Suchergebnisse

The Regional History Project conducted three interviews with former Chancellor Angus E. Taylor on January 28-30, 1997. Taylor was appointed the campus's third chancellor in February, 1976, by UC President David S. Saxon during a difficult period in UCSC's history, when the campus's second chancellor, Mark N. Christensen, resigned amidst controversy after a tenure of barely 18 months. Saxon asked Taylor to assume the chancellorship and to stabilize the young campus while a permanent chancellor was selected. Prior to his appointment, Taylor was a professor of mathematics at UCLA from 1938 to 1966; and served in the UC systemwide administration as vice president for academic affairs from 1965 to 1970, and as University Provost from 1970 to 1975. He was a seasoned veteran of the University and its unique system of shared governance; he knew the workings of the academic senate and University policies inside out and was well acquainted with the key figures in the University's administration, all of which stood him in good stead when he became chancellor at UCSC. Taylor begins his narration with the story of his early life and family history, and his years at Harvard College. He then describes the background leading to his appointment as chancellor of UCSC in 1976. Interspersed throughout his narration are comments on many aspects of his experiences as both teacher and administrator in the UC system (his participation in avoiding a confrontation between the UC Regents and the faculty during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and his comments on the history of affirmative action in the University) which influenced his approach to UCSC. He discusses the campus's most pressing problems and how he addressed them-the management and organization of the chancellor's office; interaction with divisional deans and college provosts; faculty recruitment; budget allocations and the budget process; and a serious decline in enrollment. Applications to the campus were down by over 22% in 1975, and had been declining for five years. Addressing declining enrollment was his first order of business and in his opinion proved to be the most significant and difficult problem of his tenure. He made a careful analysis of the admissions office situation, aided by the Stanford committee (appointed by President Saxon), which resulted in the difficult political decision to dismiss the controversial director of enrollment, Roberto Rubalcava. He then reorganized the admissions office and created a new position, vice chancellor of student affairs, to oversee this important campus function. Taylor addresses the major issues he faced in his efforts to stabilize the campus, including the relationship of colleges and boards of studies, the campus budget, reorganizing the chancellor's office and setting up various committees which improved communication among campus administrators, fundraising, town/gown relations, the role of the colleges, and completing the campus's academic plan. During his tenure he faced two major student political demonstrations-- the first protesting his handling of the Rubalcava affair and then protests over South African apartheid and the University-wide divestiture movement, which pressured the University to sell off its stock holdings in companies doing business with South Africa. He discusses his approach to student trespassing and law-breaking and how his solution (he declined to encourage prosecution) met with some disapproval from administrators at other universities who thought Taylor was setting a poor precedent. He also reflects on the mission of the University of California, his thoughts on affirmative action, the search for a new UCSC chancellor, and his relations with University Hall and with President Saxon.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) was established by the former Howard government to regulate the building and construction sector. The establishment of the regulatory body followed damning reports by a Royal commission which alleged that building and construction workplaces were characterized by a widespread disregard for the law. An Interim Building Industry Taskforce was established subsequent to the release of the findings. The Royal commission's recommendations were then put before the federal parliament which led to the passage of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (BCII Act 2005). The office of the Australian Building and Construction Commission first began operations in October 2005. The Howard government had hoped the BCII Act (2005) would vastly improve the workplace relations framework for building and construction operations and ensure that all building work was carried out in a fair, efficient and productive manner. The Howard government had long been an advocate of industrial reform in the building and construction sector. It believed that the crucial economic role played by the building and construction industry in Australia was being undermined and had been hindered by a perceived trade union dominance of the workplace. The government also alleged that inefficient workplace production was occurring as a result of direct interference by unions in the workplace. Therefore, it was hoped that the establishment of the ABCC would promote respect for the law and lift the economic capacity of the industry. The ABCC is legislated with coercive information-gathering powers. These powers enable the agency to request information from industry participants that is believed to be of relevance to an investigation. The ABCC may also request building industry participants to attend secret meetings in which they are required to swear an oath or make an affirmation. The triggers for the use of coercive powers in most cases are based on a ' reasonable belief that an offence may have been committed. The government's agency has been criticized for the number of prosecutions it has made against trade unions. Led by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) Labour organizations accused the former Howard government's building and construction regulator of being a political mouthpiece for the Coalition and of having an ideological 'union busting' agenda, rather than adhering to the role of a genuine industrial regulator. Where as, prominent industry groups such as the Masters Builders Australia (MBA) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) have come out strongly in support of the ABCC citing a steady on-going decline in industrial disputation in the building and construction industry since the ABCC began operations as evidence that the ABCC is functioning effectively in its regulatory role. The role of the ABCC as an active industrial regulator has always been controvers ial within the building and construction industry. However, the ABCC gained national attention following the agencies decision to take legal action against 107 individual workers employed on the Perth- Mandurah Rail project in Western Australia whom allegedly took part in illegal industrial activity. Despite the high profile of this individual case and others similar, the ABCC has managed to remain in relative national anonymity. Regardless of public perceptions, the ABCC's extensive coercive information-gathering powers and the trigger's for their usage has been a controversial subject amongst participants in the industry and this remains true today. Critics of the ABCC suggest that the BCII Act (2005) has not achieved its desired purpose of restoring a respect for the law within the industry as the Royal commission intended. They argue that the ABCC has instead provoked hostility between employee's and employers and their representative bodies which had a detrimental impact on the long-term growth of the industry. The election of a new federal Labor government in November 2007 has provided a real opportunity for the new government to develop a fairer and more balanced regulatory role for the ABCC. The new Rudd government has pledged to retain the ABCC until January 2010 when the governments new industrial relations body 'Fair Work Australia' will take control of regulating the building and construction industry. In order for the transition between the current regulator and the future body to be successful, reforms will need to take place in the operating structure of the ABCC to ensure the industrial regulator is representative of the new government's commitment to achieving a fair and balanced workplace. Division between employers and employees must be resolved as such barriers prevent the industry from performing at its maximum capacity which is pivotal to the success of the Australian economy. This report will examine the active role that has been played by the ABCC, and provide a critique of government intervention into the building and construction industry. To improve industrial relations for building and construction work a fresh approach is needed to ensure a productive, efficient and more balanced industrial workplace. A fair and balanced ombudsman for the building and construction industry is of vital importance to both the future of the national economy and the social fabric of our society.

In his inaugural address to a nation half-enthusiastic and half-stunned still by the most extraordinary political comeback in US history, Donald Trump portrayed himself as the saviour of the nation, chosen by God Himself to finally turn America First from slogan to reality and truly 'make America great again'.[1] The mixture of politics, ideology and megalomaniac eschatology is especially interesting because Trump has tied the fate of the nation to his personal fortunes like no other president before him. As he puts it, the realisation of America First is inextricably linked to his personal power.America First in practice
The nature of America First as an ideological and political platform can be told through many categories, most of them ending in 'ism'. The first is declinism, the idea that the United States is mired in moral and political decadence. That such decline is illusory – in spite of the 2021-23 inflation spike, the United States is coming off four years of sustained economic growth and unemployment near or at record lows, continues to be the hotbed of technological innovation and possesses unrivalled military superiority – is immaterial.[2] What counts is to intercept and foment the perception of a decline in mores and establish a link between national rebirth and Trump's leadership.
America First is also about nativism, the unification of nation and borders, with the latter construed as a wall protecting Americans from the crime and corruption that migrants, especially irregular ones, inevitably bring with them. It is on the border that Trump has built his political fortune, so it is not surprising that on inauguration day he promised, amongst others, to send troops to the border, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, remove foreigners from countries considered enemies using a forgotten law from 1798 (the Alien Enemies Act), and abolish by presidential fiat birthright citizenship for children born to foreign parents even if it is enshrined in the Constitution.[3]
Linked to nativism is Christian nationalism, centred on the belief that state action should reflect the indissoluble bond between the American nation and the Christian religion. Religion has always had a greater role in US politics than in most Western democracies, and yet America has historically been a promoter of the separation of state and church.[4] In Trump's America First vision, the border is blurred. The president moved seamlessly from declaring that his administration would not "forget God" to stating that it would make it official US policy that there are only two genders – an issue part of the Christian electorate is extremely sensitive to, although admittedly shared by many others too (including on the left).
Also rooted in Christian nationalism were Trump's attacks against the education system, which he accused of teaching students to "hate their country" for daring to include in school curricula such issues as the dispossession of the native tribes and slavery. Trump's re-exhumation of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century construction of America's westward expansion (but also to Cuba and the Philippines) as divine design, equally descends from that ideological framework.[5] While limited to the Panama Canal and perhaps Greenland, territorial expansionism is now back into a presidential agenda after over a century during which it had been consigned to history as an illegitimate practice of the past.
In foreign policy, America First is especially about protectionism and unilateralism, mixed with a dose of non-interventionist cynicism. Trump views the world as an arena where ever transient deals between great powers replace multilateral institutions (such as the Paris Accord on climate or the World Health Organisation, from which he has withdrawn the United States) and alliances like NATO are downgraded to client networks. In this regard, tariffs are not so much a tool to defend domestic industry as a lever to discipline clients and compete with rivals. America First means reinforcing US primacy without this entailing diplomatic and military commitments, which is why Trump seeks a balance of power without much regard for international law and the states caught in the middle.
Even oligopoly, a term historically associated with the robber barons era of the early 1900s, is not incompatible with America First if it involves securing an unassailable technology edge. Before and even more after the election, the crème de la crème of America's tech sector, starting with X, Tesla, Space X and Starlink owner Elon Musk, rushed to Mar-à-Lago, Trump's personal residence in Florida to pay homage to their new overlord.[6] What Musk and his fellow tech industry captains – from Meta's Mark Zuckerberg to Amazon's Jeff Bezos, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Palantir's Peter Thiel, and others still – expect is massive tax cuts and deregulation on steroids.
What Trump wants in return is loyalty, starting with getting rid of all content moderation and fact-checking on social media (he has been obliged already by X and Meta).[7] This is presented in the form of libertarianism, the liberation of individuals and companies from the shackles of an oppressive government, which also justifies, in a single stroke, Trump's announced boost to the fossil fuels industry (free of climate-sensitive regulations) and support for unchecked and unregulated cryptocurrencies. But libertarianism does not tell the full story of Trump's plans, which are less about liberation from the state than the capture of it. Here is where the personal agenda lying in the shadow of America First, which is arguably the greatest novelty compared to Trump's first term, comes to the fore.Trump First in practice
Contrary to 2017, when he was catapulted onto the White House to general surprise (including his own), this time Trump comes to power on the back of an organised machine, partly built by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.[8]
Trump feels that the federal bureaucracy and the Republican establishment thwarted him during his first term. He has therefore made loyalty the main criterion guiding his appointments to key positions in the cabinet and the administration at large. Trump wants to subdue, in particular, the government agencies that in his view make up the hated 'deep state': the military, the intelligence community, the Justice Department and law enforcement, the lead of which he has assigned to loyalists, even if they have no institutional pedigree, lack qualifications for the job or hold controversial positions.[9] This explains the choice of an anti-woke warrior and Fox TV host as secretary of defence (Pete Hegseth), an ex-Democrat with pro-Russian sympathies as director of national intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard), a conspiracist as head of the FBI (Kash Patel), and his former lawyer as attorney general (Pam Bondi).[10]
It is no coincidence that one of the executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office instructed his attorney general and director of national intelligence to provide him with a report on the alleged "weaponisation of government" by the Biden administration, which is how he sees or pretends to see any legal and administrative action targeting his conduct and that of his supporters.[11] Thanks to an obscure legal device which Joe Biden had revoked and he has promptly reinstated, the infamous Schedule F, Trump will be legally entitled to replace non-aligned officials with loyalists.[12]
All this raises legitimate concerns that the government machine will be used – this time for real – to punish political foes and intimidate the media. This is the backdrop of President Biden's preventive pardons not just of his son Hunter, but of many who have come in Trump's crosshairs, from former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney (guilty of joining the January 6 House Committee) to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley (who has once described Trump as a fascist).[13]
In so doing, Biden has protected them from prosecution but indirectly supported Trump's allegations (pardons imply admission of guilt). At any rate, Biden could not provide protection to hundreds of other people who could fall victim to Trump's whims. Punishment is a goal, but intimidation is equally important. It may not be necessary to resort to prosecution or formal censure. Non-criminal investigations, tax audits, the revoking of security clearances (or details), the withdrawal of libels as well as hate campaigns on unmoderated social platforms might be more than enough, given the legal costs and psychological pressure that the targets are forced to endure. In this sense, America First is characterised by a soft form of authoritarianism, though some fear worse.[14]
Arguably, the most earthshaking decision taken by Trump on his inaugural day has been the pardons and commutation of sentence for those convicted for assaulting Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021.[15] In Trump's eyes, these people did not try to violently subvert the peaceful transition of power after a regularly held democratic election. On the contrary, they committed the ultimate act of loyalty: they put him above the law and the constitutional order. For America First means, first and foremost, Trump First.Riccardo Alcaro is Research Coordinator and Head of the Global Actors Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).[1] White House, The Inaugural Address, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-address.[2] Alicia Wallace, "Biden's Economic Legacy: Historic Wage Gains, Investment and Jobs Growth but Marred by Inflation", in CNN, 19 January 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/19/economy/us-biden-economic-legacy/index.html; Edward Longe and Turner Loesel, "The United States Is the Leader of the Digital Revolution – Pro-Tech Policies Are Key", in James Madison Institute Articles, 12 April 2024, https://jamesmadison.org/the-united-states-is-the-leader-of-the-digital-revolution-pro-tech-policies-are-key; Global Firepower website: 2025 Military Strength Ranking, https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php.[3] White House, Clarifying the Military's Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States. Executive Order, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/clarifying-the-militarys-role-in-protecting-the-territorial-integrity-of-the-united-states; Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program. Executive Order, 20 January 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/realigning-the-united-states-refugee-admissions-program; George Fishman, Trump Prepares to Use the Alien Enemies Act, Center for Immigration Studies, 21 January 2025, https://cis.org/node/14881; White House, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship. Executive Order, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship.[4] Interfaith Alliance, A Concise Introduction to Christian Nationalism, 29 September 2022, https://interfaithalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/InterfaithAlliance-A_Concise_Primer_on_Christian_Nationalism.pdf.[5] Jeanne T. Heidler and David S. Heidler, "Manifest Destiny. United States History", in Britannica, 23 January 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/Manifest-Destiny.[6] Damon Beres, "Billions of People in the Palm of Trump's Hand", in The Atlantic, 20 January 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/trump-musk-zuckerberg-silicon-valley-kisses-the-ring/681384.[7] Adam Kovacevich, "How to Make Sense of Tech Making Nice with Trump", in CEPA Articles, 21 January 2025, https://cepa.org/?p=36531.[8] Heritage Foundation, About Project 2025, last updated 30 September 2024, https://www.project2025.org/about/about-project-2025.[9] James Politi et al., "Donald Trump vs the 'Deep State': President's Vendetta Agenda Takes Shape", in Financial Times, 22 January 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/cfe4f220-23c2-40a7-b3aa-da9eba080ee1.[10] Amy Tikkanen, "Pete Hegseth", in Britannica, last updated 23 January 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pete-Hegseth; Amy Tikkanen, "Tulsi Gabbard", in Britannica, last updated 21 January 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tulsi-Gabbard; "Kash Patel", in Britannica, last updated 22 January 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kash-Patel; Alanna Durkin Richer, "Who Is Trump's Attorney General Pick Pam Bondi? The Former Prosecutor Is a Close Trump Ally", in AP News, 15 January 2025, https://apnews.com/article/4b94c094cfcabf606e4883fe709ab55a.[11] White House, Ending the Weaponization of Government. Executive Order, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government.[12] White House, Executive Order on Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service, 21 October 2020, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-creating-schedule-f-excepted-service.[13] Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, "Biden in Final Hours Pardons Relatives and Others to Thwart Trump Reprisals", in The New York Times, 20 January 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/biden-pardons-fauci-milley-cheney-jan-6.html.[14] Robert Kagan, "A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending", in The Washington Post, 30 November 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan.[15] White House, Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or near the United States Capital on January 6, 2021, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/granting-pardons-and-commutation-of-sentences-for-certain-offenses-relating-to-the-events-at-or-near-the-united-states-capitol-on-january-6-2021.

Two main lessons are to be drawn from the fall of Michel Barnier's government in France. The first is that talk of Europe massively re-arming itself and substituting for the U.S. as the chief backer of Ukraine while maintaining existing levels of health care and social security is idiocy. The money is simply not there. The second is that the effort by "mainstream" establishments to exclude populist parties from office is doomed in the long run, and in the short run is a recipe for repeated political crisis and increasing paralysis of government.Two countries are central to the European Union, the European economy, European defense, and any hope of European strategic autonomy: France and Germany. Within a month of each other, both have seen their governments collapse due to battles over how to reduce their growing budget deficits. In both cases, their fiscal woes have been drastically worsened by a combination of economic stagnation and pressure on welfare budgets with the new costs of rearmament and support for Ukraine.In both cases, fiscal crisis has fed into the decay of the mainstream political parties that alternated in power for generations — a phenomenon that is to be seen all over Europe (and in the U.S., insofar as Trump represents a revolt against the Republican establishment). This decay is being fed by the growing backlash against dictation by the EU and NATO that is occurring across wide swathes of Europe.In the French presidential elections of 2017and 2022, Emmanuel Macron defeated the Front National (now the Rassemblement National) of Marine Le Pen by essentially uniting the remnants of all the centrist parties in a grand coalition behind himself. The problem with such grand coalitions of the center however is that they leave opposition nowhere to go but the extremes of Right and Left.In the case of France, economic stagnation and resistance to Macron's free market and austerity measures led in June of this year to crushing defeat for his bloc in European parliamentary elections. Macron then called snap French parliamentary elections in the hope that fear of Le Pen and the radical Left would terrify French voters back into support for him. The result however was that Le Pen won a plurality of the vote, and while electoral deals with the Left gave Macron's bloc a plurality of seats, they are heavily outnumbered by deputies on the Right and Left. Macron then ditched his left wing allies and stitched up an agreement whereby Le Pen would support a centrist-conservative government under Michel Barnier in return for concessions on immigration policy and other issues. Bizarrely however, this was combined with continued "lawfare" against the Rassemblement National, with the prosecution of Le Pen for allegedly diverting EU parliamentary funds to support her party's deputies. This is something that looks rather like a technicality or peccadillo, given what we know of the past behavior of EU parliamentarians — but would mean that, if convicted, she would be barred from running for the presidency in 2027. This of course gave Le Pen every incentive to bring down Barnier's government in the hope that it will bring down Macron with it, and thereby lead to early presidential elections; and when Barnier's austerity budget (pushed through by decree against parliamentary opposition) infuriated the Left, Le Pen seized her chance. Given the string of defeats that Macron has now suffered (and remembering that the far greater de Gaulle resigned in 1969 after a far lesser defeat), it would make sense for Macron to step down. This would most probably lead to a presidency of the Rassemblement National; but then again, this is also probable if presidential elections take place on schedule in 2027.German politics are in certain respects tracking those of France, but some years behind. Not long ago one would have said a generation behind, but European political change is clearly speeding up. After the 2021 general elections, the decline in support for the Social Democratic party, and the rise of the right-wing populist Alternative fuer Deutchland (AfD) and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) forced the Social Democrats into an uneasy coalition with two deeply ideologically opposed partners, the Liberals (FDP) and the Greens. As Germany's economic position worsened, internal battles over the budget also worsened until the coalition eventually collapsed. Opinion polls indicate that the centrist conservative Christian Democrats will come first in elections due in February, but will be far short of an absolute majority. The result will be a grand coalition with the Social Democrats; but if that also falls short of an absolute majority, and the Liberals fail to pass the five percent threshold to enter the German parliament, then (assuming a continued determination to exclude AfD and BSW), the Greens will have to be included. Not only will this replicate the internal weaknesses and divisions of the last coalition, but it will mean that if Germany's economic woes continue and the coalition parties' popularity slumps, AfD and BSW will be the only place for discontented voters to go. These parties, being newer, are not yet nearly as popular as their French equivalents. AfD still has to go much further in the process initiated by Le Pen in the Front National, of purging its more extreme elements; and of course there is the special German historical fear of the radical Right. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to think that the future German trajectory will resemble that of France.Meanwhile, large parts of the European foreign and security establishments write and talk as if none of this were happening; as if in fact these establishments had been permanently appointed to their positions by Louis XIV and Frederick II, and given by those sovereigns an unlimited right to tax and conscript their subjects. Thus in an article this week for Foreign Affairs, Elie Tenenbaum of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris and a colleague declare that in response to Trump's election and in order to block a peace deal disadvantageous to Ukraine and "impose conditions of its own," Europe must "force its way to the negotiating table." A European coalition force of "at least four to five multinational brigades" should be deployed to eastern Ukraine to guarantee against further Russian aggression. European combat air patrols could be deployed "while the war is still underway." And "if Russia remains unyielding, Europe must bear the bulk of the financial assistance to support Ukraine in a protracted conflict." Where the money and the public support for such a program is to come from is nowhere indicated.I don't know an appropriate and printable French response to these daydreams, but the Kremlin may reply with an old Russian saying: "Oh sure — when crabs learn to whistle."

Marc Joffe


San Francisco is proving to be ground zero in the nationwide commercial real estate collapse. While the values of offices and malls are tumbling in many US cities, the losses in San Francisco are more dramatic and, unlike elsewhere, have extended to hotels. City and state government mismanagement have played a major role in destroying billions of dollars in assessable real estate values, but the role of these policies is easily overlooked.
San Francisco's plight was thrown into sharp relief on June 5, when the owner of two downtown hotels containing a combined 2,925 rooms announced that it would cease making payments on a $725 million mortgage backed by the properties. Commercial bond investors will now have to find a company willing to purchase the hotels at a small fraction of their estimated 2020 valuation of $1.561 billion.
In explaining the company's decision to walk away from the hotels, Thomas J. Baltimore, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Park Hotels and Resorts stated:
After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park's stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market. Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco's path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges – both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable future.

Another nearby hotel is also experiencing a dramatic valuation decline. The 1,195-room Westin St. Francis Hotel has asked the local tax assessor to slash the combined assessment of its two parcels from $1.037 billion to $101 million.
The hotels are within walking distance of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall that is losing its anchor retailer, Nordstrom, this summer. Before Nordstrom announced the closure, S&P had already estimated that the mall's value had declined by over 70% since it was appraised in 2016.
An even larger value decline was suffered by a 22‐​story office tower at 350 California Street. After being valued at around $300 million in 2019, the property recently changed hands for between $60 million and $67.5 million according to media reports.
When considering why San Francisco has suffered so much commercial real estate value destruction in the 2020s, it is tempting to conclude that the city's tech‐​heavy workforce was better equipped to work from home. This factor played a role but should not be overestimated. Indeed, one common software development methodology, known as agile, often involved daily in‐​person team meetings. So, it is not strictly true that software engineering is a solitary job.
Rather than blame the pandemic or the local business mix, San Francisco and California political leaders should look inward at their policy errors that exacerbated the city's distress. Among these unforced errors were their harsh lockdown policies and the failure to provide adequate security in the downtown core.
The Lockdown
San Francisco and neighboring counties were the first to impose sweeping stay‐​at‐​home orders at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in the US. More importantly, San Francisco and its neighbors were slower than most other population centers to relax COVID-19 restrictions.
Over a three‐​year period, San Francisco's public health officer issued a blizzard of rules that were often lengthy and challenging to implement. As late as January 27, 2021 (over ten months into the pandemic), he issued an order that required "all residents in the County to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by staying in their residences to the extent possible and minimizing trips and activities outside the home." At the time, California had more cases per capita than the less restrictive states of Texas and Florida, begging the question of how effective lockdown measures were.
By continuing shelter‐​at‐​home restrictions for so long, San Francisco normalized remote work, thereby encouraging employers and employees to adopt to a new normal. Many employees moved beyond easy commuting distance from the city on the assumption that they could retain hybrid or fully remote work arrangements permanently.
Although San Francisco's political leaders trumpet the city's low per capita death rate from COVID-19, some of that is attributable to individuals temporarily or permanently leaving the area, thereby deflating the true denominator of any death rate calculation. Economist Stephen Hanke has concluded that lockdowns had "a negligible effect" in COVID deaths.
Lack of Security
As the accompanying map shows, San Francisco has a very high concentration of high value properties in a small geographic area. Many of these $100 million plus properties (based on assessed value) are within walking distance of the Tenderloin neighborhood which has struggled over several decades. But in recent years, the social problems of the Tenderloin have increasingly spilled over into the adjacent, high‐​value areas, deterring tourists, shoppers, and office workers from visiting.











Measuring crime trends is challenging. According to Police Department statistics, reported crimes in the first five months of 2023 are below pre‐​pandemic levels. But some proportion of crime goes unreported and it is possible that this proportion has increased given the low likelihood that San Francisco police will identify a suspect. In 2022, only 2.9% of larceny thefts were cleared within one year.
Also, residents clearly perceive an increase in crime. The most recent City Controller survey found that San Franciscans rated the city's safety a C+, the lowest grade since 1996. Safety ratings were especially low in the Tenderloin and two adjoining neighborhoods with high‐​value commercial real estate: South of Market and Financial District/​South Beach.
Critics have highlighted various public safety policy concerns including the defund the police movement, lax prosecution, reclassification of shoplifting goods worth less than $950 as a misdemeanor, disincarceration, and lack of enforcement against open air drug markets. Since these issues have been covered elsewhere and libertarians have varying opinions about them, I'll address a couple of other aspects that have received less attention.
First, the city has encouraged many individuals who may be more prone to criminal activity to concentrate in and around the Tenderloin. It has done this by establishing a cluster of thousands of supportive housing units, mostly in converted hotels in the area. Although residents of supportive housing are no longer defined as "homeless", many if not most are still dealing with issues such as drug addiction that contributed to their loss of shelter.
During the pandemic, the city converted hundreds of additional hotel rooms in the area to temporary residences for unhoused homeless individuals in hopes of preventing them from getting and spreading COVID-19. But the unintended effect of this program, known as Project Roomkey, seems to have been to increase drug abuse and disorder at the periphery of the Tenderloin.
One Project Roomkey property, Hotel Whitcomb, housed about four hundred homeless individuals, many of whom were continuing to use drugs. Shortly thereafter, a new open air drug market became established in an alley just south of Market Street. Both the hotel and the drug market were near a new Whole Foods store which was forced to close due to high rates of theft and violent criminal activity.
Aside from concentrating potential offenders in the area, the city and activists appear to have neutered two quasi‐​private mechanisms that allow business districts to enhance security levels beyond that which the city government would normally provide.
Since 1847, San Francisco has had a category of law enforcement officers known as a Patrol Special Police. These trained officers can be directly hired by groups of merchants and/​or homeowners to patrol and provide other security services within a designated area. In 1994, there were 72 patrol special police serving 65 areas. But their ranks decreased in recent decades and, as of 2022, only one officer remained.
Although clients expressed a high level of satisfaction with their services, city policies have decimated the program. San Francisco's charter requires the city's Police Commission to approve new patrol special officers, but in recent years it has rarely done so. At the same time, the San Francisco Police Department offered a competing program under which city‐​employed police officers could provide security services to local business when they would otherwise be off duty.
Since clients must cover officer pay at overtime rates, this alternative is more expensive. Further, given the shortage of police officers in San Francisco today, there may not be enough staff to regularly serve clients who might be interested in purchasing their services.
California has also given property owners the ability to form their own Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) since the 1990s. BIDs, also known locally as Community Benefit Districts (CBDs), are formed when owners representing a majority of the assessed valuation in a given area vote to tax themselves to finance district operations.
San Francisco's Union Square area, the hotel and retail center that borders the Tenderloin, has had a BID in place since 1999. By 2018, the district was employing a large staff of cleaning ambassadors and safety ambassadors to deal with trash and quality of life issues respectively. The BID also installed a network of security cameras.
But the district's efforts to force homeless individuals out of the area faced criticism from UC Berkeley's Public Policy Clinic and local activists. Since the pandemic, the BID, now known as the Union Square Alliance, may have become less effective at maintaining cleanliness and safety in its neighborhood. It is not clear whether this is due to the criticism it has received, the retirement of its long‐​time executive director, or some other factor.
Conclusion
An overly energetic lockdown and actions that concentrated violent and unstable individuals in the downtown area have contributed to the collapse of real estate values in San Francisco's prime hotel, office, and retail districts. Quasi‐​governmental institutions that might have stepped in to provide improved security and street conditions have been enfeebled in part by city policy.
At this point, it does not appear that any set of feasible policies can restore downtown San Francisco to the heights it reached in 2019. A more realistic possibility is that it will stabilize at much lower levels of occupancy, activity, and value forming a new base from which to grow. New and remaining property owners should be given the tools and the space to restore a sense of security among those visiting, shopping, and staying in the neighborhood. Finally, city and state leaders should avoid overreacting to pandemics.

US military aid to Ukraine is back, and not a moment too soon. After months of suspended arms deliveries, Ukrainian defenses have buckled and news from the front lines is grim. The lurching, grinding advance of Russian forces, particularly the recent withdrawal of Ukraine's defenders from Avdiivka, tells us much about the true state of the full-scale invasion now in its third year. Most international attention has understandably focused on the state of US aid in Congress, and its wider implications for European security, and rightly so. Even with US aid back in the pipeline, the retreat from Avdiivka and broader Ukrainian struggles on the battlefield are an apt prism into a longer view of Russia's imperial tenacity, Ukraine's desperate and obstinate capacity for survival, and the Kremlin's challenge to the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Between October of last year and March, according to recent estimates, Russian forces lost some 17,000 troops and nearly 700 combat vehicles in its offensive against Avdiivka—a staggering casualty rate for a city that, on its own, represents a marginal prize for the Russian war effort. However, like Bakhmut or Severodonetsk before it, single-minded Russian attacks en masse towards questionable territorial objectives have, even after achieving breakthroughs, done little to appreciably impact the direction of the war. In some cases, they have even heralded Ukrainian counteroffensives. In such engagements, Ukrainian forces made industrious use of Russian-ruined, treacherous urban terrain to hold and attrite much larger Russian attacking formations. Estimates of upwards of nearly 400,000 Russian combat losses since the invasion was launched in 2022 should be seen in this context. Yet Avdiivka's fall is invariably associated, and is symbolically coterminous, with US failures to provide long-promised military aid and wider concerns about Western political fecklessness in the face of evident Russian imperial aggression. Although it is uncertain to what extent Avdiivka's defenses were tenable, given inherent Russian advantages in material superiority and mass from the start, there is widespread agreement in the analytical community that troop and, particularly, ammunition shortages sharply hindered the city's defenses.[1] Because of relatively modest gains from Ukraine's 2023 summer counteroffensive and the subsequent assessments of operational stalemate, alarm has set in across the Euro-Atlantic as the mythological powers of seemingly infinite Russian mass seem to have materialized. Increasingly, analysts had been taking fears of Russian victory in Ukraine seriously.An Empire Called ForeverAt its low points, the heroic, ferocious stand of a few in Avdiivka against the inexorable advance of Russian mass might seem to describe the war in Ukraine as a whole. The restoration of US arms flows notwithstanding, the prospects of Russian victory in Ukraine had appeared to be a more urgent consideration, which stoked understandable concerns in frontline European states over the possibility of an eventual direct conflict with Russia. Just this year so far, Romanian, Danish, and German political and military leaders have issued warnings about the potential of open war with Russia should Ukraine fall.[2] France, most significantly, has adopted a more forward-leaning policy in support of Ukraine's defense. It has even refused to rule out the potential deployment of troops,[3] which according to some sources are already on the ground in limited capacities.[4] However, besieged and wounded though it has been, Ukraine's agency and capacity for survival in recent months has been underrated. When given the basic means of self-defense, Ukraine has proven over and over again to be more than equal to the task. With US arms now again en route, the world will likely be reminded of this fact.At the same time, Russia's destructive tenacity in pursuit of demonstrably imperial aims has been evident to Ukraine, and other wary neighbors, for some time. Russia can seem an empire forever called to external expansion and dominion, and today has made its regime legitimacy inseparable from aggressive militarism and severe historical revisionism. Even a year ago, we could see Russia's willingness to accept otherwise unfathomable losses, endure extended material privation, and risk domestic political instability in pursuit of victory in Ukraine.[5] Ukrainian national resilience and superior battlefield leadership, alongside a hodgepodge of secondhand Western and Soviet weaponry, was often enough to best Russian forces in the field. However, it has not been enough on its own to dislodge Russia's imperial agenda, particularly as western arms have petered out. As such, a more complete Ukrainian victory demands a more aggressive and urgent Western policy of defensive aid. While certain high-value Western systems were eventually green-lit—such as F-16s, key long-range strike platforms, and cluster munitions—they came after much consternation and delay, typically in limited quantities, and often lagged battlefield conditions. Ukraine has never been able to enjoy decisive advantage in any one military capability, and no superiority of mass in any domain. Over the past year, Russia has leaned into its quantitative edge as a decisive (if cumbersome) tool, while implementing some key battlefield lessons,[6] to gain momentum.Putin's prosecution of its war on Ukraine demonstrates that imperialism is not merely a feature of Russian strategic thinking, but perhaps its central feature. It should give Western defense analysts and policymakers pause that Russia has been both willing and able to absorb such horrendous losses in such a gruesome enterprise. These losses have been made more palatable to the elite, certainly, by the systematic and deliberate exploitation of ethnic minority, indigenous, and marginalized populations in the imperial periphery.[7] Any assumptions that Russian political or material exhaustion will be sufficient to compel the abandonment of the war are implausible in the near-term, except perhaps in the face of overwhelming and immovable Ukrainian military might. Just as Ukraine's capacity for survival should not be underrated, neither should analysts ignore Russia's willingness to broadly prosecute a war of national mobilization, its evident capacity for regeneration, and perhaps even the perceived political advantages to the Kremlin of a totalitarian war footing.A Warrior RepublicAlthough it may not always be recognized in Western capitals, Ukrainians have no doubt that they are fighting an existential war in the most literal sense: for the preservation of their state, their national identity, and their very lives. As highlighted in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Vancouver Declaration last summer, by recent Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe statements,[8] and further among several Euro-Atlantic national parliaments, the Russian pattern of atrocities in Ukraine is deliberate and recognizably genocidal in its character.[9] Any cursory review of Russian state news media reveals a casual embrace of Ukrainian cultural and physical extermination as an operational necessity. Even outside of growing scholarly consensus and international recognition, that reality is a salient organizing principle in Ukrainian society.[10] Ukrainians are under no illusions about the enemy they face and the existential consequences of defeat. However, while Russian victory may have seemed a possibility, especially in the wake of the Avdiivka withdrawal, neither is it necessarily an obvious outcome—despite Russia's increasingly totalitarian war footing and the fatalist lurch in Western media and policy discourse. For one, most conceptions of Ukrainian victory tend to be tied to the full restoration of Ukrainian internationally recognized territory. However, territorial gain is not a sufficient indicator for the achievement of either Ukrainian or Russian political aims. For Ukraine, the preservation of an independent and recognizably Ukrainian nation-state with the integral features of its territorial boundaries would be a legitimate victory. By contrast, Russian victory depends on the decapitation of Ukrainian political leadership and the wholesale subjugation of the Ukrainian nation-state. For at least the foreseeable future, even absent US military aid, the first scenario remains far more likely than the second one. At the same time, the months-long suspension of US military aid lends clues about the strategic calculus for Ukraine and the wider region, where outright defeat in the near- to medium-term is but one (low) possibility. Other potentially higher propensity scenarios are entirely conceivable and may even be already playing out—and in some cases pose other types of risks.For one, the US strategic detour did not appear to contribute to a collapse in European support for Ukraine, but rather served as a galvanizing force for a more muscular approach to Ukraine. France's more hawkish turn is only one expression of this shift. The European Union's recently announced 50-billion-euro package for Ukraine, as well as additional pledges for financial and military aid, highlight a converging appreciation for the stakes among many European leaders. And although Ukraine had come to rely primarily on the United States for its pipeline of munitions stocks, their abrupt interruption led to a diversification approach, as Washington was no longer seen as entirely reliable. While it is a positive dynamic to see Europe playing a more proactive role in Ukrainian and continental security, broader European remilitarization amid US disengagement could threaten the postwar success of arresting ruinous cycles of intra-European warfare. More muscular European rhetoric and actions during suspended US arms deliveries also revived quiet speculation that European states, acting independently or in some kind of secondary coalition outside of NATO or the EU, could be forced to intervene directly to prevent Russian victory and Ukrainian defeat. While this possibility is typically muted in public, it is a scenario that has been taken seriously within some Western analytical circles.[11] It is widely believed that Poland alone, for example, likely has the military and material capacity to successfully intervene and decisively turn the tide of the conflict; other potential Central/Eastern European and possibly Nordic members of such a coalition are not difficult to conceive. Such an intervention, however successful, would widen the war and likely lead to a fundamental crisis within NATO. Yet, if Russia is seen as likely to test NATO's Article 5 mutual defense clause, as is increasingly believed, a preemptive military action to rescue Ukraine from capitulation may be a preferable option for several frontline European states. There are also risks to more complete abandonment of Ukraine. Alone, Ukraine would further its transformation as a warrior republic, where the maintenance of war in the desperate enterprise of survival is the prevailing principle under which all other ideals are subsumed. This Ukraine would be unconstrained by the niceties of Western guardrails and caveats delivered out of concern for escalation and would take the war to Russia in an uncompromising fashion, with a ferocity could make some of its liberal international supporters wince. The debate over Ukrainian raids against Russian oil refineries, an entirely legitimate military target, is a relatively low-stakes example of this phenomenon playing out recently.[12] It should be noted that Ukraine continues to act with relative restraint, including its attacks within Russian borders, reflecting deference to US and European admonitions to limit the scope of war. However, if Western support dawdles and dwindles, and the specter of successful Russian genocide looms, incentives for restraint deplete. Left isolated, it is difficult to imagine a scenario of where Kyiv does not seriously entertain nuclear rearmament, given the large nuclear arsenal it surrendered in exchange for Western security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum. While ample ink has been spilled over the failure of those guarantees and the harm it has done to nuclear nonproliferation as a principle or concept, in no country is this betrayal more evident and immediate than in Ukraine. Russia's invasion itself seems to have crystallized the decision of Ukrainian nuclear disarmament as a potential error, given the eminent failure of the Bucharest Memorandum and the privileged position that nuclear powers enjoy. Meanwhile, western-provided arms deliveries are variously sourced, with some even arriving in poor or unusable condition, and tend to follow cycles of Western deliberation and delay. In addition, both the arms and instructions for their use are burdened with caveats, illustrating powerful fears over Russian nuclear blackmail. Even with robust US and European aid, it would be understandable for Kyiv to consider the deterrent effect of an independent nuclear strike capability as significantly more valuable than the warm regards of Western diplomats.[13]Crumbling EdificesAnticipating Russian victory, under even current conditions, underplays Ukrainian strategic agency as well as significant other downstream risks. Meanwhile, although the threat posed by a total Russian victory is widely discussed, the potential risks of broad Russian advances without Ukrainian collapse have not been adequately considered. For example, it is conceivable that Ukraine, desperate in its war for survival, triggers a wave of nuclear proliferation in Europe as the nominally protective fabric of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture lies in tatters. In this scenario, US influence and the power it derives from the alliance systems it created could be severely compromised, undermining already narrowing options for responding to contingencies elsewhere around the globe, including in the Indo-Pacific. In the immediate term, the demands of the moment are plain enough. Ukraine must see robust and unified support from both the United States and Europe to stave off Russian advances and create the conditions for military victory—and with urgency. Russian forces must face not only extended losses in manpower and resources, but such losses without hope of victory. For Russia, Ukraine must symbolize not imperial tenacity, but hubris, incapacity, and strategic impotence. Ukraine, and this war, should be associated in the Russian mind with total military and political defeat. In practical terms, the resumption of US aid is a welcome and necessary development, but insufficient. The shape of that aid should be more purposeful and emphasize the ability for Ukraine to not merely attrite Russian forces, but to make rapid advances in the near to medium term. This will require more comfort with Ukrainian raids in Russia, the provision of long-range precision strike in volume, and certain escalation dynamics inherent in such an approach.Looking at the medium term, while Ukraine's territorial contours in a ceasefire should be at the Ukrainians' sole discretion, the overriding determinant of victory is the permanent preservation of Ukrainian independence and fundamental territorial integrity to a maximally practicable degree. The dread that might accompany any hint of a ceasefire proposal will come not from the ceasefire itself, but because of fear of a return to a status quo ante that assumes, in the absence of all evidence, that Russia would negotiate in good faith. More fundamentally, a viable European security depends on an inclusive and enforceable architecture that dispenses with the notion that Russia is a legitimate security stakeholder and banishes the gray zones where Russia has most actively and successfully meddled. And the only way to do that is full Ukrainian inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture—the EU and NATO, respectively, or their equivalents.In the longer term, Russia must be dealt with plainly, based on its pattern of action, and not its deliberate misrepresentation and weaponization of international obligations and norms. Certain facts must be confronted and hardwired into Western approaches towards Moscow, which neither shares our values nor a common conception of peace. First, that for all its existence, Russia has always been an empire—one with varying periods of expansion and decline. The Russian imperium has been either a ruler or menace to its neighbors, and a reliable spoiler to dreams of a sustainable European peace. As with an aggressive Soviet Union, only hard constraints on Russian imperial ambitions can check these tendencies and coax some baseline of cooperation. Similarly, a more radical reimagining of Russia is in order: not as a partner or a political equal, but as a revanchist and unreconstructed empire without hope for peacefulness, much less democracy, until its imperial moorings are severed. This requires, at minimum, a Russia policy that proactively checks external aggression and interrogates its internal coloniality.For now, Western analysts and policymakers should look to the war in Ukraine not only as a function of Russian aggression, but a Ukrainian war for survival that transcends Western conceptions or expectations around escalation dynamics or political polarization. For Ukraine, this war could be its last war if Russia is victorious, and the end of its civilization. If it succeeds, however, Ukraine could be the cornerstone of a new age of Euro-Atlantic security and stability and a premier military power in the Black Sea region in its own right. But with or without Western aid, if anything has been made clear over the past two years, Ukraine and its people will not fade quietly.Michael Hikari Cecire is a senior policy advisor at the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the US Helsinki Commission. He is also an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. These views are his own.[1] Samya Kullab, "Analysis: A Key Withdrawal Shows Ukraine Doesn't Have Enough Artillery to Fight Russia," Associated Press, February 19, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-avdiivka-war-063ab1bd47a500ad4a815b12f3d1386d.[2] Sergey Goryashko, "We Need to Be Ready for War with Putin, Romania's Top General Says," Politico, February 1, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/we-need-to-be-ready-for-war-with-putin-says-romanias-top-general/; "Danish Defence Minister Warns Russia Could Attack NATO in 3–5 Years—Media," Reuters, February 9, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/danish-defence-minister-warns-russia-could-attack-nato-3-5-years-media-2024-02-09/; and Nicolas Camut, "Putin Could Attack NATO in '5 to 8 Years,' German Defense Minister Warns," Politico, January 19, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-germany-boris-pistorius-nato/.[3] Sylvie Corbet, "Macron Again Declines to Rule Out Western Troops in Ukraine, but Says They're Not Needed Now," Associated Press, March 14, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/france-macron-ukraine-troops-caa788d2455dafb06dd87f79c4afe06f.[4]Elise Vincent and Philippe Ricard, "Ukraine's Western allies already have a military presence in the country," Le Monde, March 1, 2024, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/01/ukraine-s-western-allies-already-have-a-military-presence-in-the-country_6575440_4.html[5] Michael Hikari Cecire, "Ukraine as Russian Imperial Action: Challenges and Policy Options," Royal United Services Institute, March 9, 2023, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraine-russian-imperial-action-challenges-and-policy-options.[6] Mick Ryan, "Russia's Adaptation Advantage," Foreign Affairs, February 5, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russias-adaptation-advantage.[7] Mariya Vyushkova and Evgeny Sherkhonov, "Russia's Ethnic Minority Casualties of the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine," Inner Asia, May 2, 2023, https://brill.com/view/journals/inas/25/1/article-p126_11.xml#FN000009; and Laura Solanko, "Where Do Russia's Mobilized Soldiers Come From? Evidence from Bank Deposits," BOFIT Policy Brief, February 21, 2024, https://publications.bof.fi/handle/10024/53281.[8] Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, The forcible transfer and 'russification' of Ukrainian children shows evidence of genocide, says PACE, April 27, 2023,https://pace.coe.int/news/9075/the-forcible-transfer-and-russification-of-ukrainian-children-shows-evidence-of-genocide-says-pace?__cf_chl_tk=nsD2fTQl_qXokDkIipfYF4Y7yd1HqcxNvt6SWP474.c-1713537611-0.0.1.1-1855[9] OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Vancouver Declaration and Resolutions Adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly at the Thirtieth Annual Session, July 4, 2024, https://www.oscepa.org/en/documents/annual-sessions/2023-vancouver/declaration-29/4744-vancouver-declaration-eng/file.[10] Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, and Volodymyr Venher, "Understanding Russia's Actions in Ukraine as the Crime of Genocide," Journal of International Criminal Justice 21, no. 2 (June 13, 2024): 233–264, https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/21/2/233/7197410; and Kristina Hook, "Many Ukrainians See Putin's Invasion as a Continuation of Stalin's Genocide," November 25, 2023, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/many-ukrainians-see-putins-invasion-as-a-continuation-of-stalins-genocide/.[11] Patrick Wintour, "Nato Members May Send Troops to Ukraine, Warns Former Alliance Chief," The Guardian, June 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/07/nato-members-may-send-troops-to-ukraine-warns-former-alliance-chief.[12] Christopher Miller, Ben Hall, Felicia Schwartz, and Myles McCormick, "US Urged Ukraine to Halt Strikes on Russian Oil Refineries," Financial Times, March 22, 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/98f15b60-bc4d-4d3c-9e57-cbdde122ac0c.[13] Josh Rogin, "Ukrainians Want to Know If NATO Still Wants Them," Washington Post, February 23, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/23/ukraine-munich-nato-membership/.

US military aid to Ukraine is back, and not a moment too soon. After months of suspended arms deliveries, Ukrainian defenses have buckled and news from the front lines is grim. The lurching, grinding advance of Russian forces, particularly the recent withdrawal of Ukraine's defenders from Avdiivka, tells us much about the true state of the full-scale invasion now in its third year. Most international attention has understandably focused on the state of US aid in Congress, and its wider implications for European security, and rightly so. Even with US aid back in the pipeline, the retreat from Avdiivka and broader Ukrainian struggles on the battlefield are an apt prism into a longer view of Russia's imperial tenacity, Ukraine's desperate and obstinate capacity for survival, and the Kremlin's challenge to the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Between October of last year and March, according to recent estimates, Russian forces lost some 17,000 troops and nearly 700 combat vehicles in its offensive against Avdiivka—a staggering casualty rate for a city that, on its own, represents a marginal prize for the Russian war effort. However, like Bakhmut or Severodonetsk before it, single-minded Russian attacks en masse towards questionable territorial objectives have, even after achieving breakthroughs, done little to appreciably impact the direction of the war. In some cases, they have even heralded Ukrainian counteroffensives. In such engagements, Ukrainian forces made industrious use of Russian-ruined, treacherous urban terrain to hold and attrite much larger Russian attacking formations. Estimates of upwards of nearly 400,000 Russian combat losses since the invasion was launched in 2022 should be seen in this context. Yet Avdiivka's fall is invariably associated, and is symbolically coterminous, with US failures to provide long-promised military aid and wider concerns about Western political fecklessness in the face of evident Russian imperial aggression. Although it is uncertain to what extent Avdiivka's defenses were tenable, given inherent Russian advantages in material superiority and mass from the start, there is widespread agreement in the analytical community that troop and, particularly, ammunition shortages sharply hindered the city's defenses.[1] Because of relatively modest gains from Ukraine's 2023 summer counteroffensive and the subsequent assessments of operational stalemate, alarm has set in across the Euro-Atlantic as the mythological powers of seemingly infinite Russian mass seem to have materialized. Increasingly, analysts had been taking fears of Russian victory in Ukraine seriously.An Empire Called ForeverAt its low points, the heroic, ferocious stand of a few in Avdiivka against the inexorable advance of Russian mass might seem to describe the war in Ukraine as a whole. The restoration of US arms flows notwithstanding, the prospects of Russian victory in Ukraine had appeared to be a more urgent consideration, which stoked understandable concerns in frontline European states over the possibility of an eventual direct conflict with Russia. Just this year so far, Romanian, Danish, and German political and military leaders have issued warnings about the potential of open war with Russia should Ukraine fall.[2] France, most significantly, has adopted a more forward-leaning policy in support of Ukraine's defense. It has even refused to rule out the potential deployment of troops,[3] which according to some sources are already on the ground in limited capacities.[4] However, besieged and wounded though it has been, Ukraine's agency and capacity for survival in recent months has been underrated. When given the basic means of self-defense, Ukraine has proven over and over again to be more than equal to the task. With US arms now again en route, the world will likely be reminded of this fact.At the same time, Russia's destructive tenacity in pursuit of demonstrably imperial aims has been evident to Ukraine, and other wary neighbors, for some time. Russia can seem an empire forever called to external expansion and dominion, and today has made its regime legitimacy inseparable from aggressive militarism and severe historical revisionism. Even a year ago, we could see Russia's willingness to accept otherwise unfathomable losses, endure extended material privation, and risk domestic political instability in pursuit of victory in Ukraine.[5] Ukrainian national resilience and superior battlefield leadership, alongside a hodgepodge of secondhand Western and Soviet weaponry, was often enough to best Russian forces in the field. However, it has not been enough on its own to dislodge Russia's imperial agenda, particularly as western arms have petered out. As such, a more complete Ukrainian victory demands a more aggressive and urgent Western policy of defensive aid. While certain high-value Western systems were eventually green-lit—such as F-16s, key long-range strike platforms, and cluster munitions—they came after much consternation and delay, typically in limited quantities, and often lagged battlefield conditions. Ukraine has never been able to enjoy decisive advantage in any one military capability, and no superiority of mass in any domain. Over the past year, Russia has leaned into its quantitative edge as a decisive (if cumbersome) tool, while implementing some key battlefield lessons,[6] to gain momentum.Putin's prosecution of its war on Ukraine demonstrates that imperialism is not merely a feature of Russian strategic thinking, but perhaps its central feature. It should give Western defense analysts and policymakers pause that Russia has been both willing and able to absorb such horrendous losses in such a gruesome enterprise. These losses have been made more palatable to the elite, certainly, by the systematic and deliberate exploitation of ethnic minority, indigenous, and marginalized populations in the imperial periphery.[7] Any assumptions that Russian political or material exhaustion will be sufficient to compel the abandonment of the war are implausible in the near-term, except perhaps in the face of overwhelming and immovable Ukrainian military might. Just as Ukraine's capacity for survival should not be underrated, neither should analysts ignore Russia's willingness to broadly prosecute a war of national mobilization, its evident capacity for regeneration, and perhaps even the perceived political advantages to the Kremlin of a totalitarian war footing.A Warrior RepublicAlthough it may not always be recognized in Western capitals, Ukrainians have no doubt that they are fighting an existential war in the most literal sense: for the preservation of their state, their national identity, and their very lives. As highlighted in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Vancouver Declaration last summer, by recent Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe statements,[8] and further among several Euro-Atlantic national parliaments, the Russian pattern of atrocities in Ukraine is deliberate and recognizably genocidal in its character.[9] Any cursory review of Russian state news media reveals a casual embrace of Ukrainian cultural and physical extermination as an operational necessity. Even outside of growing scholarly consensus and international recognition, that reality is a salient organizing principle in Ukrainian society.[10] Ukrainians are under no illusions about the enemy they face and the existential consequences of defeat. However, while Russian victory may have seemed a possibility, especially in the wake of the Avdiivka withdrawal, neither is it necessarily an obvious outcome—despite Russia's increasingly totalitarian war footing and the fatalist lurch in Western media and policy discourse. For one, most conceptions of Ukrainian victory tend to be tied to the full restoration of Ukrainian internationally recognized territory. However, territorial gain is not a sufficient indicator for the achievement of either Ukrainian or Russian political aims. For Ukraine, the preservation of an independent and recognizably Ukrainian nation-state with the integral features of its territorial boundaries would be a legitimate victory. By contrast, Russian victory depends on the decapitation of Ukrainian political leadership and the wholesale subjugation of the Ukrainian nation-state. For at least the foreseeable future, even absent US military aid, the first scenario remains far more likely than the second one. At the same time, the months-long suspension of US military aid lends clues about the strategic calculus for Ukraine and the wider region, where outright defeat in the near- to medium-term is but one (low) possibility. Other potentially higher propensity scenarios are entirely conceivable and may even be already playing out—and in some cases pose other types of risks.For one, the US strategic detour did not appear to contribute to a collapse in European support for Ukraine, but rather served as a galvanizing force for a more muscular approach to Ukraine. France's more hawkish turn is only one expression of this shift. The European Union's recently announced 50-billion-euro package for Ukraine, as well as additional pledges for financial and military aid, highlight a converging appreciation for the stakes among many European leaders. And although Ukraine had come to rely primarily on the United States for its pipeline of munitions stocks, their abrupt interruption led to a diversification approach, as Washington was no longer seen as entirely reliable. While it is a positive dynamic to see Europe playing a more proactive role in Ukrainian and continental security, broader European remilitarization amid US disengagement could threaten the postwar success of arresting ruinous cycles of intra-European warfare. More muscular European rhetoric and actions during suspended US arms deliveries also revived quiet speculation that European states, acting independently or in some kind of secondary coalition outside of NATO or the EU, could be forced to intervene directly to prevent Russian victory and Ukrainian defeat. While this possibility is typically muted in public, it is a scenario that has been taken seriously within some Western analytical circles.[11] It is widely believed that Poland alone, for example, likely has the military and material capacity to successfully intervene and decisively turn the tide of the conflict; other potential Central/Eastern European and possibly Nordic members of such a coalition are not difficult to conceive. Such an intervention, however successful, would widen the war and likely lead to a fundamental crisis within NATO. Yet, if Russia is seen as likely to test NATO's Article 5 mutual defense clause, as is increasingly believed, a preemptive military action to rescue Ukraine from capitulation may be a preferable option for several frontline European states. There are also risks to more complete abandonment of Ukraine. Alone, Ukraine would further its transformation as a warrior republic, where the maintenance of war in the desperate enterprise of survival is the prevailing principle under which all other ideals are subsumed. This Ukraine would be unconstrained by the niceties of Western guardrails and caveats delivered out of concern for escalation and would take the war to Russia in an uncompromising fashion, with a ferocity could make some of its liberal international supporters wince. The debate over Ukrainian raids against Russian oil refineries, an entirely legitimate military target, is a relatively low-stakes example of this phenomenon playing out recently.[12] It should be noted that Ukraine continues to act with relative restraint, including its attacks within Russian borders, reflecting deference to US and European admonitions to limit the scope of war. However, if Western support dawdles and dwindles, and the specter of successful Russian genocide looms, incentives for restraint deplete. Left isolated, it is difficult to imagine a scenario of where Kyiv does not seriously entertain nuclear rearmament, given the large nuclear arsenal it surrendered in exchange for Western security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum. While ample ink has been spilled over the failure of those guarantees and the harm it has done to nuclear nonproliferation as a principle or concept, in no country is this betrayal more evident and immediate than in Ukraine. Russia's invasion itself seems to have crystallized the decision of Ukrainian nuclear disarmament as a potential error, given the eminent failure of the Bucharest Memorandum and the privileged position that nuclear powers enjoy. Meanwhile, western-provided arms deliveries are variously sourced, with some even arriving in poor or unusable condition, and tend to follow cycles of Western deliberation and delay. In addition, both the arms and instructions for their use are burdened with caveats, illustrating powerful fears over Russian nuclear blackmail. Even with robust US and European aid, it would be understandable for Kyiv to consider the deterrent effect of an independent nuclear strike capability as significantly more valuable than the warm regards of Western diplomats.[13]Crumbling EdificesAnticipating Russian victory, under even current conditions, underplays Ukrainian strategic agency as well as significant other downstream risks. Meanwhile, although the threat posed by a total Russian victory is widely discussed, the potential risks of broad Russian advances without Ukrainian collapse have not been adequately considered. For example, it is conceivable that Ukraine, desperate in its war for survival, triggers a wave of nuclear proliferation in Europe as the nominally protective fabric of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture lies in tatters. In this scenario, US influence and the power it derives from the alliance systems it created could be severely compromised, undermining already narrowing options for responding to contingencies elsewhere around the globe, including in the Indo-Pacific. In the immediate term, the demands of the moment are plain enough. Ukraine must see robust and unified support from both the United States and Europe to stave off Russian advances and create the conditions for military victory—and with urgency. Russian forces must face not only extended losses in manpower and resources, but such losses without hope of victory. For Russia, Ukraine must symbolize not imperial tenacity, but hubris, incapacity, and strategic impotence. Ukraine, and this war, should be associated in the Russian mind with total military and political defeat. In practical terms, the resumption of US aid is a welcome and necessary development, but insufficient. The shape of that aid should be more purposeful and emphasize the ability for Ukraine to not merely attrite Russian forces, but to make rapid advances in the near to medium term. This will require more comfort with Ukrainian raids in Russia, the provision of long-range precision strike in volume, and certain escalation dynamics inherent in such an approach.Looking at the medium term, while Ukraine's territorial contours in a ceasefire should be at the Ukrainians' sole discretion, the overriding determinant of victory is the permanent preservation of Ukrainian independence and fundamental territorial integrity to a maximally practicable degree. The dread that might accompany any hint of a ceasefire proposal will come not from the ceasefire itself, but because of fear of a return to a status quo ante that assumes, in the absence of all evidence, that Russia would negotiate in good faith. More fundamentally, a viable European security depends on an inclusive and enforceable architecture that dispenses with the notion that Russia is a legitimate security stakeholder and banishes the gray zones where Russia has most actively and successfully meddled. And the only way to do that is full Ukrainian inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture—the EU and NATO, respectively, or their equivalents.In the longer term, Russia must be dealt with plainly, based on its pattern of action, and not its deliberate misrepresentation and weaponization of international obligations and norms. Certain facts must be confronted and hardwired into Western approaches towards Moscow, which neither shares our values nor a common conception of peace. First, that for all its existence, Russia has always been an empire—one with varying periods of expansion and decline. The Russian imperium has been either a ruler or menace to its neighbors, and a reliable spoiler to dreams of a sustainable European peace. As with an aggressive Soviet Union, only hard constraints on Russian imperial ambitions can check these tendencies and coax some baseline of cooperation. Similarly, a more radical reimagining of Russia is in order: not as a partner or a political equal, but as a revanchist and unreconstructed empire without hope for peacefulness, much less democracy, until its imperial moorings are severed. This requires, at minimum, a Russia policy that proactively checks external aggression and interrogates its internal coloniality.For now, Western analysts and policymakers should look to the war in Ukraine not only as a function of Russian aggression, but a Ukrainian war for survival that transcends Western conceptions or expectations around escalation dynamics or political polarization. For Ukraine, this war could be its last war if Russia is victorious, and the end of its civilization. If it succeeds, however, Ukraine could be the cornerstone of a new age of Euro-Atlantic security and stability and a premier military power in the Black Sea region in its own right. But with or without Western aid, if anything has been made clear over the past two years, Ukraine and its people will not fade quietly.Michael Hikari Cecire is a senior policy advisor at the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the US Helsinki Commission. He is also an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. These views are his own.[1] Samya Kullab, "Analysis: A Key Withdrawal Shows Ukraine Doesn't Have Enough Artillery to Fight Russia," Associated Press, February 19, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-avdiivka-war-063ab1bd47a500ad4a815b12f3d1386d.[2] Sergey Goryashko, "We Need to Be Ready for War with Putin, Romania's Top General Says," Politico, February 1, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/we-need-to-be-ready-for-war-with-putin-says-romanias-top-general/; "Danish Defence Minister Warns Russia Could Attack NATO in 3–5 Years—Media," Reuters, February 9, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/danish-defence-minister-warns-russia-could-attack-nato-3-5-years-media-2024-02-09/; and Nicolas Camut, "Putin Could Attack NATO in '5 to 8 Years,' German Defense Minister Warns," Politico, January 19, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-germany-boris-pistorius-nato/.[3] Sylvie Corbet, "Macron Again Declines to Rule Out Western Troops in Ukraine, but Says They're Not Needed Now," Associated Press, March 14, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/france-macron-ukraine-troops-caa788d2455dafb06dd87f79c4afe06f.[4]Elise Vincent and Philippe Ricard, "Ukraine's Western allies already have a military presence in the country," Le Monde, March 1, 2024, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/01/ukraine-s-western-allies-already-have-a-military-presence-in-the-country_6575440_4.html[5] Michael Hikari Cecire, "Ukraine as Russian Imperial Action: Challenges and Policy Options," Royal United Services Institute, March 9, 2023, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraine-russian-imperial-action-challenges-and-policy-options.[6] Mick Ryan, "Russia's Adaptation Advantage," Foreign Affairs, February 5, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russias-adaptation-advantage.[7] Mariya Vyushkova and Evgeny Sherkhonov, "Russia's Ethnic Minority Casualties of the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine," Inner Asia, May 2, 2023, https://brill.com/view/journals/inas/25/1/article-p126_11.xml#FN000009; and Laura Solanko, "Where Do Russia's Mobilized Soldiers Come From? Evidence from Bank Deposits," BOFIT Policy Brief, February 21, 2024, https://publications.bof.fi/handle/10024/53281.[8] Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, The forcible transfer and 'russification' of Ukrainian children shows evidence of genocide, says PACE, April 27, 2023,https://pace.coe.int/news/9075/the-forcible-transfer-and-russification-of-ukrainian-children-shows-evidence-of-genocide-says-pace?__cf_chl_tk=nsD2fTQl_qXokDkIipfYF4Y7yd1HqcxNvt6SWP474.c-1713537611-0.0.1.1-1855[9] OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Vancouver Declaration and Resolutions Adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly at the Thirtieth Annual Session, July 4, 2024, https://www.oscepa.org/en/documents/annual-sessions/2023-vancouver/declaration-29/4744-vancouver-declaration-eng/file.[10] Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, and Volodymyr Venher, "Understanding Russia's Actions in Ukraine as the Crime of Genocide," Journal of International Criminal Justice 21, no. 2 (June 13, 2024): 233–264, https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/21/2/233/7197410; and Kristina Hook, "Many Ukrainians See Putin's Invasion as a Continuation of Stalin's Genocide," November 25, 2023, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/many-ukrainians-see-putins-invasion-as-a-continuation-of-stalins-genocide/.[11] Patrick Wintour, "Nato Members May Send Troops to Ukraine, Warns Former Alliance Chief," The Guardian, June 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/07/nato-members-may-send-troops-to-ukraine-warns-former-alliance-chief.[12] Christopher Miller, Ben Hall, Felicia Schwartz, and Myles McCormick, "US Urged Ukraine to Halt Strikes on Russian Oil Refineries," Financial Times, March 22, 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/98f15b60-bc4d-4d3c-9e57-cbdde122ac0c.[13] Josh Rogin, "Ukrainians Want to Know If NATO Still Wants Them," Washington Post, February 23, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/23/ukraine-munich-nato-membership/.

Issue 12.4 of the Review for Religious, 1953. ; The Spiril: ot: SI:, Clare and I-ler Order Sister M. Immaculata, P.C: CEVEN centuries'ago, on August 11, 1253, the shadows of death ~ were lengthening around a group of sorrowing nuns whose ~ foundress and Mother lay dying. In ecstatic joy, she clasped to her heart a roll of parchment sealed with the Fisherman's seal. Clare Sceffi, a. noble lady of Assisi, had fled from her castle home when she was eighteen to follow Francis Bernardone. Francis had dreamed of adventure for. Christ, and no one had caught~ the flame of love that burned in his heart more ardently than Clare. Fran~is's course had now been run a full quarter of a century, and he was already b.eing venerated as the great saint whose popularity would grow even to our own day. pope Innocent IV had ascended the throne of Peter but the year before. His keen vision scanned the lower!rig storm clouds over a Europe ever beset by the Moslem threat. Could he but make the rulers of the Christian countries bestir themselves out of their com-fortable and only too often lustful letha/gy, to heed his call "God wills it !" With the burdens of ~his exalted, office heavy upon him, he, the Vicar of Christ thought of one little virgin, hidden behind cloister walls in Assisi. He knew Clare, heard she was dying; and he remem-bered the intrepid courage with which she had pleaded with him and some of his predecessors for approval Of her Rule, and of the Seraphic poverty to which she and her Daughters aspired. Innocent, like several Pontiffs before him, had,hesitated to approve a rule of life requiring such poverty as Saint Francis had bequea.thed to Saint Clare and her Daughters. Men, they thought, might oblige themselves to observe it,-but what of cloistered nuns? What would become of a community thus deprived of all revenue and financial security? Innocent was thinking of Clare, thinking of how she lay dying, her one wish and desire unfulfilled. He did not send her a message of comfort and his blessing. Under the inspiration, no doubt of~ the Holy Spirit, he grasped his pen, signed the Bull of approval con-taining her Rule; and then, with his retinue, turned his face toward Assisi. There at San Damiano he entered tl~e lowly cell of Clare and placed in her hands the approval for which she had prayed and 169 SISTER M. IMMACULATA Re~evo :or Religious ~)leaded and suffered for over f.orty years. We can imagine" the astonishment of Clare and her Sisters when the Holy Father himself stood at the convent portals. How she must have pre,ssed that docu-ment to her heart and sung her last hymn of love to Christ her Spouse. Clare had imbibed th.e spirit of Francis at its source, .cher-ishing it firmly and wholly, and bequeathing it to her Daughters as they knelt at her death bed. And they have cherished, loved, and guarded it. They have preserved it unchanged since 1253. Through 700 years the Rule of Saint Clar~ has often been buffeted by storms, and has been wounded at times by the infidelity of her children, but it has always emerged in its first freshness and .strength. It still lives in 1953, and today there.are 19 houses of Poor Clares in the United Stat~s. Our modern age has not been able to undermine the observance of the Rule nor destroy its spirit. The order has grown silently, spreading its branches in neaily every country of the world. No nationality but has found the Rule and its spirit congenial, so that the daughters of Saint Clare scattered throughout the countries of the world have always been able to adapt themselves to her Rule, which .has proved .independent of time or place. Today our American girls still observe the Rule Innocent IV placed in the hands 0f the dying foundress. " What is the spirit, contained in the Rule of Saint Clare? As. in ¯ her own time, her Daughters live a contemplative life in strict en-closure. The spirit, one of poverty, love of prayer leading to closest union with God, is joyous, and their personal sanctification is as much for the efficacious gaining of gra~e for"soul~ as for the strength-ening of the bond of love in the order. It is a life of joyful giving, closing the doors to what the world calls pleasure by the vow of en-closure, thus finding the treasure which is worth more than all pos-sessions. Though it embraces the deprivation of "the things the world de-sires and cherishes, this seclusion with its penance does not entail a sad, bleak; and joyless existence. It is not the thing~ that are barred from the cloister which bring peace and joy to the soul, but those that are found within, of which the world knows nothing. There is song in the heart of the cloistered nun. for she is not burdened with the superfluous gadgets and noises which fill so many hours of our com-plex modern life. Saint Francis has been coi~sidered a model of penance and self-abnegation, but was ever saint more joyous? Hadever a saint a heart 170 ,July, 1953 SPIRIT OF ST. CLARE more full of music? His seemed to be an overflowing fountain of happiness, and he communicated it to those around him. In this, as in all else, Saint Clare was his faithful follower. Penance for her was not practiced for penance's sake. It was an outlet for the love burning in her heart ,and reaching out for more adequate fuel to feed its flame. This joyous spirit still pervades the cloisters where the Daughters of Saint Clare follow in her footsteps and observe her Rule. Their hearts are the cups that still hold the happiness of which the world has now so little, because their lives are still spent in genuine love and wholehearted giving. The worlff today is filled with sorrow and suffering,, and count: less hearts.are bearing a burden they could well consider supreme penance, did they but think of accepting all in a spirit of penance. The heart's most loving, if inarticulate, acceptance of penance is the willing b~aring of the unwelcome burdens so often placed on it by God. To be silent and lovingly resigned is always, to practice pen-ance in a very perfect form. The Daughters of Saint Clare vowing a Rule which imposes manypenances are but reaching out for greater love, ~vhich is warded With greater joy in God's service. Penance is not ugly, harsh, and fearsome. The bell which call~ one to ri~e from welcome sleep to seek the light of the sanctuary in the dead of night may sound un-welcome to a tired body: but is theie anything rfiore beautifuf_than the religious wending their silent 'way to the choir to make their first act of adoration before their Lord in the taberf.acle when the day has just begun? Standing in their stalls, they offer the praise of virgins before the face of~God, a prayer with the Son of God, ",bhile the world sleeps or sins. Does anyone know the joy in the hearts of those who give Him this homage? So it is with all the penances.prac7 ticed by the Daughters 6f Saint Clare. Penance for penance's sake is repugnant, meaningless, and very often food- for pride and phari-saism, so entirely alien to the spirit of Saint Clare. Penance for "love's sake is sweet. If there are still hearts in the world today which know unalloyed joy, they are undoubtedly those whose lives are being poured out in the most unselfish and wholehearted giving. Their joy is most full because their lives are most full of giving. The transition from the life of our modern girl to a postu!a~nt the cloister is not so drastic as some would suppose. Young, eager, lighthearted, with a soul attuned to God's grace, she assumes by slow degrees the duties and customs to which she adapts herself. She learns 171 SISTER M. IMMACULATA Review for Religious to love the hours of prayer, the Divine Office, the silence and regu-larity, The joyous acceptance of the sacrifices imposed by the Rule creatds a deep happiness and peace, which is found" especially in the hours of prayer. Prayer is not a ready-made gift in anyone. It en-tails mortification, is often itself mortification, but a mortification that decreases as the spirit of prayer and union with God increases There are no secrets of rapid progress over the rough path that leads to union with God, except the secret of persistent self-abnegation and striving for that wlsich obliterates self, and builds up in us the Christlikeness which alone makes us one with Him. But God does not lure us into the wilderness of. the contemplative life to forsake us and l'eave us to our own helplessness. True, we seem to take a leap in the dark When we embrace the contemplative life, but our Lover is not a human being whom we fear to trust. Like Clare who left her castle home in the dead of night, her Daughters follow where their Divine Spouse leads, and the path. is ever to union with God and the embrace of the Holy Spirit. While the enclosed life of contemplation should not be glamor-ized, neither should it be made a fearful existence df joyless sacrifice and penance. Too often is either mistake made. Those who look for a thrill rush to embrace what they do not understand, looking for something occult, dxpecting tangible thrills of gra.ce or ecstatic prayer before they have hid anything like the foundations of the spiritual life. On the other hand, ferszent though timid souls are often over-come by fear of what may be expected of them once they step behind the cloister walls. Neither is the correct attitude. Those to whom God gives a vocation to the contemplative life, have, nearly always, a natural yearning for God. They want Him, are looking for means of. union with~Him, "have a certain joy in prayer, and, with the light affd guidance of the Holy" Spirit, find pehce of soul in the difficult stretchds of the way as well as happiness in His tornforts. Union with God is a growing state, and though it often advances in dark-ness there are times when it comes into the light, and a light that does not fade entirely even when the way is again through dryness. There is too much emphasis put on the trials, sufferings, and dark-ness of the interior life and not enough on the joy in God and peace Of soul found therein. It has been said that Saint Clare, had she lived in our day, would have founded a missionary order. No Daughter of hers would ever consent to this opinion. Clare knew without a doubt to what she 172 dulg, 1953 SPIRIT OF ST. CLARE was called and she never wavered. She did not simply follow a pat-tern of her time. Indeed, we know that a number of:Benedictine houses, especially the large one at Florence, took the Rule of Saint Clare. It was Agnes, her sister, who was sent there to be the abbess under the new Rule. Francis knew Clare was a contemplative, as he was himself, and the hearts of both were so much the missionary's that no field of labor would ever satisfy' their zeal. Nothing less than the entire world would be Clare's mission field, as it was that of Francis and his Order. Italy and Assisi were no closer to her than the farthest-flung mission. No contempla.tive is one indeed if she has not' the heart of a missionary. Francis's was the call to go out and preach,. Clare's the outstretched arms of a Moses on the mount of contemplation. Clare would give to Christ, her Spouse, not only herself, but all the world. She'knew the fields were white for the harvest and she would obey the words of Christ and pray that the Master send laborers into it. He did not bid her go out and gather it in, bu~ strengthen the arms of the workers. She knew the limita-tions of her own weakness, but prayer and sacrifice, united with the prayer of Christ in the Divine Office, in in~erior love and union, were and are the all-powerful weapons which can reach the opposite ends of the earth at one and the same time. It was the spirit of Clare. as it was the spirit of Francis, to be daring enough to wish to support the Church, on her own weak shoulders, knowing that the Hands and Heart of her Divine Spouse were supporting her. The Spirit of Saint Clare, the foundress of the "Poor Clares, is still living and burning brightly after seven centuries. It calls to the heart cJf the modern girl of our cities as it did t6 those of the middle ages. The life she and Francis instituted for her Daughters is not outmoded in the 20th century, but instead is as living, warm, and joyous in the hearts of the novices of ~oday as in the days of Saint Clare in the little monastery of San Dami~no in 1253. ST. CLARE PLAY BY A POOR CLARE Candle in Umbria is the story of Saint Clare of /~ssisi told in a verse play by a Poor Clare Nun. The play of four acts, eight scenes is suitable for production by college :students or by high schools with special direction. The play was written to honor the foundress of the Poor Clares on the seventh centenary (1953) of her death. The authi~r is a regular contributor to Spirit magazine. ~$1.00 per copy, including the music for the "Canticle of the Sun" which is embodied in the play. Those interested in obtaining a copy of this productior~ should write to: Poor Clare Monastery, Route 1, Box 285 C, Roswell, New Mexico. 173 News and Views Yocational Institute at Fordl~am The Third Annual Institute on Religious and Sacerdotal Voca-tions will be held by. the School of Education, Fordham University, Wednesday, July 29, and Thursday, July 30, on the Fordham. campus. Ways of encouraging, fostering, and guiding vocations~.to the diocesan priesthood an/d to the religious life will be~ discussed by outstanding experts. For further information write to Rev. John F. Gilson,.S.J.,' Fordham Univ. Sch6ol of Education, 302 Broad-way, New York 7, N.Y. ,~ Institute of Spirituality At the National Congress of Religious, held last summer at the .University of Notre Dame, it ,was suggested that the University offer summer school courses in spiritual theology and an institute of spir-ituality each year for the Sisterhoods. This suggestion was favorably received by the representati(,es of the Sacred Congrdgation of Reli-gious and by th.e religious superiors who attended the congress. To carry the suggestion into effe~0 the Notre Dame Department of Religion is inaugurating this summer a program of courses in spir-itual- theology as part of its graduate work in view of a Master's De-gree in Religion. Moreover, since many superiors and mistresses of novices are unable to be present for the summer school, courses, the University is offering a distinct. Institute of Spirituality for them. This is also sponsored by the Department of Religion. The Institute is not a part of the academic program and offers no credits towards a degree. All the lectures and discussions are specially arranged for Sisters superior and novice mistresses. A~ the formal opening of the Institute, on the evening of July 31, His Excellency,. the Most Reverend John F. O'Hara, C.S.C., D.D., will deliver the address. From August I to 7, there will be three lectures each morning. Topics and speakers for these series of lectures are: "'The Role of the Sister Superior and Novice Mistress," by Rev. Paul Philippe, O.P.; "The Theology of the Religious Life and the Vows," by Rev. Joseph Buckley, S.M.; and "Ascetical and Mystical Theology," by Rev. Charles Corcoran, C.S.C. Each after~ noon, August 1-6, the three lecturers will cbnduct workshops on their subject-matter. On four evenings, August I-4, there will be 174 Julg, 1953 NEws AND VIEWS special lectures, running simultaneously, as follows: "The Liturgy and the R~ligious Life," by Rt. Rev. Martin Hellriegel; "Canon Law for Religious," by Rev. Romaeus O'Brien, O.Carm.; and "Psycho-physiology and Religious Sisterhoods," by Rev. Gerald Kelly, S.J. The Institute will close on the morning of August 7 with an address by Very Rev. Theodore M. He.sbargh, C:S.C., President of the Uni-versity of Notre Dame. Morol Theology ond Love There was a day when the science of Christian moralit~r included everything that is now partitioned into moral theology, ascetical the-ology, and mystical theology: in othei~'words, it included the entire Christian life, in all its degreesof perfection. Bdt the very growth of the su,bject-matter made some kin~i of division necessary, at least for teaching purposes. This division more or less limited moral the-ology to the sphere of what is obli~Tator(/: tb the study of laws, of the exact limits of the obligations imposed by the laws, to the.conditions which might constitute exemptions from these laws. and so foith. There is one great advantage of this ~partiti0n: it makes a dear distinction between what is obli~Tator~l and what is superero~lator~t; and this distinction is ext~rbmely important for the preservation of peace of soul. Nevertheless, from the point of view of moral the-ology, there is also a decided disadvantage: the science is made to ap-. pear too negative. Perhaps every student and professor of moral the-ology has been conscious of this disadgantage, and perhaps many of them h:~ve tried to find some way of introducing a more.positive and inspirational dement into moral theology without, of course, scaring its basic clarity. Father G. Gilleman, S.J., a Belgian Jesuit who teaches theology in India, suggests that moral theology can gain its necessary inspira-tional note by emphasizing charity as the very soul of the Christian life--which it truly is, whether in the sphere of obligation or' of supererogation. Those who ire'intdr~sted in improving.the method of moral theology should nbt fail to read Father Gilleman's book. The title is, Le primat de la charitd en thdologlie morale. It is pob-lished by E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain, Belgium. The price is 225 Bel-gian fr'ancs. $t. Joseph Research Center A St. Joseph" Research and Documentation Center has been estab-lished at St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal 26, Quebec. The constitu- 7.5 NEWS AND VIEWS tions of this organization have the approval of His Eminence, Paul Cardinal Lel~er, Archbishop of Montreal. The purpose of the so-ciety is to encourage a more profound study of the position of St. 2o-seph, and eventually to subsidize works published on the saint. It will sponsor research in fields such as church history, liturgy, and the arts, as well asin theology. Membership is open to' all interested in-dividuals or groups. Inquiries can be sent directly to St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal or to Rev. F. L. Filas, S.J., at Loyola Univer-sity, Chicago 26, Illinois. Scholarships at Catholic University" The Catholic University of America has made provision for. 160 half-tuition scholarships for post graduate studies for the next aca-demic year. Open to lay men and women, priests, Brothers, and Sisters, the grants/ worth $300 towards 'tuition, will be awarded on the basis of scholastic excellence and financial need of the applicant who is entering on post graduate work. Grants are available in all studies except philosophy, engineering, and architecture. Appli-cants should write to the Registrar, Department G, Catholic Univer- ¯ sity of America, Washington, D.C., for additional details on the program. Office of the Passion in English The Confraternity of the Passion, in answer to many requests, has had The Little Ofl$ce of the Passion of Our Lord desus Christ translated into English and made available in Small booklet form. The booklet may be obtained for 25 cents from the Confraternity of the Passion, Sacred Heart Retreat, 1924 Newburg Road', Louisville, Kentucky', or from any Passionist Monastery. ~ Layos Catholic Records Layos Records is a Hollywood recording company devoted ex-clusively to the production of Catholic records. The first record, " "Act of Contrition," is already in circulation. Original music was composed by Peter; Jona Korn, and the piece is performed by the Roger Wagner Chorale. The company plans to sell the recordings through advertisements in the Catholic press. A five-year schedule calls for the production of a new Catholic record, at six-week inter-vals. The firm is being advised in its musical program by Father John Cremins, head of the music depastment of the Los Angele~s Archdiocese. The record company is anxious to ha~,e suggestions from Catholic music and audio-visual departments regarding the type of material to be recorded. 176 On !:he Particular i:::xamen [EDITORS' NOTE: The first two articles on the particulmr examen .arrive~l almost simultaneously. The fact that the first is from an American Brother studying in Switzerland and the second from a Belgian missionary in India would seem" to indicate, universal interest in this practice of asceticism. The third contribution to this "sytfiposium"'is .from a member of the Jesuit Mission Band of the New Yot;k province. Communications from Our readers that may bring some more hdpful ideas to the practice of the particular examen are: welcome.] William T. Anderson, S.M. UMAN nature is prone tO falling into a rut. Those who lead very ordered lives often become slaves to routine. Religious sometimes feel the deadening effe~ct of routine and.habit: in fact, if we ark not car~eful, we find ourselves going to chapel without any preparation and without ~any aim. Day after day slips by and, before we know it, a year is gone. When .we 'take inventory at the annual-retreat, the shelves of our spiritual warehouse look" bare indeed. Perhaps we ought once in a while to ask ourselves a few embar-rassing questions on our religious duties. The reflections listed below are the result of just such a scrubbing of the~ soul. What effect has particular examen had on me? What is my attitude towards this ex-ercise? What importance has this exercise ir~ the spiritual life? Is there any direct ratio between successful zeal and progress in particu-lar examen? After .asking yourself these questions, try to answer them honestly. Then read on and see whetheroyou agree with the ideas given below. 1. A written record is a "'must" for examen. A record book for examen was insisted on in the novitiate. Over and over we heard how necessary this was. Yetsome 'religious perhapscast their examen book out the window of the car carrying them from the novitiate to the train station. Some of us used it for a while, but then discarded it. And that ~ras the beginning of the end. Perhaps most religious who do not make examen with a record as a help do not make exa-men. I~ this a rash statement? Do .you make examen faithfully without a iecord? Does your personal experience agree with this observation ? 177 "~,VILLIAM T, ./~NDERSON Re~iea2 for Religious 2. The subject for~ examen must be specific. If the subject is not limited to definite occasions during the day, or to specific'times scat-tered oxier the usual schedule, after a time the examen, period becomes' " 6nd during which 6u~ Stomach continually reminds us "that a meal is not,far off, or it is a p~eriod of planning unconsciously our work for the rest of the day or the morrow. Vagueness here is the deadly ene-my of progress. 3. Our apostolic influence is in direct ratio to our efforts at par-ticular examen. We learned in the scholasticate that while knowl-edge is very necessary for a teacher, the more important ingredient for a successful teacher and religious educator was the hbility to get along with people and to attract souls. Anyone who has taught fora few years will attest to the authenticity of this statement. Any one will also agree that teaching boys, especially adolescent b.oys,.can be a very nerve-racking job. Nervous tension may ruin any influence which we might have with students when we use sarcasm or unjust punishments, show favoritism or laxity on some occa-sions, or exercise undue ~ever!ty on others. Examen is the means which we have at our disposal to develop in us that self=control which is so necessary for the teacher. To be kind when words of sarcasm rise to outlips, to be exacting ~h~n we fed sluggish and lazy, to give words of correction which yet, do not cut, to be patient when we have had little sleep or food (as on fast days), ~o work steadily despite the fact that "results" are not forthcoming--is M1 this.poisible without examen? Most prob-ably not. As soon as we stop working at examen, we find ourselves difficult to get along with, harsh, lazy, or sarcastic. The weeds of our defects spring up rapidly'bnce we lay down the hoe of particular exam'en. 4. Particular examen is a sine qua non for communit~l life. All of the.foregoing can be just as well applied to community life. Com-munity life sometimes causes a lot of friction, some heat, and at times, even fire. Examen is the~exercise we need to mold our charac-ters so that we learn to avoid occasions which.cause arguments' or to cement, fraternal relations, once they are broken.~ Community life is sometimes a big cross; there is no need to make Jrbigger for a fellow r~ligious. 5. Examen is one of the best means we have of attaining our ideal, desus,'Son of Marv. Putting off the old man and putting on the new man is quite a job for us weak mortals, afflicted as we.are by 1"78 953 PARTICULAR EXAMEN the effects of original sin. It seems impossible that a religious can be sincere and continue hi~ striving for perfection in religious life with-out keeping up with the daily examen. Progress tgward making ourselves like to Jesus, Son of Mary, is made only by the grace of God and constant striving on,our part. Much of oar progress in the spiritual life proceeds, ex opere operantis. And examen is an excel-lent measuring rod for our own effort. 6. Examen is one of our most poten~t means of recruitment. Stu-dents join our ranks, not because of what we say or what we write. but because o~ what we are. If we are real religious, if we are. happy in the knowledge that we are striving to perfect ourselves,, if we show the acquired virtues of patience, charity, humility, and piety, it is ~mpossible that recruits will not come to us. Is there a. better adver, tisement for the religious life than a real religious, one who is daily advancing in virtue? Holiness attracts. Examen is a potent means of holiness. . Perhaps you do not agree with all or even any of the foregoing reflections. 'Be that as it may, you must admit that, granted that particular examen is necessary, we often negl.ect this important reli-gious exercise. Not only must we strive to be present for the examen each day, but we must make it fruitful by daily striving.~ Growth. in" virtue seems to demand the daily examen. As his particular examen goes, so goes the religious. P. De Letter, S.J. The particular examen i~ a common practice of modern spiritual-ity, As every canonical fiovice knows, it consists in direct.ing atten-tion to a particular point, either a fault to be corrected or some practice of virtue, to be fostered. Popularized if not originated by St. Ignatius~ of Loyola, this has become a common tactic in the spir-itual life. All have a passing acquaintance with it. As proposed in the Spiritual ExWcises, attention is to be focused on the particular examen three times every day: at the morning oblation, in theexam-ination of conscience at noon, and again 'during the evening exam-ination. Through this practice gifferent defects, are "gradually elim-inated and needed virtues acquired. 179 ~ P DE LETTER Remeto for Rehgtous A Fact from Experience Yet some religious do not succeed with the particular examen. They apparently fail to see its use 6r grasp its meaning: At any rate, they draw little, profit from it even whrn they do not drop it alto-gether as a useless formality. This is true even among religious who in no way neglect their interior life. Their failure is not due to wil-ful neglect or to tepidity. They simply do not' see their way to making a success of the practice. . Since sound spiritual writers speak so highly of the worth of the particular examen, it seems desirable to examine some apparent neglect and to revalue._.this spiritual exercise. We may sum up its importance by saying it is a sign of spiritual vitality, especially for those who have spent some years in religion. It may not be all-important m itself, at least when it is thought of and practiced in too narrow a manner. Generally its practice is a good indication that.the interior life is thriving. More often than not, its neglect means alack of spiritual vitality. In a limited sense, fidelity to" the practice of the examen can serve as a barometer reading of spiriti~al fervor. A Restricted Conception of the. Exarnen The formal idea of the particular examen can be applied in two different ways regarding both the choice of the subject matter and the manner of conceiving its pragtice. One way is very concrete and definite, perhaps too mechanical and artificial at least for life-span practice. For instance, we decide on rooting out a habitual fault such as the neglect of silence, resolve to avoid transgressions, and keep a record of the eventually-decreasing faults. Or we concentrate our attention on a specific practice of virtue such as kind interpretation of the actions of others and endeavor to. increase the number of these acts throughout the day, checking at noon and night to see how we have succeeded. This method is very rightly advised in the beginning of the religious life. It is an effective means of correcting exterior faults and defects and of gradually developing a religious way of thinking, speaking, and acting. It is also useful at other periods in life when it is necessary to remedy some faulty way of speaking'or acting that has crept in unnoticed. Another Approach If the particular examen is to measure up to what writers say about it and be a really powerful means of progress, there ought to be another way of conceiving its practice which does justice to its 180 1953 PARTICULAR EXAMEN importance. A number of religious have given the assurance that the following approach "works." Instead of taking just any particular fault or practice of virtue, we should fix on some central interest or need of our spiritual life. If the subiect is important it will less easily be forgotten. Then its !~ractlce, oreferably positive rather than nega-tive, should be conceived in a broad and inclusive manner. By means of the resolve made and renewdd at the three times--morning, noon, and night--we work at gradually penetrating our working day with an ideal or conviction rather than at c.ounting a number of particular acts 6r ,defects. To be more specific, the most suitable ;sub.iect matter for our par-ticul~ r examen is the main resolution or resolutions of our annual re- " treat. When this subiect is properly" chosen, it answers a real need and generMly our great~st one. It may crystallize into some maxim or mqtto. Then the oractice will consist in keeping this before our mind or recalling it when needed and pbssible. We thus slowly come to live in the atmost)here or disposition which our watchword con-veys. ¯ We begin to think, speak, and act accordingly. Some examples are: "The LordIoves a cheerful giver": "Ndt for me, Lord, but for Thee": "To have that mind in you which is in Christ." The prac-tice of framing our resolution in a driving maxim or a quotation from Scripture can be very helpful 'though it is not essential. What is essential is to keep before our mind a definite objective, sufficiently central and important for our personal interior life, such as cannot be lost sight of as long as our effort for spiritual "progress is kept alive. In this method our faithfulness and success in the,practice of the par-ticular examen are the criterion of our vitality and fervor. This will create a .congenial interior climate in which our souls can thrive. The importance of tEis concep~ion of the examen is evident at once. Nor is there any danger that we shall overlook and forget it throughout a busy day. If our work is permeated with a driving spiritual ideal, as it should be if it is to be different from mere secular work, a particular examen that looks after 6ur present main spiritual need will help sustain this retreat-clear inspiration. It is only in moments of forgetfulness when we neglect grace and allow natural-ism to guide our thought or conduct that the particular examen will also suffer from this spiritual thoughtlessness, But the examen itself, by reason of the resolve and the effort it implies, helps to forestall or exclude and .certainly to dimi6ish these "secular moments" in our days. 181 P. DE LETTER Review [or Religious Room [or Varietg We need not fear that this method will leave no room for a helpful variety that will maintain interest. When our particular examen aims at our central, yet definite, spiritual interest or need, its subject, matter can and naturally will take on many different aspects according to the variations of that interest or need, directed both by grace and by our psychology. As a matter of fact, our spiritual needs and interests evolve gradhally according to seasons and circumstances and to the inspirations of grace. These will reveal now one,e, ~now another side which before remained more or less hidden or unnoficed. Moreover, when our retreat resolutio.n, as is gener~ally the case, is not restricted to one but foresees several particular needs, we can alternate the practice and change from one to the other when the 'one seems to have worn out and lost its grip. Later, we can often return to the first with a refreshed outlook and new ardor. ( Dispositions and/or Acts Does this manner of practicing the examen require specific acts as does the first, or may we dispense with these? It may require them and generally does. That depends on the subject matter and on in-dividual dispositions. Some people can maintain a habitual disposi-tion of recollectedness or selflessness without insis(ing on or multiply- , ing definite acts. Others are in need of such acts, which arise spon-taneously from their resolve to be recollected or self-forgetful. spirit of praye.r normally demands some explicit acts of formal prayer; habitual or virtual prayer alone would not be sufficient. Self-lessness, trust, apostolic zeal can be habitual dispositions, but some explicit acts, whether exterior or interior, would not do any harm but would help very much even if they were not altogether necessary. The marking in a book after the noon "and evening check-up, which is generally a real help to our dodging human nature,'is not to be overlooked in this second way. But it need not be done in numer-als. Some people are congenitally poor in.arithmetic. Instead of marking the number of acts or df faults, a gener~al notation may suf-fice, for instance: good, average, poor; or A, B, C; or any way one prefers. When we mean business with our particular examen and make use of all the means to succeed, we still must expect times when our effort will have little success. Some days everything goes well spir-itually; other days it does not. These ups and downs need not be 182 July, 1953 PARTICULAR EXAMEN ; magnified; even in0 the "downs:' our effort can and generally does remain substantially faithful and successful to an extent. This should not be oveHooked: otherwise unwarranted and naive optim-ism may flounder during low moods, Provided our desire and effort .does not flag, even this partly unsuccessful particular examen still marks a steady progress. - The second way of conceiving and. practicing the particular exa-men makes the exercise not just a small device for casual use if it suits but rather an important ~nd obligatory factor in every serious effort for progress. Without it. spiritual life~.slackens if it does not die down. Perhaps we should say that every, fervent life actually keeps this practice of the particular examen, though possibly without giving it that name. Every fervent spirituality is practically boun,d to aim at and concentrate on some definite objective required by the present need. Fervent sduls do so spontaneously. It can only make for better ~esults if they are aware of this law of spiritual vitality and resolve to follow it. Seen in this light, the particular examen-is an essential unit inthe structureof spiritual progress. It is, not just a decorative trifle. We need not fear that this determined and steady effort at lJrog-ress in one particular direction will result in a state of uneasy t~nslon and nervousness. As in the whole spiritual life, so also here, ti~e-de-sire and endeavor for advancement must combine ardor and peace,, earnestness and patience, genuine'effort and disinterested acceptance of the results. For is it not grace that makes our effort possible and suc-cessful? Human endeavor is a subordinate factor. It is no doubt, necessary: grace does ndt replaceit. But it is trust in grace combined with sincerity in not sparing ourselves unduly that makes a burning, yet peaceful ardor possible. The particular examen, understood in this grand and realistic way,, repays, th~ effort we make in a measure which it is impossible,to anticipate. Fidelity to grace is often re-warded beyond human expectation. Gabriel A. Zema, S.J. 1. Let us take, for example, the habit of passing on to a friend or acquaintance our low opinion of the fault or sin 0f another. De-pending on circumstances, the thing may be no sin at all, a.venial, or a mortal sin. Even if no actual sin, it is a habit that belongs to no 183 GABRIEL A. ZEMA lady or gentleman; and it can lead to a lot of trouble. 2. On rising, or after morning prayer, write a figure, say "3," some place where you can again see it at the end of the day. (Even nosey people will never know what "3" stands for.) For you "Y' means you are determined to control your tongue three times that day on the habit you set ouk to break. 3. When you look at the figure at the end of the day while examining your conscience as every sincere re!igious.should--it is pos- Sible you won't know what it stands for yourself. You may even have forgotten you put it there. ,But a little reflection will bring back the breaking-that-habit idea. 4. Very well, begin all over again. On the second day you may find that you have not controlled your tongue even once. Go to the third day more determined than ever. 5. I~eep'up the practice for ten or twelve days. You will find a definite improvement if you are at all serious about it. 6. At the end of ten or twelve days take tip another fault and give it ~he same treatment. Follow the same procedure. After you have worked on three or four faults.--never forgetting to keep im-' proving on them--go back to the first one and see how the patient looks! 7. In morning and evening prayers ask Our Lady to come to your aid. BOOK NOTICE THE INTERIOR CARMEL: THE THREEFOLD WAY OF LOVE, by John C. H. Wu, a very brilliant Chinese. convert, diplomat, and scholar, "wi'll help highly intellectual.lay men and women to raise their spiritual lives of contemplation and divine love td an equal height and to give them something of the lofty mysticism that char-acterized St. John of the Cross. It will also aid very busy religious or priests to make their exterior activities conducive to a ,higher and more intense internal spirit. Interestingly and inspiringly Dr. Wu quotes the ancient Cbiriese sages, Confucius and Mencius, to rein-force the lessons of modern Catholic and Spanish Carmelite mysti-cism. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953. Pp. xii + 257. $3.25.) 184 Child Mo!:her: r cious ynt:hesis Mother Winifred Corrigan, r.c. AT HOLY COMMUNION, the soul authentically in love with ~ God, is sometimes conscious of itself as a banq~ethall in which the memorable gospel of the anointing of the Lord's feet by "a sinner" is being reenacted. This soul becomes aware in itself of two sep.arate impulses. One is the generous spirit of the Magdalen, utterly expending self for the beloved Master, freely offering to spend its best years in obscurity or lovingly giving its body to be burned. The other impulse, also within .the soul, is viewing, rea-soning, even objecting: "To what purpose is this waste?" It is the soul speaking in terms of the apostle 3udas, not yet the traitor, who prudently considers the extravagance of broken alabaster."For this might have been sold for much, and given to the poor." That Our Blessed Lord openly favored and approved the sym-bolic self-surrender ~f Mary Magdalen, the sinner, we know. "The poor you have always with you but me you have not.always." We have experienced, too, bow the logic of Divine Wisdom reconciles our opposing desires and restores equilibrium. "Thy. sins are for-given thee. Thy faith hath'made thee safe, go in peace." Devotion to Mary performs a similar function. It tends to unify two spiritual realities sometimes thought to be at variance: the doctrines of spir-itual" cbildbood and spir!tual motherhood. Why are these doctrines ever considered incomigatible? In the natural order, it is plain that the two states, childhood and mother-hood, are not in opposition. Obviously, the same person can be both child and mother. The basic concept, mother, one who merci-fully sustains the life of her offspring ("do not kill it"), is unfor-gettably presented to us as illustrating the wisdom of Solomon. "Give the living Child to this woman.for she is the mother there-of." This concept of mother ~choes the first woman's name, Eve, mother of the living. The concept of child, in the Divine Mind, is expressed for us in the Fourth Commandment. In the Book of Ec-clesiasticus (Chapter 3) the blessings of fruitfulness and long life are promised in detail to the loving, obedient child. Writing to his dear Ephesians, St. Paul confirms this divine revelation for New Testa- 185 MOTHER WINIFRED CORRIGAN Review for Religious merit times.- "Children, obey your parents in. the Lord, for this is just. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first command-ment with a prorriise: that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long lived upon earth." Thus, for the Christian, it is natural for the faithful child to become fruitful, nor would the sacrifice of mar- ¯ riage and family usually be required in order to keep the Fourth Commandment. In the supernatural order, the harmonious' sequence between the roles of child and mother is less apparent. In making ready to lighten up the mists by reference to M.ary, it may be well to clarify the meaning of the terms, spiritual childhood and spiritual mother-hood, according to Scripture and the lives of the saints. Spiritual Childhood Our Lord has strongly set forth the reality, even. the necessity of spiritual childhood. "Amen, I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little, children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." He then counsels the humility of a little child for his disciples, and for all who would be "greater in the kingdom of heaven." The reality of spiritual motherhood is presented for us in the forceful language of St. Paul. "My little dhildren," he wrote to the Galatians, "of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you." His apostolic cry for souls re-echoes the appeal of the Divine Lover, heard in the Old Testament (Isaias 49:15). There it tran-scends rather than distinguishes itself from the pangs of .natural motherhood. "Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her wombs. And if she should forget, y.et will I not forget thee/' Amid the miracles of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we find this divine, motherly concern for human needs manifesting itself in a sweet, considerate way. He took the hand of Jairus' 12"-year-old daughter and raised her from the dead. Then, having counselled her parents to secrecy, he "commanded that something should be given her to eat." Some of tl'Je saints have discovdred the .beautiful qualities of spir-itual childhood and spiritual motherhood.contained in the above and similar passages. At Holy Communion, they have explored the mystery of their Eucharistic Lord .entering the human body, resting there like a helpless, unborn child, in order to nourish the life of the soul. The Divine Word, repeating the mother's cry: "Do not kill 186 Jul~,1953 GRACIOUS SYNTHESIS it!" 'daily fulfills His own promise: "The bread that I will give. is my flesh, for the life of the world." The saints have understood how, by their very self-effacement, by being belittled and becoming as little children, they too can maternally assis~ in the birth, growth, and' development of the Mystical Body. St. Th~r~se of the Ch'ild Jesus (1873-1897) has renewed the interest of the modern world in the doctrine Of spiritual.childhood: Her position as youngest child of the Martin family and her early entrance into religious life preserved in her soul the true attitude of a child. How this spirit of utter dependence on her heavenly Father helped her to fulfill her maternal duties as nox}ice mistress to the souls "who came to me asking for food," she tells with unique charm in her Autobiographgt (p. 213). Her present title of patroness of the missions suggests the breadth of her spiritual moFherh0od, hidden deep in her youth and Carmel. No discordant contrast is the spirituality of Blessed Th~r~se Couderc (1805-1885), foundress of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Retreat in the Cenacl~. As the oldest girl in a large family and as young superior of a religious community, sloe early developed the valiant traits characteristi(of spiritual motherhood. Then. con-sequent upon bet consecration to Our Lady, shesaw her responsibili-ties removed and she went down willingly into years of oblivion. In her 60th year, Blessed Th~r~se or, as we know her better, Mother Th~r~se, had emerged from the darkness of humiliation and failure, to find herself a humble, cherished adorer confronted with the holi-ness of God. "He treats me always." she wrote at this time, "like a child who would not have the strength to bear trials, Also the sweetness He makes me feel in His service makes me forget and bear all." This is the stage at which she detailed her doctrine of self-surrender. While it graduall~ led her into the thicket of unitive suffering and reparation, she continued to call it an easy means of sanctification, noting that there is "nothing so sweet to practice.': Marg, the Ideal The ideal of self-surrender is Our Lady of the Cenacle. It is Our- Blessed Mother in th~ last. perhaps 15-year, epoch of her earthly life. She has already received her Divine son's formal commission for the motherhood of mankind, on Calvary. In the Cenacle or "upper room," by a mother's persevering prayer and a claild's anonymity- ("who when she was first of all became-the last" St. Bernard), 187 COMMUNICATIONS ReotetO [or Reltgtot~s Mary continues to attract us to the sublime by the gracious synthesis of her life. In religious life, Mary's spirit is learned and gained in a'variety o.f ways: perhaps in the shared intimacy of Holy Communion, perhaps in the fragrant solitude of a retreat. Our Lady is ever the, true child ,and the true mother. Her spirit, '!meek and strong, zealous and prudent, humble and courageous, pure and fruitful," imparts to us our own proper measure of both these roles. When we have reverently analyzed ~and appreciated the doctrines of spiritual childhood and spiritual motherhood, we may be allowed to accommodate an angel's words as our simple directive,. "Take the Child and His mother." Thus, sincere, day to day imitatio'n of Our Blessed Mother. gradually becomes our meaningful response to an ever more imRerative invitation. We then find that we have tended to integrate in our spiritual .life the two ways'of which Mary, our model, is the gracious synthesis. Reverend Fathers: I agree with Sr. Ma~y Jude', 0.P., in her articl~, "The Summa for Sisters" (March, 1953), that a study of the works of St. Thomas would help our Sisters become better religious and better teachers However, I do not agree with Sister regarding "the distinctive phe-nomenon of the active orders today." Professed religious who are seeking admission to contemplative orders are a growing concern of the Church, but they are not a phe-nomenon. They are the logical result of the transition that has been taking place within active orders. Truly "their final profession is far enough behind," but a glance at those former days may illuminate the darkness, mistrust, and mis-understanding that surrounds them. When ~hey entered religious life the goal was one--it was clear-cut, that is, perfection which would I, mean intimate union with God. During their novitiate and perhaps I' for the first ten years of their religious life their concentrated all their it efforts to attain this end. Then stress was not on education, nursing, i! or Catholic Action, but on the presence of God and the pursuit of I virtue; however, because of pressure from without, the change of l 188 duly, 1953 COMMUNICATIONS standards, and the requirements by the St'ate, professional knowledge, ability, and skill became a necessity. Therefore. higher education with Saturday and weekday classes was added to teaching, plus parent-teacher m~etings, sodalities, public relation groups, discussion clubs and first~id courses. These religious lack neither intelligence nor good will. They readily admit with St. Thomas the greatness of the charity of the apostolate. Theylive, for the most part, lives of self-renunciation and sacrific6. Other,wise they would not be seeking admission to the cloister.- Nor are they seeking only the joys of contemplation. Most of them would gladly spend themselves and be spent in the apostdlate if they could still be c~rtain that their union with God was increasing not decreasing. But the signs point in the opposite direction. Let us look at one of these Sisters of fifteen y~ars ago. Today, instead of the one goal of 'union with God, she has another, that of professional competence. What has happened to her.as a result? First, the intensity of her desires and her efforts in the spir~itual life has naturally been weakened by her concentration on her work. Second!y, the virtues of the interior life, silence, and recollection do not have the opportunity for development they had in fdrmer days. Distractions in one form or another and activity hinder their growth. Thirdly, the virtues of the hiddefi life have become watery. They lack the positive yirility that so characterizes interior souls. She is in the world and does not wish to be of the world, yet its spirit of ac-tivity and distraction are now hers. ~ Viewing these results, she finds a growing conviction that her. spiritual life is deprived of the degree of vitality that once was hers and thai the culprit is activity. From this conviction flows the fear that her work and its accessories are separating her from Christ. It is not the fear of a neurotic; it is a well:founded fear that demands recognition and attention. No zealous religious desires to go to heaven alone; no thinking religious denies the value of the apostolic life,, but there is much ac-tivity in the life of the religious today that could not conceivably be put in the category of Apostolic. Those who strive to unite prayer and action as St. Paul and St. Thomas, St. Catherine and St, Teresa of Avila did, find they fall short of the ideal, in fact they fail. Tl~is is not just subjective thinking. It can be proven without much spiritual examination. As in nations, so in groups, and so with the individual, the pe- 189 COMMUNICATIONS ~" riod of adjustment is 'fraught with dangers. These must not be spurned. They should be recognized and analyzed. It is the chal- . lenge of our age. , The desire for contemplation is rapidly growing in America, not o~ly.in orders of women but also among men. We have a Father Moore, a Father Raymond, and a Father Merton, to name only a few outstanding ones, to prove this. Not only is contemplation sought by' religious in active orders, but so many young, eager Americans have sought admission to the Trappist Monastery in Kentucky that they .have had to build five new foundations in a short time, The Carthusians, stiil in their infancy in America, have a waiting list. All. this is significant. ¯ Would Sr. Mary Jude say all these people were exceptions, or that they lack the ability to find the delicate balance between prayer and work. I doubt it. Looking at it from this' broader .point of view, we see that this cbndition of which~ Sister M, Jude speaks i~ only a branch of a much larger river that is sweeping America from coast to coast. If we wish to insure the vitality and growth of our active orders, we must see that. the desire for intimate union 'with Christ is given outlets and opportunities for development, .even if it means the curtailment of many activities. We can do without the latter, but without the for-mer all action is but sounding brass and tinklilag cymbals. --A SYMPATHIZER. "BLESSED BE HER GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION" .On December 23, 1952, Our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, decreed that the in-vocation printed above is.to be added, to'the Divine Praises whenever they are re-cited after Mass or'after Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.' In the official publi-cation of this decree, which appeared in the Acti~ Apostolica Sed~'s under date of March 21, 1953, vol. 45, p. 194, it was stated that this new invocation should be inserted after the invocation "!Blessed be~ th~ Name of Mary Virgin and Mother." However, L'Osseroatore Romano for April 9 contained a correction, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on Apr!l 8, to the effect that it should be inserted im-mediately after the other invocation: ',',Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate C.oncep, tion." ,. The ob'.i~ati0n of inserting this new. invocation into the Divine Praises begins on dune 21, 1953, that date being three months from the date of the ACtu Apos-tolicae Sedis in which the decree appeared, in conformity with canon 9 of the Code of Canon Law. We take this occasion to remind our readers that on Oc~0ber 31-, 1950, in con-nection with the formal definition, Pope Pius XII decreed that the invocation Queen assumed into f-leaven should be added to the Litany of Loretto after the ~'oCation "Queen conceived without original :sin." At the same time he also up-, proved a new Mass which is to replace the Mass formerly said on the Feast of the Assumption. 190 I Spiri :ual Progress and Regress Charles A. Nash, S.J. AN IDEA as old as St, Augustine, and. rebbrn in Rodriguez, pic-tures the spiritual life "as a ,b~all of string you are carefully winding up. IL once you drop it, it readily unwinds, and it takes a long time and much effort to .wind it up again. This same idea, on a natural plane, permeates the business day of six thousand psychiatrists in the United States who have become profoundly, interested in what happens once the ball of life is dropped and starts to unwind. Their technical name for it is regression or the reversal of t~ae normal steps Of growth. Regression is of such paramount im-portance in psychiatry that it is often .defined as "the science of re-gressive phenomena." The aim of this article is to picture regression in the spiritual life and.to use psychiatric data in order to empha.size certain psychological factbrs that underlie spiritual progress. " Because it is their.daily, business, psychiatrists today are fast be-coming experts in the delicate art of character change or the forward step to maturity, As modern scientific.innovators in an ancient field. these medical specialists have made many valuable scientific investi-gations and acquired much practical experience in the last twenty-five years. Religious ark wise to profit by some of their ideas on regress and pr,og~ess toward maturity 'which have a direct practical bearing on the religiou~ life. Like the psychiatrist, a religious, too, practices daily the delicate art of character change, but be aims at a greater spiritual maturity. The forward progress at which a psy-chiatrist aims in treating his patient strikes a close parallel to the for-ward progress of a religious in the spiritual life. Both involve a gradual change of character. Psychiatrists must know character change in two directions, both Zegre~s and progress. The classic exampl,e of regression or unwinding in human life is old age. We are often a casual witness when time, by its slow process, lays its fingeron a man. We have watched elderly PerSons gradually drop things most cherished in !ife, one by one. first a man b~gins to lose the wide ifiterests he once had. Sports no longer interest him; he stops traveling is much as he used to; his friendships narrow dow.n; interest in his daily, work begins to lag. All gradually culminate in his retirement.1 If he.k~eps his mind open '~Leland El Hinsie?Concepts and Problems of Ps~ychotherapg, p. 124: Understand-able Psgchiatrg, chapter on "Regression." * 191 ¯ CHARLES A. NA~H Reoietu for Religious and pliant and is ready to welcome whatever the future may bring, the elderly pers.on often mqves gracefully through his last years. Often enough, however, his mind closes up and he loses track of the day and the hour. He becomes hostile to what is new, to change, to innovation, closing off hislmind to the future. In the ,course of time he may become self-centered and petulant, and fall back upon the 'manners of his childhood, then of his infancy. He may have to be bathed, fed, dressed, assisted in walking. For him it is a haven of repose, a citadel of safety. He has reverted to his "second child-hood" and regressed to the activities of an infant. Besides the com-plete unwinding of habits of maturity in "second childhood," there are many pictures of partially unwound habits which are but-smaller portraits on a much reduced scale. Unwinding Spiritual Life Complete spiritual regression can be 'seen in-the nominal of "fallen-away" Catholic of any age who knows his religion but drops. its practice entirely. The unwinding spiritual, life runs down a path more or_ less parallel to "old age and ~econd childhood." The ¯"fallen-away" .Catholic's practical interest in religion slowly wanes, and he gradually closes off his mind to religion, becoming spiritually self-centered. One by one he drops the religious practices he once cher-ished. -Sunday is like any other day; the churchdoor remains ever .i:los~d. He stops going to Mass; he falls away from the Sacraments: his prayer life diminishes to a minimum or none at all. Gradually, his acquired spiritual habits Unwind until he is back to "childhood," where spiritual obligations and.moral responsibilities are at a mini-mum. He has traded away God for careless, vacant ioaming. As far as religion is concerned, he is once' again like a small boy, sans reason and his seventh birthday. Instead of progressing to an ever greater possession of God, he has gone backwards. Here, too, miniature por-traits of regression are quite common in the spiritual life where a spiritual habit or two may start to unwind. Progress and regress follow definite patterns. .One is a dynamic, forward-moving pattern toward maturity; the other moves back-ward down the path a man has come up, Life experience normally present~ the picture of a continuum of, forward growth along a life-line which falls into natural periods: birth, childhood,, adolescence, young manhood, adulthood, change of life, and decline. It is the common lot of mortal man to :crown his numberless daily experi- 192 Jul~j, 1953 PROGRESS AND REGRESS ences with.an ever greater maturity. This growing maturity is dearly won through countless small successes. In sharp contrast, the re-gression pattern, at any age and at any level of development, is a're-versal of the' normal steps of growth along', this life-line. Read the life-line forward and you have progress; read it backward and you have regression. Psychiatrists'~tell us that every man takes a backward step now and then. No one, save Christ our Lord and His Blessed Mother, is co,mple.te master of his every action. For religious, the single back-ward step may occur in problems of obedience,' the daily order, pov-erty, t~he practice of virtue, the daily rosary, spiritual reading--to name but a few possibilities. The single backward step is not. so significant. When this backward step becomes a definite pattern, then real spiritual regression is beginning. But despite" occasional backward steps, psychiatrists say the nor-real person is about ninety per cent adjusted to life.~ About ten per "cent of life he cannot quite master and he dodges it in one way or another. In other words, man's daily batting average is about .900; the ratio of small successes in life to small failures is about ninety to ten. Whether saint or sinner, some failure pursues him every day, but success (forward progress) definitely predominates in his actions. Dgnamic Equilibrium Because he is fundamentally successful but always carries some failure in tow, the average person strikes a balance with life. He reacts in terms of an equilibrium--a dynamic, forward-moving equilibrium in which progressive factors predominate, ,but regressive ones are also present. This equilibrium ,is built into the very struc-ture of his mind through the years. It is his own practical system of reacting to life, his working method of dealing with experience de-rived ,from his past.psychological history. Psychiatrists have learned~ to investigate this equilibrium scientifically and now actually measure it,.with~scientific formulas,a When it breaks down, regression begins. If it does not break down, progress continues. ~This figure refers to the over-all or.comprehensive picture of all man's actions in meeting life. Personal success in one particular action, however, may vary from mastery, to littleor no control. Leland E. Hinsie, Concepts and Problems of Pay-. chotherapt./, p. 77. Edward A. Strecker, Fundamentals of Ps~/chiatr~/, graph on p. 231, 3E~lward A. Strecker, Fundamentals of Psv. chiatr~t, p. 51. Franz Alexander and H~len Ross, Dgnamic Psgchiatrg, p. 140. CHARLES A. NASH Reoieto for Religious This dynamic equilibrium produces manifold effects. It gives an even tenor to, man's ways and stability to his character. It embeds past success in the human system for'future successful operation. As a result, whatever a man does in his normal day leaves most of his old order standing. A singld act, forward or backward, leaves most of his autobiography of character largely unchanged. Occasional back-ward steps are readily tolerated and absorbed without throwing the forward motion offstride. Because of it, a major change of character. occurs slowly. A spiritual character change requires many actions over a considerable period of time. In many aspects of life this equilibrium acts as a shock-absorber, an internal ,resistance built right into the structure of personality for resisting the "blows of outrageous foitune." For instance, a death in the family may score a temporary psychological and emotional knockout in other members of the family~. But soon the pendulum swings back to normal and old habits take over once again. Gradu-ally, the appreciation of life built up through the years prevails, and life goes forward once more. Because of his equilibrium, a man does not deteriorate psychologically at one major blow, nor can ,he turn himself'inside out, for better or worse, overnight. Role o~ Failure After much failure or long-enduring stress, this same personal balance or equiliblium can wear thin or even "break down." When this occurs, the backward pattern of regression slowly begins. Then, a religious falls back upon lower and lower levels of his spiritual life, and becomes beset by earlier and earlier habits of his career. The first failure is easy to take, but not a series of them. Failtire is hard on morale, and daily failure has a numbing effect on our effort. The effect of failure is to close off the mind to the difficulty and 0fall back upon.earlier habits. After repeated failure, for instance, a religious may gradually close off his mind to formal mental prayer, and fall back upon his earlier habits when mental prayer was not part of the daily schedule. All spiritual regression has one point in common: it is a back-ward step to an earlier and easiei adjustment to the difficulties of the spiritual life. At the, same time, unfortunately, spiritual progress either slows down or stops. Part of the goal drops out of the picture "for the present," and there is a partial farewell to hopes of greater things. Instead of the "new man in Cl~rist," it is a return to the 194 PROGRESS AND REGRESS "old man" of self when spiritually less mature. The significance of regression in the spiritual life is that it sounds the knell of forward progress. Continued progress requires that a religious take failure~ in stride. Often small successes in life become so integrated into a religious per-sonality that they almost go unnoticed. We only see and take note of our failures, and they can come to loom large on the daily hori-zon. After repeated failure, therd is danger that a religious will close his mind and chart his future course by past failure. The true measure of the future, bower(r, is past success. There is no small touch of humility and wisdom in expecting some daily failure and not charting our future course by it. Man normally moves forward in a dynamic equilibrium with a ninety per-cent rate of success. American Stgiritualitg The pace or tempo of character chahge is a slow one. Being' American-minded, we naturally expe.~t rapid results. The very at- . mosphere of our times--an era of modern machine .efficiency, high- 13ressure business methods, production miracles, and high-speed travel--promotes an ingrained bent toward immediate success. Rightly' or wrongly, we feel there should be a twentieth-century ¯ masterkey to the spiritual life, a foolproof device as dependable ?s the multiplication table. Yet strangely enough, our spiritual life seems to move at the tempo of the first centuiy in a twentieth-century World. True character change may be hard to see. We Americans see the, entrancing picture of industrial production, but we look upon spiritual progress in our own lives as a vague or blank picture. Sanc-tifying grace and internal actual grace are both intangible and invis-ible. We sow the representative crops, the seeds of humility, love of God, obedience, and the other virtues, yet always wonder2--when's the harvest? To see results, we often make one good resolution suc-ceed another in rapid succession, turning our spiritual life into a series of short-term cycles, partly for variety, partly to convince ourselves that we are getting somewhere and making progress. But after six months of short-term cycles we are ready to doubt whether we are changed an iota. That old spiritual problem which we settled once, and for all two weeks ago somehow surges back to life again today. A series of .these experiences can readily warp ore: spiritual judgment or ~lgrudence and lead to loss of effort and discouragement. Then 195 CHARLES A. NASH Review for Religious failure charts our course. Being constitutiOnall~y successful, we shift our effort to some more promising line of_ endeavor, and the spirit of' spiritual progress becomes like a ghost on the outermost rim of the real business of daily living. 200-300 Hours Psychiatrists have much this same time-problem. How much time is required to make a permanent change in a patient's character~ How long to turn a man around and start him forward again on the life-line to maturity? A considerable body of evidence indicates that it takes two hundred to three hundred hours, roughly speaking; to make a permanent character change.4 This means one hour a day, seven days a week for about nine months devoted to making the change, whate;cer that change may be. No matter how un-American it may sound, there seems to be normally no substitute for time in a 'permanent character change. Even if our minds thunder and rever-berate in syllogisms, it still takes from two to three hundred hours to drive' the lesson home permanently and to relate it in experience to the concrete parts of life. A religious may profitably add a bit of timing to his spiritual motor; Permanent growth is not like reading through a spiritual book in three or four days ~nd expecting the result; it is more l,!ke the slow, nine-months' nurturing of the child in the mother's womb. It is not the work of a day or a week, but it finds a closer parallel in the one hour a day for nine months thata student devotes, say, to mathe-matics ~r history or language in school. Putting on a facet of Christ's personality is not done in one meditation; it slowly develops like the b.aby slowly developing back and neck muscles, balancin'g on his feet at six months, and finally learning to walk near the end of a year. Permanent character change, is more in the image of St.,Peter and the Apostles learning confidence in Christ over a period of several years, and still being a bit shaky at His death when confronted with actual life experience. But worth noting is the ever-recurring fact of suc-cess. After nine months in the womb the baby actually is born; a year later he walks; in nine months the student knows his history, mathematics, and language. In time the Apostles did attain cona-dence in Christ. Actual success is the constant experience of the hu-man race if timk and energy are dev6ted to the task. 4Leland E. Hinsie, Concepts and Problems of Psychotherapy, 11-12. 169. John Knight, S~o'ry oI My Psychoanalysis, 2-3. 196 155, 166- Ju~,~, ! 953 PROGRESS AND REGRESS ¥~rhat l~appens in two or three hundred hours? In that time our perso.nal equilibrium changes. Through ~ur mind and emotions there slowly winds a new track of virtue all its own. Character change invoIyes a rather thoroughgoing shift in our habitual reaction to life. It requires a new appreciation of life as a permanent part of the m~nd, a' new emotional pattern, a new reaction to a vast number of concrete situations. Suppose, for example, a close friend dies with whom you have associated night and day for ten years. In all the old situations which constantly remind you of this lost friend you m~lst make clear to yourself that you have this friend no longer, and that a renunciation is necessary. He is Vividly represented {n many personal memories and experiences. You will have to correct your reactions for many a day, and detachment must t~ke place separately in each instance. Similarly in character chan, ge. "The single action, the passing thought hardly dents the human system: it remains more like a feeble echo in the soul. A single action leaves one's equilibr!uin for meeting life largely unchanged. In two or three hundred" hours, however, the new reaction "works through" and permeates our mind and our thinking~ In that time it develops its own emotional pat-tern and becomes permanently related in experience to most of the concrete parts of life. Factors in Adult Progress As adults, we tend to sell human nature short. We frequently forget what a long way we have come since childhood, the countless number of small successes involved in our present degree of maturity. Starting out as a helpless babe, man slowly learns t6 walk, to speak, to run, to master language, to enjoy countless new experiences,, to cope with school life, to earn a living, to marry and support a fam-ily. Any one of thesehas practical difficulties of time and energy and personal ability somewhat like those in the spiritual life: Yet by the common experience of mankind, their attainment ih practically cer-~ rain if sufficient time and energy is devoted to the task. As adults we tend to forget the countless milestones we have already passed, and even come to expect no new milestones in the future. Often as adults we cut down on spiritual time and energy, and act in the practical order as if religious experience had been exhausted. If a religious tries to compress thirty hours int6 twenty-four, it is inevitable that he will have to scalp time from his spiritual life to ac-complish this feat. In this regard it would seem that all of us are endowed with a certain native shrewdness of the horse-trading vari- 197 CHARLES A. NASH ety. But little time means little progress. Sometimes we run our spiritual life like a carburetor with too thin a mixture of energy to operate the machine. Life's fast teinpo drains away energy. The more our limited daily energy is channeled to other things, the less remains available for character change or spiritual growth. ~ If there is no time and energy, there is no progress. As we grow older, our ideas of spiritual experience tend to become mote and more .rigid. Spiritual progress is difficult in a rigid mind, like mov, ement in a. straitjacket. Progress demands an open and pliant mifid with the door ever open to wider spiritual experience. Often in order to pro-gress we first have to unstiffen our spiritual ideas and keep them lim-ber. Age is not a true limit to spiritual growth. Remai'ning ever an experiencing being, man normally moves ever forward irma dynamic equilibrium toward an ever greater maturity in God. If the human mind closes to the future, it falls back upon the past. Not age but the man himself puts a stop to progress, by refusing new spiritual ex-perience. The Divine Plan Time, energy, and an open mind docile to the Holy Spirit fit into God's design for human experience on earth. In His divine plan as the Creator of human nature and every human experience, God has an eminently skilful regard for bo~h the strength and the weakness of the earthly pilgrim in his slow daily progress. He assists the slo~v, three-hundred-hour pace by the superior motivation of divine reve-lation, by countless actual graces, by the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. When only a miracle can be substituted for time, when our very best efforts are always attended by some failure, we catch no small glimmer of the "divinity that shape~ our ends" in the gift of-the three theological virtues. For without hope progress stops; without faith the path grows dim: without love the heart grows faint along the way. But in God's design for religious ex-perience ,the pilgrim is fortified by God Himself. Faith illumines our mind along the road to God; hop~ keeps effort alive and the goal be-fore our eyes; and love is even now a participation of the goal itself while progressing along the way: Divine assistanc~ and a ready w~l-come ever await the pilgrim at every step of his journey. "Come to Me all you that'labor and are heavily burdened and I will refresh you." The lq.ng-run trend of spiritual growth, in God's design, is a quickening triumphal march. ~ 198 The Unseen World Jerom~ Breunig, S.J. THE telescope and microscope have extended our horizons im- | measurably. They have opened up unseen worlds for us. "How mean is earth when I look to heaven," said St. Ignatius one night in Rome more than 400 years ago. Hbw much more mean-ingful this remark is today when the giant eye at Mt. Palomar, California, a 200 inch telescope, helps us penetrate into the sky to the staggering limits of more than one billion light years" and reveals millions of suns like our own moving at the incredible .speed of 500,000 miles, per hour. .~Apart from the findings of the great ob-servatories, even a good telescope on a clear night can reveal wonders hidden to the eye. We can see the pock marks that craters ma~ke on our next ~lo~r neighbor, the moon, which is a scant 238,000 miles fr6m our planet. We. can see the nine moons that cluster about Jupiter, the'ring of light about Saturn, as well as the fiery masses said to be billions of stars. ~The inicroscope opens another unseen world. To the unaided eye what is on the glass slide lo6ks like'a drop of water. Under the microscope we see many protozoa of all kinds. We can see scores of little slipper-shaped animals called paramecia caromin~ about in the water. Perhaps a sluggish, slow-moving amoeba can be sighted or a green euglena of the mastigophora (whip-bearing) family, propel-ling itself by its whiplike tail. After human vision gtopped, the zo-ologist has pushe,d on with his microscdpe to discover 30,000 kinds of protozoa in an unseen world. But there is another world still more 'marvelous and far more important than the worlds that the magnifying glass reveals. It is the unseen world of spiritual realities. Higher visual aid is required to penetrate far into this invisible but real world. We are blind and helpless without the eyes of faith. St. Paul speaks right to the point. "What is faith? It is that which'gives substance to our hopes, which convinces, us of things we cannot see." What are some of the realities in this unseen world? What are some of the "things we cannot see" except with the eyes of fai'th? No one has ever seen a soul at the moment God created it,'when it.left the body, or at any other time. Nor has anyone seen the re-birth of a soul at Baptism when the higher life of grace is infused and the human clay is made immortal diamond, when the bap'tized 199 ,In I JEROME BREUNIG Reoieto for Religious is made a son of God and heir of heaven, when the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity come and make their home in the soul, trans-forming it into a temple of God. "Blessed are those who have not .seen and have believed." Faith convinces us of things we cannot see. No one has seen a soul red as scarlet washed whiter than snow by the absolution of a priest. Nor has anyone seen the bread of heaven restoring the waning strength of the soul. No one has seen the inexpressible joy of the elect in the mansion,s of heaven, the chastening anguish of the souls in the prison of purgatory, or the black despair of the damned 'in hell. "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." Faith convinces us of things we can-not see. Opposition of the Sense-World It is essential to salvation to stay aware of the unseen world but it is not easy. We live in a world of sense. Our very mode of learning is rboted in sense impressions. There is nothing in the mind / that was not first in the senses. Even faith comes by hearing. Our convictions about what we cannot see are constantly being challenged by things we can see. It is a losing battle, naturally. For instance, we will ordinarily be more vividly impressed by paging through a national picture magazine for a few minutes than we will by reading the Imitation of Christ for the same length of time. Unless we con, stan.tly cultivate supra-sensible reality by reading, reflection, and prayer, we will not be able to offset the ever-present attraction of the sensible. We.are also at the m'ercy of our less immediate environment. We are influenced by what we see, hear, feel; and much of this is secular. It is not informed with respect for the sacred unseen realities. There are also abundant examples of godlessness. To claim there are no atheists in foxholes, on the operating tables in our hospitals, among the alumni of our schools; Or ("there but for the grace of God go I") among ex-religious is to close one's eyes to the facts. The lack of respect for God's creative co-operation in h.uman generation is widespread and appalling. There are hardened, blinded men who look on death like the fallen-away who "assured" the hos-pital chaplain: "If I die on the operating table, there will not b'e any-one to take me away." Many non-believers patronize our "naivete" in accepting the sacramental system. A Catholic mayor was openly ridiculed in the public press: "How can he be fit to manage the city goverttment when he is foolish enough to believe a little wafer is his 200 duly, 1953 THE UNSEEN WORLD God." Communists use brutal methods.to eradicate, "to wash away," a sense of the supernatural, but secularism has a smooth ap-proach that sometimes is even more effective in uprooting faith, hope, and charity. The recent ~u.rvey of religion in the United States has produced some startlin~ data. The first report that 99% of the people be-lieved in the existence of G~od was heartening, but the subsequent studies revealed the shallowness of much of this belief. Thd eighth" of the series, "What Americans Think of Heaven and Hell," reported the following statistics in the March number of the Catholic Digest. "Do you think there is any real possibility of your going to.hell? Yes, answered .I 2 %; No, 29 % : Don't know, 17 %; Do not beh.eve in hell, 42 %." In other words, 88 % of those questioned were not greatly concerned with .a truth that Christ underlined clearly, in His teaching. And this is the. environment, through the press, radio, television(?), and a thousand other contacts, we live in. The un-seen world of faith has competition. Witnesses to the Unseen The greatest Witness to the reality of the unseen world was" Christ, God2s Son, who clothed Himself with flesh and blood, a true human nature, worked miracl~s, and founded a ,visible Church to bear witness to the invisible grandeur of divine realities. He invites religious in a special way to continue to bear witness. He has invited them to prove the eternal value of.a better world to a money-mingled, sex-sick, rugged-individual generation by being poor, chaste, and obedieht as He was in the wor'ld. "But if religious are not inhabi-tants of this unseen world they will never impart the irresistible con-viction that the unseen world exists." The recent communication from a Poor Clare (REVIEW, No-vember~ 1952, 312-14) contained the eloquent witness to the un-seen world that is afforded by contemplatives. "There is an unseen world which to her (a Poor Clare) is very real. The incidents of daily lilt'are mere accidentals which are of value so far as they pur-chase for her more perfect union with God. This unseen world is as real to her as the things she can reach out and touch, and touching it she can make every action of hers prayer. I am speaking of prayer,mnot prayers," Until the unseen world is as real to us as the things we can reach out and touch, we will not convey the conviction so badly needed. 201 C. A. HERBST Reuieto for Religious, There is on~ way to make this world that real. It is by living in it. I remember a retreat master's remark on tills point. "You have to have darkness to find a picture on the sensitive plate, and you ha~e to have prayer to bring out the invisible presence of God." Again, it is ' prayer and not prayers that will enable us to live the convictions of our faith. Chari!:y C. A. Herbst, S.J. W~HEN a learned man among the Jews asked Our Lord: "Which is the great commandment in the law?" Christ answered: "Thou shalt love the' Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, andwith thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment." (Mt. 22: 37, 38). This was not new with Christ. It is the burden not only of the New but als0 of the Old Testament. written, as St. Paul says, "with the Spirit 6f the living God.in the fleshly tables of the heart" (II Cot. 3:3). The theological virtues are the greatest of all the virtues. Thdre are three of them: faith, hope, and charity. "And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three." Of these three, love of God' for His own sake is the queen: "But the greatest of these is charity" (I Cot. 13:13). Its object is God Himself, and our motive for loving Him,. too, is His own dear Self, "because Thou are all good and worthy of all love." "I call charity that virtue which moves the soul to love God 'for His own sake and oneself and the neighbor for God's ~ake," said St. Augustine. Charity makes all the virtues live. It is the soul even of faith, without which it is impossible to please God. "The life. of the body is the soul. By it the body moves and feels. Even so the life of faith is charity, because it works through charity, as you read in the Apostle: 'faith that worketh by charity' (Gal. 5:6). When charity grows cold, f~ith dies, just as the body does when the soul leaves it." (St. Bernard, Serrn. "2 In Resurr.) "O my God, ,I love Thee above all things." How can I truth-fully say this when I prove many times every day by committing venial sins that I love even tiny creatures more than I love God? Or why is it that I do not cry for love of God wheaa I lqse Him by mor-tal sin but I do cry when I lose my mother by death? Although ¯ 202 drain, 1953 CHARITY these actions seem to be contradicting my words "0 my God, I love Thee above all things," they, really do not. I can weep over my mother's death and commit venial sins and" still love God objectively above all things. That is, I can, and do, go on sincerely and earnest-ly wishing Him the l~reatest good, .that He will continue to be the supreme object of all love and receive divine honors. I can commit venial sins and weep over temporal ld~s and still love God above all things appreciative4 , too. by preferring God with an efficacious will to all created things, by esteeming Him as thehighest good. I can so value and esteem Him ak to be r~eady to lose all else rather than abandon God. We canndt recall too often that true love is in the will, not in the fe~!ings or ~motions. A mother's instinctive and spontaneous feelings and enfotions may draw her to love her child more ir~rensel~, with greater ease, tenderness, and alacrity, than she does God, yet she is ~eady to lose her child rather than offend God seriously. Her love for God is greater and deeper, and influences her soul more p[ofoundly. She loves God objectively and appreciatively more, and intensively and emotionally less. Thihgs of sense appeal more directly and affec-tively than spiritual things do. That in the supreme test, love for God is greater and stronger than any natural love is wonderfully shown in the death of St. Perpetua, martyr. "Neither the tears and oft-repeated prayers of her. aged father, nor the mother-love for the baby boy at her breast, nor the ferocity of her tormentors could move Perpetua from her faith in 3esus Christ." This is brought out, too. by the incidents in the daily lives of the "little people" in Christ's Church' in this living present, so well presented by Father Trese. " 'We've a good pastor,' my.people say --and I am ashamed. Ashamed as I stand beside Katie Connelly at the bed of her just-dead son, and hear her say, 'It's God's will. isn't it, Father?' while she clutches my. hand. Ashamed as I stand beside Ed Fetter at his wife's bier, and hear him say, with three little tykes hanging to his pants-legs, 'If this is what God wants,, we've got to take it, Father.' Ashamed as I ride with the Martins to the Stat~ Hospital where they are taking their son, and hear the mother say, as she bites her lip, 'Well, we've all got to have our cross, Father.' " (Leo Tress, Vessel of Clapt, 24.) Love has various degrees. - In the love of concupiscence there is something of self. I love another because I will get something out of it for myself. This is love of God for my own sake, with selfishness, 203 C. A. HERBST but a very good selfishness. This is the great virtue of hope. Then there is the love of complacency, in which I am glad and rejoice, take pleasure in, another's good, just~ because it ishis good. By it I re-joice in ~the divine perfections~ "Thus approving the good which we see in God, and rejoicing in it, we make the act of l~ve which is called complace-ncy; for we please ourselves in the divine pleasure infinitely more than in our own,' (St. Francis de Sales, Looe of God, V, i). A third and higher'degree of love is~ the love of benevolence, By it we wish another well, want good to come to him. This love we express in the Our Father when we pray: "Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom ~ome, Thy will be done!" Love consists more in deeds than in words. "If you love me, keep my commandments," Our Lord said (John 14: 15). Every-body knows that "talk is che~p,'° but actions filled with love are purest gold. A fine expression of love is a gift. That is why we give gifts on birthdays and on other joyous occasions. Gifts are the language of love. This is shown most strikingly at Christmas time. It is ~ the . feast of giving, of the Gift. Men give then because God taught them to show love that way. He gave the first Christmas Gift by giving Jesus Christ, His son. "God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son" (John 3:16). That was Bethlehem. That was Calvary, too. "God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son." The .lesson ChriSt taught from the crib and from the cross is the same lesson; love in deed, in giving. The soul that loves God cannot miss that. It is convinced that love consists in a mutual exchange of gifts. "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for cnrlst. The answer leaps forth: "Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding~ and my whole will." One gives oneself whole and entire. We cannot do more. But we can do it more solemnly and more specifically, and we have. Religious surrender to God the goods of the world by the vow of poverty. They surrender to .God the goods of the body and of family, life by the vow of chastity. They surrender to God the goods of the soul, especially that most precious thing, their will, by ~he vow of obedience. "Almighty and Eternal God, I vow to Thee perpetual poverty: chastity, and obedience." This is our answer to the divine challenge: "Thou shalt love'the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy .whole soul, and with all thy strength, and wi'th all thy mind . This do, and thou shalt live." 204 The Moral Code Cat:holic I-lospit:als Gerald Kelly, S.J. SOME years ago there was a colorful basketball official who used to delight (and sometime~ enrage) spectators by his dramatic way of telling players, "You can't do that[" Again and again his whistle would be heard and he would be seen speeding across the floor, an accusing finger' pointed at some offending player, as his piercing voice insisted," "You can't do that!" ¯ For all too many people, I fear, this officialmminus his pleasing dramatics--might represent the Catholic hospital and its moral code. Engraven in the minds of these people is the picture Of a devoted non- Catholic physician bending over his patient in the operating or de-livery room, yearning to do something to save the patient's life, but frustrated in this salutary design by the Church, which, through the Sister superior or supervisor or chaplain, raises its restraining hand 'and says unsympathetically, "You can't do that!" Certainly much of the publicity given to v~arious events that take place in our hos-pitals caters to this impression. For example, a few years ago, in Brownsville, Texas, a physician who had sterilized a woman in defiance of the hospital code was dis-missed from the staff. The incident received nation-wide publicity in the daily'papers; and the correspondent of one widely-read weekly devoted to it considerable space and ev?n more emotion. The Sisters of Mercy had closed the doors of mercy to the doctor whose only purpose was mercy~ Follow-up letters from doctors, including one from the vice-chief'-of-staff of their hospital, favored the Sisters and showed little sympathy for the expelled physician. Other letters, however, showed marked sympathy for the doctor and for his emo-tional reporter. One letter in particular expressed great !mpatience with this.Church which insists on projecting the taboos .(a favorite epithet for commandments, divine and human) of the Dark Ages into the twentieth-century operating and delivery rooms. In this and similar incidents We have examples of the old prob-lem of misunderstanding.' The critics usually do not understand our hospital code. Even Catholics, I think, seldom realize what goes into a code. In fact, many seem to have the impression that a Cath- 205 GERALD KELLY Review fur Religious olic hospital moral code consists in ond supreme principle (which, incidentally, is "best-seller" nonsense at its best) that mothers must die fortheir babies. These people ought ko have more accurate in-formation, and it seems logical that they might expect to get it from religious because the Catholic hospital, is one of the most distinctive and extensive achievements of our religious institutes. The following paragraphs p~ovide at least the minimum essentials for giving correct information. ~ Why a Code? Since.the administrators of Catholic hospitals are men and women whose lives are consecrated to God, they can conscientiously conduct these hospitals only when they have a reasonable assurance that the law of God will be observed in the treatment of the sick. One way of obtaining this assurance is to formulate the pertinent moral prin-ciples and their applications into a code and to have the staff-members guarantee that they will observe this code. The first reason for having a code, therefore, is to satisfy the conscience of the admin-istrators. This is aptly stated in the introduction to the present code of the Catholic Hospital Association: "Catholic hospitals exist to render medical and spiritual care to the sick. The .patient adequately considered, and inclusive of his spiritual status and his claim to the helps of the Catholic religion, is the primary concern of those entrusted with the management of Catholic hospitals. Trustees and administrators of Catholic hos-pitals understand this responsibility tbwards each patient whom they accept, to be seriously binding in conscience. "A partial statement of this basic obligation is contained in the present Code of Ethical and Religious Directives. All who associate themselves with a Catholic hospital, and particularly the members of the medical and nursing staffs, must understand the moral and reli-gious obligations binding on those responsible for the management and operation of the hospital, and must realize that they are allowed to perform only such acts and to carry out only such procedures as will enable the owners and administrators to fulfill their obligations." What was .lust said might be construed as meaning that the sole or primary purpose for having a moral code is to protect administra-tor~ against doctors who might perform illicit opera.tions in their hospitals. This" is not true. Generally speaking, doctors and nurses, both Catholic and to a large extent the non-Catholics, want clear 206 July, 1953 ~ HOSPITAL CODE guidance in the ethical problems of their profession. And they want it because they are conscious of a need. As members of a. profession ithat deals constantly with life and death, with mutilation of the hu-man body, with expensive and sometimes dangerous remedies, they are faced again and again With acute ethical problems. Yet large numbers of them, even among tl~e Catholics, have never had the op-portunity of taking~a course in medical ethics. Others who have had such a course have grown "rusty" and need some convenient way of refreshing their memories. For all of these a moral code, which con-tains concisely-stated principles and practical applications to the field of medicine, satisfies a definite need. Making a Code What have our Catholi~ hospitals done to provide the needed guidance through a moral code? For many years the hospitals of the United States and Canada used a very brief ~ode which was excellent at the time it was formulated but which became more and mor~ in-adequate as the progress of medicine introduced new problems and threw new light on old ones. A new and more complete code was needed, and many dioceses prepared such a cod~ for their own use. It was not until 1947 that work was begun on a revised code for the Catholic Hospital Association of the United States and Canada. The work done by the committee on this revised code may be of interest., The committee first made a careful examinationof all the recently-composed diocesan codes, selected what seemed the best material from them. and arranged this material plus their own contributions in a manner that seemed best for handy reference. When this was done, a preliminary draft of a new code was sent for criticism to a large number of doctors and moralists in various parts of the United States and Canada. The doctors consulted included both Catholics and non-Catholics. They were chosen for eminence in their profession and not for ~hei~'religion. These consultants, doctors and moralists;: submitted criticisms some of them. very detailed---of the prelim-inary formula. The criticisms were carefully weighed by the com-mittee and a new formula was drafted. , This was referred again to the original critics; more suggestions were offered; and the code was finally formulated in a manner that met"with universal apprbval. This code was publ!shed in 1949 by the Catholic Hospital Associa-tion of the United States arid Cahada, and it is used today in most o'f the dioceses of these two countries. Some dioceses which had gone~ 207 GERALD KELLY Review [ur Religious to great trouble to prepak-e their own codes still use these in preference to the revised code of the C~tholic Hospital Association. Two observations are in place here in order to ~0revent misunder-standings. First, there is a question pertinent to revising a code: does this mean that morM principles change, or, as some people would put it, does it mean that the Church has changed its moral ~tandards? Obviously, the revision of a hospital code should have no such im-plications. Moral principles do not change: and, from the stand-point of ~principles, the only'reasons for revising an approved code might be to include some principle not beret0fore included, or to ex-press more clearly and simply one of the principles already included. But the application of moral principles to medicine can change be-cause this application depends on the medical facts, which can change with the progress of.science. For example, there was a time when the only way of successfully treating certain infections was' by surgical operation, but tod~ay many of these infections can be arrested by the use of recently-discovered drugs. A fact like this can be the basis for declaring that an operation which was permissible several years ago because necessary for the patient's welfare is no longer permissible. This is but one example of how the application of principles to con-crete cases can change. The revision of a code is largely concerned with these concrete cases. A second observation concerns ~he fact that different codes are fol-lowed in various dioceses. Does this mean that what is morally good in one place is immoral in another? Again the answer is in the nega-tive. The differences in the codes concern neither the moral prin-ciples nor the licitness of specific operations and treatments. They concern rather the selection and arrangement of materi.al, with per-haps the addition of some purely disciplinary regulation .which may be thought necessary in one place but not in another: for example, on the need of consultation before some operation is allowed. Content of Code .: At this point, if not before, someone might well ask just wh~it, is a code, and what goes into it. I can best answer this question by're-ferring specifically to the revised code of the Cat.holic Hospital As-sociation, which is entitled Ethical and Religious .Directives/~or Cath-oti~ Hospitals. As the title implies, this code contains two sections. The second section contains directives of a religious nature which concern the reception and administration of the ~acraments and the 208 dulg, 1953 HOSPITAL CODE reverent disposal of.amputated members and immature babies. For the most part, this sectibn of the code would directly concern only Catholics or those who wish to become Catholics. The first section contains ethical directives, that is, principles of the natural law with applications to medicine. Since the natural law binds all men, the provisions of this section apply to all patients, doctors, nurses, and other hospital personnel, regardless of their religion. This is really the moral code of our hospitals. My subsequent remarks app.ly to this section. Basic Principles The,baslc moral principles which are ~ formulated and applied in ¯ our ethical directive~ can be reduced to these six: (a) the .need of the / patient's consent; (b) the inviolability of innocent human life: the intrinsic.evil 'of contraceptive practices: (d) the principle~.of the "double effect"; (e) the principle of "liberty" and (f) the principle of "totality." Perhaps a few words about each of these principles will .be informative without being unduly soporific. ~) The patient's consent. Each individual human being has bqth ~the right and the duty to care for his health. When a doctor treats a patient, he is simply exercising the patient's own right of self-preservation for him, and he may not perform even legitimate operations without the consent of the patient.,. This Consent may be' given explicitly, as would be the case if an operation would be ex-plained to the patient and he ~would then agree to it. Or it may.be implicit, as would be the case if the patient asl~ed for a cure, with the understanding that he is.willingto Submit to all the necessary pro-ce. dures, even without .explanation. Or it may be reasonabtg pre-sumed, as is the case when a doctor gives emergency treatment to an unconscious man. Sound morality requires consent in one of these forms and l~oth civil law and medical associations recognize ~his. For infants and others who are incapable of acting rationally, the parents or guardians have the right to give the consent., b) The inviolabilitg of innocent human life. The meaning bf this principle is strongly and clearly explained in a memorable pas-sage of our present Holy Father's Allocution on the moral problems of married life (October 29, 195 I). This.passage Should be f~imiliar, not 0nly to religigus in hospital work, but to educators as well. "Now the.child, ~ven the unborn child," said the Pope, "is a hu-man being, a human being in .the same degree and by ~he same title as 209 ,,It GERALD KELLY Review for Religious is its mother. Moreover, every human being, even the child¯ in its mother's womb, receives its right to life directly from God, not frdm its parents, nor from any human society or authority. Therefore there is no man, no human authority, no science, no 'indication,,' whether medical, eugenical, social, economic/or moral, that can show or give a valid juridical title for a deliberate and direct disposing of an innocent human life, that is to say, for an action which aims at its destruction, whether such destruction be intended as an end or as a means towards some other end which may "itself be in no way illicit. So, for example, to save the life of the mother is a most noble end, but the direct killing of the cl~ild as a means to that end is not law-ful. The direct destruction of the 'so-called 'valueless life,' whether born or unborn, which was practised a few years ago in numerous in-stances, can in no way be justified. And therefore when this i~ractice began the Church formally declared that it is contrary to the natural law and to the positive law of God, and consequently" illicit--even under instruction from the public authority to kill those who, al: though innocent, are nevertheless by reason of some physical or-ps3;- chical taint useless to the nation and even become a burden on the ¯ community. The life of an innocent human being is inviolable, .and any direct assault or. attack on it violates one of those fundamental laws without which it is impossible for human beings to live safely in society. We have no need to teach you the particular significance of this fundamental law and its bearing upon your profession. But do not forget it: above any human law, above any 'indication' whatso-ever, there stands the indefectible law¯ of God." The Pope's words are obviously directed against doctbrs and others who think that in certain situations there are good reasons (they call them "indications") for the direct killing of an unborn child. Against these men he defends the right of the child. But he does not limit his words to the child; he defends all innocent human life. The direct (i.e., the intentional) taking of such life is never permissible. Any procedure which'would result in death for either the mother or the child (or for any other innocent person) can be justi-fied only when the death is an unintended and unavoidable by-product of the procedure. Incidentally, this principle of the inviola-bility of human life also condemns the so-called mercy-~killing (the taking of a patient's life to relieve him of suffering), whether it is done with or without the patient's consent. c) The intrinsic evil of contraception. The Church, especially in 210 July, 1953 HOSPITAL CODE the oi~cial t~aching,of the two last Popes, has'constantly branded artificial birth control as contrary to the law of nature, and therefore intrinsically evil. The most ~adical form of this evil is direct steri-lization, which means the intentional destruction of the procreative power. Doctors have many ways of accomplishing this, and all of of them.are forbidden by our code. .d) The principle oF the "'double effect.'" Students of ethics are familiar with this principle and know that it contains the solution to many of the practical,~problems of life. Conscientious people often use it without knowing it exists. The aviator who bombs an im-portant military target, foreseeing but not desiring the deaths of some civilians, is perhaps unwittingly using this principle. The student who must read a treatise on sex, foreseeing but not wanting tempta-tions against chastity, is using perhaps also unwittingly the p~inciple of the double effect. And all of us. whether we realize it or not, are following this same principle when we perform some good and neces-sary action, realizing that, despite our best intentions, certain others will misunderstand and will be'led to rash judgments and to criti-cism. The deaths of the civilians, the sexual temptations, and the harsh thoughts and criticism, are all simply unavoidable and un-wanted by-products of actions that are good in themselves and of sufficient importance to be performed despite the evil effects that at-company them. The principle of the double effect has many applications in medicine, especially as regards surgical operations on diseased repro-ductive organs with the unavoidable destruction of the procreative power and as regards treatment of a pregnant mother with some un-intentional but unavoidable risk either to herself or to her child. This last point was clearly explained by. Pope Plus XII in his Allodution to the "Family Front" (November 26, 1951): "On purpose," he said, "We have always used the expression "direct attempt on the life of an innocent person,' "direct killing.' Be-cause if, for example,-the saving of the life of the future mother, in-dependently of her pregnant state, should urgently require a surgical act or other therapeutic treatment which would~have as an accessory consequence, in no way desired or intended but inevitable, the death of the fetus, such an act could no longer be called a direct attempt on innocent life. Under these conditions the operation can be licit, like other similar medical interventions, granted always that a good of high worth is concerned, such as life, and that it is not possible to 211 GERALD KELLY Review fur Religious postpone the operation until after the birth of the child, or to 'have recourse to other efficacious remedies." e) The principle of ."libertt.t." Physicians do. not always see eye-to-eye on the value of certain treatments or operations. For ex-a.~ ple, take the much-discussed and too-much-popularized operation called Idbotomy. Thisoperation consists essentially in severing cer-tain fibers in the brain, and its general purpose seems to be to reduce emotional tension and thus help in the cure of some mental illnesses and in relieving otherwise unbearable pain. The sharpest kind of con-troversy exists among reputable physicians as to the good produced by the operation, the risks it involves, the types of patients that might benefit from it, and so forth. And this is but one example of many decidedly controversial questions in the sphere of medicine: Theologians, too, have their differences of opinion; and this is especially true when they are faced with a new problem. "There are pros and cons to many of these problems, and it may take a long time before the issues are sufficiently clarified to have a ffnanimous opinion for either side or until the teaching authority of the Church inter-venes to settle the matter. Sound morality supplies this practical principle that may be fol-lowed in these legitimately debated matters: obligations (i.e., pre-cepts and prohibitions) are not to be imposed unless they are certain. This is what I mean by the principle of "liberty." For the doctor, this means that, with the consent of the patient, he and his consult-ants may follow what they sincerely judge to be the proper medical procedure as long as this procedure is not certainly wrong. I f) The principle of "totality." I have taken this woful from Pope Pius XII, who said in his address on the moral limits of medical research a~ad treatment (September 14, 1952): "By virtue of the principle of totality, by virtue of his right to use the services of his organism as a whole, the patient can allow individual parts to be destroyed or mutilated when and to the extent~necessary for the good of his being as a whole." Obviously, this is an extremely important principle in medi'cal practice. Every time a doctor, acting according to the principles of sound medicine, and with the consent of his pa-tient, removes an eye, a hand, a gall-bladder, etc., he is following this principle of totality. He removes the member, which is a part of the whole, because it has become in some way.a threat to the survival or the well-being of the whole. 212 Jul~, 1953 HOSPITAL CODE Conclusion The foregoing are. the main, if not the only, principle~ that form the core of an~] sound medico-moral code. Perhaps I have giventhem too much space: yet it seems to me that one really appreciates our hos-pital codes only when he sees these basic principles grouped together and briefly explained. It may be taken for granted that an~ doctor who conscientiously follows these principles will act, not ~nly ac-cording to sound morality, but also according to sound medicine. Earlier in this article I suggested that in the minds of many people the supreme moral principle of Catholic hospitals seems to be that mothers must die for their babies. This, as I said, is best-seller non-sense at its best, and perhaps I should have said at its worst. Implicit in this attitude is the idea that in a critical situation a Catholic mother must always prefer her baby's life to her own. The idea is erroneous. Obviously, no mother may allow the direct taking of her life in order to save her baby, because, as Plus XlI declared, the direct destruction of any innocent life is morally wrong. And even a~ regards the risking of her life, e.g., by submitting to a dangerous operation, for thd sake of her baby, we must be very careful about making universal state-ments. We would have to consider many concrete factors before we could decide whether such a risk is obligatory or even permissible. Closely related to this erroneous notion that in our hospitals mothers must die for their babies is the idea that, since Catholic hos-pitals do not permit thereapeutic abortion (a "gentle" expression for the practice of killing babies to "save" mothers), they lose more mothers than do other hospitals. Not only is there no statistical basis for this, but what statistics we have indicate the very opposite. /~or example, two Boston doctors, Roy J. Heffernan and William "A. Lynch, recently obtained information about maternal deaths from 171 hospitals in various paris of our country. This information covers a period of eleven years, 1940-1950. In these hospitals, during this long period, there were more than ~hree million deliveries, about evenly di~iided, between hospitals that permit therapeutic abortions and hospitals that exclude this practice. The maternal death rate in the hospitals that do not allow therapeutic abortions was .87 .per thousand deli~ceries, whereas in the hospitals that do allow therapeu-tic abortion the maternal death rate was .98 per .thousand deliverles. According to these and similar statistics', the keeping of God's law saves not only babies but their mothers, as well. This is a too-littld-known aspect of the apostolate of Catholic hospitals. 213 .ues!: ons and AnSwers ~18m What can be done to counteract some Iong-sfandincj practlce, s en-gaged in during time of retreat by Sister-retreatants, for example, re-hearslng daily for one or two hours the Mass and hymns to be used ,for the reception ceremony; embroidering and crocheting between conferences2 The Sisters who participate in these works find that it interferes with thei~ recollection. ¯ Some work ab.out the house, some choir practice, and other little jobs (like needlework) would not seem to interfere ,too much with retreat recollection if indulged in only for about aft hour or so a day. That would still allow the retreatants a fair amount of time for un-disturbed private reflection an~l personal duties. If, however, the re-treat schedule were already extraordinarily crowded (which is usually not the case), there might be little time left for such tasks as indi-cated in our question. In any case, it is important that retreatants h~ve a fair amount of leisure time for private reflection, for jotting down. spirittlal "lights," for additional rest, and the like. ml9m At times it is necessary to post items pertinent to religious' in various departments of an establishment in regard to keeping rooms in order, having greater care of furniture, and the like. Would it not further a bet-ter ~om;nunity spirit if such directions were posted in the community room rather than on the doors of the different departments where outsiders may read them and make comments? Yes, it would be better to post items of a personal or private na-ture, whether they pertain to the community as a whole or to indi-vidual members of the community, in some place reserved to the reli-gious family .in preference to other more or less public places. Thus criticism might be lessened. It is possible, :though, that sometimes superiors ihtend such notices not merely nor primarily for religious who are in charge of or are working in a department, but especially for the outside help. Then such notices would be posted where those for whom they a~e intended would see them. In these cases, however, care should be taken that the wording of the notice does not occasion criticism of the religious. 214 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS In a religious congregation (in which simple vows are taken) may a ~ell-glous who is subiect fo a provincial superior have a right of appeal to the superior general when the religlous wants a farad or extra permission? To begin with, religious have the right of communicating with higher superio.rs: such correspondence is sealed. Religidus could. therefore, ask for various permissions from higher superiors. Some extraordinary permissions are usually asked of higher superiors ra~ber than of the immediate superior. Ordinary permissions, however, as a general rule are to be sought from the immediate superior. If that superior refuses the permission, one should not request the same per-mission from a higher superior without informing him that the per-mission was refused by the lower superior." Good government dic-tates that procedure, as ~ell as courtesy ahd possibly the rules of the institute. Before asking for any extra permissions or "favors," religious should remember .that superiors are to help their subjects observe common life; hence superior~ may not readily grant extra permission.s to a subject unless the Circumstances of the case warrant it. Likewise superiors must then be willing, and able, to grant the same permission to any other, subject in the same circuhastances. Subjects should try to lighten° the superior's burden' of of~ce by not requesting permis-sions which superiors should not grant either because they are not consonant with religious life, or because they would violate or harm common life, or because of some other good reason. Besides being a violation of common life, "favoritism" in a community is always odious. The cause of our Venerable Founder has been in progress at Rome for thirty years. In order to help Stimulate popular devotion to our Founderu particularly among ou~ students and their parents--our Order is in the habit of prlntlng, from time to time pictures and devotional pamphlets about him. Up to now. printed matter of that type only bore the nlhll obsfaf of the ordinary of the diocese where our motherhouse is located. It was brough~t to our attention lately that we need the approbation of the Holy See ~or an~ printed material about our Fo, under who has been de-clared Venerable. Is that observation correct? Canon 1387, of the, Code of Canon Law states that what per-tains in any way to the causes of beatification and canonization of 215. QUESTIONS ~ND ~NSWERS Servants of God may not be published without the permission of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. @his restriction applies only~to causes which are pending before the Sacred. Congregation; not to those which are finished (person b~s been canonized), or are pending be-fore some other body "than the Sacred'Congregation of Rites. During the time permission must be obtained from the Sacred Congregation, no further permission of the local ordinary is necessary for publica-tion of matter approved by the Sacred Congregation. The Codex pro Postulatoribus Causarum Beatiffcationis et Can-onizationis i4th edition, 1929, page 26, nos. 21 and 22) repeats the abo~ce and includes pictures (imagines) under the provision of can-on 1387. Several author~ who comment on canon. 1387 say that it seems to refer only t6 documents and. acts connected with the prosecution of th~ cause, such as summaries and proofs proposed for furthering the cause, opinions of consultors; comments of. the prornotor tidei, and the like. These authors rely on a Monitum of the Sacred Congrega-tion of Rites of February 12, 1909, which required previous' permis-sion of the Sacred Congregation for the publication of accounts,of the llfe, virtues, and "wonders" of Servants of God. Consequently it seems probable that the devotional pamphlets and pictures mentioned in our question need not be submitted to the Sacred Congregation for approval. m22-., Postulants are being sent out to the missions to hel'p with the teaching in schools*. They return to the motherhouse fop the week-ends. Are supe-riors justified in extending the postulancy for,three or four months, because the number of novices to be 'professed is not sufficient to fill the places of Fhe postulants? The Normae of 1901 (which have been used as a model for the constitgtions of rehgzous ,congregations) allowed a period of pos-tulancy ranging between gik--and twelve months. They permitted the superior general f~ a ~just cause to prolong the postulancy up to three additional months i~ particular cases (n. 65). A just cause was considered to exist if superiors remained uncertain about the vocation of the candidate, about his qualifications Or defects, or about his ad, justment to the life of the institute. ¯ The Code of Canon Law speaks of a postulancy of at least six entire months which must. be made by all women in religious insti- 216 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS tutes with perpetual vows and by the lay brothers in the.institutes of men. It permits the major superior ,to prolong the postulancy, but not beyond another six months (canon 539). This may be done in particular cases. The purpose of the prolongation is again to allow superiors more time to size up the applicant's vocation and more pre-cisely. his aptitude or fitnes~ for their religious institute. In the light of the above, it is rather difficult to see how superiors wbuld be justified in extending the postulancy for three or four months in the case under consideration. It might be well to add that the Apostolic Delegate has special .faculties to shorten or prolong the postulancy pre~scribed by the Code of Canon Law. Relatives of a relig;ous send money to a mutual friend with the under-standing that the religious will let that friend knowwhat he wants the friend to buy for him on the occasion of his blrfhday, Christmas, Easter, and the like. Is such procedure in keeping with poverty, or would the religious be considered as having a reserved fund of money? In the final .analysis the practice outlined' in the question reduces itself to a private fund of money at the disposal of the religious, a form of peculium generally contrary t~o the poverty professed by most. religious institutes, At best, this is contrary to cohamon life and the spirit of povert, y. A religious who countenanced such a practice could very well profit from reading Father Gallen's excellent article on "The Spirit of Poverty'" (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, VIII .[1949], 35-43), not to me.ntion various other articles on common life arid the vow of poverty. As a practical solution, the religious could advise his relatives, who wish to give him a present, to send the money.to 'him rather than to the mutual friend. It would be understood that the reli-gious will turn in the money to his superiors to be added to the com-munity funds; then, when the religious needs something, the superior will provide it from the community funds. In that way both the vow and the spirit of poverty, as well as commott life, will be safe-guarded. A Sister acts as organist for the children's choir and for the adult choir during Mass and other services. Does canon law forbid this? A similar questi6n about a Sister organist was answered in the 217 Review ?or Religious BOOK REVIEWS pages of this REVIEW, VIII (1949), 325. Attention was called to possible diocesan regulations on the matter, even though the Code of Canon Law says nothing about it. In genera~ it seems that there would riot be much objection to a Sister acting as organist for a chil-dren's choir. In case of reai need this might also be stretched to in-clude an adult Choir of women only. But for a mixed adult choir:. "In practice,no Sister should undertake to play the organ for amixed choir of men and women without the express permission of the local ordinary and of her ownhigher superior" ibid.). / Book Reviews .~IRACLES. By Jean Hell~. Translated by Lancelot CL Sheppard. Pp. v~ -h. 288. David McKa¥ (~omp~ny, Inc., New York, 1952. $3.~0. This work is not a philosophical or tbeo16gical treatise on mir-acle. s. Rather, by a fairly detailed historical presentation of selec.ted cases, it is designed to give the reader a fairly general knowledge of, them. It is "a synthesis, or more modestly perhaps, an attempt at a synthesis" (p. 14). The whole story is built around persons, and l~eferably persons Who are not very remote from us in time. The language is not technical, but adapted to all intelligent readers. ,, The first chapter is an account of "miracles of humility": it: pre-sents the "stories of the Cur{ .of ~Ars and of Bernadette Soubi~ous; Then there follows, "Fatima, or the Age of Mary." Therese Neu-mann does not measure up to the author's standards and require-ments. But--surprisingly enough--"Catberine Emmerich, 'Narra, tot' of .the Gospels" and her writir~gs touched up by Clement Bren-tano meet with his full approval. The apparitions at Beauraing, BelgiUm, 1932-1933, are judged t6 be "childish fiction.'" Neverthe~ less' this is one of the few among recent cases that have received epis-copal approbatton. A particularly interesting feature of th~s book is the final chapter: "imitators and Fakers of Miracles." By contrast it serves especially well to bring out the great differences that obtain be-tween, genuine supernatural signs and others that are ~fraudulent, and how the pretended marvelous can be detected and distinguished from whaTt his~ a wuthhoelnet iwc.ork emphasizes the prudent reserve and critical spirb of the Church toward whatever is proposed as surpassing the limiv 218 duly, 1953 BOOK REVIEWS of nature, and tends to,bring about in the mind of the reader a simi-lar wise attitude.---AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD. ., A LIFE OF CHRIST. By Aloys Dirksen, C.PP.S. Dryden Press, New York, 1952. Pp. 340. $3.75. This book is unique in two respects: first, it has the '.'split-p~ge format." that is to say, in the upper part we find the Confraternity text of' the Gospels, and entirely separated from this section, a com-mentary on the Gospel text. One can turn the pages of the upper section without disturbing those below. Secondly, the Commentary and its Introduction are models of intelligent compression. Eight introd_uctory chapters furnish,,~i background for a better understanding of the actual commentary. These include a brief dis-cussion of the sources for a life of Christ, an outline of the geography of Palestine, a survey of the l~revious history of the Jews. the politi-cal and social conditions and prevalent religious beliefs of the period when our Lord was onearth. Such a comprehensive introduction can treat these matters only in barest outline, and if a few inaccuracies have crept in, this can readily be excused. The commentary, too, is suggestive rather thar~ exhaustive: but it is usually very much to the point. The ordinary reader will find there what he wants to know about the Gospel text he is reading. At the end of the commentary, by way of appendix, is a list of messi-anic prophecies found in the-Old Testainent. and of the Old Testa-ment quotations found in the four Gospels. Since the author uses many tec