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Issue 53.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1994. ; OUS Christian Heritages and ContemporaryLiving MARCH-APRIL 1994 ¯ VOLUME 53 ¯ NUMBER 2 ¯ 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, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ° P.O. Box 29260 ¯ Washington, DC 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. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1994 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. review for religious Editor David L. Fleming Associate Editors Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Canonical Counsel Editor Elizabeth McDonough OP Assistant Editors ¯ Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Advisory Board Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Se~in Sammon FMS Susanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living MARCH-APILIL 1994 ¯ VOLUME 53 ¯ NUMBER 2 contents 166 feature In the Midst of the Times: Religious Life and the Ever-Present Experience of the World John W. Padberg SJ presents three historical perspectives on religious life to aid in imagining and planning for the future. commitments 182 Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love 189 196 David Maria Knight suggests that religious are examples and models of that dramatic gesture which is a key element in launching anyone into passionate relationship with God. Quest for an Undivided Heart Theresa Mancuso ponders a heart focused on God in a life of consecrated chastity. Imaged Celibacy: A Reflection for Priests Brian C. Yates proposes a way of imaging that allows us to enter more freely into the reality of celibate living. challenges 200 Needed: An Ethic of Memories 208 214 222 Joanne Marie Greer suggests various ethical aspects that need to be considered when sharing memories, especially those which are a part of therapeutic counseling. ADiscipline of Self-Respect William Mockus describes the need for spiritual discipline as a function of self-respect. A Transformational Journey Annete Adams SND observes the cycle of the monarch butterfly to gain understanding about the spiritual-direction process. Community for Today and Tomorrow Janet Roesener CSJ sets forth the call and challenges for reli-gious to live a covenantal community life. 162 Review for Religious 231 238 254 263 directions Fruitfulness versus Achievement Peter G. Van Breemen SJ reflects on the distinction which we Christians need to make between achievement and the biblical notion of fruitfulness. Old Brothers and Young, Dreams and Visions Robert C. Berger FSC uses images of the Hebrew Scriptures to shed light on the action of God and the relevance of brother-hood. Just Look at the Lord Joel Giallanza CSC presents a simple and practical melding of our desire to pray and our praying from Teresa of Avila. Pray Always: John Cassian on Distractions Kenneth C. Russell applies the insights of John Cassian to help us live a life focused on God amidst the distractions of the modern world. reflections 273 Genesis Continued Mary Michael McCulla CDP poetically reflects a kind of Genesis account of woman. 278 Called to the Harvest Vera Gallagher RGS enters us into her experience of God's healing grace in people's troubled lives. 285 report U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and ~7orks 1993 Kenneth G. Davis .OFMConv presents a panoramic of the year's events within the U:S. Hispanic Catholid community. departments ¯ ¯ 164 Prisms 303 Canonical Counsel: Norms for Renewal and Reflections on Its Progress 309 Book Reviews Marcb-/lpri11994 163 prisms ~edo not necessarily compliment our-selves when we compare ourselves to the first disciples of Jesus. For example, the two disciples on their way to Emmaus do not symbolize either gospel people (evange-lizers) or apostolic people (on a mission). In a way, of course, they are pilgrim people, journeying, although they are running away from Jerusalem, where their lives are meant to be centered. They know a lot about Jesus-- enough to k6ep talking about him at least between them-selves or privately with an amiable stranger. Yet what stands out in their telling of the Jesus story is their own disappointment. Disappointment may be the common cross that afflicts us followers of Jesus all the more because we like to describe ourselves as Alleluia people. These two disciples symbolize disappointment immediately after Jesus' pas-sion. During the active ministry of Jesus, a rich man with much fervor wanted to lead a holy life, but walked away from Jesus--disappointed with his kind of "Beatitude" challenge. Other disciples caused Jesus such pain by their leaving that he asked Peter and the others identified as the Twelve, "Will you leave me too?" People had left cha-grined by all this foolish talk about Jesus being the food and drink of their lives. They were unwilling to live with promise in such incarnate guise. Disappointment can certainly be a difficult cross to bear for us Christ-followers. For us present-day disciples of the one who has overcome death, it somehow seems "not right" to have to continue to face defeat, failure, and betrayal, especially from agents that speak or act in Christ's 164 Review for Religi?us name. How can we not be disappointed when the Vatican is the only agency among all the world's states which recognizes a repressive government in Haiti? How legitimate the disappoint-ment is when we face the problem of certain clerics or religious who betrayed a trust by their sexual abuse of a child! How disap-pointing for us as a community is the high percentage of failed marriages, often within our own families--marriages celebrated with all the beauty and solemn commitment of the wedding Mass! Are we ever disappointed with ourselves--after years of striving to be Little Flowers--at still feeling more like the scrubby weeds found along abandoned railroad tracks? Disappointments come in all sizes--some so big that they seem insurmountable, but others so small and daily that we suf-fer them as the necessary "colds and flu" of our spiritual life. Disappointments come at all stages of life development. Young and old and all the in-betweens face unrealized or shattered dreams, an if-only sense of things left undone, feelings of aban-donment by ones they love. Where does the event of Christ's resurrection touch most directly the practical living of our lives? I would suggest that we need to look towards our experience of disappointments. We test quickly the firmness of our faith in the resurrection by our lived response to disappointment. Among us followers who want to distance ourselves from this hierarchical church or to walk away from a disheartened priesthood or to dismiss a seemingly anachro-nistic religious life or to reject a cumbersome parish structure, we find an identity with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. The question we face is whether we will take the time from all our talk or activity to listen to and recognize the call to believe what is central to our faith: Jesus is risen, and our response to disap-pointment need never be a time without grace, an experience without new life. The Easter e{r~nt translates into our creedal "I believe in the resurrection of the dead." But the daily disap-pointments that make us die by inches are where we all need to let our resurrection faith have.its effect. As with the two disciples on that first Easter evening, it is in our hurrying back into a dis-appointing Jerusalem--with our faith in the risen Lord--that we truly act as evangelizers arid people on mission. David L. Fleming SJ March-April 1994 165 feature JOHN W. PADBERG In the Midst of the Times: Religious Life and the Ever-Present Experience of the World The reader of these reflections by an historian will have noted at once that their title is a variation on the immediately preceding theological essay by Elizabeth Johnson csj, "Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God." That reprise is quite deliberately meant to introduce the reader to the com-plementary. intent of these remarks, in accord with the overall structure of the Religious Life Futures Project. That comprehensive, study of "the future of religious orders in the United States" included six independent ele-ments or "research units" in its work. The first five were a national survey, leadership studies, studies of caring peo-ple and of visioning groups, and a series of individual interviews. The sixth unit was to be a two-part theologi-cal/ historical monograph, of which the first part was to provide a theological framework for interpreting the data gathered in the study and this second part was to be "an historical postscript" or a set of reflections on that theo-logical essay from an historical perspective. John W. Padberg SJ is director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis. This article will be part of a companion book to The Future of Religious Orders in the United States: Transformation and Commitment (Praeger Publishers, 1993) by David J. Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis. His address is Institute of Jesuit Sources; 3700 West Pine Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. 166 Review for Religious The theological essay concludes saying, "For religious life in the United States it is now Advent, the most honest season of all. ¯. What is needed is vigilant patience, profound prayer, and the ability to act boldly toward that future where new forms of evan-gelical life will develop" (Johnson, p. 24).1 This essay will take off from that judgment, which is both correct and important. Advent is a new beginning, but it comes after the conclusion of the year-long liturgical season during which we first await and long for the arrival of Jesus and then in turn remember and cel-ebrate the impossibly good news that he himself is: a hidden life of long duration, the preaching of the good news in person and in word, his seeming defeat in his terrifyingly real passion and death, and then the paschal triumph. We might be tempted to think it is all just a cycle, but then the year goes on beyond the life of Jesus, like an arrow into the future, to tell us that the spreading of that news and the imparting of that life take place in the down-to-earth reality of the post-Pentecostal church which, if we stop to realize it, still lives on as our present church. And then the year begins again with another Advent. The history of the church has recorded many such Advent and subsequent varying seasons. So has the history of religious life in the church. As the theological essay notes, "the evangeli-cal following of Jesus in the church, traditionally called 'religious life,' has been incarnated in a great diversity of forms [which] have consistently emerged from the insights of individuals and groups responding to the Spirit in the crucible of cultural change" (Johnson, p. 7). If it is true that "the only reason for religious life is the experience of God" (Johnson, p. 16), and that such experi-ence is a "postmodern" one "between the times," it is true in another sense that the only way such religious life is lived is "in the midst of the times" and in the context of "the ever-present experience of the world." Hence the complementary title of this essay and the tenor of its remarks. The theological essay suggests that the emerging "under-standing of [religious] life is primarily that of persons and com-munities called to prophetic ministry embedded in a contemplative relationship to God" (Johnson, p. 12). It maintains that beneath changes in structure are changes in attitude and that underlying such changes in attitude is a postmodern experience of God. "Postmodernity is conscious of the end of progress, the limits of reason, the sad isolation of the unconnected individual, and the March-April 1994 167 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times Spiritualities significantly influence the ways in which °religious congregations remain faithful to their original purposes and the ways in which they respond to human need. catastrophe that results when nature is disrespected," while wish-ing to keep from the modern era such goods as "the emphasis on human dignity and human rights and their expressions in liberty and equality. Postmodernity is awake to the egregious failures that the modern ethos has wrought. It wants to go Away-From-Here" (Johnson, p. 18). But meanwhile it is absolutely nec-essary to remember that the "Here" from which postmodernity seeks to escape still mightily influences our cur-rent life. And while the contexts of pre-sent and past are inevitably different, the reactions to past contexts might yield clues as to how we shall react to the pre-sent context. Religious life has of neces-sity existed in several such past contexts of a world changing around it. Often enough that life took on a particular character from the ways in which its members, men and women religious, looked both on change "in the midst of the times" and on the "ever-present experience of the world" around them (to quote again from the title of these present reflec-tions) and from the ways in which they judged both world and change or history. The body of this essay will deal especially with those two matters. It will, firs.t, present several such modern changes in reli-gious life in the midst of changing times, in other words, several examples from history. Secondly, it will reflect more generally on the ways in which religious life responds to change and to the experience of the world, because the nature of those responses characterizes in part the dominant spiritualities which inform either religious life in general or a particular form of that life. Such spiritualities, in turn, significantly influence the ways in which religious congregations remain faithful to their original purposes and the ways in which they respond to human need. As the executive summary of the study concludes, "fidelity to the spirit of the founder and responsiveness to critical and unmet human needs are basic to the original mission of religious com-munities" (Summary, p. 42).2 168 Review for Religious Three Times in the Midst of Change In its fifteen-hundred-year history in the Latin Church of the West, religious life has experienced upheaval more often than is realized. To look only at the modern world, such upheaval has happened in a major way three times in the last four hundred and fifty years: during the time of the Reformation (beginning in 1517), during the time of the French Revolution (beginning in 1789), and in the renewal which was asked for by the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. First, the Reformation. The whole notion of religious life was rejected by the Protestant reformers. This rejection had its foun-dation in their theology, but it gained popular support because religious life had lost much of its credibility. The scandalous rep-utation of many religious congregations and their members-- especially male religious--was all too often deserved. One does not have to read Chaucer (before the Reformation) or Rabelais (dur-ing it) for examples of why that reputation was well deserved. The church documents in those years, calling for reform, are vivid enough. Over and over those calls for reform were made, and over and over again they were ignored. The effects on religious life in the lands of reform were dev-astating. In England men and women religious had already been brutally driven out of their houses. In other countries monks and nuns left their orders in droves. Even in lands that stayed Catholic, the numbers of persons entering religious life dropped drasti-cally. So bad had the reputation of religious life become that more than once during the Catholic reform it was proposed to the Holy See that all but four orders of men, and most orders of women, be suppressed. And yet, in the midst of this seemingly impossible situation, during the Catholic reform new orders and congregations arose, grew in numbers, and flourished. Older orders gradually took themselves in hand, reformed, and prospered. Why? The second major upheaval took place at the time of the French Revolution. While the religious orders in general had been far more faithful to their rule and to the furtherance of the spiritual lives of their members than at the Reformation, still many, even the most active of them, had often lost touch with the changing world around them, a world influenced in many ways by the Enlightenment. The Revolution brought chaos to the church and to religious March-April 1994 169 Padberg * In the Midst of the Times life. Europe was the home of most of the members of the church. It was the place where the administrative structures, the finan-cial resources, the educational establishments, the charitable apos-tolates, the seminaries, the religious congregations had existed for more than fifteen hundred years, all in aid of the preaching of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments. Quite simply, the Revolution swept away most of these realities upon which the church depended and in which religious life had embodied itself. The properties from which many of the dioceses and orders drew their support were secularized by the new governments and sold to the highest bidder. (For example, Cluny, the acme of Romanesque architecture, the glory of. the Benedictine Order, the second largest church in the Christian world, was destroyed, in part by revolutionary ideology and frenzy but mostly by several good middle-class families who bought it after the state had con-fiscated it and then had it taken down, stone by stone, to be sold for their profit as building material, all in the name of the sanc-tity of private property.) Many of the religious orders were officially abolished in the lands reached by the Revolution; members of almost all of them were turned out of their houses and left to fend for themselves. In 1789, as the French Revolution began, there were some two thou-sand Benedictine establishments in Europe; by 1815 only about twenty were still functioning. In fact, of the many religious orders of men in existence before the French Revolution, only two, the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits, have ever again grown to be as large as they were before the Revolution or larger. And yet, the hundred and fifty years from the Revolution to the beginning of Vatican II were for religious congregations and orders the most unusual years in the history of the church. More new congregations were founded than in any comparable period in the history of the church. More new congregations of women were founded in that century and a half than in the whole previ-ous history of the church. The older orders grew again. More missionary congregations were founded than ever before, and more women and men went to the foreign missions. Why? To turn now to our own histories, and the third upheaval, the Second Vatican Council brought undreamt-of change to the church and to religious life. Many in the church had hoped for change, but no one could have imagined the depth and breadth of the change which did occur. This is not the place to rehearse 170 Revino for Religious those postconciliar events of the past twenty-five to thirty years. The theological essay has well noted many of the changes that took place. Perhaps, however, the quantity and especially the qual-ity of that change can be evoked by recalling ten words or phrases from Vatican II. With the two exceptions of the words "liturgy" and "revelation," none had been common in the church before the council. The other eight are: aggiornamento, collegiality, dia-logue, people of God, inculturation, religious liberty, joy and hope (gaudium et spes), and ecumenism. The realities behind those words raised expectations and produced changes which often have gone beyond either the worst fears of those who wanted no change or the best guesses of those who hoped for it. But whether we now react with dismay, delight, or doubt, many of the details, good, bad, or indifferent, of the world of the church and the world of religious life in the church of thirty to forty years ago have changed irretrievably or even vanished. In and through those changes since Vatican II religious life has been in tur-moil, as it was in the two other great Changes were not introduced from some source external to the church such as the Reformation or the Revolution, but came about internally, from the church itself'at Vatican II. modern upheavals. A very great difference, however, is that these changes were not introduced from some source external to the church such as the Reformation or the Revolution, but came about internally, from the church itself at Vatican II and from what has been truly in its proportions a paradigm shift in the church's self-understanding. The notion of "tranSformation" in the organiza-tional realm, as described in the Religious Life Futures Project, is utterly apt here for what has happened in the~ church. "It refers to qualitative, discontinuous shifts in members' shared under-standings of the organization, accompanied by changes in the organization's mission, strategy, and formal and informa| struc-tures" (Summary, pp. 9-10). In the midst of all this, religious orders and congregations were themselves directly asked by the church to review and revise their own way of life in the light of the council's teachings, in accord with their originating charism, and in adaptation to the March-April1994 1 ~1 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times needs of today. In general, they have taken this request seriously and generously, often at great personal and institutional cost. They, too, have been caught up in the process of transformation. And yet, in this case, the optimistic aftermath of the two ear-lier upheavals has not occurred in the wake of Vatican II. Why? A brief response to the why asked at all three junctures will come later in this essay. The Experience of the World and of History The second major part of this essay will include some reflec-tions on the particular types of spirituality that inform the inner life and the external activities of religious orders. Again, why? Because on such various types of spirituality which inform reli-gious life in general.and specific orders in particular will depend religious life's understanding and judgment of the times in which it lives and of the world which it experiences. "Spirituality" is here understood simply as the way an individual or a group habit-ually acts in learning about and loving and serving God in accord with God's self-revelation in and through God's deeds, especially the greatest of those deeds, Jesus Christ himself. The heuristic structure used here to describe a variety of spir-itualities3 distinguishes four possible ways in which they view the world and history in the midst of a particular time and space by the responses to this question: Does a spirituality.view or not view the world and history as positive means to express itself and to practice a growing relationship to God? "World" includes not only the obvious natural, material world but also human society and institutions. "History" includes especially process, develop-ment and change. In practice, of course, no one of the four resul-tant types of response exists in its absolutely pure state, and obviously in real life they all exist in. particular sociocultural con-texts. In addition, all four types are always intermingled. Perhaps most importantly, each of them is in itself a good. To distinguish them however is, in general, useful for clarity and, in particular, for helping us to see where our contemporary religious life stands and how we might be inclined to move to the future. The first response to world and to history says no to both of them. The second says no to the world and yes to history. The third says yes to the world and no to history, and the fourth says yes to both world and history. 172 Review for Religious Particular examples may clarify these categories. The first response, a spirituality that says no to the world and no to history, might be called an apophatic spirituality, one which comes to a knowledge of God by way of negation. This is the type of spiri-tuality often and somewhat misleadingly known as mystical, for example the kind expressed through such works as The Cloud of Unknowing, or through the works of John of the Cross, or more recently through some of the writings of Thomas Merton. It is important to note that such a spirituality does not necessarily see the world as evil or history and change as meaningless. Rather, such an apophatic spirituality emphasizes that God is beyond any concepts and that the most authentic expression about God is negation of any specific image from world or history. A person goes to the love and knowledge of God through unknowing or through darkness. In our present and our immediate future, in .what the theological essay describes as "the dialectic between divine absence and presence" (Johnson, p. 23) such a spirituality and the postmodern experience of God may increasingly find sup-port in each other. A second type of spirituality finds an expression of the authen-tic not in the world but in history, that is, in change and conver-sion. In saying no to the world but yes to history, it is a prophetic type of spirituality. For example, the Old Testament prophets offer both judgments and interpretations of history. Through his radical poverty, Francis of Assisi said no to the abuse of material wealth that his world of the early 13th century was involved in; in so doing he gave to the poor a sign of hope in a God faithful to his promises. Such a prophetic spirituality is often characterized by living one or more of the gospel values to an extreme. Such a spirituality surely informed the first examples of religious life among the desert fathers and mothers of the Egyptian Thebaid. Other examples of such a prophetic spirituality, in addition to Francis and his poverty, would be early Christians spurning the world and awaiting the call of martyrdom and contemporary Christians motivated by the gospel to practice civil disobedience. Today, as the theological essay puts it, when accepted "forms are breaking down, interpretive support systems, are collapsing, rift~ with the institutional church exacerbate the darkness, [and] many members are in distress" (Johnson, p. 24), we may have a situation in which religious congregations say no to a world that is passing and say yes to a hoped-for change to a more fully gospel-inspired March-April 1994 173 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times future "in the risk that God is faithful in judgment and grace" (Johnson, p. 14). ¯ Third, what might be called a "locational" or a "city of God" spirituality says yes to the world and no to history. But here the When we seek a stable world and way of living in it or when we focus on a particular community or place or on our own hearts, we localize ideal, unchanging circumstances, bringing a changeless "city of God" dimension to our spiritual lives. world may be a world. Th~ authentic is located in one special place, in a world, geographical, psychological, temporal, theological, to the exclusion of other place's, with the changeless-ness that the fulfillment of that king-dom implies; that place then becomes a reflection of the kingdom of God. For St. Benedict it was the monastery as the place in which to live out the Rule. For The Imitation of Christ it is the safety of our own hearts where "you will see the kingdom of God come into your soul." For some it is the familiar church of pre-Vatican II observances. This type of spirituality may be the most common type throughout Christian history. It has also been one of the characteristics of every other type of spirituality and a force for stability in the midst of chaos, It may be an especially inviting and understandable spiri-tuality for those who have just come through a revolution. VChen we seek a stable world and way of living in it or when we focus on a particular community or place or on our own hearts, we are highlighting a way, or place that has worked for us. As a conse-quence we localize ideal, unchanging circumstances, bringing a changeless "city of God" dimension to our spiritual lives. Finally, there is a spirituality which answers yes both to world and tb history. This can be called an apostolic spirituality. To avoid misunderstanding the term and its application to religious life, let it be~ clear that everyone, of course, even in the most con-templative order, is called in some way to apostolic endeavor, to a life committed to the spread of the kingdom of God. But not everyone is necessarily called to an apostolic spirituality, a'spiri-tuality which seeks God primarily through involvement in the world and the transformation of its history. Ideally, such an apos- 174 Review for Religious tolic spirituality sees the world and history as a locus for trans-formation and for self-transformation. Most of the orders and congregations founded since the Reformation, and especially since the beginning of the 19th century, have been inspired by the ideal of an apostolic spirituality. But because the church since the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution has often made quite hostile judgments of the world and of history or change, this is a difficult double stance to maintain. One can easily multiply examples of church mistrust and con-demnation of the world as a source of self-transformation. And even if we have often thought the world could be such a source of self-transformation provided it had a different history or pro-vided we managed to change it, we can easily multiply examples of church mistrust and condemnation of change as a source of self-transformation, especially if it were suggested that change should apply to religious orders and more especially to the church. The way in which to give positive answers to both world and his-tory can vary greatly. Several of the 16th- and 17th-century Catholic reform reli-gious orders of women are examples of an attempt to do so. Mary Ward had a vision of such a spirituality for her Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and attempted to put it into practice. But the apostolic group, of "that incomparable woman," as Pius XII called her in praise, was forced out of existence by an uncompre-hending Vatican in the 17th century, only to be papally approved in the 19th century. The Sisters of St. Joseph, of the same 17th century, quietly and obscurely flourished, in part because while liv-ing such an apostolic spirituality, they called no widespread atten-tion to it. The members of the Society of Jesus, for the end proposed to them by its founder, Ignatius Loyola, who could "find God in all things," were supposed to find the self-transformation of holiness through an involvement with the world in spreading the ldngdom of God. It was a world that Ignatius and his first companions knew by experience was changing and needed new ways of living and preaching the gospel. But it was very difficult to get across to many of the next gene?ations of Jesuits that both present world and inevitable change were to be taken seriously as part of a Jesuit apostolic spirituality. In its more recent his-tory, the Society of Jesus in its spirituality continues to seek for "the conversion of the individual," but it also wants to help "to transform the world into a fit habitation for justice and human- March-April 1994 175 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times ity." In so choosing a double yes, it recognized the need to take seriously both the world around it and history, process, develop-ment, and change. In the 19th century, when the Society of Jesus was univer-sally restored after the French Revolution, it could not and did not For all of the 19th century, religious, life inclined heavily not to an apostolic spirituality, with a yes both to world and to history, but rather to a locational or "city of God" spirituality, with a yes indeed to the world but with a no to history or change. both the real successes wish to deny the world itself as the locus of its endeavor. It could hardly do so and be authentically Jesuit. But that world was in the midst of great change, and the church and all religious orders, including the Jesuits, were acutely uncomfortable with change and reluctant to respond pos-itively to it. In the midst of a world in which they had never been more active and thought they had an apostolic spiri-tuality, the church and religious orders were not only uncomfortable with that world as they found it, but also often nos-talgic for a past world and in fear of a world changing yet more before their eyes. In such circumstances, for all of the 19th century, religious life inclined heav-ily not to an apostolic spirituality, with a yes both to world and to history, but rather to a locational or "city of God" spirituality, with a yes indeed to the world but with a no to history or change. This fundamental attitude may help to explain and the real failures of the 19th-century structures and activities and spirituality of religious life with which most orders'and congregations lived until Vatican II. More gen-erally it also may help to explain the puzzlement; the ambiguity, even the dismay with which religious life looked around after Vatican II and could not fathom where it stood or how it expressed its relationships with the world and with history. Which one of the four sets of responses to the world and to history best characterizes the spirituality of most religious life today? When the question is put that way, there is not and should not be a single, monolithic answer. Fidelity to the originating charism and "to the spirit of the founder and responsiveness to critical and unmet human needs" imply and indeed mandate both 176 Review for Religious such a diversity in religious congregations and such an overriding purpose that, as a result, each congregation, in order to be true to itself, will have a response particular to itself, a response which at the same time will always look to those needs. There is a yet deeper question. Why answer.at all? Why reli-gious life at all? What was quoted earlier in this essay still remains the fundamental answer: "The only reason for religious life is the experience of God." It is not only in religious life, of course, that a person experiences God, but that fundamental experience, how-ever dark or bright, however tumultuous or serene, however unin-terrupted or intermittent, has to anchor our experience of the world in the midst of time and our responses to the world and to history or change. The Response to Need Let us return now to the three points at which the question why was raised, the three times in the modern world at which religious life experienced major change in church and world and thus also in itself. Just as at the beginning of religious life in the Egyptian desert and through its earlier centuries, so also, in the post-Reformation church and the post-Revolution church, reli-gious life was a response to a need. For the monks and nuns of the desert, it was a need to live out the gospel and to follow the Lord more faithfully than they thought they could in a society in which the Constantinian church and empire had made peace and had come to rely on each other. In the counter-Reformation century, religious congregations, of direct apostolic service especially, arose in response to the Catholic revival that emphasized a renewed preaching of the gospel (hence congregations for urban retreats and country missions); works of charity (hence religious commu-nities that worked in orphanages and hospitals and prisons); the centrality of the sacraments (hence congregations devoted to urg-ing the reception of confession and Communion); the outward expansion of the gospel to newly discovered worlds (hence for-eign- mission congregations)~ and Christian education (hence con-gregations that took on schools and colleges and seminaries and the publishing of pious books and pamphlets and tracts of all kinds). "Active" religious congregations, both new ones and reformed and revitalized ones, arose in response to specific needs, religious and secular, of church and civic community. As for the March-/ltrri11994 177 Padberg * In the Midst of the Times more cloistered or so-called "contemplative" orders, while they did indeed grow, growth was much slower and reform of the inter-nal life of the community was more the norm. When one asks why the apostolic-service orders grew so dra- When one asks why the apostolic-service orders grew so dramatically in the 19th century, response-to-need again seems the fundamental answer. matically in the 19th century, response-to-need again seems the fundamental answer. In Europe a shattered institutional structure had to be rebuilt. Many of the old and formerly religious educational and social institutions had been confiscated by the state, which was often at least determinedly secularist and often actively anticlerical. The second great wave of European colonial expansion into Asia and Africa took place, with the consequent open-ing of mission fields. Meanwhile the church in the persons of its highest officials and of .most of its members was determinedly con-servative and often actively hostile to the polit-ical, social, c~altural, and intellectual currents of the age. Frequently, then, European Catholics thought that only institutions parallel to but indepen-dent of the state would "protect the faith." To respond to those needs as thus perceived, new religious congregations arose locally, regionally, and nationally. Their founders and their members had maps, the almost unchanged Tridentine rules and regulations, expressed and implied and still unquestioned, of church and reli-gious life. They had the experience of present but traditional unmet needs. They responded, generously and heroically, within the boundaries of that map. They had little imaginative ability to see unmet needs that were new. But neither did the church, for example, in the case of the socially unjust consequences of the Industrial Revolution. In the,United States of the 19th century, the circumstances were somewhat the same, somewhat different, The rules and reg-ulations of religious life were the same as in Europe, but the insti-tutions of Catholic life had to be built up from the beginning, and, as the century went on, the building had to take place right in the midst of an immigrant flood of poor, uneducated Catholics coming into a vastly different and somewhat hostile environment: Here, too, the need seemed to be for institutions to protect the faith of the immigrants and to introduce them into American 178 Revie'w for Religious society. To respond to those needs, here, too, new apostolic or "active" congregations arose and old ones established branches in the United States. They too had the same maps; they knew from experience that those maps had to be modified, simultane-ously felt guilty when they did so, and were often unable to offer to Rome a theoretical basis for the changes. While apt at devis-ing new strategies in traditional apostolates, those congregations, too, lacked the imaginative ability to see unmet needs that were new, for example, in the case of the black population and the unjust institutions of slavery and then of segregation. But at least through the 19th century and up to the end of World War II and the assimilation of the Catholic population into the economic and social mainstream of American society, the active religious congregations responded visibly and successfully to the immedi-ate educational, social, and economic needs of American Catholics. At the third major upheaval in religious life, the one follow-ing Vatican II, religious were called on not, of course, to tear up the old maps and discard them, but surely to revise them thor-oughly in the light of:the council's teaching. But such revision is not a short-term, easily~done task. Religious life in the United States is still at it and, from an historian's point of view, has not been at it very long yet, not even quite a full human generation. For Americans, used to quick results, this seems both intolerable and discouraging. And the analogy of map ~revision can only be partial, since not simply documents but also attitudes, insights, and patterns of practice enter into such a revision. As for experience, the theological essay describes well the "social, economic, and political forces at work in the culture of the United States [as] contributing to changes in religious life" (Johnson, p. 10). All of those forces, even those least direcdy con-nected with the church or religious life, have been part of the context of our experience of that life since Vatican II. They have modified both our reading of the maps of the past from which we came and our tentative responses to the present. The imagi-nation to see how to put those experiences to positive use in con-temporary religious life is still in short supply. What we need most is the imagination to conceive of what we want that future to be. ' March-April 1994 179 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times Something is going to happen to religious life in the United States over the next ten years. What will it be? Future History as a Conclusion An historian is really not a prophet in any of the usual dic-tionary meanings of that word. He or she neither "utters divinely inspired revelations" nor is "gifted with more than ordinary spir-itual and moral insight" nor "foretells future events" nor necessarily is "an effective and lead-ing spokesperson for a cause, doctrine, or group." But near the conclusion of these reflec-tions, an historian might urge on the readers of this essay an exercise sometimes called "future history," an exercise within which one can think about the future with realism and imagination. Briefly, taken literally, the exercise asks present participants in an activity or institution to write here and now but as if from a particular point in the future at least part of the history of what "has" happened in order to get to that future. It thereby requires the participants to imagine what might have happened and to select those things which they think most likely to happen to bring about that imagined future. The purpose, quite frankly, is to provoke people to turn their minds to the future decade. Something is going to happen to religious life in the United States over the next ten years. What will it be? That exercise in future history begins by looking back from the year 2005. What will have happened to religious life in the United States? For example, imagine the community of which you are a part enjoying in the year 2005 a successful existence in the service of the gospel, the church, and the human community. What characteristics describe that success? How did the com-munity achieve that success? Most importantly, what five impor-tant decisions were made by the community in 1994 to 1999, the first five of those years, to make it the success it now is in 2005? On what five things in those five years did you and your com-munity and the ministry you work in and your coworkers come to a consensus which contributed to making your community, its inner life and its exterior works, the success that it is in 2005? The future is in the present in such decisions. This framework for imagining and planning can bring us quickly to concrete details and can gently force us to face up to what we think realistically possible. 180 Review for Religious Where does one start in developing.such a future history? Perhaps with three questions: First, how would I describe to myself what I think my religious congregation fundamentally is? Second, what are the absolutely essential characteristics of its reli-gious community life? Third, what are the absolutely essential characteristics that any work it undertakes should have, be that work contemplative prayer or civic networking or anything in between? With the best answers in hand that we can presently give to those questions, derived from our present experience of the world in the midst of the times in which we live as religious, we might go on to imagine what ideally we want to be in 2005 and to plan what practically we can do to achieve that goal. Neither an historian nor anyone else could have predicted what as a matter of fact did come after the original Advent. What did take place in the coming of Jesus was a deed that was faithful to God's original purpose and to the origins of our salvation in the fulfillment of God's promises. It was an experience of God between the times, surely thus a postmodern experience in that it broke out of all past and present categories, and also a deed that con-tinues to be active even in the midst of times in the presence of the Holy Spirit in a world still "charged with the grandeur of God." That post-Advent deed and its consequences are the foundation for the yet unimagined post-Pentecost future of religious life. Notes ' Page numbers refer to Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ, "Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God," as pub-lished in Review for Religious 53, no. 1 (January-February 1994): 6-28; hereafter Johnson. 2 Quotations from the Executive Summary of the study will refer to the text in Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6- 55; hereafter Summary. 3This structure is taken from an article by E. Edward Kinerk SJ, "Toward a Method for the Study of Spirituality," Review for Religious 40, no. 1 (January 1981): 3-19. March-April 1994 181 DAVID MARIA KNIGHT Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love commitments I spent several years in the confused and glorious hey-day after Vatican II writing and speaking on the goal and value of the re.ligious vows. Inspired by the theology of Karl Rahner, I presented them, in a nutshell, as the "real-symbolic expressing (and therefore experience) of response to the transcendent call of grace." In English this meant that each vow was a way of realizing, of "making real," both to ourselves and to others, the truth of the faith, the hope, the love we were giving to Jesus Christ and his gospel. Poverty is a "real-symbolic" expression of the fact that we have set our hopes for fulfillment and security not on material possessions, but on the riches of the kingdom. Real poverty, voluntarily embraced, is a way of saying we really hope in God's promises, we really place our trust in God. Celibacy is an expression "in the flesh" of our belief that anyone who accepts "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" can have with God, now, on this earth, a rela-tionship of love as real as marriage, as satisfying as mar-riage, and as developmental of us as loving persons as the most ideal marriage could be. One does not have to be a celibate to be in spousal relationship with Christ--it is implicit in our baptismal consecration as "brides in the David Maria Knight is a priest of the Memphis diocese. He is a well-known author and speaker. His address is Sacred Heart Church; 1324 Jefferson; Memphis, Tennessee 38104. 182 Revie.w for Religious Bride" who is the church--but the commitment to voluntary celibacy is one way to realize, to make real in flesh and blood and action, the truth of this relationship that our faith tells us about and to experience interiorly the passionate intensity of the love we are giving to God in Jesus Christ. The vow of obedience is a real way of expressing our faith in the active presence of Jesus in the church as true head of his Body on earth, and an expression of confidence that he is able to use us and will use us effectively for the work of the kingdom through the government of those who speak for him with authority in his Body. This was new. It was a departure from the traditional way of explaining the vows as means for overcoming attachment to pos-sessions, desire for sexual pleasure, and pride. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, although it takes a much more inspiring and positive approach to religious life elsewhere, still describes the "evangelical counsels" as "having as their goal the removal of any-thing which., could be an obstacle to the development of char-ity" (no. 1973). I believe that even if nothing within us were an obstacle to the "perfection of charity" the vows would still be inestimably desirable as passionate expressions, in flesh and blood, of the reality of ourfaith, our hope, our love for God in Jesu~s Christ. Their primary value is not in what they remove, but in what they give: the deep, personal awareness (and witness in the church) of relating to God in passionate faith, hope, and love. I find myself now, however, immersed in lay spirituality. As pastor of a parish--a position I requested precisely to "field test" a plan for.spiritual growth in parishes which I have been devel-oping for ten or fifteen years-- I am fc~cused on preaching and teaching the spirituality of the laity as they are defined in Vatican II (a definition which distinguishes the secular laity from lay reli-gious): those who "live in the world; that is, in each and all of the secular professions and occupations [and who] live in the ordi-nary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven." Vatican II not only makes clear, but assumes it is "evident to everyone," that "all the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the per-fection of charity." This, I believe, is the key to all the aftermath of Vatican II. Pastoral ministry has had to refocus.The goal of parish life is no longer to provide the laity with those services they need March-April 1994 183 Knight ¯ Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love to "save their souls." It is to lead the laity, all of them, closer to the "perfection of love." Parish ministry has changed from store keeping to intensive marketing, from a "maintenance spiritual-ity" to a spirituality of growth. Gone are the days when parishes Religious have the personal experience of committing themselves to total response to the gospel and have training and practice in living it which should make them the natural "coaches" for the laity. existed just to provide a preordained set of services, and the only stress on the priest was concern about providing them well. Now every parish is, or should be, a center fomenting desire for "the fullness of the Christian life" in all of its members and pro-viding the motivation, instruction, and sup-port necessary to keep every member growing toward the "perfection of charity." Now every pastor faces the challenge of dis-covering how to do this. And it is not easy; the paths a whole parish can follow to greener pastures are neither familiar nor well -worn. But the goal is clear: parishes exist to support that kind of living in their members which makes the life of every single one of them a "way of perfection"--a term we used to reserve for the vowed life of religious. The life of every Christian should be avis-ible, lived-out response to the first of all commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind." Jesus' words "If you would be perfect." are addressed to all. To every one of his followers he says, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect., strive first for the king-dom of God." How does religious life fit into all of this? There are some obvious answers we need not dwell on, because they should be evident to everyone: Religious have the personal experience of committing themselves to total response to the gospe.1 and have training and practice in living it which should make them the natural "coaches" for the laity as the whole church turns toward this goal. Also, the "fullness of the Christian life" includes involvement in ministry, which is explicit in our bap-tismal commitment. There is no question about the fact that reli-gious, the majority of whom are nonordained women, are the most experienced and effective "lay ministers," taken as a body, that the church has ever known. In the historical context of what 184 Review for Religious is and not only in the abstract context of what theoretically ought to be, it is still true to say, "If you want it done, get a nun!" But there is another way in which religious life fits into this picture of the "new church" striving en masse for perfection, and I think it is something which must be recognized if the conversion of every Christian way of life into a way of perfection is going to succeed. Religious are examples and models of that dramatic ges-ture which is a key element in launching anyone into passionate relationship with God. When Jesus said to the young man in Matthew's Gospel, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor. ," he was giving, not a command and not a "counsel," but an example. The young man came out of a legal-istic tradition. Jesus acknowledged this in the beginning by meet-ing him on his own ground and saying, "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." The young man was still thinking legalistically when he said, "Which ones?" so Jesus gave him a list. But when the boy said, "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?" and showed that there was something in him impelling him beyond a religion of law observance, Jesus recognized in him a kindred soul, someone who could learn what he came to teach. Then Jesus said (and now I am paraphrasing), "Well, if you want to live by my 'new way'--if you want to be perfect, to 'live life to the full'--here is something you can do to start with which will show that you understand what it is all about. Go, sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor. Then you can come and follow me." What Jesus was calling for was a dramatic gesture--something that would catapult the young man into another orbit of response to God. He may have been thinking explicitly of the gesture Elisha made when Elijah the prophet called him to be his successor: Elijah set out, and came upon Elisha, son of Shaphat, as he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen; he was following the twelfth. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, "Please, let me kiss my father and mother good-bye, and I will fol-low you." "Go back!" Elijah answered. "Have I done any-thing to you?" Elisha left him and, taking the yoke of oxen, slaughtered them; he used the plowing equipment for fuel to boil their flesh, and gave it to his people to eat. Then he left and followed Elijah as his attendant (1 K 19:19-21). March-April 1994 185 Knight * Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love Jesus asks all, takes all, is worth all. Why did not Elisha just have one of his workers lead the oxen back to the barn and put up the equipment while he left with Elijah? The answer is obvious: After what he had said to Elijah and Elijah to him, Elisha felt the need to make a dramatic gesture, just to show how willing he was to leave everything immediately and give himself to the service of God. This gesture was necessary, not only to win Elijah's confidence, but so that Elisha himself would know, without any shadow of doubt, that he was sweeping everything out of his heart in undivided dedication to what he was called to do. What Jesus said to the rich young man about "selling everything" was just one example of the kind of dramatic gesture which would show that the man understood, before he started to follow Jesus, what the terms of discipleship would be. In a nutshell, Jesus asks all, takes all, is worth all. What he offers is the "pearl of great price" and the "treasure hidden in a field" for which we must be willing to sell every other pearl, even everything we own. What he said to this young man was no dif-ferent from what he said in several places elsewhere. And essentially what Jesus tells the young man is the same thing he proclaims to all when he says, "whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (see the whole of this passage, Luke 14:2 5-3 3). Another translation miti-gates for modern ears the Hebrew starkness of "hate fath+r and mother" by making it "turn your back on father and mother." This puts the interior attitude into the form of a dramatic gesture again, but the meaning is the same: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And if you want to know you do not love father or mothei" more than me, make a dramatic gesture that proves it." Jesus could just as well have told the young man, "If you want to embrace my way, show it by leaving home; abandon your father and mother!" Or he could have used the example Matthew cites right before this and said, "Go make yourself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom; that will prove you are taking me seriously!" Jesus is a teacher; he.is trying to make a point. It is of no concern to him whether his followers are rich or poor, married or celi-bate, living with their parents or missioned a thousand miles away 186 Review for Religdous from them. They can be living the "perfection of charity" in any of these situations. What Jesus is saying Ks that anyone who authentically follows him must be, in fact, total and undivided in love for God, or at least be consciously committed to such total and undi-vided love. And it is characteristic of human beings that we do not really know what is in our hearts until we express what is in them externally. As 'Karl Rahner puts it, "We do not know that we really believe in the two birds in the bush until we let go of the one bird in the hand." We cannot know that our treasure is in heaven unless in some way we renounce the treasure we have stored up on earth. And if we want to know that we really believe in the invis-ible God in our heart, one effective though rad-ical way to discover it is to give up the visible man or woman in our arms. To launch ourselves into a "way of perfection," we need to make some dramatic, radical gesture which says to us and to others from the outset that we are for real. This is what religious know, what they have experienced, and what the centuries-old tradition of religious life has demonstrated: To launch ourselves into a "way of perfection," we need to make some dramatic, radical gesture which says to us and to others from the outset that we are for real. Jesus Christ is not real to us until we take him for real. And to give up things which are very, very real to us, such as money, marriage, and independence, is a very powerful, passionate way to take him for real. It is authen-tic, it is legitimate, and it works. In the "new" church, which is consciously oriented toward the "perfection of love" as the go.al of every Christian's way of life, religious have the role of witnessing to the need and to the efficacy of expressing dramatically one's commitment to this love. Religious need to understand their vows as the dramatic expres-sion of their own intention to live single-mindedly--in "purity of heart"--in total, passionate, undivided love for God. The vows are a dramatic gesture, but a real one, like that of the bride strip-ping herself for the bridegroom. They are a gesture given daily-- every day, all day--as the expression of enduring, faithfully passionate love. The purpose of the vows is to focus our hearts on the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ offers himself daily in the dramatic gesture of March-April 1994 187 Knight ¯ Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love the Eucharist--"This is my body, given up for you." He asks us to open ourselves physically to him, to receive him into our bodies in the dramatic gesture of Communion which pledges us to be one with him in heart and mind and soul, in the living of our lives and in the offering of our lives together with him, the Lamb of God, for the life of the world. Religious have understood for centuries the significance of this language of love. Whatever else they did or did not do, religious, whenever it was humanly pos-sible, participated in the eucharistic celebration daily. Those men and women who daily lived their lives in love, who daily gave expression through their vows to their passionate intention of loving the Lord their God with their whole heart, whole strength, whole minds, grasped without need of explanation the appropri-ateness of joining themselves to Jesus Christ in the passionate daily expression of his love in the Eucharist. Sometimes people ask, "Why is there no sacramental conse-cration to religious life as there is to marriage and priesthood?" Perhaps an answer is that religious ire not consecrated to a par-ticular function in the church the way priests and married people are; their function as religious is that of all the baptized: to bear witness to Jesus Christ and his gospel in the total, passionate, daily oblation of themselves. But religious, by their particular and different way of life~ do this in an explicitly recognizable way. Religious life, when it is authentically lived, is a visible, convinc-ing sign (as martyrdom is) that total dedication to Jesus Christ is possible, that the grace of undivided love is present and active in the church. Sacraments are "visible signs instituted by Jesus Christ to give grace." Perhaps we can say that religious life is "grace made visible in a total commitment to Jesus Christ that is a sign," In this case the sacramental expression of religious life--as of every Christian life which actually aims at the "perfection of love"--is the eucharistic celebration. Religious, who have .been called to make their lives a dramatic gesture of love, celebrate the meaning of their vocation when they join themselves to the dramatic expression Jesus gives to his passion, to his passionate love, every day in the Mass. 188 Review for Religious THERESA MANCUSO Quest for an Undivided Heart On a dark autumn night in Far Rockaway, the rough Atlantic lurches and rolls up the sand. The tide is coming in. Foamy waves crash along the shore, filling rocky crevices with a salty spray, dislodging, sometimes, the fearless gulls that perch precariously on the jetty's edge waiting for their prey, regardless of season, regardless of cold. High up on a boulder overlooking the surf, I perch myself, silent in the coming night, watchful as my three German Shepherd dogs dart back and forth into the water playing tag along the beach. A ripe harvest moon hovers above, the only source of light as the gathering darkness wraps the shore in stillness. Alone now except for the roaring sea,which seems alive in its noisy motion, we are sandwiched here between heaven and earth, time and eter-nity. It is a good place to think, a great place to pray. In this deserted cathedral of earth and sky and sea, I often find renewal for my soul. Solitude, silence, and surrender calm and soothe when I am lonely or afraid or when, perchance, I have momen-tarily lost sight of the vision that impels me. Many-splendored master that it is, the sea is both healer and challenger and the everlasting Face of the Deep is forever a reminder of human lone-liness, longing for God. Many years ago in the romanticism of adolescence, like many others, I was drawn and fascinated by the ideals of religious life and led to embark on a spiritual journey on which celibacy, con- Theresa Mancuso's article "Prayer, Memories, and God" was published in our July-August 1993 issue. She'lives at 448 Seventh Avenue; Brooklyn, New York 11215. March-April 1994 189 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart secrated chastity, was considered the pearl of great price. For the crown of Sponsa Christi, the young religious was inspired to sac-rifice the heart, forgetful of every, human longing--not knowing for sure all it entailed. To the precious star of chastity we set our sails so long ago and far away, willing to journey through the per-ilous waters of life, armed only with faith and emboldened by the little we knew or understood about reality or ourselves. Maturity was far off, then, as we took ,.the golden chalice of chastity with both our hands, intent on draining it to the dregs. Time folded round about us like the arms of the sea as decade by decade we were washed in the flood of human experience from which there is no return. There is a solitude and silence deep in the heart of conse-crated celibacy, a surrender that echoes in the still point of the soul. Despite the changes time inscribes on the idealism of youth, it is a refreshing experience to meet today's consecrated virgins, men and women of various ages for whom religious chastity has never lost its meaning. Of their lives and their experiences, let us take note. The consecrated virgin is rather little understood and even less appreciated in the modern world. Nevertheless, religious chastity is still the sign and seal of the kingdom of God among us. We try not to forget where we came from or where we are going. There is something indelibly written in the human heart by the vow of chastity. Regardless of all the changing cultural mores in the world about us, regardless, too, of our own restless hearts, the unspeakable beauty of this vow is bound up to the essential integrity it sustains, the quest and achievement of an undivided heart. When those of us who vowed our lives to consecrated chastity long ago and far away confront the reality of today, who we are and what we. have become, deep questions await us. Have we emerged through the years with undivided hearts? Have we found the pearl of great price? Has chastity given us power to love all God's chil-dren, to nurture the world in the spirit of faith, to sustain great and noble friendships without losing the balance of a virginal heart? Is celibacy still our pearl of great price, or has it become an embarrassment to us in a world of sexual adventure,., excess, and casual alliances? Doe's chastity still shine within us with the light of happiness that shone in the promises of youth, or is our love for 190 Review for Reli~ous the celibate ideal so damaged by time and tarnished by temptation that it is long forgotten, pushed to the back of our mind as if, indeed, we had never given ourselves to God? Have we grown tired of trying? Have we lost our precious pearl? The.monk (monachos) or nun (monache) stands in the breach of the universe, a marginal person, monos-- alone. In that desert there is solitude, silence, and surrender, but there is also tenderness, joy, freedom, and peace, the gifts of the Spirit and the happiness of an undivided heart. To be alone with God in the vastness of time is sometimes frightening. We came to religious life burning with desire for union with God. The spiritual goals of enlighten-ment and self-giving called us to surrender our entire existence, everything,, right down to the deepest longings in the human heart. How shall we know if the promise has been fulfilled within us? Eschewing too much analysis, it is not with-out merit to examine ourselves with regard to chastity, for what we paid the greatest price for shall indeed be our sweetest con-solation. The reality of celibacy takes us into solitude, not once and for all, but over and over again. Every time we face the silent stillness of an unencumbered life, we recognize the act of sur-render (for there is really no other alternative), an act that leads time and time again straight to the heart of God. Along this way the saints have gone, and we may follow. Monks and nuns are not alone in celebrating the joy of the undivided heart. Many others, to be sure, in the world about us, have sacrificed sexual expression for the love of God, the practice of intensified religious living, the service of others, and the deepening freedom of the human spirit. Why be celibate in a world exploding with sexuality? Why be chaste in a society glutted by sensual allurement? Why refrain from instant and immediate gratification? The promise of chastity remains today what it has always been, an uninterrupted, pro-foundly unifying discipline of the heart, a calming of emotion. Apatheia. Passionlessness. The emptying of explosive divisive attachment. Our long journey-to God is a quest for an undivided The reality of celibacy takes us into Solitude, not once and for all, but over and over again. March-April 1994 191 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart Chastity for the kingdom of God shines beside marital chastity as a vocation complete and magnificent in itself. heart, stripped of attachment to all that is not he. Kenosis. Emptying. But we do not strive to abandon passion in order to be phlegmatic zombies. We do not strive to over-come attachment so that we can be cold, mechanical people, devoid of love. Instead, chastity is the baptism of all our feelings, all our emotions, the freeing of all the power within us, zest for life, creative energy. Chastity is the focus of our vision on God,or it is nothing. Celibacy asks its practitioner to pour out its most intimate being, not into the void, but into the Total Ultimate that is God. Chastity calls for continual repentance, continual surrender. Metanoia. Change of heart. The surrender of sexual distraction and satisfaction removes from a human being those concerns about intimacy that. often eat up the larger portion of human consciousness and creative preconsciousness. The heart that is focused on God is empowered to love and embrace the entire world, not for self-satisfaction, but with gen-uine and authentic interest and care. Our consecrated celibacy should make us more loving, more caring, more gentle and tender, compassionate and kind. That is the reality of an undivided heart. To be all things to all for the love of God, unselfishly, with purity of heart--that is the joy of chastity, the empowerment of the virgin. When today the world scoffs at virginity, it acts and reacts without understanding or knowledge of what it truly is. Our quest for an undivided heart is not futile, not wasted. It is the journey of courage that takes us into the fullness of God's abiding presence, more and more revealed to us proportionately as we lay aside all that is not God. The whole point of celibacy is union with God, nothing more and nothing less. Chastity is free-dom from the pursuit of pleasure and popularity, freedom from encrustations of endless self-adornment for the sake of vanity or "sex appeal," freedom from uncontrolled emotion and undisci-plined desire--indeed, freedom from self in areas where self may be the worst enemy. We do not posit'the beauty of consecrated chastity over against marital chastity, but beside it, its sister state. Chastity for the kingdom of God shines beside marital chastity as a vocation 192 Review.for Religious complete and magnificent in itself. Monos, alone. The splendor of the celibate heart is not servile frigidity nor some holier-than-thou imagined adornment of the soul. The consecrated virgin is not opposed to the married; the virgin lives as ultimate marriage of the spirit. The splendor of celibacy is the quickening of abil-ity to embrace the world unselfishly and bring God's love back into it. By surrendering one's right to nurture one's own offspring, one is free to take the children of humanity into one's deepest embrace and to love and serve them forever. Celibacy is a font of energy in the undivided heart, a direEting of the life force to the Life Giver. We need never be ashamed for having made this choice--indeed, for having been chosen for it. Most religious have tasted the price of celibacy. Many have traveled far from the safety of religious communities in which the vows were made, those havens where temptation was kept very much at bay. Unexpqsed and untested, we thought ourselves pure. Later, mind and heart were tested by the real world. The promise of celibacy is far deeper than all the dreams 'and aspira-tions of our youth. Life has a way of sweeping away illusion. One by one we find ourselves devoid of excuses, alone in the wilder-ness wfiere we must do battle against the pull of desire. But God teaches us quietly with relentless compassion until we understand the vigorous truth of what it is all about. And then the years are gone. Single-mindedness in the undivided heart bears fruit in quiet happiness. One finds, after all, that God is always with us, his love underpinning everything we are, everything we do. All earthly delights pale beside the effulgence of God reveal-ing himself to those who seek him with a pure heart. Immersed in him completely, we are given a new ability to focus on the things that really matter. Nor should we think of celibacy as just a physical state. It is more a state of mind, a field of completion for the soul, a refin-ing instrument that fine-tunes emotion. Chastity with diligent constancy chips and chisels all the corners of the human heart. It makes us who we are, but slowly, slow. We are forever becom-ing. As the sea chips and chisels the shore, so does celibacy remove the dross of selfishness as it refines the heart. Not without pain. Not without suffering. But, most importantly, not without joy. I watch a gull swoop down into the waves, taking his catch from the sea. The small fish is caught, devoured, by the power-ful beak of the gull, for this is nature's way. Then the lonely sea March-April.1994 193 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart Our quest for an undivided heart seems to take a whole lifetime. gull flies up out of the wave and is lost to sight in the evening sky. It reminds me that I, too, fly alone over the'ocean of life, single in the world, without a mate, for one great purpose, God. The gull and I are one for this single fleeting moment as the night steals on and the only sound in the darkness is the song of the sea. Two beings in the universe, separate and complete, starkly alone. Somehow in thavfleeting moment I come to understand why I choose .celibacy. All the props have disappeared since the day on which I promised chastity to God. It is very different now, the life I am leading, Those who inspired me have vanished from the earth in the sweet embrace of death or are far away from me. Our destinies, once so closely entwined, grew separate through the years. The whole world has changed, but the heart remains the same. Over time we face our dragons, such as they are. There is no exemption. Life batters the foundations on which religious vows are built. Suffering and sin touch everyone. The best we can do is to keep on choosing God first, for he has chosen us. To keep on choosing God is to celebrate the vow of celibacy for the love of God and for no other reason. To keep one's eye on the goal is to remain in an undivided heart. All along the way we just keep fac-ing ourselves, as we are, for better or for worse. Staggering truths reveal themselves, but they do not come home to us all at once. As the years unfold, bit by bit we uncover the truths of who and what we really are. Life insists that we go beyond the images, far beyond our misconceptions and imaginings. Sometimes it is a painful, searing journey. Our quest for an undivided heart seems to take a whole lifetime. It was not the work of the novitiate nor completed in the ceremony of vow day. The richness of the vowed life dawns slowly a long way down the road from where we started. As the moon rises higher in the sky over Rockaway, the dark-ness fills with a luminous aura. The sea quiets down as the tide rests inland. The dogs hunker down beside me, digging deep cav-erns in the sand to lie down in. Questions of celibacy have long challenged me, not just tonight, but many nights for more than a quarter of a century. Now, in this luminous nightfall on the shore, all inne~ rhythms find themselves attuned to the sand and sea and sky. One with the universe for a single moment, the burdens of a 194 Revie~ for Religious lifetime fall silently into the waves. Configured in stark simplic-ity, it suddenly makes sense, lt's all about an undivided heart. I did not notice the stars coming out slowly in the black dome of sky as the evening wore on. They twinkle now light years away, far above me. There they are just as they have always been. But I didn't notice them, not until now. Only now do I see them clearly, a starry quilt across the heavens wrapping land and sea in the blanket of their glory. The whole point and purpose of religious chastity seems suddenly at last so clear, so complete. The quest for an undivided heart. Through it we are called to create an interior environment free from the remnants of undisciplined love, unrea-sonable attachment, self-centered emotionalism, and the display of ego. Celibacy re~noves distraction from the undivided heart. One consecrated to celibacy still stands in this troubled world as a sign of the kingdom of God as the stars stand from age to age, forever. Gathering my things, I descend the rocks and leave the beach, dogs at my side. The stars are twinkling high above and the sea's roar is silent. Everything is still as the fullness of nighttime falls. The burden of loneliness is gone; commotions of the mind are silent. With renewed conviction I head for home, focused, for a while at least, on the pearl of great price that once was mine and calls me still to the undivided heart that finds its all in God. Vocation Poets and prophets Are born to bleed And orily lesser ones weep. To have heard and held in hollow heart a word Seared lips al~ne may speak Is glory enough--is glory indeed! Janet Benish March-April 1994 195 BRIAN C. YATES Imaged Celibacy: A Reflection for Priests This reflection on celibacy considers the imagination in e life of a celibate. To put the theme bluntly: Do I see and imagine myself as a celibate? Do I see my celibate self as a lov-ing and lovable man? The apostolic exhortation "I Will Give You Shepherds" (Pastores dabo vobis, 7 April 1992) says, "The gift of self, which is the source and synthesis of pastoral charity, is directed to the church" (§23). My query is this: Is the self that comes to mind in these questions and in this statement my real and true self, or is it in practice my false self?. My false self--using Thomas Merton's distinction--is what may be described as my mask, my shadow, my empirical self, the self I develop in my own likeness rather than in the likeness of God. I develop the false self to cope with the trials of life; it is the self I project and display to the outer world of people and experience. The true self, on the other hand, is that deeper new reality which lies hidden within me as the image of God, the word of God that I am, the new man described by St. Paul. To paraphrase Merton, the real I is simply one's self and nothing more, one's self as it is in the eyes of God. First, then, do I as a celibate try to work at making my false self celibate? Do I attempt to accomplish the task of making who I think I ought to be celibate? Such an approach is all of my own doing--granted all the goodwill in the world--and is prone to utter frustration. Why? Because celibacy needs to be linked not to Brian C. Yates, a diocesan priest, writes for us from Galilee House; 60B Blair Street; Bondi, N.S.W. 2026; Australia. 196 Review for Religious the false, unreal, pretended self, but rather to the real self. I am firmly of the opinion that many of us celibates have tried to make our false selves celibate. It is, however, only when we get in touch with our real selves by honest and true self-knowledge and awareness that we accept ourselves as created by God in his own image and likeness. We then accept the word of God that each of us is. Only when we discover our true self and discover the real-ity of God dwelling within us can we admit that our identity rests on our being loved by God who dwells within. By throwing off the hold the false self has on me, I become open to the gifting of the Holy Spirit. The "Come, Holy Spirit" invocation is a cry from the true self, not the false self. Second, do I image myself as a celibate loving and lovable man? I propose that celibacy thrives as a reality in our lives only when our graced active imag-ination never lets us forget that we possess it as a gift of the Spirit of God. In other words, if celibacy is not imaged as a desired gift, it will not continue to be there as a gift or in any other way. The invitation to image is suggested by Jesus' question "What are you looking for?" (Jn 1:38). Men who have been ordained to the priesthood have been so gifted because, over the course of years, they have imaged priesthood and celibacy as the gifts they are. The art of imaging is not fantasy or mental picture making, nor is it a means of escaping reality and life's demands. Rather, it is the way which Providence uses to get us into the real. It is the energy and power of one's mental faculty that operates through the medium of images, symbols, myths, stories, and parables--for example, the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price, a dragnet, a hidden treasure, a festive wedding banquet. Imaging is a way of knowing--it is beyond mere reason and rational thought. When we image, we intuit and we use our feelings, emotions, and memories, without excluding logic and planning. In fact, these latter ingredients prevent us from sinking into mere reverie or daydreaming. The process of imaging has been aptly caught by the saying that "we tend to create what we love." Do I love celibacy? That is the question. The desire, under grace, to image is encouraged by St. Bernard's remark "The desire is the pledge of the fulfillment of the Imaging is a way of knowing-- it is beyond mere reason and rational thought. March-April 1994 197 Yates * Imaged Celibacy The image of celibacy has a life of its own, a life to be subsequently realized in practice. desire" and by Ricoeur's observation that to change behavior we .need to change the image. I propose that celibates will find their lives greatly enhanced by the practice of imaging celibacy. If one does not image celibacy as a gift to the true self, much energy will be exercised on the task of avoiding temptation, of coping, of excessive concern about the quality of interpersonal relationships, of asking "How far can I go?" or expressing one's sexuality in inappropriate ways, of offering up dif-ficulties, of living encumbered by suppression and repression, of merely tolerating the law of celibacy from outside as a technical requirement of ministry. When a man images celibacy as a gift to himself and practices a celibate lifestyle as a loving and lov-able person, he authors his own life as a free disci-ple of the Lord. Freedom and life are the results of such imaging and such practice. The image of celibacy has a life of its own, a life to be subse-quently realized in practice. As long as it stays healthy by being consciously lived, this life of celibacy prevents a takeover by outside factors. On our spiritual journey the passionate energy of imaging is aptly expressed in Luke's preamble to the Last Supper. Jesus' image is proclaimed: "I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." This image, this desire, was acted upon by Peter and John: "Go and prepare our Passover for us" (Lk 22:7-16). The imaged desire of Jesus became a reality--it hap-pened. The Beatitude "Blest are the single-hearted for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8) further captures the imaged energy of the celi-bate. This blessed "sight of God" is shown again in the imaged and vigorously implemented desir~ of Zacchaeus to see Jesus. His running out in front and climbing the sycamore tree secured the presence of Jesus in his house that very day (Lk 19:1-10). Annie Dillard, in her story of the Weasel in Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes of "people taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obe-dience by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling., to grasp your one necessity and not let it go." If their vision has become blurred, celibates need to regain appropriate ways of imaging their choice of celibacy--they must stalk their calling. They must do this in conjunction with their own self-knowledge and aware-ness, their conscience and their value system, They must not shun 198 Review Jbr Religious the effort involved in such imaging and such living. They must keep looking in the right direction, in season and out of season: "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37). The Sacred Temple You will find your way by the grace of God over the broad dirt road through the merchant mob: the press of children selling holy cards, the pretty, gypsy girls and brown, drunken bards yelling: "No. no plaster., alabastert." as the ocean air fills with rum and laughter rum and laughter Scattering seagulls like failed prayer's fruit in a once quiet place the mob is upon you pushing, tugging, pulling at your jacket with old gum and bloody, sad gods of plastic their playfully wild dogs between your feet looking, whining, growling for something to eat something to eat But, then your senses blur. You are taken into, away, beyond the soul awakens where the bright sweetness of eternal Light consumes that crazy mob of our false delights where the Word of God draws with gentle bands and you know and are known where the birds fly home to the holy land. John Boyd OSB March-April 1994 199 JOANNE MARIE GREER Needed: An Ethic of Memories challenges In my current careei- I teach and supervise religious who are in training as pastoral counselors in M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Personal memories, memories of inter-personal exchhnges and relationships, are very live issues for these trainees, both in their emerging clinical compe-tence and in their own processing of their own pasts. This article is a result of my reflections deriving from my work with the students. Those reflections were crystallized by the following incident. Quite by accident I met Maria, someone who turned out to be a link to my past of almost forty years ago. I found that Maria was a close current friend of Anna, some-one I had known rather well in high school and also been with in the novitiate. I had moved to another part of the country and had not seen Anna since. Further exchanges ensued: "Well, do you know X?" "Did you know Y? . Did you also live under Mother Z, and what did you think of her?" "Did you visit such and such a place?" and so forth. Then my new acquaintance said, "Oh, by the way, my friend Anna is sometimes called [a slightly salacious nickname] within her community. No one will tell me the story behind it." With a moment's reflection on my part, I was able to supply the embar-rassing information, which came from Anna's life around age sixteen, When she and I were schoolmates. Joanne Marie Greer PhD is director of research in the Pastoral Counseling Department of Loyola College; 7135 Minstrel Way, Suite 101; Columbia, Maryland 21045 200 Review for Religious Later I was reporting this incident to Susan, a current-day friend. I had felt troubled by the exchange with Maria about Anna's nickname, but could not put my finger on the reason. I was certainly not jealous of Anna's friendship with Maria. Anna had not been a close friend of mine, and I had not thought of her in years. My friend Susan reproached me for telling the mean-ing of the nickname, saying: "What you remember of Anna does not belong to you. It belongs to you and Anna together. If Anna had wanted her current-day friend to know this about the past, she would have told her herself. Besides, when Maria tells Anna what she knows, Anna will be troubled. She will wonder what else you may tell Maria about the past." I conceded that Susan was right, and felt 'there was some deep wisdom in her comment. I continued thinking about it off and on for several days. I finally concluded that this apparition from my past had caused me to momentarily regress in my judgment in a way which I still regret. But it may be useful to describe how I reached this conclusion. In this way my medium--this article--becomes part of my message, that memory is a volatile and indeterminate thing. As a psychoanalyst I have learned the professional discipline of analyzing my own thoughts carefully whenever I feel troubled, lest my lurking disturbance throw me off balance in my clinical work. Initially I set out to trace my own free associations to the exchange about Anna's nickname and to Susan's subsequent reproach. The first thing I recalled was working in the novitiate of my order, and the secrets I had painfully held within. I then moved on to the memory of seeing the pain of the novice mistress when it got back to her what gossipy and critical-things the departed trainees had said about her to their relatives and friends. I had found the novice mistress a very difficult work supervisor, and I understood the diffuse anger of the disappointed, disaffiliated postulants and novices. I resolved, however, that if I ever left the order (as I afterwards did) I would keep its dirty laundry to myself. I simply did not want to cause such pain, and I cut off all mem-ories to guard against remembering and talking. I went so far in this that none of my in-laws even knew that I had spent ten years in the convent. Memory .is a volatile and indeterminate thing. March-April 1994 201 Greer ¯ Needed: An Ethic of Memories Another association that came to mind was to a recurring cur-rent- day announcement in my parish bulletin, inviting people to join a counseling group entitled "Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families." The invitation listed several questions. If one answered yes to these questions, the implication was that one should join this discussion group. I recalled that I always read the list of ques-tions with rising irritation and impatience. I am well aware that the answers to these questions can indicate a multitude of subtle or gross psychological difficulties. I also know that these diffi-culties are unlikely to be helped by ten sessions of parent bashing, however ghastly one's parents may have been. In fact, my experi-ence has been that such discussions often give persons with seri-ous characterological difficulties a new excuse to indulge in self-pity, instead of helping them to effect in themselves hard psy-chological changes. My thoughts then went to some students in my pastoral-coun-seling classes who seemed unable to learn anything abstract because their own memories were so enlivened by the class mate-rial. I had to work against the tendency of these few to turn the class into group therapy. This led my thoughts to my admiration for a student who came to me and said simply, "I don't want to go into details, but I'm dropping your class because it's getting me too upset. I'll take it again in two years, after I've done some work in therapy." I also connected my associations to my original contact with psychoanalysis. At that time I was aware of being quite depressed at the impending death of my mother-in-law and the illness of my young son. I went to my HMO (health maintenance organi-zation) for the twenty sessions of psychotherapy included in my employer's contract. After ten sessions the supervising psychia-trist threw up his hands and said, "Go have psychoanalysis. You spend half your energy avoiding mourning over the loss of your friends in the convent, so you cannot stand up under the pres-sure of the present. We cannot do anything for you in ten more sessions." I took his advice, found it helpful, and became so inter-ested in analysis that I ultimately became an analyst myself. So I had become a "specialist in memories," as a roundabout result of my original avoidance of memories! How did this con-nect to my indiscretion in sharing my memory of the meaning of Anna's nickname and to my subsequent discomfort? I spend part of each day listening to memories that are eatin, g 202 Review for Religious at my clients, my analysands. For their own personal benefit, I almost always discourage them from sharing these memories out-side the sessions. They would dissipate the emotional power gen-erated by private reflection and structured therapeutic work on their memories if they broadcasted them to friends and relatives. That emotional power would then be less available for real per-sonal change. Anger, grief, and disappointment are powerful emotions. In the psyche they are similar to oil or coal that can be converted to fuel, used as energy for action and redirection. Endless talk dissipates rather than concentrates this energy. But I have a second reason, an important ethical one, for discouraging people from sharing these old memories that they discover as we work in therapy sessions. Memory is a tricky thing. What we empha-size, and what we forget, depends not only on what happened, but on our intellectual capacities at the time of the event and on our ability to endure the truth. What we remember is seldom the whole story. Here is the advantage to keeping these memories within the therapy sessions. If kept within the treatment relationship, this potential discrepancy between past facts and current memories is simply more grist for the therapeutic mill. If we discover together a suppression of some aspect of the past, within the ses-sion we can very usefully explore why that bit of information was so carefully forgotten and what change has made it possible to remember now. The layering of memories is such a common-place that psychoanalysis has a special name, "screen memory," for a memory that hides behind it yet another, more traiamatic mem-ory. In a full-length analysis of a person with a traumatic but largely forgotten childhood, I have seen the "screen" layers turn out to be more than two deep. This constitutes an excellent i'ea-son for those in treatment to hold their tongues while continuing to trace the red thread through the tangled skein of their mem-ories. There is, however, yet another ethical aspect to the question of sharing a memory from treatment. Suppose the person in treat-ment decides to give a sibling a play-by-play description of the current status of the therapeutic work. Several major problems ensue, which seem to me to have important ethical dimensions. First of all, the listener may have shared some of the experiences What we remember is seldom the whole story. March-April 1994 ]03 Greet ¯ Needed: An Ethic of Memories in the recovered memories. But the listener may not have a ther-apist or other suitable confidant with whom to work through the feelings stirred up by these confidences. Even if the listener is a current-day friend who did not share the speaker's experiences, the friend .may have had similar experiences which are suddenly brought into working memory. In either case, this recollection occurs, not when the listener chooses and feels ready, but when the speaker thoughtlessly imposes this unexpected psychological task. This is one good reason that therapy per se is a profession and not a friendship task. Professional therapists have been trained to attend to their own intrapsychic reactions to the client's dis-course. The client realistically depends upon this aspect of the therapeutic contract in order to be free of the burden of caring for the therapist's psyche during the sessions. Moreover, the client need feel no guilt at all about burdening the therapist, because the client is paying the therapist to perform this intrapsychic task. It is the therapist's job to have recourse to self-analysis, peer supervision, or a resumption of personal treat-ment if a client's discourse about traumatic memories then arouses troubling feelings and memories in the therapist. To expect this same degree of accommodation from a friend would be exploita-five. Such concomitant self-care cannot be appropriately forced on a nonprofessional in order to make one's friend more "useful" in working through one's past. To force this task upon a friend would be appropriate reason to feel quite guilty. A very serious problem may follow the sharing of one's mem-ories outside of therapy as if they were firm fact. The uncon-scious operates by a set of "primary process" laws. The psychoanalytic term "secondary process" refers to our rational, adult way of thought processing and is roughly equivalent to "rea-soning." In contrast, primary process is the more primitive and imaginative way of thinking that takes place in dreams, creative productions, and memories. In primary process the part may be substituted for the whole, or vice versa; one person may be sub-sfituted for another, or one event for another, because of some yet unnoted logical connection between them. In dream analysis these connections can often be recovered by asking the analysand to systematically free-associate to each element (noun, verb, or adjective) of the dream narrative until the stream of associations runs dry. But in memories per se, often the missing or substituted elements become clear only much later, when the remembering 204 Review for Religious person overcomes resistance to a more accurate memory. The dangers of sharing the "interim drafts" of the final memory should be obvious. Terrible hurts may be imposed on the innocent. But suppose the memory is accurate and stands fast over time in the face of careful analysis? There still seems an ethical prob-lem in broadcasting such a memory. Memory by definition refers to the past. The persons in the memories have current-day rela-tionships with other innocent people. For example, suppose a sib-ling who molested you now has a wife and children. What good would be served by venting one's rage within the family and destroying the peace of the newer family members? One would be obtaining revenge, or at least emotional ventilation, at the expense of the innocent. Certainly the person who recalls experiences of victimization and exploitation has every right to establish a psychological dis-tance from the past abuser. But this can be done without sharing one's thoughts. Further, over the course of a long mental-health treatment or course of counseling, the analysand usually arrives at a position of compassion towards those who caused them suffer-ing in childhood. Even in cases of former physical or sexual abuse, the termination of treatment finds the survivors in a position of forgiveness combined with appropriate self-protection, rather than a position of vengeful attack. This psychological disposition is serendipitously not only more Christian, but also more life enhancing. As we approach the end of treatment, I have sometimes been thanked for insisting on the confidentiality of the ongoing treat-ment. In the heat of remembering, one may wish to confront one's torturers. But later, after the pain has been alleviated, an analysand is often grateful that some small but meaningful rela-tionship remains, for example, with parents who are now under-stood to have been pitifully impaired by their childhoods. After the incident of Anna's nickname, one result of my asso-ciative process was a new realization that middle-aged people who have been, or still are, in a religious order have not one but two families of origin. The usual past practice of admitting very young candidates means that many candidates completed adolescence and entered young adulthood with a second set of parents, the training staff. Moreover, the drastic changes involved in enter-ing a religious order could be expected to cause, and did cause, massive regression in many candidates. This means that, in effect, March-April 1994 205 Crreer * Needed: An Ethic of Memories they spent not only some of adolescence but even all of adoles-cence and some of a second latency period within the cloister. It would be theoretically likely that the usual mechanisms of for-getting childhood trauma, recovering it in garbled form, and feel-ing a need to work through it would be present When is a memory private, and when is it community property? When must it be told, when may it be told, and when must it be kept secret? in such people with regard to t~0 childhoods and two sets of parents. My reflection led me to include myself among those who had such a past and to recall that my main dissatisfaction with my training analyst had been his utter incapacity to imagine my life experience as a young religious. Thus Anna's nickname pointed me to a new task in my ongoing self-analysis. My second realization was a personal grasp of a dilemma'I have listened to many times from the victims of family crimes. When is a memory private, and when is it community property? W-hen must it be told, when may it be told, and when must it be kept secret? I had learned that this question may surface about something as large as incest or as small as a nickname. As in many of the subtle ethical dilemmas in life, there is no pat answer to this question. It is well to keep this in mind. Here a final memory linked with Anna emerged, and I under-stood another of the roots of my early resolve against giving pain by narrating private memories of my past convent experience. In this memory I was a novice, on vacation at a rustic seaside camp connected to a rural high school owned by the order. Along the length of the washroom wher~ I was brushing my teeth, there was a ventilation space just under the eaves, open to the cloister walk outside. Out on the cloister walk I recognized, among a group of visiting major superiors, the voice of the nun who had been principal of my school when Anna and I were students together. Another superior who did not know me mentioned my name. My old principal, who had not spoken to me in three years, remarked, "Oh, yes, that one is full of the Old Nick." My eyes filled with angry tears. I felt it was unfair to judge me at age eigh-teen by my behavior three years before. At that point in my current-day reflections, I realized that each of us is in a process of becoming. Those who have remem- ~06 Rwbiew for Religious bered us only by some static moment and then have passed out of our lives do seem to have an ethical obligation to keep their own counsel. After all, persons being impugned via the narration of memory may, in effect, no longer exist; they may be thoroughly different from the persons called to mind by the reminiscence. In any case, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Participants in therapies which focus upon memories of years ago need to keep this in mind. So do ordinary folk, particularly as they age and their store of memories becomes larger and larger. Easter Lily Your bell is poised for announcement, green-white at first, the color of music not yet tongued. We have come to expect drama: spring's green entrance, the dandelion invasion, snow in the orchard, and those housewrens concealing their nest in the ivy-veiled oak. This morning you trumpeted six gold notes from your ivory cave, a fanfare for the resurrection from the dead. Avis Kunca Kubick March-dt~H11994 207 \~ILLIAM MOCKUS A Discipline of Self-Respect Forthose seeking direction in their spiritual journeys and for .1_ .those who journey with people seeking God's direction, how we use the word discipline needs to be given attention. Our assumptions about discipline significantly affect our spiritual exer-cises and practices. A few years ago a cartoon depicted one man saying to another, "Yes, I'd like to reach spiritual perfection as soon as possible; then move on to bigger and better things." Obviously, this perception of "spiritual perfection" relates more to ego achievement than to true spiritual growth. But, like most humor, what makes it funny is its nearness to truth. We desire to grow spiritually, but we are not sure of how or when the goal is reached. When asked what they desire at the beginning of a retreat or a spiritual-direction relationship, many people say a closer or more intimate relationship with God, a more faithful practice of prayer, or a sense of security around what they are already doing in prayer even though it may "feel dead" to them. Often, from what we have been taught and have come to believe about spiritual perfection, we assume that greater disci-pline, meaning greater self-control, will produce the desired spir-itual fruit. To pray well, we believe we must control our wandering imagination, our body, even our breath. We believe that, if we fdil ai' our discipline ot[ self-control, then we or someone else may judge our spiritual life, if not our entire self, to be a failure. William Mockus, a diocesan priest from Paterson, New Jersey, currently serves on the. retreat team at Bon Secours Spiritual Center. His address is Bon Secours Spiritual C.enter; 1525 Marriottsville Road; Marriottsville, Maryland 21104. 208 Review for Religious We have long recognized that, in developing most worth-while skills, some type of discipline is required. We assume, then, that living Christian lives "skillfully" must involve the "discipline" of putting the Jesus story into our everyday activity. But our image of God should not ignore Jesus' own activity at work within our lives as they are. Having such an image involves a different sort of discipline. Rather than straining to achieve a degree of spiritual perfection that will allow us to feel secure by sheer force of will, we need to seek a "disciplined faithfulness to our own advancing StOry." In the spiritual life the essential ingredient is relationship-- our individual relationship with God and our communal rela-tionship with one another in God. It is for the sake of these relationships that discipline is important, but only secondarily. In our growing-up years, it is important to learn some discipline, some self-control. Without "boundaries of behavior" for impulses and emotions, we would do much harm to ourselves and others. Good boundaries are important for developing ego identity and strength. For adults, however, it is a mistake to confine one's thinking about discipline to self-control. For people beyond young adulthood, viewing one's need for spiritual discipline as a function of self-respect can be more help-ful than striving after an unrealizable degree of self-control. In fact, spiritual (and emotional) growth may be more hindered than helped by too much of it. Mature Christians realize this. Increased self-respect comes from patient growth in God, not from aggres-sively building oneself up to self-perfection. Discipline for the journey is more a matter of trusting in the Spirit's movement than of standing tall or standing one's ground. We do not arrive at "spiritual perfection" as much as journey toward it in hope and faith. Here a healthy discipline of self-respect can prevent us from abandoning the quest for spiritual perfection in frustration because we lack enough self-control to arrive at some idealized point of our own choosing. This adjustment in our understanding of spiritual discipline can help us move from a success/failure model of spiritual life to one of ongoing progress. It is a call for respect of one's "true self" rather than control over one's imperfect self. The practice of self-respect, like most spiritual tasks, requires a real commitment to discipline. But it is a discipline that has patience for the grow-ing self's time of maturation and integration. March-April 1994 209 Mockus * A Discipline of Self-Respect People often perceive their lives as somehow overshadowed by what they have come to understand as their vocation or calling: the idealized notion of being a Christian, to be perfect as their "heavenly Father is perfect." Traditionally we have been taught to strive toward spiritual perfection in prayer and spiritual practices. Unfortunately, for us limited human beings, the reality of our many imperfections is often contrasted too harshly with the ideal. No matter how we struggle we always fall short of our desired perfection, and the ideal always eludes us. If self-perfection is the goal, the flawed reality of our lives usually confronts rather than comforts us in our spiritual quest. In terms of God's perfection, and our own expectations, we always fail. Nevertheless, thanks to the desire that God places at the core of our being, we keep. striving in one way or another to deepen the relationship with the One who is the source of all our desire. Yet, when we do not respect our own truth and wisdom, we too fre-quently seek some magical prayer discipline or some miracle that will deliver us from our failure-ridden struggle. If God wants us to be perfect, then more fervent prayer, or Jesus, or some spiri-tual director will help us finally achieve it--right? For those who seek "spiritual perfection," reaching the goal is constantly frustrated by human limitations. One's prayer disci-pline or acts of charity, one's responsibility to family or commu-nity, fulfillment of one's commitments or vows can never be as they should be because perfection moves as soon as it appears within reach. Considering what might be years of frustration in attempting to reach an idealized image of oneself, it is easy to understand some people's difficulty in determining how to improve their spir-itual practice or in ever finding the "comfort zone" of a commit-ted daily prayer practice. The built-in danger of a self-perception based on an ideal is that the reality of our limitations causes us to judge our efforts harshly, no matter how hard we try--unless in frustration we give up the quest. A typical response to what often feels like constant failure is grief or, worse, despair. In Vital Spiritualities Jerry Broccalo explains the distinction between a spirituality of the real and a spirituality of the ideal while recognizing the value of each. As with the rest of life, when it comes to our spirituality there is a radical difference between the ideal and the real. We too often confuse the difference. Despite the God-life within us, we are not God; weare not 210 Review for Religious perfect and cannot control everything in our life, especially its limits. A discipline of self-respect allows us to see the truth of our humanness more clearly. It requires that we discard the belief that our perfection is within our power. God is God; we are not. Our spiritual growth does not depend on our ability to control reality, but rather on our ability to surrender con-trol. ~ This surrender depends on our recovering what may be termed our "firsts." Making the shift from a discipline of self-control to one of self-respect is a matter of taking the right steps in sequence. One cannot skip the first step in the" process. We need to recover our appreciation of the first commandment, the first beatitude, and the first three steps of any twelve-step program thfit deals with addictions. Each of these firsts points to several parallel truths. We are not in charge, we need God, and we cannot control everything about our lives. The truth behind all of these firsts is that we are mor-tal and limited, as well as graced and saved. We cannot assume the power to judge or condemn ourselves for failures or wrong choices. Although we may judge an action or the lack of action as evil or sinful, it is God's domain to judge the person: Poverty of spirit, the first beatitude, requires that we real-ize exactly who is and who is not God in the human/divine rela-tionship. Because I know that prayer, exercise, and setting boundaries around my appetites are all essential for my well-being, for my "true self" to grow strong, I know that I need discipline, but not the discipline of self-control based on an ideal image of myself. Perhaps the most common temptation to idolatry is the ongoing desire to see myself only through others' .eyes. Butmy holiness depends on being my true self and worshiping the God in whose image I was made rather than a god made in my image. The discipline of self-respect compels me to do these things because .of what Christ has taught me about the reign of God within me. When I do not practice the discipline involved in liv-ing the Good News, I am being respectful of neither nay true self nor the gospel. If I do not pray or care for my body with proper diet and exercise, I need to look again at my spiritual discipline. But even then I have no right to condemn and crucify myself. A discipline of self-respect allows us to see the truth of our humanness more clearly. March-April 1994 211 Mockus ¯ A Discipline of Self-Respect Instead, in honest humility I can admit nay lack of self-respect and recommit myself once more to following the Lord rather than pursuing my idealized self. A discipline of self-respect calls me to constant conversion and does not allow me to assume divine authority over my own, or someone else's, failures. This discipline is one of true humility, and holds that human beings may not usurp God's authority. Maybe this is why the first commandment is the first, and the first beatitude is first, and why the same three steps are put at the beginning of every twelve-step recovery program. The first step is the need to recognize our dependence on God. The first steps in recovery, like the first beatitude and the first commandment, contradict the common belief that, if only we exercised enough self-control, we would pray better and live better and thus become more holy--and, pre-sumably, this level of spiritual perfection would make us more loved by God. This may be more a form of spiritual consumerism than a spiritually mature relationship with God in Christ Jesus. One may object that this type of spiritual discipline sounds too much like those theories which so casually justify the selfishness and self-centeredness of contemporary culture. From teachings learned in our growing-up years, it is easy to believe that all talk of self-respect promotes attitudes that are too self-centered. Admittedly, the danger of self-righteousness always remains with us, but it may be worth the risk to use the spiritual discipline I propose in the hope of gaining a more God-centered rather than self-center.ed view of what discipline is meant to be. The phrase "discipline of self-respect" may suggest imma-ture self-centeredness. People often assume that, if a spiritual dis-cipline does not involve self-denial, then it must be some form of narcissism. But such an ego-driven and immature sense of self is not what we are speaking about. We are advocating respect f0r one's "true self," as Thomas Merton uses the term, where the egoless self encounters the reign of God within one's life. In a conversation several years ago with Dr. Frederick Franck, I inquired about the Buddhist notion of decreasing one's ego desires and the Christian notion of dying to oneself. Dr. Franck responded that "first one had to have an ego." Before one dies to oneself, one must be a self or have what may be termed a' healthy ego, a sense of one's own true self. For the believer, Christ' is not only the image of the invisible God; he is also the image of our true self encountered within the reality of our lives, not in 212 Revie~v for Religious some unrealizable ideal. A discipline of self-respect is not self-ishness. It is a way to understand spiritual discipline as a call to die to one's false self-centeredness in order that one's true Christ-centeredness may be more fully realized in our lives. It is God's reign rather than our own that this discipline seeks. This call to be our "true selves" is always new and meaning-ful, no matter what age we are or in what stage of life we find ourselves. Whether we are young and need to control our impulses and urges, or mature and need to respect the truth of our real but limited lives, our spiritual discipline must reflect our experience of life and God. What is required in the spiritual jour-ney, if it is to be more God-centered than ego-centered, is a healthy and humble discipline towards one's true self. This disci-pline involves an ongoing quest for self-knowledge and self-respect and an openness to God's constant and loving call for conversion. If one's discipline of prayer or exercise or eating or working is to be tru!y healthy and whole, it must be balanced and con-gruent with one's true identity. It cannot be mere conformity to the images and masks we have held before us, whether these are images of perfect beauty or perfect sanctity. One's spiritual per-fection, then, is not a goal to be chalked up on a self-actualiza-tion chart. It is not a matter of self-mastery, but of self-surrender. The discipline of self-respect is a matter of surrendering to one's true self, encountered at the point of contemplative union with the God who made us just the way we are. Correction Do you know what the word KUMASI becomes when the spellcheck of a computer program encounters it? It becomes CHUMPS. Our apologies to the KUMASI diocese of Ghana mentioned in Susan Rakoczy's article "Charismatic Renewal and Consecrated Life" in our November- December 1993 issue, page 913. March-April 1994 213 ANNETE ADAMS A Transformational Journey May living room can be a cozy place in the winter. Making fire in the fireplace, watching the flames, listening to the crackle of wood, catching a glimpse of a spark breaking away, all move me into a very reflective mood. There is some-thing about a fire in a fireplace that captures my spirit and invites me to quiet. I began to think about images: fire, sun, wind, water, animals, insects. Since images have played an important part in my spiri-tual journey, I looked back to see what image has spoken most powerfully to me. That image is the butterfly. I began reflecting on the monarch butterfly about ten or eleven years ago. Did you know that in its caterpillar stage it can resist moving into the next stage? It can postpone moving into the chrysalis until the fol-lowing spring. This experience reminded me of a time I had been resisting a change in my own life and thinking of all the reasons why I was not the person for this new ministry. Why me? Why now? Why not someone else? I struggled for a long time and finally one day, too tired to fight anymore, I just sat and listened to some reflective music. As I listened, someone came into the room and told me of a wonderfulsight she had just seen. She had watched a beautiful monarch emerge from its chrysalis. She had never seen such a wondrous transformation. For me that was a very powerful moment, for it spoke to me of my own moment of surrender. It was not until I surrendered that I could begin to be free enough to say yes to what I was being Annete Adams SND has been a teacher and a formation director. Currently provincial secretary, she also gives retreats and does spiritual direction. Her address is Notre Dame Educational Center; 13000 Auburn Road; Chardon, Ohio 44024. 214 Review for Religious invited to do. Was this the beginning of another time in my life that was beckoning me into my own chrysalis, to a state of fertile emptiness, to a time of waiting, inviting a transformation? That image .and that symbol are still with me on my journey. I sit here now, in the midst of another transition time in my life, knowing it is time to let go, to move on, uncertain about what is ahead, and yet excited about what might emerge and bring new life and energy. I remember being on a week-long retreat and feeling as though I were a chrysalis. There was not a thought, a prayer, a song, or a gesture that spoke to me. I took a walk that day through a very quiet neighborhood and got lost. A monarch butterfly on the ground caught my eye. I went to look at it. It was dead. I remember picking up this fragile bit of creation, too beautiful to leave there, and holding it in my hand as I walked on, seemingly forever. I came to a park and sat on the grass, opened my journal, and drew what I saw; somehow it became a priceless gift for the day. At the end of the time I took it to a "safe place" where it would not be trampled on and then began my journey back. I remember sharing the incidents of the day with my director. I told her I could not even imagine why I was carrying, so care-fully, a dead butterfly. Her question to me was simple and yet profound: "Did you ever think that the dead butterfly was you-- the part of you that died, that is no longer--and that is why you carried it with you until you could let it go? I knew at once that the suggestion in her words and eyes was true. I had been look-ing outside myself for the answer when in fact it was within. As I reflected on this image later, I noticed near the fireplace a small sand castle. It had been given to me as a gift because of my great love for Teresa of Avila and her Interior Castle. I wondered if each dwelling place could be like another cocoon--a place of darkness, a place pregnant with all the possibilities of newness and a place of deep union between the lover and the Beloved--as it awaits its moment of transformation. Such a simple image and yet what profound insights! All this reflecting brought me to con-sider my own journey and' that of those on the road with me. I reflected on spiritual direction for this journey of ours. Have you ever watched the cycle of the monarch butterfly? To me it seems similar to what happens in spiritual direction. The journey is one of wonder and joy. The journey is one of searching, watching, waiting, mystery, and transformation. Marcb-.4pri11994 213 Adams ¯ A Transformational.yourney The egg of the monarch butterfly looks like a very, very tiny pearl. The Searching To get yourself a monarch-butterfly caterpillar, you would do well to look in a field, along the road, or in a garden for the milk-weed plant and then to examine its leaves and stalk carefully. The egg of the monarch butterfly looks like a very, very tiny pearl. You can take the leaf on which the egg rests and place it on a moist sponge; in time you will see a tiny caterpillar emerge to begin its new life. If you cannot find an egg, then you should look for an already hatched monarch caterpillar--with its eas-ily spotted black, white, and yellow circular bands--wherever it has left a trail of partly con-sumed milkweed leaves. Directees do their own kind of searching in spiritual direction. They search for a director who will help them unfold their real selves, one who will help them search out the truth, one who will love them for who they are and continually journey with them as they come to know a God who nourishes them on their journey. In spiritual direction directees search and find; they search and sometimes do not find; but they do not stop searching, no matter how painful it becomes. It is not the director's demand that makes this contihued search happen. It is their realization that God's search for them is much greater than their search for God because God's love for them is unconditional. The Watching If you really want to watch the monarch caterpillar in its var-ious stages, then you need to put the portion of the plant that the caterpillar is on into a large glass jar and cover it with some fine netting. The caterpillar moves all over the plant, continu-ally eating bits of leaqes, taking in all the nourishment it can for the journey. In very quiet moments, with your ear over the top of the jar, you can hear the sound of each bite. It is that kind of posture of attentive listening that is part of being a spiritual director. It takes many quiet moments to notice what is happening in a directee's journey. It takes the right setting, an atmosphere for growth, openness, and readiness for the jour-ney. The directees need to place themselves in a setting where spiritual direction can take place, to prepare themselves to be 216 Review for Religious receptive to however our God wishes to feed them with words, prayers, songs, or silence. The Waiting The caterpillar needs leaves from the milkweed plant every day. You can watch in silence each day for its constant growth-- watching it become larger and larger until one day it stops eating and begins searching for a place to attach itself so as to begin the mysterious and won-derful work of forming the chrysalis. I have watched for many hours in utter amazement at how care-fully the caterpillar walks around and around its container until it finds the place to fasten itself securely. Th

Issue 51.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1992. ; fo,r relig i ous Christian Heritages and ContemP0ra~ Living SEPTEMBER-O~OBER 1992 ~ t VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ FAX: 314-535-0601 ,÷ Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: .Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ 5001 Eastern Avenue ¯ P.O. Box 29260 Washington, D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1992 Review for Religious for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez sJ Sefin Sammon FMS Wendy Wright PhD Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1992 ¯ VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents spiritual growth 646 Spirituality, Spiritual Development, and Holiness William G. Thompson SJ explores by means of three personal examples the relationship between being holy and being devel-oped spiritually. 659 Listening as the Foundation for Spirituality Robert P. Malohey CM proposes that listening becomes a basic Christian stance for a healthy and practical spirituality. 675 Two Key Transitions in Spiritual Growth John Wickham SJ mixes traditional language and new approaches to explain the major movements from the discerning and affirmation of the self to ultimate union with the Lord. religious life 691 Seeking a Sense of Direction in a Time of Transition David F. O'Connor ST reviews the history of how traumatic changes in religious life have preceded new forms of dedication and vitality. 707 Religious Life in the Puebla Document Juan Ram6n Moreno SJ emphasizes the directions of religious life in Latin America given official support in the Puebla docu-ment. 716 721 A Collaborative Retirement Convent Kathleen Steinkamp RSM details the process by which two reli-gious communities established a residential care facility for their retired members. living spiritually Reinventing the Sabbath Dennis Hamm SJ presents a refreshing review of the meaning of 642 R~view for Religious 733 736 sabbath rest and its importance for the survival of our faith. Priesthood, Listening, and the Music Bishop Paul A. Zipfel instructs Dominican ordinands to reverence the gift of orders they will be receiving. A Diligent Compassion Theresa Mancuso relives both the pain of grief on the occasion of her mother's death and the long process of being reconciled with that loss. 743 754 praying Becoming Contemplative Here or There Marie Beha OSC traces out four strands of monastic contemplative discipline to give outsiders a close look at some fibers that go into a contemplative life. An Imaginative Look at Mary Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz focuses his imagined prayer or his prayer-ful imagination on how he sees Mary fitting into today's world. life directions 762 A Journey of Transformation Together Lorelle E. Elcock OP describes the steps of the process of trans-forming three Dominican congregations of women into a new unity. 770 Celibacy as Possibility Marie McCarthy SP explores a celibacy that is concerned about possibilities for life, for generativity, and for transformation. 644 782 789 departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: Communicating an Indult of Departure Book Reviews September-October 1992 643 prisms ~hat does a laywoman in Brooklyn have in common with a professor in Central America gunned down for his beliefs, with an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis known for his pastoral-liturgical style, and with a member of a religious community facing the prospect of no new members? In addition to being people who have struggled to live authentic Christian lives, each of these men and women has articles in this issue of Review for Religious. They join their voices with a treasurer of a reli-gious community, with a cloistered contemplative sister, and with spiritual directors, theologians, and administra-tors from Canada, Rome, and the United States to exam-ine a whole spectrum of issues of interest to the contemporary church. These women and men--and, over the years, many others like them--have written about their religious expe-riences in these pages. As they share their personal insights and practical observations about living their faith, our readers around the world benefit from their reflections. Review for Religious has been a valuable resource because of the rich diversity of topics it treats and because of the wide range of perspectives it presents. Have you ever wondered how such articles come to be published? One of the best-kept secrets about this pub-lication is that the editors seldom solicit articles for a par-titular: issue. Over the years a steady flow of unsolicited manuscripts has provided a substantial backlog of articles. The editors simply select, edit, and group the articles. We are constantly amazed at what comes across our desks. Each year the editors consider 250 to 300 articles. From these we select between 90 and 100 for publication. 644 Review for Religious After the editors have chosen the articles they wish to publish, their time is consumed by the process of careful copy editing, proofreading, and preparing the articles for press. The continued vitality of this journal depends on the contri-butions from our readers. Articles that appear in Review are writ-ten, for the most part, by nonprofessional writers--people just like you. That's right. People just like the one who is reading these words at this moment. But this should not come as a surprise. Some two thousand years ago a tax collector and a tent maker did not look on themselves as writers, but today we still draw inspi-ration from the words they penned. Moses and Jeremiah found words worth recording even though one stuttered and the other felt inexperienced. Many of us feel equally inhibited. Few people consider themselves writers. None of the members of the Review staff, if truth be known, prepared themselves for careers in writing or publishing. Yet each of us discovers that, at some point in our lives, we have something to say. We may, how-ever, have difficulties convincing ourselves of that fact. But consider the words found in the Book of Deuteronomy: "The word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart." The words we discover within our hearts often merit a wider audience. Have you come to a fresh understanding of prayer during a recent retreat or as you talk with other people who pray? Review for Religious would like to invite you to share your experiences and insights. Has the community or parish you live in developed a program or a new method of interacting that others could profit from hearing about? Review could make that possible. If some-thing strikes you as original or valuable, chances are someone else will benefit from hearing that idea. May we invite you to consider becoming a writer? Should you feel that you have the materials for an article that meets the mission statement printed on the back cover of this issue, con-sider putting it on paper. Review will be delighted to send you a set of writers' guidelines. These guidelines clearly describe how to prepare and submit an article for publication in this journal. Review and its many readers want to hear your ideas. And we will be grateful to you for the courage and hard work you will invest in expressing them. Michael Harter SJ September-October 1992 645 WILLIAM G. THOMPSON spiritual growth Spirituality, Spiritual Development, and Holiness For several years I have been articulating for myself and my classes a working model of the inner world represented by the terms spirituality, spiritual development, and holi-ness. In this article I offer some insights I have had as I wondered about how these terms are related. How is spir-ituality related to the human sciences, especially devel-opmental psychology? Is spiritual development the same as what psychologists call human development? How is holiness related to psychological wholeness? I will begin with three examples, move to a more technical exploration of the terms, and return to reflect on the examples in the light of that exploration. Rachel, an adolescent with cerebral palsy, is so severely delayed in her human development that she cannot attend the regular religious-education classes or the liturgies in her parish. Every two weeks she gathers with five other similarly retarded adolescents and six adult sponsors for sessions in special religious education, symbolic catech-esis for the mentally retarded. Joan, who has been her sponsor and friend in this gathering for five years, is con-vinced that despite her developmental retardation Rachel is a very holy young woman. William G. Thompson sJ specializes in the New Testament for adult spirituality and pastoral ministry. He has a doctorate in Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute and serves as asso-ciate professor in Loyola University's Institute of Pastoral Studies, Chicago. His most recent book is Matthew's Story: Good News for Uncertain Times (Paulist, 1989). His address is Ignatius House; 1331 W. Albion Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60626. 646 Review for Religious Katie Klein was born in Germany but came to the United States at the end of World War I. When I was a child, she came to our home two days a week to do laundry and clean our house, as she did for two other families. I came to know and love Katie. She lived a simple, structured, apparently rigid and unimaginative, but also very meaningful life. She went to Mass every morning before work, and she spent at least an hour after work reciting traditional prayers at home. I believe that Katie was a very holy woman even though she seemed never to outgrow the simple piety that had given meaning to her younger years. Before her death in 1950, no personal crisis or public event occurred to chal-lenge her way of living a life that appeared to be pleasing to God. During Vatican Council II, I was pursuing doctoral studies at the Biblical Institute in Rome. Day by day I interiorized the drama of the council as I received reports about its progress from a fellow Jesuit who attended the sessions. I soon sensed that the vision of the church in the modern world that was being shaped in the council's debates was tearing down the world of meaning I had put together for myself over the fifteen years of my Jesuit formation and education. I somehow knew that a long and subtle search for a new world of meaning was beginning. Had the Vatican Council not called us Roman Catholics to let our paradigms shift and leap to a different horizon of meaning, I might still be wear-ing the traditional Jesuit cassock and living the style of priest-hood for which I was so well trained. Spirituality Before Vatican II, spirituality as it refers to lived experience was an almost exclusively Roman Catholic term. But it has taken on a much broader meaning with the council's invitation to a new awareness of, dialogue with, and appreciation of other Christian denominations and of non-Christian religions. In recent years we have been speaking of spirituality as found in various Protestant traditions and in the various traditions of Judaism, as well as in Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. Vatican II also called us to a new dialogue with the human sciences, especially with the fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, in which spirituality refers to the human spirit apart from religion. Some even speak about the spirituality of antireligious movements such as secular feminism and atheistic Marxism. September-October 1992 647 Thompson ¯ Spirituality and Holiness Spirituality has become a broad, inclusive term that is no longer confined to or defined by religion. It seems now to name a human reality which is difficult to define but whose patterns can be verified in quite different religions and movements. It is no longer limited to the so-called "interior life" of those (mostly priests and religious) who "strive for perfection" through a life of prayer and virtue beyond that of the "ordinary" believer. Spirituality now focuses on the human spirit of believers and non-believers, on their lives as a whole, that is, on the physical and emotional, the intellectual and social, the political and cultural, the secular and religious dimensions of their lives.1 In recent years academic courses and publications in spiritu-ality have multiplied in response to the broad and deep interest among professionals in ministry and among academics in semi-naries and universities. How then are we to define spirituality? Sandra Schneiders provides the best definition that I have found: "Spirituality is the experience of consciously striving to integrate one's life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives.''2 According to this definition, (1) spirituality names our progressive, consciously pursued movement toward personal integration; (2) such integration happens when we transcend ourselves rather than center on ourselves and our own self-actualization; and (3) such self-transcendence takes place within the horizon of how we imag-ine, think, and feel about what is ultimate in human life and moves us toward it. For Christians our ultimate concern is God revealed in Jesus Christ and experienced through the gift of the Holy Spirit and within the life of the church. But a spirituality may or may not include God or Jesus Christ, may or may not be explicitly reli-gious. Clear boundaries between the secular and the sacred, between believers and nonbelievers, are notoriously difficult to determine. But twelve-step spirituality has taught us that for reli-gious persons reliance on their "Higher Power" may mean reliance on God, while for nonreligious persons it may mean reliance on their support groups. However, our definition of spirituality does not extend to those persons who organize, orient, and orches-trate their lives in dysfunctional or narcissistic ways according to addictive patterns such as alcoholism or self-centered eroticism. Self-transcendence moves us out of compulsive, addictive, obses-sive patterns of behavior toward more healthy relationships with 648 Review for Religious other persons, with ourselves, and with a transcendent Other, however we imagine and name that Other. At the heart of spirituality, then, lies self-transcendence? The philosophical meaning of spirituality is that capacity for self-tran-scendence through knowledge and love which characterizes humans as persons. We human beings actual-ize this philosophical spirituality within the net-works and patterns of our relationships with others. We seek meaning and are found by meaning as we interact with each other indi-vidually and in communities; and we seek truth and are found by truth in these interactions. A religious spirituality affirms that the proper and highest realization of our human capacity for self-transcendence is to be found in our personal relationship with God. Spirituality in this religious sense has as its ultimate concern our individual and communal believing in, hoping for, and loving God. Religious traditions that imagine and understand God as a person who relates reciprocally with individuals and communi-ties on earth have a religious spirituality. The religions of Islam and Hinduism, of Judaism and Christianity, all see our human spirit as responding to, dependent upon, related to, and account-able to a transcendent Other named God. These religions include images, symbols, metaphors, stories, laws, and rituals through which people encounter God and are encountered by God. In Christian spirituality God's Spirit within but other than our human spirit, within but other than the community of believ-ers, actualizes our capacity for self-transcendence by relating us in and through Jesus Christ to others, to our world, and to God. Our spirituality is at work when we implicitly or explicitly imag-ine- think and feel about, make choices and decisions about-- our everyday lives within the ultimate horizon of our relationship to a personal God in and through Jesus Christ and as empow-ered by God's Spirit. We Christians seek to interpret our indi-vidual and collective human experience as centered in Jesus Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit, and oriented to God. Our spirituality is incarnational and trinitarian. God initiates the personal relationship in and through Christ by the power of the Spirit; our spirituality, individual and collec-tive, reflects how we respond to God's initiative as we face the At the heart of spirituality lies self-transcendence. Septentber- October 1992 649 T~_~pson . Spirituality and Holiness, challenges of everyday life within our specific historical and cul-rural environment. Our spirituality is the sum of our responses to what we perceive as the inner call of God. It has to do with our vocation, that is, with the activities by which we find God and are found by God, by which we find a purpose for life that is part of the purposes that God has for our lives in the world. It has to do with the activities by which we are being created by God and create with God, by which we are governed by God and govern our world with God, by which we are being redeemed by God and participate in God's work of redemption in our concrete his-torical situation. At its core, Christian spirituality concerns how we live in part-nership with the action of God in our lives, whatever its pattern. It focuses on how God actively guides our evolving universe, including God's personal interactions with individuals and com-munities. It acknowledges that our human lives are created by God and destined to return to God. It is concerned with how we are aware of and respond to God and how we transcend ourselves to relate more deeply with others and with our world. As we shall see, this call to self-transcendence may also, but need not, include development, that is, movement in the direction of more devel-oped patterns for finding truth and meaning in our lives.4 Returning to our examples: Rachel, although developmentally retarded, transcends herself by responding to Joan's invitation to friendship, the human experience that most closely resembles faith. She is instinctively present to the other adolescents in the praying group, and she senses that the adult sponsors truly want to be totally present to her. Responding more often with smiles and gestures than with words, Rachel lives close to her feelings and does not hide them from others. She has no problem loving the others and wanting to be loved, even though her movement toward personal integration is slow and retarded. Katie Klein transcended herself by serving our family and other families as laundress and cleaning lady and by being devoted to God at daily Eucharist and in her nightly prayers at home. Her faithful devotion to God and her dedicated service of others dis-closed her ultimate concern; she lived cheerfully and peacefully within the horizon of that concern. Her movement toward per-son] l integration seemed not to include changing how she found meaning in her life. I was called to transcend myself by engaging the events of 650 Review for Religious Vatican II, letting them interact with and begin to tear down the world of meaning constructed over the long years of my Jesuit formation and education. From 1963 to 1968, I was invited to let all that the council meant slowly change how I understood myself as a Jesuit priest, as well as let its vision shape in me images of what my life and work would be as a biblical scholar in the post- Vatican II Roman Catholic Church. I experienced this process as an invitation not simply to move but to leap to a new and broader world of meaning and as a challenge to come to a different under-standing of myself in that world. Spiritual Development Human development is the lifelong process of growing, of changing in many different ways. We humans sometimes change to survive or at least to find meaning in our lives. Sometimes we choose new ways to realize our dreams and attain our goals. At other times we learn better skills and gain more expertise while remaining in the same relationships to others and to our work that give meaning to our lives. We are invited to grow and develop, however, when events so shatter the ways in which we have found meaning and been found by meaning that we inust move toward shaping new patterns that will be more adequate to our changed inner and outer environment. Our journey through life may sometimes take us to new vis-tas of knowing, to deeper realms of trusting, to ever widen.ing circles of belonging, to more creative and effective acting. As we develop, we are enabled to embrace a wider world, to acknowledge a more adequate truth, to live in a more inclusive community, and to enter more deeply into the mystery of human existence. A relatively young discipline, the psychology of human devel-opment was born in response to our modern culture, in which, expecting to live longer lives, we become fascinated by what the extended journey entails. We also sense that, as we near the end of the twentieth century, the global village we call our world is dramatically changing. We need and want to know how we indi-viduals and our families and communities are to navigate such hazardous times. Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget are considered the fathers of developmental psychology. For Erikson, the father of psychoso-cial theories, development is h series of tasks based both on bio- Septe,nber- October 1992 651 Thompson ¯ Spirituality and Holiness logical development and on how we interact consciously and unconsciously with other persons, with secular and religious insti-tutions, and with all that makes up our culture. Erikson names a sequence of eight tasks: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, integrity vs. despair. We never complete any of these lifelong tasks, but, as we move through our lives, one task more than the others may call for special energy and attention. For example, the elderly continue to work at the tasks of trust vs. mistrust and generativity vs. stagnation even as they are called to the final task, integrity vs. despair,s Jean Piaget, the father of structural-developmental theories, focused on the structures of human thought and reasoning. He recognized that infants, children, and adolescents come to know reality differently. He developed an understanding, of cognitive development in which a stage is an integrated pattern of opera-tional structures that at a given time constitute the person's thought processes. Piaget called his stages preoperational, concretely oper-ational, early formal operational, and formal operational. Development from one stage to another involves the transforma-tion of these cognitive structures in the direction of greater inter-nal differentiation, complexity, flexibility, and stability.6 Erikson's tasks, with their focus on what meaning we find in our lives, are related to the seasons of our lives, to our youth and adolescence and to our early, middle, and late adulthood. Piaget's structural stages, with their concern for bow we find and are found by meaning, are not so related to chronological age or social envi-ronment. As children we may have begun to develop formal oper-ational structures in which our experience of others is concrete, literal, and immediate. We may have created strong stereotypes of others, shown little empathy for those with whom we are not familiar, and developed a strong but simple sense of right and wrong based on regulations, law and order, and reward and pun-ishment. Since this structure is not age related, we may live all the seasons of our lives and address all the psychosocial tasks without moving toward the next structural stage of human development. We may continue to use existing structures as long as they work, that is, until our inner and outer worlds become so much more complex that we can no longer find and be found by meaning within those structures and patterns. 652 Review for Religious When we experience life as more complex than we have known it, we may be invited to move toward the next stage of human development, toward the next task (Erikson) or toward the next structure for finding meaning (Piaget). Crises, marker events, unfulfilled hopes, changes in significant relationships can create an inner climate of confusion, doubt, and conflict that invites us into transition. Rome during Vatican II was such an inner and outer environment. If we choose to respond to the invi-tation, we begin to separate from the images that have given mean-ing to our lives and then to float in between the old and the new so that we may gradually reintegrate our lives around more ade-quate images of how we are to know, feel, value, love, and act. As we change, we may feel weak, vulnerable, and out of control because we have begun to experience our lives as more chaotic than orderly. Nevertheless, we are drawn to risk moving or being moved toward more developed patterns so that we may live and act more effectively in our increasingly complex world. Transitions in human development are those more or less extended periods in which we gradually develop more internal complexity, more sub-tle differentiation, greater flexibility, and stronger inner stability. This is the place to ask how human development with its stages and transitions relates to spiritual development. We have seen that spirituality has as its concern how over time we integrate our lives in the direction not of isolation and self-absorption but of greater self-transcendence toward the ultimate value as we per-ceive it. According to Daniel Helminiak, spiritual development is the same as human development but with four characteristics that make it spiritual: (1) an intrinsic principle of authentic self-transcendence, (2) the openness of the person to such self-tran-scendence, (3) the integrity or wholeness of the person in question, and (4) an adult capacity for self-criticism and responsibility for oneself.7 Spiritual development, like spirituality, is a general human phenomenon that may or may not be religious. It is more prop-erly studied in the human sciences than in theology, particularly in developmental psychologies with a philosophical perspective. Spiritual development can be called religious when in our search for meaning we acknowledge a personal God to whom we are related and with whom we can realize our deepest capacity for self-transcendence. Christian spiritual development understands that relationship as the gift of God's Spirit actualizing our capac- Septentber-October 1992 653 Thompson ¯ Spirituality and Holiness ity for self-transcendence and relating us to God in Jesus Christ within the Christian community of believers. We Christians believe that God is present and active in the events that change our inner climate, that Jesus Christ invites us into transition and enables us to respond to the invitation, and that God's Spirit com-panions us as we separate from outworn images and learn to float in between, waiting patiently for new, more life-giving images to emerge. Spiritual development can also be described as our moving into deeper and more comprehensive love. Love is Jesus' only command and the standard of perfection in the Christian tradi-tion. 8 Developmental psychology considers this same movement from self-centeredness to self-transcendence its criterion for human development. Although Christians understand spiritual growth as involving more than psychological development, both the Christian tradition and developmental psychology have the same vision of human maturity, that is, movement toward greater autonomy for the sake of more authentically mutual and intimate relationships. Insights from developmental psychology can enrich our understanding of and help us grow into more mature rela-tionships with others, with ourselves, with the cosmos, and with God. Holiness With this understanding of spirituality and spiritual devel-opment, we now ask what it means to be holy and whether holi-ness is the same as wholeness. I agree with Daniel Helminiak that holiness has to do with the quality of one's relationship to God, while spiritual development has to do with the pattern of that relationship? A person can be holy at any stage of spiritual devel-opment; a neurotic person can be holy; a developmentally dis-abled or retarded person can be holy. Holiness has nothing to do with psychological wholeness, but everything to do with the qual-ity of our relationships to God and others, to ourselves and our world, whatever the pattern of those relationships. Holiness has to do with generosity, surrender, intensity, openness, and depth according to our capacity to possess and exercise these qualities. Holiness concerns our authenticity before God, others, ourselves, and our world, how we walk in these relationships, how we do God's will, how we remain close to God and others, how we live 654 Review for Religious in harmony with God, others, and ourselves, how we cooperate with the call and grace of God in our lives. Holiness concerns how well we respond to God's call to self-transcendence and enter into meaningful relationships with oth-ers and with all that makes up our environment. God's call may or may not include an invitation to move toward the next stage of human development, that is, toward more complex patterns for finding and being found by meaning. What counts is how open we are to God, how well we listen for God, and how well we respond to God in and through the relationships that make up our everyday lives. God calls us to holiness within our concrete histori-cal and cultural situation, whether we are developmentally retarded, as is Rachel; or we live with simple patterns for finding meaning, as did Katie; or we are invited to " move to the next stage of spiritual devel-opment, as I was invited. Our vocation--that is, the activities by which we find God and are found by God, by which we find a purpose for our life that is part of the purposes that God has for our life in the world--may include an invitation to develop new, more complex patterns for making meaning, but it may not. Holiness cannot be identified with psychological wholeness or correlated with spiritual development. A less developed person may be holy, while a more developed person may not. As we pass through the stages of spiritual development, we may become more psychologically mature, but whether or not we also grow in holi-ness depends on the quality of our response to the call of God in our lives. Holiness has to do with the quality of one's relationship to God, while spiritual development has to do with the pattern of that relationship. Conclusion Now we return to our cases. Rachel cannot manage in the usual parish groups of adolescents because she moves at a much slower pace than normal in her spiritual development. She has moved through the stages of grasping reality by exploring every-thing in sight (sensory-motor thinking), of imagining the outside Septentber-October 1992 655 Thompson ¯ Spirituali~ and Holiness " world to fit her inside world (symbolic thinking), and of identi-fying with what she learns (intuitive thinking). But her retardation makes her as yet incapable of thinking beyond what actually is to what is possible (formal operational thinking). Her adult friend Joan and the other adult sponsors are convinced that Rachel is holy and growing in holiness even though developmentally retarded. Rachel receives her vocation from God through Joan and the other adolescents and adults at their biweekly sessions in symbolic catechesis. She responds to those around her and to God with the capacity she has to symbolize and imagine, to know and be known, to love and be loved. Joan senses that almost imperceptibly Rachel is growing more open, more generous, and more authentic in responding to this call of God. Her holiness depends on the quality of her response to others and to God, not on the stage of her spiritual development,l° Katie Klein lived a regular, structured, apparently unimagi-native, but meaningful life. Her experience of others and of God was concrete, literal, and immediate. And she had a 'strong but simple sense of right and wrong. She moved through the tasks of adult life (Erikson) with early formal operational structures of thought (Piaget). Although capable of further development, Katie found those patterns adequate for finding and being found by meaning in her inner and outer world. Generously serving others and being faithful to daily Mass and devotional prayers, Katie became a very holy woman even though her life situation, God in her life, never invited her to move beyond an uncomplicated pat-tern of spiritual development. Within that pattern Katie responded more and more generously to God and walked more and more faithfully with God to become as holy a person as anyone I have known. In how well she loved and served our family, in how deeply she trusted God as she approached death, we knew that Katie's was a rich, solid, strong partnership with God. During my doctoral studies, the events of Vatican II invited me to develop spiritually by letting conventional patterns for find-ing meaning in my Jesuit life be shattered so that more adequate, more individuated, more autonomous structures might be shaped. As I interacted with the environment of the council, God called me to an experience of brokenness so that I might become more whole psychologically, more mature spiritually. Reality became chaotic compared with what I had known in my years of Jesuit formation. Challenged to change, feeling vulnerable, I risked 656 Review for Religious moving toward more complex patterns for making meaning in my life. God called me into this transition so that I might more effectively live and work in the world envisioned by the council. As I struggled through this developmental transition, whether or not I was also becoming holy depended not on the transition but on how well I was listening to and how generously I was responding to the call of God in that experience. Rachel was developmentally retarded, but l~oly; Katie was never called into transition, and she was holy. God invited me to move from the conventional world of meaning I had constructed in my Jesuit formation toward a more individual stage of spiritual develop-ment. Does that mean I was also becoming more holy? Not nec-essarily! We cannot measure holiness, neither our own nor other people's; only God knows the quality of that response to God. We can remember, however, and we must, that holiness concerns how well we live in partnership with God, not how far we have advanced through the stages of spiritual development. Notes ~ Sandra M. Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 681-683; Joann Wolski Conn, Spirituality and Personal Maturity (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 13-29. 2 Schneiders, "Spirituality," p. 684. 3 Sandra M. Schneiders, "Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners," Horizons 13 (1986): 266; Wolski Conn, Spirituality, pp. 29- 30. 4 For further discussion see Katherine Marie Dyckman and L. Patrick Carroll, Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 79; Benedict J. Groeschel, Spiritual Passages (New York: Crossroad, 1988), p. 4; James W. Fowler, Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 71-76; James W. Fowler, Weaving the New Creation (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1991), p. 31. s For another approach to psychosocial development, see Daniel J. Levinson, The Seasons of a Man's Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); Anita Spencer, Seasons (New York: Paulist, 1982). 6 For a description of contemporary structuralists (Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, James Fowler, Robert Kegan), see James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), pp. 37-116; Fowler, Becoming Adult, pp. 37-47. 7 Daniel A. Helminiak, Spiritual Development (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987), pp. 29-42. September-October 1992 657 8 Joann Wolski Corm and Walter E. Corm, "Christian Spiritual Growth and Developmental Psychology," The Way Supplement 69 (1990): 3-13. 9 Helminiak, Spiritual Development, pp. 143-158. ~0 For an excellent treatment of the mentally retarded, see Mary Therese Harrington, A Place for All: Mental Retardation, Catechesis, and Liturgy (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992). The Chess Game It seems you never give up needling away at my defenses. You come to me ready to play a game of chess where you are the seasoned player, and L the fumbling novice. Sometimes you move all at once your strategically placed artillery, leaving me helpless soon after the confrontation has begun. On other occasions you will move, with well-&ought-out expertise, your black knight too near the weakest part of my citadel. You know from past maneuvers I tend to abandon the safety of my ramparts in my hasty efforts to capture him. In the process I give you the liberty to rush into my undefended heart, capturing, as a victory prize, any false god who resides there. When you play, you are never content with a pawn or queen of mine. You want them all! Richard Heatley FSC 658 Review for Religious ROBERT E MALONEY Listening as the Foundation for Spirituality Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear. Isaiah YO:4-Y manuals on the spiritual life, and even in the classics? One searches in vain for a chapter on listening in the writings of St. Benedict or St. Ignatius or even in the writings of very practical, concretely oriented saints like Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul. One comes up empty too in Luis de Granada and Rodriguez and in later widely used treatises on spirituality like Tanquerey. Listening, of course, enters these writings implicitly under many headings. But if one considers listening the foundation for spirituality, one might have expected it to stand out in greater relief. This article proposes some reflections on listening as the foundation of spirituality. It will examine, in a preliminary way: (1) listening in the New Testament; (2) listening as the foundation for all spirituality; (3) some echoes of the theme in the history of spirituality; (4) the contrast between an implicit and an explicit theme; (5) some ramifications today. Christian listening begins, of course, with the Old Testament, R6bert P. Maloney CM writes from Rome, where he serves as a mem-ber of the general administration of the Vincentian Fathers and Brothers. His address is Congregazione della Missione; Via dei Capasso, 30; 00164 Roma, Italy. September-October 1992 659 Maloney ¯ Listening where listening plays a vital role, especially in the Deuteronomic and prophetic traditions. Yahweh often complains that, when he speaks, his people "do not listen." Conversely, the prophets are preeminent listeners; they hear what Yahweh has to say and then speak in his name. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening," says the boy Samuel as he begins his prophetic career. Listening recurs again and again in the New Testament, where a study of Johannine literature, for instance, would reveal listening as the key to eter-nal life. "Whoever is of God listens to every word God speaks. The reason you do not hear is that you are not of God . If someone is true to my word he shall never see death" On 8:47, 51). Listening in Luke's Gospel In Luke's Gospel the listening theme is quite explicit. For Luke, as for the entire New Testament, God takes the initiative through his word, which breaks into the world as good news call-ing for human attention and response. Mary the model listener. As with almost all the important themes in Lukan theology, the listening theme is introduced in the infancy narratives. These narratives provide a summary of the theology that Luke will weave through his Gospel. The listening theme is among the most prominent Lukan motifs (parenthetically, one might add that in Luke's Gospel another theme is at work in many of the listening stories; contrary to the expected cultural patterns of the writer's time, a woman is the model listener presented to the reader). Mary is evangelized in Luke's first two chapters. She is the first to hear the good news. She is the ideal disciple, the model for all believers. Mary listens reflectively to Gabriel, who announces the good news of God's presence and tells her of the extraordinary child whom she is to bear; to Elizabeth, who proclaims her blessed among women because she has believed that the word of the Lord would be fulfilled in he~; to shepherds, who tell her and others the message which has been revealed to them about the child, the good news that a Savior is born; to Simeon, who proclaims a song of praise for the salvation that has come to all nations and a prophecy that ominously forebodes the cross; to Anna, who praises God in Mary's presence and keeps speaking to all who are ready to hear; to Jesus himself, who tells her about his relationship with his heavenly Father, which must take precedence over everything. 660 Review for Religious Luke pictures Mary as listening to the Angel Gabriel with wonderment, questioning what it might mean, deciding to act on it, and afterwards meditating on the mystery of God's ways, reflecting on them in her heart. The theme of listening later in Luke's Gospel. Luke uses three brief stories to illustrate this theme of listening discipleship, namely, that those who listen to the word of God and act on it are the true followers of Jesus. (1) His mother and brothers came to be with him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. He was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you." He told them in reply, "My mother and my brothers are those who listen to the word of God and act upon it" (8:19-21). In this story Luke changes the Markan emphasis (cf. Mk 3:31- 35) radically. While Mark depreciates the role of Jesus' mother and relatives, Luke extols it, echoing his first two chapters and show-ing that Mary is the ideal disciple, who listens to God's word and acts on it. (2) On their journey Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him to her home. She had a sis-ter named Mary, who seated herself atthe Lord's feet and listened to his words. Martha, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to him and said, "Lord are you not concerned that my sister has left me to do the household tasks all alone? Tell her to help me." The Lord in reply said to her: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things; one thing only is required. Mary has chosen the better portion and she shall not be deprived of it" (10:38-42). Even though Jesus' statement about the one thing necessary has been subject to innumerable interpretations, there is little doubt about the point of this story in the context of Luke's Gospel. Mary has chosen the better part because she is sitting at Jesus's feet and listening to his words, just as any true disciple does. While there are many other themes in the story (such as the role of women and the role of the home-church in early Christianity, which is reinforced here through a Lukan addition), Luke empha-sizes the basis of discipleship: listening to the word of God. That is the better part (see Lk 8:4-21). (3) While he was saying this a woman from the crowd called out "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that September- October 1992 661 Maloney ¯ Listening nursed you! . Rather," he replied, "blest are they who lis-ten to the word of God and keep it." This passage interrupts, rather puzzlingly, a series of contro-versies that Jesus is involved in during the journey to Jerusalem. But Luke inserts it to clarify the meaning of discipleship once more: real happiness does not lie in physical closeness to Jesus, nor in blood relationship with him, but in listening to the word of God and acting on it. Listening as the Basis for Spirituality All spirituality revolves around self-transcendence. As a work-ing definition for spirituality, we might use one proposed by Sandra Schneiders: "The experience of consciously striving to integrate one's life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one per-ceives." l For Christians spirituality involves "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rm 13:14), "giving away one's life rather than saving it up" (Mk 8:35, Mt 16:25, Lk 9:24, Jn 12:25), and other phrases that imply self-transcendence. The self is not obliterated through self-transcendence; rather, it becomes fully actualized.2 That is the Christian paradox: in giving oneself, one finds one's true self. In that sense authentic love of God, of the neighbor, and of self come together. Authors put this in different ways. For Bernard Lonergan self-transcendence occurs in the radical drive of the human spirit, which yearns for meaning, truth, value, and love. Authenticity, then, "results from long-sustained exercise of attentiveness, intel-ligence, reasonableness, responsibility.''3 For Karl Rahner the human person is the event of the absolute self-communication of God. In his foundational works Rahner describes the human per-son as essentially a listener, one who is always awaiting a possible word of revelation. Only in Jesus, the self-communication of God, is the human person ultimately fulfilled. At the core of the his-torical human person is a gnawing hunger for the other, for abso-lute Value. A particular spirituality is a way in which this longing for the absolute is expressed.4 But this inner yearning for truth and love, this "reaching out," as Henri Nouwen expresses it, can only be satisfied by a word from without--spoken or enfleshed--that reveals what true 662 Review for Religious humanity really is. In the human person the fundamental dispo-sition for receiving that word or Word is listening. It is worth notirig here that Genesis, the wisdom books, and the Johannine tradition all seize on the concept of the Word as the way in which God initiates and breaks into human history. The creating word bears within it its own immediate response: "Let there be light, and there was light." But the word spoken to the human person, who in God's image and likeness rules with free-dom over all creation, must be listened to and responded to freely. Of course, listening here is used in the broadest sense. It includes seeing, hearing, sensing, feeling, perceiving. "Attentiveness" might serve as the term for the various ways in which the human person is ready to grasp what comes from with-out. Listening in this sense is the indispensable precondition for self-transcendence. Without it the word that comes from without goes unheard, the truth that draws the human mind to a vision beyond itself goes unperceived, the love that seeks to capture the heart goes unrequited. Is this why the saints have so stressed the importance of lis-tening in prayer? ls this why obedience has played such an influ-ential role in the tradition of religious communities? Is this why the seeking of counsel has always been regarded as one of the signs of true wisdom? Is this why the Word made flesh and the word of God in the Scriptures are at the center of all Christian spiritual-ity? Is this why the reading of the Scriptures in the liturgy and communion with the Word himself in his self-giving, sacrificial love are "the source and summit" of genuine Christian living? Listening in Vincent de Paul One can find echoes of the listening theme in many tradi-tions. Ignatian discernment, which has exerted such a forceful influence on the countless people who have made the Spiritual Exercises since the sixteenth century, is a means of listening atten-tively to what God is saying and allowing God's word to work conversion within us. Francis de Sales, whose Introduction to the Devout Life has been read by millions since its first publication in 1609, spoke of the need to "be devoted to the word of God whether you hear it in familiar conversation with spiritual friends or in sermons." He urged his readers, "Always listen to it with attention."5 September-October 1992 663 Maloney ¯ Listening Here, however, I will focus briefly on another seventeenth-century figure, Vincent de Paul, whose writings are less well known, but whose charism has influenced enormous numbers of men and women, not only in the two communities he founded (the Vincentians and the Daughters of Charity), but in other com-munities that have sprung up under his inspiration, and also in the hundreds of thousands of Ladies of Charity and St. Vincent de Paul Society members throughout the world. The central place of listening in spirituality is not explicit in the conferences and writings of St. Vincent. But the spirituality he proposes includes several key themes in which the importance of listening is evident. Humility the Foundation of Evangelical Perfection Vincent calls humility "the foundation of all evangelical per-fection and the core of the spiritual life.''6 For him truly humble people see everything as gift. The humble recognize that God is seeking to enter their lives again and again so that he may speak to them. They are alert, they listen for God's word, they are eager to receive God's saving love. The humble know that the truth which sets them free comes from without: through God's word, through the cries of the poor, through the church, through the community in which they live. There is probably no theme that St. Vincent emphasized more. He described humility as the origin of all the good that we do.7 He told the Daughters of Charity: "If you establish your-selves in it, what will happen? You will make this company a par-adise, and people will rightly say that it is a group of the happiest people on earth . ,,8 Humility and listening are closely allied in that listening is the basic attitude of those who know that fullness of life, salvation, wisdom, truth, and love come from without. Brother Robineau, Vincent's secretary, whose reflections about the saint have just been published, notes that this attitude was especially evident in Vincent's conversations with the poor, with whom he would sit and converse with great friendliness and humility.9 St. Vincent loved to call the poor the real "lords and mas-ters" ,0 in the church. It is they especially who must be listened to and obeyed. In the reign of God, the world of faith, they are the kings and queens; we are the servants. Recognizing the special 664 Review for Religious place of the poor in the new order established by Jesus, Vincent was eager not only that his followers would serve and evangelize the poor, but also that they would hear God speaking in those they served or, as we would put it today, that they would allow themselves to be evangelized.1~ Reading Sacred Scripture St. Vincent was convinced that the word of God never fails. It is like "a house built upon rock.''~2 He therefore begins each chapter of his rule and many individual paragraphs with a citation from Scripture. He asks the members of the Congregation of the Mission to read a chapter of the New Testament every day. He wants them to listen to the word of God and to make it the foun-dation of all they do: "Let each of us accept the truth of the fol-lowing statement and try to make it our most fundamental principle: Christ's teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will." ~3 Abelly, Vincent's first biographer, notes, in a colorful passage, how devoted the saint was to listening to the word of God: "He seemed to suck meaning from passages of the Scriptures as a baby sucks milk from its mother, and he extracted the core and sub-stance from the Scriptures so as to be strengthened and have his soul nourished by them--and he did this in such a way that in all his words and actions he appeared to be filled with Jesus Christ.''~4 "Obeying" Everyone The word "obedience" (ob + audire = to listen thoroughly) is related etymologically to the word "listen" (audire). For St. Vincent the role of obedience in community was clearly very important. But he also extended obedience beyond its usual mean-ing, that all are to obey the legitimate commands of superiors. Using a broadened notion of obedience, he encouraged his fol-lowers to listen to and obey everyone, so that they might hear more fully what God is saying and act on it: Our obedience ought not limit itself only to those who have the right to command us, but ought to strive to move beyond that . Let us therefore consider everyone as our superior and so place ourselves beneath them and, even more, beneath the least of them, outdoing them in defer-ence, agreeableness, and service.Is September-October 1992 665 Maloney ¯ Listening~ Obedience moreover, is not the duty of subjects alone, but of superiors too. In fact, superiors should be the first to obey, by listening to the members well and by seeking counsel: "There would be nothing more beautiful in the world, my daughter, than the Company of the Daughters of Charity if. obedience flour-ished everywhere, with the sister servant the first to obey, to seek counsel, and to submit herself." 16 An Implicit Theme vs. an Explicit One It is clear that listening plays a significant, even if unaccented, role in each of the themes described above. The importance of lis-tening is not, therefore, a "forgotten truth" (to use Karl Rahner's phrase) in the writings of Ignatius Loyola, or Francis de Sales, or Vincent de Paul, or in the overall spiritual tradition; neither, however, is it a central one. Therein lie two dangers. First, truths that remain secondary or merely implicit run the risk of being underemphasized or distorted. For example, reading a chapter of the word of God daily can degenerate into fulfilling an obligation or studying a text unless listening attentively retains its preeminent place. Likewise, the practice of humility, when distorted, can result in subservience to the voices without and deafness to the voices within, where God also speaks. In such a cir-cumstance, "humility" might mask lack of courage in speaking up, deficient self-confidence, or a negative self-image. A distorted emphasis on obedience can cause subjects to listen exclusively to superiors, no matter what other voices might say, even voices that conscience demands that we listen to. Conversely, it could cause a superior to insist loudly that he only has to "listen" to the advice of others, .not follow it (whereas in such instances he may usu-ally listen to almost no one but himself). But when listening retains a place at the center, the danger of distortion is lessened. Reading the word of God, practicing humility, and obeying are seen as means for hearing what God is saying. The accent remains on attentiveness. Second, when the importance of listening is underempha-sized, there is a subtle tendency to focus on particular practices to the detriment of others or to be attentive to certain voices while disregarding others. For instance, a member of a community might pray mightily, seeking to discern what God is saying, but pay little attention to what a superior or spiritual director who 666 Review for Religious knows the person well is trying to say. He or she may listen "tran-scendentally" or "vertically," so to speak, but show little concern for listening "horizontally." Along similar lines, a superior might be very confident that, because of the grace of his office, God lets him know what his will is, while other persons, by the grace of their office, are desperately trying to signify to the same supe-rior that God is saying something quite different. The simple truth is that we must listen to many voices since God speaks to us in many ways. Some of these ways are obviously privileged, but none has an exclusive hold on the truth. Some Ramifications In his wonderful book on community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: The first service that one owes to others in the community consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins by listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is because of God's love for us that he not only gives us his Word but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one ser-vice they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either, he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life. 17 If listening is so crucial to healthy spirituality, then how might members of communities grow in it, both as individuals and in common? Listening as Individuals From reflection on the church's long spiritual tradition, one might glean a number of qualities that characterize good listen-ers. Here I will touch briefly on four, which seem to me crucial for better listening. The first indispensable quality for good listening is humiliW. September- October 1992 667 It is "the foundation of all evangelical perfection, the core of the spiritual life," as Vincent de Paul put it.is Humble people sense their incompleteness, their need for God and other human per-sons. So they listen. Humility acknowledges that everything is gift; it sees clearly that all good things come from God. St. Vincent writes to a priest of the Mission: "Because we recognize that this abundant grace comes from God, a.grace which he keeps on giving only to the humble who realize that all the good done through them comes from God, I beg him with all my heart to give you more and more the spirit of humility." t9 But consciousness of one's incompleteness has a further dimension. It is not only "vertical," so to speak, but "horizontal"; we depend not only on God direcdy, but on God's creation around us. Truth, then, comes from listening not only to God himself, but to other human persons, through whom God's presence and words are mediated to us. The hunger for truth and love that lie at the heart of the mystery of the human person is satisfied only from without. We are inherently social, living within a complex network of relationships with individuals and with society. It is only when what is heard is pondered that its full mean-ing is revealed. The second quality necessary for better listening, then, is prayerful reflectiveness. While at times one can hear God speak even in a noisy crowd, it is often only in silence that one hears the deepest voices, that one plumbs the depth of meaning. The Psalmist urges us: "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). The Gospels, particularly Luke's, attest that Jesus turns to his Father again and again in prayer to listen to him and to seek his will. Prayer is then surely one of the privileged ways of lis-tening. But it must always be validated by life. One who listens to "what God is telling me" in prayer, but who pays little heed to what others are saying in daily life, is surely suspect. Prayer must be in continual contact with people and events, since God speaks not only in the silence of our hearts, but also (and often first of all) in the people around us. Because prayer is a meeting with God himself, what we say in prayer is much less important than what God says to us. When there is too much emphasis on what we say or do during prayer, it can easily become a "good work," an "achievement," a "speech," rather than a "grace," a "gift," a "gratuitous word" from God. 668 Review for Religious Naturally, prayer, like all human activities, involves structures, personal discipline, persevering effort. But the emphasis must always be on the presence of the personal God, to whose word we must listen attentively as he speaks to us the good news of his love for us and for others. In an era when there is much noise, where the media, if we so choose, speak to us all day long, one must surely ask: Are we able to distinguish the voice of God among the many voices that are speaking? Is God's word able to say "new things" to us? Are we still capable of wonder? As may be evident to the reader, the word wonder has an etymological kinship, through German, with wound. Is the word of God able to wound us, to pen-etrate the membrane that seals us off, that encloses us within ourselves? Can it break into our consciousness and change us? The third necessary quality is respect for the words of human persons. It is here perhaps that the tradition was weakest. It did emphasize humility. It Prayer must be in continual contact with people and events, since God speaks not only in the silence of our hearts, but also in the people around us. did accent the need to hear what God is saying and to discern his will. But it rarely focused explicitly, in the context of spirituality, on the central place of listening to other people. Many contemporary documents put great emphasis on the dignity of human persons and on the importance of hearing the cries that come from their hearts. Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes and the encyclical Redemptor Hominis see the human person as the center of creation,z° Centesimus Annus puts it strikingly: "Today the church's social doctrine focuses especially on man . ,,2~ Respect for human persons acknowledges that God lives in them and that he reveals himself in and through them. It acknowl-edges that words of life come from the lowly as well as the pow-erful. In fact, St. Vincent became gradually convinced that "the poor have the true religion" and that we must be evangelized by them.22 Many of the recently published texts of Brother Louis Robineau, which relate his pe,rsonal experience of Vincent de Paul, attest to the saint's deep, respect for persons of all types. September-October 1992 669 Maloney ¯ Listening Attentiveness is an indispensable means for creating authentic communities. Robineau notes how well Vincent listened to them: poor and rich, lay and clerical, peasant and royal.23 In this context, the process of questioning persons that is involved in the quest for truth takes on a new light. When there is deep respect for all human persons, questioning involves a genuine search for enlightenment, rather than being, in some hidden way, refutation or accusation. Questioning is a tool for delving deeper, for unpeeling layers of meaning, for knowing the other person bet-ter, for digging toward the core of the truth. As we attempt to develop increasing respect for human persons, surely we must ask some challenging questions. Are we really able to hear the cries of the poor, of the most oppressed: the women and chil-dren, who are often the poorest members of society; those discriminated against because of race, color, nationality, religion; the AIDS victims, who are often shunned by their families and by the physically healthy; those on the "edges of life," the helpless infants and the helpless aged, who are unable to speak for themselves? Are we able to hear the counsel given to us by others: by spiritual directors, by members of our own com-munities, by the documents of the church and our own religious congregations? Are we sensitive to the contributions that come from other sources of human wisdom (like economics, sociology, the audiovisual media, the massive data now available in com-puterized form) that often speak concretely about the needs of the poor, that can help us find and combat the causes of poverty or that can assist us in the new evangelization called for by the church? Are we alert, "listening," to the "signs of the times": the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the repeated call for justice made by the church; the movement toward unity within global society, which is now accompanied by an opposite movement toward separatism and nationalism; the growth of the church in the southern hemisphere, which contrasts with its diminishment in many places in the northern hemisphere. The fourth quality needed is attentiveness, one of the most important signs of respect for the human person. It is the first step in all evangelization, the prerequisite for serving Christ in the poor. It is only when the servant is attentive to the needs of the master (in this case, the poor person) that he really knows what to 670 Review for Religious bring him. It is only when the evangelizer is alert to the needs of the listener that she is able to communicate genuinely good news. Attentiveness is an indispensable means for creating authen-tic communities. If community members do not pay close atten-tion to the opinions and needs of those they live with, each person becomes isolated even if still physically present to others. Those living in community must therefore continually seek renewed ways of listening to each other and of sharing their prayer, their apostolic experience, their struggles in community, their successes and failures, their joys and sorrows. Attentiveness is also of the greatest importance as one seeks counsel. Robineau relates how often St. Vincent asked others their' opinion about matters at hand, "even the least in the house." He often heard him say that "four eyes are better than two, and six better than four.''24 Robineau relates an interesting incident in this regard: One day he did me the honor of telling me that it was nec-essary to make it our practice, when consulting someone about some matter, always to recount everything that would be to the advantage of the opposing party without omitting anything, just as if it were the opposing party itself that was there to give its reasons and defend itself, and that it was thus that consultations should be carried out.zs Listening in Community Meetings, along with consultations and questionnaires of var-ious sorts, are among the primary means of listening in commu-nity. Like most realities, meetings are "for better or for worse." Almost all of us have experienced some that we find very fruitful and others that we would be happy to forget about. To put it in another way, meetings can be a time of grace or a time when sin threatens grace. Communities, like individuals, can become caught up in them-selves. A healthy self-concern can gradually slip into an unhealthy self-preoccupation. Outgoing zeal can be replaced by self-cen-tered security seeking. Communities can be rescued from this state, in a way analogous to that of individuals, only through cor-porate humility,26 a communal effort to listen to God and com-munal attentiveness to the words of others. September-October 1992 671 Maloney ¯ Listening Meetings can be a time when sin threatens grace. When there is no listening, they create strife and division. They disrupt rather than unify. They deepen the darkness rather than focus the light. Among the signs that sin is at work in meetings is fighting. When participants do not listen, there is inevitable strife, bad feelings, disillusionment, bitterness. Such meetings result in fleeing. The group backs away from major decisions, especially those that demand some conversion; it refuses to listen to the prophets; it seeks refuge in the status quo. A further consequence is fractur-ing. When participants do not listen, badly divided splinter groups form; the "important" conversations take place in the corridors rather than in the meeting hall; politics, in the worst sense, takes the place of discernment. Meetings can be an opportunity for grace. They provide us with a wonderful opportunity for listening and discernment. They enable communities to work toward decisions together, as a com-munity. In order for this to happen, those who meet must be com-mitted to sharing their common heritage, creating a climate of freedom for discussion, and planning courageously for the future. In meetings where God is at work, we recall our heritage in order to renew it. We listen to and retell "our story." We recount and rehear the deeds of the Lord in our history. We celebrate our gratitude in the Eucharist and let thanksgiving fill our hearts, for we have heard the wonderful works of the Lord. We share com-munal prayer and reflection because the faith of others strength-ens us. The atmosphere will be grace-filled if all are eager to listen to each other. If all arrive without hardened positions and preju-dices, convinced that the group must seek the truth together, then the groundwork for the emergence of truth has already been laid. The content, no matter how concrete or seemingly pedes-trian, will be grace-filled if all hear the word of God together, listen to each other's reflections on that word, and make deci-sions on that basis. The decisions of a listening community will flow from its heritage while developing the heritage in the light of contemporary circumstances.27 Meetings play an important role within God's providence. God provides for the growth of communities through wise deci-sions that govern their future, especially the training of the young, the ongoing formation of all members, and care for the aging. But such decisions can be made only if the members of the com- 672 Review for Religious munity are willing to listen to the data that describes its present situation and projects its future needs. Communal decision mak-ing, based on realistic projections, is one of the ways in which providence operates in community life. Failure to listen to the data--difficult though it may sometimes be to "hear" it honestly-- results in calamitous "blindness" and "deafness." The listening individual and the listening community will surely grow, for listening is the foundation of all spirituality. To the listener come truth, wisdom, the assurance of being loved. To those who fail to listen comes increasing isolation. Jesus, like the prophets, knew that listening made demands and consequently was often lacking. He lamented its absence: "Sluggish indeed is this people's heart. They have scarcely heard with their ears, they have firmly closed their eyes; otherwise they might see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and under-stand with their hearts, and turn back to me, and I should heal them" (Mt 13:15). He also rejoiced in its presence: "But . . . blessed are your ears because they hear" (Mt 13:16). In recent years many congregations have attempted to assist individuals, local communities, and assemblies to listen better, In workshops much effort has been put into fostering practical lis-tening skills. But are there ways in which communities, particu-larly during initial formation, can better communicate the importance of listening as foundational for growth? If listening is the foundation of all spirituality, as this article has tried to show, then it is crucial for personal growth and for the vitality of all communities. Notes ~ Sandra Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 684. 2 See Ga 2:19-21: "I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own: Christ is living in me. Of course, I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." The Greek text identifies Jesus as the self-giving one. It also makes it clear that self-transcendence does not wipe out true human-ity, but fulfills it. 3 Bernard Lonergan, A Third Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe (New York: Paulist, 1985), p. 9. 4 See K. Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg: Herder, 1984), pp. 35f, 42f. Septewtber-October 1992 673 Maloney ¯ Listening s Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp. 107 and 108. 6 Common Rules H, 7. 7 SV IX, 674; see Common Rules H, 7. 8 SV X, 439. 9 Andrd Dodin, ed., Monsieur Vincent racontdpar son secrdtaire (Paris: O.E.I.L., 1991), §46 and §54. 10 See SVIX, 119; X, 332. 1~ See Evangelii Nuntiandi, §15. 12 Common Rules H, 1. ,3 Ibid. 14 Abelly, Book III, 72-73. ~s SV XI, 69. ~6SV IX, 526. ~7 D. Bonhoeffer, Life Together (London: SCM Press, 1954), p. 75. ~Common Rules H, 7. 19 SV I, 182. 20 Gaudium et Spes, §§9, 12, and 22; Redemptor Hominis, passim. 21 Centesimus Annus, ~54. 22 SV XII, 171. 23 Andrd Dodin, ed., Monsieur Vincent racont? par son secrdtaire (Paris: O.E.LL., 1991), especially §§71-83. 24 Ibid, §52. 25 Ibid, §118. 26 Vincent de Paul repeatedly emphasized the need for corporate humility if the congregations he founded were to grow. See SV II, 233: "I think the spirit of the Mission must be to seek its greatness in lowli-ness and its reputation in the love of its abjection." 27 In his essays on spirituality, Karl Rahner distinguishes between "material" and "formal" imitation of Christ. In material imitation, one seeks to do the concrete things that Jesus did, ignoring the extent to which everything he did was influenced by his social context. In formal imitation, one seeks to find the core meaning of what Jesus said or did and apply it within the changed social context. 674 Review for Religious JOHN WICKHAM Two Key Transitions in Spiritual Growth Both in coming to understand our own spiritual develop-ment and (should we be engaged in spiritual direction) in reflecting on where a directee of ours may presently be moving, a sense of the various kinds of transition that often occur can be a great help. I assume here that spiritual growth (changes, new data) are to be expected, are even to be sought. Quite a number of transitions are possible. One can move, for example, from a life of mortal sin to a life of sanctifying grace, from a rather legalistic reliance on external rules to a life of per-sonal choices; or, at the other end of the spectrum, one can move from a devout life to a life of advanced mystical prayer. But two other transitions deserve, I think, special attention today. The two developments I have in mind are often at issue in the Spiritual Exercises ofSt. Ignatiushone of them in the First and Second Weeks taken as a whole, and the other in the unit formed by the Third and Fourth Weeks. In his active spirituality St. Ignatius may be said to have reshaped the "Three Ways" (purgative, illuminative, unitive) into two spiritual transitions, each of which reveals both a negative and a positive side. This essay will attempt to describe and study these two major movements that occur in many dedicated lives. After each of them has been clarified, their relationship and especially their differ-ences will require comment. John Wickham sJ is director of the Ignatian Centre of Spirituality, which prepares and accredits directors. His address is 4567 West Broadway; Montreal, Quebec H4B 2A7; Canada. Septentber-October 1992 675 The First Transition Assuming, as St. Ignatius does at the start of his First Week Rules for Discernment, that we are in touch with persons living a good Christian life, striving to get free of sinful ways and to grow into closer union with God, then this first important tran-sition may be seen to move from relying mainly on getting emo-tional satisfaction to discerning spiritual consolations received from the Lord and felt in the heart. This formulation makes a contrast between emotions and feelings (or felt knowing). Emotions in this usage refer to per-sonal responses to objects in the external world around us (through our five senses) and to interpersonal events in our social setting. There is nothing wrong, of course, with emotional expe-riences. Emotions are often the main stuff of human life. In their endless varieties they fill most of our daily hours. We wake up in one mood and at night perhaps we drift off to sleep in the grip of another. Between times we may be surprised by shifts and changes of emotion or brood over a lingering mystery of emotional confusion. Persons without emotional reactions are hard to bear. We might wonder if they suffer from some disorder. But perhaps their emotions are not warm and pleasant but of the cold, off-putting kind. Whatever their nature, we can be sure that our emotional responses provide the real texture of human life. In themselves they are part and parcel of God's creation. And like other creatures they may be put to good use or they may get us into trouble. Returning to the formula given above, what needs emphasis at this point is the habit of relying too much on emotional satisfac-tions. When we habitually demand to be satisfied emotionally, we become blocked against further spiritual growth. We can become stuck right there. Without realizing the fact, we may be expect-ing God to deliver emotional satisfaction to us and we get angry when God fails to do so. We pray, in effect, a self-centered prayer, "my will be done on earth--not Thine!" While nothing is wrong with emotions in themselves, we can put too much stock in them. Let us be honest, many of us do so a good part of the time. We come to rely almost entirely on our own emotional states. If they are satisfying, "God is good!" If not, "God has rejected me!"--or we imagine things are going wrong. 676 Revie'w for Religious One of the major troubles of social life is to have others inflict their moods on us--because they tend to interpret the nature of reality in terms of current emotions. "The emotion that grips me now tells me who I am and what the world is doing to me." Even if we can avoid inflicting our emo-tional state on others, we still often experience the world in accord with our emotional state at the moment. As the poet Pope tells us, "All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye"--and the world looks rosy through rose-colored glasses. Our emotions easily become a lens that colors our world--for the time they last. This is often how we are as we begin our spiritual journey. There is nothing very surprising about it. And so a well-known stage of purification consists in getting free of emotional demands. First comes the step of noticing our emotional reactions, of naming them as they occur, and of refusing to identify our being with their con-tinuance. In order to become liberated from their insistent claim upon us, we learn to do small penances. In the past there has often been a danger of coming to despise our own emotions--an undesirable side-effect when struggling to gain freedom by willpower alone from these emotional claims. ~Without further treatment of that point, I merely note here the need to avoid puritanical efforts in this transition. We are dealing with spiritual growth, which is always initiated and brought about by divine grace. We do, of course, need to cooperate with such graces, and small penitential acts are forms of cooperation. But our highly emotive personal responses are right and true in themselves. Even if emotional self-denial is necessary for a cer-tain time, we will need to return to our emotions just as soon as we can get free of their tyranny. Then they may become, not only right and true, but beautiful and even holy. Emotional self-denial is only a temporary ploy within a larger movement of growth, not the main aim of the spiritual life. An egotistical tendency (if it is present) to invest our sense of self mainly in our emotional satisfactions needs to be purified during the First Week exercises. That is, of course, a rather sub-jective way of approaching the areas of sinfulness that call for purification, but it seems appropriate here because I am focus- When we habitually demand to be satisfied emotionally, we become blocked against further spiritual growth. September-October 1992 677 ,Wick~ ham ¯ Key Transitions,, ing on interior transitions. The Rules for Discernment them-selves lay heavy stress on the desolations to be expected in a per-son striving to move forward, and on the need to persevere in that intention despite the losses of emotional satisfaction that may be experienced. Spiritual Feeling In the more positive phases of the continuing transition, spir-itual consolations arising from moments of union with Jesus the Lord may make their presence felt as one enters the Second Week of the Exercises. It is assumed at this point that exercitants have already heard the call of Christ to follow him and have responded (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) to that summons. And dur-ing the contemplations of the public life that follow, each one must learn how to discern true from false consolations. An elementary principle to be noted here is that consolations of the Lord are not to be identified as "feeling good" and deso-lations as "feeling bad." Many today use the term "feeling" in a general sense that includes (or mainly denotes) what I have described above as emotions. That is a defensible usage, but in this essay I wish to separate the term "feelings" from the term "emo-tions" as already defined. I want to cast light on the rather dif-ferent movements we may experience at a deeper, more interior level of our being. In other words, I wish to define feeling (an enduring state) and feelings (momentary events or "touches") as personal responses that occur at our spiritual center in the core of our being, and not primarily in our social world. Humans may be said to enjoy a double-leveled awareness, one with outer and inner dimensions. In this discussion I am using emotions to refer to responses at the outer level, and feeling to refer to responses at the inner level. Quite correctly, it should be insisted that outer and inner lev-els are continually interacting together. Whena sudden event moves us wholly, it is often true that emotions and feelings are impossible to distinguish. Tears start from our eyes, our heart is fully engaged, we cry out with joy or sorrow, we even experience sensations in our body (waves of heat or cold, tingling of the spine, pressures in hands or feet, a burning forehead, and so on). Similar points may be made about calmer experiences as well. 678 Review for Religious In fact, it is normal for human beings to "sense" a two-way intercourse between outer and inner events, between what occurs in the social world and simultaneously in the interior feeling. Our reflective capacity, which is not merely mental but also passion-ate, is precisely what makes our awareness human. Our con-sciousness is multidimensional. While we know and feel, we also know we are knowing and feeling. And when we respond emo-tionally, we are aware at the same time of various intuitions under-lying our most emphatic emotions. Even when we "forget our self" in some activity or other, that welcome effect is considered unusual--an exception to the rule, and never total. Besides, an egotistical self-awareness is not the only kind of selfhood we may experience. We may be full of self-doubt, for example, or eagerness, or mistrust, or calm happiness, and so on. The Inner Self All the same, what is transpiring in this first transition is pre-cisely a development of interior selfhood. As certain modes of dominance by the outer self are overcome, we receive a new growth of inner self---a very important transition in anyone's life. Today we may take it for granted that the "self" we are talk-ing about, no matter how much trouble it may get us into, is a positive value in its own right, not to be identified with mere self-ishness or false egotism. Only fairly recently did this new assump-tion gain acceptance. For example, in The Imitation of Christ the term "self" was rarely used except in a pejorative sense, and it followed that one's main goal was to get free of it as much as possible. That view continued to be the dominant one until only a few decades ago. The shift that has taken place so recently has brought with it a new sense of the human subject, of selfhood as a valuable reality-- however much it may need to be discovered, owned, purified, and developed. A much stronger awareness of the "inner-self"--at least as a potential reality--has arisen among many members of our secu-lar culture today. Often we know it first for negative reasons: we are hurt, we feel misunderstood, we are unable to communicate our special desires or intentions, we are judged wrongly or become unsure of what we really meant. It causes a great deal of confusion, September-October 1992 679 anger, resentment, and so on. But at some point or other it may dawn on us that, despite the urgent need we may be feeling for much more growth and clarity, our inner self is a reality, valu-able in and for its own simple being. We may begin to experi-ence our own goodness as a fact. It need not, and cannot, be earned or proven. It is just "given." Through faith I may know that my personal existence is received from God who does not choose to make me without lov-ing me. My selfhood is real and my unique being is loved--even holy. That realization is such a remarkable event in anyone's life that it calls for prolonged attention and care during the earlier stages of spiritual growth. Since I assume that the above reality is widely recognized and appreciated today, I wish to focus now upon the kind of transition involved in its realization. An individual coming through that key transition begins to experience things in a personal way that may be called heartfelt. They are spiritual feelings and illuminations in the inner self. These consolations (or desolations) differ noticeably in qual-ity from emotions experienced in the outer, social world. And the transition from relying mainly on emotions to rel~ing mainly upon spiritual consolations (feeling) is a very significant "moment" in one's development. Not a False but a True Self This transition has been the main aim of novitiate programs ii~ recent centuries, although in most cases the novitiate was directed toward the positive adoption of each congregation's way of life. In other words, a single spiritual "style" or mode of oper-ation was proposed for every novice to imitate and put into prac-tice, and what needed to be sacrificed in order to obtain this goal was the ordinary tendency to demand emotional satisfactions for oneself. The self in question was taken to be wholly "selfish" and needed to be "offered up." Today a single spiritual lifestyle imposed on everyone alike has been replaced by "the charism of the founder/foundress" in a way that leaves room for the unique selfhood of each member to receive recognition and approval. As a result, the sense of self in question had to be clarified. The false self, which needs to be purified, is one that demands 680 Revievo for Religious emotional satisfactions and is upset when these are not forth-coming. But the true self, to be realized through penance and pa.tient striving against desolations, is received as a gift from God and recognized in consolations consisting of spiritual feeling and preconceptual knowing (experiences of sentir). A special way of following Christ, modeled in each congre-gation by the founder/foundress, will enable new members to undergo a radical purification of their conscious (or outer) self in the process of identifying their center of being in their heart's core. Members of vowed congregations who were trained in the older system have likely gone through an adjustment of this sort during recent decades. Each one will need to say how he or she has made the required adaptation, if indeed it has taken place, and what precisely was involved. But in general it may be said with some confidence that this first transition, which is of primary importance in spiritual growth, has been clarified as the emergence of an inner self united with the Lord in discipleship. What prevents its growth is usually the habit of expecting or relying upon emotional satisfactions, a habit which must be changed if the desired transition is to take place. Once it has been changed, and soon after the new inner self has grown accustomed to spiritual consolations, a reintegration of the'whole person with her or his emotional responses should then commence. This process will involve the formation of new social habits on the basis of the inner self so recently received from the Lord as a true actuation of one's potential being. The Second Transition An expectation of further growth should not disappear from our purview for too long after the first transition has been com-pleted. True enough, a directee who begins to enjoy true spiritual consolations does require considerable time (perhaps several years) to integrate them and create a new way of life on the basis of the inner self they bring alive. But the moment will inevitably come when remembering past graces will no longer suffice. As soon as signs of this new need begin to appear, the director (if not the directee) ought to recognize them. Such signs may point to the onset of a second, rather different transition. What might signs of this new sort be like? In general, con-solations of "the Second Week type" curiously do not seem to Septentber-October 1992 681 Wickbam ¯ Key Transitions operate "as well as" ones of an earlier stage. In different contexts, we should notice, St. Ignatius employs the same word, "consola-tion," in somewhat different senses. In the First Week, for exam-ple, which deals with persons who seek to be more and more purified from their sins, the ferm simply means experiences lead-ing to closer union with God. But in the Second Week it means experiences of persons bound in close discipleship to the Lord; because these apparent consolations may come from God or from the enemy, they need to be examined much more carefully. It is my contention here that the term is further varied in the Third and Fourth Weeks: if it gains in nuance by moving from the purgative to the illuminative way, we should not be surprised that it varies again in moving to the unitive way. It is usually rather puzzling to find that "what used to make me happy no longer does so." Naturally enough, we normally expect things to continue as they were. But the fact of the matter is that we may change so significantly (because of Our authentic spiritual growth) that what used to console us does not console us any more. Former ways, including ways of praying, that we had first discovered with some difficulty and later came to enjoy with a sense of real progress now seem to leave us cold. They no longer satisfy our hearts, but instead cause a certain malaise or uneasiness. It can be quite disconcerting. What can have gone wrong? At first we may fasten on various explanations: we are not trying hard enough; we have grown com-placent and lack humility; we should return to our former graces with renewed enthusiasm, and so on. But try as we will, the loss of taste, the lack of any real sense of meaning and .value in our usual way of life, continues to bother us. Of course, many different factors may be relevant in the case of each person. But I want to introduce the possibility of a new kind of transition as an important consideration in many cases. If indeed the divine Spirit is moving us to a new stage of growth, then we are obliged to give it some attention. Unitive Experiences Since what I will be describing his to do with the unitive way, let me begin by insisting that this traditional stage of spiritual development is not exceptional, not meant for only a very few persons, and not regularly accompanied by unusual mystical phe- 682 Review for Religious nomena. Unitive graces are an ordinary occurrence in most devout lives, just as are those of the illuminative and purgative ways. (Besides, concretely speaking, even after one has discerned unitive experiences, he or she is not usually separated for very long from renewed moments of purification and illumination. Perhaps one should stress the fact that occasional unitive graces do not mean one is "firmly established" in the unitive way--what-ever that may mean.) It is my conviction that the Third and Fourth Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises cannot be reduced to a "confirmation of Second Week graces." That may be legitimate in many cases, but the limitation ought to be spelled out rather than turned into a general rule. Let me be explicit: a limitation of Third and Fourth Week graces occurs quite legitimately when the individual person has for the first time received graces belonging to the first transition or when a notable deepening of that transition has been granted. In other words, the person's "inner self" has been realized or deep-ened in graces of union with Christ--and this is quite new for this individual. In that case (and it is a very important develop-ment) the Third and Fourth Weeks are likely to consist mainly of graces that confirm the key event that has so recently transformed the person involved. The Passion of Jesus may be shared in many different ways-- even by the same people at different times. I may cling to the cross in a sort of desperation if I am in serious danger of falling into mortal sin. Or during a crisis of decision making or of self-doubt I may dwell in the Garden of Gethsemane. Alternatively, I might find my personal illness or injuries transformed by a new way of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Or I could accept obsta-cles thrown across my path, get free of resentments that have long bothered me, or deal more creatively with insults and humil-iations that come my way by prayerfully participating in what the Lord endured in his Passion out of love for me. This list could be much extended, but I simply wish to illus-trate here the wide variety of possible experiences we may find. At least a mention may be made of special graces of union with the Passion, such as we may read about in St. Juliana or other spiri-tual writers. Some of these may be clarified in what follows, but my main concern is to speak about Third Week (and Fourth Week) graces in a way that might enable ordinary Christians seek- September-October 1992 683 ~ickham ¯ Key Transitions ing a closer union with the Lord to recognize the possible mean-ing of unitive experiences that may also have been given to them. When the Passion of Christ "confirms" the first transition in the experience of a given directee, then that person's union with the Lord (so recently received or deepened) may be clarified and strengthened through worldly rejections and insults, even when these are taken in prayer to the limit situations of betrayal, impris-onment, violence, condemnation, and death. In other words, one's interior meaning and value as a person created and saved by the Lord and called to his service will become much more surely "known" in consolations received when contemplating the Passion. The Resurrection contemplations, in similar fashion, may confirm the previous grace more positively through experiences of a new way of life operating out of spiritual feelings received in the depths of the inner self. Those "Second Week" consolations may become clarified and strengthened through experiences of union with the risen Lord. Such graces received during the Fourth Week are to be discerned, unless I am mistaken, as confirming the Second Week graces already obtained by the directee. Limiting the Last Two Weeks In short, in these cases (only), confirmation of the Election in the Passion and Resurrection contemplations may be taken as appropriate during the Third and Fourth Weeks. This means that the central grace of the Spiritual Exercises is seen to be one of inti-mate personal union with Jesus (most fully revealed in the Election). What I have called the "first transition" may be rec-ognized as the main event for the individual person one is direct-ing-- even during the last two Weeks. So frequently is this the case today that many directors tend to consider it the only true goal of the Third and Fourth Weeks. But if that is so, then their notion of the unitive way has become dangerously foreshortened. For all practical purposes, it has been subordinated to the purgative and illuminative ways. But if the unitive way is truly a normal dimension in the growth of every devout Christian (as I believe it to be), then its omission from the Spiritual Exercises would be a limitation that raises serious questions. And to restrict unitive graces to a few exceptional persons would, in my opinion, be equally damaging. There is secular evidence to give us pause today. When 684 Review fbr Religious Maslow began to publish his findings on "peak experiences," he was under the impression that only a small number of persons had undergone this type of interior opening. But further research by himself and others produced widespread testimonies to simi-lar events. Eventually he reached the conviction that peak expe-riences of one kind or another are universal, although ignored or repressed by a hardy few. While his concept of "peak experiences" is ambiguous and may refer to quite a wide range of phenomena, his evidence cannot be restricted to what I have named the first transition. What I would like to call the second transition, then, would always assume the previous acquisition of first-transition graces. For example, if we suppose that a directee before making the Spiritual Exercises has already received profound graces of the Second Week type, what would likely occur during the first two Weeks? Usually one would expect the directee to receive confir-matory graces during those meditations and contemplations. But I would add that such prayer experiences might also be prepara-tory to more advanced graces possibly to be offered during Weeks Three and Four. If a director is not open to this possibility, then the fore-shortening of the Exercises, already mentioned, becomes all too likely. And if the more advanced graces of the second transition are actually given, such a director would not know what to make of them. The directee's experiences might easily be misunder-stood and the director could fall into false discernments. I believe that this has in fact occurred far too often. Challenges to a Good Way of Life The reality of spiritual growth reveals how frequendy believ-ers find that God disallows their apparently excellent form of commitment to the divine service. "The rug is pulled out from under their feet," we could say. Let us assume, for the sake of argument here, that the way of life of a given directee is truly unselfish and generous. It has been discerned carefully under direction, and has in fact become fruitful in its apostolic outreach. Is it possible that God might call the individual to surrender, or move away from, this entirely good way of life? Not only is it possible, it ftequendy takes place. A car accident, a heart attack, a financial loss, or social changes intervene to make September-October 1992 685 IVickbam ¯ Key Transitions our chosen course no longer viable. From many (limited) points of view, this makes no sense at all. But the point of view that mat-ters is the divine one--where we are called to believe and trust without knowing why, without making our own merely "common sense views" the final criterion in our discernment. This is what must have challenged Mary, the Mother of Jesus, on that first Holy Saturday. To her way of thinking, what could have been better than the life and teaching of Jesus? And yet its rejection in Israel was permitted by the divine mystery. Mary had to accept that baffling course of events, painful as it was in the extreme, without any "human" understanding of its value. We might say that God asked her to endure a spiritual death in her own heart corresponding exactly with the actual death of her Son. If this line of thought is pushed a little further, of course, we may perceive that the Passion and Death of Jesus was itself most acutely a spiritual death for our Lord himself. Had he not set his heart upon the conversion of Israel whom he desired to gather under his wings as a hen gathers her chicks? But they would not have it so. Instead, he was compelled to accept the rejection of his teachings, and of himself with them, at the hands of those in Israel who were in positions of wealth, prestige, and power. Only a few remained his followers. Jesus embraced this destiny out of love for all his people (including the very ones who were bent on his destruction). Not only did he accept the loss of what he had hoped to gain, but he did so with generosity of spirit. And so the Father raised him to a new role in the course of our history, a role that brought him into direct relation with every nation on earth. That spiritual death, which he so fully accepted, led to a new form of spiritual life for every people--even for ourselves. This, of course, is the pattern set for all of us by our Lord in his paschal mystery. But it should be obvious that we do not reach the fuller modes of participation all at once. Only gradually over many years do the devout followers of Jesus find the path to a more complete union with the Lord in the mystery of divine pur-pose. This does not mean that what we presently do will certainly be taken away during our course of active life (that remains a mystery of the future). It means only that, if we do move forward in union with the Lord, our basic attitude toward what we do and who we are will likely be tested in a more radical way. Even so, 686 Re~ie~ for Religious those who know us externally may not even notice the changes occurring deep within us. But somehow, through threats of illness, accidents, or altered situations that touch each one of us deeply, experiences like those that came upon our Lady and the other disciples of our Lord-- experiences, that is, of a spiritual death corresponding to the actual death embraced by Jesus out of love--will need to be encountered. And if we are graced by the divine love, we may pass through that "radicalization of the paschal mystery" so as to enter into a new kind of life in God--or at least into momentary tastes of it. This is what I mean by unitive graces. The Root of the Matter The term "radicalization" refers to the removal of more deeply rooted barriers to union with the Lord. Negative events similar to the ones mentioned above may occur in our lives, of course, without becoming the occasion of unitive graces. What is assumed here is that advanced graces of purification from sin have already been received, and that graces of intimate discipleship have also been conferred which have enabled well-discerned com-mitments to service of the Lord's kingdom in this world. It is only some years after a first transition has been made that certain neg-ative events may trigger an experience of lost selfhood or lost capacity for going on--even though outwardly one still goes throughthe motions that resemble a normal life. But why is it necessary to "die" to our good interior self in order to "live" in the heights of the spirit? Whatever answers we attempt will necessarily dwell within the mystery of divine union. Does our chosen way of life in its underpinnings somehow tend to place a barrier between ourselves and God? If so, why should that be? Does our most intimate sense of true selfhood always to some degree (because it remains unfinished) hinder us in our encoun-ters with God? Does our entry into utter transcendence always call for a further surrender--and yet never actually deny the validity of our individual and communal being? (These are far from being new questions--they belong to a well-worn tradition.) Sometimes our experiences of union seem to emphasize a oneness that obliterates awareness of distinct selfhood or to bring about a newness of love-identity in the Other that makes us eas- September-October 1992 687 ily forget our usual human longing for recognition as individuals. True. But these passing tastes and their remembered glories refer to unitive graces which at first can stun us with their breakthrough "difference." By this I mean that the experiential qualities tend to capture too much attention at first--they are new to us, very fulfilling, and so ~ometimes a bit extravagant. Nonetheless, the substantial reality of a grace, once given, is never taken away by the Lord even though the experiential aspects are temporary. We remember the experiences, but we are still inwardly changed and even "put together" differently by the substantial character of those gifts. The Way of the Cross In the specific case of unitive graces, however, a prior expe-rience of spiritual death points to another factor. There is no way to Easter, as we know, that does not pass through Calvary. In the terms already used above, this means that radical experiences of union with the risen Lord in the "heights of the spirit" are not possible for us until we have undergone a spiritual death "in the depths of the soul." P~erhaps this factor can be clarified by saying that we are not ready for unitive graces (of the Fourth Week type of consolation) until we have experienced the loss of interior consolations previ-ously given us (Second Week spiritual feelings and illuminations). In terms of selfhood, we might say that we must die (not to any false self, but) to the good "inner self" given to us in the first transition. Only the loss of that very g~od gift can prepare us to receive a "higher self," spiritually communicated to us by the risen Christ in this second transition. In consequence, the two transitions I have been describing are related in the Spiritual Exercises--and beyond them. The "spiritual death" that essentially prepares for the second transition is the experiential loss precisely of the grace already received in the first transition. There can be no second transition, then, if the first has not previously occurred. We should note that the "second kind of humility" is cer-tainly meant for use in the Election. The "third kind of humility," on the other hand, is intended to enable directees--should they actually receive that grace--to move forward into the second tran-sition after their full acceptance of the first. 688 Review for Religious Concretely, of course, this conceptual clarity is muddied by many variations in practice: both transitions may be combined or crossmated, along with backward and forward movements, fre-quent delays and regressions, sudden spurts and more sudden withdrawals--endless "visions and revisions," as Eliot puts it. The actual circumstances do not often present ready-made examples for our mental laboratory. MI the same, our awareness of the "crucial" contrast between the second transition and the first may prove helpful. If the approach taken here is even approximately correct, then we may be assisted in discerning the special qualities of second-transition experiences, especially in their earlier phases (of the Third Week sort). And this may enable us to avoid false strictures on our own or others' responses to these movements of grace. Qualities of the New Life The first transition, then, moves an individual from relying mainly on emotional satisfactions to receiving spiritual consola-tions in the inner self. The sedond transition may be said to move one from a well-accepted habit of interior union with the Lord and a way of life based upon it to a new life received directly from the risen Christ and enabling experiences of a higher self. It remains to suggest various qualities of the higher life that is enabled by unitive graces. First of all, although one's ordinary life, of course, continues, along with it (and not only behind it but also "in among" it) there is known to be a divine presence-- ever so delicate and respectful of one's freedom. That factor may grow more powerful at certain times, but often it remains gentle, although unmistakable. Another feature is a "higher" movement of the Spirit--rather unlike the heartwarming and compelling graces of the first tran-sition (which are usually "deep" and "interior" in quality). It is the awareness of divine mystery operating everywhere, bringing about God's will despite all evidence to the contrary; it is a dis-position to wait for God to reveal the divine will, to expect this and not to be surprised when it comes. It means not to speak until words are given, not to act until one "knows" how the Lord desires to act in the community. These few features may be taken as examples of the higher life (often seen in the lives of the saints). In general, that nothing Septentber-October 1992 689 should prevent God from loving others through my life becomes the central desire of my existence, the main reason for continu-ing to live. It need not, on the other hand, mean that the interior expe-riences of the inner self do not return and are not customary in one who has received unitive graces. It is just that one can no longer identify oneself with them. They are available at times and should be exercised. But they may also be taken away, and one is ready now to let them go. All this is possible because the risen Lord has made his divine presence felt by uplifting one to the level of his own activities in the church, in each person, and in every part of the world. Burning Bush Afire burns outside my bedroom window, October-red euonymus its name. As I look down The blood-red leaves leap up Vivid as living rivulets of flame. Transfixed, ! stand, New-wakened in the early autumn dawn. Then, barefoot, kneel, Obedient, Although no voice is heard. What angel calls me - silent? "Here I am!" I almost cry, Drawn by this shock of unconsuming fire To listen, stricken as Moses, For some name, some quickening word. Therese Lynch csJ 690 Revie'w fbr Religious DAVID E O'CONNOR Seeking a Sense of Direction in a Time of Transition As we try to read the "signs of the times" and prepare for an unknown future, we should not forget the lessons of the past. We should take note of the cultural, theologi-cal, ecclesial, ideological, and generational influences that have moved our personal and collective lives as religious in certain directions. And we should be alert to the factual changes, adjustments, adaptations, and developments which seem to indicate some of the shapes and forms that religious life may be taking as we approach the third mil-lennium. religious life Recalling the Lessons of History Recent historical scholarship has opened our eyes to the uneven history of religious life--a history filled with crises and chaos, with high points and low? Interestingly, there have been relatively short periods of time when the church and religious life appeared to enjoy some institu-tional tranquillity and stability. More than once the whole concept of religious life seemed doomed to extinction by events out of control. Religious in North America, especially during the first part of the twentieth century preceding the Second Vatican David O'Connor ST teaches at the Washington Theological Union. He is the author of Witness and Service: Questions about Religious Life Today (Paulist Press, 1990). His address is 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. Septetttber-October 1992 691 O'Connor ¯ Seeking a Sense of Direction Council, found themselves in one of those rare stable periods in the church. It was a time when the highest leadership in the Roman Catholic Church, beginning in the late nineteenth century and ending only in the middle of the twentieth, had chosen a defensive and protective position, effectively withdrawing from a changing and modern world which, in fact, was often hostile to it. The Catholic Church centralized itself at the Vatican to a degree unknown until then. Within this same period of time, the Catholic Church in the United States developed and flourished.2 American Catholics were, for the most part, an immigrant population that experi-enced the hostility of the WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) culture. While retaining a fierce loyalty to Rome, they tried to prove they were loyal Americans as well. For them the Roman Catholic Church appeared to be the model of stability and the rock of certitude. Although the worldwide Catholic Church of this period seemed intransigent, it was, in fact, still recovering from the buf-feting of social and historical changes that had rocked it at the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Following the French Revolution, religious life and many other institutions of the church seemed to be in their death throes. Yet, by the beginning of the twentieth century, it was clear that the church and religious life had recovered their vitality and were experi-encing unprecedented growth. In the 150 years preceding Vatican II, religious life had more than recovered from previous losses. Statistically, its number of members peaked in 1965.3 The post-Vatican II period, through which we are presently living, has been one of immense social and cultural changes. The council fathers thrust the church into the modern world, and fall-out from this movement of the Spirit in the church has occa-sioned a difficult time of transition for all, especially religious in the Western world. The rnove from a church-imposed inflexibil-ity and rigidity of the pre-Vatican II period to a church-initiated reform of religious life in the post-Vatican II period brought about an upheaval that was radical and spectacular in its magni-tude and complexity.4 No one could have imagined the depth and breadth of these changes. Indeed, we are still too close to events to make a true assessment. We will have to leave that to a future generation. Presently, it is still difficult to read the signs of the times because they are so ambiguous. Yet one of the clear lessons 692 Review for Religious of history is that drastic changes in religious life in the past did precede new forms of dedication and new vitality which were appropriate for the new needs of the church in a new time and in new situations. God does speak to us through history. One of the more important lessons of history is that, while religious life appears to be perennial, individual religious insti-tutes are not. Dedication, consecra-tion, and commitment to Jesus and his people are evident in the lives of groups and individuals throughout the history of the church, but the forms these have taken and their specific expression in individual groups, communities, monasteries, and institutes does change. Institutes are like people--they are born, they grow, they live their lives, and even-tually they die.s V~hile monastic groups can sur-vive with a minimum of members, and even decrease to a handful of people in one or two monasteries, apostolic institutes cannot. Apostolic groups frequently respond to spe-cific needs at certain times and in particular places in the life of the church. Once they have achieved their purposes, they tend to fade away or find new life through adaptation and change. In any case, an apostolic group requires many members to fulfill its corpo-rate role and purpose. The institutional life of these religious, all things considered, is much shorter and more tenuous than that of monastic groups. However, some forms of religious life have had the ability to be revitalized over and over again through reform, adaptation, and new expressions. One need only consider the Rule of St. Benedict, which has been adjusted to multiple forms of monastic and quasimonastic life. While individual monasteries or groups of them fade away, new ones are established in other places and times. Each institute has its own life to live. Not a few have seemed to be dying out or even were suppressed, as was the Drastic changes in religious life in the past did precede new forms of dedication and new vitality which were appropriate for the new needs of the church in a new time and in new situations. September-October 1992 693 O'Connor ¯ Seeking a Sense of Direction Society of Jesus in 1773, only to be given new life and experi-ence spectacular growth. Nevertheless, breakdown and death are probably inevitable for every religious institute. Some may have a very short life and others may live for an unusually long time, just as individual per-sons do. Calamities and misfortunes overtake certain groups. It might be combinations of political and economic or social and religious events which occasion their breakdown and demise. Often these events have nothing to do with the interior vitality of the group. For example, .when pestilence decimated the Western world in the fourteenth century, the mendicant orders were espe-cially ravaged when many members generously ministered to the sick and dying; some orders lost half their membership.6 Time also takes its toll. The life and death of individual com-munities frequently have nothing to do with the spiritual vitality of the members. Often, in fact,'it appears that in periods of decline the membership display many virtues and signs of dedication. Their corporate life has simply come to an end. As death crowns their collective life, other dedicated people often rise up to meet the new challenges confronting the church. Contemporary Influences on Western Religious Life Cultural Factors. The church does not exist in a cultural vacuum, but in the world as it is. We are, at present, living through a period of exceptionally rapid and revolutionary cultural change in an increasingly technological society. Our Western culture has had an immense influence on the attitudes of our people toward freedom, authority, obedience, sexuality, intimacy, and affectiv-ity. Periods of rapid social change promote personal and institu-tional instability and make it extremely difficult for people, especially the young and inexperienced, to make any permanent and unconditional commitment as expected in marriage, the priesthood, or religious life. The high incidence of divorce and remarriage and the many departures from the clergy and reli-gious life coupled with a corresponding drop in vocations dur-ing the last two and a half decades manifest this unfortunate social fact. The postconciliar years also chanced to coincide with "a kind of cultural revolution which led to a break with tradition, a crisis of authority, and indifference toward questions of faith, great 69¢ Review for Religious uncertainty about moral values, and a crisis in the realm of ethics.''7 The whole world seemed caught up in a series of extraor-dinary social and cultural changes. These enormous cultural shifts and their concomitant crisis of meaning forced even the religious who did not leave their communities during these years to change their lives in such a radical way that their communities are now different from the ones they originally entered decades ago.8 The American cultural values of personalism and personal fulfillment, freedom and self-determination, pluralism, democratic self-crit-icism, and egalitarianism and an emphasis on productivity and success have frequently clashed with an older and more rigid reli-gious life.9 In the period before Vatican II, religious life became part of the Catholic ethos and was carried along by its own cogency. It was largely insulated from the broader currents of American cul-ture. This situation, however, could not continue--certainly not for many members who left it after the reforms called for by the council began to take effect,j° Moreover, Catholics are no longer social outsiders in the U.S. culture; they have joined the nation's insiders.II Because of its outsider mentality, the Catholic Church had built its own vast school system, its own hospitals, newspapers, and fraternal and professional societies parallel with everything that was found among the WASP insiders. Large numbers of Catholic men and women joined religious life. It was a natural way for many to obtain an education and take their place in the Catholic society of that time. Now that Catholics are social insid-ers, they are no longer attracted to serve only in church institu-tions, for many options are available to them in the larger society and in the church.12 Also, the present-day phenomenon of the prolongation of adolescence into the early twenties and the consequent delayed adulthood of many young people in our culture is a sociological fact.13 Large numbers of young adults remain dependent upon others and do not assume full responsibility for themselves until, perhaps, they are forced by circumstances to do so later in life. This has had a direct effect upon the vocational and formational problems facing religious communities. The perceptions of young people concerning religious life today are quite different from those of their elders.14 The younger the person, the less he or she perceives religious life as dynamic and effective, and the less attractive it is to him or her. Moreover, Septentber-October 1992 695 O'Connor ¯ Seeking a Sense of Direction because the positive perception women religious have of them-selves is not shared in the same degree by those outside religious life, it does not bode well for the replacement of present mem-bership. 15 Most significantly, because of the changed perceptions regarding the value of a celibate lifestyle on the part of so many people in our culture, the continuance of a celibate religious life, as we know it, is highly problematic with regard to the availabil-ity of potential candidates. There are very few people open to considering such a lifestyle, in the opinion of professional observers.16 Therefore, to state that religious life is countercultural in our present society is to assert an all-too-obvious fact. Theological and Ecclesial Factors. Pope John Paul II expressed his own grave concern about the drop in religious vocations when he sent a letter to the bishops of the United States on 3 April 1983. A pontifical commission was established to investigate the matter--dubbed the Quinn Commission because Archbishop John R. Quinn, of San Francisco, was appointed the pontifical dele-gate. 17 This commission made its lengthy report to the pontiff in October 1986 and a shorter one to the U.S. bishops in November 1986.18 The report did affirm many positive developments sucla as the rediscovery of the charisms of many institutes, the deepening of authentic spirituality, a new appreciation of apostolic religious life, a new awareness of the uniqueness of each individual reli-gious, the promotion of a greater participation in the decision-making processes of the institute, a new appreciation of the universality of the church's mission, a growing awareness of the feminine, the development of new constitutions, and new signs of hope through older and more mature vocations.19 It did note, however, that the universal call to holiness of all members of the church made at Vatican II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (§§ 39-42) affected religious and those who were contemplating entering religious life. This affir-mation of a common vocation to live a full Christian life was inserted in the conciliar document before its treatment of reli-gious life. It effectively undercut the popular misconception that the call to holiness lay primarily in religious life and in the priest-hood, or that one needed to enter them to pursue holiness seri-ously. A clear call to holiness was being made to (and heard by) 696 Review for Religious those in the married and the single life and not just to those liv-ing the celibacy of the religious life and the priesthood. Second, religious women and men took to their hearts the council documents' emphasis on social justice, which expanded upon the social teachings of the Gospel and the popes. This emphasis was reinforced by the personal experience of religious when they encountered social evil and injustice in their efforts to live and preach the Gospel. This experience, however, seemed to some to place apostolic religious in a theological bind between two apparently contrary church expectations: that they live "apart from the world" while they live and minister with an "option for the poor" in a modern world filled with social injustice. Third, the council'g reaffirmation of the need for the lay peo-ple to serve and to minister--to evangelize--in response to their baptismal call had an effect on religious. They became aware of the apostolic call made to all the faithful. The identity of religious can become clouded in periods of theological and ecclesial change. Their sense of direction and their morale are affected. Some religious now see themselves more as lay people. They react negatively to any restriction they per-ceive

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

Issue 47.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1988. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published eveD' 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. REVIEW FOR RELiGiOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIG~OUS. 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: REwEw 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 July/August 1988 Volume 47 Number 4 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rwv~v.w Eon RvJ.w.~ous; 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 Rwv~v.w FOR Rv.~,w, lous; 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, M! 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. Jesus and Francis as Gospel Makers: An Experience in Kenosis Jude Winkler, O.F.M.Conv. This paper is adapted from lhe keynote address of the 1987 meeting of the Inter-province Conference of the Conventual Franciscans. Father Jude is slationed al St. Hyacinth College and Seminary; Granby, Massachusetts 01033. When one speaks of Jesus and Francis as Gospel makers, one is led to ask exactly what is meant by the term "Gospel." Probably the best way to respond to that question is to consider the formation of a particular Gospel. This will help one to determine which material the community considered to be so essential, so central to the message of Christ that it was necessary to pass it down to future generations of Christians. The starting point, therefore, is an individual Christian community: the com-munity which produced the first Gospel, that written by the evangelist Mark. Although there are other opinions, most scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome around 70 A.D. How could one describe Rome and the Roman Christian community of those days? Rome was the center of the Western world. Wealth poured in from the empire, which stretched from the English Channel to the Syrian De-sert. In certain ways the city was reaching the apex of its magnificence. The ruins from the great fire under Nero had been removed and much 0f the city was being rebuilt, this time in marble and not wood. A sense of the glory of Rome can be found in chapter 18 of the Book of Revela-tion, where John speaks of the many products that could be bought and sold in that city. Yet there was also a certain amount of instability in the Roman psyche in 70 A.D. The previous decade had witnessed the forced suicide of Nero and the two-year period during which three different em-perors ruled the empire. The civil war which ensued had been as bad as 481 482 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 that which had followed the death of Julius Caesar, and it had left the empire badly shaken. As often happened in the ancient world, instabil-ity in Rome had led to rebellion in the provinces. One example of this is the fact that the Romans were only now crushing a troublesome rebel-lion in Palestine. In addition to this, the social fabric of the city had de-generated over the past several decades. Large numbers of slaves had been brought to Rome following the conquests of new territories. Be-cause there were so many slaves to do work which had formerly been done by members of the lower middle class and the artisans of Rome, large numbers of people had been put out of work. These unemployed masses were fed by the public dole and kept occupied by the spectacles sponsored by the government (the proverbial bread and circuses). Thus, even though imperial power was great and the empire would soon reach its greatest expanse, there was something unsettled in the Roman char-acter. Essentially, the city was socially, morally, and spiritually bank-rupt. This is most evident in the fact that large numbers of Romans were participating in various mystery cults that had arrived from the east. They were looking for something which would give their lives purpose. And what of the Christian community of Rome? The community had been founded as early as the forties during the reign of Emperor Claudius, but it was not yet very large. The first missionaries to Rome were probably Jewish Christians from the Jerusalem community. This young church had suffered persecution: an edict had been issued by Claudius which expelled certain Jews (most probably the Jewish Chris-tians) from Rome because of difficulties caused by a troublemaker named Crestus (most probably a form ofChristus = Christ). Recently there had been the persecution under Nero in which both Peter and Paul are said to have died. Further complicating the situation was some internal dis-sent in the community: From what can be gleaned from Paul's Letter to the Romans, it is obvious that there was a bit of tension between those who had allied themselves with a more Jewish interpretation of the Chris-tian life and those who followed Paul's ideas. Add to that the fact that most of the new converts in the city were now coming from the Gentiles (and would thus be less likely to defend the old Jewish ways) and one can see that there was bound to be some confusion. And now, some forty or fifty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, another crisis was facing this fledgling church: the apostles and the disciples who had known Jesus were dying. One after another the wit-nesses to the Christ event were passing from the scene. This would be especially frightening in a time of instability. For the Jewish Christians Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 41~3 of Rome, there was the confusion of the Jewish rebellion in Palestine which had resulted in the destruction of the temple. The building which they had called the dwelling place of God on earth was now a ruin, and the Jewish Christians did not know what to make of this. Would Juda-ism continue? For the Gentile Christians, there was the political and so-cial instability. For,the entire Christian community, there was the uncer-tainty of which direction the Church was taking. Would it remain a Jew-ish sect or would it become something radically new? What would unify the Church and give it stability? It was in this context that the Gospel of Mark was produced. Its author, whether or not he was actually the John Mark mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, wrote it so that the Gospel message of what Jesus had done and said, of how he had died and rose, might be passed down. His Gospel would become the ballast which steadied the course of the Roman church in those troubled times. ¯ Given all of this, one would certainly have some expectations about how this Gospel would present the character of Jesus. If the Gospel were intended for the Jewish-Christian audience, one would expect Jesus to be the perfect fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies. He would be the Messiah whose power was greater than that of the Romans. If the Gospel were intended for the pagans, then Jesus would have to be at least as great as the pagan gods. Mark would have to show, as did Moses and Elijah, that the God of Israel was far superior to the gods of the Gen-tiles. For either audience, this Jesus would have to manifest his power and authority openly, for the people needed a wonder worker, a great hero who would give them hope in these troubled times. And yet, oddly enough, this is the exact opposite of the Jesus pre-sented by the Gospel of Mark. While one would expect a powerful and glorious Messiah, Mark presents one who is weak and lowly, one who has embraced an emptying Out (kenosis) of his divinity, as Paul describes it in the Letter to the Philippians when he speaks of Jesus who had been in the form of God but who emptied himself by becoming human and even dying on the cross. This idea is presented ina number of ways in the Gospel, but the most evident is the so-called Messianic secret. Over and over again Jesus commands his disciples and the demons whom he has expelled to be silent concerning the fact that he is Messiah. Why should he do that when the entire purpose of the Gospel is to show that he is, in fact, the Messiah? The reason is that his audience has the wrong idea of what it means to be the Messiah. They want a political Messiah who will manifest himself in power. Jesus is not that type of Messiah, 484 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 and he refuses to be categorized in that way. Peter's profession of faith at Caesarea Philippi makes that clear. Je-sus has asked his disciples who people think that he is. Peter responds that some think that he is a prophet and others that he is John the Bap-tist. He then asks Peter who he thinks he is. Peter responds that he is the Messiah. Jesus commends him on this and then describes how the Mes-siah will have to suffer and die. When Peter hears this, he cannot be-lieve what Jesus is saying. He is sure that the Messiah will become a king and that he, Peter himself, will rule with him. Here Jesus is predicting defeat. This is too much for Peter; it is obviously a bad mistake. So Pe-ter takes Jesus aside and tells him not to say these things. Jesus responds harshly, telling Peter to get behind him .and calling him Satan, the tempter; This misunderstanding by the apostles is repeated again in later chap-ters when Jesus again predicts his passion. Once, as a response to the prediction, the apostles argue about who the greatest among them might be while another time James and John ask to be seated at his right and left when he comes into glory. He is telling them that he will die, and all they are interested in is to divide his inheritance. Why do the apos-tles and even the family of Jesus speak in such an inappropriate man-ner? Why do they have such a difficult time understanding who he is and what his being Messiah means? Basically it is because their entire con-ception of God is mistaken. They think that God will come in power on the Day of the Lord to defeat the powers of evil, such as the Romans and the Pharisees. Instead, Jesus defeats them in weakness. As John would later state, Jesus was the king who ruled from a tree, the cross. It was exactly in this emptying out that evil was defeated, for while the powers of evil clung to power and tried to exercise it over others, Jesus clung to love and wanted to share it with all. That is the point behind the temptations of Peter and the apostles as well as the temptation in the desert. Even the taunts with which the crowd jeered Jesus, that he should come down off the cross, are a call to power. If Jesus had come down from the cross, he would have shown himself to be God almighty, but since love necessarily involves a sacrifice of self, he could not have shown himself to be loving. The author of the Book of Revelation presents this same idea with the images of the lion and the lamb. In the Book of Revelation, that which one sees is that which is superficial while that which one hears is the spiritual significance. John sees a lamb which was slain, and he hears that it is the lion of Judah. This lion of Judah was one of the fa- Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 485 vorite symbols for the Messiah in the Old Testament. The lion of Judah was a symbol for power. A lion conquers by tearing apart its enemies, and this was what the Messiah was supposed to do--defeat his enemies with power. This particular lion is different, however, for it will con-quer by dying. This becomes evident when one realizes that this lion is also the lamb who conquered evil by allowing himself to be slain. In other words, all of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Mes-siah in which he is seen as a powerful conqueror are turned on their head. He would not be a paradigm of power but rather of powerlessness. This is the greatest of the ironies of the Gospel message. This einptying out of oneself is not only intended for the Messiah, but it is an open invitation and a necessary prerequisite for a life of dis-cipleship. Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot en-ter the kingdom of God. If you would save your life, you must lose it. Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and then come, follow me. The consequences of such a surrender are frightening, for it means a loss of control. It means living totally for and in another and never being sure where the life of discipleship will lead one, The foxes have their lairs and the birds (Jr the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. But he who had invited them to this life of radical faith was himself faithful. The very fact that he allowed his story to be told in this Gos-pel, the fact that his living spirit infused these human words with that which was divine, proved that he would never abandon his loved ones. For these words, the words of the Gospel, were inspired, and this inspi-ration was itself an example of kenosis. Theologians sometimes speak of inspiration as if the Holy Spirit were an executive dictating a letter to a secretary, the evangelist. But this image does not respect the human dimension of the process or the great love expressed by God in allowing his word to undergo a kenosis. Msgr. Edelby, who spoke at the Second Vatican Council, suggested another model: Just as the Holy Spirit entered into Mary and joined the eternal Word of God with that which was human and thus produced the Word made flesh, so also the Spirit inspired (breathed into) those who wrote so that the eternal Word of God entered into that which was hu-man, their human ability to write and their own talents and energy and purpose, and they gave birth to the word made flesh, this time the Gos-pels. In other words, the divine word of God became enfleshed in hu-man words with all that that means. It was st~bject to the weakness of human expression. One example of this is the horrendous literary style 486 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 of the Gospel of Mark. Unlike the other Gospels, it is a pasting together of various preexistent sources that barely become a narrative. One would almost think that it was written by a high school freshman writing his first term paper. He went and photocopied twenty or so articles (or, in this case, preexistent sources), cut out the important sections, and stuck them together with his glue pen. And yet this Gospel contains the eter-nal word of God. What greater sign of love could God give this commu-nity, what better way to guide them in this time of confusion? God was clearly showing the community that he would work in and through weak-ness. And the miracle of God's love does not even end there. Just as the eternal Word of God joined with that which was human in Mary and be-came the Word of God made flesh, and just as the eternal word of God joined with that which was human in the literary talents of the evangel-ist and became another manifestation of God's kenosis, so his word, the Gospel message, joined that which was human, the individual Christian of the community, to become a new manifestation of God's presence, his body, the Church. The community, insofar as it cooperated with the grace of God, became a continuation of the IncarnationS:'~ What are some of the consequences of this fact? One of the most im-portant is that, in combining with the human, the word of God necessar-ily assumed the weakness of that condition. God did not reject the hu-manity of the believers as the Gnostics and Docetists would have it, but he transformed that humanity so that it was to be that which God in-tended it to be. A practical application of this principle is to spirituality. We are not so much called to be perfect as to be faithful. If we were to seek to be perfect, freed from all weakness, we could very well be try-ing to control our own destiny and to show God that he owes us some-thing, that is, love, salvation, and so forth. In trying to be faithful, we admit our weakness and rely upon God's mercy and love, which enables us to do what we really cannot do on our own. Which raises a second consequence: In order to manifest God's pres-ence, we must surrender. Let it be done to me according to your word. Each believer is called to empty himself of that which is selfish, that which bespeaks control, and to place himself in the Lord's hands. We are to undergo metanoia. As was said before, that can be frightening, for we would like to know where we are going. We like to think that given the right formula, given the right therapist, and so forth, we could do it (a subtle form of Pelagianism). But the crucial message of the Chris-tian experience is that the believer really cannot make it, that sooner or Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 41~7 later we will hit the wall and realize that we are all fundamentally weak, broken, unable to save ourselves. When we finally admit that we are anawim, the lowly ones, and we reach out, it is then that we will allow the Spirit of the Lord to inspire us (to send his life-giving breath into flesh which was all but dead). Finally, one of the most disturbing consequences of this process is the fact that we are so human, even as a faith community. Who of us would not prefer to live among people who were more spiritually ma-ture, who would support us in our weakness and be perfect companions for the journey? Instead, what do we get--all too often we are the blind leading the blind. To the human eye, this community of ours barely looks like Christ incarnate, but to the eyes of faith it is obvious. Consider Mark's portrayal of Jesus and the apostles' difficulty in recognizing him as Messiah--it is the same difficulty we have in seeing Christ in our com-munities, which are so often so fleshly. And yet he is there, and if we put aside our prejudices and we become weak, we will see him. The New Testament saw this process of becoming a manifestation of the kenosis of Christ and speaks of it at length. Paul calls the believ-ers ambassadors of Christ in 2 Corinthians. The Acts of the Apostles serves as the second volume of the Gospel of Luke to show how this con-tinuation of the Incarnation provoked a response of faith among those who would listen. And then there are the Johannine writings, which are even more intimate. Everyone knows that love is one of the central themes of the Gospel of John, but some of the richness of that message is sometimes lost be-cause one fails to recognize all of the symbolic messages contained in the Gospel. For John and the author of the Book of Revelation, Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is his bride. Each follower of Christ, as a member of that Church, is to produce heirs for Christ. An example of this emphasis is the story of the woman at the well. This well story is actually a clever use of a leitmotif. A leitmotif is a set literary pattern that one finds throughout a literary work. One example is the set pattern that one would expect to find at the end of a western movie: the hero rides off into the sunset. The well stories are a leitmotif of the Old Testament. One meets one's spouse at a well. Isaac meets Re-bekah there (through Abraham's servant), Jacob meets Rachel, Moses meets Zipporah, and Ruth meets Boaz. Furthermore, one can tell what is important in the story by small changes in the set pattern. The normal pattern is that a man comes to the well, meets a woman who offers him water, and they decide to marry and live happily ever after. In the Jacob 488 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 story, however, Jacob must first uncover the well, for it is covered by a heavy stone (a sign of his difficulty in being able to marry her). With Ruth, it is the man who offers the woman water, for she is a foreigner and is being invited into the people of Israel. What of the Samaritan woman at the well? Sheis intended to be a symbol for the bride of Christ, the Church. Like the Church (and Israel), she has been married five times before, chasing after any god who offered her what she wanted. The woman offers Jesus water, but he offers her a different water, one that signifies the spiritual life that he would give her. They would not cling to each other in human form (as did the Jews in Jerusalem and the Sa-maritans on Mount Gerazim), but would live a spiritual marriage. Their marriage would be fruitful, for she would become a spring which would overflow (a spring or well being a symbol of her'womb which would pro-duce many children for the Lord). A second series of text.~ carries this message under the form of vo-cabulary taken from the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is an Old Testament work which speaks of a very sensual love between a man and a woman. Even in Old Testament times it was interpreted as represent-ing the love of Yahweh for his people Israel. Two pericopes in the Gos-pel of John use that vocabulary extensively to remind the reader of that love. The first is when Mary anoints Jesus with oil in chapter 12 and the other is when Mary Magdalene searches for her beloved, the Lord, in chapter 20. Again, the message is clear in both: The women represent the Church which would be united to Christ in a spiritual marriage (that is, the order to Mary Magdalene not to cling to him for their marriage is not physical). Finally, there is a series of texts based upon the Old Testament levirite marriage institution. This institution was an attempt to ensure a progeny for a family. If a man died and had not produced a male child, then his next of kin would marry the widow and the first male child of this union would be named after the deceased husband. If the next of kin refused to marry her, she would take him .before the elders of the city and untie his sandal and spit in his face, saying that this was what a man deserved who would not give a descendant to his brother. John the Bap-tist, when asked whether he was the Messiah, responds that he is~not wor-thy to untie his sandal. This is not only a proclamation of humility; it is a message that he has no right to marry the widow (Israel, which had treated God as if he were dead). Jesus is the next of kin, and he will pro-duce an offspring. In fact, John speaks of how he rejoices at the voice of the bridegroom and he speaks of how that bridegroom must increase. Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 489 The word used when he speaks of how Christ must increase is the same word as that used when God tells humans to go forth and multiply in the Book of Genesis. In other words, John the Baptist is giving the best man's toast at a wedding, for he is wishing that Jesus have many chil-dren. But does Jesus have children? He really does not have any children during his lifetime, which explains another scene. Jesus tells his mother that John is to be her son, and he tells John that Mary is to be his mother. He is adopting John so that he (and the apostles) may bear children in his name (for they would, in fact, be called Christians). And when does Christ marry the Church? There are three possibili-ties. One of them is Pentecost, when the Spirit gives life to the Church. The Fathers of the Church also speak of two other possibilities. One of them is the Baptism of Jesus, when the Spirit comes upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Why a dove? Because it is a sign of love ("my little turtledove"). This is the love of Jesus and his Church. Still a third pos-sibility is on the cross. How do the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) marry? God took a rib from his ~side and formed woman. And the sol-dier pierced his side with a lance and immediately blood and water flowed out, the signs of his sacramental love for his bride, the Church. This message that Christ is our groom is sometimes distasteful to some males. Yet the image is not only operable but is profound as long as one leaves the image a bit vague. When we allow Christ's Spirit to enter us, we become one with Christ. Isn't that, after all, the purpose of the Eucharist? We take his flesh and make it one with our own. And the two of them shall become one flesh. In other words, the Eucharist is making love with God. And that union has to be fruitful, producing many offspring. Jesus: the union of the eternal Word of God and created flesh. The Gospel: the union of the eternal word of God and human lan-guage. The community: the union of the eternal Word of God and weak in-dividuals, each becoming a manifestation of Christ's presence. And what did all of this mean for Francis of Assisi? Francis was born in an age in which the kenosis of the eternal word of God had been deem-phasized. Historians speak of two major reasons for this deemphasis. The first has to do with the Arian heresy, which overemphasized the human-ity of Christ to the detriment of his divinity and which refused to recog-nize Jesus as the equal of God the Father. As a reaction to this heresy, many in the Church centered in upon the glory of the eternal Lord Je- 490 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 sus. A second reason for the situation was the social conditions of the time: the feudal system. People tended to pattern their God upon the po-litical reality of the day, and so they made Christ into a feudal Lord who was to be obeyed, and not so much loved. Francis himself was a product of his age. This can be seen in his first futile attempt at conversion when he had a dream that he was to serve a great lord. He naturally interpreted this as a call to fight in one of the many wars for the cause of the Lord occurring in his day. He saw this call as a call to po~ver. It was only when he came to know his Lord that he realized that the call was actually one to powerlessness. It was no accident that his con-version is intimately tied to his vision of the crucifix speaking to him. In coming to know the Lord who empties himself of power and glory, he was able to recognize the need to surrender to the will of that Lord, to become smaller and humbler. As in the days of the origin of the Gos-pel of Mark, the opposite would have been expected. There were great upheavals o.ccurring in the world: political, economic, and religious. Fran-cis could have been expected to search for a model based upon a great emperor or a successful burgher or even the lofty Holy Father, but he chose none of them. He chose instead a Lord who became flesh and let that flesh be nailed to a tree. And because his Lord had emptied himself of power, Francis felt him-self called to do the same. He would strip himself of his father's clothes so that he could belong to the Lord alone. He would lay aside even those most deeply rooted prejudices such as his loathing of lepers and see them as children of God. Bonaventure reports: "Francis now developed a spirit of poverty, with a deep sense of humility and an attitude of pro-found compassion. He had never been able to stand the sight of lepers, even at a distance, and he always avoided meeting them, but now in or-der to arrive at perfect self-contempt he served them devoutly with all humility and kindness, because the prophet Isaiah tells us that Christ cru-cified was regarded as a leper and despised. He visited their houses fre-quently and distributed alms among them generously, kissing their hands and lips with deep compassion." In this surrender Francis went beyond the service of an ideal. He was not so much striving after perfection as being a man in love, for Francis had fallen head over heels in love with his God. He, like John the Evan-gelist, interpreted the kenosis of his Lord as an act" of unreserved love, and he wanted to respond in a like manner. He recognized, too, the con-tinuing kenosis of our Lord in his word and in the sacrament of his body Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 491 and blood. He had great devotion to the presence of God in his word. He wrote the following to a general chapter of his friars: "I urge all my friars and I encourage them in Christ to show all possible respect for God's words wherever they may happen to find the.m in writing. If they are not kept properly or if they lie thrown about disrespectfully, they should pick them up and put them aside, paying honor in his words to God who spoke them. God's words sanctify numerous objects, and it is by the power of the words of Christ that the sacrament of the altar is conse-crated." He believed that this word was effective, for he knew that it was a manifestation of the eternal word of God. As 2 Celano reports, "he often said that a man would easily move from knowledge of himself to a knowledge of God who would set himself to study the Scriptures hum-bly, not presumptuously." Likewise, knowing that the sacrament of the Eucharist is a continu-ation of the Incarnation and thus of the living kenosis of his Lord, he held it in greatest esteem. He admonished his friars over and over again to honor and respect that presence. His letter to all clerics is a good ex-ample: "We clerics cannot overlook the sinful neglect and ignorance some people are guilty of with regard to the holy body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are careless, too, about his holy name and the writings which contain his words, the words that consecrate his body. We know his body is not present unless the bread is first consecrated by these words. Indeed, in this world there is nothing of the Most High him-self that we can possess and contemplate with our eyeslexcept his body and blood, his name and his words, by which we were created and by which we have been brought back from death to life." Francis, being thus in love with his Lord, did not limit his recogni-tion of the presence of the Lord to these signs. Bonaventure states that in everything beautiful he saw him who is beauty itself, and he followed his beloved everywhere by his likeness imprinted on creation. He saw a worm and thought of how the words of the suffering servant of Yah-weh were applied to Jesus, "I am a worm and not a man." He saw a lamb and remembered the lamb of God who died for his sins. He saw a bird or a fish and felt compelled to preach to it. Being one with his Lord, he saw him everywhere and in everything. And being one with his Lord, he shared his goals. Bonaventure re-ports that "enlightened by a revelation from heaven, Francis realized that he was sent by God to win for Christ the souls which the devil was 499 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 trying to snatch away. And so he chose to live for the benefit of his fel-low men, rather than for himself alone, after the example of him who was so good as to die for all men." And like all loves, that of Francis and his Lord was fruitful. As John the Evangelist had done in his Gospel and its matrimonial symbolism, Francis exhorted the friars to produce offsprin~ for the Lord. He states' this in his letter to all the faithful: "We are to be servants and should be subject to every human creature for God's sake. On all those who do this and endure to the last, the Spirit of God will rest; he will make his dwelling in them and there he will stay, and they will be children of your Father in heaven, whose work they do. It is they who are the brides, the brothers, and the mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. A person is his bride when his faithful soul is united with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; we are his brothers when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven, and we are mothers to him when we enthrone him in our hearts and souls by° love with a pure and sincere conscience, and give him birth by doing good." The love affair of Francis and his God went even beyond this most intimate moment, though, for Francis was seen not only to produce off-spring ~or his God, but he came to be seen as a living sacrament of the presence of God. This is especially true in his stigmata. Bonaventure re-ports, "The fervor of his seraphic longing raised Francis to God and, in an ecstasy of compassion, made him like Christ, who allowed him-self to be crucified in the excess of his love. Then one morning about the feast of the exaltation of the holy cross, while he was praying on the mountainside, Francis saw a seraph with six fiery wings coming down from the highest point in the heavens. The vision descended swiftly and came to rest in the air near him. Then he saw the image of a man cruci-fied in the midst of the wings, with his hands and feet stretched out and nailed to a cross. Two of the wings were raised above his head and two were stretched out in flight, while the remaining two shielded his body. Francis was dumbfounded at the sight, and his heart flooded with a mix-ture of joy and sorrow. He was overjoyed at the way Christ regarded him so graciously under the appearance of a seraph, but the fact that he was nailed to a cross pierced his soul with a sword of compassionate sor-row." He was lost in wonder at the sight of this mysterious vision. He knew that the agony of Christ's passion was not in keeping with the state of a seraphic spirit, which is immortal. "Eventually he realized by divine inspiration that God had shown him this vision in his providence in or- Gospel Makers and Kenosis / 493 der to let him see that, as Christ's lover, he would resemble Christ cru-cified perfectly not by physical martyrdom, but by fervor of the spirit." And Bonaventure later adds, "True love of Christ had now transformed his lover into his image." It was no wonder that when Francis appea~-ed after his death to some of the friars, they asked each other whether it was Christ or Francis, for, as Celano reports, it seemed to the brother and all the great multitude that Christ and Blessed Francis were one and the same person. And so, as with the apostolic community, the early Franciscan com-munity was founded upon and became a manifestation of the kenosis of Christ. It celebrated his kenosis in his incarnation and passion; it es-teemed highly his continued kenosis in the sacraments of his body and his word; it became itself a manifestation of Christ's kenosis. Francis and each member of the community recognized that they were weak and lost, but when they were filled with the life-giving Spirit of God, they became fruitful and even sources of life. Having emptied themselves of pride, they never attributed that new life to themselves, but were always con-scious of how God had worked a miracle of love in them. They were so in love with the Beloved that they became his image. That is today's challenge. When we look at the example of Jesus and Francis and how each embraced a kenosis, we realize what we are to do. We are to empty ourselves of that which closes us off from God and each other. We do this by our own kenosis through listening, understanding, and challenging. We are to allow the life-giving Spirit of God to unite with our °weak and fragile self so that we may be healed or, even more precisely, be recreated in his image. We want that union of spirit and flesh to be fruitful as it was in Christ and Francis so that we can invite, so that we can make children for Christ. Finally, one of the most important ways of engendering children for the Lord is to tell our stories to each other. If we remember how the ap-ostolic community became a manifestation of Christ's presence, as did Francis and his followers, then we will fully appreciate the sacredness of sharing our experiences and our vocation stories. Our lives, insofar as we have cooperated with the grace of God, in spite of our great weak-nesses and very often through those very weaknesses, are manifestations of the kenosis of God. He has entered us and we have become one with him. Telling our stories, then, is not just an exercise in group dynamics. It is an anamnesis, a recalling and a re-presenting of sacred history. And in our sharing of our stories and our unveiling of the mystery of God's action in those stories, we make the word visible again and we permit 494 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 the spirit to enflesh itself in the memories of our sisters and brothers. A warning needs to be given, though. This all sounds wildly opti-mistic, especially for those who have experienced the disappointments that seem almost inevitable when one lives in a Christian community. It really is not unrealistic, though, if we approach our stories with the eyes of faith. Just as the apostles had a difficult time accepting the di-vinity of Christ hidden under his human form and in Francis's day many had difficulty seeing God under the form of a host, so we might become cynical and look at our stories with eyes of flesh. The only way that we will be able to avoid that is by embracing a kenosis. We must empty our-selves of our pride and preconceptions and allow the Lord's grace to be seen. If we do that, we, like John and Francis, will prove ourselves to be men and women madly in love with our God, for we will be truly one with him. The Call: Basic Law of the Religious John M. Hamrogue, C.SS.R. Father Hamrogue preaches parish missions and gives retreats to priests and religious. He may be addressed at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Rectory; 526 59th Street; Brooklyn, New York 11220. In entering upon religious life, each of us promised to live up to the rule of our particular institute. We may be living out that promise happily or unhappily. The religious rule itself may pose very little problem on pa-per, especially since it probably sounds much less legalisti.c and more in-spirational than it used to. Still, we all have to cofiae to terms with this, that it catches us in a web of relationships inside and outside the com-munity, of duties, of places in which we must live and work, and of peo-ple we must live with and try to love. Very often we have little control over these things. So the religious rule still stands painfully for law, for what often comes into our life unbidden, for what we must accomplish and accept--for an alien brother or sister. But we all entered religious life in response to a Call, a conviction each of us had that we were entering this religious community because this was my life, because in choosing these convents or rectories or mon-asteries, because in freely giving ourselves over to our duties, we would find ourselves and our joy. We clutched a personal promise we thought we heard: that we would be holy, that our lives and works would mean something. But now we may be living with a frightful question: "Surely I was not deceived, was I? Surely someone made a promise to me!" The question may come of our own personal failures, but it may also arise out of a feeling that our religious rule and our community has failed us, in changing so much, or in changing so little. "Surely I have not made a big misiake with my life, have I?" 495 496 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 All human beings ask questions like that about their lives, as they try to make sense of them. In trying to come to terms with our religious life, with how our dreams and projects have gone for us, we probably cannot do better than to direct our reflections to the call that brought us here in the first place. This is God's call, of course, a law that we con-tended with before we knew any religious rule. It is a call that has cre-ated us, has made promises to us, and has taken charge of writing our individual stories. This call, this law, is the grace of the Holy Spirit in our individual lives. The Call that Creates Out of his study of the Scriptures, Father Francois-Xavier Durrwell, C.SS.R., says this about our God: "The-one-who-calls-you" is his name. Maybe I Peter 1:15-16 best expresses the import of this naming of God: "Become holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, af-ter the likeness of the holy One who called you; remember, Scripture says, 'Be holy, for I am holy.' "~ Though he is no careless scholar, Fa-ther Durrwell's citations of Scripture rather more evoke meditation than establish a tightly reasoned case. He recalls our hearts to truths we have long cherished: that God always loves first, that he seeks our response to his love, that he made and makes promises to a people and to every single human being, .that he keeps his promises. We should remember about Jesus that God called him his Son, his beloved, when Jesus was baptized by John. In Mark's Gospel, this call-- this sense of his identity--is described as Jesus' own secret. Only he sees the sky open and the Spirit descend (1 : I 0). He knows who he was, where he has come from, and where he will return. In this connection Paul preaches that Jesus has been raised from the dead: "We ourselves an-nounce to you the good news that what God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, in raising up Jesus, according to what is written in the second psalm, 'You are my son; this day I have begotten you' " (Ac 13:33). The Father has proved faithful to his call of Jesus. The early Christians had a clear notion of their identity; they saw their life as a calling. Their life challenged them, but a call supported them. Paul told them, "He who calls us is trustworthy, therefore he will do it" (1 Th 5:24). He reproached them in terms of the call. "I am amazed that you are so soon deserting him who called you in accord with his gracious design in Christ, and are going over to another gospel . Such enticement does not come from him who calls you" (Ga 1:6; 5:8). He told them they partook of the call of Jesus Christ: "God is faithful, and it was he who called you to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ The Call / 49"/ our Lord" (i Co 1:9). Mary Magdalene first grasped the sense of this promise when the Risen Christ called her name: "Jesus said to her, 'Mary!' " (Jn 20:16). Who he was and who she was in relation to him had changed to something she could never have dreamed of. Paul, too, heard his name called. "Saul, Saul, why do you perse-cute me?" (Ac 9:4). His whole sense of himself and his work is rooted in his call. He opens the Letter to the Romans this way: "Greetings from Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart to proclaim the gospel of God . " He identifies himself in the same way at the opening of 1 Corinthians: "Paul, called by God's will to be an apostle of Christ Jesus . " For the call it was that made him an apos-tle. What brought each of us to religious life, what event, what dream, what fascination? Each one of us has a story of a call, though it is prob-ably not so exotic as that of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. She wrote that at the age of four or five "I found myself saying something I couldn't unde, rstand: 'To God I give my purity, and vow perpetual chastity.' " In later years our Lord told her: "I chose you for my bride . We plighted our troth when you made your vow of chastity. That was my doing . ,,2 Our call, too, has always been his doing. For those, then, who try to follow Jesus, God is "the-one-who-calls" (I Th 5:24; Ga 1:6; 5:8), .just as he is "the-one-who-raised- Jesus" (Rm 4:21; see I P 1:21; 2 Co 1:9; Ga I'1) and "the-one-who-brought- Israel-out-of Egypt" (Ex 20:2; Jg 6:8). "The-one-who cails-you"~ is his name (I Th 5:24; I P 1"15; 2 P 1:3).3 The Call that Makes a Promise Every call includes a promise; there is something in it for the one called. When God called Abraham to go up from Haran to the land of Canaan, he made him a promise in terms that anyone would immediately and thrillingly understand. He would make of Abraham a great nation, a man in whose very name all the communities of the earth would find a blessing (Gn 12:1-3). Of course, Abraham could never have dreamt how it would all turn out--and the story is not yet finished. How could he have known that in our day the religious communities of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam revere him as a father? But he heard God's prom-ise in terms of lands and children. That he could clearly grasp. God prom-ised him, in his childlessness, that his life would matter, that someone would remember him (Gn 15). Is there anything else that any human be-ing ever wanted out of life? True, Abraham thought only in terms of a personal life with God that ended with the grave. Only much later did 4911/Review for Religious, July-August 1988 the Jews arrive at a belief in a personal life after death. Yet Jesus too, who preached and promised a life without end, also spoke of the call in terms of the great values of this life: brothers and sisters, land and home, spouse and children (Mk 10:28-31). Those of us who take on the classic renunciations of religious life are not throwing life away like yesterday's newspaper. For each of us this life--the only one we know--this life will matter. And we will be remembered for hav-ing lived it. How, we do not know. But neither did Abraham. We cling to the call, knowing God has made us a promise. To repeat, God's promise concerns earthly life and the worth of the labors and sacrifices his servants make for love of him. It is not as though we receive eternal life in exchange for anguishing our way through a bar-ren existence, a human life that really has no meaning in it, that at best is only a contrived testing ground. A jeweler often sells watches by ad-vertising for junk: hand in a useless old watch and get a discount on a new one. But God does not see a human life as a trade-in. For all that anyone knew on Good Friday, Jesus had failed in everything he had given his life to. His disciples had fled; he had died a criminal. But by raising him from the dead, the Holy Spirit also has played the revealing light of tongues of fire on his earthly life for us who contemplate it in the Gospels. We remember that life of his. How we remember it! It mat-tered. The Call that Writes a Story With the call and the promise to Abraham in the Book of Genesis, the Bible begins to talk about history in the usual sense--people and events to which we can assign a particular time and a particular place on this earth. The whole long tale of the Scriptures hangs from God's call to Abraham and from Abraham's putting his faith in him. We are merely the actors now pronouncing the lines and pacing the stage of the ongoing drama of God's faithfulness to his promise. The other side of this story of God's faithfulness is that of our unfaithfulness, our sin. Jeremiah the prophet one day glimpsed God's resourcefulness in the face of our unfaithfulness as he watched a potter at work. God had told him to visit the potter's house, where Jeremiah saw the craftsman's in-tentions sometimes turn out badly. Some pots just did not go well at all. "Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of what-ever sort he pleased" (Jr 18:4). In leading his prophet to the potter's house, God was reading him a lesson on the divine patience in waiting for the conversion of his peo- The Call / 499 pie. But he also was telling Jeremiah that conversion rested on God's res-toration and re-creation of a life and a situation that his people had often totally wrecked by their unfaithfulness. We should ponder the potter's care and intention as he sees the clay elude his skill and the design he had in mind for it. Somehow it is misbegotten. But the potter has an-other idea, another chance for the clay. He will try something else--a different shape, a different vessel. As we look at the story of our life, it may seem that we have not turned out as we should, and we might be right about that. We have all been unfaithful. But the call and the promise mean that God always has something else in mind, something new to create as he continues to shape our life. Although we may have wasted years and energy and talent, al-though we may have weakly or willfully thrown off our religious voca-tion altogether, we still remain within the work and the motion of his crea-tive hands. He still has something else in mind, even if it is only our con-trite acceptance of a littered past, which we yield totally to him as part of a broken self. Psalm 51 provides the words to celebrate God's having his way with us at last: "My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn" (v. 19). The Law of Our Life: The Grace of the Holy Spirit We have seen that the most basic law of Christian life is the call of God, which is played out in the stories of our lives. For stories are pow-erful laws, often in their way more piercing than laws in the strict sense. Which, for instance, do we find more unsettling when we come upon a stalled car along the highway, or a fallen derelict on a city street--the command to love our neighbor as ourselves or the story of the Good Sa-maritan? Which makes it harder just to pass by? Maybe we have had the privilege to hear religious or priests talk about their wrestling with their vocations. Even if they have to speak of infidelity, they talk in terms of their stories rather than of laws and rules in the ordinary sense. They often weep as they tell their story; for it con-tains the law and the call they cannot escape, and really do not want to escape. We find a crucial chapter of Paul's story in Acts 9. If the call is the grace of the Holy Spirit, then this scene portrays this grace most vividly. For Paul on the road to Damascus did not meet the earthly Jesus, the friend of Peter and the other disciples. Paul never met him, never knew him. He hardly ever speaks of him at all, though he had to know very much about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But Paul met Jesus Risen, this same man resurrected; he fell in love with the Jesus raised by the power 500 / Review for Religious, July-1988 of the Spirit; he knew Jesus in the Spirit.4 His call then was the grace of the Holy Spirit. This grace of the Holy Spirit made him. It was the law and impulse of his whole life thereafter. We too meet Jesus as Paul did--in the grace of the Holy Spirit, in the story of our life. A Call to Communion Rather Than to Observance In emphasizing the primacy of the call, Father Durrwell notes that Paul did not recognize the absolute character of any law imposed from outside the person. He preached that Christian life was a call to a free-dom surging up from within us. This limitless new law of life made space for our souls: "The law of the spirit, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has freed you from the law of sin and death" (Rm 8:2). Since this Spirit is the love of God poured into out hearts (Rm 5:5), in surrendering to it Christians yield to what they love. No one could be more free.5 We must learn, then, to love the law, to find that it has become part of us or that we have been taken up into its secret life. Rabbi Abraham Heschel discourses on this mystery when he speaks of the Jewish tradi-tion of kavvanah. The music in a score is open only to him who has music in his soul. It is not enough to play the notes; one must be what he plays. It is not enough to do the mitzvah; one must live what he does. The goal is to find access to the sacred deed. But the holiness in the mitzvah is only open to him who knows how to discover the holiness in his own soul. To do a mitzvah is one thing; to partake of its inspiration is another.6 But who writes the music in the heart so that we may live out the very soul of written notes and law? St. Augustine would answer--the fin-ger of God. By the finger of God we learn to find delight in the law. He says that we learn "to keep Sabbath in the spirit" through the Holy Spirit poured forth in our hearts (Rm 5:5).7 Father Durrwell acknowledges that the New Testament does not ex-plicitly identify the Holy.Spirit with the call. But the Scripture does speak of the Holy Spirit as an anointing (2 Co 1:21), as a seal upon one's in-ner life (2 Co 1:22), and as a promise of final redemption (Ep !:14).8 In Paul, and also in John, we see an emphasis on an available expe-rience of this life in the Holy Spirit, one that tells us that within this very ordinary life something else goes on. So Paul preaches: "God is the one who firmly establishes us along with you in Christ; it is he who anointed us and has sealed us, thereby depositing the first payment, the Spirit, in our hearts" (I Co 1:21-22). John also preaches: "As for you, the anoint- The Call / 501 ing you received from him remains in your hearts. This means you have no need for anyone to teach you. Rather, as his anointing teaches you about all things and is true--free from any lie--remain in him as that anointing taught you" (1 Jn 2:27). In reading these Scriptures we have to conclude that this anointing-- this interior impulse and promise--amounted to a real presence for these ancient fellow believers of ours. Paul and John were appealing to their people to look to their hearts, to their experience. What has happened, then, to us? Where has the awareness gone? Nothing has happened! The awareness has not disappeared. We have known the same things, felt at least sometimes the surprise of God's peace and joy in a desperate situ-ation. We have lived by the light of a secret promise that told us we could and would be better, that we could make our world better. St. Augustine reflected on this with his people as he preached on the First Letter of John. Note how he gives up trying to talk and appeals to what the people knew--the anointing. ¯ . . What is the promise given us? "We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" [3:2]. The spoken word has done all it could; the rest must be pondered in the heart. In comparison of him who "is," what could John say, and what can be said by us whose desert is so far below his? We must go back to the anointing of which he has spoken, that anointing which teaches inwardly what passes utterance; and since as yet you cannot see, your work must lie in longing. The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing.9 As Father Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., points out to us, the experi-ence John considers is the gentle, ordinary conviction of God's loving presence that we all have known, as the early Christians knew it. No need to be put off by our usual guardedness against sensational experi-ence and display. ~0 The Scriptures are urging us to trust to a patient and faithful longing for the completion of what we know has begun in us and in our world. A Woman of the Spirit Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger is Archbishop of Paris. He oversees a church suffering far more desperately than most others. What does he preach to his people? In homilies worthy of a Father of the Church, he stirs them with questions like this one: "Are Christians the masters of Christianity, deciding what it should be, or is it Christ who, through his Spirit, takes hold of you and leads you where you do not want to go'?" ~ And he places before the eyes of his people the image of Mary stand- 509 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 ing at the foot of the cross. They must pray, he tells them, "for the Marian grace of silent patience and long waitings in faith.''~2 So must we pray. As St. Augustine put it, the life of the Christian is one long and holy yearning. We know that. We have always known it, even though we may sometimes have too little appreciated the peace that has come along with living out our longing. This peace and this power is the anointing that Christians have always known. NOTES ~ Francois-Xavier Durrwell, C.SS.R., "Vous avez gtd appelds . " Studia Moralia 15 (1977): 345. z The Autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary, trans. Vincent Kerns (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1961), 4, 18. 3 Durrwell, 345. 4 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3 vols. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1983), I: 30. 5 Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: Art Interpretation of Judaism (New York: The Free Press, 1959), 165-166. 6 Augustine: Later Works, ed. John Burnaby (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), The Spirit and the Letter, -#27, 216. 7 Durrwell, 352, 357. 8 Durrwell, 356. 9 Augustine: Later Works, Fourth Homily, -#6, 290. ~0 Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., "A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit," Theo-logical Studies 46 (1985): 223. ~ Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Dare to Believe: Addresses, Sermons, Interviews, 1981-1984 (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 16. ~2 Lustiger, 226, 228. Superiority of the Religious Life Brendan Knea/e, F.S.C. Brother Brendan is an associate professor in a great books program and can be con-tacted at Box H; Saint Mary's College; Moraga, California 94575. One of the reasons why religious life is not attracting vocations is, no doubt, a failure to emphasize its superiority. In fact, vocational leaders and their literature tend to deny that there is any such superiority. Such a failure, it seems, must be counterproductive. Traditionally, of course, the opposite view prevailed. Recall the famous lines attributed to St. Ber-nard indicating a clear superiority: The religious 1. lives more purely, 2. falls more rarely, 3. rises more promptly, 4. walks more cautiously, 5. is graced more frequently, 6. rests more securely, 7. dies more confidently, 8. is cleansed more promptly, and 9. is rewarded more abundantly. "More" than who? Clearly St. Bernard means, "more than those in secular states of life." Does the teaching of Vatican II confirm this view? Even a cursory reading of the documents shows that it does. Not only do the official statements twice refer to the religious life as "a state of perfection," but in several places the language uses, like St. Bernard's "more," various comparative terms. 503 ~i04 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 Vatican II Thus, in Lumen Gentium 42 we read concerning the evangelical coun-sels of religious, "Outstanding among them is that precious gift of grace which the Father gives to some men (see Mt 19:11; I Co 7:7) st-" that by virginity, or celibacy, they can more easily devote their entire selves to God alone with undivided heart (see I Co 7:32-34)." And, "Since the disciples must always imitate and give witness to this char-ity and humility of Christ, Mother Church rejoices at finding within bosom men and women who more closely follow and more clearly dem-onstrate the Savior's self-giving by embracing poverty with the free choice of God's sons, and by renouncing their own wills.''~ In the chapter of Lumen Gentium devoted specifically to the vowed life we find a summary stotement, again in the comparative language "greater": "These religious families give their members the support greater stability in their way of life, a proven method of acquiring per-fection, fraternal association in the militia of Christ, and liberty strength-ened by obedience."2 A direct comparison with other Christians is made in the next section, where the text notes about the vowed religious, "is true that through baptism he has died to sin and has been consecrated to God. However, in order to derive more abundant fruit from this bap-tismal grace, he intends, by profession of the evangelical counsels in the Church, to .free himself from those obstacles which might draw him away from the fervent charity and the perfection of divine worship. Thus is more intimately consecrated to the divine service. This consecration gains in perfection since by virtue of firmer and steadier bonds it serves as a better symbol of the unbreakable link between Christ and His Spouse, the Church." The same section goes on to say, "Furthermore, the religious state constitutes a closer imitation and an abiding reenact-ment in the Church of the form of life which the Son of God made his own . Even the language of superlatives is used here: "Finally, everyone should realize that the profession of the evangelical counsels, though en-tailing the renunciation of certain values which undoubtedly merit high esteem, does not detract from a genuine development of the human per-son. Rather by its very nature it is most beneficial to that develop-ment . The counsels are especially able to pattern the Christian man after that manner of virginal and humble life which Christ the Lord elected for himself, and which his Virgin Mother also chose."3 It is well known that Vatican II was a pastoral council concerned, therefore, with changes in discipline, not doctrine (though for pastoral Superiority of the Religious Life reasons it changed the wording and emphasis of some dogmas). Hence, Vatican II does not contradict the Council of Trent. In particular, it did not withdraw its teaching about the superiority of the religious state. The earlier council anathematizes those who would place all Christian "states" on the same level. Specifically, it condemns those who say "that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity and celi-bacy than in the matrimonial bond" (Denz. no. 1810). Hans Urs von Balthasar notes one reason for this doctrine: "Marriage does not cross the threshold of the eschatological realm (Mt 22:30), and a person who wishes to live eschatologically should therefore renounce marriage if he can (Mt 11:12; 1 Co 7:8).''4 In a scholarly work, as part of his chapter on "Christian Voca-tions," Father John Lozano, C.M.F., has remarked, "The Council's in-sistent use of comparatives is such that theologians must, of necessity, fix their attention upon it." His own analysis (carefully nuanced and, I believe, erroneous) leads him to abandon comparatives and to vote against the traditional view, which he describes as follows: ". Chris-tian people have always considered monasticism as being, objectively, the more blessed (beatius) situation.''5 If we look at the special Decree on The Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life (Perfectae Caritatis) issued by Vatican II, we find that the religious state "is of surpassing value" (section I), though we are not told overtly what other values it "surpasses." Section 5 observes about religious, "They have handed over their :entire lives to God's serv-ice in an act of special consecration which is deeply rooted in their bap-tismal consecration and which provides an ampler manifestation of it.' ,6 It is true that an "ampler manifestation" of one's baptismal graces is expected after confirmation, and penance, and marriage, and after all moral choices--but the context of the passage, and the background of the whole tradition, require us to read "ampler manifestation" (and other comparatives) in accord with Trent's clear anathema (even if to-day there seem to be several writers who fall, inadvertently, under that anathema). Inferiority We should pause here to note that the religious life is also inferior. The religious state cuts a very poor figure in the context of a capitalist and consumer competition, and in the realm of biological reproduction, and in the area of political power struggles and status seeking. Indeed the three vows are instruments designed precisely to keep a person as in-ferior in these secular arenas as he or she is superior in the religious 506 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 arena. In the worlds of finance, medicine, the military, and so forth, there is no reason to ascribe superiority to the religious state. In the world of holiness and the sacred, there is. After Vatican II Official documents subsequent to the council enable us to read with proper understanding its intent. In 1971, for example, an Apostolic Ex-hortation on the Renewal of Religious Life came from Rome with some pointed recommendations. It continued to push the language of perfec-tion and comparatives: "more closely conformed" to the life of Christ (sec. 2); "follow Christ more freely and to imitate him more faithfully ¯ . . with greater fullness" (sec. 4); "to derive more abundant fruit" and be "more intimately consecrated" (sec. 7); "your obedience is more strict" (sec. 27). It quotes Lumen Gentium: "The Council consid-ers 'a proven doctrine of acquiring perfection' as one of the inherited riches of religious institutes" (sec. 37). Finally,, it assure us that "by the threefold renunciation of your religious profession [you] realize the greatest possible expansio.n of your life in Christ" (sec. 55).7 The present pope--certainly an expert on Vatican II--freely speaks of the superiority of the religious state. In his exhortation Familiaris Con-sortio (I 98 i), he makes it a point to say so even when his theme is fam-ily life. In section 16 he quotes with approval St. John Chrysostom's words on the superiority of consecrated virginity to sacramental mar-riage: "What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be particularly good. It is something better than what is admitted to be good that is the most excellent good." John Paul goes on to say, ~'It is for this reason that the Church throughout her history has always defended the superiority of this charism to that of marriage . ,,8 The follow-ing year Pope John Paul spoke to a representative group of sisters and said, in part, Most of all, the recommendation I would want to give you is this: pre-serve and foster a correct and lofty concept of religious life and conse-cration, according to what the Master always taught and still teaches. The Church today certainly encourages secular and "lay" forms of re-ligious life which if properly understood are of great blessing for the Peo-ple of God and for the world. The Council made clear the dignity of the earthly values and the spirituality of the laity. Nevertheless, the same Council, stressing the unique value of the religious vocation, takes care not to depreciate it with distortion of a misunderstood secularity, for-getting that the religious life achieves a perfection beyond baptismal con-secration . Superiority of the Religious Life / .507 The superiority of the religious state certainly does not depend on the Christian's final end, which is the same for everyone: blessedness in God . [There are gifts] which as such are superior to those de-riving from baptismal consecration sufficient to characterize the secular or married state . 9 Perhaps the Holy Father was recalling here the words of Adrienne yon Speyr, a wife and mother who became a well-known spiritual writer under the aegis of Hans Urs von Balthasar: If rightly chosen, the married state can be lived to perfection in a fam-ily life that is in complete accord with Christian faith and with a posi-tion in the Church, community and state . Nevertheless, there are certain limits [in married life] that cannot be moved and that simply re-lateto the finiteness of the human person . The evangelical state, whether active or contemplative, gives evi-dence from the beginning of a stronger preoccupation with God . In marriage, the individual must forgo these helps proper to the evan-gelical state. If it were possible to compare at the end of their lives two individuals who, at the moment of choice, possessed exactly the same qualifications, the same education and knowledge, the same piety and readiness to follow Christ, and of whom one chose the married state and the other the evangelical state, the advantage enjoyed by the latter would be plainly visible . Although there is a level on which the ecclesial states [including sacramental marriage] stand side by side as possible modes of Christian existence that are both good and willed by God, there is also a hierarchy among the states that clearly reveals the greater ex-cellence of the evangelical state. ~0 Later, in 1984, Pope John Paul issued a special Apostolic Exhorta-tion on the Religious Life addressed to religious themselves, Redemp-tionis Donum. He starts off in section I saying about the universal voca-tion to perfection, "While this call concerns everyone, in a special way it concerns you, men and women religious, who in your consecration to God through the vows of the evangelical counsels strive toward a par-ticular fullness of Christian life." In section 4: "This way is also called the way of perfection," a claim repeated in section 6. At the same time he twice uses the expression "state of perfection" but leaves it in quo-tation marks, and one can tell that he does so out of deference to the con-temporary sensitivities, not out of rejection of the doctrine. Also in 1984 the new Code of Canon Lawwent into effect. Careful wording characterizes it. The part devoted to religious life begins, "Life consecrated by the profession of the evangelical counsels is a stable form of living by which the faithful, following Christ more closely under the 508 /Review for Religious, July-August 1988 action of the Holy Spirit, are totally dedicated to God . " Contemporary Misapprehension How is it that this superiority is denied by many well-informed Catho-lics? We find in the influential and reprinted book Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life (1985) by Cada, et al., the following passage: "At the start of the Modern Era the Council Fathers of Trent promulgated the teaching that the state of consecrated virginity was inherently better and holier than the married state. At the end of the Modern Era the Council Fathers at Vatican II taught that the religious life was no more a state of perfection than the Christian life in general" (p. 49). It is difficult see how the authors can take such a position, especially since the coun-cil documents explicitly refer to the religious life as "a state of perfec-tion," and Pope John Paul, as cited above, says just the opposite. Read-ers of this journal will be familiar with other texts, often written by vo-cation ministers, making clear disavowals of superiority. The negative psychological impact of these misreadings of Vatican II on the work of vocation ministry should be obvious. These authors no doubt worried about the invidiousness of claiming personal "superiority." They should have recalled what Thomas Aqui-nas had already pointed out in the Summa (I1-II, 186, I ): that we are speak-ing figuratively. We call all members of an order "religious" even when some are not, and we call their state one of "perfection" although none of its members may be perfect. The figure of speech we are using, he tells us, is called ~'antonomasia." We can illustrate it by the example of our calling a king, antonomastically, "His Majesty" even when is not majestic. It appears that there are two reasons (~)ne of which has just been al-luded to) why such misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine have oc-curred. (!) There has been a strong egalitarian, anti-elitist mood in most the Western world for many years. This same appetite for leveling found when one speaks of churches, even non-Christian ones. Thus, with regard to the Catholic Church, contemporary society wants her to avoid "triumphalism" and therefore to avoid claiming superiority over other religions, since "all religions are equal," Try arguing, even amon.group of Catholics, that their religion is "superior," and see, in our egali-tarian age, the resistance you meet. Similarly, members of religious con-gregations today tend to suppress the superiority of their state, even when giving vocational advice--thereby, of course, reducing the attractiveness of that state. SuperioriO, of the Religious Life / 509 (2) There is a chapter entitled "The Call to Holiness" in Lumen Gen-tium which seems, on superficial reading, to support the modern appe-tite for equality. But the chapter simply recalls that Christ summoned all people, secular and religious, to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"--hardly a new doctrine in pastoral theology. In every state of life Christians have the sacraments, prayer, apostolic opportunities, and self-denial (see section 42) to help in the universal vocation we all have to perfection. It is natural to conclude (although long habit made even the fathers of the council keep the usage) that "the state of perfection" is not a title that ought to be arrogated to the religious life alone: it has been too easy for people to relegate other states to "imperfection." We certainly want to~ avoid that imputation~, and so a pastoral concern leads us to stop emphasizing~that the religious state is the state of perfection, even though it is clearly a superior state for the purposes of religious per-fection. Likewise, since we live in an ecumenical age, we do not go about saying the Catholic Church is superior to others, even though, as an instrument of salvation, it is. If, out of pastoral concern for giving emphasis to the religious value of secular and lay states~ we avoid stressing the superiority of religious and clerical states, we should not at the same time forget (or fail, at ap-propriate times, publicly to recall) that superiority. Thus Pope John Paul, as noted above, did not hesitate--even in a document about the dignity and worth of family life (Familiaris Consortio)--to remind us of the su-periority of the religious state. To disavow it is nbt humility; it is fal-sity. The accusation of elitism can be met in the same way that colleges and universities meet it. The best schools claim to be superior as instru-ments of higher education, and they are--in virtue of their curricula, their faculties, their social opportunities. Indeed the best institutions as-sure excellence by hiring the best faculty, and admitting and supporting the best students, regardless of their social status. Moreover, they do not claim that all the students and courses at other places are inferior. Ex-cellence does not demand putting others down or denying the principle of human equality. But it certainly does not require the best colleges and universities falsely to deny their own superiority, especially when seek-ing new faculty and students. Neither should the religious state in seek-ing new members. This analogy is quite forceful: the religious state is like a superior university--people seeking a "higher education" try to find suitable "instruments" for that purpose. Some of these "instru-ments" are superior to others, namely, the best universities and colleges. 510 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 It is in this sense that St. Thomas (Summa, II-lI, 184, 3 and 7) speaks of the religious state as instrumental to perfection; it is "the state of perfection" in that way, not in some invidious way. Among secular persons there are often some closer to perfection than many religious are. Chesterton has said somewhere, "Alone of all superiors the saint does not depress the human dignity of others. He is not conscious of his su-periority to them, but only more conscious of his inferiority than they are." When we call attention to the superiority of an instrument, we do not thereby claim superiority for the user of that instrument. When St. Paul in I Co 12:28ff. set up a ranking of charisms, he did not intend to offend anyone. Thus, in saying that bishops have the high-est vocation, that their state is the superior one, he was hoping to attract, not repel, vocations. St. Paul, a good vocation minister, ended by urg-ing us to "be zealous for the better gifts." God indeed hath set some in the church: first apostles, secondly proph-ets, thirdly teachers; after that miracles, then the graces of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches. ~l'here are similar rankings at Romans 12:4 and Ephesians 4: 10. Conclusion As an aid to vocation ministers we should update and add to St. Ber-nard's list of comparatives. By way of a partial extension, we might say of the contemporary religious that he or she: 10. witnesses more eschatologically, (Religious vows are greater eschatological signs than are offered by secu-lar lifestyles.) I 1. serves more apostolically, (Corporate efforts at ministry multiply through space and time the work of a single individual.) 12. lives more theocentrically and Christologically, (Opportunities in re-ligious community for retreats, liturgy, meditation, silence, self-denial are abundant.) 13. operates more freely, (Support in religious life reduces financial, domestic, and decision-making chores.) 14. reaches out more ecclesially. (An international religious order extends one's circle of friends and pro-vides a worldwide family for its members.) Superiority of the Religious Life NOTES ~ Abbott, W. M., S.J., ed., The Documents of Vatican H, America Press, New York, 1966, p. 71. 2 Ibid., pp. 73-74. 3 Ibid., p. 77. 4 Von Balthasar, H. U., New Elucidations, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986, p. 180. 5 Lozano, John M., C.M.F., Discipleship: Towards an Understanding of the Relig-ious Life, Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality, Chicago, 1980, pp. 55ff. 6 Abbott, p. 471. 7 Flannery, A., O.P., ed., Vatican Council II, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1975, pp. 680ff. 8 Origins 11, no. 25 (December 3, 1981): 443. 9 Consecrated Life 9, no. 2, pp. 214-215. ~0 Von Speyr, A., The Christian State of Life, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986, pp. 81-84. Mary and the Announcer So many questions you leave unanswered That 1 would ask: why it is 1 Who am chosen, when will this happen, how Shall I know it happening, what am I To tell the kind man to whom I am bonded. Tell him nothing? And already you gather Yourself for departure; the dark tower Of your presence stands a shadow On the floor, unfolding long Skirted pinions, lifting them higher. If I lifted my eyes, I would see light, Where you have stood. Where I am standing Now in light brighter than windows, the dance Of it is like rings at my fingers, Like bracelets adorning my ankles, a lightness Crowning my hair. Harmless as I am, No harm can come to me of standing In light where I cast no shadow Yet am overshadowed, where again ! hear The calm announcement: Mary, do not fear. Nancy G. Westerfield 2914 Avenue B Kearney, NE 68847 Celibate Loving Rosemarie Carfagna, O.S.U., Ph.D. Sister Rosemarie's "Spirituality of Suffering" appeared in our March/April 1988 issue. She is in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at Ursuline Col-lege; 2550 Lander Road; Pepper Pike, Ohio 44124. Can two women from the late Middle Ages have anything to say to con-temporary religious women about their efforts at celibate loving? Al-though the times and the circumstances have changed, the central issues involved in celibate loving have not. This article will look at the writ-ings of two spiritual mothers for practical guidance about the conduct of religious in love relationships. Teresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite. Margaret Mary Alacoque was a seventeenth-century Sister of the Visitation in France. Both women wrote poignantly about the experience of learning how to love. Both women learned from hu-man love lessons that led them to divine love. Their wisdom and their advice can be helpful for religious women and men today. The Desire for Affection In her classic work The Way of Perfection, Teresa speaks to her sis-ters about their efforts to love. She is aware from her own experience of the danger and temptation of looking to human beings for the ultimate satisfaction that can come only from God. Teresa herself needed to learn about detachment and transcendence, so it was with humility and sim-plicity that she could refer to the desire for affection as blindness. She tells her sisters, "I sometimes think this desire for affection is sheer blind-ness . When we desire anyone's affection, we always seek it because of some interest, profit or pleasure of our own." ~ It is the self-interest underlying the desire for affection that alerts Teresa to the imperfection of the love. As she matured in love, Teresa began to see through its more 512 Celibate Loving / 513 superficial forms. Speaking about the subversive effect of self-interest on love, she writes, "Of course, however pure our affection may be, it is quite natural for us to wish it to be returned. But, when we come to evaluate the return of affection, we realize that it is insubstantial, like a thing of straw, as light as air and easily carried away by the wind."2 Teresa wants more than this for herself and for her sisters. She realizes that the call to celibate love offers greater, more permanent rewards. How-ever, these gifts are deeply hidden. Mature religious are sensitive enough to know where to look for them. Describing the deeper vision of holy souls, she writes: ¯ . . the things which they see are everlasting. If they love anyone they immediately look right beyond the body, fix their eyes on the soul and see what there is to be loved in that. If there is nothing, but they see any suggestion or inclination which shows them that, if they dig deep, they will find gold within this mine, they think nothing of the labor of dig-ging, since they have love.3 The kind of love Teresa is describing is a purified and noble love. It is a kind of love she came to know because she was led to it by the Spirit. It is purified through a gentle and continuous process of detach-ment. Detachment Margaret Mary Alacoque learned about celibate loving directly from Jesus, whom she acknowledged as her Spouse. Her Thoughts and Say-ings record the instructions she received that guided her spiritual and emo-tional development and brought her to the fullness of love. The follow-ing message was addressed to her in prayer: "Know that if you wish to possess Jesus Christ and to dwell in his Sacred Heart, you must have no other desire and be content with him alone.' ,4 These are puzzling words for beginners in the spiritual life. Speaking of contentment in the same context as such radical detachment appears paradoxical at first. Perhaps Margaret Mary experienced a degree of consternation, too, when she heard these words. Her instructions continued in the same vein. How-ever, she was assured that Jesus her Spouse would teach her and help her become accustomed to purified love. She recorded the following mes-sage that she received by way of encouragement: May he teach you what he desires of you, and may he give you the strength to accomplish it perfectly. If I am not mistaken, this in a few words is what ! think he chiefly requires of you: He wishes that you should learn to live without support, without a friend and without saris- Review for Religious, July-August 1988 faction. In proportion as you ponder over these words, he will help you to understand them.5 The message may seem harsh if we focus only on the radical detach-ment it implies. Who among us finds the prospect of living without sup-port and without a friend attractive? But a second look at the meaning behind the words can sustain us. Rather than taking away the help that we need, Jesus is offering himself to us as helper, lover, and friend. Mar-garet Mary was told: Our Lord would fain be your sole Support, Friend and Delight, provided you seek neither support nor delight in creatures. Nevertheless, you must not be ill at ease or constrained in your intercourse with your neighbor, but always humble, bright, kind and gracious in your manner. The Sa-cred Heart of Jesus gives you these holy aspirations through the ardent love he bears you, which makes him desire to possess your heart whole and entire.6 Having this kind of intimacy with Jesus makes detachment easy. All other love relationships fall into place when our hearts are focused on him. Those experienced in celibate love know, however, that coming to such intimacy with Jesus is a gradual process. They are familiar with tri-als and temptations. They know that growth in celibate love is a constant effort at putting God first. Putting God First Both Teresa and Margaret Mary would offer advice to religious to-day, as they did to their own sisters. The unifying theme found in the writings of both of them is the importance of putting God first in the or-der of our love and of having a faithful spousal commitment to Jesus. They might say that as it is in any state of life, the religious life will have its share of trials and temptations. This is to purify and test the soul for worthiness to heaven. Only in heaven will the soul be free of suffering and only in heaven will the soul be filled with delights and satisfaction. Because these spiritual mothers were human as well as holy, they would admit that it can happen in religious life that there are attractions and even sexual arousal to one of the opposite sex or even of one's own sex. This is not wrong in and of itself. What does offend the good God is when the religious, especially the religious woman whom Jesus con-siders to be his own bride, succumbs to these attractions and sensations and knowingly and willingly seeks the intimacy with another that one would seek with a betrothed or wedded lover. It is not wrong to love or even to be in love with another when one is a religious. What is wrohg is seeking one's own selfish ends rather Celibate Loving than putting God first in one's heart and behaving seductively and ador-ingly to one's earthly beloved. No soul on earth can ever expect to find peace or happiness unless God is first in one's heart and one wills to be-have faithfully to God according to one's state in life and according to vows taken. Purified Love Loving another person in the temporal realm means loving him or her spiritually and from afar sometimes. Sexually arousing contact, be it eye contact, physical proximity, flirtation, or any seductive behavior that intends to arouse sexual passion in the other, is highly offensive to God. It would be better for the religious to leave the community than to behave so, for this can only lead to unhappiness. If one finds oneself in a love relationship and if the relationship has God's blessing, it will be peaceful and characterized by friendship, equal-ity in status, pure affection, chaste intention, and discretion in intimate behavior. Behavior toward any others will be spiritually beneficial and charitable as a result of this love. If, on the other hand, the love rela-tionship originates from one's own inordinate desires, it will be charac-terized by behaviors which seek sexual arousal and aim at sexual con-summation. There will also be exclusiveness, possessiveness, and ob-sessiveness, leaving the heart in a profoundly miserable state.7 Only, as Augustine has said, when one's heart first rests in God will it be happy and be pleasing to God. It is only in willing to please God first that the soul can find the love and satisfaction it seeks. This is especially so for a religious whom God holds responsible for shepherding his flock. The primary concern of the religious is to glorify God and to save souls. All other relationships are to flow from this holy and serious duty. May the example and the wisdom of women like Teresa and Margaret Mary help us to grow today in our efforts at celibate love. NOTES ~Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection (New York: Image Books, 1964), p. 70. ~-Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 71. 4 Margaret Mary Alacoque, Thoughts and Sayings of St. Margaret Mary (Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc.), p. 73. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., pp. 74-75. 7 See Teresa's descriptions of spiritual versus sensual relationships in The Way of Perfection, pp. 54-59, 67-81 (i.e., chap. 4 lall but the beginningl and chaps. 6 and 7). Hope for Community: A Kingdom Perspective Kristin Wombacher, O.P., and Shaun McCarty, S.T. Sister Kristin, a licensed clinical psychologist, was a writer for the Pontifical Com-mission on Religious Life in th~ United States and is presently Prioress General of the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael. She resides at Siena Convent; 4038 Maher Street; Napa, California 94558. Father McCarty, of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, teaches in the Washington Theological Union and is a staff mem-ber of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. He resides at Holy Trinity Mis-sion Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. Since Vatican II both have been extensively involved with programs of renewal for relig-ious communities of women and men, lay and religious, especially in the United States. In response to Vatican II, religious congregations have made changes in their lifestyles and structures in order to open themselves to renewal. A key area of concentration during this time of adaptation and renewal has been a desire to improve the quality of community life. The initial focus on community life following Vatican II centered pri-marily on local living situations and was largely problem-oriented. It em-phasized quantitative changes in existing structures, for example, chang-ing schedules, modifying prayer styles, and minimizing rules. As help-ful as these changes have been, the overall fruits of such a focus have been limited. What gradually has become clear is the need to shift the focus of community life, to broaden the horizons of "community," consider community not only within the context of religious life, but also within a broader Christian context as related to the life, work, and mis-sion of all God's people. This shift in focus calls us from a more intro-spective view of community life to an enhanced vision of community as related to Kingdom. 516 Hope for Community This article will be an attempt to explore "community" within the horizon of the kingdom of God. We will deal with the past development, present challenge, and future promise of community as viewed within this perspective. These observations are based on some fairly extensive experiences since Vatican II of working with a variety of religious groups, of women and men from various denominations, especially within the United States. Some Preliminary Understandings (1) Kingdom of God: This term attempts to express something of the mystery of the corporate vision of the People of God, that is, God's reign that embraces values such as love, freedom, peace, justice, unity, and fellowship. There are several perspectives of Kingdom, none of which exhausts the symbol. Kingdom is larger than any one of them. There is a sense in which the Kingdom is behind us, ahead of us, within us, and among us. The Kingdom is behind us in that it was the principal theme of Christ's preaching and was enfleshed and inaugurated in his person. The Kingdom is ahead of us in that it will reach consummation as a "new earth and a new heaven." In the words of Vatican lI's Pastoral Consti-tution on the Church in the Modern World: ". God is preparing a new dwelling place and a new earth where justice will abide and whose blessedness will answer and surpass all the longings for peace which spring up in the human heart" (n. 39). The Kingdom is within us in that it describes inner fellowship with God in mystical union and points to a human yearning for the living God that is deeper even than the hunger and thirst for the justice of God. The Kingdom is among us now in that it is already present among people who honestly seek to follow God's call and who live justly with others. This perspective refers to growth towards wholeness in the collective life of humanity--its laws, customs, institutions, works, politics, art, and so forth. It summons people now to the work of cultivating (or perhaps "uncovering" is more apt) the Kingdom "to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age." (2) Future: In speaking about future hopes, distinctions need to be made between different kinds of futures: There are possible futures-- those which might be, limited only by the horizons of imagination; prob-able futures, those which are likely to be, indicated by present trends and tendencies; preferable futures, those which should be, in accord with sys-tems of values; and plausible futures, those which can be, capable of be-ing practically realized. Our focus here will be on a future vision of community within King- Review Jbr Religious, July-August 1988 dom perspectives that can shape attitudes, indicate behaviors, and mus-ter energy for further uncovering the Kingdom now. Our contention is that religious today are called to explore the possible, to assess the prob-able, to proclaim the preferable, and to implement the plausible. It is our further contention that such vision is essential to God's call to cocreate our future, to renew, indeed to refound community. Any community with-out a vision is moribund. (3) Community: In this context we are speaking about religious com-munity primarily, that is, intentional ecclesial groups of Christians who are called together in faith and bonded by memories of a shared past, hopes for a shared future, and commitments to a shared present. To-gether, members carry out a specific mission in service of the kingdom of God according to the unique charism of the group and by using their gifts for ministry in a concerted way. As with individuals, the commu-nity itself is called to ongoing corporate renewal in response to the Gos-pel, the charism of the group, the signs of the times, and the graced in-itiatives of its members. Community as Theological Imperative The origin of everything--the world and its people, all creation, the entire cosmos--is a God who is Trinitarian. The life of God, by its very nature, is relational, societal, communitarian--a perfect union without confusion, distinction without separation. The ultimate destiny of the whole of creation is the kingdom of God, which is also at its core communitarian, a perfect communion of all hu-mankind, the world and its history. As R. P. McBrien says: The initial experience of God's renewing and reconciling presence, which is the kingdom of God, evokes our theological quest for under-standing and excites the hope that one day our union with God and with one another will be realized to its fullest, when God will be all in all. ~ Communitarian, societal, relational life, then, is both the origin and the destiny of all creation. As disciples of Jesus we live in incarnational time that originates with the Trinity and finds completion in the fullness of Kingdom. Christ came in the flesh to show us that the way to God is through membership in the Kingdom, the principal sign of which is unity--oneness with God and with each other in Christ. Jesus' parting prayer for his disciples was: "May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be one in us. that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, so may they be perfected in unity" Hope for Community / 519 (Jn 17:21-23). The Christian way to God is in and through community. Community, then, is not just a dimension essential to religious life; it is an invitation shared with all people, indeed, with all of creation. All are called to com-munity that, together with Christ, they may seek and proclaim the king-dom of God. The theological imperative of community is clearly enunciated by Vatican II in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: God did not create man for life in isolation, but for the formation of so-cial unity . This communitarian character is developed and consum-mated in the work of Jesus Christ. For the Word made flesh willed to share in the human fellowship (n. 32). Community as an Evolving Reality in Human History The need to belong, to be part of a larger whole, is a basic human need. The experience of community has evolved over time. Families at first came together into kinship groups of tribe and clan primarily for sur-vival. Eventually tribes and clans grew into villages. Over thousands of years the tribes/clans/villages grew into cities/states/nations. Today the nation is the predominant human grouping. But already further changes seem to be moving towards what is referred to as the "global village" (interdependent world communi!y). We become members of these groupings by birth. Formerly living closely together over a lifetime in tribe/clan/village provided an unques-tionable sense of belonging and membership. In addition, such member-ship provided a clear sense of identity, values, and life-purpose. While life in the city/state/nation continues to give some sense of belonging and membership, it is less tangible than the former. Today nationality, for most, primarily shapes neither identity, values, nor life-purpose. All must struggle to find their own. While some people today would claim membership in the "global village," this certainly is not yet a univer-sal experience. One movement in this evolution of human community seems to be towards increasing fullness, beyond any single nation, race, or culture-- towards a community of humankind in this "global village." To Chris-tian ears this would seem to have a "Kingdom" ring that Teilhard de Chardin heard better than most: As the centuries go by, it seems that a comprehensive plan is indeed be-ing slowly carried on around us. A process is at work in the uni- 590 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 verse . Through and thanks to the activity of mankind the new earth is being formed and purified and is taking on definition and clarity.2 Sociologists suggest that with the development of broader "born into" human groupings has come a proliferation of intentional groups which have provided a more tangible sense of belonging/connectedness. People choose to join such groups because they share a common purpose; for example, cause, interest, profession, problem. Intentional groups re-quire that members already have identity, values, and life-purpose. It is the shared purpose that brings people together concretely and gives them a sense of felt membership and connectedness. In these intentional groups, membership and connectedness are sustained by collaborative ac-tion as well as by personal presence and support. What we seem to have, then, evolving alongside the development of "born into" human group-ings, is the development of intentional groups. This evolutionary tracing makes clear that while communities (hu-man groupings) are constant human realities, the dynamics and processes of such groupings have been changing over time. Today the evolution of "born into" groups is moving toward more of an interdependent world-community. Rather than village or nation, the world itself is coming to be viewed as a single worldwide community in which we all are members. The obvious interrelatedness of world peace, world hunger, global economy, and so forth is an indicator that, as members of the planet earth, we share a common destiny. The devel-opment of intentional groups also illustrates the importance of shared pur-pose which brings individuals together and provides them with a sense of membership and connectedness. Changes in Religious Life Community Since Vatican II During the last twenty years, religious community has gone through many changes. One of the greatest impediments in the struggle to expe-rience true community, perhaps, is an obsession with local living as the focal point of community. In order to be free to look at community in terms of creative options, there is need to take another look at local liv-ing- what it can or cannot do now. In the past there seemed to be three factors that enabled local living situations to provide a strong sense of community: (I) Group living for many was an efficient way to support ministry. (2) It provided for most of the basic needs of the members, for example, physical (food, cloth-ing, shelter), relational (acceptance, support, companionship), spiritual (common prayer, liturgy, retreat day). (3) It gave each member a sense Hope for Community of relatedness and a strong sense of belonging due to commonly shared experiences and a clearly defined authority/obedience structure. At pre-sent these factors no longer seem operative in the same way and for the following reasons: (1) Because of increasing diversity in ministry, de-creasing involvement in corporate apostolates, and larger geographical distances, local community living is not always the most efficient arrange-ment to support ministry. More and more religious are living alone, in small groups, and with other congregations. (2) It can no longer be as-sumed that local living can adequately meet individuals' basic needs. This is due in part to an increasing diversity of lifestyles, prayer prefer-ences, work schedules, and so forth. In addition, increasing numbers of religious have discovered personally enriching relational and spiritual re-sources and experiences outside local living and even congregational life. (3) The experience of local living no longer automatically guarantees a sense of belonging/relatedness/membership. This is due, at least in part, to the decrease of commonly shared experiences and the minimizing of authority/obedience structures. In fact, for some the experience of local living has become alienating. Trying to force it seems only to make things worse. What then can people in a local living situation realistically do in terms of (I) finding support for ministry, (2) basic need satisfaction, and (3) nurturing a sense of belonging/relatedness/membership? Would it not seem to call for a change in expectations of what local living can pro-vide? In terms of finding support for ministry, might this not be more re-alistically supplemented by others with whom one is involved in the same or similar ministries both inside and outside the congregation? In terms of basic need-satisfaction: (a) Concerning physical needs, those who do live together must have some minimal compatibility; for example, as to what constitutes simplicity of lifestyle. (b) Concerning relational needs, the degree of required compatibility will depend on the degree of relationship expected. It may not be valid to expect intimacy (innermost, confidential, close relationship) or friendship (warmth, depth of feeling, affection). But it does seem valid for religious living together to expect a sense of companionship (living on good terms with one an-other). (c) Concerning spiritual needs, there must be moderate compati-bility in gathering for common prayer and basic respect for individual expressions of spirituality. As with relational needs, one cannot expect every local living situation to provide opportunities for deeper, more af-fective forms of prayer; for example, personal faith-sharing. 522 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 In terms of membership (belonging/relatedness), living together does not automatically yield a sense of belonging. Reasons for living together tend to occur more on the basis of ministry or, in some instances, on the basis of personal preference. It may be that the experience of member-ship is not dependent on living together or daily presence. Perhaps more significant, yet less frequent, coming together may be more conducive to a sense of belonging in religious life today and in the future. But there is a need for some kind of congregational structures through which mem-bers can experience belonging to the whole. Belonging in community goes beyond socializing, meeting, living, and finding comfort with one another. Community is primarily the re-sult of bondedness around a common mission. This mission is some as-pect of Christ's mission--proclaiming the kingdom of God, according to the charism of a particular congregation. Community, in this perspec-tive, means belonging to a group that continues to call members to more, to stretch, to sacrifice, to move beyond themselves. It means going more deeply into that core relationship of commitment and belonging, of be-ing able to share, support, and challenge each other at that level. It means looking beyond individual development to group development. The time may have come to make more qualitative, attitudinal as well as structural changes in order that members can identify and experience what com-munity could/should be about. Today, looking at the communal dimen-sion of our lives, we would suggest that mission can guide us in identi-fying how religious can come together so as to have a matrix from which to be sent out to serve. Religious need to feel, sense, experience mem-bership in their congregations and exercise it in interdependent (rather than dependent or independent) fashion. Psychological Development Accompanying Changes Since Vatican II As already indicated, the initial changes that followed Vatican II were primarily external adaptations; for example, changes in dress, time, and form of prayer. Still these external adaptations opened the door to more significant changes. Soon efforts moved beyond the adaptation of externals to more substantive issues of renewal. This appears to have oc-curred in three general phases which can be viewed also as stages of matu-ration. The first phase consisted of a search for congregational identity (identity statements). Contrary to earlier practices, at this phase there was an attempt to engage the participation of the entire membership. This so-licitation of individual opinions helped catalyze the disassembling of re-ligious congregations as collective entities and evoked movement toward individuality on the part of members. Hope for Community / 523 At the second phase, there were many attempts to foster personal shar-ing (for example, house meetings, prayer groups, and small-group liv-ing) and the greater development of interpersonal relationships. Although this search for intimacy took place within the local living situation and in the workplace, both in and outside the congregation, the emphasis was primarily a within-the-congregation experience. In the third phase, attention turned to writing "mission statements." During this period energies were directed more externally with greater emphasis on ministry and service to others outside the congregation. The changes which occurred in these three phases were much more significant than the external adaptations mentioned earlier. These three phases in religious life are not unlike Erikson's fifth, sixth, and seventh stages of human growth and development: Identity Formation (in ado-lescence); Intimacy (in young adulthood); and Generativity (care and serv-ice of others in adulthood).3 Viewed in this perspective, the movement of individuals and congregations through these three phases can be seen/ understood in terms of maturation. For many religious this was a neces-sary maturing process which challenged them to greater personal growth and increasing individuality. This process of maturation enabled great numbers of religious to move from earlier patterns of passivity, compli-ance, and dependency towards becoming more active, assertive, and in-dependent. Each moved through this process along her/his own path, which was appropriate because the task was increasing individuality. But the movement towards active, assertive, and independent living only paved the way for additional movement and further change. Now many religious seem stuck, stagnant, experiencing, if you will, a "stalled generativity." True generativity demands that religious con-tinue to mature and become interactive, resonant, and interdependent. But such movement cannot be executed alone. In order to make this next step, religious will need a renewed sense and experience of co~nmunity. Present Inadequacy of Local Community Living We would contend that community, as we have known it, is no longer adequate because it has been based too largely on local living. Lo-cal community living, for many, no longer has the capacity as a struc-ture to provide members with a sense of community. Whether one's liv-ing situation is positive, neutral, or negative, there remains among many religious women and men a lack of connectedness to a group which at present can challenge, inspire, provide a vision significant enough to con-tain the religious commitment of one's life. It is becoming clearer that local living situations can more appropriately address the daily basic 524 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 needs of religious members, but that they are inadequate in providing the context for their life commitment. In other words, community member-ship/ connectedness comes primarily from a sense of belonging to the larger whole. Alvin Toffler in projecting community for the future says it well: "Community is more than emotionally satisfying bonds. It re-quires strong ties between the individual and the organization. Commu-nity is absent because there is little sense of shared mission.' ,4 He con-nects the absence/loss of a sense of community with the lack of a shared sense of mission. So what can be done? How can religious meet their needs? Find sup-port for ministry? Reestablish bonds of belonging (membership)? Rather than problem-solve, as has often been done in the past, by focusing on how to "fix" local living, perhaps there is a need to step back and look at the goal of community as described earlier. Again, the purpose and path for all Christians is the kingdom of God as disciples of Jesus. Many have moved from dependence to independence and now need to move towards greater interdependence. In short, what we are suggesting is not so much structural change as a shift in perspective which can enable in-dividuals and groups to see community primarily in service of the King-dom. This, in turn, requires interdependent relating, both in order to pur-sue the group's mission and to meet the needs of members. Next Step: "Upper Room" Experiences In order to experience better a sense of membership/connectedness to the larger whole, religious must gather to profess their common be-lief in the Risen Lord. Such was the gathering of the disciples in the up-per room (Acts 2). Here we find: a coming together in fellowship; as dis-ciples (men and women); in confusion, fear, and uncertainty; united in their memory of and belief in the Risen Christ and his promise of the Spirit; gathered in prayerful support of one another; and open to the power of the Spirit who comes as gift, creates them anew, and unifies and empowers them with a passion for continuing Christ's mission-- proclaiming the kingdom of God. Perhaps what religious communities need today is a quest for simi-lar "upper room" experiences in which members can gather for prayer, reflection, celebration, and support. Conditions for "Upper Room" Experiences The kind of experiences we are suggesting basicallyrequires events at which members gather not just to attend, but to participate in local, regional, and congregational events for significant exchanges around mis-sion and the means for pursuing it. Not only is the topic of mission ira- Hope for Community/525 portant, but so also is the process of gathering. It, too, should mirror the Kingdom. This calls for approaches that will enable people to pray/reflect/ interact in such a way that mutual experiences can become disclosures of God's actions and invitations to a further "uncovering" of the King-dom. This implies sharing prayer at deeper levels, prayer proceeding from the very experiences of life and ministry in this incarnational King-dom. It also calls for celebrations of life together--its joys and sorrows, successes and failures, hopes and fears. In short, what is reflected upon, prayed from, and celebrated needs primarily to relate to the larger per-spective of the kingdom of God. Common community events that already provide such opportunities include: renewal/retreat programs, convocations, chapters, regional meet-ings, professions, jubilees, funerals, missioning ceremonies, and litur-gical and paraliturgical services commemorating special feasts and events. Perhaps even committee meetings have Kingdom potential! In ad-dition, there are larger ecclesial, ecumenical, and civic events to which religious groups could bring and find Kingdom perspectives. These perspectives hopefully can point to attitudes, dispositions, val-ues for preferable futures that include: a passion for the Kingdom per-meating not just the matter covered, but also the manner of the sharing (with reverent honesty); a spirit of sacrifice and compromise that allows people to let go of fixed positions (not of principle or conviction how-ever!) that might impede plausible steps for now (discernment is a mat-ter of when as well as what!); a determination to love each other until all embrace the same truth; a hunger for justice and peace tempered by compassion; a profound respect for freedom with accountability; a per-sistent quest of unity while preserving diversity. "Upper Room" Dynamics Some dynamics for gatherings that might further the Kingdom would include: (I) commonly accepted agenda that concern significant issues; (2) "contemplative listening" that would value periods of silence and listening with the heart; (3) sincere reverence for the opinions and espe-cially for the experience of others; (4) sensitive sharing that helps per-sons speak the truth in love with the authority of their own experience, yet with a certain tentativeness and humility; (5) seeking to build con-sensus rather than deciding by vote, which tends to create division be-tween "winners" and "losers." Obstacles to "Upper Room" Experiences There are, of course, obstacles to such "upper room" experiences. 526 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 Most seriously obstructive to any effbrt towards greater interdependence in community is a certain immobility resulting from a loss of belief the mission and of hope in the future of community. Unfortunately there are those who have become victims of the inevitability of probable fu-tures and who are unable or unwilling to live into the Paschal Mystery in present diminishments as the prelude to new life. There are lesser resistances of varying degrees. On the one hand, there are some who desire to restore past forms of community life rather than to renew them. Those inclined this way tend to depend on others (usually in authority) to tell them how. These are often angry, depressed, apathetic, or passively aggressive in resisting change. On the other hand, there are those who have opted for more independent styles of living and working and who .are reluctant to forgo individual paths or alternate groups which have claimed prior allegiance of membership. Many of these not only are frustrated, but have become increasingly more alien-ated and indifferent to the community; some have a pervasive resistance to the accountability true interdependence requires. Then, of course, there are obstacles from the logistics of coming to-gether- with considerations of distance, expense, ministerial commit-ments, depletion of energy, and so forth. A formidable deterrent also is the memory of poor past experiences at meetings that have not only fallen short, but have also been destructive, of "upper room" experi-ences. Signs of Hope for the Future In seeking signs of hope for the future of intentional faith communi-ties, we would point to some significant developments that perhaps fall within the range of probable futures. Some are occurring outside religious life as such and even beyond the confines of the Roman Catholic Church. In general, there is a grow-ing consciousness of and desire for the "global village" especially among those committed to nuclear deterrence and ecological balance. Common causes of justice and peace (kingdom of God among us) have brought together various religious groups into organizations like the In-terfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility. What seems to be a wide-spread quest for deeper interiority (kingdom of God within us) has stimu-lated ecumenical attempts to nurture prayer and to train spiritual di-rectors; for example, Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, in Wash-ington, D.C. A particularly striking phenomenon is the emergence of "new com-munities" like Taiz6 and L'Arche which bear some common character- Hope for CommuniO, / fi27 istics including: inspiration from existing spiritual traditions; the follow-ing of Christ as proposed by the Gospel; equality among the members as regards sex, state in life, and ministry; ecumenical membership with-out loss of confessional identity; cordial relations with Church authori-ties; a place for couples and children; a strong sense of presence among others; a readiness to adapt to changing situations; commitment to com-munity linked to commitment to each person's ministry; decisions by dis-cernment and shared responsibility; gradual movement towards perma-nent commitment with room for temporary association; a nonjudgmen-tal spirit; varying degrees of involvement in community; and a spirit of hospitality.5 Some developments are occurring within religious life itself. Evi-dences of these are intercongregational endeavors on a national scale like the LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious), the CMSM (Conference of Major Superiors of Religious Men), and Network. Lo-cally and regionally there are examples of collaboration like intercom-munity novitiate programs and union theological schools. Along less formal lines, intercommunity and even interdenomina-tiona~ support groups are emerging among people involved in ministries like spiritual formation and spiritual direction. Within congregations themselves, internal support groups (of mem-bers from different local communities) seem to be increasing, as do pro-grams of lay affiliation and the utilization of lay volunteers. Conclusion The future belongs to those who dare to hope and who are willing to commit themselves to help shape it. Some questions that members of religious communities might ask themselves in fashioning such a future are: To what extent is our life together focused on the Kingdom? How can our gatherings be more like "upper room" experiences? What atti-tudes/ behaviors/dynamics do we need to make them so? What obstacles hinder it? What signs do we see (inside or outside the congregation) of the Kingdom being uncovered? Where do members feel nudges towards further corporate transformation (conversion) in moving in the direction of a greater Kingdom-orientation? The concluding lines of Lillian Smith's Journey6 articulate some questions perhaps pertinent for those who would help shape the preferable futures of community life: A century from now, what shall be said of our journey in these times? And who shall the shapers have been'? . . . Who shall have shaped the future more? The hopeful dreamers who were strong enough to suffer 528 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 for the dream? Or the fearful pessimists who were convinced that dream-ing and hope are for sleepers only, not for those awake to the age? A century from now, shall hope and humor been strong enough to enable living with unanswerable questions? Or shall the pain that a tran-sitional age necessarily brings have caused a retreat to old answers that no longer acknowledge new questions'? A century from now, we shall have indeed journeyed . . . backward or forward. Direction can no longer be given by circumstance; real journeyers know that the direction is always chosen by those who make the journey. Who shall choose the direction? ¯ . . So the question is still the same . A century from now, what shall be said of our human journey in these times? And who shall the shapers have been? NOTES ~ R. P. McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston, 1980), p. 907. 2 p. Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 93. 3 E. H. Erikson, Identity: Youth attd Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 128- 139. 4 See A. Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1980), p. 384. 5 New Beginnings (Reprint from Bulletin 92, Pro mundi vita, spring 1983; Washing-ton, D.C.: Religious Formation Conference). 6 Lillian Smith, The Journey (New York: Norton, 1954). Finding Prayer in Action John R. Welsh, S.J. After a considerable career in high-school work in the South, Father Welsh became a pastor in New Orleans and then in Brazil, where he has also given retreats and par-ish missions. At present he is the director of the Apostleship of Prayer for the arch-diocese of S~.o Paulo. He may be addressed at Patio do Col~gio, 84:01016 S~o Paulo, S.P.; Brazil. The most abiding challenge to those who direct the prayer life of people in "active" apostolates or engaged in pastoral activity has to be that of indicating the relevance of prayer within the context of apostolic action. "Relevance" may not be the most apt word to denote that vague, haunt-ing feeling that somehow the period of my formal prayer ought to "say something" or "bear upon" all the rest of my day, devoted to activity. I use "relevance" rather to connote through an association of images, instead of trying to define precisely what we all sense: that prayer and action, certainly as an ideal, are conjoined. On the other hand, in offering these reflections of a method for con-sciously uniting our activity with our prayer, I prefer to use the language of precision and definition. Supposing agreement that in day-to-day prac-tice we rarely advert to definitions and hardly at all do so with any pre-cision, I hope in what follows to awaken in readers a sense that "I'm already doing that"; then, through some precision, to help them to at-tend more reflectively on its advantages in prayer-action dynamics. In other words, this article has no pretensions of describing a brand-new method, but only of setting out in a descriptive way the interaction or relevance of prayer and apostolate. Circular Interaction The interaction may be imagined as circular, starting with (a) prayer, 529 530 / Review for Religious, July-August 1988 (b) going on rounds of activities, and (c) closing the day with reflection. True, these three "instants" are well known and practiced widely. What makes of them a dynamic is the interconnection, the uniting, of each "in-stant" with the others and thus a closing of the circuit, so to speak. It is on the value of this "fitting together" of prayer-action-reflection that I am focusing. (a) The "prayer" I speak of is simply the time of formal prayer at the start of the day, the morning meditation or set of prayers or readings which are often done in common, either as preparation for the Eucharist or within the Liturgy of the Hours. It comprises both "hearing the word of the Lord" and "pondering on it in one's heart"; listening to the Lord and responding as that word motivates and arouses sentiments in my heart. As a simple illustration, I fix attention in morning prayer on a chal-ice on the altar as a symbol of my daily offering to Christ in union with the Holy Sacrifice offered "from the rising to the set of the sun." (b) "Activities" include all the occupations of the day, be they study, raising children, teaching, nursing, directing, counseling, travel-ing, attending planning sessions, doing business, or keeping house. Here it is vital that the sentiments evoked in prayer "overflow" and stream into the kind of person who is performing the tasks of the day. To put it another way, the one who prayed earlier should be saturated in the af-fectivity or the spirit that the prayer stimulated and in this spirit continue thinking, feeling, and deciding; and, of course, he or she should act and judge and treat others in that same spirit. Continuing the illustration above (the chalice on the altar), I set out for a meeting on the other side of my vast city, choosing the wrong bus, missing the interurban train, and arriving long after the appointed time, only to discover that I have come to a parish with the same name as another in the same sector and that the.meeting, now concluding, is at the other parish, a good two miles distant. Staying where I have arrived, I visit the staff of a recreational program for children, which is modeled on a type common throughout the city. Though frustrated, I sense I have made an important contact for my work, one more useful perhaps than the meeting I missed. (c) The "reflection" at the close of the day may come in many forms: examination of conscience, recitation of Evening Hour, commu-nity night prayers, an evening Mass, or a private review of the day. In this moment one passes in review the significant moments of the day's activities, letting what is "significant" come to the fore spontaneously: an image deeply impressed, a personality encountered, a conversation whose very overtones I recall, or the salient emotional tone of the day, Finding Prayer in Action ! 531 such as anguish, euphoria, anger, frustration, or quiet satisfaction in un-folding events. Reverting to the illustration I have been using: late at night I look back on my day. Th~ sentiments of frustration tinged with resentment somehow evoke the Lord's challenging words to the two "sons of thunder": "Can you drink the chalice that I will drink?" And I think, this is the chalice I saw on the altar when I prayed my daily of-fering, but through the day's events now it is a chalice of frustration and incomprehension, like the one Jesus chose in union with the Father's will. Now I have, in deed and in fact, just such a chalice to complete the offering I made to the Father through this morning's words of offer-ing. Visit to a Bairro and Back Coincidentally, on the very day I was planning what to say in a con-ference on "prayer and action" to lay ministers of an impoverished com-munity on the outskirts of an important urban center in northwest Bra-zil, the events I recount below took place. My day began with a reflection on the situation of the great majority of families living in this bairro spread out all over this dry, unproduc-tive area, whose only "in

Issue 47.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1988. ; Communal Spirituai ~Cons01ation The Blessing of ~OId Age . . .= =,.~ ;. ::. -. : ~ - = :"~ i~',~,~ . Love and !~Apostolate Volume 47 Number 6 Nov./Dec. 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. REWEW FOR RELiGiOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REVIEW 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 Nov./Dec. 1988 Volume 47 Number 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rv.wv.w Fon RvaotGmus; 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 Rv.wv.w FOR REt.mtous; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints ar~ 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. Consciousness Examen: Becoming God's Heart for the World George A. Aschenbrenner, S.J. Father Aschenbrenn~r, well known to almost all of our readers, returns to our pages,. His article was first published in the April-June 1988 special edition of Prayer and Service (Rome). He is the director of the Spiritual-formation program at North Ameri-can College; 00120 Vatican City State; Europe. To live contemplativeiy. Ind~ed', ~o become Whom we contempl.at~: this is the invi~gorating experience, the hallmark enterprise and adventure that human existence is all about that for which every human heart is long-ing. The magnetic appeal of~tl~e wholly beloved invites our hearts to a transformation which is never e~isy. But it is so intimately renewing as to be almost irresistible. It is the very heart 9f love. Lovers in their mu~- tual ~0ntemplation are not always explicitly aware of this process of self-transformation into which the~y ~are being swept up. But c,ertain claalleng'- ing momen, ts can starkly reveal the risky loss of self that is involved. And yet the very attractiveness of the beloved provides conviction and moti-vation t6 embrace this risk. in that magnetic moment, love seems an op-portunity not to be m'isse'd. B/at love's opportunity "and risk are also costly--and lovers finally know this. Indeed, the cost involved in the con-templation of lovers strikes to the profound level of self, id.entity. But cost what it may, the belove.d~s attractiveness lures the lover on to surpris-ingly new depths. The beloved in our reflection here is Christ Jesus, our God and Lord, our Brother and, finally, all our sisters and brothers, especially the most suffering ones across all time and space (see Mt 25:31-46). And contem-plative transformation into .this beloved is the fundamental process .in-volved in, indeed it is, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. It 801 [102 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 is also the process with which examination of conscience is concerned. And there we have at once the premise and the product of this reflec-tion. Both devotion to the Sacred Heart and examination of conscience have a long history in the Ignatian tradition. But they have rarely, if ever, been viewed in relationship to each other. In this article I will try to show how regular examination of conscience facilitates a transforming expe-rience of one's own heart into the beloved of one's heart, the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus Christ. After a brief summary of the contempo-rary renewed understanding of the examen, I will make use especially of some of the graces prayed for in the First Week Of the Spiritual Exer-cises, in order to describe the continuing conversion involved in a regu-lar practice of examen. Finally, in support of the claim that the examen can convert our hearts into devotion to the Sacred Heart of God, I will describe a little of the apostolic power~ the ardent love and thirst for jus-tice, of such a growing and ongoing conversion. Ongoing: for we are never done with love. In recent years there have been attempts, both within the Jesuit heri-tage and within the whole Church, to renew the understanding and prac-tice of examination of conscience and of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Examination of conscienc~ is now more of(en called consciousness ex-amen or awareness examen. ~ In its renewed form the examen continues to bless and sensitize the hearts of many busy believers to the loving pres-ence of God in all of daily life. And while much work has been done in developing a contemporary theological understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart,2 perhaps the a~tual practice of the devotion is not so widespread as that of consciousness examen, or at least is not widespread among those who frequently make use of consciousness examen. This article, finally, though its central point is to relate the two practices, is concerned more with the personal effects of regular examen than it is with the details of traditional or recent developments in devotion to the Sacred Heart. Renewed Understanding of Examen In the renewed understanding of the examen, two insights are key. First, a much more positive perspective has corrected a past view that often deteriorated into an overly negative, moralistic misunderstanding. Rather than highlighting the bad actions of a day, the examen gives pri-mary concern to what is primary: God's revelation, a steadfast love in Christ Jesus always inviting and invigorating our consciousness. Formal examen sensitizes our hearts to the presence of this love in the ordinary Becoming God's Heart / 803 details of every day. Whenever this love is recognized and responded to, our hearts simply must c9~me aliw~ with joy and gratitude. So gratitude is the major element in the actual time of examen-prayer, as it should also be in our daily lives of faith. And this gratefulness for the wonder of God's love stirs hearts to action. And so gratitude becomes the chief motive from which all ministry pours. As the examen begins to make our hearts more aware of God's .per-during Io.ve, we also begin to recognize flow often and how easily we can b~ oblivious to that love, or how subtly, yet quite stubbornly, we can refuse response to love. This realization, when faced honestly and not rationalized away, can, whether rudely or quietly, awaken our hearts with healthy guilt, with sorrow and repentance. As this article will de-velop later, this, experience of guilt and sorrow is anything but pleasant; yet, as an experience of God's love, it does purify us, it does transform us. And the effect of that can only be a bolder, freer, more wide-ranging apostolic service. Mature faith and discipleship cannot happen without this painful transformation in the humiliating experience of guilt and sorrow. As the repentant sinner encounters God's forgiveness in Je-sus, sorrow is transformed into hopeful, vigorous gratitude--and a burn-ing zeal to serve God's loving justice in our world. In this way, thanks-giving-- the central driving force in the heart of any mature disciple of Jesus Christ--dominates the dailyexamen and fuels its impulse toward loving action. A second insight that renews our understanding.of the examen is the importance of the informal examen, as distinguished from, though obvi-ously not unrelated to, the formal examen.3 The formal examen is a spe, cific time and style of prayer:. In a previous article I described the five traditional elements of such prayer.4 Never meant as an end in itself, this formal practice of examen should gradually .spill over and infiltrate it-self, as a special faith,sensitivity, into a person's daily ,life. And so we come upon the informal examen:a way of living. The informal examen is more a matter of who we.are and who we are becoming, whereas the formal examen is a specifid prayer we regularly practice. Thus a .regular practice of examen can lead to that self-transformation which make pos-sible a genuine faith-sensitivity of heart, a dynamic connaturality with the Beloved, which we are calling here informal examen. This dynamic development of formal examen into informal, into a pervasive faith-sensitivity of heart, is crucial--crucial both to a proper understanding of examen itself and to its role in the human heart's deeply desired experi-ence of love: our becoming whom we contemplate. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Daily Conversion in Faith Jesus' ministry erupts publicly among the peopl(-inoa great sense of urgency: a wholly new revelation of God's love and the need for reform of mind and heart, if One is to recognize and respond~to that love. It is so clear at the beginning of Mark and in the synagogue-scene of chapter four in Luke. This radical personal conversion of faith is often described in the Scriptures as a matter of repentance. As a conx~ersion that will cost a whole lifetime, 'it continually involves the risking and sacrificing of a temptingly attractive but false, illusory self while radically true and ra-diantly new creation is born in a person's daily response to the quiet ur-genc~ of God's love. But no experience of merely passing excitement will suffice for this. Nor ~can such repentance and radical change of outlook ever be re-duced simply~ tb our own planning and control. A strategy of clear-sighted tactics and of fierce determination will always prove futile all by itself. In fact, if not properly motivated and accompanied by grace, it can actually corrupt the very adventure of faith into something"unwhole-some and unholy. With0ut,a genuin(rexperience of the wonder of God's love, the Gospel call, the call by grace and favor to radical change, can-not be heard, and healthy repentance cannot happen.5 It is the attractive beauty and power of God's love which reveals the inadequacy and sin-fulness of our condition and unlooseris in our hearts a desire to be much more than what we now may be. It is in this way that the w~onder of God's love reveals our sinfulness. And this profound truth, so capable of being misunderstoOd, is always the bedrock of mature spiritual life. God alone sees our sinfulness most clearly for what it truly is: a choice against love. And it is this God who calls us to intimacy in the beautiful revelation of Jesus come among us as forgiveness. Every detail of Je-sus' life, most especially his dramatic experience on Calvary, stretches and stirs 6ur hearts in hope for a new creation, a new life, a whole new self. But repentance, with its'purifying pain and.suffering, is the only way to this urgently longed-for newness. ¯ ~An ,honest repentant.acknowledgment of sinfulness.in the face of such love is neither'obxiious nor easy, because it cuts Our consciousness in humiliation. 'The guilt and shame and the embarrassment that come in the wake of such~an acknowledgment sting and. singe our conscious-ness. In the presence of such love, they make our spirits blush. The pain and hurt will, most often ,~" and quite spontaneouslyl make us wary and seel~ to activate d~fense mechanisms such'~ as the rationalizations of de-nial and the distractions,~not of joy, but of pleasure. These are moments Becoming God's Heart / 805 for careful discernment in the life of any believer, For the humiliating pain of acknowledged sin, as intended here, is not the result of some overly scrupulous conscience. Nor is it the unhealthy guilt of self-hatred. Rather it is the purifying consolation--not desolation, but con-solation~ however scouring--the consoling experience of God calling us to greater love and life and faith. Despite the pain, therefore, this repen-tant blush of heart is a grace not to be rejected. It is essential to any ma-ture faith, to any measured zeal for God's world, to any discipleship that hopes.to brave the road's full distance. The guilt that introduces our embarrassed, repentant response to God'.s great, tender love requires a brief description here. Much past ex-p. eoence of unhealthy guilt has understandably provoked the over-reaction against, even to the l~oint of a dangerous disregar.d, of, ~all guilt as if all guilt were unhealthy. Though unhealthy guilt can surely plague and disi~eart~n.us, yet there is a guilt born of God. A'nd it ~;tings. But for the lover, it also signals the Beloved's presence, a very active pres-ence, a redemptive consciousness, inoviting great~er intimacy in faith with God. Urihealthy guilt is always anxious, wo~:rie~ aboiat self, in excessive fear of punishment, preoccupied with failure, at tim6s verging on despair in the face of some unrealistic pe~rfectionism. But healthy, consoling guilt is always the result of an interpersonal Iov,e .relationship. And it focuses the heart beyond the self, on the Beloved, in painful so~:row for the wound one's lack of love has caused. Healthy .guilt does not despair, nor does it disrupt the deepest peace of the soul. The reason for this is that healthy guilt is always intimately and very positively related to encoun-ter, a repentant sinner's encounter with God's forgiveness revealed and available now in a crucified Son's intransigent love. In the Dying, a New Life But in the tense struggle'of this inner guilt, shame, and sorrow, we usually become aware of the risk and high stakes involved. A self, or some aspect of a self with which we have been enamored, perhaps for a long time, must be let go of, Something must die if the new is to be born. It is a mortifying experience, but, as it is not a mortification sim-ply of our own making, neither can the outcome of it be clearly grasped in advance, It is a moment of perceived high risk. And the helplessness of such a moment, when we are on the verge of letting go of what used to be and are. not yet in possession of what will be, can profoundly daunt and agitate our spirit. Furthermore, it is in no way simply our own power and ingenuity that will create a different future. In the helpless and sor-rowful awareness of our sinfulness, it is only an 'act of trusting abandon- Review for Religious, November-December 1988 ment of self, sometimes done in the dark aloneness of faith, that will al-low the Beloved to gift us with God's holiness, our only true human fu-ture. A process of conversion that has begun in love leads now to even greater love as a beloved God, in that faithful promise which is the risen Jesus, defies all darkness and rejects absurdity and pain as the final word, whether about this world or the next. The heart of God revealed in"Jesus excites our hearts with the invi-tation to a new and brighter future. But only a heart scoured clean in the humiliation of repentance can respond to that invitatiofi. The issue is as profound as self-transformation and as hopeful as a wholly new c?eation. But without a mortified, response to God's loving invitation and without a risky letting go of self, such a future remains simply tantalizing, cheap grace, illusion. The forgiving love of God ~brings th~ process of repentance to a con-clusion o~ lively gratitude, profound joy, and enthusiastic zeal for min-istry. The sorrow of a forgiven sinner is not depressing, however pain-fully purifying. Neither is this sorrow obliterated by the joyous gratitude and zeal for servic~ that realized forgiveness brings. Rather, the humility of a saved sinner, while not destructively focused on the past, neve'r sim-ply forgets the sorrowful memory of forgiven sin. One cannot help but wonder whether Peter in the maturi~ty of his joy, during his after-breakfast walk with the risen Jesus, did not once again find his eyes well up with tears as three awkward questions burned his soul with his own lonely truth, but burned it precisely for the sake of fidelity, the journey in companionship, and, yes, for the great holiness of Peter that lay ahead (Jn 21:15-19). The new self created in God's fo¢giveness is always strongly char-acterized by a profound, joyful thanksgiving for a deed neither deserved nor capable of accomplishment on one's own. This deed of forgiveness and the hope of a new and better future resonate strongly in the repen-tarot sinner's heart, now riveted on the challenging beauty of God's for-giving love, found fleshed forever in Jesus on the cross. And so the whole dynamic of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises propels a per-son to confrontation, to enlightenment and encouragement before this pas-sionate experience of Jesus on Calvary. Having taken upon himself the sins of all, this Son, anguished in an olive grove over the agonizing pros-pect of a humiliating death, is able to renew that trusting abandonment of self which allows himoto find once again, as always, not previous to, but in the very abandonment of dying, his dear Father. And his beloyed Father blesses this anguished abandonment with a future of absolute full- Becoming God's Heart ness in resurrection. In the face of such enlivening abandonment on Je-sus' part, we can find the graceful encouragement needed for that sur-render of self which repentance always demands. It is at this moment that the graces of fidelity and perseverance take root in the forgiven sinner's experience. And so Jesus' death into the fu-ture of resurrection stands faithfully, for all ages, as God's forgiveness. It gives graceful encouragement to all repentant sinners in this risky and humiliating process of self-transformation. The persevering faithfulness of this new creation, this new heart, will always depend on how pro-foundly, how pervasively transformed the repentant sinner is in the en-counter with God's Word of forgiveness. As we gaze on God's forgiveness in Jesus crucified, besides a lively gratitude and profound joy, our heart knows the expansiveness of a great desire for God in Jesus--an apostolic desire to give ourselves as Jesus did in the ministry of God's forgiving justice. This desire at the end of the First Week continues to expand as the attractiveness of God's love in Jesus is revealed through the remaining weeks of the Exercises. God's Spirit and kingdom revealed so compellingly in Jesus become our whole-hearted desire. To live in daily imitation of Jesus, to serve as an apostle in whatever way God desires, becomes the very energy of our hearts. And yet, as the experience continues, this desire can stretch our hearts still further: we may be so transformed, we may, in such transformation, be so intimately identified with Jesus, that we become and, in the thor-oughly real way the mysticism of baptism and Eucharist accomplish in us, we may be Jesus in and for our world. And so ttie joyous thanksgiv-ing of a forgiven sinner, so much more than .a mere devotional satisfac-tion, sets our hearts afire with such desire for new identity in Christ Je-sus that we become mystical activists, heralds everywhere of the good news of God's transforming forgiveness. This reflection offers the view that consciousness examen may play a role of special importance in facilitating such a process of radical con-version. The profundity and pervasiveness of the transformation spoken of will depend in large measure on a regular practice of examen. And rather than putting a clear conclusion to the process of radical conver-sion, the Exercises provide enlightening direction for the further and con-tinual deepening of desire for this daily identification with Jesus. For this reason, as the formal Exercises conclude and move to become daily life, we are always left with an even greater need than before for regular ex-amen, that we may continue the daily discernment of God's love con-verting us steadily into Christ Jesus our Lord. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Goal of Examen: Devotion to the Sacred Heart of God ,in Jesus Long after the retreat experience of the Exercises is finished, regu-lar examen keeps our heart sensitive and responsive to the attractiveness of the Sacred Heart of God: ifi Jesus.As we have already seen, thanks-giving and sorrow are the two chief affections in faith of the examen-- and the sorrow itself, as we~have also seen, finds its fulfillment in thanks-giving.~ And so it is in. and through its term of thanksgiving that regular cxamen mediates our conversion and growth into Christ Jesus. Through the basic thrust of the ex.amcn, each believer becomes a concrete embodi, merit here and now of the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus. Consciousness examen, therefore, by facilitating the transformation whereby.a serious believer and disciple becomes devoted to the Sacred Heart,is profoundly related tothat same,,devotion.For in this sens~e of the word, devotion re-fers to the fundamental shape and orientation of a believing heart to the Heart of God in Christ Jesus. And this sense of devotion cuts far be-neath-- it does not necessarily deny but rather must root--any specific, traditional devotional details and practices. .~o ¯ The transformation of self whereby our hearts radically become de-votion to the Sacred Heart accomplishes some perceptible results in our lives. Growing integrity of heart, wholeheartedness, Ignatian magnanim-ity gradually centers, unites, and identifies our whole person and pres-ence in the world. A white inner stillness, fanned to burning flame in God's own creative love, radiates an. energy bf, recollection~a collect= edness--that can meld our often fragmentary faith into the Strong, live organism of a life decisively for God. Such wholeheartedness first gives enlightenment, then courage, to-wards a fundamental desire and choice in the direction of the "heav-enly" things of consolation and away from the "earthly" things of deso-lation. These desolate "earthly" things live in our flesh as the seven capi-tal, selfish impulses toward sin that the Christian tradition ~has known so well for centuries; whereas the "heavenly" things of God's consoling love are the opposite impulses which also live in our consciousness where the Spirit of Jesus invites and breathes their confirmation, their development in us, as virtues, as the very shape of our .heart. In the in-terweaving complexity and tangle of our daily consciousness, we dis-cover that the tempting experience of these capital impulses to sin is pre-cisely the battlefield upon which the fidelity of our commitment and de-votion to the virtuous heart of God. in Christ is tested and strengthened. And so it is usually by standing strong against the tempting intensity of lust that the virtue of chastity grows. It is by decisively acknowledging Becoming God's Heart .and carefully standing against the violence of desolate rage that the ten-sile strength of nonviolent gentleness is forged. And so of all the per, sonal and community motions of spirit that impel us towards or away from the justice of the Reign of God. The examen is.daily involvement in this process of transforming the impulsive desolations of our conscious-ness into the deep, consoling devotion and virtue of God's Sacred Heart. Once again, as described earlier in this article, we notice that it is pre-cisely in the dying that the new is born.And what is newly born through these mortifying struggles on the inner battlefield of our heart--the heart of each of us and the communal, societal heart of each group, each so-cial structure--always affects apostolic presence in the world, always af-fects decisively actions for or against God's justice as revealed in the lov-ing Heart of Jesus. Fifially, this conversion into the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus, this process of our becoming devotion to the Sacred Heart, does not displace offr weakness ~vith an arrogant sense of ~Sur own stren~gth. No~, just the o'ppo~site! Maturity in faith is always growth t0 grateful realization both of our weakness and of our dependence on God's love for everything. A steadfast belief in God's love does not r.eplace human weakness. Rather, it helps us patiently to wait upon the Lord and recognize arid cele-brate God's love bringing strength into our weakness. For God's power is at its best in our weakness (se.e 2 Co 12:7-10). It is a power that is needed, for becoming whom we contemplate takes courage, even as it brings energy for it. It is high adventure, with a promised wage of per-secution, to enter and be taken up into the affectivity of Jesus, God's coun-tercultural heart for the world. Consciousness examen, then, is not a way to greater, self-reliant strength. But as its daily practice transforms us into the Sacred Heart, we may become whom we contemplate and so stand in this world as liv-ing witnesses, agents of love, inviting others into God's Heart in Christ Jesus: "Come to me, all you who are weary and over-burdened, and I will give you rest! Put on my yoke and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light"(Mt 11:28-30). And one more time we listen to the Beloved, becoming whom we contemplate: "This text is being fulfilled, today, even as you listen . . . 'The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord's year of favor' " (Lk 4:16-21). I~10 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Through a companionship with Jesus made intimate and tender, strong and apostolically peremptory, through days and years of fidelity to the examen of consciousness, and through the dynamic energy con-tinually released in the experience of forgiven sinfulness, we may come to the apostolic gift which the fidelity of the friends of God can know. In becoming whom we contemplate, we may devoutly, reverently, boldly, and with his thirst for justice become, each of us and together, in the Holy Spirit, God's own heart for the world. NOTES t George Aschenbrenner, S.J., "Consciousness Examen," R~.v~Ew ~oR REt.IG~ot~s 3 I (1972): 14-21. See also the lengthy, very helpful article of David Keith Townsend, S.J., "The Examen Re-Examined," CIS 18, 2 (1987): 11-64. 2 Annice Callahan, R.S.C.J., Karl Rahner's Spirituality of the Pierced Heart: A Re-interpretation of Devotion to the ~a~'red Heart (New York: University Press of Amer-ica, 1985). This book contains references to the essential texts of Rahner on this sub-ject. 3 George Aschenbrenner, S.J., "A Check on Our Availability: The Examen," Rw~w ~oR RE~.~o~ot~s 39 (1980): 321-324. '~ Art. cit., R~vl~.w ~oR R~.~G~ot~s 31 (1972): 14-21. 5 See my article "Forgiveness," Sisters Today 45 (1973): 185-192. Clustering Thomas More Page, C.F.X. Brother Thomas More has written for us before, most recently in our issue of March/ April 1986: "Centering Prayer: A Flight to Reality." He lives at Mission Santa Bar-bara; 2201 Laguna Street; Santa Barbara, California 93105. Three years ago our provincial asked if the members of the province would be willing to commit themselves to form prayer cluster gr.oups dur-ing th~ course of the coming.year. The clusters would be small, six to eight people, voluntary, and would pledge themselves to meet at least twice a year over a long weekend. The timing of the formation of these clusters was just right, for by this time in our history a spirit of trust had ,been developed among the brothers, largely as the result of several provincial gatherings which were organized along different lines from provincial chapters. Provincial chap-ters consisted of a number of elected delegates who deliberated in a for-mal and businesslike manner over a prepared agenda, generally using par-liamentary procedures or "processes" for handling this agenda. The "gatherings," on the other hand, were open to all members and were constructed around themes which were meant to evoke a personal and communal faith-response within the ambience of prayer, personal and communal, with emphasis on our commonality as brothers. Within this framework we related our struggles and successes, recalled our sinful and graceful history, and spent blocks of time in prayerful reflection. Along with appropriate communal prayers composed around the theme of the gatherings, there were carefully prepared liturgies. Some unexpected results came from these new ways of meeting. There was a power released in many that had a healing effect. The prov-ince had experienced a deep division that had a traumatic effect upon the 811 812 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 members, leaving many wounds and a feeling of alienation, along with an unsettling disorientation. Then, also, there was a disturbing loss of identity. But here at these gatherings we were learning to speak a new language--that of faith speaking from lived experience. We spoke from the deepest levels of our lives. We spoke also of who we were. And we listened. In speaking and listening and praying we built up a new rela-tionship with one another andbegan the process of healing and more im-portantly, of refounding and celebrating our identity as brothers. With this healing and rediscovery, the level of trust rose proportionately. Also, an energizing power once more flowed through the province. Having thus rediscovered our identity within the healing and fraternal gatherings, we were ready for the proposal to take the next step of form.ing prayer clusters. The method used to form.the first experimental clusters, three in all, was simple, yet somewhat complicated. We were asked to jot down the names of those brothers with whom we would feel comfortable in such an intimate setting, along with the names of those with whom we would not feel comfortable. The provincial turned the names over to a brother-sociologist, who, after a long Struggle with the assignment, canoe up with three group'ings, ~,hich, ~after some further adjustments, were refined'. The members of the three groups were then asked to begin the process: Some brothers bypassed this process and began on their own. The group I was in has met three°times over the last year and a half. One person had volunteered to prepare th6 agenda for the first session; another, to find a suitable place where the f~icilities were such that they guaranteed the kind of atmosphere needed for this type of meeting. We had agreed that finances should not be an obstacle towards attendance and that, if anyone needed assistance, the group would come to his aid. To dat~, we have met in such diverse places as Loretto, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and Santa Barbara Mission, California. Our three ma-jor themes were: (.1) Make a review of your life. Isolate one'incident where you had to make a radical decision. How did you resolve it? (2) What has been your experience of God? How has your prayer life devel-oped over the years? (3) What significant things have happened to yot] since our last meeting? Relate an incident of injustice you have experi-enced. How did you handle it? Rather than further describing the mechanics of the prayer-cluster ex-perience, I prefer now to become more personal and isolate three major movements I saw take place. The most singular and overarching move-ment that tied the sessions together was what I would call spiritual inti- Clustering macy, which John Dunne describes as "the heart's desire." 'I had not expected that this would happen, and so it came as a surprise a grace. I was led into the most secret chambers of my brothers' minds and hearts--places that had hitherto been in darkness and inaccessible to oth-ers. To be drawn into a brother's faith experience; to walk with him as he tells me, in language uncluttered by grammatical rubrics, about his personal history--to be drawn into such an intimate circle was to become a witness to how his journey shaped, and molded him. It was to become a companion, a friend, a brother, who has been made aware and has made him aware of the sacredness of his history. He would no longer be alone to those to whom he had opened a clearing where the heart spoke without caution or~embarrassment. Released from the fenced area of private prayer and buried thoughts, each brother opened up the land, scape of his soul, where what was once unspoken, silent, became sto-ries that were, in the words of John Shea, "witnesses to grace, ~tutter-ing accounts, at times,,of,the God whose ways are unknown to us." And after each account, there was a zone of silence more reverent and expec-tant than the hushed, silence that follows upon the last plucked strings of Segovia's guitar. And thus it was that each brother, within the intimate circle of fra-ternal shari.ng, was able to speak without fear,about those things in his life he believed in, knowing that he could do this becau_se he had the sup~ port and trust of his listeners. This spiritual intimacy led to the second movement: a new sense of ideiatity. Each brother spoke in,what Robert Bella calls the "language of the heart," where one is caught up in the restless, flux of thought un-tethered by grammatical ,rubrics. When one heart speaks and another lis-tens, each is .drawn closer together in the bonds of fellowship. The ex-perience of spiritual intimacy made each ,brother feel he was participating in a fellowship in which his identity as a person and a brother was re-captured, maybe even rediscovered. When we were drawn into the feeling level of the brothers as they told their story, there was a shift that brought all the hearers into one com-mon community with common roots. What was experienced was the joy of belonging, with the discovery that "joy is deeper than agony" (Nietzsche). This kind of interchange is what J. A. Appleyard, S.J., would call "agonistic" in the "best sense of the word: it struggles to articulate primary experience, and in doing so it creates an intersUbjec-tive reality, sets relationships of cordialit~y and professionalism on a new basis of experienced faith." Through this deep experience of sharing 1~14 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 their faith, the. brothers broke through the polite slogans by which they once related and placed their newly found relationship on a personal level where their faith journeys converged towards the two poles necessary for a humanly growth-producing state: a deep relationship with God and a deep feeling of brotherhood. This senSe of personal and communal identity, this joy of belong-ing, is not something entirely emotional. It is something more than that. Its merit is that it drew the group into the beguiling and dreaming air of what brotherhood can become, where brother relates to brother. As Bishop Tutu once wrote, "You blossom among those who keep affirm-ing." The third movement was the awareness on the part of the brothers that this experience of spiritual intimacy and the rediscovery of their iden-tity' as brothers was not done within a vacuum, but was fashioned from the agenda of the world from which they temporarily withdrew. If one listened closely to their stories, one became acutely conscious that the brothers came to the cluster to gain strength and support to become even more prayerful men of faith who want to'develop a spirituality for jus-tice and equality which is nonviolent, hopeful, courageous, and collabo-rative. They came from their deep involvement in such ministries as: chemical dependency; professional involvement in heavy ethical and medi-cal questions; inner-city and upper-level-income schools; directors of re-newal programs for clergy and religious; organizers of immigrants from Central America. Against this varied background, they spoke of their call and their efforts toward a radical commitment to be voices for the voice-less, prophets in today's Church and world. They spoke of how they might effectively be involved in the women's movement and how they could be brother to them in their struggles; of the issues and the injus-tices which cry out for their voice; of how they might clarify and articu-late a response to the needs of the Church and of society; of how they can speak out and act individually and collectively regarding specific in-justices they see within the Church; of.how they might be able to speak out about the clericalism within the Church and religious orders; of how they can instill in students values opposed to a consumer society and a vision of the universality of the human family. Clustering, then, has been for the brothers a powerful force for sustaining them.in their involvement in the issues paramount in our society and Church. Without this aware-ness, they realize, the clusters could become a cozy and self-~fulfilling affair, hardly any different from social gatherings or an evening of ca-maraderie. ., ~, Clustering What has been the effect of these clusters on the membership? The question is best answered by the provincial who initiated the effort. In a very recent letter, he wrote as follows: "It is clearly evident that the Lord has been blessing us in a particular way over these last years. Our numbers may be decreasing and most of us may be aging; still we are at a depth of commitment and a level of true fraternal sharing that I per-sonally had never experienced before in my years as a Xaverian. I have lived over forty years of very happy times--of real mutual fraternal as-sistance and good-natured camaraderie. However, it is, I believe, only in these later years that we have begun to share what is deepest in our lives, in our thoughts and feelings. It is only recently that we have be-gun to share what happens to us in our prayers, to open ourselves to each other at the depths of our intimate private prayer. The mutual understand-ing, encouragement, and joy that this. sharing has produced in us is evi-dent every time we gather together: it is vibrant, palpable, and promotes further joy. It is true spiritual happiness, a real spiritual consolation." The Sanctuary Lamp Amid the silence of the night the waxen sentinels do not their vigil keep but one lone beacon stirs the midnight air. The flame, so silent her voice yet so dauntless the strength gathered in the surgings of light defying darkness. How hidden the strain of solitude's demands to give with gentle grace life's unseen gift of gold while others bask in daylight's sweet caress. Barbara Ann Opfer 2027 Campbell, B-8 Sandusky, Ohio 44870 TheMirror in the Field Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J. . , Father Tetlow has worked in the religious formation of junior religious and of theol-ogy students. He is currently spiritual director to the cle~rgy of th, e Diocese of Aus-tin, facilitator of the spirituality program in the Central Texas Pastoral Centel, and tertian director of~the New Orleans Province of the Soc'iety 6f Jesus. He liveg at Xavier Hall; 907 Lydia Street; Austin, Texas 78702. Fvery literate American can rattle off the list of major flaws in the Ameri-can psyche: workaholism, negative self-image, inability to make com-mitments, perfectionism, and so on. We absorb the list from psycho-babble, but we do not accept that these flaw~':are mere personality quirks, "just the way we are." On the contrary, we have the vague but persis-tent sense that not being able not to work, or living continually down on self, or failing in seriously made commitments, and so on, represents some kind of moral or religious wrong. W6' do not, however, know the name of the wrong. I make an attempt here to name that wrong and to diagnose the spiri-tual sickness lurking under workaholism and the rest. Why do business-men who really trust God nonetheless work themselves into coronary care? Why do mature Christians feel that'their prayer is trivial because they do not focus on divine things the way a computer focuses on its data? How can a woman go through a long preparation, soberly take mar-riage vows, and walk away from her Spouse two years later? What would make holy old religious consider themselves worthless? I will contend, first, that a single, serious spiritual failing commonly underlies these spiritual sicknesses. The failing is that we do not believe in and attend to the passionate love of God continually creating each hu-man self. Very likely, many have not even made an adult commitment to a principal foundational truth of revelation: God continues at every mo- 816 The Mirror in the Field ment the Creator even of the free human self. I will argue, secondly, that we have honorable reasons for finding it hard to keep this truth in mind. I will list five. However, thirdly, even if our reasons are honorable, we suffer a good deal because of this unmindfulness. Specifically, we suffer a syn-drome of problems that constantly show 'up in spiritual direction and re-treats, beginning with the perfectionism, negative self-imaging, and workaholism already mentioned and including others. I will list another five that I have observed. These problems, I will insist, have specifically psychological moments, but when we escape our psychological suffer-ing from, say, negative self-imaging, we then face a specifically spiri-tual issue of appropriate self-love. It is the root spiritual problem I am interested in here. To analyze it, fourthly, I. will return to and expand on my first point. For I find the root of this whole range of problems in our refusal to accept God's crea-tive loving not in the abstract (we all give notional assent to God the Crea-tor every Sunday), but in the concrete. I mean that we reject God's cre-ating when we choose to dislike, hate, or repudiate the concrete gifts that I am given and .the whole gift that I am. This radical refusal strains or even breaks an appropriate relationship with the self and with God. Finally, I will suggest that in some measure the cure for all of these problems lies in a wholehearted, living yes to the concrete realities in my history, in my life, and in the self that emerges within them. Forgetting the Constantly Creating God. As children we answered the question "Who made me?" with the belief ~'God made me." Now adults, we need to know that the question cannot read who made, but who is making me. l~or we know that it is not the case that G~)d made me in an historical event done with and over. It is the case that God, who is at every moment Maker, keeps on making me. In the fullest sense, my Maker keeps~3n shaping me as a human per-son and as a self. As a child I imagihed that God creates the w,ay rain fills a. vessel" It rains. The rain fills the vessel. The rain stops. The vessel remains filled. So God made me and now I am. This is an infantile conviction we need to grow out of. If I choose adult belief, I must imagine that God creates the way the sun illumines a mirror standing in a field. The sun's light fills the mirror and the mirror shines back. Did the sun stop. shin-ing, the mirror would go blank; as long as the sun shines, the mirror it-self radiates, light. So, as long as God's creating love burns in me, I am coming to be: Did he stop loving me right now--per impossibile, we like Review for Religious, November-December 1988 to think--I would stop right now coming to be. I would go blank. Why go back over these simple truths? Most feel that, put this baldly, they are too obvious to need saying. Indeed they are obvious, so obvious that we let them fade from functional beliefs to mere formali-ties in our faith-life. For God is so faithful and steadfast that we simply and unreflectively take for granted, not only his love, but even more his creating. Indeed, when men and women turn to God today (as at the be-ginning of a retreat, or in the middle of a life crisis), we gladly accept our divine parent cherishing us and we find deep consolation.and mean-ing in the Lord of all things loving us personally. We are by no means so quick to know our God as our constantly acting, all-powerful creator. I do not mean that the indifferent and sinful among us forget God creating. My experience in spiritual direction and retreat-giving leads me to contend that even people who pray regularly live unmindful of God's actiTe creating. Many who make the thirty-day lgnatian Exercises learn at the beginning to bask in God's steadfast love for them, but never ac-quiesce in the principal foundational truth: that what God wants must pene-trate my whole life and my whole self simply because God the Origin keeps on as the First Maker even of the human self as I keep emerging. We have learned in recent decades to take comfort in the thought that I am not yet complete, not yet finished; but we limit the meaning of that to not being finished making my own self, not mindful of the Other who has not yet finished, either. Perhaps we are not mindful of God's making because we get con-founded by trying to figure out how God's freedom and my personal free-dom fit together. We do indeed face some tremendous Speculative diffi-culties in fitting together human and divine freedom, and some people may suffer spiritual problems because of their speculations. But I have only very rarely met the person who labors under a kind of Luciferian aloneness before God, strapped into spiritual inertia by metaphysical co-nundrums. Most commonly, people live unmindful of God creating for deeply personal and experiential reasons, rooted in our current perception of our self and in our appreciation (or lack of it) of our concrete, per-sonal gifts. Honorable Reasons We are not to believe, however, that we fail to live mindful of the passionately making God from dishonest anger or sinful defiance~ On the contrary, I believe that we fail for several honorable reasons. The first, I think, comes from the way we now perceive the self. John Donne has argued that in the twentieth century we think of the self The Mirror in the Field as a reality that each of us brings forth. I am producing, I am making, myself. Our conviction sh6ws up in the way we talk: I have to do my own thing. I gotta be me. I have to be true to myself. I want to be authen-tic. In earlier ages people perceived the self differently. For instance, when Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord," she was perceiving her "self" as the sum total of her human experience. When she said, "The Lord has done great things in me," she was not talking about her little life right then. She was talking about the entire range of her little life history, all of the beginning, middle, and end. When Jesus asked, "What would a man gain if he got the whole world and lost his self?" he was not making an obscure point about some mysterious essence; he was making an obvious point about the man's entire life, his whole his-tory, his full being. Everyone can understand the point that nothing could reward a man for trashing that. We do not think that way. When we talk about our self, we .are talk-ing about something much more circumscribed, and still in process. We feel engaged in that process in every one of our initiatives and responses. We sense that we are bringing forth who I am moment by moment out of our experience, out of our history. So where does God fit in? We find it much easier to think of God as the Maker of things that are finished, and the Maker of things of which I am not the maker. We find it diffi-cult to keep in touch with the God who keeps engaged in making my whole self. The second reason why we find it: hard to keep mindful of this pas-sionately creating Love in us comes out of our relatively new knowledge of depth psychology. We can easily believe, as any child might, that God once created a self whole and intact, on whom others subsequently wreaked havoc. But we find it hard to believe two things: that God could create a self hag-ridden by an unconscious full of horrors and an id ooz-ing unresolved conflicts. And then, that God could actively continue cre-ating a self that learns lusts, neuroses, compulsions, phobias, and addic-tions before it is intelligently free or while it must choose under ruinous constraints. Does God make the self that craves alcohol which destroys that self? In what way can God be responsible for a self compelled to break out in shingles instead of breaking out of an insufferable situation? How is any god involved in creating that self? How could God be creat-ing a lesbian whose unchosen, vehement sexual desires clash shatteringly with her own cherished conscience? Both speculatively and experien-tially, we have trouble finding God's creating love inside the post- 820 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Freudian human personality. Thirdly, I think that we find it hard t~ believe that God actively shapes the self because we are so aware of sin structured into our world and of our own introjection of those structured sins. Unavoidably in my society, I feel certain racial prejudices. I came to understand only as an adult how much I am driven b~ sexism. Again with my society, I am com-ing to comprehend the blindnesses of ageism. Ev.ery day, we Americans feel the weight of the world's wealth, which so inequitably divides hu-mankind. Thus, in vague but poignant ways, we feel responsible for struc-tured sin and guilty for our part in it; and yet we feel quite helpless to change things. Why would a good God be creating oa feckless, con-founded self like mine? Fourthly, we face this business of a negative self-image. I find this ugly self-disvaluing hard to define or describe, but great numbers of pop-psychology books suggest that it is very strong. In books like Theodore Isaac Rubin's Compassion and Self-Hate and M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie, psychiatrists contend that distrust and despising of the self poi-sons the American psyche the way radioactive wastes poison: AmeriCan watertables. And noting the tide of seminars on assertiveness and self-improvement and all the Esalen Institutes around, we are forced to con-clude that something is going on in the self-evaluation of postmodern hu-mankind, and it is not positive. We are all members of David Riesman's "lonely crowd." Just recently we celebrated an anniversary and listened again to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." We resonated again to the Beatles' famous line: "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?" Indeed; where do they come from? We find it hard to keep mindful that all these listless folk are the current achievement of a pas-sionately loving God. Fifthly and finally, our difficulties are intensified hourly by the ad-vertisers and taste-makers. They persuade us of the self that we "ought" to,be. During the 1930s, practitioners came to believe that advertising could go far beyond merely extolling the virtues of a product. They de-cided that real advertising should make people feel that we truly need what is being advertised, that we cannot hope to live as fulfilled persons unless we are supported by that product. Ever since, that is how adver-tising works~---and it really does work--teaching us to feel out of it, apart~ not fulfilled, without an infinite number of products and services. Since we are effectively made to feel the need of something new just about every week~ we ~.ever can come to feel that we really belong, are included, are coming to fulfillment. So where is the passionately loving The Mirror in the Field God who is said to be at the core of my--empty-feeling, craving-to-be-filled-- self? There are the five honorable reasons why we find it difficult to stay mindful of God creating us right now and to live attuned to the passion, ate love of God burning in our hearts. Of course, even~if theseoreasons are honorable, they do not make it impossible for us to be responsible for our relationships to our self and to our God. The Sin of Our Age And even if they are honorable reasons, we suffer on account of them. We might have good reason for runn~ing' a car off the road, and still fracture our skull. For these five fractured insight~ into the self give us a badly distorted vision of it and make it easy for us to suffer an inap-propriate self-lov6. That inappropriate self-love, I believe, is the root sin of our age and it produces the whole syndrome of spiritual problems that I will come to i'n the next set of paragraphs. We stand under the commandment "Love your neighbor as your-self." We are thereby under a spiritual obligatioh of ultimate conse-quence,~ since the Last Judgmerit will be made in terms of how well w~ have loved our neighbor. And yet we pay almost no attention to that as yourself and we do not know how to love ourselves well. We give our-selves to many fake wa'ys: self-indulgence in drugs and'sensuous living, the narcissisms of body-building and dieting and fashion, the willful search for the perfect mate, and so ow. But Christlike self-love, or wise and fully human self-love? We hardly ~omprehend what it is: : And yet the spiritual success of appropriate self-love has been de-scribed for us iri wh'ole shelves of books. Their distilled wisdom can be put this way: Appropriate self-love begins in approving and growing to like the divine good in myself--the gifts that I have and the gift that0I am. I approve of my gifts in the concrete, not in the abstract, so that I enjoy (as possible instances) my yen to bevice-president or my daily three-mile run or my .hit-and-miss spelling, and I like the self underly-ing all ttiat. I approve of my gifts in ~the actual contexts of my living, both time and place. In particular; I approve the concrete qualities about myself and realities in my life over which I never did have ~ say, which began and perhaps remain outside my personal, free control. So I might have to approve of having Hispanic parents or growing up in Chicago or being male. Every one of us begins appropriate self-love .with this yes. Martin Luther King did not choose to have a minister for a father, or to grow up in the tradition of American black preaching. Geraldine Ferraro did ~122 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 not choose to be born a woman with a swift, articulate intelligence at a time when such a woman could be invited to enter public life. John F. Kennedy did not choose to be born Irish-American Catholic, of ambi-tious and effective parents. Each of these three faced a series of radical choices that added up to saying yes to their concrete gifts, Had King re-pudiated his tradition of preaching, he could have accomplished little. Had Ferraro feared her intelligence, she could not have made history. Had Kennedy ignored his parents, he might well have spent his life in a dinghy off Hyannis Port collecting sunburn. Certainly, he could not have been elected the first Catholic president. God creates and keeps creating each of us in this and that concre-teness, passionately loving us into this human limitation and that particu-lar share of his infinite self. Whai tasks fall to me, then? First of all, the task of loving myself. But if I love myself, then I love a concrete self, a self that God now creates and now loves into being as I am. Plainly, I cannot love what about me is unlovable--my sins and ugly failings. But neither can I allow my sins and failings to make me hate or even dis-like the self that commits them. (Parenthetically, within this discussion the distinction between love and like cannot separate what.is one thing, and covers a rotten lie.) For if I have learned anything at all from the Word of God, I have learned that God has chosen beforehand to love me, a sin-filled self. If I choose to despise and repudiate what God loves, do I not try to make myself better than God? To look at my own case, then, I had to approve of, appreciate, and grow to like an American born as the Great Depression began, of par-ents utterly impoverished by that cataclysm. I had to come to say yes to much else: male and first child; father a champion athlete and mother lu-minously religious; Southern boy and raised in New Orleans with its Mardi Gras mentality; Catholic and nephew of a Jesuit metaphysician. I had learned to hate "Japs" and to admire soldiers when only a child, and also to consider blacks lazy and Protestants strange. I grew in sex-ual orientation, too, before choosing, and in a hankering for books, in a home where mother and father remained lifelong lovers and all the adults were readers. Of course, I have made many choices that modify all that. But none of those choices was wise that did not begin where each of us must be-gin. First to say yes, I am a gift, and then to say yes in the concrete to each of the gifts that I am. Am I tall? Thank God I am tall. Am I short? That is my gift. If I am angry at standing short--at whom am I angry? Who keeps making me short? If I cannot believe that God wants me The Mirror in the Field / 823 short, then I have made my faith fall short, and I will have to believe in a mythical The Force or in Carl Sagan's demiurge, Chance. Again, am I very, very bright? Would I rather not be very, very bright, °and do I talk and act like a dolt to veil my brightness? Whom am I insulting then, but the One who keeps making me very, very bright? Tile most ba_sic truth emerges: In the most radical ways, I am not my own maker. I.~never was and am not now. We all know Isaiah 45:9: "Does the clay say to its fashioner, 'What are you making?' " But we tend to forget, deny, or repudiate the truth that we are still on the wheel and the Potter's hands are still shaping us. "Does the pot say to the pot-ter, 'You have no skill?' " Well, each of us, insofar as we do not say yes to the gifts that we have and are, are telling our Potter that he does not know what he is doing. We enact this repudiation in a number of ways, but we suffer one spiritual illness from the repudiation itself, no matter how we act it out. When any of us rejects God's passionate love, we diminish joy in our lives. Thomas Aquinas felt that anyone who rancorously repudiated God's concrete gifts in the self would lose all spiritual joy. For we do not make our joy; we find it. Joy is like the brilliance of the sun. I al-ways think of it as whet happens to a mirror when it faces towards the sun. SUddenly the sun's light fills the mirror and in instant consequences the mirror radiates abrilliance all around. In the same way, God's pas-sionate loving continually flows in us or we would not be, and the first consequence of saying yes to God's concrete gifting is radiant joy. How the Refusal Branches Out In this atmosphere of diminished joy, the radical failure or refusal to approve of my concrete gifts as comihg from God commonly gives rise to several gpiritual problems. How do I live if I do not feel that I have all that I need or really want? Or take a worse case: Suppose that I live afraid that I do not have the gifts I need, that I am spiritually in-adequate and just not "good enough." Or worst of all: Suppose that I am angry at life and~at God over concrete realities in my life. How would I show that? How would I live that out? I would suggest the following ways. Each way increases in intensity as a person goes from lack of trust in, to.fear of, and finally to disgust with his or her concrete gifts and self. First: laziness. Any of several causes may underlie a given person's laziness. But if people do not feel themselves worth much, or worthy of anything special, they might well act that out by doing little or nothing. Thus, if a high school girl acts lazy in algebra class, she almost certainly 824 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 believes that, being a girl, she could learn little"about it. And the sin-cere and hard-working parish priest who never gets to the prayer he truly would like to make almost surely feels unequal to the'requirements of prayer or unfit to profit from it. Lazy people accomplish nothing because they try nothing; and they try nothing because they. live' with the sense of having no adequate or relevant resources within themselves. Not~ here that some might appreciate tli~eir own personal gifts but think little of the good things of the earth or"Of human artifice. Some, for instffnce, do not see gifts in food and housing. They have all they need and want, but they take it'all for graiited, implicitly, declaring it slight and unimportant. Conseque'ntly, they simply do not feel the hu-man weight of the hunger and homelessness all around them. They are simply lazy in these matters of justice, and that laziness roots deeply in their despising the good things of the e~arth. Second: ineffectualness. If la~zy people attempt nb~t~ing, ineffectual people attempt things but accomplish nothing. They do n6t trust their own gifts enough to create, to produce, to bring forth. I kne~, an artist onEe, a~ European. 'ffho brought all kinds of material into his studio but put nothing out of it. He fooled around wit~ a~t I~ut 'made. little or ~oth-iflg. As it turned out, I~E lived ineffectuhl because he feared that his gifts as an artist had unbreakable ties'to his sexual orientation. He feared that being a successful artist would n.e~essarily'elicit~plJblicly his hcimosexu-ality, which he fehred and hated. More accurately, he hated himself for having homosexual feelings. After he came to live easy and chastely within his sexual orientation, he began producing the art work o~f which he had all alpng been ~capable. And most of us know devout Christians who get on.e spiritual book after another from thei~ Spiritual Book Club and never~ get beyond a. few pages in any of them. Many people ~dopt this way.0f living out their inadequate se!~f-lov~ or their self-loathing ineffectualness who~cannot be on time, or get an article,finished, or per-forum their jobs the way their talents and .intelligence pl~ainly allow. ,Third: negative self-image. So many suffer this~that it;can reason-ably be called the most common, psychological suffering in our culture. Sometimes it see~s as though the whole population were seeking help tow~ard self-affirmation in institutes, workshops, and popular paperback books with titles like Be Your Own Best Friend. Psychologists are be-ginning to see the roots of most addic.tions and compulsions in self-hatred. ~ Note carefully, however, that this psychological problem can and probably does mask a spiritual problem. Once I have outgrown my in- The Mirror in the Field fantile self-distrust or my adolescent self-loathing, and have come to an adult self-possession and self-approval, I am then free in facing ,relig-ious and spiritu~il reality. Can I--who have found it so easy to feel down on myself--give active approval to my whole history, to the life I now lead, and to myself as God has been and continues to shape me? Thus the problem of a negative self-image transmutes from a psychological problem to a spiritual problem. What do I personally believe about God's creating me? DQ.I feel hope about myself and abgut humankind even in the rush~and torrent of our limitations ands failures? Do I .like the person. God is making me? Can I rejoice in the personalities who burrow into my.eg .o:--or do I insist on more "impr~essivei' friends? Can I approve of and rejoice in those persons whom God has given me to live with and work with? and in "the vast throng of. people" on earth? Probably all of us know some psychologically balanced people who deliberately choose to dislike¢ reject, or despise their history, life, and self. I know'one woman who periodically feels the need to denounce in Savage terms the dedicated women who taught her in grade school. We all know ~men who consider their (quite ordinary and honorable) jobs a degradation. Some see flaws, in the self and vaguely dislike the whole self as a consequen6e--flaws as trivial as fat'hips or shyness or a quick lip. A woman blurted out recently, "I hate myself when I do that." The "that" was a genuinely trivial failing, but she spoke a weighty truth: She does indeed hate herself, and regularly takes the occasion of trivial failing to reassert her hatred. Some even see strengths in the self and hate the strengths and, in them, ,the self. I remember one man feeling,bad about himself becausehe, could "only run three miles a day," and he had passed fifty. The. truth.is that a "negative~seif-image" is one dis, guise that we borrow from our culture in Order to mask our distrust or disapproval of how and what.God is.~.creating us. It is a commonplace'.among us that most of. us find it hard to acknowl-edge our virtues and our strengths. We ,also find it easy to get depressed by our failings. I often.suggest for a period of prayer at the beginning of a retreat the exercise of going over'personal gifts of every .kind, pre-cisely to say yes to God creating me. I find the vast majority of re-treatants unable to stay with this exercise. Why is this? Are these lapses of appropriate self-love mere, ly "psychological" in the sense,that they function less than consciously in the personality? I believe that they are more than that. I believe that they grow from an ongoing option or deci-sion: "I am not much. I am not very good. ! am a nothing." This fun-damental option fractures or even ruptures a person's relationship with Review for Religious, November-December 1988 the self and with the Maker.of the self. It is an offense against, the love of God concretely burning in myself. The option can actually become a repudiation of that creating love. I am afraid it did in'the life of a ex-seminarian who had tried all the drugs and all the sex, and who con-cluded several hours of sharing with the despairing remark, "God made me a piece of junk." Fourth: bitterness and rancor. Some prideful and arrogant people lash out bitterly and destructively when they cannot impose their will on events. But others who live bitter and rancorous lives see everything from the underside. On their tongues every taste of life is bitter; in their eyes every living scene unfolds under a shadow. They aggressively scan events and people for material to "bitch" about. ThEy seem to live to heap up more and more evidence that the'ir world and everyone in it are no good. One ex-priest, for instance, offered to the president of his uni-versity this odd praise about a just-completed.building: "Even I can find nothing to complain about." That man had known for decades that he lived a bitter life, and all he would do about it was to wear a mask of sardonic drollery over his emptiness. His friends all connived in his bit-terness, too, laughing at his lunges and unable to name what made him so rancorous. Yet it was plain: he gave himself to disgust at God's lov-ing creating---of his own artistic gifts, of his self, of the motley collec-tion of men and women around him. A recovering alcoholic, a woman whose children have grown and gone, has decided to live without drink, but has also decided to live feel-ing cheated and shortchanged by her disease. She is what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a "dry alcoholic." She bitterly protests'that she can-not take a drink as can nonalcholics. She demands to be able to take a casual drink and hates that she cannot. Her conversation--on whatever topic--roils with rancor. She certainly does not say yes to a self troub-led by her disease. She plainly repudiates that part of herself and dark-ens her whole life with her refusals. But who creates her alcoholic genes? Who makes a gift of each day she lives? Whom does she offend by re-fusing to rejoice in each of her living days-.'? The bitter and rancorous may seem to hate everyone around them, and may indeed do so, But as "char-ity begins at home," so does hatred. Fifth: workaholism. A lot of holy people work Ioiag, hard days out of sense that their own time is precious and their own gifts needed by God's people. They work in inner freedom. A lot of others fling them-selves into some special work because they truly love and exult in what they are doing. But very many people work and work and work and do The Mirror in the Field / 827 nothing else. They cannot not work. Their work makes up their life and their self. They do not have the freedom to take true leisure--to enjoy, as we say very accurately, themselves. The truth is that they do not en-joy their selves. They do even not approve of themselves, except a little bit when they are exhausting themselves at work. Henri Nouwen tells of a priest who would not, could not, take time in his day to be still and pray and who finally came to admit why: "I am afraid of what I will find in myself." Precisely. Real workaholics fear their selves. They keep producing and producingbecause they do not really believe they are worth anything apart from what they produce. One religious who had badly burned her-self out in twelve years of administration asked, "What am I trying to prove?" She was trying to prove what she did not need to prove, but only to accept: "You are precious in my eyes, and I love you" (see Is 54). The mere attempt to prove that I am worthy of God's creating love stands in direct opposition to acknowledging that his love comes first and humbly acceptipg it. Three other ways that we live out inadequate self-love show up often enough to merit mention, and several minor ways can just be listed. Sixth: perfectionism. Some of us continually place impossibly high goals for ourselves, which "proves" how much we think of ourselves. Then, as a matter of course, we fail toreach those goals, and that "proves" that we are not really what we like to think we are but in fact ~ire not worth much. For the perfectionist, nothing ordinary serves; he or she needs to aim only for the perfect. As an instance: A truly fat man in the.South decided that a man like himself, ought to look like a Califor-nia beach boy. So he.set out to diet by eating only one thousand calories a day, a caloric intake unlikely even for a scarecrow. Within seventy-two hours he found himself back to eating a thousand calories before noon, and, of course, to this day he lumbers around no less large. He does, however, feel more convinced than ever that he is weakwilled and worthless. Why cannot this man simply eat more rationally? Many rea-sons operate, perhaps; but one leadifig reason is that he cannot see him-self simply as a normally rational person. He demands that his mind have despotic sway over his whole self and particularly over his appetite for food. He demands that the physical shape that would emerge from the fat resemble--not an ordinary, regular-sized American male moving to the downside of middle age--but a bronze statue of Hercules by Phidias. He will be perfect! The tr.uth is that with that demand he covers a fear that he can have no kind of reasonable sway over his self and his appe- Review for Religious, November-December 1988 tites. He hides that self-deprecating belief under a cover of perfection-ism. A lot of good,'praying people do the same. One mature and experi-enced nun who ha~l pray~ faithfrilly for years could not shake the feel-ing that'her prayer was "not very good." Her prayer was fine, in my opinioh; what needed spiritual insight and God's gracing was her demand that she pray like Teresa of Avila. This woman had not really been will-ing to approve wholeheartedly her own way of praying, and that unwill-ingness by itself had kept her off center and vaguely unhappy for years. Seventh: lust for experience. We need to note first that~today Ameri-cans place, tremendous trust ih our own experiences and feel keen dis-trust of any "truth" not-arrived at experientially. Further, we can be per-suaded rather readily to try anything, from a drink' or a drug to a new kind of prayer. We tend to subscribe to the pseudomoral dictum that, ~if you are able to, then yowought to expei'ience everything. We :are all in some measure like the'New York woman in analysis who reported her exhaustion to her doctor--too much sex, drugs, dancing, eating,° not enough sleep. The doctor asked her why she' did it,~and the woman bolted up and blurted out, "You mean I don't have to do everything I want to do?" She was in analysis because she was not doing what she wanted to do, but.,what her social group made her feel she ought to want to do. She felt ~compelled to experience whatever the group moved into. 'That compulsivity and obsessiveness grows out of an empty~ center. She did not really know what she, herself, wanted todo in,the depths of her.self; she feared the depths of her self. ~, Many of us give ourselves to experiences that diminish our human dignity or diminish our freedom, as~did the woman in analysis. I know. one couple whose children, now beginning to move into their own ca-reers, have. submitted to eve~ry kind of religious :experience, from CCD at home to charismatic~weekends and the permanent diaconate, because the parents hankered after spiritual"experience, not because the children required anything. Some Catholics roam from liturgy to liturgy,oseeking the ritual that,w.ill fill their "needs"~as though Sunday Mass does not rise out of fullness, 'bUt fills an emptiness. In them, actually, it is made to, occasionally and briefly. Eighth: inability to make commitments. Why have so many failed to make firm, long-range commitments? Among the many reasons, Cas-sian pointed out one very basic reason when he described the gyrovagus, the wandering monk who always came to feel that the'monastery over the next.~hill had a better religious life than the monastery he.live~t in. The Mirror in the Field / 829 So he wandered to the next and the next monastery, hoping to become a better monk. Fundamentally, the monk's problem lies not in his mon-astery; his problem lies in his own self. He does not like the monk he is. He does not approve of the monk he is. Or if he does, he does not want to grow into the man that this monastery, with these monks, at this time, will shape him into. So he moves on again and again, unable to make the crucial permanent commitment. A young Texan turned into a living gyrovagus when he went from a diocesan seminary to a congregation's novitiate to taking vows in an order and then to another diocesan seminary. His disapproval of the way he lived in those places seemed to be of those "monasteries"; actually, it reached deep into his own self. I would not expect ordination to fill his emptiness, and if he does accept ordination, his parishes (a succes-sion of them, surely) will have an impossible time making him under-stand that they appreciate him. Another example of the inability to make lasting commitments: A gifted psychological therapist changed cities several times and kept ac-quiring new skills. He even absorbed thorough training in spirituality and spiritual direction. When he was about thirty-five and weary of starting over again and again, he came to understand that he had never really felt the weight ,and value of his very considerable talents. As he let himself appreciate them withoutguilt, and particularly as he consciously built friendships with highly intelligent and success'ful peers, he felt more and more grateful for his own gifts and freer to rejoice in using them with-out having to feel that he was required to. He also felt himself more and more deeply committed--to his profession, to his faith, to his friends, and to the city where he had settled. Then there is the marriage commitment. We can leave aside cases of psychological dysfunctioning, like the California twenty-year-old who left his often drugged wife three months to the day after the church wed-ding, muttering that he had not known whom he was marrying. He had known, actually, and so had his friends and his parents. His actual spiri-tual problem had been that he had not known that he was punishing him-self by marrying her. Among the sane and whole, every spouse faces bone-deep challenges in living out the marriage commitment. For, once married, each feels invited to be a new person by union and communion with this special spouse who invites him or her. She will at times ask herself vehemently, "Why did I ever marry him?" At those times she will be feeling the stress of still becoming and changing in ways intimate to her marriage that she cannot control. She cannot design to make her Review for Religious, November-December 1988 spouse another person than he is, even though as he is he will give shape to herself. If she truly loves herself as a married woman, she will wel-come those new ways of becoming and growing along with him, saying her yes to her emerging self. In the same way, if a husband deeply ap-proves of himself as husband and likes the man who is this woman's hus-band, he will hardly insulate himself from the summons to grow and change that emanate from this woman as she lives and becomes, even though he has no mastery over the ways he feels summoned to grow and inexorably will at times keenly resent them. So monk and professional and married person all either say yes to an emerging self whose emergence none controls all alone, or say no. Our primordial task as creatures remains intact in and through all our free decisions: to praise God for what we are becoming, reverence his creat-ing, and serve him by following where the Spirit of Life leads us--in the concrete. To this list of eight larger flawed realizations of self-love, various writers add other specific ones. Cassian adds monkish indolence, acedia. St. Thomas adds garrulity, prying curiosity, and true malice. He also lists religious diffidence, which means the refusal to grow in the interior life. Could he speak right now, he might add integralism to that, because the rock-bound conservative often clings to externals like Latin rites or neoscholastic formulations to defend himself against a deep fear that his own faith-commitment and believing would not stand up to current chal-lenges. Some centuries later SCren Kierkegaard explored the "despair from weakness" of those who finally cannot let themselves trust the self that God is creating in them. In their turns, Josef Pieper dwells on one grave inability of those who do not approve of who God makes them to be: the inability to take true leisure. And Sebastian Moore shows that those who feel unlovable do not love anyone or anything very much. All their desiring is pallid, so consistently that he names their condition a spiritual disease: erosthenia, a flaccidity of passion. This makes an impressive list of spiritual problems: laziness, inef-fectualness, negative self-image, bitterness, workaholism, perfectionism, the insatiable lust for experience, the inability to make lasting commit-ments, and also acedia, garrulity, prying curiosity, malice, integralism, the despair of weakness, the inability to take leisure, and erosthenia. Plainly, they arise from many different life experiences and in varied life circumstances. Just as plainly, they have many causes and motivations. But in our own day and time, they all readily grow as it were in vitro, from a hollow self, flooded with the nourishing medium of pitiful self- The Mirror in the Field / 831 disapproval or arrogant self-hatred. This unwillingness to accept the self I am coming to be, which can ripen into a disgust with who I am and even a resentful hatred of myself, very possibly makes up the deepest root of sin in our day and time. The Wholehearted Life In the face of such a list of spiritual problems, any talk about solu-tions would show extravagant optimism. Fortunately, I am not discuss-ing here the solutions of many problems, but the escape from or avoid-ance of a single problem: the radical spiritual one of refusing to accept, in concrete particulars, whom God is making me. But even then I intend not to list all the saving activities we might throw ourselves into to solve that single problem, because that would tend to confirm the very mis-taken conviction that underlies the problem, that our own activity comes first in our salvation. Instead, in this last section, I will sketch briefly and from living mod-els how those people live who are very successfully avoiding or escap-ing this foundational problem. I experience them as, and name them, wholehearted. Not that their hearts beat totally integral and without the murmur of human flaws and failings. Rather, they live out of their whole hearts--their selves--just as they find them in this minute. The whole-hearted might twang like an old player piano, but with every note and chord they give God and the world around them all the music they can pour out. I will speak first about the inner life of the wholehearted and then about its external manifestations. What goes on in their spirit from day to day? First, they say yes to this day, to the gift of it and the gifts in it. They not only "live in the present moment"; they approve of the present moment as of a gift. And in that yes they are approving of their personal history and the life they now lead. More, they choose to live glad to be what they now are and to be doing what they are doing (unless, of course, they have come to a time of decision, which they will perceive more as opportunity than as termination). When they think larger, they do not feel guilty about the plenty and the privilege in which they live. To start, they feel grateful for the earth, and for humankind, and for the universe. They feel desires of many kinds, some of them strong. Among them all, they try to keep their de-sire for God in Christ in first place. For the rest of their desires, they take responsibility as well as they can, enacting those they think authentic Review for Religious, November-December 1988 with courage and with equal courage suppressing those they recognize as drawn from unworthy sources (the Spirit of Darkness or of unruly flesh). In all desiring, what they want keeps them connected with the peo-ple around them and in some appropriate measure with current, affairs~ All in all, their desiring shapes up into a great desire to make things all right for the world and for every single person now in it; but their hop-ing does not depend on immediate success in the eriterprise. The wholehearted live in appropriate autonomy. As teenagers, for in-stance, still coming to be individuals they depend heavily on peer'opin-ion. As young adults, vindicating their uniqueness; they live carefully independent of "popular opinion;" particularly about the moral cruxes in interpersonal relations. As spouses, they give and take in thorough in-terdependence. All along, precisely because they like themselves, they are able to stabilize affective relationships. This liking of themselves gives rise in them to what is sometimes called a'democratic personality structure. Negatively, this means that their personality is not bound down by one need or drive or ideology. The spiritually wholehearted are not broadly compulsive; on the con-trary, they live and move in relative interior freedom. I do not mean that they never have some dominant desire or great enterprise in their lives. Some live outof a profound, specific desire. Neither do I mean that the wholehearted do not sin, ev.en seriously. I have known some who did. They sinned wholeheartedly, and if they repented, they repented whole-heartedly-- hating rather the thing they did than the one who did it. A married man high in a bloated corporation gave himself a year or two of lascivious fornication. When he heard the Spirit (his words) summon him back, he submitted himself to astonishing inconveniences and physi-cal discomforts suggested to him as (a long) penance. Put positively, all of the wholehearted can hold some priority and or-dering in what they want to get accomplished, gladly getting at one goal while postponing others without guilt. They can also respond readily to surprise demands, able to set aside their own agenda when they see that as appropriate and not feeling put upon about it. We need to take care here. In my experience, some of us suffer from one or other addiction or compulsion (neatnik, chocolate maniac, or some less acceptable culturally) and yet live truly wholehearted lives. This is a mystery to me, that we can find ourselves broken and power-less to heal the break and yet lead wonderfully wholehearted lives. I take this as truly suffering from the Original Sin and from all those sins vis-ited .upon us without our approval or connivance, or with our forced co- The Mirror in the Field / 833 operation, by alcoholic parents, sexually addicted elders, neurotic supe-riors, viciously selfish peers, and on and on. Somehow we are sum-moned within the pockmarked life that all of us lead to give our yes to God's passionate loving in us. I do not see that holiness is wholeness. Most of us find ourselves with neuroses, mild or severe, temporary or lifelong. If we can, for all that, love what we find and the One who is making it, then we have begun to live holy lives. There is much more to this, but we cannot ignore addictions and com-pulsions and the yes that those of us who suffer them must say to the self that God is making us. For very many of us find ourselves in this excru-ciating condition. All of us need to remember that at the core of every addicted and every compulsive self--the phobic, the masturbator, the child-beater, even the rapist--the passionate loving of God burns on crea-tively. But each of them stands on the brink of an apparently impassable chasm. For no one can be in touch with that creating love who does not love the self within whom it burns, and such a staggering number of us are taught, subtly.and powerfully and with enormous precision, to dis-like or to hate ourselves. The fact is, social psychologists are beginning to discover, addictions and compulsions normally grow out of an inade-quate appreciation of the self or out of self-hatred. Then how are com~ pulsive people or addicts to think of this? The way all of us think: As I say my yes to God's creating love, I will know that I am humbly truth-ful and wholehearted when I rejoice even while I suffer what I am and what is. I am heroically wholehearted when I can set aside any demand on my self that I myself or any other persons or things be as I think they "ought" to be and can take all as I find it. We all do what Paul did af-ter he had prayed three times and the thorn still rankled. The thorn just kept rankling, and Paul just kept on sinning (by his own testimony); but we have no evidence that he got down on himself for that or any other reason. Paul certainly knew his worth, and that is a great, great virtue. This brings me, second, to the ways a wholehearted yes to the Lord manifests itself externally. The first sign is joy. Let the light bulb accept electric current. In-stantly it is full of light and instantly it radiates that light to all around. In just that way, the wholehearted radiate joy. Even when they find in-justice and disorder, they are filled rather with a sorrow that leads to com-passion that leads to action--than with a sadness that leads to pity that leads to self-absorption. This joy gives the wholehearted a definite, in-viting presence. They like who they are and therefore feel no need to hide or wear masks. They are simply present, shyly if they are shy, brightly Review for Religious, November-December 1988 if they are bright, brashly if they are young enough. Moreover, the wholehearted live an effective life, by which I mean they make things happen. They live content that God is giving them this or that job or task to do, and simply do it. And at the same time, the wholehearted usually have a lively sense of duty and of obligation. They seem to trust their own consciences, and they clearly trust that God is ordering all things sweetly from end to end. So the wholehearted tend to rejoice that they are required to do something or to omit something. They do not have time to regret what they might miss; they are too busy enjoying what they hit upon. Their attitude toward authority shows itself wholehearted, too. Here is a hugely complex business, but let me just say that any who like who they are and what God is making of the world really perceive the work-ing of authority in the world and actually accept the consequences into themselves. They feel the pull of authority where it actually appears, let-ting it instruct their understanding and warm their motivation. They also sense its absence even when someone is throwing his weight around, and if they conform when pressed by raw power, they do it while maintain-ing their sense of self-worth. As the wholehearted grow more and more mature, they can calibrate more and more subtly the weight of authority and their own response to it. I could list a number of other external signs of a wholehearted yes to God's passionate loving. The wholehearted, for instance, show a true love for creation and prefer to honor their environment. The whole-hearted seem able to show benevolence all around, not threatened by the rich or pressured by the poor, gracious to the bright and to the doltish. They tend to learn compassion early in their lives, and empathy, too. They approve of their culture even while rejecting values in it that con-tradict their own. Speaking of Americans, they live very grateful to be called to life in a rich, free, exuberantly creative land, and they show their gratitude not by badmouthing the nation, but by doing what they can to leave it somewhat better than they found it. But let me end by pointing out a nearly infallible sign of a whole-hearted yes to God's creating love: the wholehearted can take true lei-sure. What is true leisure? I find the experts--Karl Rahner and Josef Pieper, for instance--hard-pressed to define leisure, but they are clear that people at leisure are out from under production goals and rigid work-schedules and that whatever activities they might engage in do not pro-duce food and clothing and other things necessary to human life. Nei-ther do those at true leisure lie in passive numbness, their imaginations The Mirror in the Field / 835 blank and their energies depleted. Rather, they typically play or muse or commune with friends or create. In general, leisure means the free en-actment of our whole humanness simply out of joy that we live--in this or that way, here, in this place, among these folk. We take leisure while all our regular tasks wait to be looked after, feeling sure that One watches while we let them go. We evoke leisure, not theoretically, but from the concrete gifts we choose to act grateful for, sensed as rising from the pas-sionate original gift of God's creating love. Those who pray and wor-ship God take the truest of true leisure. The Last Reflection And those who have thought these thoughts about inappropriate self-loathing and appropriate self-love, and felt all these convictions about saying yes to God's creative love burning in the core of their life and their self, have given themselves to true leisure. In the measure that they feel consoled by them, and in the measure that they feel joy rising through them, they are giving themselves wholeheartedly to the passion-ate love of God burning in the center of their selves. They are mirroring back to him the blazing love he radiates to them and in them. They are becoming the mirror in the field. Standing on a Wooden Bridge It creaks now more than it used to . seems I left myself standing here only to meet me farther on here. The swirling water carries my frail leaf far beyond the viewing point. Refulgent water, flow me forth unto the Son! Barbara Ann Opfer 2027 Campbell, B-8 Sandusky, Ohio 44870 The Addicted/Dependent Minister Thomas D. Noesen, O.P. Father Noesen was a diocesan priest for eleven years before entering the Order of Preachers. He may be addressed at Aquinas Institute; 3642 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. "that our affections kill us not--nor dye" (John Donne) It is no secret that stress and burnout are high among professional minis-ters. Priests, religious, and lay professionals need at times to get out of ministry for their own well-being and to get in touch with their own de-pendencies. Priests are in the top listings of professionals with alcoholic addiction. The present-day minister struggles with human dependencies and addictions which bring persons to a dysfunctional level of service. Henri Nouwen says that we are wounded healers and that sometimes the minister is more wounded than healer. "Physician, heal thyself" is whis-pered by some of the confused congregation, but greater numbers in the assembly empathize with a more human condition. Men and women are getting professional help in residential treatment centers, private coun-seling, and support groups. Dependency and addiction are commonplace for today's ministers. C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves says that the problem with ministers is that they treat the people they minister to as "other." This failure is making ministry less workable. The minis-ter need not be a barefoot cobbler. This paper will look at addictions and the minister. (In this text I use the words dependency and addiction interchangeably; this will become more obvious to the reader as the behavioral dynamics are explored.) Granted that we are part of an addiction culture, the minister falls prey to it more often. The men and women in ministry are people-oriented per-sons; some of the most perceptive and insightful members of the popu- 836 The Addicted/Dependent Minister lation are in ministry: They are insightful and perceptive not only of oth-ers and themselves but of life itself. This latter visionary quality can cause much anxiety and insecurity. The primal angst of life's meaning can bring great stress to the ministry professions. Teaching and preach-' ing daily, these people live what many people would only think of at times of birth, death, or personal crisis. This type of stress and iniensity makes ministers prime targets of addiction. The minister is granted trust by many to know their secrets, deepest feelings, and hidden thoughts. Because of intirfi~acy, the minister carries the confidences of hundreds all at one time. It is rather easy for the minister to meet the needs of the oth-ers and to neglect his or her own. Ministers can become victims to their own intensities. Four terms are used in this paper talking of addiction. They are in-dependent, dependent, codependent, and interdependent. Independency and codependency are both unhealthy. The reader needs to know that any-one can be part of all four at once. The healthiest movement is always toward chosen dependency and interdependency. Codependency Many times the minister comes from a codependent background and unknowingly continues the dynamics in ministry. Adult children of al-coholics are common codependents. The traits of codependents are closely connected with the minister. The codependent is: I. usually a very good person, valuable to society, and often ends up in the helping professions. (One study shows 83% of nurses were from alcoholic homes and the oldest children.) Codependents are nice and likeable people. 2. a victim of low self-esteem and self-worth and makes himself or herself indispensable to others. (In counseling, the codependent coun-selor gets angry at the dependent spouse rescuing the addicted spouse. That adds up to three dysfunctional addicts--thi~ two spouses and the counselor.) 3. a good sufferer. These people make "good" Christians, martyrs, and so forth. The unspoken script of the codependent is "I'm good be-cause I suffer so much." 4. the first to volunteer; always wanting (actually needing) to be of service; always wanting it to be noticed that they are exhausted. 5. selfless to the point of hurting himself or herself. Psychosomatic illness is common in the codepeqdent. Life becomes a pain in the anat-omy. There is a need for aspirin, Bufferin, Preparation H, and so forth, in the beginning, and it can build to major medical care over years. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Thes-~'five points can define a messiah complex in a nonreligious ter-minology. A codependent is anyone out of a dysfunctional home; so this term codependent is generic: an embarrassing spouse, children, extended-family members. Codependency even links emotional disabilities to un-known ancestors. So what is the codependent's payoff? The people with whom the codependent interacts become dependent on the codependent; this way the codependent feels needed. Naming the Addictions/Dependencies Since ministers teach the gospel statement that the ff~uth will set one free, denial of addictions should have little space to survive. But nam-ing, claiming, and taming dependencies is very difficult because the de-pendencies are cunning, baffling, and powerful. There are two types of addictions: substance addiction and process addiction. Substance addic-tion is an element that can be and should be totally removed. Process ad-diction is something that will always be present, but needs to be lived with constructively and not destructively. This latter addiction is the thorn in the side of most ministers. Addiction is an exaggerated pattern. Rigorous honesty is the key in reading the following lists. Twelve-step programs use the rigorous-honesty term, and this honesty often needs to come from outside the de-pendent. Until honesty is present, the dependent is a victim. Some common substance addictions/dependencies are: alcohol / sex (cas-ual or recreational) / caffeine / chocolate / nicotine / cocaine/heroin / refined sugar / gambling / marijuana / counter drugs / prescription drugs. Some common process addictions/dependencies are: work or busy-ness / sex (casual or recreational) / negative memories / "prayer" and worry / eating disorders (boulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating) / religious fanaticism / sports (spectator or participant)/"collecting" de-pendent people / exclusive friendships/the Peter Pan syndrome / the Wendy complex / exercise /reading / attention-rejection-exhaustion / greed (compulsive spending) / control-powe'r~manipulation / success-failure- competition / TV ! sleep / anger-guilt-depression / self-pity and co-pity / anger-denial-control. Ministers are often addicted to ministry itself because they are so needed. To be human is to be dependent, but there is a healthy balance which ministers have an obligation to discern. All helping professionals have a responsibility to get their good feelings somewhere other than their clients. Ministers must know their dependencies well in order to min-ister effectively. It is so easy for ministers to project what they them-selves need onto someone else. Really soon--because of the ministers' The Addicted/Dependent Minister addiction bent--feelings get very muddled and quality ministry is endan-gered. Ministers are constantly dealing with others' feelings and can stuff their own. These stuffed feelings can come out as body illness or inap-propriately elsewhere. For example, for ministers to get charged up in anger with the clie ~nt, or with the client's oppressor, or the client's anger at the Church, or the client's anger at government, and so forth, is eas-ier for them than claiming their own inner anger, guilt, or whatever. Granted that these feelings of the client may be very real, still the "dance" of the dependent minister may be to a different tune than the client is trying to play. It is as if one is fox-trotting and the other is do-ing the waltz. Choosing Our Addictions/Dependencies Dependencies are a given to our human condition. Ministers should be model addicts by example; this is where the newer holistic spiritual-ity models can be most helpful. Ministers need to choose daily, healthy dependencies. To list a few: time alone, prayer, reflection, physical ex-ercise, support groups, non-ministry-oriented hobbies and/or friends, and nonprofessional reading. Healthy ministers continually expand and deepen throughout life--this is an integrating process. Unhealthy minis-ters fragment and splinter themselves to meet their needs of dependency and take a flock of disciples along. Healthy ministers need both to mas-ter and be mastered; unhealthy ministers either master totally or become totally mastered. Remember, extremes mark the unhealthy dependent per-sonality. Often unhealthy ministers want to be appreciated (needed) for their wealth of knowledge, fund raising, generosity, cleverness, organiza-tional skills, virtue, leadership, and so forth. None of these qualities can be considered intrinsically wrong, but the ministers' control of them can take away even God's freedom of their use. This is not to say that good is not accomplished by addi~:tive ministers; it is. The problem usually is the unhappiness of the ministers and not always the results of their min-istry. In our Church many of the most rewarded ministers are the most unhe~ilthy addicts. The Codependent Cast of Characters The alcoholic home has taught us much about unhealthy dependen-cies and the roles the members fall into. The minister may often come from a dysfunctional home that is not necessarily alcoholic. The family characters are listed in their usual order. Often the minister is one or 1140 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 more of these characters. Maybe the minister played out one role as a child, a different one as an adult, and maybe even a different role in his/ her professional life. When there is a dependency in a home, the whole family system is dysfunctional. No one escapes and everyone is affected. Those various persons may be described as follows: The dependent(usually a spouse) is the one using the substance around which the whole family unit rearranges itself. The family's individual needs and feelings are not met because of°denial, guilt, and anger. The enabler (usually a spouse) feels responsible for everyone's feel-ings. The enabler usually tries to keep peace, save face, and guard the family secret. The enabler makes ends meet financially and emotionally. The enabler needs to control and needs to be needed. This person thrives on exhaustion. The hero (usually the oldest) tries to keep the family secret by look-ing good at school, work, and so forth. This can be in sports, honor so-cieties, and so forth. The hero is organized, responsibl~, and mature to extremes. The hero is a doer-~cannot stop doing. The hero suffers from fear, loneliness, and stifled anger. The scapegoat (often the second child) is prickly and hard to get along with; he or she appears to be the family problem. The scapegoat often chooses wild friends, gets pregnant in teen years, breaks the law, and gets into substance addiction. Traits of the scapegoat are very diffi-cult and frequently impossible to understand. The lost child (usually the third in birth) often uses isolation for self-protection; lives in fantasy, quietness, and distance; wants to please at all costs; tries to be good but feels bad; has no opinions or feelings to speak of; never causes problems. The mascot (often the youngest) laughs on the outside and cries on the inside; is clumsy, whimsical, and so forth, while trying to focus off the substance; is the clown trying to make the sad family better. This person is hyper, but lonely and scared. He or she is the family medicine man. As ministers try to bring care to a family, the trap may snap and they can easily be caught and overwhelmed. Ministers must therefore have some knowledge of basic dependency dynamics, but, more than that, they should have a keen awareness of their own inner feelings and de-pendencies. They must know their own limitations and be able to say no and to judge when to refer clients. At such times they minister to them-selves. If they do not take care to function at their best, they will be caught in self-pity and/or co-pity games. The minister may say "this whole thing is absurd," "too much The Addicted/Dependent Minister / ~141 analysis," "my past is my past," and so forth. Perhaps the minister is clean and emotionally balanced; that does not mean the parish staff, re-ligious community, and/or office staff share that same wellness. Today more and more ministers are looking hard and long before taking a posi-tion. By the same norms, the employing staffs are screening more be-fore hiring. Many parish staffs are dysfunctional because they are clos-eting one or more unhealthy dependencies. Clinebell (Pastoral Care and Counseling) says that "spiritual vitality and health are contagious; it is caught more than it is taught." Ministers look more and more for an en-vironment of wellness if they themselves are well. The Rocking-Chair Minister Rocking-chair ministers are not on the porch waiting for someone to come and seek help; on the contrary, they are twice as busy as other min-isters trying to get the gospel spread. "Rocking chair' '--because interi-orly they go back and forth like a rocking chair; their feelings and ac-tions are all fuzzy and confused. Nevertheless, they are sometimes bla-tantly forceful people. There are several cycles of feelings and behavior that dovetail together. The following are some specifics of the "proc-ess addiction" mentioned above: Unhealthy Process Healthy Process worry/' 'prayer" anger/guilt/depression attention/rejection/ exhaustion anger/denial/control self-pity/co-pity affirmation/ownership/ integration/letting go anger/ownership/expres-sion/ letting go control/ministry assess-ment/ service/letting go delegation saying no In the following stories, theologies or ministry models vary. But that is not the issue. The issue is the ministers' inner world; that is, the min-isters are not ministering to themselves even though, otherwise, they are very effective ministers. Story A Father Jones worries about his people because they are so poor. They are doing better than they were before he came, and many of them tell him how much they appreciate his concern. He prays that God take care of this poverty and abolish it. Soon he finds himself an-gry at God for not curing the problem, angry at the insensitive bishop and at those in their posh offices for not prioritizing this; he is angry at 1142 / Review for Religious; November-December 1988 the richer members of the parish because they are not removing the pov-erty from their own parish. Burdened with guilt for attacking God, the Church, and his parishioners, Father Jones turns inward; depression and dullness set in and the cycle begins all over again. Father Jones is from a good small-business family that has been reputable in the community for generations. The cycle here is worry, prayer, anger, guilt, depres-sion. Story B Millie is in social-outreach ministry. She started a parish pro-gram and became deanery coordinator in this same area. Now she has founded the diocesan office for reaching out to teenage single mothers, runaways, and abused children. She holds a high profile with the me-dia. It gets money for the project. She loves the attention and limelight, and she feels it is all for Jesus. When given Church honors and civic ac-claim, she rejects it all. Miilie is torn inside between wanting to be no-ticed and disowning the recognition. She has been taking medicine for what her doctor calls exhaustion. Millie has tried to explain to her doc-tor that he is indispensable at this time; she will back off later when the time is right, Millie's dad was an alcoholic, but he has been sober since she was in the first grade. The unhealthy cycle here is attention, rejec-tion, and exhaustion. Story C Tyler is one of those rare, always smiling ministers who do very well with youth. One of his personal goals for youth is sacred space. In both parishes where he has been, he had small, multipurpose rooms that served for recreation and worship space. In the one parish there was a room with a large wooden carved crucifix before the youth took it over; in the other parish, a family had donated a large crucifix in memory of their daughter, killed in a summer outing. In both places Tyler went rounds over the crucifix issue. Always pleasant, he demanded a risen Christ figure. He said we are about resurrection and not all tfiis pain. "I believe it is Easter we are to remember; let's not make our kids hold on to Good Friday." Tyler escalated these issues to maximum polarization; the people became divided. Tyler had theologized his anger, stuffing it away, and used Christ to deny it; using his charism and position, he con-trolled the environment and won out. Tyler had been adopted at two months of age. His birth mother had neglected and abused him. He was raised in a healthy (functional) family since three months of age. Story D Deacon Bernard loves to minister. He would be a priest, but he wanted a wife and family and left seminary in college. Bernard is very well liked by the people because he is so filled with empathy. Recently he has had several counseling sessions with Phyllis. At twen(y-five years The Addicted/Dependent Minister of age, Phyllis has finished two M.A. degrees--one in counseling and the other in theology. Phyllis is very angry with the Church about not being able to be a priest. During many sessions she has talked about how victimized she felt. Bernard shares her feelings; he has felt put off by the Church because he got married. Being ordained a deacon is okay, but he feels victimized also. Bernard and Phyllis are now in their sixth session. In counseling they talk about equal amounts of time on their feel-ings toward the Church. They both agree worship has become harder and harder. They feel they have been good for each other because they share so many of the same hurts. Bernard's homelife is healthy and functional; Phyllis is from a gifted and wealthy family that seems equally healthy. The cycle here is one of self-pity/co-pity. The theologies in these stories are issues, but not as much as the pain and hell these ministers are causing to others. The rocking-chair process addiction is not a matter of standing still; though moving, it is going no-where. All these ministers are gifted and likeable people. These depend-ency stories are more subtle than that of the staggering drunk pastor or the power-hungry director of religious education, but their subtlety serves as a reflection on the movement out of addiction/dependent be-havior. These stories show some common process dependencies, but there are many more. The addict wants to be happy and unconsciously creates a world of "happiness" in which to survive. There are dependency proc-esses not mentioned here peculiar to perhaps one person. The choices and combinations of dependencies are nearly infinite. Ministers are always in need of insight into themselves lest they run the risk of projecting their feelings and dependencies on the client. Minister on the Mend Ministers need to choose not rocking-chair but journey addictions. As they learn from and depend on healthy processes, they become peace-ful within and freer to hear the true struggles of Jesus. The healthy proc-esses that are most easily seen are to say no and to delegate. Both re-quire much tact and articulation if everyone is to remain free. Sometimes the ministry can more easily be done alone; often other factors enter-- such as community, collaboration, and identity--which should be con-sidered and pondered. In any case, ministry always means community. Three more models are listed earlier under the Healthy Process column. Each of these ends in letting go. A common slogan in twelve-step programs is "Let go--let God." Any healthy process will end in letting go. Jesus is clearly the model 844 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 here. To let go (presuming the preceding steps are gone through), much reflection and healthy prayer time is needed. Ministers need time to di-gest each experience. This includes some time alone and some quality dialogue with what is commonly called theological reflection. A good minister has the ability to stand still. The old statement that moved many a minister was "an idle mind is the devil's workshop." Well, the same idle mind is also God's workshop. Each minister holds the key to the workshop door. When one's whole being is idle, the minister is able to again open himself or herself to caring for others. This means that the minister is caring for himself or herself as the first one to be ministered to. Jesus the Dependent? Jesus was human like us in all ways but sin; yet he was dependent on a home for being raised, dependent on scrolls and on people for his learning, and dependent on the elements of survival like food, warmth, sleep, and friendship. The desert fast was Jesus pulling away from food and people to experience more. Jesus was definitely dependent on the human condition. "He emptied himself" as Philippians says; and yet, without abandoning his divinity, Jesus became enslaved to our human condition of dependency. He became all those things that take each of us to the threshold of addiction and dependency. Jesus became fear, doubt, loneliness, anxiety, and anger. These are not sins but feelings. It is in feelings that one touches the threshold of dependency. Jesus con-tinually emptying himself is the movement from addiction. He did not fill himself with any substance to extreme. Jesus chose his dependencies. From the gospels those chosen dependencies seem to be friendship, the (Jewish) word of God, prayer, and telling the story (parable) plus living the story. So Jesus' dependencies are on a deeply human level but always more. Jesus was empowered with the Spirit and worked miracles of heal-ing, but still had to experience emotional suffering and ultimately death. The addiction of power and control Jesus declined over and over. He did not want to be a king, a religious leader, or a political leader. He emp-tied himself; addicts try to fill themselves. Jesus holistically emptied him-self. Flesh and bones like us, he did not even overly depend on his hu-manity. He lived and believed in his human condition and more, Jesus has the same faith in us for he was one like us. Jesus was dependent on "one day at a time." This was living the model of the Father; for him being open and dependent upon the Father became a daily reality. The "daily bread" Jesus talks of is the daily por- The Addicted/Dependent Minister tion of human and divine needs. Childlike Jesus was dependent on the human condition. True addicts/dependents become blind and their world gets ever smaller. Jesus is not blind but tries to ever open us to the larger world that he called the "reign of God." Jesus is the model for the ad-dict in the way he lived the serenity prayer: "God, grant me the seren-ity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Three Areas of Interdependence for the Minister 1. The minister in a support system A support system means to have a world of peers. Being able to talk honestly and needfully, the minister opens up, allowing himself or her-self to be the recipient of ministry. Ministry by its nature is a parent role. Therefore to be able to step out of that role into a peer relationship is crucial for wellness. To seek support ministers cannot deny or toy with their dependen-cies. They need to be able to say "I need," "I hurt," "I'm angry," and so forth. Even though these "confessions" need be made at times with clients, here it is a perspective of care for the minister. Here minis-ters make their addictions known in trust. Unhealthily dependent persons function under three unwritten rules: (1) Do not talk about the depend-ency; (2) do not trust anyone because in the long run they will hurt you; and (3) do not feel because feelings can only cause trouble or pain. With such a support system, ministers can appear arrogant or even pious. In a support system that offers freedom to talk and an environment of trust for articulation of feelings, ministers minister to themselves. Any aloof-ness starts to subside in the therapy of the support system. This is a form of interdependence. Interdependence is very difficult to accomplish because it must be scheduled on a regular basis and it must seek a quality rapport with one or more persons. So many relationships (addictions/dependencies) are codependent: "You fix me and I'll fix you." In interdependence the de-pendent lives "rent free" (as AA says) of guilt, manipulation, and shame. Once the dependency is named and claimed, some of the twelve-step programs might be appropriate. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), nar-cotics anonymous (NA), sexaholics anonymous (SA), and adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) are support groups that meet regularly and are very good. For ministers with any of these addictions, weekly contact with the relevant group would be appropriate. Meeting less often than this is Review for Religious, November-December 1988 a form of denial to a given addiction. Other support systems like clinical counseling might be in order. See-ing a counselor can help one to look at addictive behavior. Again, a weekly meeting would be appropriate for the same reasons of denial. A spiritual director can also be helpful. It is important that the spiritual di-rector also be in spiritual direction. For the minister to ask for direction would be most helpful. If the spiritual director is not in direction, he or she is probably not conscious of personal dependencies in process ad-diction. Diocesan priests can have a support system in "Jesu Caritas" or "Emmaus" groups. The interdependence support area affords intimacy that is construc-tive and articulate. There must be a constant (weekly) point where min-isters are vulnerable, candid, and open. Ministers need intimacy more than most people; they need to have their own needs met. The more pas-toral responsibilities they have, the more difficult will be the problem of a support system that will work. Not finding such a system drives one right back into unhealthy dependency/addiction. This support system pre-sumes skills of great openness, and it demands qualified supporters who are themselves in touch with their own dependencies. God will be part of this because "where two or more are gathered, I am there"; this gath-ering of support will be the human condition laid open, and this sharing leads to the divine. Christianity itself is a support system not in theory only but in expe-rienced reality. To be Christian is to be community. Ministers model Christian living at its best as they acquire ministry to themselves. There will need to be many subcommunities like support groups within the sup-port system. For example, the substance-abuse minister may be in a "non-Christian" twelve-step program; still, the very dynamic is intrin-sically Christian by the fruits that are produced. The support system keeps (or even makes) the minister docile. Our Christian model of support is that the Master is always with us; no disci-ple ever becomes the master in Christianity. Christians are dependent on the Master. The minister lives this posture of the support system with a life of prayer. Prayer must be meditative and routine. Prayer must be daily. The minister will address Christ with "now I feel . . ." and be naked of all dependencies in his presence. 2. The Minister Using Humor as Healing Somewhere in the ritual of each day, the call to play must come. Just as "Let us pray" is ritualized, so must "let us play" be said and done. Ministers take themselves too seriously. To have a sense of humor is to The Addicted/Dependent Minister / 1~47 have a sense of healing. For some a sense of humor can get rough, laugh-ing at another's expense. Even if someone encourages being laughed at, discernment of the healing or hurting nature of humor is needed. Not all humor is healing. The virtue that comes with levity is gentleness. If ministers can laugh at themselves in a gentle and affectionate way, the humor is healing. So often caught in addiction/dependency, ministers may smile at their short-comings and say to themselves, "I'm not a saint yet," and move on with life. Humor does not mean telling jokes or developing talks (homilies) that are funny or entertaining. Humor simply brings us to reality away from our world of illusion. Substance and process addictions do produce a world of illusion. Just watching TV commercials shows us illusions, humor, and addiction. The problem with much in the media is that truth is not the main product being sold. Humor has truth at its core, and per-haps an exaggeration of that truth in humor can make a point of healing. An example of this might be telling a workaholic who is exhausted that you see no reason for him to sleep tonight: "I don't know why you can't work all night writing a major address for that group--you'd do it better than anyone else." Humor brings us to gentleness and reality; another quality is that of forgiveness. Sometimes in the healing of humor more forgiveness can take place than in more formal settings. A wink or kind facial expres-sion can be the forgiving gesture of gentleness that a given moment may need. Humor is a way of recycling the minister in a very healthy way. 3. The Minister and a Sense of Adventure This need of interdependence is seen more readily in retired minis-ters, but it needs to be present all along the journey of development. Min-isters in retirement can be the personifie~ wisdom of God even (or espe-cially) in their decrepit physical condition, or they can be Scrooge-like "humbug" people holding tightly to the past. The sense of adventure always is looking at the present and the future. Ministers can feel that "they owe me after all that I've done for them." Addicted ministers often will want to cause their own early retirement (or death). In aged ministers it is still the world of extremes if addiction is present. In a sense of adventure there is a sense of tomorrow. Ever changing by an open-ness to grace, ministers can keep looking forward to more in their life. The life of unhealthy addiction/dependency always seduces one to be-come fixated. In the interdependence of adventure, ministers respond to and embrace the limited world of themselves and the limited world of their environment. Using personal creativity, ministers can become eter- 1~41~ / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 nal students of life itself. Healthy ministers can be recognized here, with their level of interests always expanding. Self-improvement and educa-tion become an ever present sense of direction for them. They have a zest for life and a loving interest in others. Unhealthy ministers often scorn and condemn the life they see in healthy ministers. This can manifest it-self in competition or gossip or both. Ministers often live in their own professional world, a world no larger than the client's care and working for the community. "All work and no play makes John a dull boy." John is not only a dull minister but an addicted minister. There is a flatness and pity that emerge when the sense of adventure is not maintained on a regular level. Some say that a minister should always be reading a secular novel (and that does not necessarily mean of the Andrew Greeley variety). Friends and hobbies that have nothing to do with religion are excellent for the minister. The priests' poker club does not meet this need because "business" will al-ways creep into the conversation. Ministers can feel lost when not known in some place for who they are or what they are--this is a good chal-lenge to the minister. Ministers who are able to change through self-experimentation, self-denial, and self-ministry will find themselves flex-ible enough to grow in wisdom, age, and grace to the very point of death. Conclusion St. Augustine tells us that we are restless until we rest in God. There are many resting places on the journey of the minister that are anything but peaceful; these rest stops are often addictions. Satiated, confused, and disoriented, the minister quickly becomes less a minister than he or she would wish to be. These pages have looked at some cultural handi-caps in order to help ministers to be more free of them. Ministers living their faith are likely to feel some anxiety and insecurity. In a highly pos-session- oriented society that measures life by production and consump-tion, ministers become models of freedom by living a simple, unattached lifestyle. The "product" is freedom in Jesus himself. Thus, even though most ministers are addicted, they have a world of choice in their depend-encies. Those choices determine their personal happiness and effective-ness. Communal Spiritual Consolation John English, S.J. Many of our readers know at least some of Father English's writings on spirituality. In this article he discusses the significance of communal spiritual consolation for com-munal spirituality. He may be addressed at Ignatius College; P.O. Box 1238; Guelph, Ontario; N IH 6N6 Canada. The understanding and practice of spirituality has tended to focus on an individual person's experience and aspirations, but the individual needs to realize that spirituality is always in a communal context. If spiritual-ity focuses on the experiences the individual has in, through, and of com-munity, there is less danger of an individualistic spirituality. Consider the many examples in the Old Testament and the whole "Body of Chr

Issue 39.2 of the Review for Religious, March 1980. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published bi-monthly (every two months), is edited in collaboration ~;ith faculty members of the Department of Theology of St. Louis University. The'editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. It is owned 'by the Miffsouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri, © 1980. By REVIEW t,'OR REIA(;~OUS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at ~;t. Louis. Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A.: $8.00 a year: $15.00 for two years. Other countries: $9.00 a year. $17.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write REvt~-:w t:o~ REt,~(;lOUS: P.O. Box 6070: Duluth. Minnesota 55802. D:~niel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read .Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor March, 1980 Volume 39 Number 2 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manuscripts and hooks for review should be sent to Rt:vlt:w volt Rt:lA~;~o'us; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answer~ing should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. "Out of print" issues and articles not re-issued as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 North Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Spirituality and Theology Alan Jones Father Jones, an Episcopal priest, is Professor of Ascetical Theology and Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality; 175 9th Ave.; New York, NY 10011. His last article in these pages, "Obedience in' the Conteinporary World," appeared in the May, 1978, issue. Non abundantia scientiae sed sdntire et gustare rein internam. (Saint Ignatius Loyola) Dogmatic and mystical theology, or theology and "spirituality," are not to be Set apart in mutually exclusive categories, as if mysticism were for saintly women and theological study were for practical but, alas, unsaintly men. This fallacious division perhaps explains much that is actually lacking both in theology and spirituality. But the two belong together. Unless they are united there is no fervor, no life and no spiritual value in theology, no substance, no meaning and no sure orientation in the contemplative life.' One of the g~'eat privileges of the sabbatical system is that it not only affords the professor an opportunity to follow a particular line of research, but it also enables him to "feel and to taste the inner thing" of his subject. When it comes, however, to the subject known as mystical theology, there is som~ dispute as to whether there is anything either to feel or taste! All I can say is that after my sabbatical, I have felt and tasted Something that might well be a subject. I feel defensive, however, on two fronts. The first is the enormity and depth of the subject itself. The second is the suspicion, odium, and contempt in which the subject has been held by some theologians over the years. The first problem is more easily overcome than the second, for every scholar in whatever subject must, at various times, be overwhelmed by his inadequacy to ' Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (1972), pp. 1"97-8, quoted in Andrew Louth, Theology and Spirituality (Fairacres Publication 55, 1978), p. 4. 161 162 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 19~80 / 2 plumb its depths. This gives me a certain comfort. The second problem, however, is of more practical concern and is~more difficult to overcome. The cleavage between theology and devotion is surely a fake one, although some fakes and frauds have a wonderful way of pretending to be real. The ugly breach (albeit based on a false dichotomy) between "the intellectual" and "the affective" over the centuries has done serious damage to both. Lo~,e is blind; the intellect is a cripple--so runs a classic image. In order for both to progress according to this. image, the intellect sits on the shoulders of the affections and guides them while the affections give feet to the intellect. In the same way, theology and spirituality belong together. Andrew Louth writes: So spirituality.[is] that which keeps theology to its proper vocation, that which prevents theology from evading its own real object. Spirituality does not exactly answer the question, Who is God? but it preserves the orientation, the perspective, within which this question remains a question that is being evaded or chided.Spirituality is necessary to theology to keep il in its proper vocation. The converse also seems .to be true, that theology is necessary to spirituality to keep, it to its proper vocation . The danger of a non- or un-theological spirituality is.that it will tend to become a mere cult of devotion.~ The immediate occasion of these thoughts which have been sitting in the back of my mind for some time was a casual remark in a letter from a dean of a seminary concerning the possibility of ~ colleague of mine doing some teachi.ng there,in the area of spirituality. In the middle of his friendly letter there was a well-aimed barb. While he welcomed my colleague's coming to the seminary, he was not sure that his faculty would r~egard Christian Spirituality as a discrete discipline. Now this is harmless enough. Fair game, one might say, in academic circles.' Still, underneath the joking there is a vein offseriousness. In other words, I take seriously the phony breach betweeri head and heart," between "theology" and "devotion." But 1 am even more concern~ed by the fact that this so-called bre~ch is thought to be real~ by at least some theologians. The idea has come abotit that the gap has always been there and always w, iil be. Of cohrse we have to bri~dge it occasionally, but this is usually done in the privacy of ou~" schizoid selves when we say one thing and do anotheL The gap, though,~ has to be obliterated, not just bridged, one way or another, and 1 would like to see it destroyed first in the intellectual realm itself.~ ~ ISOuth, op. cit., p. 4. o ' This is where both recent scholarship and the Christian mystical tradition might,.h~lp us. The books which set me. going on this subject were. R. C. Zaehner's Gifford Lectures for 1967-69, Concordant Discord (Oxford University Press, 1970), [this is a strange rag-bag of a book, polemical yet urbane, containing some brilliant insights]; William Johnston's The Inner Eye of Love (Collins,-1_978), which is the.first rece'ni attempt that I know of to argue for the recognition of mystical theology as "a discrete discipline"; Bernard Lonergan's Method of Theology (Dartbn, Spirituality and Theology One might start" by asking whether academic the61ogy itself is a,.discrete discipline. As Andrew Louth points out: ° Academic theology., needs some understanding of its own inner coherence to justify ~ . itself at all as an academic d~sophne, otherwise the several d~sclphnes ofwh ch t consists really themselves belong not together but to other wider disciplines." Without Jesus Christ as a principle of coherence th~ Old Testament just a collection Of semitic writings, the New Testamen a collec~tionof Jeffish and Hellenistic ~Je~vi~sh writings of the first century, and early'Christian doc.- trine a mere st'rand in the history"of ideas?ol~ Ithe later Roman Empire; s~irituality empha.sizes the "principle of coherenc, e" which holds together a seminary cufricultim. Theology serves spirituality .by rescuing it'from a chronic subjectivism. It is tragic when theology a~ad spirituality aredi'vided. Wird Christus Tausendmal zu Bethleh6~n geboren Und nicht in dir, du bleibst doch ewigli~h verloren. (Though Christ in Bethlehem a thousand t!mes was born But not in thee, in all eternity, thou art~forlorn.}6 ¯ ,Tr~ue, but,dangerous, "for without any, corre~cting influence the 'Christ born in me' will become the sort of Christ who can!be born in me. He will tend toAose the historical lineaments of the first-.centur~y~Jgw he was. He will lose his strangeness.He will cease to be the.one~who confronts us in his~sovereign individuality ~.A_c_a~emic the~ology, the dispassionate study of the witness of Jesus of.Nazareth, can provide~that corrective?'' ,This is why we learn Greek. "The strange language.is a symbol of t.he:~strangen~ss of thought that must be passed through before we can understand the GoSpels aright_.':a Longman, & Todd, l~70),~which' provides a method by which such a discipline Can be reestab-lished;:'~ and 'finally, Richard 'of' S(." Victor's" Benjamin' Mino'r~ Benjamin Major'and The Four Stages in the Mystical Ascent (in Clare Kirchbe?ger's Richard bf Stl Victor." Selected Writings on Contemplation, Faber and Eaber, 1957; also M~igne'.s~P,.L.CXCVI). The latter author I consider impbrtant as one who has managed to I~eal the breach between theology and devotion, even though the Victorines tended to side w~th Bernard against Abelard. All four books helped me r~discoVer the fact that there ts such~a subject as mystical theology! ' Lofith,~op. cit., p. 10. - '~Somemight, take exception to this since "the Old ~Testament revelation has an,integrity of its own, independ~ent of the New, as the flourishing Jewish religious c0mmuni~y of our time testifies. The Old Testament is the matrix of Christianity, and is essential for Christianity's identity and S~lf-definition whereas Chri~ianity'is ~n~t simiiarl~, essentiaj for Judaism" (fro~ Dr. J~.mes Carpenter's response to the first draft of this paper). I am in complete agreement with hi~ her~, bui m~' poini was not io disparage the Old Testafiaent revelation as far as Jews are Concerned, but simply to affirm that I cometo.the Old Testament in and through the light of the Christian revela-tion. Dr. Carpenter's trenchant and illuminating comments on the first.draft were helpful in my making this revision, and 1 gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to :him. ~ Louth, op, cit., p: 10: " ~ Ibid., p. I 1. ~ Hoskyns Cambridge Sermons, 1938, p.xxiii. ,. ' ° 164 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 Let us first take a brief look at the roots of the apparent conflict:. The disastrous cleavage between theology and religiousexperience goes right back, of course, to the beginnings of the struggle to articulate Christian belief. The formal "break," which has never really been healed, came, I suspect, at~he time ~)f the Renaissance and Reformation. For me, though,°it is sym-bolized in the earlierconflict between Abelard ~nd Saint Bernard. Ts-hy sym-bolized, because it would not be historically accurate to in~,est these two men with the rigidqualities ! am ascribing to them. Abelard represents theology. He was the proto-scholastic, whose unchastened intellect led'to his ruin. Saint Bernard represents affective piety, the burning heart devoted to God in prayer. Even though Saint Bernard won the first battle of the'campaign, it was Abelard, i believe, who won the war. The conflict resolved itself in two systerris in the thi~ieenth century: that of Saint Thomas Aquinas and that.of Saint Bonaventure. But who has heard of Saint Bonaventure's system apart from those few who are either medieval historians or students of mystical theology? Now, l know that what It have 'written here is somewhat of a caricature. Abelard, ifi places, reveals "a remarkable balance between in-tell'ect and feeling;''9 Saint Bernard, at times, seems to be devoid of feeling altogether., In reality, though, there was no real victor. Theology,became merely the tool of.the roving intellect. Bernard enjoyed ~nly a Pyrrhic ,victory. Abelard representedsomething vital to the healthy development of piety, that is, a probing and critical intelligence. Without theology, devotion was to go its own way. Without devotion, theology was to dry up and become, in Zaehner's words, "the plaything of desiccated mandarins.'''° Louis M. Martz sums up the situation in this way: During the Middle Ages .the scholastics threw a deep s~hadow over the affective life, a shadow which led some, such as Thomas a Kempis and his Brethren of the Common Life, to renounce scholastic subtletie§ as the brood of folly and the bitterlfruit of that curios~tas which St. Bernard denounced as the father of sin." I do not want tO paint too bla~k a picture. Nor do I want to reject Abelard. It was not _all bad, and there w~ele some .6otable men who were both brilliant scholars ahd committed contemplatives, Jean le Charlier de Gerson (1363-1429) for example, of whom most people have never heard! He wrote a synthesis, On the Mountain of Contemplation, the power of which was.such that it was cited b~, Richard Baxter in The Saints Everlasting Rest (1653): "Read'this you Libertines, and learn better the way of de+otion from a Papist." '~ Dorothy Sayers, writing about the problems of understanding Danters ~ James Carpenter. ~ ,~ ' ~o Zaehner, op. cit., p. 280. ~' Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, a study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth-Century (N. ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1954, revised 1962), p. 11.2. ~ Ibid., p. 169, quoted from The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), part IV., Spirituality and Theology / 165 Divine Comedy today has three things to say whic,h are germane to the discus-sion in hand: , . first, theReformatio~, which tended to substitute an infallible Book f6r that of a liv-ing and infallible Chur~ch; fpllowed by the Counter-Reformation whic~h tended to make doctrine a more rigid, and inelastic thing--to objectify an~d pigeonhole it, and to take as one,may say, 'the poetry out of it.' Secondly, there was a growing obsession with scien-tific method, leading men to discount all values which whre not (in .the modern sense) "~scientific," so that no truth was held to be true if it could not be tested in the~labofatory. A third point., is the increasing segregauon of specialists in th6r own specialties, so that the scientist is not expected to study theology nor the ttieologtan to study scmnce, nor either of them to be an artist or a poet. ~ Dorothy Sayers' third point is, perhaps the most telhng from the point of view of this PaPer. Over-specialization has made ,us mistake the fake breach for a genuine one. We are like the heretics Farinata.' and Celvalcanti trapped in the same tomb in the Inferno, yet each oblivious iof the other's presence. It was not always so. For Anglicaris the seventeenth-century was a period when the basic unity between the cognitive and affective was affirmed. It can be seen in the Caroline divines and in the metaphysical, poets. The coming together of the intellectu~il and the affective is summed up in a characteristi-cally seventeenth-century word, sensibility: the union of thought and feeling. In the nineteenth centuWroyr,d s"w "o~rt h w a s c o n 'cerned with. developing the "feeling intellect." In Catholicism the split was formally repudiated during the Counter- ;Reformation and the establishment-of-seminaries after the Council of Trent with their curricula which divided theology up to include ascetical, ~mystical, and mor~l departments. I do not believe the repudiation went very deep, but there was, at least, some attempt to deny the gap.~Classical Protestantism, of course, had no u'~e for mysticism whatsoever, and it is interesting to find Richa~'d Baxter trying to justify papist practices of meditation to the puritans. Asceticism and mysticism of any kind suggested the terrible possiblity of earn-ing salvation. It smackedbf merit and not of grace. But how were the saints to grow in grace? Baxter tried to remedy the situaiion by producing the first puritan treatise 'on the art of methodical meditation to appear in England. Why did h~ want to see regialar meditation restored to puritan piety? Without meditation theology was mere theorizing. All the preaching, teaching, and reading is so much-dros~ if it be not internaliz~d,~if the inner reality is neither felt nor tasted. ~ | And why so much preaching is lost among us and profess rs can run from sermon to ser-mon, and are never weary of hearing or reading and yet have su~:h lariguishing, starred souls; 1 know of no truer or greater cause than their ~gnorance, and unconscionable neglect of Meditation." ~'Dorothy Sayers, Further Papers on Dante (Methuen, 1957), p. 88. " Martz, op. cit., p. 154. 166 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 Baxter was not entirely successful in persuading his puritan readers. Enthusiasm was the mark of the elect, rather than the practice of methodical mental prayeL This seems to be just as true today. All efforts at prayer and meditation wbre doomed to fail. One had simply to"w~it!on the mysterious opera~tions of the Holy Spirit. I m~ention this'because_the suspicions0concern-ing mys~ticism and mystical experience run very deep.-When ~hey are repressed they come out in some other form, as Baxter himself realized. The puritan was led "to' expect 0nly Enthusiastick Consolatiohs.'''~ The answer tO wild and pathological charismatic exi~eriences is a sound'~ syst.emati~ and mystical theology. That iswhy t6day, in the face of "religious experiences,'?we need to redevelop and rediscover criteria for judging them. I believe taking seriously ofl~e again th~ study of mystical theology will be a step ifi achieving this. , .~O_ften it has been believed that ~mysticism ~ran ~th~ot~gh Christianity li~e a streak of insanity in the family. Every generation or so a mad man appeared who had to be put away or ignored. This was the prevailing x~iew, for examlSle, of Brunner, who brilliafitly, if unconv'indn~gly, a~rgued the Protestant case againstmysticism. It was a Pelagian aberration, a neo-pl~itonic impurity sully-ing the integrity of Hel~raic ~eality. A wedge was placed between the so-called prophetic religions and the so-called mystical ones: MystiCal religion was passive, ihactive, .quietist, not interested in ~he, world ~nd its sufferings." Ironically, of course, prophetic experience in the Old'Te~tamen( as an im-mediate experience of the reality of God is my.stic~l. What was Moses if not a myStic? Nevertheless,~ the vtew has long prevatled that mystical and propheti~ r.ehglons were opposed to one another. Anghcans took th~s up just before and Well after the Second World War in the pursuit of wl~at ¢vas theft called "BiblicAl Theolo,.gy." Iremember my old profes.sbr, Alan'Richardso~, ~i~n- ~ sistin~ in his gen'tle way that Christianity was essentially ant~-mystical. ~Fh~ puzzl6d me greatly at the time since I had the tempe~rament which took mystic)sm as a given of human experience. Richard.sob, no doubt,~meafit mysticism in the Brunner sense (as essentially monistic add pantheistic), but Brunne~:'s hssessmen~ of mysticism ,~s so one-sided and limited as to be~ in the end, unconvincing. Mysticism's only real ally amon,_g P(otestant theologians, as far as I can make out, wag Tillich. Without theological" undergirdings, mysticism be6om~s, .in Richard Norris' marvelous phrase, little more than th'e building and furnishing of a private little "hacienda of the soul.'"' There has been no stern~ ~ritic, in the " Ib;id., p. 157. ' . '~ See his Bicentennial Lecture, "Hunting the Transcendent," unpublished, but available from the Center for Christian Spirituality. His iconoclasm with regard to spirituality is thorough. I think he gives, implicitly at least, what R.C. Zaehner asks of the theologian: i.e., "not a theology of the Death of God. but a theology of the death of self, the death of the human ~'person,' who is not only our old enemy, the ego., but also the ego~who has 'got religion' because:he thinks he has found the 'true' self." (Zaehner, op. cit., p. 208). ., . ,° Spirituality and Theology / "167 best sense, of mysticism/spirituality-- call it what you will -- than Dr. Norris. He has certainly helped and influenced me in moving towards a~more critical approach to the subject. His" own introductory lectures in Systematic Theology at theGeneral Theological Seminary of New York, (a course which I once shared with him) were undergirded by what I would call "mystical theology." His whole thesis revolved around the-uflcovering of the structure of a relationship between God and the world. Mystical theology is about nothiiigqf.it is not about that. ~ Nevertheless, there are enormous odds against developing a rigorous mystical theology. Traditions are hard to break. Anglicanism gets the worst of both worlds. From Western Catholicism it inherits the'ancient, if false, cleavage between tl~eology and devotion; from Protestantism, deep suspicions with regard to any systematic, disciplined devotional life. There is one final obstacle to look at before we examine the state of theology today and try to negotiate for the reacceptance of mystical.theology as.an object of serious study. It is the obstacle of a peculiar mind-set: hard, obdurate, pseudo-scientific, fundamentalist. By "fundamentalist" I refer not only to a crass literalism with regard to the Bible, but to a crass literalism towards all "facts." - It was not accidental to find, during my days as an.undergraduate; that the Christian fundamentalist students were often, studying~scientific subjects like zoology and biology: subjects of observation and classification. I believe.there is a kind of academic fundamentalism wtiich is just as infectious and insidious as a biblical fundamentalism. It tends to see" facts" as flat, o he-dimensional. This~fundamentalism finds it hard to acknowledge that there may be more than one level ot: truth, more than one way of looking at, reality~ Some early biblical critics, for example, were no less dogmatic in telling us what a par-ticular periscope signified than the fundamentalist. There is little or no sense, in this mind-set, of the value of symbols in pointing to the inexhaustibility of "facts." : Tobe fair, this mind-set goes with scientific technicians rather than with the ,brilliant scientist who, like Einstein,~can make intuitive leaps like the mystic. The best description I havre come across of this mind-set is that of Edmund Gosse °writing about the a~titude of his parents to the Bil~le. It should be remembered that his father, Henry Gosse, was a zoologist. It involved: a definite conception of the absolute, unmodified, and historical veracity, in its direct and obvious sense, of every statement contained within the cove~'~ of the Bible. Further, " - and for my fatli~r, nothing was symbolic, nothi.ng allegorical or allusive in any part of scripture. Both my parents, I think, were devoid of sympathetic imagination. Hence there wa.s no,mysticism about them. They went rather to the opposite extreme, to the cultivation oi" a rigid and iconoclastic literalness.'7 'Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (Penguin Books, 1907, revised 1970, pp. 49-50). 168 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 -Literalness of mind can attack the professor of any discipline, not least that of mystical theology. One has only to read Tanqueray and even Harton to realize how far the "~reification.of ideas" can go. Andditeralness is nowhere more dangerous than ~vhen dealing with "the anatomy of ~ouls." The question is, how do I harmonize (insofar as t want to) all my ex-periences, .all the bits and pieces of the self? I do not think it unreasonable of me to look to theology:.for guidance and help. My spiritual nourishment comes from all sorts of apparently strange places: the novels of Iris Murdoch, my downstairs neighbor banging away at the piano and singing at the top of his voice, our family meals, a stimulating lecture by a colleague, and a host of other things besides the more obvious,centers of Christian devotion. A rigid, literal mind will not help meointerpret and harmonize these differing experiences. Before'we mov~ on to examining what might be the structure and method of a mystical theology, let us look at.the study of theology as such. There has been a great deal written already about theological studies which suggests to me that mystical theology is being slipped in through the back door. Theology which is rooted in present experience or theology as biography suggest an ap-proach to theology-which sees it as a reflection on religious experience (which, to get ahead of myself, is William Johnston's definition of mystical theology). In other words, there is a tendency for theology to be experience-based. Theology is a living, reflective encounter with a living tradition, and not "an understanding which is~at several removes from, and well-insulated against, the reality of which the scriptures speak.'''8 1 think this is why there has been such a resurgence of interest in religious experiences of all kinds:=-some of them, it is true, dangerous and bizarre. The hunger, ,however, is'real enough. It is easy to see why the academic world so easily gets jaded, cynical, and tired. Frankly, we do'not have time to experience much, let alone reflect on it. Theology then becomes dealing with experiences always at second or third hand. A sabbatical such as mine provides an opportunity for what Charles Peguy called "pure reading." Pure readers are those "who read a work solely and simply for the sake of reading it or taking it in, to feed and nourish themselves on it as a precious foodstuff, in order to promote growthdn themselves, to promote their inner, organic~dignity, not at all to use it as something to work with, to promote one's social status in a secular society.'".9 Without this freedom to read and think for its own sake, the pleasure is sapped out of teaching. As R. C. Zaehner puts it, "The joy has turned into tedium, and it is the tedium that one is likely to transmit.''2° La chairest iriste, h~las!'" wrote Mallarme, et, j'ai lu tousles livres ("sad, sad, is the flesh, and 1 have read all those books"). Theology takes a certain amount of leisure, and leisure is ver.y expensive. It Trevor Ling, Buddha, Marx, and God (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 197. Quoted in Zaehner, op. cir., p. 18. 2o Ibid. SpiritUality and Theology is, however, only meditative reflection that the mere curiositas which Saint Bernard railed against turns into astonishment and admiration. But admira-tion on its own will not do either.: Wonder needs an ihterpreter. Devotion needs theology, and that is why it simply~will not do to relegate mystical theology, to the rubbish heap, since_it_reappears in other._f.o.rms.(in-the-new jargon_~s ~f~co~t~xtu~al education and storytelling theology). Christian mysticism, insofar as it has been a mere interlope.r from Neo-Platonism,2' needs the severe censure of theology. When devotion is cut off from theology, curiositas does notomove towards admiration but to superstition. God becomes, for the theologian cut off, ,from devotion, a "pale, intellectual substitute for the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob"; for the mystic, God becomes either a crazed Oriental despot or To Hen, the great blob into which he longs to be absorbed. |n fact, the deeper one goes into the realm of mystical experience, the more vital is the critical eye of theological discrimination. Devotion to the point of ecstasy . can lead to a terrible moral indifference. Detachment can easily degenerate into disassociation and the wild inflation of the ego. The "1" that has beenJannihilated becomes "God"! In the Bhagav.ad Gita (18:7) we read: "A man who has reached a state where there is no sense of 'l',.whose soul is undefiled--werehe to slaughter [all] these worlds--slays nothing. He is not bound."22 This has tremendous social implications, as more and more persons long for just such an experience which annihilates the "I"~. and therefore annihilates moral responsibility. The rise in mindless acts of violence and un-motivated crimes points to a religious, as well as sociological disease. Depth p~ychology has taught us that we cannot help acting out our inner ¯ life, and it would be just as well if ~'e were to know something about.it. We might even learn to cultivate it,.not in the Norrisian sense of tending our own little "hacienda," but in the sense of cooperating with, and even co-creating of, our inner life. I cannot do this without the critical discipline of theology. But ~there is a further implication because, not only does the individual live out his inner life, but that same inner life eventually overflows and floods into social forms. The Church, of course, has been left out in the cold in that it has found itself largely bankrupt to offer alternatives to the hungry masses who feed on the spiritual, supernatural, ~ind often superstitious banquet provided by the ambient culture. Theology has done httle to ~nterpret these ~mpulses or ~ to help people develop a discriminating palate with regard to the various ¯ delicacies available. That some of them are deadly is beyond question. The mass suicides of the followers of the Reverend Jim Jones in Guyana point to the literal deadliness of some forms of "religion." So it is not simply a.matter 2, See Zaehner, op. cir., pp. 14Iff. ~ Ibid., p. 231. Zaehner goes on to give the modern instance of a totally unmotivated murder com-mitted by one whose mind is "still, pellucid, and free from occupation" (Andrew Gide, Les Caves du Vatican). 170 / Review for,Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 of academic niceties. A strong, critical seminary faculty could mean a matter of life and dea~.~th,_.It coul~ave a,.strong-i~iv-'~'~'ffd:-~-~-diating-r~l~, par, ¯ ti-c~larly when it looks as if we.might be victimized inside the Church, as well as~without, by new fanaticisms and enthusiams. =, The reader may have'been,frustrated by the fact that I have gotten this far without, givinga definition of what Imean: by mysticism (except as "religious experience"). Dean Inge gave twenty-six definitions in his Christian Mysticism of 1899. Iread.that book (which is not about Christian mysticism at all, but about neo-Platonism), .but since 1899 there,~have been significanli developments to,warrant our adding a hundred more,to~,the "~gloomy dean's" twenty-six. William Johnston. has recently struggled¯ with this problem of definition in. his The Inner Eye of Love. ~ ~ o~' If we go back to the Middle Ages we find that there is no distinction be-tween mystical theology and mystical experience, Jean Gerson (1363-1.429), whom we have already mentioned, writes: Theologia mystica est experimen-talis cognitio habita de Deo,per amoris unitivi complexum (Mystical theology is.~xperimental knowledge of God through the embrace of unitive love).2~ From this Johnston points out. that 'Christian "mysticism,is wisdom Or knowledge that :is found through love; it, is loving knowledge.'??' It is also ex-perimental, knowledge. It is not abstract. It is personal. And as we shall see later, w.hen we take a brief look at Richard of St. ~Victor; mysticism comes to fruition only when it reaches out in love towards others and towards the world, .in what we would call social action or outreach.: Now in my plea for the redevelopment of the mystical theology, I do not wish to imply that nothing has :'been done to reflect theologically,~about mystical experienceiin a systematicway. Roman Catholics have been trying to do"this since,the thirteenth-century, and I have waded through the treatises of Poulain and Pourrat, ,Tanqueray and Garrigou-Lagrange. The trouble witch these works is,that~they are pre-Freudian and pre-Jungian in outlook. It seems to me that it would be hopeless to try to develop a mystical theology today without relying heavily on the insights of these two great pioneers. °.Johnston claims that. the call to loving contemplation is given to everybody. It is supremely human activity. He also affirms that mystical ex-perience (if we go deep enough) is "a passage to'the¯ordinary.''2~ I certainly found this true in my short month as a hermit. It was, quite simply, a move-ment into the wonder of the ordinary. Johnston relies heavily on Bernard Lonergan's, Method in Theology in order to find a definition for mystical theology. As .Lonergan writes, "Method is .not a set of rules to be followed metiEulously by a dolt. It is, a, framework for collaborative creativity.''~ Lonergan is searching for a "transcendental method" which seeks to include not only what is thought, See Johnston, op. cir., pp. 19ff. ~'.lbid~, p. 20. ~ Ibid., p. 37, Lonergan, op. cir., p. xi. Spirituality and Theology / 171 heard, and reflected~upon, but also who it is who thinks, hears, and reflects. Theology seeks a .place where we emerge as persons, meet one another in a common concern for values, seek to abolish the organization of human living'on the basis of competing e~oisms and to repla(e it by an organization on the'~iasis of mhn's pdri;eptiven~ss and intelligence, his reasonableness, and his responsible exercise'of freedom.2' ." ":' L~onergaii"goes o~'i0 define th.$o_Jl.qogy as "refl,ection on religion,"~while Johnstbn ~defines mystical theology_as reflection on mystical~experience. "M~,s'ticism is the experience{haystical theology is reflection on thig~:ex-perierice." 2s We need the latter to combat the ~endency to~anti~-in~elle~tua.lism today, particularly in areas where religidus exl~erience~is coficerned.'"We need," sa~'s Johnston, "to interpret mystical experiefice and fihdits meaning: We~ nebd to distinguish the ahthentic from the inauthentie. Then there is the practical need to guide people.''2~ ~" The data, then, of mystical theology are the experience of mysticism, past and present. The sources are the Bible and the varied witnesses of the Christian tradition. It is conc~erned with° research, texts, history, and doctrines, but is is interesting to note that when Lonergan comes to the foun-dation of theology as such, he speaks of reflection or conversion. ~o Mystical experience has always been the v~ery core of theology. The theology of the Fathers "welled up from their mystical experience. But [and this is very significant] it also led to mystical experience." ~' Johnston goes on to pinpoint the problem today: ~ ,~ The~great temptation of theologY' has always been to di{'orce itself from mystical ex-perience. This was a very real problem in the Middle Ages; and it is a very real problem today. Particularly so, since,m the:last, few centuries theology~has bee_n grea!lY pre- 0 . qccupied with controversial issues; has becomeoextrem~ ely~academic., .and has largely di~vgrced itself from spirituality. Contemplative experience has been relegated to the pious writers on pious books. This is scarcely a healthy situation; for a theology which is divorced from the inner experience of the theologian is arid and carries no conviction. ~' If Bernard l~onergan is rjgti~ ip t~hat the Present and the futurewill be characterized by "the switch to interiority" then we will need to heal the breach between devotion and theology if we are to speak to our generation. Can w~ speak not ofily from "a wealth of sound scholarship bu~ also from a° wealth of personal experience"?~ Johnston gloomily concludes that theologians as a breed s~em particularly resistant to conversion: "The~ theologians i'emain unregenerate.''~' I am not so pessimistic, for this has not Ibid., p. I0. Johnston, op. cir., p. 43, n. 1; Lonergan, op. cir., p. 267. ~ Johnston, op. cil. " Ibid., p. 58; Lonergan, op. cir., p. 130. Johnston, op. cir., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 56-57. ~ Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 58. 172 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 been~my experience. When Alan Richardson rejected mysticism he was plainly advocating it in another sense. When Richard Norris points tothe dangers of what can so easily be a non-subject, he lectures about the God whose being is only uncovered in relationships. He lectures about love. When a seminary dean slips in.a "dig" abou.t discrete disciplines, he unrepentantl~ sees that this non-subject is given i~riority in the seminary curriculum. '.'As conversion is~b~sic to Christian living, so an objectification of,~conver-sion provides theology with its foundations.''3~ So writ.es Lonergan. Priority is being given, at least implicitly, to Lonergan's definition of theology as reflection or,conversion in its intellectual, . moral, and religious dimensions. The latter dimension is the concern of mystical theology. The converted per-son is like someone in love "without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservatio,ns;i'36 Lon.ergan's counsel to theologians is in the form of four "transcendental precepts": Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible. Later he insists on adding a fifth: Be in love.~7 Lonergan's counsel comes to me almost as a command, as an antidote to madness. Coleridge (and I wish I could locate the reference) delineated two kinds of madness: the moral and the epistemological. Moral breakdown seems easy to discern, but what about the epistemological breakdown where nothing means anything and every human longing and aspiration is relativized out of existence? There is a saying attributed to Saint Anthony: "A time is coming when meri will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us.' ,,~8 What exactly do I mean by epistemological madness? It is a form of "in-sanity" which atta.cks true knowledge in two ways which are contradictory. " Lonergan, op. it., p. 130, see also,'p. 241; Johnston. op. cit., p. 58, n. I. -'~ Johnston, op. cit., p. 58;oLonergan, op. cir., p. 106. -" Johnston, op. cit., pp. 60, 61; Lonergan, op. cir., pp. 10ft. 1 do not have time, an such a short paper, to do justice to Lone~'gan. And I confess that it took Johnston's book to bring me to a sym-pathetic reading of Lonergan's. I had tried a few years ago and found it then indigestible! Lonergan goes on to say, "Now in a sense everyone knows and observes transcendental method. Everyone does so, precisely in the measure that he is attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible. But in another sense it is quite difficult to be at home in transcendental method, for that is not to be achieved by reading books or listening, to lectures or analyzing language. It is a matter of heightening one's consciousness by objectifying it, and that is something that each one ultimately, has to do in himself and for himself" (Lonergan, op. cit., p. 14). ~ The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, tr. Benedicta Ward, S.L.G. (Oxford: Mowbrays, Cistercian Studies #59, 1875), p. 5 §25. Spirituality and Theology The first way is to say that we can know absolutely nothing. Everything is relative. Nothing, in the end, signifies or matters. It is easy to see how'this form of madness leads to moral breakdown and corruption. The second way is to say that we can know' everything (at lea~t in principle). Knowledge is graspable and finite. This is manifested in the various ideali~sms, dogmatisms, and fundamentalisms which drive people mad. It is also easy to see how this leads to a moral bankruptcy of a different order: a bankruptcy of.legalism. Both ways of madness have a root cause: the lust for security (not unlike the two forms of gnosticism which were and are manifested in libertinism and rigorism). "Nagging doubts engender rigid certainties." One way invites us to get lost in a desert of nothingness of the°destructive kind. The other lures us into a jungle of moralism. Both are places where the human spirit soon dies. The dilemma is this: how to have something, to live for, an ideal, a goal, a vision, without our vision being deified, our ideal being the cloak for megalomania. There is a way to resolve.the dilemma. It is a hard way, however. It is the way of prayer. The Christian call to contemplation is an antidote to individual and collective madness, particularly to the epistemological madness, which is attacking our culture now. Lonergan's four precepts are, in effect, the structuring of an epistemology which covers our "knowing" from direct experience, to inquiry and under-standing, through reflection and judgment to decisive action. His sources and references are interesting--Horney, Maslow, Rogers, and Piaget. They all stress the social and historical character of human knowledge. Indeed, Lonergan is the first major theologian I have discovered who really takes the development of human consciousness seriously. Ironically, the only other place that I know of where there is an analogous.ascending scheme of epistemology is in mystical theology. There we begin with study, move into prayer, and end in contemplation. Most of what we call knowledge is really only the first form, study. It is very important and in no way to be despised. Contemplation is not simply the beholding of God in a non-vocal, non-discursive way. In the end, it is that. But it is also simply taking as large a view of things as possible: ltis a mode of knowing, a way of considering every kind of knowledge . It is a free and clear ~regard of the soul, directed to the object of knowledge, gathering in comprehensive-ly many single points, dwelling thoughtfully and poised in wonder upon its object.~9 Now tla~s is a contemplative method of approaching all knowledge. It is only a metho~l, not the method. Indeed, the analytical method is also very im-portant. But unless all our knowing points to a loving contemplative end we ar~ bound to fall into one or other of the traps of epistemological madness. ~ Kirchberger, op. cit., p. 39. '~ 74 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 We.will find Qurselves either;among the libertines or among the rigorists: the know-nothings or the know-it-alls. Contemplation does not require sacrificium intellectus sorightly feared by philosophers and theologians. It does, however, require sacrificing the primacy of theintellect. Contemplation requires its dethronement. It seeks to reverse [he process~of its reification and deification. The intelligentia (for the Victorines, for examp!e, who were Catholic humanists, fundamentally op-timistic about the human condition) is the instrument of the contemplative act, suspended, it is true, during ecstasy, but essential afterwards for integra-tion and interpretation. Intelligentia here is, of course,, not so much the naked intellect of discursive reasoning, but rather an intuitive vision, a sort of unitive principle at the heart of the intelligence which.seeks to harmonize experience. Richard of St. Victor, _for example, says that: the character of contemplation varies in three ways¯ Sometimes it effect~ an enlarging of the mind, sometimes a raising and sometimes an abstraction¯The enlarging of the mind is when the gaze of the soul expands widely and is intensely sharpened, but this in no way goes beyond the limit~of human effort. The raising of the mind is when the activity of the intelligence, d!vinely.i/lluminated, transcends the limits of human effort but does not go over into ecstasy, so that what is sees is above its powers but the soul does not withdraw from its accustomed way~ of knowing . Ecstasy is when the memory of things present withdraws from the mind and it moves by a transfiguration divinely wrought, into a state of soul attainable'by"hunian effort . The first is caused by human effort, the third only ¯ by divine grace, the middle one by a mingling of both, namely human industry and divine grace. Our concern here as theologians is with the first mode of contemplation, with the first step in the third mode in our ascending scheme of epistemology. Richard. goes on to tell his readers that this first step (the enlarging of the mind) . ¯ can be dev~eloped in,three.ways: by art, by exercise, by,a,ttention. We attain the art of' doing someihing when we learn how it is to be done either from good masters or by in-vestigation. The exercise is when we put into practice what we learnt of the art and make ourselves quick and e'~fective in carrying out this practice. Attention is whi:n we reflect . with effort on what we have carried out with great diligence . By these three degrees., the depth,,of mind is widened and made more apt for any kind of Aear~ning or skill." This is not a bad description of educational method as rooted in a move-ment of contemplation which leads into the great knowing of "unknowing," to the knowledge which is love. But, aswe have seen, even this mystical ecstasy is not the end, nor is itthe sole object of our spiritu~al life (the furni.shing of our hacienda!) There is one more act of sacrifice required. "T, he.,la~s~ self-surrender to.God is the surrender of the self-centered desire for Go~, and the final possession o~God on.earth :comes.in union, with Christ's fruit-bearing Ibid., pp. 183-184(Benjamin Major V, ch. II). Ibid., p. 186 (Benjamin Major V, ch. 111). Spirituality and Theolo~,y. /175 life of sacrifice and gervice to the brethren and all 'mankind.'''2 The end of Christian contemplation, then, is always compassion. Presumably it is also the end of theology. As Lonergan says, man achieves authenticity in self-transcendence. One canlive in a world, have a horizon, ~ just in the meastJre that one is not locked up in oneself. As the question of God is ~mpllClt ~n all our questlomng, so being ~n love with God ~lS the basic fulfdlment of our conscious intentionality.'" ~ ~ I fully acknowledge the tendency of~.this strange subject to be.~a parasite on the backs~of the other disciplines. It seems to encroach on territory not its own~ Itcan be annoyin~ and vague and at the same' time'arrogant and preten-tious. It needs help an, d understan~ding ~f itis no(to be a Cuckoo lhying its eggs in the meticulous and well-constructed nests of others. In a way, Christian ~pirituality does not have a separate existence of its own. It exists only in rela-tion to other disciplines, but I would like to see it develop symbiotic rather than parasitic relationships. I repeat, the final end of Christian mysticism is compassion. In Richard of St. Victor's De Quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis (notice here that love is passionate!) he writes that there are four stages in the mystical ascent. There is knowledge of self (meditation). Then there is the ascent to God (contempla-tion). Thirdly there is absorption into God(whichRichard calls jubilation and which, alas, often gets identified as thepoint of mysticism). Fourthly, there is the going forth from God (compassio~n),." In the first degree, God enters into the s~ul and she turns inward into herself. In the second, she ascends above herself and is lifted up to God. In the third the soul, lifted up to God, passes over altogether into-him. In ~he fourth the s0ul gbes forth on God's behalf and descends below herself. In the first she enters~into h'~rsblf, in the second she goes forth from herself. In the first she reaches her own life, in the third she reaches God. In the first she goes forth on her own behalf, in the fourth she goes forth because of her neighbor. In the~ first' ~lie enii~rs in by meditationl.in the secondshe ascends bylcoi~templa-tion, in the third she is led into jubilation, in thefourth: ~she goes out by co~npassion." Theologyi~pushed by!its own p~o~bihg anffliv~ely'fin, certainties, ends either with compassion or with despair and cynicism. , Just as unrestricted questioningis our capacity for sdf-transcendence, so being in love in ~ an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity. That fulfillment is not the product of our kno.wledge and choice. On the contrary, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on and it sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing.'~ _, But the very experience of transcendence raises the very issues which theology must continually face. Ibid., p. 46. Kirch'berger, op. cit., p. 224. '~ Lonergan, op. cit~, pp. 104-105. '~ Lonergan, op. cir., p. 106. 176 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 Man's response to transcendent mystery is adoration . Accordingly, which mystery is not to be confused with problem, the ongoing contexts within whic~ mystery is adored and adoration is explained are anything'~ut free from problems.", Academic theology comes into its own' by probing those experiences which otherwise would rob Christianity of its giveness and strangeness.~ Rigorous theo!ogy saves Christi~.nity from becoming domesticated and f~mili~ar. Le! me end with a quotation from Diadochus Photic~:. . the theologian tastes something of the experie_nce of the contemplative, provided he is humble; and the contemplative will little by little know something of the power of speculation, if he keeps the d~isce~rning part of his soul free from error. But the two gifts are rarel§ found to the same degree in the same person, so that each may wonder at the other's abundance, and thus humility may increase in each." Ibid., pp. 344-345. " Louth, op. cir., p. 14. Now Available As A Reprint The "Active-contemplative" Problem in Religious Life by David M. Knigh~t Price: $.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 ¯ 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Celibate Friendship Brian O'Leary, S.J. Father O'Leary is a staff-member of Manresa House; Dollymount; Dublin, 3; Ireland. He characterizes the present article as complementary to his first one, ~'Reflections on Apostolic Celibacy" (May, 1979), "dealing with the horizontal dimension where the other dealt with the vertical." One of the difficulties with using the word celibacy in the context of religious life is that .the primary meaning of the word is negative: abstinence from marriage, or the unmarried life, the state of .non-marriage. But if con- ~secrated celibacy is agift from God, then it cannot be so~ethi~.n.g negative. At most it :can have a negative aspect or side effect, aconcomitant frustration or ~'painful limitation. But the gift itself must be positive. Religious celibacy is for living, for loving. It has everything to do with interpersonal relationships: with the God of Abraham, 1.saac and Jacob; with Jesus, :the enfleshed and full revelation of that God; with peopib, men and women, near and far, good and evil. It has to do with love received and love given; with life lived to the full through carin~ and being cared fore through reachir~g o~ut and being reached out to, through c6mmitment to people and having peop!e committed to us. Our relationships with God and with people ai'e closely intertwined. Our Iexperience of being loved by God and loving God is somehow dependent on o~" exp'erience of being loved by people and loving people. St. John wrote: "Anyone who says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen" (I Jn 4:20). We can also argue! a man Who does not experience the love of his brother whom he can see, cannot experience love of God whom he has never seen. We need to give and receive a love which is tangible in order to give and receive a love which is !ntangible. Remembei" the lines ot: William Blake: 177 178 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, .1980 / 2 i looked for my soul but my soul 1 could not see. 1 looked for my God but my God eluded me. I looked for a friend and then l found all three. ~ Religious are not usually exempt from this dependence on human love and friendship in their seai'ch for God. Celibacy itself, far from lessening our need of the experience of love, is offering us a greater freedom in loving, and conse-quently a greater facility in finding God. This latter ideal is well expressed in the Autobiography of St. Ignatius where we read: His devotion, that is, his ease in finding God, has always continued to increase and now more than in his whole life. Each time and hour that he wanted to find God~ he found him? This is the experience of a lover, but of one whose love had been purified since the immature days of his young manhood when his love for God and people had leaned more to the fanciful than the real. Describing his convalescence from his war wounds received :at Pampl.ona he says: Of the many vain things that presented themselves to him, one took such a hold on his heart that he was absorbed in thinking about it for two or three or four hours without realizing it: he imagined what he would do in the service of a certain lady, the means he would take so he could go to the country where she lived, the verses, the words he would say to her, the deeds of arms he would do in her service. He became so conceited with this ~ that he did not consider how impossible it would be because the lady was not of the lower nobility nor a countess or a duchess, but her station was higher than any of these.~ . ~ Because Ig'natius' experience of human love at that ti~me'was of this dreamy, romantic kind,'his way of loving God was similar: to undertake great and ar-dubus deeds and penances" such as his spiritual heroes had undertaken: St. Dominic did this, therefore, 1 have to do it. St. Francis did this, 'therefore, i have to do it.~ There was far more of Ignatius in that way of loviiag than there was of God. But gradually h~gi'ew both in human love and in divine love, parallel ex-periences keeping pace with° one another, inextricably intertwined, almost be~:oming one." Finding God in all things ahd all things in God. What then can b~ said about human love? A very great d~al if we judke by the' ~tmount that has been written about it from early epic poetry through lyric poetry, drama, thenQ~el and other literary genres. But .let us take just one series of reflecti6hs from a modern psychologist, Erich Fromm. The Autobiography of St. lgnatiu's' Loyola, Harper Torchbooks (1974), p. 93. Op. cit., p. 23. ~ Ibid. Cefibate Friendship What does one person give to another? He gives of himself of.the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other, but.that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness, of all expressions and ~a~ifestations of that which is alive in him. In~ thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enh~ances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy~' Fromin's emphasis here on one's aliveness that is giveri,~shared and enhanced reminds us of the statement of St. lrenaeus: "The glory of God is man fully alive." If wetake glory in its biblical meaning as a visible and tangible manifestatioff of God's presence, as in a broad sense of sacrament of God's presence, then'we can see how in truly human love God can be found and ex-perienced. It is not a question of arguing from the reality of human love to the realitY, of divine love, but rather of experiencing divine love through the ex-perience of human love. To shut oneself off from human love either through fear or inhibition or anxiety or some stoical ideal of spirituality is to cut oneself off from the p6ssibility of touching and being touched by thedivine. Strange as it may seem', mature human love does not come easily and spon-tane0usl~ to us. If left unreflected on and undirected, our loving tends to be egocentric, selfish, possessive, jealous--in a word, sinful.' Mature love demands all the patience and pain and even dying associate~l with growth. For most people, whether Christian or not, the normal ambience for such~growth to maturity is the family. This can be a schpol~o_f generous, self-g~ving love through_.the muluple relationships which kmt tts meml6ers tok'~lier. G~wng, receiving, sharing, each alter~ates--h~ i--~'~a~p-'~f~"~i|y that is closely united in love, yet otie that is not closed in u.p6n itself in a complacent, smug manner.~ The family itself has to. be open to others. It was in our own families that we first learned experientially about love, and we carry that gift with us throughout our lives. Conversely, we also carry the inevitable limita-tions and.deficiencies of that experience throughout our~ lives. Hence the need for being in touch with our past, for forgiveness and I~he letting go of resent-ments, and bitterness, for self-acceptance and the,~healing of memories. But now as adults we are called to a different life-style, one demanding the renunciation of any possibility'of founding a family of our own and bringing new human life into the world. This means that we are renouncing the use of the most natural and normal means for growing in mature, human love. Such a decision is not to be taken lightly. We must be sure that we can grow without such help. Ours is a minority kind of vocation,,~a minority life-style. But the call is still growth, maturity and love. The road may be,steeper, in many ways more solitary, but'it will also be less encumbered. There are two paradoxical 4~, requirements: to develop a capacity and even a desire~.for solitude, and to develop a capacity for deep and lasting friendships. Solitude and friendship ¯ The Art of Loving, Unwin Paperbacks (1975), p. 27. 180 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 are the two keys to a'healthy, integrated, celibate life. In both we find ourselves, the other, and God. Friendship in the lives bf religious takes many forms,, is experienced in many contexts, and has many degrees of intensity. As we live in comm~unity we are first challenged to look for friendships there. Ideally, at least, some close relationships in this. arena should be possible. ~Then there are the people whom we serve in our direct apostolate and those others with whom we col-laborate; some friendships of depth' may well emerge from these sources. Finally, there are the friends ~wejust happen to form from chance meetings or strange coincidences. All of these together give us a wide range of relation-ships such as is healthy and envigorating for any person to hav.e. It~'is an enriching and broadening experience to have friends among many age-groups, different social classes, varied occupations, and so on. Through them we touch life and are touched by life. As we move across the spectrum from acquaintance to friendship to close friendship to deep, intimate love, the reality of our celibacy becomes moreand more pertinent. In a relationship of mere.acquaintance the fact of being a con-secrated celibate is almost irrelevant, but in.a relationship of deep loving it becomes central. Some religious feel safer hovering around the center of that spectrum--and undoubtedly they are. But for others the call to take the risk of deep loving is part of God's call to respond to His love.This they accept with joy, yet they remain aware that their celibacy is a fragile as well as a beautiful gift, and that it has to be guarded as-well as celebrated. Relation-ships of deep, intimate, .human loving can exist between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman. So let us reflect on the conditions in which a religious might feel free to sustain and foster such a relationship. 1. The religious must be mature. As we have seen, maturity is a process of growth, and so the requirement of being mature is 'in some sense relative. What it means basically is that the person be comfortable with his or her own sexuality, be able to know and accept himself or herself as a sexual being. Fur- ,ther, his or her desire must be to create an adult'relationship between equals, not one of emotional dependency. This latter could happen should someone Ibe searching for a deep relationship out of a need,'overt or latent, to relieve or escape from acute loneliness. ~., 2. The religious must be.well rooted in his celibate calling. This will include having a strong personal attachment to Jesus, to the Church, to the order or congregation, to the apostolate. It presupposes a sound and vibrant life of prayer. Deep relationships starting from an insecure commitment can lead one out of religious life, o~ toan alienated existence within. 3. There mustbe an awareness and understanding of the other person's sexuality, and of his or her capacities, weaknesses and needs. An awareness also of the inevitable tendency towards greater intimacy, physical as well as Celibate Friendship psych61ogical. Hence there has to be moderation in the bodily expression of tenderness, affection and love. Touch can be a. beautiful language of com-munic~ ition, more expressive than the spoken or written word, but it can also be a 'gateway to mere~ gratification. It is not enough for a religious only to avoid sexual sin, but he must be sensitiveto the truth of every gesture, and to questions such as: "What is this action doing to the other person? What is it saying to him? In what emotional state is it leaving him?" Self-knowledge and sensitivity to the other go hand in hand. 4. Besides being grounded in one's own vocation, the religious must also affirm and desire the growth of the other in his vocation. This means really wanting and working for the other's growth in celibacy (should he be a religious), or for the other's growth in married love (should he be married). Should the other person be single, the religious must be careful not to stunt the other's affective growth in relationships with other men and women, thus cut-ting off the chance of marriage. Finally, any giving in to a sterile fantasy: "If only things were different"; "if only we were free"; "if only we had met earlier in life," is dangerous, and constitutes a degree of unfaithfulness to our commitment to Christ. 5. The relationship must not be exclusive. The ideal is to be totally non-possessive, and in that sense truly free. The ability to make and sustain other friendships with either sex should be fostered. Celibate love is primarily universal in character. 6. The relationship must be open. This means'o(a) open to God. The two people involved should be able to pray with sincerity about their love both in-dividually and together. In such prayer ]hey will receive guidance and strength. But such guidance and strength is also mediated through people, and ~o such a relationship should also be (b) open io spiritual directors, superiors, mutual friends. There is n~eed of a.constant evaluatioffof such a relationship, and a third party (this can mean one or more persons) can be helpful and ob-jective. Any tendency to hide a relationship, to secretiveness and furtive behavior is a danger signal. 7. There must be a willingness to endure pain, to go through difficult times. This is required in all human loving, but it is especially necessary in celibate love 6f a deep kind because in such love we allow, to a greater 0r lesser extent, the frustrating aspect of.celibacy to surface and be experienced. To the degree that the dynamic towards exclusivit~y and sexual union develop, to that. degree will it become more painful to keep on choosing celibacy. The person unable to tolerate such pain either leaves religious life, or, as in no. 2 above, he endures an alienated existence within his community. 8. By their fruits you shah know them. A relationship such as this cannot be divorced from every other aspect of the celibate's life. If the loving is healthy, life,giving and creative, it will enhance the quality of the person's prayer, community living, apostolic commitment, other relationships, and in-deed his general well-being. By using these criteria it is to be expected that the 182 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 relationship will aid positively to the growth of the person involved, ~n.o.tTbe something merely neutral' or indifferent,~but rather be a~strong contribut~ing factor to human and spirit.ual development. Thins aim is admittedly very,,high,. but one who is living the'qonsecrated life should be able and willing to accept. these criteria, demanding as they are, and eval~uate any intimate relationship accordingly . Now Available As A Reprint Psychosexual Maturity in Celibate Development by Philip D. Cristantiello Price: $.60 per copy; plus postage. .Address': Review for' Religious Room 428 ~ 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Catherine of Siena: Mission and Ministry in the Church Suzanne Noffke, O.P. Sister Suzanne; past president of the Racine Dominican Sisters, having just completed a' new and unabridged translation, of the Dialogue of Catherine, dev?tes herself full time to ,research, writing, and speaking on Catherine and her thought.,. Sister Suzanne resides at 2070 Allen Blvd., #2; Mid~leton, WI 54562. atherine of Siena~ was a woman who knew to,an amazing depth who she was--because she responded with such amazing: fidelity to God's revelation to her of who he is. That revelation, was nev~er for .Ca,therine (nor is it for .any of us) one finished pa~ckage, oNo, she entered. Jnto, it ~lyvel by level throughout her life as she met each new insight and wrestled with its implications and demands. But essentially there were~always those two t~hreads: Catherine knew God as boundless Truth and Love, and she knew herself as limited and even sinful, yet°loved a~d gifted, o The dynamic of Catherine's growth could be very appropriately described in terms of~the classic "transcendental precepts": ~ , Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable., Be responsible. Her attentiveness to divine initiative in her life is obvious at every stage of her awareness; it was so sacred a matter for her, in fact, that she regarded any failure in that attentiveness as a breach in. fidelity. She was very conscious of, and delighted in,°the active play of her own understanding as an intelligent be-ing in ,re,,ceiving GOd's manifestation of himself. But the play and the deligl~t were never a short-circuited contemplationS: her reason searched out the im- 183 184 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/2 plications of what she saw; and her whole being owned and responded to thoge implications in her living, no matter what the cost to herself. It is so far the picture of a beautifully human, thoroughly moral and noble person, and a discussion of mission and ministry could legltimately be drawn from it. Yet if our model encompassed only these levels--even in faith--the total reality of Catherine, and the fullest ideal of Christian mission and ministry would be muted to a kind of drudgery of diaty well done. Such could conceivably be true and heroic holiness, but we are invited to so much morel Bernard Lonergan captured the sense of this "more" when he added to the four transcendental precepts a fifth: Be in love~' . Now we may love many people, but.to be in love is a much more rare and precious phenomenon. Catherine did not simply love God: she was madly (she herself uses that modifier again and again) in love. And it was one in love that she was attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. It was love that fired her urgent sense of being sent, her sense of mission to ministry. If we would learn about mission and ministry from Catherine, we must remember that we are looking at and listening to a woman in love. And we must remind ourselves that God is in love with us too~, and that we too are in-vited beyond simply lok, ing him to the mad sanity of being-in-love: "not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us!''2 A Question of Discipleship We are dealing here.with the whole question of dis.cipleship. A disciple is One who learns from another's person as much as from his body 0f teaching: And a disciple in the gospel t~'adition is ultimately and most imme~diately a disciple of Jesus~ Any others who are models and guides' in the Christian ~vay are such only because, and insofar as, they are, first, true disciples themselves. "Take me as your model," writes Paul, "as I take Chris~?'3 In the end, "you have only one teacher, the Christ."' " ' ¯ Catherine's ~rescription for those who would be guides to others describes well her understanding of her own role toward those who were her 'disciples: Be trumpeters of the incarnate Word, God's Son, not only with your voice but with your deeds. Learn from the Master of t(uth, who practiced virtue before he preached it. In this way you will produce fruit and be the channel through which God will pour his grace into the hearts of those who hear you? Catherine, true disciple that she is, can well be both model and teacher to us, for her life speaks as forcefully as doher writings, which could have grown only out of such a life. Method in Theology. LondOn: Darlon, Longman and T0dd,_1972, p. 13. 1Jn 4:'10. ~ I C6 11:1". Letter 226, to Raymond of Capua, c. i376~ ' Mt 23:10. Catherine of Sienb: Mission and Ministry in the Church The Context of Mission and Ministry for Catherine ~ , All of Catherine's life and all that she says about specific questions can be fully understood only/in the context of hei" m.ost bhsic convictions. In isolation from these, so muchwould be--and has been--~ubject to misrepresentation. So, even at the risk of distorting by over-brevity, let me at least summarize'the faith that most centrally dictated the shape of her interpretation of mission and ministry. ' The God with whom C~therine is in love'is at once "gentle first Truth" and "Love itself." Jesus, God's on'ly-begotten Son, God's Word, is Truth in-carnate, the one Way in love for sinful humanity to find reconciliation with the ~Father. Along this Way--Catherine describes him in her Dialogue as the bridge it is in the Church as in a hostelry.that God provides the food and shelter, the companionship and rest without which we pilgrims would surely faint or fall back long before we would reach our destination. In fact, the head of the Church is "Christ-on-earth." Only he holds~the keys to the wine cellar in which is stored :the blood of Jesus, the sole source of life and salvation. And, for Catherine, there-is nc~ other way to union with God but through the open heart of Jesus. God alone--in himself and in Jesus and, analogously, in the Church--is deserving of unqualified love (senza modo). Everyone and everything else is to be loved only con modo--with love that is qualified and conditioned and limited by its relationship with God. Because of this very strong'sense 6f relativity, issues which may loom large in our considerations often 'get from Catherine what may seem short shrift to us. Some of the difference,"it is true~ is cultural; but that fact should not allow us to miss the more signi.ficant difference that cbhaes from this underlying sense of relativity -- a 'sense that is still as ~valid today as it was in fourteenth-century Tuscany. When we are in love, all things are relative~tothe one we love. With this context firmly in mind we can turn as disciples to Catherine and let her person and her words speak to our own convictions about our mission to ministry in the Church. The Foundation and Principle of Mission and Ministry Basic to ~the who|e question of mission and.ministry-for Catheriiae was the same principle she applied to preaching: that we must practice virtue first, then preach it. Jesus, she writes in the Dialogue, never taught what he had not first lived himself. We are useless to others unless we have within ourselves what we would share with them. She writes of herself in the Prologue to the Dialogue that "she knew that she could be of no service to her neighbors in teaching or example or prayer without first doing herself the service of attain-ing and p~ossessing virtue.''6 "We will never be able to nourish our neighbors," she w'rites to a group of women in Naples, "unless we first feed our own souls with true solid virtues. 186 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/, 2 And we cannot be nourished with virtue unless we cling to the breast of divine chari~ty from which we draw, the milk of divine tenderness."~7 The image is a double one: the bre, ast of divine charity is t0e.open heart of Jesus. In prayer we look into this open heart and see "the secret of the bloo~"~--that God loves us so.madly that his Song's death was not too high a price to pay for_ our love--and seeing ourselves so madly loved, we o in response fall madly in love with God. But prayer itself is imaged by ~Catherine as a mother: it~ is prayer that conceives and gives b!rth to virtue within us, and with.gut prayer the virtue which ministers in love to our neighbors is im-possible . ,. Where, indeed, will we c~tch the fragranc~ of obedlence?~ In ffrayer. Where will we strip ourselves of th~ selfish love that makes us impatient in the face of hurt and other dif-ficulties, and clothe ourselves in divine love, finding our glory in the cross of Christ crucified? In prayer/. Where do we express love and faith and hope and humility? In prayer. In fact, we would not bother to look for what we did not love; but when we do love we always want to,be united with the objec.t of our love--and he_re that object is God.° Where, finally, will we catch the fragrance of coniinence and purity, and a hunger for martyrdom that makes us willing to give our lives for God's honor and the good of sot~ls? Always in th~s gentle mother, prayer . Truly, p~rayer i~ a nio'iher. If'is she who conceives virtues as her children in love for God, and ~ives them birth in love for our neighbors/° There is no ministry, then, without virtue; no~ is there virtue withbut prayer. It is in prayer, that we are sent out, missioned, into action. And once the dynamic has been set in motion by our response ~o God,s initiative, prayer and ministry ~feed;each other: 'prayer drives us out to serve, and our service drives us back into prayer. Indeed, if0both are genuine in themselves, each becomes in.a sense the other: prayer~is a ministry and ministry a prayer. There'ar~ two ways to pray (Catherine writes): The firsi way is that of Continualprayer; that is, ,that constant lioly desire which of itself .prays before God in everything a person does. Indeed, such desire directs all our actions, whether spiritual or temporal, to his honor. That is why it is called continualprayer.'~ Continual prayer, then, is nothing other than holy desire' and the gentle movement of iove.,~ , What fruit do we derive from this sort of prayer? A peaceful quiet within us to which nothing is a stumbling~block: . Nothing wearies or troubles it. Nor does it let us. be ~.Dialogue, I. (All quotations from the Dialogue are taken from the new translation of that work to be publis.hed by Pat~list Press in January, 1980.) See~also Dialogue, 29. Letter 356 .,to thr~e women of Naples. Letter 353, to three women of Naples, 1379. Letter 26, to her niece, Sister Eugenia, a nun in the monastery of'Sf. Agnes at M0t~tepulciah0'. ~ Letter 353. ~, ~ ~ " " Ibid. '~ Letter 22, to Abbot Martino di Pass, ignano of Vallombrosa. Catherine of siena: MiSsion and Ministr.V in the Church / 187 'ideceived when our soul hankers airier our~own room, tO bask there in consolation and peace. It does not even regret having to do something else when we ~,ould prefer to be actually at prayer. No, it extracts from that something else the perfume of humility and the firb of, love for our neighbors. ~ "i'he sec6nd way'is that of vocalprayer, that is, speaking wiih oiie's tong~ae to say the~Of-rice or other oral prayers. This way is designed to bring us to the third way, mental prayer. This is a~:complished when, with I~rudence and humility., we use our minds in vocal prayer--that is, when we pray in such a way that, while we.are speaking with our i~ngue, our h~art is never far from God. Indeed, we should alw~ays try, to set our heart firmly in the love of divine charity." . urging our mmd always to think of, to offer, and t6 receive the i~ pulse of God's love more than-the sound of the.words." It is ume to give honor to God and wear ourselves out for our neighbors: wear ourselves out physically by bearing with everything, a~nd.wear ou_rselve~ out spiritually by offering continual, humble prayer in Ggd's presence with angui~shed longing, with bitter tears and sweat. ' 6 The complementarity of prayer and action, then, is'one of integration, not of mere alternation. Catherine would not be at all at home with the image we have sometimes used, that of a car which needs to return perio~dically to the gas pump for fuel in order to keep running. Her own image of the fountain and the jfig, though she used it in another context, is much more app~'opriate. The fountain is God and his love and truth. "If you take your Jug out of the fountain to dri~k," she writes, "it is soon empty. But if y0o h01d your j~gin the fountain whild you drink, it ~ill~n0t get empty;~ifide~d, it will'always be full." '' In this image, the more we drink from this jug, the more r~om there is f6r it to be filled, and the more i~ is filled, the more we have to drink (or to share). ° What," then, determines" what time shall'be given to bxl~licit praye~, and w~at 'to the ministry of action'?. Precisely ~hat initiative from God which is called mission., Not simply our own inclinatibn,.but the action of the Spirit made kno~'n through oppoit~nit3~, obedience, ~3r dema~nds of lb~;e. Be very.conscientious and persevering in frequenting the holy place of prayer'as,often " .an, d as long as the Holy Spirit offers you the 9pportuni!y. Do not,avoid'it or run a~aYo ~;o from . it ,even if it should cost you your life. Never abandon,~ t,oht .of tenderness or com-passion for your body.~ You must not break away from holy prayer for any reason whatever except obedience or It is'Prayer, .therefore, that~ holds the place of primacy. But¯~ervice is its " Lettei 154, to'Brother Francesco T~baldi of Florence, i3"~8~ t, Letter 353. ~ ~ ~; '~ Letter 154. ~ ~ :, ,6 Letter 296, to Don Giovanni delle Celle, c. 1376. "Dialogue, 64. " Letter 187, to Don Giovanni Sabbatini of Bologna and Don Taddeo de' Malavohi Of Siena, monks of Certosa anti, Be riguardo, c. 1375. '~ Dialogue, 65. 188. /Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 ,/2 , necessary fruit and touchstone. Effective love for others is the expression of true love for God. So God says in the Dialogue: I ask you to love me with the same love which I love you. But for me you cannot do this, for I loved you without being loved. Whatever love you have for me you owe me, so you love me, not gratuitou[ly, but out of duty, while I love you, not out of duty, but grati~itously. So you cani~ot gi~'e me the kind of love i ask of you. This is why I have put you among your neighbors: so thal you can do for-them wha! you cannot do for me--that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for a~ny p[ofit for yourself. And whatever you do foi- them 1 Will consider done for me.2° We cannot, in fact, honestly claim to have even conceived .virtue if we never bring it to birth'for our neighbors. (Again God is speaking.) Virtue, once conceived, must come to birth. Therefore, as soon as the soul has conceived through loving affection,oshe gives bii'ih for her neighbors' sake. And just as she loves m~ in truth, so also she serves her neighbors in truth. Nor could she do otherwise, for love of me and love of neighbor are one and the same thing: since love of neighbor has its source in me, the more the soul loves me, the more she loves her neighbors.2' Catherine not onlY, preached this integration of prayer and virtue and ministry; she lived it more and more deeply as her intimacy with God deep-ened. Her three years 6f alm.ost total silence and solitude were more than merely ~ '°'filling of the fuel tank" for the life of service that was (o begin to blossom at their end. Catherine entered that solitude, one very much centered on the relationship between herself and God, and it was atime of growth fbr her in mystical union with him. But in that solitude was growingalso.the small seedling of another relationship. The ~ulmination of those three years came in a double-edged experience which puzzled Catherine herself. During the night of Carnival in 1368 she had reached a high pitch of inten-sity" in the p~ayer~that had--perhaps incongruously to us in vie~; of her mysticism--been her l~r~occupation for months: prayer foi" th~ gift of faith. Raymond of Capua iells us that she had consistently sensed in i'~sponse to her pleadings the promise voiced in the prophet Hosea: "I will e~pbuse you to myself in, faith.''~ Yet she had never been satisfied that her prayer had been granted. On this night, however, she knew that it had, ih the experience we know as her mystical espousals. Catherine's rapture knew no bounds: she would have been content to rest where she was forever. But just as un-mistakably as the intimacy of faith carrie the mission of faith--in terms of which, frustratingly, on the very heels of rapture, the very Christ who had finally drawn~her to his wedding-chamber began to drive l'ier out of solitude to service. But note that this was not'the end of the prayer of solitude in Catherine's life. Rather she began to learn the very integration of the two, an integration Dialogue, 64. ~' Dialogue, 7. n Ho 2:22. Catherine of Siena: Mission and Ministry in the Church / 189 of wtiich she would later speak so forcefully toothers. Prayer and ministry, love of God and love of neighbor are, Christ tells her, the two feet on which she must walk, the two wings on which she must fi~, 23 Neither. can be complete without the ~ther. And as the circles" of Catherine's involvement widened, her ministry in action intensified her need for prayer in solitude, while her very prayer drove her more and more to con-cern for others. She knew'with the thirst of the psalmist in the parched desert how essential it is to "hold one's jug in the f~untain even as one drinks." And if the call of olSedi+nce afid°lo~,e filled her days to a dizzying pace she would seize the opportunity' of ii~e night to bring it all with her" whole self in quiet before God. As surely as she knew that he was with her in her ministry-- for it was he who,constantly sent her--she knew that she needed time and space to be consciously in his presence in what she calls "the holy place of prayer." The Specifics of Mission and Ministry ~)ut of the dialectice of Catherine's prayer~ an~l action grew the strong specific convictions concerning mission and ministry that dictated her own pat.h :and.her .counsel to' others. She never, even in her Dialogue, attempted a ~systematic presentation of this or any other matt, er. Nor .will 1 attempt to. draw out of her works what could be considered a full "theology of ministry.:' But it is~possible and decidedly worth the effort to pull together in some logical order the bits of. her refle.ction on the question in both the Dialogue and her .letters, and to say something ,again of how she herself lived what she taught. For the implications of any given insight w.ere~for Catherine, very concretely and practically the call of obedience. What; then, has she to tell us?, First of all, and at the basis of any sense of mission, of being sent, is the reality that in his very gifts in us God commissions us to specific ministries. His gifting is,in itself,a call: ¯ - I have distributed [all my gifts] in such a way (he says in the Dialogue) that no one has all of thefia. ~hus I have given you rea~son-- hecessity, in fact to I~ractice mutual charity. For I could~well have supplied each of you with all your needs . But'l wanted to.make you dependent on one another ,so tha~t each of you would be my minister, dispensing the grace~ and gifts you have received~from me. So whether you will it or n~t, you cannot escape the exercise of charity!Z' In another part of the Dialogue the Father becomes even more explicit about'the providence of this interdependence he has built into the economy of creation by the variety of our gifts:°. . In this mortal life so long as y9u are pilgrims, I have bound you with the chain of.charity. Whether you want it or not, you are so bound. If you should break loose by not wanting to live in charity for your neighbors, by force will you still be bound by it. So, that you Raymond of Capua, Legenda Major, ch. 121. Dialogue, 7. 190 / Review for Religiousj Volume 39, 1980 o may practice charity-in action and.in will, I in my provid~ence did not~giveto any one,p_er-son or to each indivi_dually the knowledge for doing ever~y~hing necessary for human life., No, I gav~ something to one, something blse to another, so that each one's need would be a reason to have recourse to~ tti~ other. So thoukh yofi ?hay los('your 'wili for cl~i~:ii'y ° because of your wickedness, you will at least be forced by your o~wn ne'~d'to practice it in action. Thus you see the artisan turn to the worker and th~.workeroto theartisan: each has a need of the other.becaus~ neither.knows how to do what the o~th.e~-.~does. So also the j-0 cleric and rehg~ous' " havek need. of the layperson,.and~ the. layperson. ~r~ ,~ ofo. the religious; neither can get ~long without the other. And so with everything else. Could I not have given everyone everything? Of course. But in my~providence I wanted, to make each of you dependent on the others, so that you would be forced to exercise chanty In action andwl at once." ~ ¯ Catherine hers'~lf had 'a'kind of genius for matching ,her gifts (and .she knew hergifts as well a~ her limitations) with rieeds that wete~beii~g met by no one else. She was deeply sensitive, and she too.k on those cases among the poo( and the sick that called for more care than others were able or willing to give. Sh'~had aqaiercing and uncompromising vision which she shared with reluc-tant listeners as ~vell as with the willing~ what needed saying she ~would say! Whe6. it seemed that' som~ of her followers neededra cl0ister~and,,there was none tliat,matched their r~eed~,-she founded one.~When she~sensedothe gaping, lack ~of holines~ amid thb p~litics of the pope's 'advisers~ she,called °foro.'a "papal counciW of holy persons who would fill the vacuum. Notall of'her:~f-forts met with tangible success; some of her grandest d~eams ~.ame in crashing failure'tlowri on her head~:~ Yet she owned "the mission defined'~by~her:, gift6dness, and~never disowned responsibility for the resu.lts~--:-'~ though sh~ alsb had the ability, so very rare, to let go ofo~rojects that.,~;proved,counter-productive. She knew her own dependence on 6thers a~ Wellas shb knew .that others depended On her. She knew~what it means to be gifted and "missioned. But it is' notS'merely a natural interdependence that~constitutes~ mission: Mission is inseparable from the need of sinful humanity~for redemption, and therefore it demands entry into the redeeming life and passion of Jesus, not only for oneself, but for the,sake of others as well. Those in, m~ss~on const~t, ute more than the Red Cross or thecounty welfare.office,.and this larger perspec-tive (which must be no less than God's own) may put those,in mission in°the paradoxical position of encot~raging themselves and 6tliers in suffering as often as it puts.them in the effort of relieving it. Catherine c~lledit~'~th~ om-passionate'cruelty'and cruel conlpassion of the cross" and "feeding, on souls at. the table ofthe cr0~s." It is one of thoseoarenas where the truth of faithcan "blow" the mind of reason. The Father says in the Dialogue: . . it is by means'of my ser~,ants and their great sufferings thatl would be mei'cifu I to the world and ref6rm my bride [the Church]. ,r. Dialogue, 148. Catherine of Siena: Mission and Ministry in the ~Church '/~191 Truly these last can be called another Christ.crucified, my only-begotten Son, because they haye taken his task upon themselves. He came as a mediator to put an end to war and reconcile humanity to me in peace by suffering even to the shameful death of crucifixion. In the saine way must these b~ocrudfied and'become mediators ~n prayer, in word, in good holy living, setting themselves up as an exam pie to others. The precious stones of,. . virtue shine in their patience as they,be~ar others' sins. These are the hooks with which they catch souls?~ And Catherine writes to her friends and disciples: o You would be deceived if you wanted to feast at the ~tern~l Father's table while avoiding ~'~ feeding ~n souls at the table of the Son. It is, in fact, at this table'that we must eat this food, for it cannot be,had without suffering)' It is time to show whether or not we are lovers of Christ crucified, and whether we find our joy in.this food.28 One of the first indications o'~" this r~ederdptive sensitivify in Catherine sui'- faces at the tihae of her father's death in 1368. The sudden realization that even so good:a~person as her father may still not be fully purified of sinfulness cuts to the heart of her deeply human love for him, and she begs to be allowed to pay in her own suffering the "price" of this final purifi~ation:'~Later, as her real, felt, effective love reaches out to others,, so does thi~ d,esire to enter into their redemption. It becomes truly a hunger that she knows can be satisfied only on the cross. And her joy in being there is for that reason far t6o deep and much more meaningful than the masochism some have attributed to her. It is a fine line for discernment to'draw, ttiis kr~owledge of when suffei'ing (our 6wn or others') is part Of r~demptive providen(e," and when it i~ to be shunned,'c~onquerett, and alleviated.° Ironically, the issue probably~'~eem~ clearest to us at its extreme: "Proclaini the truth and let no fear silence it! 'Be liberal and generous, ready to ~give even your.life if necessary." Thus she wrote to Raymond of Capua,~9 and .the message probably does not strike us all that discordantly. There is no doubt that Chtherine longed to be allowed to enterjust 'that effectively into Christ's redeeming deatti. But is it one Of those face(s of t;eing madly in love with God that we perhaps take so for granted that we do not really sense its place in our own life and missibn'?. Are we not also called to live (and die) redemptively? But whatever the concrete circumstances oLthat redemptive.living and dy-ing may~be for each of us, Catherine reminds us again and again that Christian ministry demands integrity and courage. Cast from you any tenderness for yourself and any slavish fear. The dear Church has no need for that sort of person; she needs strong people who are merciless"when it comes to themselves and compassionate when it comes to her.'° Dialogue, 146. Letter 271, to Alessa Saracini, 1378. Letter 330, late 1378 or early 1379. Letter 373, to Raymond of Capua, February,25, 1380. Letter 296. 199 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 The others' are not action people but wind people who whirl about like leaves, without any consistency or stability. There is not room for shame or embarrassment in regard to our Christian-ity, nor ~for fear of openly owning Christ. We are reminded of Catherine's own natural sensitivity, her embarrassment through much of her life whenever her holiness was "found out," though she eventually was able to share so completely and seemingly unself-consciously. The imagery she uses in writing of this need to be proud to be known as a disciple of Christ is strikingly ' reminiscent of that incident just before she entered the order when the urge to throw~ it all off was so strong that she was actually tempted to put on.her sister-in- law's "aft~er-the-wedding";.dress and parade around Siena in it. Once she had mastered the temptation, she tells us, Mary presented her with the wedd, ing dress that was to be hers, a~ garment from the very heart of Jesus. Years later she writes to her disciple, Gabriele di Davino Piccolomini: You need the armor-which is true charity, and over this armor the scarlet cloak of the blood of Christ crucified . The blood of Christ crucified needs to be revealed, not. hid-den. You must g~ve witness to it before everyone by your good and holy actions, and when necessary by yo.u.r words. You must not be like those fools who are ashamed to re-mind the world of Christ crucified and to testify openly that they are his servants. They are not willing to put on this scarlet cloak, the blood of Christ crucified." Ii isl in fact, not a burden, but our glory to be the ministers of Christ: Those we serve are our helpers, and even our masters insofar as it is their need that comman'ds us. °And even While we are a channel of Ctirist's redemptive love~to them, it is_the~ who in turn me~iiate our way to redemption and salva-tioh. Tfius Catherine writes to Cardinal Pietro Corsini: Be.magnanimous and generous in your charity toward your neighbors, both spiritually and materially. Remember that the hands of the poor are there to help you, as minister of the, blood, in carrying and offering divine grace.The blood of Christ crucifi.ed will teach you to distribute your possessions to the poor with the same generosity he has shown and continues to show to you. He will°make you consider the poor .and'~ those who find themselves in need as your masters." And to Monna Lodovica di Granello: You who have temporal possessions; do your duty by giving to the poor whatever yo~u can give Make yourselyes steward§ of your~wealth to the poor, for the poor are the hands that will grant us entrance to eternal life because of the loving charity with which we have given them alms." The Ministry of Social Justice ~ , Though Catherine herself never held a position of formal authority or had Letter 256, to M. Niccolo, a Tuscan official, after 1376. Letter 128, Gabriele was a layman, not a preacher. Letter 177, 1376. ~" Letter 304, 1378. Catherine of Siena: Mission and Ministry in the Church / 193 more than the most paltry alms to give in her own name, the ministry we today specifically call social justice was very much her concern, and we who sense a special call to this ministry would do well to look to her not only for inspira-tion but also for the criteria on which she based her stands. We have already seen how, in Catherine's view, the divine economy in-cludes the distribution--not always equal or even equitable in our sight--of goods and talents. She insists that there is also a positive providence in poverty and ill fortune, for her sights are always fixed beyond the limits of here and now and the standards of mere reason. Yet she is just as insistent when it comes to the obligations of stewardship imposed by the possession of wealth and power (it is God himself who speaks): 1 have shown you my generosity, goodness, and providence toward people. But they let themselves be guided by their own darksome weakness. Your bodily members put you to shame, because they all together practice charity, while you do not. Thus, when the head is aching, the hand he|ps it. And if the finger, that tiniest of members, hurts, the head does not snub it because it is greater and more noble than all the other parts of the body. No, it comes to its aid with hearing and sight and speech and everything it has. And so with all the other members. But those who are proud do not behave that way. They see a poor person, one of their members, sick and in need, and do not help. They refuse to give not only of their possessions but even a single word. Indeed, they reproachfully and scornfully turn away. They have plenty of wealth, but they leave the poor to starve. They do not see that their wretched cruelty throws filth into my face, and that their filth reaches down even to the depths of hell. I provide for the poor, and for their poverty they will be given the greatest of riches. But the others, ~nless they change their ways, will be severely reproached by my Truth as is said in the holy Gospel: "l was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was naked and you did not clothe me, in prison and you did not visit me." And at that last moment it will do them no good to excuse themselves ¯ by saying, "! never saw you, for if I had I would have done it." The wretches know well enough--and my Truth ~aid that whatever is done to his poo~ is done to him?~ Injustice is a direct assault against God. It could hardly be stated more clearly: ".their wretched cruelty throws filth into my face"! Still, Catherine's ultimate judgments and action where poverty and wealth, good fortune and ill are concerned always come back to that most basic of prin-ciples: only God is unqualified Truth and Love. Nothing of human life is un-qualified or unconditioned except our love for him. Of everything and everyone but God we must discern the "ifs, ands, and buts" before making our decisions. This is where Catherine,s own vision often made her seem the naive fool in the face of political c0mplexities -- but that is the risk integrity runs. The force of the simple truth may seem sometimes to crumple under the weight of reality as reason sees it, but if we are true to the vision of truth (and willing to admit when we have not seen clearly or fully) we still stand as tall Dialogue, 148. 194 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 and. whole as did Catherine ultimately--though the psychological burden of it all had literally done her in physically. Reform was badly needed in Catherine's day. She not only admitted that but proclaimed it to the most sensitive of ears! But she insisted that all reform must begin from within. She loved the Church as few have loved it, yet she criticized and castigated it as few have dared. If God was to show mercy to the world, the world must be reformed. But the world would be reformed only if the Church were reformed. And the Church would be reformed only if its leaders were reformed. And Catherine would be of no use to any of it so long as she held on to her own sinfulness. ;. Like Catherine, we are called not simply to preach--much less to con-demn- but to take the sins of others on ourselves. Her experience, toward the end of her life, of so feeling the weight of the ship of the Church on top of her that she could neither get up nor be lifted up from the floor of St. Peter's was more than figurative. Whereas earlier she had pleaded for forgiveness for others and even offered to suffer for their sins, in her last years she genuinely owned responsibility for those sins and considered herself truly (why would we prefer to see it as pious but exaggerated humility?) the cause of every evil in the world. Where would our burning issues be today if we could honestly own our sinful responsibility for them? Not that Catherine did not preach to others about justice. Her letters are full of very concrete, practical exhortations. To Ristoro di Pietro Canigiani, a Florentine lawyer: You may, in good conscience, seek and demand what is yours in ways that are just, for no one is obliged to let go of what is justly one's own. Anyone who is willing could certainly do the more perfect thing, but it is not an obligation unless one wants to do it of one's own free choice. But there is one thing I want to add: when any poor folk come to you (assuming they are clearly in the right) who have no one to defend them because they cannot pay, if you would work for them out of affectionate love, you would give very great honor to God?~ And to Andreasso Cavalcabuoi while he was Senator in Siena: We often see certain people in government having justice done only where poor are con-cerned-- justice which frequently is really and truly injustice--but they do not have justice done where the great and powerful are concerned.~' Further examples could be multiplied, but always the principles are the same. And always we must begin by doing justice to ourselves--the justice of repentance and virtue--and by reaching out first in response to God's call in the needs of those who are brought to touch our lives most nearly.38 God will see to the widening of the circle, probably much more intensely than we thought we had bargained for! Letter 258, 1378-79. ~' Letter 338, 1379. ~ Dialogue, 6. Catherine of Siena: Mission and Ministry in the Church / 195 The Ministry of Women in the Church We have not yet even touched specifically on the ministry of women in the Church. Yet much of what Catherine has to say and demonstrate of womanly ministry within the Church has in principle been related. She who did and said all we have spoken of is a woman. She did not speak, it is true, of the ordination of women: her culture would not have let that even be an issue. Still she does speak of the ministry of all of us(and the objects and modes of her own ministry were remarkable for a woman of her century and social class. It would be fascinating, in fact, to analyze the parallelism that seems to exist between her reflections on priestly min, i.stry and what she has to say of her own ministry! But easy as it is to point to Catherine as a woman who dared to preach to popes and princes, let us never forget that that preaching as well as her every other service rose out of her encounter with God in prayer. If we do nearly as well as she in our integrity on that score, we need have no further concern about the form or effectiveness of our ministry. We will often be frustrated as she was. We will often be misunderstood and criticized as she was. We may die in the effort as she did. But like her we will come out whole, and the Church ¯ will be nourished on our sweat, blood, and tears. And those we have been privileged to touch in our service will remember, as they did of Catherine, that we could smile through it all! Currents in Spirituality The Past Decade George Aschenbrenner, S.J. Father Aschenbrenner is presently engaged in a national spiritual ministryfor priests, religious and lay people, and works part-time in campus ministry at the University of Scranton, especially with the faculty of the university. His address: Scranton University; Scranton, PA 18510. In a stream there are always different levels of flow. An eddy or a swirl, which~i:loes not run so deep as the current, can either spin off and die on the shore or it can get caught up and become part of the deeper current of the stream. It is fascinating and instructive'to watch this process. The last decade has brought an enormous growth in interest and writing about spirituality. This article, focusing on some present issues and concerns of spirituality in this country, will be describing a variety of swirls, eddies, cur-rents and tides within the stream of contemporary spirituality. Generally, the article does not explicitly distinguish deeper currents from surface motions, but leaves this distinction to the reflection and judgment of the reader. The aim here is simply to list and briefly describe, without any prioritizing, some concerns within contemporary spirituality.' In doing this, I will be consulting both my own experience and the fruits of some conversation with experienced people across the country, At times, I will inject an issue which may not seem of much interest today, but which I ' For anotlier format and a more extensive treatment of individual thematic trends in spirituality, consult the series of articles.of Matthew Fox, O.P. in Spirituality Today beginning in the March, ! 978 issue. Currents in Spirituality: The Past Decade personally feel deserves attention. I am aware, of course, that the degree of in-terest or importance for various concerns will vary according to different geographical sections of the country. But any necessary local nuance is left to the reader. The survey nature of this article, besides severely limiting development of the various concerns expressed, also prevents any resolution of them. Sometimes, however, it is the present state of the matter itself which allows only a statement of the question and which requires that any resolution await further clarity in the Spirit. Part I of the article presents issues that affect \everybody in the Church. Part II treats some matters that touch specific groups: religious, bishops and diocesan priests, lay people. ~ Part i: Issues Affecting Everyone 1. Distinction between Monastic and Apostolically Active Spiritualities. Within the one fundamental Christian spirituality there have always been various spiritualities rooted in different orientations to the one God. Especial-ly since Vatican II, a most helpful clarification has stressed the distinction between monastic and apostolically active spiritualities. Generally speaking, the monastic experience of God depends upon some physical withdrawal from the world and upon as full an involvement as possible in the liturgy both of the Eucharist and of the Hours, which provides an essential regularity and a rhythm that will determine both the type of community support and the external activity appropriate to this spirituality. An apostolically active ex-perience of God, while deeplylocated :in the activity of the world, requires the difficult combination of an external mobility with dependable spiritual habits, so that one may serve wherever the need for God is greatest. Obviously, this ts pirituality will provide a different community support, together with both a different presence and a more extensive involvement in the world. To fail to understand which of the two basic orientations one is called to can cause personal frustration and apostolic ineffectiveness. Disregard of this clarification on the part of the diocesan priest, the religious or the lay person, whether in their training or in the living out of their vocation, may well pro-duce unrealistic expectations and. ineffective service. Taking seriously the dif-ference in the two approaches need not imply any superiority of the one over the other. Rather it may help the Church to be more present in the world ac-cording to its own fullness and to manifest God's loving designs across the whole spectrum of the human family. 2. Renewed Monasticism. After Vatican II there was much questioning and experimentation in reference to the elements of the monastic way of life: enclosure, Liturgy of the Hours, community, work, silence, travel, and external apostolic involvement. 198 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 For a while, the very validity of the monastic life seemed at issue. Now, with its essential validity profoundly reaffirmed, many experiments are being evaluated. This'process of evaluation is not concluded but, together with a deep sense that the monastic ideal has been enriched by much of this .ex-perimentation, there is a concern as to whether some of the experiments were not motivated by trying too much to imitate the active life and whether they have not therefore risked: weakening the power of the monastic ideal for our age. It will always be a difficult matter to know how, without distorting or superficializing the monastic ideal, its powerful experience of God may be brought into contact with the city oLman. 3. An Integrated, Functional Spirituality for Active Apostles: Excessive fatigue, even to the length of "burnout,." at times seems almost synonymous with active apostolic work today. Countless demands from so many angles have over-extended and excessively complicated the lives of com-petent and conscientious men and women. They know the need for formal prayer and a profound, spiritual orientation. And yet there just isn't time for eve.rything. As a result there is not nearly enough formal, personal prayer on the part of many active apostles. And this has serious repercussions, both on the apostles themselves and on all the work they do. And so the search goes on for some functional spirituality that will work .for busy apostolic men and women by giving a sense of integration and unity to their lives. It is instructive that in the past ten years interest has moved from the topic of discernment of spirits to that of apostolic spirituality. To my mind, the con-tent is pretty much the same. But the orientation is very different. Discern-ment of spirits involves chiefly an interpretative sorting out in faith of inner, affective experiences, so that, through dealing properly with the experiences, one can find and be with God in every situation and moment of life. But this process runs ~he risk of generating a short-sighted interiority and a spirituality without adequate orientation to apostolic service. Apostolically active spirituality, it would seem, should involve the same decisive dealing in faith with inner, affective experiences, but now with a much increased realization that this faith-process within the person gives a special quality of integrated, peaceful presence in the midst of the most challenging, active situations--and that this presence, eloquent in its thrust toward God in itself, also leads to ac- .~tions which further his kingdom in the world. Dealing in faith with the daily consolations and desolations of life can integrate and unify our whole affec-tivity and person. And this faith-process certainly does not excuse the active apostle from a program of regular, formal prayer. Rather it reveals the need to discover the unique style of serious, formal prayer appropriate for each in-dividual. Such prayer will always be an essential means to that quality of human presence which reveals a loving Father in Jesus as the Beloved of our hearts and which can find and serve Him in everything. In this sense, current interest in apostolic spirituality seems very healthy Currents in Spirituality: The Past Decade / 199 and very likely to lead to an apostolic presence that is increasingly prayerful and where activity is therefore not seen as weakening the contemplative presence of prayer, but as a continuation of that contemplative presence beyond the limits of formal prayer. This integrated, apostolic presence will not decrease the demands made on us, but it can prevent the sense of being overly distracted and torn between the dichotomy of formal prayer and apostolic activity. This integrated spirituality can also lessen that sense of dualism against which we are so often warned today. 4. Renouncing the World to Serve It for God. ~, It is not easy for us to see the world from God's perspective and to serve its t needs in the light of his dream of justice. Finally, this can be done only by one who comes from an experience of God, an experience in God, back to the world. Though we are usually first led to know and love God, of course, in and through his creation, there must and does come, for those whose ex-perience of God matures, a moment of experiencing Him beyond this world's ~- wisdom and potentiality-- a moment of experiencing God as not simply equal to, but as far beyond, all the beauty and wisdom of this world. This moment of transcendence, of finding complete satisfaction and joy in a loving God himself, roots our identity primarily in God and gives his love a priority over any created reality. It is an experience that re-announces us before God, before ourselves and before the world as a people of God, a people in God. In this way our "renunciation," in the sense of a re-announcement of the world for God, puts the world in its true perspective, as seen in and from God.z Rather than lessening our interest in th~ world, this view dramatically in-creases our zeal to further God's Kingdom in the wo~:id and so bring it to its full potential. But serving the needs of our world properly, as part of our love of God, demands this kind of worldly renouncement. There are issues of some importance for ac, tive apostles today that relate to this renunciation of the world. Can this experience of renunication happen without some physical withdrawal from the worl~d? And since the renuncia-tion referred to here is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, what meaias will help active people to keep it alive and growing as a personal attitude? With much ~to leSs physical detachment from the world in most seminaries and novitiates (and much of this is good and in accord with the appropriately non-monastic raining of active apostles), how can we be assured that this necessary attitude f renunciation is taking permanent root in the apostle's consciousness? How do active apostles prevent their worldly renunciation either from turning into a withdrawal from the world which, while suitable for monks, is most un- See Karl Rahner, S.J., Theological Investigations, vol 3, The Theology of the Spiritual Life, tr. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger, "The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World" (Baltimore: ~, H elicon, 1967), pp. 227-293. What Rahner describes as thefugasaeculi for a Jesuit is fundamental to any mature Christian life with and in God. 200 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 suitable for them, or, even worse, from turning into an unChristian lack of concern for the world? The American Church is not finished with these ques-tions. We need more discussion, and better answers. For without this attitude of worldly renunciation, we may have active apostles busy doing many good things, but nov per~ceiving the world's full potential for beauty and goodness and not furthering the reality of a Father's Kingdom that is revealed chiefly in a dead Son's Resurrection. 5. Relationship of Spirituality and Morality. For too many people morality has been corrupted by an overly narrow, moralistic and rationalistic stress. This moralism, with its rationalistically detailed stress on casuistry, tends to cut'healthy morality off from its roots in the spirituality of God's revelation. It has caused much unhealthy fear, guilt and introspection. The "holy person" was described as one who avoided a clearly delineated list of mortal and venial sins. And, too often, this avoidance of sins seemed more a matter of stubbornly pelagian will power than a matter of prayerfully humble dependence on God's. grace. But today, it seems one could be taking means" for serious growth in prayer, faith and a spiritual life, and yet this spiritual seriousness need not ex-press itself in quite practical matters like the morality of public, social affairs or of a chaste sexual life. At times, neither certain social injustices nor something like masturbation is seen as unholy, thereby affecting one's love relationship with God. The intertwined strands of spirituality and morality are here become so unraveled that holy, prayerful Christian people may not be ex-pected to come to similar moral conclusions on various practical issues. A fuller view of both morality and spirituality, ho~vever, rather finds them mutually inclusive and affirming of one another, mutually accountable, while at the same time leaving to each its own, appropriately specific, stress. To view some practical matter spiritually is to judge its appropriatenes~ against the faith-ideal of a trust in God's loving power wonderfully filling our own weakness whenever it is exposed in self-emptying surrender. In this way cer-tain attitudes, dispositions and actions are unholy and unspiritual because they violate this trust in God's love. Only one's spiritual growth in union with God will provide this trust in the practical details of daily living. Much is being done these days in moral theology to construct a modern .version of full, healthy Christian morality and a spirituality as integral to each other. A very interesting issue in this new approach in moral theology is the role in moral decision-making which prayerful discernment of spirits plays in providing that moral knowledge whereby a holy person can know God's love in a concrete situation. 6. Sin ~ Forgiveness-- Sacrament of Reconciliation. Related to the previous consideration of spirituality and morality is another issue, that of our personal experience as sinners in the human recep- Currents in Spirituality: The Past Decade / 201 tion of God's vivifying forgiveness in and through the sacrament of recon-ciliation. Although there are unhealthy dualisms which de.ny integral human living and which should therefore be avoided, the dualism of a person saved in Jesus, but still with much affective evidence of sinfulness cannot be avoided. This dualism is the very setting for the Christian adventure of sons and daughters still gradually coming into their own. The seven capital sins, alive in our affective consciousness as dispositions, inclinations and impulses, provide us with our own version of the pauline divided heart? But we.have an in-destructible hope of ever more healing and wholeness in the crucified Son's discovery of his Father's blessing of resurrection. Continual conversion, so central to the Christian life, happens in the pain-fully purifying humiliation of a double acknowledgement: my personal sin-fulness, and the faithful love of the Trinity for me in the Son's Calvary experience, And this brings in turn a double awareness: we are never nearly so good as we try to make ourselves out to be; but we are far more loved in the Trinity's forgiveness than we could ever imagine. This process of personal assimilation of God's forgiveness is neither instantaneous nor superficial. The inner humiliation of an unqualified admission of personal sinfulness before our beloved Father in his crucified Son is something that we instinctively try to avoid. In this experience, a careful discernment of what is spiritually good for each person is needed.' Despite the reform of the rite of the sacrament of reconciliation I wonder whether people are being helped to deepen their experience of this growth to self-identity through forgiveness. The old superstructure surrounding the in-stitution of frequent confession has broken down--as it had to. Reconcilia-tion prayer-services have restored the communal dimension of sinfulness and forgiveness within the community of the Church, and a whole new format has been developed for the individual reception of the sacrament of reconcilia-tion. But there are ways in which a communal experience of the sacrament, without a carefully~ personal and individual experience, can superficialize or short-circuit the human process of receiving.God's forgiveness. As we grow to a more healthy and loving sense of ourselves, we can learn to find the in-dividual experience of the sacrament a helpful means of growth to the maturi-ty of humble trust in the fidelity of the Trinity's forgiving love always available in our weakness. 7. Faith and Justice. After the topic of prayer, this seems the theme most treated in today's spiritual writing. Many persons are much more sensitive today to the systemic network of social sin that is rooted in the individual sinfulness of human Rm 7:14-25. See my article, "Forgiveness," Sisters Today, Dec. 1973, pp. 185-92. 202 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 hearts--that are radically social in nature. But we have a long way to go in developing a sensitivity to social sin and a social morality. And the insight that justice, in a sense much fuller than simply its social-political meaning, is in-tegral to faith badly needs to grow in the Church. Opportunities for such growth are being very well served by current studies in scripture~ and in Christology.6 Further study and reflection, however, is neede~l to recognize more precisely the sense of justice that is so centrally related to Christian faith-- the full paschal justice of God, motivated and revealed in us through a refined and decisive faith. It is the zealous faith of a great love of God that urges on us a passionate concern and practical involvement for the justice of God's Kingdom. For we are not urged on simply by a social theory about the unity of the human family, or about communal ownership of our earth's resources, or about the inherent evil of war. The fundamental and difficult question of how Christianity relates to various political ideologies--and to ideology, as such--arises here. In South America the question of the possibility of a Chris-tian marxism is very alive, whereas in this country there is a serious question-ing of the assumptions of capitalism. These are complicated questions about specific situations and activities. But we must remember that zeal for the justice of God's Kingdom can never be limited simply to the matter of a specific kind of activity that one is involved in. Rather, and with more far ranging, quite practical effect, it must grow to a vision that pervades and in-fluences everything we do. A few other aspects of this issue deserve listing. The tendency to an ex-cessively introspect, privatized spirituality needs the challenge of that zeal for justice which validates a person's faith.7 We must learn how to relate our zeal for justice to our contemplation. For active apostles in the heat of unjust, op-pressive situations, it is never easy to believe in the grace that could convert understandable angry feelings into the appropriate expression of tenderness and compassion. Much more than a matter of a given temperament, we must see tenderness and compassion not as unbecoming to either a man or a woman in certain situations, but as virtues contemplatively rooted by grace in a per-son's affectivity and will. Finally, many of us need new experiences to help us feel much more passionately the tangled questions this issue raises~ before we can even know the question, much less the answers. ~ See John R. Donahue, S.J., "Biblical Perspectives on Justice" in The Faith That Does Justice, ed. John C~ Haughey, S.J. (New York: Paulist, 1977), pp. 68-112 and Jose" Porfirio Miranda, Marx and the Bible, tr. John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1974), 338 pp. ~ J~irgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 346 pp.; John Sobrino, S J, Christology At the Crossroads, tr. John Drury Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978), 432 pp.; Leonardo Boll, Jesus Christ Liberator (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978). 7 cf. Richard A. Blake, S.J., "'As the Father Has Sent Me'," America, Aug 25, 1979, pp. 66-69 and William J. Byron, S J, "Privatization--A Contemporary Challenge to lgnatian Spirituality," Chicago Studies, vol. 14, No. 3, Fall, 1975, pp. 241-251. Currents in Spirituality: The Past Decade / 20:3 8. Role of Women in the World and the Church. Another major concern in spirituality today is the role of woman. The issue, understandably en6ugh, is often so fraught with crusading passion and angry feelings that, as male and therefore one who surely does not feel enough the seriousness of the issue, one almost fears to say anything at all. Against a backdrop of past and present prejudice, the lea'dership role of woman in the Church slowly increases. But there is a long way to go. Attitude, rather more than qanguage, seems nearer the heart of the matter--and yet linguistic care both expresses and shapes our attitude. And the attitude of many leaders and other people in the Church must profoundly change before women will exercise a suitably influential role and make their unique contribu-tion (something any exaggei'ated uniformity and equality, of course, will not allow). In general, there seem to be three stages to this concern. First is an awareness of the fact injustice, however it is explained. This is often followed by a period of intense reaction, which is quite understandable; whether ap-parently exaggerated or not. Finally, a stage of peaceful service in the Church is often reached, as one doeg what is possible to correct the injustice. It is a process similar to Kubler-Ross's stages8 arid has been gone through by others when facing the deadly situation of unjust discrimination.~ Women's ordination to the priesthood is, of course, still debated. For many, however, it does not seem to be the heart of the issue at the present time. Much will continue to be accomplished without changing the present policy on women's ordination to the ministerial priesth6od. This does not deny-that there are painful situations, which can be paschally productive for all, in which women actually minister a "sacramentally" salvific experience without the acknowledged ministerial priestly capacity to formally celebrate the experience in the Church. A good example of this is the woman director of a retreat who cannot administer the sacrament of reconciliation after sharing a retreatant's graced experience of God's forgiveness. Many would feel--and many would not m that this is still an open question, about which the Church seems not to have enough light in the Spirit to know whether a change is called for or not. In the meantime, we all need to grow in a sensitivity to correct past in-jostice in our own relationships, to beg for light in the Spirit regarding what is the right growth in this issue for the future, and to pray for the humility and the urgent patience of Jesus in his passion to live and serve generously in the present situation. 9. Spirituafity and Psychology. Because spitituality involve~ the total human person in relationship to ~ Elisabeth K~Jbler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 260 pp. 904 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980 / 2 God's saving love, it can be related to every area of human behavior. It is I~ especially appropriate and valuable to relate spirituality to psychology, and, over the past decade or more, interest in this relationship has 'increased enor-mously. As an overly rationalistic view of spirituality subsides, we investigate much more the role of the non-rational dimensions of our person in spiritual growth. Spirituality can be naive, and destructive too, when it flies in the face of healthy psycholggy. But spirituality loses its salvific power for the human person, and becomes even demonic, when it capitulates completely to psychology. A delicate balance is called for in this relationship--something not easily arrived at, or easily preserved. In turning to s'ome specific aspects of this general issue, it is obvious that much greater~ stress is now being placed on communicationskills, on affectivi-ty, on the role of the body, and on consciousness-altering techniques--all of which can enrich our prayer and further sensitize us to the many ways God's word an~d love come to us. The practice of spiritual direction often legitimb.tely ,~. overlaps with a type of psychological counseling. But the ultimate aim of ~ facili

Issue 35.4 of the Review for Religious, 1976. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS IS edtted by faculty members of St Louis University, the edttorlal offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building, 539 North Grand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copyright © 1976 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $7.00 a year; $13.00 for two years; other countries, $8.00 a year, $1.5.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Book Editor Assistant Editor July 1976 Volume 35 Number 4 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of .address should be sent to REvx~w FOR RELmiOVS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to REviEw vOa RELmIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gailen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; .Phil'adelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. "Jesuits Today" Horacio de la Costa, S.J. Father de la Costa wrote the March contribution to'our series on the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, "A More Authentic Poverty." He resides at Xavier House; P. O. Box 2722; Manila 2801; Phil!ppines. ' Just. before it adjourned, the 32nd General ~Congregation of the Society o[ Jesus arrived at a clear and distinct,idea of why it had met. This realiza-tion is expressed.in its In~troductory Dec.rce,~ which, being introductory, ~was of course taken up last. The decree makes several points. First, that the congregation immedi-ately, preceding, the 31st, sought toadapt Jesuit life to the directives of the Second Vatican Council. Second, that it did so in documents which '~ccuraiely and faithfully.~ express the genuine spirit and tradition of the Society." Third, that during the decade that followed, "significant" success attended the effort to reduce these documents to practice. Fourth, that that success Was circumscribed by "two exaggerations, each tending in an op-posite direction," the one a resistance, to renewal as being "somehow a de-parture from the genuine Ignatian spirit," ~the other an adaptation of Jesuits and their work to the needs of the world w.hich is excessix, e,,,and in fact "runs counter tom the .Gospel message." Fifth, that these conflicting tend-encie~ not only "threatened unity within the Society," but gave "cause for concern" both to the superior general of. the order and to the Pope. And hence, sixth, that the aim of the 32nd General Congregation was, by recog-nizing and removing these exaggerations, to achieve "a balanced renewal of 0religious life and a discerning re-dedication to apostolic service." A~ congregation delegate put it more imaginatively by saying that the 31st General Congregation had launched a satellite, to which the 32nd then 481 4a2 / Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/4 proceeded to transmit certain course corrections, its intention being not to modify, much less to reverse its trajectory, but rather to focus it more ac-curately on its moving target. And that, while engaged in this exercise, the said congregation received a fairly strong input from the Vatican com-puters. The focus which the congregation decided to give the 'Society today centers on the concept of mission. More than ever before, mission--the act or state of being sent--must be a key element of the Jesuit's self-iden-tity. "A Jesuit . . . is essentially a man on a mission: a mission which he receives immediately from the Holy Father and from his own religious su-periors, but ultimately from Christ himself, the one sent by the Father. It is by being sent that the Jesuit becomes a companion ot~ Jesus.''1 Well, then, what is the mission on which Jesuits are being sent today? Considering only the multiplicity of works in which Jesuits are actually en-gaged, and leaving aside the multiplicity of works in which they think they should be engaged, it covers a very wide range indeed. But are these works merely a miscellany chosen at .random, a collection without internal co-hesion? Or is there some unifying, some integrating factor-pulling them together in a convergent thrust? The congregation decided that if there isn't there should be, and that it should be the service of faith and the pro-motion of justice considered as complementary facets of an undivided whole. "The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.'''~ This is the "basic choice," the "priority of priorities" for the Society at which the congregation arrived. How did it arrive at it? It may be well to consider this briefly, to consider not only the product, but the process by which it was produced. The product is this handful of documents which .~esuits are supposed to translate from words to action; to bring to iife in their lives. Well and good. The trouble is that they are texts, and legisla-tive texts at that. Paragraphs On parade, marching down page after page in neatly numbered companies, footnotes following after like a baggage train; all spick-and-span, i's dotted and t's crossed, treadling the measured tread of ecclesiastical Latin. Parade-ground texts, remot~ely reminding us of a battle, butobearing only a faint resemblance to a battlefield. ~ How can we make these texts come alive? Would it help to have re-course to one of Saint Ignatius' little devices for making things come alive? "First prelude, the history of what I am about to contemplate. Second pre-lude, a composition of place. Here it will be to see with the eyes of the imagination . '"~ Very well; and what will it be here? Perhaps, to try to see these texts as people; the people who produced them; the congregati 1GC 32, "Jesuits .Today," n. 14. :GC 32, "Our Mission Today," n. 2. 3Spi~ritual Exercises, n. 102. "Jesuits Today" / 4113 whom the Society sent to Rome to discern what its response should be to the call of Christ. See them there in that hall on Holy Spirit Street--Borgo Santo Spirito --men from widely different national, cultural, occupational, experiential backgrounds, who, in trying to fulfill their brothers' commission, strove strenuously not only with each other but with themselves, and in the pro-cess got confused, enlightened, dismayed,_ heartened, disheartened; lost courage and regained it; got bored, doodled, dreamed of home; went to the Gesfi to celebrate the Eucharist; got an insight; tried it out on a couple of companions over a plate of pasta and a flagon of Frascati; and finally ar-rived at the consensus congealed in these texts. We must not, then, be deceived by the asceptic neatness of these docu-ments. They are the fai'r cop, y of whai:at first looked like an illegible scrawl, but; in the end,. surprisingly, made sense. If God writes straight with crooked lines, then the g.roping and searching, the backing and filling, the findin.g and losing, the consolations and desolations which filled the house on Holy Spirit Stri~et with tongues of fire disguised as will-o'-the-wisps were the crooked lines with which God wrote straight for Jesuits; and it may help to see how straight God has written if we have some idea of how crooked were the lines. I am not, of course, suggesting that the congregati thought crooked. QO the contrary; the~y were straight-thinking, straight-shooting men. The trouble was that the targets they were shooting at seemed to weave wantonly from side to side, and sometimes to disappear altogether. I think most of them will agree that there was hardly a moment during the congregation when they were not in one way or another confused: confused by the ap-palling diversity of the Society's apostolic initiatives and commitments; con-fused by the added complication that Jesuits are inserted {hus variously in a world iri process of rapid change; confused by tensions old and new, in the Society and outside it, between generations, between the backward-looking and the forward-looking, between innovation and tradition, be-tween development and liberation, between ideology and praxis, between capita!ism and socialism, between the two sides of the Iron Curtain, between East and West. A confusion so great that if a consensus emerged--as it did --it is more than likely that that straight line was drawn not by the hand of man.but by the finger of God. The consensus is what is embodied in our text~; and what I am really trying t'o say, I suppose, is that to appreciate the consensus it is necessary to have some idea of the confusion that preceded it. The Introductory Decree speaks of "two exaggerations, each tending in an opposite direction," which "have threatened the unity of the Society.''~ 4n. 4. 41~4 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 One cannot say that the exaggerations themselve~ ~vere present at the con-gregation., but one might suggest that the tendencies they exaggerat~ were. The congregation seems to have brought into confrontation two radically different ways of thinking about the Society ~nd its mission, so different as to seem irreconcilable. One approach was conservative, traditional, back-ward- looking; the other was radical, inno.vati~;e, forward-looking. In Commission I on the Norms of the ApoStolate, Commission II on the Missiofi of the Society, and Commission IV on the Promotion of Jus-tice, what the "radicals" seemed to be saying was this: "Let's start from the facts'. Let's" look at what has to be done in th~ world and let's do that. What kind of work? Never mind what kind o,f work, as long as it works! We must do only 'Jesuit' works? There are no 'Jesuit' works! What does Pedro Arrup~e say? 'Jesuit identity ~s to have no identity!' " To which the "conservatives" seemed to r~eply: "Now, wait. You can't possibly mean that. ~'ou can't possibly mean that there is no specifically Jesuit apostolate. There must be something 'Jesuit' a Jesuit is supposed to do. Start with the facts? What facts? Real facts, or what are alleged to be facts by those who have already de,ideal ffhat they want to do? Let's not start with such facts. Let's start with something more certain and secure: the Formula of the Institute, the Constitutions, the Spiritual Exercises, the directives of Paul VI. Let's reflect on what the~, say we should be doing, and let's do that. There are others in the Church ahd in the world ~;~o c/an do the rest, and do it better. What does John Janssens say? 'We can-not be Divine Providence.' " Two approaches to the apostolate. Two "niind-sets," each convinc6d that"it was i'ight and the other wrong. And so there was debate. No need to pl~y down the fact that there was debate: a cl~ish of argument' on a corn= mon ground of discourse. It will not do to give ttiis congregation the image of a group of gi-6wn men politely bowing to each other and saying, "Ah, so? That is what you think? How nice! Thank y.ou very much!" And each or~e going off, as the poet says, "eonvinced against~ his will, but of the same opinion still." A "confrontation, then, conducted for the. most. part with sweet reason-ableness, but not without sound and fury. Such at least was the impression given by couriers to the staff officers of the Deputatio ad Secernenda Pos-tulata (the commission to validate initiatives taken by Jesuits, individually or corporately, for consideration of the co.ngi'egation), standing on.their rise o~ ground ab.o~ve the smoke of battle: Committee Room P, fourth floor. But when the smoke of battle cleared, and the field glasses went up to sur-vey the sh~m. bles, it became visible even to the naked eye that,what began a's a confrontati6n had turned out to be a convergence. What happened? Some would say that debate had given way to discern-ment, It may well be. 1 do not know enough about discernment to be cer-tain. My personal observation is that as the~congregation progressed people "Jesuits Today" / 485 were listening more to each other, and were more inclined to question not only those from whom they differed, but themselves. Thus: We must promote justice. That is the conclusion imposed by the facts. Yes; but what is justice? What do I really mean by it? Or rather, what does the Gospel say it is? , Or again: The. Formula of the Institute says that we are a society founded for the .defense and propagation of the faith, Yes; but how do you defend and propagate the faith? By word alone? Also by wit'ness? What kind of witness? What kind of witness in a divided' world? And further: Jesuits in the developed world must be chiefly concerned with secularism, with the~ marginalization of Christianity in societies an-ciently Christian. Jesuits in the underdev.eloped world, on the other hand, must be chiefly concerned with underdevelopment, with' the marginalization of the powerless in unjust societies. Certainly; but are these two phenomena completely distinct? Or are they somehow related? How related? And finally: Take a look at the Constitutions, Part VII, where Saint Ignatius lays down his norms for the selection of ministries: the more uni-versal good, the more lasting good;,.help to those most in need of help, works that have a "multiplier" effect, spiritual works by preference, but corporal works if more urgent. Apply these norms to our moment of his-tory, and what do you corne up with? ~ . It was by some such process of shared reflection that the two mind-sets we have described discovered, initially to their discomfiture, increas~ ingle, to their delight, that they were saying the same thing. More precisely, that they were in the same boat; rowing, ,bailing, or busily polishing brass, but in the same boat, with Diakonia Fidei (Service of Faith) stenciled on the port side and' Promotio lustitiae on the starboard side. ,A pretty rocky boat, to be' sure; not quite,rigged and already slightly battered; with cracks to be sealed, sails to be set, a course to be charted; but one boat, not two planks from a shipwreck. And not completely at .sea, either; for we now have, by this callida.iunctura of faith and justice, a focus to our apostolate, a destination for our mission. The convergence can be more clearly seen by juxtaposing nn. 4 and 10 of the document "Jesuits Today" and nn. 2 and 3 of the document "Our Mission Today." We arrive at this basic choice' from several different points of departure. The postulata received from the provinces, the panorama of the state of the Society presented at the congregation, and the suggestions given us .by the PoPe, ~all direct our .attention to the vast expanse, and circuit of this globe and the great multitude and diversity of peoples therein . We are con-firmed in this basic choice by being led to it from another point of departure, namely; the original inspiration of the Society as set ~forth in the Formula of the Institute hnd the Constitutions . 486 / Review]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith~ of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement . In one form or another, this has always been the mission of the Society; but it gains new meaning and urgency in the light of the needs and aspirations of the men of our time, and it is in that light that we embrace it anew. Put that way, it sounds pretty obvious. The point, however, is that when the congregation began it was by no means obvious; that it became obvious by a convergence of two different approaches in a process of interaction; and that this convergence was, for many in the congregation, a discovery. Closely allied to the problem of what Jesuits do is the problem of what Jesuits are. There was a far greater number of postulata from the provinces concerning the first problem than concerning the second. However, there were enough for the Deputatio ad Secernenda Postulata to decide to form an Intercommission on Jesuit Identity. Why an "intercommission"? For two reasons, First, because its members were recruited from the regular commissions which had already been formed. Second, because the Deputatio's instructions were that this group should be a link between the other commissions; or rather, a listening post, lis-tening in on all of them to pick up and put together what they were saying that could have a bearing on Jesuit identity. But why did the question of identity come up at all? What gave rise to the postulata on the subject? One reason might have been the feeling that many of those who leave the Society do so because they no longer have, perhaps never had, a clear idea of what it is to be a Jesuit, or why they should be Jesuits rather than something else. Or else, the concern that we are engaging in all sorts of development work, justice promotion, political action, and other efforts to build up a more human world, but doing so according to the norms, ideals, and procedures of secular agencies or move-ments engaged in the same enterprise; in effect, that we are identifying our-selves with them instead of making the' original, the unique contribution we are called upon to make as an apostolic, religious, sacerdotal body. Which, incidentally, is what the.more reflective among the secular humanists them-selves expect us to make. They don't expect us to do0what they are already doing: They expect us to do "our thing." But what is "our thing"? We do not seem to be quite clear on that. This intercommission, then, was told to do something about the problem, but it was also very distinctly told that it was not to make up "Jesuit iden-tity" oui of its own head. It was by all means to avoid being creative. Its job was simply to find out what the congregation itself was saying about Jesuit identity, explicitly or imlSlicitly, in the course of its deliberations on mission, formation, poverty, government, community lift; and if it succeeded in drafting a statement on the subject, to sub/nit the draft to the congrega-tion for approv~il. The result is the document entitled "Jesuits Today." An earlier title, "Jesuit Identity," was rejected by the congregation, and "Jesuits Today" / 4117 rightly so. This document is in no sense a formal definition of the Society or of the Jesuit. It is simply a descriptive summary of some of the attributes that may serve to identify Jesuits both to themselves and to others. Even as a description it is certainly not definitive, for Jesuit identity, like that of any other personality, is, first of all, elusive; it cannot be pinned down or exhaustively catalogued in any statement. And it is elusive chiefly because it is in [ieri, in process of becoming: the identity of a living and growing thing which keeps changing while remaining itself. Some future congrega-tion will doubtless find it necessary to draw up another statement of Jesuit identity. That is why it was finally decided to call this document simply "Jesuits Today." As the effort at self-understanding of persons who do not take them-selves too seriously, it was given, inevitably, other, less formal titles. "Cari-dent: the toothpaste with Formula 32, a special blend of charism and iden-tity, guaranteed to enhance that dazzling, distinctive Jesuit smile." "ldenti-kit." the police portrait of the mystery man going around holding up people and asking them, 'Who am I?' " But "identikit" is not just a gibe. It contains a thought of Father Arrupe's which he expressed to the Intercommission on Identity~ I hope I may be forgiven for paraphrasing it here. A photograph of Jesuit identity is not possible, only an approximate likeness, as in an identikit. Why? Interiorly, spiritually, we do have an iden-tity:, the Ignatian spirit, insofar as we live it. But exteriorly, apostolically, what is Jesuit identity? It is to have no identity. We have no specifically Jesuit ministries, as other religious institutes might have: not education, not social action, not parishes, not this or that form of action or contemplation, 'but only what here and now God wants done. The document begins with the first and most obvious clue to a Jesuit's identity: his name: Jesuitbsomeone who pertains to, who belongs to, Jesus. Everyone knows how tenaciously Saint Ignatius clung to that name. Nothing could induce him to change it, This complete certitude that he and his company are something that belong to Jesus seems to be based on the spiritual experience Ignatius had at La Storta, a.wayside chapel just outside Rome. He was making his way to Rome from the north on foot, and all the way he was praying to Our Lady that he might be "placed with the Son." Arrived at La Storta, he had this vision, or enlightenment, or insight, in which the Eternal Father asks Jesus carrying his cross to take this pil-grim into his company. And Jesus accepts him. It is interesting that in all this the Lord is not called Christ but Jesus. Jesus, his personal name. Which suggests that for Ignatius being "placed with the Son" meant entering into a personal relationship with him, a rela-tionship of personal love. This is confirmed by the fact that when his com-panions asked him what our Lord's words to him ("I shall be propitious to you at Rome") meant, Ignatius replied with great joy, "I don't know. Maybe it means we shall b~ crucified with him in Rome!" A love relation- 488 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 ship, then, not just between servant and master, not just between soldier and cat~tain, but between sinner and Savior. This brings us to what the document sees as another clue to Jesuit iden-tity. The Jesuit is a man who has come to a vivid realization not only of his sinful acts but of his isinfulness; and with equal vividness has come to realize that his conversion, his turning back to God, began not with him but with Jesus: the saving love of Jesus reaching out to him, in his sinful-ness. "You did not choose me; no, I chose ~,ou.'''~ If, then, the Jesuit is' one who, following Ignatius, asks to be placed with Jesus, it is because he is responding to love: the love of Jesus which, beyond,all expectation, antici-pates and seeks his love. His response is that of the converted sinner. These are the two related thoughts with which the document begins: "What is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus.''G There was some objection at the congregation~'to beginning the docu-ment with" this confession of sinfulness, this "beating, of breasts." It was thought to be overacting~ or over-reacting to the alleged Jesuit.propensity to arrogant ~triumphalism. Does this show.of humility really counteract that impression--if, indeed, it is the impression Jesuits give? Is it not, in fact, a kind of triumphalism in reverse? Why not simply ~and immediately focus on the central element of Jesuit. identity, that of being socius lesu: the com-panion of Jesus, the man who has answered the call of the Eternal King? Perhaps. But the point is that that is not how~Ignatius began. And that is not how the Spiritual Exercises begin. Ignatius the Jesuit begins with what James Brodrick calls the "pilgrim years," when this wandering penitent signed his letters "Ignacio pecador": Ignatius, sinner. And the Exercises begin not with 'the Meditation on the Kingdom but with the First Week: with the effort to realize thfit the love of Jesus has reached out to me in my sinfulness. They begin, in fact, even before that. They .begin with the First Principle and Foundation: with the love of Jesus reaching out to me in my nothingness; by the act of creation choosing me out of nothing. That in the. mind of Ignatius it is-Jesus who does this, is suggested by the fact that both in the Exercises and the Con-stitutions there is constant attribution to the Second Person incarnate not only the title of Savior but of tfiat of Creator. The next few paragraphs of the document: bring out what seems to be another essential i~ngredient of Jesuit identity. It is outward-looking more than it is inward-looking. After his conversion, the Jesuit fixes his gaze not so much on what goes on in tlie soul within him ~at on what goes on in the world around him. We are all familiar with the popular (and, one hopes, .~Jn 15.16. G"Jesuits Today," n. Ol. 7nh. 4-9. "Jesuits Today" / 4119 distorted) image of the Jesuit as a worldling, inclined to involve himself in mundane affairs which are none of his business; conducting himself in a manner far removed from the popular (and equally distorted) image of the "man of the cloth" as so completely wrapped up in, things divine that he cannot even change a blown fuse when the lights go out. Well; let's face it. There is an element of truth in this. We will find it in the initial response of the converted sinner as expressed in the key colloquy of the First Week of' the Exercises: "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ?. What must I do for Christ?" What to do. What, and where, is the action. This is not the initial response of other types or schools of spirituality. By way of contrast, we might paraphrase a passage from the Chinese phi: losopher Mencius, of which', surely, there are echoes in the Western world: Yoti wish to find God? God is in the heavens, .the infinite heavens. But the infinite heavens are reflected in a small pool deep.in a,well-~-the well of your soul. Plunge, then, into your soul, and there find God. But that is not what the Jesuit does.~ What the Jesuit does.is go into the Second Week of the.Exercises. There he hears Christ calling for-com-panions to go with him to conquer the~world,s There ~he looks up to God in his .Trinity of persons and finds their gaze also, fixed on the world, whose salvation they are d~ciding to accomplish? There,.he, sees Christ choosing mento send into the world to proclaim his sacred tehching,to persons ot~ every class and calling.~° From which it appears that the Jesuit instinct (or charism) is not to withdraw from the world to be~alone with God, but rather to turn to the world and ask himself, "Wh~t~ can Io do for God. in this world in whose midst I am, and to which I am sent?" This would seem to be the force of Saint Ignatius; assertion that the grace,by which the Jesuit is driven to serve men is identical with the grace by which he achieves his pe~:sonal salvation.1~ Or, as our document puts,it: "The grace of Christ that enables ~nd impels us to seeko'the salvation~and perfection.of souls' or what might be called in contemporary terms the integral liberation of man, leading to participation in the life, of God himself is the same grace by which we are enabled and impelled to seek 'our own salvation and perfection.' ,,1~ It was suggested earlier that "Jesu.its Today." is an "echo" document, echoing in the key of identity what the other documents of the congregation say about mission, compa~nionsh]p, freedoha, dis~ernment,~ and love. The emphasis ,on mission: that the Jesuit is essentially a man who is sent by Christ through the mediation ot~ those who hold Christ's authority, is clearly an echo of the document "Our Mission Today." 8Spir. Ex., n. 95. .~lbid., nn. 106-107. aOlbid., n. 145. a~General Examen, n. 3. ~-~"Jesuits Today," n. 1~1. 490 / Review for Religious, °l~'olume 35, 1976/4 The emphasis on companionship: that the Jesuit is essentially a com-panion, a companion of Christ first, but in Christ also of those whom he has called to the same companionship, is similarly an echo of the document on "Union of Minds and Hearts." The emphasis on freedom: that the Jesuit is essentially a man who is free, or rather, a man who has been set free, and this, paradoxically, by the vows that bind him, is an echo, at least in part, of the document on Poverty. The attitude towards the vows here brought out as characteristi-cally Jesuit is that they are not meant to enclose a man, to protect him from the world, to pluck him from the madding crowd and wall him up in some pleasance of peaceful contemplation--in the matchless phrase of Fray Luis de Le6n~ ~'la escondida senda por donde han ido/los pocos sabios que en el ~mundo hart sido"---but to detach him; to hack away from him all en-cumbering armor, and thus to free him from the constraints that may hold him back from any service in the world that Christ working in the world may require of him. The emphasis on discernment: that obedience for the Jesuit not only permits but demands discretion, is an echo, again, ,both of "Our Mission Today" and "Union of Minds and Hearts." It recalls Ignacio Iparraguirre's dictum that the Constitutions are not so much law-book as guide-book, and Pedro Arrupe's oft-repeated saying that being told what to do does not exempt us from the necessity of discerning how to do. In thi~ connection, it is surely significant that the command "to water a dry stick, or "to bring a lioness unto him (the superior)" of the Ignatius/Polanco Letter on Obedi-ence does not include detailed instructions on where to get the water or how to persuade the lioness. And, finally, the emphasis on love: that the Jesuit is essentially a man moved by a personal love for the personal Christ, is an echo not of any particular document but of what might be called the La Storta insight, which seems to have been recaptured, to a greater or less degree, by so many of the delegates to this congregation. As Father General Arrupe, bouncing up the back stairs of the house on Holy Spirit Street after breakfast one morning, put it to one of them, sleepily drifting down: "We proclaim the Gospel in poverty and humility-- fine. But perhaps to add: in love. There is much concern today about loving the Mystical Christ, seeing and serving him in our fellow men, espe-cially the poor; and that is good. But if we do this, is it not because we love Christ in himself, in his Person? Is it not because each of us, pilgrims with Ignatius, prays to the Father 'ponerme con el Hijo' (place me with the Son)?" Which obiter dictumomay serve to explain why our document says: "In love: a personal love for Jesus, whom we seek to know with an ever more inward knowledge that we may the better love and follow him; Jesus, whom "Jesuits Today" / 491 we seek, as Saint Ignatius Sought, to experience; Jesus, Son ot~ God, sent to serve, sent to set free, put to death, and risen from the dead.''~3 There is a lack of definition in what the document says about the So-ciety as a priestly body.TM It strongly asserts the elements which make up this attribute: that the core, as it were, of our membership is a group of brdained priests; that the vocation .to the Society is one; that it is the whole body of the Society that is priestly; and, consequently, that all its members share in that priestly attribute, even those who are not ordained ministers" of the Gospel. But as to the precise nature of that participation the document says nothing. This reflects pretty much the state of the question as the con-gregation left it. The general sentiment was that further theological reflec-tion was needed to say anything more on the subject, and it was hoped that this reflection would form a vital part of our ongoing renewal of spirit. If we now take a look at the document as a whole, we will notice that it has a certain quality of movement: this movement being, basically, that of the Spiritual Exercises. In other words, Jesuit identity is conceived not as state but as process. Companionship with Jesus begins with conversion: the realization that having been called to life by God Creator, then estranged from him by sin, I have been recalled to life by God Redeemer. This realization draws me to stand before (~hrist crucified and make my first oblation: What will I do for Christ? The First Week. Hard upon this conversion comes the call of Christ the King: "I want you to b~come my companion, and the companion of these Others whom I have also called." To do what, Lord? "To be sent, as I was sent. Into the world; not away from it. This world, your world; in all its diversity, agony, tragedy, hope: Sent to share with people the saving faith I have shared with you, and in my justice to reconcile men to God and men with each other." My response to which is my second oblation, the~Kingdom obla-tion: to bring Christ to men not by the witness of word alone but by the witness of life: in poverty, humility, and love. The Second Week. What is 'the range of this oblation? It involves all that the apostolate involves--for Jesus as well as those Who have asked to be'placed with him. Some' experience of success, certainly, and an abiding serenity; but also frustration, b~trayal, defeat, nakedness to p~in. An oblation to failure. An oblation t6 the CrosS. The Third Week. But out of the depths of failure, joy. The joy of total and mutual self-giving: Jesus to me, myself to Jesus. Day by day joyfully going to ttie work site with God the Workingman--habet se ad modum laborantis to build a world at once more human and more divine. My third oblation. Take and receive. 131bid., n. 27. 14Cf. ibid., nn. 21-22. The Freedom and Detachment of Submission Sister Mary Catherine Barron, C.S.J. Sister Mary Catherine last published in our pages in the March, 1976 isstie of Review for Religious. She resides at 808 Cypres.s St.; Rome, NY 13440. ' In his Asian-Journal, under a November 19 entry, Thomas Merton speaks of three doors which he posits as desirable for the eschatological pilgrim to enter: "the door of emptiness, the door without sign, the door without wish."' And in an earlier work of his, C~ontemplation in d Worl~l~of Action, Merton tells of the internal spiritual liberation which such surrender of self brings: ". a kind of permanent vacation in the original sense of 'emptying.' ''~ Perhaps it would be fitting for each of us in our individual lives to pon-der the possibility of taking a "vacation" through these three rather unin-viting doors. ~ Father JohnoQ. Haughey, S.J., in his most recent.book Should Anyone Say Forever? recounts a pos~sible interpretation of the statement of Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14 where he tells his disciples to "enter by the narrow gate" since this alone "leads to life." Father Haughey says: "The narrow gate Jesus was alluding to probably refers to the gate in Jerusalem which could only ~accommodate people unaccompanied by their possessions and camels and donkeys.''3 If we are to become such a people "v~cationing" through 1Thomas Merton. "The Himalayas/November 1-25." The Asian Journal ot Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions Paperback, 1973), p. 154. '-'Thomas Merton, "Problems and Prospects," Contemplation in a World o] A'ction (New York: Image Books, 1973), p. 36. aJohn C. Haughey, S.J., "The Underpinnings," Should Anyone Say Forever? (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975), p. 21. ,~ 492 The Freedom and Detachment o[ Submission / 493 ngaargreo-w-t ghaetne si ta nsed. te_~rr.ar.inss"p athreant tw doe omrsu, sutn benecguinm tbheere jdo ubyrn eexyc ewssit the mtwpoor raal tbhaegr- im-portant spiritual qu~ilities: freedom and detachment. And since Jesus never exhorted his foil6wers to any endeavor that he himself would not surpas, singly complete, qt would be well to follow in. his footsteps on the roadway to and through t_,hese beckoning (but sometimes, frightening) entrance-ways to the Kingdom. " The Free Christ '-Jesus was' a free man, able ~o commit himself to a way of life which in-evitably and irrev6.cab.!y would end in ignominious agony. Because he wa's free,,,he was also. supremely detached froin the picayune compromises Of life by which we' s6 ~asi!y bind ourselves to ~he transient. Categorically'~l~eaking, it seems that Jesus was free enough to:°sub-ject himself to 6th~rS (in his case, always his inferiors); subject himself to the law (re, ligi~'s and civil); subjeCt~ himself to the Transcendent (his Faiher). And ~e.c.a.u.s.e he was' unafraid of that type of subjection which we, in ~so utterly a human stance, avoid, C'firist becomes the detach.ed and liber-ated man, par ~exi~ellenc¢--i.nfi.nitely able to detach and .liberate us for him-self. Submission to Others ~,, In all. of hi,s relationships with others . (his creatures).,~ Jesus is able to submit{ His first profound submissibh in the womb of Mary initiates the patter.n of "nm:row gate" and "doors ,w, ithout signs" that he follows through-out 'his. life. Frbm the early Temple .expe.rience: "And he then~.went down with them . .;.'~and lived under their au, thority" (Mary and,. Joseph.), to Ca~a: "They have no wine" (whe~ he lberforms his first miracle through the intercession Of his mother), thro~ugh .his public, life: "Lord, that I may see~gain" (miracle after miracle upon request), to Calvary:" . ~h et y¯, . ,~,.led him awfiy to crucify, him,'! Jesus fi~lfills~ th6 will of others. Had he .done so out b.f mere fiuman weakness, or .the inability to assert himself and dominate, or through the petty hop~ of gaining prestige and popularity, wealth and'status, his final submission atGolgotha would be but the ~pathetic end,to an :already. doomed demi,gOd. But Jesus submits freely--in total self, surrender--comPletely in control o~ his own life and that of his corn temporaries. Knowingly, willingly, in complete gix;enness, he yields to others. Why? Why such a profound stooping into emptiness, into human obliterr ation, into the undesired door of death to self? "I have come that they may have life and have. it to the full,"-.J'~.sus answers (Jn 10:10). The words are haunting because they imply that fullness of life commensurately grows as we become more liberated and detached for others. If this is the pat-tern for Christ, can it be any,different for his followers? ~ 494 / Review [or Religioux, ~'olume 35, 1976/4 Submission to the Law Jesus also demonstrates throughout his earthly, existence that interior freedom enables one to become so detached from self that adherence to imposed human statutes becomes possible. He is born according to the law of the Scriptures, in fulfillment of the prophetic words and visions trumpeted through the ages of Salvation His-. tory, in complete accordance with all the signs and symbols which mani-fest his coming. And he dies in the same manner, as derided and rejected as Isaiah had seen that he would be, "lifted up" as he himself proclaimed, under Jewish rejection and Roman assent. And situated between those two n~atural, human laws of birth and death remain the countless daily submis-sions to civil and religious law which Christ fully and freely accepts. He announces in the Temple that "this day the Scriptures are fulfilled in your midst" (and in his person) while at the same time having scrupu-lously adhered to the proscribed religious rites. In response to the legalistic baiting by which the Pharisees hop,e to entrap him: "Master, is it permissi-ble for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (Lk 20:22) Jesus judiciously replies: "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; to God the things that are God's," thus delineating the parameters of civil and religious obedience. Ironically, it is his fulfillment of religious law (the feast of the Passover) which brings him to Jerusalem--to Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate who sen-tence him to death. In the presence of these designated earthly authorities, Jesus, detached, submissive, and free, recalls the only reason for anyone's submission to human law: "You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above" (Jn 19:11). Knowing this and authorizing it, Christ, freely gives himself over to these misguided, conniving, fearful, self-centered representatives of the Law, who wash their hands of him and conclude that "it is better for one man to die than that the whole nation perish" (Jn ~11:50). Again we are tempted to ask the question "why"--why this submission to human laws and human beings by one who is their Source and Origin? Perhaps the better question would be "how"? How do we become liberated and detached enough to do the same? Submission to the, Transcendent Once again Jesus provides us with the answer: "The world must be brought to know that I love the Father and that I am"doing exactly what the Father told me" (Jn 14:31). In other words, he tells us that we will only be able to submit ourselves to temporal rules and temporal persons if we have first submitted to the Eternal Rule and the Eternal Person: "Love the Lord, your God with your whole heart and soul and mind" (Lk 10:27). Christ did; Totally, constantly, unswervingly, he submitted to his Father: "I come not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me" (Jn 5:30). And it is this~awareness of the Father's will and the Father's The Fr'eedom and Detachment of Submission / 495 love that is the motivating force of all of Christ's other submissions: "No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son who is nearest to the Father's heart, who has made him known" (Jn 1:18). Christ makes the Father known through his execution of the Father's will In the name of his Father, he cleanses the Tempir, restoring it as a place of worship, proclaiming it his Father's hous~e, and thus establishing, in one dramatic act, the power of his filial submission. In all his conversations with men, Christ consciously mentions the Father. To Nicodemus, he confides the reason that he has been commis-sioned by his Father: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life" (Jn 3: 17). To the Samaritan woman, he outlines the "kind of wor-. shipper the Father wants" (Jn 4:23). To the Jews, he openly acknowledges his dependence on the Father: "The Son can do nothing by himself; he can 0nly do what he sees the Father.doing" (Jn 5:19). And when his disciples ask him to "show us how to pray," .Christ refers them to the Father. Even when he teaches, Christ does so in the name of the Father. And the only authority he possesses for his teaching derives from his submis-sion to the Father: "The works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father hasjsent me" (Jn 5:36); His final great submission to the Father coincides with Christ's final great submission to religious and civil law as dispensed through the hands of his human subjects. In perfect freedom, detachment, and submission, Christ foretells and then completes his passion and death. When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself: what the Father has taught me is what I preach; He who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him (Jn 8:28-29). Having uttered these profrundly simple words, Jesus stoops through the "narrow gate" of death, passes through the ."door of emptiness, the dorr without a sign, the door without desire"--the Cross. The Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, And as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again; and this is the command I have been given by my Father (Jn 10:17-18). What liberation and detachment infuse these submissive words! 496 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 The Paradox Merton would be among the first to assent to the paradox inherent in freedom, detachment, and liberation. He states: "Obedience [submission] is, paradoxically, the one guarantee of . . . charismatic, inner liberty" ~Contemplation, p. 34). And Christ himself was the first to demonstrate the paradoxical dimension inherent in following him: "Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone ~vho hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" i, Jn 12:25). The choice~is ours to mal~e. Haughey cogently reminds us that b~, our choices we are irrevocably defined (Should Anyone ¯ . . , p. 32). And Christ urgently.prods us to make his own irrevocable ~hoice. ours, when he claims:~ Eternal life is this; to know you, " the only true God ~" ~'~ ~ and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn 17:4). In such knowledge, indeed, resides the foUndatiori arid reward for all the liberation, detachment~ and Submissidn of thepi!grim heart. ~ t'The three doors (they are one door) . .' Christ said: '!~am the door. I am the op~er~ing, the. '.shewing,' the revelation'" (Asian-Journal, pp. 154- 155). "Come follow m6"--through the "narrow gate~" through the "'un-marked, undesired doors;" into thd liberation and detachment of submis-sion- the Chri~tic "vacation" of love. The ,,'Active-Contemplative" Problem in Religious Life David M. Knight Father Knight is a member of the House o! the Lord community which staffs a "house of prayer" established in Memphis under the jurisdiction of Bishop Dozier. His present work is mostly in the. area of priests' retreats and team approaches to parish missions. He has published" before in 6ur page~, his latest title concerning religious government and obe~lience (July, i97]). His address: Nazarettl 'House of the Lord; 1306 Dellwood Ave.; Memphis, TN 38127. Can we still use the terminolbgy: "active-cQntemplative-mixed" to char-acterize religious life today? Aiad if we do use these tdims, ar, e we really using them in the way St. Thomas understood them--a way that carries oo the aut.horit3~ of his own tSrestige? Father Ladislas Orsy, S.J., suggests:that we abandon this terminology with its threefold division 9f religious life:" The arguments against the division are manifold. First,, all religious institutes are called to .be con~templative. Then, there cannot be true apostolic action in the ,full sense without its being rooted in the inspiration and strength of the Spirit which is contemplation." Finoally, tl~e express!on "mixed life" does not make s+nse. Action has to grow fi'om contemplation; they are 6rganically united, not mixed. ¯ . . "~here~'ore, so far as the distinction has a foundation, it must lie in the external way of life of these communities; in the specific approach to the realization of contemplation and action. TO avoid confusion, it might be better to describe this differentiation among religious by spe~king about fully enclosed life. moderately enclosed life, and fully open way of life. (Open to the Spirit, Washington (Corpus Books), 1968, pp. 271-272). 497 4911 / Review for Religious, l/'olume 35, 1976/4 Fathers Thomas M. Gannon, S.J., and George W. Traub, S.J. present St. Thomas's division as a distinction between "the contemplative life, the active life, and the apostolic life" (The Desert and the City, New York: Macmillan, 1969, p. 142). So far as I have been able to discover, St. Thomas does not use the term "apostolic" any more than he uses the term "mixed'" to describe a category of religious life (see George E. Ganss, S.J., " 'Active Life' or 'Contemplative Life'" in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 22 (1963) pp. 53-66, esp. p. 61). He teaches that human life in general is divided simply into "active life" and "contemplative life" (Summa Theo-logica, II-II, Q. 179, art. 1) and that, in itself, the contemplative life is "more excellent" than the active (ibid., Q. 182, art. 1). But he adds that a man might be "called away from the contemplative life to the works of the active life on account of some necessity of the present life, yet not so as to be compelled to forsake contemplation altogether. Hence it is clear" that when a person is called from the contemplative to the active life, this is done by way not o] subtraction but o] addition" (ibid., ad 3, emphasis added). There is much evidence in St. Thomas's treatment of this subject to conclude that Thomas would consider all religious as belonging essentially to the category of contemplative life. Some reasons for this are: 1. The religious state is directed to the perfection of charity, which extends to the love of God and of 6ur neighbor (Q. 188, aLt. 2). But to direct one's whole life to growing in loving knowledge of God without which the perfection of charitY is impossible is to embrace the goal of the contemplative life. 2. The active life has two senses for St. Thomas: a) a life directed to the practice of the moral virtues as con-trasted with the theological virtues. The moral virtues (pru-dence, justice, temperance, fortitude) aim at the correctness of man,s external actions toward persons and things in this world (Q. 181, art. 1 and Q. 180, art. 2, Sed contra). The theological virtues (faith, hope, charity)aim at knowledge and love of God himself, as object. It is obvious that no one striving for the "perfection of charity" can make th~ moral virtues the goa.1 of his life. And Thomas teaches explicitly that if a person is practicing the moral virtues in order to arrive at contemplation, he is in the contemplative rather than in the active life (Q. 181, art. 1 and 2). And this is what religious do. b) In a second meaning, the active life is one which is taken up with external activities, such as active works of service to the neighbor. When Thomas argues in favor of this for religious he always seems to be working on the assump-tion that the religious in question is in the contemplative life, The "Active-Contemplative" Problem / 499 but that he accepts to leave contemplation partly or tempo-rarily and add works of the active life "in order that God's will may be done and for His glory's sake" (Q. 182,~ arts. 1 .~ and 2). That he assumes this to be the case when religious engage in active works is indicated by his answer to the question "Whether a religious order should be established for the works of the active life?" One objection against the proposition is that' every religious order belongs to the state of perfection, but the perfection of the religious state consists in the contemplation of divine things (Q. 188, art. 2, obj. 1). Thomas doesn't contradict this. He ~imply answers, "Since religious occupy themselves with' the works of the ' " active life for God's,sake, it follows that their action-results~ ]rom their contemplation o] divine things. Hence, they are not entirely deprived of the fruit of the contemplative life." (Emphasis added.) St. Thomas recognizes; however, that active work may result from contemplation in two ways. It may be that the work results from the full-ness of contemplation. A man contemplates God until"he is filled with a wisdom, an insight into the mind and heart of God, a graced understand-ing of the Scriptures, that overflows his heart and is shared with the neigh-bor 'in preaching or teaching. For St. Thomas, obviously, preaching and teaching are not something°'a .man .is prepared to do by academic study. The intellectual who is not a contemplative cannot teach or preach in St. Thomas's sense of the words, which refer precisely to a sharing with others of the fruits of one's contemplation. The merely academic teacher of theology, the eloquent intellectual in the pulpit, are nothing but sounding brass' and tinkling cymbal; their activity does not even enter into this dis-cussion. There are other works of the active life which do not presuppose the fullness of~contemplation: active works of service for the neighbor, such as taking care of guests, nursing the sick,., and so forth. And yet, if they are engaged in such works out of love for God and a desire to serve him perfectly in his Body on earth, they do proceed at least from a beginning of contemplation; from a prayerful response to the Scriptures. (If, such work should, in any given person, proceed from a merely humanitarian concern for others, it ~would not.be~ a Christian act, and again would not even enter into our discussion here. )" Also, St. Thomas presumes that, in religious, such activity is directed to the end of religious life, which is the '~perfection of charity." And since, as we have seen, this perfection cannot be conceived apart from contemplation which attains God directly in faith, hope and love, we must conclude that this activity, in a religious, is directed to the end of the contemplative life. In other words, a religious engaging in such active labors is; in 'fact, a contemplative.A given religious may not 500 / Review lot Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 be a contemplative in the sense of having already attained that degree of spiritual deepening and prayer., which enables him or her actually to con-template in the full sense of this word, or to share with others the fruits of contemplative insight into the mysteries of God. But the religious is still a contemplative by reason of the.end to which his or her life is directed. Thus a postulant or candidate in a religious house who has not yet begun to pray seriously, who perhaps has little or no spiritual ~xperience to share with his neighbor~ and who spends his day washing dishes in the kitchen or teaching some secular shbject in a school--that person is, nevertheless, already in the "contemplative life." He is a contemplative in the same sense that a fetus in the womb is a human being: he is not yet sufficiently developed to function fully as a contemplative, but he is already intrinsically ordered, by a free choice of his destiny, to the "perfection of charity," to loving knowledge of God answered by a total gift of oneself. We should also apply to this qtiestion St. Thomas's reasoning about the pursuit of moral virtues belonging to the contemplative rather than to the active life if contemplation is its ultimate end (Q. 181, art. 1 and 2). If a man engages in :active works, but with the intention that through these he will rise to a more and more loving knowledge of God (contempla-,, tion), then this man, too, is inthe contemplative life, although .he.is occu-pied in the ,w~orks of the active life. We should remember here that even a monk in the most enclosed contemplative monastery is still engaged :in the works of the '.'active life"---even though he.is called a contemplative~ so long as he is at that stage of spiritual growth in which his main concern is acquiring moral virtues, and his prayer life is sti'il on the level of active meditation, spiritual reading, and such (see John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, ch. 17, par. 4). To be engaged in the "works of~ the active life" not only means doing what we popularly refer to as "active work"--teaching, nursing, repairing houses, keeping books, etc. In its most fundamental sense this expression means actively using one's human powers to bring about, a change, whether in oneself or in outside reality, whether one does this through carpentry or through meditation on the. gospels. Contemplation, on the other hand, is resting in what one has~ already learned, already come to love, letting oneself be transformed without labor (not without pain) into what one sees. Where meditation is studying,~,think-ing, deciding, contemplation is looking, listening, loving. Thus we conclude that religious, even though entirely taken up with° external activity, truly belong in the category of "coritemplative life" so long as their works-- whether of moral virtue or of service to others--are not, for them, ter-minal activities in themselves, but means to arrive at a more loving knowP-edge of and union with God. As St. Thomas puts it: "When a man makes use of~ things pertaining to the active life, merely as dispositions to con-templation, such things are comprised under theocontemplative life" (Q. 181, art. 1; and see Q. 180, art. 4). We might have to. question ~ind The "Activ~e-Contemplative'" Problem / 501 qualify the word "merely" in this sentence, but the main point is clear: so long as a religious is aiming at the perfection of faith, hope and love, which is inseparable from contemplation, he is in the "contemplative Aife." What we call. the "active life" for religious, then, is one of two things: first, it~might be an overflow of contemplation. This might take the form of an overflow of love as well as of knowledge. That is, it might take the form,~not just of preaching and teaching, the two examples St. Thomas gives, but of heroic service in nursing, counseling, social action, or the like. In this first sense, then, a religious might be an "active" contemplative through any form of activity which is, .in this individual, so impregnated with grace and love that it~ results, in the given case~ from the "fullness of contemplation." In a second sense, the "works of the actiVe, life" might be a stage of growth toward contemplation--not towa~:d spending long hours in formal prayer, necessarily, but toward habitual contemplation, toward such intimacy with God in faith, hope and love, that° one is always, in a sense, seeing the face of God, and reflecting it (see Q. 182, art. 3). In the words of Gannon and Traub (The Desert and the City, p, 148), ¯ . . In Thomas' understanding as well as in the usage of other ascetical writer~ ~ ofthe time, the active life and the contemplative life designate successive but interacting stages of growth.ifi the interiorqife of a Christian' seeking "spiritual .growth, whether he be a religious or a layman. The active life is the earlier , stage where, seriously 'beginning his pursuit of living spiritually, he struggles ~ against sin and imperfections in himself and both learns and practices the moral virtues and the exterior acts @hich spring from them. Activity thus comprises the'Ltwo stages of spiritual growth which were later named "~he pur- ~. ~gative way of the beginners" and "the illuminative way of th6 advancing:" The :contemplative life, on the other hand, is a higher stage where the Chris, , tian practices c,.hiefly the theological virtues, especially charity, and under its inspiration works of love that witness to it. Among these manifestations of charity one often finds a growing desire to withdraw into solitude in order to achieve undistracted contemplation of God°. We are now better able to understand St. Thomas's comparison of the three kinds of religious orders. (Q. 188, art. 6): .° . The work of the'~active life (that is, the work that religious can do) is of two kinds. One proceeds from the fulness of contemplation, such as teaching and preaching . And this work is more excellent than simple contempla, tion. For even .as it is better to enlighten than merely to shine, so it is better to give to others the fruit of one's contemplation than merely to Contem-plate. The other work of the active life consists entirely in. outward occupa-tion, for instance, almsgiving, receiving guests, aiad the like, Which are less excellent than the works of contemplation, except in cases of necessity, as stated above.'. Accordingly, the highest place in religious orders is held by those which are, directed to teaching and preaching . The second place belongs to those Which are directed 10 contemplation, and the third to those which are occupied ~vith external acii0ns. J Tl~e lowest 'place among religious orders is held by those "which are 502 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 occupied with external actions." Understand here that these actions are not such that they must proceed from the "fullness of contemplation," such as authentic--that is, spiritually effective--preaching and theological teach-ing must be, but actions which achieve their proper end equally well whether the one performing them is a beginner in the spiritual life or a mystic. A candidate of one day in a religious order, if she is a skilled nurse, can nurse as well as another who has twenty years of contemplative prayer behind her. However, we must also understand that these actions can pro-ceed from the fullness of contemplation, in which case more will be taking place than just the action itself. A nurse who is a mystic will communicate the love of God, to her patient as well as she communica'tes all the human concern implied in good nursing care. If a given religibus order is set up in such a way that it effectively fosters in the members a contemplative spirit that will make all the external actions come from the fullness of con-templation, then that order belongs in the first, and highest, category .of religious ordersEnot in the third one. Likewise, an order established for teaching and preaching, if it is no longer such that it effectively fosters contemplation in the members, does not belong in the first category of religious life, but in this third, and lowest one. What we call here an "ac-tive" order, then, is one which is basically in the contemplative life, because it has loving knowledge of God as its end, but which is not really organized to produce this loving knowledge of God very effectively. An individual religious here and there might attain it, but the order as such does not concentrate on the attainment of. contemplative union with God, but just on the active work to be done. In such an order contemplative union with God will not be excluded as an end, of course; in fact, it will be specifically proposed (in words) as an end, and there will even be some prayer, or other spiritual exercises, prescribed or suggested to help the members attain union with God. But it will be obvious from the real structures and policies of the community that what the order as such is bent on is active service, with or without much progress in loving knowledge of God. If the com-munity's particular mixture--harmony, balance, formula--of prayer and service are such that they do, in fact, lead one to ri~e through the active stage of growth (active methods of prayer and emphasis on moral virtues as well as active service) to the loving knowledge of God that belongs to developed faith, hope and love, i.e. to the plane of developed contempla-tive life, then in that measure the order does not. belong in this third category of "active" .religious c6mmunities. We might ask here whether any "active" orders as we have just de-scribed them really exist. Here we have to distinguish between existing in ]act or existing juridically; i.e., existing as active orders because they have degenerated into mere service organizations or because that is what they were founded and accepted by the Church to be. ~It may be that in ]act, the majority of the orders we call "active" in the popular sense today The "'Active-Contemplative" Problem / 503 (meaning not strictly contemplative) have become ~tctive as described above. Juridically, however, many, perhaps most, were not founded to be this, as is clear in the history and constitutions of such communities as the Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and so forth. If, though, there are orders actually founded to be active in the sense we have described, then they were probably founded on a double principle of practical realism: first, some active task had to be performed, and dedicated hands were needed to perform it. Secondly, it was assumed that the persons who would be called to such a life would not be, as a general rule, apt material for a way of life that aimed at much more than solid moral virtue and a sound, con-sistent piety that kept one living and functioning as a dependable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. God might, of course, raise one to the highest contemplation and mysticism in such a way of life; but the life as such did not presume to aim so high. Let us be frank in admitting the possibility of a certain class distinction in this. Just as St. Ignatius hesitates to give to rudes (the crude, uninstructed, ignorant) more than the "First Week" of the SpiritualExercises (namely, the part that aims at conversion from, sin and systematic practice of the moral virtues: see Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola, Annotation 18: Louis J. Puhl, editor, Loyola Uni-versity Press, Chicago, 1951, pp. 7-8) so the founders of some religious communities seem to have assumed that their recruits would be mostly uneducated peasant girls, whose interior life would be adequately nourished by a few simple exercises of piety and a strongly structured community life. I do not know if this was the case, any more than I know if any "ac-tive, .order as we have described it was ever approved or founded to be such in the Church. But if such an order exists, it is easy to see why St. Thomas would give it the lowest place in his hierarchy of religious com-munities. It is also easy to see why the Church so ~asily grants permission to transfer from an active order to a contemplative order, if even part of the description of active orders as we have presented it above should be true. The second place on the scale of religious orders belongs to those "which are directed to contemplation." Since all orders are ordered to con-templation indirectly, at .least, this category obviously applies to those orders which occupy themselves primarily and directly in-exercises which by their very nature tend to foster contemplative prayer. We must recall that many of these exercises may belong, of themselves, to the "active life"; the practice of moral virtue, active methods of meditation and prayer, etc. To be a member of a contemplative order does not mean that one has already attained to contemplative prayer, or that one's life is actually char-acterized by a deep and habitual awareness of God in faith, hope and love. But it means that one's life is organized directly to foster this spiritual growth. Obviously this is a "higher" form of religious life than the active life described above. It is not yet the highest form of religious life, in St. 504 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 Thomas's opinion, 'becausethe aim of the community is just the interior development°of its own members., The community is like a tree whose energies are all bent towards growth, but which is not yet mature enough~ to produce fruit. It,is better to aim at full developme]at than to be content with giving lesser fruit on a lower level, A developing fruit tree is a "higher" form of life than" a bush already serving to prevent erosion. So the orders we call "contemplative" are in themselves on a higher,plane than those we have described ~here as "active." The contemplative at least aims directly at~ spiritual growth towards contemplation, while the active qife seems to be designed for beginners who are going to remain on a non-contemplative plane of spiritual activity. St. Thomas assigns the "highest place" among religious orders to those "which are directed to teaching and preaching,"' but with the understand-ing that "preaching and teaching" presuppose contemplation: that what is preached'and taught is precisely the fruit of a contemplative life. He is not referring to those who teach secular subjects, or even to those who teach academic theology unless what they teach proceeds from the fullness of their contemplative prayer. We might add to St. Thomas's teaching' here-and pr~opose that "teaching and preaching" as the fruit of contemplation might be equally the work of a cloistered, contemplative commianity or of a community of Social activists busily reforming social structures in the political ~arena. What is r~quired for ,"teaching °and preaching" is not presence in the classroom or pulpit, but simply the fact ,of communicating to others the truth of God as this proceeds from that loving sureness of vision 'which is a mark of authentic contemplative prayer, It may well be that in" our day no teaching and preaching are more eloquent, or more needed, than the silent, inescapable witness of the,,monasie~ on the moun-tain top. Still another way to teach and preach has been brought very much before.~our consciousness these days. The Synod of Bishops, 41974, spoke of the "intimate connection" between the Church's work and concern for social justice and her task of evangelization. An earlier synod, 1971, went so far as to say that "action on behalf of justice and participation, in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel." (Both texts available from U.S. Catholic Conference,Publications Office, passages cited fr6m p. 1'8 and p. 34, respectively.) By0 this principle any"outward occupation, even the very active one of political struggle for social justice, is. a form of Christian teaching and preaching--and 'in the sense that St. Thomas. uses the terms --provided that it truly proceeds from the fullness of contemplation and is done in such a way that what clearly appears to the world is the truth 'of Christ's own mind and heart~ embodied in unambiguous action. St. Thomas's argument for this hierarchy of religious orders is based on' two principles. The first concerns the value of the end that is aimed at; the second concerns the effectiveness of the means employed, to achieve The !'Active-Contemplative" Problem / 505 the end. Orders which share the r+sults of their contemplation with others are more excellent than those whic~h just, contemplate, because these orders aim at the end of all religious life, the perfection of charity, in a way that includes more of the end, more of[the good that "charity" embraces. They organize their lives in a way design,'ed both to bring them to a more loving knowledge of God,in contemplati,~n, and to be of service in love to the neighbor (Q. 188, art. 6). Remember that, as we have explained this, any .I religious order, from the most clo~.stered contemplatives to the most active workers in the Church, can belon~g to this third and highest category of rehg~ous life provided that the commumty truly has a. formula for living that combines prayer and service in such a way that the community "speaks" to the Church out of tl~e fullness of contemplative insight into God. The superiority of such an order is based on the fact that the end to which it is directly ordered includes, both the good of contemplation and the good ,of active service to the! neighbor. It is obviously this kind of community St. Thomas has in mi~d when he argues that a religious order i . can be founded for works of the acuve life because their activity "results from the contemplation of divine ihings" (Q. 188, art. 2) and that~ a per-son who is in the contemplative life can .be called away from exercises of contemplation to works of the active life without losing anything bec~ause his engagement in active works is idone "by way not of subtraction but of addition" (Q. 182, art. 1 ). In suctl a case one does not forsake contempla- . tion entirely, but only partly or te~mporardy in order to add works of the active life (ibid. and art. 2). Thus such a community is "better" because "its end is a greater good." I Hence a religious order is preferable to another if it be directed to an end that is abso.lutely more excellent eit,her because it is directed to a greater goo~!,~ or. to more goods (A. 188, art. 6). This is the first principle by ~vhich St. Thomas rates religi6us orders, the principle that looks to the goo~d or end they are directly structu.red to attain. The second principle looks ito the suitability of the means emplpyed to achieve the end: !. If, however, the end be the same, 'ithe excellence of one religious order over another depends secondarily, not o~ the amount of exercise, but on the pro-portion of the exercise to the end in view. Wherefore, in the Conferences of The Fathers (Coll. ji, 2), Blessed Anthony is quoted~.as preferring discretion, wherebY, a man moderates all his at c¯ tions, to fastings, watchings, and all such observances ( ibid). I In evaluating a religious community we should look to its structures. The question is not really how austere the community is, or how strict its life appears to be. Nor is the question how human the community is, or how free its members, seem to be. The real question is: how well are its structures adapted to helping the members attain the goal of religious lile? 506 / Review Jor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 A tight ~community is no better than a loose one--and no worse. Whatever leads persons to the perfection of charity--towards God and neighborm is the ideal of religious community policy. St. Thomas warns that a religious order is not better because it has more penitential practices than another, more prayer than another. But in our day we may be failing into the same error he warns against under a different form. In our reaction against some of the rigidities and distorted practices of the past, we have perhaps apotheosized another set of values, made idols out of some other very particular and limited ideals. We have refocused our attention on-freedom and personalism, discernment and dialogue, community life and social involvement. And because these values are good,~we are under the illusion that in pursuing them we are renewing religious life. The truth of the matter is that religious life is not renewed by .any community exercise as such, whether it be dialoguing or taking the dis-cipline together. Religious life is renewed by discovering, in prayer and surrender to the Holy Spirit, an integral and harmonious set of structures that correspond to the complete goal of the community. If growth in con-templation, for example, understood as loving knowledge of God, is an integral part of the community's aim in life, then the community must in-corporate into its life-style specific and effective structures that really promote this growth. To affirm the ideal in words in the Constitutions is not enough. Communities should be evaluated, not by the orthodoxy of their statements, but by the effectiveness of their structures. What a com-munity really is should be judged, not by the goals it proposes to itself, but by the means it is willing to commit itself to in order to achieve these goals: and commit itself to realistically by building them into its life-style. We might ask what point there is in comparing religious orders. After all, the "best" order for any individual is the one which is most suited to his own temperament, stage of growth, and particular call from God. What point is there in comparing'religious orders in the abstract? I think that the precise point of all this is that the three categories we find in St. Thomas are not meant to be--or at least cannot be taken today to refer to---three different patterns for authentic life. We are not really offered three different choices of what a religious order can aim at. I believe that in St. Thomas's sense every religious order must be founded for "~teaching and preaching" if it is to be Christian. For the teaching and preaching that we intend here is nothing more specific or less spiritually profound than Christian witness. A religious vocation is a gift from God. But it ig a gift like those St. Paul speaks of in 1 .Corinthians, chapters 11- 14: manifestations of the Spirit given for the common good. A purely active religious order that really did not provide within the structures and policies of its communal living, means effectively to promote spiritual growth--growth towards deeper and deeper contemplation (under- The "Active,Contemplative" Problem / 507 stood not as longer hours of forma!, contemplative prayer, but as an ever more constant loving awareness of God and of all other things in the authenticity of their being as relation to God) would hardly be a legitimate form of life in the Church. At the most it would be legitimate as a com-munity that understood and accepted itself, with frank humility, as a com-munity for persons incapable of ~rogressing beyond the level of moral virtue in the spiritual life. But can.[we believe that any such category ac-tually exists? And would such a community really be viable? Would its apostolate really be valid? Yet I think we have around us in the present day examples of communities which have become in fact, if not in desire, purely "active" communities. The level of prayer is very low. Deep under-standing of the life of grace is praciically non-existent. This is not in every individual, of course, but it is embodied in the communal expression of the community as a whole. In these, communities does an authentic "apos-tolate" really exist? We may run sc,hools or hospitals, may engage in social service or social action with enthusiasm, and labor to the point of exhaus-tion. But by our fruits we must be judged. Are our schools producing peo-ple who have been touched by an ,encounter with Jesus Christ as a person --real in himself and active in his ,Body on earth today? Are our hospitals symbols and witnesses to the whol~ world of Christ's healing concern for the poor, the suffering, the afflict~ed? Is our reform of social structures permeated with the spirit of the beatitudes. Where the labor and service of an "active" order does not reail3} "teach and preach" the truth of Christ and the gospel, is that labor reall~ an apostolate? And can one's activity express the truth of the gospel if it! does not rise from a loving con.templa-tion of that truth within one's own!, heart,° a contemplation that makes one alike in one's being to, what one sees? Let us suppose, on the other h~nd, a more contemplative order, either a cloistered community or a veryI explicitly prayerful, active commumty. And let .us. suppose that it is so turned in-on itself, so defensive against all that is going on in the Church, sd protective of its own traditional struc-tures in their last, rigid detail, thatlthe community as a whole is not a wit-ness to anyone in the Church. Or w.orse: let us say the community ',speaks" to a diehard minority of crustacean Catholics who are clamped like barnacles onto anything in the ChUrch that~has the appearance of a rock. Suppose the community really exists to encourage a faction in the Church to believe, in opposition to the main body of the hierarchy, that Vatican II is only a passing wave:~that will soon get over us, leaving things exactly as they were before? It would be hard to accredit such a community as truly contemplative, of course, no matter how much time they spent in silence and stances of prayer. But one clear reason why the community would be invalid even as a contemplative community is that the com-munity would have no truly apostohc d~mens~on. They would not .be preaching and teaching--not in ~the name of the Church and for the 508 / Review lor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 Church--but in the name of a factional spirit that is resisting the life of the People of God. Sucti communities are teaching a spiritual archeology and calling it biology:' holding up fossils to the world as the living Body of Christ. Let us suppose another.contemplative order, one still in its beginning stages. Let us say it is set up to be ~a community of solitaries. In its first efforts to really achieve solitude and a true spirit of prayer this community may have to defend itself to some extent even from contacts with the main body .of the Church. "It may ~have to. withdraw far into' the wilderness, far from the paths of men, and jealously guard its privacy for a while. To this extent it'can appear, momentarily at least, as a "counterwitness" to the ~solidarity of the whole Church's sharing in the charismatic .gifts of ~every member and group. But soon, if the community's charism is authentic, the flow of life back into the Church in the form of "teaching and preach-in~" .must begin anew. The monastery will begin to shine as a 4ight in the world--and most visibly to. the Church--through its manner of life and prayer. More than lik.ely pilgrims and pray~ers will begin to come, and they will be welcomed in the spirit of open faith traditional to monastic communities: a spirit of hospitality which receives each guest as possibly sent from God to receive or to give a blessing only God foresees in its details. On a level that is deeper yet than hospitality, and theologically more fundamental, the community must always understand itself, very con-sciously, as called and gifted for the benefit of the whole Church: The community must be aware of, and concerned about, what its life is "saying" to the Church, and what the Church's life is saying to it: how its self-understanding matches and fits into the ~ Church's contemporary under-standing of herself. The enclosed life must not" be a seIJ-enclosed life. There is no self-enclosed life in the living Church, the organically-inter-dependent mystical Body .of Christ. The reactionary community, be it monastic or non-monastic, is a non-apostolic community. Whether it spends twenty-four hours a day behind monastic wails or eighteen hours a day exhausting itself in the inner city, the community that has ceased to inter, act vitallywith tile Church is a non-apostolic community. How can a group that has sealed itself off from the Church's life claim in spite of this to be "sent" by the Church or to the Church? It is not possible, therefore, for a contemplative (or any other kind of) community to be authentically Christian. if it opts 'to live solely in its own little ~world of private tradi-tions, and practices, oblivious to all that is taking place in the life of the worldand the Church around it. To be truly contemplative, 'then, is to be apostolic by that very fact. And to be authentically ~apostolic one must be contemplative. And to be either, or both, in .the Church one must be in vital, responsive contact with. the. rest of the Body of Christ on earth. This contact crosses denominational The "~4ctive-Contemplative~' Problem. / 509 . lines: an authentically prayerful com, munlty of Protestant Christians (Taiz6, for example) speaks very eloquent!y to Catholics, and vice-versa. But a community that has set itself up as[ a standard for the Church, in opposi, tion to the movement of the Holy Spirit in the Church, speaks to no one. If the community is factional in a ]reactionary sense, clinging, to the past while the (~hurch moves into the future with God, its teaching becomes a "spiritual necrophilia," a fascinatioo with what is dead and controllable, based on fear of responsible encouhter with the Living God. °If the com-munity is factional in a progressive '~ sense, caught up in the .current of this world:rather than moved by the v~inds of the Spirit, then its teaching is idolatry: 'it receives man-made images from the pagans, or shapes them: from its contemplation of the worla, and presents them to the People of God as a ~graven image, a reflectioh of man's own contemporary face, to Worship as the new face of God. What, then, should We say in conclusion about the traditional threefold division of religious orders into "active," "contemplative" and "mixed"? First we should recognize that the word "mixed" may not legitimately claim a place in our tradition aldngside the categories of "active" and "contemplative." To describe the th'ird category as !'apostolic" rather than mixed (as G;innon arid Traub do) is misleading,~ because it implies that' the other, two categories, are non-i~postolic. This could be justified,° per-haps, if we_use "apostolic" t,o :refer~ in a very strict sense to precisely the kind of life the twelve Apostles' le, d,.as Father Orsy does (Open to the Spirit, pp. 273ff.). But', this is not thee meaning the word "apostolic" evokes when we ,:use it. In current usage~ "apostolic" means bringing grace to others as Christ's instrument, contributing by~(~ne's life' to the redemptive work, of the Church. Father Orsy"p0ints out this distinction very succifctly when .'he~ Says of rehg~ous, All are ,apostles but not all apostles follow the~ apostles', way of iife" (ibid.):ii, St. Thomas seems to recognizeIonly two categories of life for human beings, the contemplative and the active. He seems to assume that all re-ligious are in the contemplative li~fe by °virtue of the fact that they are striving for the "perfection of charit:y," which cannot be conceived of apart from that loving knowledge ~of God which is c'ontem~lation. Likewise all religious must be apostolic, 'became love of neighbor is included in the perfection of charity., . In the organization; the~structufing of religious life, however, one com-munity differs from another. Some ~ommunities organize their lives almost entirely toward actiVe works of sergice: Contemplation is still a recognized goal (asit is of every fully Christian life), but the community as such does not directly aim at it in any signifidant way through communal policies or structures. So far as the communl!y as a whole is concerned, its visible stance, embodied in structures, points it: only toward active service, and toward the active stage of spiritual "growth. Spiritually the community is 510 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 geared to the level of moral virtue. Each member is expected to labor generously in the vineyard of the Lord, and to live peacefully and coopera-tively in community. The vows as such are not stressed except as a basic and not particularly elevated platform on which to live and work. Mem-bers are called upon to live celibately and purely, to make simplicity and sharing the characteristics of their relationship to material things, and to subordinate personal preferences to the decisions and goals of the com-munity where the common good requires this. This life of "reasonable service" is nourished by workshops, discus-sions, and reading; by some sustaining prayer, and methods of personal and communal evaluation and accountability. Good liturgies and theological input are welcomed where available. Spiritual direction is encouraged for those who feel the need of it and can find a director. Everyone is expected to find time to make an annual retreat of five to eight days, and allowed to make it usually, on whatever level of depth the individual desires. If a person lives a morally virtuous life within this framework, causes no trouble in community, and does his or her work well, the community will ask nothing more: This describes the kind of religious community we have called "single-mindedly active," and it may correspond to the reality St. Thomas defines in his comparison of religious orders as a community "occupied with external actions." There is a direct concern for the spiritual life in these communities, but the level of spiritual life aimed at is that which will sustain the members in their active work for the Church and in their inter-action with one another in community life. For anything beyond this the individual must seek means and support on his own. Other communities are singlemindedly contemplative. They embrace structures and organize their lives in such a way that the way of life itself is a constant impetus toward growth in specifically Christian faith, hope and love. In these communities the life is so designed that anyone who is simply leading a life, of good moral virtue and pei'forming well in com-munity and in his work will have it brought home to him with increasing conviction that he is nothing but a "useless servant" (Lk 17:10). The whole manner of ~living is specifically designed not to. make sense except as an expression of the mystery of Christian. faith. And therefore a person must be constantly aware of this mystery to find the life even bearable. The key here is not austerity as such, but simply the absence of any rea-son within this world for living as one does. This "faith or foolishness" quality, stands out with dramatic clarity in the cloistered contemplative life, where not even work can be used as a justification for the way one lives. The active religious might be able to tell himself in moments of waver-ing faith that even if there is no God it is worth the sacrifice of family and possessions just to devote oneself to one's fellow man in his poverty, his sickness, his ignorance. It is certain that many active religious and priests The "~4ctive-Contemplative" Problem / 511 pour themselves out in work in order not to have to face the deeper ques-tions of their relationship to God in fi~ith. It is more difficult for the cloist6red contemplative to do this. He ~ight try, but everything in the life-style he is submerged in will cry out to him what he is doing. The cloistered orders give a place to prayer that is obviously not intended just to support a life of moral virtue or keep people generous in their work. The poverty, pursued by these communities is, as a rule, a level of deliberately-sougllt deprivation not imposed by circum-stances or embraced just out of a s~nse of solidarity with the poor, a style ~of life designed to be congruous. Religious obedience is recognized, not just as a means to harmonious, cooperative living, but as a form of kenosis and a way of surrendering to the Holy Spirit in the Mystical Body of Christ. And the structures of com-munity life embody this understanding of religious obedience and of the government that corresponds to it. ~Within such a context celibacy is both understood and expressed as a poSitive way of relating to God through Christ in a relationship of growing lintimacy, mutual comprehension--and gift, ' Communities designed to express and to lead to' the fullness of Chris-tian knowledge and love of God and of all other things in the light of God are obviously, in St. Thomas' opinion, preferable in themselves to communities that do not aim at this. If it came to a choice between one or. the other--an either-or alternatave Thomas would say the second kind of community is the better choice in itself. It is better, in the abstract, to be a singieminded contemplativ~ than to be singiemindedly active. It might be, however, that for a givenl individual, or in a given set of circum-stances~ it would be a better thing in the concrete case tO choose the more active form of life. But are we really faced, in theory at least, with an either/or alterna-tive. Granted that the choice betw,een an enclosed, a cloistered life and a non-enclosed life is an either/or alternative. Granted again that the choice between a life of solitude and continuous contemplation in the sense of an undistracted intellectual preoccupation with God is an either/or alternative to a life of active, absorbing labor.' Still, "actively' and "contemplative" do not have to be either/or alternatives. Contemplation need not be restricted in its meaning to the absorption of the intellect in God during periods of formal prayer, Contemplation can be, and ought to be, a total and con-tinuous attitude of mind and heart; an ~rientation toward God and an awareness of relationship with God in all that one does and encounters (see Gannon and Traub's seventh ]chapter, "Finding God in AllThings," op. cit., p. 152ff.). This awarenes~l of God in all things is fostered both by periods of formal prayer (experience teaches that. these are normally indispensable) and by a total life~-style that expresses emphatically and 512 / Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/4 unambiguously the faith, hope and love of which one wishes to remain aware. For St. Ignatius of Loyola the key to continuous contemplation is an ever-growing abnegation of self and a continuous stance of renunciation towards this world embodied in concrete choice (see Gannon and Traub, op. cit., chapters seven and eight: "Finding God in All Things" and "The Logic of Christian Discernment," esp. pp. 158- 172). For St. Thomas Aquinas the choice presented by the active and con-templative life-options is not an either/or choice but a triple one: either the active life, or the contemplative life, or both. In the third option one chooses to live in a way that leads to contemplation and in additio.n to this to share with one's neighbor i.n service the results of one's contemplative life. It may be--this We neither defend or dispute--that St. Thomas made too much of a distinction between contemplation and action, conceiving of contemplation too narrowly in terms' of an explicitly intellectual absorp-tion in formal prayer. It may also be, as I believe the case, that he did not understand, or at least develop, how many kinds of activity could be included under the term "teaching and preaching" that for him designates the kind,.of work in which th~ fruits of contemplation are shared. But if we follow the principles of St. Thomas's doctrine, I believe we arrive at an ideal of, religious life towardwhich every community can aim. This is re-ligious life characterized by a double end: that of growing explicitly in loving knowledge of God in faith, hope, and love while explicitly ordering one,s life to the spiritual benefit of the neighbor. Such a life must not only be explicit about its end. It must also incorporate effective means to produce the contemplative spirit and apostolic effectiveness sought. In the measure that a given form of religious living really does produce contemplative peo-ple and really does "speak" to the Church in a solid and effective way, that life corresponds to St. Thomas's ideal. This ideal of St. Thomas~was expressed in,Vatican Council II as the ideal, not of one particular category of religious order, but of religious life itself: ", ¯ . . As they seek God before all things and only Him, the members of each community should combine, contemplation with apostolic love. By the former they adhere to God in mind and heart; by the latter they strive to associate themselves with the work of redemption and to spread the Kingdom of God. (Decree on the Renewal o] Religious Li]e, part 5, Abbott p. 47~0. See also Orsy, op. cit., chapter seven, "Filled with Grace and Power: Contemplation," esp. pp. 209, 254). The "mixed" life, in other words, is not really an option in religious life:if we use the term in the sense developed here, it has tobe an aim. To'~be practical we should suggest in conclusion that every religious take a good, hard look at.the concrete reality of his or her community's life. What concrete structures, policies, activities, or provisions: of com- The "Active-Contemplative" Problem / 513 munity life are specifically designed ~to foster the contemplative spirit? How effective are they? What real priod~ty are they given in the actual life of the community? How much do they influence community decisions? In what visible ways do they determiqe the community life-~style. Secondly, what is the life of the community saying to the Church? What are the real effects of the c~mmunity's work? What are the fruits of its apostolate? Is the communityiin reality working for the Kingdom of God, or just working and offering ~hat work in some general way for the Kingdom .of God? Is the .community corporately ~fiware of the difference between a life of moral virtue and a life of theolbgical virtue? Is there an insistence, in visible, concrete ways, that each member keep growing to the level of perfect faith, hope, and love? Or d~es the community in its actual policies insist only on a good day's work and a cooperative spirit in community? To be a "good religious," an acceptable member of the community, how much contemplative spirit is required? Are prudence,~justice, temperan.ce, and fortitude enough? o. ~ It is certainly legitimate for an individual to live the "active" life during certain periods of his spiritual growth. But this is only legitimate if th~ active life is seen as a phase of growth ordered toward achieving contem-plation. Or the active life can be added to the contemplative as a way of sharing its fruits with others. But ithe active life as such cannot be the final goal or total plan of any serious;Christian's life. What is legitimate for individual~ is legitimate for communities. That is, a community can structure its corp9rate; its communal life to be "active" for some members or for a certain~ time. But this is legitimate only if the community situates its active life-s~tyle within the broader context of an identifiably contemplative life-style~. The community must .be able to identify the explicit elements in its overall style of living--its structures and policies--that present the contemplative life to its members and foster its growth. The community must be able to show that it is concretely geared --and not just abstractly committed~to bring its members to the "per-fection of charity," the fullness of the loving knowledge of God. If a community is not willing or able to do this, it should take the responsibility of redefining itself. It should present itself to its members and to the ~world as a singlemin~ledly "active" community, a "service orgamzatlon in the Church. This ,;vould be,' in St. Thomas's explanation, a third class religious order. A second-class religious order ~would be one that is committed and geared toward achieving contemplation, but which frankly acknowledges that it is not strong enough in itsl contemplative life to take on an ex-plicitly apostolic dimension. By "apostolic dimension" I do not mean, of course, just active work. A comm.hnity of solitaries strictly cloistered in the desert can have a fully-developed apostolic dimension. By "apostolic 514 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 dimension" I mean an explicit concern about what one's life is "saying" to the Church. (This is, I believe, a legitimate interpretation of what St. Thomas means by "teaching and preaching.") Any community can put this concern aside temporarily. A novitiate house, for example, or a new religious older in its first beginnings; might have to forget for a while about what it is saying to the Church in order to concentrate exclusively on what God is saying to it. But a community which did not see itself as ever having any concern~except the growth and sanctification of its own members would have to acknowledge itself as a second-class religious order--a sort of spiritual hospital for people who are never expected to become strong enough to share the burden of the Church's mission. I seriously question whether either of' these first two choices~ are legitimate options in religious life. If religious life (like every,.valid Christian life) has the per[ection of charity as its goal, it seems a contradiction in terms that one would accept to be a second- or third-class religious. Realistically, I think ,the value of St. Thomas's distinctions lies in the help they give us in recognizing situations that ought to be temporary in the life of religious communities; situations we might be tempted to accept as permanent. We have mentioned a legitimately' exclusive preoccupation with one's own spiritual growth, provided it is temporary. We see in the life of the active orders around us a-similar preoccupation at this moment in history, but which might not be recognized for what it is. After Vatican II, when religious renewal began in a massive way, one religious com-munity after another awoke to the distortions that had crept into our understanding of religious life. We realized that in our efforts to become spiritual we had lost s~ight of ,what it was to be human. Words like "ful-fillment" and "interpersonal relationships" began to punctuate our con-versations. We threw ourselves into the rediscovery of our emotional and affective lives. We made acceptance of ourselves h religious goal, and embraced as a duty the grateful enjoyment of this world as God's gift. Words like "renunciation" and "abnegation" became "trigger" words, sym-bols of a repressive' and distorted spirituality that blanketed human values and suffocated human personality under an all-covering mystique of self-sacrifice. Religious began to pursue courses and workshopg for their own intellectual and psychological development. Individuals began to take responsibility for their own decisions and to speak up like adults in com-munity discussions. We went in for group decision-making and discern-ment. The emphasis was placed on personal responsibility. Bells were abolished, the time and place for prayer left up to each individual. Supe-riors were abolished, too, in many cases and group accountability substi-tuted for personal, spiritual ,government. People began to furnish their rooms in ways that expressed acceptance of the world rather than austerity. Convents went in for bright curtains, pink bed spreads and teddy bears. A rich variety of food and drink became available twenty-four hours' a day. The "Acttve-Contemplative" Problem / 515 Smoking and drinking ceased to be tabu to nuns. The ancient practice of the "peculium" so constantly condemned in religious tradition, came back in the form of personal budgets. Nuns and priests started dressing to ex-press their individual personalities as well as their maleness or their womanhood. Sisters experienced what it was to "feel like a woman again," for better or for worse. Priests and seminarians fell in love with sisters,~ and sisters fell in love with them. Some left religious life and got married. Those who remained began to speculate on the "complementarity of tlie sexes," and to ask how one's human sexuality could be integrated into a celibate life without compromise to chastity. Experiments were acted out, mistakes were made. Growth resulted, tragedy resulted; there was good and evil! In all of this there has been in religious community life an absorbing corporate preoccupation with "self." Religious communities have turned their gaze inwards, trying to straighten out their own house. For the time beirig many communities have become more concerned with what religious life is saying to them than they are with what their religious life is saying to the Church. In many specific instances, communities have defied alike the prejudices of the laity and the precepts of Rome. In their intense ef-fort to listen authentically to what God is saying to them, it would seem that some religious have become less attentive to the voice of the wider Church, whether this comes from the ranks of the People of God or from the official representatives of that People. A temporary preoccupation with self is legitimate and good, even on the community level. But no real discernment.or renewal of religious life can take place in the long run in isolation from the People of God. Re-ligious cannot ignore what their life is saying to the rest of the Church. As long as a community is doing this, or has to do it, it is engaged more in spiritual therapy for its own members than in making its contribution to God's people. It may well be that for a certain time a religious community may have to direct all its efforts toward "becoming human." Perhaps the human values of responsibility, affectivity, self-acceptance, and interper-sonal relationship have been lost through a distorted way of living in the past. These values may have to be recovered. But if a religious community accepts as its permanent goal in life, and as its normal guideline for community policy, the ideal of "becoming human," that community must inquire into its place in the overall community Of the People of God. So long as a community is mainly preoccupied with the healing of its own self-inflicted wounds it falls, I believe, into St. Thomas's second cate-gory of religious life. Whether the community is exclusively preoccupied with becoming divine through contemplation, or with becoming human through sensitivity sessions and the use of creatures that reinforce people's sense of personal ~worth, it is not yet strong and mature enough to share with others the fruits of a healthy and developed spiritual life. We should 516 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 recognize this and make sure that we do not accept a temporary, therapeu-tic situation as normal policy for religious life. We can set up spiritual hos-pitals for oursel~,es on a temporary basis. But .if the raison d'etre of our lives is just to constitute a healing milieu of humanness, our expectations for the future should be that no healthy human'beings will apply. Religious life is intended to lead people through active and contempla-tive stages of growth to that developed maturity of life, both human and divine, which allows each person to become a word of grace made flesh; a word of light, of life, and of love spoken tothe People of God. Religious life structured to this goal is the first, the highest, and I believe: the only authentic form of religious life. St. Thomas's distinctions invite us to look at three levels of value in religious life and tO ask" ourselves if our own communities are concretely and effectively geared to achieve them all. To a Young Sister on Her Final Profession Day You .,ask me for a poem, Sister, in honor of this day on which you place for all eternity, your life. your total self~ within the Heart of Him who called you, drew you, in a thousand subtle ways to 'love Him for Himself alone. But how can words of human speech express what is forever inexpressible, what can be only numbly felt :by hearts too grossly fles!! Even the Psalmist's flame-tipped words that ride ~he winds and pierce the clouds fall, helpless, to the ground. The only poem I can give you, Sister, is a prayer, whispered in the depths of nay own heart, to Him who dwells there too, as in Your own. And even that prayer says less in words than in desire. Love Him---trust Him--always, Sister, until that day when there will be no need of poems or words but only of that Word who is all love that ever was or is ° or can be. He is your poem, Sister! Sister Mar~c'Luke, c~S.]. 3556 Rocky River Drive Cleveland, OH 44111 The Incomplete Conversion J. 'Rankin, King~ . Mrs. Kin"g graduated from St. Louis University in 1973. She has pfiblished poetry in The Haiku Anthology, Poet atid~,C~itic arid elsewhere. She 'is presently engaged in research fin the .field of comparative re!igious,experience. Her address:. Nativity Hermi-tage;. Taos, NM 87571. We are b~ now, as participant observers,, nearly used to~ the revived in-terest in spirituality which has characterized the seventies, jStudies .and ex-periments inthe practices of Eastern Orthodox and Asian traditions oc-cupy~. a small but well educated and serious° number of cgntemplative re-ligious: Monumental tasks of research and translation by monastic scholars pr_o_mise considerable assurance that the monastic renewal will be both sound, and profound. A. reawakened interest at. the popular level in the role of .the, Holy Spirit in Christian life heightens mass awareness of God's saving ,pr.e~sence. ,Chri_stocent~ic~,incarnationalism, more intellectual than the popular movement, less comprehensive than the monastic effort, pro.- vides a vehicle for renewed devotion to th.~:, humanity of Christ among many priests and religious. These tendencies exist beside, and tend to color th_e spiritualities o.f, the religio_us orders which are more and more coming to be seen as mutations of and variants upon the one-basic spiritually of ~the Church Universal, simple ,and whole, the spirituality of the ages. Of all these, this essay .will °attempt to deal 0nly with the contemporary popular tendency. It, will stress its weaknesses rather than its strengths, its situation of risk rather than its posture of promise, because it is, among the trends developing at pres_ent, at once the most massive and the most fragile. It. is my hope that this approach will contribute more at the pres-ent moment to the ongoing recovery of spiritual discipline among us than the positive one which has been the more common over the past few years. 517 518 / Review ]or Religious, F'olume 35, 1976/4 While the popular spiritualities of the prayer group and the pentecostal meeting discover their sources in traditions outside the Church, they may also be accurately described as reactions to the conventional spirituality that preceded them. That earlier spirituality stressed rule and form, this proposes the Spirit and the spontaneous. That spirituality was rooted in the prescriptions of the spiritual manuals, this adventures without them. If that spirituality had nearly forgotten the Illuminative Way, this is ignorant of the Purgative. That spirituality put affectivity to its bow and aimed it upward, often so austerely as to be accused of being cold. This is charac-terized by a diffuse and volatile emotion. Conventional spirituality was a spirituality of reserve, interiority. Popular spirituality celebrates the mani-fest, effuses. Their differences are sufficiently radical to render them remote and, in a very profound way, both antipathetic and antithetical to one another. ~ And yet both have this in common, that the first had forgotten and the second has yet to learn the meaning of metanoia~f metanoia not as moment but as process. It is ironic that popular spirituality, in setting out to recapture the Spirit and the Life, should bear within itself, also, that precise element the want of which drained the previous spirituality of ex-actly those things. For it was certainly °its failure to grasp and implement the mechanics of the Purgative Way--that radical reaction to the discovery of one's own sinfulness--which stripped the previous spirituality of its vitality and left it, intact in all its structures but resoundingly,empty, a prey to that kind of renewing which obliterates altogether. It is characteristic of reactionff to~ over-react and, sometimes, to miss the point, Iri this case the.point was not that there was something wrong with the spirituality of the manuals: it was, hfter all, the Catholic spiritual-ity, the spirituality of the ages; but that there was something dreadfully wrong with those .who professed it. Specifically, they were not half sorry enough for their sins. On the contrary, they often thought themselves very good folk°'indeed. It is not perhaps surprising that their ~lateral~descendants should harbor a similar misapprehension, and that it. should produce, spon~ taneity to 'the contrary, a similar chill of ';righteousness"; a characteristic which proclaims as clearly as any antinomianism; the Spirit's absence. Genuine metanoia is a process. It begins, to be sure, with a haoment: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor.myself, and repent in dust and ashes,''1 I abhor myself~ an abhorrence that generate~ an ongoing and ever deepening reaction. We have called that reaction the Way of Beginners, the Purgative Way. We have identified with precision its stages; its characteristic rhythms of prayer, its temptations, its joys and sorrows, its goals and the interior technology which must be employed if they are to be attained. And we know its term: aJb. xlii, 5:6~ The Incomplete Conversion / 519 a sincere and complete conversion; .and'its consequence: a man sufficiently iiast to bear experimental cbntact with the Spirit of God in illumined faith-- a man who has the justice, the prudence, the temperance and the fortitude to worShip in Spirit and Truth under the influence of infused prayer. ¯ At the present time 'the popular movement recognizes the moment but is unaware'0f the process. Its characteristic exercises--shared and peti-ti0riaty prayer and Scripture reading--are not primary metanoiac agents. It is difficult to see how the movement is to proceed, if it does not assim, ilate a technology" of interior change. Popular spirituality's mistaken guess that the first gift of the Spirit is joy prevents it from cultivating that sorrow, with its concommitant hatred of sin and the filial fear of the Lord which dreads' to lose him, which are, in fact, the Spirit's choicest gifts to the youngest of his Chosen. ~'Its apprehension of a fullness of some kind, when overly encouraged, acts as a bar to its experiencing its own poverty. A dollar may indeed look like a great deal to a man who has known only'plugged nickels all his life but. it remains, nevertheless, a dollar, with a dollar's purchasing power. There seems tO be some danger of the popular renewal's forgetting that the ish seddqdh~ the just man, is ?a member of the an~wim, God's afflicted ones: the poor, the weak, the humble, the meek, the oppressed . the needy, the broken hearted, the crUshed in spirit.''-~ In its search for signs of the Spirit's presence, it is prone to overlook the "Sign of'Jonah" proposed to a previous unbelieving generationhthe death, burial and resurrection of the Lord and i.s, in consequence, diverted from living any coherent program of its own daily dying which is, after all, the Christian's only entrde to the higher life. "There is an apophthegm of Pambos," writes Andre Louf,'a "that is all the more pointed for its brevity: 'Acquire a heart and you can be saved.' 'Acquire a heart': this implies that we do not yet have that spiritual sensi-tivity, that alertness of heart, that can discern and understand the things of the Spirit." The popular, spirituality is of~theopinion that it can. There is perhaps no greater bar to the acquisition oL a heart than the persuasion that one has one. "Better just to smeil a~ flower in the garden or something like that," wrote Thomas M~rton,4 "than to have an unauthentic experience of a much higher value." * A concept of change nearly defines traditional spirituality. Life in Christ is metamorphosis. Its dynamism is the life of God in Trinity which enters the soul 'at the time of its baptism or through the"second and "labo-rious" baptism of penance. Conversion, then, i.s not an arrival :but a de- 2David Holly, The Quest ]or Biblical Living; Cistercian Studies,~ Vol. X, Nos. 3 and 4, p. 235. aAndre Louf, Spiritual Experience, Cistercian Studies, Vol. X, no. 2, p. 128. 4Patrick. Hart, ed., Thomas Merton, Monk (New York: Sheed & Ward; 1974), p. 190. Review. ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/4 parture.: To delay upon the platform, cheering the trains as they come in, is nearly always fatal. The Kingdom of Heaven withers when .it finds~a pos.t-conversion ?'level". and is staticized there. Transformation is'the primary work of the Holy Spirit. ,It is' to this--a definitive delivery~ffrom sin--that" his chief inspirations tend, for he is indeed the very SpiriL.of Christ, he who came to ~.set free the captive, to deliver those Iying in prison, To un. derestimate the extent of,the captivity, the depth of the dungeon, is to miss entirely the pointoof the Mission of the Spirit. . We often hear~it said today that because God loves us he accepts us. That is, of course, the one thing he will never do-,-because he loves us. "When he said 'Be perfect,' he meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hanker-ing after is harder--in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard4or an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to, fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you.cannot go on. in-definitely being just an ordinary, decent,;egg. Wg must be hatched or go bad.''~ , Perhaps we could say that contemporary popular spirituality is in a situation of vulnerability at the moment because it does not dream that~it is an egg. It would seem to be a fatal diversion to cultivate joy if "real spiritual joy is one of the rarest fruits of the., spirit, to be attained only near the summit of the way, after all evil ,habits and thoughts are overcome, all passions conquered, and reconciliation with God is reached?'~ If "the true signs of sincere penitence .are the taming of the beast of anger and absti-nence from all condemnation.of others''~ and if only sincere pen.itence can open the way to any kind of consistent experience of God, then it would seem to be the better .part of enlightenment to .work at those hydra-headed passions. That, at any rate, seems to be what the Spirit.has always bee.n saying to t.he Churches. ; It wbuld not,.perhaps, be necessary to notice the belief clusters and attitudes in popular spirituality which .hinder its. developing genuine in-teriority if it had not attained a very rapid and, indeed, massive growth and were not now showing a decided disposition to impose .itself wherever possible on the rest of theoChurch. Now it is, of course, highly d~e~irable that we should all be more committed Christians, but it may be4hat a good many of us do not desire to be imposed upon, nevertheless. ~Especially by those whose light does not exceed our own. The prospect of spending the rest, of one's spiritual life occupied in "praise"~ and intercessory prayer, punctuated by predictable prophecies will not appeal to everyone . While enthusiastic neo conversi may be able to speak winningly and cohvincingly of their ~newly discovered life in Christ, it is the Church's ex- ;'C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. 169. ~-~ "Iulia de Beausobre, ed., Russian Letters b] Direction, 1834-1860, beiiig the l~tter~ of Staritz Macarius of Optino.(St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1975), p. 106. rlbid., p. 169. The Incomplete ~onversion / 521 perience that fruitful apostolates are the result of a mature Christian life. And it is, besides, the spiritual doctrine of Catholicism that too great an eagerness to teach others is, in beginners, a sign of sp!r!tual pride.i, Although it is typical of evangelical Christianity to send its converts immediately into the field, it has not been the apostolic Church's custom. Following the example of her Lord, who spent thirty years in obscurity be-fore undertaking his public mission, she has preferred that her children nurture the life of grace in humble penance, in mortification and in prayer before sending them "as sheep among wolves." ". when we are fully grown men," writes Tauler in full fidelity to the tradition, "we may come and live in the land of Judah. 'Judah' means 'to confess God.' Then you can teach and admonish in Jerusalem . You can cross over into Galilee which means 'overcoming all things'. ,,8 The facility with which the technique for inducing a Pentecostal type conversion experience can, apparently, be acquired, makes it tempting to the popular movement to adopt evangelical traditions of proselytization. The maturer fruits of conversion oin terms of authentic interior cleansing will not be likely to develop, however, under condition~ 6f forc6d acti~on. Th6 spirit of "results" apparent among the'fastest paced evang'el!qa~l,16rom0i~r~ today should give us pause. For that spirit is not the meek Spirit, the Holy ~pir!t, thee Spirit of repentance which the popular spiritua!ity ~has claimed for its own. "I realize," wrote Andre Louf in a rece6t ar~ic, le, that repentance is not o_nly~ a difficult theme to touch on today, but is also~ g~ven the .complexes of our times--one of the most. difficult to pin down and live authentically. And yet it remains essential. In general, repentance is:'re-fused today. We live at the turning point between th~ obsessive neurosis (if ~ - I may call it that) characterizing the pe~:iod immediately before our own, and °~ the adolescent effervescence add aggressivity of a period that is now freeing ~ itself;of~ that neurosis. ProoL~that he has sinned can only create unbearable ~, ~anguish in one ~ho is already eate.~ up with anguish. Sin was intolerable for the l~eriod immediately before our own, and people tried to free them-selves from it by what the Fathers used to call dikaioma, the pretension to ° justice. Sin-is unbearable, so one claims to be just by an outward observance of law, or rather, of a certain n~n~ber of r~gulations; in r~hlity one is fleeing from me~tanoia. Today instead we hav~ an adolesc,eni effervescer~ce and aggreg- '~sivi~y which is~just as~ neurotic and ~'for which sin is just as uhbea'rable; the solution now, however, is to say there is no such thingP " ~ '" -~or to bury it under the cliches Of "love" and "joy" and "community" and "perice." ~' " The question for the next few years or s6, so far as the popular spirithal-itY goes, is whether ~it ~ill be able radically, to assimilate to its present spirit the basic spirituality of the Church and its metan~iac techniques. Or will the conversion remain incomplete? ¯ - SJohn Tauler, O.P., Spiritual Con]erences (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1961), p. 38. aAndre Louf, Spiritual Experience, Cistercian Studies, Vol. X, no. 2, p. 132. Ministry, Grace and the Process of Humanization Rev. Stephen J. Duffy Father Duffy is Associate ProfessOr and Chairmarl of the Department of Religious Stud.ies; L6yolaUr~iversity; New Orleans, LA 70118. My" subject ~is ttie very topical "theology of liberation.''a Before we plunge into the subject, however, there are some contextual questions that demand an answer. Why should w~ be concerned with grounding Christian pastoral or social ministry in theology at all? In this connection, is talk about a theology of liberation just a pep-talk or a sales pitch to send enthusiasm soaring? Are institutes and courses on pastoral ministry some kind bf inter-lude before we all get back to our real work? Do they amount to little more than abstract and theoretical discussions designed to titillate, the more intellectually inclined? My strong conviction is that a theology of liberation and discussions of pastoral ministry in that context should be far more than any of these. ZGustavo Guti6rrez, A Theology o] Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis B~oks, 1973)." See also his "Notes for a Theology of Liberation," Theological Studies 31 (1970), pp. 243-261. Guti6rrez is prob~b~ly the most widely read and mo~t influential single theologian of liberation. For a good overview accompanied by a rather, complete bibliography, see Phillip Berryman, "Latin American Liberation Theology," Theolog-ical Studies 34 i(1973,), pp. 357-395. A variety of liberation theologies has been flourishing outside the Latin American situation. Cf. e.g., James H. Cone, A Black Theology o! Liberation (Philadlephia: J. B. Lippincott, 1970); R. Lauren.tin, Libera-tion, Development and Sa/v~ttion (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1972); J. B. Metz, Theology o] the World" (New York: Seabury Press, 1973); R. Reuther, Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1972);~F. Herzog, Liberation Theology (New ¯ York: Seabury Press, 1972). 522 Ministry, Grace and Humanization / 5~23 '~ I am convinced first of all that there is a deep theological meaning to pastoral ministry. One of the most important contributions of Vatican II's Constitution on the Church is' the notion of Church as mystery. According to Vatican II, the. Church is first and foremost a mystery, a "kind of. sign of intimate union with God," and of the unity of all mankind." The Church is ,an outward sign and instrument, at once concealing and dis-closing the invisible action of God in the world. But if the Church is a mystery, then all its activity in the world is mysterious too, sharing in the very mystery of God. And if0'the Church is not solely the hierarchy or a voice speaking infallibly, or some vague entity.floating serenely above the chaos of this world, but is rather a community of persons, then our ac-tivities, too, share in the mysterious character of the,Church's action. As individual Christians, and as persons engaged in a work more or less clearly identified in some way as the Church's, there is no esCaping the fact ,that our activities will not be merely social or economic or educational or political .or psychological, but will bear a dimension that is Christian, and therefore mysterious. In the second place i believe'it is highly important for us to understand theologically this Christian dimension of our work, to grasp something in our own lives of this mysterious sign simultaneously revealing and con-cealing the. mystery of God. It is crucialfor us to understand what w~ are doing, for it is difficult to do a task well or enthusiastically without under-standing its purpose and meaning. Crucial, I say, because the meaning of Christian ministry cannot be exhausted by political~ sociological, economic, educational, or psychological interpretations. As sharers of the Chris'tian vision we affirm, in fact, that all such human acti'~ities, abstracted from their Christian dimension, would be ultimately meaningless. Thirdly, as students of theology, or :at least as persons with something of a professional interest in the Work of the Church, we must learn to think in theological terms about our ministry in the world. One of the emphases of liberation theology is that if theology has any meaning at all, it .must be applicable to real-life~ situations. Theoria .and praxis must be wed. I think that here our Christian education is :often lacking. We go through hours of religious instruction, even theology, without a hint that sometiow this must have practical implications. Few attempts are made to show the student how to relate what he has learned in °the classroom with what he is meeting in the s~reets. When Thomas Aquinas faced the prob-lem, at the very beginning of his Summa~ whether theology is a practical or a speculative science; he answered that it is both. From our~practice think we would have to deduce that we consider it to be purely speculative. The popular image of the priest closing his theology books on ordination, never to reopen ttirm again, is, unfortunately, close to the truth. Now I do not in the least want to downgrade theoretical or specuiative theology. I do not want it thrown out in favor of pastoral or even biblical Review ]or Religious, Volume 35; 1976/4 theology, I. feel it should.be even more emphasized, in the sense thaf each one should be trained, not merely to accept passively the theology he. or she is taught, .but rather to be able to reflect actively, creatively, theologi-cally, not only about classroom matter, but about the whole spectrura o1~ Christian :life in the world. If that is not done the pastoral gimmicks taught today will be obsolete in ten years, Critical theological reflection, by rel-ativi

Issue 30.6 of the Review for Religious, 1971. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, 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 6:31o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pe.nnsylvania 191o6. + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright ~) 1971 by REVIEW 'VOg RELIGIOUS. Published for Review for Religious at Nit. Ro\'al & Guilford Ave., Baltimore, .Xld. Printed in U.S.A. Set'ond class postage paid at Baltimore, .Maryland and ,at addithmal mailing offices. Single copies: $1.25. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year, $11.00 for two years: other countries: $7.00 a year, $13.00 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 POg RELIOIOGS 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 should be sent to REviEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P. O. Box l 110; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editorial correspondence, and books for re-view should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 619 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louts, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. NOVEMBER 1971 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 6 JOSEPH F. GALLEN,.S.J. Decree on Confessions of Religious. In a decree dated December 8, 1970, effective immedi-ately, and confirmed by the Pope on November 20, 1970, the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Instb tutes made the following.changes in the canon law on the sacrament of penance for religious, especially religious women, and on exclusion from a religious institute of one in temporary vows because of ill health. These provisions will remain in force until the new Code of Canon Law is effective. Number 4, e), of the Decree states that the pre-scriptions of the present canon law that are contrary to the new provisions, incompatible with them, or which because of them no longer apply, are suspended. Any provision of the Decree that~ affects novices will apply to those in a temporary commitment other than temporary vows. The numbering of the Decree has been retained in the following explanation. 1-2. The Decree exhorts religious to value highly the sacrament of penance as a means of strengthening the fundamental gift of metanoia or conversion to the king-dom of Christ, and to esteem in the same way the fre-quent use of this sacrament, which debpens ~true knowl-edge of self and humility, provides spiritual direction, and increases grace. These and other wonderful effects, according to n. 2, contribute not only to daily growth in virtue but are highly beneficial also to the common good. 3. All religious, men and women, clerical and lay, ex-empt and nonexempt, should strive to receive the sacra-ment of penance frequently, that is, twice a month. Supe-riors are to encourage this frequency and make it possible [or the members to go to confession at least every two weeks and even oftener, if they wish to do so. In the past, canon law did not oblige religious to go to confession at least once a week. The canonical obligation extended onl~ to superiors, who had to make it possible for their subjects to confess at least once a week. How-÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph F. Gallen, s.J., writes from St. Joseph's Church at 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Penn-sylvania 19106. VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 944 ever, the Code of Canon Law presupposed that an obliga-tion of weekly confession, existdd at least from custom, and very universally the constitutions obliged religious to confess at/east once a week. 4, a). "All women religious and novices, in Order that they may have proper liberty, may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. For this no special jurisdiction or designation is henceforth required." The first sentence of this number" gives all women reli-gious and novices, in orders, congregations, or societies of common life, the right always to go to confession validly and licitly to any priest of their choice, whether he is diocesan or religious, who is approved for confessions in the locality of the partic.ular confession. Furthermore, as this number of the Decree also states, the confessor does not have to be designated or appointed, for religious women.' Even in the past there were no canonical norms on the confessions of men or women postulants, who were regulated canonically by the same laws on confession as secular men and women. Religious women and novices are therefore .no longer obliged to go to ordinary or ex-traordinary confessors, eveh when such confessors exist for their houses. The special confessor of a particular reli-gious woman of canon 520, par. 2, no longer exists be-cause a religious woman may go, even habitually or al-ways, to any confessor of her choice. The same reason excludes the supplementary confessors (c. 521, par. 2), the occasional confessor (c. 522), and the confessor of seri-ously sick religious women (c. 523). Number 8, e), of the recent norms on the papal enclosure of nuns permits the following: "A priest [even if he possesses no jurisdiction for confessions] may likewise be admitted to assist those religious suffering from a chronic or greave illness." Mere spiritual direction, unlike absolution, does not require jurisdiction for confessions. Because of the sus.pended canons listed above in this paragraph, canon 2414, the last canon in the Code, is also suspended. This canon reads: If a superioress acts against the prescriptions of canons 521, par. 3, 522, and 523, she shall be admonished by, the local or-dinary; if again delinquent, she shall be punished by removal from office, and the Sacred Congregation of Religious is to be immediately informed of the matter. By reason of the second sentence of this number, spe-cial jurisdiction is no longer required for the valid or licit confessions of professed women religious or novices, whether in orders or congregations, nor for those in the analogons states of societies of women living in common without public vows (c; 675). All of these are now ab-solved in virtue of the same jurisdiction as secular women. Priests ordinarily possess jurisdiction for the con-fessions of the faithful ol~ both sex~esf@hey may therefore, in the locality for which they posses such jurisdiction, valid!y absolve the religious women listed" above any-wherd, in the confessional or outside of it. They may licitly do the latter in a case of sickness or for any other reason of like import (c. 910, par. 1). In the pa.st, to absolve validly and licitly the~ same religious women listed above, special jurisdiction was nec-essary. The jurisdiction was special becfiuse it "~as not contained in the jurisdiction granted for the faithful of both sexes~or for women. It had t3 be given expressly for religious women (c. 876, par. 1). The pres.ent suspension of the necessity of special jurisdiction also implies the suspension of the necessity of the designation of a special spiritual director (c. 520, par. 2) by the local ordinary or the regular superior. The i'eason for the necessity of this designation was that special jurisdiction for confession was granted to such a spiritual director. Lay religious institutes o[ men. According to n. 5 of the Decree, the applicable norms of n. 4 on women appertain~ also to lay institutes of men. Therefore, all religious and novices of such institutes may go to confession to any confessor, as explained above for women (n. 4, a). Be-cause of this right of choice, the special ordinary ~onfes-sor of professed °(c. 528), for whom the permission of the religious superior was° required, no longer exists," as is true also of the supplementary confessors of novices in the same institutes (c. 566, par. 2, n. 3),'and likewise of the occasional confessor of both professed and novices (c. 519). All of canon 566, par. 2, on confessors of novices in lay and clerical institutes of men is also suspended. Clerical institutes o[ men. Nothing is said directly in the Decree on the confessions of members of clerical or-ders' or congregations except that they too Should go to confession twice a month (n. 3). However, the applicable provisions on the confessions of women religious and nomces must also apply to clerical institutes. Otherwise, their members would be in an inferior condition to that of religious women and of the members of lay institutes of men, which has not been their status thus far in the laws of the Church. It is also the sufficiently evident intention of the Sacred Congregation to simplify the law on confes-sion [or religious and to grant greater liberty, and these are also desirable in the laws affecting clerical institutes. Therefore, all religious and novices in clerical institutes may make their confession to any confessor, as explained above [or women (n. 4, a). It would be incredible that clerical religious alone would be excluded from the pre-ceding concession. As above for lay institutes of men, the occasional confessor of both professe.d and novices (c. 519) ÷ ÷ ÷ Conlesslons VOLUME 30, 19TI 945 ~. l~. Gallen, $.~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 946 no longer exists nor the supplementary confessors for novices of canon 566, par. 2, n.3. 4, b). An ordinary confessor must be named for monas-teries of contemplative nuns, for houses of formation of women, and for large houses of women. An extraordinary confessor is to be named at least for the first two types of the preceding houses. The women religious and novices are not obliged to present themselves to either such ordi-nary or extraordinary confessors. The provision for the monasteries of contemplative nuns should in practice be extended to nuns who are doing immediate apostolic work, for example, conducting schools within their monasteries, and also to the houses or monasteries of contemplative congregations of sisters, for example, the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood, who have monasteries in the archdiocese of Portland, Oregon and in the dioceses of ~Brooklyn, Lafayette, Indi-ana, Manchester, Ogdensbu?g, Portland, Maine, and To-ledo Houses of formation of women include novitiates and juniorates, although the small number of novices and juniors and other circumstances can in some cases render the appointment of ordinary and extraordinary confessors impractical. There is no canonical definition of a large religious house. The determination of such houses should be made hy the local ordinary after a considera-tion of all the circumstances and even by consultation of its members. It could happen that the members of a very large house in a city can and prefer to go to any confes-sor. The presence or absence of members who cannot go outside the house for confession is obviously an impor-tant factor. Nor is consideration for the confessor to be forgotten, for example, an ordinary confessor who would come every two weeks and find nothing to do. In some cases a priest such as the one Or" ones who celebrate daily Mass in a larger house may be able to handle readily the few confessions that will occur. The fact that no religious woman or novice is obliged to present herself to any of these ordinay or extraordinary confessors follows from the general principle of the decree in n. 4, a), that all women religious and novices may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. This number of the Decree commands merely [he appointment of an extraordinary confessor, that is, the confessor who frequently, not neces-sarily at least for times during the year, is accessible that the members of the community may have the opportunity of confessing to another than the ordinary confessor. This was the definition of the same wording in canon 528 on the extraordinary confessor for professed religious in lay institutes of men. The Code explicity commanded the extraordinary confessor of professed religious women and novices (c. 521, par. 1)and of novices in institutes qf men' (c. 566, par. 2, n. 4) to be available atleast four times a year, but this provision is suspended by the Decree, In a liouse of ~formati0n, ord_i.nary .and extraordipar.y_, confeS, sors are to be app0intedl only for those in formation unless, with regard to an ordinary confessor, tbe other members of the house are sufficient to constitute a large house. This doctrine is evident from the fact that ordi-nary and ~xtraor,dinary confessors would not be ap-pointed [or these other members if they were in another house. Therefore, for example, in a novitiate house these confessors are appointed for the novices, not [or the mem-bers of the generalate or provincialate staff residing in tbe same house of formation. 4, c). "For other co.mmunities [in additition to the monasterieg of nuns, houses of formation, and large houses of n. 4, b) immediately above] an ordinary confes-sor may be named at the request of the community itself or after consultation with its members if, in the judgment of tlie ordinary, special circumstances justify such an ap-pointment." The "special circumstances" will be at least very com-monly those that prevent the religious women of a house fi'om going to confession twice a month unless an ordi-nary confessor is appointed. This can arise from the pres-ence in the house of religious who cannot go out for confession, from the location of the house that makes access to other confessors difficult, or that allows such access to only one confessor, for example, the sole priest in the one parish in a small town, and so forth. Lay and clerical institutes oJ men. With the exception of that on monasteries of nuns, the provisions of n. 4, b) and c) immediately above apply also to lay institutes of men by reason of n. 5, and to clerical institutes in virtue Of the arguments given under n. 4, a). It would again be incredible that ordinary contessors would continue to have to be appointed for all houses of clerical institutes (c. 518, par. 1) but only for the restricted number of houses of religious women and lay institutes of men ac-cording to n. 4, b) of the present Decree. Houses of for-mation in Clerical institutes include also houses of study (C. 587) and houses for the apostolic year and tertianship (see Sedes Sapientiae, nn. 48, 51). The judgment on the existence of a large house and on the special circumstan-ces tbat justify the appointment of ordinary confessors in houses that are not houses of formation or large apper-tains in clerical orders and congregations to the religious superior who has the right of appointing ordinary confes-sors according to the constitutions 0f the particular insti-tute. 4, d). "The local ordinary should choose confessors 4. 4. 4. ~. F. Gallen, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 948 ~arefully. They should be priests of sufficient maturity and possess the other necessary qualities. The ordinary may determine the number, age and term of office of the confessors and may name them or renew their appoint-ment after consultation with the community concerned." This paragraph of the decree commands the local ordi-nary to choose the ordinary and ektraordinary confessors of women religious and novices of the tw9 preceding sections with care. The suitability of priests for these two duties appertains to the judgment of the local ordinary. For example, it is no longer required that these confessors be 'forty years of age (c. 524, par. 1). The local ordinary also determines the number of such confessors, and it is no longer demanded that per se only one ordinary and extraordinary confessor be appointed for each house (cc. 520, par. 1; 521, par. 1). The local ordinary may but is not obliged to determine the duration of the term of office of these confessors, for example, two year.s, and may reappoint them immediately and indefinitely after con-sultation with the community concerned. He may also, with the same consulation, immediately appoint an ordi-nary coiafessor as extraordinary of the same commun.ity (see c. 524, par. 2). Clerical and lay institutes o[ men. The ordinary and extraordinary confessors in these institutes from the na-ture of the matter are to be priests suitable for the office. The provisions, however, of n. 4~, d) of the Decree imme-diately above apply only to institutes of women both from their wording, which is based on the canons on confessors of religious women, and from the fact that the present canon law prescribes no qualities for the ordinary and extraordinary confessors in institutes of men, whether clerical or lay. It is evidently permitted to follow such a provision as the previous consultation of the com-munity concerned. The following are the canons specifically on confessors of religious that remain in force: Can. 518, par. 1. In . every clerical Institute there shall be deputed. [ordinary] confessors with power, if it be ques~ tion of an exempt Institute, to absolve also from the cases re-served in the Institute. Par. 2. Religious Superiors, having faculties to hear confes' sions, can, in conformity with the law, hear the confessions of their subjects who spontaneously and freely approach them for that purpose, but they may not without grave reason hear them habitually. Par. 3. Superiors must take care not to induce, personally, or through others, by force, by fear, or by importunate persua-sion, or by any other means, any of their subjects to confess his sins to them. Can. 524, par. 3. The confessors, whether ordinary or extra-ordinary, of religious women are not, in any manner, to inter- fere either in the internal or external government of the com-munity. Can. 525. For all houses of religious women immediately subject to the Apostolic See or to the local Ordinary, the latter selects both ordinary an.d extraordinary ,confessor;. ~o~" those subject to a Regular Superior, this Superior presents the con-fessors to the'Ordinary who will grant them the approval to hear the confessions of'the nuns; the Ordinary also shall supply, if necessary, for the negligence of the Regular Superior, Can. 527. According to the terms of canon 880, the local Ordinary can, for a serious~ cause, remove both the ordinary and extraordinary confessor of religious women, even when the monastery is subject to Regulars and the confessor himself a Regular, nor is the Ordinary bound to make known the reason for the removal to anyone except to the Holy See, if it should require the reason from him; he must, however, if the nuns are subject to Regulars, inform the Regular Superior of the removal. Can. 875, par. 2. In an exempt lay Institute, the Superior proposes the confessor, who, however, must receive jurisdiction from the Ordinary of the place in which the religious house is situated. The preceding are taken from the authorized but unof-ficial translation, Canonical Legislation concerning Reli-gious. Canon 891, which also remains in force, is ~not contained in this translation. It reads as follows: Can. 891. The master of novices and his socius, the superior of a seminary or of a college may not hear the sacramental con-fessions of his students residing in the same house with him, unless the students spontaneously request this in particular cases for a grave and urgent reason. The canons therefore specifically on confessors of reli-gious that remain are part of canon 518, par. 1, and all the rest of this canon; all of canons 524, par. 3, 525, 527, 875, par. 2, and 891. "II The final clause of canon 637 is to be understood in the sense that a religious in temporary vows who, because of physical or mental illness even if contracted after pro-fession, is judged by the competent superior with the consent of his council, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, to be incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute, may be refused admission to renewal of vows or to final profession. The decision in such cases is to be taken with charity and equ!ty." According to canon 637 a professed of temporary vows could be excluded from the renewal of temporary vows or from making perpetual profession because of ill health ofily if it was proved with certainty that the ili health had been contracted and fraudulently concealed or dissi-mulated before the first profession of temporary vows. The same principle is true of the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows (c. 647, par. 2, n. 2). These canons are not completely logical. The time of temporary vows is Confessions 949 4. 4. 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 950 one of probation; the canons permit exclusion or dis-missal of such professed for other inculpable causes; and canon 637 otherwise requires only .just and reasona-ble causes for exclusion and canon 647, par. 2, n. 2, only serious reasons for dismissai. These canons also caused serious and, without recourse to the Holy See, even insol-uble problems. This was verified especially with regard to psychological disorders when the subject would not vol-untarily leave the institute. His retention could cause great difficulty to the institute, even intensify his own condition, and cases occurred in which superiors could not in conscience admit such subjects to further profes-sions, particularly to perpetual profession~ It is evident that the decision in these cases of physical or psychologi-cal health is to be made with proper regard and considera-tion for the subject, and, as the Decree states, with char-ity and equity (see REVIEW I~OF RELIGIOUS, 16 [1957], 218-9, 271; 25 [1966], 1104-5). In virtue of the present legislation in II, an exclusion from further temporary or perpetual profession because of physical or psychological illness, even if contracted after the first temporary profession, may be made by the competent superior with the consent of his or her council if they judge, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, that the subject is incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute. The subject should ordinarily at least be first encouraged to leave voluntarily and this as soon as such a condition is sufficiently ascertained. The new legislation is concerned only with an exclu-sion from further profession; it does not extend to the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows in the same case. This can cause a serious difficulty if the case comes to a head when a considerable part of a temporary profes-sion is unexpired, for example, in the early part of the second year of a three-year profession, and the subject will not leave voluntarily. This case, when it occurs, may be proposed to the Sacred Congregation for a solution. Practical summary o[" the Decree. The~ norm'~f fre-quency of confession is every two weeks. All religious may always confess to any confessor in the locality. Spe-cial jurisdiction is not required for religious women. The only confessors proper to religious are ordinary confessors in monasteries Of nuns and in the following houses of men and women: houses of f6rmation, large houses, and other houses in special circumstances, and extraordinary confessors in the same monasteries and houses of forma-tion. Such confessors of women do not have to be forty years of age. A professed of temporary vows may be ex-cluded from further professions because of physical or psychological illness. CHRISTOPHER KIESLING, O.P. Ministry in the Schools of the Church Religious should get out of Catholic schools. Such schools should not exist.The Church should not be in the business of education, but should devote its resources to the social problems of our day. Moreover, Church schools serve the affluent middle and upper classes more than the oppressed minorities. Religious, ther~efore, should go into other ministries in which they can serve the world, especially the underprivileged. Undoubtedly it is good that religious are venturing into nev~ ministries besides ~eaching or administration in schools of the Church. It is good for sisters and brothers because some have temperaments, inclinations, interests, and talents which equip them much better for other min-istries titan that of the church school. It is good for the Chnrch and the world because both have grave needs which can be met only by the service of highly motivated and generous people such as religious. But while some religious should be encouraged to enter into new forms of apostolate, it would be most unfortu-nate if others were not encouraged to enter Or Continue in the apostolate of the schools of the Church. This apos-tolate is extremely important and even assumes, a ni~wness today by virtue of the many changes taking place in both the Church and the w6rld. As is well known, these schools are threatened with extinction today. The demise of the schools of the Church, however, is a most grievous set-back to the emergence of mature Christian laymen in the life and apostolate of the Church and hence in the Church's mission to the world, especially to the world's social problems. Vatican II expres'~d the int.egral mission of the Church with special clarity. It was compelled to do tiffs in its efforts to describe p, ositively the place, digni_ty, and role of the laity in the Church. The Decree on the Apostolate o] the Laity, for instance, says: 4- 4- Christopher Kies-ling, O.P., is a fac-ulty member of Aquinas Institute School of Theology in Dubuque, Iowa 52001. VOLUME 30, 1971 951 + C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW I:OR REI.IGIOUS 952 Christ's redemptive work, while of itself directed toward the salvation of men, involves also the renewal of the whole tem-poral order. Hence the. mission of the Church is not on!y to bring to men tlie message and grace of Christ, but also to pene-trate and perfect the temporal sphere with the spirit of the Gospel (n, 5). Tlie missiofi of the Church, in other words, is not to rescue men from this world for salvation in another world, but to unite men to God in this world and through them permeate human activity, culture, and his-tory with fl~e spirit of Christ, thus cooperating with God in bringing all creation to its divinely intended goal: eternal life and resurrection of the body for men in a new heaven and a new earth. Every member of the Church participates in her mis-sion: For this the ChurCh was founded: that., she might bring all men to share in Christ,s saving redemption; and that through them the whole world might in actual fact be brought into relationship with him. All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, and the Church carries it on in various ways through all her members. For by its very nature the Christian vocation is also a vocation to the apostolate (ibid., n. 2). The Church is the whole body of baptized believers, sent by Christ into the world to bring men his truth and grace and to work for the divinely willed perfection of creation. In order to accomplish this mission, baptized believers nfinister to one a~aother, building up the whole Body of Christ in truth and grace for service to the world for the glory~of tlte Father. Some ministries are purely charismatic, the fruit of the Spirit's quickening believers to particular services to fellow members of Christ's Body for their joint mission to the world. Some ministries are also institutional, that is, in addition to the call of the Spirit, they have a more or less per.manent place and a more or less defined [unction in the structure of the Chnrch as ordained by God in Christ or by the Christian community in the course of history; consequently, these ministries appear in the canon law of the Church. But whether institutional or not, all these ministries are in-cludetl in the Spirit-inspired serf-help which the members of Christ's Body give to one another for the vigorous life of His Body and for its continuing mission and ministry to the world. What is required of the members of Christ's Body if they are to fulfill their apostolic vocation? They need articulate faith, a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, and zeal coupled with skill for building a better world of truth, justice, love, and freedom for every man, woman, and child. By "articulate faith" is meant a faith with some under- standing of the assertions.of faith, .including recognition of the difficulties which these assertions present to human intelligence today, their historical conditioning, and their need for continual reinterpretation and restatement if they are going to remain vali'd'expression~ of'~tuthentic faith in the midst of constantly changing human con-sciousness of reality. More importantly, articulate faith is aware of itself as.an adventure into ineffable mystery and personal communion with the living God, for which faith's assertions are a means not an end: a gateway, not the end of the road. Articulate faith also includes the willingness, ability, and c6nfidence to talk about what one believes. Because faith is a great adventure toward the fulfillment of men's deepest longing, one is willing, even eager, to discuss matters of faith; and one does not shy away from such discussion for fear of being wrong, because one is aware that faith is response to a loving Person who is more interested in drawing men to per-sonal communion with Him than He is in theological niceties. Vatican II expects the members of the Church to have such articulate faith, in accord with their capacity for it. According to the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, "the apostolate of the Church and of all her members is designed primarily to manifest Christ's message by words and deeds and to communicate his grace to the world" (ibid., n. 6). Noteworth~ in this statement is that all mem-bers of the Church are to manifest Christ's message by words, as well as deeds, and to communicate His grace. The ministry of teaching and sanctifying is not restricted to the clergy's ministry of the word and the sacraments. The decree proceeds to note that one of the ways in which the laity exercise their apostolate of "making the Gospel known and men holy" (ibid.) is through the testi-mony of a good life. But it goes on to say that "an aposto-late of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one's way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believ-ers with a view to leading them to faith, or to believers with a view to instructing and strengthening them, and motivating them toward a more fervent life" (ibid.). ¯ In other words, the laity, as well as the clergy and religious, are responsible for building up the Body of Christ in truth and love and [or implementing its teach-ing and sanctifying mission. To fulfill this responsibility, laity, as well as clergy and religious, need articulate faith. A second need which each member of Christ's Body has is for a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures: The Lord wishes to spread his kingdom . In this kingdom, creation itself will be delivered out of its slavery to corruption 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" 4" C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 954 and into the freedom of the sons of God (cf. Rom. 8:21) . The faithful, therefore, must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation~ and how to relate it to the praise of God. They must assist one another to live holier lives even in their daily occupations. In this way the world is permeated by the spirit of Christ and more effectively achieves its purpose in justice, charity, and peace (Constitution on the Church, n. 36). In the light of revelation,, baptized believers must see and appreciate creatures in their original goodness and in their relationship to the Incarnation and the eschaton; They should perceive and treasure creatures as the poet does, with awe and reverence for the uniqueness and beauty of each. They should not view them simply with the detached, calculating eye of the technician. Yet tech-nology too is a creature of God, so that Christians should understand and evaluate rightly its place and products in the scheme of things. Especially must the Christian be aware and appreciative of man and the mysteries of his being: the human body, feeling and emotion, love and sex, work and play, community and celebration, art and science, the aspirations of the human spirit~and the long-ings of the human heart--all bathed in the light of God's gracious love. Thirdly, the members of Christ's Body need zeal cou-pled with skill for building a better world: By their competence in secular fields and by personal activity, elevated fr6m" within by the grace o[ Christ, let them labor vigorously so that by human labor, technical skill, and civic culture created goods may be perfected for the benefit of every last man. Let them work to see that created goods are more fittingly distributed among men and., in their own way lead to general progress in human and Christian liberty (ibid.). Baptized believers should also "by their combined efforts remedy any institutions and conditions of the world which are customarily inducements to sin, so that all such things may be conformed to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it" (ibid.). They need to "imbue culture and human activity with moral values" (ibid.). The question now arises: By what means are the mem-bers of Christ's Body going to develop articulate faith, appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, arid zeal with skill for building a better world? Can weekly liturgies of the word (including homily) and the Eucha-rist accomplish this end? Even supposing the Scriptures are well read, the homilies well prepared and delivered, and the celebration well carried through, weekly liturgies alone hardly seem capable of generating the qualities which Christ's members ought to have to fulfill their apostolic vocation. CCD classes are not going to yield the needed qualities. They are limited in time. They p~vide little sustained interaction between mature Christians and growing ones over a wide spectrum of life. Their very organization fosters the idea of faith as a gegment of life, [,or Which one sets aside a piece of time each week. Finally, they are impeded in effectiveness by the forced and often chaotic conditions under wliich .they operate. Newman Centers too are very limited in what they can do to develop the necessary qualities in the members of Christ's Body beyond a small circle. Courses in "religiqus studies" are far from adequate means. They are by definition uncommitted, objective examination of religion and religions. They are highly intellectual, speculative, whatever existential and subjec-tive use an individual student may make of them. They are also limited in the amount of time given to them and, being a self-cOntained part of a curriculum, they convey the impression that religion also is a self-con-tained part of life, rather than~a dimension of all life. Adult education does not appear to be the solution. The competition for adults' time and attention is ex-tremely intense. Moreover, dae qualities required of a mature Christian should be well developed before he reaches the age at which l~e would enroll in adult educa-tion courses that are more than remedial. The answer is not Catholic newapapers, magazines, and books. People who love and profit from reading are relatively few in our activist culture, and are becoming even fewer in this post-linear age of happenings and tele-vision in the global village. The Church's recourse to happenings and television will not be much more fruitful than literature for achieving the necessary goal. Once people are gathered, happenifigs and television can be extremely effective instructors, but the problem is pre-cisely gathering the people. Unless people are already rather strongly motivated religiously, they are not going to prefer religious happenings and television programs to their secular coi~nterparts. As for parents as the source of the needed Christian maturity, parents are limited in what they Can do for their children. They cannot ,.lead their children to an articulate faith much beyond their own. They will find themselves limited especially when they come to helping their children develop that keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creation which Vatican iI urges for all members of Christ's .Body. Parents may be able to foster such apl~reciation for the simpler things of life, but they may be at a loss in matters of biology, the physical universe, history, poetry, drama, music. Parents' social consciousness and involvement may or may not be very highly developed, and will almost always be limited in 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME .'30, "1971 955 + 4. 4. C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 956 scope because of family responsibilities and finite human energies. Social services of the Church are not ordered, by defini-tion, to the development of mature Christians, but to relieving the pressing needs which men and women have in their personal and social lives, in order that their lives may meet basic standards of health, decency, dignity, and happiness. It is difficult to imagine any project of the Church which offers the opportunities that schools do for p.ro-viding the members of Christ's Body with the develop-ment of faith, .appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal and know-how which they need and to which they have a right. Several points are to be noted about this affirma-tion. First, it does not mean that schools alone do the whole job. There is still need for good liturgies, adult educa-tion, and all the rest. Secondly, the schools referred to are not only elementary schools. High schools and colleges are more important. Thirdly, the assertion speaks of schools for providing the needed qualities of articulate faith, appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal with skill. It does not speak simply of religion courses in schools operated by the Church, though such courses have their rightful place. It is not a matter of the Church going into the education business, so that it can, with ease, slip religion courses into the curriculum. It is, rather, a matter of providing a Christian milieu in which learning to live a full life can Occtlr. Finally, the argument is not based on the actual con-duct or achievements of the Church's schools in the past. Whatever judgment is rendered on the past, the situation has changed so much since Vatican II that the schools of the Church today constitute an entirely new set of oppor-tunities. In recent years new methods of teaching have evolved which make learning boi:h more exciting for students and more in contact with life in society. Lay teachers have become a familiar part of the faculties of the Church's schools. Priests' and religious' styles of life have changed, bringing them into closer contact with ordinary life and with the laity, particularly their students. The ghetto mentality has largely disappeared, so that Church schools are less prone to be instruments of defense and more liable to be openings to the world. The ecumenical spirit enables Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians, as well as Jews and men of other beliefs, to have some place in the education that goes on in the schools of the Church. Administrators, faculties, and students are more aware of the school's obligations to the civic community in which it exists, All these new [actors mean :that the value of the Church's schools today cannot be judged on the basis of their past conduct and achievements. The opportunities which the schools of the: Church offer do not consist only or even mainly in the possibili-ties for religion courses or religious pract~ices. They con-sist in the possibilities for the young to develop articulate faith, a keen appreciation of creatures, and zeal with com-petence for building a better world by close association in learning and doing with mature Christians who them-selves have such faith, appreciation, and zeal. There is a difference, I would maintain, between what a youth derives from a course in English literature taught with competence and enthusiasm by a Christian whose faith permeates his life, and what he derives from such a course taught by someone else. A course in English litera-ture well taught by a Christian tells a young person that Christianity embraces all of life, that it is willing and able to learn from human experience as well as from revela-tion, that it recognizes the Spirit of God working in the world and speaking to men through human events, per-sonal and social. Besides this non-verbal communication, there can be explicit comparisons between the views of life in English literature and the view of the gospel. These comparisons are opportunities to develop articu-late faith without indoctrination. But even without any explicit mention of Christian faith, this course in English literature is a Christian ministry. As Vaticap II affirmed, Christians should have a deep sense of the meaning and value of all creation. The Church, therefore, has a duty to provide for its members to learn about creation through the arts and sciences illumined by the gospel. It is a precious gift which a Christian teacher gives to a student in patiently helping him to appreciate-a poem, even though faith is not explicitly referred to. If this Christian teacher of English literature is also aware of the world's and ldcal community's problems; if he is involved outside the school in trying to build a better world, if he lets this be known to his students and even involves his students in his social concern outside the classroom, his students will be made aware of another dimension of the Christian vocation and will even gain some knowledge of what they can do concretely to build a better world. If the administrators and teachers in a school of the Church are articulate in their faith, if they treasure God's creatures, if they are socially concerned and involved, if they constitute the nucleus of a genuine, open Christian community into which they assimilate their students, that school offers unparalleled opportu.nities for developing in the members of Chris,t's Body the qualities nece~ssary for + ÷ + Schools VOLUME 30, ].971 957 + 4. + C. Kiesling, O,P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 958 their sharing the mission of the Church to mankind and the world. But, it may be objected, should not such a Christian teacher of English literature or physics or sociology or mathematics be in apublic school? Could he not perform a most valuable Christian ministry there Yes, he could; and such Christian teachers--lay, religious, cleric-- should be in public schools. They would be fulfilling the Church's apostolic mission to the world in a most excel-lent way. But could his pupils derive as much benefit from him in the public school as they could in a school of the Church---or of the Churches, as some would propose in this ecumenical age? In a public school, his pupils could only rarely, and then with the greatest circumspection, explicitly view the subject with the teacher in the light of the gospel. Never could they celebrate their Christian awareness of the subject in worship, liturgical or other, unless they met outside the school and school time. This condition raises the complex problem of finding a con-venient opportunity for such celebration; and it intro-duces a division into the public school community, which could Iead to all sorts of unpleasant complications: More-over, students in a public school would not experience their learning within a known Christian milieu and hence would not see it as part of Christian life and Chris-tian life as embracing it. But is this not the age of anonymous Christianity? Is it necessary for students to examine explicitly a subject in the light of the gospel, to celebrate it in worship, and to see it as part of Christian life and Christian life as em-bracing it? Recourse to the concept of anonymous Christianity is a way Christians have adopted to take the sting out of the widespread de-christianization and secularization that has occurred in modern times. But anonymous Christianity, though a good thing in comparison to being altogether outside the influence of God's grace,'is a humanly imper-fect thing. To be human is to have self-awareness. Man is not only conscious as animals are, but reflectively con-scious; he is aware of himself as animals are not. If man's self is actually graced by God, then his self-awareness should include that fact, otherwise he is not fully self-aware, not fulIy human. Hence it is important, not only for Christian education but for the human education of the Christian, that he see what he learns as part of Chris-tian life and Christian life as embracing it. When one reads carefi~lly the documents of Vatican II in regard to its ideal of what Christian laymen should be in the life and mission of the Church, one cannot help asking how they are ever going to achieve that ideal, and how clergy and religious are going to help them in fulfill- ment of their priestly and religious responsibilities to serve their fellow members in the building up of Christ's Body. What i~ called for is not comprehended under the labels of religious instruction or religious practices. Nor is it adequately described as handing on, preserving, or nourishing Christian faith, What is required is education in the fullest sense of the word, education of the whole man for the whole of life, bnt education with a'Christian quality to it. Of all the Church's projects, its schools offer the most opportunities for such education. With such education, Catholic laymen would exercise their role in the mission of the Church, not by contributing money to a Human Development Fund, of which the hierarchy is the banker, but by becoming involved in human development in the neighborhood, city, state, nation, and the world. This latter is the more authentic fulfillment of the Christian apostolate by which the members of Christ's Body partici-pate in its mission to the world. The schools of the Church will very likely be fewer in number in the future. But they remain unique opportun-ities for building up the Body of Christ for its mission. Abandonment of the struggle to maintain them and, still more important, to exploit their new possibilities under the conditions, which have arisen since Vatican II will grievously set back the emergence of the layman and the mission of the Church to the world. It will promote the tendency of the Church to be identified with the clergy and religious rather than the whole People of God, and to become a club for fellowship in subjective re_ligious experience rather than the leaven in the dough ~of his-tory. Religious' involvement in the schools of the Church remains both~an important and challenging ministry. Schools VOLUME $0, '].97~ 959 SISTER MARY JEANNE SALOIS, R.S.M. Opinions of the Laity on Changes in Religious Life Sister Jeanne is director of research services at the Sis-ters of Mercy Gen-eralate at 10000 Kentsdale Drive, Box 34446; Be-thesda, Maryland 20034. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 960 Literature concerning recent developments in the re-ligious life provide little information on the effects of these developments on the laity. Since the prima.ry pur-pose of adaptation and renewal as stated in the docu-ments of Vatican II is to become more effective in promoting the kingdom of God on earth---"That this kind of life and its contemporary role may achieve greater good for the Church, this sacred Synod issues the following decrees" 1--it should be helpful to know how a section of this kingdom feels about the adaptation they are observing. Such knowledge should contribute sub-stantially to an honest evaluation of the changes being made. This article summarizes the thinking of lay people on adaptation in religious life in seven parishes distributed geographically from the New England coast to mid-western United States. A random sampling of 60 families from each of the parishes listed in Table 1 participated in this study. Treatment o[ the Data: The investigator sent an in-strument entitled "Opinionnaire to Obtain the Lay-man's Assessment of Religious Women in the Church Today" to 420 randomly selected persons. Of these, 220 responded, constituting 53.4 percent returns. Distribu-tion of respondents is shown in Table 2. Eighty-three men and 137 women responded to this opinionnaire. Of these only One was black, the others being white. Age of respondents varied as indicated be-low: 1Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents o[ Vatican II, "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life," n. 1. Age of Re~#ondent Number in Category Percent 20-29 16 7 30-39 59 27 40-49 77 35 50-59 42 19 60-69 19 9 70- 7 3 Approximately half of the respondeqts attended a Catholic grade and high school and most of them at-tended college. Most of the respondents indicated they were professional or sell-employed with very few saying they were semi or unskilled workers. TABLE :1 Parishes Participating in Study to Obtain Opinions of Laity on Changes being' Made in Religious Congregations Parish* City and State Our Lady of the Assumption St. Joseph Immaculate Heart of Mary Sacred Heart Immaculate Conception St. James Gate of Heaven Atlanta, Georgia Denver, Colorado Detroit, Michigan Hattiesburg, Mississippi Memphis, Tennessee New Bedford, Massachusetts Dallas, Pennsylvania * Parishes were selected at random from the total list of parishes being served I~y a religious congregation of women. TABLE 2 Distribution of Laymen Who Responded to Opinionnaire New Denver, Bedford, Hatties- Dallas, Colorado burg, Atlanta, Detroit, Memphig, Penn~yl, chusettsMassa" Mississippi Georgia Michigan Tennessee vama No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % ~o. % No.! % 17 58.3 26 43.3 41 68.3 28 46.6 37 62.7 36 Findings from Opinionnaire: Items and comments of respondents will be summarized under the three headings on the instrumefit: (1) The individual's personal contacts with sisters, (2) the religious life, and (3) sisters' aposto-lates. Personal Contacts with Religious Sisters Almost three-fourths (72%) of the respondents at-tributed most of the credit for helping them become religious persons to their parents. Twenty-six percent credited the sisters for having provided them with in-spiration, and 9 per cent mentioned the clergy. When asked how much influence for good religious sisters had exerted on them, participants responded as 4. 4- 4. Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 961 Sister 1eanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 962 follows: A mount of Influence Number Percent Very great influence 58 '26 I~reat influenc'e 54 24 Some influence 63 29 A little influence 29 13 No influence 13 6 Thus, 50 percent of respondents indicated that re-ligious sisters had influenced them greatly for good and 29 percent said sisters had influenced them some. Most of the respondents consider sisters friendly and easy to meet (192 or 88%). Nineteen respondents (13%) consider the sisters unaware of people around them, and four persons said they were unfriendly. When asked if they would go to a sister for help if they had some personal religious problem, 106 (48%) said they would go rarely, 71 (32%) said they would never go, and 38 (17%) said they would usually go to a sister for help. Most respondents feel that sisters show respect for them as persons (all do--61%; some do--36%). Ninety percent of respondents indicated that the sisters they have known spend most of their time in the educa-tion of children. Ninety percent are pleased with this effort, 6 percent are indifferent, and 3 percent are un-happy. Most respondents believe that sisters manifest an in-terest in the welfare of people in general (78%), and 18 percent don't know. Two percent said that sisters do not manifest an interest in the welfare of others. When asked to express their thinking on the age distribution of the sisters serving them, 81 respondents (37%) said age is not important, 74 (34%) s.aid the age distribution was about right, 25 (11%) said they did not have enough younger sisters, and 5 (2%) said they did not have enough older sisters. The Religious Life Two-thirds of the respondents believe there is no difference between the religious life and mariage in so far as thei~ comparable merits are concerned. Seventeen percent believe the religious vocation more pleasing to God, and 25 respondents (11%) said they didn't know. One hundred and twenty-five respondents (57%) said they would respond favorably if they had a daughter who wanted to become a religious, 77 (35%) would be neutral, and 15 (7%)would respond unfavorably. Most of the respondents (93%) said the sisters they have known seem to be happy. Respondents were widely distributed in their thinking on the economic level of religious living. One hundred and nine (50%) of the respondents believe that the sisters are living on the same or better economic level than they are. Sixty-nine (31%) believe they are living more comfortably than~ the sisters, and 41 ~(19%) said they don't know. When asked whether the sisters seem more progressive since Vatican 11, 161 (73%) said they were either out-standing or quite progressive. About 10 percent found them too progressive and approximately the same per-centage considered them not progressive at all. Almost three-fourths (70%) of the respondents pre-ferred to see religious women living in a convent espe-cially designed for them. Fourteen percent prefer to see ~them in a middle-class residence near their employment. Only two persons said they prefer to see sisters in a home in a poor neighborhood, and three persons said in an apartment. Thirty-eight respondents (17%) said they didn't care. Fewer than half (44%) of the persons responding in-dicated that they like to see religious dressed in a habit which includes a veil. About one-third (32%) like to see religious in conservative attire which does not include a veil, and 7 percent like to see them in contemporary clothing with accessories identical to lay women. Four-teen percent don't care what religious wear. Two-thirds of the respondents like to see sisters par-ticipating in all parish activities. Twenty-four percent-wish religious to participate in all parish activities ex-cept those which are purely social, such ,as dances. Seventeen respondent,s (8%) prefer that sisters attend only those activities related to the school, such as home-school meetings. Apostolic Services When asked how they would react if the sisters would decide to withdraw entirely from the school in order to do other works in the parish, 72 percent said they would respond unfavorably. Eighteen percent said they would be neutral, and 9 percent said they would respond fa-vorably to such a decision. Respondents .were asked if they thought the sisters should be 'more active in working with the poor. Re-sponses were evenly distributed with 68 (31%)in the affirmative, 70 (32%) in the negative, and 72 (33%)with no opinion on thismatter. Responses to items which attempted to find out which apostolaies seemed most necessary to the laity left no room for doubt. They strongly endorse the Catholic school concept and wish sisters would continue in this endeavor. In response to an item concerning the services they 4- 4- 4" 4" 4. Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 964 would prefer sisters provided for them if they were .in need of such services, 68 percent said they wished them to teach children. Other services given some priority by respondents were to administer to the sick in institutions (12%), administer to the sick in homes (5%), and teach adults (4%). Only one percent wish sisters to teach poor children only. Respondents were asked which apostolic works, if any, sisters should discontinue in which they are presently engaged. Each respondent could list three works. Results follow. Campus Ministry on Secular Campus 32 Diocesan services 92 Social work 19 College 16 High School I 1 Elementary school 10 Hospital 9 Religious Education 5 Respondents were asked to list in order of priority the works which they believed sisters should be engaged in at the present time and in the future. The following priorities were established by.averaging the ranks of the 220 respondents. 1. Teaching religion in Catholic school 2. Administrator in Catholic school 3. Teaching secular subjects in Catholic school 4. Teaching in Religious Education Program 5. Administrator of Religious Education Program in parish 6. Serving in Parish Ministry working with families 7. Staff position in health institution 8. Administrator in health institution 9. Social worker in inner city 10. Rehabilitation of drug addicts 11. Serving in Campus Minstry on secular campus 12. Administrator or staff position in public institution Comments of Laity on Adaptation and Rerlewal of Sisters In their comments on the adaptation they are observ-ing in religious communities, participants expressed di-verse opinions, presenting a kaleidoscopic view of re-ligious congregations. Many respondents praised the sisters for some of the changes they are making and for their continued dedication. Some, accustomed as they are to uniformity within religious communities, are using similarity of dress and dutifulness to t~aditional occupations as the criteria for evaluating renewal in religious life. Some are using normal standards of ac-ceptable behavior and are surprised and scandalized at the extremes to which some sisters are going in their new freedom. To the laity, these sisters seem immature and insincere, wanting the best of two worlds. Thus, much of the renewal effort is suspect to some of the laity, both that being made by large groups of sisters attempting to renew sincerely in keeping with the changing needs of the world and by the small group of extremist whose actions the layman is questioning. The comments below are typical of those made by many respondents. I don't think the'sisters are'adapting to the needs of the Church. Some sisters are radical; some are conservative: Some are in habits; some are not. Some are worldly; some are not. They seem to be divided among themselves. Some seem to act as immature young women wanting the best of both worlds. They ~vant the respect due to religious and the fun and entertainment of single women. They are mainly interested in satisfying their own desires. Opinions concerning the habit differed with many respondents reluctantly accepting the demise of" the traditional habit in favor of some lesser form of identifica-tion. Many emphasized the, importance of a religious identity and regret the loss of respect which the habit has always commanded. On careful analysis, responses seem to set forth the .primacy of "habit" over "person" in the thinking of some lay persons. I feel the sisters should have uniform attire~ even if it is a simple colored dresg with a large cross. They are married to God and should be proud of their vocation. They would also command more respect and be more useful, as people would be aware of their vocations and ask for help seeing the gar-ment, not the per.son. It was surprising to see how the laity identify religious with the traditioffal professions to the extent of con-sidering new occupations completely incompatible with the vocation itself. Sisters should either be in the religio~as vocation, or if they want to do soc.ial work they should not do it under the guise of a religious. Religious have pushed into social care areas where .they are not qualified. They have given scandal, betrayed their com-munity life and their origina! vocation. Sisters should work where they can influence and strengthen the faith and morals of young Catholics. Let others care for their social and physical needs. The laity continues to look for the dedicated, hard-working sister wh6 spends her time going from her work to her prayers in the convent where her physical, and social needs are met. They are surprised when they see sisters becoming more like other women in their use of leisure and in the external manifestation of their fem-ininity. They feel that the purpose o[ religious women was + + + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 965 ÷ ÷ Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 966 and is to stay in the classroom and teach their children, and that to betray this purpose is to betray their calling as religious. Sisters should do what they have done for many years--see to the education of our future citizens. Most of God's work is just that--hard work--and this is probably the main thing I have always admired about the nuns I have known. They were committed and worked hard with little thanks or praise, and I'm sure they were often discour-aged and unsure of their accomplishments. Some of the laity are interpreting the trend to leave the traditional apostolates as a sign of individualism which prompts one to wish to "do her own thing." I find it disturbing that some sisters, when given the op-portunity to work in the world today, become concerned with their own needs or interests under the guise of making money for their order. Since Vatican II, I feel that many nuns are confused and at odds with their own previous commitment. Teaching sisters now seem to feel social work is their bag, nursing nuns feel that teaching would be more appropriate, etc. Confusion stems, I believe, from a lack of the whole spirit we used to know as dedication to God's work. It is being replaced today in all of society by a personal need to do your own thing. A change very pleasing to the laity where it has taken place is the updating observed in methods of teaching and curriculum. They praise the sisters who are more understanding of child nature than they used to be and who are ready to meet the explosion of knowledge which today's children are experiencing. They complain if these changes are not taking place. Unfortunately, older nuns are not adjusting methods, cur-riculum, and themselves personally to many facts, namely,. that today's children know much more in space and science study than is in textbooks and they often know more than the the teacher herself. The teacher's attitude often becomes bel-ligerent rather than pleased that children are this way. Some personal evaluation seems necessary. The older nuns seem to adapt to the needs of the Church. Younger nuns could learn from them. It is no longer a voca-tion to them, it is ajob. Some middle class lay people feel that religious are now prejudiced against them. They argue .that their needs for the services of religious are as great as those of any other segment of society. We who are just ordinary people--working, living, and .dying--also need the help and example of the religious sister in today's world. We feel that what's the use when our lives and struggles are treated with disdain. We don't want to be applauded, but we feel that by living an honest and decent life and ever-striving to do the works of Christ, that we ought to be considered at least as human as the girls who have il-legitimate babies who you would think had won the grand prize for all the attention they are given. In short, love us too, even though we have never broken a law. I believe ~many sisters aye giving up "their 6wn" to work in the inner cities and for social causes. A poor soul is not .Primarily found in a poor person--the person may be rich, middle 'class or ~poor. We should try to help all equally so all can be saved. Another change taking ~place among religious women which is greatly appreciated by the laity is the attitude of considering all persons as equals. They are happy that sisters have come down from their pedestal and no longer seem to expect deference from the laity. The sisters, I believe, are progressing to include all persons with whom they come in contact as equals. I used to. feel the sisters considered themselves.very special and should be looked up to by all. I think they are more aware of people's needs than previ-ously. They are more sensitive and less untouchable. Some have lost self-respect by playing down to the laity too much. Much of the advice given to religious by respondents argued for the maintenance, of balance in the matter of adaptation and warned against extremes. Don't go overboard! Keep attire and sense of misSio~a in line with Catholic beliefs. If the sisters participate in secular affairs, I feel they should remember they are sisters and uphold the traditions and reputation Catholic sisters have always had. General impressions reported by respondents include the following: I get the feeling they are not of the Church but of the world. Instead of giving up things of the world they are acquiring things of the world. Nuns, in general, appear ito be departing from a way of life which identified them as religious, and as a result of ,this proc-ess, society appears tO have less respect for religious orders. I think sisters are doing a fine job. This is a time for all people to join t.ogether and to remember that God is the father of all, not just the white man, Many so-called Christians have forgotten this. General Statements on Opinions of Laity From the many ideas expressed by the laity responding to this opinionnaire, a few generalizations can be stated: There is little evidence at this time that the changing needs of society, for example, the rapid increase of Catholic students on the secular university campus, have penetrated the thinking of: lay people to any great extent. Criteria used by most of the laity for judging sisters remain the. same today as before Vatican II in spite of the shift toward greater personal freedom and more leisure in society as a whole~ However, a few of .the respondents 4- 4- + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30~ 1971 967 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 968 do seem to comprehend rather accurately the reasons for change in religious congregations. A few religious who, in the eyes of the laity, have seemingly lost sight of the meaning of religious vocation are impeding acceptance of the necessary changes large numbers Of religious women are making. There are certain paradoxes in the thinking of the laity concerning religious sisters at present. The laity are happy that sisters consider them as equals, no longer expecting deference; yet they lament the elimination of' external signs, such as the habit, which commands special respect. The laity give major credit to their parents for being the grea.test influence for holiness in their lives; yet they insist that the sisters are essential to growth of holiness in their children. The laity are happy that sisters have stepped down from their pedestal to walk among them; yet they wish to continue admiring them at a distance when they need help in the solution of their personal religious problems. In summary, respect for religious among the laity in this sample has decreased as a result of the changes made by religious congregations since Vatican II. This loss of respect can be attributed to a failure on the part of laymen to understand the reasons basic to change and their failure to recognize new needs in society for the services of religious women. It is also the result of unwise individual choices which some religious are making in their personal lives. The laity need the assistance of sisters if they are to understand the motives for their new behaviors. Perhaps the greatest need of the laity, as well as of religious, is familiarity with social doctrines of the Church and the emphasis given to these doctrines in the documents of Vatican II. Reflections of the Writer Religious congregations are attempting to implement the new emphases of Vatican II. The laity, familiar with the old structure, fail to understand the inevitable re-suits "of implementing such documents as "Declaration on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II, and Mater et Magistra, the encyclical letter of Pope John XXIII. An example of this implementation is the attention religious congregations are now giving to the dignity of the human person. In Mater et Magistra (215) we read, Whatever the progress in technology and economic life, there can be neither justice nor peace in .the world, so long as men fail to realize how great is their dignity; for they have been created by God and are His children. According to the social teachings of the Church, society is at~the, service of the human person to respect his dignity and allow him to attain his end and his full human development: "Society is made for man and not man for society.''2 Plus XII s~aid: "Man is a personal being, endowed.with intelligent& and free will;" ~a~ being who has the final choice of what he will or will not do," s Enhnciating this principle of the dignity of the human person, the ""Document on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II states: God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth. Hence they are bound ih consdence but they standunder n0: Com-pulsion. God has rbgard for :the dignity of the human person who.m He himseff created; man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom. . In contemplating these teachings concerning the basic freedoms o[ man and applying them to herself, a religious may conclude that she does not relinguish her innate freedom to govern herself when she enters a religious congregation. She believes that she is responsible to God alone for her actions and that she is responsible for keeping these actions in line with the life she has com-mitted herself to live. If this reasoning is correct, obe-dience in religious life needs to find its meaning apart from the responsibility of one person to govern the life of another. If religious growth takes place through responsible choices made freely, each person must be free to choose in matters pertaining to her personal life. In their efforts to implement tile new emphasis on the dignity of the person and_ her freedom of choice, religious congregations are eliminating rules which formerly gov-erned the personal life o[ each member. Remove pro-hibitive rules designed to channel actions according to a certain pattern which all members are exp6cted to observe and they are going to act as do all other members of the human race uniquely and differently. Some per-sons are going to make unwise choices as is true of persons in other walks of life. Freed from rules which prevent extremes, religious women are going to demon-strate their good taste or lack of it in their external appearance, their behavior, their use of leisure, and in their professional activities. But the end of this process is good the coming to being of a religious who is interiorly motivated to govern herself in a manner suited to her commitment as a woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and the service of His kingdom on earth. The new religious will come to r~alize as never before th~it she has been made = Plus XI,'Divini Redemptoris. a Pius xIi, "Allocution to the Sixth International Congress on Criminal Law," October 15, 1954, + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 969 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 970 in God's likeness to imitate His perfection, His goodness, and His love and mercy for men. She will realize that sh~ must 'lift herself up to God freely if she wishes to l~articipate with Christ in life eternal, in the divine life of God and of the Blessed Trinity. This is the destiny of all men, the religious included, and all must freely choose to follow this path, for with Christ there is no coercion, no forcing, no want of freedom. Surely every adult' outside of a religious community reaches the period in her life when she is no longer told what to wear and where to go. The fully committed re-ligious woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and to the service of his kingdom on earth should "be equally capable of" exercising her God-given freedom and of assuming the responsibility for her actions and her destiny. Lay people need to understand that they will be observing some evidence of poor taste as religious use the freedom they now have. Poor judgment is not a monopoly of the laity; it can also be expected of religious. Unless the formation period in the life of young re-ligious provides an understanding of how the gospel message is translated into daily living as a religious, sisters cannot be expected to make decisions in keeping with their form of life. In their uncertainty regarding the preparation which best prepares individual religious to exercise greater freedom, some congregations are ab-dicating their responsibility fbr the formation of young religious. To supose that new members who have not developed an understanding of the religious life will make personal decisions in keeping with it is a rash assumption. If religious congregations are to make wise choices. during this period of renewal and adaptation, they must take time to study the past and realize Gully the import of char~ge on the present and future. Unless changes are in line with the purposes for which the congregation was formed in the first place, the congregation will give way to a new entity or disintegrate completely. In-dividual members of apostolic religious congregations in the past realized their service of Christ in His Church through service of the congregation whose corporate end was this divine service. Today, many religious see them-selves as groups of dedicated individual members with a diversity of tasks. If religious retain the apostolic dimension of their original commitment, the transfer from corporate to individual commitment may be a change of means rather than ends. However, if the apostolic dimension of one's service is lost, the primary purpose of apostolic religious congregations in the Church no longer exists. When no unifying purpose is present, organizational structure becomes meaningless. It has been the purpose of this study to provide some insight on the reaction of the laity to observed change in religious congregations in the year 1971, Hopefully, the opinions expressed in this report will be.helpful to religious congregations as they chart their c0urse'for the future. + 4- 4- Laity Opinion VOLUME ~0, 1971 97! SISTER MARY JOHN MANANZAN, O.S.B. Must I Love You for God's Sake? ÷ ÷ .I. Sister John is a graduate student of the Gregorian Uni-versity and resides at Via dei Bevilac-qua, 60; Rome, Italy (00165). REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 972 Read the title without a pause and with the correct intonation lest you miss the point of this article, it is not an exasperated exclamation like "Must I put up with you, for heaven's sake?" The article concerns itself rather with the question whether we should love others "for the sake of God." This phrase has been so misinterpreted in the past and still also in the present that the word "char-ity" has fallen into disrepute or at least it has acqui~?ed a cold, antiseptic atmosphere. People say "I don't want your charity"--"I will not be an object of charity." In the stu-dent house where I lived while I was studying in Ger-many, the girls were very wary of "nuns" doing things for charity. Once an Idonesian girl living in another house got sick. A German friend of mine announced her inten-tion of driving over. I spontanously exclaimed: "I'11 go with you." She looked at me and cautiously asked: "Are you doing it for charity?" The reason for such wariness is that doing things for charity or for God's sake is taken to mean something like: "Actually you are a nasty fellow and for yourself I wouldn't lift a finger. But I am doing this because I see Christ in you." I don't tbink for a moment that Christ is at all pleased with such pious prattle. And the person concerned rightly feels himself an "object" of charity--a means to some altruistic, humanitarian or still worse to a spiritual ideal. C. S. Lewis in his delightful book Four Loves gives a punchy example of an "unselfish . self-sac-rificing" mother who "just lived for her family." In a remarkable self-deception she literally worked herself to the bone for them but actually what she managed to do was to suffocate each member of her family, because she did not actually see them as persons and did not really consider their real needs; She looked through them to work for her image of being an ideal mother. She used them as means to fulfill her need to be needed. In a similar manner "loving others for God's sake" has some-how taken on the meaning of disregarding the individual person. On this point one can learn a great deal from Kant who has been accused of having never written a word on love. But he actually offers a very solid foundation for what we call "love of neighbor" in his famous (infa-mous?) categorical imperative. This principle has also suffered a very one-sided treatment. The frequently cited formulation is the one that approximates the Golden Rule wearing a grim duty-conscious facial expression. A less quoted formulation however reads: "Act in such a way as to treat humanity whether in yourself or in others never only as a means but always also as an end/' Kant's moral theory is based on the absolute valuation of the person. A person is for him an autonomous subject. He alone possesses the dignity to be happy (Wtirdigkeit, glficklich zu sein). For this reason, a person may never be regarded only as a means but should be willed as a good-in- himself. This absolute valuation of a person manifests itself first and foremost in doing one's duty towards him. Again on this point Kant is frequently misinterpreted. No less than the great German poet Schiller is guilty of this shallow interpretation of Kant when he writes: Gladly I serve my friends but alas I do it with pleasure Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person. This is answered by a similarly poor interpretation of Kant and a worse poetry: Sure your only recourse is to despise them entirely And then with aversion do what your duty enjoins you. Kant did not mean at all that interest and affection would detract from the moral worth of an action. His term "duty" is a limiting term. It simply isolates the factor which accounts in the last analysis for the moral worth of an action. But once this is ascertained, one can embellish one's action with all the affection one is capa-ble of. I think it is important that Kant makes this em-phasis. There are really people who lavish their affection here and there and everywhere but neglect their elemen-tary duty towards these same persons. It is this forgetfhl-ness of Kant which is responsible for the benevolent tyr-anny in many lands suffering from social injustice, where the rich landlords or employers give to their exploited laborers "in charity" what they owe them in justice. The elementary duty of "love of neighbor" is thus to take the person as an'end in himself and never a means for anyone or anything. Truly? Not even for God? No, not even. God needs no means. He is His own End. He ÷ ÷ Love VOLUME 30, 1971 973 doesn't rely on any means to reach it. What then does loving others "for God's sake" mean? If it means anything at all, it means: one must take the other in his totality. Man is essentially a relation. A per-son is most a person in his relation to God. One can give him absolute value because he has already been radically affirmed by an absolute Person, He is worthy to be loved because he has already been radically loved. One can therefore love him for his own sake if one regards him in the totality of his being rooted in God. But the totality of man also means his being an individual distinct person. Therefore "love of neighbor" means taking this concrete person beside me for what he is and loving him with all his quirks. I think it is one of the characters of Peanuts who said: "I love humanity; It is people that I cannot stand." To love another is to see him. It is to love him "interestedly." "Disinterested love" is no love. It is too pretentious. It is being in love with one's perfectly selfless way of loving. This is the reason why I think foreign aid to developing countries miserably fails in arousing the gratitude of the people it helps. It is literally disinter-ested. There is no interest in the people as persons. No wonder they feel insulted and are resentful. They do not feel loved--they feel that they are objects of love. The same is true in individual relationships. One wants to be loved,' becau'se one is lovable. A boy who tells a girl "I love you, because of your pug nose" is not necessarily being superficial. Maybe he grasps the point of love better than if he were to enumerate the noblest .motives in the world. I think the art of loving is to find something very concrete .in someone (be it a pug nose, a crooked smile, a naughty left eyebrow--whatever it is. There is one in every person aching to be discovered!), to discover this recapitulation of his personality and in this burning focal point of his being, to love him intensely. 4- + Sister John REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 974 TENNANT C. WRIGHT, s.J. A Note on Poverty This is simply a report on a mode of poverty lived at one Jesuit house in Mexico City. The report is drawn from a conversation with several members of the commu-nity there, including the Father Minister who was influ-ential in setting up the program and helps with its ad-ministration. The program seems particularly enlightening at this moment when there is such discussion of poverty and how it fits with a religious' psychological need to feel economically productive and responsible. The Mexican community is made up of Jesuits who receive a salary at one of the Universities (non-Jesuit) in Mexico City. The salary i.s paid by the University directly to the individual Jesuit~ It is turned over by the Jesuit to the community. The community treasury, derived from the salaries, is then divided into three parts: First, there is a common fund for the community, out of which comes such general expenseg as house upkeep, and the room and board of the Jesuits living there. Second, there is a monthly personal amount returned to each Jesuit, an equal amount to each, no matter what his salary from the University. Out of the monthly "allowance" the Jesuit is expected to take care of his or-dinary personal items, such as clothes, recreation, the or-dinary personal necessities of his study and work, his ordinary travel. Third, there is a fund retained by the community for emergencies. As I understand it, the emergencies are gen-erally of two types, each handled differently. There is that personal emergency which arises from the unexpected, for example, an accident, a particularly large medical bill. Such personal emergency expenses are met by the community in a direct payment (not a loan) out of this emergency fund. But this third fund also covers those personal but more expensive items needed by some but not all. For instance, if one of the Jesuits in the course of his work needs some particularly expensive equipment or books or a car, then the community lends to this Jesuit the money to buy the T. C. Wright is a faculty member of the University of Santa Clara; Santa Clara, California 95053. VOLUME .30, 1971 975 special item. The loan is made without interest, but it is gradually paid back to the community out of the individo ual's monthly allowance. This question of loans to the individual for special expenses is crucial. The Mexican community is clear that this is not a case of dominion, of true ownership. Rather it is a more sophisticated way of responsible use. The special item is only purchased after consultation with the superior. The ultimate decision remains with the supe-rior. Although the item is used with the responsible dis-cretion of the individual, when and if his need for it is no longer present it is sold and the money returned to the community fund. Although this three-fold scheme of community use of [unds seems simple and clear in presentation, Father Minister and other members of the Mexican Jesuit com-munity emphasized that the implementation of this mode of poverty has more difficulties and is more complex than its simple outline indicates. 4- 4- 4- T. C. Wright REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 976 W. L. L~CROIX,.S.J. The New Property" and the of PovertY In the past ten years there has taken place a consider-able change in the attitudes of many vowed to the reli-gious life with respect to their "having" material goods. At times, this change in attitude has been reflected by attempts to patch the tearsin earlier lived interpretations of the vow of poverty by talk of a "vow of common life," or something of the sort. By these patchwork efforts, peo-ple have tried to bring within a reflective understanding of the vow such new lived interpretations of poverty that permit individuals to have exclusive control over many more material items (from transistor radios to individual vacations) than were ever previously found acceptable. In this brief essay, I would like to suggest that these efforts are of secondary consequence. I submit that there is a much more pressing problem for the practice of vowed poverty in contemporary America. This more pressing problem emerges from the recent, qualitative leap taken in the lived interpreta)ion of property. If the vow of poverty at all concerns some deliberate taking up of a life style that is designated by its extraordi-nary attitude toward property (this does seem to be the "matter" of the vow), then it is of major importance to talk about that which a political economist might call today the "new property." This concept is both simple and subtle, so let me briefly try to present what lines of thought are involved, and then appraige the implications of "new property" for what I will call the positive "thrust" of the vow of poverty. The "'New Property" Property may be described as a socially acknowledged relation that a person has to what is considered, in the broadest sense, an item of value. Now what is considered of value (except for subsistence in food, clothing, shelter) is to a great extent determined by the concrete attitudes W. L. LaCroix, S.J., is a faculty member of Rock-burst College; 5225 Troost Avenue; Kansas City, Mis-souri 64110. VOLUME 3~0, 1971 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 978 within a cultural milieu. And what are the manifold ways in which, ordinarily understood, one may acquire rela-tion to items of value are familiar to us all. And so we have our ordinary image of what we talk about when we use the term "property." But this imagining is so easy only because so few have done serious reflection on some significant socio-economic developments of the last fifty years. Many people today. continue to be undisturbedly at ease with talk about property exclusively under the rubric of the individual's possession, use, and control of "permanent" and fixed (real property) or of manipulable or consumable items of value (personal property). In fact, however, with the growth of a corporate society in America, some are able to argue convincingly that this familiar rubric of prop-erty has become at least partially obsolete, and that the part where it is obsolete is the more important part. One major indication of the need for a new rubric is that, in, our society heavily toned by business relation-ships, political economists and businessmen now are will-ing to say that, for most of the large business corporations, there are capital investors, there are top and middle man-agers, there are employees, customers, unions, the govern-ment, and the society at large that are related to the corporate organization, but there are no owners. That is, there are none except the impersonal (albeit legal) entity of the corporation itself. Certainly one reason here is that the business corporation is no longer an item compassa-ble by any individual who might attempt personally to organize and control it, that is, to "possess" it, to have it as private property. This growth to bigr~ess is one that has moved not only vertically in the size of an individual corporation, but hlso horizontally to interlace organizations of diverse kinds into one corporate society. Qualitative alterations have taken place in how and by whom social relation-ships are determined within the individual private orga-nization, in the relations between the individual private organizat~ions, and between these organizations, govern-mental bodies, and the social community itself. Corpora-tional businesses today act less with attention to the com-petitive market and more with attention to a mutual self-interest of the leading businesses, or even at times with a mixture of this and "public interest." Government does not hesitate to curtail initiative from a "private" firm for the sake of "public interest," or, conversely, to subsi-dize private sector business for the "public interest," or to contract out to business and to educational institutions some "public interest" undertaking. Educational institu-tions concern themselves with good relations with the business community and government for financial assist- ance; and with accreditation agencies for professional prestige. In a society composed of such interlaced organ~izations, the sharp distinctions between the public and the private sectors of activities have faded (I will suggest a test for this further on), and all members of society have been drawn into new and manifold relations to all the organi-zations. This means that those items of value, or wealth, which the individual can have as "private property" have become secondary in social significance. From Locke to World War I in Anglo-American thought these items have been the key to civic freedom, self-identity, and individual capacity to initiate effects in society. Now the socio-economic fi'eedom, identity, and initiative--in one word, the social power---of the private property holder are minimal. As a society we have entered an era where the initiative comes from organizations which act for or-ganizational or for "public" interest. And the "public" interest today means .less and less each individual's inter-ests and more and more only organized interests~ As part of a growing consensus on the relations of persons to new items of value today, A. A. Berle, Jr., has spoken of the divorce from older property of the socio-ec-onomic power to make determinations in society. He terms this the distinction between "individual possessory holdings" and "power systems." What is at stake here :is not merely the separation of ownership from socio-eco-nomic control, but the "increasing elimination of pro-prietary ownership itself and its replacement by, substan-tially, a power system." Charles A. Reich has spoken of the new form of wealth which one obtains in a corporational social structure through the relationships one has to various organiza-tions. These relationships gain for one a place in the interlaced socio-economic system of organizations. The new marriage of wealth and power is a union within the blood line of the power structure itself, for the wealth is itself new power. One has this new wealth of socio-eco-nomic place, or power status, in so far as one has actively functional relations to the power systems. As active within the power systems, one individually has the socio-economic power without the need of property in the tra-ditional sense of individual possessory holdings, One only needs to obtain a place, a status in the power systems. To clarify how this change brings in new dimensions in the question of poverty, let me develop briefly how one acquires this power, what the power is, why it is special today, and whether it is legitimate. ~ (How acquired) One enters a place of power not by ownership, but by the possession of whatever credentials the people presently with an active function in an organi- 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 979 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 980 zation designate as required. They in turn designate what matters are required in response to the organization's demand in view of~ its present strength and future fate in the interlaced system. These admission credentials are supposed to, and often do, signify the possession of some expertise, some "know how" in terms of the functions and goals of the organization. One's relations to active power status in an organiza-tion is always conditional. It is forever a trial marriage and lasts only as long as the person's power decisions make things function well for the organizational system. In turn, one is subject to those interchanges of power which constitute the organization to which he belongs directly, and to those interchanges of power by which his organization is interlaced within the American corporate system. One is tied to his organization's fate, which itself is precarious, by one's personal credentials, which are constantly under test. For brevity~s sake, let us call one's conditional relations to this new wealth of power status the "new property" (even though I have modified Reich's use of the phrase). Some kind of status in a community or in a private orga-nization, of course, is nothing new. But the status now at point is no longer simply a social by-product of possessory holdings, ancestry; or profession. The new status is a place of socio-economic power within active organiza-tional power. (What is power) As Berle has noted, we are still philo-sophically immature in reflections on power. For our pur-poses here, let us be satisfied with a simple concept: power allows the wielder to initiate decisions on the transmission, use, and determinations of socio-economic assets for the lives of persons. One who holds power has a "scope of significant choice" (Carl Kaysen) open to his decisions within a corporational social structure that widely and significantly affect the determinations of how one himself and others experience and express human values. Today we have large social and economic organi-zations which depend upon and which generate power to their members. These organizations are managed by non-owners whose decisions and instructions, by the mecha-nism of the organization, are made causative at distant points of application, both inside and outside the indi-vidual organization. Normally one distinguishes "power to do things" and "power over persons," but this distinction often is only in the relative immediacy of the results of power's exercise. And the exercise of "power over" brings a reduction for those affected in the range of personal alternatives in socio-economic activities, and an increase in dependence on the power's exercise. (Why special) As society's organizations become more complex, they become more interlaced and thereby more counterbalanced in their scope of initiative action. This primordial counterbalance, however, is less in terms o~ conflict and more in terms of agreement. As a result, as organizations grow to need each other, they become less counterbalanced in the consequent effects o~ their actions in the public arena. This is an important point. It any-one subject to a function of organizational power is still ultimately free to disassociate himself from .the power, with some but with no drastic repercussions in his total li~e style, then the "power over" that person may be said to be private. Sucb a freedom of the one subjected to private "power over" presupposes other, significantly dis-tinct sources of "power to do" things which produce real options for the one subject to the power system at hand. But if the disassociation, if possible at all, from one power would at best only bring about the substitution o[ tbe one by another qualitatively the same source of 'power over," then the "power over" may be said to be public. From this test of the distinction of the public and tbe private sector o[ society, one sees that the real c~runch of the "new property" power is that, more and more, its consequent effects can no longer be balanced out by deci-sions made by others with power. It is so far forth public. Power status is thus one's place in the organizationally active determination of the quality of people's lives. As holders of "new property," individuals exercise the resultant social power to determine some relations that others will have to the organization or to its products, and thereby to the corporateI society. With an ethical vocabulary based on the old p, roperty rubrics, many sta-tus power people still speak ofI these determinations they bring about in tbe lives of ot[~ers only in terms of privi-leges or options, and not in terms of rights and basic human values. They thereby presume that to deny a rela-tion to the orgamzat~on or to deny a cr~uc~sm of its products is merely to deny a lprivilege or to deny tbe immediate value of certain options. There is no wonder that umvers~t~es, for example, st~ll ~ns~st that students are there not by right but by privilege. When orgamzauons were private, such talk was movie acceptable ethically. But today, when org~inizations both decide upon and, in their interlaced stance, supply thos~ credentials which deter-mine a person in the roles he b~ts in tbe corporate society, the subject's relation to them i~ now public and nearly or completely in the area~of rigltts. We are less and less a society o~ persons who receive entrance into "private" organizations by privilege or lwho use the products of organizations by option. Simp,ly stated, the "new prop-÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1973. 981 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 982 erty" gives not only "power to do," but, more signifi-cantly for human and Christian values, direct "power over" persons. " (How legitimate) Such "power over" persons requires justification. One must question such power that can "make things happen" in respect to basic values in a society and ask if it is legitimate. The question is raised today for non-owned economic organizations and is espe-cially vital for all organizations which by the interlacing of society have had their power effects take on the "pub-lic" quality noted above. Power is a fact, but the persons concerned can ask for the rights to its possession and to its use. By "legitimate" I signify that there are good answers in terms of human values to the questions "How come such and such has power" and "For what purpose does such and such have power." Such questions ask for standards by which to judge the possession and use of power which are extra-neous to the power itself. In a society of fre6 persons, power can legitimately be obtained and legitimately be used only under the aegis of some expression of "public consensus." Berle has sug-gested two phases in any legitimization. (1) People get control, within an organization's power mechanism by some inner organizational ritual established by the orga-nization and accepted at least passively by the public consensus. (2) Such people use socio-economic power le-gitimately if the organizati6n has a [unction to perform within the values of the full society which is acknowl-edged by consensus, and if their use of the power is appropriate to that function. (Of course, few such func-tions are well-defined, but public consensus has positive though vague ideals here of what is acceptable.) Let us stipulate that, ambiguous as it is, power over persons can be legitimate. And let us for convenience designate anybne with legitimate power over persons in our corporate society as one who has "authority," but let us call such authority in the socio-economic structure "authority (P)." By this authority (P) ~ person rightfully can affect others in societal relationships by making things happen [or them, and thus can determine them in respect to some of the values in their lives. Given that individuals are persons, non-counterbal-anced power to affect their lives will be legitimate ulti-mately only if it positively contributes to their develop-ment as individual and as social persons. In our corporately interlaced society, this legitimacy will imply that those who have power will be accountable to all per-sons whose lives the exercise of the power affects. In summary, then, the argument is that today "new property" is identified with the exercise of "power over" in the socio-economic field, d one's "power over" activ-ities, one's authority (P),g ~"ves one's social identity and one's social initiative.°Keep in]mind that, in a true sense, one need not "own" anything [in order to have this "new property." " [ I do not wish to argue here that the concept of "new property" is accurate. This h~s been done forcefully by the political economists. All I need is this brief and un-doubtedly inadequate overview in order to ask for Some reflection on the relation of ~his advent of "new prop-erty" to the vow of poverty in ~eligious life. / The Vow ol Poverty In every activity within the[ corporate society, ,persons make and express their selves as they transact with other persons. Thus each one in deeds gives answers to those questions which are either exp!icitly or at least implicitly in every personal encounter: "~Who are you?" and "What do you mean for me?" ,, The social power that is theI new property' makes one respond in terms of status and function: "I am one who has tlus place m the social sttqucture and "I determine these values for you." Let me at once contrast withlthese responses what I call the positive thrust of the vow of poverty and suggest that tt ~s that wluch would permit one to respond: I am the human being Ch~'ist has made !me, are you such a human being, too?" On~ thereby expresses the message and the challenge of the Good News by one's very life style itself. Usually in activities we express a functional connection between some parts of ourselves and some parts of the supporting socio-economic system. We are teachers, pro-fessors, administrators at such and such an educational institution; we are experts and on such and such commit-tees; we have such ahd such training, such and such de-grees, such and such publications to our credit; thereby we are in such and such relationships to this organization within the complex of interlaced organizations. That is "who we are." By this part-function'ality we conceptually merge a re-sponse to "Who are you" with the response to "What do you do?" or even more broadly "How do you fit into the socio-economic system?" Thus when .asked "Who are you?" or when we ask of others "Who is that?" we really change the meaning of the question in,our minds and then employ functional categories "to handle" other per-sons in our thoughts and to have identification as we are "handled" in the thoughts of others. (We must be taught to do this: a little girl at the border, when asked if.she was an American, replied, "No, my daddy is an Ameri-can. I'm a girl.") 4- 4- + "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 983 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 984 Generally then, and perhaps more especially in a "new property" milieu, one's functional roles in the corporate society determine one's self identity. And this identity is more and more dependent upon the fate of one's immedi-ate organization within the corporate society, and upon. one's acceptance by functional peers and one's perform-ance among functional inferiors. Thus the primary con-cern of the person with "new property" must be organiza-tional. This is antithetical to the thrust of vowed poverty. A second, equally significant factor from "new prop-erty," the socio-economic power endemic to organiza-tional place also jabs at the thrust of vowed poverty. One with "new property" determines the lives of others Jor them because, as functional within and dependent upon socio-economic power, one exercises "power over" per-sons. Those who consider the vow of poverty as significant for Christian religious life can no longer ignore the con-tradiction that occurs when one points only to one's "min-imal individual possessory holdings" and Overlooks one's "new property" holdings. Since many religious in the United States are in education, let us use an example from this organizational area to put the problem strik-ingly. Let us ask: Can one who has a vow of poverty act consistently if he becomes the president of a uniyersity? Even if he lives a most frugal and Spartan private life, one stripped of all but the immediately necessary mate-rial items, can he in deeds live the thrust of the vow of poverty, since 'he has willy-nilly status wealth in the pub-lic socio-economic system and acts constantly with "power over" persons? Can he express the message and challenge ¯ of the Good News in any continuous form coming from his life style itself if he so connects himself with the interlaced set of organizations whose basis is a power to determine for other persons items basic to their values in life? The same questions can be put to the tenured profes, sor, the high .school principal, and so on. Perhaps a test for an opposition to vowed poverty would be: Do the respect and consideration one has from peers and inferi-ors in societal transactions come primarily from one's "new property" functions or not? Some have argued that poverty does not mean the neg-ative "not using material items of value," but rather the positive "sharing of the effects and experiences resultant from any possession and use with the concrete religious community." These values are one's talents, the experi-ences of one's apostolate, as well as the gifts one receives, one's former individual possessory holdings, and so forth. Thus they might argue that one can also use the "new property" consistently without effect on poverty in reli-gious life. I suspect that such an argument misses the qualitative newness of the "new property.~" It also un~terplays the positive thrust in the rentmciation of the old property, suggested in this section's opening. I will stipulate that some of the inward thrust of pov-erty may be in terms of mutual sharing with the commu-nity. But the vow must be ultimately for the life of the Good News in the mission of the whole Christian com-munity. It cannot have for its final term the limited reli-gious community: And ~he outward thrust (and part of the inward thrust itself) of poverty is precisely so that one can respond to contact with others as a (Christian) human person and challenge the others also to be (Chris-tian) human persons. Poverty has been an attempt to remove those identification handles which passively ob-struct the transmission of the Good News which chal-lenges others to be in, deeds what Christ has made them. Perhaps more importantly in our time and place, poverty seeks to remove that public power which actively ob-structs others from determining for themselves their free response to the challenge of the Good News. This mission of the Good News one legitimately .ob-tains and legitimately exercises by the action of the Trin-ity in human history. Let us for convenience designate anyone with the legitimate mission to challenge others with the Good News as one who has Christian authority, but let us call this challenging authority "authority (C)." By this authority (C), a person in encounter~ can legiti-mately challenge others to be consistent with themselves as individual and social persons, but the challenger has no power to determine the others in respect to their values as human persons, because the thrust of one's Christian mission is to leave the others confronted with the Gospel challenge but free to determine themselves, As there is authority (P) which is legitimate power to challenge others by determining to some extent human values for them, so here there is authority (C) ~hich is the mission to transmit a legitimate challenge but with-out any power to determine for the one c.hallenged. Those who live a vow of poverty would seem to want to specialize in ~some continuity of deeds and life style in this Christian authority (C). Of course, it is not impossible for one tO have status property and to exercise the consequent determining power and still,, in addition, to transmit by authority (C) the challenge of the Good News. Christians who do not vow poverty do it every day. But they do not attempt to specialize in a continuity of deeds .which emphasize au-thority (C). 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 985 ÷ ÷ W, L, LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 986 Some would argue that those with the vow of. poverty also can utilize the "new property" and its logically con-seqt~ ent authority (P) as a means in their life style. They argue that religious do not rest in this "new property" but can have it and remain true to the thrust of the vow because, for example, they use the "new property" to make professional contacts vital to the universalization of the Good News. Let us reflect here not on the strengths of such a defense, and there are some, bnt on its weaknesses. A. Some would say that religious need the status, which is the wealth of the "new property," in order to contact the important people in a society organized around power status on their own level. From the "new prop-erty" gained by administrative, academic, or other cre-dentials, religious can contact the organizational profes-sions of the clay and influence them. But do religious as status members speak to others as trans-status human beings or as co,possessors of power status? Do religious who contact as holders of "new property" contact the whole person and challenge the other with authority (C)? Must religious not necessarily, if they are fellow "new property" holders, speak to others pronouncedly as fun-damental co-members who are equally bound to the power and th'e fate of the structure in dominance in today's corporate society? Remember, unlike the old property, one never "owns" the "new property;" One is always conditionally and precariously subject to the orga-nizations which generate the active power place. One keeps the p.lace only by somehow contibnting actively to a successful exercise of socio-economic "power to do" and "power over." B. Why was not a parallel argument valid for religious to have the "old" property? If it was not valid, what value did Christians place on the vow of poverty in the past that made it so? Was it simply the release from worry over those things which other people must daily worry about? Certainly not. Christians held [or some rea-son that religious vowed to poverty could give a special continuity to the use of authority (C) lrom the very form their life style gave to all their activities. Religious could give this special continuity to the use of authority (C) if they were not the equals of others as holders of individ-ual possessory property, if they encountered the others not in a role of co-wielders of social power from that property, but radically as persons unconnected with a social function category. Can this thrust be realized if religious with a vow of poverty are equal co-holders of social economic public power from the "new property" of today? It is not easy to answer this with a simple "no." Many seem successful in their mission with the Good News to challenge others t(; be "the persons Christ has made them even though these present challengers, vowed religious, or lay Christians, are co-holders with the chall~n~ged of the "new property." X~'hether such success is limited to this period of transi-tion, wherein few are fully .aware of the i.mplicationS of "new property," is a good question. But whether even such success continues to make a religious vow of poverty meaningful is a better one~ ÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 987 ROBERT OCHS, S.J. Experiments for Closing the Experience Gap in Prayer ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs is a faculty member of Bellarmine School of Theology; 5't30 South University Avenue; Chicago, Il-linois fi5615. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 988 "Speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another"- these are the words with which Ignatius Loyola character-izes what he calls "colloquies," conversations with the Father, Christ, or Mary which conclude so many of the exercises which make up his Spiritual Exercises. This prayer of conversation, explicitly evoking a personal part-ner, is not the whole of prayer. To try to make it such, to focus on the divine Thou in all our prayer, is a strain which can cut us off from other avenues of divine contact. Trying to force all prayer irito a conversational mold can even short-circuit what it intends to further, by making us hurry past the "impersonal" world of divine power and energy, fire and spirit, not to mention Silence and nothingness. Yet to turn our back on it would be to lose a vital dimension of religious experience. Prayer as conversation, dialogue, or encounter with God has recently become much harder for increasing numbers of Christians, as they have rediscovered God both as transcendent mystery and as immanent Spirit. But, I submit, neither our new awareness of God's tran-scendence or of his immanence is the real cause of our inability to meet God in a face to face encounter. For some reason we are not bold enough, or realistic and imaginative enough, in our use of dialogal prayer. Prayer of colloquy is not nearly "colloquial" enough. Speaking with God "exactly as one friend to another," as Ignatius flatly states it, has yet to be really explored, partly out of a misplaced fear of anthropomorphism, partly because our personal relationships themselves have become so bland that we have forgotten exactly how intimate friends do speak to one another. (I sometimes feel Dr, George Bach's paperback, The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage, would be a better aid to prayer nowadays than many books directly on prayer,) Underlying our lack of imagination is a peculiar mind set of ours which renders any boldness in encountering God all but impossible. Until we alter this mind set about where and how God is encountered, about the mediurn of any encounter with God, any modeling of our encounter with God on the model of human encounters will look merely like improved make-believe. The Spiritual Exercises speak a great deal about this medium, what Ignatius calls creatures or .simply "all things." Early in the text~ the so-called "Principle and Foundation" insists on "indifference" to things, using them "in as far as" they help find God. And toward the end, the "Contemplation to Attain Love" reminds us that love manifests itself in deeds and consists in a mutual sharing of goods. Between these two exercises, which span the whole Ignatian retreat, the effort is to make things a vehicle of mutual communication instead .of an obstacle, to make them a locus of encounter and matter for shar-ing. As an introductory school of prayer the Exercises teach us to find God in all things, so that things become the means of exchange for dialogue. The whole effort to encounter God involves us therefore in a vast transforma-tion of our view of things. All this sounds terribly obvious. And yet the shift in point of view we are called on to effect in ourselves is enormous, and if we could do it we could pray. The effort involves, for a Christian who supposedly "already believes in God" but does not yet really live in faith, the overcoming of an attitude about God and things which is perhaps the great obsta_cle to encounter with God in our lives, an attitude I Choose to call Deism. Deism sounds at first a harmless enough term, and that is partly why I have chosen it. Giving a harmless name to what one feels is The Great Obstacle has the advantage that it opens us to look for the obstacle to prayer within ourselves and our own pale Christianity. For much that goes by the name of Christianity is no more than Deism, and Deism is as far removed from Christian faith as ag-nosticism or atheism. At any rate, Deism stands along with agnosticism and atheism on the opposite side of the line dividing belief from unbelief. And it is perhaps more dangerous than those two, because it apes Christianity and obscures it own lack of faith. After all, is it not at least theistic, admitting the existence of God? But it ad-mits a God with whom one does not deal, an inaccessibld God with whom one does not argue or wrestle. From the viewpoint of faith the Deist is worse off than the atheist who seeks an accessible God but cannot find him. It is not true that believing in a Deistic God is better than + ÷ ÷o VOLUME 30, 1971 989 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 990 believing in none at all, because to believe in a God who does not enter into intimate relationships with men im-plies giving him certain personal attributes opposed to such relationships, making him aloof, arbitrary, uncon-cerned. While faith says He is our Father. Deism is far from harmless. It is religion without reli-gious experience, religion without encounter and without prayer. It declares God inaccessible. It views the world of things precisely as providing no access to God. It would be profitable to read Ignatius' "Contemplation to Attain Love" as an overcoming of Deism, seeing God dwelling in creatures, "conducting Himself as one who labors" for us in all creatures on the face of the earth. The "Contempla-tion" is the effort to see deeds as potential manifestations of 10ve and all goods as material for mutual sharing. I somewhat regret having to use the term Deism, be-cause it sounds too exclusively associated with the ages of' enlightenment and rationalism. What I mean by it is less a theological position than a state of mind, one which is still very much with us. Deism is a whole sensibility impeding our prayer. One could almost define it as the opposite of finding God in all things, as finding things and supposedly finding God, but not putting these two together except in an awkward juxtaposition. It is what modern thinkers are trying to overcome when they talk of transcendence in immanence and of encountering God in the world. We are Deists when we find God in religion and' not in secular things, and when we admit that reli-gion is more important but more boring than life. We are Deists in our inability to talk about God without using pale language divorced from life, language made more and not less abstract when it becomes pious. We are Deists when we live out our own human growth Odyssey without relation to our spiritual Odyssey. These are old accusations. We are no doubt overfami-liar with these aspects of our Deism. Accordingly, in the following pages I propose taking a look at certain things in which we are not used to finding God. We do not look for God in these things because we think He is already there. We are already aware of the problem of finding God in matter, in the secular, in the ugly. But the things I want to look into with the reader are, briefly, the will of God, our thoughts (especially our religious thoughts), and our images of God and ourselves as we engage God in dialogue. If we looked more for God in these things, .we would be much more able to pray. The best way to take this look is not by direct description, but by watch-ing our spontaneous reactions provoked by certain thought experiments. This way we can uncover the var-ious Deistic mind sets we are caught up in. We should not be surprised by this procedure. The Exercises them- selves proceed often in this same fashion, asking us, for example to imagine three classes of men or to imagine ourselves at tile hour of deatli, or to enter in fantasy into a gospel scene and then ',reflect On myself." The itinerary through the Exercises proceeds as much by uncovering and then healing attitudes of unbelief as by appropriat-ing attitudes of belief. God Present in the Things .That Are His will The second is that love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example the lover give and shares with the be-loved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give: and vice versa, the beloved shares With the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and' 'so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other.--Spiritual Ex-ercises, n. 231. Let us start hy a look at our will-of-God-talk. There is, in fact, a curious anomaly in much recent will-of, God-talk. This anomaly can be expressed in different ways. For example, we seem to be theists in our discei:ning process, and secularists in our carrying out process (and therefore Pelagian Deists all round: Discern as if every-thing depended upon God; act as if everything depended on you). Our talk of discerning God's will sounds more convincing than our talk of God's will once discerned. We do talk rather convincingly (that is, convincedly; with words that at least sound as if we were convinced of the reality we were talking about) about finding God'S will, but our handling of God's will once we have supposedly found it seems to give the lie to such talk. It is not iust that we fail in performance, that we are slow to fulfill what we think we must do, as Christians have always felt themselves to be. It is that the talk that accompanies our efforts to fulfill the wi.l,1 of God sounds as if we were~less than convinced that there was any such thing as a will of God manifested in discernment. In short, our talk gives the impression that we aim at doing more than merely discerning "What the situation calls for," because we in-sist on giving it a theological dimension. And yet once we have discerned "the will of God," we carry on as if this theological dimension were sheer ideology. Various Symptoms point to this, especially Our vacilla-tion and our regrets (and recriminations). Our vacillation during the process of discernment, weighing and search-ing our motives, 'indicates that we take seriously what we are doing. But vacillation after the moment of deciSion indicates rather the opposite. Again, it is not so much vacillation in performance I am talking about, but a kind of vacillation in the belief which governs the perform-ance. (If you are going to believe in a will-of-God uni-verse, an agnostic observer might say, at least take the ÷ ÷ ÷ Prayer VOLUME 30, 1971 991 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 992 advantages as well as the onus of your world view, and taste a bit of the joy and enthusiasm that ought to accom-pany such a belief.) For example, a line of action em-barked upon as a result of discernment will be aban-doned with a lightness incompatible with the discern-ment talk which launched it. The project is not adjusted in the light of new circumstances, discerned anew, as we say, but is changed without recourse to any discernment process at all. A project may be entered upon with some sense of vocation, and then abandoned with neither a sense of infidelity to any call, nor a sense of a new version of the call. If it does not work out, it is simply dropped as a misguided enterprise shot through with human fallibil-ity. After this, curiously enough, the whole discernment process may be started again, with'hopes inexplicably undimmed of finding this time the will-of-God project that will not turn sour. This phenomenon makes one wonder if any genuine discernment was ever done at all, especially when one considers that true discernment does not just provide the knowledge of what to do, but the grace to carry it out, the grace not to forget for long that one is about the Lord's business. Nadal remarks that what struck the early companions about Ignatius was his single-mindedness once he had adopted a course of action through discernment. Ignatius especially deplored the failure of spiritual nerve or what he called courage in difficult enterprises. Another index is regret. We have pursued a course under the aegis of God's will, expended our energies on it, and it does not work out, or works only tolerably well. Hindsight reveals all the deficiencies of our original choice--it looks dated, it is not what we would have chosen if we knew then what we know now. We regret, we recriminate, we think rather quickly .that we have been duped, wasted our efforts, labored under a very human delusion. Even though when we made the deci-sion we claimed to be aware that we had no choice but to choose, further postponement of decision being a worse choice than the one we made, yet we have no sense of accomplishment, no sense of having done God's will or even qf having done our best trying. For another index, let us observe our reactions to the account, in Chapter I of Acts, of the drawing of lots to fill up the vacancy left in the Twelve by Judas' betrayal. Matthias and Barsabba

Issue 12.1 of the Review for Religious, 1953. ; Review t:or ~eligious Volume XII January December, 1953 Publlshed'at ~ THE COLLEGE PRESS Topeka, Kansas , "Edited by THE JESUIT FATHERS SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is indexed in ÷he CATHOLIC PERIODICAL INDEX ¯ The C rt:husi ns Jerome Breunig, S.J. ~"HE centuries-old Carthusian Order is breaking ground in the | NewWorld and the eyes of America are watching with interest. Through the generosity of a benefactress and with the approval of the Bishop of Burlington, the Most Rev. Edward F. Ryafi~, a pio-neer band, consisting of two Carthusian priests and two lay brothers with some Americancandid~ates, has established the first ~ommunity at Sky Farm near Whitingham in the Vermont hills. The very name Carthusian is pronounced, with reverence on Catholic lips, and in .many minds it represents the ultimate in austerity and deep spiritual-ity. The coming of the Carthusians brings many questi~ons to mind. Is there place for them today? Aren't they passe, a respected' relic of the past? Just how old are they? Who founded them and why? Do they differ from the Trappists? What do they do? What did they do? How do they live? Is it true that they do not eat meat, that they do not heat their rooms, that they always wear a hairshirt? Are there Carthusian nuns? Many of these and similar questions are answered in the Apos-tolic Constitution of Pius XI, Umbratilem, in the booklet, The Car-thusian Foundation in America, and in tw~o recent books that com.- plement each other: The Cartbusians, which gives a detailed factual' description ,of their life, and The White; Paradise, which is a glowing account of his visit to the chartethouse ~it La Valsainte in.Switzer-land by the gifted autho£-conv~rtI, Peter van der Meer de Walcheren. Mo~t of the information in this article is taken from these four sources. Any questioning of the validity; and modern relevance of the Carthusians should be cut short by Umbratilem, the Constitution issued on July 8, 1924, when the Statutes of the Carthusian Order were. approved in conformity with the new dode of Canon Law. This important document on the contemplative life states clearly at the, outset that Carthusians h~ive chosen the better part, and holds up their life to the, admiration and imitation of all. ".All those, who, according to their .rule~ lead a life of solitude 'remote from the din and follies of" the world, and who not only ~3 JEROME BREUNIG Reoiew for Religious assiduously cbntemplate the divine mysteries and the ~ternal truths, and pou~ forth ardent.and continual prayers to God that his king-- dom may flourish and be daily spread more widely, but who also atone for the sins of other men still more than for their own by mortification, prescribed or voluntary, of mind and body--such indeed must be said to have choser~ the better part, like~ Mary of Bethany. "For no more perfect state and rule of life than that *can be pro-posed for men to take up and embrace, if the Lord calls them to it. Moreover, by the inward holiness of those who lead the solitary life in the silence of the cloister and by their most intimate union with Gbd, is kept brightly shining the halo of' that holiness which the spotless Bride of Jesus Christ holds up to the admiration and imita- ~tion of all." The document also mikes it clear that there is need for Carthu- .sians today. "For, if ever it was needf_ul that there should be ancho; rites of that sort in the Church of God it is most specially expedient nowa'days "when we see so (nany Christians-living without a thought for the things of the next world and utterly regardless of their eter-nal salvation,° giving rein to their desire for earthly pelf and the pleasures of the flesh an'd adopting and exhibiting publicly as well as in their private life pagan manners altogether opposed to the Gospel. ¯ . . It is, besides, easy to understand how they who assiduously fulfil the duty of prayer and penance contribute much l~ore to the increase of the Church and the welfare of mankind than those who labo~ in tilling the Master's field; for unless the former drew down from heaven a shower of divine graces to water the field that" is being tilled, the evangelical laborers would reap forsooth from their toil a more Scanty crop." The Founder An authentic hunger for God led a diocesan priest-educator in the eleventh century to formulate a" way of life that h'appily blends community life with thelife of solitude and keeps the advantages of each form. This life was first put into practice in 1082 by the same priest and six companions at Chartreuse in the Alps of Dauphin~, in Southern France, and endures to our day. From the extant r~cord of tributes after his death, this priest, whom we know as St. Bruno, was one of the great men of his time. Besides noting Bruno's talents as a preacher, writer, and educator, these tributes single out three vir-tues for which the saint was conspicuous: spirit of prayer, extreme January, 1953 THE CARTHUSIANS mortification, and filial devotion to Our Lady, virtues also conspicu-ous in his Order. Born in Cologne, St. Bruno (1030-i l~J)'studied at the episco-pal school at Rbeims. After his ordination he remained at this school for 25 Years as '.teacher~, principal, and "diocesan superintendentl) of schools. After a short term as chancellor of the diocese he evaded the efforts of the clerg~ to make him their bishop by "~scaping" to Chartreuse in 1082. In .I090 Pope Urban II called his former teacher, St. Bruno, to Rome to be his counsellor. The orphaned community wavered in their vocation for a time and later even deserted by.following their founder to Rome, but after a year they returned to their hermitages at Chartreuse. Though Sty. Bruno made the ground plan for the Carthusian Order, it was the fifth general, Guigo the Venerable (1109-1136) wh6 xvrote the Consuetudines, the first Statutes of the Order. "The Consuetudines are the Carthu-sian gospel, Guigo our evangelist and Saint Bruno our founder and lawgiver" (The Carthusians, 17). The Life of Solitude In Rome is a famous statue of St. Bruno by~Houdon. It is so lifelike, the comment is: "It would speak if his rule did not compel him to silence." Silence and solitude, so essential to the Cartbusian life, are insured by providing each monk with a separate hermitage consisting of four distinct rooms and an enclosed ghrden plot. There is a storeroom and work shop, usually on the first floor, and, above, an ante-chamber called the Ave Maria, because it honors a statue of, Our Lady, and an "'inner chamber" or living room. A private wash-room is also provided. In the cell proper the monk has a prayer-stall, desk and book cas~, a bed, and a small table for meals. Except on Sundays and feast days the meals are brought to an opening in each cell. There is never any breakfast and m~at'is never permitted even in sickness. From September 14 to Easter the evening meal is cut down to a collation of dry bread and whatever is the most com-mon drink of the country. Penitential as it is; the diet seems to insure longevity rather than shorten life. The cell is the monk's "living toom." Except for community exercises and the occasional recreation periods the monk never leaves his hermitage. He lives for God and God alone. Here he devotes whole hours to study, to spiritual reading, and to prayer, including mental prayer, the part of the Divine Office not said in choir, the JEROME BREUNIG . Reoieto for Religious Office of Our Lady. and sometimes the Office of the Dead¯ Since "the harp needs a rest,", th~ monk relaxes from time to time with light manual work such as sawing wood for his fire, cultivating his gar-den. making religious articles, and caring for the hermitage. No siesta is permitted and the night's sleep is always broken into two periods of about three and a half hours each by the night Offce. The Comrnunit~ Life The community life which tempers the solitude provides a~ frame-work with a fixed daily'order and sustains the courage of each monk by mutual good example. 'jBrother helped by brother-makes a strong city." The main daily communal exercises are the chanting of the night Office and of Vespers and the conventual Mass. On Sundays and feast days the rest of the Office except Compline is-chanted, meals arc taken in the refectory, and there is a recreation period. Besides there is a weekly walk outside the enclosure.- ,This period is called, the spatiarnenturn and lasts about three and a half hours. Dom I.e Masson an outstanding general of the order'(1675~- 1703). says of this exercise: "It is only with the greatest reluctance that I excuse from the spatiarnentum, and then. on!y to tbe aged. So great, it appears to me. is the utility of this walk for good both of body and soul . More easily and willingly would I exempt a car-thusian monk from the night Office for some days, or from fasts, of th~ Order. than from the spatiarner~tum." (The Cartbusians. 62.) What They Did Onl.y eternity will unfold the~ contribution of the Carthuslan Order to~ the glory, ~: God- and .the salvation of souls. Even in recorded history the order is eminent in providing the Church with saints, beati, and saintly bishops, archbishops, and a few cardinals. Perhaps the greatest s!ng[e contribution is the'treasure of writings in ascetical and m~stical theology. The only wealth of any kind in a charterbouse was to be found in the library. Scbolarship'was always held in high esteem and the monks helped enrich other libraries as well as their own ldy providing both copyists and eminent writers. Besides St. Bruno,' who is said to have written bi~ famou~ commen~ ¯ tary on the Epistles of St. Paul when at Chartreuse, the list of writers includes Ludolf of Saxony, whose Vita Cbris~ti was so influential for centuries~ Dionysius the Carthusian called the Ecstatic Doctor, who has written more than St: Augustine; John Lansperg, who ~_~te of Devotion to the Sacred Heart before St: Margaret Mary l and Lau- danuar~t, 1953 THE CARTHUSIANS rentius Surius, whose Vitae still help supplement the work of the ~3011andists. The official document of the Church Ur~bratilem is quite articu-late about the contribution of the Carthusians to the. religious life. "In his great kindness, God, who is ever attentive to the needs and well-being of his Church, chose Bruno. a man of eminent sanctity, for the work of bringing the contemplative life back to the glory of it~ original integrity: To that intent Bruno founded the Carthusian Order. imbued it thoroughly with his own spirit and provided it with those.laws which might efficaciously induce its members to ad, ,vance speedily along the way of inward sanctity and of the most rigorous penance, to the preclusion of every sort of exterior, ministr) and office: laws which would also impel th~em to persevere with steadfast hearts in the same austere and hard life. And it is a recog-nised fact that through nearly nine hundred years the Carthusians have 'so wel! retained the spirit of their Founder, Father "and Law- , giver that unlike other religious bodies, their Order has never in'~o long a space of time needed any amendment, or, as they say, reform." The badge of the order is appropriate. It is a globe surrounded by~ a cross and seven stars, with the motto: Star crux dum votoitur orbis terrarum The cross remains firm while the world keeps spinning around. If, persecution is a mark of Christ's followers, the Carthusians can certainly, be identified. "They have persecuted Me. they will also persecute you.'" Three Carthusian priors .were among the proto-martyrs of Henry VIII: fifteen more mohks died on the scaffold or starved to death in prison during the English persecution which practically suppressed the order in that country.~ Spain pre-vented a Carthusian foundation in Mexico in 1559, compelled the charterhouses to separate from the order in 1784, and suppressed them in 1835. The, French Revolution was the greatest blow. In ",1789 there were about 122 charterhouses. Almost all,of-them were suppressed, first in France and then throughout Europe as the French armies over-ran the continent. The restored houses in France were again disrupted in 1901 as a result of the Association Laws. Tile. Italian houses were suppressed during the course of the Risorgimento. The Carthusian Order in 1607 had about 260 houses with 2,500 choir monks and 1,300 lay brothers and donn~s. At the pres-ent time there are 18 established charterhouses witil a total of over 600 members. There are four charterhouses in France, five in Italy and Spain, and one each in Switzerland, Jugoslavia, Germany, and England. 7 January, ) 953 The Carthusian Nuns In 1245 Blessed John of Spain,, Prior of,the Charterhouse of Montrieux, was ordered to adapt the Carthusian Rule for a group of nuns at the Abbey of Pr~bayon in Provence. Since then there have never been more than ten convents for Carthusian nuns. The nuns; live in private rooms not separate buildings, have two recreations a day, eat in a common refectory, and are not obliged to wear the hair-shirt. They spend eleven hours a day in prayer, meditation, and work, and are allowed eight hours, sleep. The nuns have always been distinguished for their austere sanctity and strict observance. Out-standing among them ar~ Blessed Beatrix of Ornacieux and St. Rose-line of Villaneuve. Both lived durin'g the fourteenth century. The body of the latter is still incorrupt. At present there are four con-vents for nuns, two in France and two in Italy. BOOKS ABOUT THE CARTHUSIANS The following can be obtained from The Carthusian Foundation, Sky Farm, Whitingham, Vermont: The'Church and the Carthusians. The teaching of Pope Plus XI as contained in the Apostolic Constitution Umbratilem; Introduction, translation and Latin text. Pp. 18. $.10. The Cartbusian Foundation in America. Pp. 24. With pictures and illustrations, $.25. The Carthusians: Origin --- Splrlt--Familg Life. First p~inted in 1924. Re-printed in 1952 by the Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, Pp. 107. $1.75. The White Paradise. The Life of the Carthusians. By Peter van der Meer de Walcheren. Witha preface by ~Jacques Maritain. David McKay Co., New York, 1952., Pp. 91. $2~00. THEOLO~Cf DI~EST Theglogy Digest, a new publication edited by ' Jesuits at. St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, is for priests, religious, seminarians, and laity who are interested 'in present-day theological thought, but who perhaps find it hard to maintain and cultivate this interest. The Digest aims to help such readers to ke~p informed of current problems and developments in theology by presenting a concise sampling of current periodical writings in America and Europe. The digests-deal with the vari-ous branches of theological learning--Apologetics. Dogmatic Theology, Scripture, Moral Theology and Canon Law, Ascetics, Liturgy, and Church History--with emphasis on the speculative rather tbar~ the pastoral aspects of theology. Published three times yearly. Subscription price in U,S.A.] Canada, and coun-tries of Pan-American Union, $2~00. Foreign, $2.25. Send subscriptions to: Theology Digest, 1015 Central, Kansas City 5, Missouri. "So Trust in God as it:. ," Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ! [AUTHOR'S NOTE: For nearly everything in this brief account I gladly and grate-fully acknowledge my indebtedness to the article by C. A. Kneller, S.J., "'Ein Wort cleshl, lonatius oon Logola,'" in the Zeitschri?t t~uer Aszese und M~stil~, 1928, 253-'257. There one will find a fuller treatment of the matter and the original texts.] ONE could hardly be familiar with modern spiritual literature and not have encounfered one or the other, or both, of these sayings attributed to St. Ignatius: "So trust in God as if all success depended on yourself, and not at all on God; but take all pains' as if you were going to do nothing, and God alone every-thing"; and the other: "S~ trust in Go.d as. if all success depended on Him, and not at all on yourself; but take all pains as if God were going to do, nothing, and you alone everything." Both rules have become commonplace. The firsl~, more paradoxical, form occurs in various editions of the Thesaurus Spiritualis Soci~tatis desu, an official collection of documents of prime importance in the spiritual formation of mem-bers of the Society and in the hands of all of them. This version was first published by the Hungarian Jesuit Gabriel Hevenesi (d. 17i5) in a little book entitled lgnatian Sparks. For every,day of the year he proposed an aphorism of St. Ignatius. They were to have some-thing of the effect, if we may use an anachronistic cgmparison, of a spark-plug upon one's daily life and fervor. The book rhust have been excellent: it went through dozens of editions, one of them being ~s late as 1909. This di'ctum, "So trust . .," is put down for January 2, a fact which suggests that in' Hevenesi's opinion it was one of the best of the maxims which he' found in St. Ignatius. The dictum has been censured as contrary to the Catholic doc-trine of grace. It implies, the objection runs~ that man carinot do anything, not even merit, toward his eternal salvation. But the maxim is not concerned with how divine and human activities are united. I~t purports to give a working rule on how to combine one's expectations with one's exertions. It has.also been argued that the saying does not make sense, and that therefore it could not have been uttered b'y St. Ignatius. In an article on "The Tensions of Catholicism" in ThoughtI 1. Thought (December, 1950), 630-662. AUGUSTINE ~. F.LLARD Reoieuv/'or Religious Father Andr~ Godin.states that Catholic hope can deteriorate in two different vfay:~. The first is.by way of "the rationalizing tendency: to march toward salvation with assurance and in a spirit of con-quest." The secohd is the "affective tendency: to attain salvation ~hrough fear and tremblirig.'; The true "Catholic equilibrium of "the two tendencies" is "to act as though all depends on God and to pray as though all depends on us." He notes that ."the formula is sometimes r~versed, but then it ,s~ems extremely banal.''~ Father Godin takes "this celebrated formula" to mean that in Christian action there should be both humility and hope, and in pra, yer anguish as wellas ardent appeal. It excludes both Quietism and Pelagian-ism. One's life becomes a unified whole, in which there are both "the tranquil certitude of Christian hope 'and the. anxiety of invocation in .prayer." . If one were perfectly united with God and as it' were identified with Him, one might well trust in God as if all success depended on oneself, that is, really, on God, and tak~ all ~pains as if. God were going to do everything, that is again, God and oneself co-operating with Him. ~Father Pinard de la Boullaye, in his Saint Ignace de Logolq Directeur d'Ames, quotes it in French translation. He ~ays that it was inspired.by the doctrine of St. Paul: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth" (I Cor.3:7). It should warn us, he adds, not to be negligent in any way on the-plea that after all it is reallyGod who accomplisl~es things. But Father Pinard de la Boullaye seems to betray a sense that there is something wrong with this direction by supplementing it immediately with another "quota-tlon from St. Ignatius (and Hevenesi also) strongly emphasizing foresight and constant self-correction: "To plan in advance,, what one is going to do, and then to examine what one has done, are two of the most.reliable rules for acting r.ightly,''~ The counsel to trust in God as if nothing depended on Him, and to exert oneself as if one's efforts were to have no effect, seems indeed to be more than a paradox or an oxymoron: how understand it as something other than a perfect absurdity? One so advised might ask, "How am I to go about formulating such a trust? What is the point in doing something expressly acknowledged to be of no avail ?" Although this first form of the maxim is in every Jesuit's 2.Ibiil~, p: 64~. 3. Thesaucu~"Spiritualis Societatis Jeiu (Bruges, 1897); No. 9, p. 604.~ 10 ~la'nua~'~ 1953 So TRUST IN G6D Tbesaurus~ oddly enough it is not the one more Commonly heard, or encountered. One is more, apt~ to meet, substantially this advice:. "Trust in God as if everythifig depended on Him, and exeft yourself as if you were'doing everything by' yourself." Given "this contrary and more intelligible .turn, the principle is said to ha;ce been a favorite guiding rule of the late eminent Arch-, bishop John I~eland of St. Paul. However, with him it underwent a further minor change: "We ought to act as if everything depe'nded on us, and pratt as if everything depended on God." Praying is sub-stituted for trusting. One of the most famohs pulpit-orators of the last century, namely, the French Jes6it Xavier de Ravignan, distin-guished for the conferences he used to give in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, in advising some of his younger religious brethren how to prepare themselves for preaching, said: "Listen to St. Ignatius, " who gives us this'meaningful counsel, 'One must do all as if one were alone in acting, and one must expect everything from God as if one ¯ had done nothing.' " This form of the saying is very common' on leaflets given to .retreatants, on :religious-calendars, holy cards, and so on. Another slightly different turn given to it is this: "Let Us ;act as bravely as if we could d6 everything, and still abandon ourselves to Providence as if we ~ould do nothing." A person who hears, that St. Ignatius advises one to act a~ if everything depended on ~ne's self and then again 'as-if nothing at all depended on one's self, may rightly '.wonder what St. Ignatius really said. Reason for wondering is enhanced when one notices the long interval of time that elapsed between Ignatius and Hevenesi, namely, .150 years. If, too, one should try to. find the' original 'words of St. Ignatius in hi~ printed works or in other first-class sources, one's wonderment could become still greater. Neither the first nor the second form of this saying is a direct~ quotation from the saint. However, the substance or idea of toe ~econd form does occur repeat-edly in the documents written by him or by his contemporar{es about Hevenesi gives, as his authority the Bologna Jesuit Carnoli (d. 1.693), Who published a life.of St. Ignatius at Venice ~n 1680. In a chapter on the faith and hope of the saint he relates the follow-ing incident. Off a certain occasion Ignatius, accompanied by Riba-' deneira, a confidant and frequent companion of his, called on~ the Spanish ambassador in Rome, the Marquis de Sarria, ~nd met with a cool reception. Ighatius's suspicion ~as that the M~rquis was piqued AUGUSTINE (3. ELLARD . . Review for Religious because~ his influence with the Pope was not considered great and his intercession was not much in demand. Then Ignatius explained to Ribadeneira that thirty years earlier the Lord had taught him to employ all permissible means in the divine service, but not to build his hope upon them. Hence neither upon the noble Marquis nor upon any other creature would he base his confidence. Carnoli does not give his source. In fact at that time it was not in print. Now it is, namely Ribadeneira's work, De Actis P. N. lgnatii.* In No. 108, the pertinent place, Ribadeneira writes: "He said to me that he thought of telling him that thirty-six [sic] years ago our Lord had given him to understand that in. matters of His holy servic'e, he ought to use all the possible legitimate means, but then to place his confidence in God, not in those means." Ribadeneira himself wrote a biography of St. Ignatius, and in the account of this visit quotes him as saying: "I shall tell him [the Ambassador], an'd I shall say it plainly, that thirty years [sic] ago I 'learned from God that in doing the work of God, I should seek all helps, but in such a way that I consider my hope to rest, not in those aids, but in Godralmselr. . s In a letter to St. Francis Borgia St. Ignatius gives expression to the same thought: "Looking to God our Lord in all things . considering it wrong to trust and hope merely in any means or efforts by themselves, and also not regarding it as secure to trust entirely in God without using the help He has .given, since it seems to me in our Lord that I ought to avail myself of all aids . I have ordered . "6 I The same Ribadeneira wrote a treatise entitled "On the Method of St. Ignatius in Governing," and in it he says: "In the matters belonging to the service of ou~ Lord that he undertook, he employed all human, means to succeed in them, with as-much care and efficiency as if success depended on them, and" he confided in God and kept himself dependent on divine Providence as if all those other human means that he took were of no effect.''7 Pinard de la B'oullaye gives several other .references to old writings which witness to St. Igna-tius's use of the sam~ principle.8 4. Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu, Monumenta lgnatiana, Set. ,~, v. 1. 391 ; cf. 400. ¯ 5. Pedro de Ribadeneira, Vitq lgnatii Loyolae (Cologne, 1602), Lib. 5. cap. 9, 615ff. 6. Monumenta'Ignatiana, Set. 1, t~. 9 (Sept. 17, 1555), 626. 7. Ibid., Set. 4, v. 1, 466. 8. Pinard de la Boullaye, Saint lgnace de Loyola Directeur d'Ame~, p. 299. 12 January, 1953 So TRUST IN GOD This principle is also characteristic of the spirit that animates the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. In one of the most important parts of them, after stating that, to preser;;'e and perfect the Society, supernatural means should be given the priority, the Founder says: "This foundation having been laid . natural means also . . . are conducive to the same end; if however they be learned and used sin-cerely and only for the service of God, not that our trust should rest upon them, but rather that, in accordance with the order of His supreme providence, we should in this way co-operate with divine grace.''9 The very same idea, in almost identical words, is proposed in the rules for priests.1° Perhaps the latest development in the long and complicated record of this aphorism :is the,following. About the beginning of 1951 Father Joseph De Lapparent, editor of Vari~t~s Sinotogiques~ wrote to Father John B. Janssens, the General of the Society, com-plaining'that the text of this dictum as it occurs in all the different editions of the Thesaurus Spiritualis was defective. In reply Father Janssens says: "Although that form of.the saying is not without -some sense~ it must be confessed that it is twisted and far-fetched, and does not perfectly correspond to very many sayings of St. Igna-tius, as one can see in the notes already published by your Rever, encen and in the study of Father C. A. Kneller, S.J., "Ein Wort des hl. Iqnatius yon Loyola.' "'~ Father Janssens goes on to say that in getting out the Spanish edition of the Thesaurus pubiished at San-tander in 1935 the'editor did well to change th~ text to: "So trust God as if all success depended on Him, not at all from, yourself; however, exert yourself as if God were going to do nothing, and you alone.everything."~3 ~ Before the times if St. Ig.natius the well known theologian, spir-itual writer, and chancellor of the University of Paris, John Gerson (1363-1429) had said something very. similar: "Presumption re-fuses to co-operate with God, and despair will not wait for ~he co-operation of God with it. The middle course is so to act that everything may be attributed to divine giace, and so to trust in grace 9. Constitutiones Societatis desu, Pars X, n. 3. 10. Regulae Societatis desu (1932), No. 14. 11. Nouvelles de la Mission de Shanghai, Sept. 15, 1944; Oct. 31, 1947; Dec. 30, 1948. 12. Zeitschrift fuer Aszese und M~stik (1928), 253-257. , 13. Acta Romana Soc&tatis desu (1952), 137-138. 13 AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD as not to give up one's own activity, doing what one can.'°14 Bossuet's conception of the matter was thus expressed: "One ought to expect everything from God, but nevertheless t0 act also. For one ought not only to pray as if God alone should do every-thing, but also to do what one can, and use one's own will with. grace, for everything is done through this co-operation. But neither should we ever forget that it is always God who takes'the initiative, for there precisely lies the basis of humility.''is St. Vincent de Paul puts it ~hus: "I cons,ider it a good maxim to avail oneself of all the means that are licit and possible for the glory of God, as if God should not help us~ provided that one expect all things' from His divine Providence, as if we did not have any human means."16 An Englishman, who like St. Ignatius, has a name in history as a military 'man and a religious leader, but was~ very unlike him in other respects, namely, Oliver Cromwell, is said to have given his followers this admonition: "Put your trust in G6d; but mind to keep your powder dry!" 14. "'De Si~nis Bonis et Malis;'" Opera (Ed. Dupin)~ III, 158 d. 15. Meditations sur l'Etaangile (40e jour).: cf. Pinard de la Boullaye, op.cit.29.9. 16. Letter t6 Markus Cogl~e (April 24, 1652), Oeuvres (Ed. P2 Coste, Paris, 19.21) ,rlV, 366. EXAMINATION OF THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS" , Proposed for Superior.s General 1. Has the love of God grown in proportion to the graces offered: daily Com-mumon, develop~ent.'of liturgical life, deeper study of Holy Scripture, increased de-vouon to Our Lady, doctrine of the Mystical Body, and way of spiritual childhood? Are there more souls of prayer in our communities? Is there a deeper sense-of God? 2. Has true charity increased within our communitie~ in thought, word, and deed? 3. Is tension caused by the quantity of work undertaken, to the detriment of patience and humility which ,should win hearts and draw them, to the religious life? -4. Has motherly charity in government rather than mere administration given a true idea of the holocaust of charity? '5. Has the pursuit of technical and p~ofessional progress obscured ~he need fo~ poverty, disinterestedness, a, nd0great lo~;e for the poor? / 6. Is the Gospelspirit of self-denial, penance, and reparation not only unques-tioned but stronger~to defend religious holiness against the spirit of the world? 7. Is more consideration given to religious who are tired and over-strained, and ".what means are taken to guard against that conditibn? 8. Have fi'iendliness between congregations, collaboration in work, the "spirit of the Church," increased? 14 Lengt:h ot: Lil:e of Religious Men: Marianist:s, 1820-195! Gerald J. Schnepp; S.M~ and John T. Kurz, S.M. ~'JHAT is the average age at death of male religious? Has their W~ length ~o~ life increased, decade by decade, with the rest of the population? Are there differences by country? Finally, how does the average age at de~ath of religious' compare with that of males in the general pdpulation? Answers to these questions are now availhble for 2,380 Marian-ists who died in the Society of Mary between 1820 and 1951. Source of the st~atistics is the latest edition of the Necrolo~g of ibe Societg of Marg which lists the name, age at death, and year and place of death of each religious who persevered.1, The Soci~ety of Mary was founded in 1817 in Bordeaux,-France, "by Very Reverend William Joseph Cha~inade: during the decade 1820-29, seven religious2 were called to their eternal reward and in succeeding decades, increasing numbers died. The congregation comprises three categories of persons: Priests, Teaching Brothers, and Working Brbthers. For the present study,s no breakdown by categories is given because, first, the Necrol-ogo does not distinguish the two types of Brothers, and secondly, the number of Priests is too small (perhaps ten per cent of the total) tO supply an adequate sample over the 130-year period covered.4 Let us take up, in order, the answers to the four questions posed. The mean or average age at death of the entire group of 2,380 Marianists is 55.7 years, with a standard deviation of 22.4 years: 1purpose of, the Necrology (Dayton, Ohio: Mount St. John Press. 1952), which also lists the exact day of death, is to recall to the li~'ing members the names of the deceased, for remembrance in their prayers: the list for the following day is read in community after the evening meal. 2Here and throughout the article is included the first Marianist to die, Brother An-thony Cantau, who passed away in Bordeaux in 1819. 3The present article is based on John Kurz, S.M., Length of Life of Male Religious (Unpublished M.A. thesis, Saint Louis University, 1952). 4Research on the lengih of life of religious priests' w~uld be of interest in the light of one study which shows that, the average age 'at death of Catholic priests in Eng-land is five per cent above the average for the general population. See Louis J. Dublin, Alfred J. Lotka, and Mortimer Spiegelman, Length of Life (New York: The RonaldPress Co., 1949), p. 219. '. 15 GERALD J. SCHNEPP and JOHN T. KURZ Ret~iew for Religious this means that approximately two-thirds of the ages at death fall between 33.3 years and 78.1 y~ars. The median age, or mid-point ¯ in the distribution, is 61.5 years. A total of 844 Marianists, or 35.5 per cent, lived out the traditional "thr~e score and ten" 70 years or beyond. These figures, it should be kfiown, are weighted by com-paratively low ages at death in the earlier years of the S'ociety. Even so, they indicate a fairly "respectable" life span. Measured in terms of service, assuming that each Marianist began his active life at the age of 18, this represents 89,726 years of service which the Society of Mary has given to the Church from 1820 to 1951.5 Concerning the second question, it is known that life expectancy all over the civilized world has been increasing during the past 130 years, the period of time covered by this study. Improved living con-ditions, better nutrition, and advances in medical science undoubt-edly all played a part in this development. Likewise, the extraordi-nary development of science and industry, along with the improve-ments in agricultural and processing techniques c6mbined to improve the quality, quantity, and variety of food. These factors had an in-fluence on the lives of all who lived during this period, including the religious who are the subjects of.this study. The facts concerning the 2,380 Marianists are presented in Table 1. During the first three decades, all deaths (except one) occurred at age 54 or less, and hence the mean ages at death are very low 23.9, 25.9, and 28.1 years. This is to be expected in a young society, since, if any deaths are to occur, they are likely to be deaths of rela-tively young religious. The length of time involved is not sufficient to enable men who joined at the usual age 15 to 25 to reach much beyond 50. But there is a steady upward progression through-out the series, with slight breaks during the 1910-19 and 1940-49 decades. The explanation ~eems to be that both were decades in which world wars occurred; in some European countries, religious in the younger age brackets served in the armed for~es, and some of them were killed. Further, during the '1910-1919 decade, the influenza epidemic interfered with normal life expectancy. In general, then, Table 1 indicates that Marianist life expectancy,has increased, decade by decade, reaching a high of 67.2 years during the 1930-39 decade. In order to make comparisons with the general population, how-ever, it is necessary to consider~ the figures for each country separately; SThis figure would be considerably larger, of course, if the services of those still living were included. Z TABLE I--Ageat Death and Decade of Death (1820-19Sl) for 2,380 ,Mar;an;sts 1820-29 1830;39 AGE GROUP 1 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 23.9 3 8 2 0 1 ~1 1 0 0 O 0 0 0 " 0 0 0 16 25.9 1840~49 12 14 13 2 4 4 1 1 0 0 °0 0 0 0 0 1 52 28.1 -- 1850:59 12 21 17 9 6 5 5 3 I 3 2 0 1 0 1 0 86 32.4 14.8 1860-69 5 I0 18 I1 6 8 4 8 6 5 '5 4 1 0 0 0 91 40.7 16.4 1870:79 14 28 19 I1 I0 6 10 I0 10 13 14 15 5 3 0 0 168 44.3 19.5 1880-89 1.7 22 13 10 15 8 12 10 22 17 I~ 16 8 5 ,,3 1 193 48.2 20.4 1890-99 18 34 ~20 9 5 ~,6 13 13 17 23 29 32 22 13 1 0 255 :51.8 "21.6 1900-09 5 28 I0 '4 8 "12 5 11 '17 26 32 37 30 18 8 5 256 59.2 20.6 I~10-'19 12 34 18 19 16 l0 8 16 12 23 39 46 41 30 10 3 337 57.1 20.1 1920-29 6. 23 7 . 7 4 7 I1 15 22 19 28 37 35 25 13 3 262 61.1 20.2 1930-39 2 lO 14 ll 9. 1 8 14 19 ~l 34 52 56 36 34- 14 345 67.2 18.0 1940-49 3 II 21 7 lO 6 3 8 ll 20 17 37 46 60 15 13 288 66.1 20.6 1950-51 1 .2 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 5 3 2 2 2 2 0 24 61.2 Total 111 248,175 100 94 74 83 112 137 185-217 278 247 192 87 40 2380 55.7 22.4 GERALD J. SCHNEPP and JOHN T. KURZ ¯ Reoiew for Religious this will help~to answer the third question. °World-wide figures, even if available,¯ would be misleading, since the f~ctors affecting length of life do not operate uniformly all over. It is also necessary to consider tbh figures for males 'only, since female.life expectancy is generally greater; for example, in the United States at the present time, male life expectancy is about 66 years, whereas femal~ life expectancy is about 71 years. Ten countries are represented as places of death for the 2,380 Mafianists.included in this study bui~ com-parative figures can be presented only for' France (1,314 deaths) ; Switzerland (171) ; United States (370) ; Belgium (141) ; ~and Austria (11i6) ' Statistics for .Spain (175 deaths) are unavailable in regard to the male population; smallness of sample rules out com-parative figures for the'other four countries: Japan (52) ; Italy (22) ; Russia (17) ; and C~na (2). TABLE 2 I-ireExpectancy o~r Males af Age 17 ~n France, Swlfzerland, United States, Belgium, and Austria Compared to Age at Death of MaHanlsts, by SpeciRed Time Intervals MARIANISTS WHO DIED IN FRANCE Years Average Age I. FRANCE Life Expect. atAge 17(1) ~861-65 63.4 1877-81 62.9 1891-00 63.8, 1898-03 63.3 1908-13 64.4 1920-23 65.9 1933-38 66.9 II. SWI'I'ZERLAN D 1910-11 65.5 1921-30 68.4 1931-41 70.0 I939-44 71.3 III. UNITED STATES 1930-39 70.1 1945 72.1 IV. AUSTRIA 1930-33 68.4 V. BELGIUM 1928-32 69.2 Years at Death 1860-69 42.0 1870-79 45.6 1890-99 55.2 1900-09 62.8 1910-19 " 53.3 1920-29 66.0 1930-39 ~ 71.0 MARIANISTS WHO blED 1910-19 ' 66.6 1920-29 67.5 1930-39 70.8 1940-49 74.9 No. of Deaths During Decade 77 ,153 223 129 1'99 97 116 IN" SWITZERLAND. 30 40 MARIANISTS WHO DIED IN THE UNITED STATES 1"930-39 - 70.3 ~' 87 1940-49 68.6 MARIANISTS', WHO DIEDIN AUSTRIA 1930-39 71.4 27 MARIANISTS WHO DIEDIN BELGIUM 1920-29 70.0 32 (1) Life Expectancy at Age 17 computed by interpolation from Dublin, Lotka, and Spiegelman, Length of Life and here expressed, for comparison, as expected age at death (li{e expectancy at 17, plus 17). References for the various countries: France, p. 346 ; Switzerland,' p. 348 ; United States, p, 324 ; Austria and Belgium, p. 346. January, 1953 LENGTH OF LIFE As is noted from Table 2; the comparisons are not perfect, "be-cause statistics from the various countries are not always available by decades. Since it may be assumed that all the Marianists had sur-vived at least the first 17 years of life (17 is the ordinary age for taking first vows), the figures, for the various countries are presented on the basis of life expectancy at age 17. A cursory examination of the tables will bear out this general conclusion: Mariani~t life ex-pectancy is about the same as, or somewhat more favorable than, that of the general male population of each country in the years since 1900; prior to' that time,. Marianist life .expectancy was somewhat lower, and in the early years of the Society; considerably lower, than the general male life expectancy. Another way of looking at this is to return to the figures in Table I. If only the 1,512 Marianists who died since 1900 are considered, it is found that 712 or 47.1 per cent lived to age 70 or beyond. Another matter of interest is the average length of life by coun-try. Tbis is available for our study but not for the male population of the ten countries over the span of years that Marianists have been working in those countries. The figures, in' order from highest to lowest, are: Belgium, 69.2 years; Switzerland, 65.8 years; United States, 60.5 years: Italy, 58.4 years: Spain, 57.5 years;: France, 53.6 years: Austria, 52.9 years: Japan, 46.8 years; Russia, 39.8 years; and'China, 22.5 year~. It should again be pointed out that these averages are b;]sed on a small number of cases in-,regard" to Japan, Italy, Russia, and China. For the rest, cautious comparison with the over-all average of 55.7 years seems to be justified. The only couff-tries with a large number of deaths which fall below this. general average are France and Austria. Compulsory military service and war undoubtedly are factors in both cases; and, for France, the cradle of the Society, it must be remembered that figures extend back to 1820 when general life'expectancy was not so high as it became in later years. The over-all conclusion, from this study is that life expectancy of Marianists for the past 50 years has been about the same as that of the general male population. Since the unmarried population has a lower life expectancy than the general population,6 ~tbese Marianist figures demand some explanation. Why do these Marianists-- 6"Among white males at ages 20 and over in the United States in 1940, the single had a death rate just 1 2/5 times that of the married." Dublin, Lotka, and Spiegelma~, op. cir., p. 140. 19 GERALD J. SCHNEPP and JOHN T. KURZ Ret~iew for Religious all unmarried of course--have a higher life expectancy than 'other unmarried males in the population? Explanations readily suggest themselves: the screening process by which only healthy persons are accepted in'to the congregation; the fact that most of these men were male teachers, an occupational classification with a higher than aver-age life expectancy? lack of financial and dbmestic worries; regular-ity of life, i~ncluding regular hours for prayer, work~ recreation, meals, and sleep; easy access to good medical care; and, in the United States, exemption from military service. Less certain as a factor is the loss, through defection, of individuals who, if they had perse-vered, might tend to decrease the average age at death. Although it is impossible to state, from the present study, that these are the factors at work, they are mentioned here as suggestions for a more ambitious project which might be undertaken in the future. It would also be profitable to make similar studies of other religious orders and con-gregations of men and of women; to consider Priests and Brothers separately; and to make some inquiries int.o the causes of death. The general value of such studies is to provide an answer to the recurring criticism that religious life, from a physical and/or psycho-logical point of view, is unnatural and harmful. For the particular order or con. gregat!on, such studies are valuable in guiding the ad-ministration in such matters as recommendation of religious for ad-vanced studies; appointments to serve as superiors: .policies on diet and medical care; adaptation of religious life to modern conditions; and provision for the aged members who, according to all indica-tions, will be progressively more numerous in the future, propor-tionately, than ever before. Since these considerations may seem to put too much emphasis on the natural, it must not be overlooked that the Will of God in regard to the death of each religious is a fact; however, we may be certain that God does not prohibit but rather commands that all natural means be used to prolong that life as long as possible. 7Ibid, p. 219. OUR CONTRIBUTORS THOMAS SULLIVAN, the designer of a special Communion card for patients (REVIEW, Sept. 1952, p. 248),is chaplain at St. Luke,s Hospital, Aberdeen, South Dakota. GERALD J. SCHNEPP and ALBERT MUNTSCH are-professors of sociology at St. Louis University, St. Louis, ,Missouri; the latter has been teaching 49 years. JOSEPH F. GALLEN teaches canon law at Woodstock College, Wood-itock. Maryland. AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD and JEROME BREUNIG are members of' the editorial board. 20 Canonical oVisi!:at:ion ot: Nigher Superiors ,Joseph F. GaIlen, S.J. THE visitation of the houses 9f a religious institute by the higher. superiors and the local Ordinary, since it is prescribed by canons 511-512, is called the canonical visitation. The pur-pose of this article is to explain the visitation of higher superiors. 1) Frequencg of visitation. The Code of Canon Law does not determine the frequency of the visitation of higher superiors. In the practice of the Sacred Congregation of Religious in appro',;ing the constitutions of lay congregations, which is and should be closely imitated by diocesan institutes, the far more common norm is ~hat the superior general, personally or throug~ anothe~ religious, visits the entire congregation at least every three years, even in congrega-tions that are divided into provinces. Many institutes not divided into provinces, realizing that they lack the customary annual visita-tion of a provincial; prescribe a greater frequency of visitation by the superior general, for example, every second year, at least every second year, or annually. This desirable greater frequency cannot be pre, scribed in many congregations because of their large number of sub-~ jects, the great territorial extent of the institute, or both, A much lower number of congregations command a visitation by the superior general only once every six years, but at least this is commanded in the .practice of.the Holy See for lay institutes, even in those that are very extensive and large. By far the greater number of institutes im-pose an annual visitation by the provincial; a small number limit this obligation to one visitation in three years or two in three years. The annual visitation' is the much more preferable norm and it may always be made, even when not commanded by the constitutions. Some constitutions permit the provincial ~o omit the visitation during the year that the house has been or is to be visited by the supe-rior generhl, but a prudent provincial will hesitate to use this privi-lege unless some rare business of greater moment demands or counsels the omission of the visitation. A provincial cannot make the annual appoint.ments satisfactorily to himself or to others unless he knows both his subjects and the facts. 2) Moral oblioation of making the visitation. Canon 511 per- 2.1 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Relfgious mits .the particular constitutions to determine the frequency and even to omit any prescription, as to the frequency of the visitation. If the constitutions have 'commanded a determined frequency, canon 511 imposes an obligation immediately in conscience on the higher supe-riors to make the visitation according to this frequency. The omis-sion 'of the visitation, without a justifying, reason, is thus a sin. Many canonicalauthors hold that this obligation is grave.1 The~sin .is certainly.grave if the culpable omission of the visitation is the ~:ause of the existence or continuance of a serious relaxation of reli- :gious discipline or of any another seriously harmful situatio'n.2 3) The obligation is personal. Canon 511 permits a higher :superior to designate another to make the prescribed visitation only when he is l~gitimately prevented from doing so himself. Legitimate impediments are the following and others of about the same import: sickness, infirmity, old age, the great territorial extent or large num-ber of subjects of the institute or province, other business 'of serious mom, ent, and long or frequent absences on visitation that impede the proper government of the institute or province. It is evident' that such reasons will frequently excuse from only part of the visitation': Houses omitted from a visitation should ordinarily be given the pref-erence in the following visitation. A few of the excusi.ng reasons will lose" some and even all of their cogency if the higher superior is given an efficient secretary and freed from the work of a typist' and clerk. The lack of proper "courtesy is also a time-consuming element in the lives of higher superiors. Matter~ that fall within the compe-tence of local superiors should not be brought to higher superiors. Subjects should ordinarily not seek an interview for matters that can be despatched by letter. Whgn an interview is necessary, proper courtesy demands that a subject request an interview by'l~tter. The telephone should be used only when a request or a matter is urgent. It.is obviously inconsiderate and discourteous to drop in on a higher superior at any time and to expect an interview. We can .all al~o render the lives of higher superiors more useful, fruitful, and peace-ful by coming to the point quickly and sticking to it. Reasons ex-cusing from making the visitation are to be interpreted more liberally for the superior general than for the provincial. 1. Beste, 335; De Carlo, n~ 92: Fanfani, n. 70; Fine, 981: Gerster, 263; Geser, q. 364; Piatus Montensis, ,,L 636; Pruemmer, q. 170; Schaefer, a. 558; Vromant, n, 396, 2); Wernz-Vidal, III, n. 145. ¯ 2. Cf. Wernz-Vidal, III, n. 148. 22 danuar~lo 1953 : CANONI~U., VISITATION The'.understanding of the constitutions in a particular institute may be that the higher superior has full liberty either to make the visitation personally or to delegate another as visitor. This interpre-tation is more likely to be verified if the constitutions omit the.clause of candn 511, "if legitimately impeded," and is far more readily ad-mitted for the superior general than for the provincial. Aliteral in-terpretation of canon 511 leads to the conclusion that a higher supe-rior must delegate another for any visitation that he cannot make personally. This is also the: teaching of authors and is at least gen-erally true. However, if a personal visitation is mostrarely omitted, I do notbelieve that there exists a certain obligation to delegate an-other as visitor unless a, situation in the institute, province, or house clearly demands a visitation. Higher superiors are to be slow to ex-cuse themselves and to delegate a visitor. Su,bjects quite generally find it difficult to talk to a-delegated visitor. 4) Constitutions that do not prescribe ~isitations. Canon 511 does not directly command higher superiors to make visitations; it merely enforces any obligation of visitation imposed by the constitu-tions., If the particular constitutions do not impose a visitation, the higher superior has no.obligation but he always has the right of making a visitation. Some constitutions do not oblige the superior general to make visitations, but this would be unthinkable in the case of a provincial and also in that of a superior general of an institute not divided into provinces, , Canon ~I 1 is principally concerned with centralized institutes and thus with general and provin'cial superiors, who are the higher superiors in such institutes. These institutes can also have superiors of vice-provinces, quasi-provinces, regions, missions, districts, and vicariates, who should, as a general principle, follow the same norms-of visitation 'and of frequency as provincials. The canon also extends to the superiors of monastic congregations and confed.erations and ac-cordingly now affects the superior general or president lind regional superiors in federations and confederatiohs of nuns established cording to the counsel of the apostolic constit.ution, Sponsa Christi. ~,The constitutions of some institutes of ,religious. women factu-' ally consisting of many houses and engaged in the active life., contain no prescriptions on visitation, because by law they, are nuns or.con-. gregations of sisters whoseconstitutions.have been,taken from orders of nuns. The mothers superior of such institutes should make visita-tions according to the norms detailed-abo~e for .superiors general. 23 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Reoieto for Religious Theseinstitutes are factually centralized, and the purpose of a visita-tion is at least as necessary in them as in a canonically centralized in-stitute. 5) Designation of a delegated oisitor. The usual norm of con-stitutions of brothers and sisters permits a superior general to appoint -a visitor for a particular matter or an individual house but demands the consent of the general council for the delegation of a visitor for the entire congregation if this visitor is not a member of the general council.3 Some constitutions extend the necessity of ~his consent to any delegated general visitor and to a visitor designated by the supe-rior general for an entire province. The same norm ordinarily regu-lates the nec, essity of the consent of his council in the delegation of a visitor by a provincial superior. 6) Companion of oisitor. The constitutions of brothers and sisters almost universally prescribe that a superior general, provincial, or delegated visitor is to have a religious of perpetual vows as com-panion. 4 The companion can be of great assistance to the visitor by handling the latter's correspondence. He could also be delegated for the visitation of' pl.aces, i.e., the chapel and sacristy, cloister, refectory, kitchen, recreation or common room, library, and the living quarters of the religious. The whole house shofild be visited'. The general or provincial bursai would frequently be an apt companion. He could examine the books and investigate thoroughly the financial and material condition of the house. 7) Purpose of ~isitation. The 'importance that the Church places on the visitation of higher superiors and the seriousness with which canonical authors consider its obligation manifest evidently that the visitation is not to degenerate into a mere ~egal formality. The primary purpose is to learn and correct defects of religious dis-cipline, s "This includes the observance of the vows, "the laves, decrees, and. instructions of the Holy See, the constitutions, legitimate cus-toms, ordinations of the general chapter, and the regulations of higher superiors. Such a purpose implies the encouragement, of the fervent, the prudent correction of delinquents, and the prescribing of apt means to restore, preserve, and increase fait.hful and constant ob-servance. Higher superiors are to ax;oid the energy of the reformer but they-are also to shun the passivity of the quietist. Some people 3. Cf. Normae, nn. 256: 271, 9*. 4. 'Cf. Normae, n. 257. 5. Cf. Wernz-Vidal, III, n. 148. 24 January, 1953 VISITATION hold that the least government is the best government; others incline to the view that the worst government is no government. If a local Ordinary finds a serious situation in any house in his canonical vis-itation, the conclusion is almost infallible that higher superiors have been derelict in their duty. A paternal or maternal government does not exclude in religious superiors,, as it does not in our Holy Motherl the Church, decisive action when this is demanded by the circum-stances. The higher superior is~also to learn the spiritual and tem-poral needs and desires of subjects and to grant these according to the principles of the religious lifel the common good, and prudence. The purpose of the visita,tion is also to investigate the govern-ment of provincial and local superiors and the administration of the temporal property of the house and province. Defects of govern-ment and administration are to be prudently corrected. There is a general need of clarity and emphasis on the fact that the investigation of government is only a secondary purpose of the visitation. Too many religious prepare for an interview with a superior general or provincial with only one principle in mind: what is wrong with the superior and with the officials? The primary norm of the prepara: tion should be: what is wrong with me? Higher superiors should protect the good name and authority of local superiors, they should remember that in a doub~ ~he presumption favors the superior, bu~ they cannot follow the principle that a local superior never errs. Mi, nor, accidental, and occasional mistakes should be overlooked; the local superior also must be given the forbearance due to a son, or daughter of Adam. However, habitual and serious dei:ects that are ob-structive of the spirituality, efficiency, and peace of the community should be studied, and the local superior is to be admonished of them, but with appropriate consideration. It has been remarked that we can often justifiably apply to a superior the principle of what was said of a conspicuous historical character: the scrutiny fastened on him detects many flaws but entitles him to be. judged free of any-thing of which he is not charged. ~ An important purpose of the visitation is that the higher supe-rior acquires a knowledge of the Capabilities and deficiencies of sub, jects. This should be of great assistance in making the annual ap-pointments for both the common and the individual good. 8) Extent ot: the t~isitation. The visitation extends to all houses, persons, places, and things. Both superiors general and provincials should strive to visit the missions at least once during their term of ,JOSEPH F. GALLEN office. The religious on .the missions are those making the greatest sacrifice and they should not be the most neglected. Both in law and in fact it is the presumption that perfect observance is more °difficult in small houses, and yet higher superiors are inclined to make only a cursory visit of a few hours iii~such houses. Canon 511 commands a higher superior to visit all bbuses subject to him. Therefore. a provincial does not visit a house immediately subject to the superior general unless he has been delegated to do so by the" latter. Canon 513, § 1 obliges a visitor ~to interview only the determined religious and the number in a house that he judges necessary for the purpose of the visitation, but¯ the particular law or custom of an institute will almost universally oblige a higher superior to interview all the reli-gious, This is also demanded by paternal government and the pur-pose of knowing the individual religious. As stated in n. 6, the visitation extends to all places in the house. A visitor is to be sensi, tire not o.nly to the irregularities of worldliness, luxury, softness, and sensuality but also to the adequate and et~icient furnishings of the living quarters of the religious. The cell of stark monastic sim-plicity may be suitable neither for sleep nor work. The visitation extends to all'things, for example, the furnishings of the house, the chapel, the sacristy, the proper care of the sick in the infirmary, the clothing, the heating, light,- food, to the books and documents of temporal administration, and to the book of minutes of the council. A fastidiousness, over-interest, and preoccupation with food is evidently alien to the state of perfection, but the food of religious ~hould be simple, substantial, well-cookedl appetizing, and sui~cient. Religious poverty implies privation, not indigestion. Highe{isuperiors should not omit a quite careful visitation of the li-brary and should investigate the number and quality of the' books purchased during the year. It would be interesting to learn what percentage of the budget, if any, is allotted to the purchage of books in some religioushouses. The visitation covers the whole external life of the community. The suitability of the horarium to the work and climate of the community is to be studied. Some institutes, especially of women, appear to follow the l~rinciple that the religious may die but the horarium must go on. In this era of enlightened and pru.dent adaptation the higher superior is to look carefu11~r'into the matter of customs. Some of these are meaningless, antiquated, originate from the self-interest of the few, or serve only to imprison the soul of the religious life in a labyrinth of formality and detail. It - danuar~l, 1953 CANONICAL VISITATION would be unwise to conclude that the need of a~laptation extends only to religious women, not to religious men and priests. 9) Opening of the visitatiqn. A visitation customarily begins with an exhortation to the community by the visitor. "Fhe topic of this exhortation should ordinarily be a virtue or principle distinctive of the religious life, a virtue especially necessary for the particular in-stitute, or a present problem of the religious life or of the institute. 1 O). Precept of the vow of obedience. Some institutes oblige the visito~ at the opening of the visitation to.imi~ose a precept in virtue of the ",;ow of obedience on the members of the community to reveal serious offenses. A few institutes extend the precept to anything else the religious may think necessary for "the good of the community. This precept does not extend to conduct that has been completely re-formed and obliges only with regard to matters that are external, certain in fact, and serious.6 11 ) Prelirninar!/interviews. It would be profitable for the visi-tor to have a preliminary interview on the state of the community alone with the superior, with the entire group of councillors, at which the superior is not present, and for their respective fields with such officials as the bursar, the master of novices, of postulants, of junior professed, and of tertians, with the dean, principal, adminis-trator, or director of the school, hospital, or institution. In these preliminary interviews the visitor should cover such topics as the gen-eral religious discipline of the community, fidelity to spiritual exer-cises, silence, cloister, observance of pove, rty, whether necessities are obtained from the community or externs, whether material necessities are adequately supplied by the community, whether the quan.tity and quality of material things are. observed according to the tradi-tions of the community, the possession of. money by individual reli-gious, excesses or imprudences in contacts with externs, the more common defects of religious discipline, the general level of spirituality and charity in the community, the success in general of the com-munity in its work, obstacles to this success, whether all the activities. of the community are profitable, activities added or dropped, whether the community is overworked, the material and financial state of the house, state of the community in relation to the superior and:~fficials, whether the council is properly consulted, the s~.ate of the external relations of the community with the local O~dinary, the parish clergy, diocesan director of schools, hospitals, or., other institutions, 6. Bastien. n. 302 ~" JOSEPH F. GALLEN ReView for Religioud 'with the chaplain~ the confessors, and with secular authorities and agencies. Inquiry is to be made about the adjustment of the junior professed to the active life, their formation, care, direction, instruc-tion, and education. In a novitiate, an even more diligent inquiry is to be made on these headings about the novices and postulants. 12) Interoiews with indiuidual religious. The following is a suggested outline of topics for the interviews with the individual' re-ligious. It.is b~; no means necessary that all of these be covered with each religious. The visitation will be more helpful if the visitor suc-ceeds in getting the religious to talk spontaneously and if he directly and indirectly suggests topics rather than adheres to a formal ques-tionnaire. The visitor should, make a notation of any important matter. A notation is of great efficacy in mollifying a, tempestuous soul. a) Health. Sufficient rest? recreation? food? any particular ail-ment? it~ nature? care? the opinion of the doctor.?. b) Work. Success? progress? difficulties? sufficient time for preparation? according to the system and traditions of the institute and directions of' tho~e in authority? overwork? direction of extra-curricular activities? relations .with head of school, hospital, institu-tion? the level of moral and Catholic life among the students? the influence of the community and the individual on these? c) Studies. Studies taken during the year or the summer? in what? how profitable and practica.l? what success? What work is the individual inclined to?. thinks he will do his best in? Is there an~" time to advance by private study and reading during the year? , d) Companions. Getting along with them? Making an effprt to do so with all? Any particular difficulty with anyone or any type? Neglecting some and associafing with only a few? Any coldness, antipathy, anger? Divisions, factions, cliques in 'the com-munity? Their cause? Any cause of 'lack of peace, harmony," happi-ness, charity in the community? " e) Religions life. Any difficulty in attendance at common spir-itual exercises or in performing those prescribed? Any dispensatio, ns necessary? Why?'Any obstacle to profi.t from religious exercises? Any .problem in the observance of poverty?~ Any difficulty in securing ma-terial necessities from the communi.ty-? How is obedience going? With the superior? With officials? Sufficient opportunity for confession? Supply of spiritual books adequate? Does work, community duties, domestic duties interfere with the interior life? Sufficient opportunity 28 danuar~l, 1953 CANONICAL VISITATION to deepen and intensify the dedication to the interior life? Days of recollection, tridua, retrea~s profitable? f) Superiors and officials. Any external obstaCle to a spirit of faith towards superiors and officials? Any misunderstanding? Any hesitancy or diffidence in approaching them? g) Anything else? Any suggestions? complaints? difficulties? permissions? Everything he needs spiritually and temporally? Any-thing, else he wishes:to say? 13) Some principles for the individual interviews. The visitor , must cultivate the dexterity of giving each subject sufficient but not excessive time. The ability to end an interview promptly bui gra-ciously is an enviable gift for the life of a superior. All of us have to beware of the natural tendency to find greater truth in the story first ¯ told or greater force in the argument first presented. Fairness, judg-ment, patience, and prudence are necessary for any visitor who ~ishes .to be objective and to learn the objective truth. The fact that the subject is a friend, the possession of an attractive personality or man-ner, or a facile and orderly presentation is not an infallible criterion of truth. Our enemies and the unattractive and inarticulate are not always wrong.' The passing of the poetry of life teaches' us that man, and woman also, .too often knows only what.he desires to know, too often sees only what his inclinations want, and all too frequently finds in the objective oi~der what exists only in the desires or rebellion of his own heart. The visitor is,to ascertain the individual state of each subject. He is not to conclude too readily that a problem is. exactly the same as something in his own past life or that it possesses no distinctive note. The constant pronominal subject of the visitor's thought'should be ¯ you, nbt I. We rarely solve another's problem by the history of our own lives. The subject.should be made to feel that there is a sincere interest in him, An,interruption, exclamation of surprise, or calm remonstrance should be used to restrain any flow of words that is outracing the mind. Reluctant and forced replies, especially with re- ~gard to oneself, are very frequently suspect,in their objectivity. This is the suitable and expected time for the higher superior to administer necessary correction to individuals. The visitor should first make certain of the facts, hear all sides patiently, and correct calmly. A higher superior who never corrects should not be too quick to thank God for the fervor of his institute. The omission of correction is sometimes prudence. Sometimes it is sloth, or lack of courage, or 29 JOSEPH F.,GALLEN Reo~eto for, Rehgtous, human respect. Many a higher superior has prolonged his sleepless ~ nights by exclaiming: "Oh, if the,generals or provincials had onIy~ done something about him (or her) years ago! Now it is impossible to do anything." But now also is the time for him to do for futu're higher, superiors what he would have had done for himself: 14) The field of conscience and of religious government.~ The" forum or fieId of conscience consists strictIy of actions that are in- 'terior, or external but not readily knowable by others, provided eil~her is the type of action that one V~uld not care to reveal to an-other except under a-pledge of secrecy. The field of conscience thus consists of all completely interior acts, such as .graces: lights: good desires, inclinations, "attractions, affections, and motives; interior progress; consolation; desolation; desire of progress; conquest of self; acts and habits of virtue; interior acts of prayer; imperfect and evil attractions, propensities, aversions, and motives; interior trials ¯ and dangers; imperfections, sins, and habits of sin; and lack of in-terior effort in prayer and spiritual duties. All external actions not readily knowable by others are also restricted to the forum of con~ science. Such interior matte'rs as the ,knowledgeof. how to pray, to make the examen of conscience, the difficulty or ease in usin'g par-ticular methods of prayer or examen, the attraction or repulsion for particular types of spirituality, people, or occupations are not strictly matters of conscience, since one would not hesitate to speak of these to a friend .without a pledge of secrecy? Unless the Institute is Clerical and has the privilege of imposing the obligation of a manifestation.of conscience~ the visitor is forbid-den to inquire about any matters that appertain strictly to the forum , of conscience. If such interrogations are made, thesubject riaa.y lic-itly reply by a mental reservation. However, a subject is not forbid-den to reveal any of these matters voiuntarily to a visitor, even if the latter is a brother, ntin, or sister. All religious ale even counselled by canon 530, §'2 to manifest their consciences to superiors. If the superior is not a priestl this counsel does not extend to sin, tempta-tion, and any other matter that demands the knowledge and trair~ing of a priest. The. subject is not forbidden to reveal these n~atters also ~ to a visitor or any superior who is a brother, nun, or sister. The field of religious government consists of all external and 7. Bastien, n. 212, 3; Beste, p. 350: Creusen-Ellis, n. 128; Jone, 444; Schaefer, n. 684; Verrneersch-Creusen, I, n. 650. 3O danuar~,1953 CANONICAL VISITATION readily kriowabl~'conduct of a religious. Superiors may legitimately question a subject about such personal conduct, and the subject is obliged to answer truthfully,s Religious may therefore be questioned by the visitor or any superior on such matters as rising on time, ex-ternal performance of spiritual duties, prompt attendance fit common 'exercises, observance of silence, external charity, neglect of study, external neglect of the duties of one's offic.e, whether one went out of the house without permission, or without a companion, mailed .l~t-ters without permission, etc. 15) Denunciation of the conduct of a companion. Denunciation is the technical term that signifies the revealing of the conduct of a comp.anion to a superior." Religious do not and should not revealthe petty and purely personal defects of companions. This alone is to be classified as talebearing. Religious may certainly reveal the faults and defects of others that are of no serious malice but are disturbing, interfere with. one's own work, peace, or happiness, or with those of some others, or of the.entire.community. A religious is not obliged to lose a great deal of sleep or suffer headaches because a companion nearby tyl6es most of.the night and whis~tles most of the day. ,The door slammers, radio addicts, midnight bathers, corridor and cubicu- .lar orators and vodalists, and the nocturnal religious who flower into the life of work and talk only at night fall under this principle. A visitor or any superior may inquire and subjects are obliged to ankwer truthfully about an offense in external r~hdily khowable con-duct of ~/companion: a) if the religious by the particular law of their institute have re-nounced the righ't to their reputations to the extent that any sin or defect may be immediately denounced to the superior.9 Such a re-nuncxation is practically never found in the law of lay institutes. .b) if there exists a rumor or founded suspicion of the commission of the offense by the particular religious.I° c) if a truthful answer is necessary to avoid the danger of serious harm to the institute, the province, the house, an innocent third 8. Berutti. 109: Beste, pp. 336: 350: Creusen-Ellis, nn. 89, 2: 128: Geser. q. 510: Jombart. I. n. 839. 3°: Van Acken. q. 164; Vromant. n. 402. 9. Cf. Summary of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. nn. 9-10: Com-mon Rules, n. 18. 10. Augustine. VIIi,: ,~19-520: Coronata I, n. 540: Fanfani. n. 72: Geser. q. 377; Pruemmer. q. 110: Sipos. 339. 31" ¯ JOSEPH F. GALLEN~. Revie~o fdr Religious party, or the.delinquent himself,n This reason alone permits the revelation of the matter of an entrusted secret of counsel or official secret. 12 A religious maq reveal the offense of a companion spontaneously or in answer to the question of the visitor, since in the religious life the offense of another may always,, practically speaking, be immedi-ately denounced fo a superior without the necessity of a .previous fra-ternal- correction.13 Conduct that has been completely corrected is not to be revealed, and it is evident that a ~ubject has no right to in-ves'tigate the conduct of his companions.Subjects should be prayer-fully attentive/to the case listed above under c). In practice such a matter should be~revealed.to the superior as soon as possible. Reli-gious are apt to excuse themselves from such a revelation lest even "their own conscience accuse them of talebe.aring. Later they may painfully and shamefully hear their consciences condemn them as the cause of a human disaster and of the suffering of many or all of their fellow-keligious. Whenever the name of a companion oCcurs in a conversation with a superior, conscience should immediately signal the red warning of truth. The facts and their source should first be studied, not in the imaginative and exciting glow of the evening, but in the cold and gray stillness of the early morning. Any denunciation to a superior should also be preceded by a searching examination of conscience on one's purity of motive. An impure motive stains the soul and als9 discolors fZct. Superiors should remember that the voice, the.face, and even the bristling hair of the criticism of others often bear a.striking resemblance to those of defense of self. 16) The visitor rna~t use u2hat he has learned in the visitation. The purpose of the visitation is not mere spiritual direction but gov-ernment and evideritly gives the visitor the right of using what he has learned in the Visitation. The visitor may therefore do such things as instruct, reprehend, correct, change the employment, office, or house of a religious, or place him under the vigilance of a local supe-rior because of what he has learned in the visitation. ~ In the use of information on an~" matter that is not commohly known~in tlie 11. Abbo-Hannan, I, 523; Augustine, III, 139-40; Bastien, n. 236; Beste, p. 336; Cocchi, VIII, n. 302 b) ; Creusen-Ellis, n. 89, 2; De Carlo, n. 95; Fanfahi, n. 72; Gerster, 264; Geser, q. 377; Pruernmer~ q. 110; Sipos, 339; Vroraant, n. 402 ¢). 12. Vromant0 n. 402. '~ 13. Coemans, n. 231; Fine, 1067; Regatillo, I, n. 658; Wernz-Vidal~ III, n. 149. 32 danuary, 1953 CANONICAL VISITATION community the visitor is to be careful to protect the reputation of the subject. He is forbidden to use, outside of the interview itself, any-thing learned in a voluntar~l manifestation of conscience without the express consent of the subject. 17) Revelation of things learnedin "the visitation. To reveal is . to tell others. In general, the visitor is forbidden to .reveal secret matters learned in the visitation. This obligation of secrecy clearly does not extend to matters that are commonly known in the. com-munity, but a prudent superior avoids indiscriminate conversation on anything that even appears to have been learned in virtue of his office. Some superiors could foster a greater intimacy with secrets. The visitor is to keep secret the identity of the one who gave the in-formation, but the importance of the matter to be corrected Can in some cases prevail over this obligation. Evidently the superior should not apologize for his duty of correction by even obscurely and guardedly hinting the name of' the one who gave the information, This would be to imitate the soldier who had enlisteti for the music of the bands but not for,the whine of the bullets. .Neither should the superior strive to make it appear that the sole reason for the c0r. rection is that the matter was reported to him. The mere mention of this fact often destroys any effcacy that the correction might have had. The visitor may reveal secret matters learned in the visitation, to a higher superior or to his councillors if this is jhdged necessary for a more permanent and efficacious correction. It is always forbidden to reveal anything learned ~in a manifestation of conscience without " the express consent of the subject.14 18) Closing of the visitation. The visitor frequently gives an exhortation also at the close,of the visitation on a topic of the same nature as that used to open the visitation. 19) Instructions and regulations. The visitation will be par-tially ineffective unless means are taken to further the good that the community is doing, to bring it to dffect the good that is being left undone, and to correct abuses. The visitor should write out instruc-tions on these points. It will usually be sufficient to reaffirm existifig obligations without enacting new regulations foi the community, New laws are to be regarded at mo~t asa se'asonal delicacy, not as our daily bread. The visitor should retain a copy. of the instructions. According to the custom of the institute, these instructions may be 14. Cf. Coemans, n. 501 b): Voltas. CpR. I. 85, nota 6; Wernz-Vidal, III, n. 210, nota 57. ~ 33 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Reoieto t:oc Religious the topic.of the closing talk of the visitor, be.given only to the supe-rior, who is always charged with their enforcement, or at least part of them may be read to the community, preferably .after the visitor has left. The initructions should begin with something sincerely complimentary, which can always, be found. The defects listed should be frequent and quite common violations of religious disci-pline. Other defects are to be taken care of by individual correction. The visitor is also to strive in the instructions to further positively the spiritual life and the work of the house or province and is to avoid concentration on the negative aspect of the correction of defects. 20 Pertinent canons on visitation. Canon 51 I. Higher superior~ of religious institutes who are obliged to visitation by the constitutions must visit personally or, if they are legitimately impeded, through a delegate, all the houses subject to them at the times determined in the constitutions. Canon 513, §' 1. The visitor has the right and the duty oi: ques-tioning the religious that be thinks should be questioned and of ob-taining information on matters that appertain to the visitation. All the religious are obliged to reply truthfully to the visitor, Superiors are forbidden to divert them'in any manner whatever from this obli-gation or otherwise to binder the purpose of the visitation. Canon 2413, § I. Superioresses who after the announcement of a visitation have transferred religibus to another" house without the consent of the visitor; likewise all religious, whether superioresses or sub jerrY, who personally or through others, directly~,or indirectly, have induced religious not to reply or to dissimulate in any way or not sincerely to expose the truth when questioned by the visitor, or who under any pretext whatever have molested, others because of an-swers given to the visitor shall be declared incapable by the visitor of holding any office that involves the government of other religious and, if superioresses, they shall be deprived of their otffce. § 2. The prescriptions of the preceding" paragraph are to be ap-plied also to religious institutes of men. Canons 513, § 1 and 24.13 apply to the canonical visitation also of the local Ordinary or his delegate. The hindering of the purpose of the visitation prohibited by canon 513, § 1 can be effected in many ways, for example, by concealing objects or falsifying records or documents. The great importance that the Church places on the canonical danuarq, 1953 CANONICAL VISITATION visitation is manifest in all these canonsbut especially in the penal canon, 2413. The permanent or temporary transfer forbidden to any superior is one whose purpqse is to separate a religious from the visitor and thus to prevent the revelatibn or interrogation of the reli-gious. This purpose is presumed if made after the announcement of the visitation and without the consent of the visitor. The interference with' iegitimate interrogation' prohibited to all religious includes that done pe.rsonally or through anyone else, whether directly, by inducing or commanding others expressly to conceal the truth, or indirectly, by praise, promises, special attention or .treatment intended for the same purpose but. without expressly mentioning this purpose. To be' punishable the interference must cause the religious actually to be silent, to dissimulate, or to be insin-cere when questioned by the visitor. . The forbidden molestation can be accomp!ished in various ways, for example, by transferring a religious, changing his employment, by punishment, public or private reprehension, or by other signs of displea.sure because of replies given to the visitor. Recourse against false replies is to be made to th~ visitor or a highei superior. The offices referred to in the penalty as involving the ,government of others are, for example, general, provincial, or local sup~erior, mas-ter of novices, of junior professed, of tertians, of postulants, probably_ also deans, principals, administrators, and directors of schools, hos-pitals, or other institutions. Such a punishment demands;a serious violation of the law. The natural tendency is to conclude that this penalty, enacted by canon law, is a canonical penally and that it can be inflicted only by one possessing jurisdiction in the external forum.Is However, Larraona gives the at least probable and safe opinion that this penalty is not strictly canonical and that it may be . inflicted also by" visitors who possess only dominative power in clerical non-exempt and lay institutes and thus also by visito)s who are brothers, nuns, or sisters with regard to those subject to them either habitually or by reason of the Visitation.16,x7 15. Cf. ~'anon-2220, § 1; Augustine, VIII, 521 and note 9. 16. :L~rraona, CpR, X, 369, note 4; 370 and notes.7, 8; Bowe, 64-65: Jombart, IV, n. 1323; Reilly, 169-170. Cf. the same opinion in the interpretation of canon 2411 in: Brys, II, n. 1091: Cloran, 313: Cocchi, VIII, n. 298 d). 17. The authors and documents cited are: Abbo-Hannan, The Sacred Canons; Augustine, A Comme.marg. on Canon Law; Bastien, Directoire Canonique; Berutti, De Religiosis; Beste, lntroductio in Codicem; Bowe," Religious Supe-rioresses; Brys, Juris Canonici Compendium; Cloran, Previews and Practical 35 BOOK NOTICES BOOK NOTICES In LENGTHENED SHADOWS, Sister Mary Ildephonse Holland, R.S.M., records in considerable detail the hundred-year history of the Sisters of Mercy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In a style that in all reverence might be called "chatty," the author, a former mother-superior, tells (1) of the founding of the'Sisters of Mercy by Mother McAuley, .(2) of the motherhouse, (3) of the twenty-eight other houses, (4) -of some senior Sisters. The book has an unusually large section of glossy prints and useful appendices,, includin~ one of chronology and lists of the living and the dead. In his foreword, the Archbishop of Dubuque, His Excellency Henry P. Rohlman, speaks of the fivefold purpose of the book. It should be of interest to the Sisters of Mercy, to Other Sisters, to pastors, to the laity, and a challenge to many young women. It certainly should. (New York: Bookman Associates~ 42 Broadway. Pp. 337. $4.50.) Some years ago Sister Mary Berenice Beck, O.S.F., R.N., ~ub-lished a little book entitled The Nurse: Handmaid of the Dfofne Ph~.tsician. The object of the book was to cbver all the various as-pects of the spiritual care of patients, as well as to offer the nurse some practical helps for her own spiritual life. That first edition was good. But the revised edition, entitled simply HANDMAID OF THE DIVINE PHYSICIAN, is s.uperior to it in every way. Content, arrange-ment, printing, and binding--all are excellent. (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1952: Pp. xviii + 31~I.: $3.00.) ' Cases; Cocchi, Commentarium in Codicem ~luris Canonici: Coemans, Com-mentarium in Regulas Socletatis lesu; Coronata, [nstitutiones Juris Canonid; Creusen-Ellis, Religious Men and Women in the Code; De Carlo, dus osorum; Fanfani, De lure Reliqiosorum; Fine, lus Regulate Quo Regitur So-cletas lesu; Gerster a Zeil, lus Religioso~um; Geser. Canon Lau~ concerning ,Communities o[ Sisters; Jombart. Trait3 de Droit CanOnique: Jone, Com-mentarium in Codicem luris Canonici; Larraona, Commentarium Pro Religi-osis; Normae Secundum Quas S. Congr. Episcoporum et Regularium iOrocedere Solet in Approbandis Novis lnstitutis ,Votorum Simplicium. 28 iun. 1901: Piatus Montensis, Praelectiones duris Regularis. ed. 2; Pruemmer, dus Re,u-latium Speciale; Regatillo, Institutiones luris Canonici; Reilly. Visitation ~Religious; Schaefer, De Retigiosis; Sipos, Enchiridion luris Canoni6: Sum-marg of the Constitutions of the Societg of Jesus: Van Acken. A Handbook for Sisters; Vermeersch-Creusen, Epitome [uris Canonici: Voltas, Commen-tarium. Pro Religiosis; Vromant, De Personis; Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum, HI, De Religiosis. 36 The ,reat:es!: Moment: in !:he Hospit:al Day Thomas Sullivan, C.S.V. SEVEN A.M. is the dawn of another busy day in the hospital. A hustling corps of hospital personnel stream into the hospital entrances, crowd the elevators, and soon swing into action¯. A burst of activity greets the quiet hallways. Ni~rses hurry to the chart desks~ to relieve their weary sisters; laboratory technicians fan out to. all parts of the hospital; nurses' aids begin their chore.s; tray girls and surgery personnel are on the move. At this time of greatest activity, there;is in our Catholic hospitals a momentary pause. The sound'of the silver bell is heard and all stop in reverent prayer. A patient or stranger who hears it for the first time will naturally ask, with the blind man of the Gosp~l who heard a crowd passing on the road to Jericho, "What might this be?" , He will be rightfully told, as the blind man was, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." He has but to view the respect and courtesy of every-one to know a great Visitor is passing by. Truly this is the greatest moment of the day. Each of our hospitals is greeted by the Eternal Word: "Today salvation has come to this house." More especially for the Catholic patient who receives is this the greatest moment. We all have need of the food of eternal life, but for the sick this need is acute. And' therefore the 'invitation of the Lord is more pressing. His sacred banquet is especially prepared for them, for He says, "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, and the crippled, and the blind, and the lame.'" "Come to me,," 3esus says, "all you who labor and are bur-dened, and I will give you rest." Most frequently our patients need to be reminded of the Lo~d's invitation. They should desire to receive every day while at the hos-pital. To arouse this desire, it is not sufficient that they be conscious in an. abstract way of the Catholic ,doctrine of the Holy.Eucharist, that Christ is present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. They must have the truth of faith alive and.real, and be convinced in a practicai way that here is the Food of the Soul, that this is the Bread come down from heaven. And this on the authority of the Great Physi-cian who prescribes: "He who eats .my flesh and drinks my blood 37 THOMAS SULLIVAN abides in me and I in him." In the first place the devoted nurses and chaplains should arouse in themselves a zeal for better disposed communicants among their patients. Let them meditate upon the marvelous effects of this Sacr,a-menl~ whose effect is in part conditioned by the dispositions of the recipient. Scripture and spiritual books provide ~ wealth of material., ~ The bread the angel fed the prophet .Elias prefigures the effects of the Eucharist. Most patients find themselves in a predicament simi-lar to tha~ of the p~ophet of the Old Testamen't, who was worn out with trials, tortured by his enemies, wandering weak and sick through the.wilderness. In desperation Elias prayed, "Lord, it is enough for me, take away my soul." He fell asleep under the shadow of a juniper tree, and an angel awoke him, s~ying, "Arise an'd eat.'" He ate and drank and fell asleep again. The angel of the.Lord came to him a second time, "Arise, eat, for thou bast yet a great way to go." Elias .arose and ate, and the Scripture states, "He walked in the stre.ngth of that food forty days and forty nights, unto the mount of God, Horeb." (Kings 19:1-8.) What a fitting parallel to the "living bread that has come down ¯ from heaven," and how like Elias is the person in sickness! In his misery and anxiety' be may be moved t'o exclaim with the prophet, "Lord, it is enough for me, take away my soul. The angel of the sick, the nurse., is at hand to arouse him, "Partake of the bread of life." In this bread he will have strength to continue his journey to the mount of God; to heaven, for-be will have "life everlasting~ and I will raise him upon 'the last day~" ViatIinc ugmiv iinn gd athneg efra iotfh fduela tthh,e tphree C.cheuprtc ohb tleiagcinhges t htheem i mtop roerctaenivcee. tohfe having Christ with us on the journEyfrom this earth. "This Sacra~ ment is called the'Viaticum by sacred writers, both because it is the spiritual food by which we are sustained in our pilgrimage ,through this life, and also because it paves our way to eternal glory and hap-piness" (Catechism of 'the Council of Trent, McHugh and Callan, p:215). Next ~ve are reminded of the health-giving properties of the Eu-charist, since it is called an eternal ~emedy of body and soul. ~If the woman suffering twelve years from h.emorrhage was restored to health merely by touching the tassel of our Lord's cloak, '~hat is the blessed effect upon the pbrson who takes Christ's body upon his tongue and receives Him into his heart? For "this is the Bread that .,38 , danuarg, 1953 COMMUNION IN HOSPITALS comes down from heaven, so that if anyone eat of it he will not die." In the prayer beforehis Communion the priest :s.ays, "By Thy mercy, may the partaking of Thy Body, O Lord'3estis Christ, be profitable to the safety and health both of soul and body." After Communion he prays, "What we have taken with our mouth, O Lord, may we re-ceive with a pure heart; and 6f a temporal gift may it become to us an everlasting healing." (Roman Missal.) And recall the prayer of the priest as he gives Communion to the faithful, "May the Body of Our Lord 3esus Christ preserve thy soullunto life everlasting." In the OffiCe of Corpus Christi we read in the second noc.turn., "of all, the Sacraments none is more health-giying, for by it sins are washed away, virtues are'increased, and the soul is fedwith an abundance of all spiritual gifts." In comparison with this health-giving food all the scientific medications and treatments available in the ~nodern hospital pale into significance. The so-called "miracle drugs" are at the best but temporary helps to better ,health. The Eucharist 'is the only real, permanent, miraculous medicine. Other medicines and treatments merely postpone the inevitable death; this keeps the soul for life ever-lasting. The great philosopher, St. Augustine, describes tile riches of this Gift of God, in these words: "God, all-wise though He be, knows nothing better; all-powerful though He be, can do nothing more excellent; infinitely rich though He be, has nothing more pre-ciou~ to give, than the Eucharist." Now, how may these truths enter into the thinking of the patient and dispose him to receive Holy Communion? This will haveto be achieved through the usual routine procedures. Neces'sarily there must be rputine, otherwiseduring the busy evening and the more busy, Morning there wo.uld be nothing done. But judgment and intelli-gence, faith and zeal, will put, Christian value in what otherwise is merely mechanical. For instance, the simple detail of drawing up the Communion list, can be done with a faith and enthusiasm that will make the patient realize the 'Lord's invitation. This can be done without catechizing or giving a discourse on the Sacrament. Tl~e initial step is most important because it involves the decision of the patient; it is the mofft delicate because people so easily miscon-strue our interest and concern ~ibout their religious'practice. The more ¯ objective and impers0n~il the nurseis in explaining the opportunity for Holy Communion the less chance there is to draw resentment from the sensitive who feel that ",it is none of your business." In 39 THOMAS SULLIVAN Reoiew for Religious giving expression to the Lord's invitation, the nurse, like St. Paul, must be all things ,to all people. This simple routine is the first step in what might be called the remote preparation of the patient for Holy Communion. The next might be notifying the chaplain, should the patient want to go to -confession. Especially in the case of a patient who is to have surgery~ the next morning is this very necessary. If the patient is not in a. private room, the nurse should arrange for con'fession in a place where there can be privacy; and, too, she should advise the ch~plai'n of the best time to come so as to avoid the rush of surgery proce-dures. The chaplain will want to take greater pai.ns with his patient~ penitents, and it will be his absolution in the Sacrament :of Penance that will make ready the "large upper room furnished." The Master says, "Make ready the guest chamber for.Me'." Do we need another reminder? Then, reflect on the care and pains of the hospital procedures before surgery.' The success of surgery depends much on the proper preparation of the patient and his physical and mental condition. For this it is necessary that the patient be in the hospital the night before, that all tests and precautions,be taken. There is a striking parallel in the reception of Holy Communion, counseling us to exercise some care to make ready the patient-com-municants. A contrary parallel follows. Surgery at the hands of even the most skilled surgeon is a great risk to the life of a person in poor physical condition. So likewise this most health-giving Food can mean eternal death to the one. not proper!y disposed. Remem-ber the severe words Of the Lord to the guests who had not on the ,wedding garment. Think; too, of what St. Paul says of those who eat and drink condemnation to themselves. Ther~ is an immediate preparation for Holy Communion that is also very important. At an early hour of the morning the nurse will awaken the patient; and, while she is tidying up the room, seeing that things are clean and in order, and a fresh sheet on the bed, she. has the opportunity to explain the reason, the coming of a great Visi-tor. All. must be clean and neat, especially the soul of the recipient. If 'the patient has a prayer-book and rosary, place them conveniently at his reach. Many hospita.ls hav.e a special card with prayers before-and after Communion. If the patient is unusually drowsy, as is the case so often with those who have taken sedatives, the night nurse should see that the patient is again aroused shortly before the priest comes. The priest 40 danuarv, 1953 will often hesitate, except in the~case of Viaticum, abofitgiving Holy Communion to a person who is too sleepy to keep awake. It goes without saying that the patient should not be ~listurbed for some ten minutes to allow for s, uitable thanksgiving. Tests and trays and shots can be delayed a few minutes; these moments after Holy Communion belong to God. The patient should be alone with His Gbd. , Language cannot express adequatery the great benefits of Hol.y Communion and the hospital cannot do too much to help the patient profit by each Communion. But even the most zealous efforts in establishing p~oper hospital procedure to assure worthy recipients of the Sacrament are not sufficient. Human efforts are necessary, but it "is God's grace that is more so. Our Blessed Lord in His famous dis-course on the Eucharist in St. ~ohn's Gospel reminds us, "No one can come to me unldss he is enabl.ed to do so ~by the Father." This is why we must invoke the angels and the saints t0 assist our weak human efforts to help patient-communicants be better dis- ~posed. St. John the Baptist could well be selected as the patron for worthy reception of Communion, since it was his vocation to "make ready the way of the Lord." Such is the mind of the Church in the Liturgy, as in the Confiteor we pray, "the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, the blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, to pray to the Lord our God for me." The priest fore distributing Communion begs God to send His angel down from" heaven "to guard, cherisl~, protect, visit,, and defend all that,assemble in this dwelling." MEDICO.MORAL PROBLEMS Part IV of the series of booklets entitled "Medico-Moral Problems, by Gerald Kelly, S.J., contains the article, "The Fast Before Communion," formerly pub-lished in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS,. March, 1'945. Other topics treated in the book-let concern the consent of the patient, the need of having and 'following consulta-tion, the relationship of doctor~ and department supervisors, induction "of labor, unnecessary surgery, the papal teaching on rhythm, and so forth. The booklet also contains a critical list of recommended readings for doctors. Taken together, the four b~oklets cover most of the practical ethical and reli-gious problems that confront doctors and hospital personnel. For the most part, the articles are commentaries on various sections of the Catholic hospital code, Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Hospitals. Price of the code, 25 cents: of 'each part o~ Medico-Moral Problems, 50 cents: of the complete set of five booklets, $2.00. Reductions on quantity orders. Order from: The Catholic Hospital As-sociation, !438 So. Grand Blvd., St. Louis 4, Mo. 41 Congress in Rome THE first International Congress of Mothers General was held in I. Rome September 11 to 13, 1952. The address" of the Holy Father to the delegates in a special audience on Sdptember 15 was printed inthe November number of the Reoiew (pp. 305-308). The present incomplete report on the congress itself is based on notes sent us by some of the delegates and on the newspaper accounts of the event from-L'Osseroatore Romano (September 11, 12, and, 14, 1952). Perhaps other delegates can supplement this material by sending communications with their own impressions. The congres.s of mothers general of pbntifical institutes was con-vened by the Sacred Congregation of Religious to discuss and co-ordinate more efficiently the religious and technical training of mem-bers of the apostolate. The papers prepared for the congress described the conditions and needs at the present time, gave helpful suggestions, and put forward the idea of establishing at Rome a pontifical, uni-versity for religious women and a commission of mothers:general to facilitate communication and liaison betw.een ecclesiastical superiors and individual institutes. The latter, it was said emphatically, is not to be a kind of "super-government.". The superiors general and tl~ose who represented and accompan-ied them came in Such large numbers that the, meetings v~ere trans-ferred from the assembly room of the Sacred Congregation of Reli-gious to that of the Gregorian L'lniv~rsity. after the first morning. An eye witness writes of the first afternoon session: "I counted the num-ber of Sisters in the Gregorian assembly room, since I didn't u~nder-stand the .Italian. My count was 800." Of these, 200 were dele-gates representing 800 religious institutes for women. Countries represented inelude~i Italy, Australia. India, France, Germany, Eng-land. Spain; Canada, and the 'United States. The opening address was given by the Most Rev. Arcadio Lar-raona, C.M.F., the secretary Of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. He pointed out that the purpose of the meeting was not "reform-- for which, thank God, there was no need but improveme'nt, by bringing up to d~te the ideals 6f the founders and foundresses with a willing, intelligent adaptation of means to the end. "We. r~ust do today what our founders would do if they were alive." The next speaker, the Rev. Riccardo Lombardi, S.J., stressed the grave~ resp6nsibility of superiors general to make the best use of their 42 CONGRESS IN ROME subjects' talents. To waste them or leave them unused is a fault just hs much as wasting one's own talents through carelessness or sloth. Natural capabilities and qualities of heart, and mind, which would have given a Sister considerable influence in the world had she not entered religion are to be cultivated by good training. The general subject introduced by Father Lombardi, the training for the apostolate, was next developed in four talks which indicated specific modifications for different parts of the world. The Rev. A. PlY. O.P. "the editor of La Vie Spirituelle. reportedon the training of religious in France. The representative for Spanish-speaking peo-ples. Father Leghisa. C.M.F., made a special plea for a better local distribution of various apostolic efforts. Mother Bernarda Peeren-boom. 0.S.U.' spoke for Germany, and Mother Magdalen Bellasis. O.S.U. for English-speaking countries. 'Mother Magdalen pointed out that some prevailing conditions in English-speaking countries .would call for greater emphasis on cer-tain aspects of training. Greater temporal prosperity (not i~ Eng-land since the war) underlines the need to stress poverty of spirit: "They must learn to want to be poor, to prefer to have less rather than more." The spirit of self government and the earlier emanci-pation of women reqmres more stress on-and explanation of the principles of religious obedience. The fact that Catholics are a mi-nority is a spur to.zeal, but it demands of faith. "There is a certain danger selves in a small minority, will suffer which, prevents energetic action. They that they have something splendid to solid instruction in the truths that.Catholics, feding them-from an inferiority compl~x must be given the conviction offer to the world and that their religion is something to be proud of." Monsignor Giovanni Battista Scapinelli,.under-secretary of the Shcred Congregation of Religious, gave a long, documented account of the co-operative efforts and .the movements toward federation in various countries and then proposed the formation of a central" and international co-ordination of forces. 'As an example of a co-operative effort, he proposed the foundation in each country of a hos-pital reserved for sickSisters. (It seems that in some countries Sis-ters- have to be cared for in pfiblic.hospitals.) The study of u'nit~- was continued in the three talks the fol-lowing morning. D6n Secur~do de Bernardis, S.D.B. ~poke of the need of gr.eater mutual knowledge and complementary co-operation among the different institutes. Then Mother M. Vianney, O.S.U., read a pap,r on the advantages of having a permanent Commission 43 CONGRESS IN ROME Review for Religious of Superiors General a[ Rome. The third speaker, Monsignor Luigi Pepe. the General Secretary of the Congress, spoke of the need of higher studies in religion. He urged provision for such studies in each country and proposed a financial plan for founding a faculty of religious studies at Rome for nuns and women' engaged in apostolic work.~ An auditor 'called the afternoon talk by the Rev. l~mile Bergh, S.3., "a soul-stirring conference." The heart of this talk was a,n examination of conscience for the past twenty-five years. This examination is given in the present number on page 14. He also gave some suggestions for the future. For instance, he mentioned that real days of recollection and retreat be organized that would provide a rest for the body too so that the soul might be ableto profit more from these exercises. After this, Father Larraona gave some practical directions of the Holy See for apostolic work in the field of education, re-education, care of the sick, and social wbrk. On Saturday morning he met with the superiors general while the other religious held group discussion in their own language groups. The congress was then closed with a brief address by His Eminence Cardinal Pizzardo, the secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Studies. , Observations . , The foregoing is a running, factual account of the congress as we. have been able to piece it together from our sources. To this we might. add a few of the more personal observations made by some Ameri-cans who attended the congress. ¯ Several have noted that there seemed to be very little realization in Italy of what we already have in this country. For example, we already have a splendid system of Catholic schools providing higher st.udies for women, not excluding religious. Also, many of our hos-pitals provide special care'for Sisters. As was noted in the Holy Father's address, previously published in the Review, he recommended modifications in the religious habit when this is necessary for hygiene or the better accomplishment of the work of the institute. We have not yet' obtained a copy of Father Larraona's address, but we have heard that when he mentioned this question of modifying the habit, he said that permission would readily be granted if the iequest was sponsored by amajority of the members of. an institute, and if the change could be made without ,]anuarg, 1953 CONGRESS IN ROME loss of harmony. The main thing, he said, is to keep peace in the family. (Not his exact words, but a good English equivalent.) And this reminds us bf another observation made by an Ameri-can delegate. "Looking at the habits that garb som~ of these dear, good religious,, we can't wonder that the Father of us all would like to see us clad in less grotesque and more unostentatious dress! Ours is surely the simplest here.'" Then she added: "'But it may be that everyone else, thinks tbe~same of hers!" (We have supplied the italics.) We c~onclude with another observation from an American mother ger~eral: "It was a grand and glorious assembly, and since we were there in obedience to the wish of our Holy Father, our being in Rome was grand and glorious too. However, the language q(~estion was a great drawback. We realized that it was international, but we felt that we lost too much since we, so many of us, had no knowl-edge of Italian. We were generally given a resum~ of the talk in the various languages, but that wasn't too satisfactory." SUMMARY OF THE CONGRESS ~ The superiors general, reunited in Rome, 'in response to the de-sires and directives of the Holy See, consider it opportune to sum-marize the work and conclusions Of the Congress as follows: The superiors general with their council will ~ollaborate in the holy movement of revitalizing the religious spirit, conforming to the needs of the Church and of the world in this historic moment. This revitalizing of the religious spirit must be basedon the spirit of our founders and fo~ndresses and of their outstanding disciples, while adapting itself to present needs and utilizing the immense resources at band in order to reach hearts and minds with the same broad vision and courage which the holy founders and foundresses would have bad today; Points for the Ascetical Life 1. Particular care must be taken to develop the personality of each religious in the exercise of Christian virtue and in the generous. dedication to religious virtue. 2. Maternal care must be taken of the health of the' religious; the work of each must be 'orderly and moderate; each religious must have time for her exercises of piety. 3. The schedules must always be reasonable and adapted to the various regions and apostolic ministries today confided to religious; 45 ¯ CONGRESS iN ROME Review for Religious 4. Care must be taken of the sick with promptness and exquisite charity. , Superiors must co-oper~lte in the organization of hospitals and s~anatoriums for religious. 5. In their individual houses, the superiors general will make it possible for al~ religious to lead a Christian life, by giving ample bp-portu. nity to receive the sacraments, and to carry out the duties im-posed on them by their consecration to God, by providing time for days of retreat, Spiritual exercises, and devotional practices common to the individual institute. Points regarding Government , I. It must. be remembered that we have need of superiors arid of teachers W.ho are well~balanced, nobl~-minded, refined holy souls or those strongly resolved to become so. They m!~st be ,well pre-pared for their sacred mission and, forgetful of themselves, give gen- ¯ erousI~ to their offide, striving to evaluate justly the natural and supernatural gifts of their subjects. 2. S.ubjects gifted With prudence and foresight should be chosen for superiors and for such offices as mistress ~)f novices and postu-lants. Young religious should not be excluded from higher office if they have the necessary natural and spiritual qualifications. Care must be taken not to ask more than canon law exacts nor should we be obstinate in the question of re-election. It is the mind of the Church that her laws and the cons'titutions of the institute be ob-served, both of-which prescribe the change of superiors so that no religious superior may be deprived pf the blessing of obedience. ,.' It is to be noted that when conditions are equal between a superior in office and a new carJdidate, preference should.be given to the new candidate. In :this way unpleasant situations'can be avoided and a greater num-ber of religious will be formed for governing. 3. In governing, in making the necessary decisions, such as changes, transfers, the equal distribution of work, one must "be guided by wisdom and charity. ' 4, In making ;¢isitations all the necessary time should be taken to examine well everything regarding the subjects, the houses, the registers, and the like. Each religious should be given an opportunity to speak freely and privately. The superiors and religious charged with various offices should enjoy a certain amount of' trust, while they sh0t~ld always remember that they are religi0u,s, subject to dis-cipline according to their respective offices. 46 d~nuarg, 1953 CONGRESS 'IN) ROME Special, Training 1. The creation of institutes of" higher education similar to those already existing for religiousorders of men. In these institutions the religious will study at least the essential' elements of Christian asceti-cism, of the religious li~e, of theology, of philosophy, of pedagogy, of psy~chology, of canon and civil lav~, and other subjects necessary for the direction of cofisecrated souls. 2. The introduction of a cours~ in orientation. This course may be given in the individual institute or tothe religious of various con-gregations grouped together. The. aim of this course is to acquaint religious with the needs and the trends .of the times in their various fields of activity. ~= 3, The diffusion among the religious of reviews of general and specific interests that may be of value'to them in their apostolate.~ 4. An intelligent, study of the documents of the Holy See. The Apostolate 1. It must 'be remembered that the apostolate is a grace, a voca-tion to which one must correspond, faithfully fulfilling the new ob-ligations which have been aisumed. The spiritual values must be main.tained,"tbe spirit of. prayer must be re-awakened, and the tell- ¯ gious'must be given 'the opportunity of making their spiritual re-treats. They must have the benefit of courses an'd have access to lit-erature that will enrich' their spiritual life. 2. It must b~ remembered that the apostolate is also a science and an art and that the Holy S~e ir~sists on high standards in literary, .technical, and profession.al training of religious, on the necessity of degrees required for the exercise of the various prbfessions; on the ne-cessity of aspiring to a greater degree of proficiency, never thinking that one's training is adequate for the present need. 3. It must be remembered what great profit can be derived from the formation of secretariates for apostolic works" both in the single provinces and in the entire congregation. Collaboration' It is sad to say. that religious frequently are indifferent to one an-other in their apostolic work. Perhaps this is more noticeable among superiors than among the members. There is a tendency to act and to think as though we were not perfect Christians bound fraternally to those who like ourselves are, striving for religious perfection. Milch harm is done to the Church and to souls by this indifference and 47 danudr~,1953 many worthy apostolic works are hindered in their development by this deplorable lack of union. By fraternal collaboration we can in-tensify our common actions for the greater glory of God and ,thus realize works which would be impossible to the individual congrega- ,tions. , The superiors general conforming to the designs of the Sacred Congregation and following the example of the superiors of the reli-gious orders of men, will constitute a committee to provide a com-mon center of information, of co-ordination, and of collaboration. General Aims of Committee 1. To gather in accordance with the Secretary of the Central Commission, already existing .at the Sacred Congregation of Reli-gious, that information which could be useful to the congregation ,regarding. various problems such as questions of the apostolate, ori-entation, defense, propaganda, administration, and authoritative reports. 2. To promote congresses, conferences, and courses of general and particular interests which are deemed necessary or useful and to organize them, after having informed the proper authorities. 3. To. reply to questions that may be asked by the Holy See. 4. To present to the Sacred Congregation of Religious any in-formation that might reflect the needs and the desires of the various~ congregations. 5. To serve as a secure and rapid means of t.ransmitting~com-munications of importance to the religious 'congregations. 6. To organize works of common interest and benefit or, at leasi~, to study the concrete projects that may be presented. Particular Aims of the Committee i. To create a pontifical institute of higher religious education. 2. To suggest the organization in various countries of courses for the ascetical and pedagogical formation, both for the religious in general and for specialized groups such as superiors, mistresses of novices, and prefects of study. ;. 3. To collect sVatistics regarding the distribution' of work, ,vari-ous apostolic needs, the fruits obtained, the difficulties encountered, ~and the like. 4. To formulate conclusions on common problems to be sub-mitted to the Sacred Congregation of Religious. 5, To promote the organization of schools for higher education by groups of congregations. ' 48 Shunfing Facilities Albert Muntsch, S.3. RAILROAD yards possess shunting facilities which enable the yard-master to move quickly a row of cars ~to a siding to make room for incoming or outgoing trains. The more complete such provisions, the less danger of collision at times of heavy traffic and travel. As we go thrdugh life we all need, at times, facilities, of escape-from spiritual or moral dangers that threaten ruin 1~o the immortal soul. We need them also to find relief from the worry, depression, and disappointments that beset every traveler through the pilgrimage of life to the eternal homeland. We may regard such avenues of escape as spiritual shunting facilities. Fortunately we have them in abun-dance. Like the "rare day in ,lune" they are free to all. And what is more, these "shunting facilities" have a beneficent effect. They will surely work if we do not place an obstacle in the way. Some of the great heroes whom we honor in the calendar of (he saints tell us that a reverential glance at the crucifix was to them a source of courage and of spiritual strength in the hour of trial.~ It is easy, to imitate them. We carr~y,the cross on our rosary. How easy ¯ ¯ to look devoutly and with confidence at the sweet symbol of salva-tion! Surely there is always hope and healing for the troubled soul in the cross of Christ. Pragers consisting of three or four words--prayers which may be uttered on the crowded street, as well as in the quiet of the home, are an easy way to gain new strength and much-needed hope. Let us try to cultivate this practice of utteri,ng such ejaculatory prayers. "My 3esus, mercy," is a familiar example. We shall become the richer s~iritually for forming this excellent habit. It can provide a good avenue of escape from many of the little'worries, that eat into the~ heart and make the soul unfit for larger efforts in God's Kingdom. A brief visit to the chapel--what a wonderful means for fighting . off weariness in well-doing and for laying up new resources against the,.hour of temptation! We are in God's house.Perhaps we see other souls praying for the same graces we need in the spiritual journey. It is always edifying to enter St. Peter's Church, near the D~ar- 49 ALBERT MUNTSCH born,Station in Chicago, at any hour of the day, and become one of the man,y dev6ut clients of the Sacred' Heart. There ~ill be scoies of men and women frbm all walks of life who have turned aside from the busy street and the roar of commerce to find hea!ing for the soul. Rich and pgor, young.and old, saint and ~inner, native son and im-migrant all on the same high quest. They needed a spiritual siding so they turned into God's holy house~to avoid some snare or spir-itual danger or to lay up strength for the day's, ceaseless conflict. With a song of g.ladness from the heart we may take up anew life's daily burden. We are not like those who are without hope. We see a light ever-shining. There are many beacoi~ lights even in the darkest hour. For a loving Providence has providedus weary pil-grims, with many a station at which to stop for second wind while press!ng forward to the goal. Now such spiritual shunting facilities are of immense value to, and even of great necessity for r~li~ious. Many are engaged 'in the splendid work o~ Catholic hospitals, following in the footsteps of Christ, the Divine Physician. But both patients and nurses may. at times become wearied and their hearts may become oppressed with bitterness. They need a spiritual._siding. Religious persons should often dwell on one of the g[eatest prob-lems the problem 9f human suffering. It is contemplation on the su.fferings, of Christ which will enable them to find thoughts of hope and inspiration for their suffering patients who are about to give up the struggle, abandon ~hope, and listen to the tempter'of souls. An eminent physician refers to the immense value of the "simple habit of prayer" for those who are nervously depressed. This simple habit of prayer and an act of faith in the divine value of suffering patiently borne may provide spiritual shunting facilities.for both the nurse and heb patient. "The drudgery of the classroom" has become, almost a proverbial expression. When the duties of teaching seem hard, it would'be well for teachers to realize that in ten or twenty years the boys or girls, who~ are now often a sourde of trouble, will be young men and women. They will be on the front line and may be exposed to seri-ous temptations. Under the tutelage of the Catholic teacher, they fnust prepare themselves now for victory in that critical hour. T~his vision of the future will help provide shunting facilities for the tem-porary snarl of discouragement. The vision should prove an inspi-ration to persevere .faithfully in the Christian apostolate of teaching. 50 ( uestdons an.cl Answers When H01y Saturday services are held in a convent chapel on Satur-day evening, terminating with the Mi.dnlght Mass, what is the correct order for the Divine Office on Holy Saturday, and what versicles, re-sponses, and prayers should be used for' grace at the noon and evening meal? Should the Alleluia be omitted at grace when the Holy Saturday services take place in the-evenlng? The answers concerning'the Office are contained in a Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, dated January 11, 1952 (Acta Apos-toticae Sedis, January 25., i§52, pp. 50-63), giving_ directions for the c~lebration of the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening with the Easter Mass followiiag about midnight. Regarding the grace at ~able, which is not covered by the Decree, confer below. The pre-scriptions for the Divine Office are as follows: MATINS and LAUDS are not anticipated-.on Friday ev,ening, but are said Saturday.morning at.a convenient hour. At the end of Lauds the antiphon Christus factus est is ~epeated with a Pat'-'r Nos-ter, but the psalm Miserere is 6mitted. and the following prayer is substituted for the Respice quaesumus: Concede, quaesumus, Omnipotens Deus: ut qui Fitii tui resurrec-tionem devota expectatione praeuenirnus; ejusdem resurrectionis glo-riam- consequamur. The conclusion Per eundem Dorninum is said silently. SMALL HOURS are ~aid as on Holy Thursday, en~ling with the antiphon Cbristus factus est and a Pater Noster. The psalm Miserere is omitted, but the new prayer Concede is said as indicated above at Lauds. VESPERS are 'said at a.convenient h6ur in /he afternoon as on Holy Thursday, with the following changes: Antiphon 1: Hodie agtictus sum valde, sed cras solvam uincula Antiphon for the Magnificat: Principes sacerdotum et pharisaei munierunt sepulcrum, signantes lapidem, cure custodibus. The antiphon for the Magnificat is repeated and the Christus factus est, Pater Noster, and Miserere are omitted. The prayer noted above for Lauds is said: This concludes ~espers. COMPLINE is omitted on Holy Saturday evening. 51 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Revietv ?or Religious Until the Sacred Congregation of Rites issues an official text for grace at meals,, the f,ollowing, which keeps the parallel between the Office'and the meal prayers to be found in t'he Breviary at present, is suggested as a form which may be used on Holy Saturday: AT THE NOON MEAL: Cbristus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis and a Pater Noster. Then recite the new prayer Concede, given above at the end of Lauds, ter-mmat! ng it with Per eundem Dominum "to be said silently. AT THE EVENING MEAL: V. Principes sacerdotum et pharisaei munierunt sepulchrum. R. Signantes lapidem, cure cus-todibus. Then a Pater Noster and the prayer Concede as given abo~e with its silent ending. The Alleluia will not occur in the Office or grace at table on Holy Saturday because it has not yet been su.ng officially. This will occur during the Easter Vigil. ~2m Throughout ~he year we chant the Little Office of Our Blessed Lady in choir. During the last three days of Holy Week we replace this¯ by the Office of the Roman Breviary. However, at Matins on these days we spy only the first nocturn. Is this a proper'and permissible omission? In his Hol~l Week in L. arge and Sm~ all Churches, Father Law-rence J. O'Connell states the following: "Tenebrae.services may be .held not~0nly in cathedral, collegiate, conventual, and parochial churches,.but also i,n chhpels of convents and other institutions where the Blessed Sacrament is habitually reserved . If all three nocturns of Matins cannot be sung, it is sufficient to sing the first nocturn and the Benedictus.'" (See also W'apelhorst, n. 360, 6!). The custom of replacing the Little Office of Our Lady with the Divine Office during the Sacred Triduum seems reasonable and jus-tifiable. In a congent where the Holy Week services are not held, when is it proper to uhcover the crucifix on Good Friday? There does not seem to be any special legislation on the .subject. Hence it is suggested that the crucifix be uncovered after the services held in the parish church in whose territory it is situated. Our constitutions state that if anythlncj is left over it is to be sent to the provincial house. Sometimes we have to send our salaries before we 52 Januarg, 1953 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS pay our food and book bills. We have to make so many excuses when the collector comes. This cjives us a bad local reputation, and our credit is not good. Hence firms expect us to pay cash. Is it proper to

Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. ; The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, WeberState University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ; 39p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 video disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Interviewed By Rebecca Ory Hernandez 5 September 2012 12 September 2012 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 5 September 2012 12 September 2012 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in the University Archives, which also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Dumke, Ezekiel R., an oral history by Rebecca Ory Hernandez, 5 and 12 September 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. September 12, 2012 Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. ca. 1943 1 Abstract: Ezekiel R. Dumke, Jr. "Zeke" was born June 3, 1923 in Ogden to Dr. E.R. and Edna Dumke. His father was a well-known local physician and his grandfather, E.O. Wattis, was a principal of the Utah Construction Company. Zeke sat down with Rebecca Ory Hernandez in his office in Salt Lake City to share stories about his family, including his parents, his brother, Ed, and his sister, Markey Dumke Healy, who passed away this year. Zeke reflected on his life growing up and attending Polk School in Ogden as well as his time spent in the Navy during World War II in the South Pacific. He attended Weber College for a short time in 1946. He met and married Katherine White, daughter of Ogden's Mayor Rulon and Reva White. Zeke was President of Western States Management and serves on many Boards of Directors and was president of the Dr. Ezekiel R. and Edna W. Dumke Foundation. Zeke and his family named the Ezekiel R. Dumke College of Health Professions, and recently named an endowed professorship in the college. Markey named the Dumke Simulation Laboratory in the Ezekiel R. Dumke College of Health Professions. The family continues to give generously to many local causes as one of the leading philanthropists in Utah. ROH: Today is Wednesday, August 15, 2012 and I am in the office with Zeke Dumke. This is Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University and we are here to talk a little bit about Zeke's history. ZD: Going back on my earliest memorable childhood experiences at Polk School, my grandfather, who was president of the six companies building the Boulder Dam, 2 took me on a personal tour where we stayed in the guest house down in Boulder City. He took me down on the dam site and up on the elevators where they were building the dam and looked in the tunnels. He gave me a map of what they were doing in the way of construction that I took that home and presented it to my class. This would be in 1934 during my fourth grade year. They were so impressed that they then had me present it to the total school assembly. Never having been involved in anything like that before, it was quite a memorable experience in my childhood. ROH: Tell me about your siblings. ZD: I had one older sister, Markey, who died earlier this year and I have a brother, Ed, who is three years younger. ROH: Did you have a group of friends that you would hang out with at Polk School? ZD: Not in particular. There was one fellow that lived a block down whose name was Harry Poe. He went into the Air Force during the war and he has died since. ROH: What were some of the things you did in Ogden as a child? ZD: Our backyard connected to my grandfather's home and the middle of his street split around a park. We used to call it the "watermelon circle." Various neighborhood kids would get together there and we'd play games and other things there. ROH: Were you born in the same house you grew up in? ZD: Yes. It was built by my grandfather. 3 ROH: Was that on Eccles or Van Buren? ZD: Van Buren. Next door was a home also built by my grandfather for my Aunt Ruth. My mom and Aunt Ruth had a double wedding. ROH: We know your dad was a fine physician in town. Did you ever go with your father on any calls that he went on? ZD: His first operational schedule was at seven o'clock. My best visits with him would be as he got ready to go to the hospital. I'd go in and sit on the stool and visit with him. He was a very busy man and sometimes he would take me up to the hospital on his tours. ROH: Did you ever think that you might go into medicine yourself? ZD: I did. I was planning to go into medicine when the war started, but I was called into duty. ROH: What division of the military did you go into? ZD: I graduated with a commission in horse cavalry. My parents had horses and I was raised with horses. At the age of 13 and 14, I was in horse shows and I won quite a few cups. ROH: Was the horse cavalry part of the army? ZD: Yes. By the time I graduated in 1943, the horses were eliminated and the army had gone mechanized. That meant that the cavalry people would go into tanks. I really get Closter phobic, so I didn't want to be in tanks. Just before they called 4 me, I joined the Naval Aviation program. I went on duty in June of 1943, I was a Naval Cadet. ROH: Did you learn how to fly? ZD: Yes, I started off in flight prep and then we had War Training Service (WTS). That was where we learned to fly. After that, I went to Iowa Preflight for my Preflight Training and about that time the navy realized they had many more pilots than they needed. They were not losing them in the Pacific as fast as they thought they would. I was then transferred and I spent the rest of the war as a quartermaster on a submarine chaser. ROH: Where were you? ZD: I was in the South Pacific. We did mainly convoy work between the Marshall Islands and anywhere from Guam to New Guinea to the Western Pacific. ROH: How long did you serve? ZD: Thirty-nine months. ROH: After the Southern Pacific did you come back to Utah? ZD: The war ended in August and the following March I was discharged on March 10, 1946. I went back to Weber College for my first quarter and then went down to University of Utah. ROH: Do you have any memories from that first quarter at Weber that you'd like to share? 5 ZD: Not really. I just came in a little late and the quarter was short and I was just getting acquainted. I really didn't know many people and I went up to our cabin at the Hebgen in the Summer of 1946, then I started at the University of Utah. ROH: Do you remember any of your teachers at Weber College? Did anyone make an impact on your education? ZD: No. It was a very brief quarter. ROH: Where did you spend your summers growing up and as a young man? ZD: My father bought a cabin on the Hebgen Lake in Montana. He had a dear friend by the name of Dr. Ochsner who had started the Ochsner clinic in New Orleans and they used to go fishing in the Summer time. Dr. Ochsner would bring his boys up to Montana. He had three of them that match up with my brother and me. Dr. Ochsner was famous for his crusade against smoking and was probably responsible for the labels on the cigarette packages that congress requires. My mother was a heavy smoker. On a trip back East, she was looking at a diamond bracelet she thought was really pretty and my dad said he would buy it for her if she would quit smoking. She did, just like that. She said, "For how long?" He said, "For at least a year." She said, "What if I start to smoke after that?" He said, "I'd hope you'd have more sense than that." Well, she quit for a year then she started again and died from cancer of the mouth as a result of her smoking. ROH: Do you know how your dad and Dr. Ochsner became friends? 6 ZD: My dad was very involved with upgrading of medical education. He studied in both Berlin and Vienna. Along the way, he met Dr. Ochsner. In 1944, my dad started the Ogden Surgical with Dr. Fister and Dr. Rich. He was one of the three founders. Dr. Ochsner would come each year as a speaker and bring his boys. ROH: Were you ever tempted to go back into medicine after returning from the war? ZD: After being gone for four years, I tried to pick up my classes right where I left off and it was a disaster. I realized that with those kinds of grades, I'd never be able to get into medical school, so I switched to business. I graduated in banking and finance. I had a friend, Jack Craighead whose father had multiple sclerosis. His mother, Madeline Craighead was a very dynamic lady, and she started the MS Society for the state of Utah and got me involved. I was the treasurer and later president. I am listed as a founder and I volunteered there for 14 years. That was my first public service kind of job. ROH: What were some of the things you did in starting that group? ZD: We weren't really interested in research; we were just trying to help patients. Actually at the end of it, my sister moved back to Salt Lake City after a divorce and she was the local representative for MS until she married Pat Healy of Ogden who became the director of the National Municipal League. Their job was to watch what government was doing and to lobby on behalf of the cities. ROH: Meanwhile, where were you living at this point? You studied business at the University of Utah, were you living in Salt Lake? 7 ZD: I never went back to Ogden after I started at the university. I always thought there would be another war and I didn't want to go back to the Navy. The sub chasers were too rough for me. I signed up for ROTC again for another year because I'd already had four years of ROTC. I got commissioned in field artillery. That was not a wise move because shortly after that, the Korean War started and I was listed as an officer without any service time with my commission. So, I was subject to call. I stayed active at the Fort with the 96th Division. Fortunately, we were never called to active duty. When I graduated from the University, there were three things I was interested in and had an opportunity to get a job in. I went to San Francisco to meet with my cousin, Bill Kimball, who had an army reserve job of lining up all the various industries for war duties in the San Francisco area. If there was another war they would know who to call on to do what. He was able to introduce me to people in the areas in which I was interested. When I was in school, Don Bradshaw ran the insurance agency for his father's firm, American Savings and Loan. I worked there and had exposure to casualty insurance and I liked that. So, I decided to go into the casualty insurance business. Through an introduction from my cousin, I met with the Standard Accident Insurance Company of Detroit. They suggested that I go to their training program for six months in Detroit. That's what I did. Right after I got out of the service, a big thing in my life was skiing. One of my ski buddies was Bob White. Once, while skiing in Snowbasin, he went over to talk to this beautiful blonde and I said, "Who's that?" He said, "That was just my 8 sister." Katherine and I met while she was a senior in high school and the following year she went to the University of Utah and we dated during her Freshman year. We didn't date again until her senior year. Her story was that it was to give me time to grow up. If we kept going together we probably never would have married. ROH: You don't think so? ZD: No, we were on different ships. ROH: How did you guys get back together? ZD: I think she realized what a quality person I was, but that's not her story. Anyway, we got together. If you want some humor in this, her dad was the mayor of Ogden at that time. ROH: What was his name? ZD: Rulon White. He was trying to clean up lower 25th Street in those days. He'd been warned that if he didn't let up on things that his daughter would be endangered. The police were keeping a good eye on his home. ROH: Where did he live? ZD: Near the corner of 28th Street and Harrison one down from the corner. I'd take out his daughter and every time I'd drive her home and park in front of his house to get acquainted the police would come up and ask me what I was doing. In August, I knew I was going back to Detroit and I wanted to give her a ring. My father had a lot up on upper 28th Street right by the foothill, so I thought that 9 would be the place I would go and not be bothered while I give her the ring. I had just slipped this ring on her finger and she wanted to turn on the car lights to be able to see it. Little did I know, my father told the police that people were coming up and having beer parties on his lot and asked if they'd keep an eye on it. As the lights turned on, here came the police. I often joke that the Ogden police tried their hardest to keep me from getting engaged, but I was fortunate and finally got it together. ROH: What was Katherine thinking when the police pulled up all these times? ZD: I don't know. Her dad was their boss. ROH: Who was telling him to lay off 25th Street? ZD: It was the mafia figures. They had the gambling, prostitution and all that was going on. ROH: Speaking of 25th Street, did you go out on dates to any of the places on 25th Street at that time? Was it a popular place for you to go? ZD: They used to have a large dance hall just up the hill from Ben Lomond Hotel. My wife and I always enjoyed dancing up there. ROH: Did you go shopping around 25th Street at that time? Was it a destination for activities? ZD: No. We had some very nice stores along Washington Boulevard, like Fred M. Nye and L.R. Samuels. I don't think any of those stores are in existence 10 anymore. The Ben Lomond was a fine hotel then. Commercial Security Bank was there as well. ROH: Was your dad still practicing medicine at this time? ZD: My dad was practicing and he was the first Chief of Staff of the Dee Hospital. He felt they needed more than just one hospital during the war and they saw an opportunity to have the government involved in building another hospital. It just so happened that the man in charge establishing hospitals for the army had been one of his commanding officers in World War I. He was very helpful in getting that put together and my father was the first Chief of Staff for St. Benedict's. ROH: Do you recall him saying anything about the fact that it was a good thing for Ogden to have two hospitals during that time? ZD: I was in the service at that time and had very little communication. ROH: So you were married in 1951. Where did you get married? ZD: April 17, 1951 at the Ogden Country Club. ROH: Tell me a little bit about it. ZD: It was a big wedding. The thing I remember the most is that I had a lot of friends that were really out to decorate my car when I left there because I had been guilty in taking part in sabotaging theirs. Fortunately, since Rulon White was the mayor, I told the Chief of Police that I was going to have problems. He took my car and it was not available until I got ready to leave and the police drove it up to 11 me and I drove off. That really upset my friends, they thought that was illegal politics. ROH: What did you do to your other friends cars? ZD: We used to tie cans on them and use soap to write over the windows and put rice up in the visors and all that kind of stuff. ROH: What did you do after you were married for work? ZD: Alder Wallace had a small agency and they wanted me to take care of it while I built my own agency. I did that for a short time, but the general agent didn't like me being there while building my own business because he was afraid I would walk off with all of the business his current agent had. I started my own agency and this was about the start of the Uranium boom. I saw the opportunity of dealing with some of the Texas people that were coming in for the purpose of drilling for Uranium. Perhaps I could handle the Utah business. I solicited a few of these people and that also got me involved to some degree in the Uranium business. ROH: Did you go to Texas and speak with them or was this in Utah? ZD: Here in Utah. I got quite an education in the drilling and prospecting business. I was given 20 or 30 claims and the operators decided to drill. Suddenly, the cost of drilling my claims was way beyond the money that I had at that time, so I abandoned the prospecting business. That was an early business experience, but I made some good friends and contacts in that area. 12 ROH: Would we know the names of any of those companies today? ZD: None of them are in business. Most of them were partnerships of people that were older than I was and they're gone now. There was a geologist by the name of Cliff Goldsmith in Dallas, Texas that I'm still in touch with. Moab gave me a start on my insurance business and it began to build slowly in Salt Lake City. I still had business contacts and one of my friends was Dick Ruling who was the manager of Hertz rental cars for Utah. It was owned by his father-in-law. Dick and his wife, Nancy, would go camping with us. One day, we decided to go down the San Juan River with a guide by the name of Gaye Stavely. He was excited about the fact that there was going to be a Glen Canyon dam set up on the Arizona line. It would be a very big dam that would back up 180 miles into Utah. He wanted to be a concessionaire. When we sat down and talked to him, it turned out that he wanted us to put up all the money and he would run it and have a big stake in it. We didn't want to do that. Dick had gasoline contacts with Chevron. Chevron was interested in getting the gas business for the new concession on Lake Powell. There was no road into this area and no development. There was a concession right across the Lake called Hall's Crossing that was run by Calvin Black. We got Calvin and some of his mining friends to join us in putting in a bid to the National Park Service. The Park Service felt that since we had Chevron and we had operators that were already working in that area in the mining business and used to tackling difficult contracts, that we would be the ideal people to take on this concession. We called it Bullfrog Marina. 13 The State of Utah started to build a road into the area. The Park Service had already established some buildings with material brought up from Paige, Arizona by boat and created some housing for their park service people. There was a contract for the road. It was during the period of the Vietnam War and money was not very available. We had our Senator, Ted Moss, who had a lot of influence with where the money went for roads and other things. Every time there was a little money left over he would direct it to our road in Utah. The government told us the road would never be done because there would be no funding, but it did get done thanks to Senator Moss. During this period, Calvin Black and the other miners from Blanding, Utah got in a fight over some mining claims. They wanted to have their interest purchased. Dick Ruling and I did that. Then, Calvin Black wanted to have a lot of special considerations that we didn't want to do so we ended up purchasing his interests as well. At that point, we found ourselves building and operating Bullfrog. We had another friend named Lincoln White who was in the jewelry business and liked to have exciting ventures and he joined us. There were three of us that owned the concession at that point. Since my time was more flexible, I ended up doing all the direction and working with the architects and the park service on what buildings we could build and where. I became the General Manager, but I was never hired that way I just ended up doing it. I spent twelve years in that capacity until we sold it to the Del Webb Company. Along the way, our road was completed and we started to have visitors come in. They all needed a place to stay and the only way we could do 14 that was with house trailers. We started a village of house trailers. Utah people were famous for coming down with all of the supplies that we would have liked to sell to them including gasoline. So, business was rather scarce in the early years. We heard of the success that some other operators had on park service lakes with houseboats. We got into the houseboat business and over the years ended up purchasing smaller boats 30 or 40 feet long, but everybody always wanted the biggest boat so we ended up buying boats that were 50 feet long. ROH: Did you rent these boats or were they purchased? ZD: We purchased about 80 houseboats and our clients rented them. There was good income with them. Our boats slept anywhere from 6 to 20 people depending on how our customers packed people in. Many people would sleep in sleeping bags on top of the roof. They liked to be under the open sky. We ended up purchasing a large assortment of boats over the years. We had to laugh because we really had more boats than we had slips or places to put them. It was like a juggler. We always had to have some of them out on the lake at all times in order to accommodate them. People in Utah didn't understand houseboats at first, but we did get a lot of people from California and Colorado. Early on, we had a houseboat delivered to a boat show in Salt Lake City to let people know about it and had a lot of people come through and they still didn't rent them. We had very few people from Utah use our houseboats in the first year or two and then the number grew. ROH: Give me an idea of the year now, what was the first year you rented boats? 15 ZD: About 1966, after the road was finished. Then we increased the number of customers. In the first years, we ended up with maybe only 2,000 people a year. Later, we both had up to 150,000 visitors. The houseboats business was really what made our operation a success. Houseboats had bedrooms and the bigger ones had three bedroom areas plus cots, so they brought a lot of people who bought a lot of supplies and gasoline and so on. Since we were on a lake that was rising up to 100 feet in depth each, it covered a lot of ground that we had to move over to try to keep our marina and our facility operating. At first, we were going to have a marina which floated on steel tanks. An outfit from Oklahoma came in and said, "Don't do that because those tanks won't last." They invited us to come back to Oklahoma City and took us down to Lake Texoma which is on the Texas and Oklahoma border. They showed us a marina that had been built on steel tanks that suffered from electrolysis between the electricity in the boats and the tanks. It would eventually put little pin holes into the tanks and they'd take on water and start to sink. That gave us the lesson of why we didn't want to have steel tanks. Instead, we went to Styrofoam and bought them from Mecco Engineering in Oklahoma. Over the years, we developed 150 slips and they worked out quite well. The park service was responsible for furnishing the roads and the power lines. The problem was that every spring the water would come up and we'd have to move. They didn't have it in the budget to put in new roads or power, so we ended up doing it and would go to the park service and hope to get our money back. Those expenses got to be quite high. We finally moved the whole marina 16 up to a new location. As the water came up and as the lake got bigger, the waves also got bigger. We had to move the whole marina around into the next canyon where we had land to block some of the waves to be able to operate the marina. Between the cost of having to buy all of the boats and marinas, and advancing the money for the roads, parking and getting the power lines down, the government was creating a loss for us of over a half-million dollars. We were trying to get government repayment. In the meantime, Del Webb had purchased Wahweap at the south end of the lake. They had quite a problem because their rented boats would get up to our place which was a hundred miles away or even 80 miles further and break down and it was a losing proposition to try to get service boats to go that far to do the repair work. They were very anxious to try to get either Hall's Crossing or our place, so we made a deal to sell to Del Webb. The interest rates were going up so rather than pay us they agreed to do it in installments at market interest plus two percent. With the interest rates going up, the interest got as high as 22 percent. At 22 percent, we were making more money on having sold it than we would have made by operating. Webb had to sell their casinos in Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas in order to get the money to pay off the banks back East before they could pay us off. I ended up working for Del Webb from the time we sold in 1977 until they paid us off in 1982. They had to pay me and maintain my office in Salt Lake City until we finally settled. I used my share of the payments to build warehouses. 17 At this time, my daughter was married to Scott Thornton, who was a contractor. Because I was doing this building, Scott came to work for me. My son, Zeke III, who had graduated with an MBA from Northwestern, went to work with a company called GATX which was a large internationally leasing company. Most of the tank cars that you see on the railways were leased by GATX as well as airplanes and mining equipment. He's very smart and good with computers and he was hired by GATX in San Francisco. They then transferred him to head the Denver office. He had to service and call on people all the way from Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota. That was too much traveling, so he left them. He moved back to Salt Lake City and came to work for me to learn about my development business. He learned all I could teach him in six months and I've been hanging on to his shirt tail ever since. ROH: When did he come to work for you? ZD: It would have been about 1984 or 1985. At that point, things started to get more advanced in the office and I'm trying to figure out what it's all about. He came to me one day and said, "Dad, the girls are taking too much time trying to teach you about computers to keep up. Why don't you just tell them what you want to do and let them do it?" That was sort of the end of my computer work. The more advanced they got, the further behind I got. Zeke III got to the point where he wanted to have a paperless office and got everything on the computers. My daughter, Claire, and her future husband, Steve Ryberg, spent summers at the Hebgen Dam in our respective cabins. Our families would go up 18 there every summer. Later, they were looking for land on the Hebgen for their own cabin. They stumbled upon a ranch that was going to be for sale for about 2 million dollars and it included about 2,000 acres on the north lakeside of Hebgen which was private land rather than forestry. It was a little too expensive for them, so Steve and the family decided they'd like to buy it together. I knew that with the land at that price that he could make many times more than what he had in it. The whole family got involved. I could see that if you were going to have various houses there that they'd all want to be on the lake and have a place for their boat. There was a small marina there that they could buy. It wasn't making much money and we bought it cheaply. It got to be a problem because Scott, Betsy's husband, who was also partner in Salt Lake didn't really like being involved in something in Montana. Steve had sort of taken the lead on the marina and Scott was sort of against it. My oldest daughter Betsy, really didn't want to have anything to do with business, so Scott was her voice which then created some problems with our other children. They could all work together, but Scott was an independent speaking for Betsy. So, I was trying to work it out. Their agreement was that they would have to act unanimously on any investments and they did, but Scott and Betsy were going different directions. It became apparent that they either had to buy him out or make an arrangement where the majority ruled which is what we finally worked out. During this whole time, Zeke and Scott separated in the Salt Lake business. Zeke became the sole owner of Western States Management, which 19 had been my company. I arranged to take the balance of what I owned and transfer it to the children. Scott had an arrangement with the Woodbury Company which was a very big in real estate within the Intermountain area. Zeke didn't want to be in the building business. He liked the investment business, as did Scott. We obtained an interest in shopping centers through Scott and Woodbury. We have the Hampton Hotel in Salt Lake City and land in Idaho and Montana. Zeke and Scott run those together. We also built and operated the 721 shopping mall, which was near my office. There's also an office building on that mall. ROH: The one that has the Jimmy John's sandwich shop and San Pan? ZD: Yes. All of that area including the office building and the parking terrace underneath. There was a group building a Hampton, but they weren't able to find any land downtown. So, we donated the land and became partners. We have a similar deal with a Hampton Hotel next to our hotel in Springdale. We gave them the water rights and land and we have 51 percent interest. If we ever ran into a big problem we could either buy their interest or sell our controlling interest. ROH: Were you still involved in your insurance company, or did you abandon that at some point? ZD: I sold it. When I got involved as general manager of Bullfrog Resort, I had an airplane and I kept my office in Salt Lake, but would fly down to Bullfrog. I'd get an area manager to watch things, but I was the general manager. We had to do all our ordering and keep track of everything through my office in Salt Lake. I'd fly back and forth as needed. We'd normally get about 6 to 10 house boats each 20 year, but it would cost a lot of money. With the park service, we weren't able to bring in any new partners without their permission. At one time, my parents were going to put in $10,000, but it took us six months to get them cleared. Until 1972 we'd work with the park service and we considered ourselves partners. We'd operate and build the resort but they owned it. However, anything we built there was covered by possessory interest. That meant that they would recognize the amount of money that we'd put in and if they didn't renew our contract, they had to buy us out. They really didn't like that. They wanted all of our investments to depreciate and then buy our interest even though it may be worth much more. So, that possessory interest was very valuable to us. Any time we increased gas prices or food prices or rentals, we always had to get approval of the government and that always took a few months. It's really hard doing business that way. When I sold the resort I saw this other situation in Springdale where we owned the land and ran our business. That was much better. ROH: A lot more fun. ZD: Yes. I just didn't realize the problems we'd have. In effect, we had the ownership, but the city council and the planning commission were all elected by probably 90 percent Mormons that were the voice in the background was what controlled the zoning down there. We had a lot of problems getting anything done. For instance, they had a regulation against any high-rise building there. You could come in and build a two-story with a peak roof, but you couldn't go any more than that. We were on a slope, so the back of our building could be three 21 stories, but the front was only two stories. You had to determine if the three story was in violation or keep the two story. We had to come back and pile enough dirt on the bottom that they could say that it was a basement plus two stories. It was those kinds of problems that were pretty tough to deal with. Anyway, it's worked out well and we have a Best Western down there that has been very profitable. In addition, we're able to do the next hotel, The Hampton, and have enough room to do one more hotel after that on our land. ROH: Tell me about your spot in Yellowstone. ZD: This is the marina that was next to the ranch the family bought. They have some small cabins that are not furnished. If you've got a sleeping bag and if you don't need an inside toilet, they're not bad. We now have some bigger ones that do have a toilet, but the first ones were just a roof over your head. We also have a nice trailer park. ROH: That keeps the bears out. I think that's important. ZD: That's right, the bears and the bats. My wife is terrified by bats. Robert Redford used to come down and use our place. One time he went out on one of the houseboats and he got a little bite. He said, "It must have been a bat." That got carried nationally stating that Robert Redford had been bit by a bat on a houseboat at Bullfrog. He never knew if it was a bat, and I don't think it was. ROH: Was it good for business that he mentioned that he was in Bullfrog? 22 ZD: It was terrible. We had a lot of people cancel their reservations. We have a lot of stories about what happened there. We had one fellow that went out and just started with a canoe. He had a little outboard engine with a tube going to the gas tank. He didn't get 40 feet off land and somehow the canoe tipped over or swamped and the cord got caught around his ankle and he drowned. When we got the body back up he was dead. We were in Garfield County and the sheriff that had to come and investigate any death claims was in Cain County. He would have to drive through two other counties to get around in Bullfrog. The county line was about three miles north which put Bullfrog in his county. He still had to investigate, so we had to lay the body in the garage overnight until he could get up there. ROH: One question I wanted to ask you was about your children. How many children do you have? ZD: I have four children, three girls and my son Zeke Dumke III. Our oldest daughter, Betsy, and Scott Thornton live up by the Canyons Resort in Snyderville. Betsy is a great horse person and has five horses. She does a lot of riding and is also involved in the community and other things. She's currently the chairman of the National Advisory Committee for the University of Utah. She and Scott are both on the board of Nature Conservancy and she's on the board of KUED. Our daughter, Claire Reyberg, graduated as a nurse and worked with the emergency ward at LDS hospital for a few years until she married Steve and moved to Idaho where he was a forestry ranger. She worked at a small hospital there. Steve was then transferred to Evanston, Wyoming. For about 20 years he was the head 23 ranger there over the Uintah Mountains. He retired two years ago and they moved back to McCall, Idaho. Our son, Zeke, lives here in town. Our youngest, Andrea, is married to Mike Manship, a retired geologist, and they live in Bosman, Montana. They are close to where they can get up to the cabin and we see them in the summer. ROH: Where was he working as a geologist before he retired? ZD: He worked for some mines in South Africa and worked in some geology deals in this country. ROH: Today is Wednesday, September 12, 2012. Today we are going to discuss your family's foundation and how it began and a little bit about the history of your family's involvement in the foundation and philanthropy in Utah. I will let you go ahead and start. ZD: I was married in 1951, six years after I got out of the service and at that time my father and mother had decided with the encouragement of their attorney to start a family foundation, the Dr. Ezekiel R. and Edna Wattis Dumke Foundation. Being the oldest son, they asked me to be president. At first the amount of money was small and my parents added to it every year. ROH: Do you recall the amount that the foundation started with at that time? ZD: It was something like $25,000 and it got up to the point of being $25,000,000 Most of it was General Electric stock which came because of the family connection with Utah Construction. The family stock in Utah Construction 24 became General Electric stock, which grew very fast in the 1990's. In 2000, General Electric had done more in the way of financing was receiving more income out of financing than from other projects and manufacturing. At that point, the market said, "This is really more like a bank than a manufacturing company." We saw General Electric tumble from nearly $60 a share down to $6 a share. That made quite a difference in the amount of gifting we did. It's coming back up. It's about 20 dollars a share now. I served as president of the company for 42 years. My dad died in 1961. His interest was in medical things. He wanted to help support doctors and medical groups with interesting ideas that would make the practicing medicine better. My mother was very interested in art and music. In the early years, those were the directions we went along with the united funds and the symphony and so forth. When I turned 80-years-old I thought I was really getting old, but little did I realize that in ten years that I would still be alive. On my next birthday, I will be 90. The directors at that time were my sister's daughter and my brother had some children that were participating and I had some children that participated. My brother ended up feeling that he was not getting as much from the Dumke Foundation as he would have liked in his area. He had a son that lived in California that didn't participate at all and he thought that was bad and that it would be better if he could get his third of the foundation and operate separately so he could divide it up among requests of his children and not be bothered with what we were doing. The other children enjoyed working together and going out on visits to various groups that we were making gifts to. Brother Ed wanted to be 25 able to assign a certain amount to each of his children and that person could make gifts to anything that was legally qualified to receive it. They don't have the meetings we do and make visits to the various groups that we're giving to. ROH: Did he name his foundation something different? ZD: It is called the Dumke Wattis Foundation. He has a group in Idaho that operates the Idaho foundations that do all the work. His foundation directors tell them how they want to gift the money. Whereas, we have meetings twice a year and we go on site visits. We are much more involved in the working of the foundation than his family. My sister's daughter Nancy Swanfelder is on our foundation and has her own foundation dealing with children. My sister also has a son, but he's never been involved in the foundation. That's the way it's been working up to this day. My second daughter, Claire, is the president of the foundation. ROH: I've met Claire on several occasions and she is delightful. ZD: Claire graduated as a nurse from the university and worked in the trauma unit of Intermountain Healthcare, so she's very wise as to medical needs and what's good. We got involved with Weber because they needed some money. The family made some gifts and they named the Health Science building for my dad. ROH: Yes, the Ezekiel R. Dumke College of Health Professions. ZD: Claire would talk to Weber and ask what he really needed that will make a difference. This last year he said, "What we really need to do is get into endowment chairs." The University of Utah has been very active in that and very 26 successful. Weber didn't have any of those and would really like to get started that way. At this time, because of the drop of our General Electric stock, we only give about $500,000 a year and in the meantime, presidential endowments have gone up to a million and a half. That seemingly was way out of our reach. My daughter Andrea, Claire and Nancy got together and said, "You know, if this is what they really want and it's worthwhile let's just say that we're not making any other gifts and we will concentrate on the endowment to Weber College for three years. So, that's what they are doing. ROH: That's incredible, thank you. ZD: We made a substantial gift this year and it will take three more years before we can meet that goal. ROH: That will make a huge difference in the quality of the faculty too. ZD: In the meantime, they decided that Nancy had served her time as president, Claire had served her time, and it was time for Andrea to step up and be the president. I think they all felt great about our grant in the medical field and for Weber State. My dad was very much a Weber and Ogden man and he felt that University of Utah and the colleges down south were getting more than their share so he was always pulling for Weber. When he first came to Ogden in his early years, he was the first chief of staff for the Dee Hospital and for the St. Benedict's Hospital. He was real Ogden man. 27 Our other foundation was started by Kay and Zeke in about 1990 and is called the Kay Foundation. It makes it easier than to try and stumble with two names. My wife has been president for a number of years. ROH: What was the focus of giving for the Kay Foundation? ZD: The focus was pretty much the same type of thing as we had in the Doctor Foundation. My wife was very interested in the arts and served at the museum of fine arts at the university. I was very interested in many things and the Red Butte Gardens. When I was working at Bullfrog, we were trying to plant trees and get a planting schedule. We had a man from the university on the Red Butte board by the name of Miles Layburn who was very knowledgeable and drew up our plans. Every time we'd submit the plans to the park service in San Francisco they'd say, "This won't work because this tree or that tree won't grow in that particular zone. At the university, Miles had seen these trees growing in Salt Lake City. Finally, after being turned down on two submissions, I told the park service, "Why don't you decide on the trees that you think will grow here?" Of course, they were not in the designing business, so very little was done in our landscaping. Miles was my introduction to Red Butte, where I served for thirty years. As the employees came in we needed trailers for about one hundred people. We needed not only trailers for our employees, but a school for their children and a store so they could all buy food. All of these needs had to be met in the first years of operations. We needed something that generated more 28 income so we got houseboats. I think I told you about that. We ended up having 75 houseboats, but that was both good and bad because every year, business was so good that we'd order half a dozen or a dozen houseboats. We started out with small, 34 foot houseboats, but everybody wanted the bigger ones. We kept ordering bigger ones and that brought in more people and more repair and that type of thing. The cost of all of these things got to be quite a problem because in order to get more money into the company, we had to clear it with the park service. I remember my parents were going to put in a small amount like $10,000 and it took us six months to get them cleared to put in the money. Obviously, we'd have houseboats coming down and we couldn't wait for 6 months to pay for them. We ran into a lot of problems that way. They also had to approve the rates that we charged on gasoline and housing. Del Webb had purchased the properties on the south part of the lake and it became a very difficult thing for them to service boats that broke down where we were because we were 100 miles away. They wanted to buy Bullfrog and we decided to sell it to them. In paying us off, I had two other partners, Dick Ruling who was president of Bullfrog and Lincoln White, who was in the jewelry business. They were to pay us off over a short period of years. So, we sold to Del Webb and they ran into trouble selling they completed their hotel in Atlantic City and that was right at the time of a big financial problem. They had to pay us on what they owed us for Bullfrog at an interest of two percent of a prime and prime got up to be 20 percent. So, the 22 percent we were making on what they were having to pay us was better than operating the company. So, that did give me 29 money to do other things with and I increased the funding for the Kay foundation and also ended up building warehouses and making real estate investments. ROH: When you started, what were some of the things you were supporting? ZD: We would look at almost any kind of foundation, but we had criteria. We wouldn't do any bricks and mortars. We didn't want to make a $10,000 gift into a 10 or 20 million dollar building because it didn't show anything. However, if we were interested in it, the directors could say, "If you've got a computer room or something inside, we can fund there." ROH: I'm assuming you were supporting the University of Utah and what about others? ZD: We don't support things that have more than 50 percent come from government because there were lots of public schools and there were too many of those. Libraries were the same way. When our small foundation got to the point where we got almost a hundred requests it got to be a lot of work. We had to find a way to cut it down. The way we did that was tightening up our criteria. We don't give to individuals, or small groups or scholarships or anything with an individual involved. We just had to decide what we could do and do it better. We closed on our geographical and said we are for the intermountain. We stretched that a little bit because we had family in Idaho and Montana and we consider that as intermountain. We require that organizations write in and ask for the amount they need and why. We'd pass that to all of the directors and they would say whether or not they were interested in hearing more about it. We'd take a vote from our directors 30 and if they had three or more votes out of our board, we'd tell them to submit a request. They can get the request off the computer to fill it in and those requests we'd send back out to directors and they were much more detailed. From there we'd take the ones that were the most popular and try to fit them within our budget. Looking at the variety of people on board, it was no surprise that we had a variety of things that we ended up clearing. We were all sensitive to what the other person wanted. In the early days, as I got into Red Butte Gardens, my mother made some gifts and our foundation made some gifts and after that I felt a little uncomfortable as president trying to submit requests to the foundation of which I was president. My wife and I did most of the funding for Red Butte Gardens on a personal basis. Having got into the foundation business, I was in rotary and we decided to have a foundation for rotary. Clayton Williams was president and he made me the first president of the Salt Lake Rotary Foundation. Our goal was to accumulate at least a million dollars to fund our work. Every year, the members put in about 5 dollars apiece each month for the foundation. That gave us about $40,000 dollars that we would give back to the rotary club for donations. ROH: Are you still active in rotary? ZD: Yes, I am. I joined the rotary in about 1978. It had a deal that once you've been in 20 years and after you're 80 years old, you can belong on a retired basis. We try to get 60 percent attendance for members that are in rotary, but after you 31 reach that qualification you don't have to pay for any luncheons that you don't attend. In 1994, I was president of rotary. That was the same year that I became president of Red Butte Gardens and president of the Alta Club. Later, I was invited to be on the hospital board at the University of Utah. It became apparent to me that academia was the political strength on the lower campus. It didn't want to see the university put any more money than they had to into the hospital. I thought that was wrong because we were the organization that was seeing the most people and we got to the point where we had more employees between the doctors and the nurses, so we decided to start the Health Science Council to try to get influential people to help us with our appeal for more months. I suggested that we start our own foundation. We were going to name it the University of Utah Hospital Foundation. The state said we can't put the name Utah in there if the state doesn't own it. So, we left Utah out. At the University of Utah, we have a special group like at the Eccles Foundation that make big gifts and the university didn't want to have too many individual departments approach the Eccles Foundation and have them say, "We have too many requests from the university and we don't like that. The university decides who can apply and holds it to about five and that's what the Hospital Foundation works on." We seldom were at a point where we could approach the forbidden list. The Dumke Foundation was on that list also. The University Hospital Foundation is the name I chose and we picked a public board. We could 32 then go out and start to approach other people for our needs within the health sciences and the hospital. It's turned out to be quite successful. There were some real bumps along the road when President Smith came in. It turned out that when he became president of the university in North Carolina, he replaced the president that got fired for using their hospital foundation funds for travel funds and as a slush bucket. So, President Smith was very sensitive about this foundation which was a separate corporation that he didn't control. We went through a couple of years where he wanted to change our articles and bylaws to the point that we could not operate as a separate foundation, but as we brought in new directors, he'd have to give the okay. They would be his directors, under his control and to me that was no better than the university doing it themselves. He moved on before the problem had to be settled and the foundation is still operating the way it used to do it. It is working under the health sciences and they're paying the payroll of all the people involved. We work under Steve Warner who was the development person for the health science. Obviously, we're very much a university facility even though we're a separate corporation. We have a separate board and we can do what we want. However, if Steve Warner tells us that we can't do it then we're not going to do it, but we are operating like a foundation. 33 ROH: What is your favorite avenue of giving? What appeals to you most? Is it still the gardens or is there another area? Obviously, you've done a tremendous amount for healthcare. ZD: My greatest interest probably remains in healthcare. My mother financed the kidney building. She had a friend up in Ogden that asked her why she didn't make gifts to the University of Utah. She was furious because she'd been very active, but my dad always wanted it to be anonymous. She went to the University and said, "I want to finance a building. They had several buildings that they were waiting to build and the kidney one was connected with medicine, so she said, "I'll take it." That's the Dumke kidney building there. Recently, they decided that they needed that room for another building. So they are going to tear it down. They told us this a couple of years ago, so my brother and sister and I gave a major gift to the health building. It is named after my mother and father. We've been very active with the women's groups such as the gymnastics team. They won a couple of nationals and their coach, Greg Marsden said, "We are starting to lose some really key prospects because they're looking at our old facilities for gymnastics. Other colleges want to get into gymnastics and have new buildings for it, so that's where the students are going. We need a new building." So, Kay and I financed it and we have the Dumke building for Utah girls. We had a soccer field that we needed for the girls. They had the field, but there was no place for anyone to sit, so we put in the bleachers there. The girls 34 also needed a baseball field. We became major donors for that. I knew that Red Butte Gardens couldn't continue to build gardens without building income. The amount that people would pay for admission was not enough to support the gardens. We needed something with big income, which was the concert center. So, we did that and we said, "We don't think it's right to have this be the Dumke musical whatever, it should be Red Butte Concert Center," and that is the name. ROH: I think a lot of people go to Red Butte to see that concert series. ZD: They get about 2500 people at a time. My sister wanted to do something out there and it took us a couple of years to get it going. They have an area that's very popular for people to get married, with the waterfall in the background and the rose garden. The only problem was there were no public bathrooms and they needed a place if it was windy or rainy where the brides could change their clothes. Also, if it rained, they needed to accommodate 100 people in a sheltered area. My sister donated about half of the cost for that. They hope to have it finished in May of 2012. However, my sister died so she won't be able to enjoy it. ROH: What is your inspiration for being so philanthropic and generous? ZD: My grandfather and his brothers worked with and uncle and built a railroad from Portland to Astoria and they had some financial and the Cory Brothers went broke. My grandfather and his brothers were on their own. They started the Utah Construction and needed some money, so they went to David Eccles, who involved the Dees and some of the others. He gave them funding for a half interest in the company in 1903. My grandfather, E.O. Wattis, ran the jobs and 35 his brother, W.H. Wattis, was president. They did well and by 1933, my grandfather was president of six companies building the Boulder Dam. He knew when he died, he didn't want to have his stock split up between his six surviving children so he set up a trust leaving the stock income to his children, but the stock to his grandchildren. That's been very helpful for me. I had to come up with stock for loans as Bullfrog was growing and I had some assets to work with. Originally, with my estate planning, inheritance taxes and children gift taxes would be high on the E.O. Wattis Trust. I had the right to say, "I don't want that," and I was able to pass my grandfather's grant down to my children after I die. They've already changed the law so we won't be able to do that again, but I already passed the residual down and I still have the income. The stock was such an advantage to me in having an asset to work with and one of the reasons I've been able to do other investments and donations. These benefits have been passed on down to me and my brothers, sisters and cousins. I had another aunt that died and had no children, so she wanted to do what her father did so she passed her estate on to the nine nieces and nephews. My father played football in high school and worked in harvesting and for a mining company in Butte. He went to see his brother in Denver who said, "You need to go on to college." He didn't have assets, but he was a very good football player and they got him a scholarship to the University of Denver. After that, he wanted to become a doctor and his coach called Northwestern and got him admitted on a scholarship. He was working and going to school and playing football and that was too much. He was going to have to drop out, but he had an 36 aunt who loaned him the funds to get through school. He felt very indebted to people who would do that. My father gave my grandparents all their medical needs and other care at no charge. The family wanted to repay him after they died. He wouldn't take cash, but let the E.O.Wattis family fund a trust fund to finance young doctors that were having financial problems like he had when he was going to Northwestern. If they were already in school and they had a critical situation come up, he would loan them the money to graduate. He financed 28 different doctors getting through their school. Only one did not repay their loan. When he died, he left all of those "I owe you's" and the money that had been accumulated to the University of Utah. They have a similar trust up there. In each case, all of these students had been supported by somebody that cared enough to make a loan. ROH: Your foundations have a lot of areas from which to choose. You mentioned that you get over a hundred solicitations in a year. When did you decide to continue giving to Weber State University? ZD: The family funded the Doctor Dumke Health Science Operation and continues to be interested in Weber. It was through the Doctor Foundation that we gave the endowment. I don't get the credit for that because I stepped down as president and my daughter, Claire, was president and she and recommended that we should do something meaningful. She said, "We can do it by making this endowment which is roughly three years of income to the Doctor Foundation." 37 She gets the credit, not me. Claire was president. We all voted for it, but it was Claire's recommendation. ROH: Were you included in that group. ZD: Yes, I was included. ROH: I have to say thank you very much. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention about your activities? ZD: Flying was always something important that I learned to do while I was in the Naval Aviation Program. It came in very handy when we got the concession on Lake Powell because I was more flexible with my insurance business and could fly back and forth, even before we had a road. I was always very interested in the state of Utah and the lay of the land and the scenic wonders. I used my airplane for a lot of exploring. One of the important things in our family was that every year we took camping trips. Instead of going to the mountains where there are mosquitos and all, we normally go down to the desert. There are very few people down there and we all love the desert and we explore all sorts of exciting places. As we see our children with their children, they are doing the same thing. They like the camping. They do it with a little more style than we used to. We used to go out and didn't even have a tent. I think we all really appreciated it and that came out of my parents. They love camping and did it with us and it has affected our lives. 38 ROH: You know that President F. Ann Milner is stepping down as president soon and I didn't know if you might have a message for her or a note to say on her behalf. ZD: She called me and I had a very nice long talk with her. ROH: Glad to hear that. Is there anything else that you'd like to say in wrapping up? ZD: My understanding was that when George Eccles died, his biggest asset was Utah International converted to General Electric stock. Mariner Eccles had been president of Utah Construction and his foundation was mostly General Electric. As you look around the community you see the Dee's, the Browning's, and the Eccle's. I think it's interesting to see the spread of that and very few people know how far that Utah International stock has gone in things that were done. The Kimball Arts center was General Electric stock that came down through Utah. A number of us that have done things, but we shouldn't really get the first credit. It came from our family and Utah stock. ROH: I appreciate that you have taken this time to visit and share your story and your family's history. We've all benefitted from your success in business and your generosity, so we wanted to thank you. ZD: I always feel fortunate that we can do it. While I've run some successful businesses, it's really gone back to the fact that I had assets to start with to make them grow. Had I not had assets to work with, it would have been a different story. So, I feel very grateful for the things that came before me and I want to help some of those that will come after me. ROH: Thank you so much for your time, Zeke. I really appreciate it. 39 ZD: Thank you.

The College Mefcuty. VOL. IV. GETTYSBURG, PA., APRIL, 1896. No. 2. THE COLLEGE MERCURY', Published each month -during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STAFF. Editor: D. EDGAR RICE, '96. Associate Editors : EDNA M. LOOMIS, '96. GRAYSON Z. STUP, '96. HENRY W. BIKLE, '97- WEBSTER C. SPAYDE, '96. WILLIAM E. WHEELER, '97. HERBERT D. SHIMER, '96. ROBBIN B. WOLF, '97. Alumni Association Editor: REV. D. TRANK GARLAND, A. M., Baltimore, Md. Business Manager: WILLIAM G. BRUBAKER, '96. Assistant Business Manager: E. A. ARMSTRONG, '97- """. (One volume (ten months). . . . $1.00 iMtMb. jSin.gie copies 15 Payable in advance. All Students are requested to band us matter for publication. The Alumni and ex-members ot the college will favor us by sending Information concerning their whereabouts or any Items hey may think would be Interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the business manager. Matter Intended for publication should be addressed to the I Editor Address, THE COLLEGE MEECUKY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EDITORIALS, 16 THE LOVE OF FAME AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS, - - IS THE RELATION OF THE STUDENT TO THE PROFESSOR, - 20 OBJECTIONS TO STUDENT GOVERNMENT, 22 "To THAHARCHUS," 23 COLLEGE LOCALS, -"* - - ' - 23 LUMNI NOTES, - ._._-_- 25 ATHLETICS, - 27 RATERNITY NOTES, --- 1 28 TOWN AND SEMINARY NOTES, - - ' - - - - 29 LITERARY SOCIETIES, - - --- 30 EXCHANGES, - - - - - - - - -'--30 EDITORIAL. THE time has almost arrived when the elec-tion will be held for positions on the MERCURY staff. With a 3'ear's experience on the staff we wish to make a few suggestions which we hope will commend themselves to the literary societies as at least worthy of their consider-ation. In looking over our exchanges we find that in a great many of the college journals positions on -the editorial staff are honors worth striving for, and that to be elected to such positions the applicants must have contributed a certain amount of acceptable matter to the paper, or in other cases the3r are-subjected to competi-tive examinations. In Pennsylvania College, on the contrary, work for the MERCURY seems to be considered as a burden, and instead of there being an over-supply of applicants, it is occasionally a difficult matter to get enough students who are willing to devote even a small portion of their time to our monthly: Without making any personal insinuations, the natural result of this arrangement is that oc-casionally some are elected to positions oil the staff who have really no interest in their work, and consequently do not put forth a great amount of effort. Another apparent defect in our arrangement is that positions on the staff do not continue for more than one year, and thus an entirely new board may be elected each year. Of course, where seniors are elected this is neces: sary, but in cases where under-classmen" are chosen, if they show ability in' their work* the)' should not be subject to an annual change. By the time a new staff gets accus-tomed to its duties; and is just in good run-ning order, it is again about time for an elec-tion and its consequent changes. ■mBBBM^^HMI 17 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 1 We believe these defects mentioned could be remedied by following the example of many other college journals, and making positions on the staff the reward of a little special effort in journalistic work. We feel safe in saying that no outside work in the whole college course is more profitable than work on the col-lege journal can be made, and we are quite sure that there are men of ability among us, who are not thought of as available for jour-nalistic work, who would devote their best efforts to it if some competitive system were used in selecting editors, and who would take so much interest in their work, that the stand-ard of the paper could be decidedly improved. We feely deeply impressed with the neces-sity of adopting some plan by which a greater interest in the paper may be created on the part of the members of the staff, and believing that the competitive system is best calculated to secure that object, we most earnestly com-mend it to the serious consideration of the literary societies at their next joint meeting. *** FROM the reports received concerning the Oratorical Contest at Swarthmore we believe our representative compared very favorably with those from some of the other colleges. Although we did not come in for a share of the honors, we need not feel so badly over it, when we remember that we made as good a showing as Franklin and Marshall, whose lit-erary societies receive such well deserved praise, and which was so confident of winning. The result is indeed encouraging, and snows us that with a little more effort we may hope to be winners. It is a fact that the proper interest was not taken in the preliminaries this year. Those who were willing to go in probably did their best, but the fact that there were only two entries from one of the societies makes us feel that the contest in college might at least have been made much more close. Not one of those who were recognized as the best speak-ers from that society at the Junior Oratorical last year entered the preliminaries, and neither was the Junior Class represented. We would urge on both societies that next year a greater effort be put forth and that preparation begin in good time. If we wish to continue our membership in the Oratorical Union, it is the duty of all those who can speak to take an in-terest in the preliminaries and see to it that all the oratorical ability in the college receives a fair test. If we do this, and yet are not suc-cessful, we can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we were not defeated on ac-count of our indifference. For fear we may be misunderstood, we wish to explain that no implication is made that we were not sufficiently well represented in the recent contest, but simply that more students should have entered the preliminaries, and es-pecially that there should be more next year. * * * ONCE more vacation is over and work is be-gun. Once more the records of the term's work have been received and commented on. Another term lies before us and its record is to | be made. Although good resolutions are pro-verbially broken, there is much in a good be-ginning. A good term's work must be good ill the beginning, the middle and the end ; good throughout. The duties of every day must be met and fulfilled. It does not pay to depend upon a fine examination to make up deficiencies in recitation. Examinations are uncertain at best ; there is no depending upon them, and the safest way is to let the tens in recitations make up for possible or probable deficiencies in examinations. It is very true that ambition to earn a fine grade is, in itself, a childish and a vain thing ; but, on the other | hand, why do students go to college? Sup-posably, at least, to get an .education. Hon-est work, regularly done, must be shown in I the grade ; the grade is not the measure of the man ; far from it. It is only a measure of one side of the man, but that side is not to be de-| spised. L. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 18 THERE is something interesting in the study |of class spirit and college spirit. On the one band, no class is so wonderful as our own be-cause we belong to it. No college is quite the Isanie as ours because that is our Alma Mater. |On the other hand, we are important because ve belong to such or such a class, and we [sometimes base our reputation on "Old Penn-sylvania." Yet, what gives a reputation to the class or the college if not its individual I members ? We give a reputation to the col-lege ; the college can not give us ours. Its [diploma may give us a start, but how little the [sheepskin is worth unless there is something jto back it up. If we have a real regard for our college ; if we have real college spirit, we |will take care that when we say "I am from Pennsylvania College" she will not blush to jclaim us. There is college spirit and again, jthere is college spirit. One kind is mere [empty talk and the other is what makes the j institution flourish. L. THE LOVE OF FAME AMONG} COLLEGE STUDENTS. That the desire for recognition exists in our college students, no one who has had even a slight acquaintance with them will deny. To understand fully the reason of this desire, it is lecessary first to consider the ultimate cause jof the love of prominence among men in gen-leral, viz: society. It is impossible to imagine how an individ-ual, alone, without intercourse with his kind, could advance far beyond his pristine condi-tion. To the formation of organized commu-nities, inducing an interchange of ideas, the riction of mental activity, do we owe the first larked advances in intelligence. From these communities have sprung nations, wealth, civ-ilization, learning, sympathy, reverence for the moral law, the spirit of leadership. As a rule, small communities and great cities are extremes which meet and agree in this: there is little incentive to achievement. In the one there is nothing to seek after ; in the other, every place has a host of appli-cants, and one is lost in the multitude. The peculiarity of college society is this: a com-munity not large numerically, but in which each member, since embarked upon the same voyage and stimulated by the same kind of activity, wears an exaggerated importance. Scarcely does a young man arrive at college before inquiry is made concerning him, his ac-quaintance sought, and his measure taken. There springs up immediately the desire to be of some importance, to command the respect of one's fellows, to be the object, at some time, of those exuberant bursts of applause of which the college students are so prodigal, no mat-ter how slight the occasion. The young man who can come to college and not feel well up within him the desire to become known in some sphere of college activity; who can be content to remain uuesteemed, insignificant, must be totally wanting in those qualities which characterize every noble human soul. Such a young man, we may safely predict, can never amount to anything anywhere. Despite the number of colleges which have sprung up over the enlightened world within the last fifty years, a thorough education is by no means a common possession. We have not yet reached that happy period when by an equality of opportunity every one who desires may get an education; later still will be the time when all shall desire it. Therefore, the world bows respectfully to the college student, acknowledging his superiority, and the student has accepted the homage as his due. The student is right; it is remarkable what a change takes place in the earnest student ; his development is not one-sided but complete in body and mind. Even on his return to spend his first vacation, do the parents and friends notice that he has changed; his manners are more polished, his speech can be weighty. It is strange that learning is not more com-mon. True, all have not the opportunity, but the majority do not possess it for mere want of effort. Of all the sins for which we will some day be required to answer, this one sin of lazi-ness is the most heinous. Placed here to de- MHHi^BiM^B 19 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. velop ourselves to the utmost, to enlarge the capacities of the mind and spirit for useful-ness ; how infinitesimal are the attainments of the many, how utterly unworthy of their powers ! It is the line of cleavage which sep-arates the successful and respected man from the worshiping multitude. For this reason is the student regarded with interest and treated with deference. Again, the association with exceptional men tends to develop a love for fame. Before the young man enters college, he bows with the multitude in deference to the learning and wisdom of his elders. At college he meets these men under the intimate relation of teacher and scholar. They slowly instruct him, give him the results of their thought and expe-rience, advise him, and later on acknowledge the value of his opinion. To the well-trained youth this familiarity is productive of the greatest blessings; while still reasonably ac-knowledging their superiority, his indebtedness to them, there has been begotten in him a cer-tain necessary degree of independence of thought and action, which shrinks not to en-ter whatever portal invites entrance into the kingdom of truth. Now will he be seen boldly, yet modestly, seeking the acquaintance of men wiser than himself, not fearing to hear them and ask questions. Familiarity, in its better sense, with learned and prominent men is one of the most useful of attainments, simply be-cause, other things being equal, it fits us for the same station with them, and produces the desire to occupy the position for which we are thus fitted. But while society is the ultimate cause of the love for fame, and the peculiar society found at college "tends to develop it, yet our best students, they who derive the most from their college course, are those who come impelled by a desire to rise into a higher sphere than the one in which they have been bred, and fill the measure of their usefulness in their gener-ation. Many, it is only too well known, are sent to college by parents who desire to get rid of them, or make something of them, whereas the youths themselves are indifferent and sim-ply allow their parents to do with them as I they please. These seldom make the most of their opportunities, but are simply carried along by the urging of others, content if they can secure a few temporary and empty lion-1 ors at college, and an easy means of living | afterwards. These two classes are nearly co-extensive I with two other classes into which students | may be divided, with the love of fame asfund-ameiitum divisionis, viz : Those who aim at I future and permanent distinction, and those| who desire merely present and temporary recognition. It is noteworthy how many of I our students are poor ; their education, ability, and earnestness are the only guaranty they have of future success, and they strain every nerve to attain that position to which these | alone can bring them. James shows that we may divide men into I grades according as they are influenced by considerations near or remote. The higher man ascends in the scale of intellectuality, the more he is guided in his thoughts and conduct by reasons which are more removed from pres-ent gratification. Undoubtedly, he alone is a true • student who looks forward to future achievement. He who is concerned only for his reputation among his fellows now, whether | in scholarship, athletics, or any other sphere, can hardly be said to possess a love for famel in the higher sense. And there is reason for! this difference of inclination ; it is the result of I that difference between men of which we I spoke above. The future recognition held up I as a goal to be attained, is so far distant that it requires perseverance, courage, confidence I in one's ability, in the favor of God and good I judgment of man, to keep a young man fromj fainting. Only a heroic spirit, one ready tol make sacrifices, ready to endure disappoint-ments and buffets, can ever hope to attain the| wished for success. The difference between these two classes | may be easily recognized. Few are the stu-dents who are so wrapped up in the desire tol THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Iknow, that they wear out their lives, dry up [their very heart's blood in the pursuit of [knowledge. This is often decried ; for fear {that a young man may go too far, he is urged too much the other way, and in excessive care-fulness for his physical well-being loses inter-est iu the pursuit of truth. It is an indubit-able mark of a noble spirit to wear away itself nn the thirst for knowledge ; to feel the over- [powering sense of limitation, and in the desire |to get free from restraint to mount on eagle's pings into the blue empyrean. But we do lave many young men who, while taking care lof the body, yet encroach upon their sleep and jburn the midnight oil. Of course, there is |some risk ; it may in a few cases be carried to the extent of bodily debility, but as a rule a lealthy young man seldom suffers from study-ing till midnight. It is still true, as Eongfel- |low said : , The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night. iNever was there a time when success depended [so much upon extra work ; and the disposi-tion to do extra work is a characteristic of the imbitious and successful student. Probably the seekers after present distinc-tion are most easily recognized by their eager-aess for place while at college. It is marvel-lous how eager the least capable ones are to mold offices whether in the class, upon com- [mittees, or upon editorial boards. Athletics are a fruitful source of emulation. So luch is made of athletes, they are petted and courted, that to shine in athletics becomes lany a student's ideal, and the mirage carries aim away from those nobler pursuits and ngher aims which should alone dominate the pfe of a young man, especially of a student. Athletics have their proper place only when ^hey are regarded as of secondary importance. The difference in ideals manifests itself in the manners of their devotees. The earnest student usually is retiring, seldom demands recognition, does not obtrude his acquaintance, 3Ut lets his abilities speak for themselves. On the other hand, his opposite is bolder, more aggressive, more prompt to speak and act, seeking distinction among his fellow-students rather than the commendation of his instruc-tors. Here is one who seeks distinction as a base-ball, player, another seeks to shine as a singer, and so on as low as the aim to be known as a "sport" with a fine head of hair. Since youth, including the years spent at college is the formative period, the instructors may possess almost demiurgic power. This love for fame should be fanned and trained. Nothing makes study so pleasant, makes achievement so desirable, as a word of com-mendation. Our instructors owe a duty not to their scholars alone, but to the nation and world. Men look for great things from col-lege students, and society cannot afford to have those who possess the opportunity to educate themselves waste their abilities. Without the shadow of a doubt, the future of the world, its progress, its condition of freedom or of slavery, is in the hands of .its educated men. By all means then foster this love for fame, turn aside the inclinations from those objects which are not worth}' and enter them upon those paths which lead to greatness and use-fulness. G. F. A., '97. The Eslation of the Student to the Professor. The caption indicates that we have taken only the one part of an important question. The relation of the professor to the student we leave to be discussed by those to whom it be-longs. Therefore, whatever we say is from the student's point of view. When about to decide whether we shall at-tend one of the larger colleges, such as Har-vard or Yale, or some one of our smaller col-leges, such as our own, there is no stronger argument possible in favor of the smaller col-lege than that of the closer contact with the personality of the heads of the various depart-ments, afforded by them for their students. For it is in these institutions that the student may have the advantage of that peculiar trait— THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 1 the individuality of the teacher, whatever it may be, which distinguishes him from his fel-low man. Assuming that these chairs are filled by live and competent men, as there is no reason why they should not be, the student of such a college has at his disposal one of the greatest advantages offered by the best univer-sities of the day. It is the soul of the teacher that kindles the soul of the student ; and the nearer we can approach it the greater its in-fluence over us. The question is a grave one, and we fear that it must be answered negatively, whether the students of the smaller colleges recognize this opportunity. The conduct in our own college and that in others of a similar class seems to bear out the conclusion that they do not. Nor is it our purpose here to assign any reason for it that would take us beyond our subject. But it is only for us to say what, in our opin-ion, would be the proper deportment of the student in this particular relation. Is this ideal possible ? It is not an ideal ; but an actual possibility, a thing already real-ized by some, being realized by others and pos-sible for everyone. However, to accomplish this the student must see in his teacher a true friend, anxious to promote his welfare and better his condi-tion ; he must see in the subject pursued a means to some useful end ; and he must real-ize that his obligations to his teacher cannot be measured by money but are payable only by respect and gratitude, and that the careful and faithful prosecution of any subject will bring a return far greater than the time and energy spent on it. In short, the student must have his heart in his work. It is not so much his ability to learn as his love, which makes his relation to his professor a pleasant and a profit-able one. Let the student then love and re-spect the professor and be interested and de-voted to the subject studied and his deport-ment in this relation will not be far from right. "At the feet of Gamaliel," said Paul, speak-ing of his education, "Twas brought up." The very thought of one like Paul placing himself in such a position to his teacher ought at least arouse in us a profound respect and a | reverence for those who are our instructors. And so we find the best young men in the days I of Socrates willing to humble themselves be-fore him, despised and ridiculed by the leaders| of the city, in order that they might be in-spired by that same powerful influence which I distinguished Socrates from other men. The| objection may be made that we have no Gam-aliel and no Socrates these days ; but we have I those who are their peers ; for when was there ever such wonderful achievements in science as to-day, and when had the world ever a bet-ter knowledge of the classics than at present? The trouble is this : we are not looking for a Gamaliel or a Socrates, nor would they, if it were possible to'find them, be able to influence us even as much as some of our present teach-ers. For, sad as the fact is, a large number of | our students have developed a disposition al-most insensible to the most powerful influence I which the best teacher can exert. And what is this strange influence which deprives us of I our greatest privilege? Is it a thoughtlessj error, is it a legacy bequeathed to us by our predecessors, or is it pure indifference ? May it be hoped that it is one of the former, for the latter is worse than suicide, strange as it mayf seem. . Let it be what it may, it is the deadliest en-emy to the possible and complete efficiency of I our smaller colleges. Its presence in the class- \ room is as destructive as water in a powder I magazine. It forbids the instructor laying! aside the secondary matters in the class-room I and the concentrating of all the power and en-ergy of body and soul on the subject underI consideration. It refracts, distorts and almost! obliterates those rays of genius radiating from! the mature and master mind, which alone are! able to fire the dormant energies of the un-| tutored student. Will the students ot these institutions never | awaken to a proper appreciation of their owr interests and advantages until they are foreverl R0ffi> THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 22 lost ? Can generation after generation be nur-tured and sustained by a delusion? The life of an error may be long, but its death is cer-tain. So in this abuse which means so much to the success and life of the student a reform is inevitable. And may the time not be dis-tant when the students of these institutions shall again assume the proper relation to their instructors, and restore to these colleges in actual fact what is to-day only a cherished tra-dition. Let each student then ask himself these questions: How far have I unconsciously been led by this delusion ? What have I lost myself? What have I robbed others of? What is my duty? And let him be a man, who, when he knows his duty, has moral cour-age enough to do it. L., '98. OBJECTIONS TO STUDENT GOVERNMENT. In a recent number of the MERCURY there appeared quite an extended article on ' 'Stud-ent Government," in which mainly the de-sirable qualities were set forth. It may be of interest to those who are strongly advo-cating the system to give a moment's time to a few of the obstacles which will be in the way of the new system. But it may be added, however, that these hindrances are not of such a nature that they cannot be overcome. The main feature of this system of students' self-government, which had its origin at Am-herst College, is a student senate, the members of which are elected from the four classes by the entire student body. Just here is the first and greatest draw-back to the success of the system, viz., the election of the members of the senate. Among college students espec-ially, there are all classes and every tempera-ment. Among them can be found those who were "born with a silver spoon in their mouth," as also those born of the humblest parentage in the land ; those clothed in "soft clothing," who have all the luxuries and en-joyments that kind parents and wealth can give, and who consider it their great pleasure and privilege to deride and unsympathetically to embarrass their less (?) fortunate fellows, as well as those who wear plain yet neat attire and who, wholly unwilling to offend or dis-obey, put forth an honest endeavor to make the best of their great privilege, which has been bought with many years of hard manual labor. With such a difference the election of the members of the senate will always be one-sided. It will be a source of continual wrang-ling, and instead of uniting the student body it will only increase the ill-feeling among the different classes. Usually in setting forth the advantages and benefits of the system Amherst College is cited as an example to show that the system can be made successful. But here the senate ceased to act more than two years ago. It was not suppressed by action of the Faculty, but by the action of the students themselves it has been given up. And again the decisions of the senate are to be referred to the Faculty for approval or dis-approval. That the decisions of the senate will seldom if ever be reversed by the action of the Faculty is not quite so sure, since stu-dents are too much inclined to make their tasks as light as possible, whether it will be of most advantage to themselves or not. Measures have already been undertaken by the student body to induce the Faculty to yield to their de-sires, but in almost every instance nothing was gained thereby ; and it may be added that in many cases it would have been folly to grant the requests. Often the poor plea is made that under the present system the students' truth and honor receive so little recognition that there is very little occasion, if any, to preserve them. But certainly there is none whatever for breaking them. Can the Faculty be ex-pected to trust the students in the new system if they are unfaithful in the present ? Only he that is faithful in the least will be faithful in that which is greater. Our worthy president has given the students full opportunity to 23 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. prove themselves obedient and trustworthy. Has the recent attitude of the students been such as to warrant his full confidence in them ? If students' truth and honor are sacred enough to be kept in the greater are they any less sacred in the less ? Only he that is faithful in a few things will be made ruler over many. Gold is tried in the fire to test its quality. Only where the students are mature, manly and morally thoughtful, does such a system have any decided advantages. N. "TO THALIARCHUS. Behold the snow-clad mountains, and observe The force of frigid Boreas' driving sleet O'er all the landscape ; then divert Thy gaze into the forest where the trees Labor 'neath the burden of the snows. The river, too, is frozen, and instead Of sparkling liquid surface, which beneath The sun and moon doth oft transparent seem Thou seest a stream congealed, upon which oft The maiden and the youth in pleasure glide Upon the crystal ice. But coldness, too. Within my dismal chamber reigns supreme ; And bids thee, Thaliarchus, forth to bring The wood from its receptacle to feed The dying embers and thaw the nipping cold. Then bring forth,Jrom Sabiuejars, the ruddy Vine-juice, four mellowing summers old, 'twill cheer The dull despondent mind, and cause the soul To live in pleasure To the gods resign Whatever else there be ; for unto them The winds pay tribute ; quick at their command They cease to war on oceans or among The ash and cypress trees. In thought be young ; Nor think of doubtful future ; and when days Are in succession on thy life bestowed. Count them as favors worthy to commend. Despise not youthful loves, nor yet refuse To dance, to court, to love as long as age Withholds its grip from thee. Skip to the park And meet the girls; then through green lanes and pleas-ant walks. Where merry laughs betray them, let thy steps Conduct thee ; nor forget the whispered word Which often in their bosom does inspire Responsive love. Think of how the ring "Upon her dainty finger will attest And prove thy plighted love ; then think of how The bashful maiden will approve and smile, And, by an anxious look, ask for the day J. H. K./99. COLLEGE LOCALS. GKAYSON Z. STUP and ROBBIX B. WOLF, Editors. At last it came—the snow. In spite of all the vain wishes for a good sleighing snow dur-ing the Christmas holidays and the earlier part of last term it came not until all hopes were buried in the final work of the term. But just as the boys were getting ready for base ball and the campus walks fit to be trodden upon, along came the snow and spread a white cover-ing of about eighteen inches over our part of the earth. Then buried hopes revived and merry sleigh bells announced that the boys were making the most of the occasion. Not only sleighing but all the other features of winter sports were seen—snow ball fights, broken windows,' smashed hats and umbrellas. Then ye pestiferous town boys got in their licks. But they were soon careful enough at whom they fired, after one, a Senior, nick-named Eddie, displayed his foot-ball courage and skill. In the language of Eddie, "They were cooled." We all gloried in the lesson thus given. It is a shame that students can-not wear decent hats up town, nor use their umbrellas without some lawless pests pelting them with snowballs. It went too far and the boys can take care of themselves if necessary. With the great fall of snow came the cor-responding amount of mud, and now, though the campus walks are being constantly im-proved, we shall have to tread muddy paths until April showers shall be dispelled by May sunshine. Vacation gave us a chance to prac-tise on country roads and other places. We were peculiarly unfortunate in the latter part of the term in our entertainments. The last of the Y. M. C. A. course was postponed once, because of a failure to get Dr. Willitts, and finally by the sickness of Representative Howard. The lecture will be given this term, and if possible Dr. Willitts will be procured. The Sons of Hercules were equally disap-pointed by the inclement weather. The ex-hibition was postponed twice on account of the drifting snow. They were in good con-dition to give a first-class entertainment. But they have decided to give it early in the term and hope to do better than they would have clone before. There are thirteen in the crowd and every one has some specialties. The work on the mats and in pyramids will be especially good. It is encouraging to find so many tak-ing an interest in these manly contests. What is better than a sound mind in a sound body? In spite of the falling snow on Wednesday, March n, the Senior dinner, given by the President to the class, came off and was a suc-cess in every particular. The boys were afraid a chill would be put upon it by the blizzard, 111 e n 6 .; r( K lii ■1! it] ai ; •s. til 'CM x !ei Jut Kill ■ '' tain Tun tot: wa\ you THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 24 It when iu the genial presence of our host forgot the storm without. The dinner be-lli about 8.30 P. M., and every member of [6 was present. The affair was unique in §tny ways. The class, as a whole, was at- ■red in evening dress, and made a good ap pearance around the convivial board. The dinner was very tastefully served, in six R)iirses. The table was beautifully decorated With roses and evergreens. ■ At each one's place was a white carnation, and a card bear-ing his name, tied with a bow of the class col- H-s. After partaking of the .sumptuous ban-quet, the following toasts were responded to. ■Our Host' and Hostess," Ship ; "Ninety-six in Athletics," Moser ; "Our Sports," Menges ; "The Faculty," Reitzell ; "Our Future," Rice. Then Toastmaster Eisenhart called upon the Doctor to give his impressions of '96. It w:as then that we learned for a cer-tainty of his intention to leave the college in Tune. He spoke very tenderly of his relations to us as a class, and said that he would be al-ways interested in us as his youngest boys and youngest girl. We feel very sorry to know that the Doctor is going to leave. We also feel that we are quite fortunate in being al-lowed to sit at his feet and receive instruction. His generous hospitality to the class endeared us still more to him, and we shall often refer, in talking over reminiscences, to our days spent with Dr. McKnight. The dinner was a very pleasant occasion, and in the future when we shall look back over the dim past it will be an especially bright one among the many happy clays we spent together in '96. I The musical organizations have been doing faithful practice during the past term, and if it is kept up during this one, there is no doubt but that the commencement concert will be Rry good. I Now is the time for out-door sports. Every fellow who can play base ball ought to be out trying for the team. Let us get up an in-vincible one and have some exciting games on our new field. Tennis, too, should be made a great deal of. We want good contests, and, if possible, track athletics at commencement. I The fourth annual contest of the Pennsyl-vania Intercollegiate Oratorical Union was held at Swarthmore on Friday, March 20th, in the presence of a large audience. Swarthmore ffiad spared no efforts to make the contest a Success, and it was undoubtedly the best yet held. - The colleges represented, the contestants and their subjects were as follows: Swarth-more, F. Grant Blair, "The Function of His-tory; " Muhlenberg, John F. Kramlech, "Liberty and Revolution;" Franklin and Marshall, S. H. Stein, "Education Obliga-tory;" Lehigh, Ross N. Hood, "The Pre-server of Religious Liberty;" Lafayette, Ellis H. Custard, "What will Europe Say?" Ursinus, A. C. Thompson, "The Revival of American Patriotism;" Gettysburg, I. O. Moser, "Lafayette, a Champion of Liberty." The judges of the contest were Dr. J. Max Hark, President of the Moravian Seminary, Bethlehem, Pa.; Professor George Bible, Prin-cipal of the State Normal School, Strouds-burg, Pa., and Rev. Luther S. Black, of Get-tysburg, who awarded the first prize of twenty-five dollars to Swarthmore and the second of fifteen dollars to Muhlenberg. Who said that Eddie did not own college on Thursday evening, March 19th? The Fresh-men looked upon him with a holy awe, and wondered if they could acquire such bravery by playing foot-ball. No doubt we shall have a strong team next fall. J. S., '99' has a great desire for ladies' rings. Some time ago he received one, after assurance that he would not lose it or be un-true to the owner. Now he is in quite a pre-dicament, for he has either lost it or given it to another girl. But he has overcome all dif-ficulties by buying another and asking her to keep quiet about it. H., '99—"Do you know what you are? " S., '99—"I am in bed." He must have been in that semi-conscious condition which psychologists say we are when we are enter-ing the realms of sleep. If anybody is looking for trouble he wants to call around to fourth floor. West Div. There he will find F., '98, ready to settle all disputes. All that cannot be amicably settled will be mended as well as possible with the fist. E., '99, has a very flattering opinion of him-self. The other day he said that he would go with whatsoever girl he pleased, and stay as long as he wished. In that case I guess the girl doesn't have much to say. K., '99, said that Mercury's mother was Jupiter. Mythology must be revised. Mr. S., '97, who was playfully invited by a 25 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. lady to take a ride on a child's bicycle, said, in his dignified air: "Indeed, I would, but I'm afraid it would lower my humility." Z. '98, in English Bible, said that they were going to concentrate the spoils of war. F. '98, said that the Caspian Sea is south of Palestine. Mr. A., '97 (returning from a sleigh'ride). "I didn't get to Two Taverns." S. '99. "I suppose one tavern settled you." H., '99. "This Lutheran Quarterly costs pretty much." S.'i '99 (Looking at the price). " 'Tis rather steep." H. "Why, one copy alone costs seventy-five cents." S., '99- "More than that, there are only three quarters in a year." The Phrena reading room is completed and ready for use. It is quite an improvement over the former room. Both the Philo and Phrena reading rooms are now in first-class condition and the boys, whether members or not, should take care of them and keep them in good order. The popular electives for the spring term are Baseballology and Tenni(y)s-on. Never did the boys feel happier over the ap-proach of vacation than last term. The term was a long, dreary one, and the lessons were hard and kept the boys studying hard. There were no out-door sports, and gym. work is not very refreshing to young men accustomed to play foot-ball, base-ball, etc. All however look forward to this term with pleasure. It will be only ten weeks long, and will be at-tended with all the joys of spring and summer. Don't fail to attend the exhibition to be given in the gymnasium by the "Sons of Hercules." Go both for the merits of the ex-hibition and because the proceeds are for the benefit of the Athletic Association. We are sorry to hear that one of Dr. Nixon's brothers died during the vacation. The MERCURY extends heartfelt sympathy to him in his bereavement. The Pennsylvania College Alumni Associa-tion of Western Pennsylvania will hold their annual meeting and banquet at Pittsburg, on May 5th. The annual Pen-Mar Lutheran re-union will be held Thursday, July 23rd. Y. M. C. A. NOTES. At the final business meeting of last teniij March 26th, the following officers were elected! for the ensuing year : President, G. F. Abelf Vice President, R. W. Woods ; Corresponding! Secretary, E. W. Meisenhelder; Recording Secretary, A. M. Stamets ; Treasurer, C. J.l Fite; Reporter, W. R. Stahl ; Organist, W,| C. Spayde. The schedule for the term has been preparedl and can be obtained from members of the De| votional Committee. ALUWINI. H. D. SHIMER AND H. W. BIKLE, Editors. '41. Col. C. H. Buehler died on March 24th! at his home in Gettysburg, Pa. He had beeil for many years a Trustee of Pennsylvania Colj lege. '53. Rev. Peter Begstresser, D. D., has book in press entitled "Baptism and Feet! washing." '57. Rev. H. L. Baugher, D. D., Presideul of the General Synod, will preach the baccaj laureate sermon for Irving College, Mechanics] burg, Pa. '57. Rev. L. A. Gotwald, D. D., of Wit| tenberg Theological Seminary, we are please to learn, has rallied from a recent relapse and] is enjoying about the same degree of strengtt| as before. '57. Rev. D. M. Gilbert, of Harrisburgl Pa., was in Gettysburg on Mar. 26th to atj tend the funeral of Col C. H. Buehler. '62. Rev. M. L. Culler is having success; pastor at Apollo, Pa. During the summd about $1200 are to be expended on the churclj building of his charge. '64. Geo. M. Beltzhoover, whose son wasd member of the class of '97, is very much in| terested in Gettysburg College. He writes tj the MERCURY, and wishes to be' rememberei kindly to all his college friends. '69. Rev. G. F. Behringer, of the class ol '69 till the end of the Junior year, has a verf interesting article in the April Lni/if/ui Quarterly on Luther's pecuniary resources dull ing the Reformation, and the way heexpendef his income. '70. F. J. Kooser, Esq., carried his count!! MMM THK COLLEGE MERCURY. 26 (Somerset) by a majority of 1300 at the Re-publican primary election for Congressman from that district. '73. In looking over the Lutheran Woild for April 2, 1896, we found the portrait of Rev. W. S. Freas, D. D., president of the Board of Church Extension, York, Pa. '73. Rev. L. L- Sieber recently closed a series of meetings in St. John's Church, Steel-ton, Pa., which resulted in the conversion of some seventy persons. '74. Rev. F. W. Staley is a very energetic and successful minister at Middletown, Pa. During his pastorate at that place his good in-fluence ha3 been felt, not only in his congre-gation, but also in the town. '74. Dr. Geo. E. Titus writes to us from his home in Hightstown, N. J., that he is well and prospering, and extends a cordial invita-tion to his classmates and college-mates to visit him whenever convenient. He has not lost interest in them, or in the old college at Gettysburg, and does not wish any one to think that he has. '76. Rev. Geo. C. Henry has not lost inter-est in his class. In his last letter to us he writes: "I am hoping 'only that and nothing more' as yet, for a reunion of '76 at Gettys-burg this summer." '77. Rev. H. B. Wile has been pastor of the First Lutheran church, Carlisle, Pa., for ten years. During that time he has done a very encouraging work. '77. Rev. William M. Bamn, Jr., recently celebrated the thirteenth anniversary of his pastorate at Canajoharie. '78. Rev. A. R. Glaze was recently elected pastor at Maple Hill, Lycoming county, Pa., and has accepted the call to begin work April 5th. '80. Rev. G. W. McSherry, pastor of the Lutheran church atTaneytown, Md., preached his farewell sermon on Sunday, March 22d. '80. David McConaughy, of Madras, India, spent a short time in Gettysburg during last month. '83. Gov. Drake, of Iowa, lately sent to the Senate the appointment of Luther A. Brewer to be State Oil Inspector. The Senate in ex-ecutive session confirmed the appointment. '83. R. M. Linton, editor of the Somerset Democrat, delivered an address before the Pio-neer Lodge, K. of P., at Meyersdale, on the occasion of their fifteenth anniversary, March 25th. '83. Rev. H. L. Yarger, the efficient col-league of Rev. Weber in the Church Exten-sion work is doing excellent service as an evangelist among the western frontier mis-sions. '84. Rev. L. M. Zimmerman is a very en-ergetic minister of Baltimore, Md. He has lately prepared a series of "Stray Arrows," in the form of small cards, attractively printed, in several colors, for use among the discouraged, bereaved, convicted, etc. '86. Rev. W. F. Berger has been called from Camden, N. J., to Fairmount, Ind. '87. James S. Croll was in Gettysburg for a few days in the early part of March. '88. Rev. J. Milton Francis is now in Columbia City, Ind. Rev. Francis thinks that the MERCURY is a good tonic for his "home-sickness" out in that Wittenberg territory. '89. Rev. R. F. Fetterolf was installed as pastor of St. Paul's church of Millersburg, Pa., on Sunday, March 8. '90. We are glad to learn that Rev. L .T Snyder, of Orrstown, Pa., is getting along well, and doing good work. '91. Rev. M. L. Tate was married Thurs-day, March 12, to Miss Florence Heisler, of Harrisburg. Rev. Tate has just accepted a call to Millersville, Pa. '91. Prof. E. J. Wolf is the most popular Principal the schools of his native town ever have had. At the recent election for city councilmen he was elected to that body, re-ceiving the highest vote cast for any one on the ticket. '92. Rev. C. G. Bikle has changed his ad-dress from Hagerstowu, Md., to Glen Gardner, N. J. '92. E. W. Herman writes to the MERCURY from Annapolis, Md. We appreciate the kind interest he still has in our college paper, as well as in the college. '92. Rev. G. A. Getty has changed his ad-dress from Baltimore, Md., to East Schodock, N. Y. '93. Walter S. Oberholtzer has been seri-ously ill for some time. We are glad to re- ■■■■■■ THE COLLEGE MERCURY. port that he is getting very much better, and hopes to be out again in the near future. '93. William J. Gies is co-editor with Prof. Chittenden, of a biological magazine, recently established at Yale University. '93. Rev. Geo. Beiswanger, pastor of Cal-vary church, Baltimore, Md., is doing a noble work. The congregation was organized Sept. 22, 1895, with forty-six members, and one week later the Sunday school was organized with eighty-five scholars and teachers. There are now fifty-nine members of the congrega-tion, with a Sunday school of one hundred and eighty. The congregation recently purchased the lot on which the chapel is located for $4,000. The MERCURY extends to him its best wishes. '93. Rev. F. Hilton has accepted a call to Martin's Creek, Pa. He will begin his work at that place, some time in June. '94. C. F. Kloss is very much interested in Gettysburg College, and has paid us several visits this year. '95. Ivan L. Hoff is pursuing law at West-minster. '95. H. W. Shinier expects to take up a course of study in some western university next fall. '89. The success of Rev. J. F. Seibert in the organization of a church at Sedalia, Mo., is a source of much gratification to his friends. ■ During the recent meeting of the Kansas Synod an impromptu alumni banquet was held after one of the evening sessions. Those par-ticipating were Rev. H. L. Yarger, '83; J. N. Lentz, '84; J. F. Seibert, '89, and R. B. Wolf, '9i. ATHLETICS. WILLIAM E. WHEELER, Editor. The base-ball team and its prospects have been the principal topic of conversation since the opening of the term on April 7th. Some difficulty has been met and overcome, result-ing from the fact that several of the best ap-plicants have not permission to play. At this late date other players have been substituted and at the practice games during the past week, have shown up very well. A little weakness is noticeable in the infield, but this will be remedied by the time for the first game on April 17th, with Washington and Jefferson College. A good game is expected as both teams are about evenly matched, and this be-ing W. and J.'s first game at Gettysburg, each team will put forth every effort to win. Cap-tain Leisenring has the team out on the field each evening for practice and considerable anxiety is manifested as to the showing of the team. The field is being put in fine condition. The fence and backstop are being strengthened and the field rolled. The Athletic Association desired to enter the relay races to be held at Franklin Field,U. of P. on April 25th. A team composed of four of our best runners will represent us, and it is hoped that Gettysburg will make a good show-ing. Teams from the best colleges in the country will compete, and some surprises are looked for. Our team has been running daily, and the men are in fine condition for the race. This part of our athletics has not received the attention it should during the past, and the in-terest now manifested shows that the possibili-ties of a good track team are the very best. Tennis will soon become the leading event along a lighter athletic line. All the courts are being put in good condition, and several new ones are in course of forming and leveling. Manager Lark is now busy securing entries for the tournament, which will be held during the latter part of the term. These tournaments have always been a means of bringing out the best men and, at the same time, developed new ones. On the whole this season's work will without doubt be the best. Owing to a deficiency in the treasury of the association a plan was devised by several of the members by which money can and is be-ing laised. Weekly contributions, no matter how small, are paid by each college man. A man from each class makes these collections, and by the end of the term enough money will have been secured to place the association upon a sound financial basis. A new era is undoubt-edly dawning here along athletic lines, and from the interest taken in all measures to further the athletic spirit, there is no doubt that Gettysburg will be heard from oftener in athletic circles than ever before. "Prep" is filled with the athletic spirit to the extent that a base-ball team has been or-ganized, which promises to be an exception-ally strong one. Dates with other teams will be arranged if permission is obtained. Al-ready the prospects of a Prep track team and THIS COLLEGE MERCURY. 28 foot-ball eleven are being discussed. This is the true athletic spirit and speaks well for the [future college team. The exhibition which was to have been [given by the Sons of Hercules last term was : postponed, on account of the inclement weather, 1 to this term. A definite date has not yet been decided upon, but it will be given within the next few weeks. At a recent indoor contest, Grazier, '98, I broke the college record for the standing broad jump, making 10 feet 3^ inches. The interest manifested in cricket at Haver- I ford is shown by the contemplation of sending a team abroad this summer to compete with [the English public schools. A new feature of Harvard's foot-ball prac-tice will be inaugurated next fall. The eleven will line up for actual play but three times I a week, alternate days being given to some light form of exercise as different from actual [foot-ball as can be devised. Yale will send a crew abroad this summer to I enter in the Henley regatta which will be held |'on July 7, 8 and 9. T. Conneff, the champion mile runner of the world, has entered Holy Cross College. There are 230 men in training for Harvard's I track team. The University of Chicago will send a team feast this spring, and games have been ar-ranged with Yale, Princeton, Harvard, U. of 1. and others. FRATERNITY NOTES. PHI KAPPA PSI. ^ R. M. Culler, '98, visited Carlisle Indian School recently. L. P. Eiseuhart, '96, represents our chapter fat the Grand Arch Council, now in session at Cleveland, Ohio. F. M. KefFer, '95, also ex-pects to be in attendance. L. S. Weaver, '99, spent the vacation very pleasantly at Washington, D. C. E. C. Stiteley, '92, is studying law at the University of Maryland. C. T. Eark, '98, spent a day in Mechanics-burg, Pa., at the close of last term. PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bro. Neudewitz preached in Brooklyn on the morning of March 29th, and in St. John's Church, New York, in the evening of the same day. He also assisted his pastor in commun-ion on April 3rd. Bro. M. E. Young, Ph. D., had an article in the April number of the Reformed Quarteily Review on the subject, "Preaching Christ— the Theme and the Times." Bro. Fite visited Bro. H. L. Stahler at his home, at Norristown, for a few days during vacation, and with him spent a short time in Philadelphia and New York Bro. Baum reports a very pleasant time with friends in Harrisburg on his way back to col-lege. PHI DELTA THETA. W. G. Souders, Pa. Epsilon, Dickinson Col-lege, paid the chapter a visit the beginning of the term. G. W. McSherry has resigned the pastorate of the Lutheran Church, at Taneytown, Md. J. N. Lentz and R. B. WTolf are the Execu-tive Committee of the Luther League, of Kansas. E. J. Wolf is a candidate for Superintendent of the Public Schools of Centre county. Frank Barndt has been compelled to give up his studies at the University of Pennsylvania on account of his health. ALPHA TAU OMEGA. Charles B. Erb, '97, and William E. Wheeler, '97, were initiated into the Frater-nity March 14th. Charles W. Spayde, '99, spent part of his Easter vacation in Philadelphia. TOWN AND SEWJINARY NOTES. WEBSTER C SPAYDE, Editor. TOWN. A bill was introduced in the Maryland Legislature recently for the consolidation of the four electric companies that have secured the privilege of conducting lines between Bal-timore and Washington. The move for con-solidation is said to be part of the scheme for 29 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. the construction of an electric railroad system from Washington through Baltimore to West-minster, over the Blue Ridge, to the Cumber-land Valley and Gettysburg. Widener, El-kins and other capitalists interested in rail-ways are said to be connected with the pro-ject. Paul L. Levin, of Philadelphia, representing the Daughters of the American Revolution, was in Carlisle several weeks ago seeking per-mission to remove the body of Mollie Pitcher, which is buried there, to the Gettysburg battle field, where it is proposed to erect an expen-sive monument to her memory. Senator Cullom, of Illinois, introduced a bill on Friday, March 13th, appropriating $50,000 to the erection of a statue to Abraham Lincoln on the' battlefield at Gettysburg. The Secretary of War is authorized to con-tract for the erection of this statue, after a de-sign for the same and a suitable site on the battlefield have been selected. The selection of the design is entrusted to the Secretary of War, the commander-in-chief of the Army, the commander-in-chiefof the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Governor of Pennsylvania. In speaking of this bill, Senator Cullom stated that he thought there was no spot more suitable for a statue of the martyred President than Gettysburg. Rev. Dr. H. W. McKnight preached in Messiah Lutheran Church, Harrisburg, on Sunday morning, March 29th. It is said that the United States Battlefield Commission has notified the Gettysburg Elec-tric Railway that it holds no title to a part of the land on which its tracks are laid. A new route will have to be constructed, and the road may not be operated this summer. Mrs. Sarah Tawney-Robson will give an en-tertainment in Brua Chapel, "Angels, or the * Actress of Padua," a four-act play, by Hugo, under the auspices of the students of the Semi-nary, on April 16th. SEMINARY. On Thursday evening, April 2d, W. I. Red-cay preached at Watsontown, Pa. Rev. F. Hilton was assisting at the Cold Springs mission on Easter. Rev. J. M. Guss preached at Duncaunon, Pa., on Easter. Rev. H. E. Clare preached for his father, Rev. R. H. Clare, Abbottstowu, Pa., Sunday, March 29th. Rev. A. A. Kelly filled the pulpit of the Trindall Springs church, Mechanicsburg, Pa., on Easter. He confirmed 43 members. Rev. M. G. Richards preached at Round- Top, Sunday, March 29th. The Rev. Dr. Charles William Schaeffer, chairman of the faculty of the Lutheran Theo-logical Seminary at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, died at his home in Germantown on Sunday, March 15th, from heart disease. He was born in Hagerstown May 5, 1813. He studied theology at the Seminary in this place, gradu-ating in 1835. During his life he was presi-dent of the General Synod and also of the general Council of the Lutheran church. For a number of years he was a trustee of the col-lege. Rev. W. F. Bare, of York, has been elected pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran church, Steel-ton, Pa. A committee of the West Pennsylvania Synod, appointed at its last session, to devise means for the liquidation of indebtedness of the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, met recently in York. The members of this com-mittee are: Revs. W. S. Freas, D. D.; A. G. Fastuacht, D. D., of York; H. L. Baugher, D. D., of Gettysburg; D. T. Koser, of Arendtsville; Chas. M. Stock, of Hanover; Messrs. J. Burr Reddig, of Shippensburg, and J. L. Shelly, Mechanicsburg. A plan for the procuring of the necessary means was sub-mitted by Dr. W. S. Freas and after some dis-cussion it was adopted. The plan will be put into operation at once and it is believed will be very successful. The four speakers selected by the faculty from the graduating class of Gettysburg Semi-nary for Commencement day exercises to be held June 4, are: Revs. H. B. Stock, Car-lisle; M. J. Kline, Frederick, Md.; C. P. Wiles, Thurmont, Md., and J. T. Huddle, of Virginia. The graduating class consists of 23 members. Rev. A. J. Rudisill assisted Rev. Marion J. Kline in the Easter service at the Tabernacle church, Harrisburg, on Sunday, April 5th. Rev. E. H. Delk, of Hagerstown, will de-liver the annual address to the C. E. Society of Irving College, Mechanicsburg, on Sunday evening, June 7, and make the address before THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 30 fthe students, faculty and friends on Saturday [evening, June 6. [ Rev. A. R. Longanecker supplied the Shen-indoah charge, Virginia, on Easter. We are glad to hear that Rev. W. S. Ober-loltzer is convalescing. LITERARY SOCIETIES. EDNA M. LOOMIS, Editor. PHILO. The following members were initiated into Philo Society on Friday, March 13th : Albers, [99; Beerits, '99; De Yoe/'gg; C. H. Smith, [99; Weaver, '99. The Senior valedictory program will be jiven on Friday evening, April 17th. PHRENA. The reading room is now ready for use. It las been entirely remodeled, and presents a irery beautiful and attractive appearance. The bid carpet has been removed and the floor ptained. Wainscoting several feet in height aas been placed around the whole room. Ar-rangements have been made for better lighting ijy the introduction of Welsbach burners. With |he present system of arranging papers and periodicals, we think the reading room must Irove itself a very desirable and profitable place to the students. Phrena will render a special program in ibout two weeks. EXCHANGES. We are very sorry we have been unable to pay the attention to our exchanges which they deserve. We receive a large number of excel-lent journals, and enjoy reading them very luch, but want of both space and time pre-sents us from giving notices to even a limited lumber. We will try, however, to do so vhenever we are able, assuring all our ex-changes that they are highly appreciated. The Dickinsonian for March contains an _ litorial which strongly advocates the teach-ing of hypnotism in the regular curriculum. Another new exchange of considerable merit Is the Metceisburg Monthly, published at Mer-cersburg College. Among our new exchanges is the Holy Ghost College Bulletin, published by the stud-ents of Holy Ghost College, a Catholic insti-tution, located at Pittsburg. The article on Napoleon Bonaparte, which has been running in the College Student for several issues, strikes one as being just a little "heav5r" for a college paper. We have recently received a copy of the Waste Basket, a paper published monthly at Detroit, Mich. It is made up of contributions from writers who aim at journalistic work, but who do not yet show sufficient literary merit to have their articles accepted by the better mag-zines. The first number of the Orange and White has come to us from York Collegiate Institute. . If it is kept up to the standard of the initial number, the students of the Iustitue may feel well satisfied with their endeavor. The Wittcnberger of March 24th contains an excellent sketch of Pennsylvania College, by Prof. G. D. Stahley. WHAT HAVE I DONE? [Julie M. Lippmann, in The Sunday .School Times of April II, 1896.I Day after da}' Heaven, listening, hears men cry : "What have I done that such a fate as this Should follow me? What have I done amiss That clouds of Care should darken all my sky? That Pain should pierce, and that shrewd Poverty Should pinch me in that grievous grip of his, What time I tremble over the abyss, And long for death, yet, longing, dare not die? But when does Heaven, listening, hear men saj': "What have I done that in the blue-domed skies The evening star should shine, the spring clouds move, The world be white with innocence, that May Has set afield, and God in children's eyes, To win our hearts to wonder at his love?" NEATNESS. Without her leave he stole a kiss ; He did. Oh ! bliss ! A sharp command was promptly his, "Just put that back," I tell you this, "Where it belongs," spoke haughty miss. He did. Oh ! bliss. 3' THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Once a Freshman was wrecked on an African (70LLBGB OF coast, Where a cannibal monarch held sway ; And they served up the Freshman in slices on toast, On the eve of that very same day. But the vengeance of heaven followed swift on the act, And before the next moon was seen, By cholera morbus that tribe was attacked, For that Freshman was dreadfully green. PHYSICIANS i SURGEONS, 'Hast thou a lover," asked he, "Oh maiden of the Rhine?" She blushed in sweet confusion And softly faltered "Nein." He felt rebuffed, and knew not What best to say, and then A sudden thought came to him He pleaded, "Make it ten." THE EDITOR. The editor sat in his sanctum Letting his lessons rip, Racking his brains for an item, And stealing all he could clip. The editor sat in his class room As if he was getting over a drunk, His phiz was clouded with awful gloom For he had made a total flunk. His love, he said, was like the sea ; The maiden answered quick, She thought that he was right in that, Because it made her sick. Parvus Jacobus Horner Sedebat in corner, Edeus Christmas pie. Inserint thumb Extraxit plumb Clamarit, qui puer am I. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Balti-1 more, Maryland, is a well-equipped school. Four ses-sions are required for graduation. For full informa-tion send for the annual catalogue, or write to THOMAS OPIE, M. D., Bean, Cor. Calvert and Saratoga Sts. c_£=aEstablished l8y6.t^r-^ WATCHMAKER AND JEWELER, Gettysburg Souvenir Spoons, College Souvenir Spoons, | No. 10 Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PENN'A. WEIW 111 riowii& DEALERS IN Fresh Beef, Yeal, Lamb, Pork, Pudding, Sausage, HAMS, LARD, &c-., GETTYSBURG, F>E!MIM'A. ADVERTISEMENTS. YOU CAN EARX 840 TO $100 MONTHLY AND EXPENSES IF YOU WORK FOR THE NURSERY CO. Stock sold with a guarantee and replaced. [DURING VACATION GO TO CHAUTAUQUA F~F? ElE FULL INSTRUCTIONS. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED. H. B. WILLIAMS, Secretary, Geneva, N. Y. The Athletic Association of the Univercity of Pennsylvania n. LAU5S.V-- (acram. 'n c OIO. WHARTON PEPPER. ■»; C. JOHH NULL, 'n C PffiLADELrnu Mar* -7th, 189$ Messrs A. G. Spalding & Bi*0* 12IC Chestnut Stre«t Philada. Gentlemen: - I take pleasure in informing you that the Athletle Association of the University of Pennsylvania has again awarded you the contract for furnishing the Uniforms etc., for the base ball team during the coming season of 1896, at the prices and upbft the terms and conditions set forth in your estimate of Feb. 5th. The quality of the goods*furnished the base ball team and the prompt-manner in which you filled our orders wore entirely satisfactory last year and we therefore confidently renew our contract with you this season. Yours truly ^^-—J csh$£zU ~R.$H.$RE1NINGER,~ MERCHANT TAILOR. fIr?g tot Work at % Lowest fWces. Suits from $12,01 to {40,00. Pants from $4,00 to $12,00, Centre tSqixai-e.tiS^D NEXT DOOF{ TO POST OFFICE, UPSTAIRS. J. A. TAWNEY Is ready to furnish clubs and boarding houses BREAD, ROLLS, J) No. 6 S. Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PA^ por all the lalesl styles in Suitings andTrousers, AND FULL LINE OF Gents' Furnishing Coods,| Call or, T). H. WELSH, York, F=a.

The Mercury December. 1895 ADVERTISEMENTS. Eagle H°tel, 0) >- IS si ♦ I e 9 ©©ttysburcj, IPa. W. T. ZIEGLER, PROPRIETOR. THE CHARLES H. ELLIOTT CO., Carriages for the Battlefield can be secured at the office. John fl. Minnigh^ onfeetionepxj ^|©e^peam, OYSTERS Stewed and Fried. No. 17 Baltimore St. S. A, Fl^OXEL'S •illiarcL M Wool WiOmtiB BdLTIMOQLE ST •*P©NSOSB MYBfiS,^ WAT6HMAKER AND rTEWELER, Gettysburg Souvenir Spoons, College Souvenir Spoons, No. 10 Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PENN'A. ''{mm &C;0" Hats and Gent's Furnisher, 33 North Third Street, Opera House Block, HARRISBURG.PA. Latest Styles in ^£&v Sttj*»Mt, R M. ELLIOTT'S IT. B.—Stiff Hats undo to Fit the Head in two minutes. Eckenrode &* Earner, DEALERS IN Iptresto ieefc'Vealc (karat,, Pork5 Paddlteg,, Sa«o sag©» tCacrasj, B.aird!» &c" Chambersburg Street. i^lJII 60I2FE6TIOI2E^Y AND IGE 6REAM. ©YSTE&S IH SEASOT, NEWS DEPOT AND SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY. Main St. ITZIL}ILLEJ( NATS, CAPS, —~" BOOTS*SHOES. G^Satisfaction Gua ra nteed.Sja Afa. (5 J?. Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG. PA. -*LEVI REINECKER,^ DEALER IN FINE GROCERIES AND NOTIONS, » Nos. 16 and 18 W. German Street, BALTIMORE, Offer to the trade their large and well-selected stock of Make a specialty to have on hand everything required by Pharmacists. A complete stock can at any time be selected or wants supplied. ALQNZQ L. THOMSEN,^- BACK, WINDER, SHAEP AND LEADENHALL STS., p. O. Box 557, Baltimore, Md, I heg to call to tlie attention or the Trade tliat I have re-cently added to my Want a complete set of Drug Milling Ma-chinery ot the most Improved pattern. " G. ». SPMGLB8, ~ Successor to J. W. Eicholtz & Co., DEALEB IN VMMOS, ORGANS, MUSIC, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, STRINGS, Etc. No. 21 BALTIMORE STREET, Gettysburg. A temperance house. Pleasant and home-like. Teams and Guides to all points of interest on the battle-field. -StJggSQeY&B&B 2&$ZW£.=S2?0 No. 127 Chambersburg St., GETTYSBURG, PA. JOHN E. PITZER, MEMBER POST 9, G. A. R. ABB' ic -DEALER IX-Hats, Shirts, Shoes, Ties, Umbrellas, Gloves, Satchels, Hose, (Pocket (Books, Trunks, Telescopes, (Rubber, Etc., Etc. AMOS ECKERT. H ( (LWY HOT Gettysburg, Pa. JOfil] E, HUSHES, PROFIT Tins Hotel is situated on Main street, one square from P. and It. and W. M. R. R. Depots and within one-half minute's walk of the Diamond. Every room is heated, and lighted by electricity. Parlors on first and second floors. Bath and Toilet rooms on second floor, gratis to guests. Rates $1 50 to $2.50 per day. Rooms without Board 50 cents and upward according to location. Excellent accommo-dations for 250 people. Electric cars stop at the door eveiy half hour. Livery Connected, with first-class Teams, and Battle-field Guides at Low Hates. Dinner with Drive over the Battle-field SI.35. The College Mefcufy. VOL. HI. GETTYSBURG, PA., DECEMBER, 1895. No. 8. THE COLLEGE MEHCUHT, Published each month during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STAFF. Editor: D. EDGAR RICE, '96. Associate Editors : EDNA M. LOOMIS, '96. GRAYSON Z. STUP, '96. HARLEN E. GLAZIER, '96. WEBSTER C. SPAYDE, '96. WILLIAM E. WHEELER, '97, HERBERT D. SHIMER, '96. ROBIN B. WOLF, '97. Alumni Association Editor: .REV. D. FRANK GARLAND, A. M., Baltimore, Md. Business Manager : WILLIAM G. BRUBAKER, '96. Assistant Business Manager: E. A. ARMSTRONG, '97. »"",,". /One volume (ten months). . . . $i.rn iLiiars. |slngle copies .15 Payable in advance All Students are requested to hand us matter for publication. The Alumni and ex-members or the college, will favor us by sending Information concerning their whereabouts or any Items they may think would be interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the business manager. Matter Intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor Address, THE COLLEGE MERCURY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EDITORIALS, THE DUTIES OF THE WEALTHY TO SOCIETY, A FANCY, -- COLLEGE LOCALS, ALUMNI NOTES, FRATERNITY NOTES, ATHLETICS, --- TOWN AND SEMINARY NOTES, - - - - 128 129 132 132 135 136 137 139 LITERARY SOCIETIES, EXCHANGES, - 141 - Hi EDITORIAL. THE subject of student self-government has of late been receiving considerable attention from the students of various colleges, and the general sentiment seems to be that its adoption would effect a great improvement in college life. It is our intention to present the subject to the students of Gettysburg College, in the hope that they will at least think of the advisa-bility of its adoption here, and if it is consid-ered at all practicable, that they will use the columns of the MERCURY for its discussion. The plan originated at Amherst and has been in successful operation there for quite a number of years, and is briefly as follows : In addition to the Faculty there is a student Senate, selected by the students, and consist-ing of four Seniors, three Juniors two Sopho-mores, and one Freshman, to which matters of decorum, and all others pertaining to the stu-dents are referred. The decisions of the Sen-ate are passed upon by the Faculty, and of course may be reversed by it if considered ex-pedient, but such reversals would undoubtedly be infrequent. Such a system, being, as we believe, entirely practicable, could be adopted by ourcollege with great advantage to both the students and the in-stitution. Much is said about student honor, but oneis compelled to believe that under the present system of college legislation this quality of the student receives but little recognition and en-couragement. Instead of being left free to act of his own accord in a manner to which the training of a Christian home and his gentle-manly instincts would prompt him, he is met on every side with rules and prohibitions. He is compelled to attend public worship on Sun-day and chapel during the week, and required to promise that he will refrain from profanity, 129 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Sabbath desecration, and in short the whole catalogue of sins to which young men are prone. While we readily admit that all these re-quirements are just and proper, yet we are not willing to believe that compulsion is necessary in order to have students observe them. Those who are naturally well disposed grow restless at being compelled to do what they would most gladly do of their own free will, while those who have no inherent regard for right or propriety will generally do as they please de-spite the rules and prohibitions. The result of this method of treating the student has been »to create in him the feeling that the Faculty is hostile to him rather than friendly, and chafing under the restrictions placed upon him, he loses the respect for his instructors which they really deserve, and which it is necessary for him to have in order to obtain the most satisfactory results of his work. The Faculty on the other hand, by the discontent and constant opposition of the stu-dents become more confirmed in the opinion that they are to be suppressed by stronger re-strictions, rather than pacified by the removal of the restrictions. It is gratifying to see that this feeling of un-friendliness between Faculty and students is generally growing less, but if the students were given a part in their own government, it would disappear entirely. As soon as they would realize that the Faculty are willing, in a practical wa}', to recognize the fact that stu-dents have noble motives which influence them more strongly than compulsion, their feelings toward the Faculty would be greatly changed, and they would take delight in doing that which is now distasteful, simply because it is compulsory. Another very important advantage of the co-operative system is that a stricter discipline could be enforced than the Faculty acting-alone, is able to maintain. We do not wish to be understood as saying that the discipline in our college is more lax than formerly, for we do not believe it is, but the fact is nevertheless evident that there is much room for improve-ment in the conduct of the students. There are numerous instances of misconduct which are disgraceful not only to those who commit them, but to the whole body of students, as well as injurious to the reputation of the col-lege. These acts are, indeed, strongly de-nounced by all the students who have a regard for the right, but as none are willing to incur the unpopularity attached to one who gives evidence against his fellow student, the Fac-ulty is in many cases unable to punish the offenders as they deserve. If, however, the students were giv.m a share in their own gov-ernment, they would take a greater interest in preserving the reputation of the college, and cases which would come before them would be almost sure to be decided justly and impar-tially. Being entirely in the hands of the stu-dents, no individual unpopularity would result from any decisions of the Senate, but they would be supported by the whole body of stu-dents, and their enforcement made more cer-tain. Of course this whole matter of self-govern-ment rests on the question as to whether our students wish to raise the moral standard of our college, or are willing to let matters re-main as they are. The expressions of dissat-isfaction with prevailing conditions are suf-ficiently numerous and general, but if it is to stop at this, nothing more need be said. If, however, some definite action is desirable to improve these conditions, the self-government system is at least worthy of consideration. * ** SUPPLEMENTING the remarks made in our last issue concerning the recommendation of the West Pennsylvania Synod to prohibit our intercollegiate foot-ball contests, we wish to give the following statements, which we think will serve to show that it is not the sentiment of the larger colleges that these foot-ball con-tests be prohibited. The first is from an address to the Senior class on Nov. 4th, by President Patton, of Princeton, and is a most decided approval of THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 1.30 intercollegiate contests. He said in substsnce: "I am well aware that many forces operate to make a college and no one appreciates the benefits arising from intercollegiate athletics more than I. Foot-ball is a factor that cannot be overlooked in building up a college, and I was heartily gratified to learn of the amicable ar-rangement for annual games with Harvard. I The intellectual and moral sides of college life are paramount, but going hand in hand with these are the healthy exercise of mind and body, and the attainment of physical culture." The evidence of a man of so great experi-ence in presiding over a college as Dr. Patton is deserving of much consideration, for it is in the larger colleges, if anywhere, that evil re-sults follow these intercollegiate contests. The second article is from President An-drews, of Brown University, and if we can be-lieve him to be a careful observer, the game which is generally spoken against as so very i brutal, is not as dangerous as other college athletics. In his annual report Dr. Andrews . says : "For those in perfect health and trained to it, foot-ball is safer than either rowing, ! yachting, gunning or running hounds. Row-ing appears to be many times as fatal. So is base-ball. Even tennis is worse." These statements, coming from the presi-dents of two of our largest institutions may be taken as the expression of the sentiment of all ! the larger colleges, and surely there is nothing in them to indicate that intercollegiate foot-ball is losing favor as a college sport. On the contrary, they show that its importance is be-coming more and more recognized. Disregarding the merits of the game itself, the Synod seems to show partiality or rather inconsistency in thus discriminating against Gettysburg College. Midland College, Kan-' sas, which is supported directly by the appro-priations of various synods, boasts of having one of the best foot-ball teams in the state of Kansas, and yet we have not heard of any reso-lutions recommending the cessation of foot-ball contests. Other Lutheran colleges also pay great ■ attention to their athletics without any objection being raised, and why Gettysburg is singled out is more than we can understand. * * * OUR foot-ball season closed early on account of the many difficulties with which the man-agement had to contend, but we hope that dur-ing the coming year these difficulties may be-come less instead of greater, and that next season we may achieve the success of which we are capable under favorable circumstances. AT Franklin and Marshall recently, Presi-dent Stahr announced that by a resolution of the Faculty every student not a member of a literary society must of necessity be a member of the classes in elocution, in addition to the extra work in composition, etc., before re-quired. It would be well if our Faculty would follow the example of the F. and M. Faculty, and enforce strictly the rules they have made in regard to joining literary societies. More interest must be taken in our societies if we do not wish them to decline, and as per-suasion and argument seem useless, the socie-ties ought to insist that the Faculty enforce the rules which have been made on this subject. * * * OUR students have been very fortunate within the past month, in having the oppor-tunity to hear the series of lectures on the social problem by Dr. Stuckenberg. This prob-lem is one of the most serious and important of the present time, and all who heard Dr. Stuckenberg's able discussion of it were very much enlightened and benefited thereby. THE DUTIES OF THE WEALTHY TO SOCIETY. Seldom does a wealthy man hear the injunc-tion, "Sell that thou hast and give to the poor." Once, long ago, a young ruler heard these words, and it is recorded that he "went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." It would seem that a rich man's first duty is to give to the poor. He has an abundance and can give, not with sparing hand, but roy i-31 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. ally. He is not compelled to limit charity to the beggar at his gates ; he can found institu-tions that shall bring knowledge or health or even life, to thousands, and his name shall be blessed by many. " Wealth brings power, and power always brings responsibility. The wealthy man may have neither a brilliant intellect nor unusual talent ; in this case he will be excused from moving millions by ''one ink drop on a single thought," he will be excused from making any great inventions, and he will hardly be expected to revolutionize the world by his startling discoveries in the realms of science and art. His duty lies in a different direction. Let him take care how he spends his money. There are plenty of brilliant intellects going to waste from lack of money to cultivate them. If the rich man invests some of his wealth in a poor man's brains he may be able to do great things in the intellectual world by proxy. This is the next best thing to doing them in person. There are plenty of college.? needing endowments ; it may almost be said of them that their name is Legion. What more last-ing monument can any man erect to his mem-ory than a fine college building ? And, pos-sibly, some of the students will enjoy their comfortable quarters more than the epic which the founder might have written, had he been a poet. Such is the depravity of human na-ture. Money means so much. As long as the soul dwells in the earthly body it longs for material comforts and luxuries. All these the rich man has at his command. If he does his duty, he will not keep them all to himself; life is un-certain, and he may enjoy them only a day. He will divide them up a little and find his greatest delight in the pleasure of others. But he need not stop with this. Money means far more than material enjoyment. The rich man with an average amount of brain power has no excuse for not knowing some-thing. He is released from the drudgery that wearies the rest of the world. His time is at his disposal, and if he wastes this, what can be said of him ? It is his duty to give to the poor, but it is also his duty to give something to his poor soul, and not let it go starving into eternity. God gives him the grandest oppor-tunities, and what can he say if these are neg-lected ? When the wealthy class are educated and cultured, it will be the fashion to be educated and cultured. They are the leaders in society and they can do more for its elevation than any one else. They can open their doors to those who are fitted, by nature and learning, to move in the best circles, and close them against those whose admission is only bought by money. Society need not be merely a show, a hollow pretense. It should be some-thing more satisfying than this. It lies with the rich to uphold the standards of truth and right ; yes, and the standards of purity and common sense. The wealth}' woman can, per-haps, do more for society than the wealthy man. The spending of her dollars has such an influence upon the spending of her poorer sisters' dimes. If her church dress is of silk or velvet, she may still gain a great deal of benefit from the sermon ; but how is it with her neighbors? Possibly, one whose plain gown is pretty and suitable feels a little stir-ring of envy in the depths of her soul. If if she could only array himself like that. Another one, perhaps, whose shabby gown is brought out in startling relief by so much ele-gance, firmly determines to stay away from that church in the future. Well is it, if she does not go further and pronounce church-goers a vain lot. Yet, the wealthy ought not to deprive them-selves of all beautiful, luxurious things. They are a part of the blessing of wealth. A wealthy man has a right to a beautiful home and to elegant surroundings. The)' tend to refine-ment and culture. There is no reason in the world why he should not gratify his tastes in this direction ; there is strong reasons why he should. If art, music, and literature are to be kept alive at all, they must be kept alive by the wealthy classes. The wise use of money THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 132 has nothing whatever to do with penury in the case of a man who has an abundance. If he has a wise, good heart, he may spend his money f.eely, even for self gratification, and 110 one will suffer thereby.' ;A woman who distinguishes between things temporal and things eternal may be attired elegantly without proving a stumbling block in the way of any one. It is hard to observe the fitness of things when pride comes in ; but things fall into their proper places of themselves when one remem-bers that "the glory of man is as the flower of grass." To the wealthy are given great responsibili-ties, but great privileges. The responsibility of power and influence and example ; the re-sponsibility of spending wealth ; of settling the standards of society, and of influencing their fellow men. They have the privilege of receiving blessings from many grateful lips and of hastening the day when social purity and justice shall reign. God gives to some his good things in keeping, and let them be care-ful how thev fulfill the trust. E. M. L., '96. COLLEGE LOCALS. GRAYSON Z. STUP and ROBBIN B. WOLF, Editors. A FANCY. Very early one Autumn morn. Before the first flush of coming dawn Had touched the sky with roseate hue, Or scattered the morning mist of dew, I saw—afar in the cloudless sky— Crescent-pointed, sailing high, The waning moon, like a tiny hoat, In a sea of boundless blue afloat; Just a slender, silvery, thread Sailing serenely overhead. Oh, where are you going, little boat. As through the azure dome you float? Where are you bound, as you sail along Thro' all the silent, starry throng. Is there some dim and distant strand Far, far away from this mortal land, Some celestial, glorious shore To which you are sailing evermore? And do you hope, some day, to reach The haven of that shining beach ? Sail on oh, little fairy boat Still onward thro' the azure float, Who knows what precious freight you bear, What wealth of heavenly treasures rare. Perchance some bright, angelic band You carry to that shining strand. We do not know, we only see Thee, sailing onward silently, And wonder at the silver boat In heaven's boundless blue afloat. A. R. W., '99. Thanksgiving ! Big dinners ! Institute ! School marms ! Get ready for examination, boys. Long vacation this Christmas. College closes on Dec. 20th at noon and opens again for the winter term on Jan. 7th, 1896. Thanksgiving day dawned very beautifully. It was an ideal day, and even the heart of the most ungrateful wretch must have felt like giving praise on such a ,day. The boys were especially happy, because the day was given as a holiday. Not even the first recita-tion was heard. Many of the boys went home. Those who stayed here lived off the fat of the land at their respective boarding places, and after their feasts were over many were seen on the streets and in the country, walking with friends and fair ladies—many of them modest little school teachers. While the Institute, with its many teachers, is fresh in our minds, we might notice some effects upon college life in general. No one would question that the Institute is a good thing for Gettysburg. It has proved so as re-gards the college boys. Many of them, who were never known to be out much with the ladies, have decided to take lessons under their instructions. Quite a few had courage enough to venture upon the campus with them, even though their fellows, from the dormitory win-dows, whistled that familiar march so well known. Their courage did not fail, even, when they were invited to bring back the col-lar and handkerchiefs they had borrowed. The college athletic field is about completed. The fence is being put up and, in fact, is nearly finished. It is eight and a half feet high, and is made entirely of chestnut. The grass seed is up nicely, and by next spring the field will present a first-class condition for base ball. We ought to have a strong team to initiate the work on the new field. Gymnasium work began on Nov. 4th, with Physical Director Wheeler, dressed in his best suit of tights, ready to take charge of the classes. He was a little nervous when he looked up and saw the gallery filled with spec-tators, among whom appeared some of the 133 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. co-eds. But in spite of all the eyes fixed on him Billy gave the command—"Attention"— and everybody obeyed. He is getting along very well with his work. About three weeks ago a glee club was formed, consisting of eight members. On ac-count of the number it is denominated "The College Octet." It originated out of an invi-tation extended to the musical clubs of the col-lege to furnish music at the Institute. There being no Banjo nor Mandolin clubs, some of the boys in the old Glee Club, with one new fnan, formed the organization. The members are as follows : Nicholas, '98, and Ott, '97, first tenors; White, '97, and Stup, '96, seco.id tenors; Lark, '98, and Koller, '98, first bass; Stamets, '99, and Manges, '97, second bass. The Octet furnished music on Monday and Tuesday evenings for the Institute. Many very favorable criticisms were passed on the songs. On Monday evening, Nov. nth, a good trick was played at College. Good, '99, was reported to have been stoned by those pestifer-ous town boys and it was said that his face was cut very badly. Naturally the boys' sym-pathy would be aroused and no very urgent invitation would be needed to get them to go to his room to see him. When they got there this is what they found. A number of boys in the study room, a dim light in the bed-room, and a form in the bed. The faces of the boys had that woe-be-gone expression that in-dicates the awfulness of something ; the light was so dim that it suggested the chamber of death ; and the form in the bed had the ap-pearance of a human being. However, when the sympathizing visitors were led up to the bedside silently on tiptoe, and the other long-faced boys were standing around, the dim light was suddenly turned up and the cover thrown back, then it was that the form of a good-sized pillow was seen. Then the longitude of those boys' faces standing around suddenly changed into latitude. From time to time the hearty peals of laughter that were heard told that another fellow, who had per-haps gotten up out of his nice warm bed, had been victimized. Just about a hundred boys, from every class in College, and some from Prep, were faked. So effectually did the trick work that Good, who was up town during the evening, was made a victim, his chum having been reported to be the unlucky one. Some of the Seniors were fooled so badly that they got sick, and flunks were quite in style the next morning. So it will not do to have many such experiences. One good trick goes a long dis-tance. The boys will have to get hungry be-fore they will bite on such bait again. A series of six lectures on Sociology by J. H. W. Stuckenberg, D. D., was given in Brua Chapel from Nov. 18th to 23rd. The lectures were given in the evening and lasted a little over an hour. The main auditorium of the chapel was well filled each evening, and much interest was manifested. Dr. Stuckenberg is an able speaker, and his reputation as a scholar brought many strangers to hear him discuss the great problem of society. The public is indebted to the Missionary Society of the Seminary tor Dr. Stuckenberg's stay with us. The balance of the money remaining after ex-penses are paid will go for the purpose of fit-ting up the new gymnasium in the Seminary. The following is a list of tlie subjects lectured upon : 1. What is the Meaning of the Social Prob-lem ? 2. What are the Causes of the Problem ? 3. The Social Problem in the United States. 4. Solution by Revolution : Communism, The Social Democracy, Anarchism. 5. The Solution by Evolution. 6. The Function of the State in the Solution of the Problem. The Lecture Course Committee takes pleas-ure in announcing the course of entertainments for this season. The course is an excellent one, surpassing that of last year in price. The committee, being very desirous of having Gen. Gordon, had to sacrifice the arrangement of the entertainments. This explains why they are in such close succession. The following is the course : Jan. 22—Lovett's Boston Stars. Jan. 27—Col. Copelaud. Feb. 22—Gen. J. B. Gordon. Feb. 25—New York Male Quartette. Mar. 17—Rev. A. A. Willets, D. D. Somebody said that he thought Bruby had very hopeful signs of being married before long. When asked why, he said: "I see that the arch is up." The boys must have seen the arch when they were out to the Battlefield Hotel fire. Prof. H.—What is the object of a minister? Ans.—Saving souls. Prof. H.—How does he do it? Ans. (after long reflection)—By not walk-ing on them. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 134 Messrs. Brubaker, '96, and Lutz, '98, have purchased a graphophoue. About two weeks ago they gave an entertainment in Brua Chapel for the benefit of the Athletic Associa-tion. The instrument is an improvement over the phonograph and reproduces the music very nicely. The proprietors were well advertised on the bulletin board before the concert. A crowd of sympathizing Freshmen, wish-ing to aid in a charitable cause, recently sub-scribed the necessary amount for another scientific man to have his curly locks trimmed. The collection was gladly accepted, and now the curly-headed lad no longer gets late at church. Dr. H.—Whom did the Lord tell Moses to take along up into the mountain ? S., Jr., '99—His brother Exodus. M., '96; suprised the class in astronomy the other morning when he said that an eclipse has the effect of making birds and other ani-mals go to roost. Mr. W., '95, reading Bacon's essay on "Studies," said: "Reading maketh a man full." Even Prof. H. could not restrain his laughter. Mr. L-, '98, was lately seen strolling over Balto. Hill prominently exposing his suspend-ers. Many of the boys spent Thanksgiving day and the remainder of the week at their respect-ive homes. They can hardly know how good Adams county turkey is. Mr. S., '97, while at Mr. B.'s reception, spied the olives and asked one of the young ladies to pass him the pickled plums. Mr. Z., '98, had just passed the P. & R. depot and was telling a freshman how high the snow had drifted there last winter and how his whole class conspired to stay out of mathe-matical recitation the day of the blizzard. Just then Dr. N. loomed out of the darkness and said: "Yes, and I'll catch you some day." Very sad, indeed, was the disappointment of the boys who went to St. Mary's to see the foot-ball game when they found that the game had been cancelled. The class of '97 was royally entertained on Tuesday evening, Oct. 28th, by Mr. H. W. Bikle. It was our first reception and the boys looked forward to it with great expectations. Our expectations were not only realized but far surpassed. The class assembled at the home of the host about half-past eight. Great was our joy when we beheld some of the fair sex of G. 011 hand who were to share the hon-ors of our co-eds. Everybody was cordially received by Dr. and Mrs. Bikle who then re-tired, having given the young people full charge. The first part of the evening was spent in pitching bean bags. This game was enjoyed by all since some of the boys could not' even hit the board. The winning side then went out to the dining-room where a bountifully laden table awaited them. Every-thing was served beautifully and the refresh-ments were enjoyed by all. The winning side then retired to the parlor to give the losers an opportunity to enjoy the feast. While the losers were eating they were entertained by the melodious voices of the Avalon Sextette. After the party was again united in the parlor the}' were entertained Mr. S.'s jigs and piano music by the young ladies. Then we all sang —except Pearl, who has not acquired the art— till our throats and music were exhausted. The clock had passed the hour of midnight when we adjourned, thanking Mr. B. for his kindness and congratulating him on his capac-ity as a host. It was an event which will be long remembered by us all. Many of the boys attended Institute during the past week and had the customary good time with the school marms. Some of them were so much interested in the work that it seriously affected their recitations. Mr. E. of Prep., displayed the Persian fond-ness for strangers by sitting in church with his arm around one of our co-eds. The Juniors are hard at work on their Spec-trum. The Spectrum will be of special interest since it includes matter of the last two years. If any of the students or Alumni have not sub-scribed for it they should do so immediately. If Gettysburg College is to publish an annual it must have the support of all its friends. Mr. B., '96, who has lately been troubled with nervous fluctuations of the heart, finds it a wonderful restorative, when calling on young ladies, to keep on his overcoat and gloves. That's hard luck, Bruby. One of the most able men in the Junior class, after he had been out with the ladies all morn-ing, suddenly asked the boys at the dinner table whether a duck was the he of a geese. He must have been suffering from temporary aberration, his mind wandering after his duckie. '-35 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. While Mr. Bikle, '97, was working in chem- j ical laboratory recently, he had an accident by which he was seriously burned about the eyes by sulphuric acid. He has the sympathy of all his fellow-students. The following is a brief lesson in '97's nom-enclature. One Friday, when the Duck was out strolling, she was sud- , denly attacked by the Mange(s). She at once went to the \ Miller and asked him what she Ott to do to get rid of it. The Miller said he was not Abel to give her a remedy. But as the Duck walked along, it made her Sh(r)iver to see a White Wolf in the bushes eating (h)Erbs. The Wolf was just about to sieze the Duck when the Smith came riding down the road on his Bik(l)e, and he, being very Armstrong, slew the Wolf with his Kain. The Smith then got on his Wheel(er) and brought the Duck safely to her Stahl. BEFORE THE FRESHMAN-PEEP. GAME. Before you crash 'gainst Freshies' line Just think it over. The challenge, Sirs, do not decline, ■ But think it over. . It is not wise to be too new Because, before the game is through, Your bright prospects may all turn blue, So think it over. Don't spend your cash for painted signs, But think it over. The score towards you of course inclines But, think it over. We've heard of teams beaten before With a smaller difference in the score, And it might be done just once more. So think it over. We did not practice, Sirs, to lose. So think it over. We care not for a break or bruise So think it over. As soon as our men reach the field, It certainly won't be to yield. But henceforth shall the score be sealed. So think it over. H. M. C, '99. Y. M. C. A. NOTES. We were glad to see the interest taken in our meetings during the week of prayer. Al-though there were none who openly professed Christ as their Saviour, we are sure that none could have attended the meetings without re-ceiving much benefit. The topics for discus-sion during the week were : "For What has God Created Me?"—Dr. Valentine; "Christ our Righteousness"—Rev. Black; "An Invi-tation to All"—Dr. McKnight; "Excuses"— Rev. A. R. Steck ; "What Shall I do with Jesus Which is Called Christ?"—Dr. Bill-heimer. Our delegates to the Y. M. C. A. Conven-tion at Erie, brought home a very interesting and gratifying report. May the great Y. M. C. A. work go on. No one can estimate the value of good music. It perhaps exerts more influence in our meetings than the words which are spoken. Everybody come and help us sing. We shall appreciate your presence. The Missionary Bible Class is exceedingly interested in the study of God's Word. We would be glad to see interest in work of this kind more general. The Bible will admit of the profoundest stud5'. On Wednesday evening, Nov. 13th, Rev. M. S. Kemp delivered an address in the Pres-byterian church, on his summer's work in Adams county for the Bible Society. The fol-lowing are statistics given : Number of fam-ilies visited, 3250 ; number of families found entirely destitute of the Bible, and which he supplied by sale or gift, 230 ; number of fami-lies who had nothing but a large Family Bible, 519; number of families who, though not en-tirely destitute, needed the Bible, yet were too poor to buy, and which he supplied, 260 ; number of Roman Catholic families to whom he sold Bibles (King James Version), 25; number of Roman Catholic families who were supplied, 60; number of copies of the Bible sold and donated throughout the county, 419 ; number of Testaments and other parts of the Bible sold and donated, 744 ; total number of books sold and donated, 1163 ; amounting to the value of $400. ALUwiNl. H. D. SHIMER, Editor. '53. Rev. W. F. Ulery was in Gettysburg for a few days recently. '57. Rev. Dr. L. A. Gotwald, Professor of Practical Theology in Wittenberg Theological Seminary, was stricken with paralysis a few weeks ago. Dr. Gotwald's illness is a source of great anxiety to the entire church. Our latest intelligence is that his condition is im-proving. '57. Rev. Dr. H. Louis Baugher has lately returned from his western trip. '58. Rev. Dr. A. R. Home, whose cut was lately published in one of the leading papers, is editor of the National Educator. Dr. Home THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 136 is well known throughout the State as an educator, and is worthy of the position he holds. '63. Rev. Dr. E. J. Wolf assisted in the re-dedication of the Lutheran Church, at Seven Valley, York county, Nov. 17. '64. Dr. T. L- Seip, president of Muhlen-berg College, was appointed by Governor Hastings a member of the College and Univer-sity Council of the State of Pennsylvania, and by them elected chairman of the Council. '68. Rev. L. M. Heilman, D. D., of Chi-cago, now about to take charge at Harrisburg, Pa., was the recipient of very cordial expres-sions of love and good wishes from his Chi-cago people. '71. Mr. M. Allen Emory has located at Frenchtown, N. J., and is enjoying a lucrative law practice. '73. Rev. J. A. Singmaster, D. D., of Al-lentown, Pa., has received an increase of $300 per year 011 his salar3'. '73. Rev. Wm. S. Freas, D. D., of York, Pa., president of the Board of Church Exten-sion, was elected the principal speaker at the Luther League meetings, held in New York city and Brooklyn, on Nov. 10th and nth. '75. Rev. Dr. E. D. Weigle has decided to accept the call from the Lutheran congrega-tion of Mechanicsburg. It will be remembered that a call was extended him a few weeks ago, which he refused at the request of the people of the charge which he is now serving in Al-toona. '75. Rev. E. G. Hay was in Gettysburg during November, visiting Prof. Himes and family. '76. Rev. S. E. Smith, pastor of Punxsu-tawney, Pa., is hard-working and successful in his parish efforts. '79. Rev. Geo. S. Diven has been called to St. Paul's Lutheran church, Iredell county, S. C. '84. Rev. L. M. Zimmerman, pastor of Christ English Lutheran church, Baltimore, Md., recently preached upon the subject: "Who are Lutherans." The Morning Herald, of October 28th, contains an excellent extract from it. '88. On Thursday afternoon and evening, November 14th, the semi-annual meeting of the Central Lutheran Association of Pittsburg and vicinity, was held in Bethany church, East End. Rev. S. D. Daugherly was one of the speakers. '90. Rev. J. F. W. Kitzmeyer, of Davis, W. Va., has been called to the new English Mis-sion in New York city. '91. Rev. S. Griug Hefelbower's address is 'changed from 13 Emilien street to Floss Platz, Leipsic, Germany. '92. Dr. August Pohlman, of Baltimore, a graduate of Pennsylvania College, has been elected valedictorian by the graduating class oi the Baltimore Medical College. '92. Rev. George Beiswanger has changed his residence from No. 2233 Gough street to No. 1722 Fulton avenue, Baltimore, Md. '92. Emanuel W. Herman, Esq., of Luther-ville, Md., was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates at the election held in November. '93. We are glad to note that George C. Baum, who is a member of the Senior class in the School of Architecture at Philadelghia, re-ceived second mention from the Society of Beaux-Arts Architecture, awarded on the last competitions of that society. '93. Mr. D. Floyd Culler is pursuing a graduate course in Romance Philology at Yale University. '94. Margaret R. Himes is suffering from a severe attack of pneumonia. FRATERNuY NOTES. PHI KAPPA PSI. The Chapter will celebrate its fortieth anni-versary this month. . D. P. Forney, '57, has been elected presi-dent of the Adams County Farmers' Associa-tion. Rev. L. A. Gottwald, D. D., '57, was stricken with paralysis at his home, in Spring-field, O. John C. Bowers, '93, attended the wedding of a former classmate at Frederick last week. Keefer, '95, has entered a business firm in Reading. Witman, '95, attended the Seminary conven-tion at Lancaster last month. Graff, '97, has gone into the lumber busi-ness in Duluth, Minn. '37 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Reitzell, Eisenhart, Kueudig and Lark spent Thanksgiving day at their respective homes. Weaver, '99, spent the holiday in Philadel-phia. PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bro. Meade D. Detweiler, '84, was re-elected District Attorney of Dauphin county at the last election. He managed the affairs of the office so satisfactorily to all that he was re-elected by a majority greater than the num-ber of votes cast for his opponent. Bros. Alleman and Garland attended the lectures delivered by Dr. Stuckenberg. Bro. H. M. Roth, of Bucknell Chapter, was a visitor to Gettysburg recently. Bro. Fite represented the Chapter at the 47th annual convention held at Eastou, last week. Bros. Rice and Shaar spent Thanksgiving at their respective homes. Bro. C. H. Smith, attended the reception at Irving, Thanksgiving night. Bro. Neudewitz preached at Rossville, last Sunday. Bros. Valentine, Ph. D., '80, Stabler, '82, and Bliut, '90, were recent visitors in town. PHI DELTA THETA. Bro. J. F. Seibert, '89, paid the Chapter a visit the beginning of the month. Bro. E. O. Grover, N. H. Alpha, '94, spent last week in town, in the interests of Kellogg &Co. Bro. Sloop spent Sunday, Nov. 17, with his parents, at Steeltou, Pa. Bro. Meiseuhelder spent Thanksgiving at his home, in Hanover, Pa. Bros. Smith and Friday spent election day at their respective homes. Bros. Kain and Meiseuhelder attended the Alpha Province Convention, held at Schenec-tady, N. Y., with N. Y. Beta, Oct. 31-Nov. 2. SIGMA CHI. Bro. Garnet Gehr, '91, was recently ap-pointed attorney for Wolf & Co., a large man-ufacturing firm of Chambersburg. Bro. Edwin J. McKee, '88, gave the address of welcome to the visiting firemen at Hagers-town, Md., on Thanksgiving Day. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Hagerstowu Athletic Association. Bro. Leisenring spent Thanksgiving with his parents at Chambersburg, Pa. Bro. Lawyer spent Thanksgiving with his parents at Westminster, Md. The Chapter recently- had their pictures taken in a group in front of the Chapter lodge. Brother William Hersh, '91, will be married on the nth inst. to Miss Edith Eunice Rahter. The best wishes of the Chapter are extended to him. C. E. Stable, '87, visited the Atlanta Expo-sition. ALPHA TAU OMEGA. W. B. Nipple, '97, spent Thanksgiving Day with friends at Harrkburg. M. R. Zullinger, '98, was home over Thanksgiving Day. C. W. Spayde, '99, spent some time recently at his home in Harrisburg. P. W. Roller, '94, of the Seminary, spent a week recently at Lancaster, Pa. Geo. W. Kyner, '89, of Chambersburg, was in town on business some time ago. ATHLETICS. WILLIAM E. WHEELER, Editor. The last game of foot-ball for this season was played with Swarthmore at Harrisburg, on Nov. 2nd. The Harrisburg papers, com-menting upon the game, said : It was one of the prettiest ever played here. Both teams played with a dash and brilliancy, surprising even the admir-ers of the game. The teams were about evenly matched, and it is out of the question to say one out-played the other. The ball was first put into play by Gettys-burg kicking well into Swarthmore's territory and downed there. S. lost on downs and Get-tysburg took ball, but was unable to advance it and lost it also on downs. By short, sharp dashes through lines S. rushed ball to 20-yd. line and there lost it. Gettysburg made some very fine runs around S.'s ends, and the ball was back on their 30-yd. line. Here it was lost on a fumble to S., who advanced it by massed plays through the line to Gettysburg's 25-yd. line; but Gettysburg held S., compell-ing them to kick. The ball was blocked and secured by Loudon, who had an open field be-fore him. He was overtaken by Hodge, after making a fine run of 45 yds. Swarthmore got the ball for holding in the line, and by runs THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 138 around end and massed plays carried ball up 1 the field, scoring first touchdown. Time was I called with the ball in Swarthmore's territory. Swarthmore kicked off in the second half and downed the ball on G.'s 35-yd. line. Brilliant j runs by White' and Loudon, and plunges [ through line by Sheely, carried the ball stead- i ily back to S.'s 15 yd. line, and then lost on a miserable fumble. S. kicked to midfield, and the ball moved backwards and forwards for some time. One of the most remarkable runs ever made on a field happened by Hodge secur-ing the ball and making a run of 80yds., scor-ing second touchdown. In the run the cap-tain of S. jumped clear over the head of one of G.'s men, who attempted to tackle him. The play called forth much applause. Hodge then kicked goal, and the game was ended with score 10 to o in favor of Swarthmore. The line up of the teams was as follows : GETTYSBURG. POSITION. SWARTHMORE. Moser, (Capt.1 left-end Wilson Manges left-tackle Firth Wierman left-guard Fouse Williams centre Morrison Tholan right-guard Clarke Menges right-tackle Wills Loudon right-end Cahill Carty quarter (Capt.) Hodge Shinier right-half Cloty White left-half Knauer Sheely full-back Kapplcr Umpire—Hickok. Referree—Beruheisel. Linesman—Fick-inger. Touchdowns—Hodge and Kappler. Goals—Hodge- Thirty-minute halves. In our last issue we spoke of the advisabil-ity of more intef-class spirit as far as athletics were concerned. The suggestion was favor-ably commented upon by the student body, and as a result several inter-class games of foot-ball were played, viz.: Freshmen vs. Preps, and Seniors vs. Freshmen. While these games do not affect the standing of the college teams yet they do, in a great measure, keep aflame the athletic spirit. Our place in the ranks with our sister institutions next year will, in part, be due to our interest and assist-ance this Fall. Show the spirit now and the work will surely manifest itself. The Freshman-Prep game was played Sat-urday afternoon, Nov. 16th. It was a very nice game and stubbornly contested. The Freshmen may have had the benefit of longer practice, but what the. Prep's lacked in prac-tice they made up in aggressiveness and weight. The Freshmen scored on a fumble in the first half, Devinney crossing the line for a touchdown and Spayde kicked goal. The second half was marked by quick, sharp play-ing on the part of the Preps. Determination to score showed itself in the play, and this they did in about twelve minutes after play was called. The score was now a tie and neither side was able to score again before time was called. The game was prettily played and both classes were elated over their, teams. The line up was as follows : FRESHMAN. POSITION. PREP. Weeter left-end Kahler Devinney left-tackle Young Cumbler left-guard Dielll Smith, J centre Williams Reisch right-guard Hollinger Brumbaugh right-tackle Mcllhenny Herman right-end Brandt Good quarter (Capt.) Huber Doty (Capt.) right-half Eberly Spayde left-half Lawyer Trimble full-back Wisotzki Umpire-Rudisill. Referee—Kump. Linesmen—White and Menges. Touchdowns—Divinuey, Eberly. Goals—Spayde, Wisotzki. The Senior-Freshman game was played the following Saturday, Nov. 23rd, and was quite a surprise to those who looked for an over-whelming deleat of the Freshmen. They played a much better game than was expected, preventing the Seniors from scoring in the first half. Several times the ball was lost to each side on downs, and time was called with the ball in the Freshmen's territory. The second half was even more marked by the efforts of each side to score. The Freshmen by repeated rushes and a pretty run by Doty got the ball within one foot of a touchdown. Here the superior strength and weight of the Seniors showed itself in preventing the ball from going over the line. They got the ball on downs and immediately rushed it down the field for a touchdown. This seemed to unnerve the Freshmen and the Seniors made two more touchdowns before time was called. Taking into account the greater weight of the Seniors and the fact that several of their men belonged to the college team, praise is due the Fresh-men for their well-played game. The follow-ing was the line up. SENIORS. POSITION. FRESHMEN. Moser (Capt.) left-end Weeter Shaar left-tackle Hoover Jlrubaker left-guard Cumbler Ritter centre Smith, J. Reitzell right-guard Hickman Shinier right-tackle Brumbaugh Wolf right end Herman Rice right-half (Capt.) Doty London left-half Spaj'de Menges full-back Trimble Carty quarter Good Umpire—Geesy. Referee—Wolf. Linesmen—Kitzmeyerand Meisenhelder. Touchdowns—Loudon 2, Rice. Goals—Menges. '39 THE COLLEGE MERCURY At a recent meeting of the Athletic Associa-tion the following were elected for the ensuing year: Manager of Baseball, Armstrong, '97; Manager of Track Athletics, Wheeler, '97; and Manager of Tennis Tournament, Lark, '98. The various managers, are at work dis-cussing'iplans and outlining the work for next season. Now that the foot-ball season is over, we very naturally turn to the next thing of inter-est and importance, namely, base ball and track athletics. Our record on the diamond is by no means bad, in fact it is here that we demonstrated our ability and worthiness to take our place in the ranks with other colleges. But we can't rest on past reputations and achievements. Everyone interested in base ball should be willing and ready to lend a hand. The places of the old players, now out of college, must be filled, and you can do it. Track athletics are not entirely unknown, since attempts have been made to organize a team, but without success. The fault lay not with the management, but with the students. We surely have the material out of which a creditable team can be made, and at the same time facilities for the training and practicing of such a team. Indifference to the need and importance of track work causes all the trouble. Once get the idea that we MUST have a team, and we will have it. The treasurer of the athletic association will call on all members during the next week who are in arrears for dues and fees. Be ready with your cash. TOWN /\ND SEWIINARY NOTES. WEBSTER C SPAYDE, Editor. TOWN. At the Missionary Convention of the Luth-eran Church, which met in Carlisle several weeks ago, Mrs. E. Breideubaugh was elected treasurer; Mrs. P. M. Bikle and Mrs. Baugher, members of the Literary Committee; Miss Maggie McClean and Mrs. C. H. Ruff on the Adams County Conference. The Veteran Association of the 76th Pa. Regiment held their re-union here on Wednes-day, Oct. 23rd. The party included twenty-six of the survivors, many of them accom-panied by their wives and daughters. Two magnificently illustrated lectures by the Rev. M. W. Hamma, D. D., of Washington, were given in Christ church, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, Nov. 6th and 7th. Sub-ject of first lecture: "Southern Norway—'The Wonderland of the North.' " Second lecture: "Through Denmark, Sweden and Northern Norwav to the North Cape under the Light of 'The Midnight Sun.' " On Wednesday, Oct. 23rd. General John Taylor, General j. P. S. Gobin, Colonel John P. Nicholson and Colonel R. Bruce Ricketts, with the artist, H. K. Bush-Brown, and other friends, among them Geo. Alfred Town'send, the war correspondent, viewed the statue of Major General Geo. G. Meade, and, owing to the delay in the granite pedestal, postponed dedication of this, as well as the Hancock statue, until next June. The Hancock statue was approved by the State Commission and an order given for the payment of its cost. The same gentlemen met at Harrisburg, on their way here, and inspected designs for the Rey-nolds monument, but no action was taken. The three massive granite blocks composing the base of the Meade statue are set and the imposing statue, which has been previously described in these columns, placed in position. On the one face are the words, "Major Gen-eral George Gordon Meade, United States Army, Commander of the Army of the Poto-lnac." On the other, "Born December 31, 1815. Died November 6, 1872." Rev. A. R. Steck, pastor of St. James Luth-eran church, assisted at the re-opening exer-cises of St. Matthew's Lutheran church, Han-over, on Sunday, Nov. 3rd. While the Skelly & Warner corner, form-erly the Fahnestock building, was being in part torn down recently, Mr. John M. Warner found an old paper which seems to be an offic-ial list of the men who formed Company E, 2d Regiment, Penua. Volunteers. Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, of Cambridge, Mass., preached in Christ Lutheran church on Sunday morning, Nov. 17th. He also filled the pulpit of the same church on the morning of Nov. 24th. In pursuance of the general plan of restor-ing the battlefield as nearly as practicable to its appearance in 1863, the Government Com-mission has purchased a large number of trees, including leading varieties of oak, maple, ash, elm, and other indigenous trees with which to renew the portions of Ziegler's and Reynolds's groves, which have been cut away since the THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 140 battle. The work of planting them is in charge of Mr. Mclntire, representing Con-tractor O'Connell, of Philadelphia, who furn-ished the trees. About 2.30 o'clock Sunday morning, Nov. 10th, the Colonial Hotel was discovered to be on fire and the alarm was quickly given. The fire was first discovered by Mrs. Tate, wife of the proprietor, C. B. Tate, who noticed the smell of smoke. She aroused the family and the guests, all of whom escaped, but some were in extreme danger. The firemen quickly responded to the alarm but before they could get water the whole building was wrapt in flames. They turned their attention to the surrounding buildings, all of which were in imminent clanger, espec-ially those on the east and south. The resi-dence of J. A. Kitztniller, Esq., across the street, directly within the line of the wind, caught several times but a slate roof saved it. The ice-house, closely attached to the hotel, was destroyed, but the barn was saved. As to the cause of the fire nothing definite can be stated. Mr. Tate says that he has no idea how it could have started. Those who saw the fire early think that it began in or near the bar-room in the basement. All of the furniture and wearing apparel in the house was destroyed, and a small stock of liquors. The hotel was insured to the amount of about $8,000. A plan is on foot in Gettysburg to introduce a telephone system. Some of the business men have been approached, all of whom, we are told, think the plan a good one. It is pro-posed also, if the venture is a success in Get-tysburg, to connect with the surrounding towns. The anniversary exercises of the Women's Bible Society were held on Sunday evening, Nov. 17th. In the Presbyterirn church the services were conducted by Revs. Dr. Barkley and Black; St. James Lutheran, Rev. Gilchrist and Dr. Billheimer; Christ Lutheran, Revs. Steck and Carver and Dr. Stuckenberg. The Christian Endeavor Society of St. James Lutheran church held their seventh anniver-sary on Sunday, Nov. 24II1. In the morning Rev. C. C. Benson, of Williamsport, Pa., de-livered a very able discourse based on the text: "Thy Kingdom Come." In the evening ap-propriate services were held, conducted by the pastor, Rev. A. R. Steck. The St. James and Christ Lutheran congre-gations held a union Thanksgiving service in St. James Luthern church on Thursday morn-ing, Nov. 28th, at 10 o'clock. Rev. L. S. Black preached the sermon. Services were also held in the Presbyterian and Reformed churches in the morning. The firemen of this place had a parade on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 28th. The hose-carriage was drawn by some of the firemen, the engine and ladder truck were drawn by horses. Music was furnished by the Gettys-burg band. One of the most popular auxiliaries of the evening lectures at the Adams Count}' Teach-ers' Institute was the "Graphophone Exhibi-tion" by two of our boys—Messrs. Lutz and Brubaker. The audience was carried away; every selection was applauded. And so de-lighted were both audience and manager that their service was secured for a second night with equal success. We congratulate the boys on their splendid success in so large a hall and before so large an audience. SEMINARY. • Rev. J. Albert, on account of ill health, has given up his work at Seminary and has re-turned to his Mission in the West. Rev. A. Bredenbek and Rev. M. J. Killian preached at Good Intent on the 10th and 17th of November, respectively. On the 3rd of November, Rev. G. W. Enders, Jr., preached at Newport, Perry county. In the absence of Rev. Steck, Nov. 3rd, Rev. M. J. Kline filled St. James pulpit in the morning, and Rev. George M. Diffenderfer in the evening. Rev. A. A. Kelly preached in the Trindal Spring church, Mechanicsburg, Pa., Novem-rer 24th. Rev. Chas. P. Wiles preached for Rev. Hesse, New Oxford, Pa., Nov. 24th. The pulpit of the Second Lutheran church, Carlisle, Pa., was filled by Rev. H. B. Stock, Nov. 24th. Owing to ill health, Rev. M. J. Kline was advised to return to his home, Frederick, Md., for a short time. Rev. F. Hilton returned to Seminary several weeks ago. i4r THE COLLEGE MERCURY. On Nov. 24th, Rev. E. E. Parson preached at Freedom, Md. Rev. J. F. Crigler assisted Rev. M. P. Hocker, Steelton, Pa., Nov. 10th. Rev. J. C. Bowers preached at Rossville, Pa., Nov. 17th. The following 'Seminarians attended the meeting of the American Inter-Seminary Mis-sionary Alliance, which was held in Lancaster, Pa.: Messrs. Ehrhart, Diffenderfer, Kline, Rndisill, Stock, Heffner, Bare, Oberholtzer, Koller, Ibach, Cromer, Harms, Whitman, Cox and Killian. Each day during the week beginning Nov. 17th, Dr. J. H. W. Stuchenberg lectured to the Seminarians on Philosophy and Christian Sociology. Rev. W. A. Kump preached at Round-Top, Sunday evening, Nov. 10th. On November 24th, Rev. W. O. Ibach pre-sided at the pipe organ in Christ Lutheran church. LIJERARV SOCIETIES. EDNA M. LOOMIS, Editor. PHILO. The society has decided to make some needed improvements in the reading room. As Dr. Stuckenberg's lecture occupied the evening of Ncv. 22nd, and the Teachers' In-stitue the evening of Nov. 29th, no meetings were held on those dates. The new members of Philo are Brumbaugh, '99, and Bregenzer, 1900. The special program of Dec. 6th will be de-voted to Robert Louis Stevenson. PHRENA. Our special meeting on Nov. 1, which was in charge of our new initiates, was a grand success. The hall was filled to overflowing, and all went home well pleased with the even-ing's entertainment. Our new men deserve to be congratulated. The following new names were added to our roll during the past month: J. H. Straw, '99; David P. Deatrick, H. B. Ernest and Alex-ander O'Neal, of the Preparatory Department. On Wednesday evening, Nov. 6, our de-bating club elected the following officers: Pres., Woods, '9S; V. Pres., Staley, Jr., '99; Rec. Sec, Krafit, '98; Treas., Sprenkle, '98. Phrena will render a special program on Friday evening, Dec. 6th, entitled the "New Woman." Declamation, "A Dream of Possibilities," - - WOODS Essay, '"The 'New Woman' in the World of Sport," - CARNEY Declamation, "A Fearful state of Things/' - - LAUFFEH Oration, "The 'New Woman' in Politics," - - - OTT DEBATE: . "Which Makes the Better Wife, the 'New Woman' or the 'Conservative Woman?'" Aff (.FLECK, I MEISENHELDER, E. W., ' J STOCKSLAGER. .•»=»• J AJOSER. Declamation, "Will She?" . ROEHNER Oration, "The 'New Woman' in the Intellectual World," WOLF EXCHANGES. We are glad to add to our exchanges the Maryland Collegian, Lutherville, Md. It con-tains a good editorial department, and well written contributions, and is in every respect an excellent monthly. The Wittenberger among its foot-ball notes says of our former centre-rush : "Rank's cheerful voice is heard at all stages of the game. The darker the prospects, the more encouraging is our right guard's call." A recent number ot the same paper contains a good editorial on the honor system of gov-erning students. The Dickinsonian seems desirous of empha-sizing the fact, by mentioning it in several places, that the Dickinson students who wit-nessed the Buckuell-Gettysburg game, "root-ed" for Bucknell. It is fortunate they took this opportunity to yell for the winning side, as it is about the only one they have had this season. The Irving Skctch-Book begins its second volume with a very creditable number. This is one of the most attractive exchanges we re-ceive, and is always read with special pleasure. JTor all the latest styles in .uitini and Trousers, AND PULL LINE OF Cents' Furnishing Goods, Call on D. H. WELSH, York, Pa. (gO TO^ *H0m GETTYSBURG* TIMBER SHOP.*- Centre Square. <*^__B. M. SEFTON. ADVERTISEMENTS. A. G. SpaSding & Bros., roof BALL SUPPLIES A SPECIALTY. Every Requisite fop the Game. Jackets, Pants, Jerseys, Sweaters, Shoes, Caps, Belts, Stockings, Morrill's Nose Mask, Rubber Mouth-piece, Shin Guards, Head Harness. Spaldiiiy's Official Intercolle-giate Foot Ball Must be used in all Match Games. PRICE - - - ^s.oo Webster9s IM&ioaiary Invaluable in Office, School, and.Some Successor of the "Unabridged." Standard cf tho U. 0. Gov't Printing OGico, the U. S. Supreme Courfc,a:id of nearly all the Schoolbooka. SPALDING'S OFFICIAL FOOT BALL GU I DE~ N EW RULES-PICTURES OF ALL THE LEADING PLAYERS. Price 10c ttCUOSOttt WAUSTRMtO VOfM 6M_\_ CM\\_QQUt Sim TRtt NEW YORK. PHILADELPHIA. CHICAGO. Til HORACE PARTRIDGE CO. "Warmly commended by State Superintendents of Schools, and other Educators almost without number. THE BEST FOR EVERYBODY rt . . *. j ^. BECAUSE it is easy to find the word wanted. Words nre (riven their correct alphabetical placea, each one beginning a paragraph. [1 is easy to ascertain the pronunciation. The pronunciation is Indicated by the ordinary dlacrit. ically mariced letters used iuthoschoolbooks It is easy to trace the growth of a word. The etymologies nre full, unllhe different meanings are given in the order of 1 in ir development. It is easy t o learn what o word means. The definitions are clear, explicit, and full, and each 13 contained in a separate paragraph. G. & C. MEItRTAM CO., Publishers, Springfield, Mass., XJ. S. A. 03-Specimen pages, etc., Bent on application. BOj^R/JDIILTGh By Day, \A/eel< or Month. RATES REASONABLE. MOUSE EQUIPPED WITH ALL MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. 335 Washington St.,, BOSTON, WIASS. Grocery Store In same building. Full line of Goods kept and sold at small profits. House and Store located on Cor. of College Campus, opposite Brua Chapel. figj^Public Patronage Solicited. SAMUEL H. TAUaHINBAUSH, Prop'r. ifiiil M|iM| Isiliillfc Base Ball and % 9 & © Tgqqis Supplies : -t^fi -A SPECIALTY. 'T3-?i IVIr. \A/. H, MENGES, Our authorized agent at Gettysburg. N j Troy, N. Y., DANY, MAMOTACTOBBK OF SUPEfUOH BELLS. The 2,000 pound bell now ringing in the tower of Pennsylvania College was manufac-tured at this foundry. ADVERTISEMENTS. I V A V [ \ I. Classical Course for the Degree of A. B. II. Scientific Course for the Degree of B. S. III. Pest-Graduate Course for the Degree of Ph. D. IV. Special Course in all Departments. V. Elective Studies in Junior and Senior Year.-. VI. New Testament Greek and Hebrew in English Bible Department. Observatory, Laboratories and new Gymnasium. Four large buildings. All buildings heated with steam from central plant. Libraries, 25,000 volumes. Fine Museum. Expenses low. Department of Hygiene and Physical Culture in charge of an experienced physician. Accessible by frequent railroad trains. Location, on BATTLEFIELD of Gettysburg; most pleasant and healthy. PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT, in separate buildings, for boys and young men preparing for business or college, under special care of the principal and three assistants, residing with students in the building. For full particulars, apply for catalogue to HARVEY w. MCKNIGHT, D. D., LL. D., PKES'T.

The Mercury October 1893 ADVERTISEMENTS. IReafring 1Ratlroa6 "The "Royal ■Route" New and Direct Line To and From QETTTSBURQ. Fast, Frequent and Superbly Equipped Train Service Between , NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, Allentown, Pottsville, Williamsport, Reading, Harrisburg and Interior Pennsylvania Points, with through connections to and from all parts of the Middle States, New England and the West. Visitors to America's Greatest Battlefield can obtain through tickets and baggage checks, via this new and most picturesque route, at all principal stations and ticket offices throughout the country. I. A. SWEIGARD, C. G. HANCOCK, General Manager. Gen. Pass. Agt. Berber Sfyop, CHARLES C. SEFTON, PROPRIETOR. BALTIMORE STREET. THE PLACE FOR STUDENTS TO GO. ONLY FIRST-CLASS WORK. Chartered 1850, offers Classic, Normal, Music and Art courses for Diploma and Degrees ; comprises three large brick buildings, situated on a beautiful eminence, a lovely campus, library, apparatus, hot and cold mountain water, steam heat, gas light, electric bells, a suite of rooms nicely furnished for every two or three students, music lessons on Pipe Organ, Reed Organ, Piano, Violin, Guitar, Mandolin, Banjo, and Cornet. Lessons in Drawing, Crayoning, Pastel, China and Oil Painting. German and French languages taught and spoken. Special attention paid to Elocution and Voice Culture. Normal course with Diploma for teaching. Strict attention given to Physical, Social, and Religious culture. Kee Mar College is located in a most attractive, refined, and healthful city of 14,000 people. SEND FOR CATALOGUE AND JOURNAL TO Rev. C. L. KEEDY, A. M., M. D., President, Hagerstown, Md. To th£ S^Ud^s oF QANDERS & OTAYMAN Beg to call attention to their splendid exhibit of the leading makes of Pianos and Organs Including the famous ESTEY ORGAN, WEBER, DECKER BROS., ESTEY, FISCHER, AND IVERS AND POND PIANOS. Also a full line of Sheet Music, Music Books, and Musical Instruments of all kinds, including Violins, Mandolins, Banjos, Guitars, Cornets, Autoharps, &c. SANDERS & STAYMAN, 13 NORTH CHARLES ST., BALTIMORE, MD. 934 F STREET, N. W-, WASHINGTON, D. C. Music Sent " On Selection." Catalogues Free. We are Sole Agents for the Wonderful ".^OLIAN," an Orchestra in Your Own Parlor, With You as Musical Director. Spalding's Livery Stable, STRATTON ST., GETTYSBURG, PA. Branch Office, E. S. Faber's Cigar Store. Hacks, Carriages, Wagonettes, Double Teams, Riding Horses, Large Wagons Capable of Holding Sixty Persons at a Time. COMPETENT GUIDES FOR THE BATTLEFIELD. CHAS. J. SPALDING, Proprietor. -SIimiiiiiitlliiiim; .:i',iiiiiniiiiiiuii 'Hii|iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiini (§"" Gettysburg Carriage Works, CHAS. J. SPALDING, Proprietor. WEST MIDDLE STREET. BUILDER OF ori3e8 Society Baboes H^ti3e flfoebals Stationery The most successful designers of College and University Badges in the Country Estimates Designs on Application ■$f£ ■$• 3f£ BAILEY BANKS BIDDLE Chestnut and Twelfth Streets Philadelphia, ?a. Mary had a Little Lamb, amp jour Memory.) It's wool was all the go— We make it up in BUSINESS SUITS for $1 5.00 you know. These Custom-Made Suits are popular throughout America— because they represent the very Quintessence of Nobby Dress, and are essential to every | business man who cares one lota for economy and APPEAR-ANCE. Send us 6 cents in stamps, stating kind of gar-ment or suit desired, and we Will forward you SAMPLES of Cheviots, Cassimercs, etc., Self-measurement rules and fashion plate. YOU DO THIS; and we do the rest. Balti more cheapest market. KEELER the largest custom producer. Full Dresi Suits, Trousers, - - Frock Suits, • Overcoats, - - JO,iN M. KEELER, 5 N. Calvert St. Baltimore, rid, "Suffer no longer the extortions oflocM tailors '" $25.00 Up. ■ $4.00 Up. $18.00 Up $18.00 Up. OEM'S AGME HALL @MIIV Hirnm 5 and 7 W. Baltimore Street, Annex 6 and 8 S. Charles St., BALTIMORE, MD. NEW SPRING STYLES Of Suits and Overcoats now ready at 20 to 30 per cent, under com-petitors' prices. Write for Samples and Price List. WILLIAM SMALL, DLFIIIK D0OR IlMER AND DOOR DIM 6 WEST MARKET STREET, YORK, PENNA. w. s. SCHRODER, -&>• DEALER IN Correspondence Solicited With Responsible Parties Desiring to Act as Agents, Hats and Caps? Boofrs and Shoes? No. 6 Balto Street, Gettysburg. IV ADVERTISEMENTS. F. D. SCHRIVER, Draper, Importer, - fl^D JVLerehant Tailor, 23 Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. The College Mercury. Vol. I. Gettysburg, Pa., October, 1893. No. 6. THE COLLEGE MERCURY, Published each month during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STARR. Editor : JULIUS F. SEEBACB, '94. Associate Editors : FRED H. BLOOMHARDT, '94. FRANK E. FICKINGER, '94. HENRY E. CLARE, 95. WALDO D. MAYNARD, '95. PAUL W. KOLLER, '94. ROSCOE C. WRIGHT, '95. WILMER A. HARTMAN, '95. Alumni Association Editor : D. FRANK GARLAND, Baltimore, Md. Business Manager: BENJAMIN R. LANTZ, '94. Assistant Business Manager: CHARLES F. KLOSS, '94. TERMS * / ^ne vo'ume Cten months), . . . . $1.00 ' (.Single copies, 15 Payable in Advance. All Students are requested to hand us matter for publication. The Alumni and ex-members of the College will favor us by send-ing information concerning their whereabouts, or any items they may think would be interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the Business Manager. Matter intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address, THE COLLEGE MERCURY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EDITORIALS," 91 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, 93 SEITEMHER, 94 COLLEGE LOCALS, , 94 ALUMNI, 100 FRATERNITY NOTES, 102 ATHLETICS,' 103 TOWN AND SEMINARY, . 104 LITERARY SOCIETIES 105 EDITCrRIAL. IN days long since gone, when the simple great of earth believed and doubted not— in the days when the gods ruled the universe, Mercury was their chosen messenger, carry-ing the expressions of their will wherever sent. He was a jovial fellow, ever ready to respond to the happier moods of those around him ; nor did he deem himself superior to the mor-tals he often visited. Indeed, so well did he endear himself to them by his cheering, help-ful ways, that images of himself were used along roadsides as .finger-posts to guide trav-elers, and the first thing to greet the way-farer at gate of city or door of house was the smiling face of Mercury bidding welcome to its portals. But now all is changed. Men, in the haughty superiority of their knowledge, have dethroned the gods. Mercury alone re-mains. Offered the freedom of the world by its grateful inhabitants, he accepted it, settling down at length to his old occupation as an index to travelers and welcoming host to the. guests who arrive at this city of learning. He it is who, in the name of the older citizens, in his modern form bids a hearty welcome to the class of '97 and all new guests. You have indeed well come. * CLASS of '97! THE MERCURY congratu-lates you on your numbers and oppor-tunities. In these times of stringency in the money markets of your land, you have come as pure gold from your monometallic homes to replenish anew the circulating medium of these classic halls. Your Alma Mater, con-scious of the charge given her, is proud to direct your course. Your elder brothers, though they affect contempt for your " fresh- 92 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. ness," think with pride of the name your presence will help to give our common mother. The Faculty—what can it do but be pleased? You may be offended at times by the strictness of your instructors, by the rigidness of your discipline, and think the Mater has received the wrong appellation, but after years will teach you better. What seems strictness now will then appear the truest kindness, while words of rebuke will be treasured up as incen-tives to better endeavors where mistaken kind-ness will be forgotten. * * * " A SPLENDID opening at Gettysburg " is fl the way to put it this time. And we are glad to see it. With a Freshman class number-ing 55 or more, and additions to other classes we have an assurance of what the future will bring for our Alma Mater* Let all the friends of the college rally with increasing devotion to her support, and give to her that large-hearted sympathy and encouragement which shall make her strong. These large acces-sions, we take it, give assured evidence both of the deep interest which the sons of the college take in her welfare, and also of the unwaver-ing confidence which she inspires. This is as it ought to be. Let the work go on. Give us more students—more endowment—still better equipment for the work, so that at Gettysburg may be found all the advantages which the very best institutions of the landfumish. There ought to be, for a Church which takes fourth rank in America, at least one powerful university, and where else than at Gettysburg ? We ex-pect to see that realized in our lifetime. Hasten the day. G. * ■ * * THE editors of THE MERCURY desire to ask the indulgence of their readers for whatever in its present columns does not approach its usual high standard of excel-lence. The staff is laboring under the de-cided disadvantage this month of having several new associate editors who are entirely unacquainted with the requirements of their respective departments. In addition to these, the editor of the Alumni department was un-avoidably delayed in his return to college, and his work has suffered in consequence. This explanation is made at the request of the new staff members, who wish at the same time to assure the subscribers of a better showing next month. In this connection it may be well to reiterate the request that has been made in these columns at different times for contributions and news items from students and Alumni. THE MERCURY is the best, indeed the only true representative of the interests of the college and student-body, and should, therefore, be upheld by all who are interested in the advancement of old " Pennsylva-nia." * * LET there be no hesitancy among the new students in joining one or the other of the Literary Societies. No one can at all afford to miss the advantages which these afford in the direction of literary culture. There will be a rich return rendered if these societies are in any measure what they ought to be. And we are led to believe that never in their history have they been so excellent as now. The croaker will be around, of course. He has no interest in them, except to revile their work and their methods. Don't listen to the croaker, he is at college for the fun there is in it, or to spend his father's money; he is not one of the progressive, wide-awake boys who will use every advantage afforded for intel-lectual'culture. Don't listen to this fellow, but go into a literary society and work there four years, and you will spend the remainder of your life in thankfulness that you did so. G. * * * THE MERCURY desires to call the atten-tion of the students to the advisability of establishing a second-hand book-store within the college walls, in which those who wish to dispose of and those who wish to THE COLLECxE MERCURY. 93 buy books may find a ready medium of exchange. All know what trouble and delay was caused at the beginning of this term by the inability of the majority to ob-tain books. Nor is this merely an occasional occurrence—every term witnesses the same confusion. There would be no need of this, if system were introduced into the exchange. The plan has much to recommend it, and has been successfully put into operation at other institutions. Let some one take the matter in hand, establish headquarters for exchange, and the boys will soon recognize the benefits of the plan. Those who wish to sell can bring their books with the prices marked therein; those who wish to buy will find at such a place whatever books they need. Of course, the one in charge will have to receive a moderate commission, but, in view of the time, trouble, and temper saved there can be no objection to this. The plan is worth a trial. AS the libraries of the institution are for use, they ought to be opened daily to the students. - The old custom of opening twice each week is out of date now that the college has advanced to the front rank in' other directions. It was in the past the experi-ence of the writer that the society libraries were used more largely than the college library. And it is likely so now. But these store-houses are locked up to the anxious reader now, except on two occasions each week. He may look through the iron bars at the treasures stowed on the shelves, but he must not touch, taste, or handle. It ought not to be so. Let it cost a small sum each month, but by all means put some one in charge who will open these libraries several hours each day. Make it convenient to the students to get books and they will use them. Settle this at once, as there is no question about the wisdom of it. Let the most pro-gressive Society move first in this direction. We wait the issue. G. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. ALL bustle, excitement, hurry, business pressure, quick disappointments, short joys, feverish desires, insatiable ambition, all these are characteristic of the great Amer-ican nation. Never since time began has there existed in any country or in any clime such a being as the American. He is denominated by fellow-countrymen as morbid, petulant, and excitable. Why all this speed ? why all this hurry ? Is it an intuitive desire to do such things, or is he so influenced by his surround-ings ? The word^ hurry has become synony-mous with the term American. In comparing the life of a business or professional man in Europe with that of types of the same class of persons in our own country, a marked dif-ference is observed. There is not a moment in which American men seem to be unem-ployed. They rush along the streets like ani-mated wagon-wheels. From early morn until dewy eve there is a constant rush and bustle. This drive and excitement of business often continues far into the night. The lawyer, after leaving his office, merely transfers his work to the quieter surroundings of home. The mer-chant, after closing his place of business, burns the midnight oil over his day-books and led-gers ; and while half the world is wrapt in the sweet embrace of slumber, the financier is planning fresh business schemes and is study-ing the fluctuations of stocks and bonds. The silence and rest of the Sabbath is broken by the shrieking and howling of the trains carry-ing perishable freight, such as lumber, soft coal, and coke. We travel by lightning ex-press, correspond by telegraph, talk through the telephone, and the time is not far distant when mighty vessels shall rush through the hazy atmosphere carrying both passengers and freight. The American widower of to-day, deprived of a gentle, peaceful, and loving wife, buys for himself a phonograph, in order that he still may have something to talk back to him. The 94 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. American baby of to-day will scarce repose in its cradle long enough for its foot to grow to sufficient size to wear a number naught shoe. At the age of three it will talk politics with its father, and at six will want to vote. Everything is hurried. Men will rush for the trains. Men will rush to the lunch-counters. Men will rush to the stock exchanges with a bundle of stocks in one hand and a roll of bills , in the other. If one is successful, he ventures again; if he fails, he is in a hurry to die, and no matter if the office is Russell Sage's, he will blow to atoms, with a dynamite bomb, the office, with its inmates and himself included. He is in a hurry to get rich, consequently he besieges the race-tracks and gambling dens, and stakes his money with the insane idea that he can beat the gamblers. He is in a hurry to get married,- which necessitates the building of a church on one side of the street and a di-vorce court on the other; and it very often happens that the bridegroom stands before the judge in a divorce court with the same bouquet in his button-hole that he had when he stood before the' parson at the bridal altar. The children of the present generation are scarce able to know they have a mamma until they are placed behind the walls of a kindergarten, and a few years later, by undue mental develop-ment, possess heads like pumpkins, bodies like radishes, and a dyspeptic stomach in the bar-gain. The American women besiege our bar-gain dress-goods counters in ceaseless streams, and array themselves in such fantastic shapes that philanthropic persons have been forced to organize societies of dress reform. We have societies for the prevention of cruelty to ani-mals— let the good work go on—and, if the dress-reform movement continues, perhaps we will have some more. Although death should end the hurry of the American, yet even after death he is hurried. He is either placed in a crematory and his mortal remains all consumed in the brief space of forty-five minutes, or the hearse in which he is placed to be conveyed to his last resting-place is driven at such a tre-mendous rate of speed over the cobble-stones that the black ornaments on top of the wagon of death float to the breeze like the plumes on the helmet of a mounted warrior. Finally, he is placed beneath the green sod, and on the tombstone, reared to his memory, is inscribed the very appropriate motto, " Died through too much hurry. The American takes a vaca-tion at last. May his rest, indeed, be sweet." J. S. E., '94. SEPTEMBER. Gold that fades into misty pink, I'ink that melts into tender blue, I >eep in the west where the mountains sink, Like gates that close when the sun goes through, Glowing to rest like a dying ember— And that's September. Mist that floats in the valley at eve, Frost that gleams on the grass at morn; Insect voices at dusk that grieve ; Gathered sheaves of the ripened corn; Hearts that yearn and hope and remember— And that's September! M. R. H., '94. COLLEGE LOCALS. FRED H. BLOOMJIARDT and WILMER A. HARTMAN, Editors. COLLEGE opened Thursday morning, September 7th, at 8 A. M. Many famil-iar faces were missed from each class, while many new ones were seen filling their places. The prospects for a successful year were never brighter in the history of the institution. After an address of welcome by President McKnight, the customary announcement to the assem-bled students of the order of their recitations and the books required was made by the pro-fessors, after which the boys were released for the day, in order to give them a chance to ar-range their rooms, and prepare for the real beginning of the college year on the morrow. On Monday night, September nth, the Sophomores and Freshmen had their annual rush. It was so dark that one could scarcely distinguish faces, so that it is difficult to decide THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 95 to whom the victory belongs, but the general opinion seems to be that, although '96 was outnumbered more than two to one, it won the greatest number of rushes. It may not be out of place, in this connec-tion, to suggest to those who may take part in future rushes that they have them during the day. The advantages to be derived from this are numerous, while the disadvantages are almost nil. Both classes can then see what they are doing, and not be guilty of the re-cently- observed absurdity of pushing their own men around the field. It will also do away with the incentive to unfair play which the darkness of night offers to those of both classes whose sense of right is feebly devel-oped. Besides, it will make it more of a class affair, compelling the upper classmen and townsmen to hold aloof. All these objection-able features were in force in the last rush, and the time is at hand for reform. The college musical organizations lose two very valuable members in Hoffman and Ma-dara of the class of '95. The former enters Yale while the latter goes to the University of Pennsylvania. Notices were placed On the bulletin boards by the manager of the Glee, Banjo and Man-dolin Clubs calling for candidates for the sev-eral organizations. The answers to the call were encouraging and Prof. Miller considers the present status of the applicants, without any joint practice, almost, if not altogether, equal to that of last year's clubs with all their train-ing. Manager Duttera is pleased with the out-look and feels confident of success. Ninety-three was well represented in chapel on the morning of September 19th by Messrs. Kline, Bare, Ehrhart, Oberholtzer, Parsons, Neudewitz, Kelly, and Enders. " Fads " re-ceived his usual share of attention. President McKnight was in attendance at the Allegheny Synod September 9th, at Hunting-don, Pa. Dr. Huber attended the meeting of the Board of Publication at Philadelphia last week. In a meeting, held September 23d, the class of '95 elected Mr. Witman as Business Mana-ger, in place of Mr. Hoffman, now of Yale. Mr. Newcomer was also elected Assistant Business Manager, and Mr. Eckels as Asso-ciate Editor to fill .the vacancy caused by Mr. Witman in that department. Freshman yell: 'Rah! 'Rah! Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah! '97 Siss ! Boom! Yah! The banjo and mandolin clubs have been partially organized and consist of the follow-ing members. The positions and names of the former are Banjeaurines: HERSH, BAUM, ECKELS. Second Banjo : COBEAN. Piccolo Banjo : HEINDEL. Guitars : BlKLE, ZEIGLER, FICKINGER. Mandolin: EHRHART. Another guitar will be added in a short time. The positions and names of those on the mandolin club are as follows : First Mandolin : EHRHART, WERT, RICE. Second Mandolin : BAUM, HEKR. Guitars: BlKLE, ZEIGLER, FICKINGER. Flute : SMITH. The clubs, in conjunction with the glee club, will give an entertainment in Brua Chapel, on the 23d or 24th of November. This will be their initial concert, perhaps the 96 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. only one given during the term, but there is every assurance given of an extended tour of the clubs during the Christmas holidays. The musical talent of the college will not suffer total annihilation for awhile, at least, since the " Count" has his new guitar, " Sweitzer " his mandolin, " Sheckels " his banjo, while " Plainfield," in the absence of a violin, makes use of " the instrument nearest it," the human voice divine (?). The artists on the staff of '95's Spectrum have begun active work in their department. The associate editors have also been assigned to their various departments, and the Spectrum may now be expected to move on to glorious success. The courtesy of the new treasurer, Mr. Pick-ing, and the convenience of having his office on the college grounds are greatly appreciated by the boys. Even Seniors make mistakes. One defines " Political Economy " as the " Gospel of Mor-mon." Va(i)n are our strivings toward per-fection. And now the innocent Freshman speaks about the " Livy" exercises of the class of'93. Our c(l)ute Freshman says he has a dead " kinch " on a horse to the French alphabet. " Our James " says the early races " culti-vated " animals. The dear little fellow thinks he can give them pointers on keeping stock. " That same old smell."—Kloss. The Juniors have succeeded in convincing Dr. McKnight that it is too hot to study Psy-chology. The "clbetrich " season has opened with many devotees. Several " Preps " have been out on the hunt for the mysterious animal, but without success. Dr. B. (in Lab.)—" Mr. J., in what are you heating that substance ?" Mr. J., '95 (knowingly)—" In an indignation tube, of course." Dr. B.—" Give me the parts of sum!' M., '96 (after much hesitation)—"Amo, amarc, amavi, amatum." S., '94, whose knowledge of transportation is limited to horse-cars only, answers the trol-ley- car conductor's query, " Where do you want off," by "Oh! I only want five cents' worth of ride." " Remsen" (while napping over his Political Economy and reveling in dreams of his be-loved Chemistry)—"Dang it! what experi-ment's that ?" S., '94—" What's wrong)?" " Remsen" (rubbing his eyes)—" Oh ! I was just reading over a line here, and all I could get out of it was, 'And he had a cheerful, frank, sodium countenance.' " Respectfully dedicated to the co-eds. of '94: " Little Miss Muffet Sat on her tuffet, Studying Theistic Belief, When along came a spicier And sat down beside her, And brought her nigh unto grief." Mr. W., '95 (translating *f:i-! 4>tS!)—"Alas! Alas !" Dr. B.—" How is that ?" U.,'95—"Alas! Alas!" Dr. B.—" I guess not." U., '95—"A lass!! A lass !!" C, '97, to H., '95—" Don't you know, I was filling my student's lamp to-night, and it all ran out before I knew I was filling the wrong end." " Ursinus " (waiting at Y. M. C. A. reception, greatly excited)—" We've only got two kinds of vanilla—peach and ice-cream." " Buckskin " says he hardly thinks Governor McKinley can be re-elected Governor of Cali-fornia. "Kid" H., '94, during his visit to Chicago, had quite an experience. When the bell-boy answered the continuous ringing of the call- THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 97 bell, he heard the " Kid " murmuring, as he held the pitcher under the button, " I have been pressing this button for fifteen minutes and haven't got a drop of ice-water yet." Every Senior class has its married man, and '94 is no exception. .Arthur Deisroth, Hazleton. E. M. Duck . Spring Mills. J. H. Eckert, Gettysburg. Charles Emmert, . Hagerstown, Md. George Englar, Linwood. Joseph Enniss, Burkettsville, Md. Charles Erb - Boyertown. .Frank Fegley Allentown. C. E. Fleck, New Kingstown. Dr. B.—" Have you ever heard any Chinese^ w ^.^ Jefferson, Md. music?" ■ John E. Gable . •. Lititz. B.,'94 (suspiciously, after a summer's ex- ,4 Carroll Graff, Dululrnft perience)—" Do you mean chin music, doc-tor?" Hanover. University down to 16 to o. More will be '/j. p. Michler, ." Easton. given in next number. Hurrah for Gettys- { burg! The following are the accessions to each department. There are several others who contemplate coming, but who have not arrived as yet. Their' names will be published in our next issue. , Senior Class. Orville Sigafoos, Easton. Junior Class. George Eckels Shippensburg. J. C. Fassold, Sunbury. Harry Mohn, Adamstown. Sophomore Class. C. W. Rank, Williamstown. ■ D. E. Rice, . ' Chambersburg. C. J. Stephenson, Pervin. Freshman Class. George Abel . Philadelphia. E. A. Armstrong, Hellam. A. R. Aukerman, Altoona. W. M. Aukerman, Altoona. E. D. Bankard Taneytown, Md. F. E. Beltzhoover, Jr Shepherds Town, W.Va. Henry Bikle, Gettysburg. John Cable, Smithsburg, Md. Horace Clute, Harrisburg. Roy Coble, Lykens. Arthur Coble Lykens. K. M. Culp, Gettysburg. Walter Monath; Chambersburg. Charles Nicholas, . • West Fairview. Harry Olewine, Hazleton. J. W. Ott Rocky Ridge, Md. Harry Sheely, Gettysburg. 1 Pearlie Shriver Fairplay. W. M. Shoop, . Colebrook. H. R. Smith, . . Chambersburg. C. G. Smith Beaver Springs. "^M. L. Smyser, Wellsville. W. R. Stahl, Hays Mills. Robert Stahle Gettysburg. -J. Emory Stockslager Funkstown, Md. Lillie Tipton ' Gettysburg. -{(. G. B. Trimmer, Union Bridge, Md. John Turnbach Hazleton. W. E. Weikert, Green Mount. 4 C. G. White, Manheim. Robin Wolf, Gettysburg. Preparatorians. Ralph Buehler, Gettysburg. James Burrell Williamsport. Howard Erdman, Macungie. Chas. W. Earnest, Mifflinburg. Roy Geesy, Altoona. George P. Grammer, Gettysburg. Harry Hardman, Littlestown. Chas. B. Kephart, Harney, Md. William Kepner, Gettysburg. J. W. Krafft Glenrock. John Le Fean, York. Blanche Minnich Gettysburg. 98 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. H. J. Musselman Fairfield. Naomi Myers, . . Gettysburg. J. Henry Raffensberger, Gettysburg. Norman H. Swartz, Gettysburg. Samuel F. Tholan, Merlin. Chas. H. Tilp, Myersdale. Carl Tipton, Gettysburg. Joseph Trimble, Ansoiiia. Geo. H. Watson, Fairfield. Charles Wendt, New York, N. Y. John Wendt New York, N. Y. Annie Wible, Gettysburg. Leland Wilson, Philadelphia. Guy Wisotzki Gettysburg. Samuel K. Yaukey, Fayetteville. Y. M. C. A. NOTES. The College Y. M. C. A. has begun the present school year under the most favorable circumstances. Being the only Christian organization among the students, it naturally expects the support and attendance of all. To make its success in religious work equal to that attained last year will be indeed a grand accomplishment, but why should we not exceed the amount of good done last year, and build up our Association in influence and numerical strength ? The reception to the new students, which took place in Recitation Hall, Friday evening, September 8th, was an exceptionally pleasant affair, and we believe was thoroughly enjoyed by all the persons present, especially by the new men. Short exercises were held in Philo. Hall previous to the serving of refreshments in the large room just below it. Mr. Ibach, '94, opened the exercises with a piano solo. Dr. Martin then led in prayer, after which Dr. Huber filled the place of President McKnight, who was unable to be present, in extending a cordial " Welcome to College." Then fol-lowed a banjo and guitar duet by Mr. Baum, '96, and Mr. Herr, '97. The President of the Association, Mr. C. F. Kloss, '94, then ex-tended a hearty welcome to the Y. M. C. A in a few appropriate words, urging all to great zealousness in the work. These exercises were concluded with a piano solo by Mr. Erb, '95. The effort which was put forth by the Reception Committee and. the old students in general to make the evening one of great enjoyment was well repaid. According to custom, the Biblical hour of the first Sabbath ' was given into the hands of the Y. M. C. A. The meeting was conducted by Rev. L. S. Black, '88, Pastor of the College Church, who addressed the students in Brua Chapel on the three-fold claims of the Chris-tian religion upon the college man. It was just such an address as a college boy needs before he begins the work of a new year, and was listened to with much appreciation by the entire student body. The first regular meeting of the Y. M. C. A. was held on September 14th at 7 p. M., when some considerations were presented " Why the New Men Should Join the Y. M. C. A.," by Mr. C. F. Kloss, Dr. Baugher, and a num-ber of the students. At the close of the meet-ing, some Association business was transacted, quite a number of new members were elected, and Mr. S. C. Burger, '95, was elected to fill the vacancy in the office of Corresponding Secretary. Bible classes are being formed among the students, and all are earnestly requested to identify themselves with the classes in " Bible Study." Many of the lecturers and musical organi-zations which have entertained us in former courses have been so delighted with their kind reception here that they are making ap-plications to the " Lecture Course Committee " for engagements on the coming course. Since the above was written, the Lecture Course Committee has selected its course for next term, which is superior in talent to any which has ever made its appearance before a Gettysburg .audience. The attractions will be "The Temple Quartette," Robert J. Burdette, John Temple Graves, Major Henry C. Dane, and the "John Thomas Concert Company," THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 99 with a possible engagement of " The Lotus Glee Club," or "The Mendelssohn Quintette," about the middle of November. The course will be looked forward to with great interest, and those who have never as yet enjoyed the pleasure of attending such a course will surely not be disappointed in this initial series. Of course everyone will attend. The subjects of the lectures to be delivered will be given in a succeeding number. GENERAL COLLEGE NEWS. The students at Amherst are making a big fight for the abolishing of compulsory chapel. The college senate recently unani-mously adopted a resolution asking the Faculty to abolish compulsory worship. The reso-lutions were vetoed by the president, Prof. Gates.— University Courier. President Schurman, of Cornell, recently made an eloquent address to the Freshman class, calling upon them to produce a crew that would be a credit to Cornell. Would that there were more professors in the college world like President Schurman, who can rec-ognize the value of student life to the Uni-versity he represents, and who lives among his students, not above them.— University Courier. The University of Chicago has the largest library of any American college; it contains over 225,000 volumes. Yale has 200,000 vol-umes, and Columbia, third in size, has 140,000. —Excliangc. Harvard has graduated fourteen Cabinet officers.—Red and Blue. A young colored lady took the first prize for the best entrance examination to Chicago University.—The College Forum. This year, Johns Hopkins, for the first time in-its history, conferred the degree of Ph. D. upon a woman. Miss Florence Bascom is the one thus honored.—Bates Student. As this is the time when many of the pre-paratory students are discussing the question as to whether or not it will pay them to join a literary society in college, the following from Hesperian will be of interest: " Every student intending to pursue a col-lege course should by all means join a literary society. It is in the literary work of these organizations that we put into use the learning acquired by the study of the class-room. One of the most important characteristics of an educated and refined personage should be ab-solute ease and grace of manner—the ability to impart the brilliancy of intellect to others in a fascinating, yet unaffected manner. The prac-tice afforded by society work is certainly a great help in the acquisition of ' address, man, address.' "—The Occident. A court has been established at Princeton, composed of under-graduates, to try men ac-cused of dishonorable conduct in examinations. The court was given power to impose penalties according to the nature of the offense.— Uni-versity News. Dartmouth is considering various plans of student self-government. The plan recently instituted at Cornell will probably be adopted with some slight modifications.—The Occi-dent. This year Tuft's College adds a course for the degree of A. B., which will substitute mod-ern languages for Latin and Greek.—Bates Student. The students in Iowa College have sub-scribed over $10,000 for a Y. M. C. A. build-ing.— Bates Student. The plan of college government at Wes-leyan, in which the under-graduates are ad-mitted to a share, has been definitely framed by the Faculty. Four Seniors, three Juniors, two Sophomores, and one Freshman will be associated with not more than five members of the Faculty.—Bates Student. IOO THE COLLEGE MERCURY. ALUMNI. FRANK E. FICKINGER, Editor. THE amount of matter in this department is unavoidably small for this issue, for which the editor makes due apology. It is not our purpose to slight our Alumni in any particular, and we promise, that in the future this department shall be given as much prominence as in the past. All communica-tions are thankfully received and greatly appreciated. '39. During the summer we noticed an ac-count of the tragic death of Rev. Philip Wil-lard, who was struck by a railroad train, near his home, at Mexico, Pa., along with his little grandson Allen, both of whom died within a few hours after the sad catastrophe. Father Willard was for many years at the head of the Tressler Orphans' Home, at Loysville, Pa., and his memory will ever be most fondly cherished by not a few of our Alumni. '42. Rev. Henry Baker, D. D., celebrated his golden wedding, in the First Lutheran Church of Altoona, Pa., on August 25th, 1893, of which church Rev. Baker was pastor for thirty years. '42. Grace Lutheran Church, of Round-town, York County, Pa., Rev. M. J. Alleman, D. D., pastor, was dedicated on Sunday, September 10th. Services were held all day, and the pastors of York assisted the pastor in the feast of dedication. The church is only a few miles from York. '53. Rev. Peter Bergstresser, D. D., has ac-cepted a call to Rockwood, Somerset County, Pa. He is already on the ground. '57. The Elmira, N. Y., Gazette and Freie Presse, of September 5th, contains a very full sketch of the life of Prof. H. L. Baugher, D.D. '57. Hagerstown Female Seminary, Rev. C. L. Keedy, M. D., principal, has had, since [853, about 5,000 students in attendance from all over the country. The total number of graduates is 318. This next year it will have a faculty of 18. '63. Dr. G. U. Wenner will complete the 25 th anniversary of his entrance into the min-istry, in November next, and, at the same time, Christ Lutheran Church, of which he is the honored pastor, will celebrate the 25th an-niversary of its founding. '65. Rev. J. W. Henderson was installed as pastor of the First Lutheran Church, of Phil-lipsburg, Pa., on Sunday, August 27th. The charge to the pastor was delivered by Rev. E. E. Hoshour, of Bellefonte, Pa., and the charge to the people by Rev. Chas. B. Gruver, '73, of Lock Haven, Pa. '70. The Rev. G. F. Behringer has declined the Professorship of Dogmatic Theology in the German Theological Seminary, at Chicago, to which he was elected by the Board some time ago. '70. Rev. S. A. Ziegenfuss, A. M., of Ger-mantown, Pa., delivered the opening address to the students of Muhlenberg College, Allen-town, Pa., on September 7th. '70. Rev. J. T. Gladhill, of Jersey Shore, Pa., spent a few days of the past week in town, visiting friends and relatives, leaving on the 21st inst. '71. At a meeting of the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, held in Har-risburg, Pa., September 4th, Rev. Dr. William H. Dunbar was elected a member of the Ex-ecutive Committee. '72. Rev. W. A. Trostle has resigned the Boalsburg, Pa., pastorate and will leave there October 1st. '72. Rev. W. E. Fischer left his charge at Centre Hall, Pa., September 14th, and has gone to Shamokin, Pa. '72. The address of Rev. Sylvanus Stall, editor of the Lntlicran Observer, is changed from 2127 Gratz to 1468 North Fifty-fifth Street, Philadelphia. '74. Rev. F. W. Staley, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Middletown, Pa., is on a visit to the World's Fair. A check to pay his expenses was left at the National Bank at Middletown by three sisters, who. are now in the city of Chicago. This was an unexpected surprise to Mr. Staley, and he appreciates the generous gift with profound gratitude. '74. Rev. W. L. Remsberg, Beatrice, Neb., publishes a neat and attractive parish paper, Trinity Lutheran Quarterly. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. IOI '74. During the summer Rev. J. B. Focht dedicated his new church at Lewistown, Pa. 'jy. Rev. W. L. Seabrook, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Abilene, Kan., was elected President of the Law and Order League of that city, and recently preached two very powerful sermons there on " Shameful Reve-nues." 'yj. Rev. J. J. Young, D. D., late of Rich-mond, Ind., preached his first sermon as pastor of St. John's, New York city, on Sunday, September 3d. '■jy. Prof. G. W. Gross is this year Principal of the York County Academy, in which insti-tution he had formerly held the position of teacher for a number of years. '80. The Independent for August 17th has an excellent article from Rev. C. W. Heisler, of Denver, entitled "A Voice from Denver." '80. Rev. L. B. Wolf sailed for India on September 13th,by the steamship " Majestic," of the White Star Line. He will again en-gage in his missionary labors, his family re-maining here at Gettysburg. '84. A Pittsburgh paper of September 6th contained the item that Rev. H. L. Yarger, of Lawrence, Kan., has been called to Braddock, Pa. '85. Rev. A. S. Fichthorn, at present secre-tary of the Y. M. C. A. at Tyrone, Pa., has declined a pressing call to the Brushton Ave-nue Church, Pittsburgh, Pa. '85. The address of Rev. H. M. Heilman is changed from Barlow, Md., to 214 Second Avenue, Altoona, Pa. '85. We were pleased to see on the campus recently, Rev. E. G. Miller, of Easton, Pa. During his absence from home, we understand, his church has been repaired and the interior handsomely decorated. '85. Rev. E. E. Hoshour's new church at Bellefonte, Pa., was dedicated on September 3d with imposing ceremonies, in which Presi-dent McKnight and Dr. Wolf took part. '86. Rev. J. G. Traver has been elected Prin-cipal of Hartwick Seminary. '87. After a long and continued illness of over eight months, Rev. Cyrus G. Focht died at his home at Centerville, Pa., on Sunday, September 17th. '87. Dr. I. N. Snively was recently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Medi-cine— quite a distinguished honor—on which we congratulate the doctor heartily. '88. Rev. J. M. Francis, pastor of the Fourth Lutheran Church of Louisville, Ky., has been called to the Lutheran Church of Columbia City, Ind., recently served by Rev. C. H. Rockey. He has accepted the call. '88. Rev. John J. Hill has resigned at West Camp, N. Y., to accept a unanimous call from the English Lutheran Church at Canal Dover, O. He will enter upon his labors there about the middle of October. '89. St. John's Lutheran Church near Bar-tonsville, Pa., Rev. Cyrus E. Held, pastor, was dedicated solemnly to the worship of Almighty God on Sunday, August 6th. The dedicatory sermon was preached from Psalm lxxxiv, 1, by Rev. Charles E. Hay, pastor of St. Mat-thew's Lutheran Church, of Allentown, Pa., and President of the Eastern Conference of the East Pennsylvania Synod. The General Secretary of Church Extension had charge of the finances, and under his management all the debt was provided for, and the church dedicated free of all incumbrances. '89. Rev. W. L. Rutherford has resigned as pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Steel-ton, Pa., to take effect October 1st. '89. John R. Scott is the Republican nomi-nee of Adams County for the office of District Attorney. '90. Rev. H. C. Bixler, the new pastor at Manchester, has taken unto himself a good Lutheran helpmeet. We offer congratulations and best wishes. '90. Mr. Charles Foger, of Harrisburg, Pa., has been chosen professor of chemistry in the High School of that city. '90. The new pastor of Trinity charge, Rev. Fred. Geesey, has entered the field and is busily at work. At Stoverstown, he has started a class of over thirty catechumens. - He has moved his family to Spring Grove. 102 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. '90. The Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette of Monday, August 28th, gives an excellent ab-stract of a sermon by Rev. S. T. Nicholas, on " Christian Contentment." '90. Rev. G. H. Reen, late of the Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., has begun his work as pastor of St. Luke's, Mansfield, O. '90. Rev. H. C. Reller, a recent graduate of Gettysburg Seminary, has accepted a call to the Lutheran church at Freeport, Pa., and en-tered upon his duties there the first Sunday of September. '90. Rev. W. J. Wagner, of Center Hall, Pa., a member of the last Senior Class in the Gettysburg Seminary, has been engaged to supply the Center Hall charge until a pastor shall be secured. '90. Mr. S. B. Martin left on the 25th of September for Yale, where he will enter the present Senior Class. Mr. Martin graduated last June from the Yale Law School, receiving the degree of Master of Laws. '90. Geo. W. Rowe is teaching in the High School at Muncy, Pa. '91. Mr. Wm. Hersh, of this city, after hav-ing recently passed a very creditable final ex-amination, was admitted to practice in the courts of Adams County. '91. J. Bradley Markward, of the Seminary, supplied the pulpit of Rev. W. E. Stahler, '80, at Shippensburg, Pa., during the vacation of the latter this summer. '91. Mr. A. C. Stup, who has been working up a new mission at Riverside, Cal, during the summer, arrived at his home in Frederick, Md., ' on 22d of September, and will soon resume his ' duties in the Seminary here. '92. Rev. F. D. Hesse visited Taneytown, on September 3d, and preached twice for Rev. McSherry, soliciting funds for the new church which is in process of erection at Brunswick, Md., quite a sum being realized. '92. Mr. E. O. Keen has entered the Ger-man Reformed Seminary at Lancaster, Pa. '93. A majority of the members of the class of '93 have returned to the Seminary. Of those who have not, we have been able, in part, to learn the whereabouts. Mr. Bortner is clerking in his father-in-law's store, at York, Pa.; N. L. J.Gron, W. J. Gies, J. F. Kempfer, and R. R. Miller enter Yale; H. E. Gettier, F. G Turner, and F. S. Hedges enter Johns Hopkins University; and A. S. Hain is Assist-ant Professor of German in Hartwick Semi-nary. FHATE-R/NITy 7NOTES. PAUL W. ROLLER, Editor. PHI KAPPA PSI. We are glad to welcome back Bro. R. E. Miller, '94. Bro. Reitzell, '94, was not able to return to college on account of sickness. Bro. Russell, '95, has left college to engage in business with his father. Bro. S. Duncan, '91, is engaged in post-graduate work at Harvard. Bro. R. R. Miller, '93, is continuing his studies at Yale. Bro. G. Frank Turner, '93, is pursuing a post-graduate course at Johns Hopkins. Bro. E. S. Duncan, '82, is the Democratic nominee for district attorney of Adams County. PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bro. S. B. Martin,'90, is spending a'few days at home. He will return to Yale at the opening of the session, and enter the Senior Class. Bro. Miller, '83, is visiting his father-in-law, Dr. Valentine. Bros. Anstadt,'90, Knubel, and Neudewitz, '93, have entered the Seminary; Bros. Fair, '94, Madara, and Hoffman, '95, failed to return at the opening of the session. Bro. Fair is teaching at Altoona. Bro. Madara will enter the Medical Department of the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania. Bro. Hoffman will enter Yale. Bros. Shaar and Hoffer represented the local THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 103 chapter at the Phi Gamma Delta banquet at the World's Fair. The fraternity enjoyed the exclusive right of the New York State build-ing for the evening. PHI DELTA THETA. Bro. A. S. Cook, '95, who enters Princeton this year, spent a few days among his friends at the college, at the opening of the college year. Bro. G. H. Eckels, '95, was initiated into the mystic order, September 16th. Bro. Ehrhart, '93, is engaged in the whole-sale grocery business at Hanover. Bro. Brallier, '93, is principal of the Berlin Public Schools. Bro. Lantz, '94, won the Junior oratorical prize, contested for during Commencement week. Bro. Van Camp, '94, received the Hassler Latin medal for the best scholarship in Latin. Bros. Maynard and Eckels, '95, are on the editorial staff of the Spectrum. Bro. Gettierj '93, will enter Johns Hopkins for the purpose of pursuing a course in medi-cine. Bro. J. K. Cook preached in the Methodist Church of this place, September 10th. Bro. Forney, '96, was initiated September 23d. Bro. Peffer, of Allegheny, made our chap-ter a very pleasant visit September 16th. Bro. Hoick, of the Seminary, has been sup-plying St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Asheville, N. C, during the summer. ALPHA TAU OMEGA. Alpha Upsilon begins the new year with 11 brothers. Bro. Bortner, '93, is engaged in business in York, Pa. Bro. Vastine, '93, is teller in the Catawissa National Bank, Catawissa, Pa. Bro. Hipsley, '93, is engaged in business in Baltimore, Md. Bro. Joe S. Hay, '95, enters the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania. Bro. Ammon, '93, is studying law in York, Pa. Bro. White Hutton, '97, was initiated June 22d of last term. Alpha Upsilon made an addition to the fur-niture of their hall in the shape of a pool and billiard table. ATHLETICS. HENRY E. CLARE, Editor. THOSE interested in athletics can certainly feel gratified by the promising prospects for the coming season. Probably no collegiate year in the history of the college has opened so auspiciously as the present. Enthusiasm sways the boys ; and the one absorbing topic is foot-ball. The new men are interested as well as the old. All await with eager expec-tations the coming games as tests of the mate-rial in hand, hoping, and with much confidence, that they will rather raise the interest to a higher pitch than lower it. From present in-dications, we feel that the confidence has not been misplaced, but that the coming season will add fresh laurels to those already won by former teams. The new men have furnished much promis-ing material for the team, and by it the vacant places are being creditably filled. Under the able direction of Manager Kloss, quite a number of games have been arranged, some of which promise to be more than ordi-narily interesting. Below is a list of scheduled games together with some probable ones : September 30th, at Ithaca, N. Y., CORNELL UNIVERSITY VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. 104 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. October 4th, at Philadelphia, Pa. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. October nth,at Carlisle, Pa. DICKINSON COLLEGE VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. ((ctober 141I1, at Getiysburg, Pa. FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. October 21st, at Lewisburg, Pa. BUCKNELL VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. October 28th, at Harrisburg, Pa. WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. November 4th, at Gettysburg, Pa. DICKINSON COLLEGE VS. GETTYSBURG COLLEGE. The probable games are Haverford, Swarth-more, a second game with Franklin and Mar-shall College, and Baltimore City College on Thanksgiving. In view of these approaching games the team is getting into trim by daily practice and training-table diet, the practice offered by the scrub teams becoming at times very formidable. A second team will be organized in the course of a few days. Considering the material from which choice is to be made, it is likely that a very good team will be selected. An effort will be made to arrange games with distant teams. The Gettysburg base-ball team, wishing to try its luck against a college nine, made its wish known, and was gratified. The regular college team having disbanded, a team was made up, consisting of four old players and five new ones. . The game was played on September 16th, resulting in a victory for the college by a score of 7 to 1. The game was a very interesting one, and many fine plays were made by both teams. The fielding was exceptionally strong. Judging from the dis-play of skill by the new men in this game, we look forward to an excellent team next year. The college can boast of four or five good pitchers and much other good material. At a recent meeting of the Athletic Asso-ciation, Messrs. Roller, Keefer, Moser, and Aukerman were placed on the Board of Con-trol. ■ At the same meeting it was decided to pro-cure the services of a " coach " for the foot-ball team, but at present such services arc very ably performed by Mr. Harry Buehler, of Gettysburg, and Mr. Gehrhart, an ex- Lehigh man. Under their directions, the team is learning a little more of the science of foot-ball. As we go to print one of the Athletic Asso-ciation officers informs us that a large number of names will be proposed for membership at the next meeting. It is gratifying to notice this evidence of interest on the part of the new men, and it is to be hoped that the old students ■who have not as yet identified themselves with the Athletic Association will follow their ex-ample. If we are to make any great headway, every one must co-operate with the Athletic Association. With such glorious prospects for good work, it is anything but pleasing to report that not a cent has been added to the athletic field fund. It was earnestly hoped that the means proposed last spring for raising funds would be successful, but it appears that no attempt has been made. This is the pressing need at present, and, if any friend of the insti-tution wishes to make his.name illustrious, let him remember us in our need and do the deed of beneficence. TOWN A/NTD S EMI /N TVRLj. ROSCOE C. WRIGHT, Editor. c TOWN. OL. OWEN, of the Quartermaster-Gen-eral's Department, was in town about the middle of the month completing arrange-ments for marking the forty regular commands. An iron tablet will be erected at the location of each, and when Congress appropriates sufficient funds these iron tablets will be re- THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 105 [placed by monuments. A cannon will be placed at each of the twenty-five battery posi-tions, and granite posts will be erected at the [corner of each lot. The dedication of the Minnesota monument has been postponed until July of next year, in order to secure a sufficient appropriation for the transportation of veterans. Duvall's Federal Cavalry, attached to the Purnell Legion of Maryland, held its Fourth Annual Reunion at the Washington House, September 16th. One hundred and twenty-five veterans of the Thirteenth New Jersey Infantry arrived here on the i8th, on a special train. A camp-fire was held in the court-house, at which a number of speeches were made. The Gettysburg Land Improvement Com-pany has laid out two streets at the foot of Seminary Ridge. One of these is called Hay Street, after the late Dr. C. A. Hay. Mrs. Sarah R. Hay, widow of the late Dr. Chas. A. Hay, has moved from Gettysburg to Harrisburg, to reside with her son, Dr. John W. Hay. SEMINARY. Dr. Wolf delivered the address at the lay-ing of the corner-stone of the St. James Luth-eran Chapel, at Frederick, Md., September 17th. Dr. Richard supplied the pulpit of Dr. A. W. Lilly; of York, on Sunday, September 17th. Drs. McKnight and Valentine preached at the dedication of the Lutheran Church at McSherrystown, September 24th. At the Religious Congress, held in Chicago September 13th, Dr. Valentine read a paper on " The Harmonies and Distinctions in the Theistic Teachings of the Various Historic Faiths." He was introduced as the distin-guished professor in the great Church of the Reformation—the Lutheran Church. He compared the universal beliefs in a God, and gave the monotheistic conception of a God, the conception of a divine personality, the cre-ative idea, the ethical conception, and the re-demptive view. The Chicago Inter-Ocean de-voted considerable space to his paper, which it considered an able and scholarly address. Rev. Prof. Richard has been appointed cura-tor of the Historical Society. The Seminary opened • Tuesday, the 19th. Dr. Valentine presided at the opening service. Dr. Wolf delivered an address upon " The Encouragements for Young Men to Study for the Lutheran Ministry." In the afternoon of the same day, Dr. Billheimer was installed Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exe-gesis. Rev. Boyer, President of the Board of Directors, presided, and delivered the installa-tion address. There are in the Seminary 23 Seniors, 25 Middlers, and 25 Juniors. LITE-R7VRy SOCIETIES. WALDO D. MAYNARD, Editor. THE interest shown in the societies at the opening of the term was very marked; . may it continue throughout the year. Let the enthusiasm be kept up, for there is no depart-ment which affords a better opportunity for practical work. The work performed in the societies and the debating clubs develops self-reliance in the student, and one who does his work faithfully is preparing himself for more usefulness than he would be able to render to the world without such a training. How often we find well-educated men who are unable to make a speech ! Why ? Simply because they have never been trained in this especial line, and consequently do not make as useful citizens as some who have accustomed them-selves to public speaking in their early training. In view of the great importance of the work done in the literary societies, we would urge every new man to become a member of one of the societies, and join early in the term, just as io6 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. soon as he has determined from which of the two societies he may be able to derive the most benefit. It would seem to be needless to remind the older members to invite others to come to the meeting, yet we were informed that last year there were good men who were never asked to join a society. Possibly this may have been an oversight, but it shows that we might be more active in our society work. We would not only advise the new men to connect themselves with a literary society, but also to join one of the debating clubs, since they afford an opportunity for one to do better work in the societies themselves. Following a long-established custom, the Adams County Teachers' Institute has pre-pared a series of evening entertainments to be given in connection with the Institute held in Gettysburg during Thanksgiving week. The enterprise of those in charge in affording us such a literary treat is to be commended. All of the speakers are known outside of our own State, many of them being even of national repute. The lecture of Will Carleton will be beyond doubt the main attraction of the series, and many will avail themselves of this rare opportunity of hearing one of America's widely read and highly appreciated poets. The following is a complete list of speakers : Monday Evening, . Tuesday Evening, . Wednesday Evening Thursday Evening, . Friday Evening, . . DR. L. B. SrERRY. WILL CARLETON. THEO. F. CLARK. . MRS. H. E. MONROE. I.OVETT'S BOSTON STARS. The music for the week will be furnished by the musical organizations of the college, which expect to be in good working order by that time and ready for anything along their line. PHRENA. NOTES. A very interesting programme was rendered on the evening of September 15th, consisting of instructive and entertaining essays upon im-portant subjects of the day. Phrena. intends having a series of meetings to be known as historical evenings, when his-torical subjects of importance and interest will be taken up. The first subject to be considered is the " American Revolution," October 6th. The society hopes by this course to awaken an interest in an important topic which is often considered dull and uninteresting. The following are the officers of the society: President, Barndt; Vice-President, Hartman; Recording Secretary, Jones ; Corresponding Secretary, Spayde; Librarian, Maynard; As-sistant Librarian, Brubaker; Treasurer, Miller; Monitor, Wright. The following have been elected members of the society: Hollinger, Bell,'95 ; Wolf, '97, and Duck, '97. Mr. Hartman, '95, has been elected one of the editors of THE MERCURY in the place of Cook, '95, who goes to Princeton. The following have been elected officers of I Phrena. Debating Club: President, Miller; Vice-President, Moser; Secretary, Spayde; Treasurer, Diehl. PHILO. NOTES. The society gave an exceedingly interesting literary and musical treat at its first meeting of the term. The society for the present will continue its series of" Authors' evenings," which have been found to be so interesting and profitable. American authors only will be considered during this term, the first one to be discussed is Bryant; The following have been elected members of the society: Mohn, '95; Heindel, '96; Swartz, '96 ; Olewine, '97 ; McCartney, '97; Culp, '97; Englar, '97; Sigafoos, '94, and Fassold, '95. Philo. Debating Club has organized with the following officers : President, Brosius ; Vice- President, Byers ; Treasurer, Loudon ; Secre-tary, Crilly ; Critic, Manifold. ADVERTISEMENTS. Wanamaker's. Sporting goods of every sort. Sporting wear of every sort—Goats, Trousers, Caps and such a gathering of Shoes for every indoor or outdoor game :n as was never before seen in America, And Wanamaker prices—as low as anybody's, very likely lower than any-where else. ATALANTA was the swiftest girl of antiquity. The myth has come true to-day in a Wheel. Our ATALANTA is a Bicycle as fast, as strong, as simple as any on the market; faster, stronger, simpler, safer, better than most of the " first-class" machines. And lighter—weight 30^ lbs. But the best part is the price—$120 for a bang-up $150 Bicycle ! JOHN WANAMAKER. SEND FOR CATALOGUE OF - FOR - yOUfSG ^T5S> NEAR. BALTIMORE, lylD. This widely known, thoroughly equipped, and extensively patronized School will open its 41st Annual Sesson, Sept. 13th, 1893. PROFESSIONAL CARDS. All the Departments of a High Grade Seminary. CtfA*?IiES S. DU^CA]*, '82, ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW, Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. CHAS. E. STRH^E, '87, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, Biiltimoi-e Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. DR. CHAS, B. STOUFFER, OFFICE, STAR AND SENTINEL BUILDING, GETTYSBURG. PA. \ , fiber's Dr^ Store, Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PA. Prescriptions Carefully Compounded. ISatest Stylcs i*l Hats, Shoes, AND Gents' furnishings, R. M. ELLIOTTS. N. B.—Stiff Hats made to Fit the Head in two minutes. A; D. BUEHLER&CO., Headquarters for Bs©Ks a^d Brags, Stationery and Blank Books. Address, Rev. J. H. TURNER, A. M., Principal, LUTHERVILLE, MD. LOWEST CASH PRICES. VI ADVERTISEMENTS. DECKER BROTHERS' PIANOS. Absolute Evenness of Touch, Richness and Brilliancy of Tone, Extraordinary Singing Quality, Unequaled Workmanship, Power of Standing in Tune longer than any other Piano made, are among the characteristic qualities of DECKER BROS. PIANOS, 33 Union Square, Jieixx York. Used in Philo. Hall at Gettysburg College. GO TO C.A.BLOCHER'S Jecueli*y Stove fot» Souvenir * Spoons, ^ Sword * PTVins, &c. ReparWng a specraTty. DEEKA Fine Stationery and Engraving House, 1121 Chestnut St., Philadelphia. COLLEGE INVITATIONS CLASS STATIONERY SOCIETY STATIONERY PROGRAMMES, BADGES WEDDING INVITATIONS VISITING CARDS BANQUET MENUS DIPLOMAS AND MEDALS Post Office Conor, Centre Square. STEEL PLATE ENGRAVING FOR FRATERNITIES, CLASSES AND COLLEGE ANNUALS. All work is executed in the establishment under the personal supervis-ion of Mr. Dreka, and only in the best manner, Unequaled facilities and long practical experience enable us to produce the newest styles and most artistic effects, while our reputation is a guarantee of the quality of the productions of this house. ADVERTISEMENTS. VII R. H. REININGER, Merchant * Tailor. )K ^ X X THE BEST WORK AT THE LOWEST PRICES. Suits from $12.00 to $40.00. Pants from $4.00 to $12.00. NEXT DOOR TO POST OFFICE, UP-STAIRS. CENTRAL SQUARE. PETE THORNE, Shaving $ Hair Cutting Parlors. FI-RST CLASS 7VRTISTS. CENTRAL SQUARE. FLEMMING & TROXEL, Billiard AND Pool 'Rooms. BALTIMORE STREET. RJVIOS ECKE^T, DEALER IN Hats, Shirts, Shoes, Ties, Umbrellas, Gloves, Satchels, Hose, Pocket Books, Trunks, Telescopes, Rubbers, Etc., Etc. AMOS ECKERT. SPECIAL! TO STUDENTS. Fine Tailoring. JOSEPH JACOBS, Merchant Tailor, Chambersburg Street, (Mow Eagle Hotel) GETTYSBURG, PA. Red Front Cigar Store R. H. RUPP, Proprietor. |4o. 8 fialtimore St., Gettysburg. The place for a fine Cigar or a good chew. Solid Havana filler, 5 for 25c. An elegant article. A FINE ASSORTMENT OF PIPES AND SMOKING MIXTURES. ^■■■^■■■^■■■B V1I1 ADVERTISEMENTS. ESTABLISHED 1876. PE/N-ROSE MgE-RS, JEWELER. Ltapge Stock of LUatches, Clocks, Jeuiclfy, etc., on Hand. That Man is Out GETTYSBURG SOUVENIR SPOONS. COLLEGE SOUVENIR SPOONS. 10 BALTIMORE STREET, GETTYSBURG, PA. Students' Headquarters IS AT J. R. STINE S, SON'S CLOTHING STORE The Cheapest Clothing and Gents' Furnishings in Gettysburg. WHO BUYS HIS BASE BALL, . BICYCLE, . . LAWN TENNIS ^2^ <-^ OUTING, YACHTING AND BOATING ELSEWHERE SUPPLIES, . THAN AT . A. Q. SPALDING & BROS. CHICAOO, NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, TO8 Madison St. 243 Broadway, 1032 Chestnut St. MERCHANT TAILORING A SPECIALTY. COME AND SEE US. J. R. STINE & SON, THE LEADING CLOTHIERS, MAIN STREET, GETTYSBURG, PA. DnTTLETIELD LlVEKT. Rear of Washington House, Opposite W. M. R. R. Depot. GETTYSBURG, PA. m^r. All Kinds of Teams. Good Riding Horses. -:o:- The Battlefield a Specialty, With First-Class Guides. DAVID McCLEARY, Prop.

The College Metcufy. VOL. IV. GETTYSBURG, PA., NOVEMBER, 1896. No. 7. THE COLLEGE MEftCUfiT, Published each month during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STAFF. Editor: ROBBIN B. WOLF, '37- Associate Editors : LEWIS C. MANGES, '97. ED. W. MEISENH ELDER, SAMUEL J. MILLER '97. CHARLES T. LARK '98. JOHN W. OTT, '97. CHARLES H. TILP, '98. E. L. KOLLEK, '98. Alumni Association Editor: REV. D. FRANK GARLAND, A. M., Baltimore, Md. Business Manager: HARRY R, SMITH, '97. Assistant Business Manager: JOHN E. MEISENHELDER, '97. Tvi>»a. J0ne 1EKMS volume (ten months). -\Slngle copies Payable in advance. $i.no .15 All Students are requested to hand us matter for publication The Alumni and ex-members or the College will lavor us by sending information concerning their whereabouts or any items they may think would he interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the business manager. Matter intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address, THE COLLEGE MERCURY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EDITORIALS, - - - ■ - 97 "GETTYSBURG CLUB" AT YALE, - 100 "PREP," 103 COLLEGE LOCALS, . - 104 BOOK REVIEW, . 106 ALUMNI NOTES, -.-. --- 107 ATHLETIC NOTES, 109 TOWN AND SEMINARY NOTES, --- no FRATERNITY NOTES, m LITERARY SOCIETIES, . --- . - 112 EDITORIAL. IN the Franklin and Marshal Weekly for October 21st, appears a caustic criticism on the Gettysburg vs. F. and M. foot-ball game. It is anonymous, but it was evidently written by one who saw nothing of the game and knew less. It starts with saying, "Our team made an obstinate stand and brave fight against G. College as a whole." A huge faori-cation to start with. Fleven men only opposed them. No one except players and officials were allowed within the lines. "As a whole" maj' insinuate something bad concerning the officials. If any official showed partiality, it must have been their own man. Mr. Kump, the Gettysburg umpire is a conscientious and upright man, a student in the Theological Seminary, and there is no one who could have filled the position more honorably or more im-partially. "The 'Varsity was the constant mark of offensive derision and extreme disre-spect at the hands of many of the spectators and the substitutes on the side lines." This is a great exaggeration. No team ever re-ceived more gentlemanly treatment on our field. Cessna was the only F. and M. player that was guyed and he well deserved it. Another imaginary statement was, "Gettys-burg played a game which was characterized by holding, slugging and off-side playing." This was evidently copied from some dime novel and sounded well, so the writer put it in to fill up. Then, too, it said, "We condemn that reckless spirit which will resort to indecent and unsportsmanlike methods to accomplish its end." So do we. Such a thing would never be tolerated by the students or the Fac-ulty of Gettysburg College. We claim to be decent and gentlemanly, and denounce and re-press anything indecent or ungentlemanly. The article is so inconsistent with the talk of 98 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. the F. and M. players themselves. Manager Garhard personally thanked our Manager for the excellent entertainment. Hosterman, their injured player, will never forget the tender care given him, which was forsooth the cause of his speedy recovery. While we believe in manly emulation, we are grieved to think that college men have not realized the fact that both teams can not win. Rather let defeat be an inducement to gain the victory next time. * * WE publish this month the article entitled, "Reminiscences of Prep," sent us by a man signing himself "An Alumnus." There will hardly be space to publish an account of his whole college career. While we may be glad to publish portions of it, we can and will not do it unless he sends us his name, not neces-sarily for publication. He may write over a nom deplume, but it is against editorial rules to publish anything unless the author is known. The article was published this month ex gratia but we will delay all others until the name is known. * * * COMMUNICATIONS sent us this month by Alumni as to their whereabouts were wel-comed. It is to be hoped that many others will imitate them. It is impossible for the ed-itors to know of the movements and fortunes of all the Alumni. If you have any personal items send them on. * * *. WE unwittingly neglected to mention the new professors in our last issue. Rev. Oscar G. Klinger, Professor of the Greek Language, Clyde B. Stover, assistant in the Laboratory, and Luther P. Eisenhart, instructor in Prep. All of them are graduates of our Alma Mater and are giving general satisfaction in their re-spective positions. The MERCURY wishes them success in their work. THE recent action of the leading Medical Universities, requiring an applicant for admis-sion to be an A. B., is well worth notice. The main object of this action is to keep office boys out of the profession, that is, to have only thoroughly educated men as doctors. Physi-cians are not held in the same estimation to-day as they were formerly, and this is largely due to the fact that the authorities at the vari-ous colleges and universities have been too lenient, granting diplomas, etc., ex gratia. Boys who have not been able to keep up with their classes in colleges and academies, go to medical schools, receive their diplomas, and then undertake to cure all the ills that flesh is heir to. Few things are more sacred than this office and every advance which tends to place this work in the hands of only competent men is to be commended. BY the time this copy of the MERCURY reaches you, the next President of the United States will have been elected. Very little en-thusiasm is shown hereabouts this year, com-pared with other presidential elections. This is probably due to the great sound money ma-jority among the college boys. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that most of the boys are minors. There are so few silverites here that there is not as much cause for party spirit. The students used to hold political meetings, make eloquent speeches and make various lu-dicrous bets. Perhaps the spirit is latent, daily increasing, ready to break forth in all its glory when the result is known. * * * THE foot-ball game between Lafayette and University of Pennsylvania on the 24th, strik-ingly illustrated the disastrous effects of over confidence. Self reliance is one of the noblest attributes, but over confidence is sure to work injury to any cause. The U. P. team was so sure of victory that they thought practice was unnecessary. Compelled to practice, they merely went through the form, being sure of their positions on the teaiji and confident that Lafayette would be "easy." Lafayette, on the other hand, knew they must play a hard game THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 99 and therefore practiced faithfully. The game was played and the University team, represent-ing several thousand, succumbed to the team representing a college of several hundred. Our team should take note of this and profit by their example. OUR foot-ball enthusiasts might learn a needed lesson from their neighbor at Carlisle. Our first team is willing to practice, but often there is no second team out. We are told that from thirty to fifty men in uniform are on the field every night at Dickinson, and from them is picked a team well worthy to cope with the first "eleven." OUR LARGE ADDITIONS.—In these times of financial distress throughout the country our college is to be congratulated on the large ad-ditions made to the student body at the open-ing of the scholastic year. Reports from the various colleges throughout the land indicate a reduction in the number of recruits—some colleges having only about the usual number, while others report less. On the contrary this will be the banner year for Pennsylvania Col-lege, having the largest Freshman class in her history and the largest number in the Prepar-atory Department ever registered at the open-ing of the year. Midland, too, and Carthage have larger additions than ever before and Wittenberg holds her own. All this speaks well for the education of our Lutheran boys and for the •colleges of the Lutheran church. Our people believe in the higher education o'f their sons and they have faith in the colleges of the church. G. * * PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.—So we write it now, for the name of the great institution has been changed. Princeton has just passed its sesqui-centennial, which attracted the atten-tion of the entire world of letters. The great scholars of Europe crossed the sea and joined with the great men of America in doing honor to this institution of learning. Perhaps never before in the history of America has there been gathered such a body of distinguished men. There were men from England, Ire-land, Scotland, France, Holland, Germany and Greece^ Some of the leading educators, governors, literateurs and editors of this coun-try were present. Mr. Cleveland also was a distinguished guest, and the chief speaker of the occasion. His theme was, "The duties and responsibilities that college men owe to the cause of good government." President Patton reported the gifts, on this occasion, to the institution to be more than a million and a quarter dollars. It is worth}' of note that un-der present conditions the cause of education should be so generously supported. A rather long list of celebrities were honored in the con-ferring of degrees. In the list were some of the great men of Lutheran Germany. We ex-tend our hearty congratulations to Princeton University and trust that long before Pennsyl-vania College has reached her sesqui-centennial year Princeton will have the pleasure of re-turning congratulations to Gettysburg Uni-versity. G. # * * "THE ETHICS OF WORK."—Work has an ethical element. It is not something to be shunned. It is not an evil to be avoided, but a privilege to be accepted. It is a part of the Moral law, "Six days shalt thou labor." Idle-ness degenerates—work develops manhood and womanhood. It is not as some write, "a badge of inferiority," but it is a sign of super-iority. Christ, who came as the highest rev-elation of the Father, took his place at the work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. Out of the necessity of work are begotten un-told blessings both to the race and to the indi-vidual. It is therefore a serious mistake to court idleness and to seek to be "saved from work." There seems to be in our day a wide-spread anxiety to escape from work. Too many are asking for "the minimum of labor for the maximum of remuneration." Thou-sands seek the "short-cut road" to riches and to the rewards of work and effort. Too few ioo THE COLLEGE MERCURY. are willing to tread the slow and weary road our fathers trod to success. This spirit of "short-cut" search for treasure has effected our educational work. Here, too, is mani-fested anxiety to get the maximum of reward for the minimum of toil. Too many seek the short-cut road to graduation and the diploma, in their anxiety to be saved from work. Too many take the short-cut road to the prepara-tion of lessons and "ride" into the recitation hour. They save themselves the drudgery of toil, but they lose the blessings of work and carry with them at graduation, too much of diploma and too little of true learning. "Hon-est toil" is the thing needed most in educa-tional methods. The men whom the world honors most are the men who have toiled hardest. The leaders in thought and in en-deavor are. the men who have not sought to be "saved from work" but who have cheerfully and honestly accepted the righteousness of God's command, "Six days shalt thou labor." G. " GETTYSBURG CLUB " AT YALE. • NEW HAVEN, CONN., NOV. 2, 1896. To THE EDITOR OF THE MERCURY : The October issue of your journal, if you will allow me to comment upon it, was found to be unusually interesting and, I am satisfied, has been read with more than ordinary pleas-ure by all of your patrons, in the college as well as out of it. The welcome news con- [OUR readers are to be congratulated on hav-ing presented to them, in this issue, the fol-lowing very readable letter of Win. J. Gies, '93. He is at present pursuing a special course of studies at the Sheffield Biological Department of Yale University, and is well-known as a true Gettysburg College man. He was instrumental in the change of the name of our college and in the betterment of our ath-letics. It is to be hoped that other alumni will follow his example and favor us with in-teresting contributions. —ED.] veyed by the "List of New Students," and by your enthusiastic editorial references thereto, has indeed been of a most gratifying character and suggests the hope that the numerical strength of the classes at Gettysburg will steadily increase, year after year. Every member of the class of '93 is very, very proud (pardon our egotism) of the distinction which membership in that largest, let me say most famous, of Gettysburg classes confers, but each of us, I believe, has long since gladly bowed his acknowledgments to the bright, brawn}', brainy Jioys of 1900 and will, here-after, constantly hope that, in their course through Gettysburg, the present Freshmen, as a class, will establish an unprecedentedly brilliant record in every line of commendable activity and, on the whole, make an impres-sion, upon the history of the college, so deep and so decided as to completely subordinate all the great achievements of the class of classes -93- Your editorial reference to the recent action of the Athletic Association in regard to the resolution upon "pure athletics" at Gettys-burg, reopens and, at the same time, an-nounces the satisfactory settlement of a ques-tion often heretofore discussed, but never be-fore so commendably acted upon. Are we to attribute to the advent of the class of igoo the influence which has brought about this great advance in the athletic polic}' of the student-body at Gettysburg ? If so, we weaklings of '93 will have to gracefully bow again. Let me be one of the first to congratulate you all upon this decided step in the right direction, and to express the hope that there will never, for any cause, whatever, be a reversal of the present creditable policy. The reports appearing in the MERCURY, and in the newspapers, in regard to the work of the foot-ball eleven are indicative of a very laudable earnestness on the part of the men constituting the team, as well as of the hearty enthusiasm of the entire student-body sup-porting it. This is indeed a very happy state of affairs. The recent defeat of Franklin and THE COLLEGE MERCURY. IOI Marshall, at Gettysburg, particularly, affords intense satisfaction to those of us who delight in noting the repeated supremacy of our ath-letic teams, and that the present season of foot-ball will prove to be eminently more success-ful than any over which Gettysburgians have had occasion to rejoice in the past, is doubtless the earnest wish of ever}' friend of our Alma Mater. All honor to the brave fellows who, under the dashing leadership of Captain White, '97, are struggling so manfully and so successfully to advance, to the very forefront, the athletic standard of Gettysburg College. Collectively, as well as individually, they are deserving of the highest and strongest praise, and it should certainly be openly and cheer-fully accorded them. The "suggestion" made by "J. A. H.," in the preceding issue, is one of the most im-portant general communications ever presented in the columns of the MERCURY,-and, if fol-lowed in detail, cannot fail to be productive of the happiest results. The plan suggested to bring about a more general interest in, and larger attendance upon, the annual Commence-ment exercises and Alumni meetings, as inti-mated, "is substantially that which has been in operation at Yale University," and those of us who are familiar with the brilliant success attending the annual gatherings of graduates here at Yale can enthusiastically endorse any plan of the same general character as that now proposed by "J. A. H." for the special pur-pose of inducing a greater personal interest in the affairs of commencement week at Gettysburg. The suggestion is assuredly worthy of a trial. The plan proposed succeeds gloriously at Yale. Why should it not eventually effect similar happy results at Gettysburg? It is to be hoped that the committee appointed by the General Alumni Association "to devise a more popular entertainment- for those who revisit their Alma Mater" will give this important suggestion the consideration it deserves and, if possible, put the proposed plan into prompt practice next June. The writer takes great pleasure in announc-ing that a permanent association of former Gettysburg students has lately been organized at New Haven. It is known as the "Gettys-burg Club" and its main objects are practi-cally the same as those of the General Alumni Association. As a permanent organization it proposes to stand by Gettysburg College and its affairs with unswerving loyalty at all times and, in every way within its influence, con-tribute to the success and advancement of our Alma Mater, and to the furtherance of the varied interests of her students in college. The "Gettysburg Club" will always cheer-fully extend the right hand of good-fellow-ship to all Gettysburgians desirous of continu-ing their studies at Yale, and all who come to New Haven from .Gettysburg will find the members of the club ever ready and willing to systematically assist them, and besides, always anxious to make their stay here as agreeable and pleasant as possible. Mr. Arthur H. Brown, '96, (Yale, '97), resident at 150 Shelton Ave., is the club's Corresponding Secretary. The first formal action of the club to indi-cate the attitude it intends to assume, in rela-tion to the affairs of the students now at Get-tysburg, was the unanimous adoption of a res-olution requesting the Spectrum editors for the privilege of representation with suitable cut, etc., in the '98 annual, at the club's expense. This action is designed primarily to give to the Spectrum editors the encouragement that those who earnestly and unselfishly labor in the name and for the interests of the college, as the '98 staff is now doing, should mani-festly receive from all. The following very brief accounts of some of the more important facts in the recent history of each of the eleven Gettysburgians now in New Haven are presented in the belief that they may be of general interest to the readers of the MERCURY : '90. SANFORD BOUCK MARTIN. B. A., (G., '90; Y., '94). B. L., (Y., '92). M. A., (G.,.'93)- M. L., (Y., '93). (Phi Gam-ma Delta.)—Left Columbia Law School, '91, to enter Yale Law School; received degree B. 102 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. L., June, '92. Pursued post graduate studies in the Yale Law School, '92-'93, receiving M. L., magnet cum laude, June, '93. Entered Senior class of Academic undergraduate de-partment in '93 and graduated with honors with the class of '94, receiving degree B. A., June, '94. For the past two years Mr. Martin has been practicing law in New Haven and has already earned a very enviable reputation. The exceptional ability he displayed, as assist-ant attorney for the defense in the widely pub-lished Lee murder trial, elicited universally approving comment among the people of New Haven and the acquittal of the defendant was due in large part to the masterly efforts of Lawyer Martin. '91. SCHMUCKER DUNCAN. B. A., (G., -9i). M. A., (Y., '94). (Phi Kappa Psi.)— Pursued undergraduate work in English and Philosophy in the Academic department, '92- '93. Continued work in same subjects as graduate student, '93-' 94, and received degree M. A., June, '94. After a year's absence from New Haven, Mr. Duncan has again resumed work in these same lines as a graduate stu-dent. '93. DANIEL FLOYD CULLER. B. A., (G., '93)! M. A., (Y., '96).—Entered Yale in the fall of '96 as a graduate student of Modern Languages; received degree M. A., June, '96. Has resumed work as a graduate student in the same department. '94. CHARLESFRONEFIELDKLOSS. B.A., (G., '94).—Has just entered Yale as a gradu-ate student and is pursuing studies in Political and Social Science. '94 REV. JEREMIAH KNODE COOK. (Phi Delta Theta.)—After graduation from Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn., June, '95, was given charge of Christ Church at East Haven, serving the congregation there from date of ordination to diaconate to end of October of present year. Was ordained to priesthood in Trinity church, New Haven, October 11, '96. Is now curate at Grace Church, Baltimore, Md., having taken charge there on All Saint's Day—Nov. 1. During the two years of his work in East Haven, Rev. Cook made a very favorable impression upon all who knew him, and the members of his congregation part with him now most re-luctantly. During the academic year, '95-'96, Rev. Cook took a post graduate course of lect-ures in the Yale Divinity School. '95. HARRY LESLIE MORRIS HOFFMAN. (Phi Gamma Delta.)—After the close of his Sophomore year at Gettysburg, Mr. Hoffman, in the fall of '93, entered the Freshman class of the Yale Academic department and has since continued a member of '97 in good stand-ing. In '95 he received one of the class hon-ors conferred annually upon the "high stand" Juniors on the basis of exceptional work done during Freshman and Sophomore years. Dur-ing his course at Yale he has been paying par-ticular attention to courses in the department of Music and in the Art School. He has been one of the most prominent and successful members of the Yale Gymnastic Team for the past two years, during that time having won three first and two second prizes in contests open to all members of the University. Mr. Hoffman has been one of the mainstays of his class base-ball team and is a popular member of many of the leading college organizations. '95. HORACE MONTGOMERY WITMAN. B. A., (G., '95). (Phi Kappa Psi.)—Has just begun the studies of the second year in the Yale Divinity School as a member of the Mid-dle class, after having finished the work of the first year in the Gettysburg Seminary. '96. ARTHUR HALLECK BROWN.—Entered Yale in the fall of '94 from the Sophomore class at Lafayette and became a member of'97 in the Academic department. He has continued to be a regular member of the class since then, having received one of the Junior honors based upon good work done upon his studies during Sophomore year. Mr. Brown has been mak-ins; special study in the Political Science courses. '96. ADELINE SOPHIA BROWN and SALETTA MERCY BROWN.—Both ladies have been re-siding with their parents in New Haven since the summer of '94. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 103 The writer, the eleventh on the list, at pres-ent is a graduate student in the Biological de-partment of the Scientific School and an as-sistant in the Biological Laboratory. WM. J. GiES, '93. "PEEP." To those who enjoyed the privileges of a life at "Prep.," the recollections of those em-bryonic days vie in interest with the later ones at College. It is for this reason, and with the hope that the incidents here narrated may bring to others in reading them, the same pleasurable recollections they have brought to me, that I now give these reminiscences of "Prep." It was on a dark and stormy September night in the seventies, that I first set foot upon the sacred soil of Gettysburg; a night not es-pecially conducive to cheerfulness; when the rain drops reminded you of falling tears and the winds sang funeral dirges. I felt strangely in accord with nature that night, and the ba-rometer of my feelings pointed to "rain." The first glimpse of my future school home was more reassuring than my introduction to the town had been. After stumbling along over the uneven pavements, stepping now and then in puddles of water, and again, feeling the bricks gently give way beneath my step, the appearance of the Preparatory building with its windows all brightly lighted and the hospitably open door, seemed to promise that which I received—a hearty welcome. As I crossed the portal, I ran against an outstreched hand, and this I immediately seized and shook most vigorously. My victim informed me during the exeicises that he was Mr. H., the Principal. Afterward, the boys completed the introduction by stating that every one called him by his official designation, "Pete." Soon after my arrival, I was introduced to my future chum and immediately began a covert study of him in the endeavor to weigh the probabilities of future peace or war. The result of my inspection was decidedly in his favor and during our association together, the verdict reached at this first meeting was never reversed. Dick G. was a tall, good-natured fellow, with a bright, smiling face and a hap-py- go-lucky air about him, that argued more for his companionship in frolic than in study. One point of difference settled, we managed to get along in perfect harmony. Dick was an inveterate tobacco chewer, and it was only af-ter many remonstrances that he could be per-suaded, in expectorating, to select other and more worthy objects than the stove and furni-ture for his deadly aim. At that time he was about seventeen years of age; just the period when youth to female charms is most suscepti-ble. Night after night, yielding to the mag-netic influence of the beautiful girls of G., he would throw hat, coat and boots out of the window, and then, in dressing gown and slip-pers, go down for water. If that water was needed before midnight, it was generally nec-essary for me to carry it up myself. Though not registering many perfect recita-tions, in every trick or escapade my chum stood easily, the first. When, with an intuition amounting almost to a certainty, our irate Principal would sharply question him concern-ing some especially audacious mischief, Dick, with a face of most cherubic guilessness would evince the greatest interest, ask the particulars and lie in a manner most convincing of his in-nocence. He was also musical, was chum, and, to gratify his artistic taste in this direction, inaugurated midnight symphony concerts. After Pete's light had been extinguished a sufficient time for slumber to have wrapped him in her mantle, white robed figures might be seen quietly stealing through the corridors; suddenly from every corner and recess of the building there would issue a succession of un-earthly and most fiendish howls; these would increase in volume and then as quickly cease, while their echoes, slowly dying in the mid-night air, seemed like the wail of lost and tortured spirits. By this time could be heard the pushing back of bolts; and the scurrying of feet and slamming of doors which followed io4 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. the suspicious sound, plainly indicated the presence of an enemy in the field. The quiet which then so suddenly succeeded pande-monium, rendered distinctly audible the soft and cat-like tread of our • Preceptor. Nearer and nearer it would come, pause for a moment at the door and then as quietly move away. All this time we had been listening with bated breath and hardly yet dared breathe too freely for fear we might receive a second visi-tation. After a silence of several minutes had sufficiently reassured us, preparations would be made for new renditions. Not always was, however, the danger we had run so quickly over; for, frequently the pause before our door -would be succeeded by a number of light, sharp taps, which, receiving no attention, (for at such times we were heavy sleepers) would increase in force, while Pete's voice trembling with anger, would demand admit-tance. Finally, with a deal of grumbling at being thus so unceremoniously aroused, some one would turn out and let poor Pete in. The angry charges of our much abused preceptor, would be met by our aggrieved and equally indignant -protestations of denial. All had "been most soundly sleeping and no noise had -been heard except what he had made by bang-ing on our door. No one could sleep with that infernal din and how did he expect us to get up and .study out our morning's lessons •when thus our rest had been so rudely broken. •Vanquished but not convinced by our re-proaches, the almost invariable result was an admonishment followed by the withdrawal of our discomfited and unwelcome visitor. Fif-teen minutes was considered ample time for him to get in proper frame of mind for more music and' in this manner, for weeks in suc-cession, would the poor man be driven to the verge of distraction. When it was seen that our attentions were beginning to prey upon our dear Preceptor's health, with generous consideration, a cessation of hostilities would be voted until he had recruited. I wonder if poor Pete, whom we really liked, has forgiven his former pupils the many sleep-less nights they caused him. I most sincerely hope he has, for malice was not the main-spring of our actions, but simply, well, simply the desire to keep the procession moving. "AN ALUMNUS." COLLEGE LOCALS. EDMUND W. MEISF.NHELDER and E L. KOLLKR, Editors. One of the Freshmen does not eat grapes be-cause he says he is afraid of getting pe) itonitis, F., '98, (reading in German) "And all the people were clothed in their vestal garments. F., '98, (in Lab.) "Why this crucible weighs only five centi-meters." This metric system must be a queer thing, anyway. Prof. K., (in Greek) "Mr. S. it seems that your feet are.too long." Quite true, only S. thinks its his legs. H., '99, says that F., '99, "hadn't ought to dare play foot-ball according to doctor's ad-vice., "Herbie" F., 98, says that Minerva is the "goddess of fatness" and that "Zim" is her especial favorite. A few of Nick's puns heard lately : Upon being asked by one of the fellows for fire -from his cigar Nick replied, "Man, this is a good cigar, and you oughn't to make light of it. In Lab. some of the fellows were hotly dis-cussing the whereabouts of a piece of meat that was being used in the experiment, and which somebody had stolen, when Nick re-marked, "Fellows, it is not meet that you should make this disturbance." It is .said that those who are caught study-ing in Chapel are marked absent. According to this, on Psychology and Astronomy morn-ings it would seem that nobody is present ex-cept the Sophomores and Freshmen. At the urgent request of "Bobby" W., '98, we publish the following JOKE : "Why doesn't Mr. McKinley like mack-erel? Because there is too much brine (Bryan) about them." Those prostrated by this will please avenge themselves on "Bobby,'' not on the editors. "Meadow" L., '98, (translating in Ger-man)—" Very ungladly spoke the excellent landlord." THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 105 Dr. M.—"Yes, Mr. L.; now suppose you read it in English." There had been a discussion about the value of the training gotten at the music schools of the large cities, when D., 1900 remarked to S., 1900: "Say, don't you think if there's any music in a man those obse?vato?ies will bring it out ? '' It seems that mathematics is always useful. D., 1900, was writing to his especially dear lady friend, and in trying to prove to her that he does not spend his time in the society of the gentler sex of Gettysburg, used the fol-lowing : "Let D=myself and g=the Gettysburg girls. To prove that D does not go with g. Proof—There are no girls in Gettysburg. . D does not go with g." Cline, '98, is back, and is going rig'ht on with the Classical Juniors. It is reported that during the recent wind storm the carpet in the room of L., '97, was blown off of the floor and that the bed was lifted several feet. We can vouch for the ve-racity of all the items of this story, except con-cerning the carpet and the bed. "Doc." L., formerly of '98, Gettysburg College, is now at Susquehanna University. He reports that there are no horses in the in-stitution. He ought to know. Quite a number of the fellows went home to vote. It took some of them all Saturday, Sun-day, Monday and Tuesday, to attend to this. The members of the West Pennsylvania Synod, which was recently in session in St. James Lutheran church, visited in a body the College campus and buildings, Saturday after-noon, Oct. 17. The Glee Club is working hard on new pieces and expects to be in excellent shape for their engagement during Institute week at the Court House, and for their trips in the winter term. Some fellows apparently do not know that our Chapel is not ah Opera House or a Concert Hall, where they can groan, hiss, talk, sing or shuffle their feet at pleasure. It is a matter for congratulation, however, that those who are most inclined to do it, still have two years and one-half in which to learn better—that is if they finish their course. A straight tip to Freshies : Do not stand for more than half an hour at a time under the windows of the fourth floor on the front porch of middle division. It isn't "healthy." To find out why, try it. Mr. C. (in Latin) how that part reads." Remember what ? 'Dr. I can't remember G., chre ? Is a euchatist one who plays eu- On the evening of the visit of the Columbian Club of Philadelphia, A., '97, our proctor, was trying to devise all forms he could for giv-ing the visiting gentlemen a rousing reception, and said: "Say, wouldn't it be fun if we could get a whole crowd of fellows with those Kala-mazoos V' But then his ideas of the names of musical instruments are not as clear as some other things. It certainly is an unfortunate state of cir-cumstances for a man to say just before going into Psychology class, that he thinks "the les-son was quite easy this morning," and then to go in and flunk. Mr. F., '98, (one of "The Dummies," after having stumbled through the translation of an Anglo-Saxon sentence.) "Prof. I didn't get that sentence out very well." Prof. H. "I see you didn't, Mr. F.'' The Freshmen have recently gotten class hats. They are argent, with a narrow garnet band. Generally speaking they are attractive and it's a good idea. The biological course has recently been fav-ored with a very valuable gift from Charles Baum, M. D., Ph. D., of the class of'74. The gift consists of a collection of forty choice plates for the study of normal human his-tology, arranged by Prof. Geo. A. Piersol, of the University of Pennsylvania. The plates are silver prints and photo-micrographs giving at least five illustrations on each card and are invaluable aids in teaching this particular branch. Explanatory notes accompany the plates. This contribution is very thankfully received and the hope is entertained that many of our medical Alumni may remember the col-lege in a similar manner. Mr. C., '99, remarked that one of the early leaders of the church "died a martyr's life." Dr. H.—"What does the word Philistine mean." Mr. S., '99.—"High language." io6 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Have you subscribed for a '98 Spectrum? ' If not, why not? Now is the time to show your class and college spirit. The business manager will call on you in a few days. Give him encouragement in the way of subscrip-tions. The '98 Spectrum receives enough en-couragement in other ways-, now let it have it in this way. "Actions speak louder than words." Mr. S., 1900.—"Water is changed by elec-trolysis into two sightless gases." . Mr. I., 1900.—"Is the Columbia Club go-ing to have their exercises in Bureau Chapel ?'' On the afternoon of Oct. 21, '96, Mr. Pearl Schriver entertained the Senior Class at his home. It was a stag party. The ever genial host Pearl showed his class mates a royal good time, and after all had regaled themselves with cider and apples, they withdrew very well pleased with their entertainment and, need we add, wishing the host many happy returns of the day. Mr. F.'s '98, favorite expression, "Is that so, Doctor?" The students should remember that the local department depends, for its success, upon them. Let them give all the jokes to the edi-tors of this department. The latest reports tell us that Mr. K., 1900, is going to be a professional nurse. Of late, Jess has had some experience in that line. Let us have some class-games of foot-ball. Class spirit in the lower classes seems to be below par. Rouse up Freshmen ! The Soph-omores want to play. Dr. N. to Mr. K., 1900 (who is playing with some paper), "I guess you had better bring some pap along next time, Mr. K." Mr. W., 1900, (introducing himself to a certain town girl), "Good evening, my name's W., how did you like my father's sermon?" Dr M.—Translate "Ou mencz-vous la vache." B ) jgoo—■ 'When you have eaten a cow —. One Of the girls of the "Baltimore Normal School" asked Mr. D., '99 (who was making himself conspicuous by his noise), "To what class do vou belong ? Are you a Freshman ? '' Too bad, "Bobby!" Mr. K., '98, has been doing good work in Lab., having received, as he thinks, 96 per cent.' His note book was marked 10 | 9 | '96. Dr. B.—"Where do you find legiV Mr. N., '98—It is infinitive, passive, da-tive. Mr. H., '99, likes Marion Crawford, because he thinks she is a fine writer. Dr. B.—What is the syntax of auctoritate ? Mr. B., '98—Subjective of—. Mr. S., 1900—"Louis, XIV, was the great-est anarchy that ever lived." Dr. M.—"No, greatest monarch that ever lived. An anarchy is a kingdom over which no one rules." "Kopy"—"Dr. isn't an anarchy a kingdom over which an anarchist rules ?'' "Kopy" is making quite a hit in Gettys- I burg society. He tells us the girls here are i "dead easy" to catch; he himself having j caught the supposed daughter of one of Get- I tysburg's prominent citizens. Mr. S., '99, was calling recently. During the course of the evening the mistress of the house suggested that the pair should withdraw to the kitchen, where they, or rather the girl, properly belonged. There is a move on foot to invent a new col-lege yell. This is a move in the right direc-tion. Some of the things heard Halloween night : "What are you doing out so late at night ? " "It would do my heart good t^ catch some of them!" "Is that you, Doctor?" "Have you caught any one yet, Doctor ?'' BOOK REVIEW. Football, by Walter Camp and Lorin F. De-land: Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., pp. 425. Price $2.00. The authorship of this book renders almost unnecessary any word of commendation for its manifold merits. It is certainly a most com-plete and interesting treatise on this most fas-cinating of college sports. Divided, as it is, into parts "For the Spectator," "For the Player" and "For the Coach," it recommends itself at once to all those who take any inter-est whatever in the game. Every college stu-dent will want a copy of it, but to the players and the coach it is indispensable. Containing a history of the game with full and clear de- THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 107 scriptions of all its various features, it cannot but add wonderfully to the prestige of inter-collegiate football which is gaining grouad so rapidly in this country. The publication of such a book is certainly most opportune and will be hailed with delight by all devotees of the "gridiron." ALUMNI-I*. C MANGES and CHARI.ES H. TILP, Editors. '42. Rev. M. Sheeleigh, D. D., read an orig-inal poem, entitled, "The Perkiomen," at the recent meeting of the Montgomery County (Pa.) Historical Society. '44. On Sunday, October nth, it was just fifty years since Rev. George A. Nixdorff, now of Frederick, Md., entered the active work of the gospel ministry. Rev. Nixdorff is in ex-cellent health and was in regular attendance upon the recent meeting of the Maryland Synod at Cumberland, Md. '47. On Monday, October 19th, the Luth-eran Social Union of Philadelphia, held its semi-annual session in the parlors of the Law-yers' Club in the Betz building, when inter-esting addresses were delivered by Rev. Luther E. Albert, D. D., '47, pastor of Holy Trinity, Germantown, and by Rev. Dr. Joseph A. Seiss, '40, pastor of Holy Trinity, Phila-delphia. '47. Rev. P. Sheeder died at his home near Gettysburg, on Wednesday, October 21, aged 77 years. He retired from the active ministry nine years ago. '49. Rev. Elias S. Henry, of Pine Grove, Pa., preached his 44th anniversary sermon in St. John's Lutheran church last month. This is his first and only charge. '54. Rev E. Unangst, D. D., has been actively and successfully engaged in the Gen-eral Synod mission field in India since Nov. 23, 1857. He is now resting from his life labors in California. '57. Rev. J. R. Dimm. D. D., president of Susquehanna University, is now president of the Central Pennsylvania Synod. '57. Rev. Dr. H. L- Baugher has been called to the pastorship of St. Paul's Lutheran church, at Baltimore. '60. The corner stone of Grace church was laid at East Stroudsburg, Pa., Sept. 27th, by Rev. B. F. Apple, pastor of St. John's assisted by Rev. William Ashmead Schaeffer, of Ger-mantown, Pa., and Rev. Theo. Heilig, of Stroudsburg, '61. Rev. H. C. Halloway, D. D., was elected as a director of the Seminary by the Central Pa. Synod. '64. Rev. Frank Richards, of Zanesville, Ohio, recently visited his old church, Trinity, of Chicago, 111., of which he was the first pas- : tor. '65. Rev. T. C. Billheimer, D. D., repre-sented Pennsylvania College, at the meeting of j the Central Penn'a Synod at Lock Haven, Pa. '67. Rev. Chas. S. Albert, D. D., of Phila-delphia, Pa., is visiting a number of Synods this fall in the interest of the Board of Publica-tion. '68. Rev. J. W. Richard, D. D., of Gettys-burg, Pa., occupied the pulpit of the Memorial Lutheran church, Harrisburg, Pa., on Oct. 4. '68. Rev. Lee M. Heilman, D. D., pastor of of the Memorial Lutheran church, Harrisburg, Pa., has gone to Manitou, Colorado, for his health. The rest of the summer did not help him much and a stay in the high altitude in the Rockies it is believed will be beneficial to him. '69. Rev. Jacob A. Clutz, D. D., of Mid-laud, College, Atchison, Kansas, will preach the dedicatory sermon for the new First Luth-eran church of St. Joseph, Mo. '70. J. L. Hill, Jr., Esq., has been confined to the house with rheumatism. '71. Rev. D. Z. Foulk, North Platte, Neb., j has returned from a much needed vacation j which he spent in Pennsylvania. '73. The address of Rev. J. S. Moser is ! changed from Riverside to 31 Van Ness Ave., Santa Cruz, Cal. '73. Rev. J. A. Singmaster, D. D., of Al-lentown, is one of the presidential electors on : the Prohibition ticket. '74. Rev. W. L. Remsberg, of Meyersville, Md , who prepared the Church Extension Service for the past two years, has prepared a Home Mission Service this year for Luther Sunday. '74. Rev. G. C. Probst was installed on September 13th, as pastor at Burlington, Iowa. io8 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Revs. Ortlepp and Bockelmann had charge of the services, '75. Rev. M. S. Cressman has been elected a delegate to General Synod by the Central Pa. Synod, and also to represent his Synod on the board of trustees of Susquehanna Univer-sity. '76. Rev. J. C. Jacoby, D. D., has resigned j as pastor of Newton, Iowa, to take charge of | the new mission of Webster City, Iowa, No-vember 1. Please address him accordingly j after Nov. 1st. '77. Rev. C. S. Trump, of Martinsburg, W. Va., was elected President of the Maryland Synod at its recent session held in Cumber-land, Md. '79. Rev. Luther Kuhlman has been made President of the Frederick, Md., Ministerial Association. '80. Rev. M. F: Troxell, D. D., has com-pleted seven years of most successful service as pastor of Grace Lutheran church, of Spring-field, 111. '80. At the Choral Recital, given by the choir of Ziou Lutheran church, Lebanon, Pa., in College church on Oct. 22, Dudley Buck's well-known song, "Fear not ye, O Israel," was well sung by Mr. S. G. Valentine. '82. Rev. C. R. Trowbridge, of Baltimore, Md., has resigned as president of the Balti-more Lutheran Church Extension Society. '82. Rev. Prof. C. L. T. Fisher, of Mt. Pleasant, N. C, recently preached a powerful sermon on "Christ's Descent into Hell," in St. James Lutheran church, Concord, N. C. '82. Rev. M. H. Valentine, of Philadelphia, was in Gettysburg on Oct. 22, visiting parents and friends. '83. Rev. W. W. Anstadt, of Bedford, Pa., has been called to succeed the late Rev. T. F. Reeser as pastor of the Lutheran church at Hollidaysburg, Pa. 83. Rev. Chas. W. Baker has been re-elected for another year, as the Conference Missionary Secretary of York county, Pa. '83. Rev. Prof. Huber Gray Buehler, M. A., English Master in the HotchkissSchool at Lakeville, Conn., has prepared a lecture on the battle of Gettysburg. '85. Rev. G. G. M. Brown, of Everett, re-cently preached a sermon pertinent to the is-sues of the day, a brief review of which was given in the Everett Republican of October 2. '87. Rev. H. C. Alleman, of Chambersburg, Pa., has accepted the call to College church and will begin his work here about December 1st. '88. It is hoped to dedicate the new church at Taneytowu, Md., Rev. D. Frank Garland pastor, in February next. '90. Rev. O. G. Gruver, pastor of First English Lutheran church, of San Francisco, Cal., recently gave the members of the mis-sionary societies of the First English Lutheran church of Oakland, Cal., and of St. Matthew's German church, San Francisco, a cordial wel-come to a joint meeting in his church. '90. Rev. U. S. G. Rupp, of Fort Washing-ton, Pa., has been called to succeed Rev. D. F. Garland, as pastor of the Church of the Reformation, Baltimore, Md. '91. Rev. John M. Axe, of Belleville, Pa., and a member of the Central Penna. Synod, is at present in charge of a school at Belleville. '91. Rev. E. J. Wolf, Jr., a graduate of our Seminary, is teaching school at Centre Hall, Pa. '93. Rev. J. M. Guss was marned on Oc-tober 28th to Miss Evangeline Dimm, daugh-ter of Rev. Dr. Dimm, of Susquehanna Uni-versity. The ceremony took place in the Lutheran church. '93. Rev. E. Er Neudewitz, of 228 West 10th street, New York, has organized an English Lutheran church in Jersey City. Dr. H. Louis Baugher, President of the General Synod, preached the opening sermon. '93. Virgil R. Saylor, Principal of the Elk Lick, Pa., schools, has been speaking at Re-publican rallies in various places in Somerset county. '93. Niels L. J. Gron has had charge of the Scandinavian department of the campaign which the Republican National Committee has waged in behalf of McKinley and Hobart. The Boston Herald of a recent date gave ex-tracts of his speeches and an account of his work. '94, Luckett A. Bush was licensed to preach the gospel at the recent session of the Witten-berg Synod held in Van West, O. Reciprocity Illustrated--Fall brings forth the foot ball game and a foot ball game brings forth the fall. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 109 ATHLETICS. CHARLES T. LARK, Editor. Gettysburg, 50—B. C. C, o. Gettysburg, 10—F. and M., o. Gettysburg, 12—Swarthmore, 4. What a most delightful task is mine, that of chronicling three very decisive conquests for the home team. Victory is always sweet and it seems doubly so when it comes after several defeats. It is almost a settled fact that when we play on the home grounds the orange and blue will wave triumphant over our opponents. It is then we can play the material we have, it is then, and only then, that dear old Alma Mater is represented in the field as she can and should be represented. The team and the en-tire student body feel most keenly the loss of the Seminarians from our athletic organiza-tions. One hears grumblings and questions on all sides to this effect, "other institutions can play their Sems., why can't we?" It is an undeniable fact, that Athletic pres-tige is a big drawing card for new students. The foot-ball season was opened Oct. 10th, on the home grounds—Baltimore City College vs. Gettysburg. In spite of the cloudy and threatening condition of the weather, a crowd of 300 people saw the game. Our opponents, though somewhat lighter than the home team, played a very plucky game. They were clearly out-classed, as our' fellows made gains almost at will. Captain White and Dale made some fine runs, and Sheely played in his usual ground-gaining manner. The playing of Doty and Wagner of the B. C. C. team, was of a high order, as they played to win and tackled very sharply. At no time was the Gettysburg goal in danger. Twenty-five and twenty minute halves were played in which our team scored thirty and twenty points respectively. The line-up was as follows : BALTIMORB C. C. Zollers Love. Boggs Winslow POSITION. GETYSBURG. center Stifel .left guard Hagerniau .left tackle Manges left end Doty Campbell right guard Koppenhaver Kequardt right tackle Nicholas Wagner right end Fite (Loudon) Cordell quarter-back Lawyer Phillips left half-back Dale Warner right half-back White Doty full-back Sheely Touchdowns—Sheely 3, White 2, Dale 3, Nicholas 1. Goals— Dale 7. Referee—Best. Umpire—Templeman. Linesmen—Ott and Wheeler. Timekeeper—Wheeler. Twenty-five and twenty minute halves. Franklin and Marshall had agreed to play us a return game on the home grounds Oct. 17th, but having won the contest when we visited them, feared defeat in case they should come here and so cancelled their engagement. Manager Wheeler through earnest and per-sistent efforts secured another date with them —Oct. 17th. Our team manifested the greatest activity in their preparation for this game and were determined to win it. Interest grew as the time for the game drew near. Finally the wished for day arrived and the stout set of fellows comprising the oppos-ing eleven came on the field confident of add-ing another to their list of victories. But alas ! they were doomed to feel the bitter pangs of disappointment. They met a stronger team than the one which they encountered on their grounds, since we can not take with us on trips some of our best material. Four of their players are students in the Theological Semi-nary at Lancaster. The two teams were very evenly matched in weight. F. and M. having the kick-off, sent the ball well down the field. It was, however, rushed back to the Gettysburg 50 yd. line, and for the first fifteen minutes of play was kept al-most in the centre of the field, changing hands several times on downs. The Lancaster boys then made their greatest gain of the game, that of a 15 yd. run around the end. The ball was then forced into F. and M. territory, gradually worked down the field and carried across the line, at the end of 20 minutes, by Byers after having made a 15 yd. plunge through the line. The punt-out failed. Our opponents again put the ball in play, when by a series of tackle and end plays and a 25 yd. run by White, it was taken to their 15 yd. line, at which point time was called. The first half thus ending : Gettysburg, 4; F. and M., o. In the second half F. and M. taking ad-vantage of the strong wind which had sprung up, resorted to a kicking game and gained con-siderable in so doing. They, at one time, captured the ball on our 20 yd. line but lost it on downs. Our fellows here took a very de-cided brace. Nicholas, Byers and Moser played as they are capable of playing. Dale made some fine runs. Sheely besides kicking very cleverly, hit the line hard and in a short time the ball was taken to the 20 yd. line at I (O THE COLLEGE MERCURY. the other end of the field. White then scored the second touchdown, from which goal was kicked. This gave us six more points making the score io-o. The ball was again put in play and was in the centre of the field when time was called. Enthusiasm was at a high pitch. The students formed a parade and marched through the town filling the air with college yells and songs. Thus closed the hottest, cleanest and most scientific exhibition of foot-ball which has ever been witnessed on the home grounds. The line up was as follows : F. AND M. POSITION GETTYSBURG. Cessna, (Capt.) right half .Dale Greenawalt right end Manges llertolet right tackle Nicholas High right guard Hagerman Guider center Stifel Hower left guard Kuppeuhaver Keiffer left tackle. Byers Schneder left end Moser Hosterman, McLaughlin left half (Capt.) White Metzeuthin fullback Sheely Locher quarter back Lawyer Touchdowns—Byers and White. Goals—Dale i. Time—25 minute halves. Referee—Garwood. Umpire Kump. Lines-men— Gerhard and Leisenring. In the presence of 400 people, on the 6th St. grounds, Harrisburg, Swarthmore' con-tested with the boys from the battle-field town. It was on this same field that they defeated us last year, 10-0, and our team went there de-termined not again to be conquered at their hands. The Swarthmore boys are a jovial, gentle-manly set of fellows and they played a very quick; snappy game of ball. Gettysburg started the game by kicking the ball well down the field. We seemed in the first half not to realize the strength of our op-ponents as our playing was not up to form, for it lacked life and spirit. Swarthmore steadily advanced the ball, losing it occasion-ally on downs but recovering it, scored at the end of 20 minutes' play. They failed to kick the goal. The ball was again put in play and was on the Swarthmore 25-yard line when time was called. Our team took their customary brace in the second half and their playing certainly was a marked improvement over that of the former half. Swarthmore kicked off and through a fumble the ball was downed on our 15-yard line. Our men forgot all about not soiling their new jerseys and got into the game with the greatest vim and energy. By taking the ball through the line and around the ends we scored and kicked the goal after eight minutes' play. The next five minutes gave us six more points. Swarthmore sent the ball sail-ing down the field. We had the leather on our 25-yard line, however, through a fumble we lost it but recovered it on our 15-yard line. White then carried the ball to their 50-yard line, and Dale immediately after took it over the line and kicked the goal. Time was called with the ball on our 40-yard line. A drunken mob of rooters from Dickinson made themselves very conspicuous during the first half but were not heard from in the sec-ond. The Dickinsonians manifested their love for Gettysburg by such characteristic yells as "Hity Tity," etc. Their conduct verified their reputation of former years. They doubt-less did much towards bringing about a friendly feeling between the two institutions. (?) The line up- was as follows : GETTYSBURG. POSITION. SWARTHMORE. Young, Fife .left end Patten Ott left tackle Verlender Koppenhaver .left guard Farquar Stifel center Booth Hagerman right guard Harper Nicholas right tackle Mears Doty right end Cahall Lawyer quarter-back Hollingshead White left-half-back Larison Dale right half back Way Sheely full-back Brownfield Score—Gettysburg 12, Swarthmore 4. Touchdowns—Sheely, Dale and Way. Goals—Dale 2. Time of halves—25 and 20 min-utes. Umpire—Tate. Referee—McCormick. Linesmen—Leis-enring and Hubbard. TOWN AND SENPNARY NOTES. S. J. MILLER, Editor. The lecture course for the forty-second an-nual session of the Adams County Teachers' Institute, to be held at Gettysburg, Nov. 23d to 27th, is as follows : Monday night, Dr. Y. M. Philips; Tuesday night, Col. Geo, W. Bain; Wednesday night, Hon. H. W. J. Ham; Thursday night, Hon M. W. Howard; Friday night, The Torbett Concert Company. Rev. Dr. H. L- Baugher has been called to the pastorship of St. Paul's Lutheran church at Baltimore. At the late meeting of the West Pennsyl-vania Synod, this place, the following officers were elected to serve for the ensuing year : President, Rev. W. S. Freas, D. D.; Secre-tary, Rev. Amos Parr; Treasurer, Rev. Albert Bell. I THE COLLEGE MERCURY. in Rev. H. J. Alleman, of Chambersburg, has accepted the call tendered him by the Christ Lutheran church, and expects to assume his duties as pastor about Dec. ist. Revs. H. L, Baugher, D. D. and A. R. vSteck were among the lucky number elected to represent the West Pennsylvania Synod at the meeting of the next General Synod. The Sacred Concert given b)' the Lebanon Choral Society on the 22d ult., in Christ Luth-eran church, proved to be very delightful in many respects. The proceeds, which were very fair, will be used for the improvement of the church. Work on the telephone line is being pushed rapidly. Connection with Littlestown has been made and the instruments in use give excel-lent satisfaction. The company has leased the third floor of the Spangler building for the exchange. The Y. P. S. C. E. of Adams county will convene in St. James Lutheran church, this place, Nov. 20-21. The Battlefield Commission have removed the dancing pavilion, cook-house, swings and all other buildings from Round Top Park. Rev. C. H. Huber, principal of the prepar-atory department, was reliceused at the late meeting of the West Pennsylvania Synod. The Presbyterian congregation, this place, has extended a unanimous call to Rev. D. W Woods, of Lewistown, Pa. He is a very learned man, being a graduate of Princeton College and Seminary and afterwards studied abroad in Edinburgh and in Germany. SEMINARY. Rev. M. Valentine is one of the delegates elected to represent the Maryland Synod at the meeting of the General Synod which convenes at Mansfield, Ohio, next year. Messrs. Paul W. Kohler, J. Henry Harmes, G. C. Cromer and L. B. Hafer were licensed at the late meeting of the West Pennsylvania Synod. On Sunday, Oct. nth, Rev. A. Bredenbek preached in the St. Paul's Lutheran church, Baltimore. At the last session of the Maryland Synod, the following were licensed to preach: Messrs. Seebach, Hazeltine, Myers and Cross. A large number of students went home to vote. On Sunday, Oct. 25th, Rev. Paul Kohler preached in St. Matthew's Lutheran church, Hanover. A missionary class has been organized among the students of the Seminary to pursue a- course of Missionary study. Missionary Biography has been selected for the work of the fall term. Rev. R. W. Mottern preached in the Augs-burg Lutheran church, Harrisburg, on the 20th ult. Rev. C. H. Brosius preached at Cold Spring on Sunday, Nov. ist. The Sunday evening services in the College church have been conducted by members of the Senior class. FRATEFJNITY NOTES. PHI KAPPA PSI. Dr. Davis Garber, '63, professor of mathe-matics in Muhlenburg College, died recently at his home in Allentown. By his death we lost a loyal brother and a true Phi Psi. F. M. Keffer, '95, is studying law in Greens-burg. W. B. Keefer, '95, is playing quarter-back on the Reading foot-ball team. Eisenhart, '96, witnessed the game in Har-risburg on Oct. 31st. Kuendig, '98, recently visited his home for several days. Weaver, '99, and Weaver, 1900, were called to Washington last month on account of the death of their grandfather. Lark, '98, accompanied by White, '97, spent Sunday. Nov. ist, at his home in Mil-lersburg. PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bros. R. Z. Imber, 1900, and W. N; Mc- Nair, 1900, were initiated Oct. 5th and 17th respectively. Bro. Brewer, '83, represented us at the Phi Gamma Delta Convention, held at Chicago, Oct. 28-30. Bro. Alleman, '87, has accepted the call to College church and will officiate about Decem-ber ist. Bro. McConaughy, '80, has returned to his foreign field of labor. J 12 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Bro. Neudewitz, '93, who has started a mis-sion in Jersey City, has met with much en-couragement in his work. We wish him all possible success in the future. Bros. Neudewitz and Knubel, '93, were or-dained at the recent session of the New York- > New Jersey Synod. Bro. Wile, '77, preached in the College , church and Bro. Leisenring preached in the j Presbyterian church on the 18th ult. Bros. M H. and S. G. Valentine accom-pauied^ the Zion choir, of Lebanon, which gave | a concert in the College church. Bros. Buehler, '82, and Stahler, '82, were j among the spectators at the Balto. City Col- | lege foot-ball game. Bro. Stahler also attended I the F. and M. game. We were glad to have with us, during the past month, Bros. Garland, '88; Anstadt and ! Blint, '90; Kauffman, '90, and Fickinger, '94. Bros. Stifel, 1900, and Fite, '98, accom-panied the foot-ball team, playing F. and M. at Lancaster, and Swarthmore at Harrisburg. Bro. Smith, '97, and Shaar, '96, spent a few days at their respective homes. Bro.G. J. Benner was elected to Congress from the 19th Congressional District by a large majority. SIGMA CHI. The Chapter has had visits from the follow-ing alumni : Stock, '74, and Trowbridge, '82, who attended the sessions of the West Penna. Synod; Frank Hersh, '92, and Nor-man Heindle, '96. Leisenring recently spent Sunday with his parents in Chainbersburg. Rosensteel, who was compelled to go home on account of the serious illness of his grand-father, has again returned to college. Loudon spent Sunday with his parents in Altoona, several weeks ago. Several of the Alumni presented the Chap-ter with a beautiful painting of the fraternity badge. PHI DELTA THETA. J. Clyde Markel, 1900, was initiated Oc-tober 3rd. Hon. A. K. McClure, Philadelphia, was ' one of the speakers at the sound money meet-ing held in Gettysburg, Oct. 10th. Rev. A. Bell, '78, one of the founders of the Chapter, paid us a call during the sessions of the West Penna. Synod. He was elected Treasurer of that body. Revs. H. H. Weber, '82, and Theodore L. Crouse, '87, paid the Chapter a call during Synod week. Revs. D. B. Floyd and J. F. Frantz, Va Alpha, were welcome visitors of the Chapter. George H. Eckels, '95, spent a few days as guest of the Chapter. C. W. Ziegler, '96, of the Phila. School of Pharmacy, spent election day at his home in Gettysburg. F. W. Friday, J. E. and C. S. Smith and G. W. Sloop, spent election day at their homes. ALPHA TAU OMEGO. We have recently had our hall reno-vated and repaired, and it now is in very good condition. It presents an elegant ap-pearance, and is a great improvement over the old. Chas. H. Spayd, '99, who has been ill at his home for some time, is rapidly recovering and will soon return to college. William E. Wheeler, '97, at his home in Baltimore. C. W. Baker, '83, of York, Pa., paid the Chapter a visit during Synod. Dr. Franklin Menges, '86, visited the Chap-ter during the meeting of Synod. LITERARY SOCIETIES. JOHN W. OTT, Editor. The following new members were initiated during the past month: Culler, Schwartz, Knittle, Easterday, Traub and Stock. Philo rendered the second of this year's series of her "Author's Evenings'' Friday even-ing, Oct. 23. The following program was rendered : Introductory—The Modern School of Scotch Writers, Mr. Myers Reading Mr. Fite Sketch of Maclaren's Life Mr. Kohler Piano Duet Misses Wisotzki and Wible Reading Mr. Kitzmeyer fRecitation, Miss McMillan Violin Solo Mr. Gates Characteristics of Maclaren's Writings, Miss Myers Reading, , Mr. Wheeler "Auld Lang Syne," Philo Quartet tBy special requent of thfl committee. THE .COLLEGE MERCURY. "3 The following officers were inaugurated Oct. 30th: Pres., H. R. Smith; V. Pres., £. L. Kohler; Rec. Sec, C. H. Smith; Cor. Sec, C. T. Lark; Treas., C. J. Fite; Critic, G. F. Abel. PHRENA. Phrena society has initiated into her ranks the following : Edwards, Hummer Frey, Hurst and Bittinger. On Friday evening, Oct. 30th, the following were elected as'officers of the society : Pres., Woif; V. Pres. Briner; Sec, Clare; Chap-lain, Clare; Critics, Meisenhelder, E. W., Cline, Musselmau, Woods; Monitor, Bikle, Jr. On Friday evening, Nov. 6th, 1896, the so-ciety rendered the following special program : THE BATTLE) OF GETTYSBURG. : ]\1 tisic Essay—Account of the Battle, .-.■ Wheeter Declamation—On to Pennsylvania Reisch Oration—General Lee . Ott Music. Declamation—John Burns Roehner Oration—General Meade .'. Brhter Declamation—Jennie Wayde, Brown Music. Essay—College in Battle, Rnders Oration—Pickett's Charge, Manges Declamation—Heroes ot Gettysburg, Finch Music. WON'T YOU GIVE YOUR LOVE TO ME ? We have just received a copy of the above-named beautiful song with a splendid waltz chorus. It is now being sung in all the prom-inent theatres in New York, Boston and Phil-adelphia. The following are the words of the chorus: Won't you give your love to me and take my heart, Ever.to abide with yours alone, sweetheart? There to dwell through all eternity- Darling, won't you give 3'our love, your love to me ? Price 40 cents per copy. All readers of our paper will receive a copy at half price by send-ing 20 cents in silver or postage stamps to The Union Mutual Music Co.; 265 Sixth Avenue, New York. i.D. RJILLER, 19 Main St., GETTYSBURG, Qroeer, (Confectioner and ffiriiiierer. Ice Cream and Oysters in season. Foot Ball Suppli EVERYTHING FOR THE PLAYER, •Jackets, Shoes, Stockings, Jerseys, Shin Guards, Etc. Spalding's Official Intercol- $y&fye£^ legiate Foot Ball, ■'^^^.A. Officially adopted bjf the Intercollegiate Association. COMPLETE CATALOGUE FALL AND WINTER SPORTS FREE. A. Q. Spalding: & Bnxs., NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, CHICAGO. 1108 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA tyfright's Qnyrav/ny jtjtfouse *?/?AS become the recognized leader in unique styles of &~£ COLLEGE and FRATERNITY EN-GRAVINGS and STATIONERY, College and Class-Day Invitations, engraved and printed from steel plates; Programmes, Menus, Wedding and Reception Invitations, Announeemonts.-.etc., etc. Examine prices and styles before ordering elsewhere. 50 Visiting Cards from New Engraved Plate for $1.00. ERNEST A. WRIGHT, 1108 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA 7/isitors to Settysburg College^ ® Settysburt/, !Penn'a, Will find the CUMBERLAND VALLEY RAILROAD running in a South-Westerly direction from Harrisbnrg, Pa., through Carlisle, Chambersburg, Hagerstown and Martinsburg to Winchester, Va., a direct and available route from the North, Kast and West to Gettysburg, Pa., via. llarrisburg and Carlisle. Through tickets via. this route on sale at all P. 11. R. offices, and baggage cheeked through to destination. Also, a popular, route to the South via. Carlisle, AsK for your tickets via, Cumberland Valley Railroad and Carlisle, Pa, J. F- BOYD, . Superintendent. H. A. LIDDLE, Gen. Passenger Agent. ADVEKTISiSMKNTS. DURING VACATION GO TO CHAUTAUQUA F" F? El El FULL INSTRUCTIONS. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED. H. B. WILLIAMS, Secretary, Geneva, N. Y, YOU CAN EARN S10 TO 8100 MONTHLY AND EXPENSES IF YOU WORK FOR THE NURSERY CO. Stock sold with a guarantee and replaced. ~R.$H.$REMINGER,~ MERCHANT TAILOR. e tot Lowest frices. NEXT DOOFJ TO POST OFFICE, XJP-STAIRS. Suits from $121 to $40.00. Pants from $4,00 to $121, (^Centre Square.: ,gOLLEQE OF PHYSICIANS i SURGEONS, ■BALTIMORE, rV|D.-^ The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Balti-more, Maryland, is a well-equipped school. Four ses-sions are required for graduation. For full informa-tion send for the annual catalogue, or write to THOMAS OPIE, M. D., Dean, Cor. Calvert and Saratoga Sts. t_g=iEstablished 1876.5^3-5 eSfPBNSOSB MYBfiSj^ "WATQHMAKEft AND JEWELER, Gettysburg Souvenir Spoons, College Souvenir Spoons, No. 10 Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PENN'A. .1. A TAWNEY Is ready to furnish clubs and boarding houses BREAD, ROLLS, &0., at short notice and reasonable rates. Cor.Washington and Middle Sts., Gettysburg. W«.1 HOWJANI DEALERS IN Fresh Beef, Veal, Lamb, Pork, Pudding, Sausage, HAMS, LARD, &c-., GETTYSBURG, IMIM'A. JOHN L. SEErtDS. NEW CIGAR STORE Next door to W. M. DAVID TROXEL, .DEALER IN. FINE CR0QERIE5 AND NOTIONS. d. I.^MunqpGP, ZPhotographerj No. 29 Baltimore St., GETTYSBURG ■York Street.^- nil • CLOTHIER, * FASHIONABLE TAILOR, 11 GEM'S FURNISHER. No. 11 Balto. St. - GETTYSBURG. SPECIAL ATTENTION PAID TO oj(©ollege oHt. J. E. BOYLE, OF LEECH, STILES & CO. EYE SPECIALISTS, 1413 Chestnut Street, Phila. Will be in Gettysburg, Pa., at W. H. TIPTON'S, THURSDAY,. NOV. 12, From 9 a. m. to 3.30 p. m. No charge for consulta-tion and examination and every pair of glasses or-dered guaranteed to be ■ satisfactory by LEECH, STILES, & Co. ^MOTEt GETTTSBURe-s- -XMftBER SHOP*- Centre Square. _B. M. SEFTON. 2fou will find a full line of tPure 'Drugs dc J^ine Stationery ^People 'a *Druy Store. ^Prescriptions a tSpeciat/y. $% ffine (Sollsotion of. BATTLEFIELD VIEWS .S/TLt0a'Ss on hand. MAIL ORDERS RECEIVE PROMPT ATTENTION. >iafcssr JUtyrajs^, - A-1ST13— Hlliott & Housep. IT. B.—Stiff Hats made to Fit the Heal in two minutes. d). E. KlTZnfLLE^, HATS, CAPS, ^, -^-r BOOTS * SHOES. Gi£:Satlsfaction Guaranteed.^) No. 6 S. Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG. PA. por all the latest styles in .uitings_?-nd. Trou AND FULL LINE OF sers, Cents' Furnishing Coods, Call or, D. H. WELSH, York, F=a. ADVERTISEMENTS. k —, , — I. Classical Course for the Degree of A. B. II. Scientific Course for the Degree of B. S. III. Post-Graduate Course for the Degree of Ph. D. IV. Special Course in all Departments/ V. Elective Studies in Junior and Senior Years. VI.' New Testament Greek and Hebrew in English Bible Department. Observatory, Laboratories and new Gymnasium. Four large buildings. All buildings heated with steam from central plant. Libraries, 25,000 volumes. Fine Museum. Expenses low. Department of Hygiene and Physical Culture in charge of an experienced physician. Accessible by frequent railroad trains. Location, on BATTLEFIELD of Gettysburg; most pleasant and healthy. PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT, in separate buildings, for boys and young men preparing for business or college, under special care of the principal and three assistants, residing with students in the building. For full particulars, apply for catalogue to HARVEY w. MCKNIGHT, D. D. LL. D., PRBS'T., Petrasytwaaiia QoJCeg©,, Gettysbwg, Pa. •

The College Mefcufy. VOL. IV. GETTYSBURG, PA., DECEMBER, 1896. No. 8. THE COLLEGE MEftClPRY, Published each month during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STAFF. Editor: ROBBIN B. WOLF, '97. Associate Editors : LEWIS C. MANGES, '97. ED. W. MEISEN H ELDER, SAMUEL J. MILLER '97. CHARLES T. LARK '98. JOHN W. OTT, '97. CHARLES H. TILP, '98. E. L. KOLLER, '98. Alumni Association Editor: REV. D. FRANK GARLAND, A. M., Baltimore, Md. Business Manager: HARRY R, SMITH, '97. Assistant Business Manager: JOHN E. MEISENHELDER, '97. ".". jOne volume (ten months). . . . $l.no iMiMS-\Siuglecoples, . . .15 Payable in advance All Students are requested to hand us matter for publication The Alumni and ex-members or the College will favor us by-sending Information concerning their whereabouts or any Items they may think would be Interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the business manager. Matter intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address, THE COLLEGE MEHCUKY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EDITORIAL, 114 DE ORATORE, - --. --- 117 AN ADVENTURE (Poetry), --- 118 AN APPEAL, "9 A LULL FROM THE HIVE (Poetry), --- 120 COLLEGE LOCALS, 120 ALUMNI NOTES, -- 122 ATHLETIC NOTES, 125 TOWN AND SEMINARY NOTES, 127 FRATERNITY NOTES, - --- '--128 SUBJECTS FOR "ROMAN LAW" THESES, 129 LITERARY SOCIETIES, --- . - - 129 EXCHANGES, --- 129 EDITORIAL. REVIEWS ! Examinations ! ! Vacation ! ! ! The stereot3rped program is about to be ren-dered. The term, on the whole, has been un-usually pleasant. Seldom has there been a fall session of so much charming weather. This has been conducive to good spirits with the professors as well as with the bo}rs. Sev-eral interruptions broke the monotony of col-lege work—the foot-ball games, the visit of the Columbian Club, Election day, Thanksgiving day, Institute week and several others. The work in the class-room has been very good, and this is somewhat surprising in the face of the great temptation to stay out-of-doors. The moral and spiritual work of the term is shown in the excellent results in the Y. M. C. A., alike in the meeetings, in the efforts among the non-members, and in the continu-ation of the week of prayer during the second week. Neither has athletic activity been neglected. The "gridiron," bowling alleys, gymnasium and tennis courts have been well patronized. After all comes vacation, especially desired by the Freshmen. The MERCURY extends to all its heartiest wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. ' + * * INTER-COLLEGIATE ORATORICAL CONTEST TO BE HELD AT GETTYSBURG.—The annual meeting of the delegates composing the Com-mittee of Arrangements of the State Inter-collegiate Oratorical Union was held at the Windsor Hotel, Philadelphia, on Saturday, Nov. 21st. Fourteen representatives were present from the seven following colleges : Lafayette, Lehigh, Muhlenberg, Franklin and Marshal, Ursinus, Swarthmore and Gettys- "S THE COLLEGE MERCURY. burg. Our delegates were G. F. Abel, '97, from Philo, and R. B. Woll, '97, from Phrena. President Yetter, late of Muhlenberg, called the meeting to order. The unfinished business was then taken up and completed. The re-quest of Susquehanna University for admission was refused on the grounds that the Union is large enough and the University very young. After hearing the delegates, it was decided to hold the contest at Gettysburg on March 27th, 1897. Hon. John Stuart, of Chambers-burg; Hon. J. B. McPherson, of Harrisburg, and Hon. Rob't E. Pattison, of Philadelphia, were chosen to act as judges of the contest. The officers elected are: Pres., R. N. Hood, of Lehigh ; Vice Pres., W. E. Stoeckel, of Muhlenberg; Treas., G. F. Abel, of Get-tysburg; Sec, \V. H. Kready, of Franklin and Marshal ; Executive Committee, Blair, of Swarthmore; Shenk, of Lafayette; Wolf, of Gettysburg, and the Pres. and Sec. ex officio. A rotation system was adopted so as to have the contest held once in every seven years at each college. The contest will be held at Gettysburg, 1897; Lafayette, 1898; Lehigh, 1899; Muhlenberg, 1900; Ursinus, 1901; Franklin and Marshal, 1902, and Swarthmore, 1903. A communication has just been received from Muhlenberg asking Gettysburg to ex-change with her. The following considera-tions make such an exchange desirable : the expense and trouble attending the contest and the fact that our oratorical talent does not promise us the prize. The expense will be from sixty to one hundred dollars, even if we can overcome the trouble; but when Gettys-burg has the contest, she should have a fair prospect of the prize. The only objection to the exchange is that Muhlenburg has already had the contest there, while Gettysburg has never had it. No action has yet been taken on the matter. * * * IT is to be hoped that the article in our last issue, on the Gettysburg Club at New Haven, by Wm. J. Gies, has been thoughtfully read and pondered by the different Alumni. This is at present the only Gettysburg Alumni Club in existence, outside of the general associa-tion. There should be other clubs of this kind at such centres as York, Philadelphia, Balti-more, Harrisburg, Altooua and other places. Such organizations are not only pleasant for the members, but are beneficent to the institu-tion. One of the chief objects of the clubs should be to furnish recruits for the college. No doubt the motive which prompted the New Haven men to form a Gettysburg Club was their interest in their Alma Mater. There are few better ways of showing your interest in the college, than by the formation of such clubs. The New Haven men have already had let-ter heads printed. At the top of the page in large characters are the words, The Yale Get-tysburg Club, while to the left in small type is a list of the officers for i896-'g7. Pres., Wm. J. Gies, '93; Vice Pres., C. F. Kloss, '94; Historian, H. L. M. Hoffman, '95; Sec, A. H. Brown, '96; Treas., D. F. Culler, '93, * * * OUR RELATIONS WITH DICKINSON.—There has been considerable talk, throughout the present term, in favor of contracting friendly relations with Dickinson. Our neighbor has intimated that we ought to come on bended knees and uncovered heads and apologize for all the defeats which she has suffered at the hands of the Gettysburg athletic teams. Get-tysburg has too much dignity to submit to such conditions, but being eager to renew the annual games with Dickinson and desirous of being on friendty terms with her neighbors, the Gettysburg boys held a mass meeting and selected one of the professors to meet with rep-resentatives from Dickinson. So much for Gettysburg. What has been the response of Dickinson ? She sent fifty of her boys to Harrisburg on the day of our game with Swarthmore, who did their utmost to have Gettysburg defeated. The Dickinsonian in their issue of Nov. 7th, recog-nizing the disgraceful character of such be-havior, offers the following by way of apology: THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 116 "There were some men whose behavior at Har-risburg, had they been college men, would have disgraced Dickinson. The}7 were town boys and not students of the college, yet Dick-inson will, in all probability, get a bad repu-tation on account of the incident.'' This sounds plausible. But the facts are in evidence against it. Several of the Gettysburg boys, being fraternity men, went up and spoke with the Dickinson men belonging to their respect-ive fraternities and thus found out that the students had been doing all the mean work for which their Weekly blames the town men. But in glancing over the Dickinsonian, a second article is noticed. This was probably written by one of the associate editors, who was ignorant of the scheme to get out of the trouble. This article says : "Dickinson rooted lustilv for Swarthmore and we do not consider this in any degree objectionable. We do, however, think that the ungentlemanly con-duct and disgraceful language of a few of the students is deserving of the harshest censure. Just such actions as these are the cause of so much talk about college rowdyism." Let the readers form their own conclusions, from the two quotations, as to the attitude of Dickinson towards Gettysburg. * * * WE take pleasure in calling the attention of the readers to the publication of the '98 Spec-trum. The work is being pushed vigorously by the class, and judging from the present prospects, it will be an unusually interesting one. The men on the Staff are the leading members of the class and are exerting all their powers to make it a success. The Alumni department of which Win. J. Gies, '93, has been elected editor, will be one of the import-ant new features. The artist's corps is also very good as was seen in their work on the '97 Spectrum. Many new cuts will supplant the old ones which have been reproduced in nearly all the preceding issues. These and several other features point to a good book, one which deserves support. It comes only once a year. It need not be paid for till May, '96. Send in your subscriptions now and thus give them encouragement in their task. All suggestions which may tend to improve the publication will be very thankfully received by the Staff. * * * EVERYONE desires to enter the coming new year with a clean record for the past year. To this end, kindly pay your subscription fee to the MERCURY. Our treasury is very low and we, .too, would like to enter the new year with everything squared up for the old. If you are in doubt as to the amount of your ar-rears, consult the Business Manager. ' * * * FEVERISH HASTE.—Americans are always in a hurry. Proverbs on the foolishness of haste seem to have no influence. We work with one eye on the clock. Trains move too slow for us. Steamers are regular snails. We can "do" Europe in a month and he is a poor sight-seeing traveler who cannot see Rome in three days. We "run" down to the city. We "run" out west. We "rush" to conventions and "rush" through them as well. Every-thing must have the electric movement, in seeking wealth, in seeking pleasure, in ac-quiring an education and even in prayer and praise. We have gotten beyond the "long" sermon and there is no place in the liturgy of devotion for practical men and women for the "long" prayer. We sympathize with John Foster who longed for the power of touching men and women with the spell of "be quiet." No thorough work can be done in a hurry. No great picture was ever painted by contract against time. The author who writes the book that lives must have leisure, quiet and the seclusion of his stud}7, away from the rush-ing tide of busy life. The old "A B C" method may be slow but it is sensible. He is wise who takes time for thorough preparation for his life-work, who is willing to work and to wait. Feverish haste to get into college, feverish haste to get through and into the business or profession of one's choice is all a mistake, a costly blunder. The old proverb can be wisely applied to one seeking an edu-cation, "Make haste slowly." G. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. WILLING WORKERS.—There is always work awaiting the willing worker. He who puts his whole heart into his work will be success- ! Inl in it. He will always be wanted in his business or his profession. He who goes grumbling to his task will soon find himself going backward in his work until finally he may be "out of a job" altogether. In every business and in every profession we are told there is always "room at the top." Here at the top is where you find the willing worker. What an army of unwilling workers then there must be in the world. There are far too many workmen who throw down their tools where they stand on the instant the bell announces '•quit work" and who will wait next day. patiently for the signal to begin again. Where you find one man who magnifies his office, by throwing his whole soul in his work, and bending every energy to success in it, you must find nine or perhaps ninety-nine who work mechanically. Even in the ministry there are men who are forever haunted with the fear of doing unrewarded work. I sup-pose it is true in every profession that the few willingly work for the work's sake, and the many struggle along merely as a matter of business necessity. This characteristic of will-ingness to work is to be seen in student-life, where habits of work are formed and fixed. Many boys, and girls, too, for that matter, are in college merely to "finish" their education, as if that were a thing possible of achievement, or to get a diploma, to be graduated. The result is they "finish" when they get their diploma. They are at the end of advancement then, and have reached the limit of progress. For the remainder of life, as up to that time work pushes theni, they belong to the great army of Unwilling workers. But he, who comes to col-lege not to "finish," but to fit himself for life work, not to get a diploma, but to get a basis lor future growth and development, will prove himself in all his college work to be a willing worker. When he leaves the college halls he will join the army of willing workers who adorn their profession or their business, and who are a power in the world. May the army of willing workers inc. ease ! G. DE ORATORE. [In anticipation of the coming oratorical contest and in order to arouse more spirit in the society work, we publish in this issue an article, entitled "De Oratore," by Morris W. Croll, '89, Professor in the University School, Cleveland, Ohio. The article was taken from the University School Record^ There has recently been a noticeable revival of public speaking as an art. While we were deploring the decay of oratory, we suddenly found that we had a number of public men be-fore us who, whatever their failings, are at least successful students of eloquence. The platform, with its pine table and its semi-circle of influential citizens, has again become a feature of political campaigns, and the square-jawed orator once more receives, with his hand thrust between the first and second buttons of his frock-coat, the wild greetings of his fellow-citizens. There has been, moreover, whether it is or is not due to the revival of oratory in politics, a similar revival in some of the largest col-leges. Everyone who has read the news-papers must have noticed that the debating clubs of Princeton, Harvard, Yale and "the Tech" have taken a prominent position among the student organizations of their respective institutions. In most large colleges there are now two rival societies, which command the respect and enthusiastic support of the student-body by the direct, simple and convincing ex-temporaneous speaking of their members. In short, it is evident that the old-fashioned de-bate has become popular. This is a consummation which many of us have devoutedly wished. The debating-club was the school in which Americans of the last generation learned statecraft. And they learned not only that, but two yet more desir-able things—the power, namely, of thinking at once rapidly and logically, and the power of putting .thought readily into consecutive language. The=e ends are as desirable, surely, for us as they were for our fathers. It is useless, however, to insist upon the THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 118 profitableness of debating. That is obvious. It is as a form of amusement, as a sport, that debating I think, is not appreciated. "The spice of life," says Stevenson, "is battle." Who would compare the enjoyment of seeing the best horse in the world run against an invisible record with that of seeing six raw-boned trotters striving toward the line at a country fair ? And who would not go further to hear a subject tossed about between affirma-tive and negative than to hear the same sub-ject expounded by its most learned advocate ? There may be some pleasures of which rivalry is not an element, but the sum and substance of all that which we call sport is eager compe-tition. And, with this definition in mind, I venture to say that there is greater striving, closer application of the powers of a man to a desired object, a narrower watch for advantage, and a quicker grasp of opportunity in a lively debate than in a foot-ball match. Consider, for one thing, how much depends upon the manner of marshalling facts. When you have ended you know whether or not each one has fitted into its place and helped to strengthen the whole. You know whether or not they are real, significant facts, and whether, if they are not significant, you have made them seem so. You know, too, if it is a good, fair-and-square extemporaneous debate, what you have forgotten and where you lost your grasp and failed to make your point; and you squirm with eagerness to try again. But it is all over with you. You have had your chance and either won or lost with it. You must await patiently the decision of the judges, who sit, like the fair ladies in the tournaments of old, ready to award the prize to the better combat-ants. Here is sport enough in all conscience, and nothing said of the hundred details of the game—of the skill in anticipating the oppo-nents' plan of attack, of the incidents that oc-cur, so unexpectedly, diverting the fight to this issue and to that, of the fine fencing with the swords of rebuttal and rejoinder which be-gins after the opening speech. Is it not clear that success in the art—or, let us say the sport—of debating requires rare qualities ? Finally, like all good sports, debating demands a fine balance of temper, equal parts of spirit and good humor; and he will be most success-ful and win most judges who is "eager to fight, yet not averse to quarrel." M. W. C. AN ADVENTURE. While the western sun was sinking On that feast-day of the Fall, Through the corridors we wandered Of old "recitation hall." On Professor Bikle's blackboard, As through his room we did pass, We had written our initials For to morrow's I^atin class. We had viewed the halls where students Oft orating, raise their voice, "Phrenakosmian" was quite nice, but "Philomatheau" was our choice. On the walls the shadows, deepening. Plainly marked the close of day. Warning us we'd miss our supper, Should we longer dare to stay. Dearer joys there are than supper, (Leastways on Thanksgiving Day) So we tarried in the "Sweat-box" •Singing, "When I'm far away,'' "Sometimes you may think of me dear." And the old familiar song Had, to me, peculiar meaning As we sang it, lingering long. Groping then adowu the stairway, We were one and all quite shocked, On arriving at the entrance, There to find the door fast locked. We might shout from out a window To some passing boy or man, But, for several obvious reasons, We objected to this plan. In our minds there was strange mixture Of amusement and dismay, When we found to leave this prison There was but one other way. We must stumble up that stairway To the gloomy upper floors, Down the fire escape and exit Through two swinging iron doors. In this pleasant manner, took we, Down through tower dark and tall, Unconventional departure From the recitation hall. I will ne'er forget that visit, Neither do I think will you, To that building of the college Of the "orange and the blue." M. G. IK) THE COLLEGE MERCURY, AN APPEAL TO THE ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE COL-LEGE FOR SUPPORT OF THE "SPECTRUM." The Junior class would respectfully call the attention of the alumni and friends of the col-lege to the Annual soon to be issued by its representatives, the '98 "Spectrum" Board. The "Spectrum" idea has always been cordi-ally endorsed by the Faculty ; the students in college are enthusiastically co-operating in the consummation of the special plans designed for the forthcoming Annual ; the class of '98 is unanimously as well as heartily supporting the work now devolving upon its chosen rep-resentatives, and the Staff of editors and man-agers itself is using every endeavor to publish a "Spectrum" that will be a lasting credit to the college and the class. That the Staff will be able to accomplish this desideratum, with the co-operation of the student body and the alumni, it feels entirely confident. Numerous decided improvements over former Annuals have been devised and several entirely new features will be presented. Sta-tistics and historical data in regard to college events of the past year and with reference to the classes, fraternities, societies, athletics, as-sociations, etc., etc., will receive special at-trition. Original literary contributions, of a character suitable for the "Spectrum," will be given the prominence they deserve. ' In order to make the '98 "Spectrum" of particular interest to the Gettysburg graduates a large section of the book will be devoted en-tirely to the alumni. This department will comprise all of the statistics, etc., given in the '93 "Spectrum," revised to date, and, besides, will comprehend many new and additional lads and features of interest and value to all who are in any way interested in the affairs of Gettysburg College. The Staff, in the arrange-ment and compilation of this department, have been fortunate in securing the kind assistance of an able and enthusiastic Gettysburg Alum-nus. The Staff feels assured that this part of the volume will be generally considered of special importance and no labor will be spared to make it the most complete and valuable alumni record issued within recent years. Suggestions in regard to this department as well as to any other matter relating to the book will be very thankfully received. General communications should be addressed to the Editor, E. W. Meisenhelder. The Staff earnestly appeals to the alumni for financial support of the "Spectrum." Prac-tically every student at Gettysburg has favor-ably responded to our solicitation for subscrip-tions and we respectfully urge every alumnus to do likewise. Many graduates have already placed their names on our subscription lists, but we hope to receive many more before the next term opens. Subscriptions given to any of the students during vacation will be promptly transmitted to the Staff. Business communications should be addressed to the Manager, S. M. Lutz. We hope to make the '98 "Spectrum" the very best annual ever published at Gettysburg. To do so, however, it is quite obvious that we must have the united support of the alumni. The student-body is doing its full share to aid us in every way. May we not hope that the alumni will freely give us the material assist-ance we need in order to publish an Annual that will be received by every friend of the college with a feeling of real pride and pro-nounced gratification? We mean to leave nothing undone to perform completely the part expected of us. Will the alumni do theirs ? We make an earnest appeal for unanimous support. May this sentiment now, and al-ways, receive universal approval and adop-tion—" Every Gettysburgian for the 'Spec-trum' and the 'Spectrum' for Gettysburg." THE STAFF. Why don't we have a few class games of foot-ball. Last year these were among the most interesting we had. Surely there is good material in all the classes—especially, the Freshman. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 120 A LULL FROM THE HIVE. Be earnest forever ! Be this our endeavor ! Be honest, be cheerful, be kind ! Making the spirit the test of our merit, To outward appearance blind. Our memory Will cherished be By teachers and class mates and friends If efforts are made towards these ends- Whenever you roam from the pales of your home In the bright sunny days of a spring, You see the bees gather from forest, from heather, Golden stores while they buzz and they sing. They nectar sip From lilies' lip Which gives to them food and good cheer When days become cold, lone, and drear. In the spring of our life, when earth's joyous and rife, And all things are happy and gay, When song birds are filling the air with their trilling, Your honey, O store, while you may ! When days of gloom And sadness come. The heart and the memory will hold Its treasures more precious than gold. W. H. B. C, '99. COLLEGE LOCALS. EbMUND W. MEiSE.NHEi.niiR and E t,. ROLLER, Editors. Dr. N. (to 190b Cadet who is verj' much in-teiested in something between himself and the board)—Mr. K., you had better take that to the window where you have better light. Mr. S., '99, recently went out after turkeys. After a walk of about four miles and a half, he arrived at the desired place. Cautiously walk-ing along a fence, he is surprised by the owner of the property who immediately begins to shoot. Walton now held up his hands and said, "I surrender." But when three men strive to tie him he makes a brave fight and finally succeeds in gaining his freedom. Now knocking two of the men down he makes a bold dash for the road. The men follow in hot pursuit and Walton falls over a plow. Never losing his presence of mind, he immedi-ately jumps up and runs into a brook. Hav-ing thrown the pursuers from his track by this piece of strategy he proceeds to a neighboring woods where he lies behind a log. till late at night. Finally he makes his way home where he is received with open arms by his worried com-panions. The MERCURY extends its sympathy to Mr. S. for injuries received. Dr. N. (to Mr. D., 1900, who is up at the board and holding a book under his coat), "You might injure your arm.by holding things so tightly under your coat." Mr. E., '99, tells us "many of our presi-dents had a very humble beginning, for in-stance, George Washington the rail-splitter." Prof. Van O., in Prep. Greek, to Mr. M.— "Have you Kelsey's edition?" Mr. M.—"No, sir." Prof. Van O.—"Who's have you?" Mr. M.—"Anabasis'." Mr. D., 1900, says that "James II, of Eng-land, w7as of a weak character because he chewed tobacco." Dr. B.—"Mr. M., what was the Koran ?" Mr. M., '97.—"An officer appointed by—" Class laughs and Mr. M. stops short in his explanation. Mr. R., '99, would like to know who Mr. Hastings is and what position Mr. Hastings is holding in Penn'a. Mr. K., '98, (translating German),—"My hat fell down confused." Prof. K. (to Mr. B., '98, who has been sleeping and has been rudely awakened to re-cite)—" Mr. B. you ought to feel refreshed after your little nap." Dr. B.—"If your eyes were shut how would you recognize Br." Mr. F., '98.—"By its color." Mr. B., '99, (in gymnasium and talking to Mr. L., 1900)—"M. L,. don't get on those mats with your feet." William Harrison Winfield R., of Prep., re-cently jewed a town storekeeper five cents on a broom. After a vain effort to jew him more he asked him, "Wouldn't you just wrap it up since I don't like to carry a broom along the streets ? " Mr. M., '99, (explaining the habitability of the moon)—"The moon revolves around the sun and has its own moon and is inhabited and the inhabitants revolve on their axes. Mr. G. 1900, wishes to borrow a horn, on which he wishes to increase his breathing ca-pacity ; Dr. S. having marked him minus. Every evening, about dark, G. will stick his head out of the window and look around to see if any one is near. If no one is near, he will blow a feeble blast on the horn and quickly withdraw, appreciating the joke hugely. We wish Mr. G. all success in his efforts. Mr. E., 1900, recites with great feeling and with good effect, "God bless the man who first invented sleep." I .'I THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Prof. K (to Mr. B., who is reading an es-say)—" The last sentence is not correct. Can you tell me why ? " Mr. B., 1900—"It is too much like a Soph-omore's writing." Prof. K.—"That's right. Quite a number of pretty words which mean nothing." Overheard at the W. M. R. R. depot from the lips of a young lady : "Well, Mr. A., I think you are the nicest man on earth." Ernie, '97, is strictly in it. Several bright Sophs intending to have some fun paid a visit to "Jess" K. the other night. Cayenne pepper was wafted about the room and burnt in the flame of the lamp. "Jesse" stood the test very well and . the "Sophs," after a short while, were compelled to leave. A more crestfallen crowd would, with difficulty, have been found. It was plainly a case of "the hunter hunted." Josey K., '99, who is a remarkable wit, said that "T., '99, received a ten for night work." Joe had reference to the Prep. fire. "Stocky" recently asked on what date New Year came last year. Mr. F., '98, has a new way of getting off from reciting Greek—he hides his book when the recitation period comes. Prof. Klinger is on to it, however. Prof. K. (in Greek, to Mr. B., '98, who has just flunked)—"Mr. B., I supposed you would have been better prepared to recite after your pleasant little nap." The back row in Lab. of the Classical Jun-iors have suddenly been deprived of the sober-ing effects of the presence of Mr. A. B. B. V. O., who departed for more peaceable climes about a week ago. "How can a fellow do sat-isfactory work, Mr. Stover, when there are a lot of bums banging around ? " The standard of the college is surely being raised, at least the standard of the Sophomore class, when a '99 man discourses fluently upon the Darwin theory—as was heard a few days ago. Truly we have "all sorts and conditions of men" around here, Darwinites, Silverites, Atheists and Preps. Mr. H., 1900, received quite a "moist" re-ception at the rear door of middle division lately. It always pays for a Freshman to "look aloft," especially when he has his Sunday clothes on, for the more moisture greens re-ceive the longer they will retain their verd-ancy. Mr. S., 1900, was lately giving his opinion about a certain "dramist." We suppose he meant "dramatist," but then he's only a Freshman and will learn. Prof. H., in teaching Anglo Saxon, has at last succeeded in impressing upon the mind of Mr. L-, of the Dummies, '98, that we get from the old English gumena our word grootn. "You may have occasion to use it some time." Mr. F., '98, (in Anglo Saxon)—"And he hastened about an ell.'' Prof. H.—"Mr. F., he wouldn't have has-tened very far in that case, would he?" A word about the College Musical Clubs. The very creditable manner in which they fur-nished the music for the recent Adams County Institute has again brought them before the people. The music this year, both of the Glee Club and of the Violin Quartet, has been very much better than any before given— simply the result of diligent and frequent prac-tice. The Glee Club has been rather unfort-unate in losing temporarily its second bass, Mr. Manges, whose larynx was injured in foot-ball practice, but his active and neces-sary work as manager has still continued. The clubs are in good condition now and the stu-dents in general will lose nothing by taking an interest in them—for they represent the col-lege musically, as the foot-ball and base-ball teams represent it in the capacity of athletics. The Juniors are writing plays for Prof. Himes. The whole college is awaiting the re-sult anxiously, for they will no doubt revolu-tionize the whole dramatic science. They range all the way from Adam and Eve to the Judgment Day. One of the sources of pleasure of the last month, was Dr. Everett's lecture on "Our Girls." A fair sized audience greeted him, which, however, should have been considera-bly larger, in view of the frequent announce-ments. The lecture was very entertaining, brim full of humor and anecdotes. We all , want to hear the Dr. again. Overheard in the Shakespeare recitation : T., '98—Say, Nick, what does "Gervinus" mean in the notes to the plays ? Nick, '98—"Why, that's the German for the author of the notes.'' S., 1900, seems to take quite an interest in the establishment of the Battlefield Photo-grapher. If he wants his pictures taken free, he is certainly going to lots of trouble. There i may be other reasons. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. This is about the time when the Sophomores ; are beginning to put on a little dignity. How- ' ever, they cannot overcome their little habit of giving their class yell every time they see a Freshman walk across the campus—just to show him how brave they are. Our society reading rooms are being mis-used by some of the fellows—especially by non-society men. They ought to realize that the rooms are for "reading," and that for this absolute quiet is needed. They were not fitted up for club rooms or places to play foot-ball. If everyone would individually realize this fact and respect the rights of his fellow student, it would certainly be better for all concerned. "Bobby" W., '98, has lately been quite at-tentive to the fair sex—one of them. This is quite surprising, viewed from our past knowl-edge of W., but then it must happen to them all, and Bobby has been captured. Congrat- | illations. During the recent convention of the Adams County Teachers' Institute some of the college fellows—especially those of the musical clubs— had the pleasure of associating with Prof. Park-er, of Binghampton, N. Y., and who conducted the music. He is a jovial good fellow, and took quite an interest in the boys, as did the boys in him. He sang several solos at the In-stitute. "Herbie" F., '98, recently in chapel one morning uttered quite a feminine shriek. It is said he "saw snakes" —one, anyway. The latest capture that the girls of Gettys-burg have made is "Albertus." Well, well, will wonders never cease ? We thought he was hardened. It is said, too, that the young ladies have been also inquiring earnestly after Fv '98. One of the fellows recently in German used the word "compar-able," accenting the second syllable. Dr. M.—"I would pronounce that 'com-par-able.' " "Since when ? Thats the first time I ever heard it pronounced that way." Dr. M.—"Well, you are not so old that you can't learn a few new things. There are many things happening continu-ally in and about college that would make very interesting items among the locals, but which never get there because they never reach the ears of the editors. It is the duty of the fellows, and to the interest of them all, that they hand such things in to the local de-partment, and thus increase its interest. Very few items are handed in and the editors have to do entirely personal work in getting such as do appear. We ask your assistance. The skillful investigation of scientific intel-lect, expanding in every direction, will ever bring to light new and wonderful discoveries. Following close on the disclosures made by the now famous Roentgen, which prove that cer-tain rays of light can be made to pass through even the obtuse head of a Sophomore, the an-nouncement now issues from the Chemical Lab. Dept., that the fruit of the genus Dios-pysos Virginiana of the natural order Ebena-ceae, commonly called "persimmons," may be obtained from the Platanus Occidentalis or syc-amore tree. This startling fact, like so many others in the scientific world, was chanced upon by the "Professor" quite accidentally, but that makes it none the less interesting. Samples of the delicious fruit recently secured, and a full explanation showing with what ease and rapidity it is digested, may be obtained upon application. Be sure that vou are not faked. ALUMNI-I. C. MANGES and CHARLES H. TILP, Editars. '41. St. Paul's Lutheran church, of Steel-ton, Pa., and the new church at High Spire, Pa., are to be formed into one charge. Rev. E. Miller, D. D., will be the pastor. '44. Rev. Peter Anstadt, D. D., of York, Pa., is considering the question of publishing a biography of the Rev. Doctor Ezra Keller, '35- '45. Rev. J. F. Probst has left Asbury Park, and will spend part of the winter at Ashville, N. C. His health has not improved to such an extent that he is able to resume the active work of the ministry. '46. Rev. Conrad Kuhl, D. D., prepared the history of the Central Illinois Synod for the 50 years of its existence, that was read by Dr. Rhodes, at the convention held at Hills-boro, 111., in October. '48. Many requests have come to Rev. P. Born, D. D., especially from former Theolog-ical students, to have his Inductive Bible Study ot the Old and New Testament issued in book form. Now that he has retired from active work as professor the call comes louder than l-?l THE COLLEGE MERCURY. ever. The work will compose a volume of about 300 pages. '50. Dr. M. H. Valentine's new book on "Ethics," will be out before Jan. 1st. The work will be used as a text-book in our col-lege. '52. Rev. Prof. John J. Scherer, of Marion, Va., has returned from a trip to Texas. '54. Rev. John Tomlinson, Dixonville, Pa., has compiled some valuable statistics, which appear in the Lutheran World of Nov. 26th. They are worthy to be read and pondered. '55. Rev. P. Bergstresser, D. D., of Rock-wood, Pa., spent vSunday, Nov. 22, in Alle-gheny City and filled the pulpit of his son, Rev. Fuller Bergstresser. '57. Rev. H. L. Baugher, D. D., has been elected Managing Editor of The Lutheran Wo//,/. The Doctor will give his undivided attention to this arduous and responsible work. This excellent paper is indeed fortunate in se-curing the services of so learned a man. '58. The Lutheran Observer of Nov. 20, con-tains a poem entitled, "Nearer Home," by Rev. B. H. Hunt, that was written and pub-lished in the Observer while the author was a student at college. The song is found in many song books. '59. After nineteen yearsof editorial service, Rev. J. H. Sieker has transferred the editor-ship of Zeuge die Wahrheit, to pastor Stack- In^/., of Paterson, N. J. '60. Rev. Prof. M. H. Richards, D. D., de-livered the first of a series of lectures at the Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pa. His sub-ject was, "An Excursion to Eden." The lec-ture was highly praised and the students and friends are looking forward with pleasure to the second lecture, soon to be delivered. '61. Rev. L. Grab has accepted the call of St. Mark's church, Omaha, Neb., and is at work in his new field. '62. Rev J. B. Keller, late pastor at Smiths-burg, Md., will spend the winter in Georgia. '62. The corner stone for the new Lutheran church at Vandergrift, Pa., was laid on Thurs-day November 12th. The sermon was preached by Rev. M. I,. Culler, president of the Pitts-burg Synod, and the cornerstone was laid by Rev. J. W. Poffinberger, '72 of Leechburg, Pa. '62 Prof. H. E. Jacobs, D. D., LL- D., president of Mt. Airy Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, filled the pulpit of College church, Sunday, Nov. 15. '63. Rev. J. L. Smith, D. D., of Pittsburg, Pa., on Sunday, November 29, organized the St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran church of Wilkinsburg, Pa. This is the first Lutheran congregation organized in that thriving town, and was brought about through the untiring efforts of Dr. Smith. '63. The November number of The Luth-eran contains an obituary and cut of the late Prof. Davis Garber, Ph. D. Muhlenberg Col-lege, where he labored for 26 years, has sus-tained a great loss in his death. '63. Rev. E. J. Wolf, D. D., recently at-tended a meeting of the Common Service Com-mittee at Alleutown, which is now preparing a Liturgy. '64. Friday evening, October 30th, the Rev. J. G. Griffith, pastor of the English Lutheran church, Lawrence, Kansas, by request, deliv-ered an address on the Reformation of the 16th century to about 400 Indians at Haskell Insti-tute. '64. The Zanesville, (O.,) Times Recorder of Nov. 30th, contains an account of the 20th anniversary service held in St. John's Evan-gelical Lutheran church of that city. It gives a review of the work done by the pastor, Rev. Frank Richard, D. D., during his long service in this church, and shows that the work has prospered in his hands, during the past fifth of of a century. The ladies of the church gave an elegant reception and reunion at the par-sonage, on Nov. 26, in honor of the occason. '65. Rev. Joseph Hillpot died on October 30th at Quakertown, Pa. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. '69. Dr. J. A. Clutz and Rev. H. L. Yar-ger, '83, assisted at the dedication of the First church of St. Joseph, Mo., on November 15. '73. Rev. T. J. Yost, of Cumberland, Md., preached the sermon at the opening of the State Convention of the West Virginia C. E. Union held at Clarkesburg, W. Va. '73. Rev. J. A. Singmaster, D. D., Allen-town, preached the sermon at the dedication of St. Matthew's English Lutheran church, Brooklyn, on Nov. 12. He also presented the chancel windows given by Hon. and Mrs. Schieren. THK COLLEGE MERCURY. 124 '73. Rev. Chester H. Traver, late of Rhine-beck, New York, has taken charge of the Lutheran church at Churchtown, New York, and thus succeeds the late Doctor Marcus Empie. '77. Rev. J. A. West has taken charge of the Lutheran church at Londonville, O. He has been warmly received by the people of his I charge. '77. The congregation of Christ Lutheran | church, of Los Angeles, Cal., of which Rev. j M. H. Stine, Ph. D., is pastor, dedicated a new j pipe organ on Sunday, Nov. 15. Rev. Stine has been very successful as pastor of this church, j '78. The good Lutheran people of Palo, 111., are arranging to care for their pastor, Rev. Holmes Dysinger, right royally. The founda-tion is already laid for a fine $3000 parsonage, to be built of dressed stone in harmony with the church itself. '78. Rev. O. C. Roth, pastor of Grace Eng- ! lish Lutheran church, Broadway and Gough street, Baltimore, Md., commemorated his seventh year as pastor on November 2nd. He preached two sermons on the event. '79. The new Lutheran church in Benders-ville, Rev. U. A. Hankey, pastor, is to be dedicated on the second Sunday in December. Dr. E. J. Wolf and Rev. H. H. Weber will have charge of the services. '80. Rev. M. F. Troxell, D. D., of Spring-field, Ills., preached an eloquent sermon on the Reformation, in Grace Lutheran church of that city. '81. Rev. J. W. Byers, D. D., of Nevada, 0., and the people of his congregation royally entertained the Eastern Conference of Witten-berg Synod, during its 97th convention, which was held in Nevada, O. 82. Rev. Chas. R. Trowbridge will spend the winter in Easton, Pa., where he has taken up work in his new charge. '82. Frank E. Colom, Esq., is one of the best and most active lawyers at the Bedford Bar, and a worthy son of his Alma Mate). He was elected president of the Bedford County Sunday School Association, at its 15th annual convention, held at St. Clairsville, Pa. '83. Rev. W. W. Anstadt has accepted the call to Hollidaysburgh, Pa. He will take charge of his new field on the first Saturday in December. '83. Rev. L. M. Kuhns, of Omaha, Neb., laid the corner-stone for his new church a few weeks ago. Rev. H. W. Kuhns, D. D., '56, was present and participated in the services. '83. Rev. H. L. Yarger assisted Rev. W. F. Rentz, of Atchison, Kansas, in a series of special services, and proved himself a valuable assistant. '84. Rev. L. M. Zimmerman, Baltimore, Md., is preaching a series of sermons on "Pil-grim's Progress." One of the subjects was, "The Pitfalls to Young Men." '85. Rev. A. F. Richardson, of Grafton, Wt Va., was unanimously elected president, for his third term, of the West Virginia C. E. Union, which convened in Clarkesburg, W. Va., Nov. 18. '87. Rev. Herbert C. Alleman will be in-stalled pastor of College Church December 6, Rev. Alleman, D. D., of Lancaster, Pa., and Rev. J. C. Kohler, D. D., of Hanover, Pa., are the committee on installation. '90. On Nov. 8th, the cornerstone of Beth-any English Lutheran church, New York City, was laid by the pastor, Rev. J. Fred. W. Kitzmeyer. '90. Rev. Oscar H. Gruver has resigned as pastor of the First English Lutheran church, San Francisco, California. 91. Rev. Stanley Billheimer, Washington, D. C., was in Gettysburg Thanksgiving Day, visiting his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Billheimer, '91. Rev. S. Gring Heffelbower has been called to Mauheim, Pa. '92. Rev. George Beiswanger, pastor of Calvary Lutheran church, Baltimore, Md., en-tertained the members of the present and retir-ing church councils at the parsonage, Thurs-day night, October 22nd. '92. Rev. Edward O. Keen completed his studies in the Reformed Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pa., in May last, and is now pastor of St. Paul's Reformed church of Waynesboro, Pa., having begun his work there Aug. 1, '92. Rev. D. P. Drawbaugh, McConnells-burg, Pa., has been doing faithful and thorough work in his field and his efforts have been crowned with excellent results. '93. Rev. Marion J. Kline preached the first of a series of four sermons on "The Life of Joseph" in Bethlehem Lutheran Tabernacle, Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 15th. The audience was large and the discourse was exceptionally fine. I •■■ THK COLLEGE MERCURY. •93. Rev. \V. S. Oberholtzer has changed his address from MifBjntown, Pa., to Harbin, Indiana. '93. Rev. F. II. Knubie, of New York city, has accepted a call to begin a new English Lutheran church on the west side of New York city. '93. The English Evangelical Lutheran church, Jersey City, Rev. E. E. Neudewitz, pastor, was the recipient of a very costly pul-pit Bible recently. It was given by a member of the same. '93! Rev. John C. Rowers was installed as pastor of St.'Mark's Lutheran church, Wash-ington, I). C, 011 Sunday, November 15th. The charge to the pastor was delivered by Rev. M. L. Beard, '75. of Middletown, Md., and that to the people by Rev. Geo. S. Bow-ers, of Hagetstown, Md. '93. Rev. G. W, haulers, Jr., of Argusville, N. Y., delivered a lecture on "Normal Train-ing in the Sunday School," before the Sharon Institute, at I.ecsville, N. Y., on November 17th. His address was instructive and well received. '93. On Sunday, Nov. 29th, Rev. Wm. C. 1U finer formally began work in his new field at Fayetteville, Pa. '93, The examining committee of the York Bar'met Nov. 20, to examine P. M. Bortner, who has been reading law with Niles ec Neff. Mr. Bortner passed a very creditable examina-tion, and on the motion of J. E. Vandersloot, Esq., a member of the committee, was admit-ted to practice at the York County Courts. '93. Rev. A. A. Kelley was installed pastor Of the Trindle Springs church, Sunday, Nov. 8. Since he has been pastor of this church the membership has been doubled. Rev. and Mrs. Kelley were visiting friends in Gettysburg, Thanksgiving Day. • '94. Herbert A. Allison is a member of the faculty of Susquehanna University. The Oc-tober "number of The Susquehanna contained a good cut of him. His department is the Greek language. '94. Prank E. Pickinger, principal of Cham-bersburg schools, was manager of the foot-ball team, composed of ex-college players, that played our team Nov. 21, on the new athletic held. '96. W. H. Mengcs was captain of the York V. M. C. A. foot-ball team tins fall. ATHLETICS. CHARLES T. LARK, Editor. Gettysburg, 6—Maryland University, o. Gettysburg, 58—Chambersburg ex-college plavers, o. Gettysburg, 64—Western Maryland Col-lege, o. Maryland University having 700 student from whom to select, as a matter of course, has a strong foot-ball team. This eleven, by its excellency on the gridiron, has won for itself the championship of Maryland. It is com-posed of a set of big fellows, almost all of whom have had years of experience in their respective positions. In spite of the fact that our grounds were wet and soggy, the game between Gettysburg and the above mentioned team, on Nov. 14th, was one of unusual inter-est. The players were about evenly matched as regards weight. The playing was so sharp and close that almost through the entire game it looked very much as though neither side would score. Deuson, the left half-back and Capt. of M. U., although the lightest man oh the team, played a most brilliant game. His three years experience on the University of North Carolina eleven, showed up to a good advantage and his work received merited ap-plause. Too much can not be said in praise of Capt. White and Lawyer for their magnificent play-ing. They always play a good game but in this particular one they excelled themselves. Their runs and tackles were the feature of the daw Had our team made more preparation for this game than it did, we would have won by a larger margin. M. U. kicked off and the ball was downed on our 30-yard line. By an elegant exhibition of team work," our fel-lows took the leather from this point to our opponents' 10-yard line, where it was lost on downs. Through the successful use of a quar-terback kick, and their quarter proved himself an adept at this, they captured the hall on their 30-yard line. The ball changed hands ofteu but we finally forced it to their 2-yard line where, on an account of an unfortunate I fumble, they obtained possession of it and again advanced it somewhat down the field, it being on their 20-yard line when the first half ended. The second half was marked by many fine plays. The ball was kept entirely within the territory of M. U., nevertheless it changed hands frequently. . During the last five min- THE COLLEGE MERCURY. [26 utes' play our men summoned all their strength for one mighty effort and after a series of de-termined, desperate rushes, the ball was taken across the line by Capt. White after a 25-yard run. The crowd yelled itself hoarse. Dale added two more points by kicking the goal— 6 to o. Time was called a few minutes after the ball was again put in play. Among the distinguished spectators present were Congressman-elect Benner and Judge Swope. This was one of the most exciting games of the year and we take great pride in placing it under our list of victories. The line-up follows : MARYLAND UNIVERSITY. POSITIONS. GETTYSBURG. Allen left end Moser Steele left tackle Byers Gauss left guard Koppenhaver Riley centre Stifel McCain right guard Hagerman Lewis right tackle Nicholas Dawson right end (Kite) Doty Riddington right half back Dale Barrow quarter back Lawyer Armstrong full back Sheely Touchdown—White. Goal—Dale. Refree—Kump. Umpire— Kuendig. Linesmen—Steward and Leisenring Time of halves—25 and 20 minutes. Our students had anticipated a closer con-test than that which took place on Nov. 21st, between Gettysburg and an eleven from Cham-bersburg, composed of ex-college players. Although somewhat heavier than the oppos-ing team we should by no means have had the walk-over we had. Fine individual playing but lack of team work tells the tale for Cham-bersburg. Our fellows made gains wherever and whenever they desired. "Willie" Burns, 1901, played the star game and seems to be as much at home on the foot-ball field as in the box. We scored 32 points in the first half and 26 iu the second, making the total 58-0. Dale, 1900, missed but one goal out of ten. ■ The following was the line- up : GETTYSBURG. POSITIONS, CHAMBERSBURG. Stifel centre Sherrod Koppenhaver left guard Plank Hagerman right guard Shaefer Ott left tackle Brown Nicholas right tackle Parrott Doty right end Wragg Young (Loudon) left end Pierson Lawyer quarter Orr Burns left half back Smith Dale right half-back G. Fletcher Sheely fullback F. Fletcher Touchdowns—Burns, 3; Dale, 3; Nicholas, 1; Stifel, 1; Sheely, 2. Goals—Dale, 9, Referee—White. Umpire—Kuendig. Lines-men— Leisenring and Lark. Timekeeper—Wheeler. As a matter of course interest on Thanks-giving Day centers around the turkey, but foot-ball comes in as a very close second. This is the first time for a number of years that our team has played at home on this holi-day, and, as the day was pleasant, an enthusi-astic crowd of 500 people turned out to see us line up against Western Maryland College. This was the best game of the year, at least in one respect —in point of attendance. Western Maryland started the game with a dash, and for the first ten minutes' play held our eleven very nicely. They then lost confi-dence and their playing during the remainder of the game looked to the foot-ballist like the first attempts of a lot of novices, while to the referee it looked like 64 to o. Lawyer, 1900, was, unfortunately, physically unable to be in the game, and his position, quarter-back, was ably filled by Capt. White, whose place at left-half was filled by Burns, 1901. Dale, igoo, did excellent work in kicking ten goals out of eleven. In short each player played his position well. Line up: WESTERN MARYLAND. POSITION. GETTYSBURG.' Stiaugh. Reckford left half-back Burns Johnson left end Fite Joice left tackle Nicholas Little left guard Ott Satlerwight '. center Stifel Warfield right guard Hagerman Baker right tackle Manges Edwards right end Doty Zepp right half back Dale Patton quarter back (Capt.) White Crockett full back Sheely Touchdowns —Dale, 7; Burns, 2; Manges, 1; Hagerman, I-Gials— Dale, 10. Time of halves—25 minutes. Referee— Kuendig Umpire—Murphy. Linesmen—Wolf and Whalen. The feelings of a Gettysburg man, in look-ing over our record in foot-ball for the season which is just now past, can be but those of gratification and pleasure. We have indeed been eminently successful, having won six games out of nine, and to-day stand higher iu the foot-ball world than we have ever stood before. In spite of the fact that we contested with some of the strongest elevens in the coun-try, we have to our credit an even hundred more points than have been scored against us, as is shown by the following: State College, 40—Gettysburg, University of Penn'a, - 32—Gettysburg, F. & M., - 24—Gettysburg, Baltimore City College, o—Gettysburg,' F. &. M., Swarthmore, University of Maryland, Chamb'sbg ex-Col. pl'ys, o- Western Maryland Col., o-o— Gettysburg, 4—Gettysburg, o—Gettysburg, -Gettysburg, -Gettysburg, o. o. o. 50. 10. 12. 6. 58. 64. Totals, 100 200 127 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. Certainly this happy result of a seasons work demonstrates most clearly the value of a coach. We were very fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Best and our success is largely due to his efforts. He did remarkably well iii developing such a team from so many inexperienced players. Koppenhaver, 1900, Stifel, 1900, and Hag-erman, 1901, at left guard, center and right guard respectively formed a center which held like a brick wall against all our opponents. Each member of this trio, averaging 195 pounds of solid muscle, at the beginning of the season was new at at the game, but their de-velopment has been remarkable. They broke through constantly and opened up well for the barks. Ott, '97, Manges, '97, and Nicholas, '98, are the men who efficiently filled the tackle positions. "Pop" Ott is one of our old relia- ' bles and always played an aggressive game. The reputation of Manges as a ground gainer is thoroughly established, while "Nick," be-sides taking ample care of his man and mak-ing gams when called on, kept things lively by his seemingly inexhaustible supply of jokes. Doty, '99, Fite, '98, Young, 1900, and Lou-don, 1901, at the end positions, upheld the orange and blue. Although this is their first year on the team, they played like veterans. Doty, after having been tackled, is fond of shaking the man from him and going on. He is a hard man to down. Eite, besides being a good tackier, is a snappy player and runs well. Young and London each played a steady game and made their presence felt. Lawyer, 1900, as this is his second year at the position, has become quite proficient as a quarter-back. He keeps his wits about him and gets into the interference well. Sheely, '97, made many fine tackles and struck the line hard, besides kicking very cleverly. burns, 1901, Dale, 1900, and White, '97, played at half. The first one mentioned kicks well and runs fast. Dale is adroit at kicking, is a swift runner, a fine tackier and an all around good player. Capt. White seems to be entirely at home in the game. It is quite unnecessary to enumer-ate liis achievements and abilities as a foot-ball player, as he is a heady player, was always in the game, and was a source of encouragement to his men. Perhaps the secret of his ground-gaining, is the fact that he sticks like a leech to his interference. We must not overlook the second team which, under the leadership of Kuendig, '98, turned out so faithfully. Their services were of great value to the first eleven, as they there-by were given sharp, hard practice. The scrub contains many players of promise, among whom are : '98, Kephardt, Tholan, Briner, Kuendig; '99, Herman, Brumbaugh, Trimble, Roehner; 1900, Good, Wisotzki, Brandt, Kohler. As we lose but a very few men, the prospects for next season's team are of the brightest. Our players may now retire from the grid-iron and take merited satisfaction in looking over a season well spent. TOWN AND SEWJINARY NOTES. S. J. MILLER, Editor. TOWN. It seems as if improvement has become the ' adopted watchword of the town. Telephone wires by the dozen have been stretched across the diamond, thus to communicate with all the important neighboring towns in the county. The Water Company has enlarged the water supply by replacing the old pipes with larger ones. Several new and costly buildidgs have been erected, among which is the new school building, known as the Meade High School, and which in all probability will be occupied at the beginning of the New Year. The association of the survivors of the Twenty-first Regiment of Pennsylvania' Cav-alry recently held its seventh annual reunion in this place. About seventy-five members were in attendance. At a business meeting the following officers were elected: President, Major Robert Bell, Adams county; Vice-Pres-ident, Captain E. McMillan, Lancaster; Secre-tary, J. Harvey Cobean. Gettysburg; Treas-urer, Captain Long, Gettysburg. The anniversary exercises of the Women's Bible Society were held on Sunday evening, Nov. 15th, in Christ Lutheran church. Rev. Dr. Huber presided. Prayer was offered by Rev. Dr. Richards, of Gettysburg, and ad-dresses were made by Rev. Dr. Jacobs, of Philadelphia, and Rev. Dr. Morrow, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Bible Society, after which a very creditable report of the society was read by Rev. A. R. Steck, pastor of the St. James Lutheran church, this place. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 128 The semi-annual convention of the Adams County C. E. Union was held in the St. James Lutheran church, this place, on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 20th and 21st. The conven-tion opened on Friday at 2 P. M. The ad-dress of Welcome was delivered by Rev. A. R. Steck and the response was made by Presi-dent Longanecker. The sessions were very interesting and were largely attended through-out the whole convention. Rev. C. H. Rockey, of Shepherdstown, W. Va., preached in Christ Lutheran church on .Sunday, Nov. 22. The Christian Endeavor Society of St. James Lutheran church held their eighth anniversary exercises on Sunday, Nov. 22. In the morn-ing Rev. E. F. Jeffers, D. D., Principal of the York Collegiate Institute, preached the anni-versary sermon. At the evening service Rev. A. R. Steck presided. An excellent program was rendered. Rev. Rockey offered prayer and Rev. Dr. Jeffers delivered the address of the evening, his subject being, "Spiritual Power.'' The old tin roof on the Methodist church has been removed and a slate one put on. The St. James and Christ Lutheran congre-gations held a union Thanksgiving service in St. James Lutheran church on Thursday morn-ing, Nov. 26, at 10 o'clock. Services were also held in the Presbyterian and Reformed churches in the morning. SEMINARY. Rev. J. E. Byers preached at Williamsport, Md., on Sunday, November 1. Rev. J. H. Harmes filled the pulpit of St. John's Lutheran church, Hagerstown, Md., on Sunday, Nov. 8th. Rev.' Paul Koller preached at Hagerstown, Md., Shepherdstown, W. Va., on Nov. 15th and 22nd respectively. Rev. W. H. Feldman was sent as a delegate to attend the Inter-Seminary Missionary Al-liance at Chicago, on Nov. 12- 15th. While there he also had the pleasure of attending the Luther League Convention. The pulpit of the Second Lutheran church, Carlisle, Pa., was filled by Rev. Brady on Sunday, Nov. 22. Rev. M. S. Kump preached in Christ Luth-eran church on Sunday evening, Nov. 29. Prof. J. H. W. Stuckenberg will deliver the following lectures in Brua Chapel, beginning with Monday evening, Dec. 7th: Monday—"The Importance and the Method of of the Deeper Study of the Age." Tuesday—"Characteristics of the Age." Wednesday—"The Dominant Ideas." Thursday—"Social Trend." Friday—The New Social Era." Saturday—"Higher Education in Germany." This is a new course of lectures prepared es-pecially for Gettysburg, and we are indebted to the Seminary students for his coming. FRATERNITY NOTES. PHI KAPPA PSI. A. J. Smith, '83, a Professor of the Univer-sity of Texas, recently suffered the loss of his wife. We were pleased to meet Dr. Philips, Presi-dent of West Chester Normal School, who de-livered a lecture before the Teachers' Institute convened in this city last week. J. C. Bowers, '93, made a business trip here a few days since. W. F. Lutz, '94, is engaged in journalistic work at his home in Bedford. A. C. Carty, '96, attended the New York City rally on Dec. 4th. . PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bro. Jacobs, '62, preached in the College church recently. Bro. Knubel, '93, has started a mission in upper New York City. We wish him success in his undertaking. Bro. Roth, '95, of Bucknell, spent a few days in town recently. We were glad to have with us during the past month Bros. Brewer, '83, Garland, '85, Fickinger, '94. Bros. Fite, '98, and Albers, '99, spent a few days with Bro. Stahler, of Norristown, Pa. Bro. Kolb, 1900, spent Thanksgiving at Mechauicsburg. SIGMA CHI. Bruce Trimmer, Kappa, '98, of Bucknell, made us a visit several weeks ago. Leisenring spent Thanksgiving with his parents at Chambersburg. I2CJ THK COLLEGE MERCURY. Win. Hersh, '92, was elected District At-torney of Adams Co., by the largest majority ever given a candidate. Rosensteel was called to his home in Altoona several weeks ago on account of the death of his grandfather. Edwards, Alpha Psi, Vanderbilt University, played end on the Western Maryland College foot-ball team in the game here on Thanks-giving. Munro and Fredericks were at their homes in Lock Haven over Thanksgiving. Frank Hersh, '92, who was home for several weeks, has returned to his work in Braddock, Pa. Keith, '99, paid a flying visit to the Chapter at Dickinson several days ago. Fredericks stopped at Bucknell on his way home on Thanksgiving, and visited the Chap-ter there. Lawyer spent Thanksgiving at his home in Westminster. PHI DELTA THETA. J. A. Singmaster, '98, was initiated Novem-ber 23d. Kain, '97; Meisenhelder, '97, and Beerits, '99, attended the 24th Biennial Convention of the fraternity held in Philadelphia Nov. 25th to 30th. M. F. Holloway, '84, and A. S. Cook, '95, were also in attendance. Chas. Reinewald, '88, spent a few days in town recently. J. C. Moore, Jr., Pa Zeta, paid the Chapter a visit the beginning of the month. ALPHA TAU OMEGO. Saturday night, Nov. 21, the Chapter held a banquet in the meeting hall, which was pro-nounced by those present to have been a very enjoyable affair. Edward Gaines, a member of the U. of Md. foot-ball team, spent Sunday, Nov. 15, with the Chapter. William O. Nicklas, '93, has been admitted to the Chambersburg bar. William H. Menges, '96, visited the Chapter during Institute. Dr. Franklin Menges, '86, was with us In-stitute week. James P. Michler, '97, is at present a stu-dent at Washington and Lee. SUBJECTS FOR "ROMAN LAW" THESES. ABEL—Spread of the Roman Law Through Barharic Invasions. ARMSTRONG—Marriage and Divorce Among the Romans. HIKLE—Influence of the Laws and Organization of the Roman Empire on the Laws and Organization of the Early Church. CLUTE—The Extent and Limitations of the Patria Potestas. COBLE, Sr.—Slavery Among the Romans. DUCK—The Indebtedness of Modern States to Roman Juris-prudence. FRIDAY—The Roman Law of Succession. HUTTON—Roman Citizenship-Different Kinds, How Acquired and How Lost. Miss KEITH—The Nature and Authority of the Jus Respon-dendi. MILLER—The Functions of the Roman Praetor. Miss SIEBER—The Roman Method of Legal Procedure in a Province as Illustrated by the Trial of Christ in Pal-estine. SMITH—The Roman Judiciary System. WHEELER—The Change from Republic to Empire in Rome, a Change to nu Autocracy. WOLF—Influence of Christianity on Roman Legislation. LITERARY SOCIETIES. JOHN W. OTT, Editor. PHILO. Messrs. Baker and Markel were initiated during the past month. On Friday night, Dec. nth, Philo will render her last special program of the term. The program promises to eclipse all others. PHRENA. Messrs. Gilbert and Hitchner. both of 1900, were elected members last Friday evening. On account of the various interruptions 011 the several past Friday evenings, Phrena will not render.her next special program till next term. EXCHANGES. The MERCURY is at present receiving a very large number of exchanges. We mention some of them as follows: The Lafayette, Ursinus College Bulletin, Bucknell Mirror, F. and M. Weekly, College Folio, Phoenix, Wittenburg, Midland, Mer-cersburg Monthly, Roanoke Collegian, Dela-ware College Review, Dickinsoniau, Monthly and Weekly, Occident, Mielensian, Lutheran Ensign, National Educator, Muhlenberg, Ora-cle, Lutheran Observer, Perkiomen Seminary Bulletin, Free Lance, Susquehanna, Western Maryland College, Augustana Journal, George-town College Journal, The Reflector, The Mountaineer, The Crescent, Orange and White. ADVERTISEMENTS. Yale annually buys $7,000 worth of books for her library. Harvard expends $15,000 for the same purpose. Columbia expends$43,000 in the same way. A National University, under government control, is to be established in China. The faculty will consist of foreigners. The first president will be a former tutor of Li Hung Chang. "Age comes to every man, hut fate Is kind to women fair ; For when she reaches twenty-eight, She stops right then and there." FPU. H. WIlNNlCrl at onfeetionmj I OYSTERS Manufacturer, Wholesale and Retail Dealer in peam. ] SEASON. NEWS DEPOT & SUBSCRIPTION AGENGY. IVIaln street, - - Gettysburg, F=a. SOLE MANUFACTURER OF DR. TYLERS COUGH DROPS TIMNTCODORT DEALER IN BEEF, PORK, LAMB, VEAL, SAUSAGE, York Street, Gettysburg. a-Speclal Ratesto Clubs."a R. A WONDERS^ Corner Cigar tParlors. ,.A FULL LINE OF. CIGARS, TOBACCOS, PIPES, &C, Scott's Cor. Opp. Eagle Hotel, Gettysburg, Pa. T« F. HBNSTXG utn\.tR \u BREAD, ROILS, PRETZELS & CRACKERS YORK STREET, GETTYSBURG. 8@TReasonable Rates to Clubs. L. Dm lf|ILLLl\j GETTYSBURG, Qrocer, (^onfeotioneT and fruiterer. Ice Cream and Oysters in season. /,. Foot Ball Supplies. EVERYTHING FOR THE PLAYER, Jackets, SHoos, Stockings, Jerseys, Shin Guards, Etc. Spalding's Official Intercol- A^cj 'Mffift legiate Foot Ball, '*^^F^. Officially adopted by the Intercollegiate Association. COMPLETE CATALOGUE FALL AND WINTER SPORTS FREE. A. G. Spalding: & Bros. NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, CHICAGO. 1108 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA Xl/righi's Qngraving jfeouse 'AS become tile recognized leader in unique styles of COLLEGE and FRATERNITY EN-GRAVINGS and STATIONERY. College and Class-Day Invitations, engraved and printed from steel plates;. Programmes, Menus, Wedding and Reception Invitations, Announcements, etc., etc. Examine prices and styles before ordering elsewhere. 50 Visiting Cards from New Engraved Plate for $1.00. ERNEST A. WRIGHT, 1108 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA Visitors to Settysburg College, Settj/sburg, !Penn'a, Will find the CUMBERLAND VALLEY RAILROAD running in a South-Westerly direction from Harrisbnrg, Pa., through Carlisle. Chambersburg, Hagerstown an I Martinsburg to Winchester, Va., a direct and available route from the North, East and West to Gettysburg, Pa., via. Harrisburg and Carlisle. Through tickets via, I his route on sale at all P. R. R. offices, and baggage checked through to destination. Also, a popular route to the South via. Carlisle. AsK for your tickets via. Cumberland Valley Railroad and Carlisle, Pa. J. F. BOYD, Superintendent. H. A. RIDDLE, Gen. Passenger Agent. ADVERTISEMENTS L M, BUEHLER, SUCOKSSOU TO A. D. BUEHLEK & CO., -HllBoofig st£giS —.A_isr:D— (gO TO ->M0TEL GETTYSBURG* -XBA'RBER SIIOPX-Centre Square. ^^B. M. SEFTON. 2/ou will find a full line of SPure 'Drugs dc J'ine Stationery ^People'a *Druff Store. {Prescriptions a Speci'ctity. Elliott & HOUSGP. H. B.—Stiff Hits mads to Fit the Head is two minutes. (Z>, B. KlTMpLEfJ, HATS, CAPS, —^ ^rr BOOTS* SHOES. CS^3=S=»tisfaiotion GSuara nteed.ii3 No. 6 S. Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG. PA. por all the latest styles in Suitings and-Trousers, AND FULL LINE OP Cents' Furnishing Goods, CallonD. H. WELSH, York, F>a. ADVKRTISKMKNTS. DURING VACATION GO TO CHAUTAUQUA F~ F? El El FULL INSTRUCTIONS. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED H. B. WILLIAMS, Secretary, Geneva, N. Y. YOU CAN KAKN Sill To SUM) MONTHLY AND KXPKNSICS IF YOU WORK FOR THE NURSERY CO. Stock sold with a guarantee and replaced. ~R.$H.$REMINGER,~ MERCHANT TAILOR. fH?e Best Work at tJye Lowest Wees. NEXT DOOFJ TO POST OFFICE, UPSTAIRS. Suits from $121 to $40,00, Pants from $4,00 to $12,00, G^Centre Square, gQLLEGE OF PHYSIC&NS 1 SlTftGEONS, -BALTIMORE, W|D.-^ The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Balti-more, Maryland, is a well-equipped school. Four ses-sions are required for graduation. For full informa-tion send for the annual catalogue, or write to THOMAS OPIE. M. D. Dean, Cor. Calvert and Saratoga Sts. <_g^Established 1876.5^^—3 ^iPBNfiOSR MYBfiSjfe- WATGHMAKEE AND JEWELER, Gettysburg Souvenir Spoons, College Souvenir Spoons, No. 10 Baltimore Street, GETTYSBURG, PENN'A. J. A. TAWNEY Is ready to furnish clubs and boarding houses BREAD, ROLLS, &G., at short notice and reasonable rates. Cor.Washington and Middle Sts., Gettysburg. fiSSSS^Si^ m*w^i^^jid^wo^^*a WEiWIilHoNJflS DEALERS IN Fresh Beef, Veal, Lamb, PorkLJ Pudding, Sausage, HAMS, LARD, &c-., GETTYSBURG, l\jr\J'A. JOEKL. SHERDS. NEW CIGAR STORE Next door to W. M. Depot, Gettysburg,