Jasku, lski) had a real devotion to St. Francis, while the other (Mother Mary Boleslaus Rybicki) "moved the congre-gation toward a popular Jesuit interpretation of obedience and authority--military in tone." As Peplinski puts it, "She exerted great influence in developing the spirituality of the congregation throughout her lifetime . . . and afterwards through those who adopted her ideals. It is ~v0rthy to note that until 1940, fourteen years after Mother Mary Boleslaus's death, almost all of the retreat masters invited to th~ congregation were Jesuits." Peplinski describes tlie congregation during its first sixty years as a Review for Religious "Franciscan sisterhood adapted to the post-Tridentine paradigm of religious life serving the American immigrant church . A basic problem was that canon law rather than the gospel law of love was set up as the ideal." In fact, not until after Vatican II, under Peplinsld's own leadership (she led the congregation 1968-1976), did the SSJ-TOSFs make a concerted and systematic effort to dis-cover what "bein~ Franciscan:' was all about. But, while they in fact embrace a Franciscan spirituality as they enter into their sec-ond century, is it at all accurate, despite their name, to regard it as their "founding charism"?II What Happened to the Benedictines? .Peplinski's congregation was not the only one "adapted to the post-Tridentine paradigm of religious life serving the American immigrant church." What happened to the Benedictines was equally dramatic and potentially of even more profound conse-quence to what they were supposed to be all about. It is a com-plicated story, ably told from somewhat different perspectives by Judith Sutera, M. Incarnata Girgen, and Ephrem Hollermann.12 The first nuns came to St. Marys, Pennsylvania, in 1852 from Eichst~itt, Bavaria, where they had lived in a way that permitted full cenobitic, monastic observance, including recitation of the Divine Office and solemn vows according to the Benedictine formulary: stability, conversatio ("conversion of life"), and obedience, However, within less than ten years after their arrival in the United States, a complicated series of events ensued, resulting in fundamental alterations to their tradition. Stated simply, the right to take solemn vows was abrogated (because the women were unable to observe strict enclosure), pressures of "life in mission territory" (as well as the elimination of solemn vows) led to "permission" to miti-gate the requirement to recite the full Divine Office (allowing substitution of the Little Office of th~ Blessed Virgin Mary, parts only of the Divine Office, or ~ven rosaries and other devotional practices), the jurisdiction of community leaders was made sec-ondary to that of diocesan, bishops (who could, among other things, approve or reject the election of prioresses and the admission of new members--something unheard of, normally, in Benedictinism). Even the simple vows the women now professed wer~ not neces-sarily the Benedictine ones. As Sutera explains, some took the tra-ditional vows, some took the three vows common to other May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? communities (poverty, chastity, obedience), Others took five vows and some four (not stability, because there were rumors that the women were to be reorganized into a large congregation complete with provinces, regional novitiates, and so forth). She summarizes the consequences this way: "What Rome had done was to create a canonical anomaly, a group of unenclosed monastic women who retained the right to the designation of 'O.S.B.' This right implied some recognition that they were nuns of the ancient order rather than sisters of a later congregation despite their simple vows. However, it left them as technically neither one nor the other. [Practically speaking,] they faded into the mass of apostolic orders." 13 Sutera and Hollermann's books, especially, are potent wit-nesses to the extent to which American Benedictines struggled over the following century both to respond 'to the ministerial and apostolic demands placed upon them and to remain as faithful as they could to their Benedictine heritage. Both accounts verify the existence and persistence of Benedictine charism, however "re-visioned" in the American context, despite the many and substan-tial obstacles put in the sisters' way. Thus, when Vatican II came along, with its call for renewal in the spirit of the founders, the Benedictines had a strong foundation on which they could rely. Nonetheless, the disparate experiences of the various autonomous foundations during the years between their foremothers' arrival in the U.S. and the postconciliar period raise important questions about how, and the extent to which, "fidelity to charism" shaped the historical reality of American Benedictine sisters. If one reads the descriptions of them in McCarthy's 1964 compendium, for instance, they seem virtually indistinguishable from the plethora of apostolic institutes that surrounded them.14 "Charisms" Buried, Repudiated, or Denied At least the Benedictines had a strong tradition, never com-pletely lost, that they could revitalize when called to do so by the Second Vatican Council, Others, however, were not so fortunate, The situations of those who chose their traditions randomly, or who were founded for largely instrumental purposes, have already been discussed. But what about those who did have more charismatic founders, whose legacies, for various reasons, were obscured or even rejected? Probably the most famous such case is that of the Institute Review for Religious of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded by the remarkable Mary Ward in 1609; not until the papacy of Pius XI! were they able to claim her officially as the founder of their congregation. But other instances pertain more directly to the U.S. Catholic experience; here I will refer to just three of them (by no means the only ones). As late as McCarthy's 1964 Guide (p. 317), the sisters founded by Margaret Anna Cusack in 1884 were identified unqualifiedly as the "Sisters of St. Joseph of Newark" and were described as having been founded by "Bishop Bagshawe of Nottingham, England . . . in 1888." Then, we are told, Bishop Michael Wigger of Newark, New Jersey, "received the community into his dio-cese shortly after its establish-ment." The latter sentence, technically, is true, but the foundation was in 1884; by 1888 the controversial Cusack had left both Newark and the Catholic Church. The myth of Bagshawe's role, as well as the rather skewed chronology, evolved largely to bury the fact that this group's founder--a woman who did, I believe, have a charism and who had a very revolutionary vision for her community--was regarded at the time of her death as an "apostate." Dorothy Vidulich has provided a first-rate account of how Cusack's community rediscovered her in the aftermath of Vatican II, officially reclaiming her in 1970 as their founder and reclaiming, too, her original name for the congregation: the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Since then, the group has devoted enormous effort to uncovering and taking ownership of her and their charism; nonetheless, the fact that her very connection with the institute was buried for eighty-five years (starting less than four years after it began) makes it difficult to discern the extent to which her charism ever played a meaningful role in its earlier historical expe-rience. Is the identity of this community primarily traceable to Cusack? Or, like an adopted child, must this group, like it or not, acknowledge that other "parents" may actually have been more significant in shaping their ongoing lived reality? 15 American Benedictines struggled both to respond to the ministerial and apostolic demands placed upon them and to remain as faithful as they could to their Benedictine heritage. May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? Which person or persons must be acknowledged as having contributed-- and how--to the congregation's actual history ? The founder of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, of Monroe, Michigan, was never, stricdy speaking, denied; her central role in the congregation's founding was, how.ever, unde-niably minimized and obscured. Theresa Maxis Duchemin was the offspring of an unwed "woman of color." Both her "race" (her mother was an immigrant to the U.S. from what now is known as Haiti) and her "illegitimate" parentage were, of course, problem-atic. So was the fact that she obscured both of them when she came to Michigan in 1845 to found the congregation ("passing" as "white")--in doing so, she left the commu- 'nity she had belonged to since 1829, the Oblate Sisters of Providence. (This group was the first African American con-gregation in the history of Catholicism. Duchemin was one of its first ,four members, its only American-born founder, and was onetime superior gen-eral of it. In the 1830s her mother, too, joined the community.) What perhaps contributed most, however, towards her role in Monroe IHM history becoming "shadowy" were her ongoing con-flict with Edward Joos (an early spiritual father assigned to the congregation by the bishop), her decision to establish a foundation in Pennsylvania (which the bishop did not approve of, and which soon turned into two), her subsequent conflicts with the .authori-tarian bishop of Philadelphia who succeeded Duchemin's beloved John Neumann, and tier resultant eighteen years of exile in Canada, during which she was forbidden contact with any of the three IHM communities she had founded. Eventually Duchemin was allowed to return to the Philadelphia foundation; ironically, however, only the Scranton one has always acknowledged her role in its begin-nings, In Monroe, meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph Walker, who succeeded Duchemin as superior in 1859, was becoming regarded as the group's "true foundress," while Joos, who served 'as its eccle-siastical superior from 1857 to 1901, was referred to as the "beloved father." 16 How is a grouplike this to return to the "charism of the founder"? Even in the 1990s the Monroe community is ambivalent Review for Religions as to how it should refer to Duchemin: was she their "founder," their "co-founder" (along with Louis Gillet, the Redemptorist who called her to Michigan in 1845 and departed' abruptly two years later), or simply one of the "first four"? What about the "found-ing" and "formative" roles of Walker and, especially, Joos? At the time of the latter's death, his loss was apparently considered so traumatic that the then general superior "had to assure the sisters that it was possible for the congregation to continue without him." True, Margaret Brennan IHM has documented the persistence of certain very specific elements of Duchemin's spiritual legacy, even through the decades when her contribution was denied, but impor-tant questions still remain.~7 As with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, which person or persons must be acknowledged as having contributed--and how--to the congregation's actual history? "The Most Reverend Archbishop William Gross CSSR of Oregon City founded [the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon] in Sublimity, Oregon, in 1886 . A vastly scattered flock, with . only a few religious to care for them, made Archbishop Gross determined to establish his own community of sisters."18 It seems a typical 19th-century story; unfortunately, it has almost no basis in reality. The real root of this community is a group of lay peo-ple who more than a decade earlier followed a schismatic priest of the Congregation of the Precious Blood, Charle~ Albrecht, out of Ohio into exile in Wisconsin and Minnesota (where Albrecht died) and then moved (with Albrecht's body) on to rural Oregon. There a young,girl in the group--who had been "bequeathed" to the cultish "trusteeship" of a trio of laymen ("devotees" of Albrecht, whose body during many months after his death,was kept in a cof-fin mounted above the dining table in the group's community room in Minnesota and then, quite ossified, was transported illegally to Oregon)--sought help from some Benedictine monks of Mount Angel Abbey, who put the future Mother Wilhelmina Bleily in touch with Gross, who eventually "regularized" the status of those who sought it and provided official recognition for the "sisters." Shortly thereafter he deposed Wilhelmina from the superiorship to which she had been duly elected, brought in a sister from Wisconsin to provide "formation" for the. community, and reshaped its identity completely. Although the original sisters had retained a strong devotion to the Precious Blood from their Ohio heritage, for instance, Gross refused to allow them to include this in the name of their congregation. By the 1960s, after decades of denial, May-June 1999 9A2 Thompson * Charism or Deep Story? Inappropriate reliance for spiritual grounding upon "a" founder and her or his significance can lead to a spirituality that is static or reactionary. Wilhelmina's contributions had been forgotten (and her diary, which recorded all that had happened, both before 1886 and after, lay gathering dust in the community's attic, not to be rediscov-ered until a new motherhouse was constructed in the 1970s), and the only things that remained from their roots were a red cord (on which they wore a crucifix around their necks) and a vague acknowledgment of a "devotion to the Precious Blood," one among many devotions that had been accepted without explanation for several generations29 More than either of the other two groups dis-cussed. here, the SSMO's decision to bury its past (not to mention Albrecht's body) certainly is understandable. It is also under-standable that, because of their "rescue" from the "trustees" by Gross, this really rather remark-able group has always prided itself on its loyalty to and reverence for the hierarchy. But how to imple-ment that loyalty whe, n the hier-archy charges one with "restoring the founder's charism"? In this case, what are they to do with Albrecht, with the trustees, with years of schismatic and extremely odd cultic spirituality, with the deposing of Wilhelmina, and with the clearly subordinate status that "in gratitude" the SSMOs were expected to tolerate in the Portland Archdiocese for most of the yea.rs of their existence? In this paper I have offered reasons why emphasis on the founder's charism--which has characterized so much of post- Vatican II religious renewal--deserves reexamination regarding its relevance and utility to the histories (and subsequent revitaliza-tions) of many religious congregations. Clearly, in many cases it is not something that can be easily identified, and, in some cases where it can be, that very recognition leads to problems of a dif-ferent sort. I could have discussed other issues as well: that certain congregations owe their origins to groups rather than to individ-uals, that emphasis on "formal" founders (founders who have offi-cial canonical recognition from the [male] prelates charged with 9rid "verifying" the "authenticity" of a congregation, and many of Review for Religiotts whom, for women's congregations, have erroneously been identi-fied as men) tends to obscure the cumulative and ongoing respon-sibilities that all community members have for their collective spirituality, and that inappropriate reliance for spiritual grounding upon "a" founder and her or his significance can lead to a spiritu-ality that is static or reactionary. All of these matters deserve explo-ration; unfortunately, constraints of space in the present circumstances prevent their serious consideration here. What I do offer for present consideration is an alternative approach to "charism" that may prove of value to communities that recognize some of their own histories in what I have been able to include in this essay. It is developed most fully, perhaps, in a 1989 article in Review for Religious by Bernard Lee SM.2° Lee begins with a clear assertion: The "recovery of charism" may be one of the most unsup-portable and unnecessary burdens a religious institution has ever been asked to bear, because it cannot be done. Charism is not a property. It is not a possession. It is not transfer-able, not transmittable, and not controllable. Charism is a deeply historicized social phenomenon. It cannot be dupli-cated in any other time or place. Charism has never been a movable feast. (p. 124) Instead, Lee suggests the notion of "deep story" as an alter-native to the emphasis on charism. He defines this as a category of interpretation that comes out of structuralism, which is a method for interpreting group identity. It pre-supposes that group identity is rooted in a narrative structure, that is, in recurring patterns of relationships and social activ-ities. The narrative structure of any complex and interesting group, however, is extremely elusive because it is instinctual and unconscious even more than it is deliberate and self-conscious . Deep stories are exhibited in rituals that cel-ebrate them (for example, rituals of profession), in special words and phrases that belong especially to them. Stephen Crites says that all of these things are elusive expressions of deep stories (he calls them sacred stories) "that cannot fully be told, because they live, so to speak, in the arms and legs and bellies of the celebrants. These stories lie too deep in the consciousness of a people to be directly told: they form con-sciousness rather than being among the objects of which it is directly aware." (p. 126)z' What Lee intends to suggest by all this, I think, is the con-tinuous and cumulative process of a community's identity forma- Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? tion--its spiritual nature (my term), its history--which, of course, in sacred time and space, encompasses the present and future as much as the past. Thus, to turn to Lee once again, "the founder's or foundress's gift is not a community's charism. The real found-ing gift is a narrative structure that supported and reflected a charismatic event in the foundation's birth, and may do so again" (p. 129). But, as I understand this, it cannot remain static; instead, a "community of memory"--while "creatively rooted" in, or faith-ful to, its deep story--must always be on its way to the realization of a new charismatically gifted reality, one in which all members must participate and assume responsibility. I believe that the notion of deep story--as a paradigm--can help all of us cope with ongoing foundings and refoundings in religious life. Seen as participants in deep story, Wilhelmina Bleily, Charles Albrecht, and William Gross, Theresa Maxis Duchemin and Mary Joseph Walker and Edward Joos, Mary Felicia Jaskulski and Mary Boleslaus Rybicki, Margaret Anna Cusack, Theresia Bonzel, and Clara Pfaender, countless Benedictines, and tens of thousands of others, living and dead, can all find space and be "at home'--not comfortably, perhaps, or e~sily, but the Christian story, the deep story, is never easy or comfortable. It is, however, real, as real as the ongoing spiritual "gift" (dare I, after all this, say "charism"?) that has called so many over the centuries to fol-low the path of religious life. Notes ~ This essay was presented originally at the 1998 History of Women Religious Conference in Chicago. Though not every point is supported by refei'ences, this essay rests upon my decade-long research into the history of American women religious, including work in the archives of about seventy-five congregations and familiarity with virtually all the published materials on this subject, including historical and biographical works on over three hundred individual communities. On the subject of charism, I read all Vatican documents dealing with religious life, as well as approximately three dozen articles directly or indirectly on this sub-ject that have appeared in Review for Religious (U.S.A.) and Religious Life Review (Ireland). Many of the incidents and ideas recounted here are developed more fully in some of my previous publications; see, in par-ticular, "Discovering Foremothers: Sisters; Society, and the American Catholic Experience," U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (Summer/Autumn 1986): 273-290; "To Serve the People of God: Nineteenth-Century Sisters and the Creation of an American Catholic Religious Life," Cushwa Center Working Papers, Series 18, no. 2 (1986); "Women and American Review for Religious Catholicism, 1789-1989," in Perspectives on the Catholic Church in America, 1789-1989, ed. Virgina Geiger and Stephen Vicchio (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1989), pp. 123-142; "Sisterhood and Power: Class, Culture, and Ethnicity in the American Convent," Colby Library Quarterly 25 (1989): 149-175; "Women, Feminism, and the New Religious History: Catholic Sisters as a Case Study," in Belief and Behavior: Essays in the New Religious History, ed. Philip VanderMeer and Robert Swierenga (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 136-163;."Cultural Conundrum: Sisters, Ethnicity, and the Adaptation of American Catholicism," Mid-America 74 (1992): 205-230; "The Validation of Sisterhood: Canonical Status and Liberation in the History of American Nuns," in A Leaf of the Great Tree of God: Essays in Honor of Ritamary Bradley SFCC, ed. Margot H. King (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 38-78; and "Concentric Circles of Sisterhood," in Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 1-21. For their insights into this subject, I offer my thanks to Ritamary Bradley SFCC, Thomas J. Costello, Barbara Garland SC, James Hennesey SJ, Mary Ann Hinsdale IHM, Elizabeth A. West ICM, and many of the participants in the Sister-L internet discussion group 2 In this, SCRIS reiterates a point made in a document it issued five years earlier, Mutuae relationes: "Bishops, in union with the Roman pon-tiff, receive from Christ the head the duty (see LG §21) of discerning gifts and competencies, of coordinating multiple energies, and of guid-ing the entire people in living in the world as a sign and instrument of salvation. They, therefore, are also entrusted with the duty of caring for religious chariSms" (§9); and "It is .the duty of bishops as authentic teach-ers and guides of perfection for all the members of the diocese (see CD §§12; 15; 35, 2; and LG §§25, 45) to be the guardians likewise of fidelity to the religious vocation in the spirit of each institute . Bishops, along with their clergy, should be. firm guardians of the specific character of each religious family both in the spiritual and in the apostolic field" (§28). These passages, as well as that from EssentialElements (§41), raise some serious questions about the autonomy and integrity of religious charisms, since the implication is that they cannot be presumed to exist "authentically" until those in (external) hierarchical authority say they exist. Certainly, this is a matter deserving of substantial Consideration; but, unfoi'tunately, that is outside the scope of this paper. 3 Wilfrid Harrington, "Charism," in A New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Joseph A. Komonchak et al. (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987), p. 180; The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard E McBrien (HarperSanFrancisco, 1989), pp. 299-300. 4 These figures, as well as information included in Table 1, are derived from a detailed listing of all Catholic women's apostolic communities that I have located to date that existed in the United States between 1727 and 1917. Included in this list are com.munities which, for most or all of their existence, engaged in some form of active ministry. Thus, for May-June 1999 247 24S Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? instance, contemplative Benedictines are omitted, as are purely contem-plative Visitation monasteries. In compiling these data, principal sources were: Elinor Tong Dehey, Religious Orders of Women in the United States, rev. ed. (Hammond, Indiana, 1930); Joan M. Lexau, Convent Life: Roman Catholic Religious Orders for Women in North America (New York, 1964), pp. 209-387 (Index of Orders); and Evangeline Thomas, Women Religious History Sources: A Guide to Repositories in the United States (New York, 1983), pp. 169-176 (Table of U.S. Founding Dates). Some information came from other sources, which are identified on the comprehensive list in my possession. s In that respect, they bear a similarity to the rest of the 149 U.S. con-gregations that have more individualized origins and have "founders" that they share, if at all, with only a handful of others. I shall return a bit later to the question of charism as it affects them. 6 All eight of the first indigenous communities of women studied by Barbara Misner in her landmark work, "Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies": Catholic Women Religious in America, 1790-18Y0 (New York: Garland, 1988), devoted most or all of their early ministerial energies to teaching. So did the vast majority of foundations initiated from abroad-- including the first in what is now the United States, the New Orleans Ursulines (founded in 1727). By 1884 the U.S. bishops, gathered at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore and extremely concerned about "leak-age" from the faith, paid tribute to the success of these pioneers (and to their belief that the education of youth was the best way to keep people within the church) by their declaration that every parish in the country should establish at least one school within the next two years. That, in turn, increased the demand for religious teachers (the overwhelming majority of them women, and sisters), just as the "new immigration" (c. 1880-1917) from heavily Catholic eastern and southern Europe was get-ting underway. See also Gerald Shaughnessy, Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? (New York: Macmillan, 1925); "The Pastoral Letter of 1884," in The National Pastorals of the American Hierarchy (1792-1919), ed. Peter Guilday (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Council, 1923), pp. 280-282; Thompson, "Women and American Catholicism," p. 125. 7 This Guide (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964) appeared in six editions, the first in 1952 and the last in 1966. The 1964 edition was selected for use here because it appeared only one year before Perfectae caritatis called upon religious to renew themselves "in the spirit of their founders," thereby initiating the whole postconciliar emphasis on "charism." It should be noted that McCarthy acquired his information from the communities; therefore, these are the founding stories that the sisters themselves had identified and transmit-ted to him for inclusion. s I have written extensively elsewhere about the fact that many of these stories bear little or no resemblance to reality. That is, communi-ties which traditionally cited clerics as founders have, since Vatican II, in quite a number of cases, identified and reclaimed women as their prin- Review for Religious cipal initiators. Nevertheless, we cannot dismiss the significance of these founding stories (often recounted and thereby reinforced for several gen-erations) either. Whether or not men actually took the principal initia-tive in founding particular communities, it did affect the self-understandings of hundreds of sisters who were taught, and who believed, that the men had done so. 9 William Humphrey SJ, Elements of Religious Life, 2nd ed. (London: Thomas Baker, 1903), p. 164. 10 p. Lothar Hardick OFM, He Leads, I Follow: The Life of Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, trans. Sisters M. Honora Hau and M. Clarahilda Fischer (Colorado Springs, I971), pp. 23, 30-31, 185-186. Ironically, perhaps, Pfaender later separated and founded her own religious congregation, which also was Franciscan (known in the U.S. as the Wheaton [Illinois] Franciscans): M. Brunilde Probst, The Burning Seak Mother Mary Clara Pfaender, 1827- 1882 (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1960). n The founding of the community is recounted in great detail in Vol. 1 of Josephine Marie Peplinski SSJ-TOSF, A Fitting Response: The History of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis (South Bend, Indiana: priv. pub., 1982, 1992); material here is taken specifically from Vol. 2, pp. ix, 49-50, 239 (italics in the original). Jaskulski was superior general for 1902-1908, 1918-1928, 1940-1942 (when she died); Rybicki was superior general for 1908-1918. Both were perpetually in leader-ship, either as head of the congregation or on its council, from its foun-dation until their deaths (Ryb!cki died in 1926); their lives, spiritualities, and contrasting administrations are described meticulously in chapters 1, 4, and 5 of Vol. 2. I also have written about the SSJ-TOSF story; see esp. "Sisterhood and Power" and "Cultural Conundrum" (see note 1). 12Judith Sutera OSB, True Daughters: Monastic Identity and American Benedictine Women's History (Atchison: priv. pub., 1987); M. Incarnata Girgen, Behind the Beginnings (St. Joseph, Minnesota: priv. pub., 1981); Ephrem Hollermann, The Reshaping of a Tradition: American Benedictine Women, 1852-1881 (Vv'inona: St. Mary's Press, 1994). ~3 Sutera, True Daughters, esp. chaps. 4-5 and pp. 38, 42, 53-56. 14 McCarthy, 1964 Guide, pp. 195-197. ,s Dorothy A. Vidulich, Peace Pays a Price: A Study of Margaret Anna Cusack, the Nun ofKenmare, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., priv. pub., 1990; orig. 1975); see also Irene Ffrench Edgar, Margaret Anna Cusack (Dublin: Women's Press, 1979); Margaret Anna Cusack, The Nun of Kenmare: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891). 16 The Monroe IHM story is told in fascinating detail throughout Building Sisterhood (see note 1, above); see, in particular, Marita-Constance Supan IHM, "Dangerous Memory: Mother M. Theresa Maxis Duchemin and the Michigan Congregation of the Sisters, IHM," pp. 31-67; Suzanne Fleming IHM, "She Who Remained: Mother Mary Joseph Walker and the 'Refounding' of the IHM Congregation," pp. 69-92; and Thompson, May-Jutte 1999 Thompson ¯ Cbarinn or Deep Story? "Concentric Circles," esp. pp. 5-8, and "Part l:The Context," pp. 25-28. L7 Fleming, "She Who Remained," p. 91; Margaret Brennan IHM, "'No Two Exactly Alike': IHM Spirituality," in Building Sisterhood, pp. 95-109; see also Rosalita Kelly IHM, No Greater Service: The History of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Monroe: priv. pub., 1948), esp. p. 132. L8 McCarthy, 1964 Guide, p. 325. ~9 The SSMO story is told with honesty in Wilfred P. Schoenberg SJ, These Valiant Women: History of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon, 1886- 1986 (Portland: priv. pub., 1986)~ I also have read Wilhelmina's diary in the SSMO archives, Beaverton, Oregon. Three of the original members of the Ohio group left it during the days in Wisconsin and became found-ing members in 1869 (one of them first superior when the group was of officially established) of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity in Manitowoc; see M, Teresita Kit~:ell OSF, Refining His Silver: Pioneer Days of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1866- 1911 (Manitowoc: priv. pub., 1979). This, among other things, serves to document the length of time that the: schismatic "cult" was in existence before the SSMO's "founding" in 1886. 20 Bernard Lee SM, "A Socio-Historical Theology of Charism," Review for Religious 48, no. 1 (1989): 124-135; see also Doris Gottemoeller RSM, "Befriending the Wind," Review for Religious 53, no. 6 (1994): esp. p. 811. n See also Stephen Crites, "The Narrative Quality of Experience," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971). Open Wounds Be bold, twin brother. Probe the wounds doubt demands to see. The gash is but entrance to his heart. Pry it wide to penetrate the core. Review for Religious Demand and desire, too, are twins that seek to let his hallowed, hollow hands transform old hurts to quiet awe. , ~Eugene Cartier ELIZABETH McDONOUGH The Need for Self-Criticism: Affirmative Comments I n the United States the precipitous decline in numbers of postolic women religious since Vatican Council II will surely have far-reaching consequences for all segments of the church as the third millennium begins. Church-related educational and healthcare institutions will probably continue to be transferred to nonecclesial and sometimes for-profit auspices, and many Catholics may grow up unaware that apostolic congregations of women reli-gious exist as ways of life that could have appealed to them. ~ Recently, in commenting on the years of renewal in religious life since Vatican II, Sister Doris Gottemoeller RSM noted that "for the most part we have not identified and reflected on the learnings" from this experience and that "critical reflection on our present reality" has been lacking.1 She is currently president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is a recent past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), was a participant in the 1994 Synod on Consecrated Life, and is one of the original members of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. Her comments may represent a pivotal change in perspective by someone in an influential leadership position. And, since critical self-appraisal has been neither prevalent nor popular among American women religious since Vatican II, her comments may also represent a significant change at this time. Elizabeth McDonough OP has written the Canonical Counsel column in this journal since our issue of July-August 1990 and has contributed several other articles as well. Her address is P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. ,~'h~y-~une 1999 McDonougb * The Need for Self-Criticism Though voices of criticism have consistently been raised about the postconciliar renewal efforts of religious life--by members of the hierarchy, by diocesan and religious clergy, by lay people, and by sisters themselves--critical reflection from without or from within has frequently been openly excluded Or quietly ignored in many, and perhaps most, women's apostolic communities. Over the years, members of women's religious communities have, in both speech and writing, lodged various objections to the general direction the path of postconciliar change was taking, a path that people now see as leading to pos-sible demise. The objections made over the years concerned, among other matters, the tendency towards having women religious governed by groups or by intermediate administrative personnel rather than by specific individuals elected to particular offices; the steady move-ment towards (so-called) total-participation chapters, which fre-quently exclude actual participation for many sisters; the general abandonment of easily recognizable identity symbols, along with the failure to maintain various community practices that many found meaningful; the increased use of open placement regarding sisters' employment, with the concomitant results of expanded apostolic diversity, an inability of congregations to make or meet institutional commitments, and the lessening of opportunities for community living. But in many women's congregations such objec-tions have not been well received by leadership or by segments of the membership. Moreover, although explicit internal objections regarding prevalent renewal patterns seem to have diminished over the years and to be somewhat rare now, it seems that members who still wish to embrace a renewed but traditional form of religious life (and who may be in their sixties, seventies, or even eighties) now channel their efforts elsewhere because of their experience of func-tional or systematic exclusion from effecting changes in internal governance. Many now direct their energies to living the remain-ing years of their vowed life by witnessing simply to the values they have consistently embraced but felt circumstantially unable to practice during much of the course of renewal. That is, they now consciously seek opportunities to live in common, to share com-munity prayer, and to minister in an apostolate traditionally related to their charism. Meanwhile, younger members--that is, mem-bers mostly under fifty--have initiated regular intra- and inter- Review for Religious congregational gatherings and networking in search of mutual sup-port and deeper religious meaning. Regarding various community renewal policies and proce-dures, then, numbers of community members have voiced explicit criticism--and by their practice have made some implicit criticism unmistakably clear too. Beyond this criticism arising from within apostolic communities of women religious, critical assessments have come also from people outside these communities. These assess-ments have been met with a similar pattern of rejection. Comments that even border on being critical have been categorically discountenanced as arising variously from arrogant, intemperate, shallow, uninformed, traditionalist, or ignorant sources. Criticism from the hierarchy and diocesan clergy seems often to have been excluded because they are regarded as hopelessly embedded in patriarchy. Criticism from religious priests seems to have been judged unacceptable because they are con-sidered to be unduly influenced by their experience of clerical advantage. And criticism from lay people seems to have been readily rejected because many of them are viewed as harboring unrealistic expectations of a lifestyle in which they do not share. Indeed, a pattern of negative reaction to critical assessmentsof what has happened since Vatican II is evident in responses to a recent article concerning possible causes for the current dearth of religious vocations in some communi-ties) It often appears that only certain internal, ostensibly self-perpetuating authorities or select special-interest groups are judged as adequately expressing the renewa! process among women reli-gious. Any suggestion from any source that any viable religious life in the future might diverge from the direction envisioned by the prevailing progressive model seems to be all too readily con-sidered as patently reactionary, as categorically negative, as arro-gantly uninformed, as judgmentally ignoring women's unique lived Any suggestion from any source that any viable religious life in the future might diverge from the direction envisioned by the prevailing progressive model seems to be all too readily considered as patently reactionary. ;'~,lay-JuJle 1999 254 McDonough ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism experience, as unfairly critical, or as an emotionally immature attachment to a former way of life) Furthermore, as postconciliar renewal has continued, it is not only critical observations that have been shunned .by women reli-gious in this country. Significant research data and pointed rec-ommendations from comprehensi'be sociological studies have also been embraced only selectively and implemented only sporadi-cally. Results from the ongoing, multifaceted, and controversial "Sisters' Survey"--as formulated and conducted under the direc-tion of sociologist Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeN--were systemat-ically distributed to participating congregations, published in several books~ and regularly reported at national meetings of major superiors from 1967 through the late 1980s. In stark contrast, amazingly little attention has been given to the more recent findings of psychologists David Nygren CM and Miriam Ukeritis CgJ. These researchers surprised participants at a 1992 Chicago workshop when, in presenting data from their study on the Future of Religious Orders in the United States (abbreviated as FORUS), they announced that many religious communities in this country had only a "ten-year window" in which to alter the present course of decline if they wished to perdure many years into the third millennium. The conferences of major superiors (CMSM and LCWR) were directly involved in the planning and execution of the FORUS study, which rendered some startling results about reli-gious in the United States. Included in these discoveries were. a lack of role clarity among religious (especially in apostolic groups of women), a high degree of cultural assimilation by religious, a general ministerial invisibility of religious, a relative dearth of effec-tive leadership in most religious communities, an apparently less-ened inclination to sacrifice among religious, and a widespread loss of institutional commitments by religious congregations.4 More than half a decade has passed since Nygren and Ukeritis projected that there was only a "ten-year window" of opportunity for the viability of religious institutes in America. During this time the FORUS findings seem to have gone largely unheeded or to have been relegated to convenient oblivion. Could it be that this study was greeted with a less than enthusiastic response precisely because its findings were unpopular among the group being assessed? For, indeed, the FORUS results did not shower unbounded accolades on the postconciliar transformation of reli-gious life in America; did not unquestioningly advocate contin- Review for Religious ued pursuit of the progressive model of renewal, and did not offer unrestrained optimism for the future prospects of religious insti-tutes. Or could it be that the FORUS findings, perceived as being all too accurate, were simply too painful to accept and conse-quently were met with at least unconscious denial at individual and collective levels in most congregations, particularly those of women religious? Over the years, religious in several areas of expertise have also sounded calls for critical reassessment of current practices in light of the manifest patterns of continuing decline in religious institutes. These calls, too, seem largely unheeded. The historical and sociological analyses of Raymond Fitz SM and Lawrence Cada SM, which appeared in the mid 1970s, got little attention after several months of popular discussion. Their work said quite clearly that probably only a small fraction of the then extant communi-ties would successfully negotiate post- Vatican renewal efforts,s Might the brief notice that Fitz and Cada's anal-yses received.be due, at least in part, to their intimation that religious con-gregations over the centuries have had identifiable lifespans, that many con-gregations did not last long after a per-vasive experience of absolute doubt regarding purpose, and that this seemed to be precisely the situa-tion at that time for thousands of religious in America? In 1983 CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) in Washington, D.C., published a translation of the 1972 land-mark monograph of Raymond Hostie SJ, Vie et mort des ordres religieux, on which the Fitz and Cada material was directly based.6 The introduction to this booklet, by historian Dolores Liptak RSM, explains its significance, its application to ~enewal among American religious and specifically women religious. But this, too, appears to have received only scant attention within women's communities in the United States. All through the early 1990s, Eleace King IHM, of CAR& pub-lished data about--and reasons for--the steady decline in voca- Religious in several areas of expertise have also sounded calls for critical reassessment of current practices in light of the manifest patterns of continuing decline in religious institutes. 255 May-,]une 1999 McDonougb * The Need for Self-Criticism tions to progressively oriented communities along with parallel data about the constant flow of vocations to traditional groups.7 Little note, however, has been taken of these results. At the beginning of this decade, David O'Connor ST offered a balanced and readable summary of the various cultura!, eccle-sial, theological, and ideological shifts that may be contributing to the (possible) disappearance of many religious institutes in this country; but his work is rarely cited or even referenced in reli-gious- life circles.8 In 1991 I myself published what the editor of America magazine referred to as a "trenchant critique" of the then prevailing trends in religious life, while the editor of First Things described it as "a first-rate analysis of what has gone awry in the many worlds of American religion."9 This analysis and critique received an overwhelming positive response from members of reli-gious communities around the world, but it was simultaneously greeted with resounding silence from those in leadership. Albert DiIanni SM has offered thoughtful considerations based on his experience of the renewal of religious life as it currently relates to religion, to modernity, to modern psychology, to com-munity, to decreasing vocations, and to certain laicizing trends in the post-Vatican II era; but his observations have been met with either studied unconcern or strident rejectionJ° And little heed has been paid to the recent, assessment of sociologist Patricia Wittberg SC that the future of most religious communities is severely limited--if not rather bleak---precisely because a coinci-dence of internal and external factors has resulted in a collapse of their ideological framework and a lessening or elimination of their functional supports.~ Regarding postconciliar religiousqife trans-formation, are only laudatory comments able to be perceived as having any meaning and value for communities of women reli-gious in America today? In many of these communities, a pattern of dismissing with studied disdain or even open derision any factual data that leads to disconcerting conclusions about their lives has been ill too evi-dent in the response to Ann Carey's recent book, a book (widely conceded to be well documented) that details decisions and actions taken in the decades since Vatican II within the conference of major superiors for women's institutes.~2 Note, hbwever, that Lora Ann Quifionez CDP and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN published a book earlier in the decade that traced precisely the same era of transi-tion and detailed most of the same topics, but from a different Review for Religious perspective and with less specific documentation.13 In contrast to Carey's work, the Quifionez-Turner book was well received and has been highly touted as an accurate portrait of renewal. Yet both books present renewal as deliberately intended and carefully planned. Both books address the influence of cultural context, the impa6t of the Sisters' Survey, the effect of feminist initiatives, the disruption from internal conference conflicts, the consequences of hierarchic confrontations, and other such topics in reference to postconciliar religious life. Both books name those who were instrumental in the renewal process at national and local levels in this country. And the authors of both books offer assessments of what has actually occurred. Could the disparity in recep-tion of these two works be due at least in part to the fact that the Quifionez- Turner book evaluates these happen-ings positively while the Carey book views the results as more than slightly wide of the mark envisioned by Perfectae caritatis? To be sure, journalist Carey is a laywoman who judged the evidence she amassed as anything but complimen-tary to the renewal process and those who directed it, and she called for critical reassessment of renewal results. On the other hand, Quifionez and Turner are women religious--both former executive secretaries of LCWR and both instrumental in effecting the postconciliar transformation--who judged the results thus far as entirely positive and urged further development along the same course of renewal. It is a truism of historical scholarship that those attempting an analysis of a set of events need a realistic broad familiarity with the historical context. But does this explain why the perspective on religious-life renewal presented by those who guided it should so readily be judged more accurate or more objective or more accept-able than the perspective of someone who has carefully pored over official documentation and verifiable data and has her own lived familiarity with post-Vatican II renewal? Could it be that negative assessments of religious-life renewal from whatever source are Could it be that negative assessments of religious-life renewal from whatever source are simply unacceptable to women religiousm for whatever reason ? 257 May-June 1999 McDonougb ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism t_g_ 1 simply unacceptable to women religious--for whatever reason? For an explanation of the present situation of decline and demise, are many women religious simply incapable of looking further than a speculatively fascinating and vaguely consoling convergence of sociological circumstances that impact religious life fr0m outside? Is none of the decline and demise of the past thirty-three years attributable to decisions made and actions taken within religious communities? Have dispersed ministries and secular attire (with lapel pins) and apartment living had absolutely no detrimental effect, whether expected or not? Are women religious able to look at none of the above? And, if so, why? Though the suggestion made ten years ago by sociologist Wittberg that the behavioral patterns among congregations of women religious might "actually be dysfunctional for organiza-tional survival" appears to have been effectively ignored, it may well identify a pertinent reality that needs to be at least acknowl-edged- if not directly addressed--by religious congregations of women today.14 And perhaps women religious would also do well to attend to the warning, offered in 1988 by psychologist Donna Markham OP, that the positive perception they had of themselves did not match the perception of others--something that did not bode well for vocations.~s Indeed, with rare exception, vocations have declined steadily throughout the decade since Markham's observation, and in most communities of apostolic women reli-gious the median age has gradually increased. " True enough, religious life is not merely a functional institu-tion, and it certainly ought not to be reduced to a numbers game. But is it unrealistic to suggest that a minimal number of members is needed for a community to perdure, to serve effectively, and to hand on a religious tradition? And, when women religious look over their shoulder for younger women walking in their footsteps and see no one there, is it really unfair to surmise that what they have been fashioning since Vatican II may not be a viable form of future religious life after all? Or, again, when congregations begin realistically to project that by the year 2010 fewer than ten percent of their members will be under sixty-five years of age, is it unduly critical to suggest that someone somewhere somehow may have made some decision(s) in the three-plus decades of post-Vatican II renewal that ought seriously to be reassessed and perhaps even altered? I think not. Review for Religious Indeed, on the part of women religious in America (and per-haps elsewhere in the world, too), some possibly difficult but gen-uinely constructive self-criticism and some corrective change of course in various aspects of postconciliar renewal ought to be hon-esdy welcomed.'6 And both may be long overdue, because the real-ity at issue has import far beyond the ever-dwindling numbers of ever-aging apostolic women religious themselves. Notes 1 Doris Gottemoeller, "Religious Life: Where Does It Fit in Today's Church?" in Review for Religious 57, no. 3 (March-April 1998): 146- 160. 2 Albert Dilanni, "A View of Religious Vocations," America 178, no. 6 (28 February 1998): 8-12. 3 See various responses to the Dilanni article (note 2 above) among letters to the editor in the March and early April issues of 1998. 4 David J. Nygren and Miriam D. Ukeritis, "The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary," Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-55; also. Origins 22, no. 15 (24 September 1992): 257-272. s Lawrence Cada and Raymond Fitz, "The Recovery of Religious Life," Review for Religious 34, no. 5 (September-October 1975): 690-718. 6 Raymond Hostie, /,qe et mort des ordres religieux (Paris: Descl~e, 1972), translated for a limited English edition as The Life and Death of Religious Orders (Washington, D.C.: CAP, A, 1983). 7 See the CARA Formation Directory for Men and Women Religious (Washington, D.C.: CARA) as edited by Eleace King IHM for the years 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994-1995. s David O'Connor, Witness and Service (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 145-162. 9 See, respectively, Elizabeth McDonough, "Beyond the Liberal Model: Quo Vadis?" Review for Religious 50, no. 3 (March-April 1991): 178-188; editorial in America for 13 July 1991; and "The Public Square," First Things, no. 17 (November 1991). ,0 Albert DiIanni, Religious Life as Adventure (New York: Alba House, 1994). " Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders (New York: SUNY Press, 1994). ,2 Ann Carey, Sisters in Crisis (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997). ,3 Lora Ann Quifionez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). ,4 Patricia Wittberg, "Outward Orientation in Declining 259 May-June 1999 McDonough ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism Organizations: Reflections on LCWR Documents," in Claiming Our Truth, ed. Nadine Foley (Washington, D.C.: LCWR, 1988), pp, 91-105. 15 Donna Markham, "The Decline of Vocations in the United States: Reflections from a Psychological Perspective," New Catholic World 231, no. 1381 (January-February 1988): 13-17. 16 See, for example, the recent comments of Doris Gottemoeller, "Religious Life in Crisis," Origins 28, no. 36 (25 February 1999): 634- 638. The Treasure Long ago a rainbow arc'd my storm-tossed sky, and the pot of gold I found then is still bottomless. Since that serendipitous moment, faith has claimed its reality. I see with clarity--over the clouds, beyond the rains--that joy and pain alike qualify to mine the treasure, provide the coin to buy the Kingdom, here on the green earth for a time, and there in the meadows of Eternity. Anna Marie Mack SSJ Review for Religious LARRY N. LORENZONI The Annuario Pontificio The Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook" and a Recent Editorial Decision Fourteen years ago the Religious Life Review, edited in Dublin by Father Austin Flannery OP, published an arti-cle with the catchy title "The Single Sex Church of the Annuario Pontificio." Its opening paragraphs noted the almost total absence of women's names in the church's official directory. The same article was later reprinted in Sisters Today with a milder title: "The Annuario Pontificio and Women in the Church." The Annuario Pontificio is the 4.25"-by-6.5" 2500- page yearbook of the Roman Catholic Church. Bound in red cloth with a golden papal coat of arms on the cover, it contains annually updated information about the College of Cardinals, all archbishops and bishops (with basic facts about their respective dioceses), all prelates and abbots, the secretariat of state, the Roman tribunals, congregations, councils, and commissions, the Vatican Library, the church's worldwide diplomatic representa-tives (nuncios and pronuncios), all the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, the administration of Vatican City, all officially approved religious orders of men and Larry N. Lorenzoni SDB, a Salesian priest, served in the late 1980s as director of the documentation, information, and press office of Caritas Internationalis in Rome. Currently director of development for his province, he may be addressed at Salesians of St. John Bosco; 1100 Franklin Street; San Francisco, California 94109. 1999 261 A former noteworthy feature of the Annuario was the almost total absence of females in its pages. 262 Lorenzoni ¯ Tlse Annuario Pontifido of women, academies, atheneums, pontifical universities (six: Gregoriana, Lateranense, Urbaniana, San Tommaso d'Aquino [Angelicum], Salesiana, and the new Santa Croce), a number of seminaries and colleges, and various other institutes and cultural organizations. The Annuario closes with a hundred pages of historical notes and six hundred pages of alphabetical lists: names of all the dio-ceses, prelatures~ and titular dioceses (in their Latin adjectival form, Latin noun form, and modern Roman-alphabet form) and the names and page references of some 25,000 persons. It is a fascinat-ing book. Of the 151 living cardinals listed in the 1997 Annuario (to cite a rather significant fact one can easily cull from its pages), 4 were created by Pope John xxIII, 31 by Paul vI, and 116 by Pope John Paul II. A former noteworthy feature of the Annuario--it used to distinguish it from virtually eve .ry other directory in the world--was the almost total absence of females in its pages. The alpha-betical list at the end of the directory was conse-quently 99.99 percent male. Historical, doctrinal, and traditional considerations are essential for a proper understanding of this situation. One page from the 1985 article (in RLR) found its way to the Vatican underground and quickly became the subject of some interesting conversa-tions during my four years (1986-1990) at Caritas Internationalis, the church's worldwide charity wing. In the penthouses of Palazzo San Callisto, where the Caritas offices are located (near Santa Maria in Trastevere), lived a number of active and retired cardinals (Roger Etchegaray, Bernardin Gantin, Paul Poupard, Ferdinando Antonelli, Francesco Carpino, and Francis Arinze). I came to know best Cardinal Francis Arinze, from Nigeria, the genial president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Occasionally I see him mentioned among the papabili and featured as a speaker on Mother Angelica's EWTN television programs. He is keenly intelligent and friendly, a good listener, articulate and ever an opti-mist. Open to new ideas, he weighs carefully all arguments against the truths of the faith and then follows them courageously t6 their logical conclusions. I remember in particular one conversation I had with him at Review for Religious Palazzo San Callisto, a conversation occasioned by some para-graphs from that December 1985 article (of mine) in RLR, which some friend had shared with him. The paragraphs are these: One glaring lacuna [in the Annuario Pontificio] is hard to understand, and even harder to accept, because of the anger it is likely to provoke today when everyone is being increas-ingly sensitized against all kinds of discrimination. I am refer-ring to the omission of the names of the superiors general of women religious where the individual congregations are listed with the address of the generalate and current information as to the number of foundations and of professed members. .This anomaly came to my attention when I needed to check the spelling of the name of the new mother general of our Salesian sisters. I had just looked up the name of the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy (whose ad I had seen in The Wanderer), so I turned instinctively to the Annuario for the answer to my question. It was not as sim-ple as I thought. For every male congregation, the name of the superior general is invariably given (and, in 99 percent of the cases, also that of the procurator general). One learns, for instance, that the Very Rev. John O'Brien is the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy (an order founded in 1808), even though the order has only seven members worldwide. Fifty-four religious orders of men have less than I00 pro-fessed members, seven have 25 or fewer, but in each case the name of the general is prominently displayed. I was chagrined to discover that in the case of the orders and congregations of women one looks in vain in the Annuario for the names of the mothers general. Some 120 of those congregations have a membership of over 1000 sis-ters. In vain did I look for the name of the superior general of the Salesian sisters, even though the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, as they are officially known, have a worldwide membership of nearly 18,000. They are the sec-ond largest congregation of women in the church, after the 34,000 Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Such a discriminatory omission tends to reinforce all the worst stereotypes one hears about the institutional church and its treatment of women, since it conveys a number of admittedly unintentional but nonetheless inescapable mes-sages: (1) Women are of little consequence in the church. (2) The father superior of ten men is more important than the mother superior of I0,000 women. (3) Names of females, no matter how important, need not be listed in the Annuario because the church does not discuss matters of consequence with them anyway. (4)Male religious superiors are routinely consulted, and hence it is necessary to have their names listed May-June 199.9 Lorenzoni ¯ The AnnuarioPontificio in the Annuario, but listing the flames of the superiors gen-eral of women does not serve any useful purpose since very rarely does one need to know who they are and even less deal or correspond with them. (5) Sisters are supposed to accept obediently and without too many questions whatever Holy Mother Church says. Unfortunately, in the thinking of many, Holy Mother Church is often equated with male power structure. No dissenting voice was heard from those who had joined our conversation. Both retired Cardinal Francesco Carpino (a man of rare nobility, who died 5 October 1993) and Cardinal Francis Arinze agreed that the Annuario should at long last join the mod-ern age and list the names of women religious superiors alongside those of their male counterparts. But Rome moves slowly. The 16 December 1994 issue of Commonweal carried this item under its Et Cetera rubric: Speaking in support of requests by women's religious orders for an end to discrimination by the church against women, Archbishop Maurice Couture of Quebec pointed to the 1993 Vatican Yearbook (Annuario Pontificio); it lists the names of the superiors general of all institutes of men, but none of the names of the superiors general of women (Origins, November 3). Good for the archbishop, but he's ten years late. Writing in Religious Life Review for November-December 1985, our correspondent Larry Lorenzoni SDB [Correspondence, November 18] recalled turning to the Annuario to find the name of the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy, an order founded in 1808 which has seven members worldwide. The name was there: the Very Rev. John O'Brien. He also looked for the name of the superior general of the Salesian sisters, the second largest congregation of women in the church: nearly 18,000 members. No name. Some of the mes-sages conveyed (Father Lorenzoni, a kind man, says they are "admittedly unintentional but nonetheless inescapable"): "Women are of little consequence in the church; the father superior of ten men is more important than the mother supe-rior of 10,000 women; there's no point in publishing the names of women superiors because who needs to know them." I have before me the 1997 edition of the Annuario Pontificio. I see with some personal satisfaction that each religious congrega-tion of women now routinely carries, as an additional entry, the name of the mother general. The change can safely be labeled "routine" since it started with the Annuario's 1996 edition. Review for Religious No doubt, some gentle nudging by a few highly placed mem-bers of the College of Cardinals, as well as by bishops convinced that the previous practice was clearly discriminatory, helped level the field. Word eventually reached the offices of the Vatican sec-retariat of state, on which the Annuario Pontificio depends, and suitable action followed with the publication of the 1996 edition. A recent phone call to the secretariat of state enabled me to reach Angela Zanetti, a most personable and knowlegeable lady who was for twenty-six years connected with the production of the Annuario. Her new supervisor, Monsignore Fermenti, intro-duced her to me as a "walking encyclopedia on the history of the Annuario Pontificio." Here are some interesting facts from our con-versation: ¯ The first list of male religious orders (Istituti Mascbili) appeared in the 1838 edition of the Annuario. ¯ The first list of female religious orders (Istituti Femminih) appeared 98 years later, in the 1940 edition, without the name of the mother general. ¯ The two lists continued to be published (Ordini Mascbili first, Ordini Femminili second) in the years following, each order of men shouting prominently the name of the general, each order of women lacking that particular information. * At last, in the 1996 edition, for the very first time, the information concerning each religious order of women included also the name of the mother general, as had previously been done for even the smallest reli-gious orders of men. I am reminded of what Pat Paulsen, the late tongue-in-cheek presidential candidatei once said with his usual aplomb: "No one should be denied equal rights because of the shape of their skin." Subs'criptions to Review for Religious can flow b~ ordered,or renewedoby FAX; and paid forby Ma~terCard ~o'r Visd. FA~ the order form inside the back cover, or cALL our o~c~ ~wi~ "th your credit card number: IF~: 31z~-977~7362 0, ~'HONE: 314-977-7363 1999 JOAN A. RANGE Women and Canon Law Cbanon law, as a support for the life of the community of elievers, that is, the church, has a history almost as old as the community itself. Over the centuries, its formulation has not been the work of women, a fact that is readily understandable. Women did not have the status nor society the liberality for that kind of contribution. Women were, however, a vital part of the church and society: in the church as members of the various ordines that supported the living community and in society as wives and mothers2 History witnesses to this fact and those roles. Women's lives, moreover, were guided by the protection, pre-scriptions, and sanctiohs of the church's law. In church courts of the ¯ Middle Ages, women were parties to suits brought against alleged violations and also were sued for alleged violations of others' rights. The activity of women in the world of canon law is well attested to in the church's history.2 But as members who formulated the law or who addressed the church's courts (defending others or doing advocate work for oth-ers) or judged cases (even as collegiate judges), all this women never did until this century. In this century women have performed all these functions in their own right as members of the church and as canon lawyers. The future is clear for their continued func-tioning to be even more vigorous. This rather astonishing fact needs consideration. Given the absence of women in all these roles before this century, how did this change come about? Joan A. Range ASC is associate professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Loui~ University. Her address is Humanities Bui_lding; 3800 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Relig4ous Women's Status in Canon Law ~ Before this century, as a rule women's status was that of persons limited before the law. Mostly, women were considered--as were minors and the mentally incompetent--unable in their own person and name to bring a case before the court. This reflected Roman law, from which much of canon law is derived. When, however, asso-ciations of women became moral persons with rights and duties in the law, they were able to bring cases to court, as history shows. Besides bringing cases to the church's tribunals when their rights were being infringed or violated, women were also sued by others if the petitioner felt that his own rights were being infringed or violated by women. This was often a matter of property rights. As time progressed it might also be a matter of marriage rights as well, especially when it concerned the legitimacy of children and their right to inherit. Other than these cases, however, women's presence in~ the laws themselves usually had to do with their status within the church and society, that is, as daughters, wives, moth-ers, widows, nuns, or women of ill repute. Beginning early in the church's history, the protection of wid-ows and orphans was a great concern since these groups were socially the most vulnerable. As time passed and Roman law found its way into the church's mentality, other laws concerning women were developed to protect the virgin from marriage if she resisted, from abduction and rape, and later as a member of a community of consecrated women) Most of the legislation had to do with the women as wives and mothers, however, and especially with their ability to bear children. Laws agains.t adultery, contraception, and abortion were the most prominent since they infringed upon the husband's potency, paternity, or virility.4 Apart from these matters, women as individual persons were not dealt with in the church's laws. The 1917 Code did not always treat women equally with men, as studies testify.5 The 1983 Code, in contrast, states that the "there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality with regard to dignity and the activity whereby all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ in accord with each one's own condition and function.''6 The excep-tion to this is when the nature of the case clearly indicates other-wise, such as the laws having to do with ordination.7 Women began to engage themselves in the activities of the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA) since about the middle of this century. It is that story upon which we now focus. May-June 1999 ,267 Range * Women and Canon Law Women and the Canon Law Society of America The pivotal event for the growth in female membership in the CLSA was the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).8 Before that event there were clear hints that the status of women in the world and in the church needed to be addressed.9 The council documents, too, indicated those concerns,l° In the United States, women's professional involvement in canon law began in the mid 1960s. Clara Marie Henning, the first woman to become a member of CLSA, applied for membership in 1968. She was then a student in the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, from which she later received the licentiate in canon law (JCL). Other women were members of the CLSA, but their reason for membership was their position as supe-riors of religious orders, not their status as canon lawyers. Even before Vatican II, beginning with Pope Pius XrlI, efforts had been made by the church to bring about a simplification and an updating within the various orders and congregations of women religious worldwide.~ This was a remote cause for interest in canonical matters and membership in the CLSA. After the documents of the council and the implementation decrees of Pope Paul vI had been issued, there was a need and desire to learn about canon law and its usefulness in the efforts of religious congregations toward adaptation and renewal. These efforts had a significant effect on the work during the 1970s toward formulating the new and revised Code. Initially, then, the impetus for women to become members of the CLSA was that congregations of women religious might derive more benefit from canon law. Another reason for women to begin studying canon law and to become members of the CLSA was an academic one. As Catholic universities opened graduate programs in theology for lay people, some women students became interested in pursuing degrees in canon law. This interest included both the relation of canon law to theology and the historical development of canon law. The membership records of the CLSA are limited in a number of ways. For many year~ the records were the responsibility of the coordinator and were not kept in a permanent office. It was only in 1980 that a full-time director and staff began to have an office (with a permanent place for records)at the Catholic University of America. The records up to 1979 were given to the Cushwa Center for .the Study of American Catholicism and are available there as archival records. The membership records are incom- Review for Religious plete, however, because they were not systematically kept, a not uncommon omission when an organization's importance is not understood in its early days22 Nevertheless, the records show a remarkable growth in female membership after the mid 1960s. In 1968 there were hardly five women members. In 1971 the first woman was elected to national office in the CLSA.13 This event witnessed to a movement within the society to include women as active members. In 1976 there were 38 women members; by 1984 there were 139. The 1990 directory lists almost 200 women members.~4 At' the time of the 1996 direc-tory, the female membership stood at 223 out of a total of 1557 members, or about 14 percent. The history of the growth of the membership of women in the CLSA is part of the growth of la~Yomember-ship. Already in1,37 the CLSA's committee on membership was concerned with appropriate criteria. The concern was not specif-ically about women, but about qualifications that would assure that interested persons, lay or clerical, would have knowledge about the science of canon law. Before this point a potential mem-ber was sponsored by a current member and his name given to the committee on membership for its approval before being voted on by all those gathered at the national convention. That this rather cumbersome way of enrolling new members needed to be revised was a common opinion at the time. Thomas J. Lynch,~5 chair of the committee on membership, wrote in a report to the board of governors that, in the proposed revision of the constitutions (1967), the CLSA will "rid our con-stitution of any unnecessary clericalism and will also insure that the active and voting membership of the society will be composed of persons whose professional qualifications give them a special com-petence in matters of renewal and revision of law." ,6 As executive secretary, after receiving increased correspon-dence from many interested parties, James Provost laid his con-cerns about qualifications for membership before the board of Initially, the impetus for women to become members of the CLSA was that congregations of women religious might derive more benefit from canon law. Mt{y-June 1999 Range ¯ l, Vomen and Canon Law governors.'7 In 1980 a constitutional amendment was finalized requiring a person to have a degree in canon law in order to be an active member. Others could be associate members, but without the right to vote at the conventions.~s In 1995 a survey was distributed to women members at the annual convention held in conjunction with the Canadian Canon Law Society in Montreal. Its purpose was to discover the experi-ence of women as members of the CLSA. One hundred three responses were returned, with seventeen women indicating asso-ciate membership, the rest active membership. The responses demonstrated a positive experience within the society; there were a few exceptions, but even they did not indicate major difficulties. One commented that the CLSA was "one of the best kept secrets of the American Church." A tone must have been set many years ago, another respondent speculated, to be inclusive of women.19 Although there is no documentation of a policy decision that ver-ifies that statement, the facts sifice 1968 attest to its reality. The inclusion of women on committees, their election to national posi-tions as officers and consultors, and their presentations at plenary sessions and seminars during regional and national conventions-- all this has been remarkable over the last thirty years. Already in 1971 a woman was a member of the religious-affairs committee; in 1972 a woman was on the legal-council committee as well.2° Twice women have been elected vice-president/presi-dent- elect and have assumed the full responsibility of that office. This office is a challenging one for its incumbent, whether male or female, and certainly for a nonordained female. In addition to chairing the board of governors, the president's responsibilities include communications with the hierarchy of the United States, with the various dicasteries of the Vatican, with the canon-law societies of other countries, and with the members of various dioce-san offices throughout the country. The leadership of the society is challenging internally also, since most of the members are still clerics, including bishops, archbi.shops, and cardinals. Besides the increased membership of women in the society and their activity within it, the agendas of the CLSA have been modified because of the interests of the women members and the" commitment of the leadership and membership to women's issues. Already in 1970, at the national convention in New Orleans, a resolution was passed that stated: "The Canon Law Society of America instructs the subcommittee of its task force on the revi- Review for Religious sion of the Code of Canon Law to study the canonical institutions concerning the dignity, freedom, rights, privileges, offices, and obligations of women in the church and to propose those changes necessary to ensure the equitable consideration of all persons regardless of sex by the law of the church.''2~ In 1973 the society cosponsored with the Adrian Dominican Sisters a meeting of canonists and theologians at their college, Siena Heights, to address the question of the ordination of women from a variety of per-spectives?~ In 1972 the board of governors established an ad hoc com-mittee on the status of women in the church; it became a regular committee in 1973.23 At the conven-tion of 1975, Margaret Brennan IHM presented a major address titled "Standing in Experience: A Reflection on the Status of Women in the church." In 1976 a symposium was held at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania on Women and Church Law; in view of the revision going on at the time, it studied how the law addresses women. It published a con-sensus paper, signed by the twenty-four participants, with sug-gestions concerning how the church in the United States might address some of the inequities from which women suffered.24 In 1987 the members of the committee on women raised the question of its future viability. Even though it regularly invited the society's membership to present it with significant issues, the committee had little business to deal with, This was the reason for the eventual elimination of this committee. Its concerns were taken up by a new committee on the laity in the church?5 From 1988 on, some members of the CLSA were involved with the canon-ical dimensions of the U.S. bishops' Letter on Women that was eventually published in 1990.26 A resolution was taken by the society in 1992 to study the question of the diaconate for women. In 1995 the report by the ad hoc committee, "The Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate," was presented to the national con-vention and accepted by the membership.27 This document received a wide distribution to other professional societies and to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). A resolution was taken by the society in 1992 to study the question of the diaconate for women. 271 May-.Tune 1999 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law With the promulgation of Pope John Paul II's apostolic let-ter Ordinatio sacerdotalis stating that the church has no authority to ordain women, the activity of the society on some of these issues perforce ceased, and no new initiatives on this issue have been forthcoming. Some study is being done on the question of the laity sharing in the power of jurisdiction, obviously an important issue, for .lay people function more and more in various offices in the church, It remains to be seen, however, if gender-specific issues will continue to inform the society's agenda. Participation in the annual conventions also reflects the change in the presence of women. In 1967 there were no women at the national convention. In 1968 the female participants were superi-ors of religious orders. In 1969-1970 some women religious were present as well as some major superiors.2s In 1971 there were 9 women registered at the convention in Atlanta, out of 224 partic-ipants. As more and more women begame members of the CLSA, more and more of them have attended both the regional and national conventions.29 In the women's responses to the question-naire mentioned above, they noted the quality of exchange at both regional and national conventions. They are a continuing educa-tional experience for the female membership, as they are for oth-ers who attend these meetings. 272 Women's Education in Canon Law It is clear that many of the women members of the CLSA are active members with degrees in canon law. The obtaining of these degrees is a completely novel achievement in the history of women and canon law. In North America there are two schools from which a woman can receive a degree in canon law: the Catholic University of American in Washington, D.C., and St. Paul University in Ottawa. Most U.S. women have chosen one of these two schools for their canonical education. Among the European schools, most women have chosen the Angelicum, which teaches courses in English, and a few the Gregorian, which until onl~ recently taught its courses in Latin. In 1990 John E. Lynch CSP published an interesting and infor-mative article about the history of the Department of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, "Laying Down the (Canon) Law at Catholic University.m° The occasion for the article was the centenary of Catholic University. In it he remarked that in Review Jbr Religious 1959 women were enrolling in canon law in Rome.3' That had not yet occurred in North America and not at Catholic University, but it would occur in 1967. The first woman to enroll was Clara Marie Henning, a native of Germany. After that, the numbers of women students increased gradually and now have remained con-stant for some time. The first women students, except for Ms. Henning, were women religious.32 The topics of their theses and dissertations represented the concerns of women in the early 1970s, after the close of the council: religious formation, authority, the LCWR, the legal status of women, the pastoral nature of canon law.3~ Besides this continued interest in the concerns of women religious, later tides indicate an interest in the position of lay people in the church: for example, participation in the munus sanctificandi, and ministry and the layperson.34 Still later tides indicate a broadening of inter-est: for example, the relation of canon law to civil law, and the relation of bishops to diocesan church institutions. Licentiate (JCL) theses usually presaged what those who con-tinued on to the doctorate in canon law (JCD) would write their dis-sertations about. Many of the topics arose from the first draft of the soon-to-be-revised Code: lay employees, rights and obligations of Christian parents, tribunal personnel. Also, a number of theses compared the historic 1983 revision with the 1917 Code. When women first entered Catholic University's Department of Canon Law as students, it could be presumed that they would make a difference in the classroom. After the early wave (women religious, all but one), a number Of lay women as well (and men, too) entered the ranks of students. To assess this presumption of difference, I seized an opportunity to interview the faculty of the department in December 1996: Father James Provost (chair), Father John E. Lynch CSP, Father Thomas Green, Father Edward Pfnausch, Sister Rose McDermott ssJ, and Father John Beal.3s Their reflections on the difference women make are interesting and substantiate what I consider an exceedingly important dimen-sion of women's contribution to canon law, that is, women's human-izing effect. Every one of the faculty indicated that the presence of women made the conversation within the class richer; the questions they asked and their observations were different from the ques-tions of the traditional clerical students.36 At first the women stu-dents did not know some of the vocabulary (nor did entering laymen). One of the faculty recalls mentioning the title "vicar May-ffune 1999 273 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law forane," a term completely unfamiliar to the women. But, when this and other technical phrases were learned, the difficulty was sur-mounted. Women and men, according to ~he faculty members inter-viewed, are equally intelligent. A number of them indicated that women seem to work harder, perhaps to catch up with the clerics because of the unfamiliar discourse, perhaps because of a greater personal commitment to learning the field. By and large women are eager students and indicate an appreciation for the dedication of their ifistructors. They suffered from some rather mediocre teaching, but the men suffered from them equally with the women.37 No resentment toward women students precisely because of their gender, however, seems to have marred their educational experience, Women have been elected to leadership within the student body and have functioned well in those positions. They quickly initiated social events that, rich in student exchange, aided schol, arly interests along with providing amiable relaxation. The male students in those same positions of leadership had not been as cre-ative in these important social dimensions of student life. The mission of the faculty in this department derives from their conviction that canon law is g/tided by its theological and pastoral nature. This conviction permeates the curriculum and challenges the students to understand it as an ecclesial discipline, a sister to scriptural, systematic, moral, and church-history stud-ies and influenced by the conclusi6ns of those studies, even as canon law has an influence on them. This understanding of the nature of canon law informs the entire curriculum and therefore shapes the intellectual formation of the students for their future careers as canon lawyers. In my discussions with the faculty, the question arose about the influence of feminism on canon law. In general, the faculty agreed that the agenda of feminism, as various as it is, does not signifi-cantly influence either the students or the classes. Earlier on, given especially the newness of women to the field, the place of women in the 1917 Code, and the questions about women's place in the revised Code, women's'issues had more sig-nificance than they currently have. At that time (through the 1970s) some of the female students manifested some anger due to these issues. Today, however, the nature of law seems to move the direc-tion of the students' questions and concerns much more than gen-der issues do. The women students are not angry, nor are their Review for Religious instructors. Rather, they are typical students focused on complet-ing their studies and finding positions that fulfill their educational goals. The question of secure employment in the church, with its attendant concerns, is more of an issue with them, women and lay men alike, than gender issues. However, as justice issues, gender concerns remain for both instructors and students, now usually subsumed in the issues of the role of the layperson in the church. Women's Involvement in. Writing Canon Law Perhaps the most original activity that women have engaged in regarding canon law is the actual writing of legislation intended to be incorporated within the revised Code of Canon Law. Whether or not the canons made their way into the final text of the 1983 Code is not the point here. Rather, it is the activity itself, utterly newin the history of the church as far as I have been able to determine. How did this creative effort on the part of women begin? Sister M. Luke Tobin SL, president of the CMSW from 1964 to 1967, was invited in 1964 to be an official observer at the Vatican Council during the 1964 and 1965 sessions. This invitation itself indicated that the council fathers wanted the participation of women in the process of developing the church's self-understand-ing in the modern world?8 The law of the church, canon law, needed to express this new self-understanding ,as well. In the United States, women religious felt that their experience of their own lives as women religious was an important contribution towards an appropriately revised Code of Canon Law. This activ-ity would engage many of the members of the CMSW during the late 1960s and the 1970s. The board of CMSW began in 1965 to consider writing the regulations for ~governing the lives of women religious in the Code of Canon Law)9 It initiated a project for accomplishing this. Committees were formed in the several regions to write proposed canons dealing with the various aspects of religious life: the vows, authority, community life, formation, apostolate, prayer, and so forth. At the annual conventions of the CMSW from 1967 to 1971, the committees gave reports about the progress of their work. Eventually the conference published a document containing the proposed norms. It received a wide distribution in this country May-June 1999 275 276 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law and abroad, going to all the religious congregations and to the bishops.4° As this endeavor continued, the confidence of the women grew; they recognized the possibilities of the project. Moreover, they sought assistance from canonical experts to assist them in this unique activity. The CLSA was instrumental in assisting the various committees in this endeavor. Father Paul Boyle CP, a canon lawyer, was out-standing in his leadership in this area for women religious.4' Already as president of CLSA, he had communicated his vision of including women in the revision process. Later, as executive sec-retary, he increased his activity along this line. The recognition by the canonists of women's lack of education in canon law led to the establishment of summer institutes for a number of them. Certificates were earned and credit gained for these educa-tional endeavors. Father Kevin O'Rourke OP assumed the respon-sibility for these institutes by sponsoring them, developing them, enlisting the faculty for them, and negotiating their locations. They were held in different Catholic colleges in the country. A number of the graduates of these programs later completed their education in canon law at pontifical schools of canon law. Besides this educational assistance, the CLSA, following Paul VI's Ecdesiae sanctae (1966) implementing the conciliar document Perfectae caritatis, developed institutes to assist women religious in managing the process of renewal in their congregations. Pope Paul's decree instructed communities to hold general chapters to write their constitutions and to somehow engage the entire con-gregation in that effort. Experimentation, too, was mandated. Experimentation and writing canonical documents were some-thing for which most religious communities needed assistance. These endeavors of the CLSA were empowering experiences for the women and their religious communities. Hitherto the women were by and large ignorant of canon law and canonical procedures. They were, however, well-educated, intelligent, competent leaders within their religious congregations and deeply committed to the renewal that the church had mandated. The assistance of the CLSA empowered them and many other women in their congregations. Enthusiasm to recover the origins of their congregations, to learn about the remarkable women who had founded them, to encounter the Word of God through a knowledge of the Scriptures, and to assess the needs of the world through a study of the "signs of the times" generated an enormous energy within these communities.42 Review for Religious The results of this monumental effort have not yet been com-pletely assessed. Many studies today record it, some positively, other negatively, but it is still too close chronologically for it to be judged adequately.43 The energy, however, remains within reli-gious communities, smaller and older though they may be. Initiatives in forming new kinds of religious communities con-tinue in the church as well.** The renewal enterprise conducted among the CMSW, the reli-gious communities, and the CLSA is one of the finest stories to come out of the post-Vatican II Church. It included not only these organizations, but also the hierar-chy of the United States. There was an extraordinarydemonstra-tion of mutual encouragement and support among these diverse orga-nizations regarding the revision of the Code of Canon Law. The pos-sibility of participating together in the revision of the canons that governed the life of women reli-gious was realized through this " effort. The Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) was obviously interested in the same endeavor.4s The Canon Law Society of America responded to the announcement by Pope John XXIII as professional canon lawyers whose expertise was not sim-ply in the practice of law, but in developing it through the proposed revision process.46 These three organizations joined in this endeavor with an unusual demonstration of cooperation. Besides these, the bishops' conference in the United States became the conduit through which the efforts of the organiza-tions were channeled to the Pontifi(al Commission for the Revision of Canon Law, whose responsibility it was to finally formulate the revision. Communication among these organizations was full of enthusiasm and respect. There was no hint of competitiveness, no turf war, no condescension toward women, who were at that time uneducated as canon lawyers. What was desired from the women was the expression of their experience of their own lives and their reflection upon that experience. The mutuality of this common endeavor is one of the finest examples of how women and men can work together to accom- Experimentation and writing canonical documents were something for which most religious communities needed assistance. 277 May-.~une 1.o99 Range * Women and Canon Law plish something for the benefit of all. As the process of revision continued, difficulties emerged, of course. When the canonical text, the Code itself, and the communities' constitutions were finalized and promulgated, the energy that had informed the orig-inal process waned. The vitality of experimentation, of developing powerful and inspiring texts, of consulting all the members of communities in that effort, of creating a vocabulary that resonated with the language of the documents of Vatican II and with the pat-rimony of individual communities--all this vitality wound down as perhaps it inevitably had to after final, authoritative texts were promulgated. As rdigious communities developed their constitutions during these years, their experience shaped their identifies in a remarkable way. The expressions within many of these constitutions were utterly original as documents for identifying and regulating the lives of women religious. In the process of havin~ their constitu-tions reviewed, both the Congregation. for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the individ-ual congregations had much to learn. Although by now most of the problems have been resolved, there are still some communities that do not have their constitutions approved. This phenomenon bears the marks of the encounter between creative initiatives, orig-inal expressions of religious life, and traditional modes of canon-ical expression. The Code defines the constitutions of religious communities as' their particular law. The universal law within the Code presents the guidelines for the constitutions, but does not provide their content. Nevertheless,.the originality of many of these documents from religious communities presented new difficulties for both the congregations themselves and the Vatican officials, who had never seen such documents before. This encounter has been very instructive for all the institutions involved. With the promulgation of the revised Code of Canon Law in 1983 and with the finalization of their constitutions, women are no longer engaged in writing the law that regulates their lives. Periodically constitutions need to be resubmitted to the church for approval. Calls for change and for dispensations are part of the regular communication between the Vatican and women's con-gregations. But creativity and initiatives no longer inform the legal expressions of women religious. Extraordinary documents, though, still emerge from congregational meetings addressing the issues Review Jbr Religio~ts that women religious face at the end of the second millennium. How these documents influence the legally binding texts remains a question for the future. Past, Present, and Future This article has investigated the extraordinary entrance of women into a

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 52.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1993. ; 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 mailing offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus ~nailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1993 Review for Religious review for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Ass#tant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Sefin Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1993 ¯ VOLUME 52 ¯ NUMBER 6 contents 806 feature Religious Life and Conversion Language Dennis J. Billy CSSR provides a language of conversion so that religious might more readily integrate their individual lives with their corporate existences. 817 828 835 842 spirituality Are We Relating to God in a New Way? Gerald M. Fagin SJ proposes five polarities which are always present in our spiritual lives. Desire, Asking, and Answers A. Paul Dominic SJ emphasizes the importance of praying from our desires by exampleg from the Bible. Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Judette A. Gallares RC explores covenantal faith through the symbol of companionship portrayed between Ruth and Naomi. The Spirituality of Surrender John P. Mossi SJ proposes three models of a spiritual surrender-ing as a means of coming home to God. 849 865 ecumenism The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious Jeffrey Gros FSC highlights the importance of ecumenical for-mation and collaboration for women and men religious. The Religious Call of Ecumenism Jude D. Weisenbeck SDS suggests ways in which the needs of the ecumenical movement can well be met by the resources of religious communities. 802 Reviezv for Religious 870 875 ministry Frustrations--Jesus' Ministry and Ours James Martin SJ seeks a fresh perspective on dealing with frustra-tions arising from ministry to the poor. Jesuit Spirituality and Catholic Higher Education Claude N. Pavur SJ stresses the importance of an Ignatian spiritu-ality, invigorating the efforts of educators in the Jesuit tradition. poverty 886 Option for the Poor: God's Pedagogy Marcello Azevedo SJ analyzes the meaning and life-applications of the phrase "option for the poor" in terms of our faith. 893 Who Evangelizes Whom? The Poor Evangelizers John F. Talbot SJ explores the evangelizing potential of the poor. 898 a life of promise Two Cheers for Celibacy William McDonough clarifies the meaning of prie, stly celibacy by combining Robert Bellah's use of institution and Thomas Aquinas's moral vision. 911 Charismatic Renewal and Consecrated Life 920 Susan Rakoczy IHM reflects from a r~ligious-life experience of twenty-five years on the blessings of the charismatic renewal in regard to consecrated life. Death as a Community Event Annette Frey SC shares the stqry of a friend's illness and death as an integrating factor in community life. departments 804 Prisms 927 Canonical Counsel: Lumen Gentium's Chapter 6: Religious 933 Book Reviews 951 Indexes to Volume 52 November-December 1993 803 prisms ~oho are the people by whom you have been most influenced? Many of us must at one time or another have tried to answer this question for ourselves or at the inquiry of others: Precisely which people have strongly influenced my life? Some may quickly name their fathers and mothers; others go on to name favorite teachers or special friends. Still others may name people in world affairs or in the worlds of sports, the arts, or medicine. Probably not very many of us spontaneously turn to the men and women whom the church has declared holy and named as outstanding members of the communion of saints. Yet the reason why the church calls our attention to these people is to allow us to see in other followers of Christ what we hope to become. Just as the church of the Eastern rites emphasizes icons that give us a glimpse of the world of the holy, so the Latin-rite church proposes the study of the lives of ~aints so that we may be inspired by them and formed and then moved along a path of holiness as Jesus' apostles. Perhaps at one time many of us did not appreciate how the more medieval theology of mediators needed updating like so many timebound ways of expressing our faith and its practices--the process mandated by Vatican II. Now it seems that we stand more ready for and in need of the kind of influence which our fellow Christians, can-onized and otherwise esteemed, can exercise in ore: lives. No longer do we, almost superstitiously, look to Mary or other chosen saints for special favors. Instead we take our direction from the Vatican II understanding and descrip-tion of Mary's place in the communion of saints under the 804 Review for Religious specially privileged titles of mother and first disciple. And so we look to our favorite men and women saints particularly in their relationship to us as brothers and sisters and as our fellow disci-ples. If Christians in general are exhibiting a greater need for this kind of influence in their devotional lives, even more might men and women religious look to the holy ones special to their con-gregations for living the kind of discipleship charismatically appro-priate to their following of Christ. ~;Vhether it be the contemporary retelling of saints' lives or recapturing their spirit in new artistic portrayals or recovering prayers of theirs that are appropriate to our times--there still are ways for holy men and women to touch us in our daily living. We may more readily find light coming to us in dark moments of our experience from the uncovered lamp of these human lives than from any theoretical studies or documents. We may also find ourselves more energized for entering into the evangelizing mission of Jesus through the radiance of their inspiration and example. Probably even more surprising than our slowness in naming saints as major influences in our lives is the not infrequent omis-sion of even the name Jesus. As we enter into the Advent and Christmas seasons, maybe more fully than Jesus being "the reason for the season," we might say that the reason for the season is for us to remind ourselves that Jesus is the unique influence upon our lives all year long. Jesus is the one who has influenced how we live, how we pray, how we interact, how we die. Jesus is the one who calls us to a way of following; Jesus is the Teacher, and we all remain the lifelong learners, the ones in continuing formation. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves another question. Is it true that for us not to name Jesus as the great influence of our lives is more than just a memory slip? Does our answer uncover for us that our everyday, busy lives are being spent on behalf of lesser gods than the God Incarnate? The question is worth more than a Christmastime reflection. That the peace and grace of God, Emmanuel, be richly yours is the wish of all the staff of Review for Religious. David L. Fleming SJ November-December 1993 805 DENNIS J. BILLY Religious Life and Conversion Language The crisis faced by many of today's religious goes beyond the breakdown of their founding myths and the resulting lack of purpose in their corporate existences. While many (I daresay most) are at least peripherally aware of having lost in recent years something of great importance for their lives as professed religious, they usually have no idea whatsoever of how to retrieve it or what to put in its place. Nor are they very articulate about just what it is they have lost and why precisely they want it back. Confronted by their own aging, a steady flow of ygunger members from their ranks, and fewer and fewer vocational prospects, many have become disillusioned and desire some sort of immediate respite from their mount-ing misfortunes. They pursue it in any number of ways. Some display a nostalgic desire for the not too distant past--"the good old days," as.they are called, which were probably never quite so good as they now seem. Others resign themselves passively to their "inevitable corporate extinction," an increasingly attractive choice for many. Still others sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of confusion and doubt about the relevance of religious life in the postmodern world--which does nothing but com-pound an already complex and. difficult situation. Regardless of the motivations behind them or their point Dennis J. Billy CSSR is author of the recently published Evangelical Kernels: A Theological Spirituality of Religious Life (Mba House, 1993). His address is Accademia Alfonsiana; Via Merulana, 31; C.P. 2458; 00100 Rome; Italy. 806 Review for Religious of origin, none of these responses are adequate to the crisis at hand. In order to move forward, today's religious must choose a path other than that of denial and escape. At this critical point of their history, what they need is a language of conversion that will enable them to give an honest account of themselves, will help them to integrate their private lives with their corporate existences, and will show them how they, as a group, can con-front the cynical doubts that writhe beneath the surface of their professional respectability. Conversion Language A language of conversion must speak to both the mind and the heart. It must make sense to.people in a way that will satisfy their intellectual longings. It must also motivate them to exanaine their situation in life with renewed strength and vigor--as if with dif-ferent eyes. More importantly, it must reshape their interpretation of experience so that, through the action of divine grace, they see their denial for what it is and then find it possible to realign their personal powers of commitment with those of the religious insti-tute to which they belong. Only from such a realignment will dusty and creaky institu-tional structures and the people who stubbornly inhabit and main-tain them have any hope of being refurbished for a brighter future. Failure to achieve this renewal of human heart and human social structure will result only in more of the same problem: individ-ualism amid corrosive social ills; continuing loss of confidence in and commitment to one's religious community; the persistence of the "double life" syndrome that has plagued so many first-world congregations since the Second Vatican Council. By most assessments, the very future of religiou~ life is at stake. The thesis is clear: the circular relationship between individ-ual and corporate change must come to the fore in any further dis-cussions about authentic conversion, particularly with respect to those who have dedicated their lives to following the evangelical counsels. "The whole cannot be understood without its parts; nor the parts without the whole." This fundamental problem of inter-pretation-- the so-called hermeneutical problem--lies at the root of the present crisis in religious life. To deal with it effectively, a language of conversion must address both the individual and the November-December 1993 807 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language group, as well as their ongoing mutual relationship. It can do so, however, only if it encompasses (1) a sound Christian anthropol-ogy that stresses the dignity of human persons on every level of their existence, (2) a persuasive philosophical link between the personal and the corporate wholes, and (3) a recognition of its own inherent limitations with a corresponding openness to the re-creative presence of God. Without these important ingredi-ents of change, no language of conversion, regardless of how elo-quent or comprehensive it may appear, will be adequate to the enormous task at hand. A Sound Christian Anthropology The connotations of the phrase "a sound Christian anthro-pology" need some explaining. An "anthropology" may be described as a specific and coordinated assessment of human exis-tence. It is "Christian" insofar as it receives its inspiration from the insights of Christian traditions. To the extent that there are numerous interpretations of the meaning of Christianity, there are also varying Christian anthropologies. In this essay, a "sound" Christian anthropology is understood as one which integrates four fundamental dimensions of human existence: the physical, the rational (or mental), the spiritual, and the social. All of these are found ih the teaching of St. Paul and are made explicit in the juxtaposition of his doctrine of the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12- 31) and the tripartite understanding of the person found in such verses as this: "May the God of peace make you perfect in holi-ness. May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body (soma), irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Th 5:23). Together these verses express the Pauline understanding of the complexity of human existence and qualify as a solid basis for further theological reflection. Of what do these basic dimensions consist? People's spirit (pneuma) is the deepest part of their being. It yearns for God with unutterabl.e groanings (Rm 8:23) and has the potential to be lifted up into intimate communion with the very Spirit of God. Ever elusive and difficult to describe, it is that aspect of human exis-tence which affirms each human person as capax Dei, that is, capa-ble of God. People's soul (psyche), by contrast, is their animating principle of life. It encompasses, not only the rational, but also the emotive, nutritive, and reproductive sides of human existence. 808 Review for Religious Rational activity, the soul's highest and noblest function, enables people to wonder about the meaning of life and to think criti-cally about its problems. People's bodies (somata) are the material extension of their existence. Unlike the Pauline term for "flesh" (sarx), which has close associations with a life of sin leading to death, soma can be used for good or for ill and is hence a morally neutral concept. Finally, people's social dimension is a constituent part of their anthropological makeup. A human per-son. arises out of and exists in a social context and cannot be understood apart from it. For Christians, the primary social arena in which they live out their lives is that of the Body of Christ as it exists in its various expressions such as the family, the parish, the diocese, and the church universal. The interrelated nature of these various dimensions of human existence cannot be stressed highly enough. Spirit does not exist apart from a person's body, soul, and social relationships-- nor vice versa. Not one of them can be separated and treated in isolation from the others, as if a person were an arti-ficial composite of four disparate parts. A continuous and unbroken anthropo- For Christians, the primary social arena in which they live out their lives is that of the Body of Christ as it exists in its various expressions such as the family, the parish, the diocese, and the church universal. logical relationship exists among all of them. So strong are these bonds that not even death can sever them completely and pre-vent their ongoing functioning. To do so would mean the ulti-mate dissolution of the human person and the corresponding passage from being to nonbeing which the Christian faith so strongly rejects as a possibility of human destiny. That is not to say that a certain priority of relationships does not exist among these various anthropological factors: spirit relates to soul as soul to body. Balanced and healthy relationships among these affect the way in which a person interacts with others. A sound social environment, in turn, produces profound healing effects on a per-son's bodily, spiritual, and mental well-being. This circular rela-tionship is important for understanding the present crisis of religious life, which now can be understood as involving not only November-Deconber 1993 809 Billy ¯ Reli~ous Life and Conversion Language the vast array of dysfunctional social structures, but also a deeper relational imbalance operative on the most basic levels of human existence. Linking the Personal and the Corporate Social structures are both products of the mind and a means through which human intelligence and human spirit are shaped. ' When functioning according to justice, they give all people their due and educate them in virtue. At other times they work to the benefit of a privileged elite at the expense of an oppressed under-class. The interests of justice are not adequately served when existing social structures help to perpetuate a mentality of control that legitimizes the unjust treatment of other human beings. Such structures are sinful and need to be changed. When they are not (as can be the case in religious life), it may very well be simply because those involved feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the task before them. Such feelings can easily lead people to a sense of helplessness or even indifference about their ability to influence their surrounding social structures. An implicit dualism then arises in the private and social spheres of religious life: individuals grad-ually lose ownership of their ruling structures; the latter go on unchallenged more out of a paralyzing lack of interest than any-one's stubborn resistance to change. One way to overcome this implicit dualism is to introduce the related concepts of microcosm and macrocosm into the cur-rent vocabulary of religious life. Rooted in the primitive Greek idea of the human person as a small-scale model of the cosmos, this distinction was eventually adapted by Plato as a way of describing the relationship of individuals to the society (see Republic, 441c). According to this adjusted version, the underlying structure of human society is nearly the same as that of the human soul. The rational element corresponds to the republic's govern-ing class; the irascible (or spirited), to its martial orders; the con-cupiscible, to its productive masses. As "the human soul writ large," society offers individuals not only a particular place in the " social hierarchy, but also the opportunity of seeing themselves projected onto the collective whole. Individuals find their reflec-tion in the whole; the whole, in the individual. Plato's application of the microcosm/macrocosm distinction is not relevant in all its details to religious life in its contemporary 810 Review for Religious ¯ Western setting. His assertion, however, of an underlying struc-tural continuity between individuals and the society to which they belong has much to its credit: (1) it preserves the circular rela-tionship between individual and social functions; (2) it allows for certain structural similarities between human beings and their primary social environment; and (3) it maintains the distinctive-ness of individuals in the face of the larger community. When combined with the Christian anthropology outlined in the pre-vious section (as opposed to the Platonic one with which it is nor-mally associated), this seminal idea can help individuals in today's religious communities to regain their sense of identity with the larger whole. The analogy would go something like this: both the human person and the religious community possess spiritual, mental, physical, and social dimensions. The relationships among the various dimensions within the human person are proportion-ate to those in the religious community (for example, human spirit / human soul = community spirit / community soul, and so forth). Cross references also remain proportionate, but only with regard to corresponding terms (that is, human spirit /communal spirit = human soul / community soul, and so forth). In all cases the rule of proper proportionality applies (a/b = a'/b'). The strength of this approach is that it maintains a fundamental continuity between the underlying anthropological structure of individuals and that of their religious community. And it is able to do so even when taking into account the limitations of the language it uses to describe the quiet, abiding presence of God in the life of the . community. The Silent Presence of Grace One of the underlying dangers in the current discussion about the future of religious life is the tendency to substitute lengthy theories for the simplicity of God's intervening grace. Uneasiness about their present situation in life has led many religious into a quest for the perfect plan that will explain in fine detail (1) why they find themselves in their present situation, (2) how they can get themselves out of it, and (3) where they should be going. Search as they may, they will inevitably end up frustrated. No magic elixir of man-made theories can satisfy expectations of such exalted heights. To achieve its ends, a theory of refounding or revitalization must place God, not itself, atthe center of attention. November-Deconber 1993 811 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language To do so, it must first recognize that conversion on any level--the personal, the communal, the societal--comes directly from God's own initiative. And since God is not limited to the narrow confines of human theorizing, the theory in question can propose nothing but one of many possibilities of how God's transforming action may occur. By placing itself on the periphery (not at the center) of divine action, such a theory acknowledges its inherent limita-tions and places itself more readily at the disposal of God's re-creative activity. "The wind blows where it wills" (Jn 3:8). The movement of God's grace is capable of transforming both individuals and the social structures they inhabit. What God does or how is not always discernible to the human eye. What is important in any of life's sit-uations-- and, in this case, in the present crisis facing many reli-gious communities--is that people (both as individuals and as a group) expand their awareness of God working quietly in the cir-cumstances of their daily lives. Where is God in the present cri-sis facing religious life? What is God saying in the graying of once thriving religious communities, in their steady loss of younger members, in their failure to attract vocations, and in their overall decline in numbers? Why does God permit the cur-rent lack of identity and firmness of purpose which characterizes so many of today's religious communities? Where is God lead-ing them--if at all? And to serve what purpose? When sincerely reflected upon, such questions lead people either to affirm or deny God's active involvement in their own life and in the life of " their religious community. The answer, however, may not end up in the shape of a simple yes or no. In a matter of faith, a believer's response must involve more than a facile determination of whether God is with this particular community or has abandoned it. Such a reply may evade the issue altogether. An authentic outpouring of God's grace will foster a deep sense of listening in the life of a religious community. Most peo-ple, religious included, are more ready to give their own opinion than to hear that of another. They are usually so heavily interested in what they themselves have to say that they talk past those around them or, at best, tolerate what is said until the next oppor-tunity arises for them to speak. What passes for conversation is often nothing more than a continuous chain of vaguely connected monologues. Such is not the case with God, the preeminent lis-tener, nor should it be the case of those stirr.ed by the free gift of 812 Review for Religious grace. Those who listen carefully--to their own hearts, to those around them, to the needs of the community, and to those outside the community--are able to discern more clearly the voice of God in their own lives. When they nurture this quiet witness of faith, religious create a space in their community where others know that their presence will be gratefully recognized and their stories listened to with interest. To empty oneself so that others may be heard is an important quality in authentic Christian living. The language of conversion cannot be spoken, let alone heard, apart from the re-creative silence of God's transforming grace. R.eligious and the Language of Conversion The rudiments of an authentic language of conversion are now in place: a sound Christian anthropology, a way of bringing together individuals and corporate wholes, and a recognition of God's creative initiative in the process of conversion. The inte-gration of these elements and their use as an active, functioning language will enable religious to find greater insight into their present difficulties and will lead them to a deeper awareness of the proper course of action to be taken. To further advance this claim, a number of observations are in order: 1. A language of conversion such as the one suggested above will challenge religious to remove the "problem solving" glasses that regularly color their current outlook. Rather than poring over "what must we change in order to secure our institutional viability," they will focus on questions about the authenticity of their reli-gious lives. A religious community, in other words, turns its life more completely over to God, not out of any ulterior motives (for example, to get more vocations, to stem the exodus of disenchanted members), but simply because that is what God asks of them. 2. Religious need to examine, in their common spiritual out-look, the relationship they maintain between "being" and "action." Informed by an anthropology that draws strong bonds between the bodily, mental, spiritual, and social dimensions of human exis-tence, they will be more apt to be sensitive to how their actions-- both private and corporate--are expressions of who they are and sensitive as well to how their actions affect their being as human persons. 3. Religious must articulate in their daily lives a deeper appre-ciation of the basic human elements of community living. November-December 1993 813 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language Membership in a religious congregation involves more than mere physical presence. It also entails a shared commitment to common goals and values, a general sense of how these ends are to be achieved, the fostering of community spirit, and a network of sound spiritual and social ties. Since these elements are them-selves all intimately related, care must be taken that members manage to relate well on all of them. Structures must be set in place to facilitate this process. 4. Particular emphasis should be given to the community's spiritual well-being. Just as the spirit is the deepest part of the human person--that part which yearns for God and which affirms oneself as capax Dei--so too is it the truest, most authentic part of the religious community. When the spirit of a religious commu-nity suffers, the other dimensions cannot help being affected. Efforts must be made to heal the wounded spirit of religious com-munity life. Among other things, this will mean working through such difficult issues as human intimacy, vocational crises, mourn-ing the loss of members, and dealing constructively with members who display dysfunctional and addictive behaviors. Only through healing of the spirit of religious community life is there any hope of recovery. 5. One way of healing a community's wounded spirit is for its members to reserve time and community space for genuine listening. By being attentive to the words of others--the stories they tell, the experiences they wish to share--people enter into the thick of life and allow for the possibility of God's presence to break into ordinary daily events. When a religious community fosters this attitude of respect for the need of people to share themselves openly without feeling threatened, it begins to go beneath the superficial ways of relating by which its members all too often relate hardly at all. One of the great sins of religious life is that people can live together for years and barely know each other. 6. It is also sad that a person can live the religious life for yea~rs without ever developing a close relationship with God. Addressing this problem, the language of conversion places God at the center of attention. The whole purpose of life, and of reli-gious life especially, is for a person to enter into a deep and last-ing friendship with God. This purpose must not be lost sight of in discussions about the future of religious life. Religious vow to live the evangelical counsels in order to walk more closely along 814 Revie~ for Religious the way of the Lord Jesus. They do so, if for no other reason, in order to enter more closely into union with him and the One who sent him. 7. People cannot know God, however, if their spirit (or the spirit of the community, for that matter) does not commune with the Spirit of God in the quiet groves of contemplation. Many religious, unfortunately, have forgotten all about what it means to seek the Lord in prayer. Having lost the incentive to pray, they merely go through the motions of living out their evangelical commitments; their lives, as a result, can easily become devoid of all meaning. Religious need to see through the self-deceptions that have gradually led them to compromise their vows. To retrieve the meaning of their religious life, they must return to a balanced regimen of prayer whereby they can gather in God's name and continually invoke the divine presence. 8. Finally, no one undergoes conversion outside a specific community environment. Religious must develop a keen sense of boundary definition that will enable them to distribute their time appropriately between their own religious community and the people they serve in the apostolate. While benefiting from the authentic sharing that goes on within their communities (an essential priority of a well functioning community), they must take care not to become inordinately introspective and so lose all desire to reach beyond their immediate circle. The apostolic orientation of all religious communities (even those with a strictly contem-plative lifestyle) must always remain a primary concern. With this orientation religious supported and energized by their communi-ties will be able--both individually and together--to do great work for both the church and for society at large. Just as the spirit is the deepest part of the human person-- that part which yearns for God and which affirms oneself as capax Dei--so too is it the truest, most authentic part of the religious community. Conclusion The present crisis in religious life is largely a lack of balance between the individual and the community. In many respects the November-December 1993 815 Billy ¯ ReIigious Life and Conversion Language crisis is a scaled-down version of the age-old philosophical prob-lem of the one and the many, an issue which has always lurked behind the scenes of Western philosophical thought and which remains, even today, largely unresolved. In recent years the pen-dulum has swung from one extreme to the other, with the indi-vidual being either submerged in the collective (as was often the case before Vatican II) or much removed from it (as has often occurred since the council). While nearly everyone agrees that a healthy balance needs to be struck, there is little consensus con-cerning just what must be done to achieve it. These pages have used certain categories from the Western religious and philosophical traditions in an effort to nudge reli-gious communities gently toward a prudent--even though pre-carious- balance. The categories include (1) a Pauline anthropology that emphasizes the four basic dimensions of human existence (spiritual, mental, bodily, and social), (2) a philosophi-cal link between individual and corporate wholes (the micro-cosm/ macrocosm distinction of the ancient Greek philosophers), and (3) a deepened awareness of the inherent limitations of lan-guage (and by extension all theories) with a corresponding focus on the creative initiative of divine grace. While none of these cat-egories are entirely disregarded in current discourse about reli-gious life, rarely have they been used in conjunction with one another and certainly not in what has been termed "a language of conversion." By assimilating these categories of conversion, religious can begin to change some of their dysfunctional ways of relating and nurse some of the open wounds that their communities now endure. First of all, they must get beyond claiming that the call to conversion extends only to individuals and not to the social struc-tures they inhabit. An awareness of the circular relationship between the human heart and the human social structure is ~un-damental to any serious discussion of religious life's future. Without it the dissatisfaction of many of today's religious with their institutional structures will continue to grow. 816 Review for Religious GERALD M. FAGIN Are We Relating to God in a New Way? When I entered a Jesuit novitiate thirty-five years ago, I was introduced to a way of relating to God deeply rooted in the tradition of the church and in the Society of Jesus. It was a way of experiencing God and of responding to God that was shaped by a clearly defined theological understanding of God, the church, and the human per-son. What characterized that spirituality was what char-acterized the spirituality of most Catholics, both lay and religious, in the years before Vatican Council II. What has emerged in the last twenty-five years is a new way of relating to God, a spirituality rooted in a plurality of the-ological understandings of God, the church, and the human person. We might describe it as a shift in model or simply as a shift from one pole of the necessary tension in our spiritual lives to the other. What is important is that we describe and understand what has happened, for too often a lack of understanding has led to confusion, guilt, and quarreling among Christians. I offer five tensions or polarities that are always pres-ent in our spiritual lives. What has happened in lived Christian spirituality can be described in terms of these tensions. spirituality From Objective to Subject-Centered The spirituality of thirty-five years ago was an objec- Gerald M. Fagin sJ, professor of theology, can be addressed at Loyola University; 6363 St. Charles Avenue; New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. Noven~ber-Decen~ber 1993 817 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? tive spirituality measured in terms of laws kept, mortifications and virtues and devotions practiced, prayers said, and Masses attended. A typical day in a novitiate was structured around an early morning Latin Mass, an hour of meditation, the rosary, the stations of the cross, examination of conscience, spiritual read-ing, and an instruction on religious life. The spiritual life of the Catholic laity was measured and identified by similar norms and practices. This way of life was supported by a clearly defined Catholic culture that gave Catholics a sense of identity rooted in unambiguous doctrinal and moral teaching and distinct rituals and practices. It was the world of the Baltimore catechism, Friday abstinence, fasting in Lent, First Friday and First Saturday devo-tions, benediction, indulgences, and St. Jude devotions. It demanded discipline and obedience and self-sacrifice, but it offered clear expectations and a structured and measurable way of living out a committed Christian life that led to sanctity. Such objectivity is an essential element in any relationship .to God. Rituals, practices, and devotions are at the heart of a gen-uine experience of God and a faithful response to God. We need clear guidelines and traditional structures if we are to be account-able and if we are to guard against the kind of subjectivity that is open to deception and divisiveness. What has emerged, then, is not a total rejection of this way of relating to God, but a new emphasis on the human person as a free and developing subject in the spiritual life. This subject-centered spirituality is a spirituality measured in terms of people's inner growth and actualization, the quality of their prayer and personal affective development. The spiritual life is described in terms'of a growth in trust and love and openness and freedom and sensi-tivity to the Spirit. Religious experience rather than religious practice is central to this approach. The focus is growth in peo-ple's personal relationship with God and on God's call addressed ¯ uniquely to individuals in their specific life circumstances. In con-sidering fidelity to God, the language of conformity and obedience to rules gives way to discernment and dialogue. Prayer becomes less a meditation on the truths of Christianity and more a lan-guage of the heart, an affective prayer that centers on God's ini-tiative more than our initiative. The role of the spiritual director puts less emphasis on teaching and guidance and more emphasis on facilitating the directee's relationship with God. The didactic gifts of the director become less important than a listening and 818 Review for Religious discerning heart that can clarify the movement of God in the directee's heart. Thirty-five years ago my spiritual director asked me about my fidelity to my spiritual exercises, the subject matter of my meditation, and the resolutions from my latest retreat. Today my spiritual director asks me about the movement of God in my heart and the consolation and desolation that are the signposts of my discernment. The presupposition is that God is at work in the individual soul and that this movement of God can be observed and discerned. The shift to a subject-centered spirituality is clearly seen in the rediscovery of the directed retreat. Conference-style or preached retreats focus on a common teaching or subject matter for reflec-tion. Everyone responds to and prays over the same material, often more doctrinal than scriptural, and not selected as a specific response to the needs and grace directions of the individuals. The subject matter of the directed retreat is each individual's experience of God, the movement of the Spirit within that person. Scripture is chosen to focus and highlight the graces of the retreatant. There is not one set program for everyone. It is pre-sumed that each person will experience and respond to God's grace in an individual way. Underlying this shift to the subject is a different under-standing of revelation. Revelation is imaged not primarily as propositions to be affirmed but as God's self-communication. Revelation is not first a series of statements about God and the human condition, but a series of experiences of God that reveal who God is and how God deals with us. Jesus is the fullness of God's revelation so that our faith life is a response to someone rather than an assent to propositions. God's self-revelation in Christ calls us to a new relationship with.God. Experience, both individual and communal, precedes articulation; and our rela- This subject-centered spirituality is a spirituality measured in terms of people's inner growth and actualization, the quality of their prayer and personal affective development. November-December 1993 819 Fagqn ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? tionship with God begins in an experience of God that then finds words in doctrines and expression in rituals. From Perfection to Process The novice of thirty-five years ago set out on the road to per-fection. Every imperfection was to be weeded out, every virtue practiced. The ideals were clear, even if unattainable. The goal was set: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." The perfec-tion model envisioned our spiritual lives as a striving for an ideal, a state of perfection that was never attained. Too often our spir-itual lives were evaluated in terms of our failures to reach the ideal or the degree to which we had failed to attain perfection. As in the objective model, the focus was on an observance of laws and duties. Novices were told, "Keep the rule and the rule will keep you." This approach tended to be legalistic and Pelagian and to generate undue fear in our relationship with God. We were always aware that we were not measuring up to the ideal. No matter how fervent our spiritual lives and how detailed our obser-vance, we remained unworthy servants who had yet to reach per-fection. We placed much more emphasis on what we had failed to do or achieve than on the level of our desire and hope and love and our moments of fidelity. This perfection model focused on the goal, not the process to the goal. God's love and affirmation were often thought of as the reward for our completing the process, for our faithful observance. A corollary of the shift from objective to subject-centered is the shift from this perfection model to a process model in our relationship with God. The process model envisions our spiri-tual lives as a journey that can be measured not only in terms of how far we have to go, but especially in terms of how far we have come. Besides sorrow for our failure to attain perfection, there is gratitude for all that God has accomplished in us, the work of God's grace in our lives. Our spiritual lives are viewed as a rela-tionship with God that grows, not as a project that needs to be accomplished. Such a model is sensitive to the adult stages of growth in the human process. Conversion is emphasized as an ongoing process of discovering and purification and commitment. Creative fidelity in the midst of new challenges and opportunities replaces perseverance in a static commitment. The love of God is experienced in the midst of the process as an abiding source of 820 Review for Religious support and inspiration. God loves us where we are and invites us to a fuller life. We find God, then, where we are and not where we would like to be. We pray out of our present experience, not out of as-yet-unrealized goals. At the root of this shift from perfection to process is a renewed understanding of grace. Grace is defined not primarily in ontological terms and categories, certainly not as a quantity to be gained and lost by observance or lack of observance. Rather it is understood as a growth in a relationship of love with some-one, a growth into a richer and fuller life. Our relationship with God is an invitation to friendship and intimacy with God, a gift of new life. God's grace is the giving of Godself that transforms us and empowers us to live God's life. From Private to Communal The novitiate of thirty-five years ago was highly structured and programmed. With rare exceptions, everyone followed the same order of the day, listened to the same conferences and instructions, and even read many of the same books. The reality of large numbers of novices made personal attention less available, even though the novice master was concerned for the well-being of each novice. At the same time, the spirituality proposed was very individualistic. People's relation with God was private and expressed in personal devotions and practices. They found God in the solitude of their'own heart and gave little emphasis to a com-munity of shared faith and communal discernment. There was a strong sense of corporate identity, but one's own spiritual life was private and to be shared only with a spiritual director or supe-rior. The support came from the awareness that everyone was praying at the same time in private, not from any ~hared sense of what was happening in the prayer of individuals. This personal piety that privatized one's relationship with God followed upon an understanding of the church as an insti-tution from which grace flows from the top through a hierarchi-cal structure to the individual. God spoke through superiors and religious leaders, not through the members of the community. Sacraments too were privatized. They were channels of individ-ual grace and a personal relationship with God. Confession was an experience of forgiveness of my sins with little sense of reconcil-iation with the community. Eucharist focused on the offering of November-December 1993 821 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? Christ's sacrifice and my reception of Communion, followed by my private thanksgiving with .Jesus. Often Eucharist was a pri-vate Mass with a single server symbolizing a broader community that was not evidently there. All of this, of course, reflected a the-ology of church and sacrament that shaped and reinforced a sense of a private relationship with God. A communal model, on the other hand, emphasizes that we encounter God in community. It respects the personal and unique aspect of one's relationship with God and the areas of religious experience that are shared only with a spiritual guide or a close friend, but it images our relationship with God in the context of a community of faith. The Spirit speaks through all, and we grow in our faith life with, in, and through others. We are one body. We are branches on the same vine. Shared prayer and communal dis-cernment are important means of developing our relationship with God. This derives from an understanding of church as pri-marily a community of believers called together in faith. The church is an institution with visible structures and offices, but it is first the gathering of disciples that find and celebrate God's presence in their midst. Liturgy is experienced as ecclesial, as the coming together of God's people to hear the word in common and share the meal of the Reign of God. Jesus is present, not only in the consecrated bread and wine, but also in the assembly. We find Jesus in the community. Sacraments, then, are experienced as communal moments Of celebration that bind us together and deepen our corporate identity as the people of God. Christians share a common story of salvation and live out that story as mem-bers of the one body of Christ. That sense of a common story deepens our awareness of God's self-revelation to us in commu-nity and our need to listen and respond as God's people bound together by a covenant relationship. From Dualism to Wholeness From its earliest days Christianity has struggled with a dual-ism that put a wedge between the spiritual and the physical, the body and the soul. Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Jansenism are only historical surfacings of a constant and strong undercurrent of thought that considers the physical to be evil and the source of temptation. Not surprisingly, the novitiate of thirty-five years ago put little emphasis on emotional growth and psychosexual devel- 822 Review for Religious opment. The prominent role of physical penances and the pro-hibition about novices touching one another dramatized not only a needed asceticism, but also a distrust of anything relating to the human body. Holiness was often identified with a flight from the body and from the emotions. The body was seen as a hin-drance to the spirit, and the emotions were dismissed or sup-pressed as irrelevant and debilitating. Reason and volition were the only reliable means of directing our spiritual lives. Discernment was reduced to a rational process or replaced by. logical analysis. Faith was seen primarily as an act of the intellect and holiness as an act of the will. In the end, the spiritual life was often per-ceived as set apart in a higher realm divorced from the growth of the whole person. Contemporary spirituality is more clearly holistic. It respects and encourages the growth of the whole person. The process of human-ization is an integral part of spiritual develop-ment. Spiritual maturity presupposes a certain psychological health as a foundation. The role of affectivity and an appreciation of our phys-icality become important elements of our growth to spiritual wholeness. Discernment is appreciated as noticing and evaluating the affective as well as the rational movements of God within the soul, sifting through experiences of consolation and desolation. Faith is the response of the whole person to God's self-revela-tion. A renewed value is given to human desire as a place where God touches and inspires the soul and calls a person to fuller life. Contemporary spiritua~ty knows well that something of this holis-tic approach can be found in a fresh reading of many of the mys-tics and spiritual classics, but modern awareness and appreciation of the complexities of the human person have insisted even more that holiness is a developmental process of integrating all aspects of the human person. The shift from dualism to wholeness is rooted in an under-standing of the human person as a unity rather than a duality of spirit and body. Psychology and religion can work together to transform and sanctify every dimension of the person. The Enneagram, Jungian personality types, dream analysis, Intensive Journaling--all these and more can enrich our appreciation and Christians share a common story of salvation and live out that story as members of the one body of Christ. November-December 1993 823 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? understanding of the human psyche and be positive helps to our spiritual growth. There is, of course, an element of truth in the dualistic approach. Physical and even psychological wholeness are not indispensable to Christian holiness. God can and does work through our brokenness. The ideal of self-actualization and human growth must always be relativized by the gospel call to self-emp-tying surrender. On the other hand, the dualistic approach, when taken to an extreme, can produce an impoverished human per-son insensitive to the riches of imagination and affect in relating to God and other people. In such a case, little or no value is given to the affective movements of the heart in the search for God. The ordering of affectivity is reduced to the suppression of affec-tivity, and an ascetic ideal is proposed that allows little room for human emotion. From Other-Worldly to This-Worldly "Just a little while and then eternity." These words attributed to St. John Berchmans set the tone for my novitiate experience thirty-five years ago. At the heart of the relationship with God was a call to renunciation of the material world. The world was a place of temptation and trial. We were pilgrims on a journey to salvation in the next life. Sanctity demanded detachment from the world. Matter was evil, the source of sin. Penance was a way to punish the flesh and control its appetites. The novitiate was in an isolated place far from the allurements of the world. There were no newspapers or magazines or movies or TV. The harshest judgment passed on any novice was that he was "worldly." At the root of this approach was a negative vision of the world as cor-rupted by sin. Flight from the world was the road to sanctity. Even apostolic religious orders tended to propose monastic ide-als that emphasized separation from the world. A special impor-tance was given to the words of Seneca (Letters, no. 7) quoted in the Imitation of Christ (I, 20): "As often as I have been among men, I have returned less a man." No one can deny the truth in this approach to the world. Growth in a relationship with God demands a radical detachment and renunciation. We live in a world of obscured values and dis-torted perceptions, a world infected with sin that stands in oppo-sition to the values of the reign of God. The world is groaning for 824 Review for Religious redemption, and Christianity must stand as a countercultural force in a broken and wounded world. Contemporary spirituality, however, takes a more positive view of the world, seeing it as the product of God's love and the locus of God's redemptive presence. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) proposed a world-affirming vision that recognized the value and autonomy of human society and culture and that took responsibility for the world. A renewed theology of creation takes seriously Genesis's declaration of the goodness of creation and the dignity of humans as images of God. Such a creation-centered spirituality rejoices in the world as a gift.from the hands of a loving God. Our relationship with God is expressed in a concern for the earth and a sense of stew-ardship for the resources entrusted to us. The reign of God is already a reality "bud-ding forth," and our human efforts are an essential element in building the final reign of God. God, then, is found in human experience and human achievement, and this world becomes a sacred place for encountering God. A genuine apostolic spirituality recognizes that we work out our salvation by involvement in the human struggle for justice. The desert invades the marketplace and the monk speaks a prophetic word in the city. The reason for the shift to a this-worldly spiritua'lity is, then, a more positive view of the world and a renewed understanding of salvation. An important corollary of this new understanding and appre-ciation of the world is a reevaluation of the relation between reli-gious life and the lay vocation. In the other-worldly view of the Christian life, monastic spirituality was considered normative, and so the life of a single or a married person in the world was necessarily a less radical commitment to a relationship with God. Lay spirituality was at best a watered-down adaptation of the higher calling of religious life. Vatican II, by contrast, speaks of a universal call to holiness. All Christians are called to the per-fection of charity and commitment to Christ. Religious life and the A genuine apostolic spirituality recognizes that we work out our salvation by involvement in the human struggle for justice. November-December 1993 825 Fagin ¯ Are V~e Relating to God in a New tVay? lay vocation are two different ways of responding to the radical gospel call to discipleship. At best one can speak of religious life as a more explicit and unambiguous lifestyle that witnesses to the common vocation of all Christians. Conclusion The tensions just described are an enduring part of our rela-tionship with God. Our spirituality will always be a balance between objective and subjective, perfection and process, private and communal, dualism and wholeness, other-worldly and this-worldly. As Richard McBrien has pointed out frequently, Catholicism is not a matter of either/or but of both/and. There is no question of rejecting one way and replacing it completely with another, but rather of claiming a new richness that respects the older way and opens new ways of living our Christian lives. My novitiate experience of thirty-five ye~ars ago focused almost exclu-sively on the objective, perfection, private, dualistic, and other-worldly dimensions of our relationship with God. Contemporary spirituality has swung the pendulum dramatically to the other pole. The challenge is to move beyond a reactionary position and to integrate the truth of the previous way of relating to God with a new and rich experience of God and the human person. The swing of the pendulum, as we have seen, comes from a new under-standing of revelation, grace, and the church and of the human person, the world, and salvation. Developments in theology and new dimensions of religious experience continue to enrich one another and open new possibilities in our relationship with God. Each age in the life of the church struggles to define Christians' relationship with God. Christian spirituality is a lived experience shaped by life, culture, and theology, but above all by the graced invitation of God. I conclude by suggesting four char-acteristics of a Christian spirituality that is responsive to the invi-tation and challenge of the contemporary world. We need an incarnational spirituality that finds mystery and the sacred in the midst of a radical affirmation of the giftedness of the world, that finds God not only above us but also with us. We need a holistic spirituality that integrates more fully into our spiritual growth the nonrational dimensions of our person, fostering a healthy sense of sin and forgiveness and respecting the human psyche's limitations and possibilities for growth in God's life. We need a 826 Review for Religious prophet# spirituality that integrates the mystical and the political and sees a passion for justice and solidarity with the poor as inte-gral to contemplative union with God. We need an ecdesial spir-ituality that lives out our relationship with God in the community of disciples, harmonizes discernment and religious authority, and responds to the call to ministry that baptismal grace enables us to hear. In the end, Christian spirituality will always remain a response to the gospel call to conversion and discipleship. In every age it promises a growth in a personal relationship with God and demands a commitment in the context of a community of faith, but in the midst 6f these constant elements Christians will con-tinue to be attentive to the movements of the Spirit in their lives and to explore new ways of relating to God. Holofrosts The offerings to God this winter's morning Are holofrosts, not burnt but frozen;fruit Of the vine hangs shriveled as nuggets of ice, The works of human hands .are noughted out By whiteness of snow. Offering God of his own From the elements given us, we lift up As gifts at his altar: his earth, air, Water, hard-touched by December, challenging Us to be devout in our changing seasons Of spring-weather faith, frost-withered doubt. Nancy G. Westerfield November-December 1993 827 A. PAUL DOMINIC Desire, Asking, and Answers porayer, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, is the articulation of ur desire before God.~ That is the way we teach our chil-dren their first practical lesson in religion: we teach them to ask God for what they want. As people grow in spiritual life, they can never outgrow the spirit of their beginnings, if for no other reason than that the highest reaches cannot exist without the low-est attainments. There is reason, then, not to abandon altogether the early, petitionary stage of spiritual life, but to continue to experience its varying moods and movements. Here biblical personages at once spiritual and earthy can be illustrative and illuminative. The recorded experiences of Hannah, David, and Job are relevant. They are all apparently of marked spirituality, notably above the ordinary. Yet in their dealings with God they do not remain always ethereal. Possessed of human desires, too, as down-to-earth people, they approach God openly with the desires of their heart. That is to say, they are simple enough not to be shatmning but to move with the tide of their life. Spiritually oriented people will neglect this basic lesson only to their cost. Not much is known of Hannah, surely; but the little that is known of her reveals her womanly spiritual fiber. Her husband, Elkanah, less known than herself, is religious too, but in the usual way, performing the regular practices like yearly pilgrimage. Perhaps part of his routine spirituality is his seeming resignation A. Paul Dominic SJ, author of God of Justice (Bombay: St. Paul Publications), is well known to our readers. His address is Satyodayam; S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. 828 Review for Religious to God's disposition regarding Hannah's barrenness. But Hannah herself would not be resigned to her situation. She burns with desire for a son as much as, or even more than, she is resentful and in distress because of the taunts of the other wife, who is not bar-ren. All this compounded desire of her heart she pours out to her God, completely oblivious of her surroundings, and she keeps on beseeching him for a son till--that is the important point here-- she is assured that she will get what she has painfully longed for. She has not supplicated in vain. No wonder she knows peace in her heart. David is great in every way, in particular in his spiritual gifts. He attains spiritual heights on certain occasions when God sur-prises him with choice favors. But he also knows low spirits and even falls. Then he prays, staying where he is. One such occa-sion is when he realizes that he has to pay for his adultery by the death of the child of adultery. Though he owns his sin, still he wants the son his sin produced. How he prays for the life of the child, struck by God with a grave illness! He pleads with God for his child, fasting and lying on the ground for days together. He prays with all his energies, hoping against hope till he realizes that the child has died. He has supplicated in vain and still, sur-prisingly enough, seems to find unusual peace in his heart. Job is an exceptional figure who manages a happy blend of his wealth in the world with his godly life. If he has enjoyed all the prosperity in the world, still he seeks and humbly keeps his integrity before his God. Such a man, however, meets with one disaster after another. Even then he allows no curse to cross his mind or lips; on the contrary, he walks humbly with God, bless-ing him still. However, in the prolonged anguish of his final dis-aster, made worse by his three friends preachifying to the effect that every sufferer must be necessarily a sinner, he is stung to the quick and so driven to defend his honor. He argues with them point by point, personally convinced that there is no sin that would explain his suffering. In between he puts the matter before God, too, quite unafraid, now lamenting his plight, now com-plaining to him, now appealing to him, now reasoning with him, now challenging him, then yearning to reach him, all the while wanting to vindicate his stand that he is innocent, whatever the traditional doctrine of retribution may be. He has supplicated alone and in company, aloud and in silence, passing through the struggle of it all, only to be surprised at the end by the mysteri- Nove~nber-Decen;ber 1993 829 Dontinic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers ous and yet overwhelmingly peaceful vision of God clearing up all the aggnizing questions and difficulties. The three biblical episodes ~nay be compared to one another as regards three elements common to them. First, the three pro-tagonists experience an urgent desire. Second, they take it up in their prayer, making it indeed their whole prayer, however long drawn out it may be. Third, they attain something positive. First, then, they are alike in experiencing desires, however various the desires may be. Hannah desires a son. Her desire is natural, normal, proper, appropriate, and worthy inasmuch as she wants only the full enjoyment of her marriage as willed by God right from the beginning. David desires that the son of his passion, born of another man's wife, should live and not die. His desire, too, is natural and normal and yet perhaps not especially worthy, if only because the circumstantial will of God is for the child of adultery to die. Job desires an answer to the puzzle of his unde-served suffering. His desire, too, is nor~nal and natural and yet only dubiously proper against the background of the common traditional belief that every suffering implies some sin in the suf-ferer. While Hannah's desire is in every way agreeable, David's and Job's are not particularly so. David resists the apparent mind of God regarding the fruit of his sin, and Job's honest and frank desire is naively bold because it seems to put God in the wrong. Second, however one evaluates the three desires, they are nevertheless real and candid; the persons know and feel their desire as only they can. They find it so urgent that they do not fight shy of voicing it before other "people and even before God. They do not simply pray about it, but make it their sole and con-stant prayer. Without any distracting self-consciousness, they sim-ply present themselves before God as they experience their desire consuming them, not minding or caring whether they might come across to casual observers as strange or surprising or suspect. Possessed by their sole burning desire, they beseech God persis-tently without any thought of circumspection or shame or seem-ing propriety till something good happens to them--which leads to my third point. In Hannah's case, what happens is just what she has desired and prayed for. She gets a son and calls him Samuel since, as she says, "I asked Yahweh iCor him" (i S 1:20). In David's case, what happens is just the opposite:of his lingering desire and prayer. His ill-gotten child whom he wants to see saved dies of illness. But 830 Re'view for Religious David--note well--comes alive after the whole ordeal of pray-ing, pining, and fasting. He bathes, anoints himself, dresses up, goes to the sanctuary, then sits down to a meal, and finally even consoles his forlorn Bathsheba. In Job's case, what happens is not just what he agonizingly wanted to find, for he finds far more than he has dared ask. He has asked only for a vindicating proof of his undeserved suffering, but he is given to see God himself, the answer of all possible problems and puzzles. It may appear at first sight that the prayer arising from and suffused with unquenchable desire turns out to be a success for Hannah, a fail-ure for David, and a mere struggle for Job. But further reflection would show that the reality or radicality of their experience is not that simple. The feverish desires of David and Job may not have ended in natural, ordinary, and expected satisfaction as in the case of Hannah. But they too have their definite, unmistakable denouement, with their desires set at rest. Indeed, they attain what may be called the res-olution of their desires, a positive ending to their experience of desire in and through and by means of prayer. Here is a lesson for life. Despite the obvious differences in their desires, Hannah, David, and Job all end up with positive experiences through prayer. Their prayer experience has some-thing in common: making their desire transparent to God or, bet-ter, living their desire before God in all its urgency. The experience of any urgent desire is itself a sort of struggle till its ful-fillment. This is only accentuated when the fulfillment of desire depends, not on oneself, but on the good pleasure of another--in the present context, God. So Hannah prays in an unusual manner, speaking under her breath, giving room for suspicion that she is drunk. So too does David, to the surprise of his officials, covering himself with sack-ing, lying on the bare ground and keeping a strict fast. So too does Job, confounding and shocking his onlookers by his unortho-dox stand that, though he has been afflicted with the worst of Despite the obvious differences in their desires, Hannah, David, and Job all end up with positive experiences through prayer. November-December 1993 831 Dominic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers sufferings, he cannot be accused of having really sinned. Even if he occasionally concedes, for the sake of argument, that he has sinned, he challenges God outright: "Suppose I have sinned, what have I done to you?" (Jb 7:20). But the burden of his prayer runs now and again in such words as these: "I shall say to God, 'Do not condemn me, but tell me the reason for your assault. Is it right for you to injure me, cheapening the work of your own hands and abetting the schemes of the wicked?'" (Jb 10:2-3). He ends his apologia daringly with no apology whatever: "I have had my say, from A to Z; now let Shaddai answer me" (Jb 31:35). How acute must be the struggle of the man who, in his dire straits, makes bold to speak to God without mincing words about what he wants. If Hannah and David, too, definitely pass through quite a struggle in their prayer seeking what they want, theirs would seem to be nothing compared with the struggle of Job for God's own vindication of his innocence. Generally speaking, the struggle experienced in prayer as peo-ple keep on imploring God for what they want is proportionate to the intensity of their desire. The surpassing struggle Job goes through in his prayer reveals how hard he desires. There is, if one may put it this way, truth in his desire. That is to say, his desire is so true and so truly possessing and consuming him that he needs must seek its fulfillment by every means possible, even if it should entail a gigantic struggle. Here may be raised a very important question concerning prayer. If people pray and complain that they do not get an answer to their prayer, it may be asked whether their prayer arises out of truth, the truth of their desire in the sense suggested above. People may be accustomed to and satisfied with bland preferences, with mere velleities, and thus ,nay not have true desire even if they know, or seem to know, what they desire. Certainly velleities are palt~ desires. It is worth noting in this context that Job with his ruling desire and passionate prayer is a fictitious figure, unlike Hannah and David. From this may one not infer that people like Job are seldom found in real life, that rarely are real people moved by strong, ardent, fervent, and in a word true desire? But without desire there can be no prayer, for desire is part and parcel of prayer. St. Thomas said so (as I have indicated above), and St. Augustine had said something similar much ear-lier. Writing to Proba on prayer, he pointed out that, if the Lord wants us to pray even though he certainly knows independently 832 Review for Religious our wants and needs, it is because "he wants our desire to be exer-cised in prayer, thus enabling us to grasp what he is preparing to give.''2 He added: "We pray always in faith, hope, and love, with uninterrupted desire. Btit at certain hours and seasons we also pray with words. We use these signs of realities to rouse our-selves, to become aware of the growth of our desire, and to strongly move ourselves to increase it . What do the Apostle's words, 'Pray constantly,' mean, if not that we must constantly desire. ?-3 Of course, one may remark quite correctly that in the context Augustine had in his mind a constant desire for the blessedness of eternal life. One may observe just as correctly, however, that what we do in prayer--namely, exercise our desire--may reach out not only to eternal life, but to present life as well, with aH that we want here and now. Anyhow, the very prayer that Jesus taught explicitly is not confined to holy desires connected with God and his kingdom, but, in the phrase "daily bread," makes mention of ordinary human desires and material needs. The Lord's Prayer certainly includes the gamut of human desires, from the lofty to the lowly. Other teachings of Jesus on prayer also focus on desire expe-rienced and expressed before God. The parables of the importu-nate friend and the widow (Lk 11:5-8; 18:1-8), for instance, emphasize the keenness of desire without which prayer would flag and falter. Apart from desire there can be no meaning in prayer of peti.tion; and it is this sort of simple, straightforward prayer that Jesus mostly speaks of. His injunction regarding effec-tive, infallible prayer is to "ask. search., knock" (Mr 7:7); and this really means that one should go on asking and searching and knocking with the growing impulse of intense desire. This real-ity of glowing desire may throw light even on the basic require-ment-- namely, belief or faith--in all such prayer. For instance, in the saying of Jesus that "everything you ask and pray for, believe that );ou have it already, and it will be yours" (Mk 11:24), the action of belief is as much an activity of desire as it is anything else.4 When belief comes into play in prayer, it invariably brings desire into the foreground, the desire which was already there in the prayer right from the start. All this is not a matter of theory but of practice, as may be seen in dealings of Jesus wifla people to whom he grants favors. In the case of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus senses right from November-Decentber 1993 833 Dominic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers the beginning how badly she desires the healing of her daughter. His apparent reluctance to accede to her request only brings out all the more her desire, at once insistent and persistent, regard-ing her daughter's welfare. He takes note of it and refers to it with pleasant surprise when he finally' gives his word of favor to her request (see Mk 7:24-30).s Just the opposite is the story of the sick man at the Pool of Bethzatha (Jn 5:1-6). When Jesus sees him and knows how long he has been ill, he asks him, "Do you want to be well again?" It is a surprising question at first, but on reflection very revealing. Jesus cannot heal the sick man unless he first desires it. As the man had been ill for so long, perhaps he no longer has any desire for healing. It is precisely to awaken this desire that Jesus puts the question to him. Today, too, neither Jesus nor his Father can hear any prayer unless it arises in real desire and is poured out in ardent desire and sustained in unabated desire. It matters how much and how far we desire whatever we desire. As I conclude, I find myself won-derii~ g if social activists have an idea how much they can effect by prayer that is sharpened by the "violence" of desire. When I say violence here, I am thinking of that intriguing logion: "The king-dom of God has been subjected to violence and the violent are tak-ing it by storm" (Mt 11:12). Notes ~ See Simon Tugwell, Prayer in Practice (Springfield, Illinois, 1974), p. 75. 2 See The Divine Office, vol. 3 (London, Glasgow, Sydney, Dublin, 1974), p. 662. 3 Letters of Saint Augustine, ed. and trans. John Leinenweber (Liguori, Missouri: Triumph Books, 1992), p. 172. 4 The Markan version lends itself to such an interpretation, unlike the Matthean parallel 21:22 with its connotation of faith as a matter of not doubting about what is prayed for. s Here again Mark is different from Matthew. Mark tells the plain story of the woman with her heart's desire whereas Matthew stylizes it in terms of faith (Mt 15:21-28). 834 Review for Religious JUDETTE A. GALLARES Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Te Book of Ruth is one of the immortal love stories in the ble. It takes as its characters and events ordinary people and mundane life situations to which we can easily find parallels in our world today. The book's primary purpose, however, is not to entertain and delight its audience with plot complications, sus-pense, and a satisfying denouement, but to hold up to its readers and listeners authentic models of covenantal faith? What is this covenantal faith, and how does companionship enter into its perspective? What does the spirituality of compan-ionship teach us in our experiences of change, life transitions, and emptiness? To glean some answers to these questions, it is beneficial to allow to sink into our consciousness Ruth's words to Naomi, her mother-in-law, which have become an immortal prayer of companionship. Let us look at her words within their context as summarized here. During the time of the judges, Elimelech of Bethlehem, together with his wife Naomi and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, migrated to Moab to escape a famine in Judah. Elimelech died in Moab. His sons married two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. The two sons also died, however, leaving two childless wid-ows with their widowed mother-in-law. Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and her daughters-in-law, set off with her. While they were on the road, she urged her daughters-in-law each to return to her mother's house, for she was unsure of what future Judette A. Gallares RC is involved in spiritual direction and retreat work in the Philippines and conducts courses on biblical spirituality and spiritual direction for lay and religious formators. Her address is Cenacle Sisters; 217-G.D. Jakosalem Street; Cebu City 6000; Philippines. Novetnber-Deconber 1993 835 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth they would have with her. Orpah sorrowfully returned to her fam-ily, but Ruth clung to her mother-in-law in spite of Naomi's prod-ding that she follow Orpah's decision. Instead, she responded in these words: Do not press me to leave you and to stop going with you, for wherever you go, I shall go, wherever you live, I shall live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I shall die and there I shall be buried. Let Yahweh bring unnameable ills on me and worse ills, too, if anything but death should part me from you! (Rt 1:16-17). Realizing that Ruth was determined to go with her, Naomi stopped urging her. Both went on their journey until they reached Bethlehem. Migration was rather typical of ancient Palestine. Families often migrated because of the frequent occurrence of famine in the area. The country of Moab, with a narrow strip of well-watered and fertile land running north and south in its center, was an attractive refuge, and so Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons migrated there. This scenario is familiar even today. To escape economic dif-ficulties caused by drought or increased militarization in third-world rural areas, people flock to the cities and towns seeking either the pot of gold or refuge from military oppression. Professionals continually migrate from third-world to first-world countries in search of better opportunities even though, regret-tably, this slows down socioeconomic development in their own countries. Migration for the sake of survival and a better life is an undei'- standable occurrence in any generation and culture. Biblical lit-erature records a number of such departures. We recall Joseph and his famil)) moving to Goshen (Gn 47:27) and a widow fol-lowing Elisha's advice and moving to the land of the Philistines (2 K 8). So Elimelech's decision to leave Bethlehem of Judah together with his family is understandable. To alert us immediately to the development and historical probability of the story, the author also gives the characters names which in Hebrew have symbolic meanings. Elimelech means "my God is king"; Naomi means "pleasant"; the two sons' names, Mahlon and Chilion, .mean "sickness" and "wasting," respectively.2 After they have settled in Moab, death strikes the male members 836 Review for Religious of Naomi's family. Elimelech dies first. Naomi is left with her two sons, who later marry native women. But after ten years the sons also die without leaving any sons. Naomi, a widow of advanced age with no sons but only non-Jewish and childless daughters-in-law, is therefore destined for a life of destitution and social oppression. In her emptiness and poverty, Naomi decides to return to the land of her birth because the famine there is over. Perhaps she thinks her own townspeople will be kinder to her in her poverty than if she were to remain in Moab as a widowed foreigner. Her two widowed daughters-in-law initially go with her, but she urges them to return to their own families. She just cannot impose her desire and longing for her own land and people on her already suffering daughters-in-law, nor can she deprive them of the small consolation that their own homeland would provide them. Besides, she knows that it would be much more dif-ficult for them, being foreigners, to remarry in her homeland than in theirs because Hebrew laws discourage marriage with foreigners.3 Here Naomi is projected as a practical person. She uses the time, not for grieving, but for doing something in a situation that needs a practical solution. Naomi's use of the unusual phrase "mother's house" is to be noted, for a house is usually designated as one's father's.4 Some com-mentators believe it is used to symbolize or to emphasize the absence of men in the women's lives.5 From another perspective it can also be seen as words of consolation to the suffering women, for the word "mother" evokes images of the love, care, and nur-turance one would long for in a time of brokenness. Orpah heeds Naomi's advice and returns to her people: Ruth refuses. Mthough the motif of ~mptiness is strongly accentuated here, by Naomi's saying that her womb will have no more sons, we see that she is not totally bereft, for Ruth would cling to her and not allow her to return to her homeland alone. Responding to her mother-in-law's pleading send-off with words of loyalty and devotion, Ruth vows to accompany Naomi through a per-ilous journey into an uncertain future. Migration for the sake of survival and a better life is an understandable occurrence in any generation and culture. Novevnber-Dece~nber 1993 837 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Ruth pledges covenant fidelity and claims as her own Naomi's place, people, and God.6 In her beautiful and moving response, Ruth clings not to a past but to a present--not to a male through whom she may achieve power and access, but to a female, one who needs her, one for whom she will provide protection, care, and access.7 Ruth thus gives to her mother-in-law the only thing she possesses, her very self. Even if society destines both of them to a life of extreme poverty as widows, they still have each other. We can still see this kind of attitude among simple poor families. They are extremely loyal to their own members and sacrifice for and protect one another in good times and in bad. Together the two widows now turn their faces resolutely toward Palestine and the city of Bethlehem. The distance between Moab and Bethlehem is only about 120 miles, but this stretch represents a long, fatiguing, and dangerous trek in this period, especially for two women who have neither money beyond their barest needs nor protector.8 It is this journey through barren places that will perhaps bring them closer to each other and cause them to cling more closely together for protection, comfort, and support. Covenantal Faith amid Emptiness in Life Transitions The contrast between emptiness and fullness runs through the entire book. This is seen, not only in the setting itself, but also in the lives of the women characters. The famine or the emptiness of the land that sets the story in motion drives Naomi's family to seek greener fields. Leaving one's country and culture as Naomi did is an experience of emptying, an experience of loss: food, rela-tionships, property, land. It is a recurring motif in the life of Israel and throughout salvation history, beginning with God inviting Abraham to leave his clan and his ancestral home for a promised land. In Abraham we see that God's promise and blessing are indissolubly bound up with a departure, an emptying of anything that prevents one from setting out on an adventure with God. For Naomi, however, Moab turned out to be a place of empti-ness, not a land of promise. There she lost not only her husband but her two sons as well. Her emptiness seemed irreparable, her life hollow deep within. These words of the psalmist could have echoed in her heai't: "How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?" (Ps 137:4 NAB).)It would be difficult indeed for 838 Review for Religious anyone in Naomi's predicament to sing a song to God amid feel-ings of alienation from God, life, others, and even self. Grief has a way of devouring our spiritual life, leaving us in the desert to feel parched, empty, depleted, lonely, and alienated. Naomi could attribute the cause of her incurable emptiness only to God: "Yahweh's hand has been raised against me." Thus, only God also could fill it. Beyond her empty feeling and sense of God's absence is perhaps a fragile hope that God will also cause her misery to cease. Perhaps this was in her mind and heart when, "having heard that Yahweh had come to help his people by giving them food, Naomi prepared to return home." Her poverty and her emptiness are so basic that they can be intimated by an unadorned reference to food. Beyond a need to fill her physical hunger, she perhaps has a keen desire to reconcile herself with the past, to catch a glimpse of home and of who she is meant to be. John Dunne once wrote9: At every turn in the road a new illuminating is needed to find the way and a new kindling is needed to follow the way. Dunne seems to speak here of moments of transition in one's life when one needs to search within to find illumination or guid-ance to continue going forward on the road to life. This search involves returning to the past, to one's home and roots and being reconciled with them. Naomi, in her poverty and emptiness, thinks of home not only as a place where she could experience God's blessing again' (having heard that Yahweh had come to help his people), but also as a place where she can find peace and acceptance of her painful situation ("Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for God has made life bitter for me"). Her words reflect a deep longing that is present in every human heart. A part in us is always yearning and quietly crying out for the true homeland where life is no longer painful and unfair,l° Undoubtedly Naomi's two Moabite daughters-in-law are also experiencing emptiness and grief at losing their husbands. In their loss their initial response is to cling to what is familiar (to continue living with Naomi and to remain in her clan) even if it does not seem to give them any kind of future. Orpah is practical minded in dealing with her emptiness. In spite of the pain of saying good-bye to Naomi and Ruth and to matters that have become famil-iar to her, she heeds Naomi's advice and returns to her mother's November-December 199~ 839 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth house. Perhaps she feels hopeful that life can still offer her a future in her own homeland, and perhaps she, like Naomi, has a renewed glimpse of home and the possibility of who she can still become. Companionship in Time of Transition On the other hand, Ruth clings to her mother-in-law and takes the risk of embracing, her, her land, and her God even if the future is uncertain and seemingly bleak. Although she too is going through ~ransition, she offers Naomi her presence and com-panionship. She feels for her mother-in-law because she too knows the pain of loss and the difficulty of adjusting to a new reality. But, unlike Naomi, she is not allowing this life transition to dis-courage her or to embitter her. For her a return to her mother's house has seemed to be a movement away from what and who she is meant to be. Instead, she follows the movement of Israel's first patriarch by leaving her homeland and venturing into the unknown. Like Abraham she departs from her homeland and empties herself of anything that prevents her from setting out on an adventure with Abraham's and Naomi's God. But, unlike Abraham, she does not perceive the God of Israel as giving her a promise and a blessing. She has none of these assurances. She leaves relying only on Naomi's God and the strength of her love for her mother-in-law. She deals with her emptiness by further emptying herself s~ she can embrace totally the God of Abraham, of Naomi, and of Israel. She lets go of the past in order to embrace the future with great faithfulness. And in these b~autiful words which have become an immortal prayer of fidelity, ~he accompa-nies Naomi through her life transition: Wherever you go, I shill go, wherever you live, I shall live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I shall die and there I shall be buried. Let Yahweh bring unnameable ills on me and worse ills, too, if anything but death should part me from you! (1:16-17 NJB). As we have seen, biblical fidelity recalls the faith of Israel that began with the departure of Abraham and led to the Mosaic covenant with God. It remembers the unique friendship estab-lished between God and Israel that is echoed in the entire Book of.Ruth and is exemplified by Ruth and other people in the story. 840 Review for Religiot~s At the heart of this covenant fidelity is the people's faith that Yahweh is the God of life who calls them to greater life. In the language and setting of today, faith calls us to face the light and to choose life. It enables us to look upon each letting go with optimism and prepares us to face other more painful relin-quishments that commit us more fully to God's service. It enables us to catch a glimpse of who we are meant to be. As with Ruth and Naomi, faith urges us to move forward and embrace the God of life. Notes L Alice L. Laffey, "Ruth," in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 553. 2 Ibid. 3 Intermarriage was prohibited, not on ethnic grounds, but to avoid religious syncretism and to foster the worship of Yahweh (see Ex 34:15ff). See Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictiona,7 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), p. 422. 4 Ibid. s Ibid. 6 See Laffey, p. 555. 7 Ibid. 8 Edith Deen, All of the Women of the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1983), p. 84. 9 Quoted byJoyce Rupp OSM in Praying Our Goodbyes (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1988), p. 77. ~0 Ibid, p. 24. Novonber-Decentber 1993 841 JOHN P. MOSSI The Spirituality of Surrender Losing, whether it is losing a friendly bet, an important argument, or a business contract, is a difficult pill to swal-low. We detest losing. The same is true for tiny diehard sports fan who endures a hometown rout. We walk away replaying the game, blaming the unfair referees, or creating strategies that "would have" favorably altered the score. When the defeat entails greater stakes, there is higher resis-tance to a surrender. To address a serious problem like addiction is personally painful. Implicit in such reality is a pervasive sense of failure. One has lost control over life's direction. The only way to regain control is to surrender what has not worked and seek a new way. This process is replete with difficulty. This article will examine the spirituality of surrender as a means of comin.g home to God? Surrendering to God will be looked at in three ways. The first involves an understanding of how surrender is operative in twelve-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. The second involves a look at the life of Ignatius of Loyola and the surrender components of the final prayer of the Spiritual Exercises, the "Suscipe," or "Take and Receive." The third considers Jesus' act of surrender on the cross in Luke 23:46. Each of these three different "ways" of surren-dering involves putting our ultimate identity and confidence in God. John P. Mossi SJ, a member of the Religious Studies Department at Gonzaga University, facilitates courses in pastoral counseling, spiritual mentoring, addiction and pastoral approaches to recovery, and Catholicism. His address is Gonzaga University; Jesuit Residence; Spokane, Washington 99258. 842 Review for Religious Let Go, Let God At Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or twelve-step recovery retreats, the expression "Let go, let God" is often used. These four important words constitute the core spirituality of A.A. and similar recovery programs that have adapted the twelve steps to their particular addiction. "Let go, let God" is an invitation to surrender one's umnanageable life to God. "Let go, let God" is a gentle conversion reminder, a kind of mantra, which assists us both to admit the addiction and to hand it over along with its various forms of com-pulsions to God. The long form of the prayer would be something like "Let go of alcohol (or whatever the specific substance or non-substance addiction might be) and let the hand and grace of God guide my life." The prayer is not magic. Saying "Let go, let God" does not instantaneously bring about recovery. Its first purpose is to assist the recov-ering addict to keep to the daily partnership task of surrendering the addiction to God. The second purpose of "Let go, let God" is. to be a prayer of liberation, to call on the greater power of God to help one escape from destructive lifestyle patterns. In this way the creative resources of the individual and the action of God are focused on together. The prayer also serves to silence those addic-tion- related inner-committee tapes and voices of doubt, loneli-ness, fear, and caustic shame that can interfere with a person's slow recovery. These, too, need to be handed over to God. I have the greatest admiration for all who enter the surrender process of a twelve-step program. For many, it is the difference between death and life, the difference between barely existing as a human and participating in community, between dysfunction-alism and experiencing the serenity that only God gives with amazing grace. The first three steps of Anonymous programs set up this "Let go, let God" dynamic. The language of the twelve steps is straight-forward and simple. This is part of their wisdom and wide appeal. The steps make sense to a lot of people. Since A.A. began in 1935 at Akron, Ohio, Anonymous recovery programs have multiplied to treat various forms of addiction.2 These include Narcotics "Let go, let God" is an invitation to surrender one's unmanageable life to God. November-December 1993 843 Mossi ¯ The Spirituality of Surrender Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, M-Anon, and Adult Children of Mcoholics. Let us examine these first three steps. 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or the other specific addiction], that our lives had become unmanageable) The first step is crucial. You admit you have a serious prob-lem. There is no denial of the fact. The blunt reality is your life is out of control, in fact, unmanageable. Furthermore, you are powerless to do anything about it. At Anonymous meetings, this first step is handled in an up-front manner. When members speak, they state their first name and their addictiveness: "I'm John. I'm an alcoholic." "I'm Susan. I'm a recovering overeater." In formal religion we might refer to this acknowledgment as group confession. In recovery programs it is simply admitting what can no longer be denied. Step one is an honest, vulnerable beginning place. Owning and naming the unmanageable addiction is essential to the surrendering process. When one is aware o£ a specific uncontrollable disease, one can effectively pray "Let go." But to whom does one surrender? Steps two and three look at the second part of the mantra: "Let God." God is the significant associate in restoring harmony. To appreciate the spirituality of the twelve steps, it is important to reflect that the existence and action of God are mentioned seven times in the twelve steps. The par-ticular addiction is only mentioned once, and that is in the first step. The activity of surrendering one's addiction and life to God becomes the spirituality cornerstone of the remaining steps. 2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.4 Step two admits the need of an outside corrective authority, a Higher Power, to bring about a stability in one's life. This is the first glimpse of light that invites God in as the restorer of sanity. There are two other important spirituality elements opera-tire in the second step: (i) the belief that a Higher Wisdom exists and (2) a disposition of humility on the part of the believer. These two qualities counterculturally work against the arrogance of the ego that craves to cling to the addiction. Step two indicates that the recovery process entails an attentive listening to a new Teacher, which means that the addict has to take on the attitude 844 Review for Religious of learner. There is a major shift in trust: from addiction to God. 3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.s Step three is where the capitulation actually occurs. First, a concrete decision to surrender has to be made. Second, this deci-sion is total. It includes the will making conscious choices, and it affects one's entire being and journey. Third, the whole person is placed in the care of God according to the individual's faith back-ground. The spirituality of "Let go, let God" is a conversion process. Conversion of its nature has two basic movements: the surren-dering of the compulsion, shame, and destructive addictive pat-terns which reduce freedom; the turning to the care of God and the Holy Spirit to be one's permanent resource of wisdom and identity. Matthew 11:28-30 speaks of a "letting go, letting God" pro-cess: "Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.''6 These three verses contain the confirmation signs that accompany a true surrender. A learning will occur, the process will be gentle and humble. Rest will be experienced. A new relationship arises, a companionship with the Master, which will be nonaddictive, easy, and light. The Surrender of Ignatius of Loyola Another way of surrendering one's life to God comes from the spirituality of Ignatius's surrender as expressed in his prayer the "Suscipe," or "Take and Receive." On his pilgrim journey Ignatius was called to surrender on several notable occasions. The first was during the defense of the city of Pamplona, Spain. In 1521 Ignatius, wounded by cannon shrapnel, reviewed the illusions of his life as sober death approached. But he did not die. His long convalescence became a conversion process. He gradually yielded up his stubborn self-preoccupation, bravado, and ambition and began to discover a new self in God.7 The spirituality record of Ignatius's surrender to God is found in his classic work, the Spiritual Exercises. Today, 450 years after its first published edition, it is still considered a significant theo-logical work noted for its integration of Scripture, guidelines for Nove~nber-Dece'mber 1993 845 Mossi ¯ The Spirituality of Surrender discernment, sense of mission, and themes of justice. The Exercises' developmental stages of growth in discipleship and intimacy enable a person to come home to God. The last prayer of the Exercises is called the "Suscipe" or "Take and Receive." I invite you to spend some time contemplating the components of this prayer. What is Ignatius, the once vain soldier-at- arms, now a mystic, asking us to do? Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will-- all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.8 The "Suscipe" is a deceptively profound prayer. It invites us to acknowledge the primacy of God in our totality; it answers the humbling question "What aspect of our being is not a gift of God?" In the light of this answer, Ignatius invites us to surrender all to God. The last part of the prayer is a seeking of the purer gifts: "Give me only your love and grace. That is enough for me." Ignatius does not compromise in the process of "letting go of self and letting God in." I recall a forceful experience in praying the "Suscipe." It hap-pened fifteen years ago during a retreat. I attempted to pray and could not. I realized I had not surrendered anything, certainly not my liberty, memory, understanding, and will to anyone, much less to God. I told my director that I could not pray this prayer at all. As a consequence, I seriously questioned remaining a Jesuit. The director gave sage advice. He invited me to return to the chapel and pray the "Suscipe" with my own words in my own way. I prayed, "Lord, I give you my sins which I know so well, those many areas of my life where I am not obedient, poor, and chaste. I give you my pride, my negativity, my hatred and vin-dictiveness, my compulsive rebellion and addictiveness to self. I am overly familiar with these dark recesses. And I truly need to sur-render these to you. Send forth your Holy Spirit to guide, anoint, ¯ and heal with a love that I am most in need of, your grace." 846 Review for Religious Like an ambush, the opportunity to surrender can appear at unlikely moments. Do not let the occasion pass by. The benefit of letting God in always outweighs whatever is surrendered. Jesus on the Cross We turn to the spirituality of Jesus and the particular way he has taught us to surrender. He, too, had to face a special moment of surrender. His prayer in Luke 23:46 is a powerful expression of letting go: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.''9 Here on the cross Jesus is still the master teacher. He models for us how to pray and hand over our daily experiences and our life to God. Notice the key elements: (1) The prayer is addressed to the Father; (2)Jesus urges us to surrender, to commend, to let go; (3) Jesus specifies what is to be handed over. He gives what little is left, his spirit and last breath. In the daily minor or major surrenders of our own pilgrimage, we can pray in the spirituality of either the twelve steps, Ignatius, or Jesus. Specify in the "Let go, let God" mantra and the "Suscipe" whatever needs to be named and yielded: "Let go of addiction and manipulation. Let God in." "Take, Lord, my dis-honesty, my hurts, my doubts and sinfulness." God can handle and work with these blighted areas quite well. Adapt the prayer of Jesus to your immediate concerns: "Father, into your hands I commit my grief, my sense of failure, my disappointment, my pettiness and vulnerability." Commend these regions of brokenness to the higher compassion and under-standing of God. It is clear that not only our joys but also our sorrows must be offered to God. Our ability to be powerless allows God to meet us and tenderly heal us on our journey, embracing us as we truly are. Moreover, the art 6f surrendering involves a lifelong process. Some days we succeed better than others. If we post-pone learning the spirituality of surrender, we will face it unpre-pared at death, when .the surrender is sudden. Perhaps we can learn to surrender to the care, to the heart, of God in advance. Notes ~ For more information on this topic, see Gerald G. May, Addiction and Grace (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 162-181. Nove'mber-December 1993 847 Mossi * The Spirituality of Surrender 2 Ernest Kurtz, Not-God: A Histo~7 of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, Minn.: Hazeldon, 1991), pp. 37-57. 3 Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1952), p. 21. 4 Ibid, p. 25. ~ Ibid, p. 34. 6 The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1985). 7 St. Ignatius' Own Story, trans. William J. Young sJ (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1956), pp. 7-27. 8 David L. Fleming SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980), p. 141. 9 The New Jerusalem Bible. Retreat: A Flight The gulls are going wild over the waters; dipping, zooming, swirling over the wild waters. Far away, at horizon's edge, two ships imperceptibly inch against a purpling sky. I look up and see clouds playing charades before my eyes; straight out, the waves, wind-tossed, chase the dunes relentlessly. It is December at Mantoloking, and my Advent prayer has taken off with the clouds and the winds and the waves. I surrender, like a Maid of long ago to a time of begetting: in Mary, a Word made Flesh. in me, a sign become Faith. each a way of holding Beauty as a born-for-us Savior in a free-for-all world where the gulls (and my heart) go dipping, zooming, swirling with the wild of wonder. Anna Marie Mack SSJ 848 Review for Religious JEFFREY GROS The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious When Pope John emphasized the unity of the church and its openness to the world in inaugurating Vatican Council II, few realized the cost that such conversion would exact. Some felt euphoria, expecting the whole Roman Catholic Church to be zealous for reunion among Christians and hoping for a quick resolution of the theological, sacra-mental, and historical problems dividing the churches. Others, even some receptive to conciliar reform, had the superficial expectation that ecumenical openness would settle for a warm but noncommittal outreach, diminishing hostilities but not calling for the radical conversion and institutional reform outlined in the conciliar decree on ecumenism. The last twenty-five years have been a reward-ing and challenging pilgrimage for the Roman Catholic Church and for its Christian partners on the road toward full visible unity. Those who would consider the ecu-menical movement dead have not been following the lit-erature nor have they felt spiritual bonds of communion becoming stronger as many ofhers have. The Holy Spirit has been very much at work, but not all have yet been vis-ited with the gift of conversion. It is small wonder that, as the Roman Catholic Church assesses its ecumenical involvement and charts its course for the future, its Directory for the Application of Principles Jeffrey Gros FSC works in the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. His address is 3211 4th Street N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017-1194. ecurnenJsrn November-December 1993 849 Coos * The Ecumenical Vocation of Reli#ous and Norms on Ecumenism (June 1993) gives special emphasis to ecumenical formation.~ Indeed, the ecumenical movement has been so successful that a whole genre of literature has emerged, resulting from the ecumenical dialogue, that calls for both spe-cialized study and incorporation into the spiritual life of all Catholics, including religious. Twenty-five years ago it was pos-sible to be ecumenical merely by being open to and supportive of the general conciliar position and by praying for the unity of the church. Today ecumenical commitments have become a richer and more complex spectrum. Most religious-formation programs gave emphasis to ecumenism a decade or two ago. They need evaluation today to see if they continue faithful to the develop-ments of this part of Catholic identity. In the new Directory there is for the first time a specific section devoted to institutes of con-secrated life and societies of apostolic life, not only laying out principles, but also proposing delegates and commissions for ecu-menism at the highest levels in religious institutes.2 This Directory is a help towards renewal. It covers such top-ics as the basis in Catholic theology for ecumenical commitment; the structures in the Catholic Church--including religious com-munities- to support the ecumenical commitment; ecumenical formation of the laity and the clergy, and within specialized min-istries and institutions; spirituality as it pertains to common bap-tism, marriage, and sacramental sharing; and cooperation and common witness. After a short introduction this essay will be lim-ited to some rather general comments on two issues: ecumenical formation and collaboration. Religious have been instrumental in Roman Catholic ecu-menism- such pioneers as Congar, Tavard, Rahner, and Dulles. Some religious communities have prayer and work for the unity of the church as their charism, like the Graymoor friars and sis-ters and the Paulist fathers? Others have set up special supports for the ecumenical movement, like the Jesuit Society of Ecumenists and the Benedictine centers at Collegeville, Chevetogne, Turvey, and Niederaltaich. Outreach programs to incorporate lay people in, for example, Jesuit, Mercy, or Lasallian spirituality and apostolates have been thoroughly ecumenical in their membership and formation. Schools, hospitals, and other institutions animated by religious in leadership positions have pioneered the ecumenical program of the Catholic Church. Among diocesan ecumenical officers are many religious. Where 850 Review for Religious shared mission is a priority, the baptismal basis and commitment to full ecclesial communion are central to the common forma-tion of the fellow Christians who are brought into collaboration with Roman Catholic religious according to their particular charisms. These developments, like the other elements of renewal, have been adapted according to cultural context and the quality of vision provided by ecclesiastical and religious leadership. The Context Certainly many bishops and religious superiors will use the occasion of the publication of the Directory as an opportunity to train specialists in ecumenical leadership, much as retraining in canon law developed after the publication of the 1983 Code.4 As in biblical, social, and liturgical renewal, expertise is necessary in ecumenism. It is essential, however, that all religious, lay, and clerical members of the church be formed ecumenically as part of their spiritual and apostolic life. The Second Vatican Council clearly asked Catholics to reach out in love to all other Christians with a charity that desires and works actively to overcome in truth whatever divides them from one another. For the council, Catholics are to act in hope and in prayer to promote Christian unity. They will be prompted and instructed by their faith in the mystery of the church, and their ecumenical activity will be inspired and guided by a true understanding of the church as "sacrament or iristrumental sign of intimate union with God, and of unity of the whole human race.''s In this sho~'t essay attention will be called to the ecumenical dimension of Roman Catholic spirituality and identity in its pres-ent challenges. Among the institutional supports to religious involved in the ecumenical movement is the National Ecumenical Consultation of Men and Women Religious. This .group's publication of Religious for Christian Unity as an ecumenical resource and direc-tory and its sponsorship of a national ecumenical conference under the theme "Toward a Communion in Faith Life and Witness" are indications of a certain maturity.6 Although there has been an international ecumenical consultation for twenty years, the United States consultation is only nine years old. It is sponsored in part by the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. With the publication and the November-December 1993 851 Gros ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Reh~ous May 1993 conference, the specific ecumenical contribution of religious begins to have a higher profile. For the first time, the Directory proposes a structure within religious congregations to assist in the ecumenical activity of com-munities at all levels: It is very opportune that the various institutes of conse-crated life and societies of apostolic life establish, on the level of their central authorities, a delegate or a commis-sion charged with promoting and assisting their ecumenical engagement. The function of these delegates or commis-sions will be to encourage the ecumenical formation of all the members, aid the specific ecumenical formation of those who have particular offices, and act as advisors for ecu-menical affairs to the various general and local authorities of the institutes and societies, especially for initiating or carrying forward the activities described [in the Directory].7 This initiative will elicit considerable work on the part of major superiors, general councils, and chapters. The implications of this proposal will need to be developed in writing for the var-ious institutes. For this project the Directory will be useful. Elements of the Ecumenical Spirituality At the root of loyalty to Christ's will for the church and for church unity is the process of conversion, personal and institu-tional, s There are cultural dispositions that make the formation for such a conversion more or less easy. Of course, a prayerful open-ness to the Holy Spirit's action in the church, in other churches, and in fellow Christians is foundational. Because ecumenism with all its human and moral require-ments is rooted so profoundly in the mysterious working out of the providence of the Father, through the Son and the Spirit, it reaches into the depths of Christian spirituality. It calls for [a] "change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians. ¯ ." Those who identify deeply with Christ must identify with his prayer, and especially with his prayer for unity; . . ¯ those whose lives are marked by repentance will be espe-cially sensitive to the sinfulness of divisions and will pray for forgiveness and con, version. Those who seek holiness will be able to recognize its fruits also outside the visible boundaries of their own church.9 However, studies of seminary formation that were made by 852 Review for Religious diocesan ecumenical officers demonstrate that the most effective ecumenical formative experience is growing up in an interchurch family. Other elements that contributed most to the ecumenical dimension of priestly formation in the United States are (I) internship with an ecumenically effective priest, (2) ecumenically effective spiritual directors, (3) internships with an ecumenically informed non-Catholic minister, and (4) experiences in ecu-menically mixed clinical pastoral education programs. All of the seminaries report that the ecumenical dimension is fully inte-grated into the curriculum. The Directory will be helpful for eval-uating these claims. As sketched out by the council, the elements of Roman Catholic participation in the ecumenical movement include (1) the ecumenical dimension of spirituality, (2) theological dialogues leading to deeper understanding and toward full church unity, (3) collaboration in common witness and service, and (4) internal renewal of the members and structures of the church in response to ecumenical commitments. Attention needs to be given to each of these dimensions in initial and continuing formation and in the ongoing life of a religious community or parish. Ecumenical Spirituality for the Church An ecumenical spirituality is at the center of every aspect of the renewal of religious and lay life in the church. Without con-version to Christ's will for the church--in this case its visible unity and Roman Catholic contributions thereto--any theologi-cal, institutional, or educational progress towards full commu-nion will be superficial. If, on the other hand, Catholics are fully committed to all to whom they are bound by real, if imperfect, communion in baptism and to Christ's will for the visible unity of the church, then no setbacks on the road toward that unity will discourage them or make them complacent about divisions: The ecumenical movement is a grace of God, given by the Father in answer to the prayer of Jesus and the supplica-tion of the church inspired by the Holy Spirit. While it is carried out within the general mission of the church to unite humanity in Christ, its own specific field is the restoration of unity among Christians. Those who are baptized in the name of Christ are, by that very fact, called to commit themselves to the search for unity?° Noventber-Decevnber 1993 853 Coos ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious While individual religious and some communities have given considerable leadership to church reform in general and ecu-menism in particular, identity problems also affect the relationship of religious and the church. The Nygren/Ukeritis studies show that United States religious have "a stronger ecclesiology than Christology." ii This is not surprising, given the Roman Catholic The vast amount of ecumenical literature that has emerged in the last thi'rty years can help people renew their understandings of sacramental faith together. understanding of spirituality. I would understand this conclusion to mean that Christ is experienced more sacramentally, communally, and in mission than in indi-vidualistic or contemplative encounters. Such a focus on community can mean two things, as a resource for Catholic ecu-menical commitment. In one instance it can mean a more closed and sectarian approach, where primary religious identity and meaning come from the proximate religious community, its institution~ and ministry, rather than from Christ's wider will for the church and the world. Needless to say, this provides a weaker basis for ecu-menical conversion and formation. On the other hand,this ecclesiocen-tric spirituality could indicate that the experience of Christ is primarily in the call to community in the church, in the wider Christian society, and in the whole human family. At this stage in the reporting of the data, "ecclesiology" is yet to be defined. Be that as it may, the fully Catholic religious sees his or her sacramental life as yet defi-cient, short of the full communion of all Christians around the eucharistic table. The data from the same study shows religious to be "clear in their lowered respect for the magisterial authority of the church and the U.S. hierarchy in. general.''12 These words, negative as they sound, may however be interpreted as a critical fidelity to the Holy Spirit's call to the church for its renewal. A higher ideal for the church, its renewal, its leadership, and its eventual unity may not be so much "lowered respect" as elevated expectation and longer-range vision. The movement toward Christ's will for a united church is a critical fidelity for all of the churches involved in the ecumenical movement. 854 Review for Religious The vast amount of ecumenical literature that has emerged in 'the last thirty years can help people renew their understandings of sacramental faith together. The agreements on "justification by grace through faith" with the Lutherans, for example, provide an important contribution to faith development, self-under-standing, and spiritual direction?3 These documents will not reach their full fruitfulness unless they transform the prayer life, litur-gical celebration, and community understanding of the churches that produced them: Catholics should also give value to certain elements and goods, sources of spiritual life, which are found in other churches and ecclesial communities, and which belong to the one church of Christ: Holy Scripture, the sacraments and other sacred actibns, faith, hope, charity and other gifts of the Spirit. These goods have borne fruit for example in the mystical tradition of the Christian East and the spiritual treasures of the monastic life, in the worship and piety of Anglicans, in the Evangelical prayer and the diverse forms of Protestant spirituality. This appreciation should not remain merely theoreti-cal; in suitable particular conditions, it should be completed by the practical knowledge of other traditions of spiritual-ity. Therefore, sharing prayer and participating in some form of public worship or in devotional acts of other Christians can have a formative value when in accord with existing directives.14 Religious have a unique role in translating these intellectual con-tributions into popular piety. Indeed, several ecumenical books on the Blessed Virgin have already provided an invaluable resource, as can be noted by the many languages into which they have been translated,is The lives of ecumenical figures from Luther to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from John WeslEy to C.S. Lewis, have enr.iched the spiritual reading of a generation and made the divisions both more clear and more subject to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. The modern availability of the spiritual classics from the full range of ecumenical sources, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican has enabled all to be enriched. The living presence of fellow Christians with whom we share Christ--in a variety of traditions, but with a common will to be obedient to Christ's call to visible unity--is a rich complement to the liturgical, bio-graphical, and literary gifts we receive from one another. Like the charisms of the various religious communities and their November-December 1993 855 Gros ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Religlous founders, each church brings to a united church gifts we dare not lose as we reconcile our divisions. More particularly, giveR the legitimate variety of charisms and of the work of monasteries, institutes of consecrated life, and societies of apostolic life, it is very important that "all communities should participate in the life of the church. According to its individual character, each should make its own and foster in every possible way the enterprises and objectives of the church," including the "ecumenical field.''~6 In addition to personal and communal ecumenical spirituality, an "ecumenical hermeneutics of piety" will need to be developed as we move forward towards full communion?7 Indeed, as the "lineamenta" document for the 1994 synod notes, the baptismal consecration, beyond the narrow borders of the Roman Catholic Church, is the criterion for our communi-tarian outreach: As a reflection of church communion, the community is not a unit closed in.upon itself. Rather, it is open to the multiplicity of relationships with others which are provided by prayer, apostolic service, and collaboration with other members of the church, all of whom share in the same bap-tismal consecration and are called to holiness and mission in the variety and complementarity of each vocation. In its communitarian aspect, the role of the consecrated life is to offer to all members of the people of God the supreme value of the charity of Christ's disciples, lived in perseverance in fraternal communion.~8 Likewise, the agenda of the synod is very explicit about the spe.cificity of the spiritual calling: Those in the consecrated life have a special role in this ecu-menical task, in dialogue with the spiritual experiences akin to those of other churches and Christian confessions, in a spiritual ecumenism of conversion, prayer, dialogue and mutual edification, always in kedping with their proper iden-tity in the faith and their charism?9 Formation for an Ecumenical Spirituality While prayer and ecumenical openness are central to the ecu-menical vocation of Catholics, including the religious communi-ties, this spirituality also has specific intellectual content. It is a truism that one cannot be an effective ecumenist from any tradi- 856 Review for Religious tion without being firmly grounded in one's own faith and iden-tity. 2° However, 'the intellectual content of the ecumenical move-ment, including Roman Catholic principles and history within that movement, is an essential component for the formation of any ministry in the church, lay, clerical, or religious. In addition to the foundational principles enunciated in the conciliar and postconciliar docu-ments, 21 there has been a rich harvest of dialogue agreements.~ All of these texts are resources for spiritual and intellectual " renewal, requiring the same level of delib-erate systematic effort as did the early days of the biblical and liturgical renewal. Until leaders in our institutions, dioceses, and religious communities become well formed in these matters, their spirit will not be able to come alive in our Catholic life. Indeed, these dialogues and the researches and methodologies that stand behind them transform not only our appreciation of our own Catholic faith, but also of the changes necessary if our insti-tutions and practices are to be converted to reach the ideal we outline with our ecumenical partners. As was noted above, the curricula of seminaries have been transformed by the ecumenical movement. Those who receive their training in ecumenical con-sortia are probably the most sensitive to the ecumenical dimen-sion, but no one taking a Catholic scripture course can be ignorant of the full integration of Catholic and Protestant biblical schol-arship since the council. Similarly, any competent liturgy or sacramental-theology course will be informed by the vast literature that has come from the World Council's "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry" processz3 over the last decade and from the bilateral agreements of a wide variety of churches. Soteriology, spiritual development, and eccle-siology are all informed by the Lutheran/Catholic work on grace cited above. Ecclesiology will include not only the principles of Catholic ecumenism, but also the work done in the World Council and in various dialogues on such topics as the local and the uni-versal church, religious liberty and proselytism, and papal pri- One cannot be an effective ecumenist from any tradition without being firmly grounded in one's own faith and identity. November-December 1993 857 Coos * The Ecumenical Vocation of Relig4ous macy and infallibility. The Directory gives helpful detail for plan-ning both clerical and nonclerical religious formation.24 For the first time a section in this Directory sets the stage for the work of ecumenical formation among religious: While the concern for restoring Christian unity involves the whole church, clergy and laity alike, relig

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 47.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1988. ; A Spirituality of Suffering Issues and .Trends--1987 Advance Health-Care Directives Evaluating Chapters Volume 47 Number,2 March/April 1988 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The edito-rial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REvmw FOR REL=G=OUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REvmw FOR RELiGiOUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year; $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail, add $5.00 per year; for airmail, add $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors March/April, 1988 Volume 47 Number 2 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW VOR REIoU;IOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REWEW VOR RE~olt;Iot~S; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Charism as E powerment to Discerff, to, De.cide,, tO Act, to Assess : F:intan D: Sheeran, SS.CC:. ' ~, Fathbr Fint~n D. 'Sheei'an'is a priest ih the" Congregation of, the Sacred Hearts. He works p~'esently as a.consultant.to religious communities and resides in his Congre-gatio, n's formatjo.,.n.~.c.ommunity, in Ch,everly, ,Ma.ryland: This is ,hi~s first contribution to our pages. He may:be addressed. ~ at Damien House; 6013 Inwood Stre~et;,. Chev-. erl~, Maryland 20785. harles de.,Gaulle.is supposed to have puzzled ove.r the possibility of.gov-erning a people who had more,t~.an three hundred diffeyent cheeses. Per-haps Church authoritie~s~are affli.cted with somewhat similar doubts as they cpntemplate the present state,of religiou~s life .and,especially the pre-sent state,of study and writing 9.n,the re.ligious life. ~Prior .to the CQuncil, a narrowly ju.ridic and0institutional~ u~nderstanding ~i'nd interpretation of re,ligious life0dominated practi.caily all writing and reflection on the sub-ject and there was consider~ible:hom.og.eneity in the field, even by pre-conciliar~ standards. Since the Council, there has been.a rich and continu-i, ng outpouring of reflection as atte,mpts have been and go on being made to understand and to.reinterpret,the religious life from various~vantage pojn~ts including in the light of.dev~eloping experience. The author of~one such ,r.ecent .i~nterpretatip.n, ,Sar~dra .Schnei.ders,. ob.serves about .this, "What a).l~ of t.hese attempts have demonstrated is the richness of the phe-nomenon of religious life and,.the,fecun~dity of approachi.ng its mean!ng fnraotemd b_trhoea dtheero.p.looignyt~s ooff 'rveileiwgi othuasn l itfhee a dt olegamsat tsiicn jcuer itdhiec aCl oounnec tihl.aotf h ~arde ndto. m~iz One fairl3~ prominent feature of all, of this.reflection has been the con-siderable ¯ attention given to charism the charism of, religious life, the charism of founders, the charism of particular congregations. This atten- 161 Review for Religious, March-APr~ il 1988 tion has included reflection by religious themselves, u~sually in a pastor-~ ally oriented way, as an element of such enterprises as rewriting consti-tutions, establishing apostolic criteria or mission statements and so on. Then, forthe first time, there have been statements on charism in offi-cial Church documents. These have been well noted. Evangelica Tes-tificatio speaks of the charism of founders (n. I I ) and Mutuae Relationes of the chai'ism of particular congregations (nn. I l, 12). Finally, charism has been touched on, to a greater or lesser degree, by practically every t.heologian writing comprehensively about the religious life since Vati-can II.2 Among theologian~ none has given more particular attention to the nature and role of charism in religious life than Tillard in line with his strong accent on the religious life as the "following of Christ." I will touch briefly on some of his reflections on charism referring in par-ticular to his There Are Charisms and Charisms.3 What I wish to speak about in this pres.ent article is Charism from a dynamic or "functional" perspective rather than from the point ofview of '~'content," meahing ho~ a charism is a particular Gospel orientation with certain evangelical accents and nuances. I am concerned rather with how a charism "func-tions" if one can speak in such a way, in the ongoing life of a congrega-tion, how it can be a source of life, of unity and of dynamic newness. A religious congregation is born of a Personal and particular experi-ence of Christ and his Spirit, a charismatic experience in the sense that it is the Spirit alone who initiates the encounter that leads to such a re-alization. ".the charism~of the religious life, far from being an im-pulse born of flesh and blood . ~. is the fruit of the Holy Spirit." (Evangelica Testifi~atio n. 11). "The 'charism ~f the founders' (ET n. 11) .appears as 'an experience of the Spirit'." (Mutuae Relationes n. 11). The person is ~eized by the Spirit. To iliuminate this experienc,e Til-lard turns to the New Testament narratives of apostolic vocation and re-sponse. 4 It is Jesus who invites; it is he;who takes the initiative, filling the life of the person ~ind leading them to the service of the kingdom. This divine initiative d0e~ not at :all depend upon any moral excellence on the part of the humarl partner in the encounter nor does it of itself im-mediately :add anything to their moral stature. (This point has larger im-plications with which we are not immediately concerned here with ref-erence to the truth that vocation to the religious life is in no way a call to any "higher" degree or form of holiness than the call of every Chris-tian in virtue of baptism.) It is an encounter with the Risen Lord which reorients the persoh's life creating a mysterious enthusiasm in which ex-planation for the otherwise inexplicably radical response is rooted. As Charism as Empowerment / 16~$ John Lozano remarks, commenting on the call of the apostles: ¯ . .They leave e~,erything--family and occupation--and go off with him. As an event in a chronicle, it would not make any sense. But it is not just any "unknown man" who passes through the account . The center of it all is relationship with Christ, understood, of cou~:se, in a post-resurrecti~on sense, when these accounts were shaped as an ex-pression of faith in theoSon of God.5 For the founder and for every religious, as for the apostles, this fol-lowing of Christ originates in an encounter'which is "charismatic"--it is of Christ and his Spirit. At the deepest level the reason a person be-comes a founder (or a member) of a religious congregation is ": . . not a for . . . but a because of. One does. not become a religious for something, ,with a view to something; one enters the religious life be-cause of JesUs Christ and0his ascendancy.''6 I make these remarks and references centering on the fundamental character of the charism of religious life because while my concern in this article is with the ongoing dynamism of charism in our religious com-munities this dynamism is inseparable from what charism is at root. Be-fore moving along it is also worth no~ting some of the marks of authen-ticity of the charism of a congregati6n, marks which continue to have considerable import for the life of a group. Mutuae Relationes mentions a number of the "true marks of an authentic charism" (12). One of these is a distinct quality of newness. "Every authentic charism brings an ele-ment. of real originality in the spiritual life of the Church along with fresh initiatives for action" (12). (The document does'not fail to note that this very newness may be a cause of difficult);. Most religious congregations can offer some testimony from their history to the truth of this. observa-tion. Nor need they always go back.to the archives to obtain it.) It is help-ful to look at something of the nature of this "newness." . The newness of charism is a n~wness of action and realization and not just of thoughts and words. The charism translates into pastoral life and action on behalf of God's people and not just into words and docu-ments. It is an originality which relates intimately and penetratingly to the reality of a particular time and place. Founders and foundresses are people of their own time, place, and culture, and they have a keen aware-ness of their environment. Moreover, they discover their vocation pre-cisely in the context of that environment. It is in terms of their percep-tion of reality and of their vision and articulation of a response that the newness of the Spirit is revealed. Their concrete pastoral response is a "fresh initiative for action"; ~it is new; it is other than the response (or 16~1 / Review forReligious, .March-April 1988 lack of response) customarily being made by'society .or tt~e Church to this part!cular need. In facL it frequently reveals the~pgvert~y of the percep-tion and the.ineptitude.of the response of the Church~and of society ~gener-ally. No wonder, as Mutua'e Relationes delicatel,y remarks, such re-sponses "~ay appear unseasonable to many." A further trem(ndously powerful element of the'freshness and :new-ness of c,harism is an aspect of which we are be(oming more awa~re. It is that the charism empo.wers the ,founders of religiou_s_:congregations to anticipate and to shape the,future in concretely effective~ways. Charism is, by its. very nature futtire-0riented. But it is an,orientation filled with purpose and with the power to achieve its purpose. This becomes clear when we read the histories.of our congregations in. the light of whatis for u~ arelatively recent perception: that history procee~ds, from, the choices, decisions and actidns 9f individuals'and particularly of groups, organized groups,of all osorts--politic'alo parties,, unions, corporations, churches, and so forth. Social realities are, the result, of human choices and decisions made in the context of economic, social,.political alterna-- tires and not simply the product~ of blind 'processes. and intractable natu-ral. forces. These actions ot~ individuals and groups create structures and systems 'whiCh in turn condition and limit our perception and options. The Shape of our society is chosen. The choi(es and action of the Church and its commuhities"fall within this complex. A~social history of eight-eenth- and nineteenth-century Europe."would surely show that society~as it was then constituted required .and secured the existence of large masses of illiierate poor in order to maintain itself as it actually was. When in-spired women and men commiited themselves to creating religious con, gregations who would,educate and care for the. illiterate poor, they did much ~more than perform an immediate work of mercy~--they became ef-fective ~gent.s of social transformation. They anticipated and shaped an alternate, future, a "new" future. The "newness" which has charism as its source is dynamic and creative; it "renews the face of the earth," "In realit.y, the charism of the religious life . . is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who is always at work within the Church.'. It is precisely here that the dynamism pr.oper.to each religious.famil3) finds its origin" (ET, 11). My concern with charism ~is exactly with the dynamism proper to religious congregations not simply as regards their origins but more as regards their ongoing life and mission. Again the actual experience of the foundersand foundresses is illuminating. Orie significant practi, cal outcome o~f~a renewed .focus on~ charism in many congregatiQns has been the serious study given to the lives of the founders anti, also in some charism as Empowerment / 165 instances to congregations" initial or "'primitive" commt~nities. These studies have been motivat(d by a~desire to rediscover th~ originating his-tory of the community as it really was and especially to know the persoh oLthe founder or foundress freed from the m3~ths and apocrypha which had often accumulated over years of neglect of critical history. Almost invariably, the result has been someth.ing like the restoration or,rediscov-ery of the work of Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Anyone who has had the opportunity to be present while the work of restoration in' the Chapel has been going on has to have been powerfully impressed by see-ing the ~"old" and the. "new" side by side. From behind the dust and debris of years thereoemerges into the light astonishingly rich and pow-erful portraits, far more striking and iml6ressive than the painting that had been accepted as authentic for years. Similarly, the women and men with whom we come into contact in recent studies of foundress~s and foun-ders ~re~p.eople'of'vividly living faith, of prophetic imagination and origi-nality; they are deeply human people with 'a'great stor~e of practicality arid common sense; men and women who were wholly, given to the Church'e~,en as they'had the insight and courage to name its needs and to confront its resistan~'eg.7 What had passed for authentic portraits had frequently~obscured a more~brilliant reality. Because of the ~i+ailability of many such Studies~ it is also possible to see, in very rough outline certainly, but perhii~ps more clearly than be-fore, something of a c6ifirhon pattern' of'movi~ment marking these jour-neys that culminate in the foundation of ~ congregation. What we are lo6k-ing at is the historical realization of charisms, their taking on concrete form and incarnation in real people, real groups. I beliexie that there is a movem6nt'inv01ved which has a typical~ rhythm, one marked by dis-tinct phases or "moments." There is an initial moment of sear6h~iSt dis: cernment with regard to the'authenticity of the call tO move in the di~'ec-tion of commencing a project; there i~ a moment of definite ch6ice 'or decision; there is a rn'oment.of action and finally a moment of assessment or evaluation. The word "moment" could be misleading. While deci-sion or choice is always in itself a m~tter of a moment'whatever the prece-dents, the actual history of ]~oundations shows clearly that the other so-called moments can be a matter of a Io,ng time, many years even; or of a relatively short period. It'varies greatly from one founder or foundress to another but these moments as such are, I believe, discernible in their histories. Obviously these moments are0quite ordinary in the sense that th~ey represent the elements of any careful decision-making and action process; in that sense they are to be expected,. Our interest in,them, how- 166 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 ever, is in how in fact they take on a distinctively "charismatic" char-acter, how they embody the "functional dynamics" of charism, how in this sense they. are utterly.di.,stinctive. . The moment of search or discernment is that period when the per-son begins to be aware of being called by God in a special way but as yet lacks assurance about this. They wonder, pray: seek counsel. Clearly there are instances where this moment stretched on for years, where the interval between the first intuition and the moment of decision was con-siderable. The time of search is followed by a moment of decision. The person now sets aside all doubts about their call and embraces the invitation of the Lord wholeheartedly and without reserve. Choice is made and com-plete commitment. One way that this new and profound option is mani-fested in the life of the person concerned i.s by an important change in their language. A confident assurance that their inspiration is from God, prev!ously absent, now marks their expression. What in other circum-stances might be regarded as simply pious phrases or even trite expres-sions take on a clear and undeniable authority and power. Such phrases as, "This is God's will" or "This is the will of ~Divine Providence" or "This is God's work" are now used in reference to their efforts. There is a new transparency of purpose; a clear~, simple and confident assurance marks their speech, as indeed a great courage,° freedom and enthusiasm marks their conduct, about the enterprise. These very quali-ties are, without doubt, key to their capacity to attract others to join them. The third moment is.the moment of actign, of doing the thing that they are called to do, gathering people together in a spirit of mission. The moment of decision and the moment of action are not the same. There c~an be instances where the decision has indeed been made but ac-tion is delayed. In the history of the foundation of my own congregation there is an example of the founder making a decision to commit himself to the project of foundation and then delaying to act on the decision. In the event he felt himself to be called to account by the Lord and repented of his delay. ~. The charism of founding a congregation comes to fruition and real-ity only when the group actually, exists and from,the beginning the un-folding of the project in fact will always involve the unforeseen and un-foreseeable. It may be better not to think of the charis.m of a founder as separated from fits realization in the original group. In a sense the foun-der or foundress must wait to 'see what God has wrought but there is ai- Charism as Empowerment / 167 ways an intuition and sense of what the new community must~be which is key to judgment on its development. While it is never a question of checking against a preexisting blueprint, there is a need to assess and to assure fidelity to the inspiration which called it into being. This moment has parti(ular significance for the founder and for the primitive commu-nity but it is a moment which must continue as long as the community endures. So indeed must all of these moments in their own way. They comprise the charism in action, the "dynamism proper to each religious family." What I wish to suggest now is that this same rhythm, these same mo-ments must continue to mark the "functional dynamics" of the charism as it exists and is exercised in a congregation. Mutuae Relationes (11) speaks of.the charism of the founders which ".hppears as 'an expe-rience of the Spirit' transmitted to their followers to be lived by them, to be preserved, deepened and constantly, developed in harmony with the Body of Christ continually in a process of growth." The charism enables" the group to search and discern what it must be and do, what must be its way of life and of pastoral action in response to the world in which it finds itselfand to do this with a certain perspective, a certain orienta-tion and point of view, a particular spirit. ~ The implication is that the group must actively.commit itself as a group to such search and discernment evdn as the founder or foundress did. It is a search by the group in such fashion that if must guard and foster that level of unity which alone makes corporate search possible. This search in turn deepens and strengthens the real unity of the group. A province, for example, needs to identify and tO sustain the processes and structures which make a group or corporate reflection and search pos-sible as a province in a stable rather than a merely elbisodic manner: Lead-ers need to'know how to promote and foster such processes of reflection and the structures they require. The charism of a group is riot "auto-matic" nor does it function in any magical way. It can remain virtually inoperative for want of sufficient cohesion within the group or for lack of sustained 6ommunal processes. The charism enables the group to search out what it must be and do and to what it must commit itself in the power of the Spirit, animated by precisely those attitudes and values which constitute the "content'" of the charism, meaning that particular Gospel orientation or accent which characterizes every charism. The grbup is enabled to make judgments which are inspired by the same spirit which animated the founding vision. More, they can experience a confi-dence in their capacity for authentic and profoundly religious newness 161~ / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 in their.:pastoral responses. As with the founder 9r f0undress, it is Jesus who in~,ites;.it is he who takes the init!ative.leading us in. service to the kingdom in,this time and this place. Nor is that initiative~depe_ndent on any spl.endid historic achievement b.y the congregation orieven on ;the measure of its present, resources: But process and structure are necess~ary. The processless,~ s~ructure!ess~co.ngregation or.province is a mirage, Which is not to say, ho.wever, that the processes and structures must.be t.his.or, that~type, an.d even less that there i~s only one acceptable _form. While the cultivation and sustenance of process and structure make~ par~ ticular demands on,!eadership, it is also one,area.where the real mean-i. ng o.f" membership"~_ is tested. Real living commitment, to the commu-nity demandsoand is .revealed in a real investment of time, energy and presence in. its pro.cesses and structur.e~. C, ommitm~nt ,to the,"spjrit of the. cgngregation. ," while h.a.ving no time for its. process.es, is commit-ment. to the dance w~hile disdaining the steps; it becomes increasingly, ethe-real. ~ ~. ¯ . ~., ~- .- .~ ~ Secondly,, the .charism enables a group to. make decisions and choices whic_h ar~e faithful expressions of the charism oitself. It is a.grace which leads to and-enables choices made for the sake of the kingd0m,and bear-ing the mark of a certain spirit and orientation. Some groups find it prac-tically impossible~ to make real decisi0.ns and diffiRult choices. People go through .the for.ms and moti0ns~of, decision-makin~g, 9t. chapte.rs ,for ex-a. rnple., only.to, discover in time that no real commitment had been gen-erated and that implementation is_ unlikely or impossi.ble.There had,been only the,~.utward app~earance.of dec.!sion. It is.not a questiQn of .bad faith but.of processes in, adequate to the challenge. Of eyoking commitment at deep level. One of the dynamic ':,fu.nctions" of charism is to empow~er and enable the group to truly choose and gen~uinelydecide; to risk, to surrender, .to be converted. At a time when all of our, congregation~.s.ar~e. confronted~ wit.h, chali,.en.ging choices of serious consequence,, this is, an area where we read.ily experience.both the neeod that, charism play its em-powering ¯ role and tha!0we be open. to .it. -The charism further enables the group,to act and to act corporately. This means that the charism enables in the.group that level of, shared per-ception and vision, of shared aspiration and intent, w, ithout which cor-porate choice and action are impossible. And it empower.s, apos.tolic 9c-tion. "Corporat.e action" js not a .question of everybody, doing the same thing but rather that the members.of t.he group act~by intent in .the~iight of a shared vision of, direction which can give uni.ty and .c.oherenceto quite varied _ministries. For example, a group .may-have achieved a Charism as.Empowerment / 1169 shared understanding of.what '.'evangelization" means in this particu, lar place and time and, though in the.service of that vision:the members. pursfie quite diverse ministries, they are aware that they pursuea com-mon goal,. On the contrary it can happen that people exercise th'e same ministry (even hll te~iching in the'same school; for example) withotit hav-ing any shared visionOf what, they are doing or even having quite 6p-posed perceptions of ~hat it is that.they are about. " ' ~ Finally the charism enables th~ "group to assess its decisions add choices~ i!,s orier~tati~ons and actions in terms of fidelity to th~ founding ifispiratio~i and ~esp~si.veness to current needs. I re~eat here without. ~ilab~ratii~n ~th~t all Of this does not happen aiatomatically. It demands susz' tained effd~t I~y the~r~tip p~ec.i~sely, as a group ~r~d it is ~,i~rtually !n~pos'- sible without having in pla.,Ce;oin a stable way, those processes and struc-tures which ~ak~e bngoin~or~orate rei'lection,~choice 'and'~actiofi the'nor-m'al way Of life of the group~.°These 'processes and structures will vary, greatly from gr6up~°to group depending on their h.~story and trad~tlon~s,. their niamb~rs, ~g~ographical dispersion, and so forth.- I must point Out that while i tiavetried in thi~ ~irticqb to k6ep the "c6n-tent'" of charism and°its' "dyna~aic functi~_.n" separate, in th'~ end this is, of cgurs6, impossible and it'seems more especially so now in these time's thah ever. The "functioning of a religious congregation ~s ~n-s'eparabl~ .from its id~n~ti.ty, 'fro~ the radical meaning of its ~li~;e in°the Chu~'~h "/~ffci just as the f'6under ~nd (o'undress discovered their v~ocation , . .~ ~,; ~ - _ , . ~ o , o "~ ~ . : . - and ~ts meamng and shaped what they d~d and how'they d~d ~t ~n the con-text df their envir6nment, so do we. A sh~arp aware~ness of the i'6ality of our world and of. our place in it is as much a par~ of out vocation's iri-" gredi~nts ~is it was that 6f our fo'u'fiders ~nd foundres'ses. And we have avail~ble to us by God;S gift~,inst~:uha'ents and r~6ans for awareness; for takir~ cri{icai dista~e and for critic~ii~nalysis whicl~ th'.ey did riot. Tti~se are means which can enhance our capacity for pt:ophEtic dis~ernmeni, choice and.action,, means~which are immeasurably deepened and sharp-ened by the charismatic gifts that root the life'of.the congregation. I~'wouli:l conclude with a brief comment on the relationship between the charism of a religious congregation and the place of the c6ngrega-tion in t~ local ChUrch. The first obedience owed by every religi6us ~con-gregati'oia tc~ tile Church isto be faithfully itself. As a ~ift' given by the Spirit io the Churcl~'a congi'~gati6n remaihs "useful" to the extent that it remains faithful to its charism. If it is authentic, this ~lways'r~eans deeper ~olidafity with the olife and' ministry of the Church.This deeper solidarity is not just a matter of rendering more services or of undiscrimi- 170 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 nated availability. Rather it is a matter of living and acting as a congre-gation in the Church more and more in virtue of the charism. "The re-ligious life is a state within the Church, not just in the sense that it op-erates within the Church, receives grace from the Church and is legally sanctioned by the Church, but in the sense that it shares in a.special way in the mystery of the Church, is one of her organs through which, the Chi~rch perfects her own life."8 The charism is the first medium of our solidarity with the Church as a congregation. And so we bring to the lo-cal Church, for example, not only ministers and services, but a particu-lar point of View, a particular capacity for discernment needed by the Church,~a. capacity for choices, actions~, assessments, illuminated by a definite Gospel inspiration. Solidarity with the Church, in turn, evokes and animates ih~e~charism of a congregation. A congregation can therefore be profoundly obedient to its charism and to the Church to the degree that it is integrated in the life of the Church. Where the local Church strives to be a Church which integrates all of its m~mbers in its life and mission, in its discernment and decision-making, it gre.atly facilitates the deepest obedience of religious congre-gations. Where the local Church integr.ates all of its members in a search for God's ,will for his Church, in choosing direction for its mission and in implementing, its decision~, in such a Church, the charism of the reli-gious congrega[ion, a gift given for the Church, will grow to full stat-ure. Such obedience must never be substituted by a mere rendering of services in an undisce,,rned way even---or especially when there is much regi~rd for service and little appreciation of the meaning of charism and of its role in the Church. I offer here a brief ~uote from Bishoia Stanley Schlarman of Dodge City. In January o~" thins year' I~e wrote a pastoral letter to his people in which he reflected on religious life in the light of the dialogue with the religious of his diocese. , Furthermpre because religious become even more skilled in searching out God's will together, they can initiate new ways of answering the needs of the times, even taking risks, when needed on behalf of the poor and oppressed . In the light of these reflections I want to invite each person in our dibc~san family into a Trinity experience of community through knbwl-edge and love, dialogue and respect, and the mutual s6pport of one an-other's vocation.9 For religious that is an invitation to charismatic life, dynamism and newness. Charism as Empowerment / 17'1 NOTES ~ Sandra M. Schneiders, New Wineskins, (New York: Paulist Press, 1986) p. 28. 2 For a very useful survey of writing on charism see M. Midali, "Contemporary Theo-logical Trends in The Charism of Religious Life: A Gift of the Spirit to Church and World" USG. (Rome, 1981). 3 j. M. R. Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, trans. O. Prendergast, (Brus-sels, Lumen Vitae, 1977). '* lbid, p. 41 ft. 5 John M. Lozano, Life As Parable (New York: Paulist Press, 1986) p. 28. 6 j. M. R. Tillard, op. cit., p. 56. 7 Francis J. Maioney, Disciples and Prophets, (New York: Crossroad, 1986) pp. 161- 2. Maloney stresses especially the prophetic dimension of religious life and of the role of founders and foundresses. 8 Friedrich Wulf, Decree on the Ai~propriate Renewal of Religious Life: Commen-tary on'the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. !I (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) pp. 669-70. 9 Bishop Stanley Schlarman, "Reflections on a Dialogue With Religious," Origins, March 5, 1987, pp. 669-70. ApostOlate of the Moment Frank Quinlivan, C.S.C. Father Quinlivan,is director of, his novitiate and,has served as a missionary. He may be addressed at Holy Cross Novitiate; P.O. Box 749;,Cascade, Colorado 80809. ~kctive religious life has a rootlessness to it. Religious are a truly pilgrim people. We move on. We are seldom anywhere long enough to put down deep and permanent roots. We enter.into the lives of others and they en-ter our lives, but we pass through each other's lives. It is not uncommon for us to long for more "normalcy" in our lives--what we see as some permanence and stability, a place to pitch our tent for more than a season, a set of relationships which endure. Min-istry today, however, seldom affords us this. Even those whose ministry allows them to be in one place for an ex-tended period of time still find a certain rootlessness because in our highly mobile and nuclear society the people ai'ound us move on. Hos-pitals and schools have a built-in turnover of people. Today urban par-ishes see a large and continuous flow of people in and out. The pace of change is rapid. Perhaps most disconcerting of all is to look back and see that we have left few, if any, permanent marks behind us. So many years and so much effort leave little to show. The things we began, the work we did has ceased to exist or else has been greatly altered. The lives we touched have moved on and changed. We quite literally "lose track." We enter into many lives. That is what ministry is. We enter into people's lives in significant ways. We are there in a special way, invited into the hearts and consciences of people in a moment of pain, of joy, of growth or healing. But where are those people now? Maybe we still get Christmas cards from a few of them. 172 Apostolate of the, Moment / 173 ¯ ' 'Did our ministry make a difference a long-term, lasting differefice? Sometimes we may know, but'usually we.don'-t., In-an effort to p¢ofessionalize our ministry we have learned to do a great deal of lo'ng-ran~e planning and goal setting, of clarification bf ob- ¯ jectives and intensive evaluations. Ou~: experience of ministry, however, is" often that we ehd up walking a path that we did not envision and through areas that w~ 'have not charted. We can take the tools of management and apply them to ministry. They cfin help; 15uttheir applicati6n is ne~r perfect. If we do not lobk at ministry~as often perhaps most often unexpected, unplann+d, mo-meritai'y ~ind without measurable long-term consequences, we will be building up gomething Which can 6nly be frustrated and frustrating. It is important that we see much of ministry as an ap.ostolate of the moment. We are here now in this place with this person and it has, made a difference at this time inthis iife and that is enough. Fieeting contacts between pe~pJe where something human happens, often unplanned and impo.s'sible to follow up on, are how the history of the kipgdom and of ministry are most often written. This pers~)n was min-istered to at this moment,, l,oved, served, ,forgiven, encourage~d. There was,, a pointof huma~n~ con, tact, a sharing, a totJ~hing,, ~eemingly not sig-nificant, nor planned and, perhaps, not even remembered, but,this was the building of the_ kingdom. We move through others' lives and they thro~ugh ours, often in a.jum-ble, but the.points of intersection and meeting are the way. We,do not know, where fully ninety percent of them are-now. It is enough that their Way and our way crossed. ~ When we have aplan, be it for our lives or for only the day; we tend. to get very upset by interruptions. The in,terruptions, perhaps, are what we are meant to be doing. As'ministers we~are meant to be interrupted. ~ This is not an argument against planning and evaluation, or against efforts to make ministers "more professional: It is an argument, however, fOrothe" need to realize that ministry'does not°often ,fit into these catego-ries. It ,is possible .for us, like so many people,, to so live and work in the past or in the future, that we fail to,understand the,importance of the present moment. Yet it is in this.very moment that ministry is done.:" Our very rootlessness, as disboncerting'as it can be for us, is a key factorin our ministry. It allox;vs us to be.present this moment, the time when ministry.is done. It allows us to'be true agents,of the kingdom which is built up by many cups of cold wate~ given~in Jesus? name., 174 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 The apostolate of the moment is tied to our definition of .success. The normal definition of success hinges on things which we can point to and count, marks left behind which are permanent and observable. Ministry affords us little of this. How are we to know that weare ~uccessful min-isters, ,when. we have so little to "show"? All of us have been to funerals in our community when an elderly religious is laid to rest. We can ihink:of the countless lives he or she has touched. We can think of the thousands of points of intersection where his or her life and works touched ~nother's. Yet when they die, other than the community, there is usually no one else there.~ Most of the peo-ple they ministered to, in those special moments, are not aware of their death, do not remember the moment of ministry, do not recall even their name. Success in ministry, in our apostolate of the moment, cannot be meas-ured by conventional standards of success. Lives, may hav~ been touched profoundly, deep change~ may have occurred, but our rootlessness will mean that we will often never even know this. Jesus speaks of salt and seeds and yeast: They "are little things, seem-ingly insignificant, that effect great works, u~ually unseen, transformed into something else, hidden from notice, known only if they are lack-ing. This is'~how the success of our apostolate of~the moment must be understood. Let us attempt to plan and .to evaluate, but let us also understand our apostolate of the moment. Each human life is God-given and precious, beyond all value. Each moment of each life is precious and invaluable. That we are there in this moment is tremendously important. If there be an enduring effect or long-range consequence, we may never know. It is enough simply that we were there at that moment. A final word. Jesus tells us that he is the vine and we are the branches. When we reflect on ~his and on our rootlessness, there is much to learn. A branch does not have rootsoof its own. Separated from the vine it will die, but it is rooted in and through the vine. What weexperi-ence as rootlessness is, in truth, deeply rooted in Jesus. All ministry is his. The branches may grow in all directions; but the vine ties them to-gether and ~provides them .with root and life. The branches are often pruned and cut back so that there may be new growth in new directions, but they are neveruproote.d or cut off from the vine entirely. Much of our ministry is momentary, but its significance is eternal. Jesus told us that even a cup of cold water, given in passing, was not without lasting, even eternal significance. Apos~tolate of"the Moment / 175 It is difficult ifor us to be content with an apostolate of the moment. It would be satisfying to be able to see enduring effect and accomplish-ment. Our planning actually accounts for little of what we end up doing and there is so little visible to evaluate. It is, in the end, a matter of deep faith that we will not show up empty-handed before the Lord, but rather loaded down with a great deal of fruit despite being so rootless. Thief You kissed me - a Child of five - and stole my heart away. You called me - a girl of fourteen - and became h~y "first love." You covenanted me - a young woman - and bound me to You, eternally. O, gentle Thief, never give me away, nor ever set rile free! Claire Mahaney, R.S.C.J. Valparaiso Community 140 Valparaiso Avenue Menlo Park, California 94025 Eoaluating General and Provincial Chapters Gerald A. A~buckle, s.M. Father Arbuckle continues to give workshops on "refounding" religious life and to write for this review. His "Beyond Frontiers: The Supranational Challenge of the Gospel" appeared in the May/June 1987 isSue. His permanent mailing address is: East Asian Pastoral Institute; P.O. Box ~1815; Manila 2800; Philippines. Come now, let us talk this over, says Yahweh (Is 1.'18). People differ about the effectiveness of general and provincial chapters they attend. In the evaluations of a general chapter held recently, par-ticipants varied in'their assessment. Some were thoroughly satisfied; oth-ers felt that it was a useless experience since ~participants were not.com-mitted to implement the chapter's mission statement and decisions. Oth-ers claimed the chapter ignored'realities, while some felt that they had been manipulated by well-organized groups. Who is right? Without some objective criteria to judge the chapter by, it is impossible to even begin to answer that~question. This article is an attempt to offer sonie ~ciological and faith criteria to help readers evaluate their chapters. It is not in, any way an exhaus-tive study on how to assess the effe~tiyeness of chapters. My aim sim-ply is to answer this question: Are there certain attitudes, ways of look-ing at the world, procedural methods,, and ideologies which hinder or facilitate the work of chapt6i's? I will concentrate on general chapters, but my comments will apply with only very minor adjustments to provincial chapters. To aid in ~y analysis I will list a selection of comments by participants of general chap-ters held from 1971 to 1985 and then use them as catalysts for my own 176 Evaluating Chapters /:177 evaluatiofi of,such gath6rings. Hopefully, readers will be able to iden-tify from their own experience with several of these comments and. then be helped by my .,a.ssessment. I will proceed by defining,the nature and aims of a general chapter; by recording various comments by participants of general chapters; and then by evaluating thes~,corfihaents in lighi 6f sociological and:faith, criteria. ', Aims ~f ~en~r~i,,c]t~pters ,.~ "; ~dd~lly,° 'a general chapter, "aft a ~'ign of unit~, in charity," ~ho~u.ld be "a moment of grace and of the action of the Hbly Spirit in an insti-tute. It should be a joyful, paschal,, and ecclesial'experience which bene-fits the institute itself and also the ,whole Church.-The,general chapter is meant to renew and protect the spiritual patrimony of the institute as well as elect the highest superior ahd councilors; conduct major, matters of business, and issue norms for the whole institute.''~ There are two key emphases in this. desc~ription: the apostolic .calls to w~tness h~r6 a'ntt now and to plan for the futur6. I ffill~expI~iin briefly what ~acl~ em a~is means. In order to ffitnes~ h'ere and now, 'ihe chapter is to I~ a faith experi-ence, a cooperative action of both the Holy Si~irit ~nd the" memb~i's of the chapter. It is to be to the.Church and to the,congregation a vivid com-munity expression of,g.osl~el°charity and joy;:.comm~union will .arise out of a pro~cess bf personal a~nd .corporate convers~ign. ~ , . In planning for the~future, t.he chapter is. to,c.a, II the congregation to be accountable to the ideals of the Gospel and its charism, praising crea-tive apostolic, initiatives' and correcting aberrations since the: last chap-ter. It should establish~policies that~ relate the congregation's-charism, ap-ostolic life, and personnel resources to the ever changing pastoral needs of the People of Gbd. It is to.elect,the,highes(officer and his or her~ as-sistants on the basis of their abiliti~e~ to4ead~and inspire ~the 6ongregation to conversion, to its faith-and-justice mission, and tb the implementation of the chapter's policies and decisions.~ It should, call p.a,~icipants to com-mit themselves to lead within the~pr~ovi~ces i'fi impl~m~i~ing thee policies and decrees of the chapter. The two calls'are" complementary. 0n~ m~st not e~i~t:without the other. If all the chapter does is to formulate polici.es for the coming years, it is no different.than a commercial board of directgr~ which meets to plan and choose its executive officers. If, on the other hand, the mem-bers believe that all they have to doAs pray and live in charity and thus fail to prepare theologically and in every,,other way necessary to make sound pastoral and religious-life policies,, ~then they gravely misunder- 178 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 stand the incarnational role of the apostolic Christian and so of their con-gregation; they are running away'from serious obligations, taking refuge in a false spirituality or supernaturalism (see Lk 6~46-49). Reflections on Reality Do chapters in fact realize this twofold.call? To help readers answer this question, ~ list some evaluative comments of the participants 0f sev-eral chapters; then I attempt to assess them in tile light of the ideals for cha~ters given above. i. "No outward conflicts, but~there was too much pressure for con-sensus .in all things. The time for divisions was over, we were told. The consensus just covered over deep divisions; I "and others became in-tensely angry because of this. The chapter was not a reconciling event that it is said to have been." 2. "The c~hapter was to be a time for dialogue, yet it was riddled with conflicts. Some group said they were out to bring reality into the chap-ter. They caused conflicts all the time, refusing to listen to contrary views. We agreed on nothing." 3. "I tried to raise the important initial-formation issue, but the emo-tional reaction and pressure of the group against it was so great that I had to drop it. I was marginalized for proposing a discussion. So we strug-gle in ignorance for. six mor6 years about formation." 4. "We had a good chapter, since we stressed the discernment pro-cess, downplayed debates and the study of reports on the congregation." 5. ~'I feel unhappy with our chapter. One national group effectively stopped the discernment process. 'We don't decide things by prayer! That's pre-Vatican pie.ty,' they said." 6. "Some participants held back from sha~ring their views until they had ihe right momeni for maximum impact; they would not listen to others. I thought they used their silence as power to manipulate us." 7. "People say that there sfiould never be conflicts, but only'consensus' on issues. This puzzles me. Perhaps disceinment might'help." 8. "I feel the chapter was an experience of grace. I did not feel the under-" ~urrent of ideological pressure groups, power movements, national/ cultural lobbying, that characterized our last chapter." Evaluating Chapters 9. "There was hardheaded debate, but a spirit of listening, openness to reports of the world we must be evangelizing, an experience 0f rec-onciliation and sisterhood. I believe there was a deep conversion to the Lord in all of us. Discernment, research, and prayerful preparation helped. Decisions are being now implemented." 10. "Every now and then our chapter made self-congratulatory expres-sions or decisions that were so unreal. You would think that the whole world was waiting on every word, yearning to be led by a dynamic con-gregation, well equipped for apostolic action. We wrote a mission state-ment,- but ignored priority of apostolic needs, the insights of theologi-cal e.xperts--anything, it seems, that would have embarrassed us to face the poverty of our spiritual and human resources. We had warm, comfort-ing liturgieS. It made people feel good. What a sad, escapist experi-ence!" I I. "'We wrote many documents, including a mission statement. We felt we had accomplished much because we did a lot of writing, but the real issue of conversion remains unconfronted." 12. "I was frightened by the repeated labeling of participants as 'right-ists' or 'leftists.' If you were classed as a leftist by one vocal group, there was nothing one could do wrong in the chap~ter. Groups, especially some national groups, spoke of 'winning or losing battles,' obviously rejoicing when rivals were 'conquered.' " 13. "It was a prayerful chapter. We got to the painful issues, and made good decisions. Now, several month~ later,participants are not inter-ested in doing anything about the decisions." 14. "Two sma!l, but vocal, groups struggled to dominate or manipu-late our chapter. One group wanted by force of law to restore the status quo, the opposite group wanted.change to be,imposed by law on all of us. Both were humorless, almost fanatical." Some of these comments are optimistic, but, overall, respondents are uneasy about the effectiveness of'their chapters. Given the frequent, un-critical 'use of such value~charged sociological terms as "conflict" and "consensus," I estimate that their unease is justified. I suspect that sev-eral chapters described by participants were insensitive to how power can be manipulated, sometimes by people with immense goodwill but with little knowledge of the social sciences, in ways that are quite contrary to gospel values. Review for Religious, March-April 1988 Because of the confusion that Can exist about how a culture or group functions?internally, a, confusion evideht in the comments listed, my task is now to, ex.plain the n'ature-and function of two popular models of so-cieties: the confliCt arid ~the consensus models; this will necessitate an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses'oUsociological models in gen-eral. Also, after showing how these two models can be misused w~hen applied to the'an, al.ysis of r~li~iOus~congregations., I,shali ~xialain the role of di~ce~'nment in m~k.ing'decisions. Models of Society , - A model, o~: ideal-type, analysis denotes a~particular and popular method of sociological investigation of society. An idea.! type i~ an "ex-aggerat! on',' .of cert,/in features which tend to be present in society; once the type is constructed by ttie researcher; ~i°concrete s'ittiation can then be better understood by means of comparison with the ideal type. For ex-ample, the researcher concludes that a particu, lar society is like, or di-verges from,~the ideal type in this or that way. Ideal-types have been con-structed, for example, of capitalism, communism, bureaucracy, and pre- Vatican II religiouscongregational governments.3 In summary, an ideal type has the following qualitieS: First, it is not "ideal" ir~ an ethical way. Secondly, it is rather "ideal" in a logical sense;it is freely d~signed by the researcher in an effort to better ~om-preh~ nd reality by isolating, accehtuating or emphgsi~ing, arid artiCulat-ing the elements of a recurrent social phenomenon (bureaucracy~ for ex-ample) into an internally consistent system of relationship. Thirdly, an ideal~type in no way em.b~.~ces all details of the~rea!ity; the aim, as opted, is to emphasize or highlight "significant" recurrent social phenomena. This means that various aspects of society are not included in the model because they do, not fit its Overall purpose or focus~ Hence, to get the best possible analysis of a social situation~, it would be.important to construct several ideal types for analytical use. The response can then be integrated to give a fuller picture of the sit'uation. ~ Fourthly, ideal types are not hypotheses; they are not falsified if they are not, fully substantiated in a particular situation or even,at all, but they are research aids in the building of hypotheses, Fifthly, ideal types gen~ erally are~really scientific refinements of~ common sense. ,For example, the fact!that people use,(even correctly) the two models we describe be-low (consensus and conflict models) does not necessarily mean,~they°are trained social scientists. It ma~, mean that they instinctively.feel, for.~what-ever~ reason~ comfortable, with the emphases that .the models describe~ Moreover, some models, such as the two we are to describe, have.~be~ Evaluating. ~hapters / 181 comepopular!zed in all l~inds of literature, so that the nonexpert" readily absorbs the language particular to the models ,and thus uses it in ways that may or may not be sociologically exact. Finally, an ideal type or model is not a caricature of reality. A cari-cature, when made of a person, consists of a graphic distortion of the s~a-lient points of his or her appearance or habitual costume so as to excite amusement oro.contempt; a caric,ature of a society or. group has the same deliberate distortion.An ideal type does not distort reality, but only high-lights particular details to facilitate a better knowledge of a situation. Of course, if an ideal type is ,wrongly, used, it can well become a caricature. Consensus and Conflict Models of Society Cooperation or Consensus and conflict are two basic processes of group life. Consensus is that general agreement in thought a~d feeling which~tends to l~roduce order where the~e was disorder. Conflictu~l'i'ela-tionships c~n be~=ategorized in terms of competition (mutually opposed efforts to obtain the sa~ne objectives), rivalry (conscious competition be-tween particular groups), or~conflict (the struggle over val~es and claims to scarce resources in which the aims of the opponents are to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals). Two commonly used~ideai types have been constructed~ around'these two words: consensus and conflict (see Fig-ure ~1) 4 . Inthe cQnsensus model the.assumption is that people generally agre~e on values and norms; soqial life.is.basically.stable becausecooperatipn is rewarding.A spirit, of interdependenc,e pervades the society. Conflic-tual situations do ,emerge (~r~iters on this-model then tend to speak of "strained," "otense," "rival ".or, "competitive" relationships rather than "conflictual" o.nes), but they, do not threaten the dominant, consen-sus; .conflict resolutionS°in which equilibrium or harmooy 'i~ resto~r.ed, is achi.e~ed othr.~ugh trust :~n~ di,alogue and with ~'he aid of legitimate lead-ershi. p.,5 Maj.or social change comes very siowly and .depends on signifi-cantly large shifts in a~t.itud.e, and belief. The model therefore is conser-vative 'about change; many su~ggestions for chang~e are considered unre-alistic because people hold so firmly to their existing attitudes, vaiues~ and customs. ' In.the conflict model the key characteristic is the domination of some groups~by others, and actual or.potential conflict is at the heart of all so-cial relations. If~consensus exists-it is only a.facade. Behind this mask of.harmony the powerful, including ;the legitimate authorities, in order to maintain their-positions of .influence, manipulate or oppress othi~rs through the use of coercive power. ,Change comes about when existing 112 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 Key Points I. Basic qualities 2. Social life involves is essentially and depends on or produces 3. Leadership through 4. Social systems are and tend to Figure 1. Models of Society Consensus or Integration Model no'ms/values commitments cohesive consensus, solidarity,. reciprocity, coopera-tion, dialogue legitimate authority integrated remain Conflict or Coercion Model interests inducement and coercion divisive structured conflict, op-position, exclusion, and hostility power ¯malintegrated 9nd con-tain "contradictions" change conflictual situations are further exacerbated and new groups or individu-als emerge who manage to challenge the power structures in a confron-tational manner. Adversaries in conflicts generally judge the outcomes in terms of victories and defeats, wins or losses. In brief, at the heart of the conflict model is the assumption that conflict is the indispensable force in society. Ali relationships are coloreffby' it. The model empha-sizes the role of structures in society and how the powerful can use them to their advantage, and hence emphasiz,es'that change comes about through the alteration of structures through various forms of coercion. The roots of the conflict model go back to .people like Machiavelli and Hobbes. Karl Marx helped to refine the conflict model; conflict leads to revolutionary change rather than fi~aintenance of the system and, in the end, to what Marx claimed Would be a better society. His influence in the social sciences is considerable, though supporters tod~y do not nec-essarily agree with all that he said.6 Uses and Abuses of Models of Society As pointed out above, models are human constructs that articulate emphases in society. The models help us measure particular societies or cultures; enabling us to get a better understanding of their structures and dynamics. Most social scientists today would avoid adopting exclusively either the conflict or the consensus model; depending 9.n the nature of the particular group being studied, they would draw. on the.~trengths of Evaluating Chapters both models. Cultural anthropologists, whose task it is to study in depth a cultural situation, generally feel more comfortable with the consensus rather than the conflict model; they discover that people are more apt to resist change, often vigorously,~ because it threatens their critical need for cultural identity, security, and sense of belonging. People may adopt the jargon of the conflict model and yet remain at heart most unwilling to change. The process of facilitating change is more complex than the en-couragement of conflict; that may have quite the opposite effect. Abuses of the models occur inseveral ways. (A) One way is through the unscientific and exclusive application of one or other of the models to reality. People are then blinded to wider realities and values that may significantly influence the behavior of people. For example, as regards the mainline Filipino culture, it is .unwise to apply the cohsensus model exclusively, even though most key aspects of that model are evidently present. The emphasis is on the external maintenance of smooth, inter-personal, cohesive relationships and consensus in decision, making. If the enforcing of justice endangers harmony, then justice may have to be sac-i'ificed~ However, if theconsensus model is uncritically applied to the culture, it will not bring to light the intense conflictual anger and°resent-ment that can build up within individuals, for example because human rights are being ignored. A pointcan be reached when the anger cannot be contained, and it then breaks out with a feroc!ty and intensity that can stun the.unwary observer.7 On the other hand, the exclusive use of the conflict model blinds peo-ple to the existence of values, held in common and to the attitudinal re-sistance to change that generally exists at any level. The mere change of power structures, without attitudinal change or a chaiige of values, will lead to new forms of oppression. (B) Another abuse of the models occurs through the conscious or un-conscious desire to deny uncomfortable or embarrassing realities. There is the urge in all of us to deny awkward truths about ourselves or others, for if we acknowledged their existence we would have to do something about them. (C) A.-third abuse is the turning of either model into an ideology. By ideology I here mean (I am defining it in its pejorative sense) an action-oriented understanding of the person, of history, and of the world. The understanding is dramatic; the individual identifies ~vith it, is emotion-ally and totally gripped by it; one's :personal identity is constructed around the ideology and one accepts a role within the action drama. An ideology is apt to become for its adherents a dogmatic faith, blocking out 184 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 all challenge~ to it; people believe.,in it, then they~beheve in beliex;ing in'it.8 Ideologists readily use emotion-'ch~rged'labels.ofithemselves and others, for example; "libei-als, . conservatives," . ~ rightists,"~ "left-ists," o "radicals.",' An ideology is a caricature of an ideal type of soci-ety.~ My e.xperience'is that ideologists can,,~become so fanatically con-sumed by the rightness of their cause that. humor is beyond them, most certainly~,:t~he gift. of being~able to laugh at themselv.es.9 Ideologists are blinded to anything that threatens to undermi~n.e their assumptions. Take the conflict ideologlst. Situations and people are sim-plistically categorized, fo~xample, into '~pEre.ss~rs.and t.he oppressed, so that no gray ar,~e,a in the.a, nalys.is is. perm, itted. A.nyone who .~lares to doub! the analysi.s is lqgically (and emotively) assigned to the category "oppressor." ~0 Sigilarly, the consensus ideologist will not tolerate ai~y-thing~ but "harmony,," so that even ~enuine 90nflictual sitt]ations ar.e cov-ered over.~,,. Consensus/Conflict Model Analysis and'the Church Interest in the conflict perspective ih social'relations revived~ ht least in the Ehglish-speaking 'hations, in the. 1960s: In ~r~ceding decades, the dominant" sbc°ial-science theori~'s a~d:m0del~°d'eiaicted societie's~as founded and maintained o~ consensus ar~l ~ooperatiori. Howe~ier, the po-litical upheavals~ of th~ 1960s, 'botli domestic and international; focused attent~oh;ofi~)cial coffflicts and'~h6ir r~solution~ through ye~hlore con-flicts. For example, as concern for world poverty gi'6~v, people 6~ed the cbnflict rno~l~i to'better appreciate how pbwer (~conomic, l~olit'ical, and military) ~otild be i~ed to'impose unequal'exchanges which lead toga ~vorld system ina?ked by dependency arid pb~?erty. : : ~ ~ At the same time as the conflict"fia-6del was being revitalized and re-fined in the secular world, the Church began to ekperience the impact of'the incarnational and social-justice thrust of Vatican II.'Papal social documents 'and'synodal statements reflected,this trend. Proponents of lib-eratidn theolo~gy pointed'out that the philosophy of'cohsensus was being twisted, into an ideology in South America by the powerful minority to oppress the poor. Structural poverty must be tackled in order to briffg genu-ine relief. The.bishops~-'conference at Medellin in 1968 shocked partici-pants. into an awareness of this fact, and thereafter the small ~eed of lib: eration.theoiogy'sp~routed and grew rapidly. The documents of Medellin clearly show thd powerful influence of~the conflict-model in aiding the bishops to grasp the efiormity of the injustices being experienced by their people. On the wider intbrnational scene,.,Paul VI in his~landmark 197.1 document Octogesima Adveniens and in his Ef;ang~lii Ntintiandi (30-39) . Evaluating. Chapters o.f L975.and the bishops; 1971 ,synod on Justice in the World pinpointed ~he~caus.es of. world pox~erty in terms of the sgci.ological conflict model; but cle.arly rejecte.d ~both conflict and ,~consensus ideologies. , In the late 1970s there developed among concerned pastoral workers what became.known as Structural Analysis. This is a heightened criti-cal~ iselfrawareness of. .the wgys in which we c.an be. biase.d~ oLlimite.d in 9ur own thinking by our soqial, e.conom!c, cultural, or religious-life con-text. Advocacy, for the poor is a~critique of conservative-establishment power, domination, and wealth ideology. Identification with the poor and the oppressed is pictured as a "war waged on a more or less clearly iden-tifiable enem~,. The model is essehtially a conflict one where the promo-tion of a good ~s ,~nextrlcably hnked to a fight w~th a known adversary. ~ Unfprtunately, Structural'Analys~s, when it is used by tl~e amateur so-cial scientist, can r~adily t'~:n into a conflict~ ideology and'~hus"b~ the. cause of inj~Jst'ic~rather than an ~nstrument for its'removal. There are example~ of this in the evaluative coinment~ of genei'al ~ch~l~ters gi~,i~ri above. ' ~: :" " In summary, in the main Church documents that set out evangeliz, a, tion's preferentia! option for the poor: 1. The conflict/coercion/consensus models are used as ins, t.ruments of ~ocial/power ,analy.sis. 13 ,o 2. The limitations a,nd.~the dangers of misusiog the conflict mode!,in pa~rticular are pointed out: (.A) The,model cannot embrace theotransce_~n~ de.n,t; concern for just~ice mustoembrace the fullness of the ggspelme, s.- sage: "the prophetic~proc~l.amation of a herea.fter, man's profound and definitive calling, in both cofltin~uity and dis.cgntinuity with the present situation." 14 o~ ~ (B) The model must not be turned into a violence or conflict ideol-ogy;~ 5 "the action which,[the Church] sanctions is not the struggle of one~ class agai.nst an.other !n ord.er to eliminate the foe. She does not.pro~ ~ce.e.d from a mistaken acceptance of an alleged la~ of history: . . . The~ ~Chris.t~ian :wil~l always prefer the path of dia!ogue and joint action.' ,.~6 Nor should the conflict model be turned.into an °ideology that interprets the special option for the poor as embra~cing evaong.el.ically only;one section of the population: "This option excludes no one. This is whyothe Church cannot express this option by means of re.ducti.ve sociological and ideo-logical categories which would make this preference a partis.an choice and~ a.sourc~e of conflict." ~7 0 (C) Sociological models, 0.r ideologies that use these models, do not take into account the reality of sin; efforts at attitudinal or structural 11t6 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 change that ignore our proneness to sin are d6omed to failure. The urge to dominate or neutralize one's opponents, and the culpable escape from the realities of mortality, find their causes within our desire to deny God and replace him with gods of our own making.~8 (D) True dialogue between individuals or groups is not based on the ability to dominate, but on a spirituality of powerlessness born of char-ity; charity moves us to be open to others in order to respect and listen to them. 19 iE) E~vangelizers must watch lest they use the models in an amateur, but osten.sibly scientific~ way ~ manipulate and oppress people.2° 3. The~commitment to the social-justice apostolate must come out of a deep spiritual conv6rsion nourished by pra~yer. Prayer brings us to un-derstahd, how injustice is rooted in the sinfulness and selfishness of our hearts, it is prayer which calls on th~ Spirit to create within us both the courage and the love to bring about a conversion in people's hearts and the renewal of all structures of society.2~ Understanding Discernment "Discernment" is another frequently used term in the chapter com-ments noted ~bove. Discernment is a prayerful reflection on a human situ-ation in the light of faith. I must discover and root out all the attitudes, ignorance;, and prejudices that obstruct ~y ~penness to the Holy Spirit. Hence, I turn to whatever can hell~ me sharpen my grasp of truth--to the-ology, to social sciences, to discussion. But for discernment I need more than skilled human insights. I need the openness of a converting listener of the Lord. Discernment is not so much a skill as a presence with the Lord. It is being a Mary, "who sat down at the Lord's feet and listened to him speaking" (Lk 10:38). Father Thomas Green, S.J., points out that there are three presuppo-sitions of genuine discernment in the life of a Christian. First, discern-ment assumes that a person sincerely desires:to do what the Lord wants; secondly, this desire involves an openness to what God wants without reservations. Thirdly, the discerner must know the~ Lord in love, an ex-perienced intimate knowledge of God that a converted person has espe-cially through prayer. Discernment assumes conversion or the fact that the person has responded to God's grace and abandoned himself or her-self to the Lord. As Green says, "Discernment is.a function of a lov-ing, pe~rsonal relationship to the Lord. It can normally be only as deep and as solid as that relationship itself. The true discerner must be a pray-ing, loving person."22 Evaluating Chapters The presuppositions for communaLdiscernment are the logical exten-sion of the requirements for individual discernment.23 Every person of. the community must desire God's will; there must already be that open-nes, s, that intimate union of friendship in Christ. Without these qualities, communal'and individual discernment-remain human actions or tech-niques, not movements .in faith. Only'an individual or,group that has ex-perienced "that peace of God which is so much greater than we can un-derstand," and which ought to "guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus" (Ph 4:7), can identify what the Lord is asking. Discernment does not dispense with the need to use every human method possible--for exa~nple, sociological research, theological discus-sion-- to clarify the options that one must choos~ from. At tim6s this may require vigorous debate Or discussion. This is indispensable preparatory activity. To neglect it is to ekpect the Lord to work miracles, and'because of our laziness this he will not do. However, despite the perfection of our research, there are limits to our insights. We are relating to a God and Savior whose ways~ can be humanly inconceivable and unpredic.table; so, once the background material has been clarified, then we take it in a prayerful way, to the Lord and with him we contemplate the options. Evaluation of General ~Chapter Comments In view of the above explanation, many of the evaluative comments on several general chapters are not at all surprising. ShOrtly after the end of Vatican II, congregations initiated a series of provincial and general chapters of renewal aimed at updating legislation arid approving new con-stitutions. In the 1970s and 1980s the j.argon of ihe consensus, and espe-cially the conflict, mode~ls of analysis became increasingly popular and acceptable in secular and theological circles. Participants at congregaz tional chapters merely reflected ~hat was happening in the wider Church and society. Our formation p~ograms unfortunately had not adequat~ely prepared us in the social-gcience disciplines always to use sociologica~l or anthropological models with the needed professional caution. We have used sociological terminology, especially of the conflict model, but have frequently failed to grasp the technical ramifications of the language. In very recent years, as congregations have slipped more and more into the stage of chaos,24 religious have grown suspicious of the simplis-tic use of the conflict model and more aware of the attitudinal and spiri-tual dimensions needed i~ charige. Structural changes have not had the desired miraculous effect. Now the terms "consensus" and "discern-ment" are the "in" words though there is frequent confusion about their 188 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 meaning, as is evident in the following analysis of the chapter evalu- ¯ ations. Mis'use of tl~e Conflict Model (Reread Con~ments 2, 3, 5, ,,6, 12,~ 14) Delil~erately or otherwise~people coerced other participants. Com-ment 3 p,oints to an~,,atmosphere of subtle,.but effect!ve, coercion; the in-dividual feltemotionally pressured io withdrawoa mgtteroof considergble importance to the congregation~--initial formation. In comment 5 one na-tional group r~efuses to cooperate in the discernment process, so the only option ope.n is the ~use of power politics~ pressure grouping, wins and losses. In comment 6 some manipulate the group through orchestrated sile~nc,e.s; they will not risk shar!ng views~ntil they are in a positio,n to d~minate the g~roup with their own decisions. Christi.an mutuality.d~es np.t. ex!.s,t: In comment ~2 i.ndividuals are thor~ughgoin~g ideglogists; they openly proclaim that nothing will be done except through confhcts initi-ated by .them. MisUse~%f the Consensus Model (Comments 1, 7) In comment 1 participants Were using corisensus ideologically, though they may not have been aware of it. Obviously, they had experi-enced in the past the disruptive b,!tt, erness and failure of.the conflict ide-ology. and wanted to~ avoid it at all-costs., They the.n misunderstood the meaning of consensus. People of comment 7 are se~rc,hing to grasi~ the meaning of discernment. Misufider~.tanding of Discernn~ent (cpmments.4, 9, i3) Comment 9 ~vould suggest that a positive chapter was held; not so with .the chapters referred to in comr~efits 4 and 13. A l~'ey presupposi-tion in dis~ernmen(is, the willingness to do what God wants ~f us, no matter h~ow Oistastefql it may be. The fact that "nothingohas been d~)ne about th6 Chapter decrees" shows that this effective willingness was not present. ~, Escdpism/Denial (Comments V,~' 2,, 3;~ 4, 5, 6, 7) ~ . Ernest Becket claims that the root cause of human evil is that our "natural and inevital~ie .urge" is "to deny mortality and achieve a he-roic self-image."25 Discernment demands that we admit our mortality, our,absolute need~of God. This means f.acing ~up constantly to the reali-ties of our 'own sinfulness and our need to be dying to ourselves in order that we rise in Christ, This is painful. It attacks that which we so enjoy-- our .pride and~ self-sufficiency, ., ' ~ EvaluaiingChapters / t89 ~There are examples and hints of participants denying their own per- ,sonai and corporate mortality and thus avOiding reality, for example'; through the misuse.of conserisus and conflict models and the failure to have the openness to one another that.comes 6nly through the risk of faith. Power, as commonly understood in:the comments, is unilateral; that is, people are out to impose their influenc~ on others while cloging then~selves to the'insights of the'latter. RelationalpoWer is precisely the ability t~O listen to others as well as being available to influence the same people (see comments 2, 3).26 InSistence on conflict or c6nsensus at all costs overlooks, the fact that ultimately there can be nor worthwhile change unless it springs out of one's conversion to the Lord'~ his love, his meekness. Fine documents do not effect conversion (comment~l l')~. In response to.grace we must turn wholehe~rtedly to the Lord. No culture must ever be the norm for the Christian.-A cultu;e may or. ma3? not facilitate dialogue, but ultimately dialogue for tl~e Christian must=have its roots in faith and in imitation of Christ.'He is the exemplar of relational power, the power of mutuality and risk' in .~harity. He thtis teaches us what genuine dialogue means. Ponder how often he asks peo-pie wh~it, they wish of him. He does not tell them what hE thinks they need: "'What do ~,ou want me to do.for you?" he said to the blind man. "Master, let me see again'~' (Mk 10"51). Or take that in~ident~in which Jesus enters into dialogue with the Canaanite woman who persistently begs him to heal her daughter. She does not take no for an answer, and Jesus listens (Mr 15:21-28), just as he does with the Samar.!tan woman at the well and his perplexed follow+r.s on the rgad ,to Emmaus. Then the touching interchange on the cross itself, when Jesus in his agony listens and responds to the repentant thief. The ultimat~e~source of his gift of lis-tenir~ g is the divine/human e£change bf th( incarnation itself:"'Hi~ State was divine, yet he did not cling to his equa!ity with~God, but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave" (Ph' 2:6-7). Conclusion " Chapters are called to be witnesses of charity to the Church and to their own congregations and to apostolically relate their ~institutes to the needs of a changing world: In order to know these needs, "participants must break through the'barriers of their own pr6judices and ignbrance. An amateurish use of the social sciences, for exampl.e, through the mis-use, of sociological models of analysis, only iincrease~ these barriers. St. Paul was never a trained social scientist, but he had a shrewd in-sight into how people could misuse power. He detested those who sought to divide the Church into exclusive, conflictual, unlistening po~er blocks "191~ / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 that aimed to dominate one another--all in the name of Christ: "What could be~more unspiritual than your slogans, 'I am for Paul' and 'I am for Apollos'?" (1 Co 3:4), That approach, he insists, traps.people and deprives them of their freedom and openness to the Spirit; it. is a "sec-ondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ;' (Col 2:8). Paul then is condemning ideologies, or any action-oriented beliefs, which claim to legitimize the domi~nation or manipulation of people. At root, "feuds. and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels, disagree-ments, factions . . . and similar things" are the fruit of "self-indul-gence," which "is the opposite of the Spirit, and the Spirit is totally agaipst such a thing" (Ga 5:20, 17). The sign of the converting, therefore listening, person or group is love, for "Love is always patient and kind; ~t is never jealous., never rude or selfish., not resentful . [It] delights in the truth; it is al-ways ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and .to endure whatever comes" (I Co 13:4-7). Such ~people will do all they can to discover God's will, for they take to heart the ever pressing invitation of the Lord: "Come now, let us talk this over, says Yahweh. Though.your sins are like scar-let, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool" (Is 1:18). NOTES t Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life, May 1981, par. 51. 2 See G. A. Arbuckle's Strategies for Growth in Religious Life (New York: Alba House, ! 986), pp. I 16- I 19. 3 See Max Weber, TheMeth~gdology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1949), passim. 4'See P. S. Cohen, Modern Social Theory (London: Heinemann, 1968), p. 167. 5 See presentation of model by Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: The Free Press, 1949), passim. 6 See Steven Vago, Social Change (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980), pp. 39-44. 7 For a Japanese parallel see lan Buruma, A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), pp. 219ff. 8 See Antonio B. Lambino, "Ideology, Social Change and the Christian Con-science," in Loyola Papers, Manila, 1976, nn. 7/8, pp. I If. 9 See Arbuckle, StrategieS, pp. 67-87. t0 See insights by Renato A. Ocampo and Francisco F. Claver in Pulso, Institute on Church and Social Issues, Manila, voi. I, no. I (1984), pp. 7-16, 48-63. t t John L. Seymour, "Social Analysis and Pastoral Studies: A Critical Theological Assessment," in Pastoral Sciences, vol. 4 (1985), p. 58. Evaluating Chapters / 191 12 See Joe Holland and Peter Henriot, Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice (Ma-ryknolh Orbis, 1984); pp. 14-44. 13 See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, 22 March 1986, par. 42; also Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching (Maryknoih Orbis, 1983), pp. 175,244- 250. 14 Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, par. 28. 15 Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens, 1971, par. 28. 16 Instruction, op. cir., par. 77. ~7 lbid, par. 68. ~8 lbid, pars. 38, 39. ~9 lbid, pars. 55-57. 2o Octogesima Adveniens, pars. 38, 39. 21 Evangelii Nuntiandi, par. 15. 22 Weeds Among the Wheat: Discernment--Where Prayer and Action Meet (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1984), p. 64. 23 See John Futrell, "Communal Discernment: Reflections on Experience" in Stud-ies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, vol. 4, no. 5 (1972), passim; and Brian P. Hall and Benjamin Tonna, God's Plans for Us: A Practical Strategy for Communal Discern-ment of Spirits (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), passim. 24 See Arbuckle, Strategies, pp. 23-66. 25 Escapefr~om Evil (New York: The Free Press, 1976), p. xvii. 26 See Evelyn Woodward, "Uses of Power in Community," in Human Develop-ment, vol. 4, no. 2 (1983), pp. 27-29. The "Active-Contemplative" Problem in Religious Life by David M. Knight Price: $.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell~ Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 The ,Relevance of Life Review tO the Vowed Life James J. Magee, D.S.W. ~ ~o' Doctor Magee has, done extensive research and consultative work in the j'ield of re-tirement programs for religious women~ His last article in these pages, "Confidants Help Older Religious with Life Review," appeared in the issue of March/April 1987., He may be addressed,at the College of New Rochelle; New Rochelle, New York 10805. ¯, ~ ¯ , In response to the "graying" of their membership, many religious com-munities have begun to draw upon the reminiscences of their older mem-bers as a valued resource. Communities have sponsored groups to tape oral histories of the personalities, geographical sites, institutional crises, and developmental issues for which only the older members can give first-hand accounts. They have asked members whb are retired from their pri- ~ mary mini, str~!e~s~i'tg~.feiz.0.~d ~th.~zhaile~i'~es t,h~t iin~ar)'~.bly cbn.fro~t those who succeed them. Ttiey have, encouraged them, too,. to value the in- . creaseo ~nvo~vemento~n~4tte rewew that accompanies'aging:as occasions for healing memorie_s and di.sce~rning God's gracious intervention through-out their lives. Life review is a fo£m of reminisce.nce,~in whic,h persons recall long-forgotten incidents, dwell on them, and re6apture the emotions that origi-nally accompanied them, often while trying to convey these felt experi-ences to a listener. Thes'e.re~zollections are:usuhlly clear and vivid, ac-' companied by pleasant or uncomf6rtabl~ emotions varying in intensity. Life review increases dra~atie~ll~ in middle age and continues un-abated among older adult~':~In, life~re~,iew:ifii:li.vidfi~als reflect upon their personal history and accept responsibility for it. It is a process in which reviewers gradually r.ecpns~truct and assess their past, using their current 192 Life Review and the Vowed Life / 193 values to weigh behavior that memories progressively retum to conscious-ness. It focuses attention upon the connectedness of their: past with their current sense of themselves, evoking memories of formative experiences that influenced their personal development (Merriam, 1980). Life Review and the Daily Examen This description of life review overlaps several of the functions of the daily examen. A critical evaluation of life experiences with a goal of integrating them in an acceptance of oneself here and now is common to them both. Life review, however, is seldom a structured progression of memories. Usually it proceeds circuitously through reverie, reflection, dreams, diary or journal entries, correspondence, and storytelling. More significantly, life review enhances the fruitfulness of the daily examen by focusing upon the vowed lifestyle as a way of life that can release its members from compulsions that impede their self-actualiza-tion and intimacy with God. Like everyone who engages in life review, older religious become enmeshed in memories which join their own per-sonal history with the history of their family. They particularly recog-nize the ways in which they have mishandled in their own lives some is-sue( s) that they know various family members have mishandled over gen-erations. In a previous article in this journal (Magee, 1987), I indicated that these intergenerationai issues characteristically include the fol-lowing: WEALTH. (How much is enough? Who has access to it? What is sup-posed to be done with it?) HEALTH. (Use/avoidance of preventive and rehabilitative services, hy-pochondria, phobias) SEXUALITY. (Knowledgeability, scrupulosity, homophobia, premari-tal and extramarital activity) WORK. (Workaholism/inertia, process/product orientation) ANGER. (Forms of ex.pression, targets, repression, degrees of openness to resolving differences) RELIGION. (Freedom to participate/disaffiliate, questioning institutional teaching) AUTONOMY. (What decisions are mine to make? Where can I live? How often am I expected to contact kin?) These issues recur in families over generations because they have never been resolved. Instead of coping with them when they arise, fam-ily members react with a heightened anxiety which spurs demonstrations of denial, projection, and somatic symptoms. One authority refers to such issues as "islands of sensitivity" in a family. When family mem- Review for Religious, March-April 1988 bers even approach one of the "islands," no more than a particular kind of look, gesture, word, or tone of voice is needed to arouse an emotional explosion (Fogarty, 1977). ¯ Life Review and the Vowed Life How appropriate, then, that the lifestyle of living in community un-der vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience should lead religious to con-front the very issues which hold such intractable control over most peo-ple's lives. Texts concerning formative spirituality consistently em-phasize the inevitability of the vowed life engaging religious with their tenacious, problematic attitudes toward status, sexuality, and autonomy. It is to be .expected, then, that life review will elicit memories that reit-erate the difficulties religious had in observing their community's way of life precisely because that lifestyle addressed issues of exquisite sen-sitivity in their families. Consider the situation of a son who intervened between his parents who were estranged over any subject involving finances. The mother, in turn, invested in a compensatory relationship with her son, while the fa-ther maintained a deprecatory attitude toward him. The son rallied to-ward his mother, but experienced increasing anxiety over the intensity of their relationship. Later, after entering his religious community, he remained sensitized to expressions of anger, even disagreement. He was unable to resolve arguments, felt drawn to one member against another, and yet believed he must work everything out between them. Finally, he remained particularly scrupulous about observing the letter of his vowed poverty, and alert to any apparent laxity in the observance of other com-munity members. A second example concerns a woman religious who was raised in a patriarchal household in which daughters were assigned, without right of protest, the least challenging and most wearisome chores. Although she demonstrated exceptional organizational abilities in her community, she participated only reluctantly whenever her superior asked her to co-ordinate retreats conducted by a priest rather than by another woman re-ligious. In fact, whenever community liturgies involved several male cele-brants, she suffered symptoms severe enough to keep her from attending the services. A final example concerns a friar who grew up in a tradition-oriented family in which the eldest son for four consecutive generations had as-sumed direction of the family business. In this man's case, however, he entered his community even though he was the firstborn and had been christened with his great-grandfather's name. He maintains that his Life Review and the Vowed Life choice of vocation was the only discontinuity with his family of origin. For the family's entrepreneurial orientation and expectations for his as-gendancy continued throughout his life to compound his difficulties in sharing in the give-and-take exchange of community living and in ob-serving prescribed consultations with his superior. Life Review and Depression For most older religious, life review affirms their self-esteem as saved sinners, "in Christ, a new creation." Insight into the heritage of their family-based compulsions demystifies so much of their dysfunc-tional behavior. With faith, they see their frailties of character as graced opportunities "to boast of nothing but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." For a troubled minority, however, life review, like the examen it-self, can lead to depression instead of peace. For three groups, life re-view can precipitate a crisis of conscience and faith. One group consists of religious who "have consciously exercised the human capacity to in-jure others" and cannot imagine that they could be forgiven by those whom they have injured or by God (Butler, ! 963). They feel that no re-course exists to undo whatever harm they have inflicted. Often they ap-pear obsessed with a theme or event, discussing it with one listener after another. Somerset Maugham's (1959) observation about reminiscence is poignantly relevant to members of this group: "What makes old age hard to bear is not a failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories." Members of the second group.are those charact.eroiogically arrogant and proud. They use life review not to appreciate the gratifications that their memories recall, but to accentuate that their accomplishments and sources of life satisfaction are now behind them. Moreover, because they have built their self-esteem upon recognition for their achievements and affiliations rather than on their inherent worth as human beings, they view aging as distancing them further from the bases for their self-worth. Life review may also lead to depression for a third group who have tended throughout their life cycle to live in the future. Their memories surface a lifetime of opportunities missed because they were focusing uport tomorrow rather than upon today. Feeling powerless to modify their future-orientation and seeing death as foreclosing further opportunities, they become disconsolate over a life that appears to them as wasted. These three groups are in crisis about their spiritual life and their men- Review for Religious, March-April 1988 tal health. Their depression requires professional mental health attention. Conclusion Increased investment in life review is a developmental attribute of aging. As members of religious communities age, life review becomes a more potent resource. It enhances the quality of the daily examen. It helps religious to understand lifelong difficulties they may have had with their vowed community lifestyle. Finally, it helps in identifying relig-ious who need mental health services as well as spiritual direction. REFERENCES Butler, R. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26, p. 70. Fogarty, T. (1977). Fusion. The Family, 4(2), p. 56. Magee, J. (1987). Confidants help older religious with life review. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 46(2), p. 235. Maugham, S. (1959). Points of view. Garden City: Doubleday. Merriam, S. (1980). The concept and function of reminiscence: A review of the re-search. The Gerontologist, 20(5), pp. 604-609. The Cross Reconsidered William F. Hogan, C.S.C. Father Hogan's last article, "Eucharistic Community of Disciples," appeared in the issue of November/December 1985. He continues to reside at the generalate of the Christian Brothers: Fratelli Cristiani; Via della Maglianella, 375; 00166 Roma, Italy. History points to the virtual impossibility of maintaining balance between all the facets of the mystery of Christ, his person and his message. Theo-logical controversies over the centuries bear witness to this; current spiri-tual movements, as in the past, similarly offer testimony. ~ In the present day, emphasis on the Cross would appear to be one aspect of theology-spirituality that has receded in the light of other stresses, and a variety .of reasons could be adduced, not the least of which would be a reaction against some of the negativism in the past associated with the attention given= to the cru~ifixiofi in the Paschal Mystery and the insufficient ac-cent on the resurrection. Further, the broader view of the theology of crea-tion and incarnation has been seen .as necessary for a better appreciation of the basic concept of mission and our part in it today. It is not surprising that the recent extraordinary synod pointed to the need of recognizing "that in today's difficulties God wants us to teach more profoundly the value, importance, and :centrality of the cross of Je-sus Christ."2 These words assume a particular importance when we re-flect on the many kinds of life-struggles in our world and the areas need-ing redemption. What the synod said concerning teaching the Cross should not be restricted to ministerial actions toward others, for the mes-sage touches life and spirituality and needs to be integrated therein. But how a person approaches the centrality of the Cross in ministry as well as in personal life is very important, for there is need for integration as such. We cannot just let the. Cross remain outside ourselves as a reality 197 Review for Religious, March-April 1988 to be looked at. (While this may seem obvious, in fact, in our daily liv-ing we may well find ourselves looking at the Cross disinterestedly as an object.) The Cross is not simply a thing, static; rather it involves and expresses a relation of personal self-emptying love and total giving for us. Unless seen in that perspective, it will not touch us concretely and we will find much more comfort in concentrating on the Risen Jesus, avoiding the starkness and pain of the Cross. Touch us it must, for the Cross is at the core of Christian discipleship and reveals the mystery of divine love in the gift of the person of Christ, who invites us to follow him into the Paschal Mystery. Discipleship entails such a preferential love for Jesus as to demand that we go after him all the way into the mys-tery of his death-resurrection and not be deterred by lesser preoccupa-tions. The integration of the mystery of the Cross into our lives is inti-mately associated with the whole question of our human sinfulness and brokenness and how we own that as part of our lives. Often we would prefer not to look at that side of ourselves, since it can be discouraging and depressing. Some past approaches of spirituality urged people to re-flect on sin in such a way as to foster morbidity and gloom because of insufficient attention to the love of Jesus and that of the Father in send-ing him to humankind. As a result, instead of a deep spirit of sorrow for sin, a sense of guilt took its place, accompanied by feelings of shame, where the attention is at least unconsciously on self and not on God-- "I thought I was better than that." And then for many the next logical step is the loss of a meaningful sense of sin out of a flight from guilt and shame. No doubt, it can be frightening to see some aspects of ourselves, when at times we catch a glimpse of our dark side or it catches us by surprise; and we would prefer not to acknowledge to ourselves our sin-fulness, brokenness, and weakness. Yet a major factor in this reluctance may be how we look at this part of our lives. Do we view it separately in itself or in conjunction with the Cross and the healing power of God's love? Do we at the same time see God's power operative in the midst of our human frailty, using it as an occasion to break into our lives? A basic call is given to each of us to accept ourselves as we are if we are to grow to maturity. This includes acceptance of our dark side as well as the brightness of gifts, talents, and admirable qualities. However, the acceptance of one's sinfulness must be against the background of the re-ality of the Cross and divine love eager to lead us through our b~oken-ness towards wholeness, analogous to the felix culpa message proclaimed The Cross Reconsidered / 199 in the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil Service, We are not to cling to our sinfulness in a wrong way, trying to hide it from ourselves and from God, but let him use it and operate through it--sincerely believing that "for those who love God all things work together unto good" (Rm 8:28). A correlated sense of sin and of the Cross leads to greater convic-tion of need for, dependence on, and openness to the God who loves us in our weakness; simultaneously there is a breaking down of the exagger-ated kind of personal autonomy that lies at the root of so many personal and societal problems. And the human person gradually becomes steeped in the gratefulness to God that is the antithesis of the ingratitude of sin. Joyful dependence on God should overflow into a sense of dependence on others, enabling us to more intensely live Jesus' message of interde-pendeiace. We need each other, as we all need God and his redemptive love, because of our mutual brokenness and sinfulness. And in a very real way it can be said that God uses individual frailty as a means of be-coming a life-giving channel for others when we accept them and need them in their sinfulness. God ministers to them through us when we com-mune with them in our mutual need for healing and strength; and at the same time we receive God ministering to us. The Cross is not an isolated reality, for it extends to all aspects of individual and social life in touching what is most fundamental in hu-man nature. Each season of the liturgical year, while concentrating on one or other dimension of the mystery of salvation in Christ, must ulti-mately be viewed from the perspective of the Paschal Mystery. The Cross and resurrection are present in all of them even as they were pre-sent in the lifelong discipleship of Jesus. His self-emptying in following the will of the Father and seeking the Father's glory in all the phases of his life led to the culmination of kenosis in laying down his life. Any-one who would respond to Jesus' call of discipleship must necessarily make the same journey from self to the Father, and the Cross is inescap-able. We may~not like the manner of expression of the Imitation of Christ, but the message still holds true: The cross is always ready and everywhere waits for thee. Thou canst not escape it, whithersoever thou runnest; for whithersoever thou goest, thou carriest thyself with thee and shalt always find thyself. Turn thyself up-wards, or turn thyself downwards; turn thyself without or turn thyself within thee, and everywhere thou shalt find the cross.3 Various spiritualities in the past emphasi~.ed practices related to the Cross and some of them have been dropped. Perhaps this was wise and 900 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 even necessary because the devotions were not sufficiently well grounded for some people and even, in fact, became ends in themselves. Now may be the opportune time to take another look at the values these devotions and practices were meant to instill and deepen and to seek to reincorpo-rate them with new expressions and emphases, especially making a more explicit link to discipleship and our human brokenness. This could be help-ful in enabling us to perceive life and ministry struggles in terms of the Cross and drinking the cup (see Mt 20:22). Similarly opportune would be ongoing personal reflection on God's personal redemptive love for the individual--a truth that can never be deeply enough engraved on our hearts, a truth intellectually admitted but so often not interiorly believed such as to affect our lives. In the awareness of the pilgrimage of our lives, we need to see the already attained as having been reached in terms of God's love and the power of the Cross and the "not yet" element as something to be faced in the light of the same. Throughout the centuries the Cross has been a symbol of Christ, point-ing backward through history to the salvific event and at the same time forward with a prophetic call. It speaks to the world and to individuals about love, unlimited love, the love to which we are still challenged to-day: What I say to you is: offer no resistance to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other. If anyone wants to go to law over your shirt, hand him your coat as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him two miles. Give tqthe man who begs from you. Do not turn your back on the borrower. You have heard the commandment, "You shall love your countryman but hate your enemy." My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are sons of your heavenly Fa-ther, for his sun rises on the bad and the good, he rains on the just and unjust (Mt 5:39-45). The disciple of Christ, even in his/her sinfulness, is empowered to take up the challenge of Christ through the power of the Cross operative today and, in trying to witness to this love, will be living out the Pas-chal Mystery. How important it is that we seriously reconsider the Cross and its im-plications in our lives today, for it is so easy to forget or at least take it for granted. The Cross Reconsidered NOTES ~ See John Dalrymple, "Not Peace but the Sword," in The Way, January 1986, where the author indicates how some elements of charismatic spirituality tend to cloud over some disturbing aspects of Christ and his message. 2 L'Osservatore Romano, December 10, 1985, Documents section, Relatio Finalis D. 2. 3 Thomas a Kempis, My Imitation of Christ, Confraternity of the Precious Blood," Brooklyn, New York, 1954, p. 147. A Sister's Passing I watched the sunlight touch the corners of the sky and softly climb the hills, while you-- so still-- let the light fade in your room and quietly went.away to another mansion where mysteries are no more, and the Son-light never dims. I shall not question your going. R.LP. Sistei" Dorothy Clark, R.S.C.J. 2/6/85 Claire Mahaney, R.S.C.J. 140 Valparaiso Ave. Menlo Park, CA 94025 Advance Directives for Health Care: A Proposal for Priests and Religious Ruth Caspar, O.P., Ph.D. Sister Ruth, recently returned from a sabbatical devoted to research in bioethics, is a consultant in biomedical ethics along with being Professor and Chair of the De-partment of Philosophy at Ohio Dominican College; 1216 Sunbury Road; Colum-bus, Ohio 43219. The events surrounding the recent death of Monsignor.Thomas O'Brien will put clergy and members of religious congregations on notice that they should enact directives concerning their preferences regarding medi-cal treatment well in advance of the age of 83. ~ This was the age of Mon-signor O'Brien at the time of the severe stroke that left him paralyzed, unable to swallow and take nourishment, and incapable of speech. It was also the age of Brother Charles Fox when he suffered cardiac arrest and anoxia during routine surgery.2 In both cases, medical technology was available to sustain the lives of these patients, and in both cases persons close to them--friends who could have been expected to know their val-ues and preferences--sought the removal of these medical interventions. A review of the medical, legal, and ethical aspects of these cases, which differ in significant respects, will be instructive in providing a con-text for the discussion of Advance Directives "for members of the clergy and of refigious congregations. Brother Fox In the literature of bioethics, the case known in law as Eichner v. Dillon stands as one of the precedent-setting decisions regarding proxy consent authorizing termination of treatment for an adult incompetent pa-tient. 3 Father Philip K. Eichner, S.M., secured in that decision judicial 202 Health-Care Directives / 903 approval from the Appellate Court, Second Department, of New York State to remove respirator support from Brother Joseph Charles Fox, di-agnosed as suffering from "permanent or chronic vegetative coma." This petition had initially been approved by a trial court order, but was appealed by Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon. Both Father Eichner and Brother Fox were members of the Society of Mary, and both at that time belonged to the community at Chaminade High School in Mineola, N.Y. When Brother Fox entered Nassau Hos-pital for routine surgery for a hernia in October 1979, he had spent 66 of his 83 years as a Marianist Brother, the last ten of them in retirement at Chaminade, where his longtime friend Father Eichner served as relig-ious Superior and president of the high school. Their relationship, beyond that of friendship, was also established on the trust and respect that are part of the structure of religious community life under vows of obedi-ence. In 1953, Eichner had been a novice under the guidance of Brother Fox, then prefect of novices; in 1979 this role was reversed, and Fox lived and worked as a member of a community under the direction of Fa-ther Eichner. Why did this case make legal and bioethical history? Removal of a respirator from a patient in chronic vegetative state, with no hope of re-covery of cognitive functioning, is now fairly well supported in legal precedent and moral consensus; the debate in the courts and among bioethicists today focuses on the withdrawal of a further and more con-troversial intervention: tube feeding, which is at issue in the O'Brien case. But this was not the agenda in 1979 when Quinlan was foremost in the consciousness of the courts and the public as a result of media ex-posure. The Fox case was not finally resolved until March 31, 1981, when a decision of the New York Court of Appeals, highest court in that state, consolidating Eichner v. Dillon with Storar, upheld the decision of the lower court regarding Fox. It had opened on October 2, 1979, when Brother Fox, in relatively good health but advanced age, went in for sur-gery to correct a hernia he had suffered while gardening. In the course of the surgery he suffered cardiopulmonary arrest. Heart massage even-tually restored a heartbeat, but not before oxygen deprivation tothe brain had reduced Brother Fox to dependence on a respirator to sustain even the most basic ~of vital functions, with no hope of regaining conscious-ness. When this prognosis was confirmed by neurosurgeons, Father Eich-ner requested that the hospital remove the patient from interventions that 204 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 were clearly "extraordinary" under the well-articulated moral teaching of the Catholic Church. He was supported in this request by Brother Fox's nieces and nephews, all of whom concurred in this decision. More-over, Father Eichner and the provincial, Father Keenan, could report that they had heard Brother Fox express his preferences regarding the mat-ter. In discussions surrounding Quinlan he had said that he would not want to have his life prolonged by such extraordinary and artificial meas-ures, a conviction he reiterated immedi~ately prior to his own s.urgery. He had, however, no written document stating his position. When hospital officials refused, alleging both legal and moral qualms, Eichner was left with no alternative but to go to court if he wished to honor the known preferen.ces of his Marianist brother. He sought a court order appointing him as proxy for the incompetent patient with authority todecide whether life-sustaining equipment should be with-drawn. This was granted by the trial court on December 6, 1979 (Brother Fox had by now been in deep coma for two months); the order was im-mediately appealed by Dillon. Before the subsequent decision in favor of Eichner was rendered, Brother Fox died on January 24, 1980. Citing the far-reaching impact of the issues contested in the case, the Appellate Division proceeded with the case, announcing its decision two months later (Eichner v. Dillon, March 27, 1980). Dillon appealed once again, to the highest court in the state; once again Father Eichner's right as proxy to authorize the termi-n~ ition of treatment for Fox was upheld in the 1981 decision In re Storar. Though vindicated at every level of court review, the progress of the Fox case nevertheless incurred $20,000 in legal fees and over $80,000 in medi-cal costs. Monsignor O'Brien If the Fox case seems relatively clear and straightforward in spite of the difficulties encountered in its progress, that of Monsignor Thomas O'Brien, had it proceeded through court review, would have been a storm center. Nevertheless it presents an even stronger argument for a need for Advance Directives on the part of clergy and religious. Father Thomas O'Brien, ordained a priest for the archdiocese of New York, served over the many years of his priestly ministry at St. Paul's in Harlem, St. Anastasia's in the Bronx, and St. Malachy's, the "Ac-tor's Chapel," in Manhattan, where in retirement he held a position as Pastor Emeritus. He is described in the court record as "a lively, gre-garious loving man, an avid reader, a rapt conversationalist, and a good friend to the members of his parish."4 Health-Care Directives / 905 At the age of 83, he was severely disabled by a stroke suffered on May 25, 1986. As a result of the stroke~and subsequent paralysis, he was restricted in his movements, unable, initially, to swallow or take notir-ishment, and incapable of speech. In response to the medical emergency, a nasogastric tube was in-serted for the provision of nourishment. As the name suggests, these tubes are inserted through the nose and pass to the stomach. No consent form was required for this "noninvasive" intervention. Alth6ugh there was some difference of expert opinion about Father O'Brien's degree of competence, the record indicates that "he was not happy with the tube that was inserted and would have preferred to have it out." This he com-municated clearly by attempting to remove it fifteen times. At this point, hospital officials at Frances Shervier Home and Hos-pital in Riverdale, N.Y., petitioned the court for a conservator for pur-poses of consenting to the surgical insertion of a feeding-tube directly through the abdomen into the stomach: a gastrostomy.Such a procedure would allow the continued provision of life-sustaining nourishment with-out the irritation and discomfort associated with the nasogastric tube. It would also, from the perspective of the hospital, "buy time" for the reso-lution of the question bf competence. With the consent of a court-appointed guardian, "there being some conflict in psychiatric testimony.as to whether Msgr. O'Brien was or was not competent to make a decision as to the continuation of life-sustain-ing procedures," the surgery was performed on September 17, 1986. The issue, now that the stomach tube was in place, was whether it could be removed. To determine this, the court sought additional psychiatric testimony and heard the opinions of those most closely associated with the patient. There were no family members in a position to speak for Father O'Brien, nor had he personally authorized anyone to make decisions regarding his health care. No living will was available. One fellow priest is mentioned in the court record--the director of the residence where Father O'Brien livi~d--but he did not act as proxy decision-maker. The person who seemed to be best able to speak for the patient was a Iongtime friend who had initially requested removal ofthe NG tube. His opinion is noted in the record with respect ("His integrity and concern define what true friendship is all about"), but it was not held to be binding. Four psychiatrists, examining the patient who now had the stomach tube in place, found that he "was not so depressed or withdrawn as to render him incapable of making a rational decision affecting his life." 906 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 His method of communication, however, was limited to affirmative and negative responses which he communicated by squeezing the .hand of the speaker or nodding his head. In this way he indicated that he was not happy with the tube. He understood that it was necessary to sustain life. Did he want to live? No. Did he want to die? No. Hearing his testimony, Judge Greenfield found it necessary to visit the patient himself and to conduct his own assessment of competency and patient preference. Once again he found the evidence unclear and the mes-sages ambiguous, leading him to conclude that the court could not order the removal of the tube. "It will not order the discontinuance of a life-support mechanism without the clearest and most compelling indications from the person most directly involved. Whenever there is doubt, a court must opt for the affirmation of life." For some weeks after the insertion of the stomach tube, Monsignor O'Brien seemed to improve. Attorney for the Shervier Home, Thomas Ford, reported that he took some food orally, attended physical therapy, and prayed the rosary with his nurse.5 He died on December 8, 1986, three months after surgery for the gastrostomy. No further legal action was taken with respect to his case. Who Speaks for the Incompetent Priest or Religious? In the wake of~ Eichner v. Dillon major superiors of religious con-gregations in the United States commissioned a study of the legal issues surrounding treatment decisions in terminal illness, patient rights, and sur-rogate decision-making for their members. Prepared in 1983 by Mary Cos-grove Consentino, Esq., for the Leadership Conference of Women Re-ligious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (LCWR/CMSM), Health Care Decision Making for Incompetent Patients: Who Decides? provided an analysis of these issues, a review of rulings in the six states that had, at that time, acted on matters regarding who might decide whether life-sustaining equipment might be withheld from a terminally ill or permanently unconscious incompetent adult, and a set of recom-mendations for effecting surrogate decisi0n-making. Although this paper was not addressed specifically to clergy who are not members of religious institutes, many of its suggestions could be adapted for their use, and indeed for anyone contemplating the designa-tion of a proxy for health-care decisions. In the case of sisters, brothers, and priests who are members of religious communities, the analogy with the family offers strong support for the recognition of a fellow-member as the person best able to speak for an incompetent patient. Health-Care Directives / 207 Religious communities and dioceses will be concerned about these matters for a number of reasons. The individual person's rights of self-determination, privacy, and dignity in dying will be of paramount im-portance. In addition, there are legitimate concerns regarding the finan-cial costs of unnecessary and. futile treatment, the desire to avoid litiga-tion, and a need to clarify the roles of family and community members in decisions regarding medical treatment for priests .and religious sisters and brothers. The LCWR/CMSM paper recommends oral discussions--both for-mal and informal--as one means for bringing these concerns to the sur-face within a religious congregation. It had been this type of discussion that provided the occasion for Brother Fox to articulate his personal pref-erences regarding life-extending technology, remarks that were accepted as evidence by the courts. Increasingly, however, a more formal vehicle for the expression of directions concerning terminal care in the event of incompetency is advised. Referred to generically as Advance Directives, these may take the form of a living will or a durable power of attorney for health care. The living will is a directive executed by an individual while com-petent, specifying preferences concerning the types of treatment that one would wish in the event of incapacity. Typically these directives, antici-pating a condition of terminal illness and incompetency, request the with-holding of life-extending measures that would have the effect only of pro-longing the dying process. Durable powers of attorney are legal docu-ments authorizing an agent (the "attorney in fact") to make decisions on behalf of another person, even a~ter that person becomes incompe-tent (hence "durable" since traditional powers of attorney terminate with the incapacity of the principal). In each jurisdiction th'e binding force of living wills and durable pow-ers of attorney will depend on legislation (Natural Death Acts), compli-ance with statutory regulations, and the interpretation of the courts. As anyone familiar with the d~iily news will know, this is one of the most rapidly developing fields in medico-legal affairs. The LCWR/CMSM'pa-per reflects the state of the question on these matters only for ! 983 and must be updated. Highly recommended for this purpose is the recent publica~tion, A Mat-ter of Choice: Planning Ahead for Health Care Decisions, prepared in 1986 by attorney Barbara Mishkin for the U.S. Senate Special Commit-tee on Aging and distributed through the Special Projects Department of the American Association of Retired Persons.6 A Matter of Choice pro- 208 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 vides essential information that will greatly assist anyone contemplating the preparation of an Advance Directive for health care, as well as those charged with planning and implementing policy on these matters. Included in this report are the statutory provisions for the enactment of living wills in the 38 states that had legislated Natural Death Acts by September 1986, and a complete discussion of the durable power of at-torney, now recognized in all 50 states. Information regardingfamily con-sent statutes in the 17 states that have specific legislation regarding the rights of family members to make health-care decisions for incap.acitated adults is also provided, as are the provisions for making donations of bod-ily tissue or organs through the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. Sample forms for living wills and durable powers of attorney are provided in an Appendix. The Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care There are some clear advantages of the DPA, making it preferable to a living will, and reflected in the recommendation and endorsement by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medi-cine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1983.7 As an Advance Directive it is more flexible and more personal: phy-sicians and others involved in health care will be interacting with a per-son who is cognizant of the actual condition of the patient, rather than with a document drafted at some time in the past. The agent, chosen by the patient with a view to being able to speak in his or her behalf, will be in a better position to authorize either continuation or termination of treatment, in consultation with physicians and others responsible for the patient's care. DPAs can be used in behalf of persons not terminally ill (someone with permanent loss of consciousness or with degenerative ill-ness) and can be drafted to authorize a variety of services. A further advantage over the living will is the fact that, with the leg-islation by the District of Columbia in January 1987, 50 states and the District now have DPA statutes. There is great variety among them, how-ever, and only the most recently enacted were designed explicitly for use in medical-treatment decisions. Since most were enacted primarily to authorize decisions regarding property, they are silent with regard to their possible use for health care. Increasingly, however, they are being rec-ommended for this purpose. Attorney Mishkin's report for the Senate Committee is optimistic regarding their application to this field: No court has ruled on the validity of powers of attorney in this context, however; therefore no one can say with absolute certainty that a power Health-Care Directives / 20~ of attorney for health care would be implemented by a court, if the ques-tion were posed. Nevertheless, since courts generally will accept clear and convincing evidence of a patient's wishes in matters concerning health care, the probability is high that a court would accept an incapaci-tated patient's designation of a proxy health care decision maker through a durable power of attorney.8 For members of religious congregations, the DPA seems best suited to one very important function: clarifying who may speak for the com-munity member when physicians and courts, in the absence of such a des-ignated proxy, may tend to assume that it would be next of kin. This is not to say that family members might not be involved in the consulta-tion, but that the designated spokesperson would be a member of the re-ligious institute. An Education Program for Priests and Religious In recent years many religious congregations, provinces, and dio-ceses in the U.S. have begun the process of widespread education of their members regarding these matters. In some instances these programs are well underway or nearing completion, with all members aware of their rights and responsibilities, in consultation with the legal, medical, and ethical expertise needed to facilitate the implementation of an effective policy. Others have just begun. The rapidly developing fields of biome-dical ethics and the law surrounding terminal care will assure that this will be an ongoing project for all groups. For those who have not yet fully considered these issues, a program for community education is sketched in broad outline. Whatever ap-proach is taken, the design should enabi~ members to come to g~:ips with the,major theological, ethical, legal, and medical questions raised by the new life-extending technologies. For members of communities under vow, these will be considered in the cohtext of congregational expecta-tions with respect to a common life, simplicity, and justice in the alloca-tion of resources. Theological Reflection Priests, brothers, and sisters who have chosen to live in dedicated service within the Roman Catholic Church will want to ground their re-flections on the long and well-articulated tradition of that Church regard-ing the sanctity of life, the ministry of healing and caring that defines Catholic health care, the redemptive role of pain and suffering, and the reality of human finitude and mortality. No document better summarizes 210 / Review for Religious, March-April 1988 that tradition and addresses the pressing moral questions t~aised by new forms of treatment than the Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia.9 The 1980 Declaration, prepared by the Congregation for the Doc-trine of the Faith, carefully distinguishes the terminology used in the eutha-nasia debate: actions and omissions, intentions and consequences, ordi-nary and extraordinary means-~clarified in this document in terms of treat-ments offering "proportionate" or "disproportionate" burdens and bene-fits. Its principles are clear and offer realistic guidelines. While affirming the.sanctity of life and God's sovereignty, the Dec-laration speaks also of the unavoidability of death. Seen in the light bf faith, death provides entrance into eternal life. We may not hasten the hour of death through suicide or murder, but we are not required to sub-mit to treatment that "would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as normal care due to the sick person in simi-lar cases is not interrupted." Care-givers act conscientiously when they "administer the remedies that seem necessary or useful." Medical in-terventions that are normally optional, are those in which "the investment in instruments and personnel is disproportionate to the results foreseen" or" those that "impose on the patient strain or suffering out of propor-tion with the benefits which he or she may gain from such techniques." Some Catholic religious may be initially hesitant regarding the legiti-macy of enacting advance directives, having read of the opposition of their bishops to living wills. In this regard it will be important to clarify that the opposition of Conferences of Bishops to state legislation of cer-tain Natural Death Acts was directed at the legislation and not at an indi-vidual person's right of self-determination in writin~g such a directive. Foreseeing the rapid development of law (39 states now have such legis-lation), the National Conference of Bishops, through its Committee for Pro-Life Activities, issued on November 10, 1984, "Guidelines for Leg-islation On Life-Sustaining Treatment." ~0 These guidelines, reflecting the Vatican Declaration, propose "ways of respecting the moral principles ¯ . . as well as related concerns of the Church, whenever there is a de-bate on whether existing or proposed legislation adequately addresses the subject. ' ' The Catholic Health Association distributes a directive, the "Chris-tian Affirmation of Life: A Statement on Terminal Illness," that provide.s an opportunity for a person to state his or her wishes regarding treatment in terminal illness, in full compliance with the principles of the Church. ~ In states that have legislation regarding living wills, some, but not all, Health-Care Directives / 911 allow departures from the statutory form, and this document might be used as an alternative. Women and men whose lives have been lived in faith will also ap-proach sickness and death inspired by the same faith, identifying with Jesus in obedience to the call of the Father. They will appreciate the min-istry of their brothers and sisters who care for them in their illness, and will be concerned to act as responsibly with the resources of their com-munities in their illness as they have done in good health. Belief in res-urrection and eternal life places decisions regarding medical intervention within a faith-context. It will be inappropriate to deny death by insisting on medical interventions that are futile and that only prolong the dying process. Ethical Principles Ethical discussion of the issues raised by new developments in medi-cine and life-extending technologies, when addressed to a broader pub-lic than the Catholic community, is frequently framed in terms of cer-tain principles that must be honored and balanced in the delivery of good health care. Among the principles most central to this debate and to the matter of advance directives are these four: self-determination (or auton-omy), beneficence, justice, and fidelity. The principle of autonomy is derivative from a recognition of the in-herent dignity of the person as a free and self-determining individual. As such., competent adults have a right to control what will be done to them regarding medical treatment, and others have a responsibility to respect their reasonable wishes. This right holds, also, for previously competent adults who have indicated what their preferences would be in the event of incompetency andlor who have designated a proxy to make decisions for them. The full exercise of this right requires adequate disclosure of information--the risks and benefits of alternative procedures--as foun-dation for truly informed consent or refusal. The right to self-determination is not absolute and may be overrid-den in certain circumstances. Patients, thus, may expect that their pref-erences will be honored unless they are in conflict with "compelling state interest," the stated policies of the health-care facility, or the pro-fessional integrity of the care-givers (who are also persons with the right to self-determination). For the religious who has freely joined and re-mained as a member of a community guided by the teachings of the Catho-lic Church, choices will be further limited by fidelity to those teachings. The more extreme interpretations of autonomy assume a radical individu- Review for Religious, March-April 1988 alism that is contrary to the commitment that members of a voluntary com-munity have with respect to one another. The principle of beneficence, or patient benefit in this context, re-quires that one do good and avoid doing harm. The negative requirement (nonrrialeficence) is a more stringent duty than is the need to provide posi-tive benefit to improve the lot of the patient. In fact, these two aspects of o

Issue 43.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1984. ; General Government and Leadership The Benedictine Prayer of Beauty A°n Annotation 19 Retreat Experience Volume 43 Number 6 Nov./Dec., 1984 R~-:v~l~v,' l:or R~!~.~(;~otJs (ISSN 0034-639X). published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis. MO 63108. Rt.'.v~;w ~:or R~.~(~otJs is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus. St. Louis. MO. © 1984 by Rev~w ~:or R~.~(~otJS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $10.00 a year: $19.00 for two years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For subscription orders or change of address, write R~,vl~:w voR R~:H(;~ol~s: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor Nov./Dec. 1984 Volume 43 Nttmber 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REw~:w I.oR Rl-:lol(;~otJs; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Queslions for answering should be sent to Joseph F'. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REWEW I-'OU R~.:t.tGious; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; SI. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. The Spiritual Exercises and Preferential Love for the Poor Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J. Father Kolvenbach was elected General Superior of the Society of J~sus in September, 1983. This article is based on an address he delivered, on February 7, 1984, to the "VII Ignafian Course." an annual program of study/reflection sponsored by Rome's Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, and was first published in its bulletin, CIS: Vol. XV. no. I (1984), pp. 77-90. Fathgr Kolvenbach, as well as the Center, may be addressed at: C.P. 6139:00195 Roma, Italy. lain very pleased to be here this evening to offer my contribution to the VII Ignatian Course. Not being a specialist, what I shall share with you will be a simple meditation on a theme that is both relevant and important: the link between the Spiritual Exercises and' our preferential love for the poor. Clearly, if not necessarily dramatically, a preferential love for the poor~is contained in the spirituality of the Spiritual Exercises. We find, for example, in the section entitled "Mysteries of the Life of Our Lord"---a text in which the personal comments of Ignatius are rare and thus all the more significant--that a preferential love for th~ poor finds indirect expression in Ignatius' emphatic reference to the situation Of those chosen to be apostles; that they were men "of humble condition" [275]. Likewise the only discourse Iogion explicitly offered for contemplation in the course of the Exercises i.s the Sermon on the Mount, which in the text'begins with.the beatitude concerning the poor [278]. Ignatius also comments that, while Jesus overturned the tables and scattered the money of the wealthy money-changers, "to the poor vendors of d6ves he spoke kindly" [277], asking them'to respect the prayerful purpose of the temple, his Father's house. But these references evidence only an indirect connection with our theme, .the preferential love of the poor. "Rules for the Distribution of Aims": A Forgotten Text There is to be found in the Exercises, however, a much mor6 direct 801 1~09 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec:. 1984 connection between the spiritual urge to follow the Lord and the help that must be offered to the poor. The classic means of giving assistance to the poor had always.been alms-giving. And it is in the treatment of this subject that we shall find the most explicit link between the spirituality of the Exercises and an effective love for the poor, in an oft-forgotten section of the text entitled: "Rules for the Distri-bution of Aimsr' [337-344]. Why has this passage been so often forgotten? Above all because of the very concrete and specific application it makes to a single situation. In fact, ~he document is explicitly addressed to almoners, those who by virtue of their office are supposed to look after the poor, to clerics who practiced charity as their .function. Thus the tone of the text is very. clerical, very priestly. But despite the text's heavy emphasis on ~institutionalism with its many references to ministry, condition, office and function, Ignatius also points to Christ the high priest as the one who is the model and norm for all charitable activity. This particular reference to Christ the high priest [344] expands the horizon of an otherwise purely clerical document, calling every Christian to become a sharer in Christ's ministry through the exercise of almsgiving. In fact, in this document Ignatius takes the office of almoner for granted thus also implic-itly recognizing that not every Christian is called to the direct and immediate exercise of this task in regard to the poor nevertheless he exhorts almoners not to be content to work as mere functionaries, but to be inspi~red by the ministry on behalf of the poor that was exercised by Christ himself. Such an attitude ought to be t.he concern of every Christian without exception, each according to his vocation and state of life. Ig0atius, then, clearly intends this document directly, for a specific group of persons, At.the same time, however, he makes it clear that all Christians ought to have a special bond with the poor. There is another reason why this document is so often overlooked. It is the fact that the practice of aim sgiving no longer has today the honored p lace that this preeminent exercise of charity had in the time of Ignatius. In an older economic order it was principally by means of alms that the good will of the rich helped to correct excessive social inequality--th6ugh of course in a very imperfect.way. Saint Francis. the poor man of Assisi. had his brethren pray every day so that. thanks to therich, they could continue to be poor. Modern persons, however, even if they be poor. are no longer willing to be under anv kind of demeaning economic dependency. They expect and demand to receive from the state the means of a suitable livelihood as their right, not as something subject tb arbitrary distribution, nor dependent upon the mere '~good will" of the "good rich"--an attitude that is the very opposite of what is involved in the practice of almsgiving. Too. the modern untrammeled esteem for the value of work tends to bring almsgiving into disfavor, not just because ¯ the practice is seen as an affront to human dignity, but also because it could so easily,,encourage idleness and sloth. Preferential Love for the Poor / 803 Ignatius and Help for the Poor in his day Ignatius had to face squarely this problem of helping the poor. When in 1535, hating just finished his studies in Paris. he was resting in his native air of Azpeitia. he found himself perforce involved in the overall spiritual renewal of the townspeople. The reform of, charitable works in the area could not but form a part of this general program of renewal. F~r Ignatius. there was a self-evident connection between the two. o On the one hand (and this was to be true of him later in Rome)~ Ignatius did not want to see the poor obliged to beg: all must 'simply be helped according to their need. On the other hand he positively ,encouraged-that all alms from whatever source, whether civic authorities,~'the clergy or the laity, be given to the official almoners (see MI Fontes Docum. 88: De Azpeitiaepaupe-ribus sublevandis: 1535-1542: MI Epp L 161-165, addre~s.ed tO the townspeople of Azpeitia). To avoid abuses, then. the poor ought not to have to seek alms or beg. Rather, the almoners should receive alms to be distributed to the poor. not in their own names, but "for the love of God" (MI Epp Xll, 656: lnsfruction of November, 1554). ~' In reflecting on the m, eamng of this text. there is another facet that is important for understanding the spirituality of the Exercises. It consists in.the fact that for Ignatius himself the significance of aims had gradually taken on differing forms and purposes over the years. The "pilgrim" who in 1523 had wandered about the alleyways of Venice was a solitary mendicant who lived exclusively from alms. But the "companion" who in ! 537 lodged with some of his friends in a Venetian hospice for the poor. and who wished "to preach in poverty." also sought alms for the sake of being able "to help the poor." Heno longer sought alms only for himself, but also in order to help others. From 1540 on. Ignatius the "founder" gradually came to establish two coexisting but radically different regimens of community poverty for the na-scent Society of Jesus. without ever confusing them either in. theory (a relatively easy matter) or in practice (always a more delicate affair). In terms of. this twofold approach to ~community poverty, the "formed fathers." those whose training and incorporation into the Society were complete, would continue to live only from alms. while the colleges for the training of scholastics were tO have stable and~secure incomes in order to respond better to what the Church desired of them. Only in cases of extreme necessity wouM the seeking of alms become the last resort for the colleges, and then all the companions withoul exception would be "ready to beg from door to door" to meet the need. This is still our rule today. Material and Spiritual Poverty Once the "Roman" and "German" colleges had been started in 1550, Ignatius did all in his power to Search out suffi(ient and stable sources ofalms~ what we might call in the parlance of today's economy, "to establish founda- 1~04 / Review f~r Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 ¯ tions." However he was able to find nobody willing to give money liberally: neither princes, nor civic authorities, nor bishops. Even in those days, it seems, money was being squandered on wars--often in the name of religion. In fact Ignatius once wrgte: "After spending so much on material arms to support religionin Germany, it wouldnot be too great a burden if the emperor spared something for spiritual arms which could more effectively gain what is intended" (14 Sept., 1555, to Francis Borgia: MI Epp IX, 614). Considerable sums were being sought and here one sees a further devel-opment in the Ignatian concept of poverty, for these funds were being sought no longer for the sake of those who were economically poor, but for the formation of future priests who were called to help the spiritually poor. The Ignatius who dreamed in 1522 of living off alms alone, like the Egyptian hermit, Onophrius, thirty years later came to discover "God in all things," even in "Egypt"--his expression for the "business dealings" connected with almsgiving that were so necessary to meet the Church's needs. In his spiritual pilgrimage, Ignatius learned to take se.,riously the admoni-tion of the Lord: "He who does not gather with me, scatters" (Lk 1 !:23). For him, alms meant "gathering" with the Lord on behalf of his brothers, the poor. It is no wonder, then, that the Spiritual Exercises should include Rules for the Distribution of Alms. through which their whole, rich spiritual doctrine is applied to the very practical and relevant necessity to help the impoverished and suffering through almsgiving and indeed through the giving of one's very self. The Spiritual Exercises and Aims for the Poor ~ The mere presence of this text On the. distribution of alms in the book of the Spiritual Exercises witnesses to the fact that the Exercises are indeed geared to "the saJvation of souls," but this spirituality faces up to poverty .of whatever sort. Thus material poverty is addressed in these Rules for the Distribution of Alms. [337-344], as is spiritual poverty, for instance in Some Notes Concerning Scruples [345-351]. The contents of the rules on almsgiving also clarifies for us the motivation that led the Society of Jesus from its earliest days to become involved in helping the poor. Already during,the bitter winter of 1538-39, Rome's sole Jesuit house sheltered 400 poor people, Ignatius himself, although utterly absorbed in the government of the young Society, and while still continuing to give the Exer-cises, .also did all he could for the poor and oppressed of Rome. In other words, if its version of the Good News is not proclaimed and expressed in a practical way for the poor, the message of the Spiritual Exercises will rightly be seen as futile and lacking in authenticity. There is yet another document which bears out this characteristic of his spirituality, namely Ignatius' letter to the Patriarch. of Ethiopia. Against the backdrop of Ethiopian asceticism with its .innumerable and excessive penitential practices, Ignatius instructed the Jesuits to work toward lessening the popular Preferential Love for the Poor / 805 esteem for these excessive corporal penances in order to draw more attention to the need of working for the poor. In a nation where social concern was so minimal, Ignatius wanted to found hospitals,.to provide help for the poor by the exhortation to almsgiving both privately and in public, to ransom prisoners, to educate the abandoned, and to help young men and unwanted girls to se.ttle down in marriage. "Thus," he wrote, "the Ethiopians will seein a palpable way that there are better works than their own fasts and suchlike" (MI Epp VIII, 680-690, April, 1555). Such distortions have often been a problem, and not just in the Eastern churches. Aims "for the Love of God" Finally, the pertinence of these rules to the text of the Spiritual Exercises is explained by the simple formula which sums up the only basis for almsgiving that is acceptable to the spirituality of the Exercises: "for the love of God." Jesuits, and all who seek or give alms, should do so "for the love of God." Alms are a way of giving concrete expression to the beatitude ~vhich Was so lovingly addressed to the poor. As they appear in the text, then, these norms guide one's process of discernment for the practice of this concrete e~pression of the love of God. ' ~ Recent commentaries on the Exercises generally judge severely any retreat centered exclusively on a prayer experience that is turned in on the person of the exercitant in some narcissistic fashion. The exp,ression solus cum solo is not meant ,to isolate a person with a solitary God. Rather it is intended to express the appropriate relationship that ought to prevail between a "self" who has received everything from others, who is also called to be for. others, and a God who reveals himself precisely as "God with us~" Despite the frequent use of the first person in the text ofthe Exercises-- which always points to personal responsibility and involvement~the com-mentaries stress the profoundly communitarian character of the Exercises, character which is clearly in evidence right from the Principle and Foundation. Any person's authentic search for God necessarily entails that person's insertion into the human community. Conversely, any person's total commitment to hu .manity could only be the result of that person's discovery of the love of God. The First Rule for the Distribution of Alms Love "from Above . After these reflections on the historical and spiritual contexts of the Riales for the Distribution of Aims, let us now examine the first of these rules: If I distribute alms to my relatives or friends or persons to whom I am attached, there are four things that must be considered: Some of these were mentioned in treating the Choice of a Way of Life. The first is that the love that moves me and causes me to give the alms must be "from above," that is, from the love of God our Lord. Hence I should be conscious within myself that Gbd is the motive of the greater or less love that I bear towa~:d these persons, and that God is manifestly the cause of my loving them more [338]. 80B / Review for ~Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984" This rule immediately situates any gift of alms within agape, the love that, in Ignatius' terms, comes '"from above." In no way, then, should this text be seen as intending to provide merely a psychological preparation for, or .a religious exhortation to, charitable acts. It is not a pep talk for generous giving, nora way of spiritualizing the fundamental human instinct for solidarity. We should also avoid interpreting this rule in a way that merel3i invites to "purity of intention," Taking up anew an Augustinian inspiration which had previously appeared in the First Rule for Making a Good Choice of a Way of Life [184], this norm for distributing alms, while it does not in any way exclude philia (see the reference to "affection for relatives and friends"), does urge that phil[a be caught up and transformed by agape, "the love that,., must descend "from above" [184]. ~ . The expression "from above" also recalls the fourth point from the Con-templation to Attain the Lov.e of God [237]. God, the infinite ~treasury of all good, is in his trinitarian mystery both Gift and Giver of Gifts (see [237]). If, then, the giving of alms is to be divine--and therefore true and authentic--it must find its rationale within the dynamic of this mutual exchange of gifts, this loving movement of the gifts which "descend from above" [237]. There are a number of examples illustrative of this principle in Ignatian literature, Even in the most complicated of business affairs Ignatius kept his vision, of the lov~e ''from above" alive. Thus, for example, he exchanged some ten letters, with a certain Bernardino' Taro from Naples who had offered to sell his house in a complex deal involving some suspicious price fluctuations. A charitable work was involved, the payment was difficult, the Society sought a discount, and the benefactor became irritated. In all the correspondence, though, even while dealing with the complicated finances involved, Ignatius kept the whole transaction within the horizon of the loving movement that comes "from above," as when he wrote: "Let us pray that the Divine Goodness may grant us 'all the grace to be sensitive to his most holy will" (May 17, 1556, MI Epp X1, p, 411). It was not just by chance, then~ that Ignatius wrote on September 16, 1553 tO the, royal treasurer of Aragon, who had generously acted to convey mes-sages between the Jesuits of Spain and of Rome: "May God our Lord, whose love should be the foundation and norm of all love, repay you by increasing his love in your soul to just such an extent . For as there is nothing good witho, ut this love, so no!hing is lacking where it is present" (MI Epp V, pp. 488-489). The norm, then, for the appropriate distribution of alms is not, per se, our human solidarity, certainly it is not just philanthropy, but the agap~ of God himself, which takes flesh, in our human capacity to give and to forgive. The effort expended in undergoing the Spiritual Exercises so as "to rid oneself of all inordinate attachments" [1], is aimed precisely a,! allowing the divine t;gapP to take possession of our capacity to love. Thus t,he Rules for the Preferential Love for the Poor / 1107 Distribution of Alms have no other purpose than to put into practical effect what the Apostle John says in his First Letter: the man who does not love his brother most surely cannot be said to love God; and no one truly loves his brother unless it be with the love of God who first loved us (see l Jn 4:19-21). In this Ignatian concepiion, then, the principal criterion by which to judge one's preferential love for the poor is decidedly on the basis of .whether that love truly comes "from above," and does not rest on the simple fact that one is giving aid to one's poor brother. In other words, thee value of such a charitable act is to be judged in the measure in which me_re philanthropy has been taken up and transformed by divine agape: Service of the poor, to be sure! But before all else, service ,in my name," if it is to be true and authentic. Love "from Above"." for the Poor This first of the Rules for the Distribution of Alms, then, bringsphilia and agape.face to face with each other. "To give to those to whom one is attached by relationship or friendship" is not. automatically "ordered towards the love~ of God that comes from above"~except insofar as such a gift would actually reflect a preferential loye for the poor even in being given to oneYs own. We can find the interplay betweenphilia and agap~ that is evoked by this first rule applied in a realistically practical way in a letter from Ignatius to the Archdeacon of Barcelona, Jaime Cassador (February 12, 1536): "I mean, it. would be better to give to the poor when our relatives are not as poor as those, who are not relatives. But, other things being equal, I have more obligations to my relatives thar~':to others Who are not relatives" (MI Epp I, pp. 93-99). In other words, attachment even to relatives and friends must be caught up into the divine agape: the poor are to be preferred even above relatives unless these are themselves poor. . ' Love 'from Above"." for All the Poor The collection of Ignatian texts we have cited with r6gard to the first of the Rules for the Distribution of Alms raises a delicate question. The preferential love. for the materially poor is quite clearly a manifestation, an "epiphany" of the love that comes "from above," going as it does beyond philanthropy or the love (phil¢a) tha,~t is exercised towards one's relatives and friends. The well-ordered practice of this~ divine love (agape) clearly makes possible many social initiatives in the service of the economically po0~r. The fact that this love is not to be directed exclusively to the economically poor and socially marginalized springs from the Ignatian conviction th.at, in the last analysis, almsgiving is not meant to enable persons merely to become economically rich, but to enable persons to become rich in God's eyes~ to use the expression of St. Luke. Our free response to the love of God makes us deeply sympathetic toward the hopes of poor people under every form and at every level of genuinely human choice, but not in the pursuit of any and every messianic drehm, nor of any and every political or social option. Review.for Religious, NOv,-Dec., 1984 If in the text of the Spiritual ExerHses the use of the word "poor" is quite rare~ it is only at the end of the doc~aments on Election and in the Rules for the Distribuiion,,of"Alms that the term "poor" appears in its strictly social and economic sense (see [344] as an.application of [189]: Directions for the Amendment and Reformation of One's Way of Living in His State of Life). There.is no doubt at all that, after the example of the Gospel, the primary concern of the Spiritual Exercises is the conversion of hearts to the love that is "from bove ;~'w~thout such a conversion, all social activity, even the most generous, would already be found lacking, for its aim would not be "the human person taken as a whole." Why was there already urged insistently in the Old Testament the obligation to help the poor? It was not to make the poor economically rich, but because a person without money--in this sense "poor"--is not a "complete person" in the image of the love of God. A social revolution undertaken without agap~ means, and cannot but rlaean, death and hatred. As is well known, the Old Testament prophets;and finally'John the Baptist, expri~ssed themselves on social and economic matters in radical, even literally violent fashion. On this point, compared to the invec-tives of the prophetS, Christ's message seems like a comedown. And yet his "new Commandment," which should, according to Ignatius [338], be the root s'ourceoof the human love that finds its expression in almsgiving, possesses a r~adicality and an unprecedented newness that are quite capable of tra~nsfoi'ming humanity. In other words, Ignatius affirms in the Exercises that the human search for God is not authentic if it does not express itself in a loving commitment to the world of the poor: but. conversely, there is no perfect commitment to the cause of humanity, and concretely to the cause of the poor, unless it' be the fruit of one's personal discovery of the love of God that comes "from above." Love "from Above"." Opposed to All Poverty The cri/icisms offered in regard to theologies of social justice and of libera-tion do not call into question the urgency of the political, social and economic concerns that inspire these theologies. But the whole of God's revelation to the world cannot ~ever be restricted to a merely political, gocial and economic liberation, nor even to the gen'eral idea of freedom as such. Thes+ theologies do righily present one aspect of theology taken iri its entirety. In practice, theology ought to demand that the Church 'strive to reform the whole wbrld under every aspect according to the spirit of Christ. But the Church's option for the poor:should not be intended in a~way that would jeopardize the offer of salvation to all persons, the offer of that liberation which is the gratuitous gift of God proffered to all humanity. In struggling for liberation and justice, the Christian is called, not to curse those who have possessions, but to encourage theha also toward conversion to Christ. The Exercises ought never be limited to a single apostolic objective, To speak~ for purposes of illustration, of the time of Ignatius,' the Exercises were Preferential Love for the Poor / 809 never .focused exclusively upon the struggle against emerging Protesiantism alone, n6r upon the evangelization of the European masses alone, nor upon the refor~n of a corrupt 'clergy alone, nor upon missionary efforts overseas alone. In the same way in our own day, the Exercises should not be used only to arouse zeal for the social betterment of the oppressed, nor only for the better-ment of peoples who live in subhuman conditions. The Exercises are meant to stir each person who enters upon them to a radical gift of self, and it is going to be through this radical gift of oneself that the Lord is going to be perceived as calling that person "by name." This is the overall vision that Ignatius had. Like the Lord, he too had an evident preference for the poor, but he saw the poor as "persons" rather than as just ',the poor." We shall find in him no trace of any kind of paternalistic pity--itself a subtle but real form of domination. And without this kind of respectful regard for persons, one has no right to approach the poor. The Second Rule I will only make a few brief comments on the Other rules contained in this passage from .the Spiritual Exercises. The second rule to be observed in regard to the distribution of alms [339]:draws ~its inspiration from the second rule for . making a good election [185]. Here again, it is proposed that one abstract from one's :own individuality, .that one c6nsider oneself as an unknown, a person who is met for the first time, but who is esteemed, and for whom there is the desire for all perfection in the exercise of his or her office or state of life. In fact, all the rules to be observed for a suitable distribution of alms contain this same positive and rich outlook on all other persons, on our neighbors. The perfection that we ought to desire for others' as well as our-selves in distributing alms and in the exercise of our preferential love for the poor consists really:Sin wanting us and them to become other Christs. While one can makelife hell forthe neighbor, one can also be a source of living hope as well.! Ignatius' love for poverty was really and wholly a love for the person of the poor Christ (see [ 167]). Ignatius longed to be poor himself because Christ was poor. He longed to be poor as Christ was poor. In the same way, then, he proposes that Jesus must be the one who inspires us in the way that we go about distributing aims and serving the poor. To put it another way, we need to enter into Jesus' own way of exercising his preferential 10ve for the poor. Here the distinction between poverty and riches in the Spiritual Exercises becomes important: Spiritual poverty in the Exercises readily takes on the form of gratuity as opposed to greed. The gratuity urged by Ignatius for Jesuit ministries, for :instance, contrasts, and is intended' to contrast, with even the ¯ appearance of"business" or of the "marketplace'~in our approach to ministries, to ecclesiastical~offices and benefices, to the distribution of alms themselves. Powerful or rich persofls who always have others at their beck and call do 8"10 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 not expect.anyLhing in return beyond a calculated, response based on quidpro quo. TheLord in the Gospel, however, is portrayed as being poor. His:service is always freely given, without a hint of such calculating expectation. To remove the ministry ofalmsgiving, then, from every suspicion of interestedness, to decline gifts 'which automatically elicit gifts in return, to prefer to give .freely to those who count.for little in the world of vested interests--this is to be poor with and for the Lord who was poor. ~Gratuity, then, is a sign expressi~,e ~f the potential for radical change in human societythat could be created~--but only by the love that~is "fromabove." In the Old Testament, the paschal mystery of the Exodus had already given evidence of our human incapacity to chang.e society through our own resour-ces alone, of the impossibility of ever really convening Pharaoh, of ever becoming satisfied with any mere social teaching~that is aimed at bettering the lot of human beings. Only God, through his gratuitous gifts, can create a new humanity, a humanity "without poor people" (Ac 4:34), a society where the "poor~' of the ExoduS will live the "new commandment" of God's free self-giving. The Third and Fourth Rules The third [340] and fourth [341] rules for distributing alms present yet another characteristic of the Lord who is poor. If a person were to consider himself or herself in the light of eternity, the realization would soon dawn that, of all the riches he~ld: nothing really belongs to the~person, that the person is forever receiving, in order then to be able to give, and, in keeping with-the Judgment of the Trinitarian God, ultimately to give oneself t'o others with and through his or her gifts. This ',eternal Judgment" is actually the Lord of the Cross who died stripped of all, in the utter poverty not just the poverty of one who dies bereft of all possessions, but the poverty of one who dies~as a complete failure. , , , Here, then, is another Characteristic of the divine agapP:' a way of giving to another that ultimately comes even to the giving of one's life. It is at this point in the Spiritual Exercises that Ignatius increasingly uses the words "humble," "humility; . humiliation." It is impossible to love divinely in a possessive or domineering way. A preferential love for the poor couM be ideological, patti, san, selective, paternafistic. But as a passage in the Treatise on the .Election (1541) by Pedro Ortiz~explains, Ignatian "humility" is the divine way~ of loving. And the divine way of loving, revealed in Christ Jesus,,(onsiSts inthe humble offering of oneself for others that they may live. It is in this more profound sense that the rules for distributing alms urge a person to "imitate as closely as he can our great High Priest, model and guide, Christ~our Lord" [344]. Our preferential love .for the poor, if authentic, will move .through inevitable humiliations toward a love that refuses to be either condescending or domi-neering, that refuses to imp.ose itself by power or violence. The desire of humble love, of "humility" in the lgnatian sense, is,~then, the prayer toincar-nate the Paschal Mystery in a way that will arrive at this kind of radical Preferential Love for the Poor ] 811 poverty with Christ poor, whether this relates just to desire--the readiness to give oneself as the Lord wants, or to the realization of desire the actual giving of o~eself to those specific poor persons to whom the Lord sends one. The Remaining Rules The rest of the rules proposed by Ignatius for distributing alms explain still more clearly the practice of almsgiving which, in the terms of St. John Chrys- 9stom. was to be the human e?~pression of God's compassion. Ignatius encourages the kind of generous and unstinting distribution of resources that would inevitably require a simplification in the lifestyle of the almsgiver [344]. In this way there is no room in the asceticism proposed by the Rules for the Distribution of Aims for the kind of spiritualizing that would permit an abstract definition of personal spiritual poverty. That person is not poor who shuns the thought of death. Nor is the person poor who ensures his or her own security by storing up provisions for the future. It is rather the person who opts for insecurity through gratuitous giving, who offers out of his or her own necessity personal goods to others, and who giyes, himself or herself in them. "To be poor," then, means not just giving what is superfluous, but the ceaseless calling into 'question, both at the personal and at the community level, one's habits in' the matter of food~ dres~s~: living quarters, en!ertainment-- not just for the sake of thrift,' but in order to be able to, give to others--to the poor. Conclusion In a letter to Father Lorenzo of M6dena (May 16. 1556) Ignatius wrote: "You must understand that our Society, in its ~ractice of a umversal charity towards all nations and classes of men. does not approve cultivating particular affection for one people or for any.individual person.~except in the measure that well-ordered love.requires" (MI Epp XL pp. 408-409). " Guided by such well-ordered love--the love which looks to "the spiritual" works which are more important'~ (Constitutions, [650]), because the goal is the whole human pers, on-~we are to dedicate ourselves to thecorporal works of mercy, among which commitment to the poor takes pride of place. And so in a ~single movement of love. Ignatius,~is both attached a.nd detached. He lives a humble love which, as we have translated it here. is the love that comes "from above." The Exercises. a school of Christian freedom, in leading beyond "philan-thropy," gives to the preferential love for the poor for all the poor_--its truly Christian dimension. It is seen as our free response to that love, for the poor which God revealed in the poor Christ. who is himself rich in the Spirit To Divest or Not to Divest: Moral Investments and Immoral Purposes Michael H. Crosby, O F.M. Cap. Of this present article, Father Crosby writes: "A growing number of Catholic and Protestant groups are deciding to divest from their shares in companies involved in the nuclear armaments ch~iin. The process [utilized by] the Midwest Capuchin Franciscans serves as a case study." This experience can certainly serve as occasion for reflection on the difficult and complex task of bringing spiritual conviction to bear on actual life situations. Father Crosby, author of Spirituality of the Beatitudes, is Project Coordinator of the National Catholic Coalition for Responsible Investment. He is also Corporate Responsibility Agent for the Midwest Capuchin Province. Father Crosby may be addressed at Beatitude Program; 10i6 North Ninth Street; Milwaukee, WI 53233. Durin _the last two weeks of April and the first weeks of May, more corporate shareholder meetings are held than at any other time of the yeai'. High on the list of concerns by church-related groups of shareholders is .the issue of nuclear weapons production. This year, as in the past, the church groups" concerns were coordinated through the New York based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), the action arm of Protestant church,Catholic diocesan, and religious order investors concerned about the social impact 0f'business corporations and the application of social criteria to their own investments. For this spring's annual meetings, eight companies involved in different stages 'of the fiuclear weapons chain received shareholder resolutions from groups affiliated with ICCR. Some resolutions were subsequently disallowed by th'e Securities. and Exchange Commission, but several were to be debated on the floor of the annual meetings. For last year's meeting of AT&T, at least sixty-five groups filed a resolu-tion requesting the company not to renew its contract with the U.S. Govern- 812 To Divest or Not to Divest / 813 ment to manage the Sandia National Laboratories which carries out research and.development on nuclear weapons systems. Yet this year only forty groups filed witli AT&T calling for the company to establish criteria for military contracts and to terminate its nuclear weapons contracts. Similarly, for .the 1983 annual meeting of Geheral Electric, over forty groups, asked GE to consult with experts about and to support the nuclear freeze by declining to accept or to renew contracts involv!ng the development or production of nuclear'weapons~ Yet this year only thirty-one groups filed with GE asking the company to develop criteria for acceptance of military contracts. Why has there bee~ such a decline in the number of fliers in just one year? Has the U.S. Catholic Bishops statemeht The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response fallen on 'deaf ears? Is it due to a lack of resolve and follow-through? Or is it becausethe new SEC rules make it more difficult to return to companies on an issue when the previou~ year's voting has been small? According to Ursuline Sister Valerie Heinonen, ICCR's Military Work Group Coordinator, it is hone of the above. It is, she believes, "primarily because the Roman Catholic agencies in particular carried out divestment statements or were working on divestment positions and were in the process of implementing them." My Midwest Capuchin Franciscan Provinceis one of those groups that filed with 'AT&T and GE (along with Tenneco, Dupont and Rockwell Interna-tional) last year but did notdo so this year because of our newly-inaugurated divestment posture. In rearhing this decision, we joined such Protestant denominations as the United' Presbytbrians and th6 United Church 6f Christ as well as many Catholic dioceses and 'orders, including the Salvatorian Sisters of Milwaukee and th~ Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia. As early as April, 1982 the Adrian (MI) Dominican Sisters' general congregation declared: The c~ngregation will take a public stand for peace-making by di'.vestin~ itself, within ¯ one year. of stock currently held in the top one hundreff~diffense contractors. The portfolio managers will be instructed by the general council not to invest in these companies unless some stock is requested by the Portfoli6 AdvisofyBoard in anticipa-tion of filing a shareholder resolution. A few years ago, as Corporate Responsibility Agent for my Province, I was against divestment; yetl was concerned about the issue. I recall being part of a discussion group that struggled to define the many complex issues that must be considered in dealing with divestment: How can we balance the "peace statements" of our bishops and congregations with nuclear holdings? How do we distinguish between'.direct and indirect involvement via our stocks? Should we have stock in an), company that is part of a system that many believe is doing so much harm to so many? If we:are to do "good" via our ministries, to what degree can we do so because of "evil" returns' from questionable corporations? Should we distinguish between nuclear and con-ventional arms? Is capitalism morally evil? Or is it inorally neutral, but with some practices that are evil? Why pick on the nuclear armaments companies? 814 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 How do we deal with the balance of terror? How does the Nuremberg princi-ple of .culpability apply that all citizens are responsible, for their govern-ment's decisions, and will be held liable by humanity? Divestment has no impact on companies, except for a one-hour press c0nference~, so why not stay in and fight? Have we exhausted alternatives? If we do divest,.should it be total or should we keep a few shares to "keep the pressure on?" While no papal or episcopal statements tn the Catholic Church have called for divestment in companies involved ih the nuclear armaments chain, there are many pronouncements that touch the issue. In Pacem ~in Terris, John XXIII said, "the arms race should cease." Paul Vlsaid at the UN, "let the weapons fall from .your a os, and, in Populorum Progressio, "every exhausting armaments race becomes an intolerable scandal." John Paul II said at Hir0shima. in 1981, "let us promise our fellow h~man beings that we will work untiringly for disarmament and the banishing of all nuclear wea-pons." In March, 1984, a top Vatican spokesperson warned an international conference on European disarmamgnt that a poli~y of nuclear deterrence (the backbone of the U.S. bishops justificatio, n of the U.S.nuclear arsenal) leads to mistrust and escalation of Lthe arms race. Meanwhi!e, in their pastoral leiter, the U.S. bishops called upon Catholics at every level of defense industries. [to] use th~ moral principles of this letter to form their consciences~. . .°. Those who m conscience decide that they should no longer be associated with defense activities should find support in the Catholic commumty. Those who remain in these industries or earn a profit from the weapons industry should find in the Church guidance and support for the ongoing evaluation of their work. From my reading 9f the bishops' statement, "ongoing evaluation" of involvement in the production of such weapons ultimately should lead to disassociation from-the companies. But what about those dioceses, religious orders and lay investors tha.t are "making a profit from the weapons industry" via their stocks and bonds? What about our "ongoing evaluation" leading to possible disassociation? Stich statements nudged me to begin rethinking my position about possible divestment. The issue, it seems, is not whether churches, dioceses, or congregations support or. don't support unilateral disarmameht on the part of the United States. Divestment has little or nothing to do with disarmament. More and more the question is: Should we be involved in producing more weapons, especially since each side. has enough weapons to kill the other scores of times over?.How can more.weapons be produced when the arms race has been condemned. So on this issue we're not talking about disarmamenti just about not building more. We~'re talking about the three additional bombs built each day, and the ,ever-more sophisticated delivery systems being created. I was beginning to ask questions like these when the provincial council of my Midwest Capuchin Provinc.e ~asked its Justice and Peace Committee, of which 1 am a member, to prepare a position paper on the subject of. our holdings in nuclear armaments manufacturers so that it could determine how To Divest or Not to Divest / ~115 to deal with the provincial portfolio. Some might wonder why the followers of the Poor Man of Assisi should even have a portfolio. Their concern is shared by many of us, yet we find ourselves m a predicament. The Province has almost three hundred men. Because of decisions in the past, it now owns and operates fiv~ retreat houses which need ~provincial maintenance. It owns and operates the largest minor seminary in the United States. While it has many men in white, middle-class parishes, a large number also serve in Black, Hispanic and Native American areas, including the Cheyenne and Crow reservatiohs in Montana. From three of its inner-city locations in Wisconsin and Michigan, it runs meal programs, including Detroit's famous "Capuchin Soup Kitchen." Besides having preachers and hospital chaplains and campus ministers, our members serve in Central America, the Pacific, Australia and the Near East. The dividends from the portfolio, along with salaries and donations, constitute the arinual provin-cial income budget. Since the province is highly involved in work among the poor and for social justice (on.ly one hundred or so members actually draw salaries), the portfolio's dividends are currently needed to meet normal operating expenses. All annual revenues beyond the budget are allocated to the poor or for social justice causes--unless some extraordinary expense'needs to be,met, such as helping to repair a leaking roof in one of our inner city parishes in Milwaukee (which, .by historical happenstance, is incorporated in the name of the pro-vince rather than of the diocese). Two members of.the Justice and Peace Commission developed a position paper on divestment for the provincial council: Francis Dombrowski, who was trained as a moral theologian; l, the second author, have background in Franciscan spirituality and corporate responsibility. We were to investigate the ethical issues and our Franciscan charism to,determine what we might recomm(nd to the provincial council. It was decided that, rather than leave the decision to the council, (which earlier had divested from Upjohn.because of its manufacture of an abortifacient), ~his time the province's membership at large would be asked to become involved in making the decision. The paper was divided into four major sections: I) The facts behind th~ dilemma presented by the province's shareholdings; 2) Basic principles to be used to determine continued participation in the. manufacture of nuclear-re-lated weapons; 3) An application of the Franciscan charism to the signs of our times; and 4) A proposal for action by the province. The Facts The first section outlined the situation of. the. arms race, our participation in it via our stocks and bonds~ plus the fact that the companies at issue also did much good: , Our province has invested over a quarter of a million tlollars in some of these compan-ies with government contracts for nuclear weaponry. Thus we°'~re receiving income ~116 / Review.[br Religious, Nov.-Dec:, 1984 precisely because these weapons are being built at a profit to the company and to us as~ shareholders. Iris true that these companies'make many products and items that promote good for others; For instance, G,~neral Electric is a company in which our Province has 210 . shares (worth $19,924.00 as of December 31, 1982). We also.have $~0,000 in bonds in General Electric Credit Corporation. GE makes a body scanner which hospitals have found invaluable in saving lives; yet GE is one of the seven companies that actually makes components for the hydrogen bomb and is also involved in building the MX missile system. In 1981 GE received $3 billion in military contracts from .the United States government, accounting for I I% of its sales. This, means, in actual fact, that our province is cooperating in the production of nuclear weapons by investing money in the companies that build them. ~ The paper went on to explaiwthat holding shares does not make stock-holders proximate cooperators nor principal agents in the actioi~'s of the companies. Yet it made it clear that "we are remote cooperators in'a very.real way as owners who receive dividends from our investments and interest on ou~ bonds to sustain our way of life. Because we are shareholders and partial owners, we have s6me responsibility to make surethe companies in which we invest are not involved inactivities that counter our Franciscan vision of life." The province has adapted the steps outlined in Mt 19 (go and talk, on the word of two or three; take itto the court)in trying to get companies to change "activities that counter our way of.life,:' especially through its membership in ICCR. Since 1976 it either voted its proxies, filed resolutions, or s~oken at, annual meetings of companies involved in nuclear armaments. It bought ten shares of Rockwell International to dialogue with the company which, along with Allied (Bendix), AT&T, GE, Dupont, Monsanto, Pentax and Union Carbide (at that time), actually produced those components which would " make the nuclear weapons operational. 1 was one of three or four on a negotiating team which has,engaged in ongoing dialogue with Dupont.about its involvement. So, as a province, we had been trying to make our concerns known to the corporations. Having reviewed the way we had tried to bring the Gospel. of Peace to the "~houses" of these corporations (see Mt 10:12-15); we now had to ask ourselves: "Since these companies give no indication of change in policy and ciSntinue to accept defensb contracts that will further build up our nuclear arsefials, the question israised: What is the next step in dealing with these companies: more dialogue -- or divestment? Basic Principles 2) The second section of our position paper developed principles to be used in determining our continued participation in the manufacture of nuclear weapons~ It distinguished nuclear weapons from conventional weapons, and singled out "top" defense contractors because of the difficulty in determining the degree of involvement. Can a company like Exxon or Mobil, which provides gas for military trucks, be put in the same category as General To Divest or Not to Divest Dynamics, which makes airplanes and nuclear submarines that can deliver nuclear bombs? The principles included a lengthy treatment of just-war defense and the. -attitude of non-violence. The next area taken up dealt with deterrence. The paper shared why its ~position differed from that of the bishops by not accepting deterrence as a viable rationale. In this difference~,with the bishops' ,approach, the. paper reiterated the position of the leadership of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, The paper noted: There is also a moral question as to whether or not we can threaten to use nuclear weapons against a country to keep it under control. It is morally wrong to use such weapons even against a limited target because the effects of radiation would be deadly , for many beyond the target. There is no proportion between any good achieved and the untold destruction in the aftermath. If it is immoral to use these weapons, it is also immoral to in'tend to use them as a threat. The mere verbal threat to use them against ~ another nation with the secret intent not to actually use them is unrealistic. The threat is effective only if the intention to use them is real. The position the paper took seems to differ little from the way the Vatican thought seems to have been evolving, especially given its recent, March statement at the European disarmament conference. The final part of the "Principles" section considered principles for cooperation and "non-cooperation in evil. The two traditional points were made quite clear: One who by his/her approval, vote~ consent, together with others causes harm knowingly is guilty of i,njustice~and is obliged to make restitution in proportion to the efficacy of his/her consent. Cooperation means helping or assisting another in the performance of an~ injustice. Whoever takes an active part in an unjust action is guilty of the injustice if his/her efficacious cooperation is formal, that is, intended and deliberate. Material cooperation means not really wanting the injustice, but helping in it or contributing to it without a sufficient reason. Ordinarily, materia, I cooperation is morally wrong. According to traditional Catholic teaching, however, material cooperation is per-mitted if (and only if) two conditions are fulfilled: . a. The manner of one's cooperation is not a morally evil'act in itself, but only some participation or contribution to the evil or injustice done by another. b. The reason for one's cooperation is sufficiently important and proportionate to the ~:vil involved. By the time I r~ad the r~aterial presented by Francis Dombrowski, especially the principles related to (non)cgoperation, I had begun to believe that it would b,e difficu!t, if not impossible, for us t6 justify crntinued holdings in ,n~uclear armaments companies. This growing conviction was reinforced when I realized our portfolio could be diversified without any serious financial loss. We had. no "sufficient reason" to continue material cooperation. When I was definitely leaning this way, it was my research into the Franciscan charism that finally made me convinced that we could no longer hold stock in such companies. 81B / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 Application The third section of the paper noted that the times when Francis lived in Assisi vis~-vis wars and preparation for war were similar to our own era. According to Arnoldo Fortini, a biographer of Francis.and former mayor of° Assisi, war was "a condition of life for every city?: A militaristic way 'of thinking and acting became normative of the way opposing groups settled their differencesl Groups armed themselves to threaten their enemies, and were ready to use those arms to destroy their enemies in order to preserve their way of life, Fortini notes of the Christians of that era that they were so controlled by such an attitude that ?they could~not even imagine a faith that was not sustained by military skill." Within such an environment, Francis began to imagine a f~ith that did not need to be buttressed through armaments. It would be a way that society would p~erceive as totally alien to its way of operating and dealing with opposition. The paper noted: In the face of the militarism of his fellow citizens, Francis realized they were not about to change their ways: So he and his followers had to "divest" themselves of those ways. Thus the friars were not to acquire property, lest they take up arms to protect it. For their part, the laity ~fellow citizens as well) would bring the Franciscan charism to beai upon their lives and society through non-cooperation. They would not be able to bear any ii~thal weapons if they were to be faiihful to Frdncis' vision of life in that militaristic" milieu . it seems quite clear that his society shrouded in faith and religion the manufacture, use and deployment of lethal~ weapons. Francis' "No" must be applied to our day'as well. If Francis said no, and if Jesus said "No" to Peter who wanted to use a weapon of violence for self-protection, our response too can only be "no more of this" (Lk 22:51). What other response can we make, not as citizens of Assisi, but of the United Stfites, but to separate ourselves from this way of settling disputes and dealing with our enemies? We have been born as citizens of~the United States; we have unknowingly accumulated shares in companies manufacturing nuclear weapons. But we can choose now to respond to these realities with the,charism of Francis. ~ Proposal for Action 4) The final part of the paper presented a "Proposal for Action 'by the Province" which built on the previous three sections. After a summary of the main issues, the paper concluded that a nuclear war of defense cannot be morally justified because it,,does not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, and' damage inflicted would be greater~than the good to be obtained. It noted that the Gospel of Peace and nonviolence, combine~d with the Franciscan call for peacemaking in a way that refused the'~bearing of arms, called us to a stance of nonviolence and nbncooperation. Next, the'~,paper countered '~the present position justifying deterrence on the grounds that it lacked solid moral underpinnings, as well as the evident fact that the possession of weapons did not help ,negotiations, but had instead increased the arms race. Th~ next point called for a freeze of further production of~veapons. ThissuEport for a nuclear freeze was followed by noting that a threat of"first To Divest or NOt to Divest ] 819 strike" is incompatible with the just-war theory and a nonviolent position and "has been directly condemned in the U.S. bishops' pastoral on war and peace." Finally, the paper again presented the dilemma of having stock in nuclear armaments companies and reached the conclusion: Since these nuclear weapons and their systems are being produced by corporations in which we have investments and since we, as a province, are making money on the production of these weapons, we feel it is an unjustified form of material cooperation to continue our investments. The good products these same companies manufacture and sell in no way can compensate for the incalculable destruction these weapons can inflict and forthe tremendous fear, mistrust and intrigue that the possession of such weapons causes between nations and peoples, not to mention the misuse of natural resources. technology and money that could be used for jobs and for the poor and hungry of the World. Given the paper's rationale, the provincial council recommended to the. province's membership a "clear decision of divestment from corporations that have major nuclear weapons contracts from the government." A criteria to determine "major" was fixed at $10 million. . Furthermore, the,council recommended that there should be total divest-ment rather than to keep a few token shares to continue to pressure the companies, as groups like the Adrian Dominicans have decided to do. Whether there should be total divestment or'whether a few token shares should be held to continue to pressure companies can certainly be debated. Sr. Valerie Heinonen believes those divesting should h~ld on to some shares~,or else "we're losing a forum. I don't see how we can reach corporate manage-ment if.we don't have at least some stock." When the position paper was presented to the province along with the recommendations of the Council. a large percentage (77%) of the membership responded, two-hundred and ten in all. Three choices had been offered: 1) we should divest for the reasons indicated in the paper; 2) we should not divest but continue our present corporate responsibility efforts; and 3) we should not divest and not continue our corporate responsibility efforts. One-hundred fifty-four (73.33%) voted for divestment, fo.rty-nine (23.33%) said there should be continued corporate responsibility efforts and a small number, seven (3~.33%), said we should do neither. ¯ The fact that over 96% of the respondents felt Jomething had to be done indicated, a deep concern about .this issue . Given the evolution of thinkin~g about this issue by many of us in the province, plus the growing number of groups th.a,t are beginning to divest, it is clear that this is an issue which won't be going away. In many ~vays, our Franciscan charism might have helped make our corporate decision as one, sided as it turned out to be. Y~t. whether other groups decided to divest or not to divest demands a ~erious investigation, given their charism and/or mission staterfients. All will have to face the dilemma squarely; it is a matter of si .mply bringing our faith to bear on the modern world. General Government: Its Leadership Role Today Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M. Father Arbuckle's last article was "Planning the Novitiate Process: Reflections of an Anthro-pologist" (July/August, 1984). His duties in the general administration of his congregation keep him on extended journeys, but he may be addressed at his generalate headquarters: Padri Maristi; Via Alessandro Poerio, 63; 00152 Roma, Italy. any general administrations of religious congregations in the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s must surely have hoped that the decade of the 1980s would be marked by the tranquillity, security and growth that seemed so obviously to characterize their histories prior to Vatican 1I. But these hopes will never be realized. Religious life, like the Cht~rch itself, was challenged in Vatican II to serve the needs of people in a world that would continue to be in rapid, even turbulent, technological,'econoniic, political and cultural change. The niore religious seek to live up tO their vocation, the more in fact will they be drawn to share the hope~, anxieties and frustrations of people caught up in a world of change,~ with all the consequent stresses and strains of adjustment that this involvement brings. A further reason why the status quo of the pre-Vatican II era will n'ot be reinstated is the fact that many religious congregations ale discovering that their very future is in doubt. In view of the oft-heard prediction that "a reason.able expectation would seem to be that most religious communities the Church today~ will eventually become extinct,"2 religious in increasing numbers are askingthemselves questions ~uch as: Will the apostolate to which I dedicated my life survive when so few professed are entering my congregation? Will my province survive? Who will look after me when I am too old to work? Will my congregation itself survive? 820 General Government Toda.v / 1~21 Viewing these realities and questions from the "center," many of those involved in thework of general administration often find themselves at a loss to know what to do. On the one hand, these administrators would agree with the management expert, Peter Drucker, that all organizations (including religious local com-munities, provinces and congregations) will "become slack, easygoing, diffuse" unless challenged, and that: in turbulent tir~es the enterprise has to be kept lean and muscular, capable of taking strain but capable also of moving fast and availing itself of opportunity. This is particu-larly important if such times follow long years of comparative calm, ease and , predictability.~ Administrative: personnel may also have come to accept the harsh reflection that: when survival depends on change, human institutions often tend perversely towards suicide, in times of social upheaval, clinging to yesterday's images providessolace,a 'But, for religious congregations to su~ive and grow, more than solace is necessary. "It will take l~rave and visionary change, not just solace." On the other hand, the same general administrators may feel thoroughly' inadequate to do the type of brave and visionary "challenging for ch~ange"that~ is necessary. They feel that successive general chapters since Vatican II have so weakened their administrative authority that they have little or no effective authortty and power .to challenge the congregat~ion .or even prrvinces "tO become lean and muscular." In fact, some may even fear to do anything at all, lest tha_t result in a still further whittling away of whatever administrative authority is left them by general ch~ipters. Little wonder, therefore, if such administrations are experiencing frustra-tion, adr~inistrative identity crises, a sense of helplessness. They may even"feel somewhat .marginalized, unwanted, Within the veu congregation they have been elected to serve. Some administrations accept without question a mere figurehead role, feeling that any constructive effrrts'at challenging will achieve nothing at all. Others may initiate a spree of feverish activity, but if they lack dearly worked out goals and strategies based on sound information, then such activity is without value and only serves to intensify a feeling of frustration in all i:oncerned. ~ Unfortunately, a major reason~for the feeling of helplessness and frustration is the failure of'many persc, ns to understand that the obvious exercise of administrative authority or bureaucratic direction i~ not the only form of leadership that is opeh to administrators. In fact, while varying degrees of bureaucrati~ authority are essential in organizations, nonetheless such author-ity will be ineffective if at key points in the administration prophetic leadership is laeking~ No matter how little administratix~e authority general governments have, they can and they must exercise prophetic leadership within their.con-gregations. Paradoxically the lack of bureaucratic or administrative authority can even be an advantage. General administrations should be able to give ~129 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 mgre time to the demands of future planning, to the design of carefully planned visitations of provinces, if they do not have to be involved in the day-to-day turmoil of dealing with special-interest groups and "congregational power politics.". . In this paper, I will set out some ways in which, general administrations can exercise this crucial prophetic leadership. By way of background, I ~will also summarize relevant insights of management experts into the difficulties and challenges that confront administrations of secular organizations and businesses in the 1980s. Religious administrators can learn much from such writers--not the least being that secular administrators have to :face some major issues which are very similar to those which confront the genei~al admin-istrations of religious congregations. Secular organization~ themselves cannot survive and grow without a type of "prophetic" leadership! Models of Contemporary General Administrations Three model~ of general administrations can be distinguished on the basis of a continuum where centralization and decentralization of administrative authority are the two poles of reference. The Maximum DecentraliZi~tion Model The central administration of congregations organized in this fashion have onl); afigurehead role. The superior general and councilors merely symbolize the internationality ot~ tl~e congregation. Whatever administrative powers are left to them are of no real significance at all. The Maximum Centralization Model' Organized with a minimum of decentralization, all important matters in these congregations relat.ing to policies and appointments of key administrators (for example, provincials, formation personnel) are controlled by°the central administration: Delegation of authority to lower levels i~ minimal, only in matters .of little importance. ~ This model may characterize newly founded congregaiions, or congrega-tions which are small in membership and/or have a single, clearly defined apostolic activity, such as missionary activity. The In-betwedn Model: Mininial Centralization with Maximal Decentralization The choice of major administrators and personnel (fdr example provin-cials, formation, personnel) belongs to the~provinces. The role of the general administration in such appoin~tments is of no r~eal significance. However gen-eral administration does retain important supervisory powers, the significance ¯ of Which may.develop only in time. For example, the,superior general in such congregations may have ov~erall direction in matters relating to initial formation, without the legislation spell- General Government Today / 823 ing out precisely what this is to mean in practice. The general council may have authority to approve or reject provincial chaptbr~de~zisions according to guidelines set by the general chapter'decrees. It may have the power to control levels of expenditure within provinces. It may h~ix;e thai power,to stop a hou~;i~ being Opened or closed. The~h~ in ~hich a general administration might use these powers could at times effectively influence policy within provinces. SpecifiE instances of general administration, of course, may not fit precisely . into one or other of these models. But they will tend to approximate one rather than another. The type of frustration and malaise 1 described in the opening paragraphs will be found more particularly in the first and third models. These are the models which are the special concern of this article. Leadership Challenges in rSeculal" Organizations Today In a recent article, Ronald Lippitt stated that, for most leaders and follow-ers in the 1980s, three assumptions must be eradicated.: The first assumption whichmust disappear is that success depends on a vertical model of leadership, acc6rding to which decisions are to be made at the top, and people are to obey without contributing to the decision-making. The second assumption to be removed is the belief that "doing it by yourself" is a sign of strength. The spirit of' rugged individualism must give way to the spirit of ihterde~pendence'and collegiality at all levels of an organization. The third assumption which~has no'place in a "lean and muscular"~organi-zation is the belief that "competition is a necessary motivation for achieve-ment." This assumption,' claimsLippit~ "blocks seeking help, sharing resources, and pooling' complementary abilities--all requirements for survival, growth and development in the decades ahead."5 Sociologist Amitai Etzioni, in his recent analysis of the future of American so~iety,.says very much the same thing: The attribtites we Americans need most for the next generation is an enhanced com-mitment to othei:s and to shared concerns., l say "enhanced" because the commitment has not vanished but waned, and because a larger,measure is required~if.Americans are to do with less government and yet sustain themselves as a community. "rl3e commit-ment required., is for both ego and otl~er to attend to each other and to their shared world. 1 hence refer to it as ~mutuality.TM Again, he states that American society has become caught up with exces-sive individualism: We were affluent and had a sense that we could do anything. This attitude was fed by the pop-psychology idea of self-actualization--that everyone's first obligation was personal fulfillment.7 Taking these insights into account, .we can conclude that for survival and growth, leadership must have the ability to inspire in staffs an.effective will- 1~94 / R. eview for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 ingness to share ideas, skills, in a spirit of interdependence and .collegiality. Goal setting, the commitment to evaluate performance in light of these goals, will take place effectively because managements and.their staffs feel an atmo-sphere of mutuality or interdependence. No command from above will necessarily effect goal-setting, collegiality or a ~spirit of interdependence. This point is stressed by R. K. Greenleaf: "The very essence of leadership, going out ahead .to show the way, derives from more than usual openness to inspiration."8 He asks the question: "why would anybody accept the leadership of another except that the other sees more clearly where it is best to go?" Significantly he comments: "Perhaps this is the current problem: too many who presume .to lead do not see more clearly and, in. defense of their inadequacy, they all the more strongly argue that the ,system' must be preserved--a fatal error in this day of candor.", So the one who aspires to leadership must have the knowledge necessary "to see more clearly." But still moi'e-is required than knowledge. There is needed the spark of drive, of initiative, the call to follow: "A.leader ventures to say: 'I will go; come with me!''9,, ~., The leadership exemplified here is not the monarchical or hierarchical type--types closed to opinions and information of.others--but the type we call charismatic or prophetic. The prophet is a future-oriented person. He has an-acute.understanding of new needs and new opportunities, He opposes the. tendency in all ,human organizations ~t0 treat established institutions or methods of Ol~eration, at a given point in history, as though they were definitive.~0 Leadership of the prophetic type can see beyond the present problems, even temporarY s.uccesses, and can inspire others with a vision for change and with the courage to become involved in. realizing the vision in practice. The leader, says: "'I will go; follow me!' while knowing that the path is uncertain, even dangerous." i i Leaders of this type are rare, but the harsh reality is that unless organiza-tions of all kinds can find them and place them at various key levels so that their talents can be used, the organizations and their administrations will not survive. The organizations will die, for they will cease to b6 relevant. These leaders will, inter alia, help establish the values explained by Lippitt and others as essential for the survival and growth of organizations in the 1980s and beyond. It is not necessary for those in official control of organizations to have to a high degree all the qualities depicted by Greenleaf, but what is the sine qua non of success is the ability to spot people who do have the necessary creative and ~innovative skiils~ and then place these people in the right positions in which they can effect!vely inspire change. This is What Drucker means when he writes that "in turbulent times, my organization. '. needs to control the assignment of its resources. It needs to think through Where !the results are likely to be. It needs to know the performing and productive people." General Government Today But, to utilize such people to their full potential, there needs to be on the part of those in charge a firm discipline. Potential change-agents can easily be pushed aside because people are uncomfortable with their prophetic and innovative voices. There is also the danger that change-agents will dissipate their strengths and abilities over too wide an area. But the use of firm discipline will not be~ popular, for it will demand a "systematic withdrawal of resources--money, but above all, people--from yesterday's efforts,"12 that is, withdrawal from projects that are no longer relevant and/or productive, and the systematic encouragement Of change-agents, who can guarantee the survival and growth of the organization. Patience and courage are key virtues in leadership. In recent years some researchers into how effective leadership emerges in organizations have explicitly turned to cultural anthropology for insights into the nature, purpose and necessity of culture. This has produced some very challenging studies and conclusions. The leader who ignores basic:human needs for meaning, for symbols, for clearly articulated values and goals, for identity, as these are expressed in culture, will fail to achieve a following---even in business. o Hence, A. Pettigrew, reflecting on the interrelationship between leadership and culture, believes that the process of ghaping culture is the first task of management: "The [leader] not only creates the rational and tangible aspects of organizations, such as structure and technology, but also is the creator of symbols, ,ideologies, language, beliefs, rituals, and myths."13 J. MacGregor Burns distinguishes two types of leadership. There is first what he calls "transactional leadership." This type of leadership is concerned with the day-to-day smooth running of the organization. No organization can do with6ut this type. But no organization can survive for long if there is also lacking what Burns calls "transforming leadership:" This kind of leadership is a response to the fact that all people have need of a sense of purpose, of meaning, for a vision that helps to raise them in,their work above the daily grind. Inspired by this leadership people are moved to become more active themselves, more creative in their own work.14 T. E. Deal and A. A. Kennedy in their 1982 publication, Corporate Cul-tures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life, assert that every business has a culture which has a major effect on the success of the business. In what they call "strong cultures" everyone knows the goals of the corporation, and every-one is working for them.~s People know clearly what is expected of them. This makes them feel i~ strong sense of belonging and of being valued. In conse-quence, according to Deal's and Kennedy's research, people are more likely to work harder. In companies that have strong cultures, managers "take the lead in supporting and shaping the culture," They give considerable time and energy to ,thinking about the values, heroes, and rituals of the culture," for their primary task is to manage "value conflicts that arise in the ebb and flow of daily events." 16 Such companies have bright futures. They have the resilience 1~96 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec,, 1984 to adapt to changing circumstances.~ When difficulties arise they can "reach deeply into their shared values and beliefs for the truth and courage to see them through."~7 In 1982 also, T.J. Peters and R. H. Waterman produced their best-selling book, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Compan-ies. ~8 This study also draws heavily on the insights of cultural anthropologists. The authors list the three qualities that make for excellence in the compan-ies they researched: bias for action, closeness to the customer, and high pro-ductivity through people. By "bias for action" they mean the ability of the companies.to move very quickly in changing policy and action, "and, more important, to be continuously innovative both in making the product.and providing services.''~9 Their findings on the qualities of the leadership present in the most suc-cessful companies are interesting. Common to all leaders is what the authors call the "hands-on, value-driven style." Such leaders have the ability to articu-late and transmit to others the essential values of their companies. In this they effectively create a strong corporate culture:. "Clarifying the value system and breathing life into it are the greatest contributions a leader can make."~° In order to transmit values the leaders must be mobile, constantly in touch with the grassroots of the company. In order to keep the leadership team active and unhindered by bureaucratic pressures at the tenter, the leadership at the top is kept surprisingly small, lean. The leaders the authors studied had lofty visions which could evoke excitement and enthusiasm for thousands of employees. But they were also people committed to practical detail: "In this role, the leader is a bug. for detail~ and directly instills values through deeds rather than words; no oppor-tunity is too small. So it is at once attention to ideas and attention to detail.TM The leaders of the Successful companies did not depend on a charismatic personality for success. Rather, they made themselves into effective leaders through hard work, sustained perso.nal commitment to the values they believed in, and a certain stubbornness in their efforts to build up a strong corporate culture based on these values.22 By "high productivity through people," the authors mean "the ability top companies have of treating employees with dignity and expecting them to contribute in innovative ways on a day-to-day basis.''23 For the 'researchers this quality appeared critical. New ideas and contented customers would result only when all in the organization--not just the people at the top--were motivated by the right, values.24 In the top quality firms, in consequence, those who innovate are treated as heroes, "even though those employees are occasionally a little bit at odds with the corporate bureaucracy,"2~ The authors refer to successful cdmpanies as having "simultaneous loose-tight properties." By this they mean: that at the same time there is .very firm central direction and maximum decentralization (in fact, some of the firms are radically decentralized). General Government Today / 1127 Firm central direction is achieved by the "hands-on, value-driven" ap-proach. 'The leadership sees its task as one of stressing values crucial to the firm's culture, for example, closeness to the customer, innovation, quality. The more these values are emphasized the more certain it is that they will be realized in practice. Values which are clearly articulated and emphasized them-selves act as the control mechanism.26 Within the clear framework of these values, individuals throughout all levels of the company feel encourage.d to innovate. Leadership and Authority in Periods of Cultural Change All the above authors stress the role of leadership if "weak cultures" are to become "strong cultures." However, no author sufficiently clarifies the rela-tionship between leadership and bureaucratic authority. For example, what role, if any, has authority in cultural change? ~ John R. Sheets. S.J., provides the precision necessary for this key question to be answered. He sees a common denominator in all expressi0.ns of leader-ship. It is an ability "to draw others beyond the point where they presently find themselves to a point of greater realization of their common aspirations. It is a power to draw others toward a center of closer unity."27 He sees the role of the leader very much as Greenleaf has described it or as MacGregor Burns views transforming leadership: "While he stands within the group, he has at the same time a certain transcendence, being ahead of the group, as one who has already realized the goal to a large'extent, and who now acts as a focal point drawing others to the realization of the same goal."28 But, unlike these authors, Sheets pinpoints three fundamental qualities of leadership~ ethos, pneuma and logos. Ethos is that quality o~f leadership that is concerned with values. The leader has interiorized within himself a .set of values, and the living out of these values in his own life draws others to follow and seek the same interiorization. Pneuma refers to the power conveyed by the leader and the power that is aroused in the group. It is characterized by inspiration, enthusiasm, energy. Logos is that quality of leadership related to judgment. It is described in various ways: reason, balance, discretion~ prudence, intelligence, knowledge. Where there is logos the leader has the power of judgment how to give a "constant and consistent shape to the aspirations of the group."~9 As Sheets says, genuine l~adership involves all three of these qualities. Within any one person, the qualities are to be found in varying degrees, "very oftenowith one of the characteristics assuming a particular prominence to the point where one might be designated according to one of these, as a moral or ethical leader, a charismatic leader, an intellectual leader.''3° A genuine leader will build on the particular aspect in which he is strong and call on others to complement his efforts with other qualities in which he is deficient. True leadership then aims to evoke teamwork. "Leadership," as described here, differs from "authority." Whereas leader- ~121~ / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 ship aims to motivate people to interiorize new values and attitudes freely, authority commands people,to act in certain ways. Rather than aiming to attract people to respond freely, authority imposes an obligation on people to act. In periods of cultural change, when people undergo deep value and atti-tudinal alterations, authority is to be used very infrequently, and then only with caution and considerable sensitivity. In-depth and lasting change can occur in and through leadership, but such change is rarely the result of author-ity commanding action. Support at key points, however, may have to come from authority. For example,~the actual placement of a person withleadership or change-agent qualities within a group may require the official use of author-ity. So also would the removal of an ineffective leader be an ffct of authority. In strong business cultures, authority is used very sparingly, but with effectiveness and according to definite criteria. Thus, for example, the selec-tion and appointment of key national, regional and local managers is gener- .ally the prerogative of central administration. Such people are chosen because they have the leadership qualities described. Without people of leadership gifts at key levels of management, the future growth and even survival of the business would be in danger. In brief, therefore, leadership aims to motivate people freely tO change by accepting new values, new attitudes. The new values and attitudes, together with the conseqt~ent alteration in behavior patterns, effect cultural changes. Leadership also aims to develop teamwork, to involve the whole group in ¯pr°blem-s°lving' George Foster concludes his fine analysis of why develop-ment projects in. the Third World succeed or fail, With a description of the qualities needed in ¯a community change-agent: The ethic of helping people change involves restraint and caution in missionary zeal. It means that developmental personnel should be careful not to plan for people, but to work with them in searching for realistic answers to their problems . It means learnirig to be humble, to be willing to lear.n . It means a genuine . desire to help in a realistic way based on full understanding of the nature of culture and culture change . a~ Foster's research findings, and his concluding description of the qualities ~'equired in a community change-agent; confirm the.universal validity of the clarifications provided by Sheets and the other authors above. "Strong, and "Weak, Cultures in Religious Life A religious congregation is not a business organization. The fundamental aim of a religious congregation is not monetary profit to satisfy investors, nor is it to supply the material needs of customers. Neither can a religious congregation, unlike a business enterprise, fully gauge its success or failure by whether or not its "products" are being "sold." Nor ought we to consider a religious congregation to be definable only in terms of a social grouping--one, for example, designed to serve the human-welfare needs of its members. General Government Today / 829 A religious congregation has meaning only in relationship to the kingdom of God. Its members consecrate themselves to God in the Church to offer ¯. to the world visible proof of the unfathomable mystery of Christ, inasmuch as in themselves they really present "Christ in contemplation on the mountain, or proclaiming the kingdom of God to multitudes, or healing the sick and the maimed and converting sinners to the good life, or blessing children and doing good to all men, always in obedience to the will of the Father who sent him" (LG 46).32 Effective consecration demands of religious that they keep on discerning how best to serve the Church with "boldness of initiatives" in accordance with the particular and unique charism of their congregation, being prepared to drop this or that form of apostolate which is no longer responsive to the real pastoral needs of people.33 This does not mean that religious cannot, and must not, learn from all kinds of social organizations---even from business enterprises--about how to improve their efforts to give "to the world proof of the unfathomable mystery of Christ." With St. Paul, we religious believe that "we are only the earthen-ware jars that hold this treasure [our Christian faith].34 Our faith is incarnated in and through people, groups, customs, cultures. On the sociological level at least, our religious congregations, like the Church itself, do show "organizational traits which in many respects resemble those of secular organizations.TM The way our religious congregations or communities are organized may well either hinder or facilitate our efforts to give "the world proof of .the unfathomable mystery of Christ." Discernment, after all, does not consist just in zealous and constant prayer. It also consists in being open to whatever way the Holy Spirit may speak to us--including the. way that ordinary folk live and organize their lives. We should not be startled to learn that the Holy Spirit has something to teach us from what happens in the. mundane actions of the marketplace. Perhaps the Lord is. also telling us to be open to. contemporary research in business methods when he said: ,For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their kind than are thechildren of light."~6 In businesses which, have strong cultures, goals, objectives, values, are clearly .articulated and interiorized by all concerned. People are accountable for their actions because they know what is expected of them, and they are motivated so to act. There is constant contact with customers, making it possible to see how best to respond to their needs. Business leaders are value-oriented. They value service, not just to the customer, but also to their employees with whom they are in frequent contact. Written communications are acceptable, but personal .presence to staff.at key levels by leaders is far more emphasized. Finally, innovators are 'vigorously encouraged, despite the risks involved, for innovation that is a response to customer needs is seen as ultimately the guarantee of survival and growth: If we look at those religious congregations that are actually moving into a 1~30 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 stage of revitalization, we see that they are developing strong cultures. Mutatis mutandis, these congregations have many of the marks that we have seen characterize strong cultures. There is the rediscovery of key religious-life and congregational values, together with their interiorization and their expression in innovative apostolic action.37 Apostolic innovators are valued and en-couraged as congregational "culture heroes." Leaders have articulated their values, including the values that particularly relate to the charism of the founder. In variou~ ways, and with risks taken in faith, they have communi-cated these insights and values to the others, drawing them also to do the same. They have done this not by multiplying the ~number of documents and letters of exhortation, but by going directly~ to key°groups and personnel in .the congregation, and drawing them by their presence to accept the same values and convictions.38 Through~: cooperative teamwork, these leaders have encouraged a new sense of spiritual purpose to develop in the members of the congregation. A heightened, sense of morale emerges, because clarified and interiorized values and goals give a renewed sense of meaning and direction~to members~ lives. Those congregations that are not revitalizing have weak cultures. There is confusion about values, uncertainty about goals and objectives. Those who ought to be the leaders because they hold official positions in thecongregation are lacking in the know-how and/or the spiritual courage to give leadership. Many of their religious, mainly because leadership is lacking, cannot agree on what values should be retained and acted on. This leads to more and more ¯ frustration. Often the attitude of these religious to authority is ambivalent, On the one hand, there is a cynical or angry rejection of authority in the congrega-tion because it is seen as irrelevant and powerless. On the other hand, there is a hankering ~ifter authority to give direction--but when officials do attempt to use authority they are quickly rejected. There is a failure to recognize the fact that change cannot come through the bare use. of authority, but only through leadership. Since few religious have been trained in the exercise of leadership, it is difficult for members to. understand the distinction between authority and leadership. Potential change-agents or. innovators in the congregation are frequently marginalized, Sometimes this marginalization takes place because those in authority consider them "disloyal" or "troublemakers," for they Question the status q.uo.39 General administrators may maintain a schedule of visitations in the pro-vinces, but' unless the visitations are done with goals based on real needs of the congregation, then the visits only intensify feelings of frustration among members. The exhortations of the general administrators,~and their follow-up letters to the visited provinces, come across as irrelevant, out of touch with real issues, and thus reinforce the view that general administrations have no longer any role of importance in religious congregations. Religious congregations with weak cultures thus described have reached General Government Today what is now called the "breakdownstage." If the situation is left unchecked, these congregations will die--not because the Holy Spirit has failed, nor because the charisms of the congregations have become irrelevant, but because key people in the congregations have not "read the signs of the times" and acted accordingly.~° "Hands, On, Value-Driven" Leadership For several centuries prior to Vatican I1, general administrations often obtained their identity and role-definition from the authority they could exer-cise: the power, to appoint key people, such as provincials and formation staffs; the power to visit and check on whether or not age-old and universally accepted congregational customs were being maintained. The more adminis-trative positions became institutionalized, the more the faithgospel vision of the founding persons became obscured, together with their innovative ability to discern and react to often unattended pastoral needs of the peop!e of their times. General administrations became far more comfortable with their authority roles than with the challenges of leadership. Theologically, the emphasis was often on the need for the changing world to adapt to the unchanging Church. In similar vein, the world had also to adapt to the unchanging cultures 'of religious eongregations~ The stress by administrators, far from encouraging departures from what was done in the past; was to insist on conformity to the tried ways of the congregational culture-heroes of former times.41 With the coming of Vatican II, two interconnected emphases in particular undermined the clarity of this role-definition, and thus the traditional security o~f general administrations. The first was a renewed stress on the mission of the Church to enter and influence a world in rapid change. The second was the move to decentralize the government of religious life. The Church recognized once more that it had a mission to a world in change. Yesterday's methods were not necessarily adequate for new pastoral needs.42 The Church is called to be Christ to the world. Since religious are "to be more radical Christians, in the sense of trying to live the life and holiness of the Church in all its radicalness~''"3 they must seek to excel in cohtfibuting to the pastoral and apostolic innovation that was needed. Now the task of general governments is determined primarily by the mission which religious life and each eongregatiori has within the Church, and not by the authority they may have because the constitutions say so. The role of a general administration is to call the entire corporate body to the realization of its two-fold aim: union with Christ and service to the neighbor according to the particular faithgospel vision of the founding person. The decentralization of religious-life government left many general admin-istrations at a loss to know what to do in administration.On the one hand, the theology of Vatican II insisted that religious should be pastorally innovative and open to change. On the other hand, general administrations had no 839 / Review for Religious, ~lov.-Dec., 1984 experience of how to stimulate and lead such innovation. Especially adminis-trations belonging tO the first and third models above particularly felt con-fused and anxious since, without authority, they could not see what they should do to facilitate this revitalization. Many provinces also seemed quite willing to ignore their general adminis-trations, seeing them merely as innocuous and vague symbols of the interna-tionality of the community. In quite recent years, however, an awareness seems to be growing in some provinces that decentralization has not produced the miraculous renewal or revival that it was expected to evoke. There is a vague, ill-defined turning toward "the center." But unless central governments act with genuine leadership, the opportunity thus given them will be lost. To transform a weak business culture into a strong one there must bea radical change in values, with a consequent and effective commitment to action. And if a religious congregation is to move from a weak to a strong culture, there must likewise be a radical reconversLon to a new set of values, or a return to the original values of the founder. Founders of religious congregations laad the faith and courage to enter on a journey. They attracted others to join them in showing "the Church and the world a quality of life that calls them back to the design of God in Christ Jesus."~ The outcome of the journe~ was never certain. Each religious and each congregation which accepts this new challenge of reconversion begins, as it were. another spiritual journey. This will involve, like the first journey, "an anguished and sometimes perilous exploration,"45 an adventure in faith, hope and love. Similarly, general administrations which summon their congregations to a second journey, to a process of refounding, must expect periods of darkness, misunderstanding, even rejection. Like their founders before them, they will need far more than human expertise or ingenuity to maintain the dynamism and creativity of their leadership. A feeling of identity and security in their leadership will come, not from any authority they may still have nor from any authority newly obtained from their general chapters, but from union with Christ in his life, death and resurrection. In order to utilize resources to the best possible advantage, I believe that these general administrations must concentrate their leadership efforts on four categories or groupings of persons within their congregations: -on themselves as leaders; -on the congregation as a whole; -on groups tha.t hold, or potentially hold, leadership positions; -on all who are involved in the preparation of the general chapter. 1 will no~w take each.category in,turn. Leadership Directed at Themselves "The Church is an evangblizer; 'but she begins by being evangelized her-self." So wrote Paul VI. "She is the community of believers, the community of General Government Today hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love; and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love . [The Church] is evangelized by constant conversion and renewal, in order to evangelize the world with credibility.''~6 These words apply with equal force and validity to general administrations, for these are called to evangelize their own congregations. They can do so only by first evangelizing themselves. General administrators themselves form a group which mirrors the congregation as a whole in that they come from different cultural backgrounds, have different prejudices, both cultural and personal, which interfere with communication, have different formative and educational training, hold different theological orientations. If these adminis-trators are to be welded into a leadership team in which each is encouraged by the rest to use his leadership qualities, one of ethos, another of pneuma, another of logos, then they must face the cold reality that they themselves will have to undergo a culture change. They will have to move from being a "weak dultural group" of the congregation, with each being an individualist, to become a "strong cultural group" in which each person is in fact a ,team member. Each member will have to become increasingly and personally ope~, " not just. to changes in knowledge, information, or the intellectual rationale for action and practice, but to new attitudes, values, skills, the .removal of preju-dices, and the development of mature relationships within the team itself,47 The courage and the honesty to be open as individuals to such radical changes is needed, so that a genuine administration community for evangelizing emerges, one that is credible to the congregation. This will come only if administrators are prepared to commit themselves to deep prayer and asceticism: Only in prayerful discernment will the team members be~able to discover what the Holy Spirit is asking of them and how they can help to disentangle the pure charism of the founder from the accretions of time. Faced with the demands of the contemporary Church and world, they will experience the same sense of shock as the founder did in his day. It is true that there must be serious commitment to study and to scientific methods of obtaining factual informa-tion relating to the works of the congregation and the needs of the apostolate. But such information will be of little value, will be merely "a noisy gong or a clanging bell,"48 if the uses to which it is put are not discerned in an atmo-sphere of brotherly love and prayer. In brief, if general administrators expect to enable their entire congregation to move from weak to strong religious-life cultures, they must themselves first, individually and as a group, undergo the same cultural transformation. The top priority for each administration, there(ore, is to set aside definite periods of the year in which administrators can all be present for planning, for praying together, for sharing personal and corporate faith experiences, for discerning how the Holy Spirit wishes to use them in the service of the congregation. Nothing should interfere with this priority. At times a skilled facilitator may be an invaluable adjunct in helping team members to become 834 ] Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 yet more vitally involved in their own and their team's religious-life cultural change. ~, Leadq'ship Directed to the Congregation as a Whole Superiors general and their administrations, when confronted by the stark reality ofa weak congregational culture, are tempted to react with a strongly worded pastoral letter (or even a series of them) about the need for the members to undergo conversion. Normally, this temptation must be vigor-ously~ resisted. Historically, such letters seem to have little or no effect.49 Generally th6 letters are ignored, or if read, they may evoke yet further cynicism, even anger, directed toward central government. In successful business operations in which the "hands-on, value-driven" style of leadership is used, 'leaders avoid frequent and lengthy communications from the center to subordinates. Theyl prefer to improve communication by personalizing the process on a one-to-one basis or on a one-to-group basis. However, a general administration team, after lengthy and prayerful dis'- cernment, may conclude that a prophetic communication in letter form to the whole congregation is necessary, even though there are good grounds to a~ssume the message will be rejected, even by the vast majority of the congrega-tion. Out of great love for the Church and for the congregation, the adminis, trati0n may feel the need to speak out loudly and clearly, "to uproot and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant."50 The decision to write such a prophetic challenge should not be. taken lightly: If it is done, then, as far as possible, it should be followed up with personal contact by means of general administrators in touch with key groups in the congregation. Explanations of the letter can be given, and reactions received, in a discerning atmosphere. Leadership Directed to Key Groups ,qt is at the level of key groups within the congregation that the central government's efforts at "hands-on, value-~lriven" and "loose-tight" leadership should be concentrated. In most congregations the following groups would be important to concentrate on: .-p~ovincial councils -formation staffs -provincial chapters -other interest groups ,of various kinds, such as justice and peace commit-tees or spirituality and mission seminars (some of the groups may be of an inter-provincial or international nature). It may, be necessary, particularly in the early stages, to spend considerable time with provincial councils. The aim should be to create a discernment atmosphere similar to the one needed at the general administration level, in which~provincial¢council goals are established, and objectives and strategies worked out to .realize these goals. Considerable prudence and patience are General Government Today required since provincial councils may well consider that the initiation of change is primarily the function of authority, not leadership. Or, despite information to the contrary, the councils may even deny that there are prob-lems confronting their provinces. And they may consider the discernment process simply a waste of time, "something that only general administrations have time for!", Where these _views exist, general administrators may find the challenge to act as catalysts in culture change extremely demanding. George Foster's advice quoted above needs to be recalled: leadership to be effective requires a "full understanding of the nature of culture and culture change." Those of us who take for granted the computer age, and assume cultural changes can occur with the same speed that characterizes computerized travel arrangements and purchasing, will find it very hard to appreciate the fact that radical cultural change is always a very slow process. General administrators, when faced with negative responses from provincial councils, may be tempted, like all change-agents when confronted by rejection or lack of interest, to find escape routes. They may be tempted to return to the generalate in order to "write a report" for the benefit of.the particular provincial council that is hesitant or refuses to respond. This process of writing the report will console the administrator, encouraging the belief that "something is hap-pening." But it is very unlikely that anything at a!! is happening if the adminis-trator still refuses to implement a "hands-on~ leadership approach by being present to the difficult provincial council--with the report in hand if necessary. Prior to working with the provincial council, the general administrator may well need to visit various people or groups in the. province in order to assess the level of cultural weakness or strength of the membership at large. But g~neral administrators should avoid doing what provincials or local super-iors should do. namely, the pastoral, personal interviews of members. The more general administrators become involved on the personal level, the less time they will have to concentrate on leadership at the level of key groups. The general administration's concern should be primarily for the welfare of the congregation as a whole. Normally, whatever is undertaken by general administrators must have this overall aim in mind. I believe the failure of general administrations to be clear about their primary aim has resulted in the administrators suffering from overwork, stress, even burnout. Again. the advice of George Foster makes sense: "The ethic of helping p~ople change involves.restraint and caution in missionary zeal." Formation staffs in the post-Vatican Church are under particular pressure to work out goals and methods for initial formation. The general administra-tor responsible for formation must be prepared to spend considerable time with formation personnel, encouraging them and working with them to clarify what should be done in light of definite criteria. It might also be necessary to work with provincial councils, of several 836/ Review for Religious, No'v.:Dec., 1984 provinces in an effort to develop something like an interprovincial or interna-tional training center where the best formation staff available can be concen-trated. It is increasingly impossible for congreg~.tions with declining numbers of religious and student candidates to have many formation houses. At the same time, the quality of initial formation will be a major influence on the future health of any congregation. If a reasonable development of the forma-tion program is to take place, the general administrator will.~need to exercise considerable patience, all the while being careful never to give up on the "hands-on, value-driven" approach. The closure of a formation house which has existed for a very long time, for:example, can be a traumatic experience for members of a province. The general administrator may well have to be available for a protracted period to enable their passage through this. difficult time. As regards provincial chapters, it is important for the general administra-tion to be involved, not because it wants to use whatever authority it might still have to insist on changes in legislation, but because chapters, if rightly prepared, provide an entire province with the chance to participate in a com-munal discernment process. The general administration's task will be to encourage provincial councils to adopt the discernment process both by way of preparation and during the actual chapter.S~ If some provinces have uged only parliamentary debating and 16bbying systems, it will not be° easy to convince them' of the advantages of communal discernment processes.52 General administrations have the chance also of bringing to the provinces at such times an overview of religious life in general and of the state of,their own congregation in particular, which provinces are m danger of forgetting their discernment processes. General administratoi's, when presefit at chapters, can help to counter narrow nationalistic or parochial attitudes whiizh can so easily develop in provinces to the detriment of their work of evangelization. Meetings of religious from particular interest groups often attract many of thoseoinvolved in apostolic reflection and innovation. These religious can encourage one another at such meetings, and stimulate the prophetic people among them to new forms of apostolic action. At times, the general administration itself can sponsor regional or interna-tional gatherings of concerned religious to reflect on subjects of fundamental importance for cultural change of the congregation, for example, the charism of the congregation, and its history and relevance for the work of evangeliza-tion, the relationship between the congregation's charism and the Church's call for more involvement in justice and peace issues. There is every chance that from these gatherings will emerge individuals with the type of leadership necessary for the survival and growth of the congregation. Leadership in Preparing the General Chapter The general chapter of a congregation is meant to ~:enew and protect the spiritual patrimony of the institute. It should be ~ moment of grace, of the General Government Todqy ] 837 action of the H01y Spirit in a congregation provided there is adequate prepa-ration, an atmosphere of communal prayerful discernment during the chapter itself, and a planned follow-up after the chapter.53 The task of the general chapter is to challenge the congregation to face the future. For this purpose the goals of the institute must be evaluated (and if necessary, reformulated) in ligh! of changing pastoral needs, of the theology of mission, of the charism of the congregation and its human and spiritual resources. The means to realize these goals must be evaluated and, if necessary, changed. ~For example, the chapter must decide whether or not a congregation of the first or third models described above can realize its apostolic and religious life goals if the central government has little or no authority to complement its leadership role. For the sake of the overall good of the congre-gation, should central government have an important role in the choice of provincials and formation staffs--that is, in the appointment of key change-agents in the congregation? Remember, of course, that in successful business operations the leadership rarely uses authority. But it does use authority to appoint key staff throughout the organization, after considerable consultation of those who know the candidates. But a more fundamental question must be answered by the general chap-ter. What form of government and what kind of authority should it have if t.he congregation is to realize its primary purpose of service to the People of God? No general chapter can face such questions, nor do what it is supposed to do~ without thorough preparation. Too often general chapters are considered the work only of the capitulants, not of the congregation as a whole. When this happens, the general chapter will have little or no practical impact on the religious-life cultural change of the institute. There is' little sense in having a chapter if the whole congregation does not own it from beginning to end, that is, from the time of preparation through to and including the implementation stage. The general administration has a most crucial role to play in stimulating the whole congregation to become involved in preparing for the chapter t~hrough prayer, study, reflection, and dialog.54 This will be a demanding and time-consuming task, especially if the failure of previous general chapters has left people feeling cynical, apathetic, even angry about being invited to be involved in preparatory work. For this reason, it may be necessary for the general administration to initiate the planning of the chapter many months, even a year or two, before the chapter is due to ~begin. The follow-through after the chapter has ended is as important as the preparation, though this stage is likely to be overlooked for two reasons. Capitulants may feel the enthusiasm of the chapter experience itself will be enough to guarantee an automatic post-chapter follow-through by the con-gregation as a whole. But enthusiasm alone at a chapter will ensure, nothing. Secondly, an entirely new general administration may be elected at the chapter. It may not immediately have the skills or the coherence for teamwork 838 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 even to see that the follow-through stage must be planned and implemented immediately after the chapter. Hence, as a service to the whole congregation, the outgoing administration, drawing on its own experience, could,suggest to the chapter itself or to the new administration several alternative plans for the post-chapter follow-through. , The purpose of religious government is "the building of a united commun-ity in Christ in which God is sought and loved before all things, and the mission of Christ is generously accomplished."55 With this purpose in mind~ the general chapter must elect the superior general and ~the assistants~ The election is a dramatic moment in the cultural-change process of a general congregation, the process in which the institute is trying to deepen its religious-life values. The outgoing general administration cannot, and must not, seek to influence capitulants to vote for certain people. But, if its evangelizing presence has had an.impact over its years of government, then the capitulants will be aware:of what they should expect to find in members chosen for the new administration~ The primary question for the voters should be: Who ,has the leadership qualities necessary to be of service to the whole congregatio, n?°A .person may be able to speak many languages, but if he or she lacks leadership qualities, then voters should automatically consider other candidates. Since general administrators are to be at the service of the whole congregation, the folio.wing question should not even be considered: Will he or she better represent my province? Summary By way of summary, what particular points should general administra-tions be sensitive to if they are to exercise effective leadership? Firstly, culture change is a complex, slow and often painful process, requiring new values, attitudes and behavior patterns. Since revitalization of a religious congregation involves a cultural change, one in which the institute moves from a weak to a strong culture, the process will be slow and painful. The pain will be salvific if individuals and communities approach change in a prayerfully discerning way. Secondly, general administrations are called to lead their congregations to revitalization. They do this by articulating and communicating the values which form the foundation of the religious-life culture change of the congrega-tion. This means that in implementing the "hands-on, value-driven" and '~loose-tight" principles of leadership, general administrators must .resist the temptation to solve problems for people~ Their overriding task is to communi-cate the values in light of which the congregations' members themselves decide ¯ freely what to do. Thirdly, in order to communicate values and to guarantee that they tak+ deeper and deeper roots within the congregation,general administrators must be in as frequent personal contact with provincial administrations and key General Government Today / 839 groups in the provinces as is possible. They cannot lead by remaining in the generalate. Strong administrative discipline is required to prevent central governments from assuming administrative responsibilities that would hinder or prevent general administrators from being in the field. Planned follow-up visits are required by general administrators to provincial councils and other key groups at various stages after important planning sessions have been held. This would help the development of an accountability process. The more successful, over time, that the communication of values is, the less frequent will the visits have to be. Fourthly, implicit in all that has been said is the assumption that the primary concern of the general administrators is the corporate well-being of the congregation. General administrators should not normally take over the personal, pastoral visitations of each religious by the provincials. The more they become personally involved in this type of ministry, themselves, the less time and energy they have for their primary task. Fifthly, general administrators should constantly be on the lookout for potential or actual innovators, prophetic figures, congregational "heroes," who, ~f rightly placed, would have the ability to summon others to reconversion. Conclusion Many general administrations today are confused about how to lead their congregations through the processes of revitalization. It is true that "leader-ship styles of the past will no longer be functional or useful.''56" But the challenges that general administrations face today are not unique to them. Survival and growth are not automatic for secular organizations and busi-nesses either. General administrations of .religious congregations, especially those which need revitalization or reconversion, can learn much from the style and methods of the leaders of successful businesses and other secular organizations¯ ~ General administrators are to lead, not by taking more and more respon-sibilities from the provinces, nor by trying to coerce people into reconversion through the use of some form of authority, but by clarifying, articulating and transmitting the congregation's values and goals to all members. Their task is to build strong religious-life cultures, in which congregational "heroes," inno-vators, refounders, prophets, are valued people. The stress is on working with, not for members of the congregation. The basic and primary skill required of general administrators as leaders is the ability to work with others, first and most of all with each other, so that teamwork emerges, and then with key groups and personnel in the provincesP7 They will be evangelizer~ to their own congregation to the degree that they, as a team and as individuals, are open to evangelization themselves. They must strive to be specialists in their own congregation "in the sense of expe-riencing God more vividly in the following of Christ and making that expe-rience the basis" for the evangelization of their fellow religiousP8 I]40 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1984 General administrators need insights from research into leadership, skills and expertise. But we need to be reminded that, as Paul VI notes, while "techniques of evangelization are good, [nonetheless] even the most advanced ones could not replace the gen.tle action of the Spirit. The most perfect prepa-ration of the evangelizer has no effect without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit the m.ost convincing dialectic has no power over the heart of man. Without him the most highly developed schemas resting on a truly sociglogi-cal or psychological basis are quic, kly seen to be quite valueless."59 NOTES ~See The Church in the Modern World, I. 2See Raymond L. Fitz, S.M. and Lawrence J. Cada. S.M., ~The Recovery of Religious Life" in REVIEW FoR RELIGIOUS, Vol. 34, No. 5, 1975, p. 706. 3Managing in Turbulent Times (London: Pan, 1980), p. 43. 4E. Ward, "Christian Missions--Survival: in What Forms" in International Bulletin of Mission-ary Research. 1982, p. 8. 5Ronald Lippitt, "The Changing Leader-Follower Relationships of the 1980s" in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1982, p. 397. 6Amitai Etzioni, An Immodest Agenda: Rebuilding America Before the21st Century (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1983), p. 26f. 7Amitai Etzioni, "U.S. Needs a 'Moral and Social Recovery'" in U.S. News & Worm Report, 9 Jan. 1984, p. 591- SRobert K. Greenleaf, Servant ~Leadership: A Journey into the Nature "of Legitimate Power and Greatness (N.Y.I Paulist Press, 1977). p. 15. 91bid. ~0See Roger Aubert (Ed). Prophets in the Church (N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1968), p. 2. ~Robert K. Greenleaf, op. cit., p. 15. ~2Peter Drucker. op. cit., p. 43. ~3Cited by Thomas~ J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr: In S~arch of Excellence: Lessons from America's,Best-Run Companies (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 104. ~4See James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1978)., ~5(Reading. Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1.9~2), p. 15f. ~Ibid. p. 141. ~71bid, p. 196. A Similar cultural approach to management analysis is to be found in Richard Tanner Pascale and Anthony G. Athos. The Art of Japanese Management (l:ondon: Allen Lane. 1982). ~sOp. cit. ~gThomas J. Peters, "Well-Run Companies: The Secret of Success" in U.S. News & Worm Report, 10 Oct. 1983, p. 74. -'0Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman. Jr. op. cit., p. 291. e :qbid. p. 287. ~-'See op, cit., p. 288. -'3Thomas J. Peiers. "Well-Run Companies: The Secret of Success," p. 74. 24See Thomas J. Peters and Robert,H, Waterman, Jr. op. cit., p. 310. ¯ ~-5Thomas J. Peters, "Well-Run Companies: The Secret of Success," p. 75. -'6See T.homas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. op. cit. p. 318. 27"A Discussion on Leadership and Autfiority" in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits (St. Louis: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality; 1972), Vol. IV. No. 2~, p. 55. ~Slbid, p. 56. -'91bid. p. 58. -~01bid. 3~ Traditional Cultures: And the Impact of Technological Change (N.Y2 ~Harper. 1962), p. 269. This text is further explained by Gerald A. Arbuckle in The Role of Change-Agents in Devel- General Government Today / 1141 opment (Sydney: Action for World Development, 1972). a2Mutuae Relationes (Rome: S.C. for Religious and for Secular Institutes & S.C. for Bishops. !978): par. 10. ~lbid. par. 12 -~2 Co 4:7. 3~Mady A. Thung, The Precarious Organization." Sociological ~cplorations of the Church's Mission and Structur~ (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), p. I. For relevant sociological analyses of Church structures and management, see: Alvin J. Lindgren and Norman Shawchuck, Manage-ment for Your Church: How to Realize ),our Church's Potential Through a Systems Approach (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977); Lyle E. Schaller, Effective Church Planning (Nashville: Abifigdon, 1979); Peter E Rudge, Ministry and Management." The Stud), of Ecclesiastical Administrations (London: Tavistock. 1968). -~6Lk 16:18. 37See Lawrence Cada, 'S.M., Raymond Fit~., S.M., Gertrude Foley. S.C. Thomas Giardino, S.M., and Carol Lichetenberg, S.N.D. de N. Shaping the Coming Age of Religious life (N.Y.: Seabury Pr~ess, 1979), p. 60. ~SFor helpful historical insights ~ee Raymond Hostie, S.J., The Life and Death of Religious Orders: A Psycho-Sociological Approach (Washington: Cara, 1983), pp. 276-281. 39See J. P. Donero, F.S.C. and T. D. Frary, New Responses in Religious Life (N.Y.: Alba House, 1979), pp. 20-22. 4°See Raymond L. Fitz, S.M. and Lawrence J. Cada. S.M., "The Recovery of Rdligious Life." 4~For relevant comments see Thomas More Page, C.F.X., "Managing and Planning Change in Religious Institutes" in REvIEw I:OR REI:~G~OUS, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1972, pp. 386-401. 42The most challenging restatement of this emphasis is to be found in the Apostolic Exhortation of Paul VI, ten years after Vatican II, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, nn. 18, 20, 63. 43Leonardo Boff,,O.F.M~:, God's Witnesses in the Heart of the WorM(Chicago: Claret Center for Resources in Sl~irituality, 1981). p. 226. '~F. J. Moloney, S.D.B., Disciples and Prophets: A Bibfical Model for the Religious Life (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980), p. 169. 45Quoted by Paul V. Robb, S.J. in "Conversion as a Human Experience" in St.udies in the Spirituality of Jesuits (St, Louis: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 1982), p. 4. ~Op. cir., par. 15. ~TSee for helpful comments.'John Adair, Effective Leadership: A Modern Guide to Developing Leadership Skills (London: Pan Books, 1983). pp. 159-186. ~Sl Co 13:1': 49See Raymond Hostie, S.J., op. cit., p. 277. 5°Jr I:10. ~ For an explanation of the lg.natian method of deliberation, see John C. Futrell, S.J., "Commu-nal Discernment: Reflections on Experience" in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits (St. Louis: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 1972). ~2Two studies by W. Biddle and L. oBiddle will be helpful to leaders in cultural change: 7~te Community Development Process: The Rediscovdry of LoCal Initiative (N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965) and Encouraging Community Development: A Training Guide for Local Workers (N.Y.: Holt, Rineh

Issue 28.6 of the Review for Religious, 1969. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard. S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor,.as well as books for review, should be sent to I~VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 631o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 32~ Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Dt, imty of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building, .539 North Grand Boulevard, Saint Lores, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright (~) 1969by REVIEW FOg REmnlous at 428 East Preston Street; Baltimore, Mary-land 21202. Printed in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland and at additional mailing offices. Single copies: $1.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $5.00 a year, $9.00 for two years; other countries: $.5.50 a year, $10.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions, where accom-panied by a remittance, should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P. O. BOX 671; Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Changes of address, business correspondence, and orders not accompanied by a remittance should be sent to REVIEW RELIGIOUS ; 428 East Preston Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21202. Manuscripts, editorial cor-respondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. NOVEMBER 1969 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 6 BROTHERS THOMAS MORE, C.F.X:, AND LEO RYAN, C.S.V. Development: A New Challenge to Religious In a majority of the articles written these days in religious journals, the emphasis has been largely on areas which are of great concern for those seeking ways to achieve renewal and adaptation in the religious life. As a result, new and valuable insights have been gained in such areas as government, the evangelical counsels, prayer, community, personal responsibility, the aposto-late, secularization, and formation. There is, however, one significant movement which has yet to be fully treated in journals written for re-ligious. And because this movement could elicit from the religious families in the Church a response corre-sponding to that which characterized the great move-ments in the past, we want to draw the attention of religious to this phenomenon so that it" can become a + growing part of the literature on renewal and adapta- + tion. This movement can best be described as development. Because development is still more or less in its infancy stage, only gradually emerging into a full-blown move-ment in society and in the Church, it is not our in-tention to give here a definition of the term. Instead, we want to describe a number of events and programs which will illustrate not only the potential dynamism of de-velopment but also the implications which it has for religious institutes. On January 6, 1967, Paul VI issued the motu proprio Catholicam Christi Ecclesiam setting up the Pontifical Justice and Peace Commission. The objective of this Commission would be "to arouse the people of God to 869 Thomas More, C.F.X., is superior general of the Xa-verian Brother~; Antonio Bosio 5; 00161 Rome, Italy. Leo Ryan, C.$.V., is general councilor of the Viatorian Fath-ers and Brothers; Via Sierra Nevada 60; 00144 Rome, Italy. VOLUME 2B, 1969 + 4. 4. Brothers More and Ryan REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS full awareness of its mission at the present time, in order on the one hand, to promote the progress of poor nations and encourage international social justice, and on the other, to help underdeveloped nations to work for their own development." 1 Shortly after establishing this new curial organ, Paul VI issued his famous encyclical, Populorum progressio, which is the charter of the Pontifical Commission and its basic text. The call of the encyclical is to all the Church, which is to be educated, stimulated, and in-spired to action by it. Cardinal Maurice Gilroy of Quebec, president of the Pontifical Commission, and Monsignor Joseph Gremil-lion, its secretary, set about the arduous task of travel-ing throughout the world to create national commis-sions for justice and peace witkin bishops' corr[erences. After this work had been completed, the commission turned to the Union of Superiors General in Rome to solicit its support. Monsignor Joseph Gremillion per-sonally addressed the Union, urging it to establish con-tact with the Commission and to take an active role in the promotion of the aims of development within all the religious families of the Church. in May, 1968, the Union unanimously approved the writers of this article as its official liaison with the Pontifical Commis-sion. Now that the liaison committee has been in existence for one year, it is in a position to discern a number of trends which indicate the response religious institutes will make to development in the immediate future. The remainder of this paper will be devoted to an elabora-tion of these trends and a brief description of the more important programs from which these trends have is-sued. At the present time we see four trends in development which have significant implications for religious insti-tutes. It is very dear now that development has an ecumenical character. Second, because of the nature of development, religious institutes will be looking for- 1Father. Arthur McCormack makes the following clarification: "The name Justice and Peace must be understood in the following way: Justice means social justice within and between nations so that every human being should have conditions of life in keeping with his human dignity, which will enable him to progress towards a fully human development--to the fullness of a more abundant life~ and enable him also to make his contribution to building a new and better world. Peace is to be understood, not in the sense of main-raining peace or working for peace in the political or diplomatic sense, but in the sense of building peace--the new name for peace is development--producing the conditions that are fundamental for peace, a more just, humane, better world in accordance with para. 76 of the Encyclical, Populorum Progressio" ("The Pontifical Com-mission Justice and Peace," World Justice, v. 8 (1967), pp. 435-55). ward to training specialists in planning, sociology, tech-nology, and social justice. Towards this end, some re-ligious institutes are establishing within their general administration a secretariat for development, Third, there is a growing spirit of collaboration within re-ligious institutes, since it is evident that no religious family can tackle the problems with its own resources. Finally, there is a search for a new theology of develop-ment. 1. Ecumenical Character oI Development In the spring of 1968, the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace, the Catholic .Rural Life Society, under the direction of Monsignor Luigi Liguitti, SEDOS, FERES, and ISS2 sponsored a two-day seminar on the Church in developing countries at the theologate of the Oblates of Mary, Rome. This seminar was arranged specifically for superiors general and their curias to acquaint them with development. However, interest in the meeting was so great that it turned out to be a cross-section of some of the most important European bodies having a Third World orientation. At the meet-ing were representatives from several Roman Congrega-tions, the German mission-sponsoring agencies Adveniat and Misereor, Caritas Internationalis, Protestant ~6b-servers, sociologists, and a number of developing organi-zations from Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, and Hol-land. The Catholic-Protestant team under the direction of Canon Houtart (FERES) and Professor Egbert de Vries (ISS) gave the audience a report of their three-year Ford-funded study of the Churches' work in the four developing countries of India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Cameroons, in the areas of education, medicine, and social work.3 But of far greater importance than any of the socio-logical findings of the three-year study of FERES-ISS was the ecumenical character of the study and the seminar. The meeting was tangible evidence of the growing spirit of collaboration between the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, especially in an area which was once the most sensitive one in ~SEDOS (Servizio di Documentazione e Studi) is a cooperative documentation and research venture on the part of about thirty superiors general in Rome. FERES (Federation Internationale des Instituts Catholiques de Recherches Socio-religieuses) is the inter-nationally well-known research center in Brussels. ISS (Institute for Social Studies) is the Protestant counterpart of FERES and is lo-cated at The Hague. 8 A report of this seminar has been published by SEDOS under the title, The Church in Developing Countries;.Via dei Verbiti, 1; Rome, Italy. ÷ ÷ Development VOLUME 28, 1969 871 4" 4" Brothers More and Ryan REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the past--the developing countries. It is not surprising, then, that one of the most important conclusions ac-cepted by the superiors general was that cooperation between the different denominations be extended. Moving quickly from theory to action, the superiors general of several congregations devoted to medicine shortly after the seminar entered into discussions with the Christian Medical Commission, a semi-auton-omous organism related to the World Council of Churches. As a result of a number of meetings between Mr. J. McGilvray of the Executive Committee of the CMC, Geneva, and these religious congregations, the CMC Executive Committee reached the important con-sensus this past March that five Roman Catholic con-sultants would be appointed to the Commission after nomination by the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity. These consultants were present at the Commission's general assembly in August of this year. A third example of ecumenical cooperation in de-velopment is of far greater significance, since it was mounted on a larger international stage. In 1967 the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace formed the E~ploratory Committee on Society, Development and Peace (SODEPAX) as an experimental instrument for ecumenical collaboration. Father George H. Dunne, S.J., formerly of Georgetown University, was appointed by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake and Cardinal Maurice Roy as joint secretary of this committee. SODEPAX held a conference in April, 1968 on world cooperation for development in Beirut, Lebanon, to which it invited sixty specialists from all over the world. The participants were Protestants, Orthodox, Catholics, observer-consultants from intergovernmen-tal bodies, and two participants from the Muslim com-munity of Lebanon.4 The conference was the first attempt on the part of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church to jointly study and plan the involve-ment of the Christian bodies for the betterment of society. It is a concrete example of the way churches will unite their moral forces towards achieving human dig-nity and world peace. One of the conclusions of the meeting states this objective in terms which make an appeal to all religious: This Report has suggested many ways in which the Churches, acting together, can foster development programs both in ¯ A report of this conference has been published under the title, World Development, the Challenge to the Churches; Publications Department; The Ecumenical Center; 150 Route de Ferney; Geneva, Switzerland. the advanced and developing countries. Joint action for de-velopment will serve basic Christian aims. To work for devel-opment is to express in particular measures the aspiration for brotherhood and human dignity for every individual. And it can also be a significant contribution toward a more orderly and peaceful world. Development can gradually reduce the gross imbalances which promote instability; working together can encourage a wider sense of community among mankind; and the strengthening of international agencies will create structures for common effort and order. These three examples of ecumenical collaboration in the field of development are growing evidences of the need for all religious institutes to work together with other Christian bodies to concert their actions for play-ing their part in the long task of building a more stable international order of well-being and peace for the whole human family. This ecumenical spirit should be built into the thinking and planning of general and provincial chapters, constitutions, formation programs, and the apostolic work of religious families. It should also be the concern of national conferences of re-ligious institutes. The work is of too vast proportions to be left to the interest of those few religious who have up until now been involved in development. 2. Specialists and International Vocation The second trend in development in religious com-munities is the deployment of personnel to act as specialists in the Third World, along with the estab-lishment within general curias of a secretariat for de-velopment. Shortly after the seminar on the Church in develop-ing countries, Misereor approached the superiors general with an offer to provide funds for the training of some specialists who would assist bishops' conferences in de-veloping countries in setting up offices of trained experts in planning. The offer came as a result of the dis-cussions at the seminar concerning the lack of the skills of planning for the proper deployment of dwin-dling personnel, the retooling of personnel for meeting the new needs of the day, and the necessity for co-operating with governments in national planning. The time had come, it was agreed, for religious com-munities to become deeply involved in this modern approach and to train experts who would have com-petency as well as apostolic zeal. After many months of discussions with the superiors general, Misereor agreed early this year to provide funds for the training of highly qualified development experts for the countries of Indonesia, East Africa, and the Congo. Other countries would be added as the pool of experts becomes larger. As the agreement was finally 4, 4, Development VOLUME 28, 1969 873 Brothers More ¯ and Ryan REVIEW FOR ~ELIGIOUS worked out, the funds are in the form of a scholarship for 'the trairiing of experts in the fields of social ac-tion, science, communication, cooperatives, trade unions, medicine, agriculture, and technology. These experts would be seconded to central advisory and coordinat-ing bodies in the selected countries and would devote themselves specifically to the analysis of the problems, the planning of a strategy, and the coordination of pro-grams with national planning. This new type of service would be rendered by the religious ~ommunities only at the invitation of interested bishops' conferences of one of the three countries. This proposal clearly indicates that as the religious communities become more involved in social action, they will need more experts in this field. It also be-comes increasingly clear that religious congregations will now turn their efforts towards promoting and edu-cating a corps of highly qualified men and women who will act not for their individual communities alone but in teams for ihe good o[ society. This task force con-cept of highly competent religious from different in-stitutes could be the most dramatic response of religious congregations to the challenges provided in the Third World. From what we have just said, it is evident that re-ligious will have to respond more promptly and in-telligently to what we would call the apostolate of internationalism. To act as specialists in the Third World, to become globally involved in development, re-llgious will be entering more actively into what Barbara Ward calls our planetary community, a community which. cuts across all the lines and barriers of nations and races. In such a community, religious ought to feel very much at home, especially since the vision of all founders of religious communities extended beyond the hori-zons of a particular country or culture. That spirit which inspired founders to send their men and women to meet the needs of mankind in all parts of the world must now impel their followers to send trained and competent personnel to participate in international bodies which are working to achieve the humaniza-tion' of mankind. This apostolic thrust could be as dramatic and far-reaching as the missionary journey of Francis Xavier to the Indies. There are a number of religious currently engaged in this international apostblate. Those we have met or know of are: Father John Schutte, S.V.D., who was recently appointed by Pope Paul as assistant to Mon-signor Joseph Gremillion, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace; Father Arthur Mc- Cormack, M.H.M., special consultant to the same Com-mission; Father Philip Land, S.J., Gregorian University, Rome; Father George H. Dunne, s.J., SODEPAX Joint Secretary, Geneva; Father Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P., Secretariat for Promotion of Christian Unity; Mother Jane Gates, Superior General of the Medical Missionary Sisters, who is working with the World Council of Churches in the field of medicine; and Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. The first indication we have of a religious institute becoming serious about development and the promo-tion of the international apostolate is the derision of Father Pedro Arrupe, superior general of the Jesuits, to establish a secretariat for development within the curia of his general administration. Father Francis Ivern has been appointed by Father Arrupe to head this secretariat. Similar offices could be set up in many of the larger congregations of men and women. In the case of smaller units, it is quite possible that interested and competent religious could be, as a matter of policy, trained to take their place in general curias. Others could be as-signed to work on task forces, national bishops' con-ferences, international or national research centers, na-tional conferences of religious, and the pontifical or the national conferences of justice and peace. 3. Spirit of Collaboration It is quite evident from what has been said above that there is growing within religious congregations and institutes a greater spirit of collaboration to make the response called for by Populorum progressio and the objectives of the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace. Since the work of development is of such gigantic proportions, no one rellgious institute can unilaterally plan its involvement in it. No one individual religious, or even a cadre of them, can shoulder the heavy re-sponsibility of this new apostolate. It must be the work of all religious, or the efforts for the humanization of mankind will be considerably weakened. One model of collaboration already exists in Rome. It is an organization to which we have already re-ferred many times, namely, SEDOS. This voluntary organization of a number of superiors general, formed only six years ago on the initiative of a few missionary congregations, has in a short time given proof of the results that can flow ~om the spirit of collaboration. Within a span of just one year, for imtance, SEDOS has held a seminar on development, a symposium on the theology of development and mission, and a con-÷ ÷ ÷ Developme~ VOLUME 28, 1969 875 Brotmheurl s. RM~oarne REVIEW FOR.RELIGIOUS terence on intermediate technology. As noted already, it has worked out an agreement with Misereor to finance the education of a number of specialists for developing countries. It is also actively engaged in es-tablishing guidelines for a mutual exchange of ideas between the World Council of Churches and medical missionary congregations in the field of medicine. SEDOS is unique in a number of ways. Its member-ship consists of both men and women religious. Its ex-ecutive secretary is Father Benjamin Tonna, a secular priest from Malta, who is a professional sociologist. The director is Miss Joan Overboss, a multilingual expert from Holland. But its uniqueness lies principally in its spirit of co-operation among the superiors general in facing the new problems evolving from the Third World. Since there was no structure among religious institutes or in any Roman curial congregation to help religious fami-lies prepare themselves for their involvement in the work of development, superiors general united their forces to establish a documentation and research center which would enable them to convert from a family business to a modern and efficient concern. Thus, for the first time in the Church's history, religious congre-gations have banded together at the highest level to make their contribution in an area in which the Church in recent years has focused its principal at-tention. This same spirit of collaboration is evident in such countries as the Congo and Indonesia, where religious are working together with bishops' conferences in es-tablishing planning secretariats. Quite recently we read an appeal by the East African conference of religious to its membership to turn itself to the question of de-velopment and to form a task force that would assist the bishops' conferences in establishing a secretariat for development. If religious congregations are to involve themselves in this apostolate, this spirit of cooperation must con-tinue to grow. Many religious want to see their in-stitutes take decisive measures to execute the social objectives of Populorum progressio and to work actively to achieve the goals of the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace. The younger generation of religious also want to become actively engaged in working to create conditions within and between nations that are in keeping with the human dignity of man. But they need some concrete programs to give them direction. As a step towards establishing some programs, con-ferences of religious and individual institutes could give attention to the following suggestions made by the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace at the end of its first plenary meeting of March, 1967: 1. That Bishops' Conferences, teaching orders and all those concerned with education should be encouraged to include the teaching of international social justice in the curricula of schools, seminaries, universities and all institutions of learn-ing. 2. That retreats, sermons and specifically religious instruc-tion should emphasize the discussion of world justice, ~. That such curricula should be, where possible and suit-able, worked out on an ecumenical basis. 4. That competent study groups, again when suitable on an ecumenical basis, should continue the work of elaborating a doctrine of world-wide development and justice. 5. That lay groups of all kinds be invited to include world justice in their programs of adult education and, when com-petent to do so, assist the Commission in suggesting programs for the mass media. 4. A New Theology ot Development A concern very often expressed at the seminar on de-velopment alluded to above was that what was needed was an honest exchange of views on the theological foundation of development. In fact, one of the prin-cipal resolutions of the seminar asked the Congregation for Evangelization to put the theology of development on its agenda for its next meeting and for eventual presentation to the Holy Father as agenda for the next Synod of Bishops. Another resolution requested a sym-p. osium on mission and development. These two actions reveal that a theology of develop-ment has become a matter of urgency for religious. So long as the effort of missionaries was expended 'within the limits of a parish or a diocese, no special problem presented itself. But today the organization of develop-ment has become a much more complex affair; it has assumed the dimensions of whole nations, of entire continents, of the planetary community itself. While such a task calls for specialists, the ordinary missionaries run the danger of no longer seeing and understanding the role they are called on to play in the task of de-velopment. They stand, then, in perplexity when faced with the contradictory opinions of theologians. If some theolo-gians insist on the irreplaceable character of the proc-lamation of God's word and of the sacramental ministry, missionaries taken up with the tasks of development be-cause of the demands of the situations in which they find themselves and the concrete needs they daily encounter are troubled by an uneasy conscience. If other theologians stress the primary role of development, then those mis-sionaries whose tasks are those which belong to the more + + + Developmem VOLUME 28, Z969 8?7 traditional patterns of the apostolate begin to question the value of what they are doing. It was in response to this perplexity that the superiors general of SEDOS held a mission theology symposium in Rome this past April. Theologians from Europe and other parts of the world were invited to tackle this prob-lem first among themselves, and second in open discus-sions with the generals and their staffs.~ This symposium's importance lies in the fact that it has brought before religious congregations the theologi-cal dimensions of development, while adding to the growing literature on tlfis subject. This hard confronta-tion with the realities of development is a hopeful sign of growth within the Church and religious institutes. And instead of standing before the reality with perplex-ity and bewilderment, religious institutes, with their sense of global dedication, ought to be in the vanguard of working out a new theology of development. This mission theology symposium should set the pace for all religious families of the church. It has been our intention in this paper to draw the attention of religious to the phenomenon of develop-ment so that it can become a growing part of the litera-ture on renewal and adaptation. As a contribution to this literature on renewal, we have pointed out four major trends we have noted over the past year in the field of development as they affect religious institutes. The contribution religious can make to development, we are convinced, is enormous. The single attempts being made here and there must spring into a massive effort that will engage religious in a venture that has taken the center stage of the Church. If development is the new word for peace, it is a new challenge to religious. ~ Preparations are being made for the publication of the pro-ceedings of this symposium in various languages. The English edi-tion will be published by Maryknoll Publications. Brothers More and R~an REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS JAMES A. CLARK Placing U. S. Personnel in Latin America Once a bishop or provincial decides to give manpower assistance to Latin America, he quickly discovers the dif-ficulties of attempting to find the wisest way to assign priests, brothers, or nuns to projects in Latin America. Since few authorities can agree on proper priorities for such placements, a superior is wise to recognize im-mediately that optimum, effective assignment of per-sonnel throughout Latin America represents an unat-tainable goal. In the past, assignment of American religious in the southern half of the hemisphere resulted from acciden-tal factors. The high ratio of Americans in Peru derived from the efforts of a zealous nuncio who welcomed them warmly. The large numbers of Americans in Guatemala result from a statistic that indicated that Guatemala had the worst proportion of priests to peo.ple of any Latin American country. Bewildered superiors anxious to respond to appeals of the Vatican to send missionaries to Latin America seized on this fact as a reason to send their subjects to Guatemala. Localized concentrations of Americans usually can be traced to a friendship begun at the Vatican Council between North and Latin Ameri-can Church leaders or through the bonds of a religious community existing in both halves of the hemisphere. The complexity of properly placing people in Latin America appears as a new problem because previously the allocating of workers to missionary lands did not require any accommodation with a structured Church in the foreign situation as is the case now in Latin America. One locale appeared as needy and worthwhile as another for apostolic laborers. The presence of a viable and strong Church in Latin America demands :extreme delicacy in interposing foreigners to serve that Church. Yet the need is so general and widespread in Latin America that from a spiritual point of view it has be- 4- ÷ James A. Clark is a staff member of the apostolic delegation at The Manor House in Rockcliffe Park; Oto tawa 2, Canada. VOLUME 28, 1969 879 come impossible for even the indigenous Church to ar-rive at a generally satisfactory set of realistic and valid preferences. Priorities which have aided in the distribution of financial grants are applicable in part to the appoint-ment of people even. though this latter commodity, people, raises mnch more profound questions since it is so much more precious and scarce in Latin America. This dilemma especially concerns diocesan priests be-cause the international 'religious communities already have a functioning system for distribution of their mem-bers. This arrangement, made under the auspices of the Holy See, has served for generations and enables provincials to provide staff for missionary areas without an agonizing analysis in each case. Those communities without Latin American branches and bishops entering the field for the first time find the subject distressingly difficult. The. Most Reverend Marcos McGrath, Second Vice- .President of the Bishops' Council for Latin America (GELAM), has encouraged even the religious communi-ties to refuse to cling to traditional apostolates and to become open to new forms of ministry: Priorities of needs in the churches of Latin America can be determined most effectively when undertaken by a national episcopal conference. Deciding who comes first is a difficult exercise in the spirit of collegiality because each bishop would like to see his diocese at the top of the list. But it is a necessary exercise and is of great assistance to those from abroad who want to know what the bishops as a whole think about the needs of their country. A listing of priorities may indeed be prepared, by a special committee named by the local bishops. Such an arrangement has been requested in some instances by various organizations of assistance. CELAM's continental sec-retariat of the Latin American bishops may indicate some gen-eral priorities of needs through its specialized departments. ÷ ÷ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Several complex plans have been proposed to resolve the problem of placement. The secretariat of the U.S. Bishops' Committee for Latin America once devised a coordinating committee of ten expert advisers to counsel bishops on the proper method of allocating personnel for Latin America. However since the ten could not agree among themselves on how to achieve best results the committee never met and the plan died. The secretariat received requests from most of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Latin America (more than 600) and circulated these to bishops and superiors of religious houses. However, no attempt to provide criteria for selecting one petition over another ever appeared. Standard policy urged superiors to.visit potential recipi- ¯ ent areas personally, a rather unrealistic suggestion for harried superiors already overstocked with requests for their manpower. Naturally, bishops prefer to retain jurisdiction over their priests. For this reason the concept of a military ordinariate type structure to recruit, train, and appoint personnel in Latin America failed to receive widespread acceptance, since experience .with military chaplains alerted bishops to the fear of losing control of their sub-jects for the major portion of their ministerial lives. Several prominent churchmen, support attempts to permit diocesan priests to serve in a religious community on the missions through a temporary connection with a religious order. Only diocesan priests who have lived for any length of time in the house of a religious society can foresee the difficulties of this plan. In spite of abundant good will on the part of all involved there is no escaping the feeling on the part of the secular priest that he is a "junior" or "non-incorporated" subject, without status and without the possibility of participation in decision making sessions. Likewise, this association causes the priest to lose identity both at home and abroad as a diocesan priest serving temporarily on the missions. The entry of diocesan priests with previous parish ex-perience into missionary areas revealed the value of these men over those who went directly to the missions upon ordination without any experience in a normal parish situation to use as a barometer for their missionary en-deavors. A diocese-to-diocese setup is not workable because one diocese in the States cannot properly provide for train-ing, support, leave time, illness, vacations, and so forth of overseas staff. Yet a method must be found which preserves the interest of the home diocese which usually provides the financial wherewithal enabling the Latin American mission to function. Other proposals include appointing men for a time to a national conference of bishaps in a given country, in-cardinating priests temporarily into a Latin American diocese, or assigning them to the U.S. Bishops' Com-mittee for Latin America, which, in conjunction with the U.S. and Latin American bishops involved, could arrange for training and distribution of priests. Two countries have established national offices to deal with this issue, and bishops assigning men to either Chile or Brazil need only refer to the national offices for ad-vice. Several methods of providing diocesan priests to Latin America have sprung up among the 76 dioceses involved in this effort. 24 dioceses merely permitted priests to go to Latin America. 17 assumed responsibility to support the volunteer priests during their term of Latin Ameri- 4- 4- 4- Latin America can service but they make no provisions for the assign-ment of these priests. 34 accept the task of supporting a parish or several parishes in Latin America. In Boston, Richard Cardinal Cushing founded in 1958 a society to bring these diocesan priests together. Currently this St. James (the Cardinal's middle name) Society counts slightly more than 100 members from 30 dioceses in the U.S. and several European countries. This corps pro-vides pastoral services to a half million people spread across Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It represents the best vehicle currently available for sending diocesan priests to Latin America. A similar organization for pooling nuns going to Latin America received attention at an inter-American meeting of Bishops at Georgetown University in 1959 but has failed to be implemented. In attempting to establish priorities, the national conferences of Bishops in Latin America have proved to be a boon although usually the primatial archbishop in a country tends to see his own needs first and with good reason for he usually presides over the largest metropoli-tan portion of that country. But rural bishops complain about the criteria when they witness most foreign ar-rivals remaining in the capital city. Both CELAM and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America have sought to provide a solution in this sensitive area but without success, as most attempts at coordination cause disputes over the choice of one diocese over another as beneficiary of American clerics. Originally the Pontifical Commission offered the facili-ties of the nunciatures throughout Latin America as clearing houses, but a.fear of Roman control of the en-tire movement impelled both donor and petitioner dioceses to bypass quietly any Commission services. As a former nuncio in Panama, the late Archbishop Paul Bernier commented on this question during his tenure on the Canadian Bishops' Commission for Latin America: lames A. Clark REVIEW FOR'RELIGIOUS I think there is a strong feeling against forming a society of any kind. Most of the bishops, if I understand well, insist on having and keeping an effort of the secular clergy as such with no affiliation, neither to the diocese ad quam nor to any particular religious or semi-religious society but to keep all of them [the priests] incardinated in the diocese a qua. If they don't want to stay there for more than five years, or if for any other reason they cannot remain, they come back to their own diocese just as if they were never out of it. I think that in Canada at least the impression of the bishops would be rather contrary to affiliating or incorporating our diocesan ~nd secular priests to any particular society. Most bishops would be willing, however, to send according to their abilities one or two, five or ten priests, to some form of, not a society, but a responsible organization which in the last analysis would be in the hands of the Episcopal Committee for that. Whoever accepts responsibility for such appointments will have need of some priorities or guidelines since the priestly requirements of Latin America could not be fulfilled if every priest in. the United States went to Latin America. Some principles to follow in this area would include the following points. The i~rst choice to be made is a selection of a category of work for a religious volunteey, that is, shall I send my priest (or brother or sister) to work as a catechist, teacher, parish worker, or what? The departments of CELAM indicate the critical apostolates which normally will have first call on foreign services: education, medi-cine, social service, relief, charity, seminary/vocational work, catechetics, student/university apostolates, and service to laborers. Next the superior must choose a geographical classifi-cation, that is, shall I send him (her) to serve on the con-tinental level with CELAM, or on the regional or na-tional level with the conferences of bishops, or to the diocesan and local level. Foreigners often function best in posts removed from the intimate personal relation-ship of priest-to-parishioner which reqmres sensitive cul-tural perception. Usually their North American organi-zational talents achieve widest impact on a broader scale at the continental, regional, or diocesan levels. Also a decision must be made as to whether to send personnel to the rural or urban locations. Many Mary-knollers in Latin America have regretted the decision made many years ago to spread Society members across the mountain ranges. The impact of an individual is broader in the cities. On the other hand Cardinal Cush-ing says that the revolution in Latin America will be born in the mountains and the Church ought to be there. At one time it was thought preferable to assign North Americans to dioceses with North American bishops at the helm. This principle has been subsequently disre-garded since it leads to a danger of creating a church within a church, one foreign and one native. The monster parishes which have arisen in Latin America as a resuh of abundant American material and personnel aid have become a source of distress for Latin Americans and embarrassment for North Americans. Parish A flooded with American assistance can only re-flect poorly on parish B which is struggling along with local resources only. OccasionaIIy a choice arises between placing people in projects underwritten by private industry or govern-÷ ÷ ÷ Latin America VOLUM~ 28~ 1969 883 4- 4- REVIEW FOR,RELIGIOUS 884 ments, for example, a company hospital or a state nor-mal school. These opportunities sometimes permit the assure, ption of responsibilities which would otherwise be financially prohibitive; on the other hand, alliance with a government or industrial concern can be severely det-rimental to the Church image and impact. .One essential requirement demands that the project given help be integrated into the local church structure. For this reason each local request must be approved by the national conference of bishops to insure that it co-ordinates with the national pastoral plan. From the viewpoint of the candidate to be sent to Latin America, if he or she speaks one of the languages of Latin America or has studied or served in a particular country naturally it is logical to assign the person to that place. All attempts to satisfy reasonable personal preferences will reduce the inevitable cultural shock suffered by v, olunteers. A first principle of sending people into Latin America is that they be sent as members of a team effort and never individually. The ability of the subject offering his services will sometimes be the final determinant of assignment; a seminary professor will not serve best in a slum parish nor will a Trappist normally function well in a mass communications program. Due to the profound social division in Latin America there is a need to predetermine whether personnel are to be placed in projects serving the wealthy or the im-poverished. In the latter case a realistic plan for external financing will normally be required. Projects which provide some hope of eventual self-sufficiency in regard to their staffing needs should be selected rather than those which will require permanent foreign workers. Realistic approaches to provide new solutions to basic religious problems of Latin America deserve special con-sideration. For examples, the novel approach to slum parish work of Father Andres Godin, a Canadian Oblate, in Lima, Peru; or that of American Oblate Edmund Leising who has developed a remarkable program in Brazil for promoting parish self-support through Ameri-can fund raising procedures; or the renowned apostolate of Father Leo Mahon in San Miguelito parish in Pan-ama who has discovered an entirely new process for parish effectiveness. These offer novel and successful approaches to stubborn problems. Similar examples of projects managed by Latin American priests themselves could be cited. Most superiors have the background to recognize that adequate and detailed financial arrangements must be agreed upon in advance by both sides to prevent animos-ity from developing on obscure financial responsibilities. The overall plan an agency presents ought to be ex-amined carefully to learn if it is realistically conceived. Experience in Latin America reveals that ill.constructed, idealistic proposals soon collapse. Those of us familiar with the problem of positioning personnel in Latin America are aware of the difficulties superiors face in this field. Hopefully some of the above remarks will assist the ongoing dialogue in this area and be of some assistance to those who seek to serve the Church by releasing people for work on the only Catholic continent of the globe. + + ÷ Latin America VOLUME 28, 1969 885 JOSEPH F. GALLEN, S.J. Comments on tl e Instruction on Formation Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., writes from St. Joseph's Church; $21 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Penn-sylvania 19106. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Prepostulancy Nothing is said in the Instruction on a prepostulancy period. Number 4 states that it would be worthwhile to consider whether the practice of going directly to the novitiate from such places as aspirancies, apostolic schools, or minor seminaries should be continued or whether an interval of probation should be had to develop the human and emotional maturity of the candidate. In the case of those obliged to a postulancy by canon 539, § 1, this development can be taken care of during the postulancy, which can last up to two years and also be made while residing outside any house of the in-stitute (n. 12). There is nothing in the Instruction for or against such places as aspirancies but, as is clear from what was said above, number 4 presumes that they will continue to exist. Postulancy (nn. 4; 10-2; 33) Importance. "Hence it follows that all institutes, even those that do not prescribe the postulancy, must at-tach great importance to this preparation for the novice-ship" (n. 4). Purpose. This is to judge the suitability and aptitude of the candidate; to give a preparation that will enable the noviceship to be made more fruitfully; to provide a gradual transition from secular to religious life; and to verify and complete, if necessary, the religious knowledge of the candidate (nn. 11-2). "Tentative" in number 11 of the Vatican English translation is not in the Latin text and "to formulate a. judgment" is to form a judgment. Power of general chapter. In institutes in which the postulancy is of obligation by common law (in insti-tutes of perpetual vows: all women but in those of men only lay brothers) or by the constitutions, the gen-eral chapter may keep in mind, for a better adaptation of the postulancy~ the following norms (n. 12): Duration. In institutes in which the postulancy is not obligatory by common or constitutional law, the general chapter may determine its nature and duration, which can vary for different candidates but should not be too brief nor ordinarily longer than two years. In institutes in which the postulancy is obligatory from common law, it must last at least six full months (c. 589, § I), and this minimum time is more probably retained in the Instruction; but the general chapters of these institutes may also follow the two-year limit, the principle that the time may vary for different candi-dates, and probably that the minimum time may be less than six months (n. 12). 1 do not think the right of canon 539, § 2, to prolong the postulancy for six months extends to a postulancy of two years. A postu-lancy longer than two years would not be very rea-sonable, especially since it can be varied within that time for the individual. Place. Preferably not in the novitiate house, and it can be profitable for it to be made wholly or in part outside a house of the institute (n. 12). The postulancy may therefore be so organized that the postulants con-tinue to reside in their homes or in such another place as a college. See also numbers 4 and 11. The latter speaks of a "gradual transition from lay life to that proper to the noviceship." Director. The postulants, wherever the postulancy is made, are to be under the direction of qualified re-ligious, between whom and the master of novices there is to be sedulous cooperation (n. 12). Dross. The determination of the dress of the postu-lants appertains to the general chapter (n. 33). How-ever, canon 540, § 2, had required simply that the dress of the postulants be modest and different from that of the novices. It could therefore have been secular but modest; special and uniform, but this was not neces-sary; religious, but different from that of the novices. Noviceship (nn. 4-5; 13-33) Maturity requisite Ior beginning noviceship (n. 4). The noviceship should begin when the candidate is aware of God's call and has reached that degree of human and spiritual maturity which will allow him to decide to respond to this call with sufficient and proper knowledge and responsibility: "Most of the difficulties encountered today in the formation of novices are usually due to the fact that when they were admitted they did not have the required maturity., it must ÷ ÷ ÷ Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 887 ÷ ÷ ÷ $. F. Gallen, S.l. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 888 be affirmed that the age required for admission to the noviceship should be higher than heretofore" (n. 4). Place. The noviceship for validity must be made in a house legitimately designated for this purpose (n. 15) by the superior general with the consent of his council and according to the constitutions (n. 16). The superior general with the consent of his council and after consultation with the interested provincial may in a case of necessity permit also many novitiates in the same province (n. 17). When the small number of novices is not sufficient to promote community life, the superior general should, if possible, establish the novitiate in a community of the institute capable of aiding the formation of such a small group of novices (n. 18). To better meet some demands of their formation, the superior general may authorize that the group of novices be transferred during certain periods to another house of the institute designated by himself (n. 16). In particular and exceptional cases, the superior gen-eral with the consent of his council may permit that a candidate validly make his noviceship in a house of the institute other than the novitiate house, under the direction of a qualified religious acting as a master of novices (n. 19). Duration. For validity the noviceship must last for twelve months (n. 21). A continuous or interrupted absence from the noviti-ate group and house that exceeds three months ren-ders the noviceship invalid (ft. 22). In lesser absences the higher superior, after consulting the novice master and considering the reason for the absence, may in individual cases command an extension of the noviceship and determine its length, and this matter may also be determined by the constitutions (n. 22). Formative activity periods outside the novitiate house must be added to the required twelve months, nor may they be begun before a novice has spent three months in the novitiate (if the contrary is done, the noviceship be-gins only on the completion of the formative activity period) and must be so arranged that the novice spends a minimum of six continuous months in the novitiate, re-turns there at least a month before the first vows or other temporary commitment, and the time of the whole novice-ship extended in this manner may not exceed two years (n. 24). The noviceship amplified by such formative activity periods may not exceed two years, but this does not abrogate the right given to higher superiors in canon 571, § 2, to prolong the noviceship up to six months in a doubt about the suitability of a candidate. Such a prolongation is permitted in a noviceship of two years without formative activity periods. A higher superior for a just cause may permit first profession or commitment to be anticipated but not beyond fifteen days (n. 26). Formative activity periods. The general chapter by at least a two-thirds vote may experimentally enact, in keeping with the nature of the institute, one or more periods of formative activity outside the novitiate house, the number to be determined in practice accord-ing to the judgment of the master of novices with the consent of the higher superior, for the formation of the novices or, in some cases, for a better judgment of their aptitude for the life of the institute. Such periods may be used for one, several, or the entire group of novices. If possible a novice should not be assigned alone to these periods. In these periods the novices are under the direction of the master of novices (nn. 23, 25). "It must be emphasized that this formative activ-ity, which complements novitiate teaching, is not in-tended to provide the novices with the technical or professional training required for certain apostolic ac-tivities, training which will be afforded to them later on, but rather to help them, in the very midst of these activities, to better discover the exigencies of their vocation as religious and how to remain.faithful to them" (n. 5; see also n. 25). Separation of novices. There must be some separation between the novices and the professed religious, with whom, however, and with other communities, the novices may have contact according to the judgment of the master of novices. It appertains to the general chapter to decide, according to the nature of the institute and particular circumstances, what contacts may be had between the novices and the professed of the institute (n. 28). The use of the term "professed re-ligious" in the second sentence makes it sufficiently clear that there is no prohibition of contact between the novices and the postulants, as might be feared from the word "members" in the other two sentences of number 28. Studies during the noviceship. The general chapter may permit or command certain studies during the nov-iceship for the better formation of the novices, but doctri-nal studies should be directed to the knowledge and love of God and to the development of a more profound life of faith. From the twelve months of noviceship of number 21 all studies, even theological and philosophi-cal, made for obtaining diplomas or for acquiring a formation directed to preparation for fulfilling future Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 889 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 890 duties are forbidden (n. 29). Provided doctrinal studies are directed to the spiritual life, as prescribed in the first sentence, it is probably not forbidden to receive credits for such studies when these can be had but the studies are not to be directed to the attaining of credits. There is no doubt that the prescription on doctrinal studies in this first sentence also applies only to the twelve months of noviceship of number 21, as is also true of the canonical legislation in canon 565, § 3, on this point, "even though the Latin text says "during the time of the noviceship," not "during the regular novitiate year," as in the English translation. The latter also has "all formal study programs" in the second paragraph whereas the Latin reads "all studies." Dress o] the novices. It appertains to the general chapter to determine the dress of the novices (n. 33). Number 33 speaks of the "habit of the novices and of other candidates for the religious life." It certainly had not been the practice nor is there any tendency to give a religious habit to postulants, and the meaning here of "habit" is "dress." No limitation is placed on the power of the general chapter to determine the dress of the novices and postulants. Canon 557 commands the wear-ing of the habit during the whole time of the noviceship, but it has also been maintained that the noviceship is an uncertain time and that the habit, to retain all its significance, should not be given to the novices. Noviceship lot another class. Unless the constitutions determine otherwise, a noviceship made for one class is valid for another (n. 27). The constitutions may de-termine the conditions regulating a transfer from one class to another (n. 27), Novice master. The novices are under the direction of the novice master who may seek the aid of other skilled helpers (n. 30). This is to be kept in mind with regard to a formation team. See also numbers 5, 12, 15, 23, 31, 32. Temporary Bond (nn. 2, 6-9; 34-8) A different temporary bond may be established and ]or all. Number 34 gives a faculty, not a precept, but in general language: "The General Chapter, by a two-thirds majority, may decide to replace temporary vows with some other kind of commitment as, for example, a promise made to the institute." The same general lan-guage is found in numbers 2, 6, 10, 24,' 37-8. The pos-sibility of the extension to all in the probation after the noviceship is not certainly excluded by other num-bers of the Instruction. A dil~erent bond should be introduced only a]ter most careful thought. The reasons are (1) number 34 demands a two-thirds vote of the general chapter to in-troduce a different bond and (2) number 7 explidtly re-quires such careful thought: "No institute should de-cide to use the faculty granted by this Instruction to replace temporary vows by some other form of commit-ment without having clearly perceived and weighed the reasons for and the nature of this change." A different bond in fairness, prudence, and proper regard [or sound spirituality should be introduced only [or those in whom the special immaturity exists. The reasons are (1) by vows a special consecration is had according to number 2: "Thus it is that religious pro-fession is an act of religion ~nd a special consecration whereby a person dedicates himself to God." (2) Be-cause according to number 7 temporary vows are com-pletely in harmony with the greater response to God so important at the beginning of the religious life and also enable the candidate to make the consecration proper to the religious state: "For him who has heeded the call of Jesus to leave everything to follow Him there can be no question of how important it is to respond generously and wholeheartedly to this call £rom the very outset of his religious life; the making of temporary vows is completely in harmony with this requirement. For, while still retaining its probationary character by the fact that it is temporary, the profession of first vows makes the young religious share in the consecration proper to the religious state." (3) Because immaturity is the sole reason given (n. 7) for substituting another temporary commitment: "In fact, more fre-quently now than in the past, a certain number [quidam] of young candidates come to the end of their novitiate without having acquired the religious ma-turity sufficient to bind themselves immediately by re-ligious vows, although no prudent doubt can be raised regarding their generosity or their authentic vocation to the religious state. This hesitancy in pronbuncing vows is frequently accompanied by a great awareness of the exigencies and the importance of the perpetual religious profession to which they aspire and wish to prepare themselves." (4) Possibly also because the desire for the different commitment was true only of some institutes (n. 7): "Thus it has seemed desirable in a certain num-ber o[ institutes that at the end of their noviceship the novices should be able to bind themselves by a temporary commitment different from vows, yet answering their twofold desire to give themselves to God and the institute and to pledge themselves to a fuller preparation for perpetual profession." Since the Instruction describes temporary vows as a consecration that is special, proper to the religious state, and in harmony with the greater ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 28. 1969 89! + ÷ .~. Fo Gallen, $J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 89~> response to God, it at least seems unfair, imprudent, and without regard for sound spirituality to deprive a novice of temporary vows when he has all the quali-ties requisite for making them, that is, when he is not affected by the special immaturity described in number 7. ¯ Some observations on this immaturity. Is this im-maturity proper to the young or is it the emotionalism that is today found in many older religious, and which the young often manifest only after continuous contact with such older religious? Isn't there a movement at this moment in the United States to give the vote to those who are eighteen years of age because the young are now more politically mature? In more than thirty states it has been the law that a girl of eighteen may marry without the consent of her parents. Is there any widespread tendency at present to change this very general law because of the immaturity of the ~young? Don't some hold that the greater physical development of modern youth argues to a greater psychological de-velopment? Does one frequently and without indoctri-nation encounter a novice who is judged to have a certain religious vocation (see also c. 571, § 2) but is too immature to take temporary vows? What factual and ob-jective investigations were made in the United States to prove the existence of such immaturity? Isn't it true that such immaturity would occur with regard to the temporary vow of chastity, not of poverty or obedience? Prescinding now from the obligation of the different commitment, don't the commandments of God still bind such a candidate and under serious sin in a violation of chastity? The simplest and most appropriate different com-mitment would be a promise to the institute to observe poverty, chastity, and obedience because (1) neither the form nor the object of the different commitment is determined in the Instruction (see n. 34) but (2) in numbers 7 and 35 the Instruction at least says it is fitting that the dit~erent commitment should in some way refer to the exercise of the three evangelical counsels, for example in number 7: "Whatever form such a temporary commitment may take, it is in keeping, with fidelity to a genuine religious vocation that it should in some way be based on the requirements of the three evangelical counsels." and (3) more directly and even categorically in number 13 the Instruction apparently says that the novice is to make profession of the evangeli-cal counsels at the end of the noviceship by temporary vows or other temporary commitment: ".that a novice.may implement the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the profession of which 'either by vows or by other sacred bonds that are like vows in their purpose' he will later make." This number of the Instruction is talking of a novice and therefore o[ the first consecration, which can be either vows or another temporary commitment. There is no alternative for the profession of perpetual vows. Other forms and objects of commitment are possible. The form and object of members in the strict sense of secular institutes is: "By making profession before God of celibacy and perfect chastity, which shall be confirmed by vow, oath, or consecration binding in conscience, according to the constitutions; by a vow or promise of obedience.by a vow or promise of poverty." (Provida Mater Ecclesia, February 2, 1947, Art. III). Some of the different forms of commitments in societies of common life without public vows are annual private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and the service of the poor; private perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; promise of fidelity to the observance of the rule and constitutions; perpetual promise of observ-ance of common life and poverty; perpetual agreement to obey the rule of the institute; perpetual oath of perseverance and obedience; and perpetual oath and promise of perseverance and obedience,x The societies of common life more £requently encountered are the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Eudists, Josephites, Maryknoll Missionaries, Oratorians, Pallot-tine Fathers, Paulists, Precigus Blood Fathers, Sulpicians, Vincentians, and White Fathers. Is one who makes a di1~erent temporary commitment in a state of perfection, in the religious state, a re-ligious, and a member of his institute? This is at least a very basic question and with wide implications. The negative arguments are that the Instruction nowhere says that one who makes a different temporary commit-ment is a religious and that canon 488, 7°, demands public vows to constitute a religious. On the other hand (1) vows are required only by canon law, not by divine law or the nature of the matter,2 to constitute a re-ligious, and the Instruction derogates from this canon law, as will be seen from the following arguments: (2) number 36 states absolutely that the subject is united with his institute and absolutely that he is obliged to observe its law; (3) the Instruction throughout does not differentiate between such a commitment and temporary vows (see nn. 2, 6, 10, 24, 34, 37-8); (4) num-ber 10 states explicitly that the temporary commitment is not the noviceship. If an entirely new state were being 1 See also Beste, lntroductio in Codicem, 497; Guti~rrez, Gora-mentarium pro religiosis, 38 (1959), 312-3. =See Goyeneche, De religiosis, 10-11; Guti~rrez, op.cit., 29 (1050), 72-3. ÷ ÷ ÷ VOU, JME 25, 89~ REV;EW FOR RELIGIOUS introduced distinct from that of the noviceship and temporary vows, this should have been dearly stated in the Instruction. (5) The probationary periods can last for thirteen years. This seems in itself to be un-reasonable if the subject does not become a member of the institute until the end of such time. The professed of temporary vows are members by first profession. The present canon law does not permit a duration of tempo-rary vows longer than six years, and canon 642, § 2, likens a professed of six years of temporary vows to one of perpetual vows. (6) During this prolonged time the institute would not be held in the case of such a subject to the norms of dismissal for professed but could dismiss him almost in the manner of a novice, whereas the pro-fessed of temporary vows would have also a right of sus-pensive recourse against his dismissal. Nor would canon 643, § 2, on the charitable subsidy apply, nor canon 646 on an automatic dismissal. (7) There would be an evident distinction in the rights and obligations of these subjects and the professed of temporary vows even though both would be in the same factual state of proba-tion. It is true, as number 7 states, tl~at "the profesz sion of first vows., makes the candidate share in the consecration proper to the religious state." Such a consecration, however, is required only by canon or human law, which can therefore enact that other suitable forms of commitment would also constitute a candidate in the religious state and make him a re-ligious, as also because such a candidate is always des-tined for this proper consecration in perpetual profes-sion. Religious women are nuns and their institutes are religious orders even though no one in fact has solemn vows provided at least some are destined for solemn vows from the particular law of the institute. Public vows would also remain proper to the religious state and to religious institutes since they are not had either in societies of common life nor in secular institutes. I therefore believe that the subject in a different temporary commitment is in a state of perfection, in the religious state, is a religious, and a member of his institute, but the question should be authoritatively serried by the Holy See. In the contrary opinion, those in a different temporary commitment are in a state that is neither noviceship nor profession, one also for which we have no parallel, and consequently a state of deep obscurity at least juridically. Determination o~ details b) the general chapter (n. 36). In virtue of canon 543 only a higher superior is competent to admit to the noviceship and to any re-ligious profession. The same canon demands a vote of the council or chapter for admission to the novice- ship, first temporary, and perpetual professions. The gen-eral chapter should require the deliberative vote for admission to the first temporary commitment and pre-scribe for renewals and prolongation of. such a com-mitment the same vote as is enacted in the constitutions for these acts with regard to temporary profession. The same policy should be observed concerning the superior competent for permitting an anticipated renewal of the temporary commitment, for exclusion from renewal or from the profession of perpetual vows (c. 637), and for the vote of the council in this case. The superior general with at least the advice of his council should be given the faculty of consenting to the dissolution of the com-mitment by the subject, to so consent to the request of the subject at any time during a commitment, who can then be immediately admitted to temporary vows, and with the consent of his council from the institute. Reception of ment is not necessary because it (c. 1308, § 1), and the consent of to dismiss a subject the different commit-is not a public vow the institute was suf-ficiently given and expressed in the admission to the commitment or its renewal. The general chapter could prescribe reception since such a repeated consent of the institute is not contrary to common law. The formula of the vows will have to be changed for a different commitment, for example, a promise will be to the institute, not to God as is a vow. Even if the new com-mitment does not have obedience as its express object and is therefore not productive of another obligation of obedience, superiors, as the head of the institute or of its parts, possess at least the same authority that they have over a novice and, if the Holy See decides that a different commitment is on the same juridical level as temporary vows, they possess the same authority as over a professed but without the added title to exact obedi-ence from the vow (c. 501, § 1; 502). Ganons whose application is obscure. The applica-tion of the following canons to those in a different temporary commitment should also be decided by the Holy See: responsibility for debts, 536, §§ 2-3; canonical examination, 552; dowry, 547-51; making of cession and disposition regarding personal patrimony and a civilly valid will, 569; retreat before first profession, 571, § 3; profession of a novice in danger of death. Requisites for a valid profession, exclusive of recep-tion, the necessity of three years of temporary vows, and understanding the derogations regarding a valid novice-ship in the Instruction, 572; age for profession, 573; deliberative vote for first profession, 575, § 2; written declaration of profession, 576, § 2; no intervals between renewals or perpetual profession, 577, § 1; 575, § 1; ÷ ÷ Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 895 ~. F. Gallen, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 896 enjoyment of the same indulgences, privileges, spiritual favors, and suffrages, obligation of observing rules and constitutions, active and passive voice and computation of time for obtaining either, 578; illiceity and invalidity of acts contrary to the vows, 579. Acquisition of property by a professed of simple vows, change of cession and disposition, 580; renuncia-tion of personal patrimony, 581; 583, 1°; change of will, 583; 2°. Common obligations of clerics in canons 124-42, 592; obligation of common life, 594; obligation of wear-ing habit, 596; cloister, 597 ft.; religious duties, 595; right of exempt correspondence, 611; enjoyment of privileges of first order by nuns, 613, § 2; enjoyment of clerical privileges of canons 119-23, 614. Transfer to another religious institute or monastery, 632-5; 544, § 5; right of professed of temporary vows to leave at the end of a temporary profession, 637; ex-claustration, 638-9; effects of secularization, 640-3; compensation may not be sought for services given to the institute, 643, § 1; charitable subsidy, 643, § 2; laws on fugitives, 644, § 3; 645; 2386; automatic dismissal, 646; dismissal of a professed of temporary vows, 647-8; provisional return to secular life, 653. Six professed constitute a formal house, 488, 5°; precedence from first profession breaking a tie in elec-tions, 101, § 1, 1°; first profession as date of computing eligibility for office, 504; 559, §§ 1-2; prohibition of being members of third orders secular, 704; prohibi-tion of being a sponsor in baptism and confirmation, 766, 4°; 796, 3°; special jurisdiction necegsary for the confessions of religious women, 876; funerals of religious, 1221; 1124, 2°; permission for writings, 1386, § 1; punish-able for violations of common life, 2389. Obligation o[ observing the evangelical counsels. If the Holy See decides that a different temporary com-mitment is on the same juridical level as the profession of temporary vows, the evangelical counsels must be observed at least with the same obligation as the con-stitutions, no matter what be the object of the different temporary commitment because (1) not only does num-ber 36 impose after the new commitment "the obliga-tion of observing the Rule, constitutions and other regulations of the institute" and therefore a fortiori also the obligation of observing the evangelical coun-sels as more essential and important for a state of complete Christian perfection but also and more pro-foundly because (2) the observance of the evangelical counsels is necessary from the nature of a state of per-fection, as can be seen from the following direct and clear statements of only three Popes and Vatican II: "The religious orders, as everyone knows, have their origin and raison d'etre in those sublime evangelical counsels, of which our divine Redeemer spoke, for the course of all time, to those who desire to attain Christian perfection" (Leo XIII, December 23, 1900). "When the only-begotten Son of God came into the world to re-deem the human race, he gave the precepts of spiritual life by which all men were to be directed to their appointed end; in addition, he taught that all those who wished to follow more closely in His footsteps should embrace and follow the evangelical counsels" (Pius XI, March 19, 1924). "It is true that by the apostolic constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia we declared that the form of life, which is followed by secular institutes, is also to be accepted as a state of perfection publicly recognized, because the members are bound in some way to the observance of the evangelical counsels" (Pius XII, July 13, 1952).3 Vatican II affirmed: "Thus, although the religious state constituted by the profession of the evangelical counsels does not belong to the hierarchical structure of the Church, nevertheless it belongs in-separably to her life and holiness." 4 Moral obligation of a new temporary commitment. It might seem that a general chapter could also completely determine this (see n. 36), but number 34 gives a promise to the institute as an example of such a com-mitment. We are to presume words in such a document are being used in their proper sense, and in such a sense a promise produces a moral obligation. In a merely private promise to God or man, the one making the promise can oblige himself only to a light obliga-tion in light matter but in serious matter he can assume either a light or a grave obligation. May a general chapter, therefore, define the moral obligation of the new temporary commitment, for example, a promise to the institute, as only light? It could do so if it is decided by the Holy See that such a commitment is not on the same juridical level as temporary vows. Could it do so if the level is the same? Such a definition is not excluded by the nature of a commitment or promise purely in itself nor by the explicit wording of the Instruction. The light obligation can also be urged from the reason for permitting a different commitment, that is, the immaturity of a candidate. It would not 8Courtois, The States of Perfection, Dublin: 1961, M. H. Gill and Son, nn. 33, 130, 403, 474; see also Schaefer, De religiosis, n. 125; Beste, op.cit., 328; Padri Claretdani, II diritto dei religiosi, n. 3; Fanfani, II diritto delle religiose, n. 2; Bastien, Directoire canonique, nn. 9, 14; Creusen, Religious Men and Women in Church Law, nn. 4-5; Guti~rrez, ibid., 63-4, 67. ' Abbott-Gallagher, The Document~ of Vatican II, 75. 4" 4" 4" Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 89~ ]. F. Gallen, $.$. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS seem very practical to enact that such a candidate does not have to take the added serious obligation of a re-ligious vow if he must assume the added serious obli-gation of another form of commitment. On the opposite side it can be well maintained from the nature of the matter that it would be incongruous for the funda-mental obligations of a permanent state of life to be only light. Above all there is a reply given by the Sacred Congregation of Religious, May 19, 1949, in an entirely parallel case and in general language to the effect that the bonds assumed by the members of secular insti-tutes cannot be light in their general nature.~ The pur-pose and nature of secular institutes are given as the reason for this doctrine. A secular institute is an apos-tolic state of complete Christian perfection, and the reasoning of the Sacred Congregation appears to me to apply, at least equally, if not afortiori, to religious in-stitutes. In effect this would mean, in the promise we have advocated to the institute to observe poverty, chastity, and obedience, the same light or serious obliga-tion that is had in the religious vows. The document reads: 1. The obligations which are contracted by members in the strict sense (Art. III, §§ £ and 3) for the full pursuit of the juridical state of perfection in secular institutes (Art. III, § 2), if they are to correspond to the purpose and nature of the institute, cannot be light in their general nature and under every respect (ex genere suo atque ex omni parte). 2. On the other hand, the bonds on which this state of perfection rests, are considered so to oblige in conscience that the obligations thus produced must be called grave in their general nature (ex genere suo). 3. In individual cases, an obligation must be considered grave only when its matter must be considered as certainly grave according to the constitutions and the common teaching regarding equal or similar bonds. Moreov,er, according to the well-known rule of law (Reg. 30 in VI°), 'In obscure matters, one is obliged to Iollow only the least obligation," it cannot be affirmed in a doubtful case that an obligation is grave or more grave, for example, on the ground that an obligation arises from or is reinforced by the formal virtue of religion. 4. Just what is the nature of the bonds assumed in individual institutes and what is the precise mode of obligation---e.g., in addition to justice and fidelity, is there also and, if so, to what degree, an obligation from the virtue of religion--must be learned from the constitutions, which should give an accurate presentation of the matter, and from the formula of consecra-tion or incorporation in which the bonds are expressed. 5. Even when it is certain that there is a formal obligation arising from the virtue of religion, since there is question of vows or bonds which, although they are not fully private, nevertheless, in law, cannot be called public in the strict and specific sense and do not effect a public consecration of the' "Bouscaren-O'Connor, Canon Law Digest /or Religious, 167-8; see also Commentarium pro religiosis, 28 (1949): Larraona, 199-200; Fuertes, 292-8. person, the malice of sacrilege must not be attributed to their violation. Duration oI probation after the noviceship. The gen-eral chapter is to determine this but it is to be no less than three nor longer than nine years (n. 37). I find it difficult to see why a period longer than five years should be generally prescribed (n. 6). The total possible probationary period, that is, 2 years of postulancy, 2 of noviceship, and 9 of temporary commitment, can thus be 13 years. This would ordinarily mean perpetual profes-sion at the youngest only at the age of 30 or 31 years. Would we advise marriage only at 30 or 317 The gen-eral chapter may permit a prolongation in individual cases of a prescribed time, e.g., five years, up to the full nine years or may limit the power of prolonging, e.g., to only one year (n. 37). Precise length of dil~erent commitment. This may be made in the one act for the full length of the interval before perpetual profession, for example, five years; or for a briefer period, for example, three years, to be re-newed for two years on its expiration or to be followed by temporary vows (n. 34). The provision of canon 577, § 2, of permitting a renewal of temporary vows to be an-ticipated but not by more than a month may be also applied to the renewal of a different form of temporary commitment. Such an anticipation is permissible £rom the nature of a commitment and is not excluded by the Instruction. Must also a di~erent temporary commitment be ac-companied by the intention of renewing and of admit-ting to a renewal on its expiration? If the decision of the Holy See is that the juridical level of temporary vows and other temporary commitments is the same, the answer is in the affirmative. The explanation of the necessity of this intention in temporary vows has been the following. The religious life has ever and now de-mands stability or permanence. From its concept it is a state of life in the same way as the clerical or married state. A state of life is something that contains the note of stability or permanence. The exact permanence re-quired is defined by the Church as follows: solemn vows or simple perpetual vows are sufficient but not neces-sary; the minimum requisite is simple temporary vows. Therefore, an institute in which all the members make only annual professions of poverty, chastity, and obedi-ence fulfills this requisite. The Church further requires that temporary vows be renewed on their expiration (c. 488, 1°). This implies an intention on the part of both the religious making temporary profession and the superior admitting to this profession that, iI no obstacle ÷ ÷ ÷ Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 899 ]. F. Gallery, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 900 occurs in the meantime, the vows will be renewed on their expiration. It is evident that the same necessity of this intention and its explanation apply to a different temporary commitment since the necessity of the inten-tion is required not from vows as such but from the fact that the religious state is 'a state of life and demands stability.6 Lastly, such an intention is required in secular institutes, in which the bond can be vow, oath, consecra-tion, or promise: "The bond by which the secular insti-tute and its members in the strict sense are to be united must be: 1o Stable, according to the constitutions, either perpetual or temporary but to be renewed at its expira-tion (c. 488, 1°) . ,, 7 ConIusion on temporary vows. Tkis is the appropriate place to mention the extensive confusion that has existed on temporary vows in this whole matter of a different commitment. Many talked as if a temporary vow were a most unusual and even a contradictory thing. Evidently they did not know that temporary vows were mentioned in canon law (c. 131.1) as also in practically any manual of moral theology and in canonical works that included the treatment of the vows. It was also frequently stated that the intention of renewing and of admitting to renewal on their expiration was a contra-diction of the temporary duration of such vows. This again was ignorance. The intention was not and could not have been absolute, which would have been clearly contrary to the probationary nature of the period of temporary vows. It was a conditional intention to renew the vows i[ no obstacle intervened in the meantime, S and this obstacle, if not always, would practically always have been the discovery by the institute or the subject that he or she had no vocation. There was almost an equal number of statements that a temporary profession was invalid if at the time a religious had the intention of not renewing or a superior of not admitting to a renewal on the expiration of a temporary profession. Canon 572 does not list such an intention among the requisites for a valid religious profession. Canon 488, 1°, does not append an invalidating clause to the necessity of this intention as required by canon 11. A requirement for liceity only will also sufficiently fulfill the required stability. An invalidating law according to canon 15 does not exist in a doubt of law, and there is certainly a doubt o See Larraona, op. cit., 2 (1921), 137, 209; 28 (1949), 205; Schaefer, op.ciL, n. 128; Jone, Commentarium in Codicem iuris canonici, I, 387; Padri Clarettiani, op.cit., nn. 3, 6; Vermeersch-Creusen, Epitome iuris canonici, I, n. 580; Goyeneche, op.cit., 9-10; De Carlo, Jus religiosorum, n. 2. ~ Provida Mater Ecclesia, Bouscaren-O'Connor, op.cit., 151. aSee Larraona, op.cit.o 2 (1921), 209 and note 81; 28 (1949)~ 205; Guti~rrez, ibid., 90. of law in the present caseP There was also a great deal of talk merely about promises, as if a vow were not a promise. Nor was there too much knowledge of sanctity of life and of the relation of the evangelical counsels and of vows to this sanctity. Sacred orders may not be conferred belore perpetual profession (n. 37; c. 964, 4°). For a just reason a higher superior may permit that a first profession be made outside the novitiate house (n. 20). The Instruction does not mention the commitment presumably because it is held that the prescription on place of canon 574, §1 applies only to vows. Readmission of one who legitimately left either after completing temporary vows or other commitment or a[ter being [reed from either. He may be readmitted by the superior general with the consent of his council, who is not obliged to prescribe another noviceship, nor an-other postulancy (c. 640, § 2), but is obliged to enjoin a previous period of probation and also a period of tem-porary vows or other commitment not less than a year nor less than the time that remained to be spent in this temporary probation before perpetual profession when the subject left. The superior general may prescribe a longer period of temporary vows or other commitment (n. 38). Immediate preparation for perpetual proIession and similar periods during tbmporary vows or other commit-ment. It is desirable that perpetual profession should be preceded by a sufficiently long immediate preparation something in the manner of a second noviceship. The duration and other aspects are to be determined by the general chapter (nn. 9, 35). It is also desirable that periods of withdrawing to prayer, meditation, and study be established during the time of temporary vows or other commitment (n. 25). Section IlL Application of the special norms. The par-ticular provisions axe called norms because they have been enacted for experimentation (VII). They are in effect from January 6, 1969 (VII). The norms and direc-tives of the Instruction appertain only to religious in-stitutes; other institutes of common life may but are not obliged to follow them (n. 3). Common law (canon law, laws enacted after the Code of Canon Law, laws of Vatican II, and postconciliar laws) remains in effect un-less derogated by this Instruction (I). The faculties granted by this Instruction may in no way be delegated g See Schaefer, op.cit., n. 128; Jone, op.cit., 387; Guti~rrez, ibid., note 65; Vermeersch, Periodica, 31 (1932), 122 ft.; Goyeneche, Corn. mentarium tyro religiosis, 16 (1935), 315-6; Vidal, De religiosis, n. 9, holds for invalidity. 4- 4- ÷ VOLUME 901 ~. F. Gallen, $.]. 902 to another (II), but they may be used by those who legiti-mately take the place of the superior general when there is no superior general or he is legitimately prevented from acting (IV). The same principle is true of the vicars of other higher superiors since they are actually exercising the office of the higher superior when accord-ing to the constitutions they take the place of a higher superior, such as a provincial, in the vacancy of the office, in his absence, or when he is otherwise impeded from fulfilling the duties of his office. There is nothing of such importance in the faculties granted in the Instruc-tion to higher superiors that would merit the exclusion of vicars from the exercise of such faculties. An abbot at the head of a monastic congregation is also to be understood under the name of superior general in this Instruction (III). In the case of nuns dedicated exclu-sively to the contemplative life, special norms shall be inserted into the constitutions and submitted for ap-proval, but the norms in numbers 22, 26-7 may be ap-plied to them (V). I[ the special general chapter has already been held, the superior general and his council acting collegially,x° after a careful study of all circumstances, are to decide whether a general chapter should be convoked to deliber-ate on the faculties granted to it or whether it would be preferable to await the next general chapter (VI). If they decide against the above convocation but also that the use of the faculties granted to the general chapter is urgent for the good of the institute, they, again acting collegially, have the power of putting all or some of the same faculties in use until the next gen-eral chapter provided they have previously consulted all other higher superiors and their councils and have ob-tained their two-thirds affirmative vote. These other higher superiors should have it at heart to consult previ-ously the professed of perpetual vows. In institutes with no provinces, the superior general must consult the l~rofessed of perpetual vows and obtain the affirmative vote of two-thirds OgI). The following appertain to the general chapter: with a two-thirds vote: to introduce periods of formative ac-tivity in the noviceship (n. 23) and a different tempo-rary commitment (n. 34); with the vote prescribed by the constitutions: to make determinations for the pos-tulancy (n. 12); to decide on the permissible contacts of the novices (n. 28); to permit or command studies during the noviceship (n. 29); to determine the dress of the novices and other candidates (n. 33); to determine the duration of the probation between the noviceship See REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 19 (1960), 131-2. and perpetual profession and other aspects of the same probation (nn. 35-6-7); and experimentally to enact other matters that imply a change in the constitutions, for example, in numbers 16, 22, and 27. The following appertain to the superior general: with the consent of his council: the institution of a novitiate (n. 16) and of many novitiates in the same province, having consulted the interested provincial (n. 17); the making of the noviceship in a house that is not a noviti-ate house (n. 19); the readmission of one who legiti-mately left either after completing temporary vows or other commitment or after being freed from either (n. 38); alone: to permit the group of novices to reside for a time in another house designated by him (n. 16); to per-mit a small group of novices to make their noviceship in a house more suitable for community life (n. 18); with the council acting collegially: to decide on the calling of a general chapter to implement the Instruction or to permit, without a general chapter, the use of the facul-ties granted in the Instruction, after consulting all other higher superiors and their councils and having obtained the affirmative vote of two-thirds of them or of the pro-fessed of perpetual vows when the institute does not have provinces (VI). The following appertain to higher superiors: alone: to permit first profession outside the novitiate house (n: 20); to permit that first profession be anticipated but not beyond fifteen days (n. 26); after consulting the master of novices: to decide on a supplying of absence of a novice of less than three months (n. 22); and it is rec-ommended that higher superiors below the superior general previously consult the professed of perpetual vows on the use of faculties of the Instruction without having a general chapter (VI). Spiritual principles of the Instruction. In the intro-duction to the Instruction, the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes stated that the reason Vatican II gave no small measure of attention to reli-gious was that the Church might have a greater abun-dance of spiritual strength and be better prepared to proclaim the message of salvation to the men of our age; quoted Lumen gentium, numbers 44-5, to the effect that the state of the evangelical counsels appertains to the sanctity of the Church and that the practice of these counsels is uniquely effective for the perfection of the love of God and of the neighbor; spoke of the duty of religious institutes to renew their spiritual, evangelical, and apostolic lives; recalled that no loss was to be per-mitted in the basic values of the religious life; and de-clared the necessity of defining again the principal as-pects of this life. Formation VO'LUME 28, 1969 9O3 I. F. Ga//en,~$.l. REVIEW FOR REI.~G~OU$ 90; In the first section, which treats of principles and criteria, the Sacred Congregation reaffirmed that pro-fession of the evangelical counsels is a total consecration of one's person to God; that both from the teaching of the Church and the nature of this consecration the vow of obedience appertains to the essence of religious pro-fession; that by this consecration the religious exercises the perfection of apostolic charity, even though the apostolate is not the primary purpose of religious pro-fession; and that it may not be said that the nature of religious profession is to be changed or its proper de-mands lessened. The Sacred Congregation stated that the noviceship retains its irreplaceable role in formation; that novices are to be taught the cohesive unity that should link contemplation and apostolic activity; and that this unity is one of the fundamental and primary values of apostolic institutes. The achievement of this unity requires a~proper un-derstanding of the realities of the supernatural life and of the paths leading to a deepening of union with God in the unity of the one supernatural love for God and for man, finding expression at times in the solitude of inti-mate communing with the Lord and at others in the generous giving of self to apostolic activity. Young reli-gious must be taught that this unity, so eagerly sought and toward which all life tends in order to find its full development, cannot be attained on the level of activity alone, or even be psychologically experienced, for it resides in that divine love which is the bond of perfec-tion and which surpasses all understanding. The attainment of this unity, which cannot be achieved without long exercise of self-denial or without persevering efforts toward purity of intention in action, demands in those institutes faithful compliance with the law inherent in the spiritual life itself, which con-sists in arranging a proper balance of periods set aside for solitude with God and others devoted to various activities and to the human contacts which these in-volve (n. 5). The Sacred Congregation maintained that suitable maturity was required that the religious state be a means of perfection and not a burden too heavy to carry, as also the desirability that the perpetual con-secration to God of perpetual vows be preceded by a sufficiently long immediate preparation spent in recol-lection and prayer that could be like a second novice-ship. The second section of the Instruction is on special or particular norms and contains the following spiritual ideas and principles. The novices are to develop that union with Christ which is to be the source of all their apostolic activity; conformably to the teaching of our Lord in the gospel, the formation of the noviceship con-sists especially in initiating the novices gradually into detachment from everything not connected with the kingdom of God; that they learn to practice humility, obedience, poverty, to be instant in prayer, to maintain union with God, along with a soul receptive to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and to be mutually and spiritually helpful to one another in a sincere and un-feigned charity; they are to study and meditate on Holy Scripture; to be formed in the spiritual doctrine and practice required for the development of a supernatural life, union with God, and the understanding of the re-ligious state; they are to be initiated into the liturgical life and the spiritual discipline proper to their own in-stitute; they are to be given the occasions for striving to preserve faithful union with God in the active life; for the novices there is to be a balancing of periods of ac-tivity and of those given to recollection in prayer, medi-tation, and study to stimulate them to remain faithful to it throughout life, and a similar balancing is desirable during the years of formation before perpetual profes-sion. The Instruction reaffirmed the principle of the spiritual life and of Perfectae caritatis, number 8, that apostolic activity must have its source in intimate union with Christ and that therefore all the members should seek God only and above all, and unite contemplation by which they adhere to Him in mind and heart with apostolic love, in which they are associated with the work of redemption and strive to spread the kingdom of God; that novices are likewise to be formed in purity of intention and love for God and man; to learn to use this world as if they did not use it; realize that devotion to God and man demands a humble control of self; culti-vate the necessary human and spiritual balancing of the times given to the apostolate and the service of men and of the properly prolonged periods, in solitude or in com-munity, dedicated to prayer and to the meditative read-ing of the Sacred Scriptures. By fidelity to this most necessary and important program in all such institutes, the novices will gradually develop a peaceful union with God, which comes from conformity to the will of God. They must learn to discern the divine inspirations in the duties of their state, especially those of justice and charity. A mutual confidence, docility, and openness are to be fostered between superiors, the master of novices, and the novices that the master may be able to direct the generosity of the novices to a complete gift of themselves to God and lead them gradually to discern in the mys-tery of Christ crucified the demands of true religious + + + Formation VOLUME 28, 1969 905 obedience, and in this manner inspire them to an active and responsible obedience. The Instruction affirms with sufficient emphasis that the religious s~ate is different from secular institutes and from the state of the laity. ~. F. Gall~, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS SISTER MARY PATRICIA NORTON A New Form Community oJ Religious Government The custom that has been traditionally followed in women's religious communities of focusing all authority, responsibility, and decision-making in one person at the local, regional, and generalate level has, we believe, been a custom that grew up as a result of historical circumstances. When some of the original women's re-ligious communities were founded, there was a com-paratively small number of the members that were well educated. There has, of course, always been a local, regional, and general council to assist and advise the superior; but in actual practice the superior has gen-erally led an overburdened existence, weighed down by the responsibility of major decisions. Since the founding of the early communities, the pic-ture has changed dramatically. The rank and file sisters are no longer uneducated followers. Vatican Council II has told us that the Holy Spirit breathes up ~rom below, that is, He speaks and points out the way through the person of each and every member of the community. In the summer of 1967, the 48 Maryknoll Sisters working in Korea, considering the problems of the past, the directions of the future, and the urgings of Vatican Council II (that "all members of the community have a share in the welfare of the whole community and a responsibility for it"--~om the Decree on Ap-propriate Renewal o[ Religious Life, n. 14), began to draw up a new plan for regional government. This plan was to provide for sharing more broadly the burdens of responsibility, participation of every member in the decision-making and planning of community affairs, and to foster in each member a mature spirit of initiative and involvement. The experiment is at present under way with three elected members now jointly sharing the responsibilities that had previously belonged to the regional superior. 4, 4, Siste~ Patricia Norton is missioned at the Maryknoll Hospital; P.O. Box 77; Pusan, Korea. VOLUME 28, 1969 907 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOU$ (Note: The work of the Maryknoll Sisters in Korea is designated as a regional unit.) No one of these is superior to the others in authority or responsibility. Each one is responsible in the area that has been allotted to her: Personnel, Administration-finance, and Planning-research respectively. These three sisters are known as the Regional Team. Although each one has her area of responsibility, she does not bear this burden alone. Each of these team members has a corresponding committee of 4 regular members and one alternate member. Each committee meets once a month and the results of these meetings constitute the agenda for the meeting of the Regional Team (the three team leaders). The Regional Team also aims at meeting monthly as high priority has been placed on the value of close and frequent communications. It is felt that real participation of each and every mem-ber of the region is dependent on the thoroughness of these communications. In addition to the monthly meetings of both team and committees, good communications are fostered by availa-bility of the minutes of the Regional Team, of each of the three committees, and the publication of the agenda before each meeting. With the publishing of the agenda, each sister is invited to respond with her ideas, sugges-tions, objections, and so forth to any item on the agenda. This is one technique to insure participation by every individual. Furthermore, all those sisters who are neither mem-bers of the team nor of one of the committees become members of an interest area. The latter means that the sister has indicated her interest in one of the areas, follows the activities of that committee in par-ticular, and is ready at any time to fully participate. The Maryknoll Sisters are divided among six houses in Korea. In the event that one of these houses does not have a particular committee member, one of the in-terest area members acts as contact person for that house. Planning for this experiment began in early Fall of 1967. It was formally inaugurated at a regionwide work-shop in October of that year. Since that time it has undergone several evaluations resulting in both minor and major changes. What so far have been the advantages and disad-vantages in regard to this experiment? Some of the disadvantages: ---outsiders who have contacts with the Maryknoll Sisters do not understand it; --it is expensive (train travel and postage) and time consuming; ---it deprives the other sisters of that leisure they used to have while the superior did all the work. Some of the advantages: --it takes the heavy, burden from the shoulders of one person and spreads it" out over the shoulders of all; --it provides for the utilization of the ideas, inspira-tions, and talents of each person rather than just two or three; --it provides for decisions to be made at the level at which they are carried out; --it helps to uncover and develop leadership qualities in a wider spectrum O[ persons; ---it allows for a more truly Christian li[e [or each sister as a completely participating person, con-scious of her own role of responsibility for the success or failure of Maryknoll works in Korea; ---it cuts down dissatisfaction and provides a channel for rectifying any dissatis[actions that may occur. The comment was made by one observer: "It deprives the religious of that necessary sacrifice involved in obedience to a superior." Those who have been living ¯ this experiment would strongly differ. Obedience is not a vanished thing. It is merely the focus that has changed. Decisions are made through group-to-group or individ-ual- to-group dialogue and the individual remains open and ready to obey the results of this dialogue. It is now two years since the initial idea for this type of government was discussed. Since that time there have been many pros and cons, many wrinkles to be ironed out. It has been said by informed sources that such an arrangement Without ultimate responsibility resting in one person can never be a success. The Maryknoll Sisters are willing to concede that this may be true. But they are not willing to concede without an earnest trial. ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 28, 1969 9O9 WILLIAM A. HINNEBUSCH, O.P. Origins and Development oJ Religious Orders William A. Hin-nebusch, O.P., teaches ecclesiastical history at the Do-minican House of Studies; 487 Michi-gan Avenue, Waahington, D.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 910 An# attentive study of the origins and history of reli-gious orders reveals that there are two primary currents in religious life--contemplative and apostolic. Vatican II gave clear expression to this fact when it called on the members of every community to "combine contem-plation with apostolic love." It went on to say: "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). The orders1 founded before the 16th century, with the possible exception of the military orders, recognized clearly the contemplative element in their lives. Many of them, however, gave minimum recognition to the apos-tolic element, if we use the word "apostolic" in its pres-ent- day meaning, but not if we understand it as they did. In their thinking, the religious life was the Apos-tolic life. It reproduced and perpetuated the way of living learned by the Apostles from Christ and taught by them to the primitive Church of Jerusalem. Since it was lived by the "Twelve," the Apostolic life included preaching and the other works of the ministry. The pas-sage describing the choice of the seven deacons in the Acts of the Apostles clearly delineates the double ele-ment in the Apostolic life and underlines the contem-plative spirit of the Apostles. The deacons were to wait on tables; the Apostles were to be free to devote them-selves "to prayer and the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:~4~). ¯ This is the text of an address given to the annual meeting of United States major superiors of men religious held in June, 1968, at Mundelein, Illinois. x I use the words, "order," "monasticism," and their derivatives in a wide sense to include all forms of the religious life. In its strict sense "monasticism" applies only to the monks and does not extend to the friars and the clerks regular. There were, however, exceptions to the general rule that monks did not engage in the ministry. An Eastern current of monasticism, influenced by John Chrysostom, viewed missionary work as a legitimate activity of the monk; and, as we shall see, many Western monks shared this conviction. Nevertheless, missionary activity did not become an integral part of monasticism. Even after most monks became priests, they considered their vocation to lie within the monastery where they could contemplate and dedicate themselves to the service of God. Since the clergy did not embrace the religious life, with the ex-ception of those of Eusebius of Vercelli and Augustine of Hippo, the ministerial element remained generally absent from the religious life until the development of the canons regular. In itself the life of the monks was exclusively contemplative. "Tradition assigns no other end to the life of a monk than to 'seek God' or 'to live for God alone,' an ideal that can be attained only by life of penance and .prayer. The first and fundamental manifestation of such a vocation is a real separation from the world." Yet in the thinking of the monks and of the friars, who integrated apostolic activity into the religious life, their prayer, contemplation, and example were mighty forces working for the upbuilding of the Body of Christ. Foundation o[ Monasticism Though other Scriptural elements contributed to the origin of monasticism, the concept of the Apostolic life was the decisive force. This truth has been demon-strated by historians who have been studying this point for over half a century; it has recently been dis-cussed scripturally by Heinz Schiirmann, professor of New Testament exegesis at Erfurt. The historians show how the life of the Apostles and the primitive Christians influenced the origins and growth of monasticism; Schiirmann makes clear that the constitutive elements of the religious life were taught to and demanded of the Apostles by Christ. Religious life is rooted in the key Biblical texts that record the calling and formation of the Apostles. These passages determine the character of the Apostolic office and the relationship of the Apostles to Jesus. They are to be with Him, listen to Him, and follow Him. His call is rigorous and imperious. He demands commitment without reserve. Negatively, this requires a complete break with one's previous life: family, wife, home, and oc-cupation; positively, it establishes the Apostles in a state of total availability. Abandoning their possessions, their means of livelihood and, like the lily and raven, trusting completely in divine providence, they follow Christ, + ÷ ÷ Religious Orders VOLUME 28, 1969 9]] W. A. Hinnebusch, 0~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 912 putting themselves in a student-teacher, servant-master relationship to Him. All .the features of their new life with Him are already conveyed in brief in Mark's ac-count of their call: And going up a mountain, he called to him men of his own choosing, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them forth to preach (3:13-5). In this text, too, we find the first s~atement of the contemplative and apostolic elements that reappear in the religious life. They are "to be with him." Here is the contemplative element. They are "with him," devoting themselves to the "one thing necessary"--listening to His word. Yet in hearing and learning .they are made ready so "that he might send them forth to preach." As Schiirmann summarizes it: First they hear and learn, then they teach and act: "Preaching isonly one part of their life and its follows from the other." The Apostles enter irrevocably into a community of life with Jesus. They share His life and destiny: eat with Him, walk the dusty roads with Him, serve the people with Him, undergo His trials, conflicts, persecu-tions. They must be ready to hate and even to lose their lives for His sake. He wants total obedience, one based on their "faith in Him who calls and proposes the word of God in an entirely unique fashion. Their following of Christ becomes understandable only as a permanent state of profession of faith., fit] opens up a new pos-sibility of existence, a new manner of being-in-the-world, a new 'state' of life." Though the Apostles take no vows, their life is that of the three counsels. Christ imposes no greater moral de-mands on them than on all the other believers, but they alone live this close community life with Him. Not all who declare for Christ are chosen by Him to follow Him in this intimate, permanent way. Obviously Mary, Martha, and Lazarus do not. Others asked to be ad-mitted into the group of disciples but were not accepted. Mark (5:18-19) describes one case: As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been afflicted by the devil began to entreat him that he might re-main with him. And he did not allow him, but said to him, "Go home to thy relatives, and tell them all that the Lord has done for thee, and how he has had mercy on thee." (See also Mt 11:28, Mk 3:35, Lk 12:8-9, 10:38-42, 9:61-2.) Being with Christ constantly, hearing His word, com-pletely obedient to His wishes, separated from family, home, and occupation, the Apostles enter a new form of existence that signifies. The prime purpose of their spe-cialized following is to declare themselves openly for Him, so that all might come to believe in Him. In a strikingly visible way their intimate following pro-claims to the Jewish world that the one thing necessary is to hear the word of Christ and to keep it. Their visi-ble, stable following becomes a sign to the world. Only after they have made this permanent commitment are they sent out to preach and to act. At every step in monastic history, whether in its ori-gins, renewals, or creation of new forms, the Apostolic life taught by Christ to the Twelve, and by them to the primitive Christian community of Jerusalem, was the leading and most powerful influence. The Gospel texts and those in the Acts of the Apostles that describe the primitive community were decisive in creating the con-cept of monasticism and in fashioning its life and usages. In the Jerusalem community we find fraternal unanim-ity, common ownership of possessions, fidelity to the teachings of Christ, common public prayer, intense pri-vate prayer. The following passages embody all these features: Now the multitude of the believers were of one heart and soul, and not one of them said anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common (Acts 4:32). And they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and in the communion of the breaking of bread and in the prayers. And all who believed were together and held all things in common. And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread in. their houses, they took their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and being in favor with all people (Acts 2:42-7; see also 1:14, 3:1, 6:4,34; Mt 10:gff). The ministry of the word, evangelical preaching of salvation, was c~irried out by the Apostles (Mk 6:6-13; Acts 6:4), a mission that entailed indefatigable journey-ing (Mt 10:7if; Mk 6:6-13; Acts 6:4). Only the pre-dominately lay character of early monasticism delayed the full realization of the ministerial mendicant orders. For centuries monks examined and lovingly scruti-nized the texts. The power that they exercised over monastic founders is illustrated by the passage where Athanasius describes the origin of Antony's vocation in his Life of Antony: As he was walking along on his way to Church, he col-lected his thoughts and reflected how the Apostles left every-thing and followed the Savior; also how the people in Acts sold what they had and laid it at the feet of the Apostles for distribution among the needy; and what great hope is laid up in Heaven for such as these. With these thoughts in his mind he entered the church. And it so happened that the Gospel was being read at that moment and he heard the passage in which the Lord says to the rich man: "If thou wilt be perfect, ¯ go sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor; and come, follow me and thou shalt have treasures in heaven," 4- 4- Religious Orders VOLUME 28~ 1969 W. A. Hinnebusch, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS As though God had been speaking directly to him, An-tony left the church, sold what he had, gave it to the poor, and went into the desert. During subsequent centuries the Scriptures lost none of their influence over monasticism. The Apostolic texts led to much more than the abandonment of riches and fleeing the world; they provided a complete program of life in community. Explaining the origins of monasti-cism about 1122 A.D., Abbot William of Saint-Thierry shows how the meditation of hundreds of years had sys-tematized the Scriptural influence: We come to this spiritual sbciety of which the Apostle Paul spoke to the Philippians (2:1-5; 3:17) in praise of the regular discipline and of the sublime joy of brothers living together in unanimity. To do justice to this discipline it is necessary to return to its beginning in the time of the Apostles, since it was the Apostles themselves who instituted it as their own way of life, according to the teaching of the Lord. Unless it was the grace of the Holy Spirit which gave them power from above to live together in such a way that all would have but one heart and one soul, so that everything would be held in common, and all would be continually in the temple in a spirit of harmony. Animated by a great !ove for this form of life instituted by the Apostles, certain men wished no longer to have any other house or any other lodging than the hbuse of God, the house of prayer. All that they did they did according to a common program, under a common rule. In the name of the Lord they lived together, possessing nothing of their own, not even their bodily strength, nor were they even masters of their own will. They lay down to sleep at the same time, they rose up together, they prayed, they sang Psalms, they studied together. They showed the fixed and changeless will of being obedient to their superiors and of being entirely submissive to them. They kept their needs to a minimum and lived with very little; they had poor clothes, a mean diet, and limited everything according to a very precise rule. Influence o[ Cassian Soon after Antony went into the desert, the influence of the Scriptures on monastic origins was enhanced by a misconception of Eusebius and Jerome, who mistakenly believed that the Apostolic life of the primitive Jerusa-lem community was followed in Alexandria, Rome, and other centers. Writing a century later, Cassian developed this misconception and found in it th~ explanation of the rise of monasticism: The conversion of the Gentiles forced an abandonment of the Apostolic way by the ma-jority of Christians, even by the clergy. More zealous souls refused to give it up and founded communities to perpetuate it. This theory was very fruitful in its effects when it was coupled with the example of Antony and Pachomius, the founder of the cenobitic life, who were inspired by the Scriptures alone. This fusion constituted a powerful op- erative force in the development of monasticism for many centuries. Scarcely any monastic 'author was read so continuously as Cassian. As late as the thirteenth cen-tury, St. Dominic was reading his Conferences. Con-stantly read and reread, Cassian's books [ashioned the medieval--and our ownnmonastic life. The Holy Spirit at Work in the Church The truth underlying Cassian's error is the almost simultaneous appearance of the religious life everywhere that the Church took root. The origin of the monastic life was a spontaneous manifestation of the Holy Spirit impelling Christians to live the life of the counsels taught by Jesus. Antony was merely the first to emerge, thanks to Athanasius, from the anonymity that conceals the virgins, celibates, and ascetics who preceded him. The impetus of the Spirit is seen particularly in the early acceptance of the virginal life by both men and women as a prime means of following the Master. From the end of the first century there are references to ascetics who lived continently "in honor of the flesh of Christ." After the third century virgins were looked upon as "the most illustrious portion of the flock of Christ" and were considered the spouses of Christ. Perfect continence, to-gether with voluntary poverty and austerity of life, was a constitutive element of the ascetical life that began to develop in the second century. Though these ascetics lived in their homes, sometimes holy women, widows, and virgins formed small communities that were marked by considerable personal freedom. The general reverence of the Church for chastity when Antony became a hermit about 300 A.D. accounts in large measure for the immediate wide diffusion of the eremitic and cenobitic forms of monasticism throughout the Christian world. The dynamic power of the Holy Spirit has been con-stantly operative during the history of the religious life. Here again there is a link with the early community of Jerusalem. These Christians, as we find their record in Acts, were very conscious of the action of the Spirit in their lives and apostolic works. Theirs was a life lived in the ~lan of the Spirit, as Vicaire remarks. ImmediateIy after describing the primitive community, the Acts of the Apostles goes on to say: "And great grace was upon them all" (4:33). This grace made itself visible even by miracles: "And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles" (2:43). When William of Saint-Thierry, whom I quoted a few pages back, described monastic origins, he manifested the awareness the monks had that the charismatic power of the Spirit was at work among them. In William's think-ing it was the "grace of the Holy Spirit which gave [the ÷ ÷ 4. Religious Orders VOLUME 28, 1969 W. A o Hinnebusch~ O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Apostles] power from above to live together in such a way that all would have but one heart and one soul, so that everything would be held in common . '~ Cen-turies before, Gregory the Great, writing his Dialogues within fifty years of the death of Benedict, described the great patriarch of Western monasticism as the ideal "man of God," the spiritual father who was entirely under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The attention paid to the miracles worked by the founders and great figtires of monastic history is not merely a thoughtless emphasis on the secondary but was motivated by. the belief that the true monk, living in community, possesses an extraordinary grace for radiat-ing sanctity and contributing to the upbuilding of the B6dy of Christ. He can even receive from the Spirit the power of working miracles. The present-day interest in the charismatic character of the religious life and the charismatic founders is a legitimate, more explicit, recognition of the power of the Spirit working through all the years of monastic history. His role in the religious life deserves more attention and should awaken in us a great hope in the future of the religious life. Antony the Hermit Monasticism entered the pages of history close to the year 300 A.D. when Antony, the great hermit, gave away his possessions and retired to the Egyptian desert. The holiness and ordered discipline of his life, characterized by solitary contemplation and a severe but lofty and well-balanced asceticism soon brought other hermits to him for direction. Great colonies of solitaries arose under Antony's direction, especially at Pispir, where he lived, and at Nitria and Scete. These disciples lived alone like their master. Antony found so many imitators because of his moral greatness at a time of growing wickedness in the contemporary world. When Constantine ended the per-secutions and began to favor Christianity, the consequent lowering of the moral level of Christian life stimulated the development of a powerful ascetical movement, in-spired by the Gospels, on the ~ringes of the populated world. Antony became the model of the movement, especially after the appearance of his Life, written by Athanasius in 357 A.D., a year after Antony died. Gre-gory of Nazianzen called it "a rule of monastic life in the form of a narrative." Athanasius, who had known Antony personally and had seen him often, considered "the life of Antony an ideal pattern of the ascetical life." He intended to hold up Antony as the exemplar of the consecrated life and induce his readers to imitate what they saw. The work enjoyed a~tonishing success and was shortly translated into various languages. Antony, earnestly desiring to die the death of a martyr, went to Alexandria in 311 A.D., when the persecution of Maximin Daja broke out, to minister to the confessors in the mines and prisons, not thinking it justified to turn himself over to the authorities. When his hopes were dis-appointed, Antony returned to his desert cell where "he was a daily martyr to his conscience, ever fighting the battles of the faith. For he practiced a zealous and more intense ascetic life." With this short passage Athanasius enriched monasticism at its very birth with a positive view of asceticism and the renunciations involved in the life of the counsels. Antony's life in the desert was a substitute martyrdom and the monk the successor to the . martyr, a concept that remains alive to this day. Pachomius the Cenobite The weakness of the ei:emitical life lay in the minimal opportunity for practicing charity. Pachomius remedied this defect when he formed a genuine fellowship based on the communal charity inherent in Christianity. He composed the first monastic Rule, in it establishing the economic and spiritual bases for the common life and providing for community government. A younger con-temporary of Antony, Pachomius first served an appren-ticeship under the hermit Palaemon. Then about the year 320 A.D. he established a monastery at Tabennisi on the right bank of the Nile. Other monasteries soon followed, so that when he died, nine for men and two for women were under his guidance. These foundations were large settlements of monks who were organized into smaller groups according to the kind of agricultural work they did or the crafts they practiced. They lived a disciplined life, practiced individual poverty and de-tachment in essential matters, supported themselves by remunerative work, gathered for prayers morning and evening, and observed the three counsels, though they took no vows. Numerous biographies testify to the esteem in which Pachomius was held and the extent of his in- ~uence. Basil the Great The eremitical and cenobitic types of monasticism spread quickly both in East and West. Basil the Great, who benefited from the experience of the previous half century bf monastic experience, became the lawgiver of Eastern monasticism when he wrote his Longer R

Issue 23.6 of the Review for Religious, 1964. ; Communications Media by Vatican Council II 689 Religious Life by Paul VI 698 Matthew, Chapter 19 by Lucien Legrand, M.E.P. 705 Chastity and Psychosexual Developmen.t by Richard P. Vaughan, S.J. 715 Psychosexual Development in Religious Life by Richard A. McCormick, S.J. 724 Means of Aggiornamento by Brother Philip Harris, O.S.F. 742 Sacraments--Consecrations and Dedications by Clarence R. McAuliffe, S.J. 750 Reflections of a Student-Brother by David A. Fleming, S.M. 761 The Art of Smal! Talk by Sister Rose Alice, S.S.J. 766 Religious Poverty by Paul J. Bernadicou, S.J. 770 Survey of Roman Documents 779 Views, News, Previews 785 Questions and Answers 788 Book Reviews 796 Indices for 1964 811 VOLUIHE 23 Nu~m~.R 6 November 1964 VATICAN COUNCIL II Decree on Communications Media PAUL BISHOP THE SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD TOGETHER WITH THE FATHERS OF THE COUNCIL FOR A PERPETUAL RECORD OF THE MATTER 1. Among* the remarkable discoveries of technology which human intelligence especially in modern times has been able to make with the help of God, the Church gives a special welcome and importance to those which are principally concerned with men's minds and which have opened up new ways of easily communicating every kind of news, ideas, and principles. Outstanding among these discoveries are those media (such as the press, movies, radio, television, and the like) which of their nature are able to reach and influence not only individuals but also the masses and the whole of society. For this reason these media can rightfully be called the means of social com-munication. 2. The Church recognizes that these media, if they are rightly used, can be of the greatest service to the hu-man race since they contribute greatly to human recrea-tion and formation and to the spread and strengthening of the kingdom of God. But she also realizes that men can use these media in a way which is contrary to the plan of the Creator and can turn them to their own loss. More-over, she experiences a mother's sorrow at the harm which * The official Latin text of this decree (which begins with the words Inter rairilica) is given in dcta dpostolicae Sedis, v. 56 (1964), pp. 145-57. Paragraph enumeration in the translation is taken from the original text. Vatican Council I1 VOLUME 23, 1964 689 ÷ Vatican Cour~il !1 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS has too often resulted for human society from the wrong use of these media. Therefore, this Council, continuing the watchful care given by popes and bishops to this important matter, judges that it is its duty to deal with the principal ques-tions connected with the media of social communication. It trusts, moreover, that the teaching and directives it proposes will contribute not only to the salvation of the faithful but also to the progress of the entire human community. CHAPTER I 3. Since the Catholic Church was instituted by Christ our Lord to bring salvation to all men and is therefore under an urgent obligation to preach the gospel, she considers it to be a part of her duty to proclaim the good news of salvation by means of these media of social communications and to instruct men about their proper use. The Church, therefore, has a natural right to use and possess every type of these media insofar as they are necessary or useful for Christian education and for the work of saving souls; and it is the duty of the bishops to so train and direct the faithful that by the help of these media they may attain their own salvation and per-fection as well as that of the entire human family. On the other hand, it is the special concern of the laity to imbue these media with that humane and Chris-tian spirit which will make them fully correspond to the high expectations of the human race and to the divine plan. 4. For the right use of these media, it is absolutel~ necessary that those who use them should know the norms of the moral law and should conscientiously apply them to this area of activity. Accordingly, they should consider the matter which is communicated according to the special nature of each medium. Moreover, they must take into account all the conditions and circumstances of the purposes, persons, places, times, and so forth under which communication takes place and which can influence or' even change its morality. Among these elements there is to be included the special way in which each of thesel media works, since this is a force which can be so great that human beings, especially if they are unprepared, can' find it difficult to notice; control, and, if necessary, re-j( ct it. 5. Abbve all, however, it is necessary that all con~ cerned in the matter should form a correct conscien~ with regard'to the use of these media and especially with respect to dertain questions that are keenly discussed in our time. The first of these questions is concerned with what is termed "information"--the gathering and dissemina-tion of news. It is certainly clear that this has become a very useful and for the most part a necessary activity because of the progress of human society and the greater closeness of its members. The speedy and public com-munication of events and ,happenings provides each individual with a fuller and steady knowledge of these matters; in this way all men can contribute effectively to the common good and can assist in the further progress of civil society. Therefore, in human society there is a right to information about matters which, each in its own way, concern individual men or society. The cor-rect exercise of this right, however, requires that what is communicated should always be true and, within the bounds of justice and love, complete. Besides, the way in which it is communicated must be proper and decent; in other words, both in the gathering and divul-gation of news, moral law !and the legitimate rights and dignity of man must bei respected: not all knowl-edge is profitable and "charity builds up character" (1 Cor 8:1). 6. The second question is concerned with the rela-tionship between what are termed the rights of art and the norms of the moral law. ~Since the growing contro-versies in this matter not infrequently originate from false notions about ethics and esth~etics, the Council decrees that all must hold in an absolute way the primacy of the objective moral law which of itself surpasses and properly coordinates all other levels of human affairs, whatever their dignity and including the level of art. Only the moral order attains to man in his entire nature as a ra-tional creature of God called to a supernatural goal; and only it, if it be completely and faithfully observed, leads man to the full possession of perfection and hap-piness. 7. Finally, the narration, description, or representation of evil by means of the media of social communication can genuinely contribute to a profounder knowledge of man; and by means of appropriate dramatic contrast, it can serve to manifest and exalt the greatness of truth and goodness. Nevertheless, in order to prevent harm rather than profit coming from this, the moral law must be obeyed especially in the case of matters which require a reverent treatment or which can easily arouse evil desires in man wounded as he is by original sin. 8. Since at the present time public opinion wields the greatest influence and power on the private and public life of all classes of society, it is necessary that all members of society should fulfill their obligations of justice and love in this area; accordingly, they should + + + Communications Media VOLUME 2;1, 1964 69! Vatican Council I1 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 692 t strive to form and spread correct public opinion by means of these communications media. 9. Special obligations bind all the readers, viewers, and listeners who by their personal and free choice re-ceive the communications made by these media. Correct choice demands that they give their full support to those presentations which are distinguished for their moral, intellectual, and artistic content; moreover, they should avoid those presentations which might be for them a cause or an occasion of spiritual harm or which can lead others into danger through bad example or which hinder good presentations and promote bad ones. This last frequently happens when payment is made to those who employ communications media only for financial returns. To carry out the moral law, those who receive these communications have a duty not to omit finding out in due time the judgments that have been made by those competent in the area; likewise, they must not negle.ct to follow these judgments in accord with the norms of a correct conscience. And in order that they may more easily resist less correct inducements and give their full support to what is good, they should take care to guide and form their consciences by suitable means. 10. Those who receive these communications--espe-cially young people--should take care that they accustom themselves to moderation and self-control in the use of these media. Moreover, they should endeavor to gain a thorough knowledge of what .they see, hear, and read; they should discuss these matters with their teachers and with those expert in the particular field and thus learn to pass a correct judgment on them. Parents should be mindful of their duty to take watchful care that shows, publications, and so forth that are opposed to faith and morality do not enter the home and do not reach their children elsewhere. 11. The principal moral responsibility with regard to the right use of the media of social communication falls on journalists, writers, actors, s~enarists, producers, ex-hibitors, distributors, operators, sellers, critics, and all others who play any part in making and presenting these communications. It is evident and clear that in the, present condition of mankind all of these have serious: responsibilities since they can shape and form men and thereby lead them either to good or to evil. It is the duty of these persons, then, to take care of the financial, political, and artistic aspects of communication without opposing the common good. For the easier achievement of this, it will be worthwhile for them tO join professional associations which enjoin (if necessary~ by means of an accepted code of morality) on their mere+ bers respect for the moral law in the activities and tasks of their craft. Moreover, they should always remember that a great part of their readers and audiences is composed of young people who need writing and entertainment which offers them decent recreation and draws their minds to the higher things of culture. They should also take care that communications in the area of religion should be entrusted to competent and experienced persons and that they should be carried out with due respect. 12. Civil authority has special obligations in this matter by reason of the common good to which these media are ordered. In accord with its role, civil authority has the duty to defend and safeguard that due and just freedom of information which, especially in the case of the press, is a reaI necessity for the progress of today's society; it is likewise its duty to foster religion, culture, and the fine arts; and it should safeguard those who re-ceive the communications so that they can freely enjoy their legitimate rights. Moreover, it is the duty of civil authority to aid those projects which could not otherwise be undertaken even though they ar~ highly beneficial, especially to young people. Finally, this same public authority, since it is legiti-mately concerned with the welfare of its citizens, is bound by the obligation to pass and enforce laws whereby due and vigilant care is taken that serious harm does not come to public morals and to the progress of society by the bad use of these communications media. This watch-ful care in no way restricts the freedom of individuals and of groups, especially if there is a lack o[ adequate precaution on the part of those who are professionals in the field of these communications media. Special care should be taken to safeguard young people from printed matter and performances which may be harmful at their age. CHAPTER II 13. All the members of the Church should make a strenuous, common effort to take immediate steps to put the media of social communications into effective use in the multiple works of the apostolate as circumstances of place and time allow. They should anticipate harmful projects, especially in those regions where moral and religious progress requires a greater amount of zeal. Hence bishops should be quick to carry out their duties in this area which is so closely connected with their ordinary work of preaching. Likewise, the laity who are engaged in the use of these media should concern them-selves with witnessing to Christ, first of all by performing their duties competently and in an apostolic spirit, and 4" 4" 4- Communications Media VOLUME 23, 1964 693 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 69,t then by directly assisting the pastoral activity of the Church to the best of their technical, economic, cultural, and artistic abilities. 14. First of all, a good press should be fostered. To fully imbue readers with a Christian spirit, a truly Catholic press should be begun and promoted. This press--fostered and directed either directly by ecclesiasti-cal authority or by Catholic laymen--should be pub-lished with the manifest purpose of shaping, strengthen-ing, and fostering public opinion that is in harmony with natural law and with Catholic doctrine; it should also publicize and correctly explain events which pertain to the life of the Church. The faithful should be reminded of the need to read and spread the Catholic press in order that a Christian judgment on all events may be formed. Effective encouragement and support should be given to the production and showing of films that genuinely contribute to proper recreation and to culture and art, especially when they are destined for young people. This will be especially achieved by assisting and joining enterprises and projects for the making and distributing of good films, by commending worthwhile films through critical approval and through awards, and by fostering and consociating theatres of Catholics and other men of principle. Similar effective support should be extended to good radio and television programs, especially those that are suitable for the family. Catholic programs should be earnestly fostered, for in them the listeners and viewers are led to participate in the life of the Church and hre imbued with religious truths. Where necessary, care should be taken to inaugurate Catholic stations; but pro-vision must be made that their programs are outstanding by reason of their excellence and effectiveness. Moreover, measures should be taken that the noble and ancient art of the stage, which is now seen everywhere by means of the media of social communication, should tend to the cultural and moral improvement of its audiences. 15. To provide for the needs just enumerated, proper training should be given to priests, religious, and laymen who have the necessary abilities to adapt these media to apostolic purposes. In particular, laymen should be given an artistic, doc-trinal, and moral training. Hence, there should be an increase in schools, departments, and institutes where journalists, writers for films, radio, and television, and other such persons can secure a complete formation im-bued with the Christian spirit especially with regard to the social doctrine of the Church. Actors are also to be trained and educated so that by their art they may contribute to society. Finally, great care must be taken to prepare literary, film, radio, television, and other critics who will be highly skilled in their own fields as well as equipped with the training and inspiration to give judgments in which morality is shown in its proper light. 16. Since the media of social communication involve the participation of audiences of different ages and backgrounds, the proper use of these media requires the proper education and training of these audiences. Ac-cordingly, in Catholic schools of whatever level, in semi-naries, and in apostolic lay groups, support should be given to projects geared to achieve this purpose, especially if they are destined for young people. Such projects should be increased in number and should be directed according to the principles of Christian morality. To facilitate this, Catholic teaching and directives in this matter should be set forth and explained in catechism classes. 17. It is entirely unfitting that the Church's children should permit the word of salvation to be bound and impeded by the technical delays and expenses--great as they are--that are characteristic of these media. Hence, this Council reminds the faithful of their obligation to support and aid Catholic newspapers, magazines, film projects, and radio and television stations, the purpose of all of which is to spread and defend truth and to provide for the Christian instruction of human society. At the same time, this Council invites groups and individuals possessing great influence in financial and technical mat-ters to use their resources and experience to freely give generous support to these media insofar as they contribute to genuine culture and to the apostolate. 18. In order that the multiform apostolate of the Church with regard to communications media be effec-tively strengthened, in every diocese of the world ac-cording to the judgment of the bishops, there should be an annual day during which the faithful are instructed about their duties in this matter, are invited to pray for this cause, and are asked to make an offering to be conscientiously used for the support and development of the projects and undertakings which the Church has begun in this area in accord with the needs of the Catholic world. 19. In the carrying out of his supreme pastoral charge with regard to communications media, the supreme pontiff has available a special section of the Holy See.1 t Moreover, the fathers of the Council, gladly acceding to the re-quest of the Secretariat for the Supervision of Press and Entertain-ment, respectfully request the supreme pontiff to extend the re-sponsibility and competency of this section to all the media of Communications Media ¯ VOLUME 23, 1964 695 CouFnadtilc aI1n REVIEW,FORRELIG[OUS 696~ 20. It will be the responsibility of the bishops to watch over this kind of projects and undertakings in their own dioceses; they should promote such projects and, as far as the public apostolate is concerned, they should regulate them including those under the direction of exempt religious. 21. Since an effective national apostolate requires unity in planning and in resources, this Council de-crees and orders that national offices for press, film, radio, and television be everywhere established and promoted by every means. The special work of these offices will be to take measures that the conscience of the faithful be correctly formed with regard to the use of these media and to foster and direct whatever is done by Catholics in this area. In each country the direction of these offices is to be entrusted to a special committee of bishops or to a single delegated bishop; moreover, laymen who are ex-perts in Catholic doctrine and in these media should have a role in these offices. 22. Moreover, since the effectiveness of these media reaches beyond national boundaries and affects almost every member of the entire human race, the national of-rices begun in this area should cooperate among them-selves on an international level. The offices mentioned in number 21 should work effectively with their corre-sponding international Catholic associations. These in-ternational Catholic associations are legitimately ap-proved only by the Holy See and depend on it. CONCLUSIONS 23. In order that all the principles and norms of this Council with regard to communications media be put into effect, the Council expressly orders that a pas-toral instruction be issued by the section of the Holy See mentioned in number 19 with the help of experts of various countries. 24. Moreover, this Council is confident that its state-ment of directives and norms will be gladly accepted and conscientiously followed by all the members of the Church who accordingly in their use of these media will suffer no harm but, like salt and light, will savor the earth and enlighten the world. Moreover, the Council invites all men of good will, especially those who have charge of these media, to endeavor to use these media only for the good of human society, the fate of which more and more depends on the right use of such media. In this way, as was the case with ancient works of art, so also communication including the press and to include in its membership experts, including laymen, from 'various countries. through these new discoveries the name of the Lord will be glorified according to the saying of the Apostle: "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today, and the same for-ever" (Heb 13:8). Each and every one of the matters set Iorth ~n this Decree were decided by the lathers o[ the Council. And We, by the apostolic power given Us by ChriJt, together with the venerable fathers, approve in the Holy Spirit, decree, enact, and order to be promulgated what has been decided in this Synod [or the glory o[ God. Given at Rome in St. Peter's on December 4, 1963. 4. 4. 4. Communications Media VOLUME 2.~ 1964 697 PAUL VI Allocution on Religious Life ÷ ÷ Paul VI REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Beloved sons: With* great joy and no small hope We look upon you who are the chosen and authoritative group of venerable and illustrious religious families; it is a matter of de-light to Us to give you Our warmest greetings and to express to you the high opinion We have of you as well as Our gratitude to you. You have come to Rome to hold the general chapters of your respective institutes; although this is a matter that primarily affects your order or congregation, still it also has repercussions on the life of the Church, which derives a great part of her vigor, apostolic zeal, and ardor for holiness from the flourishing condition of re-ligious life. Moreover, you have come to Us not only as devoted and loving sons to offer your homage to the Vicar of Christ but also to request the apostolic blessing on your-selves, your institutes, and the affairs of your chapters from which you rightly trust there will come salutary results such that the religious life will be led more in-tensely and more ardently. Although We would have gladly met each of your groups separately and would have addressed each of them in accord with its own characteristics and needs, still We have chosen to receive all of you at the same ¯ On May 23, 1964, Paul VI gave an allocution to the superiors general and the capitulars general of various religious orders and con-gregations of men. The text of the allocution (entitled Magno gaudio) is given in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, v. 56 (1964), pp. 565-71. Except for the opening and closing paragraphs (which were translated by a staff member of the REWEW), the translation is by the Very Reverend Godfrey Poage, C.P.; Director, Pontifical Office for Religious Voca-tions; Piazza Pio XII, 3; Rome, Italy. The translation first appeared in the Newsletter of the Pontifical Office for Religious Vocations, n. 13 (September, 1964). time. This We have done in order to give greater weight to this speech made to you in common; We did this all the more readily since on this occasion We wish to set forth matters which pertain to all religious of the entire world. First of all, We wish to note the great importance of religious institutes and assert that their work is wholly necessary for the Church in these days. Admittedly, the doctrine of the universal vocation of all the faithful to holiness of life (regardless of their position or social situ-ation) has been advanced very much in modern times. This is as it should be, for it is based on the fact that all the faithful are consecrated to God by their baptism. Moreover, the very necessities of the times demand that the fervor of Christian life should inflame souls and radi-ate in the world itself. In other words, the needs of the times demand a consecration of the world; and this task pertains preeminently to the laity. All these developments are unfolding under the counsel of Divine Providence, and that is why We rejoice over such salutary undertak-ings. But for this very reason we must be on our guard lest the true notion of religious life, as it has traditionally flourished in the Church, should become obscured. We must beware lest our youth, becoming confused while thinking about their choice of a state of life, should be thereby hindered in some way from having a clear and distinct vision of the special function and immutable importance of the religious state within the Church. Accordingly, it has seemed good to Us to recall now the priceless importance and necessary function of religious life. For this stable way of life, which receives its proper character from profession of the evangelical vows, is a perfect way of living according to the example and teach-ing of Jesus Christ. It is a state of life which keeps in view the constant growth of charity and its eventual fulfill-ment; and it is to be preferred before any other kind of life, before temporal duties, lawful in themselves, no mat-ter how useful they may be. Right now it is of supreme importance for the Church to bear witness socially and publicly. Such witness is pro-claimed by the way of life in religious institutes. And the more it is stressed that the laity must live and propa-gate the Christian life in the world, so much the more must they be given the shining example of those who have in truth renounced the world and have clearly shown that "the kingdom of Christ is not of this world." 1 Thus the profession of the evangelical vows is a super-addition to that consecration which is proper to bap-tism. It is indeed a special consecration which perfects See Jn 18:~6. 4" 4. 4- Religious Li~e VOLUME" 23, 1964 699 Paul REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the former one, inasmuch as by it the follower of Christ totally commits and dedicates himself to God, thereby making his entire life a service to God alone. Now all this leads to another point, which We wish to stress with paternal solicitude. The vows of religion must be held in the highest esteem and the greatest importance must be placed on their function and practice. Only in this manner will religious be able to lead a life that is becoming and in harmony with the state they have em-braced--- a state they have freely chosen; only in this way will their state of life efficaciously help them progress toward the perfection of charity; and only in this way will the faithful see in them an example of the perfect Chris-tian life and be inspired to follow it. Although living conditions have greatly changed in recent years and the practice of the religious life has neces-sarily been modified, nevertheless the evangelical counsels have not changed and of their very nature retain their full force and cannot in any way be weakened. Accordingly, religious should cultivate obedience with the greatest diligence. This is and must remain a holo-caust of one's own will which is offered to God. A re-ligious makes this sacrifice of self by humble submission to lawful superiors, whose authority, of course, should always be exercised within the limits of charity and with due respect for the dignity of the human person, even though nowadays religious have to undertake many more burdensome offices and carry out their duties more quickly and more willingly. There must also be inculcated a love of poverty, about which there is a great deal of discussion in the Church today. Religious must surp~iss all others by their example of true evangelical poverty. Therefore, they must love that poverty to which they have spontaneously committed themselves. It is not enough for religious to depend merely on the superior's decision with regard to their use of material things. Let religious of their own will be content with the things that are needed for properly ful-filling their way of life, shunning those little extras and luxuries which weaken the religious life. Then besides the poverty proper to the individual religious we must not neglect the corporate poverty which should distin-guish the institute or the whole body of religious. Thus they should avoid excessive ornamentation in their build-ings and elaborate functions, as well as anything else that savors of luxury, always bearing in mind the social con-dition of the people among whom they live. Let them also refrain from excessive concern in gathering funds, but give their attention rather to using what temporal goods Divine Providence will provide for the assistance of their needy brethren, who may live in their own country or in other parts of the world. Finally, religious must preserve chastity as a treasured gem. Everybody knows that in the present condition of human society the practice of perfect chastity is made difficult not only by a depraved moral atmosphere but also by a false teaching which poisons souls by overem-phasis on nature. An awareness of these facts should impel religious to stir up their faith more energetically--that same faith by which we believe the declarations of Christ when He proclaims the supernatural value of chastity that is sought for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. It is this same faith which assures us beyond doubt that, with the help of divine grace, we can preserve unsullied the flower of chastity. To attain this end there should be a more diligent practice of Christian mortification and of custody of the senses. Never under the specious pretext of acquiring wider knowledge or a broader culture should religious read unbecoming books or papers or attend in-decent shows. An exception might perhaps be made if there is a proven need for such studies, but the reasons alleged must be carefully examined by religious superiors. In a world subject to so many impure suggestions the value of the sacred ministry depends in great measure upon the light of chastity which radiates from one conse-crated to God and strong with His strength. It is quite evident that the proper way of living re-ligious life requires discipline. There must be laws and suitable conditions for observing them. Therefore, the principal task of the general chapter is, as time goes on, to keep intact those norms of the religious family which were set up by its founder and lawgiver. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the capitulars to check firmly all those modes of conduct which gradually devitalize the strength of religious discipline; namely, practices which are dangerous to religious life, unnecessary dispensations, and privileges not properly approved. They must likewise gtiard against any relaxation of discipline which is urged not by true necessity but by arrogance of spirit or aversion to obedience or love of worldly things. Moreover, with respect to undertaking new projects or activities they must refrain from taking on those which do not entirely correspond to the principal work of the institute or to the mind of the founder. For religious institutes will flourish and prosper so long as the integral spirit of their founder continues to inspire their rule of life and apostolic works, as well as the actions and lives of their members. Religious commnnities, inasmuch as they resemble liv-ing bodies, rightly desire to experience continual growth. However, this growth of the institute must be based firmly on the more diligent observance of the rules rather ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Li~e VOLUME 23, 1964 701 ÷ Paul ~EVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS than on the number of members or the making of new laws. Multiplicity of laws is not always accompanied by progress in religious life. It often happens that the more rules there are, the less people pay attention to them. Therefore, let the general chapters always use their right to make laws moderately and prudently. The most important work of the general chapter is the studied accommodation of the rules of the institute to the changed conditions of the times. This, however, must be done in such a way that the proper nature and discipline of the institute are kept intact. Every religious family has its proper function, and it must remain faithful to this role. The fruitfulness of the institute's life is based on this fidelity to its specific purpose, and in this manner an abundance of heavenly graces will never be lacking. Therefore, no renovation of discipline is to be introduced which is incompatible with the nature of the order or congregation and which, in any way, departs from the mind of the founder. Moreover, this renovation of dis-cipline demands that it proceed only from competent authority. Accordingly, until this accommodation of dis-cipline is duly processed and brought into juridic effect, let the religious members not introduce anything new on their own initiative, nor relax the restraints of discipline, nor give way to censorious criticism. Let them act in such a way that they might rather help and more promptly effect this work of renewal by their fidelity and obedience. If the desired renovation takes place in this way, then the letter of the rule will have changed, but the spirit will have remained the same. In bringing about this renewal of religious institutes, the primary concern of the capitulars must always be the spiritual life of the members. Wherefore, to all religious whose duty it is to devote themselves to works of the sacred ministry, We state that We are entirely opposed to anyone espousing that false opinion which claims that primary concern must be given to external works and only secondary attention devoted to the interior life of perfection, as though this were demanded by the spirit of the times anal the needs of the Church. Zealous activity and the cultivation of one's interior life should not bring any harm to each other; indeed, they require the closest union, in order that both may ever proceed with equal pace and progress. Therefore, let zeal for prayer, the beauty of a pure conscience, patience in adversity, active and vibrant charity devoted to the salva-tion of souls, increase in union with fervent works. When these virtues are neglected, not only will apostolic labor lack vigor and fruitfulness, but the spirit also will grad-ually lose fervor. As a consequence, the religious will not be able to avoid for long the dangers which lie hidden in the very performance of the sacred ministry. With respect to that portion of the apostolate which is entrusted to the care of religious, We wish to make some further observations. Religious institutes should sedulously adapt the work proper to their apostolates to modern conditions and circumstances. The younger re-ligious particularly are to be instructed and educated properly in this matter, but in such a way that the apos-tolic zeal with which they are inflamed does not remain circumscribed exclusively by the boundaries of their own group, but rather opens outwardly toward the great spiritual necessities of our times. Nor is this enough. For while being educated along the lines We have indi-cated, they should also cultivate an exquisite sensitivity to their duties by force of which, both in words and deeds, they will constantly show themselves as true ministers of God, distinguished by soundness of doctrine and recom-mended to the people by holiness of life. However, in these matters let not the religious be left solely to their own initiative, since their work must always be subject to the vigilance of superiors, especially if it is a matter of work that has notable relevance to civil life. It is of the greatest concern to Us that the work of the members of religious institutes should go along harmoni-ously with the norms established by the sacred hierarchy. As a matter of fact, the exemption of religious orders is in no conflict whatsoever with the divinely given constitu-tion of the Church, by force of which every priest, par-ticularly in the performance of the sacred ministry, must obey the sacred hierarchy. For the members of these re-ligious institutes are at all times and in all places subject principally to the Roman Pontiff, as to their highest superior.~ For this reason the religious institutes are at the service of the Roman Pontiff in those works which pertain to the welfare of the universal Church. With regard to the exercise of the sacred apostolate in various dioceses religious are under the jurisdiction of bishops, to whom they are bound to give assistance, al-ways without prejudice to the nature of their proper apostolate and the things that are necessary for their re-ligious life. From all this it is quite evident how much the allied and auxiliary ministry of the religious given to the diocesan clergy conduces to the good of the Church, when their united forces result in more vigorous and more effective action. From these brief observations you now know what We consider most important for the growth of religious life in our times. May all these remarks show you with what ~ C. 499, § 1. ÷ ÷ ÷ Religiom Liye VOLUME 23, 19(~4 703 solicitude We view and esteem religious life and what great hope We put in your helpful work. The road which We have pointed out tO you is certainly difficult and ardu-ous. But lift up your souls in hope, for the cause is not ours but that of Jesus Christ. Christ is our strength, our hope, our power. He will be with us always. Continue to diffuse the good odor of Christ as widely as possible by the in-tegrity of your faith, by the holiness of your lithe, by your great zeal for all the virtues. Meanwhile, as We thank you for your obedience, We pray God through the interces-sion of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, the fos-tering mother of religious virtues, that religious institutes may continue to grow daily and bear ever richer and more salutary fruits. A pledge of these truths will be Our apostolic blessing which We bestow in all charity on each of you, beloved sons, and on all your colleagues. Paul ¥1 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~04 LUCIEN LEGRAND, M.E.P. Matthew, Chapter. 9, and the Three Vows In Matthew 19 and in Mark 10:1-31, we find in suc-cession the three pericopes on divorce, on the little children, and on the rich young man. They would perfectly illustrate a talk on the three religious vows. In Matthew, the first section ends in a call to virginity (Mt 19:11 f.); the second one extols the spirit of humility and of spiritual childhood which corresponds to the vow of obedience; the third part deals with poverty. Would this application correspond to the thought of the evange-lists? If so, what light would it cast on the value and the significance of the three vows of perfection? Matthew 19 and the Kingdom It is clear that originally the three sections must have circulated independently in the early Christian com-munities. Their grouping belongs to the later stage of the redaction of the written Gospels. The evangelists blocked these three passages together because they found in them a common theme. Now, in the text of Mark, it is difficult to trace any common idea that would con-nect the three sections. Vincent Taylor sees some kind of topical arrangement: "After a story about marriage, it seemed fitting to record an incident regarding chil-dren." 1 Then the episode of the rich man is linked up with the previous two on account of the "Evangelist's interest in the Kingdom and in teaching abbut sacrifice and renunciation." 2 In point of fact, both suggestions are questionable. Taylor must have spoken with his tongue in his cheek when suggesting that the topic of the children follows logically that of marriage; this is better a joke than an argument, for the standpoint under which children are considered has nothing to do with 1 Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1955), p. 422. ~ Taylor, St. Mark, p. 422. ÷ ÷ ÷ Lucien Legrand, M.E.P., is professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Peter's Semi-nary; Banga!ore 12, India. VOLUME 23, 1964 7.05 ÷ Lucien Legrand, M.E.P . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS marriage: they are not mentioned as offspring but as an example of a psychological and spiritual attitude. And as regards the observation that the three pericopes in Mark 10:1-31 are connected by a common interest in the theme of the kingdom, it should be noticed that, though this theme is actually referred to in the second (Mk 10:14 f.) and in the third section (10:23-25), it does not appear in the first part which, in Mark, deals with the question of marriage and divorce, a problem of ethics pertaining to the present world rather than to the king-dom. One has to turn to Matthew to verify entirely the suggestion of Taylor. It is in Matthew rather than in Mark that the three stories are connected by a common interest in the theme of the kingdom (Mt 19:12, 14~ 23 f.). Incidentally, this strengthens the case for a priority of Matthew in this section: the redaction of Matthew explains the present grouping of the pericopes; that of Mark cannot be explained as it stands: the text of Mark represents one more case of summary which in fact was largely a mutilation.~ Anyway, it is in the redaction of Matthew that the theological line is more clearly brought out. In Matthew, the grouping of the three pericopes was obviously deliberate: the evangelist focused his chapter neatly on the theme of the kingdom and the three pronouncement stories illustrate three ways of living "in view of the kingdom." For Matthew, celibacy, spiritual childhood, and poverty point to the kingdom. But in which sense exactly? How are these three attitudes related to the kingdom? To answer this question, we have now to consider the three pericopes separately; and since they happen to be ~ound in order of decreasing difficulty, we shall proceed back-wards from the third section to the first one; that is, from the clearest to the most enigmatic pronouncement. The Poor and the Kingdom The third part of Matthew 19 begins with the episode of the rich young man who comes to Jesus to ask Him how he can gain eternal life. Jesus first replies by simply 8 The case for a priority of Mt or at least of a proto-Mt has been ably argued by L. Vaganay, Le problOme synoptique (Paris-Tournai: Desclfie, 1954), pp. 51-85. Concerning the present passage, Vaganay shows that the saying on the eunuchs, though missing in both Mk and Lk, belonged to the source common to the three synoptics. Mk and Lk knew it but omitted it for stylistic reasons on account of its strong Se~nitic flavor that would have been unpalatable to Hellenistic audiences (p. 167; see pp. 211, 216). A more elaborate examination of the text may be found in our study on The Biblical Doctrine o] Virginity (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), pp. 38-40. recalling the main points of the Torah: "If you wish to enter life, observe the commandments" (v. 17). Then, upon a further question of the man, Jesus opens new prospects: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you possess." (v. 21). Beyond the ordinary walk of life, there is the possibility of becoming "perfect,'.' of joining the special, group of those who follow Jesus more closely. As it is narrated in Matthew, the episode implies the existence of two categories of disciples: the mass of those who do the essential by fulfilling the Law and the elite of the teleioi, the "perfect" who practice total renuncia-tion. Now, when the other two synoptic Gospels are com-pared with Matthew (Mk 10:17-22; Lk 18:18-23), they show a few slight verbal differences which eventually alter the meaning of the episode appreciably. First they do not speak of the "perfect": according to them, the man is not invited to join a particular group distinct from the others. Secondly, in the beginning of Jesus' reply, they do not have the words: "If you want to have eternal life, ob-serve the commandments." Their text does not suggest that the observance of the Law can lead to eternal life. Indeed, Jesus says according to Mark (v. 21) and Luke (v. 22)--and these words are not to be found in Matthew --"one thing is still lacking" to obtain eternal life: it is total renunciation. The overall picture is therefore quite different in Matthew on the one hand and in the other two synopo tics on the other side. Matthew knows two kinds of disciples: the "perfect" and the others; both, in their own way, can eventually reach eternal life. Mark and Luke on the contrary know two stages through which any disciple must pass: the first stage, that of the obedi-ence to the Law, is rather negative; common with the Old Testament, it represents a necessary but insufficient requirement. Beyond that, the disciple has to reach a higher level, that of utter dispossession of self. This divergence of outlook is confirmed by another detail. In Mark and Luke, the man who comes to Jesus is already a man of a certain age: he can say that he has been following the Law "from his very youth" (Mk 10:20; Lk 18:21). Now, Jesus says, it is time for him to take a further step. In Matthew, on the contrary, (and only in Matthew) the rich man is a young man (v. 20): he is going to make a start in life and it is now, at the outset, that he has to make a choice between two possible states of life. It is clear that Matthew adapts the saying of Jesus to the concrete situation existing in the Chnrch when the + + + Matthew 19 VOLUME 23, 1964 707 4. 4. 4. Lu¢ien Legrand, M.E.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 7O8 Gospel was written. The text of Mark and Luke is more original. It represents a theme fairly common in the preaching of Jesus: the disciple must be ready to meet all the requirements of his calling (see Mt 10:37-9; 16:24 f. and par.). Matthew gave a particular slant to the idea. He read into the episode his theology on the ful-fillment of the Law, and mostly he brought into the words of Jesus an allusion to the Christian practice of the two states of life. Everybody cannot actually embrace absolute poverty. Private ownership is not unlawful. The ordinary Christians keep the use of their properties and, keeping it, can reach eternal life. It is only the teleioi, the perfect, who apply the words of the Master literally by giving up all their belongings. The word teleios is definitely secondary: it did not belong to the original saying of Jesus but to the organization of the early Church. Echoing either the vocabulary of the mystery cults4 or, perhaps more likely, the terminology of the Hebrew sects,5 it refers to the inner circle of those who have received total initiation and applies to "a life of perfection which may be freely chosen but is not necessary to ordinary Christian life . Thus does Mat-thew cut a distinction between an ordinary state and a state of perfection." 6 Absolute poverty is a requirement of this perfect life. The context that follows develops this point. It is very difficult (v. 23), indeed practically impossible (v. 24), for a rich man to enter the kingdom. By right the king-dom belongs to the poor (see 5:3), and it takes all the almighty power of God to bring a rich man to the atti-tude of spiritual poverty that will enable him to get access to the kingdom (v. 25). The ordinary Christian is still struggling to realize this utter dispossession of self that will bring him into the kingdom. The teleios is he who has already done it. Like the Apostles following Jesus, the perfect hav~ given up everything (v. 27); they ha;ce already entered the kingdom. Poverty is the way of the perfect, the sign that, for some, the kingdom is al-ready a thing of the present. The teleios is no longer fighting to squeeze through the needle's eye: he is an inmate of the kingdom. 4 In general, in the mystery cults, those who are initiated to the mysteries are not called teleioi but teletai or tetelesmenoi. Yet Pythagoras divided his disciples into ndpioi (children) and teleioi. See C. Spicq, L'Epftre aux Hdbreux (Paris: Gabalda, 1953), v. 2, p. 218. ~ See B. Rigaux, "R~vfilation des myst~res et perfection h Qumran et dans le Nouveau Testament," New Testament Studies, v. 4 (1957- 1958), pp. 237-48. n Rigaux, "R(~vfilation des myst~res," p. 248. See also J. Dupont, " 'Soyez parfaits' (Mt. v, 48) 'Soyez misfiricordieux' (Lc. vi, 36)," Sacra pagina (Gembloux: Duculot, 1959), v. 2, p. 153. The Children and the Kingdom The special interest of Jesus towards the children ap-pears several times in the Gospels (Mr 18:1-7 and par.; 18:10; 19:13-5 and par.; 11:25 and par.). This interest is not merely sentimental. The text under study gives the reason of Jesus' predilection towards them: "The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Mr 19:14). Like the poor man, the child is a type: he finds himself spontaneously ready to accept the kingdom. As such, he is an example of what a disciple should be. What is the reason for this? What are the qualities which childhood embodies and which give it a prece-dence in the kingdom? In modern piety the child stands as a symbol of purity yet unsullied by knowledge of evil, or as a promise in its full bloom yet unaffected by the compromises of daily existence. Is it this that Jesus saw in children? It does not seem so. When Jesus sets a child in the midst of the apostles, it is not as a model of purity or of innocence but as a model of humility. Mark (10:15) and Luke (18:17) hint at the point in their parallel passages: one must receive the kingdom with the simplicity of a child. Matthew makes the point still clearer in the previ-ous chapter where he sketches a full doctrine of spiritual childhood. In Matthew 18, the disciples quarrel about their respective rank. To solve the dispute, Jesus pro-poses the example of a child, stressing his humility: "Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven" (v. 4). To have access to the kingdom, the disciple has to humble himself like a child. Indeed, one's rank in the kingdom is determined by his similarity with the child. The hierarchy of the kingdom is a reversed one for it is based on tapein6sis, on lowliness: "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Mr 23:12). The humility of a child is the standard according to which real greatness in the kingdom is to be measured. The child is a typical citizen of the kingdom because he is a tapeinos, a lowly and mean thing, not respected and often maltreated and hustled about by the elders.7 The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these because they represent perfectly the meek to whom the new world goes by right of inheritance (Mr 5:5), the oppressed, the downtrodden who already in the Old Testament made 1This point of view may not be verified in the West where romanticism has made of childhood and of youth positive values which are made much of. It may even go to the extreme of the child being idolized and made into a tyrant. This attitude towards childhood is the consequence of the rehabilitation of childhood done by Christ and the Church. But it is not the spontaneous reaction of man towards children. Outside the West, the child will be loved + + + Matthew 19 VOLUME 23, 1964 709 Luden Legrand, ¯ M.E.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS up the community of the anawim, the group of the poor whom God chose to be His faithful remnant,s In Matthew 20:26 and following and its parallels, the type of the "servant" is presented in the same terms. The "servant" also is the greatest of all: in the theology of the Gospels, child and servant are practically synony-mous. As the child, the servant embodies the attitude of the "poor in spirit," of the lowly and the humble. Whereas "the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them" (v. 25), the disciples of Christ must not take such domi-neering airs. Their hierarchy is a hierachy of service. Those who serve best are the highest; and on the top of it stands He who rendered the greatest service to men by giving His life for them (v. 28): Jesus Himself was a servant (Lk 22:27) who did not come'to do His own will but the will of the Father (Mr 26:42 and par.). The dis-ciple must take the same attitude. Because the kingdoms of the world are based on pride and oppression, the kingdom of God must be based on obedience to God and service to men. This was already manifested during the temptation of Jesus in the desert when the new King, meeting the prince of this world, refused to begin His conquering career by an act of disobedience to God. In His baptism also, He appeared as the Servant of the Lord (Mt 3:17-Is 42:1). From that time onwards, obedience and humble subservience to God have become signs of ap-purtenance to the kingdom. It is because this sign appears almost naturally in the children that they can be con-sidered as the perfect image of the true citizen of the kingdom. Obedience turns man into a child and a servant oi~ God: it shows that.one is really a member of the king-dom which was once inaugurated by the act of perfect obedience of the Servant humbling Himself unto death and the death of the cross (see Phil 2:8). Celibacy and the Kingdom If the pericopes on poverty and childhood correspond to .well-known themes of the Gospel, the same cannot be said of the saying on the eunuchs (Mt 19:12) which concludes in Matthew the discussion on divorce at the beginning of chapter 19. We are dealing here with a hapax of thought; and it does 'not make things easier that this lonely saying, expressed in a puzzling manner, is recorded by Matthew only. Who are those voluntary "eunuchs"? The traditional answer is that Jesus means here consecrated celibacy. and petted but not considered as representing-a positive value. Concerning Jesus' outlook on childhood, see W. Grundmann, "Die Ndpioi in der urchristlichen ParanSse," New Testament Studies, v. 5,(1958-1959), pp. 201-5. 8 See A. Gelin, Les pauvres de Yahv~ (Paris: Cerf, 1953), pp. 30-52. Though this interpretation has been recently challenged with a backing of refined scholarship by exegetes of great authority? we think that it remains valid. For the audience of Jesus, the saying could not but refer to Jesus' celibate life; it might even have alluded to an insulting term used by His enemies. For the early Chris-tian readers of the Gospel, the application followed im-mediately to their problems concerning virgins and widows (see 1 Cot 7:8-9). This interpretation also corre-sponds better to the context of Matthew: the attitude of the Christian celibates who remain like eunuchs in view of the kingdom explains the hard requirements of Chris-tian matrimony (vv. 3-10). The best way to understand Jesus' exacting statements is to consider the conduct of some of the disciples who give up marriage altogether. This utmost renouncement shows what is expected from all the disciples. If all are not called to abstain from wedlock, all must have the same basic attitude towards the flesh: inner freedom and readiness to accept the sacrifice required by the Kingdom?° But another problem follows. Why should Jesus advise the disciple to live like a eunuch in view of the kingdom? What is exactly the meaning of this "in view of" (dia in Greek)? What has celibacy to do with the kingdom? Usually commentators find two possible explanations for the phrase "in view of the kingdom of heaven." it They paraphrase it either "in order the better to work for the kingdom of God" or "to enter the kingdom more ~ For J. Blinzler, "'Eisin eunouchoi: Zur Auslegung von Mt 19:12," ZeitschriIt ]fir die neutestamentliche Wissenschalt, v. 48 (1957), pp. 254-270, the logion had no real connection originally with the con-text it has in Mt: it did not belong to a discussion on marriage but to a controversy on Jesus' celibate life. Jesus was criticized £or being unmarried and called eunuch by His adversaries. Borrowing the in-suiting term used by His opponents, Jesus explains the reason o£ His state o~ life. Thus understood, the logion would be an apology rather than an invitation to celibacy. This interpretation loses much of its support i[, as we think, the logion on the eunuchs does origi-nally belong to the context o~ a discussion on marriage. Moreover, even i[ the original meaning o£ the saying would have been such as Blinzler suggests, it would remain that Mt put it in its present context and the problem remains of the meaning the logion took at the level o[ the redaction o[ the Gospel. According to J. Dupont, Mariage et divorce dans l'P.vangile (Bruges: Abbaye de St Andrfi, 1959), the saying reIers to the problem oI the husbands who had to live away from their wives. Their situa-tion can be compared to that o[ the eunuchs; yet they have to ac-cept it "in view o£ the Kingdom." This interpretation misses the reference to Jesus' own celibacy and does not explain the logion in its original form. :*J. Dupont, Mariage et divorce, p. 172, summarizing the inter-pretation o1: T. Zahn, Das Evangellum des Matthiius, pp. 592-5. n See M.-J. Lagrange, L'~vangile selon s. Matthieu (7th ed., Paris: Gabalda, 1948), p. 371. For a survey of the opinions, see J. Dupont, Mariage et divorce, p. 210. ÷ ÷ ÷ Matthew 19 VOLUME 23, 1964 711 4, 4, ÷ Lucien Legrand, M .E.P . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS easily." The first interpretation does not correspond to the context which says nothing about apostolic activities. The second explanation does correspond to a general line of thought of the Gospels which insist on the neces-sity of giving up everything for the sake of the king-dom (Mr 5:29 f.; 13:44-46). Yet it should be noticed that, at least in Matthew and Mark, "a wife" does not appear in the list of the family affections and possessions one must be ready to forgo to have access to eternal life (Mt 19:29; Mk 10:29).12 There is no trace of catharism in the Gospels: marriage is not an obstacle but a sacred institu-tion established by God Himself and sharing in the goodness of the creation (Mt 19:4-fi). The comparison with the two pericopes that follow suggests another explanation of the phrase "in view of the kingdom." Poverty and spiritual conditions are not extrinsic conditions laid on those who want to enter the kingdom. It is not even accurate to say that they facili-tate access to the kingdom. They are rather the attitudes of those who are already inside: "The kingdom belongs [in the present] to Such as these." They manifest the kingdom in its inner nature. They show it forth as a kingdom of humility and obedience to God, as an eschatological kingdom differing radically from the king-doms of the world based on wealth and might. They are the marks of the new life breaking into the world. The poor and those who are like children testify by their very life that the last times have come and that the eschatological transformation wrought by the Spirit is presently initiated. The voluntary "eunuchs" give the same testimony. Dedicated single life is not a condition to gain access to the kingdom; it is a mark of heavenly citizenship. Through it, those "to whom it has been given" share already in the life of resurrection when "they shall neither marry nor be married but will be like the angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30). The virgins are the full grown citizens of the kingdom. They constitute the retinue of the Lamb, following Him wherever He goes (Apoc 14:4). Such is the meaning of being a eunuch "in view of the kingdom." It means preserving virginity because virginity is a feature of the life in the kingdom. A proper paraphrase would be "in order to be in har-mony with the life of the kingdom." la The Christian celibate has embraced this state of life to anticipate the conditions that will prevail in the kingdom. ~ Lk has added the wife to the list to make up for his omission of the logion on the eunuchs. Following a law of harmonization of the synoptic.s, often verified in the textual criticism of the Gospels, a number of manuscripts have added also "the wife" to the text of Mt and Mk; the Vulgate has added it in Mt but not in Mk. ~8 See Legrand, The Biblical Doctrine o[ Virginity, p. 44. Synthesis: Matthew 19 and the Three Vows of Perfec-tion It would be anachronistic to contend that, when. writ-ing his chapter 19, the evangelist had in view the three vows of perfection and the present pattern of religious life. Yet it can be said that Matthew 19 is the charter of religious life based on the three vows, for it was the in-tention of the evangelist to describe the main aspects of perfect discipleship which the religious institution tries to realize concretely. Matthew 19 describes a state of life proper to those "who want to be perfect." This corresponds to the life of the early Church and already to the situation of the pre-paschal community which Jesus had gathered round Him since, among His followers, there was already an inner core of a few disciples who had a more intimate contact with the Master, a closer association with the main events of His career, and a deeper initiation into the mysteries which He revealed. This "state of perfection" is described in Matthew 19 in reference to the kingdom, that is to say to the eschato-logical renovation promised by the prophets and fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah. It may be remarked that, in Matthew, the nineteenth chapter with its three sec-tions constitutes the introduction ("the narrative sec-tion") to the fifth "livret" of the Gospel, devoted to a description of the imminent coming of the kingdom, a part that will culminate in the eschatological discourse.14 In view of this, the three sections of the chapter could be adequately characterized as the three eschatological attitudes that portend the advent of the kingdom, an-nounce its coming, and realize it proleptically to a large extent. The "perfect" are those in whom eschatology is realized. In the present age, they show forth the condi-tions that will prevail in the age to come. They bear witness to the new principle of life which animates the regenerated world. Virginity shows that the new kingdom does not expand any longer by the fecun-dity of the flesh but by faith and the power of the Spirit. Childhood signifies that the power which is at work in the new order of things is not man's but God's might and the only way to share in it and benefit by its effects consists in humble acceptance of God's will. The poor are those who have sold everything to purchase the precious pearl of the kingdom (see Mt 13:45 f.): they scorn the riches of the world because they have inherited all the wealth of heaven. UAccording to the plan adopted by P. Benoit in the Jerusalem Bible (L'l~vangile selon saint Matthieu [Paris: Cerf, 1953]). Benoit follows L. Vaganay, Le probl~rne synoptique, pp. 57-61. ÷ ÷ ÷ Matthew 19 VOLUME 23, 1964 ,: 713' Therefore virginity is not solitude but fullness of agapd and unconditional gift of self. Poverty is not want but possession of the supreme treasures. Obedience is not servitude but service. In it, man's free will is not obliterated; it reaches its plenitude by being given the dimensions of God's will. Thus are the threevows the paradoxical but perfect picture of real love, richness, and liberty. They set the pattern of the iife to come and attract the world towards it. They do not cut man from the human condition; on the contrary, they represent the pole towards which man's life and even the whole cosmos converge in the new order of things inaugurated by the Resurrection of the Lord. + ÷. + Lu¢ien Legrand, M .E.P . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 714, RICHARD P. VAUGHAN, S.J. Chastity and Psychosexual Development Psychoanalysis, just as any other theoretical position, has its contributions and limitations. One of its contribu-tions is the theory of psychosexual development, which states that sexuality, like other human processes, follows a consistent pattern of growth. That part of the pattern which refers to mental aspects, such as feelings, emotions, desires, and attitudes, is called psychosexual. It is the contention of psychoanalytic theory that there are definite stages of development which each must experience if adult sexuality is to occur. Psychoanalysis offers a detailed description of each stage. Although authorities question some aspects of the sequence, most will concede that sex follows an evolving process.1 It is not something that suddenly becomes a part of one's experience, let us say at adolescence, as once was thought. It is rather a systematically developing thing, beginning from infancy. The ultimate sexuality of the adult is the outcome of many factors, both developmental and environmental. If these factors have been favorable, the result is a mature, well-balanced person; if unfavor-able, art immature, neurotic person. According to psycho-analytic thought, the ultimate goal of the developmental process is the ability to have satisfying heterosexual rela-tionships. For the religious the vow of chastity closes the door on any future heterosexual experiences. However, he still retains his sexuality. When applied to him, therefore, the analytic theory of psychosexual development poses some special questions. What is the ultimate goal of sexual growth for the religious? Does the vow block the attaining 1 Robert R. Sears, Survey oI Objective Studies oJ Psychoanalytic Concepts (New York: New Social Science Research Council, 1943), passim; and Roland Dalbiez, Psychoanalytical Method and the Doctrine o] Freud (New York: Longmans, Green, 1941), v. 2, pp. 163- 85. Father Richard P. Vaughan, s.J., is professor of psy-chology at the University of San Francisco; San Francisco, Califor-nia 94118. VOLUME 23, 1964 ÷ ÷ R. P. Vaughan, 8.I. REVIEW. FOR RELIGIOUS 716 of the final goal? Are there other possible ultimate goals? What effect does maladjustment at one or other develop-mental stage have upon the practice of chastity? Exaggerated Dualism Much of Christian spirituality has been based upon an exaggerated dualism which overstresses the spiritual to the detriment of the corporeal.2 Man is looked upon as a dichotomized being, composed of body and soul, the ani-mal and the human, the higher nature constantly at work subduing the lower nature. Sex, when viewed in this frame of reference, ceases to be an integral part of the total functioning man. It becomes an isolated process which is essentially animal. It becomes a semi-independent entity with its own energy system and mode of operation. As such, it is often at odds with the higher nature, whose chief function is to control unruly animal impulses. Such a view of sexuality is negative and likens the vow of chas-tity to an additional strong-armed guard who is ever on the alert for the slightest manifestation of sexual stirrings. When Sigmund Freud first introduced his psychoana-lytic theory to a predominantly Christian world, he met with immediate opposition. One of the reasons for this reaction may well have been the prevalent exaggerated dualism of his time. What Freud had done was invert the order of nature. In effect, he had allowed the so-called lower nfiture to take over and relegated the higher nature to an insignificant role. The sexual part of man became all important; the rational, unimportant.3 Actually, such an interpretation is far removed from the true mind of Freud inasmuch as his concept of man was not dualistic. Freud did not accept the Christian notion of body and soul, rational and animal. He saw man as a single, inte-grated, functioning biological unit. It may be true, as many think, that he overplayed the importance of the sex instinct; but he did not regard sex as an isolated process in any way independent of the total operating personality. Unfortunately, Freud used the dualistic terminology of his time, thus creating a wrong impression. However, if one examines his writings more deeply, he soon discovers that Freud went beyond the dualistic view and considered sexuality as an integral part of the total functioning per-son. 4 An exaggerated dualism which glorifies the spiritual to the detriment of the corporeal seriously hinders any -" Louis Bouyer, Introduction to Spirituality, trans. Mary Perkins Ryan (New York: Descl~e, 1961), pp. 143-62. nSigmund Freud, "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex," Basic Writings oI Sigmund Freud (New York: Modern Library, 1938). ~ Adrian van Kaam, "Sex and Existence," Insight, v. 2, n. 3, p. 5. rapprochement between analytic theory and the Chris-tian concept of perpetual chastity. It is only when sex is considered as a manifestation of the whole person that some of the clinically proven findings of psychoanalysis can help us better understand the meaning of perpetual chastity and the difficulty that it presents to some religious. Sexuality, a Human Function Sexuality in man is not an animal function; it is a human function. It is a manifestation of the whole person. A man can express himself by reasoning to the existence of an infinite God, by creating an original painting, or by engaging in the sex act. All these acts are human. They flow from the same principle whereby that man exists and functions. It is the man who reasons, who paints, and who engages in the sex act. It is not his intellect, his artistic ability, or his sex instinct. Sexuality is intimately con-nected with every aspect of our being. It exerts an in-fluence on our other modes of functioning, such as our thinking or creating; these other functions, in turn, exert an influence on sexuality. A distorted sexuality will, therefore, exert a distorted influence and vice versa. It is precisely at this point that the analytic theory of psycho-sexual development has a contribution to make to the better understanding of Christian chastity. Psychosexual Stages Let us briefly consider the progressive stages of psycho-sexual development as proposed by the contemporary psychoanalytic school. Before beginning, there are two preliminary notions that should be mentioned. First of all, the term "sex" is used in a wide sense. It includes not only the reaction of the reproductive organs and related feelings and emotions but also what we might generally consider the purely sensuous. When viewed in this latter sense, a limited amount of sexual experience in early childhood seems more reasonable. Secondly, no stage is clearly distinct from the next; there is overlapping and merging. During the first year and half of life, the mouth, lips, and tongue are the chief organs of satisfaction. Inasmuch as almost all the other human functions are greatly limited, it should not be surprising that the infant finds such actions as sucking or biting gratifying. This is na-ture's way of guaranteeing the great strides in physio-logical and psychological growth that must be achieved during infancy. Growth depends upon the consumption of food. It should also be noted that this is a time of life when the totality of all one's concern centers on self. There is no such thing as "otherness" in an infant's love; he loves himself totally and completely. Everything out-÷ ÷ ÷ Chastity VOLUME 23, 1964 717 ÷ ÷ ÷ R. P. Vaughan, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 718 side of himself exists to keep him well fed and comfort-able. Sex at this stage obviously refers to the sensuous experience that comes from sucking, feeling full, warm, and dry. These experiences, however, have some relation-ship to what is generally considered sexual in the more biological sense of the word inasmuch as they involve a certain sensuous pleasure that is preliminary to biological sexuality. Any distortion in growth during this period leaves the individual, in varying degrees, with an inability to realize "otherness" in his love and the confining of love to self. Successful transition through this first stage estab-lishes feelings of security and trust in others, the foun.da-tion for the close relationship of love that should typify the married state. The second stage (the most controversial) covers the next year and a half of life.5 During this period the child must learn to control the processes of bodily elimination. Up to this time he has experienced a certain pleasure in letting the process follow its natural course. Now he is forced to forego this pleasure at the wish of an all-impor-tant parent who buys conformity at the price of love and approval. The result is a struggle within the child who wants both parental love and unhampered elimination. For a time he wavers between conformity and non-con-formity; he often becomes negative, restraining the elimi-nation as long as possible. Toilet training involves the first great demand to control impulse. How this training is accomplished will influence future self-control. If it is handled in a harsh, threatening, punishing manner, a spirit of rebellion and obstinacy is apt to result and per-sist in later life. If the training is accomplished in a re-laxed, understanding, yet firm manner, the child will have a good foundation on which to build the needed control of his future sexual impulses. The important aspect of this stage is the interpersonal relationship be-tween mother and childmthe child's struggle with con-forming or nonconforming in response to the mother's giving or witholding love and approval. According to analytic theory, malformation at this stage can influence later interpersonal relationships--the giving or with-holding of love in dealing with. others. Toward'the close of the third year, the child becomes aware of sex in the physiological sense and directs his attention toward his sex organs. In the process of so doing, he derives a pleasure which analytic thinking looks upon as truly sexual. Here, as in the first stage, there is no "otherness" in his action. He is prompted by pure self-gratification. Sexuality is directed toward the self. According to psychdanalytic thought, it is also during this ~ Dalbiez, Psychoanalytical Method, p. 167. stage that the sexuality of the young child becomes tempo-rarily attached to the parent of the opposite sex. In the normal course of development, the attachment is aban-doned and the child identifies with the parent of his own sex. The boy begins to imitate his father and assume mas-culine patterns of behavior; the girl, to imitate her mother and assume feminine patterns of behavior. If the identifi-cation fails to take place and the boy remains too closely attached to the mother and her feminine interests, the seeds of homosexuality and a neurotic condition may be planted. This period is followed by a time when sexuality plays a relatively minor role. During this stage the child is concerned with the learning of academic and social skills peculiar to the elementary grades. With the advent of adolescence, sexuality becomes very much in evidence once again. Now, however, it begins to be directed toward others. The boy becomes aware of the girl as a girl; the girl, of the boy as a boy. The path during this stage is often rocky. In his frustration, the adolescent may revert to solitary gratification which gives him the illusion that his troubles are forgotten and his tensions released. Moreover, it sometimes happens that he becomes attached to one of his own sex before finally settling on the opposite sex. This latter inclination accounts for the so-called adolescent crush or even some overt homosexu-ality. Maladjustment during this stage can.result in later compulsive masturbation and homosexual tendencies. Heterosexual Orientation The ultimate aim of psychosexual growth is hetero-sexual orientation. In this final stage, the individual is drawn to the full satisfaction of sexual intercourse. His sexual inclinations become definitely attracted to those of the opposite sex. This does not mean, however, that the individual must actually experience the satisfaction of sexual intercourse but simply that his sexual inclina-tions are attracted to such a satisfaction. Since sexuality is an expression of the total self, he may choose to express himself in another way and still be a mature person. The individual who fails to attain this final stage experiences no desire for sexual intercourse. This state is sometimes mistaken for virtue; in reality, it is a form of immaturity. The religious is a person who has given himself entirely to God. His dedication excludesheterosexual experience. Yet if he is a mature person, he appreciates the value of his sex powers. He is fully aware of his attraction to the opposite sex but freely chooses not to give expression to this attraction so as to be able to express more fully his commitment to God. If he is psychologically healthy, he does not deny, distort, or repress his sexuality; he simply + + ÷ Chastity VOLUME 2~1 1964 4. 4. 4, R. P. Vaughan, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 720 chooses another goal, which demands the sacrifice of the fulfillment of his sexual possibilities. Commitme'nt and Sacrifice Every commitment calls for the expression of certain aspects of one's being and the abdication of others,e The dedicated physician is sometimes called upon to sacrifice his attachment to family life; the statesman in foreign service, his attachment to his homeland. In the case of religious, the commitment calls for the sacrifice of sexual experience so as to give one's whole attention to divine things. The vow of chastity implies a positive expression of the self. It does not mean a mere blocking or repressing of the sex powers but rather a fuller reaching out to God through the medium of the higher powers under the guidance of grace. To achieve this goal, abdication of sexuality is the cost. The deeper the commitment to God and His world, the easier should be the practice of the vow--providing immaturity in psychosexual development does not hinder the practice. Sexual Disorders Sex problems are" frequently the result of maladjust-ment at one or other psychosexual stage and the conse-quent failure to develop an integrated personality where all one's powers work together harmoniously. The reli-gious with a sex .problem to some extent still carries the unhealthy feelings and attitudes of infancy, childhood, or adolescence. If his difficulty is serious, chances are that malformation existed at each stage, one compounding the other. Since sexuality influences every other mode of ac-tion, the whole personality is distorted. The religious manifests a lack of harmony in his general functioning. It is for this reason that most psychiatrists hold out little hope of success for the person who announces that he has a masturbation or homosexuality problem and wants the psychiatrist to help him get over it. Psychiatry is not gear~ed to controlling will acts such as masturbation or homosexuality; it is, however, geared to the reconstruc-tion and development of a healthy personality. Its purpose is to promote over-all psychological growth which will allow the individual to utilize his powers and capacities in an ordered, effective manner. The approach is directed toward the development of the whole person. If psychi-atric treatment is to be successful, the religious must be willing to cooperate with this approach and not limit his efforts solely to the various ramifications of the sex prob-lem. van Kaam, "Sex and Existence," p. 6. Compulsive Masturbation Compulsive masturbation is a typical psychological dis-order which stems from a failure to.achieve sexual matu-rity. Fenichel states that masturbation is pathological un-der two circumstances: (1) when it is preferred by an adult to sexual intercourse; (2) when it is done with great frequency.7 Masturbation in the adult signifies an arrest in the normal evolution of the sex powers.8 Instead of turning the attraction out toward others, the individual with this psychological problem turns it in on himself. He reverts to an earlier level of psychosexual development. He fails to realize "otherness" in directing his love. During the turbulent years of adolescence, the insecure youth in his halting struggle to reach sexual maturity often regresses to the earlier developmental stage of self-gratification. Sometimes unaware of the full moral impli-cations (this is especially true in the case of girls), he devel-ops the habit of relieving sexual tension through the practice of masturbation. Frequently it is only after the maturing of sexuality that he is able to overcome the habit fully. A failure to achieve maturity results in a per-sistence of the habit even after adulthood has been reached. Before entering the novitiate, some young men and women are able to overcome the habit by the sheer force of will power, only to have it suddenly return a few years after profession. In many instances, these are reli-gious who never achieved a mature heterosexual orienta-tion. As far as their sexuality is concerned, they are still adolescents. While teen-agers, they felt uncertain and frightened when faced with the normal heterosexual con-tacts of young people such as attending dances and dating. Admission to the religious life closed the door once and for all on the possibility of such relationships. The vow of chastity, then, became a psychological defense instead of a free giving of self and a sacrificing of sexuality to attain a nobler goal. As a consequence, no effort was made to understand the "why" of their sexual feelings and to reorient them toward maturity. After some months or perhaps years in the religious life, they were eventually overpowered by their confused, immature sexual impulses and found themselves unable to cope with these .impulses. Compulsive masturbation is more apt to occur when there is a lack of satisfaction in one's life.9 Thtig thi~ frustrated religious, Who i~ unable to give :himself full~ to his c~lling, is more likely tofall into this' disorder. He may manifest a certain hostility over his in~tbiiity to socceed as 7Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory oI Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945), p. 76. s Marc Oraison, Man and Wile (London: Longmans, 1959), p. 86. ~ Fenichel, Psychoanalytic Theory, p. 76. + + + Chastity VOLUME 2,~, 1964 721 ÷ ÷ ÷ R. P. Vaughan, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS a religious and subsequently turn to masturbation as a means of gratification. Sometimes the act ceases to be a pleasurable thing and becomes an act of aggression turned in on the self out of hatred for the self. Since compulsive masturbation is a pathological symp-tom, the cure should be directed not toward the symptom but toward the reconstruction of the disordered person-ality. What is needed is the reordering of the total person. Rarely does it happen that compulsive masturbation is the only neurotic symptom. Homosexuality Homosexuality. is another pathological condition that in some instances appears to spring from distorted psycho-sexual development. During early adolescence, sexuality is somewhat adrift. It is only with full maturity that the individual becomes definitely heterosexually oriented. In the process of achieving this final goal, it is not unusual for the youth to become sexually attached to one of his own sex. Even in mature adulthood, a modicum of the attraction remains.10 In some, however, the homosexual attraction prevails, with the individual either having no attraction for the opposite sex or a nearly equal attraction for both sexes,n For centuries spiritual writers have been aware of the dangers of homosexual tendencies in the religious life. Much of the writing on the "particular friendship" gives every indication that such a relationship is a preliminary step to homosexuality. Since most retain, in varying degrees, some homosexual tendencies, it should not be surprising that spiritual authorities express con-cern. When sexual powers are deprived of their normal object, they tend to seek a second best. Lest too much emphasis be placed on this danger, there is a need to un-derstand clearly the difference between true friendship in the religious life and a "particular friendship"; other-wise charity, the essence of the Christian message, is apt to suffer. The homosexual is basically an immature person. His sexuality remains at the level of the adolescent. It can safely be said that in most instances he manifests a general immaturity, frequently accompanied by a degree of neu-roticism. His turning to his own sex and rejecting the opposite sex may result from a number of different fac-tors: (1) fear of the opposite sex; (2) early sexual experi-ences with a person of one's own sex, particularly an older person; (3) an overidentification with the parent of the opposite sex, "coupled with an unconscious hostility toward this same parent. While the causes of homosexual-lo Fenichel, Psychoanalytic Theory, p. 329. n Fenichel, Psychoanalytic Theory, pp. 328-3 I. ¯ ity are not clearly spelled out, there is sound evidence for some form of maladjustment in psychosexual, develop-merit, le Needless to say, the community aspect of religious life militates against the homosexual who enters this life. Unless he can achieve sexual maturity, which implies total psychological maturity, his chances of successfully leading the life are slight. The close contact with attrac-tive members of his own community presents a constant attack on the vow of chastity. It might also be added that under the usual conditions of religious life psychiatric treatment has limited value. In conclusion, it can be said that the well-balanced religious does attain psychosexual maturity. He freely chooses to express himself through a total cotnminnent to God and His world, which calls for a sacrificing of sexual expression. His love for God is no less an expression of the total self than the heterosexual experiences of the married. Immaturity in psychosexual development, how-ever, may seriously hinder the realization of the commit-ment inasmuch as any distortion of personality develop-ment detours one's energies in the direction of abnormal behavior and away from the object of commitment. n Dalbiez, Psychoanalytical Method, pp. 192-214; see also James Vander Veldt and Robert Odenvald, Psychiatry and Catholicism (2nd ed.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), pp. 424-9. ÷ ÷ Chastity VOLUME 23~. 1964 723 RICHARD A. McCORMICK, S.]. Psychosexual Development in Religious Life Richard A. Mc- Cormick, S.J., is professor of moral theology at Bellar-mine School of The-ology; 230 S. Lin-coln Way; North Aurora, Illinois 60542. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Our purpose this morning* is to explore psychosexual development in religious life: its meaning, importance, its manifestations, itg growth, its obstacles. To do this I suggest that we make a twofold division of material in our considerations: (1) psychosexual development in general; (2) psychosexual development in religious life. Psychosexual Development in General The term "psychosexual development" is drawn from modern clinical psychology. It is not a term, therefore, which stems from Christian ascetical literature or from scholastic psychology. In attempting to describe its mean-ing I shall describe its ideal term (psychosexual maturity). Those competent in the area of psychology would be glad, I am sure, to fill in the gaps and deficiencies of my impoverishing description. "Psychosexual maturity" is a certain degree of affective relational possibility.1 It refers to the ability of the in-dividual to enter into "harmonious dialogue with any-thing and anybody, without obscure anxieties, without incoherent aggressiveness, without exclusive posses-siveness, in an increasingly fruitful rhythm of ex-changes . ,, 2 Insofar as it affects social relationships, the first note of this maturity is the ability to deal with others in general as persons rather than as objects. But psychosexual maturity says more than the capabil- * This paper was delivered as part of a seminar on psychological development and the religious life held at Catholic University of America, June 11-22, 1964. a Marc Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 24. ~ Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 24. ity of relating to others as persons. It deals specifically with a relational possibility to the opposite sex, and as such it describes a quality of one's growth as a male or female. This maturity has been further described as an instinctive-emotional growth which "tends to a polariza-tion of the sexual drive in an intersubjective relation where the synthesis of each partner is achieved--even on the genital level--in the actual relation with 'the other regarded as a person." 3 In simpler terms I take this to mean relating sexually to another of the opposite sex as a person rather than as an object. Relating sexually should not be understood narrowly, in a merely genital sense, but in the wider sense of an overall instinctive-emotional attitude. Whatever the final commitment of the person involved, "what is important is that he achieve an interior psychological experience of his situation in relation to woman as a person. The same is true, of course, for woman in relation to man."~ "Relation to woman (or man) as a person." What does this mean? And what is the distinct character of this instinctive-emotional relationship? Relating to someone as a person means that my entire attitude and conduct reflects his total reality and dignity--a reality and dignity founded in the fact that he is a unique individual meant to be a blueprint of no one save God in whose image and likeness he was created; possessed of an immortal soul; an intellect capable of his own original thoughts; a will capable of and responsible for his own decisions, desires, purposes; emotions capable of enthusiasms, of joy and sorrow of a unique kind; of a destiny which is so magnifi-cent that it is describable only in terms of God Himself. Relating to another as a person is perhaps best under-stood by its opposite, relating to him as an obfect or means--as a thing, somthing from 'which I want to get something, to be used, manipulated, fit into a scheme, adjusted, subordinated, and twisted to a purpose. Human sexuality itself provides us with the distinctive character of this relationship to another person. Analysis of human sexuality, both in its wide and genital sense, reveals that it has two inner senses or meanings. It is, of course, fundamentally procreative. It is also essentially expressive of the deep love which brings a man and woman together to share their lives and work out their destiny by mutual complementarity. One thing is clear, then, when human sexuality is studied carefully, as Planque notes: "That the sexual function has no meaning except as related to others, and related to others in the 4- 4- P xychosexua! Developmeng s Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 109. 40raison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 109. VOLUME 23, 1964 R. A. McCormick, sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS form of an offering." ~ There are two propositions here: first, the essential relativity or other-centeredness of sexuality; secondly, the character of an offering. Because of this basic other-centeredness of human sexuality, the-ology and psychology are at one in asserting that these goals will be achieved only through altruism of personal-ity. The distinctive character of this relation to another as person is, then, that of emotional altruism, of an offering, a self-donation, an oblation. It is to be noted again that the maturity in question does not refer to an actual mode of relational life. It says ability, possibility, capability., of an oblative rela-tionship, of a relationship of self-donation. In describing this capability of self-donation, modem psychology refers to a "healthy relationship to the opposite sex." This opposite sex aspect should not be misleading. It does not imply sexual expression or the married state. It states a condition or status of personality development. It says that the person is of such an overall maturity that a healthy sexual relationship is possible and that it can (even genitally) begin to serve the purposes of love. By contrast it says that if a person does not achieve the personality growth where a relationship with the opposite sex can be a sharing "and its typical expression a self-giving, the whole personality has failed to mature and this will affect the ability to love anyone in anyway. The emphasis falls on the ability to love. Thus Maturity consists.in the possibility of chastity or con-tinence-- provided the subject wills it--for love's sake. It is moreover quite conceivable that this maturity will permit., a celibacy oriented toward a different mode of relationM life and love of persons--social service or religious consecration in a positive possibility of chastity.° Such a maturity is said to be psychosexual. What does this mean? Generally it means that the achievement is the result of total personality development--not just, for example, of physical growth or intellec'tual endow-ment. It says both that it is the result of the harmonious growth of all personality factors (emotional, instinctive, physical, spiritual, and so forth) and that its manifesta-tions occur at all levels of the personality. More specifi-cally it is called "sexual" for at least several reasons. First of all, there is the importance attributed to the sexual instinct in this development by modern clinical psychology. Secondly, the relational possibility referred to earlier will always be stamped by the sex of the per-sons involved. Thirdly, the term is, quite naturally, generally described in terms of the man-woman relation- Daniel Planque, The Theology o[ Sex in Marriage (Notre Dame: Fides, 1962), p. 90. Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 112. ship leading to and found in marriage. Finally one of the characteristic expressions of emotional infantilism is sexual irresponsibility; hence psychosexual immaturity both gives rise to this type of thing and is in some sense the result of it. We have described in general the term or fulfillment which is called psychosexual maturity. Our concern is more immediately with psychosexual "development." This implies that this term or achievement is the result of a process of growth. Here we note two things. First of all, by describing the term we do not imply that it is a static state or that it is ever fully achieved. We should rather understand that this term is an ideal and that growth toward it continues through life. Secondly, in general this growth process is conceived by modern psychology as one beginning in the tenderest years and extending into adulthood to be continued by the very self-donation which it increasingly makes possible. More concretely, it can be said that "the child begins from a normally narcissistic position, evolves toward an object relation and should achieve a subject relation in which the other is experienced as another subject."7 In other words, the process is the gradual socialization of the sex instinct, its gradual evolution to the point where it serves the altruistic purposes of human love. This growth process is defined in terms of challenges to be met, obstacles to be overcome. The phenomenon is very complex and at some points disputed and unclear. The following summary foreshortens this complexity but it will have to do. In phase with the different stages of maturation there occur certain rhythmic oscillations of social interest. Thus, at first, the infant naturally makes no distinction between boys and girls. It is socially asexual or simply non-sexual. The child of two or three is bi-sexual, recognizing gradually that there is a difference between boys and girls, but taking no account of this in its social relations with other children. With the approach of the latency period the child withdraws to the shelter of its own sex; not exclusively, not pathologically, but simply as a natural process to allow the next phase of development to occur with the least possible turmoil. This is the stage at which the young boy of six will look on another young boy of six who plays with girls as a "sissy," and the girl of six on her companion who plays with boys as a "tomboy"--or whatever happens to be the familiar term of the peer-group. Soon, having made some progress through the latency pe-riod, the child feels emotionally strong enough to emerge from his own sex-group once more. Thus boys and girls of seven or eight or nine play happily together, recognizing that they are different but without segregation on this basis (other bases, yes: incompetence at the game, tell-taleism, breach of rule etc.). This is a hi-sexual or heterosexual phase. (The phase of de-fensive withdrawal into the shelter of one's own sex is called ~ Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 106. ÷ ÷ 4. Psychosexual Development VOLUME 2.~, 1964 ÷ ÷ ÷ R. A. McCormick, $.1. REVIEW' FOR RELIGIOUS a homosexual phase, but the term must be carefully used in this psychological sense so as to differentiate it sharply from its more usual connotation of sexual perversion. The defensive with- :trawal in question here is certainly not a perversion.) From this heterosexual phase, the child passes, with the onset of psy-chological puberty (a year or two earlier than physiological puberty) or the pre-pubertal phase referred to in our second paragraph, into a new homosexual phase (again, let us repeat that this means a withdrawal into the shelter of one's own sexual peers). It is easy to see that this withdrawal has an im-portant biological and psychological function: it enables the growing organism to take the great leap into sexual matur-ity without the disturbing stimuli of the other sex, or at any rate with these minimized. When the conscious mind of the growing child has learned, however inadequately, to come to grips with its new'found sexuality, the adolescent is then ready to enter the bi-sexual society once again. ~Thus, towards the middle of adolescence, one finds once again the child emerging from the defensive positions of its own sex, and heterosexual interests and play activities are sought once again,s In explaining this process some experts put more em-phasis on the psychological interiorization of sense and emotional experiences going on within the child from the moment of birth; others put less on such a structuralizing of early experience. At any rate, it is true to say that practically all specialists accept a growth process through several crises and e_xplain this process as leading ideally to the possibility of interpersonal relationships. It is this total development which I shall understand as "psycho-sexual development." To highlight the general importance of this develop-ment, let me try to locate it in a somewhat larger (than clinical psychology) context, the context of Christian living. The great commandment, in a sense the only commandment, is the love of God and of neighbor for God's sake. All other Christian duties are simply specifi-cations of this command. But not only is this a command; God's commands are affirmations about ourselves. In telling us that the great commandment is love of God and neighbor, Christ was actually telling us what is good for us and what we are. He was saying that our own comple-tion and fulfillment is to be found here, hence that ulti-mately our eternal h~ppiness depends on love and is love. If one is to find his life, he must lose it--in the divest-ment of self which is love. This love we call charity to highlight its supernatural origin, efficiency, object, and purpose. It is easy to conclude that just as love is the essential ideal of any state of life, so ability to love is the essential disposition, that which one should bring to it and that in which one grows through it. Every state of life is an apprenticeship in love. ¯ SE. F. O'Doherty, Religion and Personality Problems (New York: Alba, 1964), pp. 224-6. - " - " ¯ - The terms, so to speak, of our love are God and our neighbor. This is clear. But the relationship between the two is not always that clear. When we are commanded to love God and our neighbor, it is easy to imagine the two as distinct. In an obvious sense they are distinct. Yet in a very real sense they are not. St. John wrote: "If any man says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who loves not his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?" (1 Jn 4:20-1). The obvious identity here suggests the Mystical Body. Our love of neighbor is our love of God because, in a real if mysterious sense, our neighbor is God, is of His Body. Also "the good our love wants to do Him can be done only for our neighbor and it is in others that God de-mands to be recognized and loved."a What is astounding here is the correspondence between this theological reality and what I might call a psycho-logical reality. The theological reality refers to the union of God and man wherein love of man is transformed into and becomes love of God. The psychological reality refers to what we might call the dependence of our love of God on rove of men--in terms of dispositions. Oraison wrote: "In order that dialogue with God be possible, there must be an existential dialogue among men. Created love opens up the heart, primes it for divine love." ~0 What I think he is saying is that we learn to love God by learning to love men and that only by loving men can we grow in those dispositions which are basic to love of God. Con-versely, the failure to love another and others, which is ordinarily traceable to an arrested development, to an infantilism of self-enclosure, will also prohibit growth in love of God. The two loves just cannot be separated, neither onto-logically nor psychologically. If one does not love man he is de facto not loving God, St. John tells us. If one cannot love men, he will very likely be unable to love God, psychology suggests. And this is the enormous im-portance of psychosexual maturity. But if these two loves cannot be separated, they must be clearly distinguished. I mean that one may never assert that Christ's message can be reduced to the realities of clinical psychology, that grace and emotional maturity are synonymous, that the supernatural love of God is psychological maturity. Far from it. Loving God is not chiefly our doing. "The love of God has been poured into bur hearts by the Holy Spirit whom we have received" (Rum 5:5). It is simply to' assert the profound oneness and continuity of the *Vincent Rochford, "Who Is My Neighbor?" The Way, v. 4 (1964), p. 116. lo Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety, p. 43. + + + Psychosemml Development VOLUME 23, 1964 ÷ ÷ ÷ R. A. McCormick, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS human personality, a thing we should expect if we grasp even partially the fact that man was created (and not only elevated) in the image and likeness of God. It is to assert that, while the two are not the same, the subject (man) is one and hence psychosexual immaturity can be a terrible obstacle to love of God.11 For the more we know of God, the more we know that He is relation, that His very being is "being-in-and-for-another." As man comes to know more about himself through clinical psychology, it should not be surprising that his Godlikeness becomes more obvious, that he sees he is made for relational life, and that everything in his makeup (including instincts and emotions) conspires to relational possibility or, as undeveloped, hinders it. And once we know that our eternal existence will be love of God, it should not be surprising that preparation for this life should be growth in the dispositions which are so important relationally and that these dispositions reach to the depths of our being. What I am trying to say most inadequately is that we will only learn to love, hence to love God, by loving our neighbor. Now we love as human beings, divinized through grace it is true, but still as human beings--not as disincarnate spirits. That means that our love is a matter of the spiritual, the intellectual, the emotional, the physical. Thus the other-centeredness which defines all (but or-dered self) love is a matter of total personality orienta-tion and development. In other words, the personal re-lational possibility of love is founded and depends on my maturity as a male or a female. Whenever we love, we love as man or as woman. Now being a complete male or female is precisely de-pendent upon a successful negotiation of the growth process which we have mentioned. It is that which condi-tions to some extent my ability to seek and respond to any other as a person. If I am emotionally immature, I will be affectively turned in on self, closed off to others, never able to transcend my own self-interest. Summarily, then, since this growth process has a great deal to do with my being a healthy male or female, and since being a healthy male or female conditions my capacity to relate personally (hence lovingly) to others, and since charity ~s to some extent this relation supernaturalized, it is clear that fulfillment of the great commandment involves some very human underpinnings, that it is tied closely to the dynamic drama of growth upon which clinical psychology has raised the curtain. We should expect this, for we are one. Assuredly grace can accomplish miracles See Robert G. Gassert, S.J., and Bernard H. Hall, M.D., Psy-chiatry and Religious Faith (New York: Viking, 1964), pp. 49-50. (thank God) and is probably forced to work overtime with most of us. But as a general rule, arrested psychosexual growth is a very poor foundation upon which to attempt to structure a supernatural life at whose heart is a rela-tional thing: charity. Psychosexual Development in Religious. Li[e Let us recall again that psychosexual maturity is affec-tive maturity, affective relational possibility. It is obvious that growth in supernatural virtue is a result of many factors: grace, prayer, sacraments, sound ideas, direction, self-abnegation, emotional maturity, and so on. When we speak of psychosexual maturity, we are not talking about this overall maturity or growth, that is, iri super-natural virtue. We are talking about one element or aspect in it and that a very natural, even clinical one: affective relational possibility. This is an instinctive-emotional cast or posture. It should be clear that it is, therefore, not something I can will into existence, grind into existence through repetition of unselfish acts, play into existence, flog into existence through penance, propa-gandize into existence through conferences. We are simply not talking about this type of thing, the type of thing which can be produced by a simple flexing of ascetical muscles. It is, then, very important to distinguish psychosexual maturity (and its development) from supernatural virtue (and its development). If I miss the difference I will either simply naturalize virtue or go to the other extreme and try to build a supernatural life without a sound sub-structure. This would be to dehumanize supernatural living, hence eventually to destroy it.12 The importance of psychosexual development in re-ligious life could scarcely be overemphasized. It has been said that if the married Iayman remains in the world to serve and save it, the religious stands apart from it to do the same thing. Religious life is, then, an attempt to respond to the call of love of God and neighbor in a very direct way. It is the direct love of service to others. And just as the Word redeemed the whole man, so the religious extends this redemptive action through time to the whole man. Anything else would be inhuman. "Our own sal-vation depends on loving as Christ loves. He cares for the whole man; and so must we if we are to love as He loves." a3 Religious life is, briefly, growing in love of Christ by donating oneself to the total needs of Christ's own. Loving the whole man means loving men as human beings, and therefore even affectively. The greatest hu- See O'Doherty, Religion and Personality Problems, p. 56. Rochford, "Who Is My Neighbor?" p. 117. + Psychosexual Dcoelopment VOLUME 23, 1964 ,4. 4. 4. IL A. McCormick, Sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS man need is to be loved. For unloved, I remain unloving, withdrawn, self-encased. But when 1 am loved in a full human way, selfhood, personal identity, a feeling of security, a sense of worth and dignity is conferred upon me--the very things which enable me to respond to others as persons, to love them. Thus it is clear that be-cause my greatest fulfillment is the other-centeredness of love (and charity), my greatest human need is for that which creates this possibility; that is, love from others, their acceptance of me as a person. Similarly my greatest gift to them is my self-donation to them because this is also their greatest need. Modern psychology, in uncover-ing the growth process which leads to the ability of self-donation in interpersonal relationships, has not only described a capacity; it has at once described a need. And in doing this it has painted in bold colors the practical content of any act of charity toward men. (As you can see, my perspective is a bit larger than that of mere psychology. It is that of Christian fulfillment.) Clearly, then, religious life which is love of Christ in His children, demands psychosexual maturity, oblative ability, affective self-donation. Without this maturity I risk just doing things for others without really loving them totally in the process. If this is religious life, it will produce dried-up hearts, sometimes hard hearts incapable of loving even God. For we must love as human under pain of not loving at all. The problem, then, which confronts us is: how is one to grow in this affective relational possibility? How can religious life promote such growth? Let me put it more concretely. Imagine, for example, an old religious of instinctively fine virtue, mellowness, and charm. We all know such wonderful people. In spite of lovable ec-centricities (they remain individuals, after all), what stands out so often is their sensitivity of feeling for others, their delicacy and eagerness in responding to the needs of others. They are genuinely spontaneous and happy in serving others; it is apparently easy for them and a source of genuine delight. Briefly, they are at home and adjusted in their deep other-orientation, even emotionally so. Our problem: how did they get this way? Barry McLaughlin, S.J.,14 has suggested that to promote such growth certain fundamental attitudes must be culti-vated: the attitudes of presence, availability, empathy, generosity, and fidelity. By cultivating these the religious presents himself to others; he decentralizes his person-ality from self and goes out to others, is free for them; he identifies with others' sorrows, ambitions, joys and be- ~' Barry McLaughlin, S.J., Nature, Grace and Religious Develop-ment (Westminster: Newman, 1964), p. 80 ft. stows himself by forgiveness and kindness. True enough. But practically how can we cultivate these attitudes? Do we not cultivate things which issue in attitudes? What i now propose is merely tentative. Regard it as a basis for discussion and enlightened disagreement. I suggest we approach the matter analogously through marriage. By seeing growth in marriage, perhaps we can isolate those elements which contribute to psychosexual development and then locate them in religious life. Love of God and neighbor is as much a commandment for and affirmation about the married as about anyone else. The ultimate vocational purpose of marriage in the Christian scheme coincides, in this sense, with the vocational purpose of any other state of life. When two people commit their lives and personalities to each other to forge a corporate "we," they undertake a sharing enterprise whose success and happiness is assured only to the extent that one's life is aimed at giving happiness to the other. One achieves fulfillment by undertaking the fulfillment of the other. "Marriage will be for a man a means of development precisely to the extent that, in full possession of their own personalities, the spouses will make a gift of self to each other and to their chil-dren." 15 But even this sharing and fulfillment must be seen in the Christian scheme as a schooling for something greater, an apprenticeship for fulfillment of the great commandment. As Frank Wessling writes: All of us, married or not, will save our lives by learning to love as fully as possible. If I am ever going to learn to love, I shall have to learn it in my marriage by loving my wife first of all. In that love I have got to see and appreciate variety and degrees, so that when I turn outward to the world and other persons, I am able to love variety and the degrees of goodt,ess I see there,ae By learning to love their own, they learn to slough of[ self-interest and open themselves to love of God and neighbor. Most people do not bring full maturity to marriage. As a Catholic husband wrote me recently: "Few people probably enter marriage adequately prepared for such totality of commitment--but it is a goal to be worked for." Most people have to learn to love, to appreciate the sacrifices essential to it. It is extremely difficult to hdmit practically that love really demands a sacrifice of self for the other. Generally, in fact, if a man and woman are not forced by some external pressure in the beginning to sacrifice themselves, they probably will do a less than a" Planque, Theology of Sex in Marriage, p. 94. lOFrank Wessling, "Is It Immature Loving?" America, v. 110 (January-June, 1964), p. 595. + + ÷ Psychosexual Development VOLUME 23, 1964 R. A. McCormick, Sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 734 adequate job of sacrificing, hence loving, on their own. Often enough the "pressure" which shatters the romantic illusions and demands very personal payments, personal preferences of others to self, is the child. It is almost providential that just as the couple is beginning to get used to, perhaps even a bit tired of, each other, attention is drawn away from themselves in a way which ultimately forges even a closer two-in-oneness. There is need to prefer others to self. They begin, slowly at first, to ap-preciate sacrifices and to perceive their meaning. As time goes along, they begin to choose them more frequently, even get accustomed to them. 0ther-concern becomes increasingly if unnoticeably (to them) a part of their life and outlook. Their thinking changes subtly over the years. The "we" dominates their planning and thinking. All the while ~their affective liIe has taken on .increasingly the color and tone of other-centeredness. Even their intimate sexual life becomes more more tender, consider-ate, partner-oriented---hence more mature. This process is a lifetime work, but what has been going on here? Clearly there has been growth. The affec-tions have been gradually drained of selfishness. The two have grown closer to each other as persons. The rhythm of their life has taken on a mutuality and reciprocity at all levels. They are identifying themselves as married, as one. But how? What is responsible for this growth? Many things, of course: prayer, graces of the sacrament of matrimony, reception of the sacraments, intimacy, flare-ups, forgiveness, little kindnesses, and so on. For the growth is total. But in so far as this growth is psycho-sexual or instinctive-emotional, I believe I see three elements which stand out at this stage: (1) the existence of an affective relationship toward each other, very im-perfect at the beginning, deeply colored by self-interest; (2) sacrificial acts which gradually purify the affective relationship, center it more pronouncedly on others; (3) at first under pressure, but then more freely chosen. Hence greater auto-determination and responsibility. Therefore this growth is attributable not just to an affective relationship and notosimply to sacrificial acts, but to such acts, resulting increasingly from free choice, within the context of such a relationship. This combina-tion has led imperceptibly to growth in relational possi-bility. Now try to apply this conclusion to religious life. What I wish to suggest is that we must find and promote these three elements in religious life if we are to foster continu-ing psychosexual growth in it. As for sacrificial acts, I think we need say very little. They are built into religious and community living. The second element, increased auto-determination, needs much attention. For religious life, especially early religious life, by training groupwise to a "foreign ascetical ideal" risks produ~:ing conforming automata--especially if we reflect on the early and immature age of entrance into religious life. The sooner the acts and practices of religious life can convert from "pressures" into freely chosen acts, the better. This means one thing to me: early communication of responsibility. I propose that we religious have been seriously defec-tive in this regard. Perhaps we have thought of "educat-ing to religious or community life" in rather external, even military terms. This can lead to identification of responsibility with mere external performance. Certainly the virtues essential to religious life make definite mini-mal external demands. In this sense there mnst be some external uniformity if religious life is to escape the chaotic and it obedience, to cite but one example, is to be identifiable as a distinct virtue. However, the matter of emphasis is important here. An approach to religious living, expecially in what we might call its "external" aspects, demands responsibility; ~or the various external tasks of religious life are simply practical demands, options, suggestions, or extensions of this or that virtue. Virtue implies choice, voluntariety. We should expect, therefore, that the more voluntariety there is, the greater will be the perfection of, for example, the virtue of obedience, the virtue of poverty, and so on. Hence if we are intent on training to virtue (and not simply to external performance) we will be concerned above all with practices which stimulate a more responsi-ble response. More specifically, poverty can be practiced just as well and as exactly by allowing the young religious to retain a certain amount of travel money as by making him ask for it on each occasion. Indeed, one would think that responsible poverty would be more likely produced precisely by such a practice. For it tends more to make dependent use of money a matter of choice, hence more responsible. Poverty is not simply "not having material things available." It is above all dependent use of mate-rial things. Its virtuous practice means that this depend-ence is voluntarily embraced for love of Christ. Of course there will be violations and abuses. But this is the price one must pay if there is to be growth in virtue. There are many areas in which we might profitably rethink our communication of responsibility in religious life: the daily order (for example, time of retiring, time o~ meditation), travel (for example, use of cars), studies, use of money, dealing with externs, adjustments to service of others, and so on. When we over-concentrate on the materiality involved 4- 4- 4- Psychosexual Development VOLUME 23~ 1964 " + ÷ ÷ R. A. McCormick, $.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ?36 (for example, performance of an assigned task), we tend to equate this with virtue, hence with responsibility. This emptieg the notion of responsibility as well as that of virtue with terribly unfortunate effects. Thus it is not uncommon in religious life to find responsibility identi-fied with control of the mop room. Clearly responsibility means more than this. It means just what it says: re-sponsibility in the planning process and in the process of execution. Furthermore, a unilateral approach (over-emphasis on the external) to virtue means that other aspects of the virtue are overlooked. For example, if one's entire emphasis where obedience is concerned falls on "doing what you are told," the virtue is robbed of its true richness. We miss the superior's duty to govern prudently, hence to make the fullest possible consulta-tive use of the subject's prudence. We miss the correlative and sometimes onerous task of subjects of making their reflections available to their superiors--always of course with the interior preparedness to submit wholeheartedly, even eagerly, when the superior's will is final and defini-tive. Finally, if unilateral overemphasis on a single as-pect of a virtue narrows the horizons of this virtue, it necessarily unprepares the subject for later and more difficult tests in this virtue. How many adult failures in religious obedience, poverty, charity can be traced to early failures in the communication of responsibility in the educative process? The analogue to the affective relationship in married life is friendship in religious life. I propose, therefore, that psychosexual development in religious life will be pro-moted by stimulating (1) the sacrificial acts so numerously present and available in religious life; (2) undertaken with increasing responsibility in early religious life; (3) within a context of human friendships. All are essential. For if there is no growth without freely elected sacrifice, there is no affective growth without an affective relation-ship. If I am right in this analysis, one sees immediately the enormous importance of friendship in religious life. For the attitudes which issue from it are "the marks of the charity of the religious man whose task it is to bear witness to the modern world of the possibility of love." 1~ Ifa religious grows in these attitudes, "he will learn the attitudes basic to Christian love. Subsequently he must seek to give his love for every man he meets the character and depth, of his love of a friend.'us I see the problem, then, of psychosexual development in religious life as depending heavily on the existence of friendship. My final remarks will concentrate on this 17 McLaughlin, Nature, Grace and Religious Developlnent, p. 83. is McLaughlin, Nature, Grace and Religious Development, p. 83. point. Affective relationships are going to exist in re-ligious life. We are made that way. It is important that they be sound; that is, that they be true human love. Hence, from this point of view, perhaps our best.practical contribution to psychosexual development is straight thinking about friendships in religious life and incorpo-ration of this thinking into our ascetical ideals. I strongly recommend a recent article by Felix Cardegna, S.J., from which I draw heavily and verbatim in the following paragraphs.19 Marriage is self-giving, self-surrender of the whole per-son symbolized by and attested to by physical surrender. Like marriage consecrated virginity is first and foremost a surrender, a surrender of my whole person, concretely represented and signed by my body. Out of love I lay my sexual secret, so to speak, my capacity for creative sexual love in all its richness in the hands of Christ. Just as corporal possession indicates the totality and exclusivity of marriage, so virginal renunciation spells the exclusivity and totality of one's self-donation to Christ. Consecrated virginity does involve, then, renunciation. But it is important to define exactly what the virgin renounces. There are, as Father Cardegna notes, four components: (1) the pleasure which accompanies the deliberate exercise of the sexual faculties; (2) the affec-rive development brought about by conjugal love; (3) children, the fruit of married love; (4) the affective de-velopment brought about by parental love. These are profound human values and run deep in the human personality. Only when I realize how deeply personal and mysterious and good is the surrender (and self-recovery) of marriage can I begin to see how deeply mysterious, beautiful, and positive is the virginal surrender and conse-quent renunciation. The sublimity of the religious' of-fering is spelled out precisely in the value of the thing offered. But does consecrated virginity renounce human love? By no means. Human love is more extensive than sexual love. Human love is in its essence not sexual but personal, a love between persons. Love's transcendence of self through self-donation does not necessarily involve physi-cal donation of self in sexual union, as we have seen. Indeed it is only when conjugal love can learn to forego intercourse at times that it reveals its truly mature char-acter-- a fact too often overlooked by the recent (and I would add "youthful") and almost hypnotic obsession with sexual intercourse. Because virginity does not re-nounce human love, it should not be presented as so ~o Felix Cardegna, S.J., "Chastity and Human Affectivity," REVIEW FOR RELmlOUS, V. 23 (1964), pp. 309-15. + + 4- Psychosexual D~oelo~m~ent VOLUME 23, 1964 737 R, A. McCormick, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS "total" that there is nothing left for anyone else. This would lead to a glowering withdrawal from the human scene. Rather because the surrender is virginal, there is much left for everyone else--and that much is human love. While the virgin renounces married love and its nuances, he does not renounce the love that is human friendship. Indeed it is impossible to imagine a human person as involved in any kind o

Issue 15.6 of the Review for Religious, 1956. ; Review for Religious ~OVEMBER 15, 1956 Cloister of Congregations . Joseph F. Gallen Zeal for Souls ¯ " c.A. Herbst Sisters' RefreafsIVI . Thomas Dubay The Religious Life . Roman Congregations Book Reviews New Business Address index for 1956 VOLUME XV " No. (5 Ri::VI.I::W FOR RI::::LIGIOUS VOLUME XV NOVEMBER, 19 5 6 NUMBER 6 CONTENTS NEW BUSINESS ADDRESS . 281 CLOISTER OF CONGREGATIONS-~Joseph F. Gallen, 'S.,J 2.8.2. ZEAL FOR SOULS--C. A. Herbst, S.J . 295 SISTERS' RETREATS---VI --- Thomas Dubay, S.M: .3.0.1. GUIDANCE FOR RELIGIOUS . 308 ROMAN CONGREGATIONS AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE"0 ". 3.09 B(~OK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS-- Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.3. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . 3~8 INDEX FOR VOLUME XV . 334 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1956. Vol. XV, No. 6. Published bi-monthly: ,January, March, May, ,July, September, and November, at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter, ,January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under ~he act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.'j., Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Edwin F. Falteisek, S.J. Publishing rights reserved by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed it. U. S. A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review For Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri Our New Business , clress When we were preparing to publish the REVIEW, we arranged to have the College Press, in Topeka, do the printing and distribut-ing. For fifteen years the editors and the College Press have worked together in the closest harmony. We have literally shared both heart-aches and joys. The heartaches were mostly brought about by the difficulties of the war years: for example, as we published each num-be~ we wondered how we would get enough paper for printing the next. The joys consisted, among other things, in getting the REVIEW out regularly and on time, despite the difficulties, and in the realiza-tion that this new apostolate for religious seemed to be appreciated. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 3115 South Grand Boulevard St. Louis 18, Missouri This is our new business address During all these fifteen years, Mr. J. W. Orr, owner of the Col-lege Press, and his assistants, have given the REVIEW the best they had; and that was very good, indeed. But the time has come when we must make new publishing arrangements. The reason for this is purely an "act of God," as far as both the editors and the College Press are concerned. There has been no break in the harmony that has always characterized our collaboration. Fortunately for us, the publishing department of the Queen's Work has agreed to take over the publication of the REVIEW. Be-ginning with the next volume, the RE~rIEW will be printed and dis-tributed by the Queen's Work. Obviously, the new publishers can-~ not wait till the last deadline to begin making addresses and keeping records. For this reason, please note the announcement in the center of this page and follow it exactly. The editors are deeply grateful to the College Press for past col-laboration and to the Queen's Work for taking over the burden. 281 Cloist:er ot: Congrega!:ions ,Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. I. Introduction. All the canons on common cloister apply to all congregations, i. e., institutes of simple vows, whether of men or women, clerical or lay, pontifical or'' diocesan, with the exception of c. 607, which treats of religious women going out of the convent alone. To lessen the complications in this highly detailed matter and to avoid the constant repetition of awkward phrases such as, "those of the opposite sex," the article explains and applies common cloister with reference to congregations of religious women. II. r~tpes of cloister. Papal cloister exists in all orders of men and women. Formerly it existed in the case of women only in mon-asteries of nuns that actually had solemn vows, but this was changed by the apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi.1 Cloister of this type is called papal because it is prescribed by papal ,(canon) law and its violation is punished by papal penalties, i. e., penalties enacted in the Code of Canon Law. Common or episcopal cloister is that imposed by canon law on all religious congregations (institutes of simple vows) of men and women. The name common is due to the fact that this cloister is less strict than papal, especially the papal cloister of nuns. This type of cloister was termed episcopal before .the Code of Canon Law. The same expression is still used, aIthough less frequently, because in the law of the code the local ordinary ex-ercises supervision over the exact observance of common cloister and may enforce its observance with canonical penalties (c. 604, § 3). Statutor~t or disciplinary is cloister insofar as it is prescribed by ¯ the particular Rule and constitutions; active, insofar as it forbids leaving the house; passive, insofar as it forbids the entrance of ex-terns into the cloistered parts; material, the cloistered parts of the house; formal, the laws of the code by which the going out of the religious or the entrance of externs is forbidden and regulated. III. Definition, purpose, obligation. The meaning, of common cloister is that the religious do not leave the house without the per~ mission of the superior according to the constitutions nor regularly receive any person of the other sex in the part of the house reserved for the community. The primary purpose of cloister is the preser-vation of the virtue of chastity. Under this aspect cloister frees the 1. Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, III, 221-52. 282 CLOISTER OF CONGREGATIONS' religious from many temptations, protects the good name of the institute and of the religious state, and prevents scandals, suspicion, and harmful gossip even among the inquisitorial and hostile. Cloister is also an element of the external or canonical contemplative life. Its purpose under this heading is to develop and intensify a truly prayerful, interior, and spiritual 1ire'by withdrawing the religious from an atmosphere of worldliness and distraction and surround-ing her with one of tranquillity, peace and recollection. Cloister is likewise a habitual exercise of mortification and penance, an aid to the preservation of religious discipline in general, and of conspicuous practical utility for persevering study and labor. The mere statement of these aims reveals the value of a cloister that is intelligently en-acted and faithfully observed both in external action and interior purpose. It must be admitted, however, that the modern apostolate demands that at least very many sisters go out of the cloister more frequently and remain out of it for much longer periods daily than in the past. This age, therefore, requires a rigorously cloistered heart rather than a mere cloistered convent, a soul immutably turned to God in love rather than a mere veiled face, sincere detachment rather than mere walls and locked doors, a true interior life rather than mere external protection, and the double barrier of habitual prayer and mortification rather than the double grille. It is an aged canonical maxim that as the fish is lifeless without water so the monk with-out his monastery. I am of the opinion that we must modernize this venerable figure and demand of the religious an amphibious spiritual life. Common cloister is obligatory from c. 604, § 1, on all congre-gations. The constitutions of some institutes of simple vows give the impression either of error or inaccuracy in stating that cloister is not of obligation. It is true that papal cloister is not of obligation for congregations and that it is stricter than common cloister, but the latter is obligatory on all congregations. Both papal and com-mon cloister exist only in canonically erected formal and non-formal religious houses.2 Cloister does not demand that the institute be the proprietor of the house. Neither papal nor common cloister exists in canonically filial houses, summer villas and vacation houses, houses that are not completely erected materially, a house in which the community is not yet residing, nor in a temporary residence, e. g., a house rented and used while the religious house is being renovated. 2. Cf. cc. 597, § 1; 604, § 1; Berutti, De Religiosis, 268; Vromant, De Personis, n. 429. 283 JOSEPH F. ~ALLEN Review for Religious Cloister begins as soon as the community has taken up residence in a canonically erected house, but the precise moment is determined by the higher superior when such residence is begun, gradually. From custom or the enactments of the general chapter or higher superiors, the regulations of common cloister will and should be observed also in filial houses, temporary residences, and even more strictly in vaca-tion houses. IV. Cloistered parts of the house. The parts of the house des-tined for the exclusive use of the religious are those that are to be placed within common cloister. In constitutions approved by the Holy See, these ordinarily are the cells or dormitories, the infirmary, and the refectory. The community room, kitchen, and pantry are sometimes placed within cloister. The cloistered parts of the house are usually determined in the constitutions of sisters. Added deter-minations, the settlement of doubtful cases, the determination of the parts to be cloistered when these are not designated in the con-stitutions, from analogy with c. 597, § 3, appertain to. higher su-periors and the general chapter. The same authorities have the right of changing the boundaries of cloister permanently, except those determined in the constitutions, and may change also these tempor-arily. A proportionate reason is required for either change. V. Doors and locks of cloister. The constitutions of some con-gregations of sisters contain the enactment that the convent doors are to be locked at night and the keys given to the superior. This en-actment undoubtedly has its origin in the norm for the papal cloister of nuns: "The keys of the cloister shall be in the hands of the su-perioress night and day; and she shall give them to certain desig-nated nuns when there is need.''3 Frequently enough the constitu-tions of nuns add to this norm by prescribing that the cloister doors are to have two distinct locks, and these may also be supplemented by bolts and bars. Some orders also command that at night the keys of the two distinct locks are to be put into a box, which it-self is secured by two distinct locks. The keys of the" latter are to be given to two nuns, so that the presence of both is required to open the box. The minimum requisite of such enactments is exit doors that can be opened from the inside only by a key. I believe that a com-petent and conscientious American fire inspector would be apt to object to such exit doors. Building and fire prevention codes and practices in the United States appertain especially to local civil or- 3. Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, I, 319. 284 November, 1956 CLOISTER OF CONGREGATIONS dinance and authority, and it would be prudent to consult these in the present question. The National Fire Protection Ass6ciation states that its standards ". are widely used by law enforcing authOrities in addition to their general use as gu!des to fire safety.TM In its pamphl~t, Building Exits Code, this association states: "All doors used in connection with exits shall be so arranged as to be always readily opened from the side from which egress is made. Locks, if provided, shall not require a key to operate from the inside~ Latches or other releasing device~ to 6pen doors shall .be of simple types, the method of operation of which is obvious even in darkness.''6 This standard is not specifically hplSlied to such residences as convents or religious houses in general, but it is extended to very similar resi-dences, e. g., apartment houses, which are defined as ". residence buildings providin~ sleeping accommodations for 20 or more per-sons, such as cbnventiorial apartments, tenement houses, lodging houses, dormitories, multi-family, houses, etc.''6 VI. Admission only of the male sex forbidden (c. 604, § 1). By the code, only the entrance of those of the'opposite sex into the cloistered parts is forbidden. Insofar as the entrance of the same sex-is prohibited in any congregation, the obligation is merely of the constitutions. Both the purpose of cloister and ordinary charity demand that even the same sex should not be admitted in a way that would unreasonably disturb the work, recollection, and. espe-cially the privacy of the religious. VII. Exemptions from the prohibition of entrance (cc. 604, § 1; 600; 598, § 2). Can. 604, § 1, extends to common cloister the exemptions given for papal cloister in cc. 600 and 598, § 2, Since these exemptions were enacted for papal cloister, they are not. inl~er~ preted entirely in the same sense when applied to common cloister. Those exempted by cc. 600 and 598, § 2 are: 1. The local ordinary or his delegate for the canonical oisitation. It is sufficient for his examination of the cloister that he be accom-panied by sisters, either two or one, preferably the superior. 2. Priests to administer the sacraments or to assist the dying. For a just and reasonable cause, any man or.boy may be admitted into common.~ loister. The administration of any sacrament and the assistance of .the .dying are evidently just causes, and therefore any priest, may be. admitted into common .cloister for these reasons. "4. Building Exits ~6~ (Boston: National Fire'Protection Association, 12th ed., 1952, reprinted 1955), back of front cover. ." "- ¯ ~ 5. Ibid., n~ 50'3 .r.," ~.:", " : . . ; ~'~ ~, ~ '~ , 6. Ibid., nn. 2800, 2812. 28.5 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious 3. Those who hold the supreme power in the state, with their wines and retinue, and cardinalL with their retinue. This exemption isnot too prattical, and. for that reas6n is omitted in many constitu-tionsi While actually in power, even if not Catholics, kings, em-perors, presidents.of republics, the governors of our states with their wives and retinue, and cardinals with their retinu~ may enter the cloister in ahy country, even outside their own country or state. This exerription does not apply to those Who have been elected to but have not a~ yet entered on the office of supreme power, nor to persons who held supreme power in the past but do not hold it now, nor to cabinet members, senators, and congressmen. The dignity of all of these, however, would be a sufficient reason for their admission into" Common"cloister. A wife in the sense of this canon is one who is commonly held as such,' even though the marriage is invalid, e. g., because of a previous marriage. She and her. retinue may be ad-mi_ tted into the common cloister of men (c. 598, § 2). The same is true of a woman who holds,the supreme power in the state, with her .retinue. The code does .not forbid the entrance of a woman into the common cloister of religious women. 4. The superior may, with proper precautions, admit doctors, surgeons,, and others whose services are neCessar~j. There is evidently a just and teasonable cause fbr the admission of all of these. 5. Others mdy be admitted for a just and reasonable cause in the judgment of the superior, the proper'l~recautions always being ob-served (c. 604, § 1). This legislation is directly on common cloister and gives the general norm for the admission of men and boys iiato the common cloister of women. It is a sufficient norm in itself; and it is very difficult'to.see the .utility of the code's extension of cc. 600 and" 598, § 2, as enumerated above, to common cloister. There is obviously a just and reasonable cause for the admission of all of those listed above from these two canons. The proper precautions may be determined in ~the constitutions. If not,- it "is sufficient thata sister, preferably the local superior or an official, accompany any man admitted to the cloister. This is also true of a priest hdmitted for the confessions of'the sick. It is sometimes specified that the door of 'the room is to be left open while the confession is being heard. This is not always possible because of the smallness bf the room and of the adjoining corridor. No one of the. opposite sex should be .permitted to remain in the cloister longer than is necessary. Men or boys may be admitted into the common clbister of wo- 286 November, CLOISTER Ol~ CONGRI~GATIbNS the house. sister m. ay Permission ticular, or the code. men for a just and reasonable cause, which is less than a serious or grave cause. Therefore, a father, brother, or close male relative may be permitted to enter the infirmary to see a sister who is ill. Greater rea-sons, such as the.preceding and the administration of the sacraments, should be required for admission into a section devoted to the dor-mitories or cells of the sisters than into other parts of the cloister. Lesser reasons are sufficient for the admission of women and girls into the cloister when their entrance is forbidden by~ the constitutions. Particular constitutions may licitly demand more serious reasons than those required by the code for the admission of men and those commonly demanded for the admission of women. All superiors are competent to permit entrance into the cloister. 6. Male professors. According to the modern practice of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, neither the constitutions nor the custom of the instit.ute is to permit the admission of lay male pro-fessors into the cloister for the instruction of the sisters in letters or arts. When judged really necessary and not opposed b~; the local ordinary, such instructors are to teach in places outside the cloister. The mother general is to determine the precautions .necessary to avoid all danger and suspicion.7 ¯ VIII. Going out of the conoent (c. 606, § 1). Canon law does not forbid sisters to leave the house withotit the permission of su-periors but presupposes that this prohibition is contained in the con-stitutions; and in c. 606, § 1 obliges superiors to take care that the constitutions are exactly, observed with regard to subjects leaving By the law of the constitutions and universal usage, no leave the convent without the permission of the superior. may be explicit, implicit, tacit, reasonably presumed,, par-general. A violation is only of the constitutions, nQt of In the law of common cloister as understood in the code and generally practiced, sisters are permitted to leave the convent for any reasonable cause, e. g., for anything that is necessary, useful, or con-ducive to the special purpose and works of the cgngregation, for medical and dental care, spiritual reasons such as going to con~fession, for shopping, for reasonable recreation such as a walk, for works of charity such as attendance at funerals and the visiting of bereaved families, of sick, sisters, women, and children, and for reasons de-manded .by ordinaiy courtesy and politeness. They should not be permitted to go.out for reasons that are idle, u.nbscomin~,, harmful to the religious spirit, or illicit . 7. Cf. Norraae of 190l, n. 173. JOSEPH F~ GA.iLEN Regigto ttor Religious Law is .a reasonable norm of conduct; and therefore the request to go out, even for such a spiritual purpose as confession, should be reasonable. Furthermore, in granting the right "of approaching an occasional confessor, canon law gives no exemption whatever from religious discipline. It is unreasonable to expect permission to leave ~he convent,, especially if this is frequent or habitual, to go to a con-fessor who lives at a notable distance, when appreciable exigense would be necessary, or when the sister would to any degree have to be ex-cused from her assigned work. ~. There is no doubt that a congregation, may have a stricter com-mon cloister than that demanded by the code and that cloister con-tributes to freedom from temptation, dangers of the world, and'dis-tractions, and tends to foster a real interior life. Cloister, however, should not be obstructive of the special purpose of the institute nor such as to induce an artificial, inconsistent, or formalistic observance. Everything in an institute should be in agreement with and subordin-ated to its purpose. Some congregations were founded in an age that could not conceive a religious woman without papal cloister. Others took papal cloister as a fairly close model for the norms of their own constitutions. In congregations cloister should be capable of:.!unstrained observance within the framework of the purpose, works, and ordinary daily lives of the rellgiou's. The local superior gives permission to leave' the 'conven(, except for the cases that in some institutes are reserved'to higher Superiors by the constitutions or custom. The constitutions frequently forbid Sisters to visit private homes, and especially to eat or drink in them Without special permission. In a few institutes, this permission is r~served to higher superiors. Some constitutions specify that the permission of the local superior is sufficient to visit hoUses of the congregation in the vicinity, but a few demand tpheerm ~ "s s"ton of the fi~'gher superior. Constitutions quite often prescribe that a sister must 15~iVe another sister as companion when going to a do~t0ro~ dentist fo~'treatment.'There is also a frequent piohibition aga.in~t visiting house~ of priests without necessity, permission, and a sister com-p'~ inion~ '-'," ' . ~" It'i~ould be advisable to consider the temper, ing. of" the prohi-l~ itiona~ainst eating and drinking in private homes With"~egard to the occasions when a light lunch or hot or cold dri~{I~ could not b'e ~efused without' appearing discourteous and impolitel There can be 'n(~

Mike Schlosser, August 14, 2013; Mike Schlosser's grandfather outside his barbershop ca. 1930; Mike Schlosser's grandfather in his barbershop at the Healy Hotel ca. 1930 ; Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. ; The following is an oral history interview with Mike Shlosser. The interview was conducted on August 14, 2013, by Woodrow Johnson. Mike discusses his experiences with 25th Street. ; 38p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 videodisc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Mike Schlosser Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 14 August 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mike Schlosser Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 14 August 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Schlosser, Mike, an oral history by Woodrow Johnson, 14 August 2013 , WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Mike Schlosser August 14, 2013 Mike Schlosser's grandfather outside his barbershop ca. 1930 Mike Schlosser's grandfather in his barbershop at the Healy Hotel ca. 1930 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Mike Shlosser. The interview was conducted on August 14, 2013, by Woodrow Johnson. Mike discusses his experiences with 25th Street. WJ: My name is Woodrow Johnson and I'm here with Elliott McNaly who is running the audio-visual equipment. We are here with Mike Shlosser on August 14, 2013. Mike, this project is about historic 25th Street and the greater Ogden area, to which your grandfather had a pretty heavy role in, so let's talk about him. Can you tell us your grandfather's name? MS: George Earl Baldwin. WJ: Where is he from and how did he get to Ogden? MS: He was born in 1889 in Pahreah, Utah. It is now the most remote ghost town in the state of Utah. He was the first born of John Henry and Martha Magnum Baldwin. He was born in a one room, dirt floor, log cabin. His father was a rancher and his mother was a rancher's wife. He had one brother born three years later. After him a baby sister born five years later who died in infancy of diphtheria. He was raised in southern Utah in cattle ranching and mustanging. He was put on horseback at a very young age and put to work. To our knowledge, he had approximately a fifth grade education. We can't find too many records about that because it was basically done by the church sisters and brothers in the Cannonville area which is a smaller community about 21 miles southwest of Pahreah. His father homesteaded this area and it was considered open range for 1 raising cattle and mustanging of horses. He was put to work because another hand to work was another mouth to feed and another mouth to feed was someone to do more work. He became quite proficient at it. For the remainder of his life, he had an affinity for horses and had an ability with them that was quite remarkable to witness. He also became quite a storyteller in his later life. In his mid-twenties he married my grandmother, they referred to her as Maggie. My mother, Ila, was born in 1916. The next child was born a year and a half later, which would have been my Aunt Maxine. In my grandfather's early life, in his mid-twenties, because of what they did for a living they broke these mustang horses that they would catch in the canyons along the Arizona strip, he got hurt pretty badly and broke his back. It was just below the cervical collar, but just above his attachment for his spinal column to the base of his back just above the scapula. He always had a hump on his back from then on. They didn't have the technology to really work on people like they do now. I asked him about his hump when I was just a small boy and he told me that it was from a horse bucking him off and hurting him really bad. This is what brought him to the Ogden area because he could no longer continue to actively ranch. He brought my grandmother and mother and one daughter to Ogden with very little money. They had heard there was a need for barbers in Ogden because of the railroad station on 25th Street. He had heard that there was an opening at the Heely Hotel on the corner of 25th Street and Wall Avenue. It was quite an opulent building. I remember very vividly the marble floors and the marble 2 staircase that went upstairs to the mezzanine level. There were always people in and out. My grandfather went to barber school in Salt Lake and to my knowledge, it was 35 dollars to go to the school and it was a two week school. They taught them all the theory of barbering and shaving and those things. He did quite well in the school and when it came time to take their tests, they were going to do the shave in the morning session and the state legislature was in session at the time and the legislatures, being politicians, as we know them, took advantage of the free shave. They came down to the barber school for their free shave from the students. Pick of the draw, my grandfather wound up with the governor of the state of Utah as his shaving dummy more or less. He took the test and when the instructor came by to grade it, the governor spoke to the instructor and said, "This is the best shave I've ever had in my lifetime." He was awarded 100 percent on the shave just on the governor's say so. That afternoon they did their haircuts and he got another one of the fellows from the legislature. He had very curly hair and he had a hard time getting it cut the way the man liked it. When they graded him, they graded him at 79 points. Passing was 80. The instructor told him, "You're one point shy of graduating." The governor was sitting right across from them and he spoke up to the instructor and said, "He shaved me this morning and earned one hundred and one points." That's how he got graduated and got his license. This led to the fact that he applied for the job adjacent to the Heely Hotel and got the job. He later bought that particular business. It was a two chair 3 barbershop with a shoe shine stand. My uncle Priel would go down on Saturdays when it was really busy and help out over the years. He was also was a barber. During the 30's and early 40's it was quite a going tradition that people would go into the Heely Hotel and spend the night from the Union Railroad Station. In the morning, the men would get up and come downstairs and they would go next door through the alcove entryway into my grandfather's shop and he would shave them and if they needed a haircut he would do that also. It proved to be fairly lucrative for him. In those days a shave was 15 cents and a haircut was 25 cents. You have to shave a lot of faces and cut a lot of heads to make a living at it, so a volume business and you're only as good as your last haircut or shave, as they say in the trades. He was able to do it. He was able to make a living for his family and his family began to grow through more children. He had five daughters and one son. He was able to support their family. When the Second World War broke out, being quite an entrepreneur, because of the way he was raised where if you had an opportunity to make a dollar, you made a dollar. He found out through the grapevine that the troop trains were coming to Ogden and the word finally got out amongst the soldiers, which being in the military myself, information like this tends to have a life of their own. He made it available for the soldiers that would come up on their train layover. There were up to 22 trains a day that arrived in Ogden at the Union Station. There were as many as a thousand or more soldiers on these trains. They'd come up 25th Street when they had four hours to kill looking for something to do. 4 At this time, in the late 30's and early 40's, it was pretty wild down there. I actually know a fellow who was a beat cop for the Ogden Police Department named Vern Butcher. We used to get Vern to talk to us about these things and about the old stories. He said on any Friday or Saturday night, as a beat cop, you could walk out of any corner on 25th Street and look any direction and there was a felony going on. It was quite an exciting time for the Ogden area and 25th Street got quite the reputation because of this. Vern Butcher spent his entire working career for the Ogden Police Department down on 25th Street. He later went to work for the sheriff's department when he retired from the police department. That's how I met him, through the sheriff's department here in Ogden. My grandfather was an interesting man. He was quite a storyteller and very well known in the community on 25th Street. He was referred to as "Cowboy Baldwin" his entire life. I actually mentioned that to Vern Butcher and asked him if he knew Cowboy Baldwin and Vern looked at me funny for a moment and said, "That's your grandpa?" I said, "Yes, sir, he was." He said, "I know him very well. He was a very interesting man and cut my hair for years and would never take a dime from me for it even though I insisted. Your grandpa said that because I walked foot beat on 25th Street, if something happened to me, I deserve to be buried looking nice." Back to the original story, the soldiers would go up 25th Street looking for something to kill the time. There were numerous restaurants on 25th Street. My brother-in-law's father owned one of the restaurants on 25th Street, which I understand he is giving you a piece on this project. There were four theaters 5 downtown at that time. Now, the Egyptian is the only one left. The soldiers would go to the movies and go eat or go to a bar, or they might find some female companionship which was quite prevalent on the street. Anything you could look for, you could find. When it came time to get back on the train, because they didn't allow any alcohol on the trains, these are servicemen going to a war zone and rules didn't really apply too much to them. They learned through the grapevine that the thing to do was to go up to the liquor store on 25th and Grant Avenue and buy a half bottle of whatever particular alcohol they wanted to have and go across the street to Saco's Fruit Stand and buy a small watermelon or a large cantaloupe and take it down to the street into my grandfather's barbershop. He would charge them a quarter to go in his back room and hollow out that fruit and stick the bottle inside and get on the train. My grandmother told many stories of having to reinforce my grandfather's suit pants pockets because of the weight of all this change he brought home every day. My older sister remembers it very vividly of him coming home and putting his hand in his pocket throwing change out on the floor. As kids, we'd just dive into it. In those days, a quarter was a huge amount of money for a kid. My particular memories of the barbershop were as a young boy, we went to grandpa's barbershop every other week for a haircut. I really didn't particularly like having my hair cut, but I really did like going on 25th Street and watching the people because it was a very busy time. In the early 50's when the Korean war broke out, he did this again with the watermelon and the cantaloupe thing. From the Second World War, he was able to amass enough money that they were able 6 to put a very nice down payment on their home on 31st Street. When the Korean War broke out seven or eight years later, he was able to buy a brand new Buick Roadmaster car that they retired with. I remember as a little boy, sitting on my grandfather's lap driving that car. They used that until he passed away when I was 14. Quite an interesting life he led. He was quite a storyteller. My favorite parts of him were after they had retired, they would go up to Twin Lakes Idaho where they had a little sixteen foot Shasta travel trailer that they pulled with that old Buick. They had a 14 foot aluminum boat they would turn upside down and put it on top of the car. It was just not quite light enough that my grandfather could take it off alone. He always had to find someone to help him get it on or get it off the car. That's why one of us grandsons was sent with him to help out. My grandfather had to retire from barbering because he developed emphysema from the microscopic hair that he inhaled. The doctor accused him of being a heavy smoker, but he never smoked a day in his life. Although, he could roll a cigarette with one hand, I watched him do it. He did it for his father as a young boy. It was interesting to watch that happen with one hand. I remember that very vividly. My father asked him one time to show him how to do it and my dad couldn't do it. It was more or less a game to them. They would fish all summer long. Being of pioneer stock, my grandmother canned everything they had. You name it, if it could go in a bottle in a pressure cooker, she put it in there. She put fileted trout in a quart jar in that little 16 foot travel trailer. There was no bathroom in it and it had a heater in the floor that if it was on, you better not step on it 7 because it'd burn your foot. There was a little stove, a one basin sink with a water tank, and they had to go to town to get their drinking water. They pretty much roughed it up there. There weren't any approved camp grounds or anything, but they would go out fishing every morning and my grandmother would go with my grandfather and myself and other cousins and we would fish in the early morning hours, usually trolling. In the evening, my grandfather and I would go and grandma would stay back at camp, and that was when he told me cowboy stories which were very illuminating. He was quite good at describing the terrain and the time of the year and what he was doing and how it got to be out in that area. He told me the story of going out to check cattle one day at about 16 or 17 years of age, and as he was loping his horse across the prairie. His horse all of a sudden gathered himself and jumped. It caught him off guard and he nearly fell off. He reigned up the horse and turned him and brought him back to see what he was jumping over and there was an Indian lying there in the trail. It was an old man whose tribe had left him and moved on. This man was named Chief Wohose, he was very elderly and my grandfather gave him some water and tried to give him some food, but he refused the food. Through broken English and what little bit of Piute my grandfather knew, he ascertained that he wanted to be left alone as that was their custom to leave their elderly along the trail. Ashes to ashes dust to dust is how they looked at it. He had a lot of occasions dealing with Indians as a young boy. He was chased several times by Piute Indians down in the Bryce Canyon areas because that area was their sacred ground in the area at that time. The 8 white man was still quite a novelty to see and especially a man alone riding a horse out in that country. My grandmother was shot in the leg at 13 with an arrow by a Piute Indian who tried to catch her. She told me that her horse was too fast for him, he couldn't catch her pony. She outran him and got home with the arrows protruding out of her leg. Until the day she died she had an indentation on the side of her calf where the arrow struck her. I've asked her several times over the years about it and always got the same story that an Indian chased her as a young girl. It was a very interesting lifestyle. My grandfather, when he started his business, he really started it from scratch. He did have some business come in from the hotel next door and from the people down the street who found out there was a barber shop there and he became quite successful at it. As a young boy, I remember my grandfather had a fellow who had been a porter for the Union Pacific Railroad and in those days they referred to these black men as George Porter, because of the man who invented the Pullman car. They were the staff on the sleeper cars. They would make up the beds and clean in the mornings and assist people on and off. When the railroad did away with the sleeping cars, they were basically left high and dry wherever they were. He was originally from Mississippi and his name was Willie. I don't remember his last name and I wish I could find a record of him, but my grandfather gave him a job and he shined shoes. He had a high back wooden shoe shine stand and I believe it was a two-seater as I remember it, and it faced the window. I used to love to get up on there as a little boy and watch the people 9 going by as 25th Street was very busy in those days with foot traffic as was all of downtown Ogden. People dressed to go shopping in those days. On occasion, my grandfather would give me 25 cents, but he would make Willie go with me and we would go up 25th Street and I'd go to a movie, or buy something to eat, or find treasures in the little shops along the way. Willie always stayed with me, but he had to stay outside because of the racial barriers at the time. As soon as I came out of the store, he was right there with me. He was quite an older man and I do remember him very vividly in my mind. He was very black in color and his eyes were very bloodshot. He looked to me like he was almost bleeding from his eyes because they were extremely red. I don't know what really caused it, but I remember that he let me touch his hair. He was really the first black man I ever witnessed and I felt that his hair was very soft, but underneath it was very coarse because he used some type of a hair dressing on there. He was an interesting man. He always had some kind of hand lotion he was working with on his hands because his hands would get really dry shining the shoes. What else would you like to know? WJ: While we're touching on racism and segregation, I'd like to continue on that. Other than walking with Willie and him not being allowed in the stores that you were able to go in, did you ever see or experience any other form of racism or segregation on 25th Street? MS: I really didn't. Being young like that, I don't believe I really understood what was going on. I just knew that Willie would just tell me to go in and when I came out he'd be right there. I didn't find out until years later really what caused that, I just 10 thought he was being polite and was going to stay outside and for whatever reason he didn't want to go in there. It didn't really register with me. As a young kid, being the first black man I ever saw, he was my friend. He would have me hold his hand as we went up the street, especially if we crossed the street to the other side. I guess it was quite a sight to see a toe-headed kid being escorted up 25th Street by a black, older man, but I didn't think anything of it really. I didn't really have any more exposure until later on in school here in Ogden. We had a couple of black kids in our school and they were my friends. I really didn't experience any racism until I was probably in high school. Then I really noticed some of this stuff because they were just other kids. I played sports with them, I had gym class with them, I'd shop with them and have regular classes with them. We really didn't have what I considered to be a problem. I never heard anybody say anything bad to them because the one fellow I was in high school with was so well-liked that he was actually a member of the student council because he was a very good athlete and a nice guy. As a kid, I didn't witness any of that down on 25th street. I'm sure it happened. I do know that Willie lived in the old porters and waiters hotel and it was really the only place that black people were allowed to live in that particular part of town unless they were able to buy a home somewhere. I don't remember what happened to Willie. I'm sure he passed away or he might have moved somewhere, but I don't really know what happened to him. WJ: With your grandfather's barber shop being so close to the porters and waiters, do you recall very many African Americans coming in for haircuts or shaves. 11 MS: No, I don't recall that ever. I don't even know if they were allowed to go in the shops because of the segregation problems in the early fifties and late forties. I do remember that the people who would come into the shop to get a haircut, shave or have their shoes shined knew his name and would speak to him because he was right there in the beginning of the shop when they came through. They always seemed to be very polite to me. That was probably an overtone of the time I'm thinking, but he seemed to be able to make a living. My grandfather kept him there for a long time that I can remember. He was kind of like a fixture there at the barber shop. He would also do clean up things and sweep the floors and stuff like that to make himself useful and helpful. I don't remember any people on 25th Street that weren't white. I don't remember that at all. WJ: So, obviously it was very busy during WWII and we covered that. You would have seen more of the Korean War era, do you have any memories of being around the soldiers on 25th Street or in the barbershop. MS: I have a vague memory of it. I don't know if this memory is of an actual occurrence or if it was something that was told to me later on in life, but I do have a vague memory of some soldiers being in there. I don't really remember too much about it. WJ: Do you feel that with both WWII and Korea ending, Vietnam used a lot of different forms of transportation, do you feel that the railroad leaving hurt your grandfather's business. 12 MS: I think so. I remember as a kid, going down to the railroad station and going through the underground tunnels that took you out to the different tracks that were going through. I don't remember how many there were, but there were a number of tunnels that you would go downstairs under the tracks and come up on the other side. I remember that we used to hear the trains all the time and the whistles blowing and so forth. Later in the sixties, the train service started to change. Airplanes became more popular and people started to fly and it was faster and cheaper to fly. I did notice a decrease downtown of people coming through. It was a very busy hub railroad station. My grandfather retired in about 1963 or 1964 and I really didn't go back down to that area until my high school years. I do remember it and I remember my father saying things like he couldn't get certain parts anymore for some of the tractors because the trains weren't coming often enough to bring freight in and things of that nature. WJ: There are lots of rumors of tunnels and opium dens and those kinds of things on 25th Street. Do you have any experience with these tunnels at all? MS: There was a trap door in the back room of my grandfather's barbershop. In the photo you'll see the grape stakes of the back wall and it was behind there. You went through that doorway into the back room and it was a fairly small room, maybe 20 feet long and about 10 feet wide. In the one corner there was a trap door in the floor and I do remember going back there one time and that door was open. Prior to that, it was pretty heavy floor and I probably didn't pay too much attention, but I did see the trap door open and I went down the stairs and they were old, wooden, rickety 13 stairs and it smelled funny. It was kind of a musty smell. At the bottom of the staircase there was a big steel door that was set into the wood frame that was locked because I tried it and I couldn't get through it. Years later, I asked about it and that was one of the doorways that went into the tunnel system, which to my knowledge is under the gift house today. That's where the barber shop was, where the gift house is built now, which is owned and operated by Scott Vanleeuwen. There are some places still in downtown Ogden that have those. I do know that over on 24th Street, under the old paint company is where the pony express office was and underneath that are some of the adobe stalls they used for the horses and things of that nature. I have seen that, but as far as up and down 25th Street, I've never been in the tunnels, but there was always talk about them. WJ: Did your grandpa say anything to you about his tunnel entrance. MS: Yes, he told me to get up out of there and he was a little stern about it. That's really the only thing he ever said to me about it. I was so young then that probably if he did say anything about it. It was kind of a curiosity for me to see the open hatch and the staircase that went downstairs and it really did have a funny smell to it as I remember, but I don't have any real experience in the tunnels themselves. WJ: When we were here before, you did mention very briefly that your grandfather was friends with Harm Perry. Do you remember anything about Mr. Perry? 14 MS: I don't. I do remember that he went to my grandfather for his haircut for years. They were friends. I know that my grandfather contributed to his campaign a couple of times. They had a very close relationship, but of course, Mayor Perry knew everyone in town. To this day, people talk about how well he interacted with the businessmen downtown and how he brought the Pioneer Days Rodeo to town and installed all these traditions that we now celebrate here in the Ogden area. As far as meeting him, I don't remember meeting him. I may have, but I don't know. The gentleman in the photograph, we have no idea who he is in the barber chair. I initially thought it might be the mayor, but it's not. We compared a picture and it's not. WJ: Do you remember your grandfather sharing any Harm Perry stories? MS: I don't really unless it would be something that was related to me later in life. I don't remember him telling me too much about any of that. I do know they were friends, I know that much and they were business associates and that he cut his hair for many years. WJ: Behind every man is a better woman, as the saying goes, and you mentioned your grandmother, Maggie, before. I was wondering if you could tell us about her since she obviously is such a huge part of your grandfather's life and your life, so I'd like to hear a little bit about her as well. MS: Well, my grandmother, Maggie, was born in Cannonville, Utah. At fifteen years of age, she met my grandfather, and they began a relationship that lasted for well over 50 years. She was of pioneer stalk and her father was a polygamist who married two sisters a few years apart from each other. He had 17 children by 15 those two women, of which the first wife passed away after her seventh child and her mother would raise all of those children. Her half-sister, we refer to her as Aunt Maude, lived in South Ogden and I have very fond memories of Aunt Maude. She was the youngest of the children, my grandmother was the second youngest of the children from the second marriage. My grandfather was called to go on a mission for the LDS church. This would have been right around 1917. My mother was about 3 months old when he left, which left my grandmother and mother home to take care of themselves in a log cabin on what was left of the family ranch. My grandmother took a job cooking for the miners up the canyon which was 13 miles further up the canyon. She would have to get up at 4 in the morning and get the fire going in the stove because there was no heat in the building. She would get breakfast started and go out and feed the stock and get the horse hitched up to the buggy and when she finally had everything warmed up and ready to go and had my mother fed, she would heat rocks and she would wrap those rocks up in cloth and put them in with my mother to keep her warm, as she was a very tiny baby and she would drive the 13 miles up to the mine and cook breakfast and lunch for the miners. In the afternoon, she would start the dinner work and another woman would come up and feed the miners the evening meal. She would go home and take care of her garden, animals, and her way of life to keep herself alive and keep my mother alive. While my grandfather was on his mission, he was in Tennessee, and he told me the story that he and his companion were walking down side of the road 16 and it was extremely hot and humid. He was not used to this kind of weather being from the desert country of Utah. He said that he had a fan in the button hole in the lapel of his coat and in those days the missionaries weren't allowed to go around in just church sleeves, they had to have their jackets and a tie on all the time. He said that it got so hot and he sweat so badly that it melted his waxed collar to make the collar stand up. It actually melted to where it just kind of fell down around his neck. They were walking along a truck came by with some men in the back of the truck and they stopped alongside my grandfather and his companion and asked them what they were doing and explained to them that they were on a mission for the LDS church and the men in the truck milled around for a few minutes and asked them again, "What are you doing?" They said, "We're on a mission for the LDS church." "What is the LDS church?" "Well, we're Latter Day Saints, Mormons." They understood what that meant and the men wanted to know why they weren't in the military because the draft was being instigated for World War I at this time and they explained to them that they have a deferment because they were on a mission from their church. The men didn't buy that and they got out of the truck and surrounded my grandfather and his companion and beat them within an inch of their lives. The men threw them in the back of the truck and hauled them into Nashville and threw them in the county jail. It took three days before my grandfather was well enough to even walk because they beat him up so badly. He was finally allowed a phone call and the only phone that was in Cannonville, Utah was in the general 17 store. He called that number through the operator and they sent word up to the cabin that he had called and would be calling back later and my grandmother came into town and waited for the call. He explained to her what happened and she was quite concerned and he asked her to tell the bishop what was going on so they could get someone in the church authority to get him out of jail. She went to the local bishop and was told that he was too busy getting his winter crop in and he wouldn't have time to do it for at least a week. He wasn't sure of the timeline and this didn't sit well with my grandmother. So she drove the buck board out to where the stake president lived and spoke with him about it and pretty much got the same story. She went back home and stewed over this for not very long because she was a very determined person, and at this time weighed about 90 pounds and never stood more than five foot four in her life. My mother was four or five months old. My grandmother basically was not going to stand for being put off. She hitched up the buck board and put together enough provisions to last her a few days and bundled my mother up into every quilt and blanket that she had and headed out to Salt lake City from Cannonville. It took her three days camping on the prairie. This story was relayed to me by my grandmother on several occasions and other members of my family. This was in the dead of winter. I can't imagine being in an open buck board trying to drive this horse across the prairies of Utah on goat trails and cow trails. There were very little roadways to speak of all the way into Salt Lake. Once she got into Salt Lake, she said, "I really looked a fright. My hair was all out of place and I was very dirty, but I went straight to the 18 church's general authority's office building and went inside with your mother in my arms." There was a man secretary sitting up on this big desk on a small platform and when he recognized that she was standing there he asked if he could help her and she explained to him what was going on with my grandfather. The gentleman came back at her with, "Do you have an appointment?" She explained, "No, I don't have an appointment. I have just arrived here and I drove myself with my tiny baby all the way from Cannonville in the buck board." The gentleman said, "Well, you'll have to make an appointment and you're probably going to have about a two week wait." This infuriated my grandmother. She had just about all she was going to have about being put off and she went back out to the buck board and as her story went, she said to me, "I reached in above the blanket and the seat of the buck board and took out a 30/30 rifle and walked back inside the building right up to the man in front," and in her terminology, not mine, hers, she said, "I fanned a bullet into the chamber and slammed the butt of the gun down on his desk and said I will see the president of this son of a bitch, and I will see him today." She did. They took her back to Cannonville three days later in a stagecoach that the church paid for. One of the brothers from Salt Lake drove the buck board back. They put her up at the fort halfway for the night so she didn't have to sleep out on the prairie and they paid for that also. I think she made a fairly good impression on the fellows downtown in the church of general authorities and my grandfather was out of jail. Two weeks later they did it to him again. It was the same type of 19 scenario. My grandmother told the story as a continuation of this story. This time she said with a twinkle in her eye, "Mikey all I had to do was tell the bishop this time." As the saying goes, "Crap rolls downhill." I guess it came from Salt Lake down to the bishop that this was not good. There was some other legislation that took place somewhere and someone in authority got involved in this. As I understand it, reading some of the history, it was fairly common for the missionaries to be accosted like this because the church was not really well thought of in those days. Sometimes you just had to stand up for yourself. I know that my grandfather did not resist them because he told me himself. WJ: Earlier you mentioned Vern Butcher. Do you know of any of his stories of 25th Street? MS: He did tell us quite a bit of stories there in the break room and about a couple of shootings that he was involved in. He was actually shot as I remember. Don't quote me on that, but as I remember he did get shot in one of those. It was either shot or stabbed. Vern was a big man. He probably stood 6'5" and weighed well over 250 pounds. You didn't have a small man walking foot beat on 25th Street. He told me that just like in the big cities they carried a knight stick and he got quite proficient with twirling it on the leather thong that it had to hold on to it. He said that in those days there were no radios for the police. They had a red light on the city and county building and when a call would come in, they would turn that red light on and it would flash and they would know to go to a call box and call in to see what was going on. You always would walk out of whatever business you'd just been in and keep your eyes peeled up toward the city and 20 county building. This was in the days before there was a lot of trees downtown that had grown to full size. The city and county building only being 10 or 15 years old at the time. He talked about a number of ladies of the night that were prevalent on the street. He talked about the bars and the fights that went on and the soldiers that met trouble on the street in one form or another. There was quite a bit of that going on because they were taken advantage of by the flim flam artists as they called them in those days. I don't remember too much more about what Vern had to say, but it was very spell binding to listen to him. He was not a man to stretch the truth and if he said that he bopped somebody on the head with a knight stick, he thumped him. I do know that when you arrested someone when your afoot, you had to walk him to jail. If the friends were around, they didn't want you taking him to jail, they tried to take him away from you. You had to be very determined about what you were going to do. He also told us on one particular occasion that sometimes you couldn't do anything because you were all by yourself or you had your partner with you and there wasn't anything you could do to stop what was going on because you were out-numbered by the amount of people out there. It's the sign of the times of the 30's and early 40's. WJ: When we were here for the pre interview. You mentioned a man only known as "Airplane." Can you share some experiences there? MS: I don't remember his real name as we called him wino. He was an alcoholic and he lived on 25th Street. He would stay in the cheapest hotel or he would sleep in the back alleys or in cars. He had been a certified public accountant as a young 21 man and alcohol took over his life and he was quite a small man when I knew him. This was in the mid-70's that I knew him. The reason they called him "Airplane" is—because of his gin soaked brain I guess you could call it, he would mimic an airplane in flight. He'd put his arms out and make noises like an airplane and bank his arms when he went around a corner or made a turn. The particular night that I remember him the most for was I had just come out of the sheriff's office in my patrol car and was sitting at the red light at 25th and Grant Avenue and I was going to go straight through the intersection and out toward the county area when I saw some movement coming toward me, which would be going south on grant Avenue. I could see a person coming at me, but I couldn't tell what they were doing and it was about 11 at night and it was winter time and it was cold and I had my window rolled down about halfway and I could just faintly hear the noise he was making. He sounded like an airplane coming toward me and he banked really hard to make the turn to go west on 25th Street and he had his head down and when he made the turn he turned just a little bit too wide and went head first into a parking meter. I do remember hearing the parking meter make a twang sound that only a piece of steel can make when it's hit with something really hard and of course "Airplane" went to the ground into the gutter and I looked over and saw him and honestly, I laughed. It was pretty comical to see. I thought, "Well, he'll get up." I sat there for a moment more and he didn't move and I thought he hurt himself bad or possibly killed himself. He was moving pretty fast as he came around the corner. I pulled over there and he was semi-conscious and murmuring and blood was everywhere, he'd split his head open 22 from the back toward the front. He was bleeding pretty badly. I felt bad for him. He stunk really, really bad. I don't know how long he'd lived in those clothes. I do know that the Ogden officers used to go out and round these guys up when the weather would get really bad and they'd take them up and put them in jail just so they wouldn't freeze to death on the street. The judge in the Ogden Municipal Courts would fine them and they didn't have the money, do they'd take the jail time anywhere from a week to thirty days. They'd take them up to the jail and they'd change their clothes out and wash them down with a hose because most of these fellows lived in their clothes for a long time and they did every bodily function they could do in their clothes while they were under this alcoholic stupor. Some of these guys were pretty pitiful to look at. I watched several of them go through DT's in the jail. There really wasn't much we could do for them other than refer them to the nurse. "Airplane," as he was referred to, being in Ogden City on 25th Street, the Ogden police department really didn't like the sheriff's department to make arrests on 25th Street. Of course, this fellow was injured and was also intoxicated. I called our dispatcher and they said, "An Ogden officer down." He came down and he was in a brand new El Camino police car and he had his dog in the back in an insulated box that the dog rode in with a wire mesh gate on the front of it. As soon as he saw how bad Airplane was bleeding, even though I had given him a great big sterile pad to put on his head to help stem the flow of blood, the Ogden officer refused to put him in his patrol car because it was a brand new patrol car. As I said earlier, "Airplane" stunk really bad and it was the kind of stink 23 that you just don't want to be around. This Ogden office would not put him in the patrol car and he finally decided and he looked at me and I said, "I'm not taking him," I told him, "This is Ogden City." He went to the back of the patrol car and he dropped the tailgate and opened the door and took his dog out and walked him around and put him in the front seat. He went back and picked up Airplane, who was a very small man, and put him in the dog house and shut the door. A fellow came by from Ogden Police Department's crime lab and he took a photograph with "Airplane" with his fingers through the grate and looking out and blood on his face. That picture hung up in the downstairs evidence room of the Ogden Municipal Building for many years afterwards and I was witness to that happening. It was a pretty comical deal. I do know that several years later there was a fire at the Marion hotel and the Ogden officers got there first before the fire department even got there and they entered the building. That particular officer drug out a couple of those guys and saved their lives. He went back up inside to try and get some more of those fellows and he found "Airplane" and he had expired from smoke inhalation. He carried him out of the building and he sat on the curb on 25th Street and cried holding this little old man because he had nobody in the world and the officer knew who he was and dealt with him for years and he just felt really bad that he wasn't able to do more for him. I know that haunts him to this day, I know it does. He's still a police officer, but I won't give you his name. 24 WJ: You mentioned that the sheriff's office and the Ogden City Police Department shared some ground, but they preferred that you didn't touch 25th Street. Do you have any stories, other than dealing with Airplane, in or around 25th Street? MS: I have a number of them. Ogden city called us one night and they had a fight going on in a bar on 25th Street, El Borracho, I believe was the name of the bar as I remember. It was a large group of Hispanic men fighting and it boiled out into the street and it got pretty bad. The Ogden officers didn't have enough guys on duty that were clear, that weren't on calls, to handle it and they called us for help. We happened to be very close by, which was a rarity for the sheriff's department. I do know I was sent to a fatal accident and I was in Hooper when I got the call and the fatal accident was at mile marker 43 on Monte Cristo and I was the closest car. That's over 55 miles that I ran code 3, lights and siren. When I got to the accident scene I couldn't even hear because the siren was above your head on a light bar in those days. This particular night, I believe it was a Friday night, in the winter time again and we went down there and we didn't actually get inside. As I remember, we didn't even make it inside the building and the Ogden officers were grabbing people and pushing them out the door. They would say, "Take that one, let that one go." It was a pretty physical fight. There were a lot of guys that were bleeding and a lot of yelling and a lot of confusion going on. I remember we put four fellows handcuffed in the back seat of our patrol car and we kind of just piled them in there. We hauled them up to the jail and when you go to the ninth floor of the old city and county building, we had a holding room and it was basically a 25 steel room with a steel door and a little window and it had a couple of benches in there bolted to the wall and nothing else. There were no bathroom facilities and no water or anything. We would put prisoners in there until we could get them in individually to have them booked in at the screening desk which was an iron graded shield in front of the desk. The jail officer would stand behind that screen and ask them questions to get them booked into jail. We threw these guys in there to hold them and in the meantime, Ogden Police were bringing people in too. There were quite a number of fellows, I don't remember how many, but there was probably somewhere between 8 and 12 people that got arrested out of this. Some of the fellows were a little banged up and we stared taking guys out and we were just helping because being with the sheriff's department, the booking officer, there were two men on a midnight shift in the jail and it got a little hectic for them trying to get all these people taken care of and all the paperwork involved. I was helping to get this done and I more or less wound up being the guy that got the next guy out of the cell and brought him in. We'd put him up against the grading fence in front of the booking desk and we'd search them and take their property from them that had to be kept with a jailer like their belts and shoelaces and any money or anything in their pockets and things. Because it was winter time we were taking their coats also. We brought probably six or eight fellows in and got them booked, which probably took about a half hour to 45 minutes to get all of them booked. We finally grabbed one fellow and I brought him out and stood him up by the wall and I started to check his pockets. He was very verbal with me. He was 26 calling me every name you could think of and was extremely hostile and intoxicated. We started checking him and when I went and reached over to take his coat off I walked behind him and took it off his shoulders and brought it down over his arms. He had a knife sticking out of his chest. We got his ID out of him thinking he was an adult because he was in the bar. He was seventeen years old. We had to take him up to the hospital and that was the end of my night in the jail because they had to do surgery on him to have the knife removed. He didn't bleed very much and it didn't kill him. I remember the expression on the jailer's face when he saw that knife sticking out of his chest. He had a couple of choice words to say to us about searching him. I said, "I didn't search anybody, they came out of that bar handcuffed and we grabbed them and threw them in the car." This fellow probably went 45 minutes to maybe an hour with a knife sticking out of his chest inside his coat. WJ: Wow. I imagine you've seen a lot then. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? MS: My grandfather was an interesting man, he really was. In his local ward, he was a high 70's and I do know that when somebody would not show up for their talk on Sunday in the sacrament meeting, they would call on my grandfather to fill in at a moment's notice. He was always able to come up with some interesting story to talk about with his relationship with the LDS church and his ideas of religion. He was very highly thought of in his local neighborhood and ward. In later years, after he passed away the neighborhood changed very much. Minorities started moving into the neighborhood and I do remember as a teenage boy mowing my 27 grandmother's lawn and I spent a lot of time down there taking care of her yard. Because of her age, she wasn't really able to do that kind of work. She had a very good relationship with two different black families there on the block and I remember one fellow walked by one day just as I got there on my motorcycle and he came walking over to me and I'd never seen him before other than maybe once or twice around the neighborhood. He walked over to me and said, "Who are you?" I said, "Well, I'm Mike." He said, "What are you doing here at Miss Baldwin's?" I said, "She's my grandmother I'm going to mow her lawn." He said, "Okay, just wanted to know what you were doing here." They watched out for her because she was a little old grandma and looked like a grandma and acted like a grandma and she was very sweet to anybody, it didn't matter what color you were or what religion you were, she was a grandma and that's how everyone referred to her. My grandfather and my grandmother are buried in South Ogden. We were just there not too long ago with another aunt and one of their children. It was interesting to walk over to my grandmother and grandfather's headstone and talk to them for a moment. I hadn't been up there since I was a kid. It was kind of interesting to see how the area had changed. When we buried my grandfather there was a very small pine tree just in front of his grave and that pine tree is huge now. He's been gone probably 47 or 48 years now so a lot of history has gone on. 25th Street had changed a lot in those years. Now it's very much a tourist attraction and eclectic place to go for dinner or the shops that are down there. That's really all I have about that part of their lives. 28 WJ: Thank you so much for sharing with us. MS: You're welcome. It was my pleasure. 29

Part one of an interview with Amelia Gallucci-Cirio. Topics include: Recognition of the September 11th tragedy underway. Amelia's involvement in the Center for Italian Culture and the Alba Program. Pride in the Italian heritage and the importance of preserving it. The history of where Amelia lived in Connecticut and Massachusetts, while she was growing up. Memories of her relatives. What Amelia's childhood was like. Where in Italy her parents were from. Amelia's experience attending Fitchburg Teachers College from 1934-1938. Attending band concerts in Caldwell Park. Dressing up for Sundays, holidays, and to go downtown. How Fitchburg has changed. How people's values have changed. The role of church in a community. Social clubs. How Amelia met her husband. Where Amelia and her husband have traveled together. What inspired Amelia to donate money towards the education of others and the preservation of Italian culture. ; 1 LINDA: This is Linda [unintelligible – 00:00:02] for the Center of Italian Culture. We are interviewing Amelia Gallucci-Cirio. And I'm sure I didn't say that in the Italian way. I'm sorry. AMELIA: Yes, you did. That was right. LINDA: Okay. It's Wednesday, September 11, and we are in the home of both Anna [unintelligible – 00:00:23] and Amelia's cousin, Rachel Montorri, and the address is 479 Lindell Avenue in Leominster. It's a beautiful morning. It's 10:20 a.m., and we're starting a little bit late today because there was a national tragedy today, and there are unconfirmed reports that there was a terrorist attack against the United States, and there have been two planes, at least two planes, that have flown and struck the World Trade Center. There was a plane that struck the Pentagon about a half an hour after that. There are unconfirmed reports of a fire at the State House, and The White House has been evacuated and the Blair House, many buildings in Washington. People are very, very nervous today. So we will talk a little bit about that, I'm sure, but Anna and Amelia and Rachel are here with us today, of course to talk about the Italian-American experience, particularly in Fitchburg and Leominster. And Amelia, thank you very much. I suppose that we have to thank you for a lot of different things. Not just for appearing today to… AMELIA: Well, I'm happy to do it. May I preface this by quoting something from Cicero? Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman, said, "Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child, for what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history." I think that's so important. LINDA: Now, did that sort of formulate your reason for creating the center? AMELIA: Yes. Yes, and one of the reasons was I wanted to -- I'm very much interested in Western civilization and the Italian language and its culture, and I thought I think I'm capable of making donations, and my Fitchburg 2 State College would be the first to accept it, although I've also made donations to other organizations. In Waterbury, Connecticut, we have a program that I hope is going to carry on here in Leominster also. It's the Alba Program, in which children ages 6 to about 13, 14, study Italian through playing games and celebrating holidays and birthdays and so on. And we've been doing that in Waterbury, Connecticut for about five years, and I hope the Center for Italian Culture will also take that on as another project. And I've already talked to Anna, and they're very much interested in it. LINDA: Now, this is in Italian language? AMELIA: Yes, studying the Italian language and its culture, and there will be four or five teachers teaching the youngsters. LINDA: Now, has it been successful in Waterbury? AMELIA: Oh, yes. They've been working for about five years, and it's down to Teikyo Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, and they meet there at the center every Saturday morning for about an hour and a half, two hours. And the children play games and they learn Italian expressions, and when it's a birthday they celebrate and say buon compleanno and so on. And the grandmothers just love it because the children go up and talk to Nonna and Nonno and so on. Yeah. And I hope that that is one of the projects they're going to take on, and talking to Anna they seem to be very interested in doing that. LINDA: Certainly anything that perpetuates the culture. AMELIA: Yeah, that's right. LINDA: Now, what's that, the Fitchburg State College website—and I'm not sure, you probably know this, but your profile has an alumni. AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: And I read -- and the very first item is that there is, "Know thyself." AMELIA: Yes. Socrates said, "Know thyself." And so we've translated that into Italian. [Foreign language – 00:04:58], meaning "Know thyself." And I 3 think I'd like to use that as our motto for the Center for Italian Culture, and not always is it included, but that's what it means. LINDA: What does it mean specifically to you? And how does it help you live your life and give donations? AMELIA: It means that… well, I know when I was a child it was difficult. We didn't have everything. My father died when we were quite young, and there were seven in the family. My older brother, Joseph, who Rachel knows, took on the responsibilities of father. It was an old Roman custom that the oldest son in the family would take over when the father died. So I thought since I am capable of doing it, I want to help children who weren't capable of learning their language or taking part in going to school, and that's what I'm doing now. LINDA: And why do you think that's important to learn about your heritage? AMELIA: It's so very important because today with so many different ethnic groups, oftentimes Italians of the TV and radio programs always talking about the mafia, and I feel that we are somehow -- Italian people don't defend themselves. But I think during the Clinton Administration they did pass a ruling wherein the Italians during World War II -- I know my mother, she wasn't a citizen, and during that time she couldn't travel. She had to go to the post office to get permission to attend a wedding in Waterbury, in Rhode Island, rather. And we are often made the scapegoat, and I think that we have to educate our people and teach them something about our background, something about our culture. We have a great culture, and the school systems at one time didn't talk about that, but I think it is being included in the curriculum today. LINDA: How do you feel about The Sopranos then? AMELIA: Oh, I'm very much not in favor of that at all. And I think that the Sons and Daughters of Italy and the NIF, and now that we have several, much more than we did in the past, congressmen of Italian origin, I think they are working to try to get them to remove that stereotype and talk more 4 about what Italian Americans have contributed to society. Going back to the time of the Romans and so on. LINDA: How did you feel when Geraldine Ferraro was running for vice president? Not necessarily her as a person or what she stood for, but was there a particular pride, ethnic pride? AMELIA: I don't know, but I know when she was running for vice president, we attended the NIAF dinner in Washington, D.C., my brother Joe, Christine, my two sisters and I, we all went down to Washington. We all went there, and she was a speaker, and we were very much in favor, naturally, being Italian American. But unfortunately there was some negative advertising about Geraldine, and that didn't help at all. LINDA: I remember specifically that there were some questions about her husband's dealings, possibly in the mafia. AMELIA: Oh, yes, yes. LINDA: There was a real backlash with that just because they have an Italian last name, and just because they're successful, it doesn't automatically make you… ANNA: What is she doing now? LINDA: I think she's quite sick, or she was. AMELIA: Yes, I think she is. LINDA: I'm not sure the form of cancer. ANNA: Oh, that's too bad. LINDA: One thing has confused me, because I read that you were born in Fitchburg… AMELIA: Yes, I was born in Fitchburg. LINDA: We'll have to change that on the website. It says that you were born in Connecticut. AMELIA: No, we were born in Fitchburg. We were born on my grandpa, my grandpa Luigi Scarano came from Italy with my mother. Mama was 17 years of age, and with Rachel's mother, Filomena, who was 13. Grandpa came with his two daughters to America, and then my grandmother came 5 with the rest of the family, and they settled down first in Boston, I think. [Foreign language – 00:10:10] Did you hear your mother talk about it? They went there and then they all came to Fitchburg, and Grandpa built that tenement house on Second Street? Did you see it? RACHEL: Middle Street Lane. AMELIA: Right. When my mother married my father, they lived in Clinton. My brother Joe was about 5 years old. Then we moved to Fitchburg, and my sister Christina was born in the block where Grandpa, Grandma, your mother was there. We all lived in the block. And then I was born the following year, May 12, 1915. And we were there for a couple of years. RACHEL: Yeah, not very long. AMELIA: And then we moved back to Connecticut. My father followed a young sister—he was always protecting her—and we lived there for a while and then back again to Fitchburg, and my brother Tommy was born here. LINDA: No wonder you like to travel. AMELIA: And then we moved back again to Waterbury, Connecticut. My father was a baker. He came from a family of bakers, and he set up a grocery store and a bakery shop, and we were there about three years, and then we moved to Naugatuck, Connecticut because his sister moved closer to another brother, and we have been there ever since 1925. But I came back to Fitchburg where I was born to attend -- it was called Fitchburg Teacher's College, and I lived with my grandmother and my uncle Joe, who was a violinist. And Anne studied violin with my uncle, and I remember when she was downstairs practicing and I was upstairs studying. So I was going to Fitchburg, we lived in Connecticut, and then I came back to Fitchburg for my bachelor's degree, and then I taught in Naugatuck in Connecticut for about eight years, and then I married in '52 and went to Phoenix. LINDA: Could you spell Naugatuck?6 AMELIA: Yes. N-A-U-G-A-T-U-C-K. It's a small community. Well, I wouldn't say small. It's about 35, in between Waterbury and New Haven, Connecticut. ANNA: That's what it is now? The population? AMELIA: Yeah, I would say. But my mother was never happy there because her mother was in Fitchburg and her sisters and brother and so on. LINDA: So do you have any memories of Fitchburg? Let's say your earliest memory. AMELIA: Yes. I remember when we all lived on 2nd Street in the block. [Unintelligible – 00:13:07] Oh, I thought it was 2nd Street. ANNA: I think you're right. AMELIA: I always remembered 2nd Street. And I remember when Anna's mother also lived there. Her uncle, who was Rachel's father -- was he responsible for bringing your mother to Fitchburg? RACHEL: Yeah. AMELIA: I remember her father must have been courting her mother, and he was such a wonderful man. Oreste. We used to go there and we'd sit on his knee, and he would give us all – that, I remember very distinctly. Those were happy days. LINDA: So what were their names? We should get that on tape. ANNA: Oreste. O-R-E-S-T-E. Guglielmi. G-U-G-L-I-E-L-M-I. And my mother, Carmela. C-A-R-M-E-L-A. Giammarino. G-I-A-M-M-A-R-I-N-O. And my mother came to America when Rachel's father, who was Michael Giammarino, called for her to come, and my father at that time was living in that neighborhood. He was boarding in a house there. Yeah, he was boarding on 3rd Street, at the Lily House. And he courted my mother, and they were married in 1920. LINDA: So your father -- tell us the relations. ANNA: Yeah, okay. My mother, Carmela, and Rachel's father, Michael, were brother and sister. Now, Rachel's mother, who was Filomena, F-I-L-O-M-E-N-A, and Amelia's mother…7 AMELIA: Anna Maria. ANNA. Her first name was Anna, Anna Maria, were sisters. So we're first cousins. AMELIA: What would the relationship between you and me be? RACHEL: Distant cousins. AMELIA: Yeah, I guess. LINDA: So getting back to your earliest experiences, so you remember her father? AMELIA: Oh, yes, yes. ANNA: He would bounce them on his knee. AMELIA: In fact, my sisters always say that -- yeah, we remember when Oreste used to sit us on his knee and… ANNA: He loved children. AMELIA: Yeah, he did. He was a wonderful man. And then of course I remember when I lived on Blossom Street with my uncle after they moved, Uncle Joe with Grandma and Grandpa moved to Blossom Street, 82 Blossom Street, and that's where he taught violin. And he used to come there summers, and they had a beautiful home, and Tommy would get on the banister and slide all the way down to the first floor. RACHEL: We've gone by that house. AMELIA: Oh, it's terrible. RACHEL: There was one house that we went by and you were disgusted. Maybe that was your first home? ANNA: No, I remember just saying what a shame to see it like that. RACHEL: But it wasn't Blossom Street. LINDA: So now is Blossom Street considered part of the Patch also? ANNA: No. Blossom Street is towards Fitchburg State College. LINDA: Okay. Who owned that house? ANNA: Her uncle? AMELIA: Oh, Uncle Joe. And Grandmother and Joseph Scarano. ANNA: Who was the son of her grandfather, her grandparents? LINDA: Okay. So tell me more about the Patch.8 ANNA: The Patch started at First Street right near where St. Bernadette's Church. RACHEL: It used to be the school. ANNA: St. Bernadette's Elementary School at that time. And it went down to Fifth Street where they have the Fifth Street Bridge, which is now being repaired and remodeled. And it started from Water Street going back to Railroad Street. That whole small section, they called it the Patch. RACHEL: And it was predominantly Italian. ANNA: Yes. LINDA: But Amelia, do you have any vivid memories of maybe what you did for fun? AMELIA: As a child? LINDA: As a child. AMELIA: I really don't know, because when I left Fitchburg, I was about 3 or 4 years old, and then we did come back there during the summer months in our teen age. Prior to that, we didn't. Uncle Joe used to come down with Grandma during the summer months when we lived in Naugatuck, but not until my late teens, probably. LINDA: How did you travel back and forth? AMELIA: Uncle Joe used to come down and pick us up. Uncle Joe would come down and pick us up in Naugatuck. LINDA: What kind of car? What kind of automobile was he using? AMELIA: Uncle Joe always had a Chrysler. ANNA: We were young, and we thought that was special. AMELIA: And he always got a Chrysler because I think he had stock in the Chrysler. RACHEL: Could be. LINDA: When he came down to Connecticut to pick you up, how many of you were there? AMELIA: Well, my brother Joe was always working to support us. There was Christine, Connie and I, Tommy and Donald, and Mama. ANNA: Anne.9 AMELIA: Oh, and Anne too. Yeah, we used to come summers for a couple of weeks or so and then go see an aunt. The youngest of the Scaranos was Aunt Rosella. Do you remember her, Anna? ANNA: I do. AMELIA: She played the piano. RACHEL: She was the most Americanized than the rest of them. She played the piano… AMELIA: Well, she was the youngest and had more schooling than the older ones. LINDA: And where are you in relation to your siblings? Are you -- you're in the middle, perhaps? AMELIA: There's Joseph, Christine, and then I. I'm about the middle, the third. There were seven in the family. Two boys are gone, and there are four sisters, three are in Phoenix. No, two are in Phoenix, and I'm with them, too. So there will be three in Phoenix and one sister is still in Naugatuck, Connecticut. And Donald, the youngest -- actually, his name was Dante. Papa called him Dante. But when they went to school they Americanized it to Donald. Donald is in Phoenix also. LINDA: How was it growing up in Connecticut? Did you see… maybe you didn't get to Fitchburg enough to notice any differences, but do you recall any differences? AMELIA: In what? LINDA: On just growing up in your area in Connecticut and then coming up to Fitchburg, which is probably booming at that time. AMELIA: In Fitchburg? LINDA: A lot of different people. AMELIA: No, we lived in this tenement house that we bought, and my father ran a grocery store and a bakery shop on the first floor. You know, I have a lot of pictures that -- did you say that you wanted them? I could send them to you. I don't have them with me. And there's a picture of the family is standing in front of the grocery store and going to school in a two-room schoolhouse on Groveside School and going to the Naugatuck High 10 School. Christine and I were very much interested in books and studying, and we spent a lot of time in the library. So the years in Naugatuck when we didn't come to Fitchburg were not very interesting. It was mostly studying and being with my brothers and sisters and my mother, because my father left -- well, he went back to Italy when Donald was a baby, and my brother, Joe, being the oldest went to work. So Papa left when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, and when I was a sophomore in high school we found out that he passed away. So he's buried in Italy, and I've gone to visit him many times when I went to Italy with my husband. LINDA: Did you live in a predominately Italian section? AMELIA: Yes. We lived on what they call Little Italy. And speaking about Italian section, for the past couple of years when I go back to Connecticut, to Naugatuck, we have a little reunion. We had it last year, and all the Italian Americans from that Little Italy section, we get together and I entertain them to dinner. We had a trio come and play for us. We've done that for several years, but because my two sisters didn't come with me this year I'm not going to do it. I'm spending more time in Fitchburg. LINDA: So tell me a little bit about growing up in your family with seven children, your father's a baker, then he leaves to go back to Italy… AMELIA: Well, the reason for going back to Italy was that he wanted to claim his share of the inheritance, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way because his brother, his oldest brother, Pasquale… Oh, hi Kathy. This is Rachel's daughter. LINDA: Hi, I'm Linda. KATHY: Hi, Linda. [Crosstalk - 00:24:04] RACHEL: So, what have you heard from the last half hour?11 KATHY: Well, you know about the Pentagon? And now they just said there was another plane crash outside of Pittsburgh about 30 miles. They don't know if it's related. Pittsburgh, a big aircraft went down. ANNA: Another building? KATHY: No. It crashed. RACHEL: That's too bad. KATHY: Are you crying? AMELIA: No. I have tear duct blockage, so I've got -- no, no. I'm fine. KATHY: Well, don't let me interfere. [Crosstalk – 00:24:38] LINDA: Are there any reports of who's responsible? KATHY: What's his name, Arafat there, he said he thought it was a horrible thing, and he would never ever have caused such a turmoil – but who knows if you can believe him? But that's what he said. A lot of people. I called [unintelligible – 00:25:19] because she had worked there at the Trade Center, but she and her husband are okay. They weren't there at the time. [Crosstalk – 00:25:27] KATHY: Hopefully all the planes are now secure. All right, ladies. RACHEL: Where are you going? KATHY: I'm going to the dentist now. I'm getting my teeth cleaned. I'll see you. Take care. Goodbye. Nice meeting you. AMELIA: So you asked me about what was it like growing up in a family of seven? LINDA: Yes. AMELIA: So where was I now? So my father went to Italy to claim his share of the inheritance. The family came from a business family, and they were well to do, and Papa was one of four. So he went back, and his brother, who was the oldest in the family, and he evidently didn't get along, so he didn't get anything. He just passed away in '31 when I was a sophomore and Christine was a senior in high school. We were a very close-knit family. We worked together and studied together, and as I said Christine and I 12 were very much interested in the library. We worked at the Naugatuck Public Library, and we got a scholarship that summer, both Chris and I. RACHEL: And she lived in Spain. AMELIA: Well, Christine studied Spanish. This is after I got married. LINDA: Which town was your family from in Italy? AMELIA: My mother was from Lacedonia. Her mother was born there, and of course Rachel's mother. Lacedonia [unintelligible – 00:27:45] Cavallino, Italy. And I've been to there. When I went with my husband after we married and lived there for two years, we were coming back to America and he said, "You've got to see where your mother was born." So we went to Lacedonia, and we met some relatives. I have pictures; that was back in Connecticut. And then we also went to visit my father's home place. My father came from [unintelligible – 00:28:13] in Italy, and we went to visit the family home. And at that time we met this aunt who I asked if I could visit my father's grave, and she had a niece of hers take me to the cemetery, and he was not buried in the family mausoleum. He was buried just as a commoner. She didn't want him there. So we visited… LINDA: What region is that in? AMELIA: Pardon? LINDA: The region. AMELIA: Well, it's all Campagna, it's all that region, it's Campagna, but it's [unintelligible – 00:28:55]. Mama's was Campagna also, but it was [unintelligible – 00:29:00]. It's a little inland from Naples, right. And you know, right at the foothills, going up to [unintelligible – 00:29:10], it's in the mountains, it's a little town by the name of Galluccio. It ends in an "o." Our name was Galluccio. When Papa came to Ellis Island in about 1902, the immigration authorities couldn't spell it, so they left the "o" out. So "Gallucci" means roosters, it's the plural. And "Galluccio" is the singular rooster.13 LINDA: That's interesting. AMELIA: And we have roosters all over the house. LINDA: Did your parents ever share with you their trip to Ellis Island? AMELIA: No. I don't remember, but I know my mother said that when they came to America with Grandpa and her sister Filomena, it was a rough crossing on the French ship Nuestri, N-U-E-S-T-R-I. Mama did tell me that. And she said it was a very rough crossing. LINDA: The courage… AMELIA: Oh yeah. I don't know what ship my father came on, but he must have come about the same time. LINDA: It's really simple now. There's a website, although it's impossible to log on. AMELIA: Oh, I know. My brother Donald had a hard time getting that information. Grandpa came on May 27, 1902. He did get that information. LINDA: So it sounds like you're a very educated family, or at least you and your sister. And musical, too. Who instilled those qualities? AMELIA: Pardon? LINDA: Who instilled those qualities? AMELIA: Well, when we came to visit Grandma in Fitchburg there was always music, you know. Uncle Joe played the violin, Bella played the piano, and the [Guiliamus] were all musicians in their family. The four girls all played an instrument. Did you know that? Yeah. Her sister Lena played the piano, Anna played the violin, Mary played the… LINDA: The saxophone. AMELIA: Saxophone. LINDA: And Helen, drums. AMELIA: Right. And Helen the drums. And then my father learned opera. We had an old mahogany victrola that you used to wind up, and we had all the records of Caruso and [Jean B.[ and [unintelligible - 00:31:45], so we grew up in a family that was always moving. [Crosstalk] So in fact, even now, they're still very much interested in music. The opera season starts 14 in Phoenix during the second week in October; that's one of the reasons I want to get back. LINDA: Yeah. Where do you go for opera? AMELIA: [Unintelligible - 00:32:19] LINDA: Yeah. They do have opera. I think the music season begins in mid-October. AMELIA: October, yes. Pavarotti is coming to Boston. Oh, I'd love to hear him. He came to Phoenix one season but we just couldn't get tickets. ANNA: [Unintelligible - 00:32:41]. It's a movie. AMELIA: Oh, that's right, yeah. LINDA: Well we'll have to make a copy of this if this is okay. ANNA: She's responsible. AMELIA: Oh yeah, I'm the family historian. I think that was my graduation. ANNA: I hardly recognize her. AMELIA: No, that was Peter's wedding. There's Aunt Rosella. My mother was the oldest. Aunt Clair was the next, then Aunt Fil was third, and Uncle Joe, and Aunt Rosella was the baby. Yes. Filomena, that's Rachel's mother. My mother and Aunt Fil came with Grandpa. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Grandpa. ANNA: That's Joe the violinist. AMELIA: Yeah, Uncle Joe. ANNA: I know. Clair and Rosella. LINDA: So how do you feel about Andrea Bocelli? Is he too much of a pop, more than opera? AMEILA: Well, I listened to him, and he hasn't come to Phoenix, but I still like Pavarotti, old days, more polished singing. Yes. LINDA: I went to see Andrea Bocelli when he was in Connecticut probably two years ago. AMELIA: He was in Connecticut? LINDA: It was at the Hartford Civic Center, and people were actually crying, waving Italian flags. It was quite an experience.15 AMELIA: I've seen him on television when they had that program, what was it? New York? LINDA: Radio City? AMELIA: Mm-hmm. LINDA: So mostly, I usually talk to interviewees about Fitchburg, but maybe what we should do -- actually, why don't we stay with Fitchburg a little bit since you attended school here, and you graduated in 1938? AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: So that means you began in '34? Was it a four-year program? AMELIA: It was a four-year program. I graduated from high school in '34. I got a scholarship for $150—that was money in those days—so I came to Fitchburg. LINDA: What was the tuition? Do you remember how much it was? AMELIA: Oh, I don't think tuition was -- well, being an out-of-stater was the reason why I had to pay more, and I think that the tuition was about $150 to $200. What I -- the scholarship I got in Naugatuck took care of that. But then the second year, being a resident of Fitchburg, I don't think there was much of a fee. LINDA: And was there any question of you attending college, or did you always assume that you would go on? AMELIA: Oh yeah, I always assumed that I would go on to college, and of course my sister, Christine, was very much interested going to school, but she and my brother had to work to support a family of seven and my mother, so because I had gotten a scholarship and Christine was working and Peter Paul at the time, right after high school, but she wanted to go to college so bad. So after I married, my husband said to me, "We've got to help your sister to go to school." So Christine after working for 26 years at Peter Paul went to college. She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's, and she went on to study Spanish—she majored in Spanish—and she studied in Madrid and Mexico City. LINDA: What a nice story.16 AMELIA: And she's a retired teacher now. She doesn't teach now. Yeah. LINDA: So there were two of you from your family… AMELIA: Yeah, Christine and I, and my youngest sister Anna, she was interested in commercial, and she went into bookkeeping and that sort of thing. She went to a business school for a couple of years. And Donald too, the baby in the family -- oh dear, Rachel's going to take it out of me -- Christine, Connie, and I, we took that in Las Vegas. Yeah. ANNA: That's a nice picture. AMELIA: We're so close to Las Vegas; we go there a couple of times a year. Yeah. LINDA: So now getting back to Fitchburg, you came in 1934. AMELIA: Right. Four years. LINDA: Did you consider going to college anywhere else, or did you consider only Fitchburg? AMELIA: No, I considered -- maybe it's because we had relatives there. You know, my grandmother was still there and mama said, "It would be nice if we could come and visit you," and so on. ANNA: Was that a normal school then? AMELIA: Well no, it was the Fitchburg Teacher's College. It was known as a teacher's college. It trains teachers and industrial arts teachers. LINDA: That's right. AMELIA: But now they teach everything, don't they? Amazing. LINDA: And who did you live with? AMELIA: I lived with my Uncle Joe and grandmother at 82 Blossom Street. LINDA: Did you and Anna and Rachel go to visit? AMELIA: Oh yeah. Always together. LINDA: What kinds of things did you do together for fun activities? AMELIA: Oh, we used to go to Whalen. We used to go to Whalen Park, we went swimming. We used to go on picnics and family gatherings. Anna's mother was a great cook. LINDA: All of you were unmarried at this time?17 AMELIA: Yes. We were all single. I married late in life. I think it was 37 when I got married. ANNA: I still remember that time. AMELIA: Yeah, you were still in high school, Anna. And we attended concerts. Uncle played with the -- what was it? ANNA: The symphony. AMELIA: No, that was in Boston. He played with a band here in Fitchburg. What was it called? ANNA: It was a marching band, Fitchburg Community Band. They had Sunday afternoons at Caldwell Park. AMELIA: Yeah, Caldwell Park. Right. So we used to go to that. LINDA: Tell me more about that, about the concerts at the park. Was there a bandstand? ANNA: Gazebo, right? On Mirror Lake. LINDA: It's still there? I played there too. AMELIA: Do they still have concerts there now? ANNA: Mm-hmm. Sunday afternoon. AMELIA: Tell me what it was like going. For example, did you dress in your Sunday's finest to go? AMELIA: Oh yeah, we always did dress on Sunday. ANNA: We didn't wear jeans and sneakers unless you were in your own backyard. And if you had to go downtown, you had to change your clothes. AMELIA: Right. And girls always had to wear stockings. ANNA: And skirts or dresses. On Sunday you'd have your hat and gloves and bag. AMELIA: Oh yeah, and attend church first, right? LINDA: And when you would go downtown and it wasn't Sunday, would you wear a hat and gloves, or was that primarily… AMELIA: I think that was mostly for church on Sundays. ANNA: But you always dressed to go downtown. AMELIA: Oh yeah.18 ANNA: I think they had more pride in their appearance than they do today. I used to pick up my mother as well, and she always had the hat and the gloves, and they had to match. Every Easter you had to go out and buy a new hat. LINDA: Would you go downtown by yourselves, or would you travel with girls? ANNA: We would walk most of the time. A mile and a half was nothing, right? There were no cars. You'd walk downtown, and I think the main activity was going to a movie once a week. I liked going to the movies. And then you'd stop and have an ice cream on the way home. AMELIA: Uh-huh, and wasn't there a movie at Blossom Street theater where Uncle used to play? The Cummings Theater. That's right. And they always had music there, and it was live music. ANNA: Right. Because Uncle Joe played the violin there. AMELIA: Oh, but Blossom Street has changed so. ANNA: Oh, it's terrible. LINDA: What was it like then? Your memories? AMELIA: They were nice-looking buildings, there were some -- what was that building where your mother worked with Mr. [Burren]? That brick building. ANNA: [Chimmers]. AMELIA: And then there was an apartment there next to that, and Dr. Ames, who lived right next to Uncle Joe, that was a nice building. And across the street from Uncle Joe's building was the -- what was that funeral home? ANNA: No, that was the Knight of Columbus home. AMELIA: Oh, the Knights of Columbus home was next to that. So they were good-looking buildings, and they have taken me up there last year and this year, and I just don't… ANNA: Oh I know. It's sad. LINDA: What happened? AMELIA: I think a lot of Puerto Ricans have come in, haven't they? And a lot of blacks have moved in. And for some reason or another, the buildings are not kept up. You should see what they did to Uncle Joe's building. Now,19 Uncle Joe's—the house that he lived in—was a beautiful classical building. The man who built it was a contractor. I can't think of his name. He was a contractor and had beautiful columns on the porch, and whoever lives there now boarded it all up. It's not the same Blossom Street. ANNA: They were mansions, I think, on the street at that time. Beautiful mansions. Big homes and huge homes. And there are other things now. AMELIA: Right. Although, the upper part of Blossom Street is not as bad. It's still very -- it's still a nice neighborhood. And that's where Mike lived didn't he? Mike, your son? ANNA: Yeah. I think it's still nice. AMELIA: And I used to walk from Blossom Street along Pearl Street all the way to teacher's college every morning. ANNA: We did a lot more walking in those days than we do today. AMELIA: Ann, didn't you walk down from where you lived to go for your violin lesson with your violin in your hand? ANNA: Yeah. AMELIA: And your mother always walked to church, every morning. LINDA: I imagine that you're talking pretty much great distances? Like a mile and a half. AMELIA: Oh, I would say a good mile and a half, two miles, yes. ANNA: And I walked that to high school. A couple of miles. LINDA: You must have felt very safe. AMELIA: Yes. There are a lot more cars now than we had, too. ANNA: Especially in Coggshall Park. Nowadays they warn you not to walk alone. Walk as a pair. AMELIA: Right. And it was even safe at night walking. You can't do that today. LINDA: We can't have any movement on the table. I'm just afraid that we're not going to -- I feel bad telling you, but I don't want the tape to be… [Crosstalk - 00:44:50]20 ANNA: They would freeze it in the wintertime, and we used to walk up there for skating, ice skating. We'd come home at 9:00. There were no lights on, you know. But we had no fear. LINDA: When would you say things start to change? ANNA: After the '40s, I think. LINDA: After the '40s? ANNA: After the '50s? AMELIA: I know sometimes in Connecticut, when I used to go to meetings in Waterbury and I wasn't driving, I would take the bus home at night, even as late as 11:00, and walk up the hill to Culver Street where we lived then, and it was still safe. I would say, yeah, maybe I would say starting with the fifties, it wasn't safe, you know, to walk, to be alone. LINDA: So what happened though? Did people lose a sense of pride? ANNA: I think so. In the city we have the hippies and the campus unrest in the '60s. LINDA: But did anything like that happen specifically in Fitchburg? ANNA: Well, you read of accidents and crimes, and they would happen in the areas like Coggshall Park, for instance, and there were crimes up there. And then, you would, be wise not to go, and you wouldn't walk alone. And now, I don't think you'd even go up there in the daytime by yourself, never mind at night. LINDA: Well, I'm wondering is it a gradual feeling to see your city decay a little bit? I'm not from Worcester, but I've lived in Worcester since 1978, and that was certainly after the heyday and the booming industry, and things started, I suppose, or had already gone downhill. Now there's a real rebirth, but I was wondering, how do you feel living in a city you're so proud of and that your parents came to make a better life, and they worked so hard to make your life better, and they worked very hard to own their own home and they probably took very good care of it and had a garden in the back, whatever. And how do you feel, just being part of that generation that saw both ways of life: the working hard, striving hard, 21 having to work for every penny, to perhaps new ethnic groups coming in and being given money and not working? ANN: That's right. That's happening. AMELIA: I know when our parents came, a lot of them went to South America because they weren't allowed -- the immigration laws today are a lot more lax, I think. They allow everyone to come in, but at the time that our parents came to the United States, the laws were a lot stricter. A lot of them went to South America. Now, Grandpa's brother emigrated to South America, Argentina. He couldn't come here to the States, couldn't come to America. A lot of them went to Argentina and Australia, too. LINDA: Did your dad have to come -- so he must have tried to come later. AMELIA: Yeah, a little later. That's when the immigration laws, I think they were a little strict. But today they're allowing all types of people to come in. I don't know why, and… ANNA: There's a lot more crime. Either that or we're hearing about it. AMELIA: Well, I think when we were brought up we didn't have television. If we had radio, we were lucky to have a radio, and we were taught to knit, and to crochet, and to sew. Children are not taught that today. Our parents were at home. When we came home from school our parents were home, and they taught us all these crafts. Today, parents are working, they're not at home, they have television. I think we have a lot more outside influences that affect our way of living. And with the drug trade, too -- we didn't have that when we were growing up. I think that's why we had such change. LINDA: When you were growing up and you came home from school, your mother was there cleaning, cooking, washing. AMELIA: That's right. Washing clothes or getting ready for -- uh-huh. LINDA: And you were probably expected to help? AMELIA: Well, Mama would say to me, "You do your homework, and afterwards you can help me." And she taught me how to sew. I used to make all my clothes through high school. Of course I don't have time now, but yeah, 22 young people were taught crafts. They were taught to knit and sew and crochet. Kids don't know how to do that today. LINDA: What about values? ANNA: We were taught to say "Thank you," [unintelligible - 00:50:23]. AMELIA: Yeah, that, too, has changed, and I think it's all because of the fact that mothers are not at home to teach their children, and there are a lot more outside influences that affect children, and they don't have mannerisms. I don't know why but… ANNA: Well it all comes from the family background. AMELIA: Yeah, well that's true. ANNA: It's a changing world. LINDA: As I sit here and record, I'm interested in my own family history too, and that's really how I got involved in this project: because my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather came from Italy. AMELIA: Really? What part? LINDA: Calabria. AMELIA: Calabria, yes. LINDA: Sometimes I wish—and I know a lot of people from my generation—almost wish we could go back to a more simple time. And a lot o f times what I hear is that we have too many choices today, and that confuses people. Do you feel that you had choices growing up? AMELIA: Yes. I think they were restricted. There were certain things that we had to do, and after we completed those, then there were choices. ANNA: A handful. AMELIA: Well, I didn't have to be told to do my homework but if I hadn't done my homework and if I hadn't helped my mother with some of the cooking, then I was rewarded on Sunday. We were given five cents, and we could do whatever we want. And she would take us shopping and buy us a new pair of shoes or something that we don't usually have at home. But today I think the children have too much. At the age of 16 they're taught -- they're given a car. At the age of 16.23 LINDA: Now, if someone from your generation ever had a car at 16, would they have to work for it? ANNA: I don't think that would happen. If you had your license you may borrow. If you had to do an errand, borrow your parents'. For your own benefit? I don't think that would happen. AMELIA: I think that children are given too much today by their parents. Look at the parking lot, the high school parking lot. The cars that are there, I think that creates a lot of trouble. I think the parents are partly to blame for the shenanigans of the young people. They're not fit for them; they haven't taught them the value of… ANNA: Even bus transportation, you know, they were all bussed to school, then they join the gym for exercise. AMELIA: Right. LINDA: I never thought of that. ANNA: They could walk, save a lot of money. AMELIA: Of course, they use the excuse that there's a lot more traffic, which is true, and there is a lot more traffic and more dangers, that's true. ANNA: We have a lot of traffic here. Worse, isn't it? LINDA: But as I talk to second-generation Italian Americans and, again, just going back one generation, everyone had to work hard, and all of you seem very happy and stable and have good values. Are those being promoted in your own families? ANNA: In my family, I think I passed it on to my children. They're all good. And I think they are passing it on to their children. But they're still young, and you wonder, as they grow up are they going to get into other things. You don't know. There's a lot of outside influences now. AMELIA: That's right. Going to school and intermingling with other children, other children that haven't had the upbringing and are taught the values that you have taught yours, and they're influenced by them, you know. LINDA: How much of that is an Italian-American experience? ANNA: I think it is a Italian-American experience.24 AMELIA: Oh, definitely. I think there is that among the Italian-American families. ANNA: There's that spiritual and moral life. AMELIA: And helping within the family. ANNA: They're helping their family by helping other families too. AMELIA: As well, yeah. ANNA: You see that need and you try to alleviate the problem if you can, lessen the problem. AMELIA: And the fact that they're Catholic religion helps, you know, from the start, and you can bring it on to your children. ANNA: Loads of people don't go to church like they used to. AMELIA: That's true. ANNA: I think that should help a lot. Truthfully. LINDA: Speaking of church, did all of you -- perhaps not you, but you probably attended St. Anthony's? AMELIA: Oh yeah, my mother was married there. Rachel's mother, your mother. St. Anthony's of Padua, is that the St. Anthony's… ANNA: St. Anthony of Padua. I was there until I married, and then I moved to Leominster. LINDA: So you think that that was a great influence on people? ANNA: Definitely. AMELIA: Oh yeah. I think it's up to the parents to instill that in their children, and I think among the Italian Americans it's far greater than maybe in any other group. Don't you think, Anna? ANNA: I do, yes. It probably came from the old country too. And if you go to Catholic school, that all helps. LINDA: Now, did both of you go to Catholic school? AMELIA: No. There wasn't any. No. ANNA: The only reason I was able to go to St. Bernard's for eight years was because Uncle gave them lessons. AMELIA: Oh, at St. Bernard's school? ANNA: You don't remember that?25 AMELIA: No. ANNA: I think that helped them to get that in. AMELIA: Grammar school? ANNA: Grammar school. Eight years. LINDA: They didn't allow Italians, or there wasn't enough room for Italians? Which was it? ANNA: I think it was mostly their own parishioners, right? The children of their own parishioners that would attend the St. Bernard's school. And it wasn't until the mid '60s that the other parishes built their own schools. AMELIA: But did you have to pay anything to attend? Oh you did. There was a minimum. Uh-huh. I know that the Catholic school that we have in Naugatuck, they have a lot of the children from not necessarily the Irish or the Italian, but a lot of the Protestants are going there too. They feel that they're doing a better job teaching than they are in the public schools. ANNA: I think it is that way now. I think there are Protestants of other nationalities who go to, for instance, St. Anna's school, which is a mostly Italian parish. But I'd say half of the students at the school are of other nationalities. AMELIA: Yeah, and the tuition is very high too. ANNA: Yes. It's not affordable for many, many people. AMELIA: I know my sister Christine, she made a donation to the appropriate school in Naugatuck, and she gets thank-you notes from parents saying "Thank you, we appreciate the scholarship that you gave to our child so he could attend a Catholic school." LINDA: So tell me: what it was like going to St. Anthony's? ANNA: Church. AMELIA: I don't recall, because I was a little girl when we left Fitchburg, but we went to Naugatuck. And as Anna said before, we would dress up in our finest, you know, and attend mass. And then after that go home and have a nice big Italian dinner with the family. ANNA: The whole family would go to church together.26 AMELIA: Father and mother and children, yeah. LINDA: And when would you go to confession? AMELIA: The day before, Saturday. ANNA: About two in the afternoon, you'd be called in. "Clean up, get ready for confession. Dress. Go to church." Confession, I haven't gone in years. AMELIA: And we always dressed up. Isn't it a shame to see children in shorts going to church? ANNA: The parents sometimes are worse than the kids. LINDA: If you weren't going to a parochial school and you were Catholic, where did your Catholic education come from? AMELIA: They had classes. ANNA: They did? AMELIA: Yeah. ANNA: The parish had nuns, and Saturday would be catechism. Saturday morning. And in fact, a lot of -- we spoke of knitting and crocheting and embroidery. They would have classes taught by the nuns. AMELIA: The nuns would teach, yeah. ANNA: And your summer was not spent out on the street. You'd go to a school where you would learn to embroider and crochet and knit. Cutwork, beautiful cutwork. Nuns would teach. And this is how summers would go. LINDA: Every day? Every day of the summer? ANNA: Every day. You'd have either the morning session or the afternoon. Or both. If your parents -- especially if the mother was working, the nuns would take over. LINDA: When you were kids or even when you came to college here in Fitchburg, did you ever go to any of the social clubs with Anna or Rachel, or…? ANNA: Marconi Club. AMELIA: Oh, that's right. Was that in Fitchburg? ANNA: Yes. AMELIA: I don't remember.27 ANNA: They still have it, but you weren't [unintelligible - 01:02:36]. AMELIA: Your father was really [unintelligible - 01:01:44]. Oh yes. ANNA: He built that club. AMELIA: Oh really? ANNA: He built the building, and all the Italians that came from that region would meet with him. AMELIA: Do they still have…? ANNA: The still have it. AMELIA: They still have it. Isn't that nice? LINDA: Did you belong to any social clubs in Connecticut? ANNA: There weren't that many there. AMELIA: Yeah, they did have a social club. I remember going to high school with my sister Christine and some of the other Italian girls living down with [Litley], that's where we lived, we would get together every Saturday night, and we would knit or sew or crochet or do something. ANNA: Parishes had social clubs. We had the Children of Mary that all the young girls that were not married would belong to that, and they would meet maybe once a week, and they would have breakfasts, trips; they would organize trips. Then they had the Lady of Mount Carmel for the married women, and they would have the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the men, the young boys. And they would organize trips, and there would be a bus going up to Caldwell Park -- not a bus, they would walk there -- but there would be a bus maybe going to some other distant park where they would take a picnic lunch. I remember going up to Simon Park… AMELIA: Oh, the family. ANNA: Yes. We would cook the dinner at home and bring it up there and eat with all the friends at Simon Park, right? That was… AMELIA: Still around? ANNA: Yes. So I think that was the social life. It was all within the parish or the Italian-American community. LINDA: Amelia, when did you get your interest in art?28 AMELIA: Interest in art? Well, that started in high school. I was very much interested in art. Our high school, Naugatuck High School, had a lot of Roman statues throughout the corridors, and they took -- it was through the library that we took courses, my sister Christine and I. We would go there and they would have different people in the community talk about art during the time of the Romans, during the time of the Middle Ages and so on. LINDA: So when you came to Fitchburg was the art museum established? AMELIA: No. I wasn't down; I don't know if it was established at the time. I had become interested in the art museum just recently after Fitchburg State College, last year when I told Mr. Peter Chin, who is the Director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, that I was very much interested in Western civilization, and that's when we became involved In Fitchburg State College working with the museum. LINDA: Do you ever wonder how your life would have been different if you perhaps fell in love and married someone from Fitchburg? AMELIA: Not necessarily, no. I think that the man that I married was a businessman and very much interested in Italian culture. Even though my father and mother instilled in me the love of Italy and the love of Italian culture, I still feel that he got me more interested. We've traveled to Italy and saw a lot of art, architecture, and learned more about our background. LINDA: How did you meet him? AMELIA: Oh -- did you ask me that question the other day? Someone asked me, "How did you meet your husband?" LINDA: Maybe I did. AMELIA: Well, I was studying here at -- it was during the time I got my master's at BU, and Uncle Joe played with the Boston Symphony in Boston. And they were having a concert, and -- oh no, I was teaching in Naugatuck -- and they were having a concert in Boston, so I took a train from New Haven to Boston. I was supposed to meet my uncle. And on the train, I went into the dining car, and there was a gentleman sitting across, and he 29 looked over and he said to me, "May I join you?" I said yes, so we had dinner together, and it was my husband whom I had met. ANNA: She was getting the idea. AMELIA: Yeah, so we started correspondence, and that went 'til he came to see to visit my mother and the family and so on. And the summer of '52 we got married. 1952. That's a long time ago, isn't it? LINDA: Did he live in Boston? AMELIA: No, he had a -- his place of business was in Brooklyn. He was originally from New York, and he had a vending repair shop and did very well. And he was going to Italy in '92, and he said to me, "Why don't we go together?" LINDA: In '52? AMELIA: Yeah, in 1952. So that's when I got married. And we married and then we went to Italy on honeymoon on the Conta Bianca Ma, on the ship that my father sailed on, never returned. And we stopped in North Africa, in Casablanca and all those beautiful places, Algiers, and -- with the ship, you know, Conta Bianca Ma, it took about 12 days and many of the passengers aboard that ship were World War II veterans. So we had a lot to talk about because my kid brother, Tommy was… ANNA: In the service. AMELIA: In the service, right. And then we got into Sicily and then went to Naples and disembarked and traveled all over Italy. We lived in the Busi area for two years, and in '54 we returned to America, and then that's when I went to see, visit my mother's home place. My husband said, "You can't leave Italy without seeing your mother and father's birthplace!" and that's… LINDA: So had he sold his business in Brooklyn and went to… AMELIA: Yeah, he sold his place in Brooklyn and wanted to get married, and he always wanted an Italian-American girl, so that was it. LINDA: Was he older than you? AMELIA: Yes. He was about nine years older than I. He died in 19 -- very bright man. He had a lot of money. He went to Phoenix and invested in 30 property, but we came back every summer because it was hot in Phoenix, temperature of 107, 108, 110, and we used to come back to Connecticut and then we went to Italy. I've been on all the liners: the Sistulia, the Independent, the Lucania, the Julius Caesar. LINDA: So did you enjoy taking a liner instead of -- do you still do that? AMELIA: No, we fly. The only liner, really, is the Queen Elizabeth, and then you go to London. I took that in '92. My sister, Connie, on the Queen Elizabeth about five days, and then we flew back on the Concorde. Nice experience. LINDA: What was that like? AMELIA: Oh, in 3 hours, 19 minutes, we were at Kennedy from London. LINDA: Do you feel differently when you're on that plane? AMELIA: It was wonderful. There was absolutely no turbulence, and my sister Connie is definitely afraid of flying. And even on the Concorde she said, "Are we all right? Are we all right?" Lovely, smooth flight. LINDA: What was it like taking off? AMELIA: You hardly know you take off, and we did not aboard the Concorde from the outside. They have a beautiful reception room where you go in from the airport. Let's see, what was it? What was the airport? ANNA: Kennedy? AMELIA: No, in London. Heathrow. Right. And you approach it from the inside, a beautiful dining room where they had all kinds of food, breakfast and all kinds of drinks, champagne in "orange," as it's called, boxes, which is mimosa, it's a mimosa. And all kinds of things. So actually, we boarded the Concorde from the inside. I wanted to get on from the outside so you could see her, you know. A wonderful experience. LINDA: But do you feel yourself really reaching great heights? AMELIA: No, you don't. You don't feel a thing. In about five minutes, we had climbed 26,000 miles. LINDA: Incredible.31 AMELIA: I have all those pictures in an album with all the notations. Yep, it's such a voluminous thing that I didn't want to take with me. But that was lovely. I'd like to do it again. LINDA: Well on July 17th, I was leaving London and there were cameras everywhere and I thought "Oh no," and we pulled into the airport and I thought there was a plane crash but it was the first Concorde taking off after that crash, I think from Paris. AMELIA: Yeah, Paris. Right. LINDA: They're rebuilding. AMELIA: Oh, they're rebuilding it? Have you been on a Concorde? LINDA: No. AMELIA: Oh, I see. Quite an experience. I think we reached the height of 58,000 feet. LINDA: Incredible. AMELIA: Wonderful. You don't feel yourself descending at all. And the food they serve, everyone has an individual table, there's all kind of linens and sterling silver. There are only 96 passengers. We tried -- Christine was supposed to come with us. She said, "No, I don't want to come." But she said she'd like to go on the Concorde. ANNA: Sounds like Connie. AMELIA: Yeah, I think British Airways -- what is it? About nine hours to cross? I think it's a long flight. LINDA: Well, it's longer coming back because of the wind. Actually, I think it's a little bit less now, maybe seven. So did you ever feel different being Italian? AMELIA: No, I don't. I'm very proud to be an Italian. LINDA: Yeah, I know. But ever growing up, did you ever feel discriminated? AMELIA: No, because at home my father always talked about Italians and what they've contributed, you know. And he was an educated man. In fact, did you know that my father was supposed to be a priest? LINDA: No, I didn't know that.32 AMELIA: Yeah. He attended -- what do they call it? Gymnasio was their high school. Was that right? LINDA: Gym -- AMELIA: Gymnasio. Is that the word for gymnasio? Papa attended the… yes, Papa attended the gymnasio, which was the high school, and then he attended Luceo, which is the junior college. ANNA: This is where? AMELIA: In Italy, in [Salunca]. Most families that had visited, they were bakers and they had a nice -- most families sent one child to study to be a priest, and my father was chosen. He was there two years and he didn't like it. What he saw, he didn't like. So he got on his horse and ran away, and the horse was riding along, went galloping up along a body of water. And he was so afraid that the horse was going to go into the water, so my father threw himself off and he had a great big gash here. Yeah. I remember him telling me that. Now there was always -- my father always told us about things of Italy, you know. Things Italy had done and the records that we played so that there was always culture at home. I was always proud to be an Italian. LINDA: So you're hoping that Alba Program, is that what you… AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: What does Alba mean? AMELIA: Alba means dawn, and since these young people are young, they're just beginning, the beginning of the day, Alba. And I gave it that name, and we've been doing that for five years in Waterbury. And I have an appointment at the University of Connecticut, where my sister graduated, and I have three nieces, all graduated from the University of Connecticut, majored in Italian. They have their doctorate in Italian. So I want to set up a center for the study of Italian culture there. I'm meeting with them on Monday of next week. LINDA: At the University of Connecticut? AMELIA: Yes. UConn, we call it. 33 LINDA: They have the Oral History Project. Like, at the Dodd Center I think they call it. AMELIA: I don't know. I'm meeting one of my nieces who teaches at UConn. She teaches Renaissance art, and she's going to take me there. Do you know any of the professors there? John Davis, I have an appointment with him. LINDA: So what was the turning point for you to start donating? AMELIA: To what? LINDA: Start donating money and trying to establish… AMELIA: My husband was always interested in doing something for -- in the school system, and it was he that said I should contact the Italian-American community in Waterbury when they advertised they wanted money for the Italian classes. Remember I told you? So shortly after he died, I decided to do that, and he was a very smart man at buying property, and I have sold property that has run into the millions, and I want to donate it to the school. So that's why I'm donating to the Center for Italian Culture, to Fitchburg State, to Post College in Waterbury, and to UConn. And also, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in London, I am a lifetime member there, and my husband was always interested in that. LINDA: How did that come about? AMELIA: I just love Western civilization. Done a lot of reading, and then there are -- the Romans occupied London for almost -- let's see, about 500 years, and they are very proud of what the Romans had given to London. In fact, Queen Elizabeth, when she visited Italy and she attended one of the sessions of Parliament, she got up and said, "I want to thank you people for bringing civilization to London." So we are members for the Society of Promotion of Roman Studies, and they will be a contributor upon my death. I mention them in my will. It was he, really, my husband that started all this interest in Western civilization. LINDA: Truly admirable. /AT/pa/rjh/es

- n i-f^Jk^ t A; NOVEMBER, 1899 ooTheoc Qettysbur Mercery that the drama was indebted for a great improvement in this respect. He gave to the dithyramb a regular lyric form, and arranged it to be sung at these festivals by a trained chorus of fifty. To this chorus was given the name cyclic, inas-much as it was grouped around the altar. The chorus now be-came a very important factor in the drama. Neighboring towns vied with one another in producing the best bodies of trained singers ; large prizes were frequently offered to this end, and as a result of constant emulation numerous improvements were con-tinually being made. Although the Dorians had most to do in originating the drama, it was allotted to the Athenians to bring it to its greatest perfec-tion. Thespis (536 B. C), seeing that the existing mode of per-formance was more or less wearisome to the audience, conceived the idea of a dialogue between the leader and one of the members of the chorus, chosen especially for the purpose. The leader stood upon a raised platform, and in the pauses of the choral song, conversed with this member of the chorus, or the answerer (hypo-crites) as he was called. Besides the addition of this actor, or a?iswerer, Thespis made various other improvements. He in-vented dances in which he carefully trained the choristers; he changed the metre of the chorus, and gave to the whole perform-ance a larger element of unity than had theretofore characterized it. The organization of the chorus was further improved by Phrynichus (512-476 B. C.) who introduced the custom ofsub-divid-ing it into smaller bands when the nature of the play seemed to demand it. He dismissed everything light and farcical, and for the themes of his plays resorted to the mythology and history of his country. Instead of satyrs and buffoonery we now have heroes, princes and their attendants. In this we see the dawning of real tragedy. Although there were a number of writers intervening between Phrynichus and Aeschylus (525-456 B. C), they were ofminor im-portance; and it is to Aeschylus that we now turn our attention. It was reserved for this great writer to make some important and lasting changes in the drama; of these we state but a few of the most important. Aeschylus introduced a second actor, and thus THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 201 made possible a dialogue, independent of the chorus. This change had the effect of making the choral song secondary to the dia-logue and thus bringing the drama to its maturity in permitting the presentation of a complete scene before the eyes of the audience. He furthermore introduced into his tragedies many imposing spectacles, and made their execution more vivid by improving the expression of the mask, making the costumes richer, and intro-ducing the use of the cothurnus. Aeschylus was a very prolific writer, and his works rank among the very best in the language. It is interesting to note that he was the first to set the example of competing with trilogies, combinations of three tragedies, con-nected more or less in thought and supposed to be acted successi vely. We come now to the part played by Sophocles (495-405 B. C.) who was in his time the favorite tragic poet of Athens. L,ike Aeschylus he was a very prolific writer of plays, and his produc-tions are of the highest merit. He also made some improvements in the drama as he found it. Of these the principal are the fol-lowing : He added a third actor; made further improvements in the costume; invented the krepis, a boot of white color, worn by both actors and chorus. He furthermore increased the number of singers in the chorus from twelve to fifteen. His plays abound with grand and heroic personages, and are frequently character-ized by the supernatural element. His language is pure, majestic and highly poetical. He and Aeschylus stand forth as the two great masters of tragedy. To complete the list of the great dramatic writers of Greece who are known to us of the present day, we need but add the name of Euripides (480-406 B. C). This writer though ranking in general popularity with Aeschylus and Sophocles, was in some respects greatly inferior to them. His independent and at times reckless style has caused him to be greatly criticised. He has been accused of breaking in upon poetic harmony for the sake 01 novelty and effect, as well as of belittling the dignity of the gods. Euripides instituted the following changes in the drama: a cur-tailment of the function of the chorus and an expansion of the function of the messenger. He was also the first to use the pro-logue. Euripides was inferior to Aeschylus and Sophocles in the vigor and artistic moderation as well as beauty of his works, but he nevertheless was the author of many excellent productions and deservedly ranks with the world's great tragedians. —C, '00. 202 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. MUSIC AND SHAKESPEARE. IT is always interesting to examine the opinions of a man con-cerning the work of a fellow-craftsman ; but it is still more interesting to examine the expressions of a great artist about the nature and functions of an art differing from his own. There seems to be a somewhat widely-spread belief, that litterati are most miserably misguided in their opinions about a corresponding line of art work, i. e. music; but it will become evident upon an examination of the works of any great writer, e.g. Shakespeare, that this opinion is fallacious. It must be born in mind while we consider this subject, that the music described by Shakespeare, differed somewhat from that of to-day; the very term "music" would invoke different ideas among different classes of people and at various periods. It is probable that Shakespeare never heard anything like a Modern Concert Grand Piano, unless with the imaginative ears of genius ; so we must be careful not to think of sixteenth century music in nineteeth century ideas. No poet or musician has written more brilliantly or sympathetically about music than did Shakespeare. Possessing wonderful versatility, handling an immense array of subjects with great mastery of detail and happiness of expression, we find the '' Bard of Avon'' as much at home when he touches the bounds of the tonal art, as he is in all the other departments of knowledge. Besides recognizing the beauty of music, he appre-ciates its great power and influence, and shows his complete mas-tery of the art, such as it then was, by his frequent expressions of technical ideas. In Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Sc. 2, he puts into the mouth of Portia this poetical description of the character of music : "And what is music then ? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow, To a new-crowned monarch : such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming' bridegroom's ear, And summon him to marriage." Further on in the same play, Lorenzo and Jessica hold quite a discourse about music; it is full of beautiful imagery : "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears, soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 203 Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim ; Which harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." And further, Lorenzo gives us the familiar,— "The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted." This passage, however, when tested by actual experience, will not always hold true; Shakespeare evidently felt thus it ought to be. Somewhat similar to it is the following from Julius Caesar, Act i, Sc. 2,—characterizing a cynic : "he looks Quite through the deeds of men ; he loves no plays, As thou dost, Anthony ; he hears no music ; Seldom he smiles." About the great power of music this passage from Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, Sc. 2, bears witness: "I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's music." Again in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Sc. 1, we have:— "For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews, Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones ; Make tigers tame and huge leviathans Forsake unsounded depths to dance on sands." Of its power over the human soul and mind, Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing, Act 2, Sc. 3, tells, in this figure:— "Now Divine air! Now is his soul ravished ! Is itnot strange that sheeps'guts should hail souls out of men's bodies?" And in Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Sc. 5, this passage, with a similar idea, occurs: 204 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. "When griping- griefs the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound, With speedy help doth lend redress." Then, too, the King in Henry IV., when stricken and looking about him for relief, commands: "Let there be no noise, my gentle friends Unless some dull and favourable hand will music whisper to my weary spirit." Lucrentio, in Taming of the Shrew, gives expression to a well-known use of music, when he says : "Preposterous ass! that never read so far to know the cause why music was ordained, Was it not to refresh the mind of man after his study and his usual pain?" The mental effect is brought out by the King in Richard III:— "This music mads me." And the Duke in Measure for Measure, tells of the moral effect: " 'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm, that it makes bad, good and good, provokes to harm." Allusion to the close connection between music and love, is made in Act i, Sc. i, Twelfth Night, when the Duke says:— "If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so, die." And Cleopatra asks for the same kind of food, "Give me some music; music, moody food Of us that trade in love." In Love's Labor Lost, Act 4, Sc. 3, we find a musical simile of love: "For valor, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the Gods Make Heaven drowsy with the harmony." So, also in Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Sc. 2, we have "How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears." The "Music of Nature" is referred to, in many passages through-out Shakespeare's works; such expressions as "murmuring THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 205 brooks," "high-singing larks" are frequent. In The Tempest, Act 3, Sc. 2, Caliban reassures Stephano, after hearing Ariel's pipe, "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not." And Stephano replies—with a note of self-interest:— "This will prove a brave kingdom for me, where I shall have my music for nothing." In the next scene of the same play, Alonzo says:— "The winds did sing it to me and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper." That our author was well acquainted with the technique of music, is evidenced by the frequent occurance of such terms as "divi-sion," "discord," etc., and by the several passages concerning time-keeping. The King in Richard III., Act 5, Sc. 5, utters these words: "Music do I hear? Ha! ha! Keep time. How sour sweet music is When time is broke and no proportion kept." And the base Iago says, in Othello, Act 4, Sc. 1;— "That's not amiss; But yet keep time in all." In Romeo and Juliet and in Two Gentlemen of Verona, other especially good examples of a technical use of musical terms are afforded, that deserve mention. One finds many places in Shakespeare's works where inciden-tal reference to the art is made, throughout his other productions too, aside from the plays, there are numerous bright gems that glow with musical beauty and to follow up and present them, is a most interesting and enjoyable pursuit. In conclusion we would quote the words of the tired king, Pericles: "The music of the spheres, list my Marina; most heavenly music It nips me unto listening and thick slumber Hangs upon mine eyes; let me rest." a^p —W. W. P., '00. It would be an unspeakable advantage both to the public and the private, if men would consider the truth that no man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.—Sir Walter Raleigh. 206 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. A CHANCE MEETING. NOT many years ago, on a beautiful day early in the fall of the year, a Southern gentleman left his home in Georgia to visit the battlefield of Gettysburg. This battlefield had a peculiar interest for him because he had taken part in the great Gettysburg battle. It was the first time he had visited the battle-field since the day of the battle. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter, an accomplished young lady just passing out of her 'teens. They arrived at Gettysburg and went to a hotel. At this same hotel was John H. Stephens, from New York, who had taken part in the same battle. His son was with him and as they sat in the lobby of the hotel, the Southern veteran, entering with a paper in his hand, took a seat near them and began to read. The Union veteran glanced at him and thought he had seen that large Roman nose before. Several times afterward, he saw the man and thought that he had seen the face but was un-able to place it. In the afternoon of the next day both parties visited the battlefield. On the other side of Culp's Hill the New York gentleman and his son alighted from their carriage and walked toward Spangler's Spring. The old gentleman led his son to a large rock which was hollowed out on one side and said to him : "On the second day of the battle we were struggling in this vicinity and were driving the rebels back. I was rushing on with the rest of my comrades through the dead and wounded, when suddenly I was seized by the leg and almost fell to the ground. I looked down to see the cause of this sudden hindrance and there lying at my feet was a rebel soldier beckoning me with his hand. I stooped down to examine him and found that he was badly wounded in his hip and the blood was streaming from a wound on his head. He began to talk in a low voice and I bent lower in order to hear what he had to say. He began. 'There is a small village down in Georgia where a mother and small child are waiting for the return of the father, but he never will return. I feel that I am getting weaker and I would like to ask a favor of you before my lips are sealed forever. That mother is my wife and that child, my daughter. My name is Ralph D. Benson. If it would not be asking too much, I would THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 207 like you to send a message to them if you can get a chance to do so. This is the last request of a dying man and I believe you will not disregard it.' I told him to go on as I saw his voice was getting weaker. 'You just tell her,' he said, 'my love for her has remained the same throughout the trials and turmoils of this war. Tell her that I kept up my spirit with the thought of returning to my dear home never to leave it again. But that dream has now faded away. Tell her my last prayer is, that God may protect her and the child.' He murmured a few more words which were unintelligible and then became unconscious. His appeal had touched me, for my thought went to a home in New York State. The man's face had such an earnest look while he was speaking, and as he lay there a sad, but tender smile played about his lips. He still breathed heavily and I resolved to remove him to some shelter if in someway he might yet recover. I lifted him up and half dragged, half carried him to this very rock you see before you and I placed him in this cavern. From the small spring you see yonder," he said, pointing his finger toward Spangler's spring, "I brought water and bathed his face and forced some water through his lips. I left my canteen with him in hopes that he might regain consciousness and have use for it. Then I was at once compelled to leave and hurry after my regiment." "That was indeed, a very peculiar happening," replied the son, "but it seems strange to me that you should try so hard to save the life of a rebel, especially in the midst of battle." "That may be strange," answered the father, but as I said before, the man's tale touched me and there was something about the man that I admired—he had such a noble, honest-looking face." At this moment their attention was attracted by the creaking noise of a carriage descending the winding driveway and the voice of a guide repeating the story of that portion of the battle which occurred in that particular place. As the carriage approached they recognized the occupants to be the venerable gentleman, whom they had seen at the hotel, his wife and daughter. When they came nearer the rock, the old man arose from his seat and told the driver to stop the horses. He then said to the guide, "I know too well about the contest which took place here, for I participated in it myself. The battle is as fresh in my mind as though it had happened but yesterday. We were being driven r^ 208 r//^ GETTYSBURG MERCURY. back when I received this wound which I carry to-day," he said, laying his hand on his hip, "and as I fell, I struck my head against the gun of one of my fallen comrades. It dazed me for a few moments, but I soon awoke and found that my regiment was being driven back by a New York regiment. I was bleeding freely from my head and side and was beginning to think that my end was close at hand. My thoughts went back to my home in the South and I would have given anything to be there if only for a few minutes. The thought struck me then to send a message, if possible, to the dear ones at home. I attracted the attention of a passing soldier, gave him what I thought would be my last messsge on earth which he promised to send to my wife. Here is a link in my story which I often have wished could be supplied, but there is only one person who can do that and he may be dead now. The next thing I remember, I awoke with a great pain in my head and everything in utter darkness. I felt around with my hand and touched nothing but cold stone. Be-side me lay a canteen from which I took a draught. I soon called the attention of some passing soldiers who lifted me from the shelter in which I was placed. I recognize this very rock and I have kept the canteen on which are inscribed the initials, J. H. S." By this time Stephens knew the man before him to be the man he had saved and, as he finished his story, Stephens stepped up to him and said: "If you can recall the rock in which you were placed, look at me and see if you can not recall the soldier who placed you there. My name is John H. Stephens and it is my canteen from which you drank. So give me your hand, comrade, we have drunk from the same canteen." Benson was struck speechless for a few moments by this unexpected revelation but gave a hearty grasp to the hand which was placed in his own. He soon regained himself and said: "This meeting I consider one of the most fortunate events of my life. Often have I longed to see the brave man who so generously saved nry life and to whom I am so deeply indebted. That moment has at last arrived and when least expected. What is most surprising is that we meet where we last parted, but, thank God in very different relations." They chatted on in this way until the sun had descended behind the hills and it was time to depart. They still had much to say so they arranged that both the old gentlemen should go back in THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 209 the same carriage and leave the younger members to take the other. This arrangement was very satisfactory to the younger pair and they made no objections. They went back to the hotel and spent the evening together. The old gentlemen told stories principally of their own experience in the war, while the young folks found no difficulty in enjoying themselves. It was a late hour when they retired that night but they were all up early as Stephens and his son intended to leave that morn-ing. They parted with many regrets and arrangements for future meetings. As they were about to separate Benson said, "Don't let anything hinder you from coming to see me next month, as we have arranged and be sure to bring your son with you." "I will come," answered Stephens, "but I can not speak for my son as he never did like the southern climate." But the merry twinkle in his eye and the smiles that appeared on the faces of all told that there was not much danger on that score. The two old gentlemen entertained a very warm friendship for each other from this time and made annual visits together to the battlefield of Gettysburg. But a still stronger friendship sprung up between the son and daughter which finally resulted in making a still closer connection between the two families. —H. A. L., '01. "SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER." Considered Historically and Critically. [GRAEFF PRIZE, HONORABLE MENTION.] OLIVER GOLDSMITH lived and died, and considered as a man, his life was a failure; but thought of as an author, one is obliged to exclaim "One of the few, the immortal names That were not born to die." Literary work always betrays in some manner the life and characteristics of its author, and in no production of merit is the writer revealed more fully than in the works of Goldsmith. In his essays we recognize the hand-to-mouth journalist and the struggling genius ; in the compiled histories we see both the hand of a master of beautiful style and the carelessness of a debtor ; in the Vicar of Wakefield we get an inside view of his father's family as it was during his boyhood days ; in the Traveler we see N 2IO THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. the homesick wanderer ; in the Deserted Village we hear the la-ments of the man over the decaying surroundings of youth ; in the Good-natured Man to have a testimony of his generous na-ture ; and She Stoops to Conquer immortalizes a supposed episode of his school-days. Thus all through his works we see the author as he was. But after all he is best revealed to us through the agency of his novel and his poems ; and it is a conceded fact that when he abandoned poetry for prose, the world became that much poorer. However, necessity, as a law, considers only self, and when the need is money it bows not to the general good of mankind. Poetry made him famous, but poor men cannot live upon fame ; so to supply the money to silence impatient creditors, he compiled histories. " I cannot afford to court the draggle-tail muses," he said to Lord Lisburn, " they would let me starve, but by my other labors lean make shift to eat, to drink, and have good clothes." While he was working at paying compilations however, he wrote the Vicar of Wakefield. That work elevated him to the front rank of prose writers, and " the success which had attended him as a novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a drama-tist." Accordingly, " he wrote The Good-natured Man, apiece which had a worse fate than it deserved." " In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chances at Convent Garden with a second play,—She Stoops to Conquer." The history of the production of this play is rather peculiar, and illustrates the error of judgment, by which even competent men are led astray at times. At the time a coolness existed between Garrick, the great English actor, and Goldsmith, caused, it is said, by the actor's criticism on the character of Lofty and other supposed defects in the Good-natured Man ; but this coolness was not as frigid as it had been shortly after the unpleasant criticism ; and it is evident from his conduct, that the author would have submitted the new play to his estranged friend at Drury Lane had it not been already promised to Colman, the manager of Convent Garden. It is also evident from subsequent developments that Garrick would have ac-cepted the play. Goldsmith was usually reckless in the matter of fulfilling his promises, but in this he was honorable and gave the play to Colman. It seems that Colman was unconscious of the real merits of the manuscript, and kept it in his possession for months • THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 211 without replying to the author, impatient for a decision. Finally, when the "fountain of patience" was exhausted, Goldsmith wrote to the manager, begging him to give a decisive answer, and not keep him in suspense any longer. He promised to remove, without argument, any objectionable parts of the play ; and said that he would refuse to allow it to be submitted to any other judg-ment save the manager's own. He concluded by saying, " I have, as you know, a large sum of money to make up shortly ; by ac-cepting my play I can readily satisfy my creditors that way, at any rate I must look about to some certainty to be prepared. For God's sake take the play and let us make the best of it, and let me have the same measure at least which you have given as bad plays as mine." To this appeal Colman replied by returning the manuscript, upon the blank leaves of which he had written "distasteful re-marks," renewing his previous promise, however, to produce the play at some future time. This discourtesy provoked Goldsmith to such an extent that he offered the play to Garrick, but Johnson, the author's tried friend, persuaded him to withdraw it, saying, as an argument, that it would be disadvantageous to take it from Convent Garden in such an abrupt manner. Then Johnson had a strong interview with Colman and persuaded him with "much solicitation, nay, a kind of force" to produce the play. Colman disliked the play and predicted its failure, even after he was seemingly compelled by Johnson to produce it. After considering its merits, such a judgment seems very strange to us. Colman was not alone in the matter of condemning it, how-ever, for some of the best actors joined in chorus with his dislike and refused to take any part; but their places were filled by others and the rehearsal began. But even then the end of all difficulties was not yet in sight, for the piece was without a dignified name. The Mistakes of a Night, which is now the second title, was considered too low for the play. "We are all in labor," said Johnson, whose efforts to have the play produced were enthusiastic throughout the whole period of disappointment and delays, "for a name to Goldy's play." The Old House a New Inn was suggested by one of the literary wits, but that, too, was dismissed on the plea of its awk-wardness. Then Reynolds, the great artist, announced to the I f 212 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. members of the club what he thought would be an appropriate title—The Belle's Stratagem. This name was still under consid-eration when, it is said, Goldsmith, in whose mind Dryden's lines may have reverberated, "But kneels to conquer but stoops to rise," suggested, She Stoops to Conquer. The night of March 15, 1773, having arrived, the play was produced by Colman at Convent Garden. It is said, that Gold-smith dined that day with his friends, and, says Sir Joshua, "nearly choked" with agitation. When they started for the theatre, he turned his steps in a contrary direction, and wandered about in St. James Park. But the triumph of his grand comedy was complete. Contrary to the expectations of the manager and many of the actors, it proved a very brilliant and triumphant success for its author. George M. Towle says, speaking about Goldsmith's death, "Exactly one year after the hisses at the Good-natured Man had been gloriously avenged by the roars of applause and laughter over She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith was struggling with his fatal illness. Still a drudge and a debtor, still struggling with money troubles, still a poet for fame, but a hack for bread, his buoyant spirits at last succumbed." A uervous fever laid him prostrate, and on the morning of April the 4th, 1774, when asked by his doctor, "Is your mind at ease?" he replied, "No, it is not." These were his last words: the great genius sank untimely, though wearied, into an unmarked grave, leaving "She Stoops to Con-quer" as a lasting monument of his literary triumph. "The candid critic is a gentleman of whom all authors approve if he praises their last volume. 'What I wanted,' they explain, 'is no gush of praise, as from a friend; but simply a calm, just re-view, slating my work if it deserves slating, commending it if it deserves commendation.' Noble fellows. Then when the critic, who is very young in this case, observes that the work bears dis-tinct traces of genius, is Shakespearian without Shakespeare's coarseness, reminds one of Milton in his best moments, and sug-gests Tennyson before the Poet Laureate's hand lost its cunning, the author smiles gently to himself, and repeats that what he wanted was an honest criticism, and he thinks he has got it." THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 213 The kind of criticism which Mr. Barrie describes in the fore-going quotation is only too common in current literature. Praise, not justice, is that which is wanted by the average author. But when we consider the fact that there are only a few living master-critics, we will not be surprised when we read the so-called criti-cisms of literary productions. Criticism is an art, and only those who devote a whole life-time to its study can ever hope to master it. To criticise any work, whether of a poetical, fictional, scientific, philosophical, historical, or dramatic character requires a master-knowledge of the subject on the part of the critic. Dramatic criticism requires an additional preparation—that of observation, for only by observation can the technique of acting be mastered,—perhaps, even then, participation in the renderings of the play may be required. If this be true, dramatic criticism is the most difficult of all. Nevertheless with all due regard to the greatness of the task before us, we humbly offer the following criticism of She Stoops to Conquer. Time establishes the value of anything ; and when a play con-tinues to be popular one hundred and twenty-six years after it was written, it must be of more than ordinary merit; and such, indeed, is She Stoops to Conquer There is, however, a dispute about this play which has never been settled, i. e. is it a comedy or a farce? The Encyclopedia Britannica says, '"The Good-natured Man had been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth of the Good-natured Man was sober when compared with the rich drollery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts." In Chambers Encyclopedia we read that "he escaped from enforced compilations (Histories of Rome and England, History of Animated Nature) with his best poetical effort, The Deserted Village (1770); and three years afterward achieved the highest dramatic honors by She Stoops to Conquer; still one of the most popular of English acting comedies.'' Horace Walpole, as quoted by Mr. Black in his Life of Goldsmith says that She Stoops to Conquer is only a farce. Prof. Ward in his Eng. Dramatic Literature says that Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem "is written in the happiest of veins; and may be regarded as the pro-totype of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, like which it hovers rather doubtfully on the borders—not always easy to determine— 214 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. between comedy and farce." Black's Life of Goldsmith speaks of the play as being a comedy ; so does Forster in his Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith. Other authorities, such as English Men of Letters, Irving's Biography of Goldsmith, essays and magazine sketches could be quoted ; sufficient could be adduced to show conclusively that this question is a mooted one. But what is a comedy ? What is a farce ? The Encyclopedia Dictionary, one of the stardard works of its kind, says that a comedy is " a dramatic representation of a light and amusing nature, in which are satirized pleasantly the weak-nesses or manners of society and the ludicrous incidents of life." If this is a true definition of the limits of pure comedy, then She Stoops to Conquer is not a comedy in all its parts. It is a " dra-matic representation of a light and amusing nature," but it is not a satire on the "weaknesses or manners of society;" and the "ludicrous incidents of life " which form the ground-work of the play are either the work of the poet's imagination or a grossly exaggerated " incident of life." The best narrative of this " incident " is given by Forster ; " at the close of his last holidays, Goldsmith, then a lad of nearly seventeen, left home for Edgeworthtown, mounted on a borrowed hack, which a friend was to restore to Lissoy, and with stores of unaccustomed wealth, a guinea, in his pocket. The delicious taste of independence beguiled him to a loitering, lingering, pleas-ant enjoyment of the journey ; and instead of finding himself under Mr. Hughes' roof at nightfall, night came upon him, some two or three miles out of the direct road in the middle of the street of Ardagh. But nothing could disconcert the owner of the guinea, who with a lofty, confident air, inquired of a person passing, the way to the town's best house of entertainment. The man ad-dressed was the wag of Ardagh, a humorous fencing-master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly; and the school-boy's swagger was an irresistible provocation to a jest. Submissively he turned back with horse and rider till they came within a pace or two of the great Squire Featherstone's, to which he respectfully pointed as the ' best house' of Ardagh. Oliver rang at the gate, gave his beast in charge with authoritative rigor, and was shown as a supposed-ex-pected guest, into the comfortable parlor of the squire. Those were days when Irish inn-keepers and Irish squires more nearly THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 215 approximated than now, and Mr. Featherstone, unlike the- ex-cellent but explosive Hardcastle, is said to have seen the mistake and humored it. Oliver had a supper which gave him so much satisfaction that he ordered a bottle of wine to follow; and the attentive landlord was not only forced to drink with him, but with a like condescension the wife and pretty daughter were invited to the supper-room. Going to bed he stopped to give special in-structions for a hot cake to breakfast, and it was not till he had despatched this latter meal and was looking at his guinea with a pathetic aspect of farewell that the truth was told him by the good-natured squire. The late Sir Thomas Featherstone, grand-son of the supposed inn-keeper, had faith in the adventure, and told Mr. Graham that as his grandfather and Charles Goldsmith (Oliver's father) had been college acquaintances, it might be the better accounted for." Was this episode a real one in Goldsmith's life? If so, why did he wait so long before he used it ? The question is un-answerable. It is very probable, however, and may have oc-curred ; and if did occur it comes within the limits of pure comedy, although it is grossly exaggerated in She Stoops to Con-quer, and that exaggeration comes near, if not altogether within the domain of faice. A farce, according to the previously-quoted dictionary, was " originally a petty show exhibited in the street; now a recog-nized performance at the theatres. The difference between farce and comedy is that the latter keeps to nature and probability, and therefore is confined to certain laws allowed by critics ; whereas farce sets aside all laws upon occasion. Its end is to make merry, and it sticks at nothing that may further it.'' Hence the dialogue is usually low, the persons of inferior rank, the fable or action trivial or ridiculous, and nature and truth everywhere heightened and exaggerated to make more palpable ridicule." If this be a correct definition, then a number of the parts of She Stoops to Conquer are really farcical. Scene II of Act I is farcical to the de-gree of vulgarity ; too low for reception by polite ears. It was, we are told, incorporated into the new play by the author to get revenge on the public for condemning the scene of the bailiffs in the Good-natured Man. Other scenes of the play are farcical; but so far as unnaturalness and palpable ridicule are concerned, noth-ing in the entire play exceeds Scene II, Act V. 2l6 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Taken altogether, She Stoops to Conquer is neither wholly a comedy nor wholly a farce; for if we draw a line between the provinces of comedy and farce we will see that this play could not be placed on either side of the line entirely,—in one place it must be classed as a farce and in another as a comedy. But it is unimportant so far as the merits of the play are concerned—they are so numerous and evident that everything else appears of small moment. The ambition of the author was to please the public and for financial profit, not binding himself in so doing by the rules laid down by critics. Rules of grammar and criticism are good enough for the talented writer but, the genius is above them. Goldsmith has been accused of stealing ideas from Farquhar, the great Irish dramatist, but whether he did or not is a secret which died with him. It is true that the junior Marlowe's charac-ter resembles that of Capt. Durette in Farquhar's, The Inconstant, but the resemblance is too weak to convict our author of stealing, for there were undoubtedly bashful men in real life when Gold-smith lived and wrote whom he could study and use as proto-types. Perhaps he himself is the original of the character, for we know that he was "free among creatures of another stamp," but we have no accurate knowledge of his conduct "among women of reputation and virtue" during hisyouuger days. Again it is said that Farquhar's "Beaux Stratagem" is the prototype of "She Stoops to Conquer." This may be true, but it seems strange that a man of superior literary attainments should copy from an inferior or use as a model the work of another man when the ground work of his own production was suggested by an episode in his life. Perhaps Goldsmith was present at a performance of Beaux Stratagem or he may have read it, and the impressions made upon his mind in either case might have influ-enced him while he was writing his second play; but if such an influence was present why was it felt only in the second play,— excluding utterly the first? The author is dead; his lips are sealed; so it is impossible to gain an answer from that source ; but the fact seems evident that Goldsmith invented his own plot, employed his own methods and constructed his own form. Whatever resemblance exists between the two plays is merely accidental. From a literary point of view, She Stoops to Conquer is a great improvement on The Good-Natured Man. The dialogue is THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 217 more easy and natural, the style is more refined, and the thought more lofty; but, then, defects are nevertheless apparent, able to be seen by the critic at a glance. —JOSEPH H. KEUER. "THE RISE OF THE DUSKY OLD MAN ELOQUENT." "The conditions of success are universal and unchangeable." —Douglas. MANY visitors to the Nation's Capital have fixed their gaze upon a tall, broad-shouldered man, whose strong, intelli-gent, and kindly face, framed in snowy beard and hair, seemed to possess an irresistible attraction. Inquiry brought the answer, " It is Frederick Douglas." This foremost of Africo-Americans was born a slave,—he supposed in 1817,—on the eastern shore of Maryland. He was separated from his mother in babyhood. When he was seven years old she made a last visit, walking twenty-four miles in a single night that she might see him. At the age of nine years he was sent to Baltimore where a kind mistress taught him to read; but her husband forbade her to give further instruction, declaring it would unfit him to be a slave,—the best reason for learning him to read. He learned all possible from his playmates; and picked up the art of writing at a ship-yard and from the copy-books of his young master. Soon there fell into his hands a copy of "The Columbian Orator," in which there were speeches of Fox and Pitt. These he read and studied repeatedly, each time with increased delight; and to them attributed the development of the oratorical ability which afterwards enabled him to command the applause of listen-ing throngs. When he was sixteen, he was sent back to the plantation and, for the first time, made a farm hand. Here he saw the lash and felt its stinging stroke. His first attempt to escape failed, but in 1838, in the disguise of a sailor, he boarded a train for New York, and in twenty-four hours was in a free state ; but he was not a free man,—only a fugitive,—nor did he ever feel safe until eight years later he "made a present of himself to himself, the expense being $750." I I s 218 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. When this negro bought himself he was famous, not only in America, but also in England, where he was kindly received. In 1839 this "graduate of a peculiar institution with his di-ploma written upon his back " made a speech before an Abolition meeting, which speech W. L,. Garrison declared to be worthy of Patrick Henry. From that day to the day of his death—a few years ago—Frederick Douglas was the recognized leader of his race. " He was not only the leader, organizer and adviser of his race, but he was an eminent man among men " and held positions of prominence under the government. He was one of the greatest orators and one of the greatest men of the century. His work is done; his deeds are recorded ! The world knows his worth as a statesman and reformer, and recognizes his power as an orator ; but a more important lesson may be learned by the student from his surmounting obstacles and overcoming difficulties. L,et him impress upon our minds the truth of the opening sentence and the following lines :— " It is a great thing to be an Englishman ; it is a great thing to be an Irishman ; it is a great thing to be a German ; but it is an incomparably greater thing to be a man." —'01. EDITORIALS. THERE are three men in college whose departure would be a blessing. One is the man whose marvelous abilities are never appreciated. Somehow or other, though his talents beyond doubt indicate highest genius, his narrow-minded fellow students cannot see them. Therefore he grumbles and talks con-stantly of " how things are run around here." The second man is he whose destructive tendencies show themselves whenever a body of students assemble at night. Certainly his nature is very low whose impulse on such occasions is to destroy college or any other property. The third man is he whose conversation ostra-cises him from nearly every student in college, for few of our stu-dents are not gentlemen. Without these three men, who we are glad to say are few and far between, Gettysburg would be better off. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 219 A few weeks ago in an editorial of the Gettysburgian were re-marks complimentary to the MERCURY. Since the Gettysburgian always has been most loyal to Gettysburg in spite of dishearten-ing opposition and ridicule, we make no apologies for giving our sister paper the praise she has so long deserved from us. When the Gettysburgian was first published college sentiment strongly opposed it. It was thought that the paper was gotten out for the financial interests of its publishers, irrespective of the effects its publication might have upon the regular college journal. However, its founders believed that the Gettysburgian, as a weekly, not publishing " literary" articles, would in no way in-terfere with the success of the monthly, but in fact would stimu-late the latter and benefit college by giving it a weekly publica-tion ; as for the financial success of the paper complete reliance was placed upon its merits. That the founders in their expecta-tions were right, two years of hard-earned and triumphant suc-cess have proven. Although the Gettysbitrgian, whose existence compelled the MERCURY to assume a form exclusively literary, was for a long time regarded by the monthly as an unfriendly rival, to-day the two papers are published without thought of competi-tion other than the most pleasant. The Gettysburgian publishes the news of college, while the MERCURY publishes examples of the literary work done in college. Each has its own sphere, and we are glad to say is keeping in it. As for " personalia," prob-ably the most interesting news to alumni, the Gettysburgian ranks with the first college papers in Pennsylvania. Most college publications contain in each of their issues ar-ticles on exchanges. On account of rivalries and differences be-tween institutions, no college paper cares to say much about the defects in exchanges and so the exchange article, though invari-ably interesting, is too often pardonable flattery. The MERCURY seldom contains an article on exchanges because if her true criti-cism is given, she will be misunderstood and she does not wish to give any but her true criticism. We do not say that very favor-able criticism should not be given when deserved, but criticism favorable when not deserved is altogether wrong; and of this wrong, publications of colleges in the highest standing are fre-quently guilty. 220 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. THE HEROES OF MANILLA BAY. I. They come, they come— And the rolling; drum is drowned by the nation's cheer. Huzzah, they come ! Our sailors come! Back from the Orient wave, they come— The bravest of the brave, they come ! Rejoice, rejoice, Columbia— Raise high thy voice, Columbia: "Our brave come home !" Thunder the cry From zone to zone Nor let it die Until its echoes carried hig-h Reach the patriots gone before ! Oh, the story of their glory Is and evermore shall be A tribute to the great and free Land of God and Liberty. II. And home they came, Strong, true, the same brave hearts that knew not fear. In peace, they hear again the roar That they had heard in distant war On that great day The First of May, When Dewey steamed into Manilla Bay. To enter meant death— And the world held its breath As, "Steam ahead," The hero said, And they steamed straight ahead ! Then the guns shook the deep, And the breezes that sweep Round the world Bore to us the news of the fight— And we knew when they hurled Solid death at the foe, Since God loves the right, How the battle would go. Yes, our thundering guns shook the deep, And the heart of Spain sank with her fleet— A famous day, That First of May, When Dewey steamed into Manilla Bay ! THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 221 We praise them not for what they did So much as what they dared to do, For every man on every crew Faced what he thought was death. III. Over the plains, across the sea That knocks at the Golden Gate, We offer the hand of Liberty To a benighted state. We would give all men freedom, We would give life for right; We cannot withhold army or gold While man has not the light! * * * * Our God, who made us Do Thou aid us To do right! Remove our blindness And in kindness Give us light ! The great Republic, loving right, Implores Thy guidance through the night— In Thee we trust, For Thou art just, In Thee, our only King, we trust: Roll back the clouds, great God, and give us light! —"ZUR.' The wild November comes at last Beneath a veil of rain ; The night winds blow its folds aside, Her face is full of pain. The latest of her race, she takes The autumn's vacant throne: She has but one short moon to live, And she must live alone. —Stoddard. In rattling showers dark November's rain, From every stormy cloud, descends amain. —Ruskin. 222 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. HARMONY OF CHARACTER. CHARACTER exhibits man at his best. As a circle can be a perfect one, only when every part of its line is equidis-tant from a common centre, so man can be perfect only when his conduct is controlled by the action of some great central principle. As the beauty and the splendor of a painting depends upon the proper blending of its colors, so the beauty and the splendor of human character depends upon the proper combina-tion of every good and essential quality. As a diamond reaches its highest worth and shines at every point only when cut and polished with the greatest care and attention, so man reaches his highest development, and shines before the world and before his Maker, only when he has pruned himself of every excessive prop-erty and has polished and refined every good and essential quality to the standard of God himself. The effect of great success is produced by a harmonious combination of every good and essen-tial quality. As the lack of a single shade of color may hinder the productiveness of the artist's picture, so the lack of a single qualification may hinder the productiveness of all the rest: or as, the excess of one atom of oxygen in its composition changes water, that aqueous element without which there can be no life, into hy-drogen di-oxide, which, if taken into the system is poisonous, so the excess of one qualification may undo all that the proper action of the rest have accomplished. "Men carrying the stamp of one defect, their virtues, else be they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo, shall, in the general censure take corruption from that particular fault.'' How was it with that most interest-ing young man of the Scriptures, who in all the eagerness of self-confidence stood complacently before his master and asked: "Good master what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And with what elation of soul did the young deceiver listen to the words of the great heart-searcher. "If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments." And with what audacity and feelings of ex-ultation did the young man reply: "All these have I kept from my youth up. What lack I yet?" By a single stroke: "Yet lackest thou one thing," all his hopes are crushed. However spotless he may have been, however energetic or industrious or intelligent, he yet lacked that one essential quality, the absence of which for aught we know, was fatal to the life of that young man. Who will deny that Lord Byron's life was a failure ? Lord THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 223 Byron's? a life which but for low and degrading passions would have gone down to posterity as a model of excellence and of beauty; a life which but for that wayward and irritable temper should thunder in the ears of every young man as a model. "Character is the spiritual body of a person and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of uncon-scious things into self-conscious beings." By character we mean the possession of such qualities of heart and mind and soul as shall give a useful, valuable and beneficial direction to human effort, stimulate it to untiring diligence in its pursuits and fortify it against great discouragements. Its aim is high in every depart-ment of life, social, moral and intellectual. It seeks the greatest possible good to the greatest possible numbers. Its benevolence spends itself upon the wants of others and in its ample folds it embraces the wants and the necessities of man whenever and wherever found in all pursuits and conditions of human life. It travels over land and sea. Like an angel of mercy descending from above and winging its flight throughout the world, it goes wherever the footsteps of man have gone and dispenses blessings, wherever human misery may be relieved or human want assisted. Such is the proper standard of human character. We take it that success in life depends upon the degree of effort put forth and its continued application. "I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and thistles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall was broken down; then I saw and considered, I looked upon it and received instruction." In all the pursuits of life, emulation is the most powerful spring of the efforts and improvements of man. A virtuous, praiseworthy and commendable desire to excel, constitutes one of the safest prin-ciples by which a young man can be guided. The pages of history glow with instances of heroic daring and devotion that seem in-credible, and can only be accounted for by this principle. The plains of Marathon and Thermopolse furnish striking examples of the prowess and undaunted energy of man when this principle is fully developed. What was it that enabled Columbus to conquer the most unsurmountable obstacles and peril the dangers of an unknown sea ? What was it that made Regulus proof against the tears of his friends, thelove of his wife, the affection of his children, the fear of death ? —"FRITZ." 224 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Fie upon thee, November ! thou dost ape The airs of thy young- sisters;—thou hast stolen The witching- smile of May to grace thy lip, And April's rare, capricious loveliness Thou'rt trying to put on ! —-Julia C. R. Dorr. Dreary is the time when the flowers of earth are withered.- Bryant. C P. SOLT MERCHANT TAILOR Masonic Bldg., GETTYSBURG Our collection of Woolens for the coming-Fall and Winter season cannot be surpassed for variety, attractive designs and general completeness. The latest styles of fashionable novelties in the most approved shades. Staples of exceptional merit, value and wearing-durability. Also altering, repairing, dyeing and scouring at moderate prices. .FOR UP-TO-DATE. Clothing, Hats, Shoes, And Men's Furnishing Goods, go to. I. HALLEM'S MAMMOTH CLOTHING HOUSE, Chambersburg St., GETTYSBURG, PA. ESTABLISHED 1867 BY ALLEN WALTON. ALLEN K. WALTON, President and Treasurer. ROBT. J. WALTON, Superintendent. flummelstomn Broom Stone Gompany Quarrymen and Manufacturers of Building Stone, Sawed Flagging and Tile Waltonville, Dauphin Co., Pa. Contractors for all kinds of Cut Stone Work. Parties visitinjr the Quarries will leave cars at Brownstone Station on the P. & R. R. R. Telegraph and Express Address. BROWNSTONE, PA. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. The Century Double-Feed Fountain Pen. Fully Warranted 16 Kt. Gold Pen, Iridium Pointed. GEO. EVELER, Agent for Gettysburg College PRICE LIST. No. 1. No. 1. No. 3. No. 3. Chased, long- or short $2 00 Gold Mounted 3 00 Chased 3 00 Gold Mounted 4 00 Spiral, Black or Mottled $2 50 Twist, " " 2 SO Hexag-on, Black or Mottled 2 50 Pearl Holder, Gold Mounted 5 00 THE CENTURY PEN CO., WHITEWATER, WIS. Askyour Stationer or our Agent to shovJ them toyou. Agood local agent wanted in every school. ^mmmwmwmmmmmwMmmmmmmwmmgg Printing and Binding "We Print. This Book THE MT. HOLLY STATIONERY AND PRINTING CO. does all classes of Printing- and Binding-, and can furnish you any Book, Bill Head, Letter Head, Envelope, Card, Blank, or anything pertain-ing to their business in just as good style and at less cost than you can obtain same elsewhere. They are located among the mountains but their work is metropolitan. You can be convinced of this if you give them the opportunity. Mt. Holly Stationery and Printing Co. *SPRINGS, PA. ^iUiUlUilUUiUiUiUiUilUUJUiUiUiUiUlUiUiUiUMR H. S. BENNER, .DEALER IN. Groceries, Notions, Queensware, Glassware, Etc., Tobacco and Cigars. J7 CHAMBERSBURG ST. WE RECOMMEND THESE BUSINESS MEN. Pitzer House, (Temperance) JNO. E. PITZER, Prop. Rates $1.00 to $1.25 per day. Battlefield a specialty. Dinner and ride to all points of interest,including the three days' figrht, $1.25. No. 127 Main Street. MUMPER & BENDER Furniture Cabinet Making, Picture Frames Baltimore St., GETTYSBURG, PA. You will find a full Hue of Pure Drugs and Fine Sta- People's Drug Store Prescriptions a Specialty. .GO TO. f?otel Gettysburg Barber Sfyop. Centre Square. B. M. SEFTON J. A. TAWNEY 9. Is ready to furnish Clubs and Bread, Rolls, Etc. At short notice and reasonable rates. Washington & Middle Sts., Gettysburg. W.F.CODORI, sS^ti Dealer in Beef, Pork, Lamb, Veal, Sausage. Special rates to Clubs. York St., GETTYSBURG. Davib Croxd, Dealer in ^tne (groceries anb notions «_x_4Jork Street. .GO TO. CHAS. E. BARBEHENN, Barber In the Eagle Hotel, Cor. Main and Washington Sts. YOHN BROS. Agents for the Keystone State, Waldo, Washburn, Groupner & Meyer. Highest Grade Mandolins, Guitars, Banjos, Mandollas and Mandocellos. Headquarters for Phonographs, Graphophonesand supplies. Trimmings of every description. All sheet music one-half off. Large discounts on Books and studies. 326 Market St., Harrisburg, Pa. FAVOR THOSE WHO FAVOR US. Baseball ^applies, .SpalOfng's Xeague J6all, /TIMte, /Tlbasfts, Etc. Managers should send for samples and special rates. Every requisite for Hennis, ©olf, Crfcftet, Uracfe anO ffielo, ©Bmnaeium Equipments ano ©utfite Complete Catalogue Spring- and Summer Sports Free. The Name the Guar-antee.' 1 a. ©. SpalDing & 3Broe. New York .". Philadelphia V Chicago ROWE. YOUR GROCER Carries Full Line of Groceries, Canned Goods, Etc. Best Coal Oil and Brooms at most Reasonable Prices. OPPOSITE COLLEGE CAMPUS. S. J. CODORI, %* Druggist*** Dealer in Drugs, Medicines, Toilet Articles, J- Stationery, Blank Books, Amateur Pho-tographic Supplies, Etc., Etc. BALTIMORE ST. R. H. CULP PAPER HANGER, Second Square, York Street. COLLEGE EMBLEMS. EMIL ZOTHE, ENGRAVER. DESIGNER AND MANUFACTURING JEWELER. 19 S. NINTH ST. PHILADELPHIA. FA. SPECIALTIES: Masonic Marks. Society Badges, College Buttons, Pins, Scarf Pins, Stick Pins and Athletic Prizes. All Goods ordered through C. H. Tilp. Gotrell Leonard) 472-474 Broadway, Albany, N. Y. nakers of CAPS, GOWNS and. HOODS To the leading American Colleges. Illus-trated Manual, etc., upon application. Meneely Bell Co. TROY, N. Y. MANUFACTURERS OP SUPERIOR BELLS The 2000 pound bell now ringing in the tower of Pennsylvania Col-lege was manufactured at this foundry. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. You can't expect to create the im-pression that you are well dressed unless your clothes are MADE FOR YOU. Equivocate as you may, the fact remains that ready-made garments lack that air of exclusiveness which custom work possesses. J. D. LIPPY, Merchant Tailor 39 Chambersburg- St., Gettysburg-, Pa. G. E. SPANGLER, Dealer in Pianos, Organs, Music, Musical Instruments, Strings, Etc. YORK STREET, 1ST SQUARE. GETTYSBURG. L. D. Miller, GROCER Confectioner and Fruiterer. Ice Cream and Oysters in Season. 19 Main St. GETTYSBURG City Hotel, Main St. Gettysburg. *J* Free 'Bus to and from all Trains Thirty seconds' walk from either depot Dinner with drive over field with four or more, $1.35 Rates $1.50 to $2.00 per day. John E. Hughes, Prop. fm. FAMILY ONE YEAR/ rA6AINST ILLNESS. PHYSICIANS"* PLUMBERS' BILLS.DUETO IMPURE AIR. ^FR0HCL066EDDj»INS. n receipt ot $|oo KLBANYN: A&V Yort. Sos/on. PAJMe/p/>/d. CMcdgo. Sdflf/snasco, /.one/on. Ps/7S.SerM Co/os/?e. CALL ON F. Mark Bream, The Carlisle Street Grocer Who always has on hand a full line of Fine Groceries. .Photographer. No. 3 Main St., GETTYSBURG, PENNA. Our new effects in Portraiture are equal to photos made anywhere, and at any price